"Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death!"

An amazing thing happened on the way to America's socialistic demise...a revolution has fomented. Born of a righteous anger centered on wasteful and special interest government spending, lack of honest representation in government, a move toward transforming the United States Constitutional Republic into a Socialist Democracy, excessive taxation and many more constitutionally based grievances, conservatives, traditionalists and Republicans, as well as centrists, independents and Democrats, took to the streets of just about every congressional district to protest a behemoth runaway government run by an elitist and opportunistic political class.

From Chicago to New York, St.Louis to San Francisco, St. Paul to Austin and Miami to Portland, hard-working, taxpaying Americans, who aren't too often moved to taking to the streets in protest, took to the streets to redress their government. What makes this "protest" more important and more potent than any petition drive, any email, letter writing or phone campaign, is that it moved conservatives, traditionalists and Republicans to take to the streets, something that in most every instance and in every circumstance they are not wont to do. The question that is being asked now is this: Will this movement grow and gather strength enough to affect real, meaningful and constitutionally friendly "change" or will conservatives, traditionalists and Republicans fall prey to their traditional boogey-man, factionalism?

The Conservative Challenge

For decades - both in my political life and for as long as I have been writing and publishing - I have contended that conservatives and Republicans - the Right - aren't cohesive. Since entering into the new media publishing and non-profit educational venues I have come to understand that they don't financially support the organizations and publications that carry the water for them; who defend the traditionalist ideology from mainstream media and Leftist attacks. They employ ideological litmus tests for their prospective candidates instead of selecting candidates that would dedicate their public service to preserving their individual rights to pursue their special interests. And it is obvious to anyone but those walking around with eyes wide shut that it takes an act outrageous and egregious to motivate conservatives and Republicans to the streets in protest.

While this analysis may sound harsh (and with regard to the lack of financial support for those who carry the water for conservatism it is meant to be), for the most part there is an underlying philosophical reason for the differences between the pack mentality of the Left and the individualism of the Right. Where the Left leans more toward identifying our populace in the collective (what's good for the country is good for the individual), the Right identifies our populace as individuals who, together, make up the whole (what is good for the individual is good for the country). This individualist philosophy lends itself to self-sufficiency and individual responsibility which leads to a community of people who believe that solutions come from individuals and not government. This, of course, leads to a civically responsible community.

A vulnerability that exists in extreme individualism is that it leads to a community of individuals who always want to be the leader. We've all heard the phrase, "Too many chiefs and not enough Indians." When everyone believes that their way of achieving things is the best, factions develop that impede the whole of the community from being effective in achieving common goals. A prime example of this can be found in the ideological litmus test for political candidates. Instead of supporting candidates that would fight to protect an individual's right to pursue matters important to the individual, factions within the conservative community threaten to withhold support if their individual special interests, the subjects and issues most important to them, are not embraced by candidates.

Using the individualist philosophy in political pursuits instead of measuring candidates on their dedication to preserving and defending the individuals' rights to pursue their individual interests makes it next to impossible to not only come to a consensus on a candidate, but slate a candidate that can beat the Left's cohesive, pack-mentality voting style. Extreme individualism is also the main reason that the Right continually falls to the Left in establishing and funding political action and advocacy groups. It is the primary reason why, even though there are people on the right side of the ideological aisle who have even more money than neo-Marxist financier George Soros, there are no groups like MoveOn.org, America Coming Together, Media Matters, etc. Those ideological groups that do exist on the right side of the ideological aisle are almost always extremely limited in what they can do to combat the Leftists because they are so underfunded.

This is why the events of April 15th, 2009, are so incredible and important in and of themselves. It would seem that the acts outrageous and egregious have occurred at the hand of our government, so much so and for so long that - to borrow a line from a Bob Dylan song, "...the times, they are achangin'."

The Beneficiaries of American Political Apathy

The American Fifth Column - an association of one-worlders, neo-Marxists, Progressive-Leftists, Communists, Socialists and anarchists, to name some of the more notable groups - has successfully intruded into our daily lives by implementing a shadow set of societal laws in "political correctness"; a shadow set of rules antithetical to the United States Constitution. This is true to such an extent that elected officials are basing the creation of legislation on these tenets, tenets directly taken from the Marxist-Leninist philosophy. From hate crime laws, whose definitions are open to ideological interpretation, to the mass redistribution of wealth currently being perpetrated upon the American people by the Obama Administration, to the government funded indoctrination of our children into special interest ideology via the public schools system, the elements of our society that believe government is the answer have infiltrated every avenue of our lives and they have placed the importance of their ideology above even the proper execution of representative government.

