"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."
-- C. S. Lewis
In the wake of the Billionaire Bailout being defeated, the elitist politicians and their friends in the mainstream media are bewildered. They just can't accept that the populous isn't failing in line behind the bailout. To their brilliant minds the need for the Billionaire Bailout (they call it a rescue)is obvious.
They are now expressing their true feelings about the hoi polloi. To the elitest media and politicians Americans are stupid and simple minded. The media and the sell out politicians are now going to try and educate all of us.
“If you just solely rely on the phone calls we’re getting from home, listening to people who don’t understand the complexities of our marketplace and what we’re dealing with here, the easiest vote for you to make would be a no vote today. You have to go beyond that.” - Rep Gary Miller R-CA Dist. 42
"We need to be able to better demonstrate that there are impacts for American families, for retirees, for small businesses, for larger businesses who are hiring, for our banking system, for the ability to get home loans, for businesses to be able to make their payrolls, their small-business accounts,...it's a hard thing to do. There are four or five steps involved ... before you get to the kitchen table of the average American family and how it affects them." - White House spokesman Tony Fratto
Barack Obama said the plan had been "misunderstood and poorly communicated. This is not a plan to just hand over $700 billion of your money to a few banks on Wall Street."
Ron Paul being interviewed by some talking head on CNN. To demonstrate how well the mainstream media researches, the quote they show on screen is not from Ron Paul's website nor is it Ron Paul's quote. This quote:
What a heroic day! The people rose up against a coalition of every evil group in America: the central bank, Wall Street plutocrats, politicians, banksters, think tanks (including the pseudo-libertarian sort), big media, big academia, and big business, and won. Today we got a taste of what things may look like when the regime is finally toppled, and its theft and killing stopped. The Austrian economists are vindicated again, as is Rothbard's political analysis, and our pizza party for Mises's birthday today look on an especially festive air. The bad guys may yet beat us, but how sweet to see the CNBC types running around like chickens with their heads cut off. Now let's get to work to defend the free market and sound money, and finger the Fed and all who support it as the culprits. Oh, and by the way, congratulations, Ron Paul.
Excellent article on the bailout from Jeffrey A. Miron, senior lecturer in economics at Harvard University:
Congress has balked at the Bush administration's proposed $700 billion bailout of Wall Street. Under this plan, the Treasury would have bought the "troubled assets" of financial institutions in an attempt to avoid economic meltdown.
This bailout was a terrible idea. Here's why.
The current mess would never have occurred in the absence of ill-conceived federal policies. The federal government chartered Fannie Mae in 1938 and Freddie Mac in 1970; these two mortgage lending institutions are at the center of the crisis. The government implicitly promised these institutions that it would make good on their debts, so Fannie and Freddie took on huge amounts of excessive risk.
Worse, beginning in 1977 and even more in the 1990s and the early part of this century, Congress pushed mortgage lenders and Fannie/Freddie to expand subprime lending. The industry was happy to oblige, given the implicit promise of federal backing, and subprime lending soared.
The fact that government bears such a huge responsibility for the current mess means any response should eliminate the conditions that created this situation in the first place, not attempt to fix bad government with more government.
The obvious alternative to a bailout is letting troubled financial institutions declare bankruptcy. Bankruptcy means that shareholders typically get wiped out and the creditors own the company.
Bankruptcy does not mean the company disappears; it is just owned by someone new (as has occurred with several airlines). Bankruptcy punishes those who took excessive risks while preserving those aspects of a businesses that remain profitable.
In contrast, a bailout transfers enormous wealth from taxpayers to those who knowingly engaged in risky subprime lending. Thus, the bailout encourages companies to take large, imprudent risks and count on getting bailed out by government. This "moral hazard" generates enormous distortions in an economy's allocation of its financial resources.
Katey Montague has issued three new videos on gun rights.
Katey Montague is the daughter of Bruce Montague. Bruce Montague was a Canadian gunsmith until his arrest on September 11, 2004 for violating the licensing and registration terms of the Firearms Act(Bill C-68).
Katey with the help of family friend Chris DiArmani made these videos to draw attention to her Dad's plight and the stupidity of Canadian gun laws.
Bruce Montague was sentenced on March 18, 2006 to 18 months in jail. Bruce's wife Donna Montague was found innocent of careless storage, and was given six months probation for owning firearms without a license.
Peter Schiff, the president of Euro Pacific Capital Inc., a brokerage firm based in Darien, Connecticut says the bailout bill is a Weapon of Mass Destruction for the economy. He says the government cure is worse than the disease.
Peter Schiff, the president of Euro Pacific Capital Inc., a brokerage firm based in Darien, Connecticut saw the coming crisis in the housing market. Of course he was laughed at by the "experts" who are now calling for a bailout of the industry that they said had a bright future.
This video is from December 16, 2006:
Peter Schiff was an economic adviser in Ron Paul's presidential campaign. Schiff made the following statement concerning Paul's economic revitalization plan:
We need a plan that stimulates savings and production not more of the reckless borrowing and consumption that got us into this mess in the first place. Ron Paul’s plan is the only one that amounts to a step in the right direction. If you want meaningful change - for the better that is - Ron Paul is the only candidate capable of delivering it. The others merely promise to continue the failed policies that are at the root of our current economic problems.
NTU urges all Members of Congress to vote "NO" on the $700 billion financial industry bailout plan.
This unconscionable scheme forces the vast majority of taxpayers who were honest and prudent to bail out firms on Wall Street that made bad business decisions. Furthermore, it does nothing to address the root causes of today's market difficulties. The long-term effects of this fiasco, including inflation, a weaker dollar, and an even more precarious federal balance sheet, are almost certain to outweigh the shallow short-term stabilization of moneyed interests who have been twisting arms on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue.
Congress helped to create this debacle with the Community Reinvestment Act, poor tax policies, hastily designed mark-to-market regulations, and spectacular negligence with regard to the systemic risks posed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Rather than addressing those core problems, this disgraceful plan instead snatches $700 billion from the pockets of hard-working Americans, the vast majority of whom had no part in this horrific play.
Congress apparently decided to listen to a few political heavy-hitters in the financial community about the need to shovel boatloads of taxpayer money into their faltering businesses, rather than listening to their constituents who oppose this giveaway almost unanimously. The legislation before you has made nips and tucks to the Treasury's original proposal that ultimately cannot conceal its fundamental flaws. Surely some Members will reap what they have sown at the ballot box for their shocking negligence of taxpayers' concerns.
Roll call votes on the bailout will be one of only a handful of votes in the last decade to receive the highest weight of 100 in our annual Rating of Congress.
If you have any questions, please contact NTU Government Affairs Manager Andrew Moylan at (703) 216-7924
Here is a press release from the Republican Liberty Caucus opposing the bailout of the fat cats on Wall Street by their corrupt political friends in Washington DC:
No Bailout for Failure, No Rescue from Risk, says GOP group September 29, 2008
For Immediate Release Contact: William Westmiller, (805) 493-4332
“NO Bailout for Failure, NO Rescue from Risk,” says Republican Group
Thousand Oaks, CA — A national caucus of Republican activists has urged GOP legislators to stand firm against the “Paulson Bailout” of a corrupt financial regulatory system. “This proposal is a government takeover of the entire U.S. economy,” says Republican Liberty Caucus Chairman William Westmiller, “whose only purpose is to rescue those who made risky bets on bad mortgages.”
