So much of the smoke and mirrorssuccess of the current administration, and the Men from O.R.G.A.S.M., is predicated upon an audience of willing dupes. For them, no good can come of this.
How is it that CBS wandered off the reservation? Also, given that this is 60 Minutes, how valid is any of it?
Centralization is the real problem. The religious leap of faith required to believe the Federal Government capable of being the Jobs Bringer is one that merits continual ridicule. DC should be chopped back, so that the States can sink or swim on their own merit.
The sanest wonk in Congress, Paul Ryan, attempts to speak sense. DWS replies with “fear Wall Street”.
If anything, Ryan’s plan is too centrist, in my opinion. My opinion is probably not too politically tenable, either.
This blog would like to commend Paul Ryan for extraordinary tact when faced with an utter knob.
Conglomerate Blog has a doom-tastic post about how New Jersey is being sued by the SEC for creating a situation where bond
investors were not provided adequate information to evaluate the state’s ability to fund the pensions or assess their impact on the state’s financial condition.
Like most securities lawsuits, New Jersey’s problems could have been cured with disclosure. That is, the problem from the SEC’s perspective was not that the state doesn’t fund its public pension funds adequately; it is perfectly natural for a public entity to get stuck in this jam of not wanting to raise taxes or slash spending yet still having to honor its contracts. Rather, the problem is that New Jersey failed to tell investors buying its bonds about this underfunding.
Why not simply disclose? There is the usual answer of not wanting to have to offer higher interest rates on bonds, which is no different than the motivation of any private securities issuer. My guess is that the more telling reason is political: what senior state Treasury employee wants to sign off on disclosure that will give ammunition to a Governor’s opponents and unions?
This is just another example of the electorate failing to demand and reward integrity. The country needs to elect 48 more in the McDonnell/Christie mold, and quit chasing the Palins out of office by abusing the legal system.
This is the fruit of a system that says “You can’t handle the truth” and substitutes Federal Reserve-financed bailouts in lieu of accountability. I think we should End the Fed, add 49 more State banks, and require greater accountability from officials.
They may be incompetent, but, when the economy really seizes up, we will see what the alternatives look like.
While various political leaders have, over the centuries, done things that violated either the spirit or the letter of the Constitution, few dared to openly say that the Constitution was wrong and that what they wanted was right.
It was the Progressives of a hundred years ago who began saying that the Constitution needed to be subordinated to whatever they chose to call “the needs of the times.” Nor were they content to say that the Constitution needed more Amendments, for that would have meant that the much disdained masses would have something to say about whether, or what kind, of Amendments were needed.
The agenda then, as now, has been for our betters to decide among themselves which Constitutional safeguards against arbitrary government power should be disregarded, in the name of meeting “the needs of the times”– as they choose to define those needs.
The first open attack on the Constitution by a President of the United States was made by our only president with a Ph.D., Woodrow Wilson. Virtually all the arguments as to why judges should not take the Constitution as meaning what its words plainly say, but “interpret” it to mean whatever it ought to mean, in order to meet “the needs of the times,” were made by Woodrow Wilson.
The American values of individual freedom, fiscal responsibility and limited government bind the ranks of our movement. That makes the tea party better than a political party. It is a growing community that can sustain itself after November, ensuring a better means of holding a new generation of elected officials accountable.
All this is swell and spiffy, but if you haven’t answered the mail on the Federal Reserve Act, and the ludicrous Federal expansion of power it has enabled, then you simply haven’t said much.
Stacy would say “Smittiot! We’ve got to win the election first!” Fine. But be thinking about ways in which we’re going to support the leadership needed to roll back 100 years of incumbency, elitism, and ruling class over-reach.
My chief worry is that, faced with the ugly realities that our government is more or less effectively hiding from us, the Tea Party will wet itself, and the Cloward-Piven will prevail. We have to get ready with the “bring it on, mike foxtrot”.
Uncoverage posts a startling article by ChuckDeVore.com that shows:
According to Moody’s, the average state per capita debt of the 28 Obama states is $1,728 while the average debt in the 22 McCain states is less than half, at $749. This information alone says a lot about voters and their attitude towards government and debt. Voters with a propensity to elect politicians who burden future generations who can’t yet vote with huge debts voted for Obama while fiscally responsible voters generally voted for McCain.
Fiscal security is the only thing more important than border security. Social issues? What are they but distractors?
Hot Air comes at this point from the CA Prop 8 vantage, quoting a CA Republican Party chair:
“This election needs to revolve around five issues: taxes, spending, the economy, jobs and debt,” said Ron Nehring, chairman of the California Republican Party. “That doesn’t mean that other issues aren’t important — they are important — but the first issue on the minds of people is the economy.”
