Friday, February 27, 2009

Earmarks are bad.......

When President Obama was making his pitch before Prime Minister Pelosi and Congress, I expected him to tell us how he has defeated earmarks. It still caused my drink to come out of my nose to actually hear some of the things he is misleading us on. One of them is pork. Naturally his comments about earmarks are out right lies. No matter what definition they try to present for what an earmark actually is, pork is pork.

Let's face it folks, Obama is simply usung his Charisma to pass Prime Minister Pelosi's spending packages. He's using a crisis and fear to ram her stuff through with limited objection by us fearful Americans.

Here is what is really making blood shoot out my eyes. It's not the Democrats. It's those Republican congressmen and their cheerleaders like Sean Hannity and Limbaugh.
They have no right whatsoever to be screaming earmarks. 40 percent of all of the pork in this bill is from REPUBLICANS!

Just like the Democrats got elected because of the out of control spending of the Republicans in power, the Republicans are following their hypocritical gameplan with precision. They are talking about pork and spending just like the Democrats during the first part of the Bush Administration they are taking the max amount of their share in the pork being allowed by the party in power.

It underscores the cozy and murky nature of appropriating, in which longtime friendships and mutual back-scratching seem to trump the steely partisanship seen elsewhere in Congress. It also reflects Democrats' calculation that there is political safety in granting the GOP about 40 percent of all earmark spending —the same proportion Democrats enjoyed when they were in the minority — rather than appear vengeful and antagonistic by cutting the Republicans' share more deeply.

"It kind of takes the sting out of their accusations if they are taking 40 percent of the pie," said one House Democratic aide. MORE....


Prezactly!

The sad thing is that the Republicans are rightfully critical of the direction the Prime Minister and the President are taking this country. The problem is that even though it is rightful criticism, I don't believe the GOP will walk the walk once they assume power. They might slow down our march to socialism, but they will not end the cycle of drunkenness at the trough of the taxpayer. And I think we will continue down the path to Fascism.

For those of you doubt me about this, remember that it was Bush and the GOP leadership along with the leadership of the Democratic party that began the power grab on our financial system. I just heard the Government has just bought a giant chunk of Citi. They will have their guys in the board room. That is fascism. And Citi's stocks are down 35 percent in pre market trading. Yay! It's Herbert Hoover all over again!!!!!

Thursday, February 26, 2009

Edward Johnson slams FDR,‘New Deal II’

“We can only hope that the government’s cure doesn’t further sicken the patient,” Johnson wrote in his annual update on Fidelity’s performance over the past year.

“During the ’30s, Congress - with guidance from the president and the same kind of good intentions - shifted the country’s cash flow away from productive businesses to government make-work projects, which most likely prolonged the Great Depression,” wrote Johnson, arguably Boston’s most powerful business executive. MORE...




Amen.

Our Government should emulate another US President. The one who was responsible for the roaring 20's. He should emulate what so called scholars claim was one of worst presidents. President Harding.

Instead of bailing out failing businesses, expanding government, and redistributing taxpayer money with a "stimulus" plan, Harding responded by cutting spending and removing burdensome regulations and taxes. During his campaign, he argued, "We need vastly more freedom than we do regulation." In stark contrast with the Bush-Obama response of ever-more government spending and debt, Harding had federal spending cut in half between 1920 and 1922 and ultimately ran a surplus.

As a result, the recession that started in 1920 ended before 1923. Lower taxes and reduced regulation helped America's economy quickly adjust after the war as entrepreneurs and capital were freed to create jobs and push the economy to recover. Harding's free market policies lead to the Roaring Twenties, known for technological advances, women's rights, the explosion of the middle class, and some of the most rapid economic growth in American history. Still, he is ranked as one of the worst presidents by many in academia's ivory tower. MORE...


Sounds an awful lot like what President Reagan did to get the nation out of the recession of the 1970's.

Why do we keep balking at what actually works, has worked, and always seems to work. If President Bush the Congress would have just listened to men like Ron Paul, the current recession would have been a lot less painful as it is becoming.