The Caucus [www.RLC.org] opposes any taxpayer payoff to rescue those who made bad investments in any sector of the economy. “The problem is not a lack of government control,” says Westmiller, “but rather the decades of market distortions imposed by Congress through subsidies, mandates, guarantees, and constraints on free-enterprise mortgage offerings.”
The Paulson proposal grants the Secretary of the Treasury total control over all mortgage-related financial instruments, nearly a trillion-dollars in discretionary funds, and the power to nationalize or deputize every financial institution in the nation. “This isn’t a rescue plan,” says Westmiller, “it is an economic police state.”
Over the past five years, Congress has refused — on multiple occasions — to impose standard accounting practices on “Government Sponsored Enterprises”, maintained an implicit taxpayer guarantee against all of their losses, and expanded the discretion of federal agencies to allocate new national debt to failed investments and insurance brokers. “This is not free enterprise, nor anything even remotely associated with the American Dream,” says Westmiller, “it is pure and simply corporatism, designed by oligarchs, suitable for a Weimar Republic or Soviet Union, not the United States of America.”
The RLC favors clear legislation protecting individuals against fraud, misrepresentation, and theft. It opposes any law that benefits one class of Americans at the expense of another, including any form of financial guarantee or subsidy that rewards failure or encourages foolish investments.
“The worst aspect of all the proposals now pending in Congress,” says Westmiller, “is the destructive craving to save a system of patronage, political favors, and class benefits that has brought us the current crisis. More of the same is no solution.”
“The ‘Pelosi Compromise’ is a fruitless exercise of battling against the most extreme Democratic proposals,” says Westmiller, “adding new layers of bureaucracy, prolonged studies of alernative interventions, and phased-in destruction of the dollar is not progress, it is more, much more, of the same failed policies.”
The RLC applauds the stamina and fortitude of multiple Republican Senators and Congressmen who have opposed any corporate bailout, expansions of government fiscal power, new burdens on taxpayers, or any further assaults on the value of the dollar through inflation.
The Republican Liberty Caucus is a political membership organization working within the Republican Party in support of individual rights, limited government, and free enterprise. The Caucus has members in all 50 states and 20 chartered state chapters. The RLC has urged all of its members to communicate to their representatives in Congress their total opposition to any bailout.
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References:
RLC Statement of Principles and Positions: “We oppose all restrictions on the voluntary and honest exchange of value in a free market … We oppose all legislation that concedes Congressional power to any regulatory agency, executive department, or international body. We support the phase out of any government subsidies and incentives that support or favor any business or special interest … We favor the privatization of all government assets an a transition to free market management and services for all programs that exceed the enumerated powers of the Constitution.
RLC Advisor Mike Pence (R-IN) [Link 1 | Link 2]: “House Republicans believe that we should not pass along the cost of a $700 billion bailout from Main Street to Wall Street … I simply find it anathema that the federal government would borrow $700 billion from future generations of Americans to nationalize every bad mortgage in America”.
“Economic freedom means the freedom to succeed and the freedom to fail. The decision to give the federal government the ability to nationalize almost every bad mortgage in America interrupts this basic truth of our free market economy.”
RLC Advisor John Shadegg (R-AZ): “The problem here is that the government created this. … Now we see the two chairs on each side, adding all kinds of things to the bill. I think the last thing you do when government policies get you in trouble is write a blank check to the government.”
RLC Advisor Ron Paul (R-TX) [Link 1 | Link 2]: “Unfortunately, the government’s preferred solution to the crisis is the very thing that got us into this mess in the first place: government intervention.”
“By doing more of the same, we will only continue and intensify the distortions in our economy - all the capital misallocation, all the malinvestment — and prevent the market’s attempt to re-establish rational pricing of houses and other assets.”
RLC Advisor Vern McKinley, in 1997: “The GSE structure is a classic case of a special legislative benefit that its recipients will fight to the death to maintain. Congress should immediately revoke all the benefits of government sponsorship …”
Republican Liberty Caucus 44 Summerfield Street Thousand Oaks, CA 91360 (866) RLC-Liberty [752-5423] www.RLC.org
Once again here is a listing of the top recipients of contributions from financial interests. The politicians are serving their masters as they rip us off.
From Open Secrets.org, here are the contributions to the two status quo presidential candidates from the financial industry sector:
Barack Obama Goldman Sachs $691,930 Citigroup Inc $448,599 JPMorgan Chase & Co $442,919 Lehman Brothers $370,524 Morgan Stanley $318,070
John McCain Merrill Lynch $298,413 Citigroup Inc $269,251 Morgan Stanley $233,272 Goldman Sachs $208,395 JPMorgan Chase & Co $179,975 Credit Suisse Group $150,025 Bank of America $129,475 Wachovia Corp $122,846 Lehman Brothers $117,500 Bear Stearns $99,300 Pinnacle West Capital $97,700
Also from Open Secrets.org, here are top 20 recipients in Congress from the financial industry. 11 Democrats and 9 Republicans and look who is #1:
Democrat Representative Dennis Kucinich gets a lot right in this speech. The bailout is being driven by fear not fact and it is being done too quickly with too many questions unanswered. Why isn't Congress questioning the underlying premise or considering any alternatives?
About the only thing I disagree with is more regulation and directly bailing out homeowners. Kucinich comes at this from a left wing perspective, but he isn't corrupt like most of his fellow congressman. I respect Kucinich even when I disagree with him.
It now appears that a deal to ripoff the taxpayers and reward the Wall Street fat cats has been agreed upon. From MSNBC:
Key lawmakers who struck a post-midnight deal on a $700 billion bailout for the financial industry predicted Sunday it would pass Congress, putting in place the largest government intervention in markets since the Great Depression.
Negotiators sought to iron out the final shape of the legislation and it still had to be reviewed by House Republicans, whose fierce opposition to a federal rescue nearly torpedoed an emerging bipartisan pact late in the week.
But officials in both parties were hopeful for a House vote Monday, and the two presidential candidates said they probably would support it.
Under the rescue plan, the government would pump as much as $700 billion into beleaguered financial firms that are starving for cash, taking over huge amounts of devalued assets from the companies in the hopes of unlocking frozen credit.
I’m sure these brilliant minds in the House and Senate will closely read each and every one of the hundreds of pages of the bill before voting on it. Yeah right!
With a few exceptions most in Congress are nothing but sellouts. I know Ron Paul will vote against the bailout and also apparently Richard Shelby of Alabama.
Anyone who votes for this bill is guilty of theft pure and simple.
Meanwhile in other crime news, more spending and more bailouts courtesy of the elected criminals in the Senate. From MSNBC:
Automakers gained $25 billion in taxpayer-subsidized loans and oil companies won elimination of a long-standing ban on drilling off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts as the Senate passed a sprawling spending bill Saturday.
The 78-12 vote sent the $634 billion measure to President Bush, who was expected to sign it even though it spends more money and contains more pet projects than he would have liked.
The Pentagon is in line for a record budget. In addition to $70 billion approved this summer for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Defense Department would receive $488 billion, a six percent increase. The spending bill also offers aid to victims of flooding in the Midwest and recent hurricanes across the Gulf Coast.
