Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
Listen to the wisdom of Reagan.
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you
Rudyard Kipling
So-called “intelligent people” are continuing to call shots and give advice to the US President and Congress that is leading us straight over the financial cliff.
Obama claims that the root causes of our financial crisis are: a) Bush, b) Wall Street, c) Banks, and d) Republicans.
Paul Krugman, like Obama, a Nobel-prize winner (which should say something about his credibility) is a perma-Keynesian who writes for the NY Times. I noted recently that he has been one of the prime proponents of MASSIVE borrowing and spending by the Federal government.
Now on Sunday the 27th, he warned we are entering a Depression. He whines about the lack of spending from government:
“you might have expected policy makers to realize that they haven’t yet done enough to promote recovery. But no: over the last few months there has been a stunning resurgence of hard-money and balanced-budget orthodoxy.”
Gee Paul, what part of reckless spending don’t you understand? He says that not spending is a deliberate mean-spirited act:
“the victory of an orthodoxy that has little to do with rational analysis, whose main tenet is that imposing suffering on other people is how you show leadership in tough times.”
It now seems that Krugman, Obama and his merry men are becoming a smaller and smaller voice, as governments all over the world wobble with crushing debts and deficits. Obama encouraged the G20 in Toronto to spend; they told him to pound sand.
Rebuffed, Obama still cannot bring himself to reduce government spending — rather we will see some wild-ass tax proposals. As far as he is concerned, though federal expenditures are up 21% in the last 2 years, spending isn’t the problem. He wants to hike taxes, but knows he hasn’t got a chance before the November elections, so he sent a veiled warning from Toronto:
“I hope some of these folks who are hollering about deficits and debt step up, because I’m calling their bluff, And we’ll see how much of the political arguments they’re making right now are real, and how much of it was just politics.”
Why wait? Well, he has to wait for his blue-ribbon debt commission to come back (after the election), so he can propose taxes, taxes, taxes .. to save us. But that committee looks like there are some no-nonsense members, like Alan Simpson, who aren’t going to pussy foot around — so that may blow up on Obama.
Of course, the root causes of the financial crises are not, according to the government:
- Reckless government spending
- Unfunded programs: social security, medicare, prescription drugs
- Unfunded government union pensions
- A non-transparent and reckless Fed, who is trying experiments never tried before
- Freddie and Fannie, encouraged by Congress, backing ridiculous loans to anyone with a dog
- And did I mention? reckless government spending
The reality is that we cannot spending our way out of an over-spending problem, regardless of what Nobel-prize winning economists say.
Allan Meltzer writes in today’s WSJ: “Why Obamanomics Has Failed:
“Almost daily, Mr. Obama uses his rhetorical skill to castigate businessmen who have the audacity to hope for profitable opportunities. No president since Franklin Roosevelt has taken that route. President Roosevelt slowed recovery in 1938-40 until the war by creating uncertainty about his objectives. It was harmful then, and it’s harmful now.”
The solution? Reganomics anyone?
“The contrast with President Reagan’s antirecession and pro-growth measures in 1981 is striking. Reagan reduced marginal and corporate tax rates and slowed the growth of nondefense spending. Recovery began about a year later. After 18 months, the economy grew more than 9% and it continued to expand above trend rates.”
Are we too late to following recovery plans like Prices’s “Stop Reckless Spending” plan, or Paul Ryan’s “Roadmap for America’s Future“?
I’m afraid we will suffer a lot of pain before then. Mish Sherlock wrote this week that “An Economic Depression is Here“. Congress and The Fed are to blame.
Hold tight … this won’t be fun.
Quote of the Day: "Under civil forfeiture, police and prosecutors can seize your car or other property, sell it and use the proceeds to fund agency budgets, all without so much as charging you with a crime. Unlike criminal forfeiture, where property is taken after its owner has been found guilty in a court of law, with civil forfeiture, owners need not be charged with or convicted of a crime to lose homes, cars, cash or other property. Americans are supposed to be innocent until proven guilty, but civil forfeiture turns that principle on its head." – The Institute For Justice, "Policing For Profits"
Civil asset forfeiture is the practice of seizing and keeping property that police claim was used in a crime.
* The government does not have to prove their claim in court under the standard of "beyond a reasonable doubt"
* Instead of "innocent until proven guilty" the property owner must prove innocence at his or her own expense
* Incredibly, the funds necessary to pay for that defense are often also confiscated
Police departments are growing more dependent on forfeitures to pay for their budgets. This means no one is safe . . .
* Instead of "protecting and serving" the people, police are pressured to investigate "crimes" which provide the best opportunity to seize property and cash,
* You can lose your car, your cash, or other property through a simple misunderstanding, or because you "look" suspicious
* And even where there are state laws protecting the innocent against abuses, the federal government rewards local police departments for evading state law!
Civil asset forfeiture is a moral and constitutional outrage. Yet the courts permit it. Only public pressure will bring this corrupt and barbaric practice to an end, so we’re asking you to tell Congress to End Asset Forfeiture.
You may borrow from or copy this letter . . .
The Institute for Justice report "Policing For Profit," offers a sobering look at asset forfeiture in the United States today. Local law enforcement have used asset forfeiture proceeds to . . . http://tinyurl.com/22p2oop
* purchase football tickets for the district attorney’s office
* purchase TV ads for the district attorney’s re-election campaign;
* fund a "training seminar" in Hawaii for the staff of the district attorney’s office
In one instance, $250,000 was donated to the sheriff’s alma mater for a scholarship!