Things are so bad, that even the Queen of Cluelessness is starting to catch on that there may be some trouble a-brewin’:
The country I was born into was a country that had existed steadily, for almost two centuries, as a nation in which everyone thought—wherever they were from, whatever their circumstances—that their children would have better lives than they did. That was what kept people pulling their boots on in the morning after the first weary pause: My kids will have it better. They’ll be richer or more educated, they’ll have a better job or a better house, they’ll take a step up in terms of rank, class or status. America always claimed to be, and meant to be, a nation that made little of class. But America is human. “The richest family in town,” they said, admiringly. Read Booth Tarkington on turn-of-the-last-century Indiana. It’s all about trying to rise.
Parents now fear something has stopped. They think they lived through the great abundance, a time of historic growth in wealth and material enjoyment. They got it, and they enjoyed it, and their kids did, too: a lot of toys in that age, a lot of Xboxes and iPhones. (Who is the most self-punishing person in America right now? The person who didn’t do well during the abundance.) But they look around, follow the political stories and debates, and deep down they think their children will live in a more limited country, that jobs won’t be made at a great enough pace, that taxes—too many people in the cart, not enough pulling it—will dishearten them, that the effects of 30 years of a low, sad culture will leave the whole country messed up. And then there is the world: nuts with nukes, etc.
Keep thinking, Peggy–you may beat Paul Krugman (h/t Insty) in the race to enlightenment. Past the finish line sit the Founding Fathers, who, in their pre-Industrial Revolution wisdom, saw that liberty was the goal.
Here is a great straight-to-YouTube Trifecta:
This Trifecta episode is a great tactical point, but, for all that, we have to understand that this November is a mere down-payment. Stand by. The new blood will get sworn into office, and discover just How Completely Frobnicated the whole situation is. If the leadership feels We The People have their back, there may, potentially, be some whacking of the Federal hydra in the 112th Congress. Historically, the professionals get accepted into the Ruling Class, and get their Sith Lord makeover.
If we merely light up a maduro and congratulate ourselves on the successful group blogger-bation, by 2012, the Tea Party energy will be the political equivalent of Springsteen’s Glory Days, and the Lindsey Graham and John McCain clones will continue to make patriotic noises while treating the Constitution with the affection afforded a urinal cake.
Remember, this hairball has been a century in the making, and will, at bare minimum, require a decade of your best effort just to get that hydra chopped down to something reasonably un-lethal. Incumbency is the enemy. We The People can either rule, or enjoy slavery.
Set against the backdrop of today’s headline – 67% of Americans don’t approve of Obama’s economic policies, the film takes a provocative look at our deeply depressed economy using the words and actions of Presidents Reagan and Obama and shows the marked contrast between Reaganomics and Obamanomics. The film contrasts two views of the role that the federal government should play in our daily lives using the words and actions of Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama. Two versions of the American dream now stand in sharp contrast. One views the money you earned as yours and best allocated by you; the other believes that the elite in Washington know how to best allocate your wealth. One champions the traditional American dream, which has played out millions of times through generations of Americans, of improving one’s lot in life and even daring to dream and build big. The other holds that there is no end to the “good” the government can do by taking and spending other peoples’ money in an ever-burgeoning list of programs. The documentary film I Want Your Money exposes the high cost in lost freedom and in lost opportunity to support a Leviathan-like bureaucratic state.
This could be good. I hope the film exposes the fact that the Federal Reserve is close to, if not the root of, all this evil. While it may be a stretch to End the Fed outright, and perhaps savvy politics for the GOP to be keeping a low profile about Paul Ryan, the GOP needs to quit being coy and step up to the Federalist plate now, now, now.
Members of President Obama’s deficit commission huddled behind closed doors today despite pleas from the left and right that they hold all their meetings in public.
The move only heightens suspicion that rather than forging a national consensus on future spending priorities, the commission’s work will consist of backroom dealings in which members of the Washington aristocracy find high-minded excuses for cutting the social safety net.
Bruce Reed, the commission’s executive director, assured the Huffington Post there is nothing sinister about holding working group meetings like today’s in private. But he had no good reason why they shouldn’t be held in public, either.
“The smaller working group meetings are not decision making meetings,” he said. “It’s not practical to have C-SPAN there anytime two or more fiscal commission members are gathered…. We’re going to have some boring meetings in public — and some boring meetings by ourselves.”
Reed said the “actual deliberations are going to be in public, at the full commission meetings.”
Listen, Editors: the political version of the Unreliable Narrator is what you supported in 2008. The only surprise here is that you have any surprise left in you. We’ll just coat that remaining surprise in BP oil Real Soon Now. But you can let go the naïveté. You can realize that your Progressive Overlords care not fig #1 for you, liberty in general, or the US Constitution in particular. There will be exactly zero (0) actual deliberations in public: all decisions will occur away from scrutiny, with occasional sideshow flourishes for the rubes.
