Leaked memos expose the hypocrisy of the Left over Iran
These past two years it has become received wisdom in influential sections of the foreign policy community that, in the wake of the Bush administration's foreign policy excesses and errors, the chief imperative of US foreign policy is to avoid any further foreign entanglements. In the pursuit of this shimmering transcendent goal, however, it soon enough becomes necessary to use any and every argument that comes to hand, no matter how implausible.
Thus Iran-apologists such as former State Department officials Floyd and Hillary Leverett - who holidayed in Tehran's best uptown hotels while, downtown, protesters were seized at random off the streets and beaten into a state of permanent incapacity, or sexually violated with broken bottles - are associated with prestigious progressive think-tanks, and invited to speak at respectable gatherings of international relations scholars. And their considered view that the Iranian regime is a victim of unrestrained US aggression is taken as a mainstream scholarly opinion.
Yet these are the same Leveretts who insisted, 18 months ago in The Washington Post, that Iran's elections were not only free and fair, but actually freer and fairer than those of their own country. Even though, as the WikiLeaks cables have now clarified, US diplomats knew all along that the result was fixed; and further knew that the actual election figures were very similar to those revealed by a brave young official in the Iranian Information Ministry, Mohammad Asghari, who paid for this act of heroism with his life, only to have his information greeted with pure white silence in Washington.
In this scholarly mirror universe, where truth and fiction are equally interesting so long as they titillate the creative intellect, and where a generalised hostility to Western interests can pass as a proxy for political progressivism, the old hard Left and the new far Right join together in a splendid danse macabre, Black and Red carolling in joyous euphony.
In June last year we were confidently informed that President Obama's conciliatory Cairo speech - where he declared to the Iranian regime that the US was willing "to move forward without preconditions on the basis of mutual respect" - would provide moral succour to the populations of the Middle East and reassure them that the US held no animosity towards them.
We now know that when they heard those fateful words - uttered a mere fortnight before the Iranian elections, so easily debauched before Washington's studiously averted eyes - every significant Arab leader must actually have been appalled, and must have wondered what on earth the US President could be thinking.
For as the cables conveyed to Washington by its regional offices make clear, nobody there took the pseudo-scholarly arguments for "constructive engagement" seriously. Take this assessment relayed from Amman by ambassador Stephen Beecroft, two months before Obama's soaring and eloquent, if foolish and empty, Cairo peroration: "Jordanian leaders' comments betray a powerful undercurrent of doubt that the US knows how to deal effectively with Iran. Foreign Minister Nasser Joudeh has suggested the Iranians would be happy to let talks with the US continue for 10 years without moving them forward, believing that they can benefit from perceived acceptance after years of isolation without paying a price."
Or take this honest but doomed communication from Timothy Richardson, acting director of America's Iran Regional Presence Office in Dubai: "Any US effort to engage the current Iranian government will be perceived by a wide spectrum of Arabs as accommodation with [President Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad." Isn't this what any moderately informed, intelligent Western observer would also have concluded, had political affections not required them to pretend otherwise?
During the past week our grand legion of "engagers" have been at pains to insist that sentiments such as these show only the supposed "hypocrisy" of Arab leaders on Iran, since they express views in private that they do not express in public.
Yet it isn't the Arab governments who have been hypocritical: indeed, the advice from Jordan is demonstrably more sober and honest than that of many foreign policy experts. Rather, the charge of hypocrisy better fits our faux-conciliators and Iran apologists, since they advocate in the name of high principle a policy they know in their hearts indefinitely prolongs the life of one of the planet's most awful and despised regimes, with the sole rationale of avoiding foreign entanglements at any cost.
What is worse, the cables support what many feared when they observed Obama's emotionless, zen-like reaction to the Green Movement's suppression: that from Washington's point of view the Iranian rebels were an encumbrance rather than an ally.
According to Alan Eyre, the Iran RPO director, in January this year: "Iran's current domestic strife is a political black hole that swallows all other issues . . . such that until a new homeostasis is reached in Iran's political ruling class, progress on issues of bilateral importance will be even more difficult than usual."
No doubt this return to business as usual will come as a great relief to the "constructive engagement" set in Washington and beyond. Except that this time around the Iranian spectre will shadow not only the region, but potentially the entire world. And this time there is not the slightest chance that a peaceful change of government can avert the looming catastrophe.
SOURCE
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WikiLeaks no threat to free society
by Steven Greenhut
The response by pundits to the latest WikiLeaks classified-document dump has reminded me of a preacher who decries pornography, but who also insists on reading the dirty magazines page by page so that he can better understand the depth of the world's depravity. If WikiLeaks' actions were so wrong, why is there such widespread interest in these cables, often by the same people vociferously criticizing their release?
Clearly, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has done our nation a service by publishing at-times embarrassing accounts of how the U.S. government conducts its foreign policy. This is a government that claims to be of the people, by the people and for the people, and which has grand pretenses about projecting freedom worldwide, yet it wants to be able to keep most of the details of its actions away from the prying eyes of the public.
There's no evidence that any information released will endanger anyone, and the U.S. government reportedly refused Assange's request to work with him to scrub any names that could be compromised. Officials will always trot out the "endangering lives" or "protecting security" argument so they don't have to reveal what they are doing, how they are doing it, or any misconduct or mistakes they have made while doing it. That's human nature. I'm surprised by how readily most Americans, liberal and conservative, are content with allowing so much of their government to operate in secrecy, even though open government is the cornerstone of a free society.
Cablegate separates Americans into two categories. There are those who agree with our founders that government power is a corrupting force, so government officials need to be closely monitored. And there are those who have nearly blind trust in the public-spiritedness of those who run the bureaucracies and rule us.
Put me in category A, which is why I applaud WikiLeaks and its efforts to provide the information necessary so Americans can govern themselves in this supposedly self-governing society.
"How can the American system be regarded as participatory if the most potentially explosive government conduct is hidden?" writer Sheldon Richman asked in a Christian Science Monitor column. "Are 'we the people' really in charge or not?" That's the question of the hour.
I'm most astounded that some journalists interviewed have been so half-hearted in their defense of Assange. Journalists know that government officials fight the release of virtually every piece of information, especially that which casts them in a less-than-favorable light. I've received police reports with nearly every word (other than "is," "are" and "by") redacted. I've had information requests dismissed and ignored, even for information that is unquestionably part of the public record.
Officials obfuscate and delay and then force the average citizen to go to court to get files that are supposed to be ours, as citizens. They know that few people can afford the legal fight, and there's little cost for refusing to adhere to public records laws.
This is the nature of government. If it weren't for anonymous sources and leaked information, the journalism business would serve as a press-release service for officialdom. We're all better off because courageous people leak important documents to the media. That's true even when leakers have a personal agenda in releasing the information.
The New York Times reports that the leaked diplomatic cables "contain a fresh American intelligence assessment of Iran's missile program. They reveal for the first time that the United States believes that Iran has obtained advanced missiles from North Korea that could let it strike at Western European capitals and Moscow and help it develop more formidable long-range ballistic missiles." That seems like useful information if we, the people, want to monitor our political leaders' decisions about how to deal with those two rogue nations. No wonder Iranian dictator Mahmoud Ahmadinejad joined Republicans and Democrats in denouncing WikiLeaks.
We learned that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton wanted to collect personal and financial information about foreign leaders, which gives the public valuable insight into this presidential hopeful's view of civil liberties and personal privacy.
Even conservative writer Jonah Goldberg, who wondered why Assange hasn't been "garroted in his hotel room" after the previous WikiLeaks release of documents relating to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan described U.S. forces shooting at a group that included civilians, found worthwhile information in the latest documents: "And what these documents confirm is that President Obama's foreign policy is a mess."
Despite that useful insight, Goldberg is still angry at Assange, who "is convinced that he has revealed the hypocrisy and corruption of U.S. foreign policy, when in reality all he has revealed is that pursuing foreign-policy ideals is messier and more complicated in a world where bad people pursue bad ends."
The public is better off that we can debate Goldberg's point, rather than remain in the dark about these matters.
Liberals have been as bad as conservatives in denouncing Assange as treasonous. This is not surprising, given how committed they are to a massive government that manages our lives.
Bill Anderson, writing for the libertarian Web site Lewrockwell.com, reminds readers that 19th century Americans largely embraced the view that "politicians were corrupt, governments generally wasted tax dollars and that elected officials could not be trusted." The Progressive movement then came onto the scene to advance its reforms, by which a gifted intelligentsia would rule for the public good. Open government is anathema to such elite rule, as the public gets to see that the elites are mere human beings with all the same temptations and foibles as everybody else.
WikiLeaks has helped demystify the inner workings of our government, sparking a much-needed debate over various U.S. policies across the world and reminded Americans that free societies depend on an informed citizenry. And the disclosures even provided some levity, as we got to read some honest assessments of puffed-up world leaders. We should thank Assange rather than malign him, and we should eagerly await his next release.
SOURCE
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Deficit cutting commission gets it wrong
The Bowles Simpson deficit cutting commission is more Washington theater. Another show with an impressive cast designed to give the appearance of being serious. This kind of theater, unfortunately, not only accomplishes little or nothing, but it makes things worse. Under the guise of doing something, it obfuscates our real problems.
Our federal budget did not explode over a few short years to sucking up a quarter of our economy because we didn't have politicos with green eyeshades looking at it. It exploded because we have government in Washington that can do practically anything it wants.
Without clarity about the role of government and meaningful law enforcing it, we're never going to get spending and debt under control. And this is what Americans need to wise up to and get resigned about.
Here's a few things sticking in my craw from just over the last week that speak to the reality of government with no constitutional constraint....
Peter Wallison and Edward Pinto of the American Enterprise Institute write that little has happened to fix what caused the great collapse in our financial markets. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the taxpayer backed mortgage behemoths, carried out their government mandate to expand homeownership by pushing a flood of subprime mortgages into the market and laid the groundwork for the collapse. They can no longer do this now that both have been bailed out by taxpayers to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars.
But this doesn't mean that Washington is now deterred from promoting home ownership by using taxpayers to back unsound mortgages. Now it's just being done through the Federal Housing Administration. According to Wallison and Pinto, this mission has shifted to FHA, who "... now accounts for 60 percent of all US home purchase mortgage originations," and, "FHA just announced its intention to push almost half of its home purchase volume into subprime territory by 2014-2017."
But perhaps the week's prize for taxpayer abuse must go to former VP Al Gore. Gore, as reported by the Wall Street Journal, admitted to a group of college students that government subsidies of ethanol are a bad idea. The energy and environmental benefits of ethanol are "trivial," he said, but "It's hard once such a program is put in place to deal with the lobbies that keep it going." Then he added that his own support for these subsidies was driven by his presidential ambitions.
We're drowning in spending and debt because theft is legal in Washington. This is our problem and the Bowles Simpson commission totally ignores it.
SOURCE
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ELSEWHERE
When the government promises it won’t abuse its powers, it’s lying: "Most people who supported the USA PATRIOT Act and the creation of DHS, no matter how unjustifiably, presumably believed that those extraordinary grants of power would be used only for the extraordinary purpose of fighting genuine terror networks like Al Qaeda and preventing terrorist attacks on the United States. It should be abundantly clear now that those people were had.”
Leak embarrassments : "My strong impression is that free men and women must never trust those in government very much, given that such folks have immense power and unless they and their works are watched carefully they are likely to abuse it–to quote the famous English political theorist Lord Acton, ‘Power tends to corrupt, absolute power corrupts absolutely.’ So there is good reason to applaud WikiLeaks’ efforts to inform us about how the governments of the world go about their business. The excuse that such knowledge may be embarrassing seems to me quite irrelevant since governments simply ought not to engage in conduct that embarrasses them.”
British taxes chase another major British company away: "The US owners of Cadbury are to switch control of the company to Switzerland in a move that could deprive Britain of more than £60 million in tax every year. The plan has been hatched by food giant Kraft, which took over the iconic British chocolate manufacturer earlier this year after a bitter £11 billion bid battle. It will see ownership of much-loved Cadbury brands including Dairy Milk, Crunchie and Twirl handed to a holding company in Zurich, where Kraft already has a major base."
There is a new lot of postings by Chris Brand just up -- on his usual vastly "incorrect" themes of race, genes, IQ etc.
My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. My Facebook page is also accessible as jonjayray (In full: http://www.facebook.com/jonjayray). For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, 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 (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)
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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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Tuesday, December 07, 2010
Monday, December 06, 2010
Obama: The traitor within
As President George W. Bush's top speechwriter, Marc Thiessen was provided unique access to the CIA program used in interrogating top Al Qaeda terrorists, including the mastermind of the 9/11 attack, Khalid Sheikh Mohammad (KSM). Now, in his riveting new book, "Courting Disaster, How the CIA Kept America Safe and How Barack Obama Is Inviting the Next Attack" (Regnery), Thiessen reveals how, as the result of waterboarding and other enhanced interrogation techniques that were used on a very selective basis, the CIA obtained a huge quantity of information. The information obtained Thiessen explains, prevented numerous terrorist assaults on the U.S. and catastrophic damage to America and its allies. In dismantling this program, shutting down the strategic interrogation center at Guantanamo and cloaking KSM and fellow terrorists with the constitutional rights of an average U.S. citizen, Barack Obama, according to the author, is courting another 9/11. Here is an excerpt from Courting Disaster:
Just before dawn on March 1, 2003, two dozen heavily armed Pakistani tactical assault forces move in and surround a safe house in Rawalpindi. A few hours earlier they had received a text message from an informant inside the house. It read: “I am with KSM.”
Bursting in, they find the disheveled mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, in his bedroom. He is taken into custody. In the safe house, they find a treasure trove of computers, documents, cell phones, and other valuable “pocket litter.”
It becomes clear he will not reveal the information using traditional interrogation techniques. So he undergoes a series of “enhanced interrogation techniques” approved for use only on the most high-value detainees. The techniques include waterboarding.
His resistance is described by one senior American official as “superhuman.” Eventually, however, the techniques work, and KSM becomes cooperative—for reasons that will be described later in this book.
He begins telling his CIA de-briefers about active al Qaeda plots to launch attacks against the United States and other Western targets He holds classes for CIA officials, using a chalkboard to draw a picture of al Qaeda’s operating structure, financing, communications, and logistics. He identifies al Qaeda travel routes and safe havens, and helps intelligence officers make sense of documents and computer records seized in terrorist raids. He identifies voices in intercepted telephone calls, and helps officials understand the meaning of coded terrorist communications. He provides information that helps our intelligence community capture other high-ranking terrorists,
KSM’s questioning, and that of other captured terrorists, produces more than 6,000 intelligence reports, which are shared across the intelligence community, as well as with our allies across the world.
In one of these reports, KSM describes in detail the revisions he made to his failed 1994-1995 plan known as the “Bojinka plot” to blow up a dozen airplanes carrying some 4,000 passengers over the Pacific Ocean.
Years later, an observant CIA officer notices that the activities of a cell being followed by British authorities appear to match KSM’s description of his plans for a Bojinka-style attack.
In an operation that involves unprecedented intelligence cooperation between our countries, British officials proceed to unravel the plot. On the night of Aug.9, 2006 they launch a series of raids in a northeast London suburb that lead to the arrest of two dozen al Qaeda terrorist suspects. They find a USB thumb-drive in the pocket of one of the men with security details for Heathrow airport, and information on seven trans-Atlantic flights that were scheduled to take off within hours of each other:
They seize bomb-making equipment and hydrogen peroxide to make liquid explosives. And they find the chilling martyrdom videos the suicide bombers had prepared.
Today, if you asked an average person on the street what they know about the 2006 airlines plot, most would not be able to tell you much. Few Americans are aware of the fact that al Qaeda had planned to mark the fifth anniversary of 9/11 with an attack of similar scope and magnitude.
And still fewer realize that the terrorists’ true intentions in this plot were uncovered thanks to critical information obtained through the interrogation of the man who conceived it: Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.
This is only one of the many attacks stopped with the help of the CIA interrogation program established by the Bush Administration in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
Former CIA Director George Tenet has declared: “I know that this program has saved lives. I know we’ve disrupted plots. I know this program alone is worth more than what the FBI, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the National Security Agency put together have been able to tell us.”
