Thought For The Day
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GM, like Ford and Chrysler, has become a vast retirement home with a small money-losing auto subsidiary. GM has 96,000 employees but provides health benefits to a million people. How do you make that math add up?
Evil acts can be given an aura of moral legitimacy by noble-sounding socialistic expressions such as spreading the wealth, income redistribution or caring for the less fortunate. Let's think about socialism.
Imagine there's an elderly widow down the street from you. She has neither the strength to mow her lawn nor enough money to hire someone to do it. Here's my question to you, and I'm almost afraid of the answer:
Would you support a government mandate that forces one of your neighbors to mow the lady's lawn each week? If he failed to follow the government orders, would you approve of some kind of punishment ranging from house arrest and fines to imprisonment?
I'm hoping that the average American would condemn such a government mandate because it would be a form of slavery, the forcible use of one person to serve the purposes of another.
Would there be the same condemnation if instead of the government forcing your neighbor to physically mow the widow's lawn, the government forced him to give the lady $40 of his weekly earnings? That way the widow could hire someone to mow her lawn.
I'd say that there is little difference between the mandates. While the mandate's mechanism differs, it is nonetheless the forcible use of one person to serve the purposes of another.
Probably most Americans would have a clearer conscience if all the neighbors were forced to put money in a government pot and a government agency would send the widow a weekly sum of $40 to hire someone to mow her lawn.
This mechanism makes the particular victim invisible, but it still boils down to one person being forcibly used to serve the purposes of another. Putting the money into a government pot makes palatable such acts that would otherwise be deemed morally offensive.
This is why socialism is evil. It employs evil means, coercion or taking the property of one person, to accomplish good ends, helping one's fellow man.
Helping one's fellow man in need, by reaching into one's own pockets, is a laudable and praiseworthy goal. Doing the same through coercion and reaching into another's pockets has no redeeming features and is worthy of condemnation.
Some people might contend that we are a democracy where the majority agrees to the forcible use of one person for the good of another. But does a majority consensus confer morality to an act that would otherwise be deemed immoral?
In other words, if a majority of the widow's neighbors voted to force one neighbor to mow her law, would that make it moral?
I don't believe any moral case can be made for the forcible use of one person to serve the purposes of another. But that conclusion is not nearly as important as the fact that so many of my fellow Americans give wide support to using people. I would like to think it is because they haven't considered that more than $2 trillion of the over $3 trillion federal budget represents Americans using one another.
Madison Rejected
Of course, they might consider it compensatory justice. For example, one American might think:
"Farmers get Congress to use me to serve the needs of some farmers. I'm going to get Congress to use someone else to serve my needs by subsidizing my child's college education."
The bottom line is that we've become a nation of thieves, a value rejected by our founders. James Madison, the father of our Constitution, was horrified when Congress appropriated $15,000 to help French refugees. He said, "I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents."
Tragically, today's Americans would run Madison out of town on a rail.
In light of the present financial crisis, it's interesting to read what Thomas Jefferson said in 1802: 'I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around the banks will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.'
--------------- Response by Len S.:
Good Walter Williams article on Red State Patriot. But even Williams does not go far enough. In our society now, when anyone is born, that individual immediately gains the potential right to a mortgage on your earnings and assets. Your government's elected officials arbitrarily determine the percentage of your earnings that will be confiscated for others' needs. And that instantly-created right to your earnings and assets is protected by agents of your government such as the IRS, with the power to destroy you. When an entity, which controls you completely, and determines arbitrarily how much of the product of your labor you are permitted to keep, and can destroy you at will, that condition is called slavery. Such taxation was once a rallying cry for those living here under another government's thumb. Those inhabitants of America then, who stood up to overwhelming power, are of no relation whatever to the Americans who live here today.
"Ubi Est Mea" - ( " Where's Mine? " ) ~ slogan of Americans in name only
--------------- Response by Marty D.:
See also the archived article on this website entitled "Slavery has Not been Abolished" (March, 2008)
There were many reasons for the collapse of the domestic auto industry. We have mentioned the high labor costs and bloated union contracts. Others have blamed the manufacture of cars and SUVs no one wanted to buy. We'd also point out that, thanks to OPEC and Congress, fewer people could afford to buy them even if they wanted to. Detroit didn't die just because corporate CEOs had a penchant for private jets.
As long as gasoline was relatively inexpensive, SUVs were all the rage. They afforded us the comfort and safety we sought, particularly after corporate fuel economy standards were forcing Detroit to make smaller and less-safe vehicles. Fuel economy standards did little to reduce our dependence on foreign oil but did raise significantly the cost of operating such vehicles. So did high gas taxes.
As Steve Milloy of junkscience.com points out, SUV popularity made a company such as Ford highly profitable and accounted for a 57-fold move in its stock price from 1982 to 1999. It was SUVs that helped the auto industry meet the United Auto Workers' demands for ever higher wages and benefits.
Yet the industry failed to recognize the connection between cheap gas and auto sales. Automakers pushed, not for more domestic drilling, but for more environmental regulation and conservation. At the 2004 New York auto show, for example, Ford CEO Bill Ford urged higher gas taxes to reduce fuel consumption. Huh? Doesn't that also increase the cost of driving?
Detroit and companies such as Ford did nothing to fuel their cars, but much to fuel the environmental hysteria that blocked offshore drilling, shale oil extraction and drilling in oil-rich ANWR.
Ford issued a report stating the company "views stabilization of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and energy security as critical and business-related issues that warrant precautionary, prudent and early action."
How one achieves energy security without domestic oil production is anybody's guess. The Kyoto Protocol has been documented as an economy- and job-killing waste of time in a world that is cooling on its own. How is that a key business goal?
Gas is cheaper now, but money still flows overseas to unfriendly and unstable places and thugs like Venezuela's Hugo Chavez. Domestic production is still stifled. Energy and auto jobs are both in jeopardy in an economy starving for cheap and abundant domestic energy. The move to put corn in our cars has not helped auto sales.
Connecting the dots between energy and economic growth is Alaska's new senator, Democrat Mark Begich. At a news conference in Anchorage, of which he was the mayor, Begich announced he was "a supporter of drilling in ANWR." This may not seem surprising for an Alaskan politician, but it is surprising for a Democrat.
An environmentalist's nightmare: the truth - winter and summer
Begich, who succeeds long-term Republican incumbent and state icon Ted Stevens, told reporters: "For the last 28 years, there hasn't been a Democrat sitting in the caucus talking about ANWR. My goal is to educate them about how big ANWR is to this state."
And hopefully how important it and other domestic sources of energy are for this country.
"I'm definitely different from a New York Democrat — you can bet on that," Begich told the New York Times. He knows caribou and other critters have thrived despite drilling in Prudhoe Bay, 60 miles west of ANWR. Oil from ANWR could meet all New York's petroleum needs for 34 years, news that should be fit to print.
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY
November 21, 2008 4:20 PM PT
Material slicker than Teflon discovered by accident
A superhard substance that is more slippery than Teflon could protect mechanical parts from wear and tear, and boost energy efficiency by reducing friction. The "ceramic alloy" is created by combining a metal alloy of boron, aluminium and magnesium (AlMgB14) with titanium boride (TiB2). It is the hardest material after diamond and cubic boron nitride.
BAM, as the material is called, was discovered at the US Department of Energy Ames Laboratory in Iowa in 199, during attempts to develop a substance to generate electricity when heated.
BAM didn't do that, but was found to have other desirable characteristics. "Its hardness was discovered by accident. We had a terrible time cutting it, grinding it, or polishing it," says Alan Russell, a materials scientist at Iowa State University in Ames.
Those chance findings have now developed into a $3-million programme at the Ames Lab to develop the BAM into a kind of eternal lubricant, a coating for moving parts to boost energy efficiency and longevity by reducing friction.
BAM is much slipperier than Teflon, with a coefficient of friction of .02 compared to .05. Lubricated steel has a friction coefficient of 0.16.
A piece of steel (left) coated with a thin layer of the super-slippery material just 2 to 3 micrometers thick - such coatings provide a kind of eternal lubrication to reduce friction and save energy (Image: US DoE Ames Lab)
One way to exploit this slipperiness is to coat the rotor blades in everyday pumps used in everything from heating systems to aircraft, says Russel. A slick BAM coating of just 2 microns (see image, top right) could reduce friction between the blades and their housing, meaning less power is needed to produce the same pumping power.
Mystery material
Bruce Cook, lead investigator on the Ames Lab project, estimates that merely coating rotors with the material could save US industry alone 330 trillion kilojoules (9 billion kilowatt hours) every year by 2030 - about $179 million a year.
BAM is also potentially attractive as a hard coating for drill bits and other cutting tools. Diamond is commonly used for this, and is harder, but it reacts chemically with steel and so degrades relatively quickly when used to cut the metal.