Such a huge bill usually would dominate the end-of-session agenda on Capitol Hill. But it went below the radar screen because attention focused on the congressional bailout of Wall Street.
Libertarian Presidential Candidate Bob Barr's reaction to the non debate. The debate he was not allowed to participate in.
Debate Response: “The Debate That Wasn’t”
September 27, 2008 10:04 am EST
There's not a dime's worth of difference between Senator McCain and Senator Obama. The viewers of this first presidential "debate" missed the opportunity for a true debate because the viewpoints I represent were not raised.
This was clearly a debate between big government and bigger government. The proposals for spending taxpayers' hard-earned money for everything from bailing out Wall Street to bailing out Georgia (theirs, not ours) are simply irresponsible.
We, the United States, are living way beyond our means, and in this debate, there was not a single recognition--let alone an alarm cry--for the runaway spending of our government. Senators McCain and Obama honestly believe that the American taxpayers have endless amounts of money available for Washington politicians to hand out to their favorite cause of the day.
We have been told that the Wall Street bailout is needed in part because there is a credit crunch. If our government wasn't so fiscally irresponsible, and we had not amassed a $9.5 trillion dollar debt, there would be more money available for the private sector to deal with this credit crunch.
Second, there should be no mad dash to pass any legislation; let alone legislation that can cost taxpayers a trillion dollars. Legislation creates lasting obligations, which are easier to create than to cancel. Already, the initial three-page bailout bill has swelled to more than 100 pages.
Bailing out some of the financial institutions, like Bear Stearns a few months ago, encourages other companies to forego typical market place measures for dealing with their bad investments in hopes of receiving immunity, and a reward, for their mismanagement from Washington bureaucrats.
With Bob Barr in the debate, you would have heard about the need to involve the Justice Department to find out if fraud or any other criminal behavior led to this Wall Street crisis.
Accountability was not present in tonight's debate; just the repetitive refrain that the taxpayers have to pay for the mistakes of Wall Street, no matter what the cost might eventually add up to.
On foreign policy, I was getting dizzy with all the places they want to inject our military forces. Both McCain and Obama need to be reminded that our military comes under the Department of Defense, not the Department of Offense.
I will defend the US from attack, but I will not use force except when an attack on the US is an imminent, clear and present danger, or in response to an attack. Our service men and women are not the world's policemen, and we have no business occupying other countries like Iraq.
The debate tonight convinced me that neither McCain nor Obama want to, or can, change the direction of our country. With roughly 80 percent of all Americans saying our country is headed in the wrong direction, I am the only candidate who embodies their hope for true change.
The Washington establishment doesn't want to face up to the challenges next administration will inherit. If you're part of the 55 percent or more of voters who think the debates would be enriched by having me in them, let the news media know your feelings. The establishment will respond if public opinion is strongly in favor of my inclusion in the next two presidential debates.
Libertarian Party presidential candidate Bob Barr represented the 7th District of Georgia in the U. S. House of Representatives from 1995 to 2003.
Ron Paul being interviewed by Neil Cavuto on the financial turmoil. Paul says:
"They have to admit the truth they can't pretend they can patch this together by just printing more money and expanding credit. We've done over $700 billion already , they want another $700 billion, so it is unmanageable. You cannot place value into assets that are worthless."
Here is a video on the role of the Community Reinvestment Act in the financial turmoil we are now experiencing. I strongly disagree with its conclusion to support John McCain, but it is an important video that explains much of the problem and the Democrats role in it.
The Democrats have successfully sold themselves as defenders of the poor and the working man, when in reality they have been in bed with corporate interests for years. They have personally benefited from their service to these corporate interests. (See below video)
This year please consider a vote for a third party candidate. Personally I am supporting Bob Barr, but I would be happy if those who agreed with the positions of Chuck Baldwin, Ralph Nader or Cynthia McKinney would vote for them rather than voting for the lesser of the evils that are Barrack Obama and John McCain. We need to break the corrupt two party system in this Country before it is too late.
From Open Secrets.org, here are the contributions to the two status quo presidential candidates from the financial industry sector:
Barack Obama Goldman Sachs $691,930 Citigroup Inc $448,599 JPMorgan Chase & Co $442,919 Lehman Brothers $370,524 Morgan Stanley $318,070
John McCain Merrill Lynch $298,413 Citigroup Inc $269,251 Morgan Stanley $233,272 Goldman Sachs $208,395 JPMorgan Chase & Co $179,975 Credit Suisse Group $150,025 Bank of America $129,475 Wachovia Corp $122,846 Lehman Brothers $117,500 Bear Stearns $99,300 Pinnacle West Capital $97,700
Also from Open Secrets.org, here are top 20 recipients in Congress from the financial industry. 11 Democrats and 9 Republicans and look who is #1:
The financial meltdown the economists of the Austrian School predicted has arrived.
We are in this crisis because of an excess of artificially created credit at the hands of the Federal Reserve System. The solution being proposed? More artificial credit by the Federal Reserve. No liquidation of bad debt and malinvestment is to be allowed. By doing more of the same, we will only continue and intensify the distortions in our economy - all the capital misallocation, all the malinvestment - and prevent the market's attempt to re-establish rational pricing of houses and other assets.
Last night the president addressed the nation about the financial crisis. There is no point in going through his remarks line by line, since I'd only be repeating what I've been saying over and over - not just for the past several days, but for years and even decades.
Still, at least a few observations are necessary. The president assures us that his administration "is working with Congress to address the root cause behind much of the instability in our markets." Care to take a guess at whether the Federal Reserve and its money creation spree were even mentioned?
We are told that "low interest rates" led to excessive borrowing, but we are not told how these low interest rates came about. They were a deliberate policy of the Federal Reserve. As always, artificially low interest rates distort the market. Entrepreneurs engage in malinvestments - investments that do not make sense in light of current resource availability, that occur in more temporally remote stages of the capital structure than the pattern of consumer demand can support, and that would not have been made at all if the interest rate had been permitted to tell the truth instead of being toyed with by the Fed.
Not a word about any of that, of course, because Americans might then discover how the great wise men in Washington caused this great debacle. Better to keep scapegoating the mortgage industry or "wildcat capitalism" (as if we actually have a pure free market!).
Speaking about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the president said: "Because these companies were chartered by Congress, many believed they were guaranteed by the federal government. This allowed them to borrow enormous sums of money, fuel the market for questionable investments, and put our financial system at risk."
Doesn't that prove the foolishness of chartering Fannie and Freddie in the first place? Doesn't that suggest that maybe, just maybe, government may have contributed to this mess? And of course, by bailing out Fannie and Freddie, hasn't the federal government shown that the "many" who "believed they were guaranteed by the federal government" were in fact correct?
Then come the scare tactics. If we don't give dictatorial powers to the Treasury Secretary "the stock market would drop even more, which would reduce the value of your retirement account. The value of your home could plummet." Left unsaid, naturally, is that with the bailout and all the money and credit that must be produced out of thin air to fund it, the value of your retirement account will drop anyway, because the value of the dollar will suffer a precipitous decline. As for home prices, they are obviously much too high, and supply and demand cannot equilibrate if government insists on propping them up.
