From Workforce Management Weekly
January 24, 2008
Wal-Mart CEO Lays Out Plans to Help Other Employers Cut Health Care Costs
Wal-Mart chief executive and president Lee Scott said Wednesday, January 23, that the retailer plans to deepen its involvement in health care by contracting with employers to help them reduce prescription drug costs.
In an address to more than 7,000 store managers and suppliers gathered in Kansas City, Missouri, for the company’s annual start-of-the-year meeting, Scott says the company would redouble its efforts to improve the efficiency and reduce costs in health care, make environmental-friendly technologies affordable to customers and businesses, and exert greater pressure on its supply chain to meet higher ethical standards in the way it produces goods.
But it is in the area of health care that Scott believes Wal-Mart can have an immediate economic impact on employers across the U.S. that are struggling with the cost of health care. Building on its program to introduce $4 prescription drugs, Wal-Mart will focus on the confluence of technology and pharmacy benefits.
“This year we will be contracting with select employers in the U.S. to help them manage how they process and pay prescription claims,” he said in the text of his speech. “Our approach will be based on taking out unnecessary costs while providing high-quality health care products and services.”
Scott says Wal-Mart will save its employer customers $100 million this year.
The company plans to launch an initiative that will quadruple the number of electronic prescriptions filled by Wal-Mart in the U.S. to 8 million by the end of the year.
Without naming it, Scott mentioned the company’s involvement in a project to create electronic medical records for its employees. The Dossia project, launched in late 2006 by Wal-Mart, Pitney Bowes, BP, Intel and Applied Materials, was set back by a contract dispute with its original service provider, Portland, Oregon-based Omnimedix.
In September, Dossia announced it would start over with a new technology provider, the Children’s Hospital Informatics Program based at Children’s Hospital Boston, which has developed a personal health record called Indivo.
On Wednesday, Scott reiterated the company’s commitment to medical records, and said the company will provide the records to employees, retirees and their dependents by 2010.
Scott’s speech came a day after the company touted in a press release its efforts to insure more of its employees. The company said half its 1.1 million employees had health insurance through Wal-Mart and that in the past year the number of uninsured employees declined by 2.3 percent.
Burdened by bad publicity and public backlashes in locations across the country, Wal-Mart has made a concerted effort to improve its image in recent years.
The start-of-the-year meeting was open to outsiders for the first time on Wednesday. The speech, titled “The Company of the Future,” was an update on Scott’s vision laid out in his 2005 “21st Century Leadership” speech. Some critics of the company, like the group Wal-Mart Watch, said the retail giant had not made enough progress since then, while others, like the Natural Resources Defense Council, praised the company for embracing its role as a global leader with the economic leverage to make other companies and industries embrace an ethos that pairs cost efficiency with environmental sustainability.
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
Thursday, January 17, 2008
Fed Chairman Bernanke Signals Support for Economic Stimulus Efforts
Just last week on CNBC they were talking about the Fed’s latest interest rate cut as “giving a boost to an economy that wasn’t really in need of a boost”. Today they’re all talking about bear markets and the need for a stimulus package. Am I the only one that doesn’t find the idea of a $300 tax rebate very stimulating? How about cutting our property taxes? That’s a gift that keeps on giving.
Fox News
Thursday , January 17, 2008
Faced with a deteriorating economy, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke has indicated he is open to congressional and White House efforts to develop a rescue package to avert a recession.
The fragile state of the economy has gripped Wall Street and Main Street and is a rising concern among voters. The situation has galvanized politicians — including those vying to be the next president — and poses the biggest test to Bernanke, who took over the Fed nearly two years ago.
Much attention will be focused on Bernanke's testimony Thursday before the House Budget Committee for insights into what can be done to help blunt the ill effects of a deep housing slump and a credit crisis. The big worry is that those problems will force consumers to clamp down on their spending and businesses to put a lid on hiring, sending the economy into a nosedive.
Joint Economic Committee Chairman Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., said he had spoken with Bernanke on Monday and that the Fed chairman was "generally supportive" of lawmakers and Bush passing a stimulus bill.
"He said that while he wasn't going to endorse a specific plan, if an economic stimulus package was properly designed and enacted so that it enters the economy quickly, it could have a very positive effect on the economy," Schumer said.
With the economy suffering, one of President Bush's first acts after returning to Washington Wednesday evening from the Middle East was to be a conference call Thursday with congressional leaders in both parties to discuss a possible short-term stimulus package.
For the Fed's part, Bernanke pledged last week to aggressively slash a key interest rate as needed to bolster the economy. Many economists believe the Fed will lower its key rate, now at 4.25 percent, by a bold half-percentage point at its next meeting on Jan. 30. The Fed cut rates three times last year, starting in September. But some critics on Wall Street and elsewhere have been critical of Bernanke for not taking action sooner and more forcefully.
Last week, Bernanke signaled he was open to additional help from the Democratic-controlled Congress and the White House, which are exploring economic stimulus packages, that could include tax rebates.
"I'd like to see what emerges from the process, and I look forward to talking with and discussing with proponents some of the various options that might be put on the table," Bernanke said in a Q&A session after speaking in Washington on Jan. 10.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Republican leader John Boehner of Ohio emerged from a rare meeting on Wednesday promising to craft legislation to energize the weakening economy.
Although Republicans and Democrats differ over what provisions should be part of any such package, there's widespread agreement that tax rebates along the lines of the $300-$600 checks provided in 2001 are likely to part of the measure. The country last suffered a recession in 2001.
A recent string of dismal economic reports has raised fears the country could slide into a recession this year. Retail sales have plunged. The nation's unemployment rate has jumped from 4.7 percent to 5 percent, a two-year high. Manufacturing activity has slowed. The nation's major banks are piling up big losses and Wall Street has been mired in turmoil.
Fox News
Thursday , January 17, 2008
Faced with a deteriorating economy, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke has indicated he is open to congressional and White House efforts to develop a rescue package to avert a recession.
The fragile state of the economy has gripped Wall Street and Main Street and is a rising concern among voters. The situation has galvanized politicians — including those vying to be the next president — and poses the biggest test to Bernanke, who took over the Fed nearly two years ago.
Much attention will be focused on Bernanke's testimony Thursday before the House Budget Committee for insights into what can be done to help blunt the ill effects of a deep housing slump and a credit crisis. The big worry is that those problems will force consumers to clamp down on their spending and businesses to put a lid on hiring, sending the economy into a nosedive.
Joint Economic Committee Chairman Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., said he had spoken with Bernanke on Monday and that the Fed chairman was "generally supportive" of lawmakers and Bush passing a stimulus bill.
"He said that while he wasn't going to endorse a specific plan, if an economic stimulus package was properly designed and enacted so that it enters the economy quickly, it could have a very positive effect on the economy," Schumer said.
With the economy suffering, one of President Bush's first acts after returning to Washington Wednesday evening from the Middle East was to be a conference call Thursday with congressional leaders in both parties to discuss a possible short-term stimulus package.
For the Fed's part, Bernanke pledged last week to aggressively slash a key interest rate as needed to bolster the economy. Many economists believe the Fed will lower its key rate, now at 4.25 percent, by a bold half-percentage point at its next meeting on Jan. 30. The Fed cut rates three times last year, starting in September. But some critics on Wall Street and elsewhere have been critical of Bernanke for not taking action sooner and more forcefully.
Last week, Bernanke signaled he was open to additional help from the Democratic-controlled Congress and the White House, which are exploring economic stimulus packages, that could include tax rebates.
"I'd like to see what emerges from the process, and I look forward to talking with and discussing with proponents some of the various options that might be put on the table," Bernanke said in a Q&A session after speaking in Washington on Jan. 10.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Republican leader John Boehner of Ohio emerged from a rare meeting on Wednesday promising to craft legislation to energize the weakening economy.
Although Republicans and Democrats differ over what provisions should be part of any such package, there's widespread agreement that tax rebates along the lines of the $300-$600 checks provided in 2001 are likely to part of the measure. The country last suffered a recession in 2001.
A recent string of dismal economic reports has raised fears the country could slide into a recession this year. Retail sales have plunged. The nation's unemployment rate has jumped from 4.7 percent to 5 percent, a two-year high. Manufacturing activity has slowed. The nation's major banks are piling up big losses and Wall Street has been mired in turmoil.
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
Hot enough for ya? Big Govt. will let you know.
Big Brother steps back from the thermostat
The American Thinker is pleased to have played a small role in keeping Californians (and perhaps eventually all Americans) in charge of their thrmostat settings. For now, at least.
Joseph Somsel first revealed here that California was considering requiring the installation of remotely controllable thermostats in all new construction and remodeling, so that authorities could lower or increase temperatures when energy supply considerations made this desirable in in the eyes of the all-knowing state.
A small scale national firestorm began, and even the New York Times credited American Thinker with putting the story on the national agenda.
The California Energy Commission has now backed down and removed programmable communicating thermostats (PCT) from the 2008 Building Standards. Here is the official notice:
There has been considerable discussion concerning programmable communicating thermostats (PCT) and their proposed inclusion in the regulations for the 2008 building standards.
On January 15, 2008, the Energy Commission's Efficiency Committee (Commissioner Rosenfeld and Chairman Pfannenstiel) directed that PCTs be removed from the proposed 2008 energy efficiency building standards.
The Committee also asked that the value and concerns related to the potential application of PCTs be considered with other demand response technologies in the Energy Commission's Load Management proceeding that began recently. Moving the evaluation of the PCT to the Load Management proceeding provides a venue for a broader discussion on the PCT technology and how it could be used with future utility tariff and rate programs. It also provides an opportunity for a full examination by consumers, utilities and manufacturers regarding the benefits and consumer choice options for demand response technologies. It is important that consumers have the ability to opt out of or into demand response programs, such as those involving the PCT.
The Energy Commission strongly supports demand response strategies, and believes that the programmable communicating thermostat offers a valuable tool to dampen peak electricity use. Demand response strategies are an important alternative to building costly new power plants that only operate during peak demand times of the year.
Technology can be a powerful tool in managing our energy use. However, it is of utmost importance that consumers make their own energy decisions.
This is not a complete victory, to be sure. But at least for now, the energy mandarins say they respect the importance of Californians making their own decisions. Thanks to all those in the blogosphere, talk radio, and especially those concerned citizens who voiced their protest to the California Energy Commission
The American Thinker is pleased to have played a small role in keeping Californians (and perhaps eventually all Americans) in charge of their thrmostat settings. For now, at least.
