Archive for October, 2009
The News Is Numbing…and Unfortunately Predictable
Posted by Tom in Centrally Managed Economy, Congress, Foreign Policy, Stimulus/Bailout on October 29, 2009
I haven’t posted in a while because it’s been difficult to find a new theme. I fall back on “power, lies, ignorance, naiveté and just plain bumbling”–as in keystone cops! Obama and his Democratic minions Reid and Pelosi are like kids in the candy store; they lie, cheat, steal with no regard for thoughtfulness or consequences. They buy on credit without regard to prudent limits and in the process burden us, our children, our grandchildren, and our great-grandchildren with debt that will end us up well down the road to serfdom. They have long ago foregone the values that made this country great, in fact, they apologize for them, for the sons we have lost and the blood we have shed; Obama calls it arrogance! Iran, North Korea, Eastern Europe and our Western allies realize that Obama and his minions are weak, bush-leaguers and will take advantage at every turn of the screw. But never fear, Obama and his minions are, and strive to be, statists of the first order! Some examples:
GMAC is asking and will get federal bailout funds in addition to the $12.5 Billion already funded. This reasonable request for your additional hard-earned money is necessary to support the sales from government motors. But be assured that your Congress, all 535 members thereof, are acting as the new GM board, ON AN INDIVIDUAL BASIS! See the Thursday WSJ. Now be sure to make your next car buy a Government Motors product, your money is heavily invested it it so you may as well enjoy the superior products it produces!
But hey, the first-time-home-buyer tax credit is working well and growing our economy; perhaps a bit too well. Seems that Treasury’s Inspector General has turned up 19,000 frauds and 74,000 additional frauds, one a four year old, taking advantage of your money again. Yep, you work hard and a four year old (via his parents) cheats to take it in the form of a tax credit you and your descendants will pay for! But don’t worry; the $15 Billion annual scam of your money is being well managed by the oversight of the same 535 members of Congress that is acting as the new Government Motors board of directors! To paraphrase Thursday’s WSJ, after two years of Fannie-Freddie generated trillion dollar taxpayer losses, “leave it to Congress to design a program that even a four-year old can scam.!”
When will the American voters wake up!
Tom Motherway
Next Gen Activist Questions Ried’s Successor
It is a privilege to see intelligent young people getting involved in politics, when the temptation must be great to run like hell from the stinking mess! Here’s a recent submission to the Nevada papers by Ryan Costella:
Dear eventual Republican nominee for the U.S. Senate:
It doesn’t take a Nobel Prize winner to certify that Harry Reid is in hot water. Just ask around. Folks are eager for new leadership and a new vision for our state: the opportunity is ripe for you to take the helm.
But it won’t come easy. Voters are going to need a lot more than the mantra, “Anyone but Harry” to oust the Majority Leader and make an investment in you as a brand new public servant taking a seat at the back of 100. So my question to you is, after beating Harry Reid, then what?
What is your vision for Nevada’s future, what do you hope to accomplish, and how you plan to get there?
We hope to hear your ideas on promoting economic growth in our state and attracting businesses to our region to create quality, lasting jobs. We hope you can share your plans for ensuring that our children receive an education rooted in excellence that enables them to compete and win in a global economy, whether they go to college or not. We hope you will articulate your vision for Nevada’s role in developing renewable energy and using the revenue for the betterment of our state. We hope you have ideas on cutting wasteful spending in Washington while ensuring fiscal responsibility, so we can stop burdening future generations with huge amounts of debt. We hope you can state your ideas for protecting our troops and their families both on the battlefield and after they finally return home.
Your opponent will raise more money, run more media spots, and outspend you at every juncture – seeking to “vaporize” your chances. But Nevada voters won’t be bought.
What you ultimately lack in resources can be made up in that good old fashioned renewable resource we call sweat. Invest in some good walking shoes, knock on our doors, walk through our neighborhoods, and talk to us in person about Nevada’s future. You can earn our support and win this race if you’re willing to get your hands dirty and work for it.
RYAN COSTELLA
775-750-2760
rdcostella@gmail.com
Who’s Next in Pay Czar Feinberg’s Rifle Scope?
Posted by Tom in Centrally Managed Economy, Constitution, Financial Policy, Government Regulation, Nationalized Health Care, Statism on October 23, 2009
Well, well, well, Comrade Obama’s Pay Czar Ken Feinberg came up with an industry wide solution to the elimination of private property and contract rights. Piece meal measures would obviously not work, since if only TARP institutions’ pay were limited, the high paid talent at those firms would depart for greener pastures just across the street. So, the obvious solution was to eliminate the greener pastures leaving no way for this greedy talent to escape. Today’s WSJ suggests that other countries will similarly restrict financial pay.
