Supporters of Capitalism Are Crazy, Says Harvard

In their usual projective way, Leftist psychologists, sociologists etc. have been trying for over 50 years to portray conservatives as mentally ill in some way. The article below refers to the latest such attempt. I have myself written at great length in the academic journals on claims of this sort (e.g. here and here) but the article below does such a good job of ridiculing the Leftist jerk-offs concerned that I will say no more

Last weekend, Harvard University sponsored a conference called (I am not making this up) "The Free Market Mindset: History, Psychology, and Consequences." Its purpose was to try to figure out why, since everyone knows the current crisis amounts to a failure of the market economy, the stupid rubes continue to believe in it. The promotional literature for the conference opened with That Quotation from Alan Greenspan - the one in which he suggested that there was, after all, a "flaw" in the free market he hadn't noticed before.

Well, that does it, then! If our Soviet commissar in charge of money and interest rates says the free market doesn't work, who are you to disagree? The promotional material continues:

If the current state of the U.S. economy makes clear that former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan's faith in free markets was misplaced, the question remains: what was it about free markets that proved - and still continues to prove - so alluring to economists, scholars, and policy-makers alike?

Because, of course, if there's one guiding principle behind the largest government in world history, it's free markets. Ahem. This conference, we were told,

brings together leading scholars in law, economics, social psychology, and social cognition to present and discuss their research regarding the historical origins, psychological antecedents, and policy consequences of the free market mindset. Their work illustrates that the magic of the marketplace is partially an illusion based on faulty assumptions and outmoded approaches.

The speakers then spent the day, I am sure, laying out their own faulty assumptions and outmoded approaches, and studiously ignoring the Austrian School of economics.

In short, the conference was about this: Why do people still think the interaction of free individuals is a superior economic system to one directed by Harvard Ph.D.s like us? I mean, apart from the failure of central planning in every case in which it's been tried, a failure so staggering that only a blockhead could miss it, why would people cling to the idea that being herded into a collective run by the experts isn't the best way to live?

So by assuming from the outset the very thing that needs to be proven - namely, that the current state of the economy just occurred spontaneously, as the result of wicked market forces - our betters relieve themselves of the need to consider that central banking, a government-established institution, just might have had, you know, a little something to do with what happened.

George Reisman has already demonstrated the absurdity of referring to our present system as a "free-market" one. Naturally, of course, none of the participants bothered to notice that a Soviet commissar in charge of money and interest rates amounts to something like the opposite of the free market, or that the economic distortions he causes cannot, therefore, be the fault of the free market. This is exactly why, in my book Meltdown, I call the Fed "the elephant in the living room." We're not supposed to notice it, and we're supposed to pretend the damage it causes is the result of wildcat capitalism, unfettered free markets, or whatever other juvenile phrase is currently in vogue to describe the usual bogeyman.

Now I don't want to list all the paper topics at this conference, since it'd be a shame to make all of you feel stupid for having frittered away your weekend when you could have listened to, say, Stephen Marglin's paper on "How Thinking Like an Economist Undermines Community." Now there's a topic I haven't heard quite enough platitudes about. (If you must, you can view the whole schedule here.) You could also have heard a bunch of totally conventional polemics about how the market economy allows for "too much" pollution, when in fact a genuine free market - which, I need hardly point out, is not actually considered in any of these alleged papers - would punish polluters and bring about the internalization of so-called externalities. Murray Rothbard dealt with this matter in an extremely important article none of the participants had read.

I wonder if anyone at the conference asked questions like these:

* When Greenspan flooded the economy with newly created money and brought interest rates down to destructively low levels, thereby distorting entrepreneurial calculation as well as consumers' home-purchasing decisions, was that the fault of the free market?

* Do you think the Fed's creation of cheap credit out of thin air makes market participants more careful or less careful in how they allocate borrowed funds?

* When Alan Greenspan bailed out Long Term Capital Management in 1998, was that a "free market" phenomenon? Do you think he thereby encouraged more or less risk taking among other major market actors?

* The Financial Times spoke in 2000, in the wake of the dot-com boom, of an increasing concern that the so-called "Greenspan put" was injecting into the economy "a destructive tendency toward excessively risky investment supported by hopes that the Fed will help if things go bad." "All the insane dot-com investment we've seen, all this destruction of capital, all the crazy excesses of the past few years wouldn't have happened without the easy credit accommodated by the Fed," added financial consultant Michael Belkin. Did the free market cause that?

* Do lending standards decline for no particular reason, or could this phenomenon have a teensy weensy bit to do with (a) government regulation aimed at increasing "homeownership" and (b) loose monetary policy by the Fed? (When the banks get the additional reserves the Fed creates, they naturally want to lend it out - and in order to do so, they wind up lending it to people they either have or would have rejected previously. As I show in Meltdown, the phenomenon of lax lending standards in the wake of an inflationary boom by a central bank is traceable all the way to the 19th century. There is nothing even slightly unexpected - or market-driven - about it.)

Questions like these could go on and on. Not one, you can be certain, was raised at this conference.

Now if you really wanted to sponsor an event whose purpose was to try to understand why people believe inane things that have been falsified by reality, you'd do much better to hold a conference on socialism, or on Keynes and his school. It would be fascinating to learn the psychological motivation behind the persistence of Keynesian economics, whose popular version is a nonfalsifiable, ersatz religion....

People who believe in the market economy support a social order in which free individuals make voluntary contracts with each other, and no one can initiate physical force against anyone else. Is that vision so obviously unattractive that we have to refer its supporters for psychological evaluation?

We might instead wonder at the psychological condition of those who would denounce such a system: might they be motivated, for all their noble talk, by nothing but base envy of those with more material wealth than they, or by a pathological desire to dominate other people? I'm sure that will be covered at next year's conference.

More here

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IN THE BEGINNING.... JUST TO JOG YOUR MEMORY ABOUT WHO PROMOTED JUNK HOME LOANS

It wasn't "capitalism" or the "free market". Fannie Mae is a Federal government instrumentality. The article below by STEVEN A. HOLMES appeared in the New York Times: Thursday, September 30, 1999

Fannie Mae Eases Credit To Aid Mortgage Lending

In a move that could help increase home ownership rates among minorities and low-income consumers, the Fannie Mae Corporation is easing the credit requirements on loans that it will purchase from banks and other lenders. The action, which will begin as a pilot program involving 24 banks in 15 markets -- including the New York metropolitan region -- will encourage those banks to extend home mortgages to individuals whose credit is generally not good enough to qualify for conventional loans. Fannie Mae officials say they hope to make it a nationwide program by next spring.

Fannie Mae, the nation's biggest underwriter of home mortgages, has been under increasing pressure from the Clinton Administration to expand mortgage loans among low and moderate income people and felt pressure from stock holders to maintain its phenomenal growth in profits. In addition, banks, thrift institutions and mortgage companies have been pressing Fannie Mae to help them make more loans to so-called subprime borrowers. These borrowers whose incomes, credit ratings and savings are not good enough to qualify for conventional loans, can only get loans from finance companies that charge much higher interest rates -- anywhere from three to four percentage points higher than conventional loans.

''Fannie Mae has expanded home ownership for millions of families in the 1990's by reducing down payment requirements,'' said Franklin D. Raines, Fannie Mae's chairman and chief executive officer. ''Yet there remain too many borrowers whose credit is just a notch below what our underwriting has required who have been relegated to paying significantly higher mortgage rates in the so-called subprime market.'' Demographic information on these borrowers is sketchy. But at least one study indicates that 18 percent of the loans in the subprime market went to black borrowers, compared to 5 per cent of loans in the conventional loan market.

In moving, even tentatively, into this new area of lending, Fannie Mae is taking on significantly more risk, which may not pose any difficulties during flush economic times. But the government-subsidized corporation may run into trouble in an economic downturn, prompting a government rescue similar to that of the savings and loan industry in the 1980's. ''From the perspective of many people, including me, this is another thrift industry growing up around us,'' said Peter Wallison a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. ''If they fail, the government will have to step up and bail them out the way it stepped up and bailed out the thrift industry.''

Under Fannie Mae's pilot program, consumers who qualify can secure a mortgage with an interest rate one percentage point above that of a conventional, 30-year fixed rate mortgage of less than $240,000 -- a rate that currently averages about 7.76 per cent. If the borrower makes his or her monthly payments on time for two years, the one percentage point premium is dropped.

Fannie Mae, the nation's biggest underwriter of home mortgages, does not lend money directly to consumers. Instead, it purchases loans that banks make on what is called the secondary market. By expanding the type of loans that it will buy, Fannie Mae is hoping to spur banks to make more loans to people with less-than-stellar credit ratings.

Fannie Mae officials stress that the new mortgages will be extended to all potential borrowers who can qualify for a mortgage. But they add that the move is intended in part to increase the number of minority and low income home owners who tend to have worse credit ratings than non-Hispanic whites.

Home ownership has, in fact, exploded among minorities during the economic boom of the 1990's. The number of mortgages extended to Hispanic applicants jumped by 87.2 per cent from 1993 to 1998, according to Harvard University's Joint Center for Housing Studies. During that same period the number of African Americans who got mortgages to buy a home increased by 71.9 per cent and the number of Asian Americans by 46.3 per cent. In contrast, the number of non-Hispanic whites who received loans for homes increased by 31.2 per cent.