Former CIA Director Mike Hayden has said: “The facts of the case are that the use of these techniques against these terrorists made us safer. It really did work.”
Even Barack Obama’s Director of National Intelligence, Dennis Blair, has acknowledged: “High-value information came from interrogations in which those methods were used and provided a deeper understanding of the al Qaeda organization that was attacking this country.”
Leon Panetta, Obama’s CIA Director, has said: “Important information was gathered from these detainees. It provided information that was acted upon.”
And John Brennan, Obama’s Homeland Security Advisor, when asked in an interview if enhanced-interrogation techniques were necessary to keep America safe, replied :“Would the U.S. be handicapped if the CIA was not, in fact, able to carry out these types of detention and debriefing activities? I would say yes.”
And in his first 48 hours in office, President Barack Obama shut the program down.
On Jan. 22, 2009, President Obama issued Executive Order 13491, closing the CIA program and directing that, henceforth, all interrogations by U.S personnel must follow the techniques contained in the Army Field Manual.
The morning of the announcement, Mike Hayden was still in his post as CIA Director, He called White House Counsel Greg Craig and told him bluntly: “You didn’t ask, but this is the CIA officially nonconcurring. The president went ahead anyway, overruling the objections of the agency.
A few months later, on April 16, 2009, President Obama ordered the release of four Justice Department memos that described in detail the techniques used to interrogate KSM and other high-value terrorists. This time, not just Hayden (who was now retired) but five CIA directors -- including Obama’s own director, Leon Panetta -- objected. George Tenet called to urge against the memos’ release. So did Porter Goss. So did John Deutch. Hayden says: “You had CIA directors in a continuous unbroken stream to 1995 calling saying, ‘Don’t do this.’”
In addition to objections from the men who led the agency for a collective 14 years, the President also heard objections from the agency’s covert field operatives. A few weeks earlier, Panetta had arranged for the eight top officials of the Clandestine Service to meet with the President. It was highly unusual for these clandestine officers to visit the Oval Office, and they used the opportunity to warn the President that releasing the memos would put agency operatives at risk. The President reportedly listened respectfully -- and then ignored their advice.
With these actions, Barack Obama arguably did more damage to America’s national security in his first 100 days of office than any President in American history.
More HERE
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Biology measures us up whether we like it or not
George W. Bush joked with Oprah Winfrey recently about not being “dragged back into the swamp”—resisting the television host’s political questions. Theodore Roosevelt tried that for a while—a good while, actually—but eventually he entered the arena again. He was to politics at that time what a guy named Jim Jeffries was to boxing—someone who just couldn’t pull off the comeback.
And speaking of the arena—it is TR who made the political metaphor an enduring one with his famous quote about “The Man in the Arena”. It was part of a major address he delivered at The University of Paris (The Sorbonne) on April 23, 1910. While recently reading about the event in Edmund Morris’ new book, Colonel Roosevelt, I was struck by something else Teddy said that day.
Hiding in the shadows of his “in the arena” address was a rhetorical warning that has great relevance to all citizens of all true republics in our day and age:
That’s right. Theodore Roosevelt told the French that they needed to keep having babies. If only they had listened.
At the time of Roosevelt’s speech, France was a major world power. Today—not so much. There is enough blame for such decline in global influence to go around, but the increased secularism of Europe, with its penchant for socialized everything, has certainly played a role. The nation was decaying from within long before Paris was declared an open city as the Nazis approached in 1940.
Now 70 years later, there is an even greater threat to their cherished way of life. If only the French today would rediscover Teddy’s advice and reverse the birthrate trend—they might have a fighting chance. But such is the mindset of secularism, it is all about self and “fulfillment.” Issues of family, not to mention progeny are secondary, if thought about at all. Marriage is deferred—even eschewed. Children are planned—or better, planned around. And over time the birth rate in Europe has fallen far short of what is needed to keep up with the various demands of the future.
In other words, the nations are aging. There are fewer children, yet more grandparents—a trend that will continue and accelerate. It takes a fertility rate of 2.1 births per woman to keep a nation’s population stable. The United States is right about there, give or take. Canada has a rate of 1.48 and Europe as a whole weighs in at 1.38. What this means is that there is a Bernie Madoff moment coming for these nations (we’re seeing some of it now, with the riots, etc.). The money will run out, with not enough wage-earners at the bottom to support an older generation’s “entitlements.”
But even beyond that, the situation in France also reminds us of the opportunistic threat of Islamism. It’s just a matter of time and math before critical mass is reached and formerly great bastions of democratic republicanism morph into caliphates. The Times of London reported a year and a half ago that its nation’s Muslim population had grown from 500,000 to 2.4 million in just 4 years, “rising 10 times faster” than the rest of society. It’s the same in France, though raw numbers are harder to come by.
A while back, it came out that France’s fertility rate had risen slightly. Calling it a “robust reproduction rate”—one that is “bucking the trend”—the reasons for it were variously described as having to do with things like government programs for maternity leave, pre-school, stipends for in-home nannies, and similar government largesse. But another factor, hiding in plain sight, has to do with the fertility rate of the resident Muslim population.
In fact, all across Western Europe it’s the same. The cities of Amsterdam and Rotterdam are on track to have Muslim majority populations within this decade. Bruce Bawer has written in his book, While Europe Slept—How Radical Islam Is Destroying The West From Within, “A T-shirt popular among young Muslims in Stockholm reads: ‘2030—then we take over.’”
I like what Britain’s chief Rabbi said last year. Lord Sacks decried Europe’s falling birthrate, blaming it on “a culture of consumerism and instant gratification.” “Europe is dying,” he said, “we are undergoing the moral equivalent of climate change and no-one is talking about it.”
More HERE
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Shock Therapy for Jobs
Fear and uncertainty about Federal government moves is causing employers to do more with the employees they already have
Unemployment jumped to 9.8 percent in a very disappointing November jobs report. Nonfarm payrolls increased by only 39,000 and private jobs expanded by just 50,000. This is way below what the economy needs. Most discouraging, the smaller-business household employment number fell for the second time in a row, down 173,000 in November after a 330,000 drop in October. This is the nineteenth straight month with unemployment above 9 percent.
Now, after the severe financial panic of two years ago, it seems clear that too many tax and regulatory obstacles are blocking satisfactory job creation. And it also seems clear that a number of fresh new incentives will be necessary to spur the kind of prosperity that Americans desire. Following the deep recession, we need shock-therapy, pro-growth, tax-cut and deregulatory incentives.
Perhaps the only saving grace from the poor jobs report is that it will spur a quick resolution to extend all the Bush tax cuts.
Democrats keep shilly-shallying with all these silly class-warfare amendments, like a $250,000 limit, or a $1 million limit. This has everything to do with left-wing redistributionist social policy and nothing to do with economic growth. The fact is, passing the bill to freeze the tax rates will help business confidence. Why don’t Democrats understand this?
But there’s more. Large and small companies remain worried about the high regulatory and tax costs of Obamacare, which is the number-one jobs-stopper. How expensive will it be over the next five to ten years for the new hire? Companies also have to deal with a crazy quilt of new financial regulations that may block access to new bank loans when private credit demand kicks up.
Lowering the top personal and corporate tax rates will increase after-tax returns for work and investment. That’s the kind of strong new incentive that will be necessary to ignite rapid economic growth in the post-meltdown period. Broaden the tax base and lower marginal rates across-the-board.
And full-throated spending reduction will be necessary to drive deficits lower, and reduce the threat that future taxes may have to go up if the bond vigilantes come after the U.S. Treasury market the way they have attacked various countries in Europe.
Meanwhile, the Fed can produce money, but we are learning again that it cannot produce jobs. It also can produce inflation and a devalued dollar.
In other words, the basic building blocks for growth must be restored: limited government, lower tax rates, and a steady currency.
More HERE
My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. My Facebook page is also accessible as jonjayray (In full: http://www.facebook.com/jonjayray). For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, 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 (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)
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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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As President George W. Bush's top speechwriter, Marc Thiessen was provided unique access to the CIA program used in interrogating top Al Qaeda terrorists, including the mastermind of the 9/11 attack, Khalid Sheikh Mohammad (KSM). Now, in his riveting new book, "Courting Disaster, How the CIA Kept America Safe and How Barack Obama Is Inviting the Next Attack" (Regnery), Thiessen reveals how, as the result of waterboarding and other enhanced interrogation techniques that were used on a very selective basis, the CIA obtained a huge quantity of information. The information obtained Thiessen explains, prevented numerous terrorist assaults on the U.S. and catastrophic damage to America and its allies. In dismantling this program, shutting down the strategic interrogation center at Guantanamo and cloaking KSM and fellow terrorists with the constitutional rights of an average U.S. citizen, Barack Obama, according to the author, is courting another 9/11. Here is an excerpt from Courting Disaster:
Just before dawn on March 1, 2003, two dozen heavily armed Pakistani tactical assault forces move in and surround a safe house in Rawalpindi. A few hours earlier they had received a text message from an informant inside the house. It read: “I am with KSM.”
Bursting in, they find the disheveled mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, in his bedroom. He is taken into custody. In the safe house, they find a treasure trove of computers, documents, cell phones, and other valuable “pocket litter.”
It becomes clear he will not reveal the information using traditional interrogation techniques. So he undergoes a series of “enhanced interrogation techniques” approved for use only on the most high-value detainees. The techniques include waterboarding.
His resistance is described by one senior American official as “superhuman.” Eventually, however, the techniques work, and KSM becomes cooperative—for reasons that will be described later in this book.
He begins telling his CIA de-briefers about active al Qaeda plots to launch attacks against the United States and other Western targets He holds classes for CIA officials, using a chalkboard to draw a picture of al Qaeda’s operating structure, financing, communications, and logistics. He identifies al Qaeda travel routes and safe havens, and helps intelligence officers make sense of documents and computer records seized in terrorist raids. He identifies voices in intercepted telephone calls, and helps officials understand the meaning of coded terrorist communications. He provides information that helps our intelligence community capture other high-ranking terrorists,
KSM’s questioning, and that of other captured terrorists, produces more than 6,000 intelligence reports, which are shared across the intelligence community, as well as with our allies across the world.
In one of these reports, KSM describes in detail the revisions he made to his failed 1994-1995 plan known as the “Bojinka plot” to blow up a dozen airplanes carrying some 4,000 passengers over the Pacific Ocean.
Years later, an observant CIA officer notices that the activities of a cell being followed by British authorities appear to match KSM’s description of his plans for a Bojinka-style attack.
In an operation that involves unprecedented intelligence cooperation between our countries, British officials proceed to unravel the plot. On the night of Aug.9, 2006 they launch a series of raids in a northeast London suburb that lead to the arrest of two dozen al Qaeda terrorist suspects. They find a USB thumb-drive in the pocket of one of the men with security details for Heathrow airport, and information on seven trans-Atlantic flights that were scheduled to take off within hours of each other:
They seize bomb-making equipment and hydrogen peroxide to make liquid explosives. And they find the chilling martyrdom videos the suicide bombers had prepared.
Today, if you asked an average person on the street what they know about the 2006 airlines plot, most would not be able to tell you much. Few Americans are aware of the fact that al Qaeda had planned to mark the fifth anniversary of 9/11 with an attack of similar scope and magnitude.
And still fewer realize that the terrorists’ true intentions in this plot were uncovered thanks to critical information obtained through the interrogation of the man who conceived it: Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.
This is only one of the many attacks stopped with the help of the CIA interrogation program established by the Bush Administration in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
Former CIA Director George Tenet has declared: “I know that this program has saved lives. I know we’ve disrupted plots. I know this program alone is worth more than what the FBI, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the National Security Agency put together have been able to tell us.”
Former CIA Director Mike Hayden has said: “The facts of the case are that the use of these techniques against these terrorists made us safer. It really did work.”
Even Barack Obama’s Director of National Intelligence, Dennis Blair, has acknowledged: “High-value information came from interrogations in which those methods were used and provided a deeper understanding of the al Qaeda organization that was attacking this country.”
Leon Panetta, Obama’s CIA Director, has said: “Important information was gathered from these detainees. It provided information that was acted upon.”
And John Brennan, Obama’s Homeland Security Advisor, when asked in an interview if enhanced-interrogation techniques were necessary to keep America safe, replied :“Would the U.S. be handicapped if the CIA was not, in fact, able to carry out these types of detention and debriefing activities? I would say yes.”
And in his first 48 hours in office, President Barack Obama shut the program down.
On Jan. 22, 2009, President Obama issued Executive Order 13491, closing the CIA program and directing that, henceforth, all interrogations by U.S personnel must follow the techniques contained in the Army Field Manual.
The morning of the announcement, Mike Hayden was still in his post as CIA Director, He called White House Counsel Greg Craig and told him bluntly: “You didn’t ask, but this is the CIA officially nonconcurring. The president went ahead anyway, overruling the objections of the agency.
A few months later, on April 16, 2009, President Obama ordered the release of four Justice Department memos that described in detail the techniques used to interrogate KSM and other high-value terrorists. This time, not just Hayden (who was now retired) but five CIA directors -- including Obama’s own director, Leon Panetta -- objected. George Tenet called to urge against the memos’ release. So did Porter Goss. So did John Deutch. Hayden says: “You had CIA directors in a continuous unbroken stream to 1995 calling saying, ‘Don’t do this.’”
In addition to objections from the men who led the agency for a collective 14 years, the President also heard objections from the agency’s covert field operatives. A few weeks earlier, Panetta had arranged for the eight top officials of the Clandestine Service to meet with the President. It was highly unusual for these clandestine officers to visit the Oval Office, and they used the opportunity to warn the President that releasing the memos would put agency operatives at risk. The President reportedly listened respectfully -- and then ignored their advice.
With these actions, Barack Obama arguably did more damage to America’s national security in his first 100 days of office than any President in American history.
More HERE
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Biology measures us up whether we like it or not
George W. Bush joked with Oprah Winfrey recently about not being “dragged back into the swamp”—resisting the television host’s political questions. Theodore Roosevelt tried that for a while—a good while, actually—but eventually he entered the arena again. He was to politics at that time what a guy named Jim Jeffries was to boxing—someone who just couldn’t pull off the comeback.
And speaking of the arena—it is TR who made the political metaphor an enduring one with his famous quote about “The Man in the Arena”. It was part of a major address he delivered at The University of Paris (The Sorbonne) on April 23, 1910. While recently reading about the event in Edmund Morris’ new book, Colonel Roosevelt, I was struck by something else Teddy said that day.
Hiding in the shadows of his “in the arena” address was a rhetorical warning that has great relevance to all citizens of all true republics in our day and age:
Finally, even more important than ability to work, even more important than ability to fight at need, is it to remember that chief of blessings for any nations is that it shall leave its seed to inherit the land. It was the crown of blessings in Biblical times and it is the crown of blessings now. The greatest of all curses is the curse of sterility, and the severest of all condemnations should be that visited upon willful sterility.
The first essential in any civilization is that the man and women shall be father and mother of healthy children so that the [human] race shall increase and not decrease. If that is not so, if through no fault of the society there is failure to increase, it is a great misfortune. If the failure is due to the deliberate and willful fault, then it is not merely a misfortune, it is one of those crimes of ease and self-indulgence, of shrinking from pain and effort and risk, which in the long run Nature punishes more heavily than any other.
If we of the great republics, if we, the free people who claim to have emancipated ourselves from the thralldom of wrong and error, bring down on our heads the curse that comes upon the willfully barren, then it will be an idle waste of breath to prattle of our achievements, to boast of all that we have done.”
That’s right. Theodore Roosevelt told the French that they needed to keep having babies. If only they had listened.
At the time of Roosevelt’s speech, France was a major world power. Today—not so much. There is enough blame for such decline in global influence to go around, but the increased secularism of Europe, with its penchant for socialized everything, has certainly played a role. The nation was decaying from within long before Paris was declared an open city as the Nazis approached in 1940.
Now 70 years later, there is an even greater threat to their cherished way of life. If only the French today would rediscover Teddy’s advice and reverse the birthrate trend—they might have a fighting chance. But such is the mindset of secularism, it is all about self and “fulfillment.” Issues of family, not to mention progeny are secondary, if thought about at all. Marriage is deferred—even eschewed. Children are planned—or better, planned around. And over time the birth rate in Europe has fallen far short of what is needed to keep up with the various demands of the future.