Joseph Somsel first revealed here that California was considering requiring the installation of remotely controllable thermostats in all new construction and remodeling, so that authorities could lower or increase temperatures when energy supply considerations made this desirable in in the eyes of the all-knowing state.
A small scale national firestorm began, and even the New York Times credited American Thinker with putting the story on the national agenda.
The California Energy Commission has now backed down and removed programmable communicating thermostats (PCT) from the 2008 Building Standards. Here is the official notice:
There has been considerable discussion concerning programmable communicating thermostats (PCT) and their proposed inclusion in the regulations for the 2008 building standards.
On January 15, 2008, the Energy Commission's Efficiency Committee (Commissioner Rosenfeld and Chairman Pfannenstiel) directed that PCTs be removed from the proposed 2008 energy efficiency building standards.
The Committee also asked that the value and concerns related to the potential application of PCTs be considered with other demand response technologies in the Energy Commission's Load Management proceeding that began recently. Moving the evaluation of the PCT to the Load Management proceeding provides a venue for a broader discussion on the PCT technology and how it could be used with future utility tariff and rate programs. It also provides an opportunity for a full examination by consumers, utilities and manufacturers regarding the benefits and consumer choice options for demand response technologies. It is important that consumers have the ability to opt out of or into demand response programs, such as those involving the PCT.
The Energy Commission strongly supports demand response strategies, and believes that the programmable communicating thermostat offers a valuable tool to dampen peak electricity use. Demand response strategies are an important alternative to building costly new power plants that only operate during peak demand times of the year.
Technology can be a powerful tool in managing our energy use. However, it is of utmost importance that consumers make their own energy decisions.
This is not a complete victory, to be sure. But at least for now, the energy mandarins say they respect the importance of Californians making their own decisions. Thanks to all those in the blogosphere, talk radio, and especially those concerned citizens who voiced their protest to the California Energy Commission
The Democrats’ Fairy Tale
By WILLIAM KRISTOL
Published: January 14, 2008
“Give me a break. This whole thing is the biggest fairy tale I’ve ever seen.” Thus spoke Bill Clinton last Monday night, exasperated by Barack Obama’s claim that he — unlike Hillary Clinton — had been consistently right (or wrong, depending on your point of view) on the Iraq war.
In fact, Obama has been pretty consistent in his opposition to the war. But Bill Clinton is right in this respect: Obama’s view of the current situation in Iraq is out of touch with reality. In this, however, Obama is at one with Hillary Clinton and the entire leadership of the Democratic Party.
When President Bush announced the surge of troops in support of a new counterinsurgency strategy a year ago, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Democratic Congressional leaders predicted failure. Obama, for example, told Larry King that he didn’t believe additional U.S. troops would “make a significant dent in the sectarian violence that’s taking place there.” Then in April, the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, asserted that “this war is lost, and this surge is not accomplishing anything.” In September, Clinton told Gen. David Petraeus that his claims of progress in Iraq required a “willing suspension of disbelief.”
The Democrats were wrong in their assessments of the surge. Attacks per week on American troops are now down about 60 percent from June. Civilian deaths are down approximately 75 percent from a year ago. December 2007 saw the second-lowest number of U.S. troops killed in action since March 2003. And according to Lt. Gen. Ray Odierno, commander of day-to-day military operations in Iraq, last month’s overall number of deaths, which includes Iraqi security forces and civilian casualties as well as U.S. and coalition losses, may well have been the lowest since the war began.
Do Obama and Clinton and Reid now acknowledge that they were wrong? Are they willing to say the surge worked?
No. It’s apparently impermissible for leading Democrats to acknowledge — let alone celebrate — progress in Iraq. When asked recently whether she stood behind her “willing suspension of disbelief” insult to General Petraeus, Clinton said, “That’s right.”
When Obama was asked in the most recent Democratic presidential debate, “Would you have seen this kind of greater security in Iraq if we had followed your recommendations to pull the troops out last year?” he didn’t directly address the question. But he volunteered that “much of that violence has been reduced because there was an agreement with tribes in Anbar Province, Sunni tribes, who started to see, after the Democrats were elected in 2006, you know what? — the Americans may be leaving soon. And we are going to be left very vulnerable to the Shias. We should start negotiating now.”
But Sunni tribes in Anbar announced in September 2006 that they would join to fight Al Qaeda. That was two months before the Democrats won control of Congress. The Sunni tribes turned not primarily because of fear of the Shiites, but because of their horror at Al Qaeda’s atrocities in Anbar. And the improvements in Anbar could never have been sustained without aggressive American military efforts — efforts that were more effective in 2007 than they had been in 2006, due in part to the addition of the surge forces.
Last year’s success, in Anbar and elsewhere, was made possible by confidence among Iraqis that U.S. troops would stay and help protect them, that the U.S. would not abandon them to their enemies. Because the U.S. sent more troops instead of withdrawing — because, in other words, President Bush won his battles in 2007 with the Democratic Congress — we have been able to turn around the situation in Iraq.
And now Iraq’s Parliament has passed a de-Baathification law — one of the so-called benchmarks Congress established for political reconciliation. For much of 2007, Democrats were able to deprecate the military progress and political reconciliation taking place on the ground by harping on the failure of the Iraqi government to pass the benchmark legislation. They are being deprived of even that talking point.
Yesterday, on “Meet the Press,” Hillary Clinton claimed that the Iraqis are changing their ways in part because of the Democratic candidates’ “commitment to begin withdrawing our troops in January of 2009.” So the Democratic Party, having proclaimed that the war is lost and having sought to withdraw U.S. troops, deserves credit for any progress that may have been achieved in Iraq.
That is truly a fairy tale. And it is driven by a refusal to admit real success because that success has been achieved under the leadership of ... George W. Bush. The horror!
Published: January 14, 2008
“Give me a break. This whole thing is the biggest fairy tale I’ve ever seen.” Thus spoke Bill Clinton last Monday night, exasperated by Barack Obama’s claim that he — unlike Hillary Clinton — had been consistently right (or wrong, depending on your point of view) on the Iraq war.
In fact, Obama has been pretty consistent in his opposition to the war. But Bill Clinton is right in this respect: Obama’s view of the current situation in Iraq is out of touch with reality. In this, however, Obama is at one with Hillary Clinton and the entire leadership of the Democratic Party.
When President Bush announced the surge of troops in support of a new counterinsurgency strategy a year ago, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Democratic Congressional leaders predicted failure. Obama, for example, told Larry King that he didn’t believe additional U.S. troops would “make a significant dent in the sectarian violence that’s taking place there.” Then in April, the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, asserted that “this war is lost, and this surge is not accomplishing anything.” In September, Clinton told Gen. David Petraeus that his claims of progress in Iraq required a “willing suspension of disbelief.”
The Democrats were wrong in their assessments of the surge. Attacks per week on American troops are now down about 60 percent from June. Civilian deaths are down approximately 75 percent from a year ago. December 2007 saw the second-lowest number of U.S. troops killed in action since March 2003. And according to Lt. Gen. Ray Odierno, commander of day-to-day military operations in Iraq, last month’s overall number of deaths, which includes Iraqi security forces and civilian casualties as well as U.S. and coalition losses, may well have been the lowest since the war began.
Do Obama and Clinton and Reid now acknowledge that they were wrong? Are they willing to say the surge worked?
No. It’s apparently impermissible for leading Democrats to acknowledge — let alone celebrate — progress in Iraq. When asked recently whether she stood behind her “willing suspension of disbelief” insult to General Petraeus, Clinton said, “That’s right.”
When Obama was asked in the most recent Democratic presidential debate, “Would you have seen this kind of greater security in Iraq if we had followed your recommendations to pull the troops out last year?” he didn’t directly address the question. But he volunteered that “much of that violence has been reduced because there was an agreement with tribes in Anbar Province, Sunni tribes, who started to see, after the Democrats were elected in 2006, you know what? — the Americans may be leaving soon. And we are going to be left very vulnerable to the Shias. We should start negotiating now.”
But Sunni tribes in Anbar announced in September 2006 that they would join to fight Al Qaeda. That was two months before the Democrats won control of Congress. The Sunni tribes turned not primarily because of fear of the Shiites, but because of their horror at Al Qaeda’s atrocities in Anbar. And the improvements in Anbar could never have been sustained without aggressive American military efforts — efforts that were more effective in 2007 than they had been in 2006, due in part to the addition of the surge forces.
Last year’s success, in Anbar and elsewhere, was made possible by confidence among Iraqis that U.S. troops would stay and help protect them, that the U.S. would not abandon them to their enemies. Because the U.S. sent more troops instead of withdrawing — because, in other words, President Bush won his battles in 2007 with the Democratic Congress — we have been able to turn around the situation in Iraq.
And now Iraq’s Parliament has passed a de-Baathification law — one of the so-called benchmarks Congress established for political reconciliation. For much of 2007, Democrats were able to deprecate the military progress and political reconciliation taking place on the ground by harping on the failure of the Iraqi government to pass the benchmark legislation. They are being deprived of even that talking point.
Yesterday, on “Meet the Press,” Hillary Clinton claimed that the Iraqis are changing their ways in part because of the Democratic candidates’ “commitment to begin withdrawing our troops in January of 2009.” So the Democratic Party, having proclaimed that the war is lost and having sought to withdraw U.S. troops, deserves credit for any progress that may have been achieved in Iraq.
That is truly a fairy tale. And it is driven by a refusal to admit real success because that success has been achieved under the leadership of ... George W. Bush. The horror!
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
Clinton Allies Disenfranchise Union Voters in NV.
Tue Jan 15, 11:40 AM ET
The Nation -- On Meet the Press on Sunday, Hillary Clinton said her campaign had nothing to do with a lawsuit--written about by Nation Editor Katrina vanden Heuvel--that threatens to prevent thousands of workers from voting in the Nevada caucus on Saturday.
Back in March, the Nevada Democratic Party agreed to set up caucus locations on the Vegas strip for low-income shift workers, many of them members of the state's influential Culinary Union, who commute long distances to work and wouldn't be able to get home in time to caucus. It was an uncontroversial idea until the Culinary Union endorsed Barack Obama and the Nevada State Education Association, whose top officials support Clinton, sued to shut down the caucus sites. The Clinton camp played dumb until yesterday, when President Clinton came out in favor of the lawsuit.
Clinton's comments drew a heated response from D. Taylor, the head of Nevada's Culinary Union, on MSNBC's Hardball. "He is in support of disenfranchising thousands upon thousands of workers, not even just our members," Taylor said of Clinton. "The teachers union is just being used here. We understand that. This is the Clinton campaign. They tried to disenfranchise students in Iowa. Now they're trying to disenfranchise people here in Nevada, who are union members and people of color and women."