By contrast, BAM is cheaper and does not degrade when used with steel.
The exact reason for the new material's characteristics is still unclear, Russell told New Scientist. Most superhard materials, such as diamond, have a simple, regular and symmetrical crystalline structure. But BAM is complex, unsymmetrical, and its lattice contains gaps, none of which would be expected in a hard material.
Its slipperiness is also not entirely understood. Although Russell says the best theory is that the boron interacts with oxygen to make tiny amounts of boron oxide on its surface. They would attract water molecules from the air, to make a slippery coating.
"It's almost as if it's a self-lubricating surface. You don't need to add oil or other lubricants. It's inherently slippery," he says.
Next year we are to bring the soldiers home
For lack of money, and it is all right.
Places they guarded, or kept orderly,
Must guard themselves, and keep themselves orderly.
We want the money for ourselves at home
Instead of working. And this is all right.
It's hard to say who wanted it to happen,
But now it's been decided nobody minds.
The places are a long way off, not here,
Which is all right, and from what we hear
The soldiers there only made trouble happen.
Next year we shall be easier in our minds,
Next year we shall be living in a country
That brought its soldiers home for lack of money.
The statues will be standing in the same
Tree-muffled squares, and look nearly the same.
Our children will not know it's a different country.
All we can hope to leave them now is money.
Eric Holder, Obama's Crooked Pick for Attorney General - Terrorists and Crime
While promising Hope and Change, Obama's real promise is clearly being translated as Hopeless Corruption. The pick of Clinton Administration figure Eric Holder who was criticized in a Congressional report for ethical violations involving the infamous pardon of fugitive criminal Marc Rich, followed by the appointment of corrupt Clinton Administration figure and Freddie Mac board member, Rahm Emanuel.
Eric Holder
There were figures in the Clinton Administration who were dirtier than Eric Holder, but not many and Eric Holder's career both before and after his time in the Clinton Administration is a very ugly one.
Let's begin with Pardongate, when Eric Holder was involved in giving his nod to the pardon of fugitive tax cheat Marc Rich and in withholding information from the Justice Department. A Justice Department that he will now ironically head as Attorney General.
"A forthcoming Congressional report on the last-minute pardons by President Bill Clinton says Deputy Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. was a "willing participant in the plan to keep the Justice Department from knowing about and opposing" a pardon for Marc Rich, the financier.
The 476-page report, a copy of which was obtained by The New York Times, harshly criticizes the Clinton White House for its handling of the 177 pardons and commutations granted on its last day.
The most controversial pardon went to Mr. Rich, a commodities trader who fled the country in 1983 rather than face trial on charges of tax evasion, racketeering and trading with the enemy. The report says that Mr. Rich's lawyers tried to circumvent prosecutors, who would oppose the pardon, and take their case straight to the White House.
Mr. Holder, the report says, played a major role, steering Mr. Rich's lawyers toward Jack Quinn, a former White House counsel. Mr. Rich hired Mr. Quinn, whose Washington contacts and ability to lobby the president made the difference, according to the report. It says that Mr. Holder's support for the pardon and his failure to alert prosecutors of a pending pardon were just as crucial.
The panel criticized Mr. Holder's conduct as unconscionable and cited several problems. It cited his admission last year that he had hoped Mr. Quinn would support his becoming attorney general in a Gore administration.
It's 8 years later but the Crook Fairy finally granted Eric Holder his wish to become Attorney General. And Obama has an Attorney General who conspired in the illegal pardon of a fugitive criminal in the hopes of making himself Attorney General.
Criminal doesn't even begin to describe this. Eric Holder belongs in a jail cell on charges of conspiracy, instead of being put in charge of the same Justice Department he tried to sideline to serve his own political ambitions.
Of course Eric Holder's slime trial doesn't end there. Pardongate also involved the pardons handed out to Weather Underground terrorists Linda Evans and Susan Rosenberg who were transporting 740 pounds of explosives for use in bombings.
Here is what those 740 pounds of explosives were intended to do.
On May 11, 1985, she was arrested again, charged and then convicted of acquiring weapons, fake IDs and safe houses, and of terrorist actions. Her targets included the U.S. Capitol Building, the National War College, the Navy Yard Computer Center, the Navy Yard Officers Club, Israeli Aircraft Industries, the FBI and the New York Patrolman's Benevolent Association. In her possession were 740 pounds of dynamite. Evans was sentenced to 40 years in prison.
Certainly targets Al Queda itself would have approved of. And now Obama has an Attorney General that Bill Ayers and Marc Rich have thoroughly vetted.
But that's just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Eric Holder and terrorists. Eric Holder also backed clemency for 16 FALN terrorists, withholding information from Congress and even Attorney General Janet Reno and overriding the FBI's own opposition to clemency for the FALN terrorists who were part of a terrorist campaign that included a wave of terror carrying out 130 bombings over nearly a decade.
"Holder, a Barbadian immigrant's son who grew up in Queens and received his law degree from Columbia, has played major roles in the probe of Democratic funny-money in the 1996 elections, the Sexgate scandal and the recommendation to President Clinton on whether to free FALN terrorists from jail. A list of FALN documents withheld from Congress shows that many memos on the FALN clemency decision went directly to Holder, while Reno's role was minimal."
(Brian Blomquist, "Ailing Reno Yielding Reins Of Justice," New York Post, 12/15/99)
This allowed Eric Holder to sideline his own boss and the Attorney General and playing the key role in freeing the FALN terrorists. Which proved to be a convenient way of blocking and dead ending the objections of the FBI and just about everyone involved in the case.
Although The FBI Opposed Clemency, Holder Supported Clemency For The FALN Members. "Although The New York Times reported that the FBI, Bureau of Prisons and U.S. state attorneys opposed clemency, Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder, the Justice Department official most involved with this issue, reportedly supported clemency. 'Eric Holder told me he was recommending that,' a high-ranking official said. Ruff also supported clemency, sources said. Holder declined to comment."
Nor was Eric Holder simply approving request pardons. Instead he was working on freeing the FALN terrorists, even though they had not made any such request... and was actually passing messages along to them to make a show of remorse in order to move the process along.
In 1997, Holder Met With Three Members Of Congress And Made Recommendations To Them About How The FALN Members Could More Easily Be Granted Clemency. "The committee's documents show that Mr. Adams and Eric Holder, the Deputy Attorney General, met on Nov. 5, 1997, with Representative Luis V. Gutierrez, Democrat of Illinois, and Representatives Jose E. Serrano of the Bronx and Nydia M. Velazquez of Brooklyn, both Democrats, to discuss the case of the Puerto Rican inmates.
According to Mr. Adams's notes, Mr. Holder told the members of Congress that because the prisoners had not applied themselves for clemency this could be taken that they were not repentant, and he suggested that a statement expressing some remorse might help. In their testimony today, both Mr. Adams and Mr. Holder declined to answer several questions about how the clemency decision was reached, citing executive privilege. Both said, however, that the Justice Department had acted appropriately throughout the process."
(Neil A. Lewis, "Records Show Puerto Ricans Got U.S. Help With Clemency," The New York Times, 10/21/99)
Clearly Eric Holder was fixated on freeing the FALN terrorists. So fixated that he was willing to sideline procedures, behave unethically and possibly even illegally. Arguably after this, Eric Holder should not be able to hold any position in the government, let alone that of Attorney General.
How wrong were Eric Holder's actions? So wrong that FALN afterward was identified as a National Security Threat.
A Subsequent Clinton Administration Justice Department Report Identified The Group As An "Ongoing Threat." "The Puerto Rican nationalist group FALN, 16 of whose members were pardoned by President Clinton in August, poses an 'ongoing threat' to national security, according to a September report by Attorney General Janet Reno released yesterday during a combative Senate hearing on the clemency decision."
(David A. Vise and Lorraine Adams, "FALN A Threat, Reno Says," The Washington Post, 10/21/99)
Eric Holder's work on behalf of FALN resulted in a special congressional measure to reform the process.
And this is the carnage that Eric Holder's FALN buddies inflicted on the people of New York and the NYPD.
The editorial is written by the Director of the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation and the sister of one of the pilots who died on 9/11.
It was nearly 10 p.m. on New Year's Eve, 1982. Two officers on New York Police Department's elite bomb squad rushed to headquarters at One Police Plaza, where minutes earlier an explosion had destroyed the entrance to the building. Lying amid the carnage was Police Officer Rocco Pascarella, his lower leg blasted off.
"He was ripped up like someone took a box cutter and shredded his face," remembered Detective Anthony Senft, one of the bomb-squad officers who answered the call 25 years ago. "We really didn't even know that he was a uniformed man until we found his weapon, that's how badly he was injured."