In other words, the nations are aging. There are fewer children, yet more grandparents—a trend that will continue and accelerate. It takes a fertility rate of 2.1 births per woman to keep a nation’s population stable. The United States is right about there, give or take. Canada has a rate of 1.48 and Europe as a whole weighs in at 1.38. What this means is that there is a Bernie Madoff moment coming for these nations (we’re seeing some of it now, with the riots, etc.). The money will run out, with not enough wage-earners at the bottom to support an older generation’s “entitlements.”
But even beyond that, the situation in France also reminds us of the opportunistic threat of Islamism. It’s just a matter of time and math before critical mass is reached and formerly great bastions of democratic republicanism morph into caliphates. The Times of London reported a year and a half ago that its nation’s Muslim population had grown from 500,000 to 2.4 million in just 4 years, “rising 10 times faster” than the rest of society. It’s the same in France, though raw numbers are harder to come by.
A while back, it came out that France’s fertility rate had risen slightly. Calling it a “robust reproduction rate”—one that is “bucking the trend”—the reasons for it were variously described as having to do with things like government programs for maternity leave, pre-school, stipends for in-home nannies, and similar government largesse. But another factor, hiding in plain sight, has to do with the fertility rate of the resident Muslim population.
In fact, all across Western Europe it’s the same. The cities of Amsterdam and Rotterdam are on track to have Muslim majority populations within this decade. Bruce Bawer has written in his book, While Europe Slept—How Radical Islam Is Destroying The West From Within, “A T-shirt popular among young Muslims in Stockholm reads: ‘2030—then we take over.’”
I like what Britain’s chief Rabbi said last year. Lord Sacks decried Europe’s falling birthrate, blaming it on “a culture of consumerism and instant gratification.” “Europe is dying,” he said, “we are undergoing the moral equivalent of climate change and no-one is talking about it.”
More HERE
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Shock Therapy for Jobs
Fear and uncertainty about Federal government moves is causing employers to do more with the employees they already have
Unemployment jumped to 9.8 percent in a very disappointing November jobs report. Nonfarm payrolls increased by only 39,000 and private jobs expanded by just 50,000. This is way below what the economy needs. Most discouraging, the smaller-business household employment number fell for the second time in a row, down 173,000 in November after a 330,000 drop in October. This is the nineteenth straight month with unemployment above 9 percent.
Now, after the severe financial panic of two years ago, it seems clear that too many tax and regulatory obstacles are blocking satisfactory job creation. And it also seems clear that a number of fresh new incentives will be necessary to spur the kind of prosperity that Americans desire. Following the deep recession, we need shock-therapy, pro-growth, tax-cut and deregulatory incentives.
Perhaps the only saving grace from the poor jobs report is that it will spur a quick resolution to extend all the Bush tax cuts.
Democrats keep shilly-shallying with all these silly class-warfare amendments, like a $250,000 limit, or a $1 million limit. This has everything to do with left-wing redistributionist social policy and nothing to do with economic growth. The fact is, passing the bill to freeze the tax rates will help business confidence. Why don’t Democrats understand this?
But there’s more. Large and small companies remain worried about the high regulatory and tax costs of Obamacare, which is the number-one jobs-stopper. How expensive will it be over the next five to ten years for the new hire? Companies also have to deal with a crazy quilt of new financial regulations that may block access to new bank loans when private credit demand kicks up.
Lowering the top personal and corporate tax rates will increase after-tax returns for work and investment. That’s the kind of strong new incentive that will be necessary to ignite rapid economic growth in the post-meltdown period. Broaden the tax base and lower marginal rates across-the-board.
And full-throated spending reduction will be necessary to drive deficits lower, and reduce the threat that future taxes may have to go up if the bond vigilantes come after the U.S. Treasury market the way they have attacked various countries in Europe.
Meanwhile, the Fed can produce money, but we are learning again that it cannot produce jobs. It also can produce inflation and a devalued dollar.
In other words, the basic building blocks for growth must be restored: limited government, lower tax rates, and a steady currency.
More HERE
My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. My Facebook page is also accessible as jonjayray (In full: http://www.facebook.com/jonjayray). For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, 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 (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)
****************************
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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Sunday, December 05, 2010
Behind that unemployment rise to 9.8%
An all-out attack on employers from the Obamabots
There is some very scary stuff happening inside of Obama’s Department of Labor that should cause you to shudder. As John Fund at the WSJ points, out the Department of Labor is up to no good, as usual.
Labor’s Office of the Solicitor released a plan that has been adopted as the standard operating procedure which highlights just how much DOL and the Obama administration dislike business. DOL is looking at doing the following things to intimidate businesses, as Fund reports:
Patricia Smith, who heads the solicitor’s office, told me in an interview yesterday that the plan is a “living document” that will “never be finalized.” Whatever its status, it includes the following:
• “Identify a public affairs liaison in each Regional Office” to “send stronger, clearer messages to the regulated community about DOL’s emphasis on litigation.”
One tactic to be employed by the department’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) division will be to “deter [employers] through shaming.” Ms. Smith told me she didn’t know what that means. But whatever it might involve, it doesn’t sound appropriate for an agency charged with carrying out the law in an even-handed fashion.
• “Engage in enterprise-wide enforcement.” Ms. Smith said that means targeting multiple work sites of the same company. A department source says it also is likely to involve enforcement agents from the Wage and Hour Division and from OSHA showing up at the same time. The plan also calls for “Imposing shorter deadlines for implementing remedial measures in conciliation agreements and consent decrees.”
• “Engage in greater use of injunctive relief,” which means using court injunctions rather than fines to enforce compliance. The department plan also wants to “identify and pursue test cases” that could stretch the meaning of the law.
DOL is drawing a line in the sand on where they stand with business. DOL is the regulator, and whatever they say goes and if you refuse to go along, you will wish you did.
But it gets worse. While DOL tightens the screws on business and the folks responsible for providing jobs to Americans, they are turning their gaze away from Big Labor, the money sucking, job killing group of thieves:
But while the Department of Labor prepares for a hyper-aggressive enforcement strategy against business, it has rolled back Bush-era reforms mandating greater union transparency. Just this week the department rescinded its Form T-1, which required unions to report on strike funds and other accounts under union control.
The Labor Department is also planning to transfer responsibility for whistleblower investigations from OSHA (which currently has 80 investigators on this beat) to the Office of Labor-Management Standards (OLMS), which oversees union financial integrity. But the Obama administration has severely cut funding and staff for OLMS. There are 187 OLMS investigators, down from 223 last year. With additional responsibilities, the office’s ability to investigate embezzlements and union corruption will be further hindered.
This work is important. Since 2001, OLMS investigations have resulted in 972 indictments for various financial misdeeds, with 905 of them resulting in convictions. As a result, $88 million in restitution was made to rank-and-file union members.
There you have it folks. If you aren’t part of the chosen class, which would be swearing allegiance to a labor union where you can have your paycheck shanghaied each week, then you are at the mercy of the Labor Department.
SOURCE
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How Obama & Co. are Creating Another Housing Bubble
Leftists never learn. They don't want to learn
It is hard to believe, but it looks like the government will soon use the taxpayers' checkbook again to create a vast market for mortgages with low or no down payments and for overstretched borrowers with blemished credit. As in the period leading to the 2008 financial crisis, these loans will again contribute to a housing bubble, which will feed on government funding and grow to enormous size. When it collapses, housing prices will drop and a financial crisis will ensue. And, once again, the taxpayers will have to bear the costs.
In doing this, Congress is repeating the same policy mistake it made in 1992. Back then, it mandated that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac compete with the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) for high-risk loans. Unhappily for both their shareholders and the taxpayers, Fannie and Freddie won that battle.
Now the Dodd-Frank Act, which imposed far-reaching new regulation on the financial system after the meltdown, allows the administration to substitute the FHA for Fannie and Freddie as the principal and essentially unlimited buyer of low-quality home mortgages. There is little doubt what will happen then.
As in the period leading up to the 2008 financial crisis, these loans will again contribute to a housing bubble, which will feed on government funding and grow to enormous size.
Since the federal takeover of Fannie and Freddie in 2008, the government-sponsored enterprises’ (GSEs’) regulator has limited their purchases to higher-quality mortgages. Affordable housing requirements Congress adopted in 1992 and the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) administered until 2008 have been relaxed. These had required Fannie and Freddie to buy the low-quality mortgages that ultimately drove them into insolvency and will cause enormous losses for the taxpayers.
The latest regulatory change does not reduce the total losses that taxpayers will suffer from HUD's policies; those losses, estimated at about $400 billion, are baked in the cake. But the higher lending standards now required of Fannie and Freddie should reduce future losses.
Not so for the FHA. While everyone has been watching Fannie and Freddie, the administration has quietly shifted most federal high-risk mortgage initiatives to FHA, the government's original subprime lender. Along with two other federal agencies, FHA now accounts for about 60 percent of all U.S. home purchase mortgage originations. This amounts to more than $1 trillion and is rising rapidly. The administration justifies this policy by saying it is necessary to support the mortgage market, yet borrowers are once again receiving high-risk loans.
The goal of Congress and regulators should be to foster the residential mortgage market’s return to the standards that used to prevail in 1990, before the affordable housing requirements were imposed on Fannie and Freddie. At that time, mortgages required 10 to 20 percent down payments, and were only made to borrowers with good credit and relatively low debt-to-income ratios. When loans of this kind were the standard in the residential mortgage market, we did not have financial crises brought on by the collapse of a housing bubble.
The Dodd-Frank Act, however, exempts FHA and other government agencies from appropriate standards on mortgage quality. This will give low-quality mortgages a direct route into the market once again; it will be like putting Fannie and Freddie back in the same business, but with an explicit government guarantee.
For example, thanks to expanded government lending, 60 percent of home purchase loans now have down payments of less than 5 percent, compared to 40 percent at the height of the bubble, and the FHA projects that it will increase its insured loans total to $1.34 trillion by 2013. Indeed, the FHA just announced its intention to push almost half of its home purchase volume into subprime territory by 2014-2017, essentially a guarantee to put taxpayers at risk again.
What is the answer? The Dodd-Frank Act needs significant amendment, so that it applies quality standards to FHA and other government agencies. This should not seriously impair credit availability for low-income borrowers with good credit. For many years, until it had to compete with Fannie and Freddie for affordable loans, FHA had reasonably good standards for the mortgages it would insure. As late as 1990, only 4 percent of the loans it insured had down payments of 3 percent or less, though by 2008 this number was 44 percent.
Establishing reasonable lending standards for the FHA, while still allowing it to make loans to low-income borrowers, would assure that the agency does not become the unworthy successor to Fannie and Freddie.
Dodd-Frank was badly designed in numerous ways. Many observers have noted that it did not address the government housing policies that caused the financial crisis. A first order of business for the new Congress should be to correct this error by requiring that the FHA and other government mortgage lenders abide by reasonable mortgage lending standards.
SOURCE
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Cure or Care?
Which do you think is less expensive, not to mention preferable: a cure for cancer, Alzheimer's disease and diabetes, or caring for people with these diseases? Wouldn't it be better medical and public policy to direct more resources toward finding a cure for diseases that cost a lot to treat than to rely on a government insurance program, such as Obamacare, which seeks mainly to help pay the bills for people after they become ill?
Isn't the answer obvious? Apparently not to many politicians trapped in an old paradigm that focuses too much on hospitals, doctors and medicines and too little on medical research and preventive care so that people will not need hospitals, doctors or medicines.
The pursuit of cures as a priority is a subject that has been taken up by my colleague James Pinkerton in his forthcoming book entitled "Serious Medicine Strategy" and on his blog at www.seriousmedicinestrategy.org.
It's not that we are failing to fund research to cure diseases that end lives too early. Rather, it is a failure of political leadership to make research a priority in their speeches and policies. Think back more than 50 years ago to when the political and medical communities united and led the public toward a cure for polio and the elimination of the need for "iron lungs." This Herculean effort was the medical equivalent of going to the moon.
Why can't we create a united front to find cures for diabetes, Alzheimer's, cancer and other ailments? Pinkerton believes it's because of "the baneful influence of the Food and Drug Administration and the trial lawyers. If the government would protect the ability of entrepreneurs and scientists to create products without getting sued into oblivion, capital would come pouring into the pharma sector, not only from American investors, but from investors around the world." That's because, he notes, people in Europe and Asia now suffer from the same diseases as Americans.
Republicans, especially, should pick up on this strategy of cures before care. Instead, most Republicans are singularly focused on repealing the president's health care "reform" law. It should be repealed, or at least experience an extreme makeover, but repealing that law doesn't cure anyone of anything. And here's the double benefit that Obamacare claims for itself, which can never materialize. Finding cures for diseases helps people live healthier lives, and it's cost efficient. Look at the money saved from no longer having to treat victims of polio, smallpox and tuberculosis. Imagine the savings when a cure is eventually found for cancer. Plus, the retirement age could be easily raised as older people work longer and live more vigorous, productive (and tax-generating) lives.
What's not to like about any of this? Republican presidential candidates in 2012 -- and a Republican president should the GOP win that election -- could change the direction and content of the entire health care debate, if they fashioned a strategy for going to the "medical moon" by a certain and attainable date. We are close to a cure for some diseases, but far from a cure for others. Let's begin with those closest to a cure.
Ask yourself: would you rather be healthy and fit and live a long life, or be taken care of in your illness by a government health system that sees you as a burden and is constantly trying to reduce care and lower costs? Ask the English, who are currently experiencing the downside to poor care.
The problem is that once a nation has made a wrong turn, it is difficult if not impossible to reverse course. America still has time to make the right choice and move in the direction of cures. Now all we need is the political leadership to point the way.
SOURCE
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Pres. Emptyhead actually believes that the government puts people back to work
When it's actually the biggest obstacle to job creation
This Monday, during his remarks regarding the federal workforce pay freezes, President Barack Obama said, "And I'm going to be interested in hearing ideas from my Republican colleagues, as well as Democrats, about how we continue to grow the economy and how we put people back to work."
He actually believes that the government puts people back to work. Government can transfer wealth from one group to another -- but people and businesses put people back to work. More often than not, the government gets in the way of putting people back to work.
For example, my part-time assistant on Tuesday called a government agency to apply for a government number. She was put on hold for an hour. When she finally reached someone and asked a question, she was transferred to another department, which again put her on hold. She finally had to hang up to go attend to her preschool children.
I'm not sure how more government is going to create more jobs, but I know how government can make it too hard and too costly for people to run businesses.
Obama continued Monday, "Today I'm proposing a two-year pay freeze for all civilian federal workers." He's about two years too late. Most of my friends have had their pay frozen, cut or eliminated during the past two years. Glad Obama thinks it's time for the government to join the rest of us.
If Obama administration officials understood the fundamentals of our country's structure, they would understand that taxes are not the government's revenue -- but the people's expense. President Calvin Coolidge understood this when he said, " I want taxes to be less, so that the people may have more."
More HERE
My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. My Facebook page is also accessible as jonjayray (In full: http://www.facebook.com/jonjayray). For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, 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 (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)
****************************
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)
****************************
An all-out attack on employers from the Obamabots
There is some very scary stuff happening inside of Obama’s Department of Labor that should cause you to shudder. As John Fund at the WSJ points, out the Department of Labor is up to no good, as usual.
Labor’s Office of the Solicitor released a plan that has been adopted as the standard operating procedure which highlights just how much DOL and the Obama administration dislike business. DOL is looking at doing the following things to intimidate businesses, as Fund reports:
Patricia Smith, who heads the solicitor’s office, told me in an interview yesterday that the plan is a “living document” that will “never be finalized.” Whatever its status, it includes the following:
• “Identify a public affairs liaison in each Regional Office” to “send stronger, clearer messages to the regulated community about DOL’s emphasis on litigation.”
One tactic to be employed by the department’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) division will be to “deter [employers] through shaming.” Ms. Smith told me she didn’t know what that means. But whatever it might involve, it doesn’t sound appropriate for an agency charged with carrying out the law in an even-handed fashion.
• “Engage in enterprise-wide enforcement.” Ms. Smith said that means targeting multiple work sites of the same company. A department source says it also is likely to involve enforcement agents from the Wage and Hour Division and from OSHA showing up at the same time. The plan also calls for “Imposing shorter deadlines for implementing remedial measures in conciliation agreements and consent decrees.”