This is an unprecedented government intrusion into private property and contract rights. It should be held to be unconstitutional both as an uncompensated “taking” under the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments and as being beyond the scope of the enumerated powers of the federal government under Article I Section 8.
The way Obama would argue around this is that financial services are vested with a public interest and therefore should be regulated under the interstate commerce clause. This essentially makes all financial services public utilities–federal public utilities!
Accepting this legal rationale arguendo the “regulation” is still more intrusive than necessary and more importantly violates the shareholders’ and directors’ rights to own and manage their corporations, their own private property. Further it often interferes with privately negotiated contracts. It is also a government restraint of trade, labor, in the free marketplace.
Finally, how in the hell does this dramatic confiscation get accomplished without a law being passed by our duly elected Congressional representatives? The only answer is that we have elected a dictator who operates through unelected, unvetted, unconfirmed czars.
The legal battles surrounding this will no doubt be waged over the next several years. BUT THE ECONOMIC DANAGE WILL HAVE ALREADY BEEN DONE. This like the health care travesty, is toothpaste that cannot be put back into the tube!
Politically, this is a case of finding and blaming a scapegoat for the sins of Barney Frank, Maxine Waters, Chris Dodd and the Democrats who committed the Community Reinvestment Act and supporting regulations and who incentivized Fannie and Freddie to foist more and more subprime mortgages on the world. No substitute for passing the buck!
Perceptive people will ask themselves who is next. I think it is a safe bet that doctors should be looking over their shoulders.
Tom Motherway
Jim Van Horne–Great Presentation, Thanks
Posted by Tom in Financial Policy on October 22, 2009
It was an honor to have Jim Van Horne present and lead Tuesday’s discussion on Tuesday evening. With impressive credentials and experience in academia, government and business, Jim lead us through the last sixteen speculative bubbles and their aftermath. Holland’s tulip bulb speculation was demonstrated to be only a bit more fantastic than our current easy-money, Fannie-Freddie explosion. His point was that our current pop wasn’t the first, nor the worst, nor unfortunately, will it be the last!
A point that I hadn’t yet pondered was that the multiplicity of financial regulatory agencies needs to be consolidated. This has not been expounded upon in current discussions. Jim said that the current internecine, bureaucratic competition among the multiple agencies with different and often cross purposes was often self defeating. It’s a truism that bureaucracies can only grow, amass power and expend money regardless of the initial or continuing necessity of their missions. This should be stopped. No surprise that no politician is proposing any such curtailment or consolidation. Obama as you may suspect is proposing and additional regulator, a consumer protection agency to mandate vanilla financial instruments!
The lively questions and discussion that followed was what we enjoy in our group. With varied backgrounds we get different perspectives, the sum of which contribute to what some may call a “learning experience!” In that regard it was enlightening to have Tom Cargill and Jerry O’Driscoll participate. With the level of Ph. D. intellects in the room, even this poor attorney felt humble–not an easy feat!
On behalf of the Reno Hayek Symposium, I want to thank Jim for a wonderful and enlightening evening. He has a standing invitation to our dinner discussion whenever his travels take him to Reno on the third Tuesday of the month.
Tom Motherway
Labor In Control-Obama v. Calderon, Reagan, Common Sense
Posted by Tom in Education Facts & Policies, Politics, Statism, Unions on October 19, 2009
When I was a kid I was lucky enough to get construction jobs during my summers to pay for college and law school tuition. One requirement was a union card from the laborers and hod carriers local union. The card and dues were a minor drag, a tax, on the ability to earn enough to pay for the schooling. I appreciated the union because the job paid well. There was really no apprentice program as a laborer, no school on how to shovel or wield a pick but there was “union scale” for which a share out of my paycheck for that “scale” seemed a reasonable price.
What I didn’t understand in my early years was the social and economic price exacted for the union control in the industry. Each summer I started and worked hard. Each summer I was told to “slow down, kid, ‘ya don’t wanna work us out of a job….and that’ll hurt you back when you’re my age!”
Unions promote not work productivity but work continuation. Unions promote not uniqueness or excellence, but mediocrity. Sad to say but teacher unions now control our education. Recall Orwell’s Animal Farm, “All of us are equal, some are more equal than others.” The pigs’ leader was Napoleon.