Rank-and-file members of Nevada's teachers union also come out against the lawsuit filed by their leadership. "We never thought our union and Senator Clinton would put politics ahead of what's right for our students, but that's exactly what they're doing," the letter stated. "As teachers, and proud Democrats, we hope they will drop this undemocratic lawsuit and help all Nevadans caucus, no matter which candidate they support."
The lawsuit's opponents make a persuasive point. Creating obstacles to voting is what the GOP does to Democrats, not what Democrats should be doing to other Democrats.
The Nation -- On Meet the Press on Sunday, Hillary Clinton said her campaign had nothing to do with a lawsuit--written about by Nation Editor Katrina vanden Heuvel--that threatens to prevent thousands of workers from voting in the Nevada caucus on Saturday.
Back in March, the Nevada Democratic Party agreed to set up caucus locations on the Vegas strip for low-income shift workers, many of them members of the state's influential Culinary Union, who commute long distances to work and wouldn't be able to get home in time to caucus. It was an uncontroversial idea until the Culinary Union endorsed Barack Obama and the Nevada State Education Association, whose top officials support Clinton, sued to shut down the caucus sites. The Clinton camp played dumb until yesterday, when President Clinton came out in favor of the lawsuit.
Clinton's comments drew a heated response from D. Taylor, the head of Nevada's Culinary Union, on MSNBC's Hardball. "He is in support of disenfranchising thousands upon thousands of workers, not even just our members," Taylor said of Clinton. "The teachers union is just being used here. We understand that. This is the Clinton campaign. They tried to disenfranchise students in Iowa. Now they're trying to disenfranchise people here in Nevada, who are union members and people of color and women."
Rank-and-file members of Nevada's teachers union also come out against the lawsuit filed by their leadership. "We never thought our union and Senator Clinton would put politics ahead of what's right for our students, but that's exactly what they're doing," the letter stated. "As teachers, and proud Democrats, we hope they will drop this undemocratic lawsuit and help all Nevadans caucus, no matter which candidate they support."
The lawsuit's opponents make a persuasive point. Creating obstacles to voting is what the GOP does to Democrats, not what Democrats should be doing to other Democrats.
They're no James Bond
This week's issue of The Economist has a heartrending vignette from one of the most ruthlessly capitalist industries on the planet:
"In 2006 EMI, the world's fourth-biggest recorded-music company, invited some teenagers into its headquarters in London to talk to its top managers about their listening habits. At the end of the session the EMI bosses thanked them for their comments and told them to help themselves to a big pile of CDs sitting on a table. But none of the teens took any of the CDs, even though they were free."
"That was the moment we realized the game was completely up," an EMI exec told the magazine. In the US, album sales for 2007 were 19% down on 2006. Don't blame me. I still buy plenty of CDs. But that's because I like Doris Day, and every time I try to insert one of these newfangled MP3s into my fax machine it doesn't seem to play. But if you're not Mister Squaresville and you dig whatever caterwauling beat combo those London hep cats are digging on their iPods, chances are you find the local record store about as groovy as the Elks Lodge.
Now there are generally two reactions to the above story. If you're like me, you're reminded yet again why you love capitalism. It's dynamic. And the more capitalist your economy, the more dynamic it is. Every great success story is vulnerable to the next great success story — which is why teenagers aren't picking their CDs from the Sears-Roebuck catalogue. There's a word for this. Now let me see. What was it again?
Oh, yeah: "change." Innovation drives change, the market drives change. Government "change" just drives things away: you could ask many of the New Hampshire primary voters formerly resident in Massachusetts. Nevertheless, between Iowa and New Hampshire, almost every presidential contender found himself lapsing into boilerplate assertions that he was the "candidate of change" – or even, as both McCain and Hillary put it, an "agent of change", which sounds far more exotic, as if they're James Bond and Pussy Galore covertly driving the Aston Martin across some international frontier, pressing the ejector button and dropping a ton of government regulation on some hapless foreigners.
But it's capitalism that's the real "agent of change." Politicians, on the whole, prefer stasis, at least on everything for which they already have responsibility. That's the lesson King Canute was trying to teach his courtiers when he took them down to the beach and let the tide roll in: Government has its limits. In most of the western world, the tide is rolling in on demographically and economically unsustainable entitlements, but that doesn't stop politicians getting out their beach chairs and promising to create even more. That's government "change."
What's the second reaction to that EMI story? Perhaps even now John Edwards is rallying the crowd at the last CD mill in America's declining rap belt, comforting the nine-year-old coatless daughter of a laid-off mill worker who started there in 1904 making wax cylinders of the Columbia Male Quartet singing "Sweet Adeline," and later pressed million of 78s of Ukulele Ike singing "Who Takes Care Of The Caretaker's Daughter While The Caretaker's Busy Taking Care?" and millions of 45s of the Swinging Blue Jeans singing "The Hippy Hippy Shake," and millions of CDs of Three 6 Mafia singing "Hit A Motherf-----," only to be cut down in his prime and thrown on the scrapheap because Americans have outsourced their record collection to the computer. "I will never stop fighting for you," Edwards will be telling them. "No matter how they try to stop me. I feel the spirit of Al Jolson speaking through me. He's saying climb upon my knee, Sonny Boy, though you're 53, Sonny Boy, I'll never stop condescending to you…."
Heigh-ho. "They" can try to stop Edwards, and if by "they" you mean primary voters in New Hampshire, they're doing a pretty good job of it. But what's going on over on the Republican side? John McCain demonizes Big Pharma — i.e., the private pharmaceutical companies that create, develop and manufacture the drugs that all these socialized health care systems in every corner of the planet are utterly dependent on. He voted for Sarbanes-Oxley, a quintessential Congressional overreaction (to Enron) that buries American companies in wasteful paperwork and hands huge advantages to stock exchanges in London, Hong Kong and elsewhere. But why stop there? McCain is also gung ho for all the most economically disruptive Big Government solutions to "climate change." Apparently, that's the only change these candidates aren't in favor of. When it comes to the climate, McCain and Hillary are agents of non-change. John McCain has an almost Edwardsian contempt for capitalism, for the people whose wit and innovation generate the revenues that pay for your average small-state Senator's Gulf Emir-sized retinue of staffers.
As for Mike Huckabee, last seen comparing his success in Iowa to the miracle of the loaves and fishes (New Hampshire, alas, was loaves-and-fishes in reverse: he took his Iowa catch and turned it into one rotting fishhead in Lake Winnipesaukee), in Thursday night's debate he was attacked for raising taxes in Arkansas. "What I raised," riposted the Huckster, "was hope."
Terrific. In a Huckabee Administration, nothing is certain but hope and taxes. Did he poll-test the line? Was it originally "What I didn't raise was tobacco?" Or did he misread the line? Did he mean to say "hogs?" Is there any correlation between taxes and hope? If you cut taxes by 20 per cent, does hope nosedive off the cliff? Not for those of us who were hoping for a tax cut. And is there any evidence that he "raised hope"? Hope of what? Huck's line is a degradation of FDR: We have nothing to hope for but hope itself.
Barack Obama, of course, called it "the audacity of hope." I'll say. Those London music-biz execs must look at primary season and marvel. In what other industry can you clean up with such insipid bromides?
"So what you selling today?"
"Well, we got two products. Over here, on this bare shelf, we've got 'Hope.' And over here, in this entirely empty display cabinet, we've got 'Change.' Or you could go for one of our two-for-one packages, 'The Hope Of Change,' or 'A Change Of Hope.'"
In the midst of the world's lousiest Presidents' Day sale, let us give thanks to the Democratic voters of New Hampshire who took a cooler look at Barack Obama and decided that the audacity of hope was perhaps less audacious than shameless. Senator Obama seems a perfectly pleasant fellow, if somewhat cravenly in thrall to every cobwebbed Democratic piety. However, his platform is platitude piled upon platitude. As Barack floats off to the gaseous uplands of soft-focus abstract buzzwords, it would be nice if Republicans could have their feet planted on something firmer than Huckabee's big-government mush. Like those teenagers surveying the table of EMI CDs, grown-up voters should look at the display of anachronistic freebies peddled by politicians singing the same old songs, and coolly walk on by.
"In 2006 EMI, the world's fourth-biggest recorded-music company, invited some teenagers into its headquarters in London to talk to its top managers about their listening habits. At the end of the session the EMI bosses thanked them for their comments and told them to help themselves to a big pile of CDs sitting on a table. But none of the teens took any of the CDs, even though they were free."
"That was the moment we realized the game was completely up," an EMI exec told the magazine. In the US, album sales for 2007 were 19% down on 2006. Don't blame me. I still buy plenty of CDs. But that's because I like Doris Day, and every time I try to insert one of these newfangled MP3s into my fax machine it doesn't seem to play. But if you're not Mister Squaresville and you dig whatever caterwauling beat combo those London hep cats are digging on their iPods, chances are you find the local record store about as groovy as the Elks Lodge.
Now there are generally two reactions to the above story. If you're like me, you're reminded yet again why you love capitalism. It's dynamic. And the more capitalist your economy, the more dynamic it is. Every great success story is vulnerable to the next great success story — which is why teenagers aren't picking their CDs from the Sears-Roebuck catalogue. There's a word for this. Now let me see. What was it again?
Oh, yeah: "change." Innovation drives change, the market drives change. Government "change" just drives things away: you could ask many of the New Hampshire primary voters formerly resident in Massachusetts. Nevertheless, between Iowa and New Hampshire, almost every presidential contender found himself lapsing into boilerplate assertions that he was the "candidate of change" – or even, as both McCain and Hillary put it, an "agent of change", which sounds far more exotic, as if they're James Bond and Pussy Galore covertly driving the Aston Martin across some international frontier, pressing the ejector button and dropping a ton of government regulation on some hapless foreigners.
But it's capitalism that's the real "agent of change." Politicians, on the whole, prefer stasis, at least on everything for which they already have responsibility. That's the lesson King Canute was trying to teach his courtiers when he took them down to the beach and let the tide roll in: Government has its limits. In most of the western world, the tide is rolling in on demographically and economically unsustainable entitlements, but that doesn't stop politicians getting out their beach chairs and promising to create even more. That's government "change."