About 20 minutes later, Mr. Senft and his partner, Richard Pastorella, were blown 15 feet in the air as they knelt in protective gear to defuse another bomb. Detective Senft was blinded in one eye, his facial bones shattered, his hip severely fractured. Mr. Pastorella was blinded in both eyes and lost all the fingers of his right hand. A total of four bombs exploded in a single hour on that night, including at FBI headquarters in Manhattan and the federal courthouse in Brooklyn.
The prisoners were convicted on a variety of charges that included conspiracy, sedition, violation of the Hobbes Act (extortion by force, violence or fear), armed robbery and illegal possession of weapons and explosives -- including large quantities of C-4 plastic explosive, dynamite and huge caches of ammunition. Mr. Clinton's action was opposed by the FBI, the Bureau of Prisons, the U.S. attorney offices that prosecuted the cases and the victims whose lives had been shattered. In contravention of standard procedures, none of these agencies, victims or families of victims were consulted or notified prior to the president's announcement.
"I know the chilling evidence that convicted the petitioners," wrote Deborah Devaney, one of the federal prosecutors who spent years on the cases. "The conspirators made every effort to murder and maim. . . . A few dedicated federal agents are the only people who stood in their way."
A few dedicated Federal agents stood in their way... and future Attorney General Eric Holder stood in the way of the dedicated Federal agents.
Twenty-four hours before a scheduled Senate committee hearing, the DOJ withheld the FBI's written statement about the history of the FALN and an assessment of its current terrorist capability. "They pulled the plug on us," said an unnamed FBI official in a news report, referring to the Justice Department decision to prevent FBI testimony
We can only imagine what Eric Holder will perpetrate as Attorney General, what crimes he will cover up, what terrorists he will aid and loose on the American public. He has proven himself all too well in the Clinton Administration as the best friend that terrorists and criminals with political influence could ever hope to have.
For Joe Connor, whose father was murdered by FALN terrorists in a bombing only blocks away from the World Trade Center, Eric Holder's corrupt actions on behalf of the FALN terrorists carries a great personal price.
During the 1970s and '80s, the FALN waged a war against the people of the United States that included 130 plus bombings. Their most heinous attack was the January 1975 lunchtime bombing of Fraunces Tavern here in New York City. It killed four people, including my father, Frank Connor, 33.
Until then, President Clinton had denied clemency in 3,039 out of 3,042 cases. It's also worth noting that the Clinton administration consulted with representatives of the terrorists - but ignored the families of their victims.
I was trying to make the point that the release of the FALN killers would send a frightening invitation to other would-be terrorists. Little did I know that more anguish was yet to come.
Almost two years to the day after my Senate testimony, my father's god son, our cousin Steve Schlag, was killed on 9/11. My brother and I watched in helpless horror from our downtown offices, ironically only blocks from Fraunces Tavern.
The 9/11 connection is not accidental. Freeing terrorists sends a signal of weakness to other terrorists. Eric Holder's work on behalf of the FALN terrorists 2 years before 9/11 amounted to demonstrating that you can brutally participate in murder of NYPD officers and New Yorkers and walk away from it with the Federal Government on your side.
But Eric Holder's terrorist ties don't end there. Once out of the White House and working as a lawyer at Covington and Burling, Eric Holder represented Chiquita when the Justice Department charged the company with engaging in transactions with terrorists for the millions of dollars in protection money that Chiquita paid to Columbia Narcoterrorists.
And then of course back in the Clinton Administration days, Eric Holder was a big fan of using force... not against terrorists, but against a 6 year old boy and his unarmed family.
Eric Holder played a key role in the armed abduction of Elian Gonzalez by an army of border patrol agents with automatic weapons pointed at his head.
Holder Also Defended The Use Of Guns In The Raid. "Mr. Holder said his agents were heavily armed when they entered the house because they had 'intelligence that the possibility existed there were guns in the house. We had to make sure our people were protected and they were in a position to protect people within the house. I don't know if there were any guns in the house. I don't know if they found any guns. We had to deal, however, with the intelligence we had that we got from local sources and make sure everybody was adequately protected.' Apparently no guns were found."
(Jerry Seper and Clarence Williams, "Holder Defends Sudden Raid For Elian," The Washington Times, 4/24/00)
Just to clarify this, ruthless force had to be used because there was supposedly intelligence that there were guns in the house, though Eric Holder has no idea if there were any guns in the house or whether any guns were found in the house.
As Debbie Schlussel points out, Eric Holder's appointment along with Greg Craig reunites 2/3rds of the Elian Gonzalez kidnapping team. We can only look forward to the kind of gruesome abuses of the justice system these two will perpetrate on behalf of Barack Hussein Obama.
Of course Eric Holder was not too fussy to get involved in corporate crime either. And I don't mean on the prosecuting side.
Eric Holder lobbied on behalf of Global Crossing, one of the 10 largest corporate bankruptcies since 1980, on a level with Enron and WorldCom. It was the 7th largest filing in American history. While Global Crossing was accumulating debt like mad, its executives were spending like mad, taking tens of millions in personal loans from the company, operating corporate jets, and selling as much inside stock as Enron.
Meanwhile Global Crossing executives were covering their asses with a million dollar donation to Bill Clinton's library. The same bribe route used by Marc Rich, another Eric Holder beneficiary.
Now guess who the auditor for Global Crossing was? Arthur Andersen, made infamous by its ties to Enron. And guess who was its lobbyist, Eric Holder.
And just in case you think that the Eric Holder Scandal Train stops there, it's only the beginning of a long route which we, and probably in a few years, Federal investigators will be tracing in great detail.
Unless Congressional Republicans and the few honest Democrats do their job and vet Eric Holder. We know the media won't do it, it will just keep on repeating the fluff about Eric Holder's historic appointment as the first Black Attorney General, as if that's supposed to make us forget FALN, Elian, Global Crossing, the Weathermen pardons and Marc Rich.
It's time for Congress to take a stand against Eric Holder and for integrity in the Justice Department.
I have become 100% convinced, to a moral certainty, beyond a reasonable doubt, that Barack Obama is not only not a "natural born citizen" as required by the U.S. Constitution to be president, but that he was not even born in the USA, not born in Hawaii, probably in Kenya, never naturalized. If he is elected, he will be the UnConstitutional President from the moment he takes the oath of office, the first president who is not a citizen of the United States.
Why I am so sure? I was not convinced by the lawsuits filed by Philip Berg, Andy Martin, Jerome Corsi, and others seeking disclosure of Obama's birth certificate. I was not convinced by the books and articles that now abound contesting Obama's origins. I was convinced by the behavior of Barack Obama and his lawyers, asking the governor of Hawaii to seal Obama's birth certificate so it could not be seen, by anyone, and by the behavior of Barack Obama and his lawyers, sealing his records at Columbia University and Harvard Law. Barack Obama is hiding himself from America. And he wants to be POTUS, and Commander-in-Chief.
In the litigation business, one quickly learns that if somebody has a document that will be good for them, they can't wait to give it to you. And if somebody has a document that will hurt them, they'll be tap dancing faster than Richard Gere in Chicago to keep you from getting it. (emphasis added)
Obama is tap dancing.
If I were Obama's lawyers, and if there was a good, authentic, birth certificate that proved Barack Obama's birth in Hawaii, I would tell him to instruct the Hawaiian Department of Health to provide a certified copy to every journalist who asked about it, to the Courts and plaintiffs in all the lawsuits, and to make the original available for inspection by any expert forensic document examiner any litigant or news agency engaged to examine the birth certificate for authenticity. I would tell him to come clean, and end the speculation. And I would tell him that the speculation could cost him the election.
But that's not what Obama's lawyers are doing, they're filling motions for summary judgment, not on the merits of the case, but on "technicalities," at least in the Berg case, arguing that Citizens, voters, do not have standing to enforce the United States Constitution, and at least one judge, Richard Barclay Surrick, has agreed.
But what Obama and his lawyers and the Democrat National Committee (DNC) are not doing is being open and honest with America. They're tap dancing faster than Richard Gere in Chicago. So we are forced to this conclusion as a matter of logical necessity:
1. If Barack Obama could produce a good birth certificate that would verify his status as a "natural born citizen," he would. Failing to do so can only hurt him. Failing to do so can cost him the election.
2. He hasn't, and is doing all possible not to.
3. Therefore, we can only conclude that he can't, and that his birth certificate, if it exists at all, is either altered, forged, or shows him born outside the U.S. We have to conclude that producing his birth certificate, if he can, will prove he is not eligible to be president, not a natural born citizen, or not a citizen at all. We can only conclude that Obama and his lawyers know that producing his birth records will hurt him even more than not producing them.
Now, I could be wrong. Barack Obama can prove me wrong by producing a good birth certificate. But he hasn't. Will he? Can he?