Despite these gains, home ownership rates for minorities continue to lag behind non-Hispanic whites, in part because blacks and Hispanics in particular tend to have on average worse credit ratings.

In July, the Department of Housing and Urban Development proposed that by the year 2001, 50 percent of Fannie Mae's and Freddie Mac's portfolio be made up of loans to low and moderate-income borrowers. Last year, 44 percent of the loans Fannie Mae purchased were from these groups.

The change in policy also comes at the same time that HUD is investigating allegations of racial discrimination in the automated underwriting systems used by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to determine the credit-worthiness of credit applicants.

SOURCE

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ELSEWHERE



Obama's road to Fascism: ""President Obama is taking over production in the American economy. President Bush admitted to doing the same with the banking, real estate and insurance industry bailouts, proclaiming he `abandoned the free market to save the free market.' Besides being oxymoronic, he was admitting he moved from a system where people control production (capitalism) to a planned economy where government controls production (there are three main types of planned economies - fascism, socialism and communism). While refusing to similarly label his own actions, President Obama at least admits he is following what President Bush did first. I have been arguing since November that the type of planned economy we are moving toward is most like fascism, not socialism."

The NYT version of a "moderate": "Barack Obama has selected a leftist, David Hamilton, to be his first nominee for the federal bench. Hamilton is Obama's nominee for a spot on the Seventh CIrcuit Court of Appeals. Appropriately enough, Hamilton reportedly was once a former fund-raiser for the radical activist outfit ACORN, a key Obama ally. He is also a former leader of the Indiana chapter of the ACLU. Hamilton's record as a federal district judge confirms his ultra-liberalism. Recently, he invalidated a law requiring the registration of sex offenders. He also prevented enforcement of an Indiana law that required information and a waiting period before an abortion. The Seventh Circuit (the court to which Hamilton now has been nominated) found that the law in question was materially identical to a law upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in the Casey decision. It noted that no judge in the land, other than Hamilton, has found such a law invalid since Casey was decided"

More destructive Obama-ism: It seems that not all forms of recycling are to be embraced. In a move that will greatly increase the cost of ammunition and may cause several US manufacturers to lay off workers, the Defense Department is ending a long standing practice of selling expended brass cartridges to domestic ammunition manufacturers. Instead the readily recyclable casings are to be melted down and recast for sale as scrap metal. To add insult to injury it should be noted that a scrap metal the brass will sell for substantially less than the expended casings themselves now bring!"

Israel: Netanyahu may become PM, finance minister: "Benjamin Netanyahu may take the finance minister's job himself when he becomes Israeli prime minister and forms the next government, a source close to the right-wing leader said on Tuesday. Netanyahu, facing the difficult issues of national security and the flagging economy, is in the process of forming a governing coalition after the February 10 parliamentary election. The source said Netanyahu, whose free market policies won praise from investors during his 2003-2005 tenure as finance minister, is weighing up whether to hold the post himself again or hand the job to a businessman with no political ties."

British Big Brother is watching: "The travel plans and personal details of every holidaymaker, business traveller and day-tripper who leaves Britain are to be tracked by the Government, the Daily Telegraph can disclose. Anyone departing the UK by land, sea or air will have their trip recorded and stored on a database for a decade. Passengers leaving every international sea port, station or airport will have to supply detailed personal information as well as their travel plans. So-called "booze crusiers" who cross the Channel for a couple of hours to stock up on wine, beer and cigarettes will be subject to the rules. In addition, weekend sailors and sea fishermen will be caught by the system if they plan to travel to another country - or face the possibility of criminal prosecution."

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here or here or here

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The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)

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When Will Atlas Shrug?

What is the breaking point? Where will the resistance form? Heavy questions, but unavoidable in the current political climate. The productive members of society can only be pushed so far, some say. What they envision is not defiance of law or a reversal of the election. It is people’s growing disengagement from a new economic order that punishes effort and rewards envy – the creepy future that Barack Obama and the Democrats intend for us. Columnist Michelle Malkin calls that withdrawal, “going Galt.”

Malkin was the first speaker when several hundred Coloradans gathered for a free-market leadership conference in Colorado Springs on March 6-7. Her reference was to John Galt, the individualist hero of Ayn Rand’s novel, “Atlas Shrugged.” She told of seeing a placard at the Denver protest rally for Obama’s stimulus bill signing that warned: “Atlas will shrug.”

So what, you ask. So in human behavior, incentives matter. People are choosers, not automatons. Mess them over enough and they’re out of here. All history proves it. “We pretend to work and they pretend to pay us,” the bitter joke among Soviet factory drones, sums up collectivism’s ultimate failure wherever tried.

Of course in the 1950s, when Rand was writing her epic about a slow-spreading spontaneous strike among Americans fed up with big government, tomorrow supposedly belonged to New Soviet Man. Reagan, Thatcher, and John Paul II, the three champions of freedom who would prove otherwise, weren’t yet heard of.

But we’re now told that 2008, with its routine recession and its celebrity election, showed freedom is untrustworthy after all. Economic makeover via legislative intervention is the fashion fad of 2009, driven by Obama and congresssional Democrats under Pelosi and Reid. Suddenly everyone’s a socialist, crows Newsweek. Suddenly the headlines mirror “Atlas Shrugged,” laments the Wall Street Journal.

The novel -- with John Galt as capitalist superman and Dagny Taggart, Ayn Rand’s alter ego, as railroad tycoon – may not be great literature. But its message of radical self-reliance has inspired millions across the decades. And as a Coloradan, I like it that the story is set right here. “We can’t lose Colorado. It’s our last hope,” says a Taggart employee at the start. A Rocky Mountain valley is the retreat from which Galt triumphs at the end.

Retreat attendees in Colorado Springs, where Yaron Brook of the Ayn Rand Institute spoke after Malkin and “Atlas Shrugged” was assigned reading, weren’t about to unplug Galt-style from daily life in protest against wind power, national health care, and charity-choking taxes. But they took seriously the disincentive effects against wealth creation and social comity in these and other collectivist proposals. We should too.

As ever more people ride in the wagon and fewer are left to pull it, there will come a breaking point. Crowding taxation onto the highest earners and debt onto our kids, as President Obama proposes, invites collapse. Ignoring the constitution at will, as statists and the spending lobby do, breeds contempt. Ruin must result. Did the USA learn nothing from the USSR’s implosion, wondered Vladimir Putin recently.

Yes, we did. Cold War victory taught us the power of ideas. The East crumbled when the West asserted the superiority of liberty, wakened by thinkers like Hayek with his expose’ of the road to serfdom and Bastiat with his ridicule of “everyone seeking to live at the expense of everyone else.”

Also influential was Rand with her capitalist commandos. Galt and Taggart’s crusade was idea-powered. With moral truth they defeated the lies of something for nothing and freedom through coercion. Not even the government office of Morale Conditioner, censoring radio, could stop their entrepreneurial comeback. Their strike against the redistributionist guilt trip was fiction. But we can shrug it off for real. The Tea Party movement is a symptom. Colorado may again play a role.

SOURCE

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Iran-loving Jewish slime is confronted with reality -- but stays slimy

Sadly, "Judenhass" is not confined to Gentiles. There's a lot of it among Jews too

New York Times columnist Roger Cohen sparred with members of Los Angeles' Iranian Jewish community about his recent columns on Iranian Jews. JTA has the story, and the L.A. Jewish Journal has the video from the synagogue forum last Thursday night. Cohen offers his own reflections of the event in his column on Monday.

This time, after hearing from Iranian Jewish expats, he makes one concession in his rosy analysis of the status of Jews in Iran. He writes: "Just how repressive life is for Iran's Jews is impossible to know. Iran is an un-free society." He also manages to note one good thing about Israel -- because it serves to make a positive point about the government in Iran: "This is the Middle East's least undemocratic state outside Israel."

But that's as far as the good news from Cohen goes. He suggests Tehran's pursuit of nuclear weapons is "pragmatic," describes Washington's ties with Israel as a "cozy, static regional relationship" and echoes those who have blamed the "Israel lobby" for the withdrawal of Charles "Chas" Freeman's candidacy for a senior intelligence post in the Obama administration.

Though the Times itself has endorsed that last point in its coverage of the Freeman affair, JTA's Ron Kampeas laid that myth to rest in a brilliant blogpost on March 9, a day before Freeman withdrew his name from consideration for the post, and in countless blogposts since (see Capital J, JTA's politics blog, for ongoing coverage of the Freeman affair).