It's the same destructive strategy that government tried during the Great Depression: prop up prices at all costs. The Depression went on for over a decade. On the other hand, when liquidation was allowed to occur in the equally devastating downturn of 1921, the economy recovered within less than a year.
The president also tells us that Senators McCain and Obama will join him at the White House today in order to figure out how to get the bipartisan bailout passed. The two senators would do their country much more good if they stayed on the campaign trail debating who the bigger celebrity is, or whatever it is that occupies their attention these days.
F.A. Hayek won the Nobel Prize for showing how central banks' manipulation of interest rates creates the boom-bust cycle with which we are sadly familiar. In 1932, in the depths of the Great Depression, he described the foolish policies being pursued in his day - and which are being proposed, just as destructively, in our own:
Instead of furthering the inevitable liquidation of the maladjustments brought about by the boom during the last three years, all conceivable means have been used to prevent that readjustment from taking place; and one of these means, which has been repeatedly tried though without success, from the earliest to the most recent stages of depression, has been this deliberate policy of credit expansion.
To combat the depression by a forced credit expansion is to attempt to cure the evil by the very means which brought it about; because we are suffering from a misdirection of production, we want to create further misdirection - a procedure that can only lead to a much more severe crisis as soon as the credit expansion comes to an end... It is probably to this experiment, together with the attempts to prevent liquidation once the crisis had come, that we owe the exceptional severity and duration of the depression.
The only thing we learn from history, I am afraid, is that we do not learn from history.
The very people who have spent the past several years assuring us that the economy is fundamentally sound, and who themselves foolishly cheered the extension of all these novel kinds of mortgages, are the ones who now claim to be the experts who will restore prosperity! Just how spectacularly wrong, how utterly without a clue, does someone have to be before his expert status is called into question? Oh, and did you notice that the bailout is now being called a "rescue plan"? I guess "bailout" wasn't sitting too well with the American people.
The very people who with somber faces tell us of their deep concern for the spread of democracy around the world are the ones most insistent on forcing a bill through Congress that the American people overwhelmingly oppose. The very fact that some of you seem to think you're supposed to have a voice in all this actually seems to annoy them.
I continue to urge you to contact your representatives and give them a piece of your mind. I myself am doing everything I can to promote the correct point of view on the crisis. Be sure also to educate yourselves on these subjects - the Campaign for Liberty blog is an excellent place to start. Read the posts, ask questions in the comment section, and learn.
H.G. Wells once said that civilization was in a race between education and catastrophe. Let us learn the truth and spread it as far and wide as our circumstances allow. For the truth is the greatest weapon we have.
Congressman Ron Paul, the man who predicted six years ago what is happening right now in the financial markets, the man who was laughed at by the ill informed John McCain, talks about the bailout. First in a email sent out yesterday and then in a interview yesterday on Fox Business.
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Dear Friends,
Whenever a Great Bipartisan Consensus is announced, and a compliant media assures everyone that the wondrous actions of our wise leaders are being taken for our own good, you can know with absolute certainty that disaster is about to strike. The events of the past week are no exception.
The bailout package that is about to be rammed down Congress' throat is not just economically foolish. It is downright sinister. It makes a mockery of our Constitution, which our leaders should never again bother pretending is still in effect. It promises the American people a never-ending nightmare of ever-greater debt liabilities they will have to shoulder. Two weeks ago, financial analyst Jim Rogers said the bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac made America more communist than China! "This is welfare for the rich," he said. "This is socialism for the rich. It's bailing out the financiers, the banks, the Wall Streeters."
That describes the current bailout package to a T. And we're being told it's unavoidable.
The claim that the market caused all this is so staggeringly foolish that only politicians and the media could pretend to believe it. But that has become the conventional wisdom, with the desired result that those responsible for the credit bubble and its predictable consequences - predictable, that is, to those who understand sound, Austrian economics - are being let off the hook. The Federal Reserve System is actually positioning itself as the savior, rather than the culprit, in this mess!
• The Treasury Secretary is authorized to purchase up to $700 billion in mortgage-related assets at any one time. That means $700 billion is only the very beginning of what will hit us.
• Financial institutions are "designated as financial agents of the Government." This is the New Deal to end all New Deals.
• Then there's this: "Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency." Translation: the Secretary can buy up whatever junk debt he wants to, burden the American people with it, and be subject to no one in the process.
There goes your country.
Even some so-called free-market economists are calling all this "sadly necessary." Sad, yes. Necessary? Don't make me laugh.
Our one-party system is complicit in yet another crime against the American people. The two major party candidates for president themselves initially indicated their strong support for bailouts of this kind - another example of the big choice we're supposedly presented with this November: yes or yes. Now, with a backlash brewing, they're not quite sure what their views are. A sad display, really.
Although the present bailout package is almost certainly not the end of the political atrocities we'll witness in connection with the crisis, time is short. Congress may vote as soon as tomorrow. With a Rasmussen poll finding support for the bailout at an anemic seven percent, some members of Congress are afraid to vote for it. Call them! Let them hear from you! Tell them you will never vote for anyone who supports this atrocity.
The issue boils down to this: do we care about freedom? Do we care about responsibility and accountability? Do we care that our government and media have been bought and paid for? Do we care that average Americans are about to be looted in order to subsidize the fattest of cats on Wall Street and in government? Do we care?
When the chips are down, will we stand up and fight, even if it means standing up against every stripe of fashionable opinion in politics and the media? Times like these have a way of telling us what kind of a people we are, and what kind of country we shall be.
The lunacy in Washington DC and among the ruling class in both branches (Democrat and Republican) of the ruling party continues.
It is pure balderdash that this is a crisis for the nation. It is only a crisis for the fat cats on Wall Street who made risky and foolish investments in order to make bigger profits. They took the risk, so they should take the fall for their choices.
These firms give big bucks to politicians in both parties That’s why the politicians in BOTH parties who are on the receiving end of “contributions” from these firms want to bail them out.
Bailing them out will only help the fat cats on Wall Street and will hurt the common man.
Lending will not dry up if there are no bailouts, just different people will be doing the lending.
Don’t listen to all the lies coming from Washington.
NO bailouts under ANY conditions.
From Open Secrets.org, here are the contributions to the two status quo presidential candidates from the financial industry sector:
Barack Obama Goldman Sachs $691,930 Citigroup Inc $448,599 JPMorgan Chase & Co $442,919 Lehman Brothers $370,524 Morgan Stanley $318,070
John McCain Merrill Lynch $298,413 Citigroup Inc $269,251 Morgan Stanley $233,272 Goldman Sachs $208,395 JPMorgan Chase & Co $179,975 Credit Suisse Group $150,025 Bank of America $129,475 Wachovia Corp $122,846 Lehman Brothers $117,500 Bear Stearns $99,300 Pinnacle West Capital $97,700
Also from Open Secrets.org, here are top 20 recipients in Congress from the financial industry. 11 Democrats and 9 Republicans and look who is #1:
1. Obama, Barack (D) Senate $10,059,210
2. Clinton, Hillary (D-NY) Senate $7,355,720
3. McCain, John (R) Senate $7,029,893
4. Giuliani, Rudolph W (R) $5,038,745
5. Romney, Mitt (R) $4,884,137
6. Dodd, Christopher J (D-CT) Senate $2,932,532
7. Richardson, Bill (D) $912,200
8. Edwards, John (D) $781,395
9. Warner, Mark (D-VA) $671,483
10. Coleman, Norm (R-MN) Senate $626,850
11. McConnell, Mitch (R-KY) Senate $620,236
12. Emanuel, Rahm (D-IL) House $600,500
13. Sununu, John E (R-NH) Senate $595,650
14. Baucus, Max (D-MT) Senate $547,500
15. Durbin, (D-IL) Senate $515,475
16. Thompson, Fred (R) $492,205
17. Biden, Joseph R Jr (D-DE) Senate $432,450
18. Lautenberg, Frank R (D-NJ) Senate $424,233
19. Himes, Jim (D-CT) $393,254
20. Shays, Christopher (R-CT) House $362,720
Again don’t listen to the lies about this being a crisis for the Nation. It is only a crisis for the politicians and their fat cat contributors.