Part Two: NO "STANDING" TO SUE?
In the case of Berg v. Obama, US Federal Judge Richard Barclay Surrick agreed with Obama's lawyers and ruled that Berg, as a citizen, as a voter, has no "standing" to enforce the United States Constitution. I have read that other agencies have asserted that only another presidential candidate has standing to sue respecting the qualifications of a candidate, presumably because, arguendo, only another presidential candidate could be injured (lose an election) as a result of a non-qualified candidate on the ballot.
This may be the most patently absurd, illogical, incomprehensible, astonishing, mind-boggling, and utterly stupid argument I have ever heard in my life – and from a Federal Judge, at that. And if I didn't make myself perfectly clear, let me know and I'll try again.
Let's do the analysis.
1. The U.S. Constitution is a CONTRACT between The People, The States, and The United States, the federal government, that defines and limits the role of the federal government, and the rights of the States and The People, and, among other things, defines and limits the qualifications for president, i.e., that the president must be over the age of 35 years, and must be a natural born citizen.
2. Any party to a CONTRACT has standing to enforce it. This is as basic as it gets. Contract Law 101. First week of law school stuff. And it seems that lawyers and judges all over the country have forgotten all about it. Also, the Constitution was intended to benefit all American citizens, We, The People, and in basic contract law the intended beneficiaries of a CONTRACT, i.e., us, also have standing to enforce it.
3. If We, The People, do not have standing to enforce the CONTRACT, the U.S. Constitution, then it is unenforceable, and if it is unenforceable it is just a historic curiosity that means nothing. It’s just an old piece of parchment. But that was not the intent, and to give intent to the CONTRACT it must be enforceable by its parties and beneficiaries.
4. We, The People, have standing under the First Amendment "to petition the government for redress of grievances." If we have a grievance that a non-citizen, illegal alien, is running for president, I think the First Amendment unequivocally gives every American citizen standing to sue the government to redress that grievance and enforce the Constitution.
I think Judge Richard Barclay Surrick is dead wrong, illogically wrong, irrationally wrong, legally wrong, I think his legal analysis of this issue, in legalese, stinks.
Part Three: THE DUTY OF CONGRESS
Article II, Section 1, requires that upon taking office the President of the United States shall take the following oath:
"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of the President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."
Article VI, Clause 3, requires that Senators and Representatives requires:
"The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the members of the several state legislatures, and all executive and judicial officers, both of the United States and of the several states, shall be bound by oath or affirmation, to support this Constitution . . ."
Members of Congress take this oath:
"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservations or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God."
Having taken this oath, Sen. Barack Obama has violated his oath of office if he is refusing to disclose a birth certificate that proves his candidacy for president is unconstitutional, and I believe this is a mandatory basis for his impeachment.
Having taken these oaths, the President, the Vice President (an executive officer of the United States), every member of the Senate and House, every member of every State legislature, and every executive and judicial officers of the United States and of each State, has a mandatory duty per Article VI Clause 3 of the US Constitution to "support and defend" the Constitution, and that would necessarily include taking whatever action is necessary to assure that no person who does not meet the Constitutional requirement of "natural born citizen" ever becomes President.
And every Federal Judge, and every Justice of the Supreme Court, having taken this oath, also have a mandatory duty to "protect and defend" the Constitution by doing whatever is necessary to assure that no person who does not meet the Constitutional requirement of "natural born citizen" ever becomes President. Indeed, I believe that the Supreme Court has a sua sponte duty to resolve this dispute by ordering, on its own initiative, the immediate production of all of Obama's birth records in order to confirm his place of birth, and prevent the election of an UnConstitutional President. So far, all Justices of the Supreme Court have failed this mandatory duty.
So far, the President, the Vice President, every member of Congress, Democrats and Republicans alike, ever Federal Judge and Justice, every member of every State legislature, and every governor, have failed in this duty. They have all failed to fulfill their oaths of office. Every one. They must all demand that Sen. Barack Obama either (a) produce a good birth certificate proving his status as a "natural born citizen," or (b) withdraw his candidacy before November 4th.
All those who do not should be impeached for having failed their oath of office.
Part Four: THE GREATEST SWINDLE IN HISTORY
If Senator Barack Hussein Obama cannot prove that he is a "natural born citizen," then Obama, the Democrat National Committee, the Democrats in the Senate and House who support him, and others such as former president Bill Clinton who openly support him, have perpetrated the greatest swindle in history by falsely and fraudulently misrepresenting Obama as Constitutionally eligible to be president, concealing the truth about his place of birth, thereby inducing millions of Democrats by the fraud of concealment, by the lie of non-disclosure, by "trick and device," to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in the Barack Obama presidential campaign to elect an UnConstitutional President.
My opinion.
Note, this is a fraud perpetrated by Sen. Barack Obama, the DNC, and hundreds of Democrats in Congress, on their own constituency, the Democrat voters of America. It is a fraud of the Democrats, by the Democrats, and perpetrated on the Democrats. And it has defrauded Democrats out of more than $600 million.
According to their oaths of office, every Democrat member of Congress has an affirmative duty to assure that their presidential candidate is constitutionally qualified. As soon as questions about Obama's birth arose, every Democrat in Congress had a mandatory duty to confirm his eligibility by demanding release of his birth records. But, they have not. Not to my knowledge. Instead, every Democrat in Congress is complicit in the cover up – the cover up – of Obama's birth certificate, by failing to demand full disclosure to confirm his place of birth.
In my opinion, unless Obama can produce a good birth certificate proving that he is a "natural born citizen," then every Democrat member of Congress, every person managing Obama's campaign, every officer and director of the Democrat National Commitee, and every person who has ever taken an oath to "support and defend" the Constitution and is now supporting an UnConstitutional candidate for president, has participated in a vast left-wing conspiracy to defraud millions of Democrats out of hundreds of millions of dollars to elect an UnConstitutional President.
In my opinion, every one of these people, hundreds of them, should be prosecuted for fraud under the Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO), for if Obama is not a "natural born citizen," that is what the Democrat National Committee (DNC) has become. And every one of them should be tried, convicted, and sent to prison for decades, for this is a $600 billion swindle of America's Democrats, a swindle perpetrated by the DNC and Barack Obama.
Now, I could be wrong. I could be wrong about every opinion I have expressed here.
Sen. Barack Hussein Obama can prove me wrong, quickly, simply, easily, by opening the doors of the hospitals and the Hawaiian Department of Health and showing us, showing America, showing the Democrats, all of his birth records.
Unless and until he does, I will remain convinced that Barack Hussein Obama is not an American citizen.
FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor Raymond S. Kraft is an attorney and writer in Northern California. He can be contacted at rskraft@vfr.net.
-------------------
Response by Anonymous:
“… spare me from having to read this kind of garbage. … I don't have that much time to waste. Don't you find it odd that John McCain, and his minions of ex-Rove scholars -- who had the entire U.S. Intelligence arms (overt and covert) at their disposal -- would have figured out where Obama was born if they that it would disqualify him? And, if Obama were able to pull off the scam he's accused of, I'd say he's smarter than his supporters thought and his critics feared -- in which case who'd care where he was born.” Anonymous
--------------
Response by Tom Wanamaker:
I've maintained all along that the quickest way to shut up the critics over the Obama birth certificate question is for the Obama camp to just put it out there and that would be the end of it. Their behavior sure makes it look like a cover-up.
Will Rogers once said, "The truth is ready to go at a moment's notice. A lie? Well, it needs a lot more dressin' up before you can take it out."
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Response by Marty Dillian:
Silence by both Obama and the U.S. Supreme Court only serves an insidious agenda. One can only hope that the U.S. Constitution, and their Oath of Office, is as important to Supreme Court Justices as it is to the rest of us. Should the Supreme Court refuse to address the constitutionality of the man assuming the Presidency (POTUS), the U.S. Constitution will, in the blink of an eye, become a dead national artifact along with the Rule of Law.
Think of the entire issue as an O.J. Simpson Redux (brought back, revisited), and the possibility of jury nullification on a far grander scale, this time by the U.S. Supreme Court. Should that occur, there will be one huge difference with the defendant O.J. Simpson. Rather than freeing a man accused of multiple homicides, the Supreme Court would, by their actions, for racial reasons be repudiating and discarding the most fundamental of our nation’s founding documents, the United States Constitution. In a very real sense they would be complicit in the murder of a nation. Should that unholy event transpire, our national culture will instantly and irreversibly become ‘every man for himself’.