What's the second reaction to that EMI story? Perhaps even now John Edwards is rallying the crowd at the last CD mill in America's declining rap belt, comforting the nine-year-old coatless daughter of a laid-off mill worker who started there in 1904 making wax cylinders of the Columbia Male Quartet singing "Sweet Adeline," and later pressed million of 78s of Ukulele Ike singing "Who Takes Care Of The Caretaker's Daughter While The Caretaker's Busy Taking Care?" and millions of 45s of the Swinging Blue Jeans singing "The Hippy Hippy Shake," and millions of CDs of Three 6 Mafia singing "Hit A Motherf-----," only to be cut down in his prime and thrown on the scrapheap because Americans have outsourced their record collection to the computer. "I will never stop fighting for you," Edwards will be telling them. "No matter how they try to stop me. I feel the spirit of Al Jolson speaking through me. He's saying climb upon my knee, Sonny Boy, though you're 53, Sonny Boy, I'll never stop condescending to you…."
Heigh-ho. "They" can try to stop Edwards, and if by "they" you mean primary voters in New Hampshire, they're doing a pretty good job of it. But what's going on over on the Republican side? John McCain demonizes Big Pharma — i.e., the private pharmaceutical companies that create, develop and manufacture the drugs that all these socialized health care systems in every corner of the planet are utterly dependent on. He voted for Sarbanes-Oxley, a quintessential Congressional overreaction (to Enron) that buries American companies in wasteful paperwork and hands huge advantages to stock exchanges in London, Hong Kong and elsewhere. But why stop there? McCain is also gung ho for all the most economically disruptive Big Government solutions to "climate change." Apparently, that's the only change these candidates aren't in favor of. When it comes to the climate, McCain and Hillary are agents of non-change. John McCain has an almost Edwardsian contempt for capitalism, for the people whose wit and innovation generate the revenues that pay for your average small-state Senator's Gulf Emir-sized retinue of staffers.
As for Mike Huckabee, last seen comparing his success in Iowa to the miracle of the loaves and fishes (New Hampshire, alas, was loaves-and-fishes in reverse: he took his Iowa catch and turned it into one rotting fishhead in Lake Winnipesaukee), in Thursday night's debate he was attacked for raising taxes in Arkansas. "What I raised," riposted the Huckster, "was hope."
Terrific. In a Huckabee Administration, nothing is certain but hope and taxes. Did he poll-test the line? Was it originally "What I didn't raise was tobacco?" Or did he misread the line? Did he mean to say "hogs?" Is there any correlation between taxes and hope? If you cut taxes by 20 per cent, does hope nosedive off the cliff? Not for those of us who were hoping for a tax cut. And is there any evidence that he "raised hope"? Hope of what? Huck's line is a degradation of FDR: We have nothing to hope for but hope itself.
Barack Obama, of course, called it "the audacity of hope." I'll say. Those London music-biz execs must look at primary season and marvel. In what other industry can you clean up with such insipid bromides?
"So what you selling today?"
"Well, we got two products. Over here, on this bare shelf, we've got 'Hope.' And over here, in this entirely empty display cabinet, we've got 'Change.' Or you could go for one of our two-for-one packages, 'The Hope Of Change,' or 'A Change Of Hope.'"
In the midst of the world's lousiest Presidents' Day sale, let us give thanks to the Democratic voters of New Hampshire who took a cooler look at Barack Obama and decided that the audacity of hope was perhaps less audacious than shameless. Senator Obama seems a perfectly pleasant fellow, if somewhat cravenly in thrall to every cobwebbed Democratic piety. However, his platform is platitude piled upon platitude. As Barack floats off to the gaseous uplands of soft-focus abstract buzzwords, it would be nice if Republicans could have their feet planted on something firmer than Huckabee's big-government mush. Like those teenagers surveying the table of EMI CDs, grown-up voters should look at the display of anachronistic freebies peddled by politicians singing the same old songs, and coolly walk on by.
Why on earth would we choose to put the Clinton family drama at the center of our politics again?
The Case Against Hillary Clinton
By Christopher Hitchens
Posted Monday, Jan. 14, 2008, at 12:15 PM ET
Seeing the name Hillary in a headline last week—a headline about a life that had involved real achievement—I felt a mouse stirring in the attic of my memory. Eventually, I was able to recall how the two Hillarys had once been mentionable in the same breath. On a first-lady goodwill tour of Asia in April 1995—the kind of banal trip that she now claims as part of her foreign-policy "experience"—Mrs. Clinton had been in Nepal and been briefly introduced to the late Sir Edmund Hillary, conqueror of Mount Everest. Ever ready to milk the moment, she announced that her mother had actually named her for this famous and intrepid explorer. The claim "worked" well enough to be repeated at other stops and even showed up in Bill Clinton's memoirs almost a decade later, as one more instance of the gutsy tradition that undergirds the junior senator from New York.
Sen. Clinton was born in 1947, and Sir Edmund Hillary and his partner Tenzing Norgay did not ascend Mount Everest until 1953, so the story was self-evidently untrue and eventually yielded to fact-checking. Indeed, a spokeswoman for Sen. Clinton named Jennifer Hanley phrased it like this in a statement in October 2006, conceding that the tale was untrue but nonetheless charming: "It was a sweet family story her mother shared to inspire greatness in her daughter, to great results I might add."
Perfect. It worked, in other words, having been coined long after Sir Edmund became a bankable celebrity, but now its usefulness is exhausted and its untruth can safely be blamed on Mummy. Yet isn't it all—all of it, every single episode and detail of the Clinton saga—exactly like that? And isn't some of it a little bit more serious? For Sen. Clinton, something is true if it validates the myth of her striving and her "greatness" (her overweening ambition in other words) and only ceases to be true when it no longer serves that limitless purpose. And we are all supposed to applaud the skill and the bare-faced bravado with which this is done. In the New Hampshire primary in 1992, she knowingly lied about her husband's uncontainable sex life and put him eternally in her debt. This is now thought of, and referred to in print, purely as a smart move on her part. In the Iowa caucuses of 2008, he returns the favor by telling a huge lie about his own record on the war in Iraq, falsely asserting that he was opposed to the intervention from the very start. This is thought of, and referred to in print, as purely a tactical mistake on his part: trying too hard to help the spouse. The happy couple has now united on an equally mendacious account of what they thought about Iraq and when they thought it. What would it take to break this cheap little spell and make us wake up and inquire what on earth we are doing when we make the Clinton family drama—yet again—a central part of our own politics?
What do you have to forget or overlook in order to desire that this dysfunctional clan once more occupies the White House and is again in a position to rent the Lincoln Bedroom to campaign donors and to employ the Oval Office as a massage parlor? You have to be able to forget, first, what happened to those who complained, or who told the truth, last time. It's often said, by people trying to show how grown-up and unshocked they are, that all Clinton did to get himself impeached was lie about sex. That's not really true. What he actually lied about, in the perjury that also got him disbarred, was the women. And what this involved was a steady campaign of defamation, backed up by private dicks (you should excuse the expression) and salaried government employees, against women who I believe were telling the truth. In my opinion, Gennifer Flowers was telling the truth; so was Monica Lewinsky, and so was Kathleen Willey, and so, lest we forget, was Juanita Broaddrick, the woman who says she was raped by Bill Clinton. (For the full background on this, see the chapter "Is There a Rapist in the Oval Office?" in the paperback version of my book No One Left To Lie To. This essay, I may modestly say, has never been challenged by anybody in the fabled Clinton "rapid response" team.) Yet one constantly reads that both Clintons, including the female who helped intensify the slanders against her mistreated sisters, are excellent on women's "issues."
One also hears a great deal about how this awful joint tenure of the executive mansion was a good thing in that it conferred "experience" on the despised and much-deceived wife. Well, the main "experience" involved the comprehensive fouling-up of the nation's health-care arrangements, so as to make them considerably worse than they had been before and to create an opening for the worst-of-all-worlds option of the so-called HMO, combining as it did the maximum of capitalist gouging with the maximum of socialistic bureaucracy. This abysmal outcome, forgiven for no reason that I can perceive, was the individual responsibility of the woman who now seems to think it entitles her to the presidency. But there was another "experience," this time a collaborative one, that is even more significant.
During the Senate debate on the intervention in Iraq, Sen. Clinton made considerable use of her background and "experience" to argue that, yes, Saddam Hussein was indeed a threat. She did not argue so much from the position adopted by the Bush administration as she emphasized the stand taken, by both her husband and Al Gore, when they were in office, to the effect that another and final confrontation with the Baathist regime was more or less inevitable. Now, it does not especially matter whether you agree or agreed with her about this (as I, for once, do and did). What does matter is that she has since altered her position and attempted, with her husband's help, to make people forget that she ever held it. And this, on a grave matter of national honor and security, merely to influence her short-term standing in the Iowa caucuses. Surely that on its own should be sufficient to disqualify her from consideration? Indifferent to truth, willing to use police-state tactics and vulgar libels against inconvenient witnesses, hopeless on health care, and flippant and fast and loose with national security: The case against Hillary Clinton for president is open-and-shut. Of course, against all these considerations you might prefer the newly fashionable and more media-weighty notion that if you don't show her enough appreciation, and after all she's done for us, she may cry.
By Christopher Hitchens
Posted Monday, Jan. 14, 2008, at 12:15 PM ET
Seeing the name Hillary in a headline last week—a headline about a life that had involved real achievement—I felt a mouse stirring in the attic of my memory. Eventually, I was able to recall how the two Hillarys had once been mentionable in the same breath. On a first-lady goodwill tour of Asia in April 1995—the kind of banal trip that she now claims as part of her foreign-policy "experience"—Mrs. Clinton had been in Nepal and been briefly introduced to the late Sir Edmund Hillary, conqueror of Mount Everest. Ever ready to milk the moment, she announced that her mother had actually named her for this famous and intrepid explorer. The claim "worked" well enough to be repeated at other stops and even showed up in Bill Clinton's memoirs almost a decade later, as one more instance of the gutsy tradition that undergirds the junior senator from New York.
Sen. Clinton was born in 1947, and Sir Edmund Hillary and his partner Tenzing Norgay did not ascend Mount Everest until 1953, so the story was self-evidently untrue and eventually yielded to fact-checking. Indeed, a spokeswoman for Sen. Clinton named Jennifer Hanley phrased it like this in a statement in October 2006, conceding that the tale was untrue but nonetheless charming: "It was a sweet family story her mother shared to inspire greatness in her daughter, to great results I might add."