SOURCE (See the original for links)

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BrookesNews Update

The Obama economy and the stock market: What gives with the markets? The recent rally did not reflect any improvement in the real economy, which is still contracting. Perhaps it is time that economic commentators took an interest in Bernanke's monetary shenanigans and how they might be influencing the markets not to mention their possible detrimental effect on future economic developments
Obama challenges the law of markets : Obama's economic policies are guaranteed to solve nothing while doing a great deal of harm to the US economy, even if Bernanke's monetary expansion works in the short term. Unfortunately, it is far easier to state an economic fallacy than it is to refute one. This is why refutations tend to be rather lengthy
Christian socialism: an oxymoronic doctrine: Christian socialists are just as ignorant and as bigoted as secular socialists when it comes to the market place and capitalism. To read this lot you would think the world was on the verge of destruction and that the 'exploited' masses are clothed in rags. Fortunately Obama has arrived to save the day
Booms and busts are like whiskey and gunpowder : The Fed raised interest rates and flooded the market with dollars 80 years ago, and caused the great depression. It did the same thing between 1995 and 2000, by increasing the money supply 52 percent, which caused the 'dot com' bubble to burst. The Fed's lowering interest rates eleven times to help us out of the dot com bubble, started the housing bubble. And as is par for the course the free market gets the blame for the consequences of the Fed's gross monetary mismanagement
Recession and Recovery: Six Fundamental Errors of the Current Orthodoxy : The Obama administration's ambitious plans for government action on many fronts fill vulgar Keynesians with hope that a Great Leap Forward is now beginning in which huge increases in government spending, debt, regulations and monetary expansion will transform the US economy into a Statists paradise. It ain't going to happen
Has illegal immigration and its effect on education become the "third rail of politics?" : The Democrats implicit support for illegal immigration and a corrupt media's vicious demonization of anyone who raises the issue has had catastrophic consequences for California. The idea that open borders promote growth and harmony has been exposed as a sick joke
Democrats fiddle while America burns : While the Obama administration blunders on the investment drops, unemployment rises, allies are insulted, foreign affairs goes to hell and America's enemies make hay while a corrupt media run interference for him. But the guy still gives great speeches

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here or here or here

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The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)

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All hail St. Pat!

I am delighted that I have plenty of the Irish in me. You will never hear an ill word about the Irish from me. I remember well and with fondness my grandmother Kelly. And Kelly is as Irish a surname as you get. Though I do know of a lady named Concepta Finnegan. That name would have to be the real pinnacle of Irishness, I think. I won't be celebrating St Pat's day today myself as I am a bit of a homebody and rarely drink beer anyway but my best wishes to all who will be celebrating. Have one for me too!

And here's a coincidence that Irish people will like. I was born in a small Australian town called Innisfail -- which is Irish for "Isle of Destiny" -- an old romantic name for Ireland itself! So there is a very indirect sense in which I was born in Ireland! Lucky I have the Irish genes to go with that!

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The Cause of Poverty

by Jacob G. Hornberger

Liberals are saying that President Obama isn't really a socialist because he doesn't favor complete government ownership and control of everything, which is the strict definition of socialism. Since he "only" favors massive government involvement in some things, such as education, healthcare, mail delivery, transportation, retirement, employment, airports, money, bailouts, subsidies, grants, banks, insurance companies, the stock market, occupations, the drug war, and trade restrictions and immigration controls as well as progressive income taxation and equalization of income - well, according to liberals, all that makes Obama "free enterprise" instead of socialist. I wonder what Fidel Castro, who also favors all those things, would say about that.

Lost in all this debate on whether Obama is a socialist or not is one simple but important point: It is the dead hand of government that is the cause of America's economic woes. That means that the more that Obama does to restore wealth and prosperity to America with his increases in borrowing, spending, and printing money, the worst things are going to get. The situation is akin to someone suffering from arsenic poisoning. He goes to the doctor and asks for an antidote. The doctor prescribes more arsenic.

What liberals, who purport to love the poor, needy, and disadvantaged, fail to recognize is another important point: It is the dead hand of the state that is the cause of poverty. Or to be more precise, it is massive government involvement in economic activity that prevents or inhibits a society from becoming wealthy. Call it socialism, fascism, welfare-statism, central planning, inflationism, wealth equalization, or just massive government involvement in the economy, the fact remains: the heavier the hand of government in people's pocketbooks and business activity, the poorer people will be.

Consider my hometown of Laredo, Texas. It is located adjacent to the Rio Grande. On the other side of the river sits Nuevo Laredo, Mexico. It's actually one great big metropolitan area, separated by a river. Yet, the standard of living of people in Nuevo Laredo is markedly lower than that of those living in Laredo. It's a phenomenon that one cannot help but notice the minute he crosses the border into Nuevo Laredo. People in Nuevo Laredo are a lot poorer than those in Laredo.

I'll bet that most Americans would never ask themselves that simple one-word question that they used to constantly ask when they were children, before they had it drummed out of them in those government-run schools their parents were forced to send them to: "Why?" Why are people in Nuevo Laredo significantly poorer than those in Laredo? After all, if one travels to the American city of St. Louis, he'll find that the standard of living of people in East St. Louis, Illinois, is about the same as that in St. Louis, Missouri. That city is separated by the Mississippi River rather than the Rio Grande. Could that be the difference?

No. The reason that people in Nuevo Laredo are so much poorer than people in Laredo is this: The dead hand of the state is much more prevalent in Mexico than it is in the United States. As bad as things are in the U.S. with respect to taxes, welfare, regulation, inflation, and bureaucracy, they are 1,000 times worse in Mexico. While we have Big Government in the United States, Mexicans have Mega Government.

That's the reason people are poorer in Mexico than they are in the United States. It's also the reason that people in North Korea are poorer than those in Mexico. The dead hand of the state is more prevalent in North Korea than it is in Mexico.

All this should provide a clue for liberals, who are supposedly interested in helping the poor. If one wants to raise standards of living for people, the solution is not to increase taxes, spending, borrowing, and regulation but instead to slash them, such as by abolishing the income tax and the IRS and by completely separating the economy and the state. That's the way to help the poor.

Alas, however, liberals move in precisely the opposite direction - higher taxes, borrowing, spending, welfare, regulation, bailouts, and stimulus plans. Even worse, they continue to force children into those government-run schools where they learn to memorize, regurgitate, and conform to this destructive nonsense rather than learn how to critically analyze and challenge it.

SOURCE

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The Economy: Sound After All!

As we noted here, Barack Obama has had to calibrate his position on the economy carefully to achieve a series of political goals. During the Presidential campaign, he said the economy was in dire straits and relentlessly ridiculed John McCain when McCain said the economy was "fundamentally sound." Once he took office, the situation became even graver, as Obama wanted to 1) make the sure the bar was set so low that anything that happens in the next four years will be seen as an improvement, and 2) justify a series of liberal initiatives that have nothing to do with the financial crisis, e.g., socialized medicine and a tax on carbon. ("Never let a crisis go to waste!")

But then the market went into an extended tailspin, and Obama seemed to realize--perhaps for the first time--that words can have non-electoral consequences. So he and his advisers started moderating their bleak view of the economy.

We've now come full circle, as this morning, Christina Romer, Chairman of the President's Council of Economic Advisers, agreed with McCain that the economy is "fundamentally sound." What is most interesting about this is that even the Associated Press couldn't miss the irony:

The economy is fundamentally sound despite the temporary "mess" it's in, the White House said Sunday in the kind of upbeat assessment that Barack Obama had mocked as a presidential candidate. ...

During the fall campaign, Obama relentlessly criticized his Republican opponent, Sen. John McCain, for declaring, "The fundamentals of our economy are strong." Obama's team painted the veteran senator as out of touch and failing to grasp the challenges facing the country.

But on Sunday, that optimistic message came from economic adviser Christina Romer. When asked during an appearance on NBC's "Meet the Press" if the fundamentals of the economy were sound, she replied: "Of course they are sound."

Do you think Obama will apologize to McCain for his conduct during the campaign? No, I don't think so either.

SOURCE

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ELSEWHERE

NY: Senate to propose "soak the rich some more" tax scheme: "Democratic leaders in the State Senate will seek income tax increases on at least some affluent New Yorkers and a sales tax increase of a quarter of 1 percent to help balance the state budget, a Senate official with knowledge of the plans said in an interview over the weekend. . The move by Senate Democrats, who have a slim majority, will significantly increase pressure on Gov. David A. Paterson, who has said he would consider raising income taxes only as a last resort and only after the Legislature had agreed to steep cuts in state spending."

Iraq: US troops to stay in insecure areas: "U.S. troops will not be removed from areas of Iraq that are not completely secure or where there is a high probability that attacks could resume after the Americans leave, Iraq's prime minister said Sunday. Nouri al-Maliki said in an interview with The Associated Press that he had told President Barack Obama and other top U.S. officials that any withdrawals `must be done with our approval' and in coordination with the Iraqi government."

Obama to unveil small business proposals: "Amid misgivings over his spending blueprint, President Barack Obama has decided to provide billions of dollars in federal lending aid aimed at struggling small business owners. The broad package of measures to be announced Monday includes $730 million from the stimulus plan that will immediately reduce small-business lending fees and increase the government guarantee on some Small Business Administration loans to 90 percent. The government also will take aggressive steps to boost bank liquidity with more than $10 billion aimed at unfreezing the secondary credit market, according to officials briefed on the plan who demanded anonymity to avoid pre-empting the president's announcement."

Incredible. After $170 billion US bailout, $100 million in AIG bonuses: "Despite being bailed out with more than $170 billion from the Treasury and Federal Reserve, American International Group is preparing to pay about $100 million in bonuses to executives in the same unit that brought the company to the brink of collapse last year. An official in the Obama administration said yesterday that Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner had called AIG's government-appointed chairman, Edward M. Liddy, on Wednesday and asked that the company renegotiate the bonuses. Administration officials said they had managed to reduce some of the bonuses but had allowed most of them to go forward after the company's chief executive said AIG was contractually obligated to pay them."