Balancing National Health Care with Caring for National Health
As we move beyond the various emotions that are inherent in the days and weeks surrounding a democratic election, we are left to sift through a variety of campaign promises and speculate upon which of these will become policy and which will be stored in the political lexicon for future campaigns. Though the economy took center stage as the most important issue of this election season, and stands to garner the most immediate attention of the new administration, health care reform continues to be a major point of concern that must be addressed by president-elect Obama and the democratic congress. Throughout his successful race to the White House, Barack Obama outlined a nationalized health care plan which relies largely on the expansion of our current Medicaid system. This is alarming considering we fund the current medical entitlement programs with money set aside for future social security liabilities. (emphasis added)
In order to get an idea of what Medicaid expansion might look like under the Obama administration, let us examine the expansion of Illinois' system while the President-elect was serving as a member of the state senate.
The Obama campaign continually pledged to expand eligibility for Medicaid and SCHIP (State Children's Health Insurance Program) to ensure that the poor individuals and children have access to health insurance. In 1999 Illinois implemented their KidCare program through SCHIP as a way of providing health insurance to uninsured children, much like Obama plans to do on a national level. The financial implications of this program are staggering. From 1997 to 1999 Illinois Medicaid spending grew at an annual rate of 0.6% compared to a national average of 5.4% - a very sustainable rate which posed no threat to Illinois' financial well-being. Conversely, from the time KidCare was implemented in 1999 through 2001, Illinois Medicaid spending grew at an annual rate of 20.1% compared to a national average of 9%. It's hard to argue against providing children with medical care, but the larger financial implications of this ambitious effort can be severe. Since 2000 Illinois has run a structural budget deficit averaging around 10% annually. According to the Center for Tax and Budget Accountability, "In an effort to reduce deferred Medicaid liabilities, in June 2004, the state borrowed $850 million to avoid carrying over those Medicaid costs into the next fiscal year…Illinois still deferred over $1 billion in Medicaid liabilities into fiscal year 2005." Given our current financial state, the concept of borrowing money to fund current debt liabilities is extremely dangerous and can have consequences reaching far beyond the realm of health care.1
The Congressional Budget Office projects that Medicaid and SCHIP spending by the federal government in fiscal year 2008 will be $205 billion with programs covering 57.4 million beneficiaries. Simply based on the CBO's projections, which do not account for an expansion of Medicaid or SCHIP programs, these numbers will increase to $270 billion spent to cover 58.7 million beneficiaries by 2011.2 This $65 billion increase is not a small amount, but what will the number look like if Obama is able to implement the Illinois KidCare program on a national level? If we apply the 20.1% increase in spending that we saw annually from 1999-2001 in Illinois while KidCare was being implemented to the CBO's 2011 projections, federal spending on Medicaid and SCHIP programs in FY2011 will soar to a staggering $355 billion.
The increasing cost of health insurance, which has doubled over the past eight years, coupled with the growing number of uninsured Americans has created a situation that must be addressed by the incoming administration. However, the expansion of medical entitlement programs is not the solution to this dilemma. The national deficit ran $162.8 billion in FY2007, which will pale in comparison to our post-credit crisis deficit.3 The new administration must do something to refurbish the health care system, stabilize premium costs and expand coverage for those unable to afford it. Nonetheless, we can not allow ourselves to fund this effort by indebting future generations. President-elect Obama and the 111th Congress are faced with the responsibility of guiding the nation out of one of the most devastating financial crises in history. Given the circumstances, it is imperative that the federal government act with prudence and moderation in approaching their health care agenda. They can not act in haste and further complicate, or ultimately compromise, the mission of stabilizing the American financial system. The health of our nation depends on it.
By Bart Seifert
Hat tip: Bob Cusack
---------- Response by Sue Curtin:
Oh I definitely agree: Obama and his administration, (small "d" democratic) will have to deal with the (large "R"?) outgoing administration that has led the country into this financial crisis. What a wonderful way to begin an administration! No doubt doomed to failure? I wonder who is cheering behind the scenes. And, for heavens sake, what in the world would McCain/Palin have done, had they won, that would be intelligent, targeted, and effective?
Yes, the costs of a national health care plan, however you cut it, however you exclude certain people or include them, will be expensive. But we have not yet seen the parallel costs of public health care and disease estimates for those without health care, who crowd our hospital emergency rooms (their only health care option) or who carry unprevented disease within our society. National health care in my opinion is a PUBLIC HEALTH concern. We're all part of that public, regardless of where we live. Do we live in a gated community that can keep out the hordes?
Just consider the rise of tuberculosis, a managed disease previously, which in our country is now spreading because of lack of mandatory health care. Yes, I'm sure some would argue that those TB carriers would not seek health care. But let's seriously think about the millions of people who inhabit our society (of whatever race, ethnicity, gender, etc.) who have no preventative health care. Isn't this a public health concern? Should those of us outside heavily populated areas of this country even care? If not, why not?
The health of our people, in my opinion, is an investment in what John McCain cited is the fundamental strength of our economy: the American worker. Have we yet seen the statistics that could help us understand how good health impacts worker productivity? We already know that no statistics describe CEO productivity particularly; the CEOs, some of whom are brilliant and some of whom are excessive failures, collect amazing salaries whether they are sick or well, successful or not. Productivity for CEOs has a different dimension than for workers. We should compare all these statistics with other industrialized countries, such as Germany and Japan. And make corrections for the recession we all are in.
These are important and serious issues for the overall health, in many ways, of our country. We've faced similar times before: when children had no protection and worked in appalling conditions in our factories and mills; when women and immigrants labored without sufficient protections from accident or layoff. Yes, I'm a union woman, former president of a teachers union -- and proud of it, considering what conditions and salaries we won to help the true educational experts in our school systems, the benefits of which have been reaped by our collective students. And the parents cum taxpayers agreed, because they supported the agreements.
Can we afford what needs to be done (if, in fact, we can agree on what needs to be done?)?
I am optimistic we can. We've reached a watershed in our history -- not about race, but about the middle class. Without a strong middle class, we do not have "the shining beacon on the hill," we do not have the "American Dream," we do not have opportunities for immigrants as the history of our immigrant country granted to us. Without these goals and themes, without the wherewithal to achieve them, without the collective will to survive and improve and go forward for all our people, we will find ourselves remembered in history, along with several other well-known empires, that sank away sadly because of their own hubris and neglected the very people who gave their promise its strength.
--------------------- Response by Marty Dillian:
Well, we all definitely view the world through different lenses.
I agree with the assessment of the current administration. Calling them ineffectual would be kind. History may put them in last place, in the last seat, in the last row, as the 'anchor man' of United States history, even behind Jimmy Carter. However, putting the blame for worldwide financial monetary collapse, and I mean worldwide, completely on one man, or one President's administration, is illogical and ignores volumes of facts. You would have a far better argument blaming Congress, and from there the list is long and distinguished across many nations if you want to spread the blame around even more. Same was true of the Clinton legacy. Same will be true of Obama and Biden. Defending Obama's future administration of healthcare by attacking the competency of an alternative McCain/Palin healthcare plan is a hoot. First of all it is not relevant given the election. Secondly, we have to deal with what is, not what might have been. And lastly, why be critical of an imaginary McCain plan that will never be? And in any case, no facts are known for sure except that Obama wants to pursue greater redistribution of wealth and income to advance socialized medicine. Few Americans have any idea what this will entail. Few understand how disadvantaged they will become by the myriad implications of socialized medicine.
Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs
It is my opinion, which is worth what you paid for it, that healthcare is earned; healthcare is not a universal Right. I could suggest to you that everything on the Maslow hierarchy of needs is earned - at every level. Nothing at any level is a human Right - except liberty, life itself, and the unfettered pursuit of happiness. Democrats and liberal Republicans have successfully sold the notion to the American people that Maslow's first four levels of needs: psychological, safety and security, love and belonging, and esteem should be a Right - a gift of government as a direct consequence of confiscating another man's wealth and income - rather than individually earned.
We have the freedom to pursue the best you can be in your life. However, you should harbor no expectations that I will support you, your family, your healthcare, your transportation, your food, your education, your housing, your entertainment, or condone and subsidize your psychological weaknesses and pathological self-neglect, etc. at the expense of my own family. It's not going to happen.
Yes, the United States of America is supposed to be a gated community. On a smaller scale, so is my home. Nobody has a right to anything in my home, nor a 'cut' of my wages. Nor does any man have a right to take from my wages, at my workplace, like a thug demanding a payoff (withholding taxes) under the guise of promising socialist protection of everyone. From top down, the country will soon look like one nationwide labor union, with everyone paying dues (Withholding and FICA) in order to have the 'privilege' to work.
