Banksters?

Most Americans have opposed the TARP program under Bush and the subsequent big spending bills that were passed under Obama. Somehow, without knowing the details, we've had this gut feeling that we were being hoodwinked. At first we only worried about the secrecy surrounding the problem, the bills, and about the distribution of the money.

Later we began to read investment newsletters and financial blogs that spoke of the perpetrators (primarily Paulson, Bernanke, and Geithner) as participants in a massive fraud program that paid off their buddies at the big banks, especially Goldman Sachs, while bleeding the taxpayers.

I didn't know any real details until I saw this article last week at Bloomberg.com, New York Fed’s Secret Choice to Pay for Swaps Hits Taxpayers. I suggest you read it to at least discover Stephen Friedman's conflicts of interest as board member of Goldman Sachs and former chairman of the board of the NY Federal Reserve and his personal profit of $5,400,000 on the Goldman Sachs stocks he bought in a, ahem, timely manner.

On a similar note, but easier to digest, is this video from MSNBC: "Banks Have Taken Over The Government And Made Taxpayers Slaves To Bank-Run Gambling Casinos"

Universal Government Run Health Care?

Our favorite illustrator of political realities (see examples here and here) has a tiny video out on health care as it exists now. Watch it; it's well worth your time.

Obama Speeches

While the media continue to swoon over Obama's speeches and press conferences, I find them rather dull. His speech pattern is totally predictable with the inevitable pause as he turns his head from one teleprompter to the other. The timbre of his voice seems condescending, as if he were trying to explain physics to unruly six year olds. And the practiced professorial tone grates on my ears.

But the content is even more predictable:
1. He faces a problem through no fault of his own. The implication is either that Bush did it or it's been happening for decades.
2. He alone has the answer to the problem and somehow his answer always involves giving more power to the federal government and spending more money that we don't have.
3. The problem is so devastating that it must be handled IMMEDIATELY by forcing a new bill through Congress so he can sign it tomorrow, if possible.

His refusal to allow time for honest debate about important issues merely indicates the extreme poverty of his ideas and plans. Good ideas are worth discussion and only increase in value through honest debate. In fact, if his main goal were to destroy our once great country, I hardly know of anything he could do differently than he's already done in the first 150 days of his presidency.

Read American's for Tax Reform for a thorough recounting of his tenure in Taxpayer Timeline of Obama's First 150 Days.

Finally, Someone Else Said It!

After spending months wondering if all Republicans had laryngitis or amnesia, Eric Cantor found his voice. Only a few journalists noticed, but his press conference did get reported. Here's the key quote from his interview with AP:

"They said, 'Set aside the rule of law, let's strip secured creditors, bondholders, of their rights. Take them away outside of the bankruptcy process and give them to the political cronies and the auto workers' unions. . .It's almost like looking at Putin's Russia. You want to reward your political friends at the expense of the certainty of law?"

Too bad the Supreme Court is still asleep at the wheel over trashing our Rule of Law in favor of cronyism by The Won.

One Chart = 1000 Words

Click on chart to enlarge it.

Dr. Sanity has posted this chart which explains relationships that I've been intending to cover for months. However, I must admit that the chart does the work of many words, even mine, for anyone who understands and remembers the Twentieth Century. If you would like a more thorough discussion, go here to read about the Left's inexplicable love affair with tyrants and their failed tyrannies.

The most frightening aspect is realizing how successful the Liberal Left has become in the freedom loving United States by carefully managing its message through academia, mass media, and the entertainment industry. Those who dare to oppose the agenda have immediately been branded as heartless misanthropes in a surreal inversion of reality, a la Alice in Wonderland.

Illegitimi Non Carborundum*

Far too long, conservatives have stayed defensive when the more liberal folks (or Statists, as Mark Levin would say) have assaulted them for being uncaring, behind the times, or devoid of new ideas. The last one hundred years, however, include many examples of the failures of central planning, socialized medicine, or government run industry. Indeed, it is the Conservatives who have history on their side.

The US has a relatively new form of government, but it is based on ideas on that have been discussed, debated, and distilled in thousands of years of philosophical discourse. From Socrates to Locke, thinkers and observers in each age studied the human race, observing what worked and what didn’t. The Founding Fathers took this cumulative wisdom and applied it to practical governing principles. Thus was our nation born.

Inspired by the heights of human achievement when set free, but mindful of human depravity, they devised a scheme of checks and balances that allowed the freedom each man craves and yet provided built in brakes to guard against corruption.

This is our heritage. The Constitution spawned and guarded a nation that achieved general contentment and financial success heretofore unknown on this earth. Like all human institutions, it is not perfect. It has created opportunity, not utopia. Results, although magnificent in most areas do allow chicanery, perversion, and suffering to exist.

In response to problems, the American people have developed into the most generous volunteers on earth. From barn raisings to blood drives, for generations citizens have responded to real needs of their neighbors. And Americans have traditionally preferred receiving the leg up instead of the hand out.

However, at least since Woodrow Wilson, there has arisen a group in the national scene who focused on the marginalized and, whether from altruism or a lust for power have sought government programs to solve problems.