Scottish independence referendum: "Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Tavish Scott has demanded the Scottish Government ditches its planned independence referendum. Mr Scott told the SNP to drop the `independence panto' and focus on tackling the recession. At the Scottish Lib Dem conference, he branded the SNP government's planned Referendum Bill a waste of cash."

Nutty Harvard feminism: "Here is a tasty bit of circular reasoning used by a feminist from Harvard's law school, Diane Rosenfeld. Ms. Rosenfeld "teaches" a course on feminist theory. Rosenfeld went up against civil libertarian Nadine Strossen to `discuss' pornography. She says that the students really want to discuss pornography but never `have the space to do it' except, apparently, in her alleged course. She claims, `There's not a good way to talk about it, there's not a forum in which to really talk back to pornography, to the extent that we consider pornography as speech.' Of course, this is rubbish. There have been endless discussions of pornography, endless conferences, forums and debates. There is no shortage of academic article, hysterical feminist diatribes, preachy sermons and energetic defenses of the material. What could Rosenfeld mean when she says no place exists to discuss the topic? In my experience what such comments tend to mean is that the other forums are not entirely controlled by feminist ideologues."

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here or here or here

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The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)

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Is Rand Relevant?

Ayn Rand died more than a quarter of a century ago, yet her name appears regularly in discussions of our current economic turmoil. Pundits including Rush Limbaugh and Rick Santelli urge listeners to read her books, and her magnum opus, "Atlas Shrugged," is selling at a faster rate today than at any time during its 51-year history. There's a reason. In "Atlas," Rand tells the story of the U.S. economy crumbling under the weight of crushing government interventions and regulations. Meanwhile, blaming greed and the free market, Washington responds with more controls that only deepen the crisis. Sound familiar?

The novel's eerily prophetic nature is no coincidence. "If you understand the dominant philosophy of a society," Rand wrote elsewhere in "Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal," "you can predict its course." Economic crises and runaway government power grabs don't just happen by themselves; they are the product of the philosophical ideas prevalent in a society -- particularly its dominant moral ideas.

Why do we accept the budget-busting costs of a welfare state? Because it implements the moral ideal of self-sacrifice to the needy. Why do so few protest the endless regulatory burdens placed on businessmen? Because businessmen are pursuing their self-interest, which we have been taught is dangerous and immoral. Why did the government go on a crusade to promote "affordable housing," which meant forcing banks to make loans to unqualified home buyers? Because we believe people need to be homeowners, whether or not they can afford to pay for houses.

The message is always the same: "Selfishness is evil; sacrifice for the needs of others is good." But Rand said this message is wrong -- selfishness, rather than being evil, is a virtue. By this she did not mean exploiting others a la Bernie Madoff. Selfishness -- that is, concern with one's genuine, long-range interest -- she wrote, required a man to think, to produce, and to prosper by trading with others voluntarily to mutual benefit.

Rand also noted that only an ethic of rational selfishness can justify the pursuit of profit that is the basis of capitalism -- and that so long as self-interest is tainted by moral suspicion, the profit motive will continue to take the rap for every imaginable (or imagined) social ill and economic disaster. Just look how our present crisis has been attributed to the free market instead of government intervention -- and how proposed solutions inevitably involve yet more government intervention to rein in the pursuit of self-interest. Rand offered us a way out -- to fight for a morality of rational self-interest, and for capitalism, the system which is its expression. And that is the source of her relevance today.

Source

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Complaints about Obama, largely from establishment Democrats

A selection from Howard Fineman's even longer list of complaints from the establishment about the performance of President Obama so far:

If the establishment still has power, it is a three-sided force, churning from inside the Beltway, from Manhattan-based media and from what remains of corporate America. Much of what they are saying is contradictory, but all of it is focused on the president:

* The $787 billion stimulus, gargantuan as it was, was in fact too small and not aimed clearly enough at only immediate job-creation.

* The $275 billion home-mortgage-refinancing plan, assembled by Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, is too complex and indirect.

* The president gave up the moral high ground on spending not so much with the "stim" but with the $400 billion supplemental spending bill, larded as it was with 9,000 earmarks.

* The administration is throwing good money after bad in at least two cases-the sinkhole that is Citigroup (there are many healthy banks) and General Motors (they deserve what they get).

* A willingness to give too much leeway to Congress to handle crucial details, from the stim to the vague promise to "reform" medical care without stating what costs could be cut.

* A 2010 budget that tries to do far too much, with way too rosy predictions on future revenues and growth of the economy. This led those who fear we are about to go over Niagara Falls to deride Obama as a paddler who'd rather redesign the canoe.

* A treasury secretary who has been ridiculed on "Saturday Night Live" and compared to Doogie Howser, Barney Fife and Macaulay Culkin in "Home Alone"-and those are the nice ones.

* A seeming paralysis in the face of the banking crisis: unwilling to nationalize banks, yet unable to figure out how to handle toxic assets in another way-by, say, setting up a "bad bank" catch basin.

Hey, give the guy a break. After all, this is really the professor's first real job besides conducting cool classes with break-out discussions and some real sharing of feelings and whatever.

Source

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The Boy President

President Obama's performance in his first months in office has reinforced my belief that it would be a big mistake to elect a boy to do a man's (or woman's) job.

Note to the politically correct language police: I am very much aware that "Boy" was long a racist, insulting, demeaning term used, especially in the South, to refer to black men. I do not choose to use that term in reference to President Obama because of his race but because of his callow youthfulness. Not his youthfulness per se - John Kennedy was even younger when he was elected, but he was no boy - but his unseasoned, callow youthfulness.

callow, adj., Lacking adult maturity or experience; immature....

Obama is like a normally sober and well-behaved little boy left unattended by adults (there being few of those in Congress, and even fewer among his governing party) in a candy store - our candy store, the treasury where all our goodies are stored. Faced with so many tempting treats that he is unable to decide which to eat first, he rushes from this jar to that in a mad effort to devour as much as he can before someone makes him stop, knocking over many jars in the process but oblivious to the waste caused by his haste. His appetite is matched only by his overweening faith in his own abilities, another conceit of untempered youth, a quality nicely captured today by George Will:

The president's confidence in his capacities is undermining confidence in his judgment. His way of correcting what he called the Bush administration's "misplaced priorities" has been to have no priorities. Mature political leaders know that to govern is to choose - to choose what to do and thereby to choose what cannot be done. The administration insists that it really does have a single priority: Everything depends on fixing the economy. But it also says that everything depends on everything: Economic revival requires enactment of the entire liberal wish list of recent decades.

Obama, in short, is acting as though he believes that he must cram as much as he possibly can, and then some, down his (and by extension, our) throat right away, because sooner or later the adults will surely come in and insist on a balanced budget diet, delaying the gratification of dessert until after we've eaten our vegetables.

Source

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Paying the Piper

[Chinese] Premier Wen Jiabao's knickers are in a bunch about his country's loans to the United States, estimated at 1 trillion.

We have lent a huge amount of money to the U.S., so of course we are concerned about the safety of our assets. Frankly speaking, I do have some worries.

The best case scenario, I think, would be for China to stop buying the US Treasury bonds that we use to fund our day-to-day spending. Think about it: there would simply be no money to fund ACORN, anti-life activism, and corporate welfare. Some argue that inflation (and disaster) would be inevitable; I like Philip Klein's conclusion:

...as John H. Cochrane, a professor of finance at the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business, explained in a recent article of mine, "Once you have a flight from U.S. government debt, there's nothing the Fed can do about it...If people don't want more U.S. Treasury debt, then the Fed is out of ammunition."

Either way, Jiabao's words were a good kick in the tush for our spendthrift leaders. I'm all for even more international pressure.

Source

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ELSEWHERE

A list of some of the promises that Obama has broken already

The jocular Bob McCarty says that it's Time to Stop Celebrating Cinco De Mayo and celebrate the CINCO DE MUSTARD instead! (Site a bit slow to load)

Americans' Opinion of United Nations at Record Low: "The Obama administration's attempts to revamp the U.S. relationship with the United Nations comes at a time when Americans' opinion of the world body's effectiveness has dropped to an all-time low. In the latest annual Gallup poll on the subject, only 26 percent of respondents said the U.N. was doing a good job "in trying to solve the problems it has had to face." The score marks a new low point in a steady decline since 2002, when 58 percent of respondents thought the U.N. was doing a good job. This year's is also the lowest score registered by Gallup in more than half a century of tracking the issue. Gallup previously attributed the downward trend since 2002 to the U.N.'s stand on the 2003 war in Iraq, corruption and scandals including the oil-for-food affair and sexual abuse by peacekeepers in Africa. But even subsequent attempts to reform the U.N. and the departure of former Secretary-General Kofi Annan in 2006 do not appear to have checked the slide."

There is a new lot of postings by Chris Brand just up -- on his usual vastly "incorrect" themes of race, genes, IQ etc.