Libertarian Presidential Nominee Bob Barr weighs in on the upcoming debates sponsored by the Commission on Presidential Debates. The Commission on Presidential Debates has controlled the debates since 1996. It is controlled by the Democrats and Republicans. Not surprisingly, no third party candidate has appeared in the Presidential debates since the Commission on Presidential Debates took control.
The stupidity of the government schools continued yesterday. Of course that is not really a surprise. Blaine High School senior Tony Richard who was suspended over having a box cutter in his car (See Protecting Us from Teens Who Work at Grocery Stores) last week will be "allowed" to return to school today.
From the Minneapolis Star Tribune:
A Blaine teenager who was suspended from school for 10 days after a box cutter was spotted in his car in his high school's parking lot will be allowed to return to school today, the Anoka-Hennepin school board decided Monday night.
Blaine High School senior Tony Richard, 17, was suspended after admitting that the box cutter was sitting in plain sight in his car's cup holder Sept. 5, where it was spotted by a security guard checking parking passes. Richard said the cutter was a tool he used in his job on a Cub Foods clean-up crew, where his duties included cutting up cardboard boxes.
In suspending Richard, administrators invoked the school's zero-tolerance weapons policy and recommended to the school board that he be expelled.
However, late Monday the six-member board voted 5-1 that despite the policy, Richard can return to school, but will be on probation until Nov. 10, the end of the first quarter at school.
Any infractions during that time could result in his expulsion, school officials said, adding that technically, the punishment will be considered an expulsion for the purposes of record-keeping.
School board members and administrators declined to comment after the vote, citing confidentiality rules around student disciplinary matters.
So the School Board has even less common sense than the school administrators. At least the administrators can claim they are required to follow the idiotic rules. The School Board allows Richard to return to school, but he is on probation and his record will reflect this as an expulsion. What a a crock!
If the School Board had any common sense or even an once of reasoning they would have apologized to Mr. Richard for what their stupid rules put him through and begged him to return to their government monopoly school. They would have immediately altered their insane zero tolerance policy.
As I said before:
Government schooling was never a good idea. It is time to end this monopoly and bring real choice to eduction. With choice, schools would need to provide value to their customers (parents and students) instead of kowtowing to the teachers union and other special interests.
Wolf Blitzer interviews Ron Paul regarding the massive government bailouts. Ron Paul states that the bailouts are merely Wall Street dumping all the bills on main street. Paul says we are seeing the destruction of the dollar and the propping up of failed system.
Here are a couple of music videos from Texas musician / singer / songwriter Billy Blaze. Both songs talk about what is happening in this Country and how we are quickly losing our freedom.
Too many Americans blindly do what they are told, never questioning the motive or reasoning behind it. The mainstream media has become a cheerleader for the two major parties and the government, effectively ignoring and ridiculing other points of view. At the same time it finds the time and the space to cover the totally unimportant happenings on American Idol and the going-ons of Britney Spears and Paris Hilton.
"How fortunate for governments that men do not think." - Adolf Hitler
Bob Barr says the Constitution is in peril with Republicans and Democrats in power:
“We have two candidates running for president on the Republican and Democrat side that believe also, very strongly in essentially doing whatever they want, no regard for the Constitution whatsoever. The only way, friends, that this is going to change is to put somebody in office, the office of President of the United States, that actually understands, believes and is firmly committed in supporting this document. Not just its intent, but in its letter. That’s what we need and that’s why the Libertarian Party with Bob Barr at the head of its ticket will bring to you, the American people.”
Ah politics, that grand game of force and total hypocrisy. The John McCain campaign is currently running the ad entitled "The Original Mavericks":
So this ad tells us that among the reasons we should support McCain/Palin is because they are mavericks who battled the GOP.
On the other hand here is an excerpt from message sent out from Minnesota Republican Party leadership:
...from now until November 4th, anyone who openly supports someone other than John McCain for President, (such as Bob Barr) and holds a Republican Party position, be it a officer, or a delegate, opens themselves up for removal from office, and while I have rarely known this situation to happen before... I believe the atmosphere is still volatile enough that the current leadership at the State, Cong. Dist, or BPOU level, may attempt immediate removal.
My own advice is: if you can't support the endorsed candidate, then just "sit on your hands".
The RPM constitution says " endorsement may include support", but it does not require it,
But, it would be viewed that support of another candidate, representing another party, after endorsement is given, which is the the equivalent of supporting a Democratic Party opponent, is a direct violation of the Constitution of the RPM.
Nothing would bring me more sadness than to discipline someone for this reason, but it also something that I will pursue if necessary.
So in other words don't you dare be a maverick, you must fall in line and support the original maverick or suffer the consequences.
This is the danger of political parties, they (especially the Democrats and Republicans) are more about power and control rather than principle.
In the end you must support your principles or you have nothing. So be a real maverick and vote for somebody other than the big government twins: McCain and Obama. I'm voting for Bob Barr.
Libertarian Presidential Candidate Bob Barr on the latest government bailout:
Another Federal Bailout: “I Told You So,” Says Bob Barr
September 17, 2008 10:48 am EST
Atlanta, GA – “Richard Nixon once said that we are all Keynesians now, meaning that Republicans and Democrats alike believed in government micro-management of the economy,” observes Bob Barr, the Libertarian Party candidate for president.
“It appears that President George W. Bush should say that we are all socialists now," says Barr, as he explains that the government has now taken over insurance giant AIG with an $85 billion loan, for which it received an 80 percent equity stake in the company. "In other words, the federal government now will own and run one of the nation's largest insurance companies."
“This administration, supposedly devoted to free markets and fiscal responsibility, has bailed out the housing industry, the quasi-government mortgage companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the investment house Bear Stearns, and a leading insurer. What’s next?” asks Barr.
“And how will we pay for this ever-rising bill for corporate welfare? The national debt already runs $9.5 trillion,” Barr explains. “The deficit this year will run a record $407 billion. Next year the red ink will be even greater. And there are trillions upon trillions of dollars that will come due under Medicare and Social Security as the Baby-Boomers retire,” he adds.
“Moreover, the latest bailouts are being made in secret by the Federal Reserve. At least the housing and Fannie/Freddie bailouts came with congressional authority, if not understanding,” notes Barr. “However, no one voted to pour taxpayer funds into Wall Street. And no one voted for the government to take over an insurance company. If the Federal Reserve can spend as much money as it desires to bail out any company that it desires, is there anything that it cannot do with taxpayer funds?” asks Barr.