• “Engage in greater use of injunctive relief,” which means using court injunctions rather than fines to enforce compliance. The department plan also wants to “identify and pursue test cases” that could stretch the meaning of the law.
DOL is drawing a line in the sand on where they stand with business. DOL is the regulator, and whatever they say goes and if you refuse to go along, you will wish you did.
But it gets worse. While DOL tightens the screws on business and the folks responsible for providing jobs to Americans, they are turning their gaze away from Big Labor, the money sucking, job killing group of thieves:
But while the Department of Labor prepares for a hyper-aggressive enforcement strategy against business, it has rolled back Bush-era reforms mandating greater union transparency. Just this week the department rescinded its Form T-1, which required unions to report on strike funds and other accounts under union control.
The Labor Department is also planning to transfer responsibility for whistleblower investigations from OSHA (which currently has 80 investigators on this beat) to the Office of Labor-Management Standards (OLMS), which oversees union financial integrity. But the Obama administration has severely cut funding and staff for OLMS. There are 187 OLMS investigators, down from 223 last year. With additional responsibilities, the office’s ability to investigate embezzlements and union corruption will be further hindered.
This work is important. Since 2001, OLMS investigations have resulted in 972 indictments for various financial misdeeds, with 905 of them resulting in convictions. As a result, $88 million in restitution was made to rank-and-file union members.
There you have it folks. If you aren’t part of the chosen class, which would be swearing allegiance to a labor union where you can have your paycheck shanghaied each week, then you are at the mercy of the Labor Department.
SOURCE
***************************
How Obama & Co. are Creating Another Housing Bubble
Leftists never learn. They don't want to learn
It is hard to believe, but it looks like the government will soon use the taxpayers' checkbook again to create a vast market for mortgages with low or no down payments and for overstretched borrowers with blemished credit. As in the period leading to the 2008 financial crisis, these loans will again contribute to a housing bubble, which will feed on government funding and grow to enormous size. When it collapses, housing prices will drop and a financial crisis will ensue. And, once again, the taxpayers will have to bear the costs.
In doing this, Congress is repeating the same policy mistake it made in 1992. Back then, it mandated that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac compete with the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) for high-risk loans. Unhappily for both their shareholders and the taxpayers, Fannie and Freddie won that battle.
Now the Dodd-Frank Act, which imposed far-reaching new regulation on the financial system after the meltdown, allows the administration to substitute the FHA for Fannie and Freddie as the principal and essentially unlimited buyer of low-quality home mortgages. There is little doubt what will happen then.
As in the period leading up to the 2008 financial crisis, these loans will again contribute to a housing bubble, which will feed on government funding and grow to enormous size.
Since the federal takeover of Fannie and Freddie in 2008, the government-sponsored enterprises’ (GSEs’) regulator has limited their purchases to higher-quality mortgages. Affordable housing requirements Congress adopted in 1992 and the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) administered until 2008 have been relaxed. These had required Fannie and Freddie to buy the low-quality mortgages that ultimately drove them into insolvency and will cause enormous losses for the taxpayers.
The latest regulatory change does not reduce the total losses that taxpayers will suffer from HUD's policies; those losses, estimated at about $400 billion, are baked in the cake. But the higher lending standards now required of Fannie and Freddie should reduce future losses.
Not so for the FHA. While everyone has been watching Fannie and Freddie, the administration has quietly shifted most federal high-risk mortgage initiatives to FHA, the government's original subprime lender. Along with two other federal agencies, FHA now accounts for about 60 percent of all U.S. home purchase mortgage originations. This amounts to more than $1 trillion and is rising rapidly. The administration justifies this policy by saying it is necessary to support the mortgage market, yet borrowers are once again receiving high-risk loans.
The goal of Congress and regulators should be to foster the residential mortgage market’s return to the standards that used to prevail in 1990, before the affordable housing requirements were imposed on Fannie and Freddie. At that time, mortgages required 10 to 20 percent down payments, and were only made to borrowers with good credit and relatively low debt-to-income ratios. When loans of this kind were the standard in the residential mortgage market, we did not have financial crises brought on by the collapse of a housing bubble.
The Dodd-Frank Act, however, exempts FHA and other government agencies from appropriate standards on mortgage quality. This will give low-quality mortgages a direct route into the market once again; it will be like putting Fannie and Freddie back in the same business, but with an explicit government guarantee.
For example, thanks to expanded government lending, 60 percent of home purchase loans now have down payments of less than 5 percent, compared to 40 percent at the height of the bubble, and the FHA projects that it will increase its insured loans total to $1.34 trillion by 2013. Indeed, the FHA just announced its intention to push almost half of its home purchase volume into subprime territory by 2014-2017, essentially a guarantee to put taxpayers at risk again.
What is the answer? The Dodd-Frank Act needs significant amendment, so that it applies quality standards to FHA and other government agencies. This should not seriously impair credit availability for low-income borrowers with good credit. For many years, until it had to compete with Fannie and Freddie for affordable loans, FHA had reasonably good standards for the mortgages it would insure. As late as 1990, only 4 percent of the loans it insured had down payments of 3 percent or less, though by 2008 this number was 44 percent.
Establishing reasonable lending standards for the FHA, while still allowing it to make loans to low-income borrowers, would assure that the agency does not become the unworthy successor to Fannie and Freddie.
Dodd-Frank was badly designed in numerous ways. Many observers have noted that it did not address the government housing policies that caused the financial crisis. A first order of business for the new Congress should be to correct this error by requiring that the FHA and other government mortgage lenders abide by reasonable mortgage lending standards.
SOURCE
***************************
Cure or Care?
Which do you think is less expensive, not to mention preferable: a cure for cancer, Alzheimer's disease and diabetes, or caring for people with these diseases? Wouldn't it be better medical and public policy to direct more resources toward finding a cure for diseases that cost a lot to treat than to rely on a government insurance program, such as Obamacare, which seeks mainly to help pay the bills for people after they become ill?
Isn't the answer obvious? Apparently not to many politicians trapped in an old paradigm that focuses too much on hospitals, doctors and medicines and too little on medical research and preventive care so that people will not need hospitals, doctors or medicines.
The pursuit of cures as a priority is a subject that has been taken up by my colleague James Pinkerton in his forthcoming book entitled "Serious Medicine Strategy" and on his blog at www.seriousmedicinestrategy.org.
It's not that we are failing to fund research to cure diseases that end lives too early. Rather, it is a failure of political leadership to make research a priority in their speeches and policies. Think back more than 50 years ago to when the political and medical communities united and led the public toward a cure for polio and the elimination of the need for "iron lungs." This Herculean effort was the medical equivalent of going to the moon.
Why can't we create a united front to find cures for diabetes, Alzheimer's, cancer and other ailments? Pinkerton believes it's because of "the baneful influence of the Food and Drug Administration and the trial lawyers. If the government would protect the ability of entrepreneurs and scientists to create products without getting sued into oblivion, capital would come pouring into the pharma sector, not only from American investors, but from investors around the world." That's because, he notes, people in Europe and Asia now suffer from the same diseases as Americans.
Republicans, especially, should pick up on this strategy of cures before care. Instead, most Republicans are singularly focused on repealing the president's health care "reform" law. It should be repealed, or at least experience an extreme makeover, but repealing that law doesn't cure anyone of anything. And here's the double benefit that Obamacare claims for itself, which can never materialize. Finding cures for diseases helps people live healthier lives, and it's cost efficient. Look at the money saved from no longer having to treat victims of polio, smallpox and tuberculosis. Imagine the savings when a cure is eventually found for cancer. Plus, the retirement age could be easily raised as older people work longer and live more vigorous, productive (and tax-generating) lives.
What's not to like about any of this? Republican presidential candidates in 2012 -- and a Republican president should the GOP win that election -- could change the direction and content of the entire health care debate, if they fashioned a strategy for going to the "medical moon" by a certain and attainable date. We are close to a cure for some diseases, but far from a cure for others. Let's begin with those closest to a cure.
Ask yourself: would you rather be healthy and fit and live a long life, or be taken care of in your illness by a government health system that sees you as a burden and is constantly trying to reduce care and lower costs? Ask the English, who are currently experiencing the downside to poor care.
The problem is that once a nation has made a wrong turn, it is difficult if not impossible to reverse course. America still has time to make the right choice and move in the direction of cures. Now all we need is the political leadership to point the way.
SOURCE
**********************
Pres. Emptyhead actually believes that the government puts people back to work
When it's actually the biggest obstacle to job creation
This Monday, during his remarks regarding the federal workforce pay freezes, President Barack Obama said, "And I'm going to be interested in hearing ideas from my Republican colleagues, as well as Democrats, about how we continue to grow the economy and how we put people back to work."
He actually believes that the government puts people back to work. Government can transfer wealth from one group to another -- but people and businesses put people back to work. More often than not, the government gets in the way of putting people back to work.
For example, my part-time assistant on Tuesday called a government agency to apply for a government number. She was put on hold for an hour. When she finally reached someone and asked a question, she was transferred to another department, which again put her on hold. She finally had to hang up to go attend to her preschool children.
I'm not sure how more government is going to create more jobs, but I know how government can make it too hard and too costly for people to run businesses.
Obama continued Monday, "Today I'm proposing a two-year pay freeze for all civilian federal workers." He's about two years too late. Most of my friends have had their pay frozen, cut or eliminated during the past two years. Glad Obama thinks it's time for the government to join the rest of us.
If Obama administration officials understood the fundamentals of our country's structure, they would understand that taxes are not the government's revenue -- but the people's expense. President Calvin Coolidge understood this when he said, " I want taxes to be less, so that the people may have more."
More HERE
My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. My Facebook page is also accessible as jonjayray (In full: http://www.facebook.com/jonjayray). For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, 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 (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)
****************************
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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Saturday, December 04, 2010
Europe is printing huge amounts of new money too
Savings worldwide are being robbed of their value. Instead of cutting spending, they are raiding everybody's savings
As the full scope of Greece's budget problems came into full view — it had lied about the actual size of its national debt by over €40 billion — it could no longer sell its debt. The result was a €110 billion EU bailout for Greece earlier this year to help paper over its debt.
Unfortunately, the crisis was not merely limited to a gargantuan Greek accounting scandal. Other European nations were also taking a pounding in the bond markets, like Spain, Ireland, Portugal, and others.
As a result, months later the EU has announced that it is guaranteeing all of its member states' debts. This effectively turned the continent's €750 billion "temporary" sovereign debt bailout fund by the European Central Bank (ECB) into a permanent debt monetization fund, as reported by the Wall Street Journal. Now, the EU has agreed to an €85 billion bailout for Ireland. As other states fail to sell their debts, they'll get bailouts, too.
The way the bailout essentially works is that when member states like Ireland, Greece, and others cannot sell their debt, the ECB agrees to print more euros to fill in the gaps. So shaky are the finances of these European states that the only way they can pay their bills is by printing the money needed.
The ostensible purpose of the money-printing has been to ease the borrowing costs of member states. The logic is that if the ECB agrees to prevent the nations from defaulting on their debts, the risk of failure is removed from the equation, therefore market demand for the bonds would be restored, and interest rates on sovereign debt should come down.
Except, the exact opposite has happened. Since the Irish bailout was announced on November 28th, yields on Italian, Portuguese, Spanish and Belgian debt have risen. What does this mean? That far from calming the bond markets, the central bank interventionism has sent a decidedly different message to creditors, warning that the value of their investments are being diluted with printed money.
Therefore, the more money a central bank prints to pay its nation's debts, the higher the interest rates the markets will demand for that debt to stave off inflation and the depreciation of their assets. If it gets really bad, nobody will even accept the currency as a means of payment. That's essentially what happened to the Weimar Republic in the 1920's, and we all saw how that turned out.
For the U.S., it will be even worse. As the caretaker of the world's reserve currency, a run on the dollar would likely level the entire global economy, leaving a new economic order in its place. The dollar run may have already begun, as China and Russia recently announced that bilateral trade relations would no longer be conducted with dollars. That could be a preemptive move by the Chinese and Russians to prepare for dumping their dollar holdings, which are considerable.
More HERE
*************************
'Constitutional conservatism' is freaking the NYT
NYT editorial below
John Boehner, the next House speaker, expresses the message of constitutional conservatism in calling for every bill to identify the part of the Constitution it rests on. Sarah Palin used the phrase to campaign for limited government. Tea Party members call themselves constitutional conservatives. It is the new mantle in which Republican politicians are wrapping themselves.
The challenge lies in understanding what, if anything, it actually means.
The phrase is used mainly in opposition: against health care reform; against the General Motors bailout; against President Obama’s policies. A year ago, conservatives focused on the gravity of economic problems. This election, their concern shifted to the danger represented by solutions.
Public Opinion Strategies, a Republican polling firm, says the message that 4 out of 5 Republicans wanted to send in the House elections was that American governance must “return to the Constitution.” Constitutional conservatives have an ill-defined faith in the redeeming power of the founders’ vision.
A polemic called the Mount Vernon Statement used the phrase last winter to rally an expanded Republican Party. The statement noted five principles: limited government; individual liberty; free enterprise; advancing freedom, opposing tyranny; and defending family, neighborhood, community and faith.
The phrase is connected to a radical vision. (The Web site of Mike Lee, the Republican senator-elect from Utah, touted him as a constitutional conservative and, as The Times reported, he “views much of what the federal government currently does as unconstitutional.”) But the statement is a vague, highly selective catchall.
It makes no mention of “We the people,” of forming “a more perfect union” or pursuing “the general welfare” — of equality arm in arm with liberty. It seems based on nostalgia for an inadequate version of the country’s past. Like many slogans, it doesn’t bear close examination. Which Americans don’t want liberty, or support tyranny?
That doesn’t mean the effort can be ignored. The prime mover behind the statement, and its first signer, was Edwin Meese III, the former attorney general who helped shape the Reagan revolution. A quarter of a century ago, Mr. Meese led a similar effort to turn a slogan into a movement. That campaign aimed to stem the tide of liberalism in law and bring about a “restoration of fundamental Constitutional values.”
Mr. Meese stirred an impassioned controversy. He drew then-Justices William Brennan and John Paul Stevens into a debate — the first sitting justices to respond to a challenge by an executive branch official since F.D.R.’s court-packing scheme.
Justice Brennan summed up, “It is arrogant to pretend that from our vantage we can gauge accurately the intent of the framers on application of principle to specific, contemporary questions.”
The news media judged that the justices got the better of the attorney general, but Mr. Meese’s rhetoric had political appeal even when it lacked legal persuasiveness. It helped energize a change in government that made conservatism dominant in the law. It helped ensure the strong influence of conservatism generally.
The anger felt by those who favor constitutional conservatism is potent. Call the slogan vague. Call it arrogant. It would be shortsighted to dismiss this increasingly used rallying cry.
SOURCE
***********************
A volunteer military can vote with their feet
Oliver North
Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini and Hideki Tojo tried and failed. Mao Zedong, Nikita Khrushchev and Ho Chi Minh couldn't do it. But commander in chief Barack Obama may well succeed where others could not. If he has his way, he will demolish the finest force for good in the history of mankind -- the U.S. armed forces. And he wants to make it all happen before the end of the year.
On Nov. 30, Defense Secretary Robert Gates released the much-leaked "Report of the Comprehensive Review of the Issues Associated with a Repeal of 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell.'" Only the Pentagon could come up with a title like that.
The "report" -- 266 pages long -- purports to provide military and civilian leaders in Washington with "a comprehensive assessment" and "recommendations" on changes in Defense Department regulations if Section 654 of Title 10 of the U.S. Code is repealed. The 17-year-old law states: "The presence in the armed forces of persons who demonstrate a propensity or intent to engage in homosexual acts would create an unacceptable risk to the high standards of morale, good order and discipline, and unit cohesion that are the essence of military capability." Importantly, the phrase "don't ask, don't tell" appears nowhere in the law.