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here or here or here

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The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)

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Behind FDR's betrayal of the Jews of Europe

The role played by an anti-Jewish Jew

Sixty-five years ago this week, American Jews gathered in their synagogues to celebrate Purim, the holiday recalling how a Jewish woman used her influence with the king of Persia to save the Jewish community from Haman's planned genocide. What the Purim revelers of March 1944 did not realize, however, was that at the very moment they were reading their megillas and shaking their groggers, a senior Jewish adviser to president Franklin Roosevelt was presented with the opportunity to use his influence to help save European Jews from the Nazis.

By early 1944, millions of Jews had already been slaughtered by the modern-day Haman, but there were many more who could be rescued. The Roosevelt administration had long opposed taking special steps to save them, but in January 1944, under strong pressure from the activist Bergson Group, Congress and the Treasury Department, FDR belatedly established the War Refugee Board. Its declared purpose was to rescue refugees from the Nazis. Although given only token funding, the Board, under the leadership of Treasury lawyers John Pehle and Josiah DuBois, Jr. - both Protestants - dove into the task with passion and determination.

One of the Board's first proposals to Roosevelt was that he issue a declaration threatening to punish anyone involved in persecuting Jews, and pledging to provide havens for Jewish refugees. Pehle and DuBois felt such a declaration was needed in part because the most recent Allied statement regarding European Jewry had been so disappointing. The American, British and Soviet foreign ministers, meeting in Moscow the previous October, threatened postwar punishment for Nazi war crimes against conquered populations, but named only "French, Dutch, Belgian or Norwegian hostages... Cretan peasants... [and] the people of Poland" - with no reference to the Nazis' primary victims, the Jews.

Arthur Szyk, the famous artist and Holocaust rescue activist, remarked that the suffering of European Jewry was being "treat[ed] as a pornographical subject - you cannot discuss it in polite society." Obscuring the Jewishness of the victims made it harder to mobilize public interest in their fate - and sent a message to the Nazis that the Free World was not terribly interested in their plight.

IN CONSULTATION with treasury secretary Henry Morgenthau, Jr., Pehle and DuBois prepared a draft of the proposed declaration. It immediately ran into opposition. Assistant secretary of war John McCloy wanted to tone down the text to make it "less lurid." State Department officials opposed issuing the declaration at all, on the grounds that the Germans would use it as proof the Allies were fighting for the sake of the Jews. The White House, too, had objections, as Pehle discovered on the evening of March 8, 1944, when he met with Samuel Rosenman, FDR's closest Jewish adviser and a leading member of the American Jewish Committee.

Just down the road from Rosenman's office, at Washington's famous Adas Israel synagogue, the Purim holiday was getting underway. Worshipers listened to the ancient words of the Purim story, recalling how Queen Esther pleaded with King Ahasuerus to scuttle Haman's plan to slaughter the Jews. Rosenman now found himself with the opportunity to become a kind of modern-day Esther.

The problem was that Rosenman was a deeply assimilated Jew who had always been uncomfortable calling attention to Jewish concerns. For example, after the 1938 Kristallnacht pogrom, he warned FDR that admitting more refugees would "create a Jewish problem in the US." In 1943, he counseled Roosevelt to snub the "medieval horde" of 400 rabbis who had marched to the White House to plead for rescue. Rosenman also tried to undermine the campaign that brought about the creation of the War Refugee Board.

NOW, IN MARCH 1944, faced with the proposed presidential declaration, Rosenman had one more chance to do the right thing. But he chose otherwise. He told Pehle that he had "advised the president not to sign the declaration because of its pointed reference to Jews." According to Rosenman, such explicit references to Jews "would intensify anti-Semitism in the United States." Pehle was surprised and disappointed by Rosenman's position.

The next day - Purim - Pehle discussed the matter with assistant secretary of state Edward Stettinius, and then reported back to treasury secretary Morgenthau. It had become apparent, Pehle told Morgenthau, that Rosenman had already turned the president against their draft: Stettinius had told Pehle that Roosevelt said the wording "was too pointedly on the Jews."

Rosenman was already at work on a revised version of the declaration. Morgenthau was particularly concerned about the fate of the draft's "very strong" second paragraph, which acknowledged that the Jews were being slaughtered "solely because they were Jews." Morgenthau's worries were justified; sure enough, that key paragraph ended up on Rosenman's cutting-room floor.

Rosenman made other significant changes as well. Three of the six references to Jews were deleted. A pledge to give refugees temporary haven in America was watered down to "We shall find havens of refuge for them," without specifying the United States as a haven. Three paragraphs were added at the beginning of the statement about the German mistreatment of "Poles, Czechs, Norwegians, Dutch, Danes, French, Greeks, Russians, Chinese Filipinos - and many others" - but not Jews. The plight of the Jews was pushed all the way down to the fourth paragraph.

The weakened statement was issued later that month. It was, of course, better than nothing, but it could have been much stronger. And its fate foreshadowed the obstacles the War Refugee Board would face from within the Roosevelt administration itself in trying to carry out its mission.

That this all took place on Purim is, of course, bitter irony. Both Queen Esther and Samuel Rosenman were uniquely positioned to influence the highest authority in the land to intervene on behalf of the Jews. Esther's heroic response has been enshrined for all time in the celebration of Purim. How different history might have been had Rosenman chosen to follow Esther's example.

SOURCE

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ELSEWHERE

There is here a link to an unusual book called "Denying history". Synopsis: "Denying history" takes a bold and in-depth look at those who say the Holocaust never happened and explores the motivations behind such claims. While most commentators have dismissed the Holocaust deniers as antisemitic neo-Nazi thugs who do not deserve a response, historians Michael Shermer and Alex Grobman have immersed themselves in the minds and culture of these Holocaust "revisionists." In the process, they show how we can be certain that the Holocaust happened and, for that matter, how we can confirm any historical event. This edition is expanded with a new chapter and epilogue examining current, shockingly mainstream revisionism.

Obama's Poll Numbers Are Falling to Earth: "It is simply wrong for commentators to continue to focus on President Barack Obama's high levels of popularity, and to conclude that these are indicative of high levels of public confidence in the work of his administration. Indeed, a detailed look at recent survey data shows that the opposite is most likely true. The American people are coming to express increasingly significant doubts about his initiatives, and most likely support a different agenda and different policies from those that the Obama administration has advanced. Polling data show that Mr. Obama's approval rating is dropping and is below where George W. Bush was in an analogous period in 2001.

Black Democrat had financial ties to bank she pushed bailout loot for: "Top banking regulators were taken aback last year when a California congresswoman helped set up a meeting in which the chief executive of a bank with financial ties to her family asked them for up to $50 million in special bailout funds, Treasury officials said. Maxine Waters, a California Democrat, requested the September meeting on behalf of executives at OneUnited, one of the nation's largest black-owned banks. Waters's husband, Sidney Williams, had served on the bank's board until early last year and has owned at least $250,000 of its stock."

Netherlands: Seven accused of Amsterdam bomb plot: "Seven people were arrested for allegedly plotting to bomb densely populated areas in Amsterdam, Netherlands, police said Thursday. One member of the group of six men and one woman has ties to a bombing in Madrid, Spain, said Amsterdam police spokeswoman Shermain Canbamme. Late Thursday, police were still searching buildings where the arrests were made, she said. Several shopping areas and the area around a soccer stadium had been closed as a precaution."

Congress considers changing Constitution: "Following tumultuous turnovers in Illinois and New York, lawmakers yesterday asked whether it was time to change the Constitution so that voters, and not state governors, fill Senate vacancies. Appointments by governors, said Sen. Russ Feingold, a Democrat from Wisconsin, `are an unfortunate relic' of the first century of the nation's history when senators were picked by state legislatures."

FBI obstructs information requests: "The FBI tells two out of every three Freedom of Information Act requesters that it can't find the records they asked for - a failure rate five times higher than other major federal agencies, a private study has found. The FBI's performance results from an outdated and deliberately limited search process, according to the National Security Archive, a private group that publishes declassified government documents and files many FOIA requests."

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here or here or here

****************************

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)

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Obama's strange mortgage plan

President Obama and his big spenders are moving quickly, to the relief of those who are facing foreclosure on their mortgages. But the program they are offering will do nothing for those most in need. In the fine print, Obama's plan provides no relief for any homeowner whose mortgage exceeds the total value of his home. But these folks are the ones who have been conned into taking sub-prime mortgages so loaded with brokerage commissions, interest rate subsidies, bank fees and lawyer and title-company charges that the amount of the mortgage has ballooned. These high mortgage amounts, coupled with declining property values, have turned about 20 percent of American mortgages upside down, so that the debt exceeds the value of the property.

By excluding these homeowners from help, Obama is guilty of a holier-than-thou hypocrisy. Was it not Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac that encouraged such over-mortgaged properties? Was it not the Democrats in Congress who passed legislation urging Fannie and Freddie to weaken the standards to allow more low- and lower-middle-income families to buy homes?

How can Obama suddenly pretend to be so shocked - shocked - that about 20 percent of America's home mortgages are now worth more than the property they finance? It was the insistence of liberal Democrats that made it so. When Housing and Urban Development Secretary Henry Cisneros demanded that Fannie and Freddie invest 42 percent of their assets in buying low- and lower-middle-income mortgages, and when his successor Andrew Cuomo raised the quota to 50 percent, what did they think would happen? When they explicitly told Fannie and Freddie not to insist on down payments in the mortgages they purchased, how did they think the purchase would be funded? Obviously, if you don't require the borrower to put money down, the full purchase price must be covered by the mortgage. To now, piously, refuse to come to the rescue of those who fell for your party's seeming generosity and bought homes on the terms it suggested is hypocritical at best.