But most disturbing is that the American Fifth Column has so successfully employed the tactics of Marxist "community organizer" Saul Alinsky to achieve their goal - the radical transformation of America's social and economic structure - that they have taken control of the US government. Nancy Pelosi's oligarchy in the US House of Representatives, combined withthe almost filibuster-proof Democrat majority in the US Senate, place the Legislative Branch firmly in control of the neo-Marxist wing of the Democrat Party.

President Obama - who has talked unabashedly about "economic justice" and the "arrogance" of the United States, and who is a self-declared"community organizer" in the mold of the Alinsky model, has populated his administration with far-Left ideologues - many from the Clinton Administration - including many members of the biased and agendized mainstream media. It can be successfully argued that the neo-Marxist Progressive-Left has become "the establishment" and traditionalist Americans - those who believe in the sanctity of the US Constitution, in freedom, liberty and personal and civic responsibility - have become the "counter-culture." Enter the tea parties...

Goebbels Would Be Proud

As real, hard-working Americans from all walks of life - rich, poor, religious, non-religious, Republican, Democrat, Libertarian, Independent, white, black, yellow, brown, male and female - took to the streets to send a message to their elected officials; those elected to office to represent the best interests of their constituencies, not their political parties, perhaps the most organized and vicious threat to our Constitutional Republic took to the airwaves to discredit, diminish and otherwise smear 'We the People': the mainstream media.

Make no mistake, while the neo-Marxists elected to office are a threat to our liberty and freedom, and to our Constitutional Republic, they wouldn't be able to come close to the success they have seen so far if it weren't for the propagandists in the mainstream media. The mainstream media disingenuously and blatantly violated their constitutionally mandated responsibility to act as citizen's advocate by championing the Obama campaign in the 2008 elections. By refusing to ask the tough questions and selectively airing favorable coverage of the Obama campaign, while criticizing the McCain campaign for even the most benign faux pas, they ensured a victory for Barack Obama thus violating the public trust.

True journalism is dead in the mainstream media. It has been replaced by a propaganda dissemination mechanism that would have made Nazi propaganda chief Josef Goebbels envious. With regard to the tea parties two examples stand out... Radio talk show host, Bill Press, on FOX News, April 14th, tried to float the idea that nefarious conservative organizations were behind theorganizing of the nationwide tea party assemblage, saying he "didn't see anything genuine or see anything real" about the protests. He advanced a ridiculous theory that because advocate organizations and politicians decided to get on board with the public outrage that they somehow were pulling the strings of the total of protesters from coast-to-coast.

Press may understand protests on the Left to be funded by nefarious political andideological forces - George Soros, MoveOn.org, America Coming Together,Media Matters, the Communist and Socialist Parties, etc. - but conservatives and Republicans aren't that adept at organizing "march-in-the-street"protests.

Another came from CNN's Susan Roesgen who displayed a level of elitism in her interviewing of tea party protesters in Chicago heretofore unseen throughout the history of journalism. Roesgen questioned one protester whose frustration with Barack Obama's totalitarian governmental style led him to equate it to the political stylings of a young, pre-holocaust Adolf Hitler. Forgetting that fascism exists on the left side of an accurate political spectrum, Roesgen chastised the protester for being "offensive." One must question how offended she was when the same thing was happening to President George W. Bush. Then Roesgen, under the guise of asking a question, lectured and entered into debate with another protester before cutting him off and declaring that the entire protest was orchestrated by FOX News and was, in fact, "anti-government," "anti-CNN" and "not family viewing." This blatant disregard for the public's genuine anger lends credence to the argument that the mainstream media is not only in the tank for the Obama Administration, but that they have reached such a level of elitism, possessing such an agenda-driven arrogance, that they have literally become not only an enemy of the Charters of Freedom but an enemy of the people.

Overthrowing Men Who Pervert the Constitution

According to the recently released DHS threat assessment titled, Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic & Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization & Recruitment, my proclivity to actively defend the US Constitution, to actively question a reckless government that has strayed from the principles set forth by our Founders and Framers - principles born of Natural Law and Judeo-Christian values, principles that forged a Constitutional Republic, defines me as a threat to our nation.

According to Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano (please tell me again what her qualifications for this post are?, because I am angry about the government's abdication of effective representative government, I am a threat to the nation, along with US soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan and each and every American who turned out for the tea parties across the nation. Both Napolitano and President Obama - for his silence on the matter - consider We the People "the enemy." As of this writing, there are 564 days until the 2010 midterm elections. The questions that remains are these:

Will this truly patriotic movement continue to grow?

Will those who took to the streets on April 15th, 2009, continue to do so until the totalitarian forces of the neo-Marxist Progressive-Left are vanquished once and for all?

Or will conservative, traditionalists, Republicans, concerned centrists and honest Democrats look at their singular achievement and say job well-done as they retreat to the status quo?