Amazingly, most of this money was taken from people who were never even charged with a crime, let alone convicted. It was stolen money.
"Policing For Profits" also reveals that . . .
* A survey of 770 law enforcement executives found that nearly 40% viewed civil forfeiture as a necessary budget supplement
* A sample of 52 police departments in Texas found that forfeiture proceeds accounted for 14% of their budgets
* There is very little accountability or oversight on how the money is spentThere are a few states with reasonable safeguards designed to protect the innocent against asset forfeiture abuse, but the federal government circumvents these state laws through a program called "equitable sharing." Local police can seize property and hand it over to the federal government in order to bypass state controls.
* The local police agency can get as much as 80% of the proceeds back from the Federal government
* The true owner must fight in federal court for the return of his or her property
* Instead of the government proving guilt, the owner must prove innocence
* The costs of challenging forfeiture is often so great that many forfeitures go unchallengedIn addition, the federal government itself has cleared a $1 billion profit from civil forfeiture. And yet, 80% of the property owners are never even charged with a crime. They are victims of government theft!
I have no problem with laws that require individuals convicted of heinous crimes to forfeit criminal profits and the property they used in the crime. But taking property without even pressing criminal charges is naked theft AND YOU KNOW IT.
The Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments say that no person can lose his of her property without due process of law. Honor your oath of office. Repeal the federal forfeiture laws and end equitable sharing.
END LETTER
You can send your letter through DownsizeDC.org’s Educate the Powerful System.
If you are as outraged at civil asset forfeiture as we are, we encourage you to forward this message to your friends and share this on Facebook.
Thanks for taking action!
James Wilson
Assistant Communications Director
DownsizeDC.org
D o w n s i z e r – D i s p a t c h
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Under the cover of “net Neutrality”, the Obama administration has moved closer to regulating free speech on the internet.
Vis:
- In April, the Supreme Court threw out the FCC rule that dictated whether or not internet providers could throttle users of programs like BitTorrent.
- Not happy with the SCOTUS affront to POTUS, last week, the FCC declared that the Internet is a public utility. if this stands, the government can control content — your free speech, your RIGHT to disagree with the policies of this (or any) government. It makes, as Pamela Geller writes, Obama the Julius Caesar of the Internet.
- Should you worry? Hell yes!
On Saturday in Virginia, Obama gave a speech where he said:
And meanwhile, you’re coming of age in a 24/7 media environment that bombards us with all kinds of content and exposes us to all kinds of arguments, some of which don’t always rank that high on the truth meter. And with iPods and iPads; and Xboxes and PlayStations — none of which I know how to work — (laughter) — information becomes a distraction, a diversion, a form of entertainment, rather than a tool of empowerment, rather than the means of emancipation. So all of this is not only putting pressure on you; it’s putting new pressure on our country and on our democracy.
What the hey ?! Free flow of “information” is putting pressure on our democracy?
This is a very disturbing set of events.
For the last year, all political attention has been focussed on the health care debate. In the end, the bills that were ramrodded through Congress and signed by the president will not reduce government spending by a dime.
In fact, Congressman Paul Ryan’s analysis, CATO analysis, heck… anybody with a brain’s analysis will show you that the true cost of the bills could be as high as $2.5 trillion.
Moreover, the on-budget costs of the legislation probably account for only 40 percent of the total costs. The other 60 percent come from the private-sector mandates. But Democrats have systematically suppressed any estimates of those hidden taxes, probably because such an estimate would reveal the full cost of the legislation to be closer to $2.5 trillion over the next 10 years.
And, did I mention? We don’t have the money!
Gosh, this weekend, Pravda published “American capitalism gone with a whimper“. The writer laments America’s fall.
It must be said, that like the breaking of a great dam, the American decent into Marxism is happening with breath taking speed, against the back drop of a passive, hapless sheeple, excuse me dear reader, I meant people.
Sort of insulting to be called a sheeple, but the true hurts! And then Pravda targets the complicity of the financial institutions.
The final collapse has come with the election of Barack Obama. His speed in the past three months has been truly impressive. His spending and money printing has been a record setting, not just in America’s short history but in the world. If this keeps up for more then another year, and there is no sign that it will not, America at best will resemble the Wiemar Republic and at worst Zimbabwe.
These past two weeks have been the most breath taking of all. First came the announcement of a planned redesign of the American Byzantine tax system, by the very thieves who used it to bankroll their thefts, loses and swindles of hundreds of billions of dollars. These make our Russian oligarchs look little more then ordinary street thugs, in comparison.
Yikes! Our banks are ripping us off? Then this article in Bloomberg this weekend: “JPMorgan, Lehman, UBS named in Bid Rigging“.
JPMorgan Chase & Co., Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. and UBS AG were among more than a dozen Wall Street firms involved in a conspiracy to pay below-market interest rates to U.S. state and local governments on investments, according to documents filed in a U.S. Justice Department criminal antitrust case.
The bump in the economy is a false trap. The government spending is a head fake, and smart money is getting out of bonds, equities and hard assets. Governments who have to balance their budgets (state and local) are going broke and moving to severe austerity programs. Unions are on the other side: they are organized and militant.
This is not looking good. Expect, as Moody’s pointed out, that the eventual cure, will cause social unrest.
(Also at RedState)