Egalitarian dreams of reducing everyone to the same common denominator, some lower common denominator, are too expensive for this country, and this family in particular, to afford. If you want to relinquish half of your own family's wealth and half of your income to benefit others, people who in most cases have made no effort in their own behalf, be my guest. I applaud you. I applaud all forms of voluntary charity. I'll put you in for some kind of international award with the Mother Theresa Foundation. If you want to live in a commune or collectivist society, such as the People's Republic of Massachusetts, I won't oppose you or try to prevent you from making your own decisions. I'll encourage you. And the converse is true. If I don't want to live like that, don't try to impose your life-choices on me. Just remember, if you try to force me to do the same thing as you, to impose what you wish to be, by force of government, you are literally denying me my Right to liberty; and that my friends is tyranny. It's never worked for the benefit of any culture in recorded human history and statistically it is unlikely that it ever will. And it won't work in my case.
The issue in my view is not who to include in a national healthcare plan. The answer is simple - nobody. Access to healthcare is an individual issue. You decide what you need, where you are going to shop, what you are going to buy from available choices, and how much of it you can afford. Restating for emphasis, make the purchases of what you want where you want in the quantity you want using what you can afford.
Nor should everybody have to shop at Wal-Mart.
Everyone should not have to shop in Wall-Mart-style for their needs, and grow accustomed to expect that the government will send their bill to you and me. Maybe that is what Sue in her response is suggesting. Someday, maybe the only business allowed by the government will be some type of Soviet-style Wal-Mart and everybody has to shop there. The government will decide what to stock on the shelves, from clothing to healthcare. People will come in and take what they want off the shelves. Many, according to Obama's Marxist views, should be able to leave with a government sanction not to pay. However, you and I have to pay full price, and then we can expect to pay extra for everyone else, including a subsidy for their food, clothing, medical care, entertainment, etc. Wow. That's what you seem to be advocating for healthcare. Why not everything else? We just tried socialized housing, and that was an economic disaster that may take this country, if not the world, to its knees. And now you want to attempt the same death-defying circus trick with healthcare? And you anticipate a different outcome?
The issue for emphasis is socialized medicine itself, which you appear to want to impose on me, which is a system in which the government chooses, instead of permitting me to choose, which has repeatedly been demonstrated to reduce the standard of healthcare for everyone (study Canadian experiences), and which will be imposed by force, and at a staggering cost to the few who still pay taxes, and at a staggering cost to those who don't pay taxes in the form of costs passed through to the consumer. It is not an understatement that the government will decide who lives and who dies, through controlling access to medical care, setting arbitrary criteria such as age, gender, race, prior medical history, retirement status, political affiliation, criminal history, education, influence, etc.
What is democratic about forcing an economic system on people who don't want it, or anything else for that matter? Because it’s for the greater good? Wow. Break out the Kool-Aid if you believe that ever-more socialized medicine is for the greater good.
In conclusion, an unknown author once said: “Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish and you have fed him for a lifetime." Suffice it to say that no man is going to forcefully take my fish, and simply give (redistribute) it to another man, because you, or anyone else, thinks he has a greater Right (or need) to it than does my family. You are an educator. Teach the man to fish and he will eat. After 30 years in the teaching trade, are you finally admitting to the world that you and the collective teacher's unions have been unable to teach men and women to fish? Nor could you teach him a work ethic in order that he could sell his extra fish and use the proceeds to pay for his own healthcare. It appears incontrovertible, that after all these years, a federal education department and trillions of dollars, that you cannot teach some men to fish - so instead our national solution should be to subsidize their sloth and institutionalize wealth expropriation on a national scale?
Liberty is best exemplified by having the opportunity to freely exchange (unfettered by government interference) our earned (or produced) goods and services for goods and services that we and our family needs or wants. Taking from my family what you need or want, by force of government, either for yourself or to redistribute to someone else, is (fill in the blank).
Response by Red State Patriot: You simply have to watch this video more than once. Watch it once; reflect for ten minutes on what you saw and heard, and then watch it for a second or third time. Thanks Ken.
My "Outrage List" keeps getting longer and longer
I don't know about you. But I started keeping a mental "Outrage List" a while back. The idea: Chronicle all the ridiculous statistics, all the lies, all the questionable practices, and all the dubious "rescue packages" Wall Street and Washington keep shoveling onto the public's lap. And boy oh boy, is it getting long these days! Heck, it's getting to the point where I need to pop a Valium before reading the headlines or watching the tube because if I don't, I might just put my shoe through the TV screen! Just Consider What Has Happened in Only the Past Few Days and Weeks ...
American Express manages to get approval (from the Federal Reserve) to become a bank holding company in the blink of an eye. This kind of thing usually takes weeks or even months. And within 24 hours, the reason they did so leaks they want to reach into your wallet and pull out some bailout money, too! Amex is reportedly seeking $3.5 billion in taxpayer funds.
General Motors operates for years churning out gas-guzzling SUVs and Hummers. Ford also stakes its future on big trucks like the F-150 instead of choosing the same prudent path as competitors like Honda and Toyota, who focus on fuel-conscious sedans and compacts. GM (via its financing arm GMAC) even goes a step further. Not content to stick to car loans, it decides to branch out and make billions and billions of dollars of crappy mortgage loans. Then, when the utterly predictable consequences of this foolish corporate strategy come home to roost, GM and the other automakers come back to the trough like pigs looking for slop. Only in this case, we're talking real money - $25 billion or more.
Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Fed Chief Ben Bernanke urge Congress to create the Troubled Asset Relief Program - with as little debate and oversight as possible and a price tag of $700 billion. They warn of financial cataclysm if the government doesn't start buying up mortgages and mortgage related assets from banks. Yet just a few short weeks later, they totally change course. They say "Never mind - we're not going to buy up assets after all. We're going to buy up stakes in small banks, big banks, insurers, and God knows who else, with the money. We know the last 20 or so 'solutions' to the credit crunch didn't work. But this one will. Really. We mean it."
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac make a huge deal about a new program to modify more mortgages. We get the mid-afternoon press conference, the intraday ramp in the stock market, the usual stuff.
Citigroup, JPMorgan and other lenders get in on the action too, issuing glowing press releases about foreclosure moratoriums and other plans to keep borrowers in their homes.
But in reality, many lenders and mortgage servicers have ALREADY been trying all kinds of loss mitigation strategies and loan modifications (loan term extensions, temporary interest rate reductions, and so on).
Yet ... they haven't managed to stop the nation's foreclosure rate from rising.
Why? It's Simple ...
1. All those modification efforts can't overcome the negative impact of surging unemployment.
2. Many borrowers lied about their income and their assets in the first place, meaning they can't even make the reduced payments their lenders are offering.
3. Others were speculators and second-home owners, who don't qualify for relief.
4. Home prices are falling so far, so fast, that millions of borrowers are underwater, owing $20,000, $50,000, even $100,000 more than their homes are worth. They have little financial incentive to stay in their houses, even at a lower monthly payment, because they know they won't breakeven for years, if ever. And many of them know darn well they can rent for less ... sometimes much less ... at a house or apartment down the street or across town.
5. Still others have loans that were ultimately sliced, diced, and repackaged into complex securities, now owned by various Ferrari-driving hedge fund managers who leveraged up to buy junky paper just a few months after they got out of B-school.
6. Because of the "miracle" of this financial alchemy ... which made Wall Street rich beyond measure ... these borrowers are stuck. Their loan "servicers" WON'T modify their loans because they're afraid of getting their pants sued off by the investors who own securities derived from those underlying loans, securities that in some cases can lose value if the loan terms are changed.
The Hole Keeps Getting Deeper ... And Deeper ... and DEEPER ...
How about the bottomless pit known as AIG? The company made a bunch of stupid decisions to insure crummy mortgage-related securities against default. It clearly had no idea what the heck it was doing, and managed to lose a whopping $24.5 billion in the most recent quarter. But instead of going broke, they get thrown a helping hand courtesy of, well, you and me. The tab for that bailout keeps on rising - approximately $150 billion at last count!
Then there's Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. They take on hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars of mortgage and interest rate risk. They pile headlong into the derivatives market, dig deeper into the riskier subprime and Alt-A part of the mortgage business, and continually operate on relatively small capital cushions.
Furthermore, they keep carrying billions and billions of dollars of dubious tax-related "assets" on their balance sheets and claim that means they're in decent shape. But soon after, the two companies are essentially nationalized. And those tax assets? Fannie Mae just slashed their value by 78% to $4.6 billion.
Why can't the government just cut the crap and level with us?
Sometimes I just can't help but ask myself that question. I mean, I know it makes for bad politics. But like the old saying goes, honesty is the best policy. And we're just not getting it from Washington and Wall Street.
Instead, policymakers and industry officials have been offering up a steady diet of B.S. about this credit crisis and the housing bust for the greater part of two years now ...
• "It's just a subprime mortgage problem."
• "There's nothing to worry about, the problem is 'well-contained'."
• "Major banks and brokers will never fail. It'll just be a few small institutions."
• "Home prices never go down."