To be sure, if the mid-term elections had been held on the day of the teaparties I truly believe most incumbents would have been ousted from office. The anger is that concentrated. But the past holds the truth of the future and it shows that - traditionally - conservatives are hard pressed to maintain cohesiveness over a prolonged period of time. Truthfully, I hope I am proven wrong on this point. The fact is, our nation's future depends on me being wrong.

After the attack on Pearl Harbor, Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto is credited with having said, "I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve." If the Left is smart - and that is truly being questioned by many Americans - they will form a new-found respect for the admiral's words with regard to the events of April 15th, 2009. If the Right is smart, and in their awakening it appears they are, they will realize this needs to be an ongoing effort, that there is hard work ahead, that everyone must act cohesively and that the revolution starts now!

"We, the people, are the rightful masters of both congress and the courts - not to overthrow the constitution, but to overthrow men who pervert theconstitution." - Abraham Lincoln

Frank Salvato
april 17, 2009
http://www.newmediajournal.us/staff/fsalvato/2009/04172009.htm

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But even as Washington tries to rescue the economy, the nation will be reeling from the actions of 50 Herbert Hoovers — state governors who are slashing spending in a time of recession, often at the expense both of their most vulnerable constituents and of the nation’s economic future.

These state-level cutbacks range from small acts of cruelty to giant acts of panic — from cuts in South Carolina’s juvenile justice program, which will force young offenders out of group homes and into prison, to the decision by a committee that manages California state spending to halt all construction outlays for six months.

Now, state governors aren’t stupid (not all of them, anyway). They’re cutting back because they have to — because they’re caught in a fiscal trap. But let’s step back for a moment and contemplate just how crazy it is, from a national point of view, to be cutting public services and public investment right now.

Think about it: is America — not state governments, but the nation as a whole — less able to afford help to troubled teens, medical care for families, or repairs to decaying roads and bridges than it was one or two years ago? Of course not. Our capacity hasn’t been diminished; our workers haven’t lost their skills; our technological know-how is intact. Why can’t we keep doing good things?

It’s true that the economy is currently shrinking. But that’s the result of a slump in private spending. It makes no sense to add to the problem by cutting public spending, too. (emphasis added)

In fact, the true cost of government programs, especially public investment, is much lower now than in more prosperous times. When the economy is booming, public investment competes with the private sector for scarce resources — for skilled construction workers, for capital. But right now many of the workers employed on infrastructure projects would otherwise be unemployed, and the money borrowed to pay for these projects would otherwise sit idle.

And shredding the social safety net at a moment when many more Americans need help isn’t just cruel. It adds to the sense of insecurity that is one important factor driving the economy down.

So why are we doing this to ourselves?

The answer, of course, is that state and local government revenues are plunging along with the economy — and unlike the federal government, lower-level governments can’t borrow their way through the crisis. Partly that’s because these governments, unlike the feds, are subject to balanced-budget rules. But even if they weren’t, running temporary deficits would be difficult. Investors, driven by fear, are refusing to buy anything except federal debt, and those states that can borrow at all are being forced to pay punitive interest rates.

Are governors responsible for their own predicament? To some extent. Arnold Schwarzenegger, in particular, deserves some jeers. He became governor in the first place because voters were outraged over his predecessor’s budget problems, but he did nothing to secure the state’s fiscal future — and he now faces a projected budget deficit bigger than the one that did in Gray Davis.

But even the best-run states are in deep trouble. Anyway, we shouldn’t punish our fellow citizens and our economy to spite a few local politicians.

What can be done? Ted Strickland, the governor of Ohio, is pushing for federal aid to the states (emphasis added) on three fronts: help for the neediest, in the form of funding for food stamps and Medicaid; federal funding of state- and local-level infrastructure projects; and federal aid to education. That sounds right — and if the numbers Mr. Strickland proposes are huge, so is the crisis.

And once the crisis is behind us, we should rethink the way we pay for key public services.

As a nation, we don’t believe that our fellow citizens should go without essential health care. Why, then, does a large share of funding for Medicaid come from state governments, which are forced to cut the program precisely when it’s needed most?

An educated population is a national resource. Why, then, is basic education mainly paid for by local governments, which are forced to neglect the next generation every time the economy hits a rough patch?

And why should investments in infrastructure, which will serve the nation for decades, be at the mercy of short-run fluctuations in local budgets?

That’s for later. The priority right now is to fight off the attack of the 50 Herbert Hoovers, and make sure that the fiscal problems of the states don’t make the economic crisis even worse.

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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.

by Mike Larson
November 14, 2008

http://www.moneyandmarkets.com/my-outrage-list-keeps-getting-longer-and-longer-28009

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