Supposedly, the "conclusions" and "recommendations" proffered in the "report" are based on a "survey" of currently serving soldiers, sailors, airmen, guardsmen and Marines. Though nearly 400,000 questionnaires on changing the law were circulated, only 115,052 responded. Of those who did reply, 27 percent indicated that allowing open homosexuals into the ranks would adversely affect unit cohesion. Thirty-five percent of service members in deployed combat units said such a change would have a negative impact on combat effectiveness. Sixty-seven percent of Marines and more than 57 percent of soldiers in U.S. Army combat units believe changing the law would hurt combat efficiency, unit cohesion, readiness and retention. Notably, military chaplains -- from all denominations -- overwhelmingly oppose changing the "don't ask, don't tell" policy.
Apparently unmoved by the concern expressed by well over half of our soldiers, sailors and Marines deployed in war zones, Gates and Mullen now argue that Congress must repeal the law immediately or the courts will intervene. That, too, is a phony argument. Section 654 has withstood more than a dozen legal challenges since it has been on the books. The case now pending in the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is but the most recent test. The Obama administration's "legal eagles" need only dust off old files going back to the Clinton administration to see how the law has been upheld in the past.
Obama's push to have the law repealed by this lame-duck session of Congress has been seconded by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. But the full-court press may yet produce the political equivalent of an elbow in the face for the O-Team.
Concerns about repeal -- on readiness, retention and recruitment in the brightest, best-educated and most combat-experienced military force in history -- are not assuaged by the report. Nearly 25 percent of those now serving -- and as many as 32 percent of Marines -- said they are likely to leave the service rather than be assigned to live with and serve beside active homosexuals.
More HERE
**********************
Why Palin Should Run
‘Morning Joe’ Scarborough’s scathing piece on Sarah Palin in Politico, rather than discouraging a run by Palin for President in 2012, may have convinced more conservatives she should run.
Joe Scarborough’s stated concerns include how Palin drew a comparison between the disparagement of her and Ronald Reagan, which is a fair assessment by Palin, and her polite but firm retort to former First Lady Barbara Bush’s comment that Palin should stay in Alaska.
Sarah Palin is the Republican “it” girl right now because she yields no ground to establishment types, bluebloods, political consultants, media elites and all those who contributed to the political and moral deterioration of the Republican Party.
Palin was ahead of the curve in taking on the GOP establishment, which is why she is a Tea Party favorite. She is now what Ronald Reagan said in 1976 we needed in our leaders: those who are unfettered by old ties and old relationships.
If Palin were to run, even if she didn’t win she would unquestionably transform the GOP primary for the better. Her mere force of presence would require Republican contestants to address issues they otherwise wouldn’t -- in ways they otherwise wouldn’t.
In a time when the GOP teeters between returning to its constitutional small-government roots and remaining the party of Democrat-lite, Palin has a confluence of several appeals that most other prospective GOP candidates lack. Add to that her Tea Party credentials, and she’s hands-down a bigger big-tent prospective candidate than Mitt Romney, Tim Pawlenty, Newt Gingrich and others frequently named.
Most importantly, Palin is a boat rocker who isn’t afraid to say the Republican Party needs to move in a direction it hasn’t even debated in over a decade, and actually shrink the size of the federal government.
The best thing for the GOP may be a presidential primary field that includes not only Palin, but Jim DeMint, Mike Pence and one or two other conservatives who don’t toe the establishment GOP line.
Ronald Reagan’s biggest initial obstacles came from within the Republican Party itself. He didn’t become the transformational figure in the GOP we now know him to be based his first run for the presidency.
Reagan’s ability to lead by identifying issues of importance to people was remarkably similar to Sarah Palin’s. Those attempting to tear her down may be kicking up more than they bargain for.
SOURCE
**********************
A Memo to New Republican Lawmakers
A thoughtful conservative activist in Illinois -- with strong ties to both the state's Republican Party and grassroots movement -- issued the following memo to a State Senator-elect. His sound advice on how to boldly navigate Springfield's treacherous political waters can easily be tweaked and applied to new members of Congress:
Random Thoughts for a New Legislator
1. First priority – ORGANIZE.
2. Springfield is a fetid dung heap of corruption.
3. Everything they do there is wrong.
4. Most of them are idiots, just look at the Brady [gubernatorial] campaign.
5. It and they will try constantly to suck you in. It is the natural pull of gravity.
6. And that equals death.
7. The status quo is your enemy, the taxpayer’s enemy and the public’s enemy.
8. Your choices are binary (Ask: Am I growing government, or growing liberty?), not multiple. Read Radical-in-Chief.
9. Always choose the anti-Springfield, anti-status quo, anti-business-as-usual option.
10. At least as significant as “conservative/moderate” is “reformer/establishmentarian.”
11. Conservative reformers will inherit public support.
12. Never speak in Springfield’s terms, always speak in taxpayer’s terms.
13. Only speak of successful examples of conservative reforms.
14. Friendly, quiet, knowledgeable and supportive.
15. “I want justice now.” – Albert Camus. Let others grant grace to the dung heap and ask the people to shoulder its burden. Advocate reform now, not next year or next session or next decade. Now.
16. Have a great time.
This simple missive contains a heavy jolt of distilled wisdom. If you hail from a district or state that just elected a freshman Republican to the House or Senate, I'd encourage you to forward this memo to his or her office. Simply substitute "Washington" for "Springfield," and send away.
SOURCE
My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. My Facebook page is also accessible as jonjayray (In full: http://www.facebook.com/jonjayray). For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, 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 (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)
****************************
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)
****************************
Savings worldwide are being robbed of their value. Instead of cutting spending, they are raiding everybody's savings
As the full scope of Greece's budget problems came into full view — it had lied about the actual size of its national debt by over €40 billion — it could no longer sell its debt. The result was a €110 billion EU bailout for Greece earlier this year to help paper over its debt.
Unfortunately, the crisis was not merely limited to a gargantuan Greek accounting scandal. Other European nations were also taking a pounding in the bond markets, like Spain, Ireland, Portugal, and others.
As a result, months later the EU has announced that it is guaranteeing all of its member states' debts. This effectively turned the continent's €750 billion "temporary" sovereign debt bailout fund by the European Central Bank (ECB) into a permanent debt monetization fund, as reported by the Wall Street Journal. Now, the EU has agreed to an €85 billion bailout for Ireland. As other states fail to sell their debts, they'll get bailouts, too.
The way the bailout essentially works is that when member states like Ireland, Greece, and others cannot sell their debt, the ECB agrees to print more euros to fill in the gaps. So shaky are the finances of these European states that the only way they can pay their bills is by printing the money needed.
The ostensible purpose of the money-printing has been to ease the borrowing costs of member states. The logic is that if the ECB agrees to prevent the nations from defaulting on their debts, the risk of failure is removed from the equation, therefore market demand for the bonds would be restored, and interest rates on sovereign debt should come down.
Except, the exact opposite has happened. Since the Irish bailout was announced on November 28th, yields on Italian, Portuguese, Spanish and Belgian debt have risen. What does this mean? That far from calming the bond markets, the central bank interventionism has sent a decidedly different message to creditors, warning that the value of their investments are being diluted with printed money.
Therefore, the more money a central bank prints to pay its nation's debts, the higher the interest rates the markets will demand for that debt to stave off inflation and the depreciation of their assets. If it gets really bad, nobody will even accept the currency as a means of payment. That's essentially what happened to the Weimar Republic in the 1920's, and we all saw how that turned out.
For the U.S., it will be even worse. As the caretaker of the world's reserve currency, a run on the dollar would likely level the entire global economy, leaving a new economic order in its place. The dollar run may have already begun, as China and Russia recently announced that bilateral trade relations would no longer be conducted with dollars. That could be a preemptive move by the Chinese and Russians to prepare for dumping their dollar holdings, which are considerable.
More HERE
*************************
'Constitutional conservatism' is freaking the NYT
NYT editorial below
John Boehner, the next House speaker, expresses the message of constitutional conservatism in calling for every bill to identify the part of the Constitution it rests on. Sarah Palin used the phrase to campaign for limited government. Tea Party members call themselves constitutional conservatives. It is the new mantle in which Republican politicians are wrapping themselves.
The challenge lies in understanding what, if anything, it actually means.
The phrase is used mainly in opposition: against health care reform; against the General Motors bailout; against President Obama’s policies. A year ago, conservatives focused on the gravity of economic problems. This election, their concern shifted to the danger represented by solutions.
Public Opinion Strategies, a Republican polling firm, says the message that 4 out of 5 Republicans wanted to send in the House elections was that American governance must “return to the Constitution.” Constitutional conservatives have an ill-defined faith in the redeeming power of the founders’ vision.
A polemic called the Mount Vernon Statement used the phrase last winter to rally an expanded Republican Party. The statement noted five principles: limited government; individual liberty; free enterprise; advancing freedom, opposing tyranny; and defending family, neighborhood, community and faith.
The phrase is connected to a radical vision. (The Web site of Mike Lee, the Republican senator-elect from Utah, touted him as a constitutional conservative and, as The Times reported, he “views much of what the federal government currently does as unconstitutional.”) But the statement is a vague, highly selective catchall.
It makes no mention of “We the people,” of forming “a more perfect union” or pursuing “the general welfare” — of equality arm in arm with liberty. It seems based on nostalgia for an inadequate version of the country’s past. Like many slogans, it doesn’t bear close examination. Which Americans don’t want liberty, or support tyranny?
That doesn’t mean the effort can be ignored. The prime mover behind the statement, and its first signer, was Edwin Meese III, the former attorney general who helped shape the Reagan revolution. A quarter of a century ago, Mr. Meese led a similar effort to turn a slogan into a movement. That campaign aimed to stem the tide of liberalism in law and bring about a “restoration of fundamental Constitutional values.”
Mr. Meese stirred an impassioned controversy. He drew then-Justices William Brennan and John Paul Stevens into a debate — the first sitting justices to respond to a challenge by an executive branch official since F.D.R.’s court-packing scheme.
Justice Brennan summed up, “It is arrogant to pretend that from our vantage we can gauge accurately the intent of the framers on application of principle to specific, contemporary questions.”
The news media judged that the justices got the better of the attorney general, but Mr. Meese’s rhetoric had political appeal even when it lacked legal persuasiveness. It helped energize a change in government that made conservatism dominant in the law. It helped ensure the strong influence of conservatism generally.
The anger felt by those who favor constitutional conservatism is potent. Call the slogan vague. Call it arrogant. It would be shortsighted to dismiss this increasingly used rallying cry.
SOURCE
***********************
A volunteer military can vote with their feet
Oliver North
Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini and Hideki Tojo tried and failed. Mao Zedong, Nikita Khrushchev and Ho Chi Minh couldn't do it. But commander in chief Barack Obama may well succeed where others could not. If he has his way, he will demolish the finest force for good in the history of mankind -- the U.S. armed forces. And he wants to make it all happen before the end of the year.
On Nov. 30, Defense Secretary Robert Gates released the much-leaked "Report of the Comprehensive Review of the Issues Associated with a Repeal of 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell.'" Only the Pentagon could come up with a title like that.
The "report" -- 266 pages long -- purports to provide military and civilian leaders in Washington with "a comprehensive assessment" and "recommendations" on changes in Defense Department regulations if Section 654 of Title 10 of the U.S. Code is repealed. The 17-year-old law states: "The presence in the armed forces of persons who demonstrate a propensity or intent to engage in homosexual acts would create an unacceptable risk to the high standards of morale, good order and discipline, and unit cohesion that are the essence of military capability." Importantly, the phrase "don't ask, don't tell" appears nowhere in the law.
Supposedly, the "conclusions" and "recommendations" proffered in the "report" are based on a "survey" of currently serving soldiers, sailors, airmen, guardsmen and Marines. Though nearly 400,000 questionnaires on changing the law were circulated, only 115,052 responded. Of those who did reply, 27 percent indicated that allowing open homosexuals into the ranks would adversely affect unit cohesion. Thirty-five percent of service members in deployed combat units said such a change would have a negative impact on combat effectiveness. Sixty-seven percent of Marines and more than 57 percent of soldiers in U.S. Army combat units believe changing the law would hurt combat efficiency, unit cohesion, readiness and retention. Notably, military chaplains -- from all denominations -- overwhelmingly oppose changing the "don't ask, don't tell" policy.
Apparently unmoved by the concern expressed by well over half of our soldiers, sailors and Marines deployed in war zones, Gates and Mullen now argue that Congress must repeal the law immediately or the courts will intervene. That, too, is a phony argument. Section 654 has withstood more than a dozen legal challenges since it has been on the books. The case now pending in the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is but the most recent test. The Obama administration's "legal eagles" need only dust off old files going back to the Clinton administration to see how the law has been upheld in the past.
Obama's push to have the law repealed by this lame-duck session of Congress has been seconded by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. But the full-court press may yet produce the political equivalent of an elbow in the face for the O-Team.
Concerns about repeal -- on readiness, retention and recruitment in the brightest, best-educated and most combat-experienced military force in history -- are not assuaged by the report. Nearly 25 percent of those now serving -- and as many as 32 percent of Marines -- said they are likely to leave the service rather than be assigned to live with and serve beside active homosexuals.
More HERE
**********************
Why Palin Should Run
‘Morning Joe’ Scarborough’s scathing piece on Sarah Palin in Politico, rather than discouraging a run by Palin for President in 2012, may have convinced more conservatives she should run.
Joe Scarborough’s stated concerns include how Palin drew a comparison between the disparagement of her and Ronald Reagan, which is a fair assessment by Palin, and her polite but firm retort to former First Lady Barbara Bush’s comment that Palin should stay in Alaska.
Sarah Palin is the Republican “it” girl right now because she yields no ground to establishment types, bluebloods, political consultants, media elites and all those who contributed to the political and moral deterioration of the Republican Party.
Palin was ahead of the curve in taking on the GOP establishment, which is why she is a Tea Party favorite. She is now what Ronald Reagan said in 1976 we needed in our leaders: those who are unfettered by old ties and old relationships.
If Palin were to run, even if she didn’t win she would unquestionably transform the GOP primary for the better. Her mere force of presence would require Republican contestants to address issues they otherwise wouldn’t -- in ways they otherwise wouldn’t.
In a time when the GOP teeters between returning to its constitutional small-government roots and remaining the party of Democrat-lite, Palin has a confluence of several appeals that most other prospective GOP candidates lack. Add to that her Tea Party credentials, and she’s hands-down a bigger big-tent prospective candidate than Mitt Romney, Tim Pawlenty, Newt Gingrich and others frequently named.
Most importantly, Palin is a boat rocker who isn’t afraid to say the Republican Party needs to move in a direction it hasn’t even debated in over a decade, and actually shrink the size of the federal government.
The best thing for the GOP may be a presidential primary field that includes not only Palin, but Jim DeMint, Mike Pence and one or two other conservatives who don’t toe the establishment GOP line.
Ronald Reagan’s biggest initial obstacles came from within the Republican Party itself. He didn’t become the transformational figure in the GOP we now know him to be based his first run for the presidency.
Reagan’s ability to lead by identifying issues of importance to people was remarkably similar to Sarah Palin’s. Those attempting to tear her down may be kicking up more than they bargain for.
SOURCE
**********************
A Memo to New Republican Lawmakers
A thoughtful conservative activist in Illinois -- with strong ties to both the state's Republican Party and grassroots movement -- issued the following memo to a State Senator-elect. His sound advice on how to boldly navigate Springfield's treacherous political waters can easily be tweaked and applied to new members of Congress:
Random Thoughts for a New Legislator
1. First priority – ORGANIZE.
2. Springfield is a fetid dung heap of corruption.
3. Everything they do there is wrong.
4. Most of them are idiots, just look at the Brady [gubernatorial] campaign.
5. It and they will try constantly to suck you in. It is the natural pull of gravity.
6. And that equals death.
7. The status quo is your enemy, the taxpayer’s enemy and the public’s enemy.
8. Your choices are binary (Ask: Am I growing government, or growing liberty?), not multiple. Read Radical-in-Chief.
9. Always choose the anti-Springfield, anti-status quo, anti-business-as-usual option.
10. At least as significant as “conservative/moderate” is “reformer/establishmentarian.”
11. Conservative reformers will inherit public support.
12. Never speak in Springfield’s terms, always speak in taxpayer’s terms.
13. Only speak of successful examples of conservative reforms.
14. Friendly, quiet, knowledgeable and supportive.
15. “I want justice now.” – Albert Camus. Let others grant grace to the dung heap and ask the people to shoulder its burden. Advocate reform now, not next year or next session or next decade. Now.