• "It's a great time to buy or sell a house."
That's what you've been told by officialdom. And all of it - every last bit of it - has proven to be dead wrong.
On the other hand, we've been doing our best to give it to you straight the entire time, no matter the consequences. This morning, I'm going to do it again ... I'm going to tell you the brutal truth you won't hear from Washington or Wall Street. You can't just wave a magic wand in Washington and wish all this stuff away. You can't reverse years and years of reckless overspending, over-borrowing, and over-lending - even with hundreds of billions of dollars of taxpayer money.
You can't keep borrowers in homes they should have never bought in the first place.
You can give banks and consumers billions and billions of dollars ... but you can't make them lend and spend it. If they know the economy stinks, they're going to lose their jobs, or that there's just too much risk out there, they aren't going to do what you want them to do. Instead, they'll do what is PRUDENT - repair their balance sheets, hunker down, and rebuild their capital base over time.
The harsh reality is that the economy is cyclical. Busts follow booms. They have for hundreds of years. And those busts are healthy over the longer term, even if they're painful in the short-term. They set the stage for healthy, productive growth.
Unfortunately, the Fed has consistently gotten in the way of that curative process in recent years.
It went totally overboard under Alan Greenspan after the dot-com bust, driving the cost of money into the gutter. Thanks to that reckless monetary policy, and the reckless disregard for prudence throughout the lending industry, we experienced the biggest housing and mortgage bubble in the history of the U.S. We also saw too much dumb lending and asset inflation in the leveraged buyout business, in the commercial real estate arena, and in the emerging markets.
Now, we have to suffer the consequences. They're baked in the cake.
The government can try to ease the pain of that process. That's what all these bailouts are about. But in case you haven't noticed, they really haven't worked. We've gotten brief bounces in stocks, brief periods of economic expansion, temporary improvements in the credit markets. But they don't stick. They fail.
What to Do Now? I know this is a sobering big-picture view. But it has the added benefit of being true - unlike a lot of the garbage you're hearing from your elected and unelected leaders.
Someday, we'll see the depths of the recession's eyes. Someday, we'll get to the point where enough companies have failed, enough homes have fallen into foreclosure, enough lenders have gone under, and enough debt has been crunched to get a real bottom in the markets and the economy. Then we'll be ready for our country to grow in a healthy, sustainable fashion for the long term.
But we're not there yet. And judging from what I'm seeing, my outrage list appears doomed to grow.
Quite recently, it struck me that it’s not that the MSM has done everything in its considerable power to spin, deny or conceal, all the unpleasant truths about ACORN, Rev. Wright, Tony Rezko, Bill Ayers and the Annenberg Challenge, that upsets me the most. The thing that truly depresses me is that millions of my fellow Americans know the truth, but simply don’t seem to care.
They also don’t seem too concerned that in a 2001 radio interview, Obama declared that his problem with the Warren Court was that although it ruled in favor of Civil Rights, it was not sufficiently radical when it came to redistribution of wealth. Apparently, Obama thinks the Founding Fathers should have included that in the Bill of Rights.
Obama can deny it all he likes, but anyone who subscribes to the belief that we should adopt a fiscal policy based on “From everyone according to his abilities to everyone according to his needs” is a disciple not of Warren Buffet, but of Karl Marx. Still, as some cynic once observed, when you rob Peter to pay Paul, don’t expect Paul to raise any objections. So, even though Obama claims he will cut income taxes for 95% of us, even though he knows full well that over 30% of us don’t even pay a single penny in income taxes, millions of Pauls are ready and eager to vote for this con man.
Frankly, I find it amazing and pathetic that so many Americans are anxious to finish the job begun by FDR to turn us into a socialist state. Is it simply because they long for America to go the way of China, the Soviet Union, Venezuela, North Korea and Cuba, or do they simply not give a damn? Sheep, after all, are not known for their spirit of independence or their intelligence.
When I suggest that socialism often leads to tyranny, I am not indulging in right-wing hyperbole. After all, aside from control of capital and the means of production, one of the essentials of all dictatorships is central control of the media. In 2008, the left already controls most of the MSM, not to mention the liberal arts departments on most college campuses.
The warning signs are all around us. Recently, as you may have heard, Beverly West, a reporter with Florida television station WFTV, dared to ask Joe Biden whether Obama’s connection to ACORN was a legitimate concern and whether Obama’s response to Joe the Plumber was Marxist. As a result, the Obama/Biden campaign informed WFTV that it was cutting off access because of such rude questions.
The American Issues Project, whose TV ad called for an examination of the Obama/Bill Ayers connection, led to the Obama machine’s demand that the Justice Department begin a criminal investigation of the AIP. The idea that the AIP should be investigated for running a legitimate TV ad, but ACORN should not be prosecuted for perpetuating voter fraud is the sort of thing that George Orwell would have dealt with if he’d lived long enough to write a sequel to “1984.”
If Obama is elected, there’s no question that the Democrats will pass the ill-named Fairness Doctrine, thus ensuring that talk radio, the only part of the MSM not fully under control of the far left, will be silenced once and for all.
After that, our only means of communication will be smoke signals. That is assuming that under Obama’s new order we’ll be able to afford blankets.
By Burt Prelutsky
November 10, 2008
--------------------
Response: Len Salonsky
Future 'Americans' will never appreciate what they no longer are. Some present-day 'Americans' haven't got a clue either."
'Center-right' America lurches further left
With about half the electorate 'on the dole,' a change of direction isn't likely.
"Give me liberty or give me death!" "Live free or die!"
What's that? Oh, don't mind me. I'm just trying out slogans for the 2012 campaign and seeing which one would get the biggest laughs.
My Republican friends are now saying, oh, not to worry, look at the exit polls, this is still a "center-right" country. Americans didn't vote to go left, they voted to go cool. It was a "Dancing With The Stars" election: Obama's a star, and everyone wants to dance with him. It doesn't mean they're suddenly gung-ho for left-wingery. Up to a point.
Unlike those excitable countries where the peasants overrun the presidential palace, settled democratic societies rarely vote to "go left." Yet oddly enough that's where they've all gone. In its assumptions about the size of the state and the role of government, almost every advanced nation is more left than it was, and getting lefter.
Even in America, federal spending (in inflation-adjusted 2007 dollars) has gone from $600 billion in 1965 to $3 trillion today. The Heritage Foundation put it in a convenient graph: It's pretty much a straight line across four decades, up, up, up. Doesn't make any difference who controls Congress, who's in the White House. The government just grows and grows, remorselessly. Every two years, the voters walk out of their town halls and school gyms and tell the exit pollsters that three-quarters of them are "moderates" or "conservatives" (i.e, the center and the right) and barely 20 percent are "liberals." And then, regardless of how the vote went, big government just resumes its inexorable growth.
"The greatest dangers to liberty," wrote Justice Brandeis, "lurk in the insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding."
Now who does that remind you of?
Ha! Trick question! Never mind Obama, it's John McCain. He encroached on our liberties with the constitutional abomination of McCain-Feingold. Well-meaning but without understanding, he proposed that the federal government buy up all these junk mortgages so that people would be able to stay in "their" homes. And this is the "center-right" candidate? It's hard for Republicans to hammer Obama as a socialist when their own party's nationalizing the banks and its presidential nominee is denouncing the private sector for putting profits before patriotism. That's why Joe the Plumber struck a chord: He briefly turned a one-and-a-half party election back into a two-party choice again.
If you went back to the end of the 19th century and suggested to, say, William McKinley that one day Americans would find themselves choosing between a candidate promising to guarantee your mortgage and a candidate promising to give "tax cuts" to millions of people who pay no taxes he would scoff at you for concocting some patently absurd H.G. Wells dystopian fantasy. Yet it happened. Slowly, remorselessly, government metastasized to the point where it now seems entirely normal for Peggy Joseph of Sarasota, Fla., to vote for Obama because "I won't have to worry about putting gas in my car. I won't have to worry about paying my mortgage."
While few electorates consciously choose to leap left, a couple more steps every election, and eventually societies reach a tipping point. In much of the West, it's government health care. It changes the relationship between state and citizen into something closer to pusher and junkie. Henceforth, elections are fought over which party is proposing the shiniest government bauble: If you think President-elect Obama's promise of federally subsidized day care was a relatively peripheral part of his platform, in Canada in the election before last it was the dominant issue.
Yet America may be approaching its tipping point even more directly. In political terms, the message of the gazillion-dollar bipartisan bailout was a simple one: "Individual responsibility" and "self-reliance" are for chumps. If Goldman Sachs and AIG and Bear Stearns are getting government checks to "stay in their homes" (and boardrooms, and luxury corporate retreats), why shouldn't Peggy Joseph?