Perfect. It worked, in other words, having been coined long after Sir Edmund became a bankable celebrity, but now its usefulness is exhausted and its untruth can safely be blamed on Mummy. Yet isn't it all—all of it, every single episode and detail of the Clinton saga—exactly like that? And isn't some of it a little bit more serious? For Sen. Clinton, something is true if it validates the myth of her striving and her "greatness" (her overweening ambition in other words) and only ceases to be true when it no longer serves that limitless purpose. And we are all supposed to applaud the skill and the bare-faced bravado with which this is done. In the New Hampshire primary in 1992, she knowingly lied about her husband's uncontainable sex life and put him eternally in her debt. This is now thought of, and referred to in print, purely as a smart move on her part. In the Iowa caucuses of 2008, he returns the favor by telling a huge lie about his own record on the war in Iraq, falsely asserting that he was opposed to the intervention from the very start. This is thought of, and referred to in print, as purely a tactical mistake on his part: trying too hard to help the spouse. The happy couple has now united on an equally mendacious account of what they thought about Iraq and when they thought it. What would it take to break this cheap little spell and make us wake up and inquire what on earth we are doing when we make the Clinton family drama—yet again—a central part of our own politics?
What do you have to forget or overlook in order to desire that this dysfunctional clan once more occupies the White House and is again in a position to rent the Lincoln Bedroom to campaign donors and to employ the Oval Office as a massage parlor? You have to be able to forget, first, what happened to those who complained, or who told the truth, last time. It's often said, by people trying to show how grown-up and unshocked they are, that all Clinton did to get himself impeached was lie about sex. That's not really true. What he actually lied about, in the perjury that also got him disbarred, was the women. And what this involved was a steady campaign of defamation, backed up by private dicks (you should excuse the expression) and salaried government employees, against women who I believe were telling the truth. In my opinion, Gennifer Flowers was telling the truth; so was Monica Lewinsky, and so was Kathleen Willey, and so, lest we forget, was Juanita Broaddrick, the woman who says she was raped by Bill Clinton. (For the full background on this, see the chapter "Is There a Rapist in the Oval Office?" in the paperback version of my book No One Left To Lie To. This essay, I may modestly say, has never been challenged by anybody in the fabled Clinton "rapid response" team.) Yet one constantly reads that both Clintons, including the female who helped intensify the slanders against her mistreated sisters, are excellent on women's "issues."
One also hears a great deal about how this awful joint tenure of the executive mansion was a good thing in that it conferred "experience" on the despised and much-deceived wife. Well, the main "experience" involved the comprehensive fouling-up of the nation's health-care arrangements, so as to make them considerably worse than they had been before and to create an opening for the worst-of-all-worlds option of the so-called HMO, combining as it did the maximum of capitalist gouging with the maximum of socialistic bureaucracy. This abysmal outcome, forgiven for no reason that I can perceive, was the individual responsibility of the woman who now seems to think it entitles her to the presidency. But there was another "experience," this time a collaborative one, that is even more significant.
During the Senate debate on the intervention in Iraq, Sen. Clinton made considerable use of her background and "experience" to argue that, yes, Saddam Hussein was indeed a threat. She did not argue so much from the position adopted by the Bush administration as she emphasized the stand taken, by both her husband and Al Gore, when they were in office, to the effect that another and final confrontation with the Baathist regime was more or less inevitable. Now, it does not especially matter whether you agree or agreed with her about this (as I, for once, do and did). What does matter is that she has since altered her position and attempted, with her husband's help, to make people forget that she ever held it. And this, on a grave matter of national honor and security, merely to influence her short-term standing in the Iowa caucuses. Surely that on its own should be sufficient to disqualify her from consideration? Indifferent to truth, willing to use police-state tactics and vulgar libels against inconvenient witnesses, hopeless on health care, and flippant and fast and loose with national security: The case against Hillary Clinton for president is open-and-shut. Of course, against all these considerations you might prefer the newly fashionable and more media-weighty notion that if you don't show her enough appreciation, and after all she's done for us, she may cry.
Monday, January 14, 2008
The real victims
This week the LA Times brings us the most ridiculous article I’ve ever read. Never mind the homeless people I pass on my way to work, here are the real victims.
People making $100K but unable to buy designer jeans or keep their kids in ski club. Times are so tough some of these poor helpless Americans can’t even afford a full hair cut, style and tint, drive their Corvette or buy the fancy type of coffee creamer.
Some teenagers even have to take the bus to their part time jobs—damn you George Bush!! One can only hope that big government will somehow help one poor woman reduce her $40,000 credit card bill…
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-econ11jan11%2C1%2C4127932.story?coll=la-headlines-nation&track=crosspromo
People making $100K but unable to buy designer jeans or keep their kids in ski club. Times are so tough some of these poor helpless Americans can’t even afford a full hair cut, style and tint, drive their Corvette or buy the fancy type of coffee creamer.
Some teenagers even have to take the bus to their part time jobs—damn you George Bush!! One can only hope that big government will somehow help one poor woman reduce her $40,000 credit card bill…
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-econ11jan11%2C1%2C4127932.story?coll=la-headlines-nation&track=crosspromo
Friday, January 11, 2008
Origins of the Fed
UNRAVELING THE MYSTERY OF THE FEDERAL RESERVE
With talk of a recession hanging in the air it seems the Federal Reserve may once again cut interest rates. While this news caused stock prices to rebound, it most likely went unnoticed by most Americans. The reality is that few people outside the world of finance take a keen interest in such matters. If TV ratings are any indication, the American public in general is more interested in hearing about Britney Spears' custody battle than the news that Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke cut the federal funds rate by a quarter of a percentage point.The actions of the Federal Reserve have a significant effect on our daily lives. However it remains something of a mystery to most Americans. The Chairman of the Federal Reserve is perhaps the most powerful non-elected official in the world, whose decisions affect every aspect of our economy, from interest rates to the cost of groceries. So what is the Federal Reserve and how did it come into existence? The answer might surprise you.The Meeting on Jekyll IslandIn November of 1910, after having consulted with Rothschild banks in England, France, and Germany, Senator Nelson Aldrich boarded a private train in Hoboken, New Jersey. His destination was Jekyll Island, Georgia, and a private hunting club owned by J.P. Morgan. Aboard the train were six other men: Benjamin Strong, President of Morgan's Bankers Trust Company; Charles Norton, President of Morgan's First National Bank of New York; Henry Davidson, senior partner of J. P. Morgan; Frank Vanderlip, President of Kuhn Loeb's National City Bank of New York; A. Piatt Andrew, Assistant Secretary of Treasury; and Paul Warburg. The secret meeting, as described by one its architects, Frank Vanderlip, went as follows:"There was an occasion near the close of 1910 when I was as secretive, indeed as furtive, as any conspirator. I do not feel it is any exaggeration to speak of our secret expedition to Jekyll Island as the occasion of the actual conception of what eventually became the Federal Reserve System. We were told to leave our last names behind us. We were told further that we should avoid dining together on the night of our departure. We were instructed to come one at a time...where Senator Aldrich's private car would be in readiness, attached to the rear end of the train for the South. Once aboard the private car, we began to observe the taboo that had been fixed on last names. Discovery, we knew, simply must not happen, or else all our time and effort would be wasted..."What's in a Name?The goal was to establish a private bank that would control the national currency. The challenge was to slip the scheme by the representatives of the American people. Earlier, it had been called the Aldrich Bill and received effective opposition. The devious planners of the revised bill titled it "The Federal Reserve Act" to mask its real nature. It would create a system controlled by private individuals who would control the nation's issue of money. Furthermore, the Federal Reserve Board, composed of twelve districts and one director (The Federal Reserve Chairman) would control the nation's financial resources by controlling the money supply and available credit, all by mortgaging the government through borrowing. The conspirators had a problem, however. President William Howard Taft had made it clear he would veto such a bill if it was introduced. They had to make sure he would not win reelection. They first supported ex-President Teddy Roosevelt in the Republican primaries, but he failed to get the nomination. The bankers then supported the Democratic contender, Woodrow Wilson. In exchange for their support, Wilson promised to sign their bill into law. But the polls indicated that Wilson would only draw about 45 percent of the votes. The bankers needed someone who could draw a sufficient number of Republican votes away from Taft without harming their Democratic candidate. They arranged for Teddy Roosevelt to run against both men by representing a newly invented third party: the "Bull Moose" party. The plan worked. The Federal Reserve Bill was held until December 23 (two days before Christmas!) before it was presented to the House and Senate. Only those senators and congressmen who had not gone home for the holidays - those who owed favors to, or were on the payroll of, the bankers - were present to sign the legislation. The Federal Reserve Act of 1913 was a deliberate charade to pacify the American voters. They'd been crying out for banking reform and had held scores of elections, alternating one set of politicians with another, only to find themselves with the same programs and deeper debt. The name "Federal Reserve Bank" was designed to deceive, and it still does. It is not federal, nor is it owned by the government. It is privately owned. It pays its own postage like any other corporation. Its employees are not civil service. Its physical property is held under private deeds and is subject to local taxation (government property is not). It is an engine that has created private wealth that is unimaginable, even to the most financially sophisticated. It has enabled an imperial elite to manipulate our economy for its own agenda and enlisted the government itself as its enforcer.New World OrderMeyer Amschel Rothschild's original plan was to facilitate "a new order of a one world government." This explains why the Great Seal of the United States, on the back side of the one dollar bill, bears the inscription Novus Ordo Seclorum: New World Order.