“President Bush should fire Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson," insists Barr. "We need a Treasury Secretary who can be trusted with the keys to the taxpayer vault. It is imperative for Congress to explicitly limit the authority of the Federal Reserve. The Fed was not created to take over parts of the U.S. economy. Its authority must be limited and its officials must be held accountable for their actions,” says Barr.
“Capitalism involves losses as well as profits," Barr explains. "When government tries to insulate businesses and investors from paying for their mistakes, we all lose. In a Barr administration, there would be no more corporate bailouts or takeovers."
"The days of loss-free capitalism would be over," Barr notes.
Libertarian Party presidential candidate Bob Barr represented the 7th District of Georgia in the U. S. House of Representatives from 1995 to 2003.
As the government bails out big corporations left and right, saving the necks of its friends in big business, the common man pays the price. Make no mistake about it, this crime is the doing of both the Republicans and Democrats. They both serve their special interest friends. If the Democrats were any different they could stop this but don't hold your breath, you'll die waiting.
It doesn't have to be this way. We could have real change that protects the value of your hard earned dollar. Change that doesn't favor fat cat businesses and unions.
From the preface of Ron Paul’s New York Times number one best selling book The Revolution: A Manifesto :
Every election cycle we are treated to candidates who promise us “change,” and 2008 has been no different. But in the American political lexicon, “change” always means more of the same: more government, more looting of Americans, more inflation, more police-state measures, more unnecessary war, and more centralization of power.
Real change would mean something like the opposite of those things. It might even involve following our Constitution. And that’s the one option Americans are never permitted to hear….
With national bankruptcy looming, politicians from both parties continue to make multi-trillion dollar promises of “free” goods from the government, and hardly a soul wonders if we can still afford to have troops in - this is not a misprint - 130 countries around the world. All of this is going to come to an end sooner or later, because financial reality is going to make itself felt in very uncomfortable ways. But instead of thinking about what this means for how we conduct our foreign and domestic affairs, our chattering classes seem incapable of speaking in anything but the emptiest platitudes, when they can be bothered to address serious issues at all. Fundamental questions like this, and countless others besides, are off the table in our mainstream media, which focuses our attention on trivialities and phony debates as we march toward oblivion.
This is the deadening consensus that crosses party lines, that dominates our major media, and that is strangling the liberty and prosperity that were once the birthright of Americans. Dissenters who tell their fellow citizens what is really going on are subject to smear campaigns that, like clockwork, are aimed at the political heretic. Truth is treason in the empire of lies.
There is an alternative to national bankruptcy, a bigger police state, trillion-dollar wars, and a government that draws ever more parasitically on the productive energies of the American people. It’s called freedom. But as we’ve learned through hard experience, we are not going to hear a word in its favor if our political and media establishments have anything to say about it.
If we want to live in a free society, we need to break free from these artificial limitations on free debate and start asking serious questions once again. I am happy that my campaign for the presidency has finally raised some of them. But this is a long-term project that will persist far into the future. These ideas cannot be allowed to die, buried beneath the mind-numbing chorus of empty slogans and inanities that constitute official political discourse in America.
Ron Paul appearing on MSNBC on 9/18/08 said that Phil Gramm asked him to endorse John McCain. Paul says the McCain Is "...not somebody I could endorse ever."
Glenn Beck, who was never a fan of Ron Paul, interviewed Paul on 9/18/08. Beck comments on how what is happening now in the US financial markets was predicted by Ron Paul years ago.
Paul says that Congress has abdicated its constitutional role and given power to the unconstitutional Federal Reserve. Paul says the problem is worldwide due to the breakdown of the Bretton Woods system in 1971 when the world accepted the US Dollar as the reserve currency. The Bretton Woods system was an agreement by the nations of the world to keep the value of their currency with in a narrow range in relation to gold.
The Federal Reserve is buying and bailing out financial firms left and right, creating new money out of thin air. This is in effect printing money which makes the money you have scrimped to save worth less. Where did the Fed get the authority to do this? According to the Washington Post:
"The Fed is using the emergency authority it was granted during the Great Depression. By law, the Fed can lend money to any individual, partnership or corporation in unusual and exigent circumstances, when the borrower cannot access funds in other ways. The power had not been exercised until March, when the Fed used it to rescue Bear Stearns."
Great an "emergency" power granted during the economic fascism of the New Deal. But that is appropriate in a sick sense. The continuing bailouts by the Fed are leading us down the path to another depression. It never ceases to amaze me how the defenders of the Federal Reserve and big government programs ignore the fact that these two are the reason for extended economic difficulties.
The Federal Reserve was suppose to prevent depressions and the New Deal was suppose to end the Depression. The combined actions of the two resulted in the longest and worst depression in American history.
Here is Ron Paul commenting on the current situation:
Another commentary from Jack Hunter "The Southern Avenger" a conservative commentator (WTMA 1250 AM talk radio) and columnist (Charleston City Paper) living in Charleston, South Carolina.
Here Hunter examines how the typical voter falls for the nice packaging while ignoring the product inside that they say they don't want.
Another chapter in the never ending stupidity of our government schools. This time the incident occurred here in Minnesota.
From the Minneapolis Star Tribune:
A Blaine teenager has been suspended from school for 10 days and faces possible expulsion Monday after a box cutter was spotted in his car in the high school parking lot. Administrators invoked the school's zero-tolerance weapons policy, which allows little disciplinary leeway.
Blaine High School senior Tony Richard, 17, admits the box cutter was sitting in plain sight in the cup holder in his car in the parking lot Sept. 5. It was spotted by a security guard checking parking passes. But Richard contends that the cutter was for his after-school job on a Cub Foods clean-up crew, where his duties include cutting up cardboard boxes.
School officials didn't budge. They suspended Richard and recommended to the Anoka-Hennepin school board that he be expelled. The board will decide his fate Monday.
Zero tolerance policies have zero common sense, but they still have more sense than the people who administer them. Expelled? For what? Tony Richard didn't do anything wrong. He did not assault anyone. All he did was accidentally violate an idiotic rule that shouldn't even exist.
The only people that should be expelled are the dim witted administrators who enforced this rule. They should be expelled from their jobs because it appears they are totally incapable of rational thought. Certainly they are not the type of people who should hold any authority over anyone.
Government schooling was never a good idea. It is time to end this monopoly and bring real choice to eduction. With choice schools would need to provide value to their customers (parents and students) instead of kowtowing to the teachers union and other special interests.
Our wonderful "leaders" continue to bail out all of their well to do friends in the investment community by in effect printing more money. The Federal Reserve continues to create money out of thin air for these bailouts, which of course just makes any savings you may have worth less every day.
The blowhards (including McCain and Obama) in both parties are pointing their fingers at each other and calling for more government involvement in order to solve this so called "market crisis". Their solutions are more of the same failed policies that caused the crisis in the first place.
Here is what Ron Paul had to saw back in 2002 when he foresaw this crisis:
Congressman Ron Paul U.S. House of Representatives July 16, 2002
Mr. Speaker, I rise to introduce the Free Housing Market Enhancement Act. This legislation restores a free market in housing by repealing special privileges for housing-related government sponsored enterprises (GSEs). These entities are the Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie), the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (Freddie), and the National Home Loan Bank Board (HLBB). According to the Congressional Budget Office, the housing-related GSEs received $13.6 billion worth of indirect federal subsidies in fiscal year 2000 alone.