I don't need Barack Obama's help to "spread the wealth around." I spread my wealth around every time I hire somebody, expand my business, or just go to the general store and buy a quart of milk and loaf of bread. As far as I know, only one bloated plutocrat declines to spread his wealth around, and that's Scrooge McDuck, whose principal activity in Disney cartoons was getting into his little bulldozer and plowing back and forth over a mountain of warehoused gold and silver coins. Don't know where he is these days. On the board at Halliburton, no doubt.
But most of the beleaguered band of American capitalists do not warehouse their wealth in McDuck fashion. It's not a choice between hoarding and spreading, but a choice between who spreads it best: an individual free to make his own decisions about investment and spending, or Barney Frank. I don't find that a difficult question to answer. More to the point, put Barney & Co. in charge of the spreading, and there'll be a lot less to spread.
I disagree with my fellow conservatives who think the Obama-Pelosi-Reid-Frank liberal behemoth will so obviously screw up that they'll be routed in two or four years' time. The president-elect's so-called "tax cut" will absolve 48 percent of Americans from paying any federal income tax at all, while those who are left will pay more. Just under half the population will be, as Daniel Henninger pointed out in The Wall Street Journal, on the dole.
By 2012, it will be more than half on the dole, and this will be an electorate where the majority of the electorate will be able to vote itself more lollipops from the minority of their compatriots still dumb enough to prioritize self-reliance, dynamism and innovation over the sedating cocoon of the Nanny State. That is the death of the American idea – which, after all, began as an economic argument: "No taxation without representation" is a great rallying cry. "No representation without taxation" has less mass appeal. For how do you tell an electorate living high off the entitlement hog that it's unsustainable, and you've got to give some of it back?
At that point, America might as well apply for honorary membership in the European Union. It will be a nation at odds with the spirit of its founding, and embarking on decline from which there are few escape routes. In 2012, the least we deserve is a choice between the collectivist assumptions of the Democrats, and a candidate who stands for individual liberty – for economic dynamism not the sclerotic "managed capitalism" of Germany; for the First Amendment, not Canadian-style government regulation of approved opinion; for self-reliance and the Second Amendment, not the security state in which Britons are second only to North Koreans in the number of times they're photographed by government cameras in the course of going about their daily business.
In Forbes last week, Claudia Rosett issued a stirring defense of individual liberty. That it should require a stirring defense at all is a melancholy reflection on this election season.
Live free – or die from a thousand beguiling caresses of Nanny State sirens.
By Mark Steyn
Syndicated Columnist
Friday, November 7, 2008
Sorry to break the bad news to Joe the Plumber. But the winner of Campaign 2008 is Peggy the Moocher. No matter who moves into the White House, Peggy has good reason to do a happy dance.
The plain, ugly fact is that both major political parties are committed to spreading the wealth in one form or another. It's all just a question of how much and how quickly.
Who is Peggy the Moocher? She's Peggy Joseph, a voter in Sarasota, Fla., who exulted earlier this week at a Barack Obama rally that this was "the most memorable time of my life." Why? As she told a Florida reporter on a YouTube video that has been viewed by hundreds of thousands: "Because I never thought this day would ever happen. I won't have to worry about putting gas in my car. I won't have to worry about paying my mortgage. You know. If I help (Obama), he's gonna help me."
You can't blame Peggy the Moocher for viewing Obama as the superior Santa Claus. With a relentless messianic campaign, a grievance-mongering wife touting him as the country's soul-fixer and a national infomercial promising to take care of every need from night classes to medical bills to rent and fuel-efficient cars, Obama effectively channeled Oprah Winfrey's Big Give.
"Everybody gets a car!" "Everybody gets a car!" And gas. And mortgage payment relief.
But the damning reality for fiscal conservatives is that John McCain's plan for homeowners underwater on their mortgages was even more generous than Obama's. His $300 billion "rescue" involved directing the Treasury secretary to "purchase mortgages directly from homeowners and mortgage servicers."
That was on top of the trillion-plus-dollar "bank" bailout supported by both presidential candidates, the White House and the Democratic leadership; the $85-plus billion to AIG; the $25 billion to automakers; and the $200 billion in capital and credit lines to Fannie and Freddie.
And who knows what else we'll be redistributing to the indebted states of New York, California, Massachusetts and all the other Peggy the Moochers, large and small, lining up for their piece of the bailout pie.
McCain assailed massive government spending — while promising to heap on more massive government spending to pursue homeownership and retention at all costs. It was the Republican, not the Democrat, who entrusted the Treasury Department to renegotiate individual home loans and become chief principal write-down agents for the nation. Both private and public entities are planning for a McCain-esque homeowner salvation plan for borrowers in the red.
It's a swell idea for everyone who bought overpriced homes with adjustable-rate mortgages. Those who rented, bought within their means or locked into fixed-rate loans that they could afford are out of luck, naturally. The only sane thing to do in response? Stop paying your mortgage and get in line.
"E pluribus unum" is no longer our national motto. These three words are: "Do for me." As in: What will the government do for me?
On Election Day, the federal government quietly reported that it will borrow a record $550 billion in the current quarter to fund the bipartisan bailout. The Treasury Department plans to borrow more than a half-trillion dollars in the current October-December quarter and another $368 billion in the first three months of next year.
Estimated total for the whole year: $1.4 trillion. Democrats plan to add another $500 billion in "stimulus"-palooza legislation. Credit-card companies, utilities, insurance companies, and car- and student-loan debtors await their turn.
The bailout bonanza blurred the differences between the two major political parties, but the Peggy the Moocher video shows that there are still basically two starkly contrasting views of government in this country among the rank-and-file electorate.
Unlike Joe the Plumber, Peggy sees government as her salvation and the president as her subsidizer-in-chief. She voted with the expectation that the Spreader of Wealth will reward her with payback. Joe just wants Washington to leave him alone to fend for himself.
Personal responsibility? Hah. Washington can't afford it.
The True Meaning of 'Historic Vote'
Shifting America's animating idea from creation to protection.
The most basic explanation for why Barack Obama may win next Tuesday is that voters want economic deliverance. The standard fix for this in politics everywhere is to crowbar the old party out and patch in the other one. It is true as well that the historic nature of the nation's first African-American candidacy would play a big role.
Push past the historic candidacy, however, and one sees something even larger at stake in this vote. One sees what Joe (The Plumber) Wurzelbacher saw. The real "change" being put to a vote for the American people in 2008 is not simply a break from the economic policies of "the past eight years" but with the American economic philosophy of the past 200 years. This election is about a long-term change in America's idea of itself.
I don't agree with the argument that an Obama-Pelosi-Reid government is a one-off, that good old nonideological American pragmatism will temper their ambitions. Not true. With this election, the U.S. is at a philosophical tipping point.
The goal of Sen. Obama and the modern, "progressive" Democratic Party is to move the U.S. in the direction of Western Europe, the so-called German model and its "social market economy." Under this notion, business is highly regulated, as it would be in the next Congress under Democratic House committee chairmen Markey, Frank and Waxman. Business is allowed to create "wealth" so long as its utility is not primarily to create new jobs or economic growth but to support a deep welfare system.
The political planets are aligned to make this achievable. In the aftermath of the financial crisis, prominent Democrats, European leaders in France and Germany and more U.S. newspaper articles than one can count have said that the crisis proves the need to permanently tame the American "free-market" model. P.O.W. Alan Greenspan is broadcasting confessions. The question is: Are the American people of a mind to throw in the towel on the system that got them here?
This would be a historic shift, one post-Vietnam Democrats have been trying to achieve since their failed fight with Ronald Reagan's "Cowboy Capitalism."
Of course Cowboy Capitalism built the country. More than any previous nation in history, the United States made its way forward on a 200-year wave of upwardly mobile, profit-seeking merchants, tradesmen, craftsmen and workers. They blew out of New England and New York, rolled across the wildernesses of the Central States, pushed across a tough Western frontier and banged into San Francisco and Los Angeles, leaving in their path city after city of vast wealth.
The U.S. emerged a superpower, and the tool of that ascent was simple -- the pursuit of economic growth. Now China, India and Brazil, embracing high-growth Cowboy Capitalism, are doing what we did, only their cities are bigger.
Now comes Barack Obama, standing at the head of a progressive Democratic Party, his right hand rising to say, "Mothers, don't let your babies grow up to be for-profit cowboys. It's time to spread the wealth around."
What this implies, undeniably, is that the United States would move away from running with the high GDP, high-growth nations rising today as economic and political powers and move over to retire with the low-growth economies we displaced -- old Europe.
As noted in a 2006 World Bank report, spending in Europe on social-protection programs averages 19% of GDP (85% of it on social insurance programs), compared to 9% of GDP in the U.S. The Obama proposals send the U.S. inexorably and permanently toward European levels of social protection