16. Have a great time.
This simple missive contains a heavy jolt of distilled wisdom. If you hail from a district or state that just elected a freshman Republican to the House or Senate, I'd encourage you to forward this memo to his or her office. Simply substitute "Washington" for "Springfield," and send away.
SOURCE
My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. My Facebook page is also accessible as jonjayray (In full: http://www.facebook.com/jonjayray). For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, 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 (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)
****************************
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)
****************************
Friday, December 03, 2010
ANY Republican nominee in 2012 will be "too dumb to be President" -- according to the media and the commentariat
The 2012 Republican presidential nominee-in-waiting is not very bright. In fact, dumb as a post is a more accurate if blunt assessment..
Does this describe Sarah Palin? Yes -- if you choose to listen to the Inside-the-Beltway elites. But just in case she doesn't run for or win the nomination, don't worry. Whoever the GOP nominates will quickly assume this "too dumb to be president" role -- bestowed by many of the same people.
Why? Because this "too dumb to be president" argument is precisely the same-old, same-old argument from liberal elites about Republican presidents or prospective presidents for decades. The argument is particularly relished when it comes to describing conservatives like the former Alaska governor. But even GOP moderates can never escape this tag once they morph from unannounced candidate (and therefore not a political threat to liberalism) to actual frontrunner, nominee or, God forbid, the actual president.
Barry Goldwater, the first modern conservative to win a GOP presidential nomination in 1964, would have been lucky to be tagged as being merely too dumb to be president. He was also said to be, according to Time magazine, "psychologically unfit to be president," "emotionally unstable," "immature," "cowardly," "grossly psychotic," "paranoid," a "mass murderer," "amoral and immoral," a "chronic schizophrenic" and "dangerous lunatic." One psychiatrist breezily announced Goldwater had a "strong identification with the authoritarianism of Hitler, if not identification with Hitler himself."
Reagan, also pegged as a war-monger, was called an "extremist" at the beginning of his political career and an "amiable dunce" just after his election to the presidency. They were a mere blip in the cascade of insults about his intelligence hurled in Reagan's direction over almost a quarter century as a serious American politician. This particular man who was "too dumb to be president" won the Cold War without, as Margaret Thatcher said, firing a shot. Not to mention launching the American economy on a path to creating some 50 million jobs over the next three decades.
But I digress. Perhaps the most instructive case of "too dumb to be president" is that of Gerald Ford. Elected to Congress in 1948, a man with a ready smile and outgoing personality, Ford had won rave reviews from the liberal press when he challenged the House Republican Old Guard following Goldwater's defeat, becoming Minority Leader. All the way through his House career, and on into his surprise accession-by-appointment to the vice presidency following the resignation of liberal bête noire Spiro Agnew, the moderate Republican Ford was pictured as good-ole smiling Jerry, the steady, smart House leader who had not an enemy in the world. He played golf with his old pal House Democratic leader Tip O'Neill. Just a nice, smart, swell guy, said the press.
Then a funny thing happened to good old Jerry Ford. In the wake of Watergate he became president with Nixon's resignation. Within a month he pardoned his predecessor, believing (correctly) that until the nation had rid itself of the Watergate/Nixon obsession he, Ford, would have an impossible time getting things done as president. Nothing dumb there.
Ford had no sooner announced the pardon and disappeared from the television air waves than the re-positioning of Ford by the liberal media had begun. The man who had graduated from Yale Law School and been the epitome of openness and hard work was, in the blink of an eye, dumb as a post and a conniving liar to boot. Up from the mists came a Lyndon Johnson quote saying that Ford the college grid star had played too much football without a helmet.
An on-camera tumble on the slippery steps leading down from the door of Air Force One led to the depiction of the most athletic president since Teddy Roosevelt as a bumbling fool. On a new program called Saturday Night Live, an unknown writer/actor named Chevy Chase rocketed to fame portraying Ford as dumbly prone to hilarious stumbles and dramatic falls over all manner of furniture. Chase anticipated the Tina Fey as empty-headed Sarah Palin routine by decades.
Then there's the Romney saga. That would be George Romney, not Mitt, George's son. George Romney was a liberal Republican, a spectacularly successful business executive as the chairman of American Motors. On the strength of his dazzling business career he was elected Governor of Michigan, where he became a popular political figure with both voters and the national press.
Then a funny thing happened to George Romney. In 1967 he began running for the 1968 GOP presidential nomination. The polls showed he was the man-to-beat for the nomination, the one man in the Republican Party who could take on and beat LBJ, the same LBJ who beat Goldwater in 1964 by a landslide. Then, returning from a fact-finding trip to Vietnam, Romney incautiously allowed as to how he had been "brain-washed" by the Johnson administration on Vietnam. And…. bam.
Within a media cycle the brilliant business executive and innovative Governor of Michigan had become -- you guessed it -- an idiot too dumb to be president. The dumb-as-a-post tag hung around his neck by a media concerned that old George was making just a little bit too much progress and that Tricky Dick, as they called Richard Nixon, would be easier to beat. Romney was finished. His last stint in government was not the White House but the Department of Housing and Urban Development, in Nixon days the equivalent of political Siberia.
What does any of this have to do with Sarah Palin? As the New York Times Magazine recently noted, there is a caricature now abroad in the land of the former Alaska governor "as a vapid, winking, press-averse clotheshorse." In other words, Sarah Palin is an idiot. Dumb as a post. Too dumb, but of course, to be president.
This mother of five with a successful marriage, the woman who, without benefit of a famous name or marriage, has been elected successively to positions as city council member, mayor, president of the Alaska Conference of Mayors, served as the appointed (by the then-governor) chairman of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission before being elected governor herself -- this before becoming only the second woman to be tapped for a major party vice-presidential nomination, a successful author and bona fide TV star like Reagan -- this is the woman who is now presented by everybody from GOP Establishment types to liberal enemies as just a vacant Barbie-style version of other men who were too dumb to be president. Goldwater? Romney? Ford? Reagan? Kemp? Bush 43? Bush 41? Like them all, Sarah Palin is just too dumb to be president.
More HERE
*************************
Todd Palin – “First Man”
Dick McDonald
I woke up this morning wondering how Todd Palin as the prospective first “First Man” would stack up against Michelle Obama the incumbent “First Lady” if his wife commits to running. I learned a bit about Todd when his wife was campaigning for the Vice-Presidency but caught a glimpse of the kind of First Man he would make on the TV show “Sarah Palin’s Alaska.
The first impression was the response he got when the family was introduced to the halibut boat captain they chartered to do some fishing. The captain, unaffected by the cameras and the hoopla, when introduced to the family blurted out “Let me shake the hand of the “Iron Dog Champion” as he brushed past Sarah to grab Todd’s hand. It reminded me that Todd was a man among men who had several times won the most difficult, competitive and challenging race in the entire world.
That will stand Sarah in good stead when push comes to shove at the ballot box.
The second impression was the character and focus he exhibited in the simple task of teaching his son the salmon fishing business. There was a flash of the command he has over his environment and his family - a flash that at the helm of a fishing boat in the treacherous waters of Alaska there is no room for error. Trip got the message – hell I was ready to salute.
Of all I know about the man I feel he has his ego under control and unlike Michelle “I was never proud to be an American” Obama he will be a plus in that equation. He clearly seamlessly floats between being a tough and tumble roustabout on the North Slope to changing diapers and washing dishes in Wasilla. Should she decide to run I believe his “First Man” persona will be a bigger factor in the election than any previous First Lady.
Comment received by email
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Minimum Wages: Some more of that nasty reality
Walter E. Williams
How about this: The law of gravity is applicable to the behavior of falling objects on the U.S. mainland but not applicable on our Pacific Ocean territories Samoa and Northern Mariana Islands. You say, "Williams, that's lunacy! Laws are applicable everywhere; that's why they call it a law."
You're right, but does the same reasoning apply to the law of demand that holds: The higher the price of something, the less people will take of it; and the lower its price, the more people will take of it? The law of demand applies to wages, interest and rent because, after all, they are the prices of something.
In 2007, the Democrat-led Congress and White House enacted legislation raising the minimum wage law, in steps, from $5.15 an hour to $7.25. With some modification, the increases applied to our Pacific Ocean territories. Republicans and others opposed to the increases were labeled as hostile toward workers. According to most opinion polls taken in 2006, more than 80 percent of Americans favored Congress' intention to raise the minimum wage. Most Americans see the minimum wage as a good thing, and without it, rapacious employers wouldn't pay workers much of anything.
On the eve of the 2007 minimum wage increase, someone got 650 of my fellow economists, including a couple awarded the Nobel Prize in economics, to sign a petition that read "We believe that a modest increase in the minimum wage would improve the well-being of low-wage workers and would not have the adverse effects that critics have claimed." At the time, I wrote that I felt embarrassment for them, but at least the petition was not signed by any George Mason University economists.
According to a Sept. 30, 2010 American Samoa government press release, "Governor Togiola Tulafono today expressed his sincere gratitude to President Barack Obama for signing legislation that will delay the minimum wage increase scheduled to take effect in American Samoa for 2010 and 2011." My question to you is why would a Democrat-controlled Congress pass a measure (HR 3940), and a Democrat president sign it, that would postpone the enactment of something as "wonderful" as an increase in the minimum wage law.
The fact of the matter is that increases in minimum wages have had a devastating impact on American Samoan workers. In my "Minimum Wage Cruelty: Update" column of May 26, 2010, I wrote: "Chicken of the Sea International moved its operation from Samoa to a highly automated cannery plant in Lyons, Ga. That resulted in roughly 2,000 jobs lost in Samoa and a gain of 200 jobs in Georgia. StarKist, the island's remaining cannery, announced that between 600 and 800 people will be laid off over the next six months, reducing the company's Samoan workforce from a high of more than 3,000 in 2008 to less than 1,200 workers." According to SamoanNews.Com, in August, 300 workers received layoff letters in phase one of Starkist's downsizing plans.
Stephen Dinan, The Washington Times staff writer who wrote "Territories snared in wage debate," (10/18/10) said, "A number of those involved with the minimum-wage issue appeared not to want to talk about it. The White House didn't return a call seeking comment, nor did the AFL-CIO, the chief umbrella group for labor unions."
Does the law of demand that we've seen applying to American Samoa also apply to the U.S. mainland? It does and particularly for teenagers and especially black teenagers. In 2007, the unemployment rate for all teens was 15 percent; today it's 25 percent. For black teenagers, in 2007, unemployment was 26 percent; today it's over 50 percent. Overall unemployment is a little over 9 percent. Those who argue that the minimum wage has no effect on labor markets in the U.S. but has an effect in American Samoa are either liars, lunatics or idiots, and that includes those 650 economists who signed that petition suggesting that a "modest increase in the minimum wage would improve the well-being of low-wage workers."
SOURCE
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The Conquering Bureaucracy
A new history of the FDA shows how regulators entrenched and extended their own power. BOOK REVIEW of "Reputation and Power: Organizational Image and Pharmaceutical Regulation at the FDA", by Daniel Carpenter
After spending months in the Amazon sometime in the early 1960s, a young pharmaceutical salesman just wanted to cross an airstrip and board a plane to begin his long journey home. But a Brazilian soldier had a different idea: “You can’t come in.”
The salesman pleaded, “I gotta come in!” The soldier pointed his rifle at the young American, unlocked the safety, and repeated, “You can’t come in.” The drug rep relented: “Oh, now I got it. I can’t go in there.”
In 1985 that salesman, G. Kirk Raab, was named the president of Genentech, which has since become one of the leaders of the modern biotech industry. But early in Raab’s tenure Genentech was dealt an almost crippling blow at a critical stage of its development by the formidable Food and Drug Administration (FDA). In the spring of 1987, a mere suggestion that an advisory panel to the FDA was entertaining doubts about approving Genentech’s first blockbuster drug was enough to send the company’s stock plummeting, wiping out a quarter of its value overnight. When talking about the incident and its implications, Raab liked to recall his jungle encounter with state power. “The FDA is standing there with a machine gun against the pharmaceutical industry, so you better be their friend rather than their enemy. They are the boss.…They own you body and soul.”
The FDA is one of the oldest and most powerful regulatory agencies in the United States. In his massive, magisterial Reputation and Power: Organizational Image and Pharmaceutical Regulation at the FDA, the Harvard political scientist Daniel Carpenter provides both a history of the agency and an analysis of how it gained and flexed its most important regulatory power, the ability to keep new drugs off the market. Carpenter carefully documents the ways FDA bureaucrats have worked to exploit opportunities to expand their influence and reshape how the drug industry and the medical profession operate.
Much more HERE
My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. My Facebook page is also accessible as jonjayray (In full: http://www.facebook.com/jonjayray). For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, 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 (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)
****************************
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)
****************************
The 2012 Republican presidential nominee-in-waiting is not very bright. In fact, dumb as a post is a more accurate if blunt assessment..
Does this describe Sarah Palin? Yes -- if you choose to listen to the Inside-the-Beltway elites. But just in case she doesn't run for or win the nomination, don't worry. Whoever the GOP nominates will quickly assume this "too dumb to be president" role -- bestowed by many of the same people.
Why? Because this "too dumb to be president" argument is precisely the same-old, same-old argument from liberal elites about Republican presidents or prospective presidents for decades. The argument is particularly relished when it comes to describing conservatives like the former Alaska governor. But even GOP moderates can never escape this tag once they morph from unannounced candidate (and therefore not a political threat to liberalism) to actual frontrunner, nominee or, God forbid, the actual president.
Barry Goldwater, the first modern conservative to win a GOP presidential nomination in 1964, would have been lucky to be tagged as being merely too dumb to be president. He was also said to be, according to Time magazine, "psychologically unfit to be president," "emotionally unstable," "immature," "cowardly," "grossly psychotic," "paranoid," a "mass murderer," "amoral and immoral," a "chronic schizophrenic" and "dangerous lunatic." One psychiatrist breezily announced Goldwater had a "strong identification with the authoritarianism of Hitler, if not identification with Hitler himself."
Reagan, also pegged as a war-monger, was called an "extremist" at the beginning of his political career and an "amiable dunce" just after his election to the presidency. They were a mere blip in the cascade of insults about his intelligence hurled in Reagan's direction over almost a quarter century as a serious American politician. This particular man who was "too dumb to be president" won the Cold War without, as Margaret Thatcher said, firing a shot. Not to mention launching the American economy on a path to creating some 50 million jobs over the next three decades.
But I digress. Perhaps the most instructive case of "too dumb to be president" is that of Gerald Ford. Elected to Congress in 1948, a man with a ready smile and outgoing personality, Ford had won rave reviews from the liberal press when he challenged the House Republican Old Guard following Goldwater's defeat, becoming Minority Leader. All the way through his House career, and on into his surprise accession-by-appointment to the vice presidency following the resignation of liberal bête noire Spiro Agnew, the moderate Republican Ford was pictured as good-ole smiling Jerry, the steady, smart House leader who had not an enemy in the world. He played golf with his old pal House Democratic leader Tip O'Neill. Just a nice, smart, swell guy, said the press.
Then a funny thing happened to good old Jerry Ford. In the wake of Watergate he became president with Nixon's resignation. Within a month he pardoned his predecessor, believing (correctly) that until the nation had rid itself of the Watergate/Nixon obsession he, Ford, would have an impossible time getting things done as president. Nothing dumb there.
Ford had no sooner announced the pardon and disappeared from the television air waves than the re-positioning of Ford by the liberal media had begun. The man who had graduated from Yale Law School and been the epitome of openness and hard work was, in the blink of an eye, dumb as a post and a conniving liar to boot. Up from the mists came a Lyndon Johnson quote saying that Ford the college grid star had played too much football without a helmet.
An on-camera tumble on the slippery steps leading down from the door of Air Force One led to the depiction of the most athletic president since Teddy Roosevelt as a bumbling fool. On a new program called Saturday Night Live, an unknown writer/actor named Chevy Chase rocketed to fame portraying Ford as dumbly prone to hilarious stumbles and dramatic falls over all manner of furniture. Chase anticipated the Tina Fey as empty-headed Sarah Palin routine by decades.
Then there's the Romney saga. That would be George Romney, not Mitt, George's son. George Romney was a liberal Republican, a spectacularly successful business executive as the chairman of American Motors. On the strength of his dazzling business career he was elected Governor of Michigan, where he became a popular political figure with both voters and the national press.