With talk of a recession hanging in the air it seems the Federal Reserve may once again cut interest rates. While this news caused stock prices to rebound, it most likely went unnoticed by most Americans. The reality is that few people outside the world of finance take a keen interest in such matters. If TV ratings are any indication, the American public in general is more interested in hearing about Britney Spears' custody battle than the news that Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke cut the federal funds rate by a quarter of a percentage point.The actions of the Federal Reserve have a significant effect on our daily lives. However it remains something of a mystery to most Americans. The Chairman of the Federal Reserve is perhaps the most powerful non-elected official in the world, whose decisions affect every aspect of our economy, from interest rates to the cost of groceries. So what is the Federal Reserve and how did it come into existence? The answer might surprise you.The Meeting on Jekyll IslandIn November of 1910, after having consulted with Rothschild banks in England, France, and Germany, Senator Nelson Aldrich boarded a private train in Hoboken, New Jersey. His destination was Jekyll Island, Georgia, and a private hunting club owned by J.P. Morgan. Aboard the train were six other men: Benjamin Strong, President of Morgan's Bankers Trust Company; Charles Norton, President of Morgan's First National Bank of New York; Henry Davidson, senior partner of J. P. Morgan; Frank Vanderlip, President of Kuhn Loeb's National City Bank of New York; A. Piatt Andrew, Assistant Secretary of Treasury; and Paul Warburg. The secret meeting, as described by one its architects, Frank Vanderlip, went as follows:"There was an occasion near the close of 1910 when I was as secretive, indeed as furtive, as any conspirator. I do not feel it is any exaggeration to speak of our secret expedition to Jekyll Island as the occasion of the actual conception of what eventually became the Federal Reserve System. We were told to leave our last names behind us. We were told further that we should avoid dining together on the night of our departure. We were instructed to come one at a time...where Senator Aldrich's private car would be in readiness, attached to the rear end of the train for the South. Once aboard the private car, we began to observe the taboo that had been fixed on last names. Discovery, we knew, simply must not happen, or else all our time and effort would be wasted..."What's in a Name?The goal was to establish a private bank that would control the national currency. The challenge was to slip the scheme by the representatives of the American people. Earlier, it had been called the Aldrich Bill and received effective opposition. The devious planners of the revised bill titled it "The Federal Reserve Act" to mask its real nature. It would create a system controlled by private individuals who would control the nation's issue of money. Furthermore, the Federal Reserve Board, composed of twelve districts and one director (The Federal Reserve Chairman) would control the nation's financial resources by controlling the money supply and available credit, all by mortgaging the government through borrowing. The conspirators had a problem, however. President William Howard Taft had made it clear he would veto such a bill if it was introduced. They had to make sure he would not win reelection. They first supported ex-President Teddy Roosevelt in the Republican primaries, but he failed to get the nomination. The bankers then supported the Democratic contender, Woodrow Wilson. In exchange for their support, Wilson promised to sign their bill into law. But the polls indicated that Wilson would only draw about 45 percent of the votes. The bankers needed someone who could draw a sufficient number of Republican votes away from Taft without harming their Democratic candidate. They arranged for Teddy Roosevelt to run against both men by representing a newly invented third party: the "Bull Moose" party. The plan worked. The Federal Reserve Bill was held until December 23 (two days before Christmas!) before it was presented to the House and Senate. Only those senators and congressmen who had not gone home for the holidays - those who owed favors to, or were on the payroll of, the bankers - were present to sign the legislation. The Federal Reserve Act of 1913 was a deliberate charade to pacify the American voters. They'd been crying out for banking reform and had held scores of elections, alternating one set of politicians with another, only to find themselves with the same programs and deeper debt. The name "Federal Reserve Bank" was designed to deceive, and it still does. It is not federal, nor is it owned by the government. It is privately owned. It pays its own postage like any other corporation. Its employees are not civil service. Its physical property is held under private deeds and is subject to local taxation (government property is not). It is an engine that has created private wealth that is unimaginable, even to the most financially sophisticated. It has enabled an imperial elite to manipulate our economy for its own agenda and enlisted the government itself as its enforcer.New World OrderMeyer Amschel Rothschild's original plan was to facilitate "a new order of a one world government." This explains why the Great Seal of the United States, on the back side of the one dollar bill, bears the inscription Novus Ordo Seclorum: New World Order.
Eminent Domain
IN EMINENT DANGER
In June of 2005 the Supreme Court shocked and frightened land owners across America by ruling that private property can be seized by the government and sold to private developers in order to generate tax revenue and spur economic growth. That case, Kelo v. City of New London, opened the floodgates for local governments to use eminent domain for private gain. The Supreme Court's decision triggered an immediate response, and the following year the issue of eminent domain appeared on 12 state ballots – making it the single biggest ballot issue of the 2006 election. The ballot initiatives were successful in 10 states, giving residents in those states varying degrees of protection from eminent domain abuse. Other states have followed suit and passed similar laws. However the problem has not gone away.In Baldwin Park, California city officials plan to use their eminent domain power to seize more than 500 homes and small businesses. The land will then be sold to the Bisno Development Company – a wealthy and politically connected private developer. The developer will use the 125 acres for projects that will generate more tax revenue. The Baldwin Park proposal is perhaps one of the worst examples of eminent domain abuse in the country (unfortunately it is not the only example).In Kelo v. City of New London the Supreme Court changed its interpretation of the Fifth Amendment. The Fifth Amendment to the Constitution provides that private property shall not be taken for public use, without just compensation. Historically, the government's right of eminent domain has been invoked when land is needed for a distinct public purpose – such as a highway, public school, hospital or military base. The words "for public use" and "without just compensation" in the Fifth Amendment were meant to provide safeguards against excessive, unpredictable, or unfair use of the government's eminent domain power. As a result of the court's decision in the case of Kelo v.City of New London, however, cities now have wide power to bulldoze residences for projects such as shopping malls and hotel complexes in order to generate tax revenue. The Supreme Court held in a 5-4 decision that the general benefits a community enjoyed from economic growth qualified such redevelopment plans as a permissible "public use" under the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment.What happened in the city of New London, Connecticut was not an isolated incident. Similar scenarios have played out in communities all around the country. The city of New London was looking for ways to improve its economy. In 2000, the city approved a development plan that would put in office buildings, a hotel, and a health club near the waterfront. When they approved the plan, however, the city gave the developers power to condemn houses whose owners remained unwilling to sell. The city argued that it would be for public good to develop the city and encourage tourism and create jobs, and for that reason, those homes could be seized - and the Supreme Court agreed.In her dissent, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor criticized the court's decision to expand eminent domain to include such takings. She wrote that, "under the banner of economic development, all private property is now vulnerable to being taken and transferred to another private owner, so long as it might be upgraded." Such a broad interpretation, she argued, could include just about anything.The Supreme Court has given local governments the green light to confiscate private property for profit. Private homes and small businesses can now be bulldozed and replaced by upscale retail and housing developments, office buildings, hotels, casinos and other redevelopment projects that are owned, not by the public, but by private individuals and corporations. Such abuse of power cannot be what the founding father's had in mind when they drafted the constitution.
In June of 2005 the Supreme Court shocked and frightened land owners across America by ruling that private property can be seized by the government and sold to private developers in order to generate tax revenue and spur economic growth. That case, Kelo v. City of New London, opened the floodgates for local governments to use eminent domain for private gain. The Supreme Court's decision triggered an immediate response, and the following year the issue of eminent domain appeared on 12 state ballots – making it the single biggest ballot issue of the 2006 election. The ballot initiatives were successful in 10 states, giving residents in those states varying degrees of protection from eminent domain abuse. Other states have followed suit and passed similar laws. However the problem has not gone away.In Baldwin Park, California city officials plan to use their eminent domain power to seize more than 500 homes and small businesses. The land will then be sold to the Bisno Development Company – a wealthy and politically connected private developer. The developer will use the 125 acres for projects that will generate more tax revenue. The Baldwin Park proposal is perhaps one of the worst examples of eminent domain abuse in the country (unfortunately it is not the only example).In Kelo v. City of New London the Supreme Court changed its interpretation of the Fifth Amendment. The Fifth Amendment to the Constitution provides that private property shall not be taken for public use, without just compensation. Historically, the government's right of eminent domain has been invoked when land is needed for a distinct public purpose – such as a highway, public school, hospital or military base. The words "for public use" and "without just compensation" in the Fifth Amendment were meant to provide safeguards against excessive, unpredictable, or unfair use of the government's eminent domain power. As a result of the court's decision in the case of Kelo v.City of New London, however, cities now have wide power to bulldoze residences for projects such as shopping malls and hotel complexes in order to generate tax revenue. The Supreme Court held in a 5-4 decision that the general benefits a community enjoyed from economic growth qualified such redevelopment plans as a permissible "public use" under the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment.What happened in the city of New London, Connecticut was not an isolated incident. Similar scenarios have played out in communities all around the country. The city of New London was looking for ways to improve its economy. In 2000, the city approved a development plan that would put in office buildings, a hotel, and a health club near the waterfront. When they approved the plan, however, the city gave the developers power to condemn houses whose owners remained unwilling to sell. The city argued that it would be for public good to develop the city and encourage tourism and create jobs, and for that reason, those homes could be seized - and the Supreme Court agreed.In her dissent, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor criticized the court's decision to expand eminent domain to include such takings. She wrote that, "under the banner of economic development, all private property is now vulnerable to being taken and transferred to another private owner, so long as it might be upgraded." Such a broad interpretation, she argued, could include just about anything.The Supreme Court has given local governments the green light to confiscate private property for profit. Private homes and small businesses can now be bulldozed and replaced by upscale retail and housing developments, office buildings, hotels, casinos and other redevelopment projects that are owned, not by the public, but by private individuals and corporations. Such abuse of power cannot be what the founding father's had in mind when they drafted the constitution.
Tuesday, January 8, 2008
What's so bad about a Dem. President?
How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Start Loving Obama
By Randall Hoven
If Republicans, candidates and base alike, cannot pull themselves out of the funk in which they find themselves, it soon will be time to start making the best of a bad situation. Some truly believe the GOP blew its big chance, their first and best chance in about 50 years.They think it might be better, even for Republicans, to see how a Barack Obama might do in office and for Republicans to join the Miami Dolphins and the St. Louis Rams in putting this season behind them and trying to salvage next season.
From 1955 through 2002, or 48 years, we never experienced a completely Republican-run government. For 14 of those years, the Democrats had everything: House, Senate, and Presidency. For 34 of those years, both houses of Congress were majority Democrat. In only six of those 48 years were both houses of Congress majority Republican -- the last six years of the Clinton Presidency.
Under Clinton, Republicans managed to end welfare, cut capital gains taxes, cut spending, expand trade and turn deficits into surpluses. Many of us salivated at the prospect of what could happen without a Democratic President ready to close down government and blame it on Republicans if he didn't get his way.
Finally, in 2003 Republicans got the Democratic foot off their collective neck. They had the House, Senate and Presidency. Finally, they could do all those things Republicans had talked about for the last 50 years: cut taxes, cut spending, cut regulations, reduce the scope of government, appoint constitutionalist judges, etc.
How did that work out?
Well, let's just look at Campaign Finance Reform, for example. It was proposed by a Republican Senator. It was passed by a Republican Congress. It was signed into law by a Republican President. And it was approved by a Supreme Court whose nine justices included seven who were appointed by Republicans. The result? It sure looks to me like money and special interests still have some influence in politics. Plus, Republicans were thrown out of Congress in 2006 partly because they were painted as the party of corruption.
President Reagan wanted to eliminate the Education Department, but couldn't get it done without Congress on his side. Once Republicans had it all, though, they teamed up with Ted Kennedy and passed the most sweeping intrusion of the federal government into K-12 education ever, and pumped federal dollars into it like crazy. The result? Complaints from schools, complaints from parents, loathing by the National Education Association, and the 2008 Democratic Presidential candidates promising to end No Child Left Behind. As for our kids, in 2006 they ranked below 28 other countries in science literacy, for example, just below Croatia and Latvia.