One of the major government privileges granted these GSEs is a line of credit to the United States Treasury. According to some estimates, the line of credit may be worth over $2 billion. This explicit promise by the Treasury to bail out these GSEs in times of economic difficulty helps them attract investors who are willing to settle for lower yields than they would demand in the absence of the subsidy. Thus, the line of credit distorts the allocation of capital. More importantly, the line of credit is a promise on behalf of the government to engage in a massive unconstitutional and immoral income transfer from working Americans to holders of GSE debt.
The Free Housing Market Enhancement Act also repeals the explicit grant of legal authority given to the Federal Reserve to purchase the debt of housing-related GSEs. GSEs are the only institutions besides the United States Treasury granted explicit statutory authority to monetize their debt through the Federal Reserve. This provision gives the GSEs a source of liquidity unavailable to their competitors.
Ironically, by transferring the risk of a widespread mortgage default, the government increases the likelihood of a painful crash in the housing market. This is because the special privileges of Fannie, Freddie, and HLBB have distorted the housing market by allowing them to attract capital they could not attract under pure market conditions. As a result, capital is diverted from its most productive use into housing. This reduces the efficacy of the entire market and thus reduces the standard of living of all Americans.
However, despite the long-term damage to the economy inflicted by the government’s interference in the housing market, the government’s policies of diverting capital to other uses creates a short-term boom in housing. Like all artificially-created bubbles, the boom in housing prices cannot last forever. When housing prices fall, homeowners will experience difficulty as their equity is wiped out. Furthermore, the holders of the mortgage debt will also have a loss. These losses will be greater than they would have otherwise been had government policy not actively encouraged over-investment in housing.
Perhaps the Federal Reserve can stave off the day of reckoning by purchasing GSE debt and pumping liquidity into the housing market, but this cannot hold off the inevitable drop in the housing market forever. In fact, postponing the necessary but painful market corrections will only deepen the inevitable fall. The more people invested in the market, the greater the effects across the economy when the bubble bursts.
No less an authority than Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan has expressed concern that government subsidies provided to the GSEs make investors underestimate the risk of investing in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
Mr. Speaker, it is time for Congress to act to remove taxpayer support from the housing GSEs before the bubble bursts and taxpayers are once again forced to bail out investors misled by foolish government interference in the market. I therefore hope my colleagues will stand up for American taxpayers and investors by cosponsoring the Free Housing Market Enhancement Act.
Unfortunately most Americans will blindly follow our "leaders" and the talking heads on TV and the government created crisis will only get worse and cost the average American more. Meanwhile the big money special interests will continue to be bailed out by their friends in both political parties.
Here are excerpts from a film that shows the efforts put forth by the Federal Government to entrap and snare Tommy Chong (of Cheech and Chong) for the great crime of selling bongs. Yes, ending the sale of bongs is worth millions in taxpayers money.
After all we have captured Osama bin Laden and the Federal government is given the authority to outlaw bongs in the Constitution. Oh wait, neither of those is true.
Libertarianism is, as the name implies, the belief in liberty. Libertarians strive for the best of all worlds - a free, peaceful, abundant world where each individual has the maximum opportunity to pursue his or her dreams and to realize his full potential.
The core idea is simply stated, but profound and far-reaching in its implications. Libertarians believe that each person owns his own life and property, and has the right to make his own choices as to how he lives his life - as long as he simply respects the same right of others to do the same.
Another way of saying this is that libertarians believe you should be free to do as you choose with your own life and property, as long as you don't harm the person and property of others.
Libertarianism is thus the combination of liberty (the freedom to live your life in any peaceful way you choose), responsibility (the prohibition against the use of force against others, except in defense), and tolerance (honoring and respecting the peaceful choices of others).
You might think that there's nothing a government won't try. You'd be right. But I was near stupefied to learn that the state of California copyrights its laws. And it's not alone.
The state tries to control -- through copyright -- how you can access its laws, where and how you store them, etc. The state makes available its building codes, plumbing standards and criminal laws online, but requires you to ask for permission to download them!
The state's out to make money. It charges $1,556 for a digital version, more for a print-out, and makes nearly a million dollars a year selling what is legally ours.
Yes, what's ours. We are a nation of laws, not of men, and we have the right to own and reprint our laws as much as we want. The purpose of copyright is to ensure private parties can maintain some control over their intellectual property. But the laws themselves are, in point of elementary political theory, the intellectual property of all. Not of state bureaus.
Thankfully, heroic Internet technician and mover and shaker Carl Malamud believes in government transparency. And he, unlike Al Gore, really worked to help build the Internet.
On Labor Day Mr. Malamud published the whole California code online. Available for free
The constant refrain from the Government Education Establishment is that schools need more money, but is money really the problem or the answer?
Is the goal of government run education to produce individuals who can think for themselves or is to produce conformity and blind allegiance to authority?
Is it possible to have true diversity in a one size fits all system?
Is a government run education system going to encourage students to question the government or to seek non government solutions to problems?
Does the government monopoly work with parents to teach the parents values to their children or does the monopoly undermine parental authority?
A video from Stop and Look:
Some quotes to ponder:
"As for money, the relationship between it and effective schools has been studied to death. The unanimous conclusion is that there is no connection between school funding and school performance."
-- Brookings Institution scholars John Chubb and Terry Moe, 1990
"The more subsidized it is, the less free it is. What is known as `free education' is the least free of all, for it is a state-owned institution; it is socialized education _ just like socialized medicine or the socialized post office _ and cannot possibly be separated from political control."
-- Frank Chodorov, "Why Free Schools Are Not Free," 1948
"Wherever is found what is called a paternal government, there is found state education. It has been discovered that the best way to insure implicit obedience is to commence tyranny in nursery."
-- Benjamin Disraeli, British Prime Minister
"If the only motive was to help people who could not afford education, advocates of government involvement would have simply proposed tuition subsidies."
-- Milton Friedman - Economist. Awarded 1976 Nobel Prize in economics.
"The first goal and primary function of the U.S. public school is not to educate good people, but good citizens. It is the function which we call - in enemy nations -'state indoctrination'."
-- Jonathan Kozol (1990)
"State education is a mere contrivance for molding people to be exactly alike one another, ...in proportion as it is efficient and successful, it establishes a despotism over the mind, leading by a natural tendency to one over the body."
-- John Stuart Mill (1859)
"It's time to admit that public education operates like a planned economy, a bureaucratic system in which everybody's role is spelled out in advance and there are few incentives for incentives for innovation and productivity. It's no surprise that our school system doesn't improve: It more resembles the communist economy than our own market economy."
-- Albert Shanker - During his time as head of the American Federation of Teachers
"We are still tolerating a public ed system that is run by adults for adults. Those charged with responsibility are more interested in their own jobs, their own turf, and how change affects them than the children the system is meant to serve. . . . I am bemused by the fact that in the late 1700s, when most people had little if any formal education, the citizenry was bombarded with broadsheets and pamphlets that dealt with complex and revolutionary political ideas and philosophies. And today, after decades of universal mass education, we have USA Today and the world in 30 minutes (if you count commercials)."