Then a funny thing happened to George Romney. In 1967 he began running for the 1968 GOP presidential nomination. The polls showed he was the man-to-beat for the nomination, the one man in the Republican Party who could take on and beat LBJ, the same LBJ who beat Goldwater in 1964 by a landslide. Then, returning from a fact-finding trip to Vietnam, Romney incautiously allowed as to how he had been "brain-washed" by the Johnson administration on Vietnam. And…. bam.
Within a media cycle the brilliant business executive and innovative Governor of Michigan had become -- you guessed it -- an idiot too dumb to be president. The dumb-as-a-post tag hung around his neck by a media concerned that old George was making just a little bit too much progress and that Tricky Dick, as they called Richard Nixon, would be easier to beat. Romney was finished. His last stint in government was not the White House but the Department of Housing and Urban Development, in Nixon days the equivalent of political Siberia.
What does any of this have to do with Sarah Palin? As the New York Times Magazine recently noted, there is a caricature now abroad in the land of the former Alaska governor "as a vapid, winking, press-averse clotheshorse." In other words, Sarah Palin is an idiot. Dumb as a post. Too dumb, but of course, to be president.
This mother of five with a successful marriage, the woman who, without benefit of a famous name or marriage, has been elected successively to positions as city council member, mayor, president of the Alaska Conference of Mayors, served as the appointed (by the then-governor) chairman of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission before being elected governor herself -- this before becoming only the second woman to be tapped for a major party vice-presidential nomination, a successful author and bona fide TV star like Reagan -- this is the woman who is now presented by everybody from GOP Establishment types to liberal enemies as just a vacant Barbie-style version of other men who were too dumb to be president. Goldwater? Romney? Ford? Reagan? Kemp? Bush 43? Bush 41? Like them all, Sarah Palin is just too dumb to be president.
More HERE
*************************
Todd Palin – “First Man”
Dick McDonald
I woke up this morning wondering how Todd Palin as the prospective first “First Man” would stack up against Michelle Obama the incumbent “First Lady” if his wife commits to running. I learned a bit about Todd when his wife was campaigning for the Vice-Presidency but caught a glimpse of the kind of First Man he would make on the TV show “Sarah Palin’s Alaska.
The first impression was the response he got when the family was introduced to the halibut boat captain they chartered to do some fishing. The captain, unaffected by the cameras and the hoopla, when introduced to the family blurted out “Let me shake the hand of the “Iron Dog Champion” as he brushed past Sarah to grab Todd’s hand. It reminded me that Todd was a man among men who had several times won the most difficult, competitive and challenging race in the entire world.
That will stand Sarah in good stead when push comes to shove at the ballot box.
The second impression was the character and focus he exhibited in the simple task of teaching his son the salmon fishing business. There was a flash of the command he has over his environment and his family - a flash that at the helm of a fishing boat in the treacherous waters of Alaska there is no room for error. Trip got the message – hell I was ready to salute.
Of all I know about the man I feel he has his ego under control and unlike Michelle “I was never proud to be an American” Obama he will be a plus in that equation. He clearly seamlessly floats between being a tough and tumble roustabout on the North Slope to changing diapers and washing dishes in Wasilla. Should she decide to run I believe his “First Man” persona will be a bigger factor in the election than any previous First Lady.
Comment received by email
*********************
Minimum Wages: Some more of that nasty reality
Walter E. Williams
How about this: The law of gravity is applicable to the behavior of falling objects on the U.S. mainland but not applicable on our Pacific Ocean territories Samoa and Northern Mariana Islands. You say, "Williams, that's lunacy! Laws are applicable everywhere; that's why they call it a law."
You're right, but does the same reasoning apply to the law of demand that holds: The higher the price of something, the less people will take of it; and the lower its price, the more people will take of it? The law of demand applies to wages, interest and rent because, after all, they are the prices of something.
In 2007, the Democrat-led Congress and White House enacted legislation raising the minimum wage law, in steps, from $5.15 an hour to $7.25. With some modification, the increases applied to our Pacific Ocean territories. Republicans and others opposed to the increases were labeled as hostile toward workers. According to most opinion polls taken in 2006, more than 80 percent of Americans favored Congress' intention to raise the minimum wage. Most Americans see the minimum wage as a good thing, and without it, rapacious employers wouldn't pay workers much of anything.
On the eve of the 2007 minimum wage increase, someone got 650 of my fellow economists, including a couple awarded the Nobel Prize in economics, to sign a petition that read "We believe that a modest increase in the minimum wage would improve the well-being of low-wage workers and would not have the adverse effects that critics have claimed." At the time, I wrote that I felt embarrassment for them, but at least the petition was not signed by any George Mason University economists.
According to a Sept. 30, 2010 American Samoa government press release, "Governor Togiola Tulafono today expressed his sincere gratitude to President Barack Obama for signing legislation that will delay the minimum wage increase scheduled to take effect in American Samoa for 2010 and 2011." My question to you is why would a Democrat-controlled Congress pass a measure (HR 3940), and a Democrat president sign it, that would postpone the enactment of something as "wonderful" as an increase in the minimum wage law.
The fact of the matter is that increases in minimum wages have had a devastating impact on American Samoan workers. In my "Minimum Wage Cruelty: Update" column of May 26, 2010, I wrote: "Chicken of the Sea International moved its operation from Samoa to a highly automated cannery plant in Lyons, Ga. That resulted in roughly 2,000 jobs lost in Samoa and a gain of 200 jobs in Georgia. StarKist, the island's remaining cannery, announced that between 600 and 800 people will be laid off over the next six months, reducing the company's Samoan workforce from a high of more than 3,000 in 2008 to less than 1,200 workers." According to SamoanNews.Com, in August, 300 workers received layoff letters in phase one of Starkist's downsizing plans.
Stephen Dinan, The Washington Times staff writer who wrote "Territories snared in wage debate," (10/18/10) said, "A number of those involved with the minimum-wage issue appeared not to want to talk about it. The White House didn't return a call seeking comment, nor did the AFL-CIO, the chief umbrella group for labor unions."
Does the law of demand that we've seen applying to American Samoa also apply to the U.S. mainland? It does and particularly for teenagers and especially black teenagers. In 2007, the unemployment rate for all teens was 15 percent; today it's 25 percent. For black teenagers, in 2007, unemployment was 26 percent; today it's over 50 percent. Overall unemployment is a little over 9 percent. Those who argue that the minimum wage has no effect on labor markets in the U.S. but has an effect in American Samoa are either liars, lunatics or idiots, and that includes those 650 economists who signed that petition suggesting that a "modest increase in the minimum wage would improve the well-being of low-wage workers."
SOURCE
********************
The Conquering Bureaucracy
A new history of the FDA shows how regulators entrenched and extended their own power. BOOK REVIEW of "Reputation and Power: Organizational Image and Pharmaceutical Regulation at the FDA", by Daniel Carpenter
After spending months in the Amazon sometime in the early 1960s, a young pharmaceutical salesman just wanted to cross an airstrip and board a plane to begin his long journey home. But a Brazilian soldier had a different idea: “You can’t come in.”
The salesman pleaded, “I gotta come in!” The soldier pointed his rifle at the young American, unlocked the safety, and repeated, “You can’t come in.” The drug rep relented: “Oh, now I got it. I can’t go in there.”
In 1985 that salesman, G. Kirk Raab, was named the president of Genentech, which has since become one of the leaders of the modern biotech industry. But early in Raab’s tenure Genentech was dealt an almost crippling blow at a critical stage of its development by the formidable Food and Drug Administration (FDA). In the spring of 1987, a mere suggestion that an advisory panel to the FDA was entertaining doubts about approving Genentech’s first blockbuster drug was enough to send the company’s stock plummeting, wiping out a quarter of its value overnight. When talking about the incident and its implications, Raab liked to recall his jungle encounter with state power. “The FDA is standing there with a machine gun against the pharmaceutical industry, so you better be their friend rather than their enemy. They are the boss.…They own you body and soul.”
The FDA is one of the oldest and most powerful regulatory agencies in the United States. In his massive, magisterial Reputation and Power: Organizational Image and Pharmaceutical Regulation at the FDA, the Harvard political scientist Daniel Carpenter provides both a history of the agency and an analysis of how it gained and flexed its most important regulatory power, the ability to keep new drugs off the market. Carpenter carefully documents the ways FDA bureaucrats have worked to exploit opportunities to expand their influence and reshape how the drug industry and the medical profession operate.
Much more HERE
My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. My Facebook page is also accessible as jonjayray (In full: http://www.facebook.com/jonjayray). For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, 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 (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)
****************************
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)
****************************
Thursday, December 02, 2010
Happy Hannukah to my Jewish readers!
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Embarrassment: Germany doing much better than America
While America stagnates economically, the German economy is going ahead like a train. Why? Martin Hutchinson has some answers
Germany's success in 2010 has surprised most U.S. analysts, who tend to start every sentence about Europe with "sclerotic." However it is by no means the only country that is recovering from the Great Recession in a remarkably healthy fashion. China, Chile and Singapore are also stand-outs in this respect, while the United States, Ireland and southern Europe have done poorly. This year's economic events can teach us again about which models of capitalism can be successful.
Germany's success should not have been surprising. The country had a remarkably successful economy in Wilhelmine times before 1914 and again from 1949 to 1990. The absorption of East Germany was an immense problem for the German economy, largely because it was done in the most expensive way possible, with a 1 to 1 conversion between the Ostmark and the Deutschemark, horribly overvaluing East German labor. However it was very obviously a problem of finite duration, given the language and cultural commonality between the two former countries. By about 2005, symbolized by the accession of the East German Angela Merkel to the Chancellorship, East Germany was ready to play a full part in the united whole. At that point, with the massive subsidies to the former East Germany declining, the traditional German model of capitalism was able to reassert itself and propel the economy forward.
The German economic model works very well for a country with perpetually high labor costs. Education and training are of great importance, as are engineering skill–engineers have a much higher social position in German societies than in Anglo-American ones–while housing finance is given a low priority, since it is correctly regarded as unproductive. Finance plays little role in the system–it was notable during the 2008 debacle to what extent the German banks were helpless victims of Anglo-American shenanigans, with little creative role of their own. The typical successful German company is both smaller and longer established than its U.S. counterpart, with powerful shareholders that prevent management from engaging in self-dealing and mindless empire building.
In very fast-moving innovative markets, the German model works less well than the Anglo-American Silicon Valley model of innovation. Thus the German enterprise software company SAP appears to have stolen technology from Oracle, not the other way around—to the tune of $1.3 billion in damages (a figure that may be reduced on appeal.) However the vast majority of economic activity is not particularly fast moving, and once a technology has become established the Germans have shown time and again that they are more than capable of playing a major role in the market with their skills of engineering and very high-quality manufacturing. They are much more of a threat in the Internet-related technology market than they were 15 years ago, for example.
SOURCE
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How did Australia dodge the GFC?
Martin Hutchinson goes on above to look at how several other countries have done after the GFC but omits the real standout economy -- Australia -- possibly because Bondi beach is all he knows about Australia. So maybe I should fill in a little gap there.
The first point to note is that Australia had NO crisis at all. A Leftist government had come to power just a couple of months before the global financial meltdown and paraded around spending money and offering government guarantees but that was just typical Leftist approval-seeking. They wanted there to be a crisis that they could seem to solve so they went around pretending that there was one.
The major Australian banks were never in trouble and in fact continued to make profits and pay dividends at around their normal levels. And unemployment is about half the U.S. level -- again at around its historically normal levels: A dream by world standards. And, as I have got about half my share portfolio in Australian banks, I am acutely aware of all that. By way of example, I have a parcel of shares in Westpac bank and in the year of the crisis, Westpac announced a profit decline from the previous year -- of only 1.5%
So Australian banks would be the obsessive subject of study by all the economists of the world if there were any mystery about why they did so unusually well. But there is no mystery. The answer can be given in one word: DEREGULATION. Australian banks were extensively deregulated a couple of decades ago and promptly went wild. With the government not telling them what to do they embarked on all sorts of "innovative" lending policies and got badly burnt in the process. The various banks owned by State governments all went bust in fact.
So they learnt their lesson. The surviving banks worked out how to do prudent lending and stuck firmly to those policies from that point on. And there were no government laws dictating that they make unwise loans, unlike the USA. Hence they didn't have any significant overhang of bad debt when the crisis struck. They had all bought small amounts of American paper because of its attractive yields but their now ingrained caution meant that they largely stuck to their own knitting. So losses on the American paper could be absorbed from domestic profits.
All that I have just said any economic historian should be able to dig up but it is not the full story. In my usual wicked way, I will now tell you the rest.
The American practice of making poorly secured loans and apparently thriving by doing so was deeply impressive worldwide and was therefore copied in many other countries -- and they suffered for it along with America in due course.
And in Australia also there sprang up a slew of financial intermediaries who offered what they called "low doc" loans. And they DID suffer from the GFC. But not too badly. They were mostly just taken over by the banks and everything continued on as normal.
So how come they did not cause a huge crash? Easy. As in the USA, the people who were given the poorly secured loans were mostly minorities. But Australia's big minority is very different from America's two large minorities. Australia's big minority is East Asian, mostly Han Chinese racially. And if you know anything about the Han you know that they would rather DIE than default on a home loan. The loss of face would be unendurable. If in trouble they would just get a third job. So loan defaults were relatively rare in Australia because Australia has a better class of minorities. Do you see why no-one else would ever tell you that? -- JR
**********************
Why tax cuts for the rich pay off
Thomas Sowell
Guess who said the following: "It is incredible that a system of taxation which permits a man with an income of $1,000,000 a year to pay not one cent to his Government should remain unaltered."
Franklin D. Roosevelt? Ted Kennedy? Nancy Pelosi?
Not even close. It was Andrew Mellon, Secretary of the Treasury under conservative Republican President Calvin Coolidge.
What was Mellon's point? That high tax rates do not necessarily result in high tax revenues to the government. "It is time to face the facts," he said. Merely having high tax rates on large incomes will not bring in more tax revenues to the treasury, because of "the flight of capital away from taxable investments."
This was all said in 1924, in Mellon's book, "Taxation: The People's Business." Yet here we are, more than 80 years later, still not facing those facts.
It is not just a question of what Andrew Mellon said. It is a question of hard facts, easily checked in official documents available to all-- and ignored all these years.
Internal Revenue Service data show that there were 206 people who reported annual incomes of one million dollars or more in 1916. But, as the tax rate on high incomes skyrocketed under the Woodrow Wilson administration, that number plummeted to just 21 people reporting a million dollars a year in income five years later.
What happened to all those millionaires? Did they flee the country? Were they stricken with fatal diseases? Did they meet with foul play?
Not to worry. Right after Congress enacted the cuts in tax rates that Mellon had been urging, there were suddenly 207 people reporting taxable incomes of a million dollars or more in 1925. As Casey Stengel used to say, "You could look it up." It is on page 21 of an Internal Revenue publication titled "Statistics of Income from Returns of Net Income for 1925."
Where had all the income of those millionaires been hiding? In tax-exempt securities like state and local bonds, among other places. Mellon had urged Congress to end tax exemptions for such securities, even before he got them to cut tax rates. But he succeeded only with the latter, and only after a political struggle with those who made the same kinds of arguments that are still being made today by those who cry out against "tax cuts for the rich."
Still, one out of two is not bad, when it comes to getting Congress to do something that makes sense economically, rather than something that looks good politically.
The government, which collected less than $50 million in taxes on capital gains in 1924, suddenly collected well over $100 million in capital gains taxes in 1925. At lower tax rates, it no longer made sense to keep so much invested in tax-exempt securities, when more money could be made by investing in the economy.
As for "the rich"-- who really were rich in those days, when $100,000 was worth more than a million dollars is worth today-- those in the highest income brackets paid 30 percent of all taxes in 1920 and 65 percent of all taxes by 1929, after "tax cuts for the rich."
How can that be? Because high tax rates on paper, that many people avoid, often does not bring in as much tax revenue as lower tax rates that more people actually pay, after it is safe to come out of tax shelters and earn higher rates of taxable income.