Mandatory programs like Social Security and Medicare are the Godzilla eating the federal budget and are estimated to go broke in just a few more years. Did the Republicans reform those programs? No, they added prescription coverage to Medicare, the greatest expansion of entitlements in 40 years. The result? Republicans got labeled as being too stingy. Seniors were irritated. Government spending spiraled and the date of Medicare bankruptcy grew closer.
We thought we largely ended farm subsidies under President Clinton with the Freedom to Farm reforms. Instead, with Tom Daschle's support, President Bush brought them back, and now we'll soon be swimming in ethanol.
President Clinton started that silly AmeriCorps, a sort of Peace Corps for America, remember? President Bush did not get rid of it or even try to; he expanded it.
Examples go on. New tariffs. Increased minimum wage. Gargantuan transportation spending. Spending growth not seen since LBJ. And what did we get for all that compassionate conservatism? George W. Bush is labeled the most ideological and divisive President in modern times, with a job approval rating approaching Jimmy Carter levels. A federal debt over $9 trillion. A loss of both the House and the Senate to the Democrats in 2006, the first time since Bush's father lost in 1992. And a field of 2008 Republican candidates that looks like the bar scene in Star Wars.
It being an election year, we are again going to hear how bad it will be if the Democrats get elected. They will tax and spend. They will appoint judges who think the Constitution is a living document. They will lead this country into socialism.
Well, we recently had a Democratic President for eight straight years. In those years, six with a GOP Congress, federal spending was cut from 22.1% of GDP to 18.4%, the lowest fraction of GDP since 1966. The deficits turned into surpluses. Welfare was ended. Capital gains taxes were cut. Free trade was expanded. And the economy expanded by a third in real terms, or an average of 3.5% per year, the same as under Ronald Reagan.
After seven years of President Bush, including four with a completely Republican Congress, deficits are back and spending is again over 20% of GDP. Our government now spends more on health care than most other developed countries, but without providing universal coverage. Government at all levels in the U.S. ate up a greater fraction of our economy in 2006 than the governments of South Korea, Australia, Ireland, Switzerland, Slovakia and Japan. Try to make a list of things that are neither prohibited nor subsidized. You fear socialism? We're already there.
If you are disappointed with our Supreme Court, you might reflect on the fact that since 1991, seven of the nine justices on the court had been appointed by Republicans. Every Chief Justice since 1953 has been appointed by a Republican.
Here is a list, just from memory, of what we got from Republican Presidents:
Occupational Safety and Health Administration
The Environmental Protection Agency
The Clean Water Act
Wage and price controls
The Clean Air Act
Americans with Disabilities Act
Mandatory air bags
Chief Justice Earl Warren
Justice Blackmun (author of Roe v Wade)
Justice Stevens
Justice Souter
Surrender in Viet Nam
Public hugging of the greatest mass killer in history, Mao Zedong.
In my lifetime, Republicans have run on platforms of reducing government and being more faithful to the original intent of the Constitution. Why should we believe them any more?
In this election year, the Republican candidates barely even pay lip service to such notions. Now each one has a government program for every problem, just like the Democrats. Huckabee is ready to remove "conservative" from "compassionate conservative". Romney introduced universal health care in Massachusetts. McCain believes in global warming and gave us Campaign Finance Reform. Thompson agreed with McCain on CFR and went to bat for the plaintiff's bar when tort reform came up. Ron Paul thinks jihadis will just go away if we ignore them. Giuliani's highest elected office was mayor.
The Republican field is like a Frankenstein monster in reverse. We took the perfect Republican, Ronald Reagan, and split his good parts among five or ten hideous cadavers.
What would be so bad about a President Obama? On the domestic front, he can only sign or veto what Congress sends him and what the Supreme Court approves. If we don't elect a Republican Congress in 2008, we'll have another chance in 2010. Remember when Clinton let his wife try to design our health care system? We got the first Republican Congress in 40 years. There's a case to be made that the best mix is a Republican Congress and a Democratic President. And frankly, how much more socialist could we get than what "compassionate conservative" already got us?
And what a message would be sent to the murmuring masses of the world. The U.S. President would be a literal melting pot of a man. Where the world used to see cowboy imperialist, it would now see its smiling self in the mirror. Without being able to demonize the head of state of the Great Satan, jihadi recruiting might take a nosedive. And if the world policeman takes a coffee break, maybe the wimps of Europe will realize who is physically and demographically closer to the nutcases of the Middle East and grow a backbone.
Then there would be the entertainment factor. I must admit, while another Clinton Presidency would have me throwing bricks through the TV, an Obama Presidency might have me pouring another glass of wine while I watch in fascination.
Also, we should dispel the notion that any Republican would be better than any Democrat. What if the Republican, for whatever reason, helps enact a Democratic agenda? The Democrats would get a twofer. First, they would get their agenda. Second, they would get to blame the predictably bad consequences on Republicans.
Let me illustrate with a hypothetical example. Let's say our hypothetical Republican President, unlike the real President Bush who gave us Campaign Finance Reform and No Child Left Behind, gave us OSHA, the EPA, wage and price controls, surrender in war and Justice Blackmun. I would predict that such policies would lead to oil price shocks and recession domestically, to emboldened enemies abroad, and to resignation in disgrace politically. And worse, the electorate would blame Republicans for all this in the following elections.
Would such a Republican President be better than a Democrat who would do the same things, but the blame would go to Democrats?
Back to real life, I would argue that Jimmy Carter gave birth to Ronald Reagan. Over a time horizon greater than the next election cycle, it is better to have a Democrat who acts like a Democrat than a Republican who acts like a Democrat.
So until I see real evidence that the Republican candidates would act like Republicans instead of Democrats once in office, I'd just as soon see Barak Obama step off Marine One.
Who knows? Maybe Obama would turn out to be another Carter and thus give birth to the new Ronald Reagan in 2012. Maybe the new Reagan could be our own melanous melting-pot of a candidate. Maybe someone who is a governor now, in a diverse and hard-to-govern state like, say, Louisiana.
I'm rooting for the Rams in 2008, and Bobby Jindal http://www.bobbyjindal.com/ in 2012.
By Randall Hoven
If Republicans, candidates and base alike, cannot pull themselves out of the funk in which they find themselves, it soon will be time to start making the best of a bad situation. Some truly believe the GOP blew its big chance, their first and best chance in about 50 years.They think it might be better, even for Republicans, to see how a Barack Obama might do in office and for Republicans to join the Miami Dolphins and the St. Louis Rams in putting this season behind them and trying to salvage next season.
From 1955 through 2002, or 48 years, we never experienced a completely Republican-run government. For 14 of those years, the Democrats had everything: House, Senate, and Presidency. For 34 of those years, both houses of Congress were majority Democrat. In only six of those 48 years were both houses of Congress majority Republican -- the last six years of the Clinton Presidency.
Under Clinton, Republicans managed to end welfare, cut capital gains taxes, cut spending, expand trade and turn deficits into surpluses. Many of us salivated at the prospect of what could happen without a Democratic President ready to close down government and blame it on Republicans if he didn't get his way.
Finally, in 2003 Republicans got the Democratic foot off their collective neck. They had the House, Senate and Presidency. Finally, they could do all those things Republicans had talked about for the last 50 years: cut taxes, cut spending, cut regulations, reduce the scope of government, appoint constitutionalist judges, etc.
How did that work out?
Well, let's just look at Campaign Finance Reform, for example. It was proposed by a Republican Senator. It was passed by a Republican Congress. It was signed into law by a Republican President. And it was approved by a Supreme Court whose nine justices included seven who were appointed by Republicans. The result? It sure looks to me like money and special interests still have some influence in politics. Plus, Republicans were thrown out of Congress in 2006 partly because they were painted as the party of corruption.
President Reagan wanted to eliminate the Education Department, but couldn't get it done without Congress on his side. Once Republicans had it all, though, they teamed up with Ted Kennedy and passed the most sweeping intrusion of the federal government into K-12 education ever, and pumped federal dollars into it like crazy. The result? Complaints from schools, complaints from parents, loathing by the National Education Association, and the 2008 Democratic Presidential candidates promising to end No Child Left Behind. As for our kids, in 2006 they ranked below 28 other countries in science literacy, for example, just below Croatia and Latvia.
Mandatory programs like Social Security and Medicare are the Godzilla eating the federal budget and are estimated to go broke in just a few more years. Did the Republicans reform those programs? No, they added prescription coverage to Medicare, the greatest expansion of entitlements in 40 years. The result? Republicans got labeled as being too stingy. Seniors were irritated. Government spending spiraled and the date of Medicare bankruptcy grew closer.
We thought we largely ended farm subsidies under President Clinton with the Freedom to Farm reforms. Instead, with Tom Daschle's support, President Bush brought them back, and now we'll soon be swimming in ethanol.
President Clinton started that silly AmeriCorps, a sort of Peace Corps for America, remember? President Bush did not get rid of it or even try to; he expanded it.
Examples go on. New tariffs. Increased minimum wage. Gargantuan transportation spending. Spending growth not seen since LBJ. And what did we get for all that compassionate conservatism? George W. Bush is labeled the most ideological and divisive President in modern times, with a job approval rating approaching Jimmy Carter levels. A federal debt over $9 trillion. A loss of both the House and the Senate to the Democrats in 2006, the first time since Bush's father lost in 1992. And a field of 2008 Republican candidates that looks like the bar scene in Star Wars.
It being an election year, we are again going to hear how bad it will be if the Democrats get elected. They will tax and spend. They will appoint judges who think the Constitution is a living document. They will lead this country into socialism.
Well, we recently had a Democratic President for eight straight years. In those years, six with a GOP Congress, federal spending was cut from 22.1% of GDP to 18.4%, the lowest fraction of GDP since 1966. The deficits turned into surpluses. Welfare was ended. Capital gains taxes were cut. Free trade was expanded. And the economy expanded by a third in real terms, or an average of 3.5% per year, the same as under Ronald Reagan.
After seven years of President Bush, including four with a completely Republican Congress, deficits are back and spending is again over 20% of GDP. Our government now spends more on health care than most other developed countries, but without providing universal coverage. Government at all levels in the U.S. ate up a greater fraction of our economy in 2006 than the governments of South Korea, Australia, Ireland, Switzerland, Slovakia and Japan. Try to make a list of things that are neither prohibited nor subsidized. You fear socialism? We're already there.
If you are disappointed with our Supreme Court, you might reflect on the fact that since 1991, seven of the nine justices on the court had been appointed by Republicans. Every Chief Justice since 1953 has been appointed by a Republican.