But what’s the harm of letting the public into the other meetings as well? Reed struggled with the answer. “Look, I think that the, the goal of, of the working group meetings is to give members of the commission a chance to ask questions and learn things and not have to make formal statements and, and so we’re going to have plenty of opportunities for members of the commission to educate the public and be educated by the public. But sometimes members want to have a boring meeting just by themselves.”
Translation: the exact nature of the financial crisis is so bad that, if the general scope were to become public knowledge, the current Greek instability would seem a rosy alternative.
Perhaps, as a consolation prize, the good President could remind us all that words about sunlight are almost as good a disinfectant as actual sunlight. Because words matter.
The situation recalls an old poll from The Onion: “73 Percent Of Americans Unable To Believe This S**t”
Calling the American people’s enormous s**t-belief capacity “one of the cornerstones of our democracy,” U.S. Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) stressed that it is the patriotic duty of all citizens to grant our leaders the benefit of the doubt with regard to their s**t.
“If the American people are no longer willing to believe this s**t, who will?” Kerry said. “Somebody’s got to take this s**t at face value. Otherwise, why are we even doing all this s**t in the first place? I am truly saddened by the lack of faith that the citizens of this country are willing to put in my s**t, as well as that of my esteemed colleagues. We must repair our society’s fraying trust in the s**t of our elected officials, or you would not believe the kind of hardcore, heavy-duty s**t that will come down.”
The Federal Reserve holds interest rates where they are for an ‘Extended Period‘, and the Dow holds itself above 11k. One person in three thinks the country is one the right track, which may or may not be related to Fed policy.
Across the pond, Spain joined Portugal and Greece in the downgrade club. If words themselves could do the trick, Greece would be leading the way out of the pit, emphasis mine:
Speaking during a cabinet meeting Wednesday, Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou said that every EU member must “prevent the fire that intensified through the international crisis from spreading to the entire European and global economy.”
Papandreou insisted Greece was determined to bring its economy into order. “We will show that we do not run away. In difficult times we can perform — and we are performing — miracles,” he said, adding that “our government is determined to correct a course that has been followed for decades in a very short time.”
Via Blogprof, Peter Schiff, who is campaigning to replace Chris Dodd, rhetorically dribbles James Galbraith on the subject of debt like a California State check:
Let Galbraith eat cake.
Meanwhile, the Republicans appear to have decided that the havok to be wreaked by Dingy Hairy’s financial regulatory reform bill is less than the threat of an all-nighter trying to keep it off of the Senate floor.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Kentucky Republican, said there had been a “key agreement reached”.
He cited “assurances” from Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd, Connecticut Democrat, that he would remove provisions in the bill that the GOP believes will lead to excessive risk-taking by financial firms requiring more bailouts.
Reached for comment, Bart Stupaka Democrat was nearly overheard saying that anything less that a privately signed Executive Order wasn’t worth the condom in which it was delivered.
Look, the Constitutionally legitimate Federal spending is less than half the budget. More dismal analysis here. Veering in the direction of something tasteless, one wonders how much personal, physical risk Mr. Galbraith would undertake in support of his “What, me worry?” analysis of the threat to the US economy. Strictly as a thought experiment, would he seriously bet his own future as cheerfully as he risks that of others, if the negative feedback touched him personally?
Determination to ‘bring the economy into order’ occurs when the budget submitted has a gazoutta less than the gazinta. It will also happen when the Federal government is confined to Federal tasks. There are too many Galbraithians holding office today.
Reached for comment on the outlook, Tim Geithner was saturnine about the economy:
The Market Oracle is bereft of cheer as the inevitability of the VAT draws near:
What has surprisingly received little media attention is that the US Government has been steadily reducing the maturity of its treasury portfolio to keep fiscal deficits down. Whether interest rates rise or it becomes a problem for the US Treasury to re-fund the ever expanding roll-over pools, both suggest a Maturity Wall is dead ahead. It will occur no later than 2012, but it will likely be triggered with the next financial default scare.
Read the whole thing. Vast amounts of unsavory graphs to be found.
Think of US taxpayers as a single person, and the VAT as a blood donation that ends somewhere after the second pint, when the heart ‘unexpectedly’ implodes.
Or, maybe, these friendly Progressive vampires will find a way to keep the donor barely alive, just slightly above the point of catastrophic collapse. Won’t that be a swell thing to explain to the Founding Fathers in the afterlife?
What I want to see after the inevitable crisis is a removal of direct taxation power from DC. Let the Appropriations Committee be a wrestling match to determine the funding targets, and impose them on the States by whatever rule becomes law. But if the bill as presented is too great, then the funding targets go down. I realize that the notion of a negative feedback loop is mature, radical, sane, and unworkable. However, if we had more engineers and fewer lawyers driving the bus, the end might not be so predictable:
Update: via Insty, more VAT love, which may not have been the sort of affection for which you voted.