-- Ron Wolk, founding editor of Education Week, in a speech before the National Congress for Public Education
"We who are engaged in the sacred cause of education are entitled to look upon all parents as having given hostages to our cause."
-- Horace Mann, father of common(government)school movement
"The education of all children, from the moment that they can get along without a mother's care, shall be in state institutions at state expense."
-- Karl Marx - Father of Communism (1848)
"At every hour of every day, I can tell you on which page of which book each school child in Italy is studying."
-- Benito Mussolini - Italian Fascist Dictator
"Every child in America entering school at the age of five is insane because he comes to school with certain allegiances toward our Founding Fathers,toward his parents, toward belief in a supernatural being, toward sovereignty of this nation as a separate entity... It's up to you to make all these sick children well."
-- Chester Pierce - Harvard University Psychology professor.
I have previously posted videos from Stop and Look on differences between Individualism and Collectivism:
Another video from Jan Helfeld. Here Democratic Senator Harry Reid insists that income taxes are voluntary. Try not paying them and see how voluntary the system is. This guy is Senate Majority Leader?
I just read an excellent article by Bill Rood. Here are some excerpts:
Not since the 1850s has there been such a disconnect between the body politic and its head, between the beliefs and desires of a majority of Americans and the direction of their political leadership. Americans are a peace-loving people; they abhor even the thought of an unprovoked attack by the US on a foreign country. That’s one reason there are still so many people who continue to believe the lies about Iraqi WMD and links to terrorism. The majority of Americans do not want Empire. They do not want the US government interfering with the legitimate governments of foreign countries. Large majorities are beginning to understand that the War in Iraq is a lie, a mistake and a war of aggression. However, the elites of the Democratic Party have failed to address the systemic problem of militarism, just as the ante-bellum Whigs failed to address the systemic problem of slavery and its negative effects on the entire nation.
The real question is not how can we get out of Iraq, but how do we prevent such a catastrophe from happening again, ever. I thought we had learned from Vietnam. We did not. We are doomed to repeat this mistake as long as we have a large standing army. We must reduce the size of our bloated military, and dismantle our Empire of Bases. There is no real external threat from which they protect us. We must disband the National Guard and replace it with state militias under total control of our state governors, with no power for the President to federalize.
The US should lead the world through example, not military power. Let’s make our economy the strongest, most vibrant in the world. Let’s have the freest, most open society in the world. Let’s have the greatest education system in the world. None of this is possible if we’re supporting the most bloated military establishment in the world. Militarism and Empire will lead to bankruptcy, exactly what Osama bin Laden has promised, and exactly what we will achieve under the policies of neo-conservative Republicans and national security Democrats. Our elite political leadership, Republican and Democrat alike, have failed to grasp these truths. The Clintons, Bidens, Kerrys, McCains and Lotts of both parties will continue to drag us into bankruptcy.
Washington, DC resident Dick Heller was trusted to protect government employees with a firearm but due to a gun ban in the city he was not allowed to protect himself and his family with that same tool. Heller joined with others to fight the ban, in a case that eventually resulted in a ruling by the Supreme Court that affirmed that the Second Amendment, like all other Amendments, are about individual rights. Heller notes that this case was initially about gun rights but eventually grew to be about something larger -- freedom.
The "Southern Avenger" Jack Hunter, a conservative commentator from Charleston, South Carolina, hits out of the ballpark with this commentary. Hunter points out that the GOP National Convention allowed speakers who favored every type of big government, socialist program as the long as they supported the "War on Terror'.
Any true limited government types such as Ron Paul who oppose the war were not welcome.
Ron Paul has scheduled a press conference on Wednesday to make a major announcement. Paul appeared on Fox with Neil Cavuto:
From the Seatle Post-Intelligencer
Libertarian-leaning congressman Ron Paul is urging voters to reject John McCain and Barack Obama and support one of the third-party candidates for president.
Paul, a Republican who abandoned his White House bid earlier this year, is gathering some of the candidates, independent Ralph Nader among them, on Wednesday to make his plea.
"The strongest message can be sent by rejecting the two party system," Paul said in prepared remarks obtained by AP. "This can be accomplished by voting for one of the non-establishment, principled candidates."
He recommended Chuck Baldwin of the Constitution Party, former Georgia Republican Rep. Bob Barr of the Libertarian Party and former Georgia Democratic Rep. Cynthia McKinney of the Green Party. He invited them to his news conference Wednesday.
Another video from Jan Helfeld interviewing George Stephanopoulis on the issue of racism. Like all the other hypocritical politicians, he walks out when he gets caught in his illogical argument.
Sarah Palin may have been an outsider, but no more, she has signed on the the failed interventionist foreign policy of John McCain.
Libertarian Presidential candidate Bob Barr on the failed McCain/Palin foreign policy:
Barr Says McCain-Palin Foreign Policy to Continue Failed Bush Approach
September 8, 2008 2:20 pm EST
Atlanta, GA - “Republicans John McCain and Sarah Palin claim to represent reform, but their foreign policy is just more of the same from the Bush administration,” says Bob Barr, the Libertarian Party candidate for president.
Barr refers to Sen. McCain's bellicose comments regarding the Russia-Georgia conflict during his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention, in which "the Republican presidential nominee went out of his way to gratuitously denounce Russia and praise Georgia, and in so doing lay the groundwork for future US military involvement in that regional dispute, and a rekindling of the Cold War."
Barr says that Sen. McCain has supported virtually every military intervention or proposed military intervention over the last decade, "and Gov. Palin appears to have signed onto the McCain agenda."
"One of Palin's chief foreign policy briefers is Sen. Joseph Lieberman; another strong advocate of going to war, even when America doesn’t have a vital interest at stake,” notes Barr.
“The Republicans continue to support the Iraq war even though most Americans realize that the invasion was a mistake,” Barr explains. "Iraq did not possess WMDs and had no connection to 9/11. Thousands of Americans and tens or hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have died. With violence dropping and Iraq running a big budget surplus, it is time to bring home American troops and leave Iraq to the Iraqis,” he adds.
“War with Iran would be catastrophic. It certainly is not something a candidate for president should sing and joke about, as did Sen. McCain,” says Barr. “I believe that the U.S. government should talk to the Iranian government and work with allied states to find a peaceful solution to the nuclear controversy. Neither Republican nominee appears to understand that a conflict with Iran would be far worse than war with Iraq,” Barr observes.
“Sen. McCain has been even more aggressive than the Bush administration in dealing with Russia, a nuclear armed power,” complains Barr. “It took a half century to end the Cold War. It would be extremely foolish to recreate that hostile atmosphere and threat of war, especially when the U.S. has no strategic interests worth conflict in the Caucasus. America should promote peaceful relations between Russia and Georgia, but stay out of the cross-fire,” says Barr.
“Sometimes war is necessary, but we should never forget that the price of war always is very high,” argues Barr. “The McCain-Palin ticket appears ready to follow the Bush administration’s interventionists policies which have done so much to hurt America’s interest, Only Bob Barr and the Libertarian Party offer genuine change, a cautious and humble foreign policy and a defense policy geared to actually defending America,” Barr says.
Libertarian Party presidential candidate Bob Barr represented the 7th District of Georgia in the U. S. House of Representatives from 1995 to 2003.