Here is a list, just from memory, of what we got from Republican Presidents:
Occupational Safety and Health Administration
The Environmental Protection Agency
The Clean Water Act
Wage and price controls
The Clean Air Act
Americans with Disabilities Act
Mandatory air bags
Chief Justice Earl Warren
Justice Blackmun (author of Roe v Wade)
Justice Stevens
Justice Souter
Surrender in Viet Nam
Public hugging of the greatest mass killer in history, Mao Zedong.
In my lifetime, Republicans have run on platforms of reducing government and being more faithful to the original intent of the Constitution. Why should we believe them any more?
In this election year, the Republican candidates barely even pay lip service to such notions. Now each one has a government program for every problem, just like the Democrats. Huckabee is ready to remove "conservative" from "compassionate conservative". Romney introduced universal health care in Massachusetts. McCain believes in global warming and gave us Campaign Finance Reform. Thompson agreed with McCain on CFR and went to bat for the plaintiff's bar when tort reform came up. Ron Paul thinks jihadis will just go away if we ignore them. Giuliani's highest elected office was mayor.
The Republican field is like a Frankenstein monster in reverse. We took the perfect Republican, Ronald Reagan, and split his good parts among five or ten hideous cadavers.
What would be so bad about a President Obama? On the domestic front, he can only sign or veto what Congress sends him and what the Supreme Court approves. If we don't elect a Republican Congress in 2008, we'll have another chance in 2010. Remember when Clinton let his wife try to design our health care system? We got the first Republican Congress in 40 years. There's a case to be made that the best mix is a Republican Congress and a Democratic President. And frankly, how much more socialist could we get than what "compassionate conservative" already got us?
And what a message would be sent to the murmuring masses of the world. The U.S. President would be a literal melting pot of a man. Where the world used to see cowboy imperialist, it would now see its smiling self in the mirror. Without being able to demonize the head of state of the Great Satan, jihadi recruiting might take a nosedive. And if the world policeman takes a coffee break, maybe the wimps of Europe will realize who is physically and demographically closer to the nutcases of the Middle East and grow a backbone.
Then there would be the entertainment factor. I must admit, while another Clinton Presidency would have me throwing bricks through the TV, an Obama Presidency might have me pouring another glass of wine while I watch in fascination.
Also, we should dispel the notion that any Republican would be better than any Democrat. What if the Republican, for whatever reason, helps enact a Democratic agenda? The Democrats would get a twofer. First, they would get their agenda. Second, they would get to blame the predictably bad consequences on Republicans.
Let me illustrate with a hypothetical example. Let's say our hypothetical Republican President, unlike the real President Bush who gave us Campaign Finance Reform and No Child Left Behind, gave us OSHA, the EPA, wage and price controls, surrender in war and Justice Blackmun. I would predict that such policies would lead to oil price shocks and recession domestically, to emboldened enemies abroad, and to resignation in disgrace politically. And worse, the electorate would blame Republicans for all this in the following elections.
Would such a Republican President be better than a Democrat who would do the same things, but the blame would go to Democrats?
Back to real life, I would argue that Jimmy Carter gave birth to Ronald Reagan. Over a time horizon greater than the next election cycle, it is better to have a Democrat who acts like a Democrat than a Republican who acts like a Democrat.
So until I see real evidence that the Republican candidates would act like Republicans instead of Democrats once in office, I'd just as soon see Barak Obama step off Marine One.
Who knows? Maybe Obama would turn out to be another Carter and thus give birth to the new Ronald Reagan in 2012. Maybe the new Reagan could be our own melanous melting-pot of a candidate. Maybe someone who is a governor now, in a diverse and hard-to-govern state like, say, Louisiana.
I'm rooting for the Rams in 2008, and Bobby Jindal http://www.bobbyjindal.com/ in 2012.
Friday, January 4, 2008
An inconvenient graph
Two of them, actually. from Dr. Roy Spencer, Climatologist. His website is well documented, scientific and factual. Even though he didn’t make a movie or win a prize for it. For those inclined to disagree, please cite sources other than CNN and the UN bureaucracy.
Thursday, January 3, 2008
The Best Candidate Match tool I've seen so far...
I've become convicted about our responsibility as Americans to become educated on the issues & candidates facing our nation in the upcoming Presidential election. This may be a little oversimplified, but this USA Today tool has been the easiest and most interesting one I've found so far. Now that I've narrowed down my top 3 and ranked the others according to issues that matter most to me, learing more about how I should cast my vote doesn't seem so daunting. Enjoy!
http://www.usatoday.com/news/politics/election2008/candidate-match-game.htm
http://www.usatoday.com/news/politics/election2008/candidate-match-game.htm
Wednesday, January 2, 2008
Santa Claus politics
Jewish World Review
January 2, 2008
By Thomas Sowell
Senator Hillary Clinton's Christmas commercial, showing various government programs as presents under a Christmas tree, was a classic example of calculated confusion in politics.
Anyone who believes that the government can give the country presents has fallen for the oldest political illusion of all — the illusion of something for nothing.
Santa Claus may turn out to be the real front-runner in the primaries, judging by the way candidates are vying with one another to give away government goodies to the voters.
Santa Claus is bipartisan. The Bush administration is unveiling its plan to rescue people who gambled and lost in the housing markets when the bubble burst.
We now have a bipartisan tradition of the government stepping in to rescue people who engaged in risky behavior — whether by locating in the known paths of hurricanes in Florida or in areas repeatedly hit by wildfires over the years in California or by doing things that increase the probability of catching AIDS.
Why not also rescue people who gambled away their life's savings in Las Vegas? That would at least be consistent.
Apparently the only people who are supposed to be responsible are the taxpayers — and they are increasingly made responsible for other people's irresponsibility.
Military conscription is long gone. But taxpayers are still being conscripted to play Santa Claus.
If taking our money and wasting it — or, rather, using it to buy votes — was all the damage that politicians did to the economy, that would be Utopia compared to all the damage they actually do.
What's more, politicians can picture themselves as the solutions to our economic problems, when in fact they are the biggest economic problem of all.
To this day, there are people who believe that the market economy failed when the stock market crashed in 1929 and that the Great Depression of the 1930s that followed required government intervention.
In reality, the stock market crashed by almost exactly the same amount on almost the same day in 1987 — and 20 years of prosperity, low inflation and low unemployment followed.
What was the difference?
Politicians — first President Hoover and then President Roosevelt — decided that they had to "do something" after the stock market crash of 1929.
In 1987, President Ronald Reagan decided to do nothing — despite bitter criticisms in the media — and the economy recovered on its own and kept on growing.
To people who think the government should "do something" — and this includes most of the media — it would never occur to them to compare the actual track record of what happens when the government does something and what happens when it lets the market adjust by itself.
Back in 1971, President Richard Nixon responded to widespread demands that he "do something" about rising prices by imposing wage and price controls that got him re-elected in a landslide. Moreover, the later damage to the economy was seldom blamed on those price controls.
Recently, Professor N. Gregory Mankiw of Harvard, a former chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, noted that people in Congress and the White House were wondering what they should do about the current economic situation. His suggestion: "Absolutely nothing."
It is not just free market economists who think the government can do more harm than good when they intervene in the economy. It was none other than Karl Marx who referred to "crackbrained meddling by the authorities" that can "aggravate an existing crisis."
Ronald Reagan and Karl Marx did not have much in common, except that they had both studied economics.
After the departure of Senator Phil Gramm and House Majority Leader Dick Armey, Congress has been an economics-free zone. There is not one economist among the 535 members of Congress.
But, in an election year, that is not a political handicap. Santa Claus has won far more elections than any economist.
January 2, 2008
By Thomas Sowell
Senator Hillary Clinton's Christmas commercial, showing various government programs as presents under a Christmas tree, was a classic example of calculated confusion in politics.
Anyone who believes that the government can give the country presents has fallen for the oldest political illusion of all — the illusion of something for nothing.
Santa Claus may turn out to be the real front-runner in the primaries, judging by the way candidates are vying with one another to give away government goodies to the voters.
Santa Claus is bipartisan. The Bush administration is unveiling its plan to rescue people who gambled and lost in the housing markets when the bubble burst.
We now have a bipartisan tradition of the government stepping in to rescue people who engaged in risky behavior — whether by locating in the known paths of hurricanes in Florida or in areas repeatedly hit by wildfires over the years in California or by doing things that increase the probability of catching AIDS.
Why not also rescue people who gambled away their life's savings in Las Vegas? That would at least be consistent.
Apparently the only people who are supposed to be responsible are the taxpayers — and they are increasingly made responsible for other people's irresponsibility.
Military conscription is long gone. But taxpayers are still being conscripted to play Santa Claus.
If taking our money and wasting it — or, rather, using it to buy votes — was all the damage that politicians did to the economy, that would be Utopia compared to all the damage they actually do.
What's more, politicians can picture themselves as the solutions to our economic problems, when in fact they are the biggest economic problem of all.
To this day, there are people who believe that the market economy failed when the stock market crashed in 1929 and that the Great Depression of the 1930s that followed required government intervention.
In reality, the stock market crashed by almost exactly the same amount on almost the same day in 1987 — and 20 years of prosperity, low inflation and low unemployment followed.
What was the difference?
Politicians — first President Hoover and then President Roosevelt — decided that they had to "do something" after the stock market crash of 1929.
In 1987, President Ronald Reagan decided to do nothing — despite bitter criticisms in the media — and the economy recovered on its own and kept on growing.
To people who think the government should "do something" — and this includes most of the media — it would never occur to them to compare the actual track record of what happens when the government does something and what happens when it lets the market adjust by itself.
Back in 1971, President Richard Nixon responded to widespread demands that he "do something" about rising prices by imposing wage and price controls that got him re-elected in a landslide. Moreover, the later damage to the economy was seldom blamed on those price controls.
Recently, Professor N. Gregory Mankiw of Harvard, a former chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, noted that people in Congress and the White House were wondering what they should do about the current economic situation. His suggestion: "Absolutely nothing."
It is not just free market economists who think the government can do more harm than good when they intervene in the economy. It was none other than Karl Marx who referred to "crackbrained meddling by the authorities" that can "aggravate an existing crisis."
Ronald Reagan and Karl Marx did not have much in common, except that they had both studied economics.
After the departure of Senator Phil Gramm and House Majority Leader Dick Armey, Congress has been an economics-free zone. There is not one economist among the 535 members of Congress.
But, in an election year, that is not a political handicap. Santa Claus has won far more elections than any economist.
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