Mary Anastasia O’Grady pens an excellent opinion in the March 19th WSJ. In it she tells how big labor elected Obama and how he has started to repay the debt, Chrysler unions ahead of creditors, steel workers ahead of China our largest creditor. We see his efforts at “card check” unionization and union board membership of GM. All just down payments on the votes to come. Poor kids in DC without vouchers and without education pale in significance to Obama votes!
O’Grady contrasts Obama to Calderon in Mexico who has just ordered the federal police to take over operations of the state-owned electricity monopoly and fire 42,000 union electricians; only 8,000 are needed to do the work! She also recalls Reagan firing the air traffic controllers. Both gutsy moves from principled presidents. No doubt that Calderon has big cajones.
Bottom line here is that we have a dangerous vicious circle taking deep root at the federal level. It has grown at the state level in the public union sphere over the last decades. It will doom us to serfdom in the end. Unions elect politicians, politicians promote unions. Jobs and productivity limiting work rules abound; excellence, innovation, entrepreneurship and individuality suffer. The vicious circle feeds upon itself to ultimately disastrous ends.
So far the state and local results are untenable budget deficits on a universal basis and unfunded pension fund obligations that will drive taxpayers to indentured servitude. The national results will be much worse.
Well we now have a new Napoleon in the White House. We are just starting to suffer for it. God save us.
Tom Motherway
Paper Tiger, Whimpering
Posted by Tom in Foreign Policy, Military Policy on October 15, 2009
We were once a great nation, leader of the free world. We are no longer. Obama is taking us down more rapidly than demographics would ultimately accomplish. He apologizes for our past leadership, he apologizes for our strength and diplomacy, he apologizes for our arrogance. He abandons Israel, Poland, and the Czech Republic. He curries favor with Iran, Venezuela and Russia.
Charles Krauthammer’s NRO October 16th post, Debacle in Moscow, says it very well, calls it “amateurish…wrapped in naivete.” When describing the soft leftist criticism of his Nobel Peace Prize as “premature,” he hits the nail on the head: ” If the Nobel committee had waited a few years Obama’s Nobel worthiness would have been universally acknowledged. “National self-denigration–excuse me, outreach and understanding–is not meant to yield immediate results; it simply plants the seeds of good feeling from which foreign-policy successes shall come.” (Now for you Peter Sellers fans:) “CHAUNCEY GARDINER COULD NOT HAVE SAID IT BETTER.” (Emphasis added!)
That we will eventually yield world leadership is inevitable, I think. The course, though, and the end results are not. The novice in the White House puts us on a very risky course with more dangerous end results assuredly in the mix.
The American electorate can, and hopefully will, change the composition of the Congress in 2010. It cannot change the composition of Obama’s foreign policy. Whether that policy is to pick unnecessary protectionist fights with our largest creditor while facing national debt approaching 100% of GNP or that policy is to abandon Israel, disarm in the Mideast and leave the critical region to Russia, we are stuck with that policy until 2012.
In short, we are stuck with Chauncey Gardiner. God save us!
Tom Motherway
Max’s Obamacare Economics
Posted by Tom in Centrally Managed Economy, Nationalized Health Care, Statism on October 14, 2009
The Democrats really can’t seem to get their arms around economics when it comes to Obamacare. Pelosi’s House fiasco will raise its ugly head in conference after the Reid-Bacus committee bill is passed by the Senate. Yet that Senate bill really doesn’t work economically as advertised.
The insurance industry had the gaul to commission a cost study of the proposal by Price Waterhouse Coopers which study concluded that healthcare premiums would go up not down under the bill. Nancy-Ann DeParle, Obama’s director of the White House Office of Health Reform felt “blindsided,” according to Rich Lowry’s NRO post bearing the same headline.
To make matters worse Max’s bill loses its attempt at mandated universality with a non-insurance fine that’s too low; Dick Morris calls it a mere “slap on the wrist,” in his Real Clear Politics post today.
What’s really sad is the way the CBO has been browbeaten into submission reviewing the Bacus bill conceptually and issuing the fantastic pronouncement that while costing some eight hundred billion dollars in would in fact reduce the deficit!
Yep, economics for the Democrats in their crusade to impose socialism on America seems more and more like a game of wack-a-mole!
Tom Motherway
Do As I Say!
Posted by Tom in Congress, Deficit, Nationalized Health Care on October 13, 2009
Tony Blankley in his October 14 Real Clear Politics post calls it like it is–our children, grandchildren and greatgrandchildren will be in the poor house paying for Obama, Pelosi, Reid and company. Washington is living on the proverbial free lunch. Sage advice: move to another country!