The investors do this because it makes them better off, on net balance, even after they pay more money in taxes on incomes that have gone up. More important, the economy benefits when there is more investment in things that create more jobs and rising output.
None of this was unique to the 1920s. The same scenario played out again in later years, during the Kennedy, Reagan and Bush 43 administrations.
But economic success is not the same as political success. As former House Majority Leader Dick Armey put it, "Demagoguery beats data."
As long as the voters keep buying the "tax cuts for the rich" demagoguery, politicians will keep selling it. And it will keep selling as long as it goes unanswered. The question is whether today's Republicans understand that as well as Andrew Mellon did back in the 1920s.
SOURCE
**************************
ELSEWHERE
Google now in the EU crosshairs: "The European Union's competition watchdog will investigate whether Google has abused its dominant position in the online search market - the first major probe into the online giant's business practices. The investigation announced overnight follows complaints from rival search engines that Google put them at a disadvantage in both its regular and sponsored search results, by listing links to their sites below references to its own services in an attempt to shut them out of the market. [Harassing American technology companies is what they do. Ask IBM and Microsoft]
US Senate passes bureaucrat empowerment legislation: "The U.S. Senate has approved the first major food-safety [sic] legislation in more than 70 years, by a 73-to-25 vote. The Food Safety Modernization Act will give the Food and Drug Administration more power …”
US Senate blocks repeal of $600 “transaction reporting” requirement: "The Senate on Monday rejected an effort to reduce tax-related paperwork for businesses when lawmakers couldn’t agree on whether they would make up the revenue the new requirement was expected to produce. … Under the new law, nearly 40 million U.S. businesses would start filing tax forms in 2012 for every vendor that sells them more than $600 in goods. … Senators tried twice on Monday to amend an unrelated food safety bill to repeal the filing requirement. Both proposals, one by Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., and another by Sen. Mike Johanns, R-Neb., failed to get the necessary two-thirds majority.”
The triumphant return of Hayek: "Keynesianism and monetarism are now suffering a similar distortion. Keynes would probably never have supported big government deficits during boom times, such as those that led to our current debt crisis. Likewise, Friedman would probably not have backed the new Fed use of monetary policy as a tool to engineer expansion rather than merely cushion the pain in a downturn. The systematic perversion of Keynes’s and Friedman’s thought is now resulting in a fall in their fortunes, leaving Hayek triumphant, once again.”
North Korea runs unchecked: "Fail to forcefully confront a thug and you generally guarantee that his thuggish behavior will continue. … Yet when it comes to the pathological regime in North Korea, the conventional wisdom throws up its hands and laments that there are no good options for confronting Kim Jong-il over his aggressive provocations. North Korea’s attack on a South Korean island last week — a 50-minute barrage that left four people dead and reduced dozens of homes to smoking ruins — was an act of war.”
The set-aside boondoggle: "Government set-aside programs actually require ineffiency in infrastructure projects by demanding that the least competitive contractors be hired to work on them. Success in a contracting business disqualifies a contractor from being designated as a ‘minority business enterprise.’ Only contractors with a net worth below $750,000 and a relatively low annual income may participate. But the bureaucracy required to oversee these programs is reason enough to cut them out, even if they did not guarantee waste in the actual operation of a project.”
The road to fascism: "Fascism is the system in which no specific economic theory is used to guide the rulers. Only one common factor characterizes the system, namely, arbitrary rule by a charismatic head of state. Such a head of state has nearly carte blanche so far as its policies are concerned. Examples of fascist regimes are quite abundant, mainly because at heart nearly all the so called communist countries are ruled by fascist dictators — Cuba, North Korea, the Soviet Union, etc. Yes, under Stalin and other soviet rulers the USSR really come to nothing more than fascism — ‘Stalinism is the most successful variant of fascism’ said the late Susan Sontag and with that declaration (made at the American Workers and Artists for Solidarity rally), she created an uproar among Leftists around the world.”
Wishful regulation in Britain: "Regulators were originally created to bring quasi-competition to newly-privatized markets. But, more than this, the last government used them as wish fulfilment agencies and that still continues. We were all shocked when companies collapsed taking their pension funds with them, so the Pensions Regulator was created to ensure that employee pensions were protected. We want energy sustainability, so Ofgem was tasked with ensuring it. The idea seemed to be that you could appoint a regulator and, hey presto, the government’s wishes would be fulfilled.”
My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. My Facebook page is also accessible as jonjayray (In full: http://www.facebook.com/jonjayray). For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, 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 (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)
****************************
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)
****************************
*******************
Embarrassment: Germany doing much better than America
While America stagnates economically, the German economy is going ahead like a train. Why? Martin Hutchinson has some answers
Germany's success in 2010 has surprised most U.S. analysts, who tend to start every sentence about Europe with "sclerotic." However it is by no means the only country that is recovering from the Great Recession in a remarkably healthy fashion. China, Chile and Singapore are also stand-outs in this respect, while the United States, Ireland and southern Europe have done poorly. This year's economic events can teach us again about which models of capitalism can be successful.
Germany's success should not have been surprising. The country had a remarkably successful economy in Wilhelmine times before 1914 and again from 1949 to 1990. The absorption of East Germany was an immense problem for the German economy, largely because it was done in the most expensive way possible, with a 1 to 1 conversion between the Ostmark and the Deutschemark, horribly overvaluing East German labor. However it was very obviously a problem of finite duration, given the language and cultural commonality between the two former countries. By about 2005, symbolized by the accession of the East German Angela Merkel to the Chancellorship, East Germany was ready to play a full part in the united whole. At that point, with the massive subsidies to the former East Germany declining, the traditional German model of capitalism was able to reassert itself and propel the economy forward.
The German economic model works very well for a country with perpetually high labor costs. Education and training are of great importance, as are engineering skill–engineers have a much higher social position in German societies than in Anglo-American ones–while housing finance is given a low priority, since it is correctly regarded as unproductive. Finance plays little role in the system–it was notable during the 2008 debacle to what extent the German banks were helpless victims of Anglo-American shenanigans, with little creative role of their own. The typical successful German company is both smaller and longer established than its U.S. counterpart, with powerful shareholders that prevent management from engaging in self-dealing and mindless empire building.
In very fast-moving innovative markets, the German model works less well than the Anglo-American Silicon Valley model of innovation. Thus the German enterprise software company SAP appears to have stolen technology from Oracle, not the other way around—to the tune of $1.3 billion in damages (a figure that may be reduced on appeal.) However the vast majority of economic activity is not particularly fast moving, and once a technology has become established the Germans have shown time and again that they are more than capable of playing a major role in the market with their skills of engineering and very high-quality manufacturing. They are much more of a threat in the Internet-related technology market than they were 15 years ago, for example.
SOURCE
********************
How did Australia dodge the GFC?
Martin Hutchinson goes on above to look at how several other countries have done after the GFC but omits the real standout economy -- Australia -- possibly because Bondi beach is all he knows about Australia. So maybe I should fill in a little gap there.
The first point to note is that Australia had NO crisis at all. A Leftist government had come to power just a couple of months before the global financial meltdown and paraded around spending money and offering government guarantees but that was just typical Leftist approval-seeking. They wanted there to be a crisis that they could seem to solve so they went around pretending that there was one.
The major Australian banks were never in trouble and in fact continued to make profits and pay dividends at around their normal levels. And unemployment is about half the U.S. level -- again at around its historically normal levels: A dream by world standards. And, as I have got about half my share portfolio in Australian banks, I am acutely aware of all that. By way of example, I have a parcel of shares in Westpac bank and in the year of the crisis, Westpac announced a profit decline from the previous year -- of only 1.5%
So Australian banks would be the obsessive subject of study by all the economists of the world if there were any mystery about why they did so unusually well. But there is no mystery. The answer can be given in one word: DEREGULATION. Australian banks were extensively deregulated a couple of decades ago and promptly went wild. With the government not telling them what to do they embarked on all sorts of "innovative" lending policies and got badly burnt in the process. The various banks owned by State governments all went bust in fact.
So they learnt their lesson. The surviving banks worked out how to do prudent lending and stuck firmly to those policies from that point on. And there were no government laws dictating that they make unwise loans, unlike the USA. Hence they didn't have any significant overhang of bad debt when the crisis struck. They had all bought small amounts of American paper because of its attractive yields but their now ingrained caution meant that they largely stuck to their own knitting. So losses on the American paper could be absorbed from domestic profits.
All that I have just said any economic historian should be able to dig up but it is not the full story. In my usual wicked way, I will now tell you the rest.
The American practice of making poorly secured loans and apparently thriving by doing so was deeply impressive worldwide and was therefore copied in many other countries -- and they suffered for it along with America in due course.
And in Australia also there sprang up a slew of financial intermediaries who offered what they called "low doc" loans. And they DID suffer from the GFC. But not too badly. They were mostly just taken over by the banks and everything continued on as normal.
So how come they did not cause a huge crash? Easy. As in the USA, the people who were given the poorly secured loans were mostly minorities. But Australia's big minority is very different from America's two large minorities. Australia's big minority is East Asian, mostly Han Chinese racially. And if you know anything about the Han you know that they would rather DIE than default on a home loan. The loss of face would be unendurable. If in trouble they would just get a third job. So loan defaults were relatively rare in Australia because Australia has a better class of minorities. Do you see why no-one else would ever tell you that? -- JR
**********************
Why tax cuts for the rich pay off
Thomas Sowell
Guess who said the following: "It is incredible that a system of taxation which permits a man with an income of $1,000,000 a year to pay not one cent to his Government should remain unaltered."
Franklin D. Roosevelt? Ted Kennedy? Nancy Pelosi?
Not even close. It was Andrew Mellon, Secretary of the Treasury under conservative Republican President Calvin Coolidge.
What was Mellon's point? That high tax rates do not necessarily result in high tax revenues to the government. "It is time to face the facts," he said. Merely having high tax rates on large incomes will not bring in more tax revenues to the treasury, because of "the flight of capital away from taxable investments."
This was all said in 1924, in Mellon's book, "Taxation: The People's Business." Yet here we are, more than 80 years later, still not facing those facts.
It is not just a question of what Andrew Mellon said. It is a question of hard facts, easily checked in official documents available to all-- and ignored all these years.
Internal Revenue Service data show that there were 206 people who reported annual incomes of one million dollars or more in 1916. But, as the tax rate on high incomes skyrocketed under the Woodrow Wilson administration, that number plummeted to just 21 people reporting a million dollars a year in income five years later.
What happened to all those millionaires? Did they flee the country? Were they stricken with fatal diseases? Did they meet with foul play?
Not to worry. Right after Congress enacted the cuts in tax rates that Mellon had been urging, there were suddenly 207 people reporting taxable incomes of a million dollars or more in 1925. As Casey Stengel used to say, "You could look it up." It is on page 21 of an Internal Revenue publication titled "Statistics of Income from Returns of Net Income for 1925."
Where had all the income of those millionaires been hiding? In tax-exempt securities like state and local bonds, among other places. Mellon had urged Congress to end tax exemptions for such securities, even before he got them to cut tax rates. But he succeeded only with the latter, and only after a political struggle with those who made the same kinds of arguments that are still being made today by those who cry out against "tax cuts for the rich."
Still, one out of two is not bad, when it comes to getting Congress to do something that makes sense economically, rather than something that looks good politically.
The government, which collected less than $50 million in taxes on capital gains in 1924, suddenly collected well over $100 million in capital gains taxes in 1925. At lower tax rates, it no longer made sense to keep so much invested in tax-exempt securities, when more money could be made by investing in the economy.
As for "the rich"-- who really were rich in those days, when $100,000 was worth more than a million dollars is worth today-- those in the highest income brackets paid 30 percent of all taxes in 1920 and 65 percent of all taxes by 1929, after "tax cuts for the rich."
How can that be? Because high tax rates on paper, that many people avoid, often does not bring in as much tax revenue as lower tax rates that more people actually pay, after it is safe to come out of tax shelters and earn higher rates of taxable income.
The investors do this because it makes them better off, on net balance, even after they pay more money in taxes on incomes that have gone up. More important, the economy benefits when there is more investment in things that create more jobs and rising output.
None of this was unique to the 1920s. The same scenario played out again in later years, during the Kennedy, Reagan and Bush 43 administrations.
But economic success is not the same as political success. As former House Majority Leader Dick Armey put it, "Demagoguery beats data."
As long as the voters keep buying the "tax cuts for the rich" demagoguery, politicians will keep selling it. And it will keep selling as long as it goes unanswered. The question is whether today's Republicans understand that as well as Andrew Mellon did back in the 1920s.
SOURCE
**************************
ELSEWHERE
Google now in the EU crosshairs: "The European Union's competition watchdog will investigate whether Google has abused its dominant position in the online search market - the first major probe into the online giant's business practices. The investigation announced overnight follows complaints from rival search engines that Google put them at a disadvantage in both its regular and sponsored search results, by listing links to their sites below references to its own services in an attempt to shut them out of the market. [Harassing American technology companies is what they do. Ask IBM and Microsoft]
US Senate passes bureaucrat empowerment legislation: "The U.S. Senate has approved the first major food-safety [sic] legislation in more than 70 years, by a 73-to-25 vote. The Food Safety Modernization Act will give the Food and Drug Administration more power …”
US Senate blocks repeal of $600 “transaction reporting” requirement: "The Senate on Monday rejected an effort to reduce tax-related paperwork for businesses when lawmakers couldn’t agree on whether they would make up the revenue the new requirement was expected to produce. … Under the new law, nearly 40 million U.S. businesses would start filing tax forms in 2012 for every vendor that sells them more than $600 in goods. … Senators tried twice on Monday to amend an unrelated food safety bill to repeal the filing requirement. Both proposals, one by Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., and another by Sen. Mike Johanns, R-Neb., failed to get the necessary two-thirds majority.”
The triumphant return of Hayek: "Keynesianism and monetarism are now suffering a similar distortion. Keynes would probably never have supported big government deficits during boom times, such as those that led to our current debt crisis. Likewise, Friedman would probably not have backed the new Fed use of monetary policy as a tool to engineer expansion rather than merely cushion the pain in a downturn. The systematic perversion of Keynes’s and Friedman’s thought is now resulting in a fall in their fortunes, leaving Hayek triumphant, once again.”
North Korea runs unchecked: "Fail to forcefully confront a thug and you generally guarantee that his thuggish behavior will continue. … Yet when it comes to the pathological regime in North Korea, the conventional wisdom throws up its hands and laments that there are no good options for confronting Kim Jong-il over his aggressive provocations. North Korea’s attack on a South Korean island last week — a 50-minute barrage that left four people dead and reduced dozens of homes to smoking ruins — was an act of war.”
The set-aside boondoggle: "Government set-aside programs actually require ineffiency in infrastructure projects by demanding that the least competitive contractors be hired to work on them. Success in a contracting business disqualifies a contractor from being designated as a ‘minority business enterprise.’ Only contractors with a net worth below $750,000 and a relatively low annual income may participate. But the bureaucracy required to oversee these programs is reason enough to cut them out, even if they did not guarantee waste in the actual operation of a project.”
The road to fascism: "Fascism is the system in which no specific economic theory is used to guide the rulers. Only one common factor characterizes the system, namely, arbitrary rule by a charismatic head of state. Such a head of state has nearly carte blanche so far as its policies are concerned. Examples of fascist regimes are quite abundant, mainly because at heart nearly all the so called communist countries are ruled by fascist dictators — Cuba, North Korea, the Soviet Union, etc. Yes, under Stalin and other soviet rulers the USSR really come to nothing more than fascism — ‘Stalinism is the most successful variant of fascism’ said the late Susan Sontag and with that declaration (made at the American Workers and Artists for Solidarity rally), she created an uproar among Leftists around the world.”
Wishful regulation in Britain: "Regulators were originally created to bring quasi-competition to newly-privatized markets. But, more than this, the last government used them as wish fulfilment agencies and that still continues. We were all shocked when companies collapsed taking their pension funds with them, so the Pensions Regulator was created to ensure that employee pensions were protected. We want energy sustainability, so Ofgem was tasked with ensuring it. The idea seemed to be that you could appoint a regulator and, hey presto, the government’s wishes would be fulfilled.”
My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. My Facebook page is also accessible as jonjayray (In full: http://www.facebook.com/jonjayray). For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, 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 (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)
****************************
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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