But it is not only the over-mortgaged whom Obama will ignore, but those who have lost their jobs! If you do not make enough money such that your mortgage payments come to 31 percent of your income, you can't get your mortgage refinanced. If your income has dropped to a point where your monthly payments on your loan consume a greater part of your earnings than 31 percent, you are stuck.

So we have Obama rushing to the aid of those who have been hurt in this bad economy, but exempting from his proposed relief anyone who has lost his job and seen a cut in income or whose property values have dropped below the amount of his mortgage. In other words, he'll help anyone but those most in need.

Source

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Trading Places with China?

For years, the Communist Chinese have been the butt of American jokes for their Maoist principles and centralized government planning. They've also received scathing international criticism for their at times brutal suppression of human rights - and deservedly so. But in the years since Tiananmen Square, China has moved steadily towards a market-based economic system while America has racked up increasingly large deficits for centralized, socialist spending - with a growing percentage of our accumulating public debt held by Chinese creditors. Also, China has taken steps to improve its human rights record in recent years, while American liberties have gradually eroded under the weight of an ever-expanding federal government.

Clearly repression and communism are still the laws of the land in China, but it is worth noting how one nation waxes and the other wanes - particularly when crisis comes. Just look at the divergent approaches taken by the American and Chinese governments with respect to their economic "stimulus" plans. Like our country, China is operating under the flawed assumption that investing in additional government will somehow bring about economic revival. But, there are critical differences in these two superpowers' positioning and plans which could make the economic downturn much easier for China to manage.

Supporters of the "American approach" like point to the fact that China is ballooning its deficit from 0.4 percent to 3 percent of its national income to pay for its plan - but that argument ignores the fact that America's deficit currently stands at 12 percent of its national income. We also have an $11 trillion (and climbing) national debt - of which China was holding $681 billion prior to the most recent U.S. bailout. China, meanwhile, entered 2009 with nearly $2 trillion in foreign currency reserves.

There are also huge differences in the "meat" of the two plans. In China, the majority of the stimulus package was actually devoted to bricks and mortar. Huge chunks were also devoted to business tax breaks, and a full quarter of the package was devoted to rebuilding an area of the country devastated by the Sichuan earthquake last May. Has it worked? Few trust China's optimistic estimates of 8 percent growth in 2009, but the country's lending, spending and consumer confidence has largely stabilized.

By contrast, America has poured billions of dollars into the same failed financial institutions and government bureaucracies that conspired to create its current crisis - not surprisingly, to no avail. The first bailout failed miserably to stimulate lending or lift the Dow Jones out of its doldrums, while the second bailout resulted in another massive selloff on Wall Street over fears that it "didn't do enough to stimulate the economy." Talk about the understatement of the millennium.

While China at least pursued its flawed interventionist philosophy (it's still a communist country, remember) with a modicum of common sense, America has plunged herself deeper into big government insanity. For example, billions of dollars intended for small businesses were stripped from the final version of the "stimulus" package, which ended up as a liberal special interest goodie bag routed through the same old inefficient, unaccountable agencies.

Also, China pumped in its "stimulus" money immediately where it would have the maximum effect, whereas the U.S. approach is to engage in a protracted, multi-year federal spend fest on government programs with no immediate economic benefit.

Source

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Obama Proposals Put Six Million Jobs at Risk

By Bob McCarty

President Barack Obama will increase U.S. reliance on foreign oil by eliminating the deduction for drilling in the U.S. and put at risk up to 6 million jobs directly and indirectly reliant on the industry. That's the message being delivered to all who will hear it by official and unofficial representatives of the American Petroleum Institute, according to a recent article in Business Week.

More specifically, the magazine reported that the national trade association representing all aspects of America's oil and natural gas industry is battling President Obama's proposals to reduce the industry's tax breaks through presentations to newspaper editorial boards and visits to Washington by top oil company executives and employees, plus drop-ins by ordinary shareholders.

When contacted about the article via e-mail, API spokesperson Jane Van Ryan said editorial board visits and drop-in visits are part of API's ongoing lobbying effort and then went on to discuss the main premise of the Business Week article that deserves attention.

"It implies that various businesses and industries are very concerned about the administration's tax proposals," Van Ryan explained. "That is correct. "The oil and natural gas industry is very concerned because of the possible impact on everyone who lives and works in the U.S.," she continued. "If the administration makes the U.S. an exceedingly expensive place to do business and continues to keep the best energy resources impossible to access, the impact won't be helpful to anyone. "The energy business is global, and the companies must answer to their shareholders. Therefore, if they can get a better return on investment elsewhere, why shouldn't they reduce their investments here and go overseas?"

The result of going overseas, of course, would be that thousands of Americans would lose their jobs, billions of dollars in tax revenues would go away and the United States would become even more dependent on foreign oil and experience more market volatility.

"No one wants that to happen - certainly not the oil companies and the 6 million people who depend on them for direct and indirect jobs," Van Ryan added. "So it's fair to say that the oil companies will not merely accept these huge tax increases. Rather, they and API will try to have meaningful discussions with a variety of people in hopes of explaining what I've just said to you."

Source

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here or here or here

****************************

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)

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Has free trade harmed the USA?

My old and respected friend Keith Burgess Jackson says that free trade has been a disaster for the U.S. I would like to look briefly at some ways in which that is true and some ways in which it is not true.

What I imagine Keith has in mind is the peaceful and largely self-sufficient existence America had in the 50s. In Australia too the 50s are often remembered as a golden age and it was a time when Australia had extensive tariffs that blocked a lot of foreign trade. One of the attractive aspects of that era was diversity (in the non-Leftist sense, among whom it seems to mean "blacks"). Practically everything was made in the home country so there were a great variety of occupations at work and that offered a wide range of opportunities for job-seekers.

Now whole industries have crossed the ocean to China so the industrial scene is much less variegated than it was and America is heavily dependant on other countries for many important things -- not forgetting oil.

I am actually old enough to have a clear memory of the 50s and I sometimes wish that we could go back there. Life was simpler and everything was more "human". People did things rather than machines doing them. When you rang up a firm you were always answered by a person rather than some infernal answering machine which asks you to press buttons. That must seem like an impossible dream to some young people today.

The other side of the argument is however very simply expressed: lower costs. I bought myself a "3 in one" the other day (printer, scanner and photocopying machine all in one). I remember when such machines first came out that they were selling for around $900. The one I just bought cost me $29 -- and it works brilliantly. It is of course made in China to an American design. And I am mightily pleased at the increased convenience my new machine has given me.

And look at the much-reviled Wal-Mart, China's major American outlet. It has bought all sorts of goods to within the purchasing power of poorer Americans because of the low prices it asks.

So are all those low prices worthwhile? I think they are, despite my happy memories of a different past. Low prices affect us all every day, one way or another.

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INDIA

The article below is off the beaten track compared to what I usually put up but I agree with it so thoroughly that I want to share it. I have been to India three times and have often been tempted to go and live there. Instead I have several polite Indian gentlemen living with me here in Australia and I fly the flag of the Republic of India from my flagpole

In my family, dad's the travel guru. Anything you want to know, he'll tell you (or he'll find out - or he'll make something up). Like the song from the annoying ad, he's been everywhere, man. He was born in Australia, grew up in Hong Kong, went to school in Scotland, then joined the merchant navy to work on ships. If a country's got a coastline with some sort of pier attached to it, you can pretty much guarantee my dad's been there. So when one day, somewhere in the middle of a rollicking travel tale, he piped up and announced there was one country on earth that everyone should experience, I listened up.

"It's ridiculous buddy, crazy," he said. "You might love it, you might hate it. But everyone should go ..." ... to India." It probably took about 10 years from then for me to actually make it there. And dad was right.



I loved it. I hated it. I felt sheer joy, and frustrated anger. I saw sublime beauty, and indescribable filth. Everything that's good, bad (and in between) about travelling, I found in India. No one leaves the subcontinent untouched (usually physically as well as metaphorically). No one jumps on the plane out, shrugs their shoulders and goes, "Yeah, it was alright." It's a place that leeches into your bones, for good and bad reasons.

I don't usually write about single destinations, but I've felt moved to pen something about India for some time, especially since the terror attacks in Mumbai, and a little film that's got everyone talking. It seems like those attacks, the sight of all those slums, plus the worsening security situations in neighbouring Pakistan and Bangladesh, will start to turn people off travelling to a country they'd probably be a little hesitant to visit in the first place. But don't give up on India yet.

A trip to India is not really a holiday - not in the traditional "relaxing" sense, anyway. Each day you wake up, dress, then take a moment to steel yourself before flinging open the doors and letting India back into your life. All of a sudden it's all honking horns, wandering cows, rickshaw wallahs, chai wallahs, smog, touts, open sewage, wafts of spices... And that's just the hotel lobby.