I once wrote on this blog that we are not going to go into a depression and that this is no where near the worst economic times since the great depression. At that time, I was hopeful that Washington would get it and we would end the madness with TARP. I am losing my optimism, thanks to the FDR like approach our Government is adopting. FDR and Hoover joined forces to turn a recession that was smaller than the one of 1920-21 into the worst depression this nation has ever faced. The hard economic times came AFTER the federal Government got involved. Contrary to popular belief, Herbert Hoover did not sit back and do nothing about the recession and the 1929 stock market crash, he attacked it with big government programs such as the National Credit Corporation (NCC), to lend money to other banks experiencing difficulties, and when that didn't work, he created the Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC) to provide liquidity to, and restore confidence in the banking system. Does this sound familiar? Eventually, the RFC began making small interest loans to all manner of failing businesses. Banks, railroads, and other business were bailed out with the effect that they either went bankrupt anyway, or they were burdened with debt throughout the 1930's and were effectively stifled. The RFC also began bailing out states for unemployment relief to fund public works projects.
"We might have done nothing," then President Hoovert said in 1932. "That would have been utter ruin. Instead, we met the situation with proposals to private business and to Congress of the most gigantic program of economic defense and counterattack ever evolved in the history of the Republic."
The result was that the "great contraction" of 1929-1933 became the Great Depression.

Oh if only Herbert Hoover had done nothing. If only he was as bad a president as Warren Harding, our grandparents would not have suffered under the crushing depression created by Hoover and prolonged by Roosevelt.

So, watching all of what is happening, I am positive we are really headed for some awful times. It's the great contraction of the 21st century. Our Government seems to be pushing us into the Great Depression of the 21st century.

When will we ever learn from what actually works?

Friday, February 20, 2009

Starr Parker



I always respected Michelle Maulkin for her intellect, but I think I found a new woman to gain my respect. Starr Parker, she has found her way to loving liberty despite being a victim of the government hand out system.

The conversation is about the road to Socialism.
I think they are a bit off though. We are actually on the road to Fascism. There is a difference. In Fascism, the government does not actually take over businesses entirely, they essentially buy their way into them and hold a large enough amount of a business so that their guy is able to sit in the board room. Fascism is possible without a dictatorship like Mussolini or Hitler. The US progressives admired the fascists of Europe in the first half of the 20th century. Roosevelt himself created the N.R.A.(National Recovery Administration) that acted as the Governments agent to oversee all businesses in a similar way that Mussolini set up his own system.

OK, enough of the history lesson. The main point is that this Starr Parker is very admirable.

Friday, February 13, 2009

Private Citizens to the Rescue

I watched the town hall meeting with President Obama in the State of Florida as he was describing his philosophy of a need for greater Government intervention into our economy and I was struck by two of the participants in particular while he was taking questions from those gathered there.

Unless your head is buried deep in the sand, you have undoubtedly seen these questions played on every network news show, and just about every blog in the Blogosphere.

My first reaction was one of sympathy for Ms. Hughes, but by the time the Mcdonald's guy asked his question, I was thinking how sad it is that our nation has become reduced to a people seeking handouts from the Government. After it was agreed by just about everyone in the nineties that the social experiments of the 60's were a dismal failure, and the Welfare State and giant entitlement programs were trimmed in favor of personal responsibility, people were once again out begging for government handouts. Didn't we learn anything from the past America?
Ms. Hughes remarked she would have to wait 2 years for the Government Housing Authority to do anything for her, and she repeated her need was urgent. 2 years. That's Government for you. Slow, ponderous, expensive and ineffective.

I included the following video from CNN that tells us what happened after that Town Hall meeting. Private citizens, not the Government, stepped up to the plate to help both of these people out. Ms Hughes actually has a house to live in, thanks to the kindness of a fellow citizen. She has had employment offers, and other offers from the kind heartedness of people who heard her story. What did the president do? As befitting a slow and ponderous Government, he gave her empty promises of help in the future. She told him her need was URGENT, but he was powerless to do anything real and meaningful except to have his staff "work on it".

The lesson here is that Government is not the answer. We are.