Lyndon Johnson accelerated the process with his War on Poverty that continues even today. The result has not been the elimination of poverty, but rather the establishment of an underclass of people dependent on the government for their basic necessities. And as the wealth of society as a whole grows, so does the expectation of what constitutes basic necessities.

Obama appears to want to greatly accelerate the process of government intervention with his solemn pronouncements about changing health care, education, volunteer work, and charitable giving. To Statists, the ideas are noble. To conservatives, the ideas may be noble, but they remain unworkable in the real world. In the end, the messy and occasionally uneven processes involved in human freedom still bring the best results to the most people. Central planning, on the other hand, eventually brings universal misery.

Let us proudly stand up to defend and explain our beliefs so that our country men fully understand what is at stake and return to Constitutional principles rather than embracing unproven or unworkable programs.

* Illegitimi non carborundum is a mock-Latin aphorism jokingly taken to mean "don't let the bastards grind you down". From Wikipedia

Should These Clowns Run Businesses?

Obama has proposed the federal government take control of any business they judge to be “in trouble.” This violates so many laws and concepts that Americans believe in and defend that one can hardly understand why masses of people are not marching on Washington with pitchforks in hand. I have yet to see much reaction to his pronouncement even among conservatives.

But, even if you put all constitutional questions aside, do you really think that any arm of the federal government can run a business? Just look at what’s happened to AIG.
1. Most, if not all of their problems were caused by laws passed by Congress (Community Reinvestment Act, for example) and enforced by federal agencies that encouraged/demanded bad loans to avoid the so called “red lining” of neighborhoods.
2. The federal government took over AIG, but either did not supervise the expenditure of money or else feigned ignorance of the way money was spent, even when it was sent to shore up overseas banks.
3. To insure that the contractual agreements made with AIG were kept, the federal government hid protection for the AIG bonuses in the “Stimulus” bill, even reinserting it at the last minute with the Dodd Amendment.
4. When the public became upset with the bonus program, members of Congress pretended ignorance and fanned the flames of outrage. Dodd, author of the Dodd Amendment, became one of the most outspoken proponents of breaking the contracts. Shumer threatened to get the money back one way or another.
5. The House of Representatives went even farther: encouraged by Barney Frank, they enacted a law retroactively making a legal contract illegal and those who benefited from it into criminals.

It is beyond comprehension that anyone would willingly work for or do business with any company that was run with such blatant dishonesty and such lack of direction. Leadership like this automatically dooms the enterprise to abject failure. And yet, the Obama administration proposes to improve the economic situation by selecting other businesses to take over.

GIVE Is Worse Than I Thought

We have additional reason to fear consequences if the GIVE Act (HR1388) continues to roll down the pike toward becoming law. It passed the House this week by 321 to 105.
1. Funding, which is ALWAYS underestimated in the voting stage, will cost $6,000,000,000 during the next 5 years.
2. It includes provisions for 250,000 people in Obama’s National Civilian Security Task Force. (Note that Security implies “armed.”) What about the police, sheriff's posse, and National Guard that we already have?
3. It explores the possibility of every one working for the country in some form of “voluntary” service. If you have to serve, it’s not voluntary. And Americans of their own accord already do more volunteer work than people of any other country.
4. It mentions people living on centralized campuses while serving, carefully avoiding the negative term “camps.”
5. It even mentions uniforms for the “volunteers.”

See Call about HR 1388 Today for additional information. Now it's time to call your Senators.

Governing by Stealth

In the six weeks that Obama has been governing, a pattern of trickery has evolved.

• Last week, several official spokesmen clearly announced that there would be no nationalization of banks. But on Friday, the statement was made that the US government was trading their Citibank Preferred Stock (usually non voting stock) for common stock (voting stock). Now the federal government, as a single entity with almost 40% of the votes in each corporate decision, will control the actions of the large bank. It’s not officially nationalization, but it’s darn close to it.
• Facing growing criticism about the possibility of the FOCA bill, apparently the decision has been made to do it piecemeal. Last week, Obama rescinded the Bush executive order that had allowed health care providers to opt out of certain practices like abortion, embryonic stem cell research, or euthanasia, if the actions conflicted with their conscience. No enforcement has yet taken place, but the foundation is in place.
• Also, facing criticism about the Fairness Doctrine from free speech advocates, an amendment to the DC voting rights bill was passed (87-11) last week that stated that the Fairness Doctrine would not be resurrected. The media presented the news with great fanfare, disdainfully telling conservatives that it had never been an issue anyway. Many sighed with relief. But the same bill also carries the Durbin amendment (57-41) that attacks syndicated talk radio shows by forcing the FCC to take actions to promote diversity of communication ownership. When implemented, it will hurt many small radio stations that depend on syndicated programs for revenue and will pave the way for ACORN or similar groups to get their own stations at bargain basement prices.
• I have already written about some of the provisions of the “Stimulus Bill” that effectively encourage, if not establish, socialized medicine. That has passed and has been signed into law. See Health Care for Me, But Not for Thee and Now We Know.