India will drive you nuts. Nothing happens the way you've been brought up to expect it should. You soon find out that everything's negotiable, and a little baksheesh will get you a long way. Strangers approach you. Hundreds of strangers. Some genuinely want to talk to you, and find out what the hell you're doing in their town, and how the hell Zaheer Khan can get Ricky Ponting out. Some want to run up and touch you as a dare from their mates. Some, if you happen to be female, will go ahead and touch you anyway. Some want to be in a photo. Some want to know your entire social and financial history within five minutes, with the intention of perhaps offloading an excess daughter. Some genuinely want to rob you, or talk you into a scam, or sell you a carpet. Your rickshaw driver will want to take you to his cousin's marble emporium.

Men urinate in side alleys. Slum-dwellers take their morning dump beside the train tracks. Everyone cleans themselves [after defecation] with a jug of water and a left hand.

The Taj Mahal will bring a tear to your eye. So will the slums. The nouveau riche flout their money with abandon. The poor beg for a piece of it. People laugh, cry, clap and cheer in movie cinemas. The stars dance ridiculously.

There are pristine beaches in Kerala, and corpse-ridden rivers in Varanasi. There are snow-capped Himalayas, and camel-riding-tourist-ridden deserts.

The food is often indescribable - mainly because you have no idea what you're eating. Old men at street carts sell snacks that would rival any Michelin-starred chef's creations. You eat with your right hand. You smear spice-laden gunk over your face as you attempt to wolf down a thali. You sip steaming fresh chai in rickety huts with men who've done so every day of their lives, and will do for the rest of them.

You talk about cricket. You talk about cricket. And you talk about cricket. And it's impossible to get bored. I've spent a month in India, and barely scratched the surface. I met people who'd been there six months and still didn't think they'd properly taken it in. I'll definitely be going back there. Hopefully, with my dad.

SOURCE

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ELSEWHERE

US official: Obama won't cut off military aid to Israel: "U.S. President Barack Obama will not cut the billions of dollars in military aid promised to Israel, a senior U.S. administration official said Wednesday. The $30 billion in aid promised to Israel over the next decade will not be harmed by the world financial crisis, the official told Israel Radio. He spoke on condition of anonymity."

Utah, Hawaii, Wyoming top "happiness" poll: "Looking for happiness - it's family-friendly communities for some, tropical paradise or the rugged West for others. A survey of Americans' well-being, conducted by Gallup in partnership with Healthways and America's Health Insurance Plans, gives high marks to Utah, which boasts lots of outdoor recreation for its youthful population. Speaking of outdoor recreation, the islands of Hawaii took second place and Wyoming was third in the poll that rated such variables as mental, physical and economic health."

UK: Web founder's "snooping" warning: "The integrity of the internet is under threat if online 'snooping' goes unchecked, one of the web's most respected figures has told Parliament. Sir Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web, said browsing habits could now be monitored as if someone had put a `TV camera in one's room.' Laws must be better enforced to ensure such 'sensitive' data was not misused for commercial gain, he added. . Parliamentarians are worried about technology allowing firms to track which websites people visit and to share the information with companies for the purpose of sending what is known as `behavioural advertising.' Google has become the latest firm to launch a system to send advertisements to web users based on their online activities."

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here or here or here

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The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)

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IS OBAMA AN AUTHORITARIAN?

I wrote the article below for the Philadelphia "Bulletin" and it appeared there on 10th. I think its interest is not confined to Philadelphia, however, so I reprint it below. My many academic papers on authoritarianism can be accessed here

Among psychologists, the word "authoritarian" has a meaning quite different from how that word is used elsewhere. And thereby hangs a tale.

In normal usage, the word is most used to describe people who boss others around -- with government by dictatorship being the extreme case of authoritarianism. But psychologists use it to describe people whom one researcher summed up as "fearful toadies". There is certainly no evidence that they boss anybody around.

How come? It originates from an attempt by a Marxist-led group of psychologists to square the circle. Theodor Wiesengrund (aka Adorno) and his Leftist friends had a big problem immediately after World War II. Everybody was aware at that time that Hitler's doctrines were simply a more aggressively-pursued version of what the American Left of the day (the "Progressives") had been preaching for over half a century. In the first half of the 20th century, the enthusiastic preachers of eugenics and racism were all on the Left and Hitler had generally been in good odor among the prewar Left. He did after all call his movement "National SOCIALISM".

But that had all now become disastrous. Being associated with Hitler was now beyond the pale. So some means had to be found to dissociate the political Left from Hitler. And if you could show that Hitler was in fact a conservative so much the better. And as we all now know, Wiesengrund and his team succeeded. Most people now believe that Hitler was of the Right. So how did they do it?

They said, correctly, that Hitler was an authoritarian and produced evidence to show that conservatives were more authoritarian than the Left. But the "evidence" they produced used their own very peculiar definition of "authoritarian". It consisted of an opinion poll that used statements that were simply popular beliefs of the day -- and if you agreed with lots of such statements you were arbitrarily said to be an "authoritarian". That it would be more reasonable to describe such people simply as "agreeable" was glided over. Wiesengrund put forward Freudian-type theories to argue that even if such people were not likely to boss anyone around personally, they would support others who did. Wiesengrund never proved that but he may have been correct. It is plausible to argue that such people might well put up with ANY government of any character, whether or not they agreed with it.

So what was the point of all that? The point is that people who agreed with a lot of Wiesengrund's collection of opinion statements tended to be politically conservative! That could probably have been interpreted as showing that easy-going guys tended to be conservative but within Wiesengrund's theory it meant that authoritarians were conservative! Which is what he had set out to prove. In his mind, he had shown that the most likely supporters of Hitler and his ilk were conservatives! But note the leap of logic there. Even if we accept Wiesengrund's claim that easy-going people are authoritarian, his findings do not show that conservatives are in general authoritarian. There are disagreeable conservatives too. It is like saying that some dogs are poodles so therefore all dogs are poodles.

But anyway, Left-leaning professors loved it all. It got them off the hook as chief supporters of Hitler. And from then on, they preached it so incessantly that almost everyone now believes that Hitler can be blamed on conservatives. The historical fact that Hitler's most unrelenting enemy was a conservative -- Winston Churchill -- is quietly glided over. Freudian speculation is preferred to historical fact.

So where does Obama fit into that? Clearly, he is not a "fearful toadie", so he is not an authoritarian in Wiesengrund's sense. There are however things about him and his supporters that are interesting from a psychological viewpoint. There are a number of things which are alarming when taken together. Any one of the things that I am going to mention leads to no conclusions by itself. But when those things make a set (or a "syndrome" in medical parlance) conclusions tend to be suggested.

Let's start with the obvious: Obama comes across as a nice guy. So did Hitler. The tremendous "hold" that Hitler had on Germans is generally unexplained in textbooks but the cause of it is in fact simple. He came across to Germans as a father-figure who loved his people.

Obama gained power through a democratic election. So did Hitler. Enough people voted for him for him to win control of the German government.

Obama has support among his followers that verges on the hysterical. So did Hitler.

Obama supporters are predominant in the media. Hitler dominated the media of his day too.

Hitler wanted the government to control most things without entirely abolishing the private sector. Obama is trying to vastly expand the role of government too.

All that is just by way of introduction, however. The most troubling thing about Nazism is that it was psychopathic. It showed no awareness or right and wrong and no respect for truth versus falsehood. And that fits in perfectly with the modern Leftist doctrine that "There is no such thing as right and wrong". And Hitler did not just preach that. He carried it out. It is perhaps early days to see what Obama's ideas of right and wrong (if any) will add up to but we CAN see what his ideas of truth and falsehood are. Like clinical psychopaths, Obama is a fantasizer with no regard for the truth at all. His latest claim (on Feb. 24) that the automobile was invented in America (all schoolboys used to know that it was actually Germany) is a minor example of that but he has been fantasizing often and for a long time. Take this excerpt from 2007:

"Speaking early this month at a church in Selma, Ala., Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) said: "I'm in Washington. I see what's going on. I see those powers and principalities have snuck back in there, that they're writing the energy bills and the drug laws." . . .

But not only did Obama vote for the Senate's big energy bill in 2005, he also put out a press release bragging about its provisions, and his Senate Web site carries a news article about the vote headlined, "Senate energy bill contains goodies for Illinois." . . .

On Sunday, the Chicago Tribune reported that an extensive search found no basis for an episode Obama recounts [in his 1995 book, "Dreams From My Father"] about a picture he ran across in Life magazine of a "black man who had tried to peel off his skin" in a failed effort to use chemicals to lighten it. Obama writes that "seeing that article was violent for me, an ambush attack." The Tribune reported: "Yet no such Life issue exists, according to historians at the magazine. No such photos, no such article. When asked about the discrepancy, Obama said in a recent interview, 'It might have been an Ebony or it might have been . . . who knows what it was?' (At the request of the Tribune, archivists at Ebony searched their catalogue of past articles, none of which matched what Obama recalled.)" . . .

As another example, consider Obama's stirring tale for the Selma audience about how he had been conceived by his parents, Barack Obama Sr. and Ann Dunham, because they had been inspired by the fervor following the "Bloody Sunday" voting rights demonstration that was commemorated March 4. "There was something stirring across the country because of what happened in Selma, Ala.," he said, "because some folks are willing to march across a bridge. So they got together and Barack Obama Jr. was born. So don't tell me I don't have a claim on Selma, Ala. Don't tell me I'm not coming home to Selma, Ala."