And yet the same Congress and president who want to stop the banks from taking too much risk cannot stop themselves from ever more deficits. Indeed, so intoxicated — nay, hypnotized! — by debt is the current government that it is not even proposing to try to cut back.
Last week saw, at the same time: 1) the world shuddering about the debt-driven weakening dollar (“The biggest story in the world economy is the continuing fall of the U.S. dollar, or at least it is everywhere outside of Washington, D.C., the place most responsible for its declining value.” — The Wall Street Journal) and 2) Washington cheering Sen. Max Baucus’ health bill’s spending levels (“Health Care Bill Gets Green Light in Cost Analysis” — The New York Times).
That’s right. The federal government is giving the “green light” for the country to drive to the poorhouse — and drive there, I would argue, by way of the lunatic asylum. Are they nuts? Consider a few details.
Before the Baucus health bill is enacted, $9.3 trillion of newly created deficit already has been added to the national debt. The Baucus bill is considered a triumph of careful budgeting because it may cost only $829 billion — and will not add to that unsustainable deficit because it is to be paid for by cutting Medicare and other programs by about $400 billion and raising taxes primarily on health care insurance by about $400 billion.
America is in deep trouble.
Dollar Reaches Breaking Point
Posted by Tom in Foreign Policy, Foreign Trade, Monetary Policy on October 12, 2009
Who will fund the record breaking Obama deficits? The dollar is falling as it should with anticipated Obamaflation. Of course Obama and the Democratic Congress are not helping by taking the strong protectionist tack that their union owners demand. This from Bloomberg:
Policy makers boosted foreign currency holdings by $413 billion last quarter, the most since at least 2003, to $7.3 trillion, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Nations reporting currency breakdowns put 63 percent of the new cash into euros and yen in April, May and June, the latest Barclays Capital data show. That’s the highest percentage in any quarter with more than an $80 billion increase.
World leaders are acting on threats to dump the dollar while the Obama administration shows a willingness to tolerate a weaker currency in an effort to boost exports and the economy as long as it doesn’t drive away the nation’s creditors. The diversification signals that the currency won’t rebound anytime soon after losing 10.3 percent on a trade-weighted basis the past six months, the biggest drop since 1991.“Global central banks are getting more serious about diversification, whereas in the past they used to just talk about it,” said Steven Englander, a former Federal Reserve researcher who is now the chief U.S. currency strategist at Barclays in New York. “It looks like they are really backing away from the dollar.”
via Dollar Reaches Breaking Point as Banks Shift Reserves Update3 – Bloomberg.com.
Obama’s post American world will be dramatically weaker and much poorer.
Tom Motherway
Ali Gomaa, Grand Mufti of Egypt, a Reasonable Voice of Islam
Posted by Tom in Law, Morality & Religion in the Public Square on October 8, 2009
The October 8th WSJ Oped by Sheikh Ali Gomaa, Grand Mufti of Egypt is a refreshing and seldom heard communication from Islam to the West. The sub headline reads, “Peace among the Abrahamic faiths will be built on respect and the law.” This harkens back to my September 26th post, One God, Three Faiths. Our main world religions do, after all, trace our roots to Abraham. While the implications of some of his concepts call for discussion, Ali Gomaa’s stated aspirations are welcome and hopefully a great start for better understanding.
We unequivocally condemned violence against the innocent during Egypt’s own struggle with terrorism in the 1980s and 90’s, and after the heinous sin of 9/11. We continue to do so in public debates with extremists on their views of Islam, in our outreach to schools and youth organizations, in our training of students from all across the world at Egypt’s theological institutions, and in our counseling of captured terrorists. As the head of the one of the foremost Islamic authorities in the world, let me restate: The murder of civilians is a crime against humanity and God punishable in this life and the next.
Yet, just as we recommit to reinforcing the values of moderation in our faith, we look to the United States to assume its responsibility for the sake of a better relationship between the West and Islam.
First, it is essential that the U.S. confront the fear and misunderstanding that has often pervaded the public discourse about Islam, especially in the media.
Second, while we must strive to reinforce the common principles that we share, we must also accept the reality of differences in our values and in our outlook. Islam and the West have distinct value systems. Respect for our differences is a foundation for coexistence, and never for conflict.
Finally, there must a true commitment to the rule of law, and to sovereign equality, as the legitimate basis for international relations. While some of the divide between Islam and the West lies in the realm of ideas, it lies mostly in the realm of politics. The violence and the aggression to which many Muslim countries have been subjected are the main sources of a deep and legitimate sense of grievance, and they must be addressed.
via Ali Gomaa: Islam, Israel and the United States – WSJ.com.
Tom Motherway