Obama was born in 1961, and the Selma march occurred four years later, in 1965. The New York Times reported that when the senator was asked about the discrepancy later that day, he clarified: "I meant the whole civil rights movement."

He just makes things up as he goes along with no concern about the truth at all. But the silly thing about such fantasies, and the thing that brands them as psychopathic, is that they sound good only at the time. Subsequently they are easily found out as false and therefore tend to cause distrust of the speaker. The psychopath just floats along on a sea of fantasy until people eventually find him out and cut him off. And I think there are already signs that Obama's proposed solutions to America's problems are fantasies too. The "stimulus" that did not stimulate seems likely not to be the last fantasy that does not work out in reality.

So Obama has a lot in common with the Fascists of history, with his clear psychopathic tendencies being the most worrying. He is in that real-life sense an authoritarian.

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Obama's destructive appointments

The Obama Administration currently (03/09/09) has 50 executive nominations pending before the Senate for confirmation. This includes the Timothy Geithner nomination to the International Monetary Fund. What follows is a brief look at seven of them.

Karen Gordon Mills - Small Business Administration (SBA) Administrator

Karen Mills is a millionaire dilettante with a reverse Midas touch. An heir to the Tootsie Roll fortune, her experience is for the most part is in ventures that have either failed or brought mediocre results to investors. Like many Obama appointees, Ms. Mills went to Harvard. During the 2008 cycle Ms. Mills made political contributions totaling $47,100, $29,500 of which went to the Obama campaign. Ms. Mills is a member of the venture capital community which is attempting through legislation to divert funds from real small businesses to small firms largely owned by huge venture capital funds. This destroys the entire purpose of the SBA.

Gil Kerlikowske - Drug Czar

Mr. Kerlikowske is currently the Chief of Police in Seattle Washington. He has a "don't ask" policy on illegal immigration, favors stringent restrictions on private firearms ownership, has a very poor record on civil rights and to top it off feels the enforcement of some drug laws (marijuana) have a very low priority. His law enforcement skills were tested during an unnecessary Mardi Gras riot in 2001. Chief Kerlikowske pulled the police back and let them watch as one young man was killed and over 70 were injured. The city of Seattle reached a settlement with the slain man's family. Seattle agreed to pay $1,750,000 to the family and acknowledged that its police strategy had presented a public safety threat. In March of 2001, the Seattle Police Officers' Guild overwhelmingly (88%) voted no confidence in Kerlikowske.

Gary Locke - Secretary of Commerce (Third Choice)

Mr. Locke, the former governor of Washington, is a partner in a Seattle law firm practicing among other things, "corporate diversity counseling." During Locke's tenure as governor questions were raised regarding conflicts of interest stemming from the state's business dealings with his brother-in-law's company. His brother-in-law happened to be living in the executive mansion at the time. Locke also seems to have used the Buddhist temple method of campaign fundraising similar to Al Gore, collecting money from people who later didn't remember making the contributions. Locke's administration also apparently liked to keep secrets such as the details of a $3.2 billion tax break to Boeing Corporation. When his administration wasn't handing out subsidies like this tax break it was promulgating regulations such as the ergonomics standard from the state OSHA, a standard that the business community estimated would cost over $725 million per year.

Dr. Ashton B. Carter - Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics

Dr. Carter of Harvard has made his reputation opposing weapons not acquiring them. His first appearance on the national scene was outspoken opposition to President Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative. He is another Clinton retread having served in that administration as Assistant Secretary for International Security Policy. His confirmation to that post was held up for over 6 months because he was clearly exercising the authority of his office before he was confirmed. He is currently a partner Global Technologies Partners a firm founded by former Clinton Defense Secretary William Perry. While the firm claims not to lobby it appears to advise defense contractors how to get contracts. The firm's web site brags that it "Identified a unique, classified U.S. government technology as a critical enabler for an aerospace company's growth strategy, identified a way to acquire that technology, and advised in its acquisition and integration."

Julius Genachowski - Chairman Federal Communications Commission

Little is known of Mr. Genachowski views at this time. What is known can be classified as truly bizarre. Mr. Genachowski sits of the board of an organization name Beliefnet. The organization's web site touts the belief in such things as Wicca, Unicorns, Faeries, Astrology and various other belief systems that are to say the least out of the mainstream.

Roy Kienitz - Undersecretary of Transportation for Policy

A brief analysis of data available to anyone over the internet shows that Americans choose private transportation over public transit at a rate of about 20 to 1. Mr. Roy Kienitz, President Obama's appointee for Transportation policy, has a track record of advocating anti-car policies. From 1996-2001 he worked at the Surface Transportation Policy Project, a non-profit that advocates growth that does not involve cars or infrastructure for cars, in favor of public transit, or what they call "smart growth." Under his direction, the STPP put out a paper claiming that the solution to aggressive driving is to limit how much people drive and how fast they can drive, through "smart growth" policies (including public transit and the engineering of roads to make people drive slower) and another claiming that solution to traffic congestion was not road expansion so that the greater number of people wanting to drive could do so, but public transit, since more roads simply breed more cars. He was a founding member of another organization called "Smart Growth America," that advocates similar policies.

His time in public office shows that he brings these private sector views to public service. As Secretary of Planning for the State of Maryland in 2001 he intervened in three land use proceedings in order to "support transit -oriented development": in one case, he had the state oppose the building of a Wal-mart in Kent County, because it was inconsistent with his "smart growth" policies, and in the other two he had the state government come out in favor of development in Gaithersburg and Annapolis that was centered around public transit and other forms of transportation. As deputy chief of staff to Gov. Ed Rendell of Pennsylvania, he advocated placing tolls on I-80 through Pennsylvania, as well as the leasing of the PA Turnpike to a foreign company, in order to raise revenue for "roads, bridges and public transportation." It is clear that Mr Kienitz, if confirmed, will advocate public transit over maintaining and expanding the roads that Americans support as a transportation choice over 20 to 1.

According to the US Census Bureau, in 2006 there were 244 million registered cars in the United States of America. According to the American Public Transportation Association in the fourth quarter of 08 there were 2,670,023 trips taken on unlinked transit. Rounding generously and assuming that this was an average quarter that comes to about 11 million transit rides in 2008. While it would seems that car registration has probably gone up since 2006, the rough figure of 244 million registered cars should serve for the purposes of this comparison. Thus, a rough comparison shows us that Americans are choosing cars 22 to 1 over public transit.

Ron Sims - Deputy Secretary of Housing and Urban Development

Ron Sims has been a disaster as King County Executive. Time and again he has been told of county problems, and time and again he has ignored those warnings. He has tolerated and even praised gross incompetence and mismanagement. He has knowingly violated the law, and he has turned a blind eye as his employees refused to comply with the law. He has catered to the union fat cats and ignored the plight of the hard- working average citizens adversely impacted by his and his employees' actions.

Ron Sims seems to have the view that whatever he does is right. He was perfectly willing to trample the law to get the $1.8 billion Brightwater boondoggle built; and he was remorseless about trampling the rights of rural county residents by arbitrarily and capriciously limiting their ability to use their own land.

Ron Sims also seems to believe that county employees are uniformly doing a very good job. After the numerous problems at the medical examiner's office, the animal shelters, the elections office, and the jail, one wonders what Ron Sims thinks a firing offense looks like. Ron Sims may be a nice man, but he is one of the last who should be given control of a $39 billion budget.

SOURCE

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Freeman Withdraws as Head of National Intelligence Council

Charles Freeman, a former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia under attack for his Middle Eastern and Chinese ties, withdrew from consideration as chairman of the National Intelligence Council because of what he called "distortions" and "falsehoods" about his record. Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair, who named Freeman to the post, yesterday accepted the decision "with regret," according to a statement from his office.

Freeman was in the final stages of getting security clearance to head the council, which helps put together National Intelligence Estimates about potential threats around the world and foreign policy issues for the president and head of intelligence services.

His withdrawal was the culmination of weeks of criticism from Republican and Democratic lawmakers and pro- Israel lobbyists who questioned Freeman's objectivity on issues in the Middle East. Some lawmakers also questioned his views on China.

In a letter to supporters yesterday, Freeman said he withdrew because of a concerted effort by pro-Israel lobbyists to spread "libelous distortions" about his experience. "The tactics of the Israel Lobby plumb the depths of dishonor and indecency and include character assassination, selective misquotation, the willful distortion of the record, the fabrication of falsehoods, and an utter disregard for the truth," Freeman wrote.

Lawmakers who opposed his appointment were unapologetic. "His statements against Israel were way over the top and severely out of step with the administration," Senator Charles Schumer, a New York Democrat, said in a statement after the withdrawal was announced.

Republicans said they were concerned that Freeman was president of the Middle East Policy Council, a Washington- based group they said was funded by Saudi Arabia. Freeman also drew fire from critics for having been a member of the International Advisory Board of Cnooc Ltd., China's biggest offshore oil explorer.

Representative Pete Hoekstra of Michigan, the senior Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, said the choice of Freeman was another sign that the vetting process had broken down in President Barack Obama's administration. "It calls into question the essential judgments being made," he said in a statement.

SOURCE

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here or here or here

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The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)

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