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Friedman Calls Code Red and then Instructs Us in Confidence: Depression is Here. Believe in O’Bozo

Friedman Calls Code Red and then Instructs Us in Confidence: Depression is Here. Believe in O’Bozo

The New York Times—aka the Walter Duranty Papers[1]has an all-embracing and tortuous history of apologizing for Communism, propping up losers, celebrating AIDS along with the perverted practices that spread this horror, and its never ending pursuit of higher and higher and higher taxes.  The Times has never retreated from its pathological contempt for capitalism. The Times has also relentlessly praised any leftist parasite or pervert who will openly parade their dishonor in our now degenerated society.  Today, as the economy starts to sag, the Times appears to wax a bit solemn on certain economic matters but grinds on with their propaganda on the essence of the Obama Depression Politics. [2] We are encouraged to be confident. Obama is here!

 

Our Resident EcoNazi[3], now wrapped in his new scintillating economic gown steps up to the podium on Mt. Olympus to offer guidance to the unwashed masses with a confession and a suggestion:

 

So, I have a confession and a suggestion. The confession: I go into restaurants these days, look around at the tables often still crowded with young people, and I have this urge to go from table to table and say: “You don’t know me, but I have to tell you that you shouldn’t be here. You should be saving your money. You should be home eating tuna fish. This financial crisis is so far from over. We are just at the end of the beginning. Please, wrap up that steak in a doggy bag and go home.” [4]-- We Found the W.M.D. By Thomas L. Friedman Op-Ed Columnist [Emphasis is mine in all quotes.]This link references all quotes in this essay unless otherwise stated.

 

 Then, from a banker:

 

This is the real “Code Red.” As one banker remarked to me: “We finally found the W.M.D.” They were buried in our own backyard — subprime mortgages and all the derivatives attached to them.”-- Thomas L. Friedman

 

No blame here for Fannie Mae and her idiot brother  Freddy or the CRA  [Community Communist Reinvestment Act][5][6]? Of course not. Not even a mention. All that ‘affordable housing’ must have been a good idea as a good liberal Democrat tells us:

 

"These two entities—Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac—are not facing any kind of financial crisis," said Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts, the ranking Democrat on the Financial Services Committee. "The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing."[7]—Backside Barney Frank

 

Just 5 trillion dollars of toxic debt Barney. Reviewing a recent article by Krugman from Nov. 14[gee not even two weeks ago] by the igNoble Leechette[8][9], we get the following prediction:

The economic news, in case you haven’t noticed, keeps getting worse. Bad as it is, however, I don’t expect another Great Depression. In fact, we probably won’t see the unemployment rate match its post-Depression peak of 10.7 percent, reached in 1982 (although I wish I was sure about that)”[10]-- Depression Economics Returns By Paul Krugman Op-Ed Columnist Published: November 14, 2008 [Emphasis is mine in all quotes.]

Well, there are two predictions that belong in the latrine. So, what does Friedman, our Hero of the Moment, advise us to do except eat tuna?

The last point is something only a new President Obama can inject. What ails us right now is as much a loss of confidence — in our financial system and our leadership — as anything else. I have no illusions that Obama’s arrival on the scene will be a magic wand, but it would help.”

My confidence soared after I learned O’Bozo listened to Jeremiah Wright for 20 years.

“Right now there is something deeply dysfunctional, bordering on scandalously irresponsible, in the fractious way our political elite are behaving — with business as usual in the most unusual economic moment of our lifetimes. They don’t seem to understand: Our financial system is imperiled.”-- Thomas L. Friedman

Conventional wisdom says it’s good for a new president to start at the bottom. The only way to go is up. That’s true — unless the bottom falls out before he starts.”

So, what is the message here? This is the Bush Depression and only some Messiah like O’Bozo can rescue us from this looming financial disaster? We all have loads of confidence in O’Bozo.

One of Friedman’s errant comments is placed here as the conclusion to this mess:

The stock and credit markets haven’t been fooled. They have started to price financial stocks at Great Depression levels, not just recession levels. With $5, you can now buy one share of Citigroup and have enough left over for a bite at McDonalds.”

Now, this is fact and a rare admission of the truth from the NYT. I wonder if Friedman passed this around and by Krugman before his published this heresy. This group who could see through the odious leftist fog is called the Smart Money Set and they can consider themselves as being somewhat beyond tuna [sans thon in French] sandwiches at this point. The dumb money is known by its sticky attachment to the Party of Democrats or their theories of class warfare and taxation.

We have smart money and the smart voters who have, at least in part, finessed this social and financial disaster by avoiding the phony tax-whoring antics of Fanny Mae, the gurgling and Elmer Fudd fluster bluster and flying spittle droplets of Barney Frank and have cleared their debts. The dumb voters are still mesmerized by O’Bozo, the Messiah, who will give us ‘confidence’ in the future. Indeed, the smart money is already making business plans to make profits when the bottom falls out of probably half of our businesses. The dumb money will follow the Detroit Bailout, Green Weenieisms and other follies.

Sure.

Let us hype the confidence up and stimulate the masses with some massive taxes on the middle class, the use of a big fat carbon taxe[11] on all energy forms and maybe a neat environment-preserving gasoline tax of say $2 per gallon. We all have confidence in O’Bozo.

rycK

 

Comments: ryckki@gmail.com

 



[1] In honor of that celebrated Communist stooge and liar and winner of the Pulitzer Prize for the NYT. The color RED is used in my essays in honor of Walter Duranty, a saint, if there could be one, in the Marxist Archives of Honor.

[4] We Found the W.M.D. By Thomas L. Friedman Op-Ed Columnist http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/23/opinion/23friedman.html

 

[5]Bear Stearns made the first public securitization of Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) loans started in 1997.[6] Editorialists in some American newspapers[7][8] and US Congressman Ron Paul[9] say the CRA loans were lent to otherwise un-credit-worthy consumers in the name of ending discrimination, although an analysis of actual lending patterns does not generally support this conclusion.[10][11][12]

On June 22, 2007, Bear Stearns pledged a collateralized loan of up to $3.2 billion to "bail out" one of its funds, the Bear Stearns High-Grade Structured Credit Fund, while negotiating with other banks to loan money against collateral to another fund, the Bear Stearns High-Grade Structured Credit Enhanced Leveraged Fund.[13] The funds were invested in thinly traded collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) found to be worth less than their mark-to-market value. Merrill Lynch seized $850 million worth of the underlying collateral but only was able to auction $100 million of them. The incident sparked concern of contagion as Bear Stearns might be forced to liquidate its CDOs, prompting a mark-down of similar assets in other portfolios.[14][15] Richard A. Marin, a senior executive at Bear Stearns Asset Management responsible for the two hedge funds, was replaced on June 29 by Jeffrey B. Lane, a former Vice Chairman of rival investment bank, Lehman Brothers.[16]

During the week of July 16, 2007, Bear Stearns disclosed that the two subprime hedge funds had lost nearly all of their value amid a rapid decline in the market for subprime mortgages.

 

[6] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_Reinvestment_Act

Community Reinvestment Act (or CRA, Pub.L. 95-128, title VIII, 91 Stat. 1147, 12 U.S.C. § 2901 et seq.)

 

[10] Depression Economics Returns By Paul Krugman Op-Ed Columnist Published: November 14, 2008 http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/14/opinion/14krugman.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

 

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It May Be Time For a Bunker Mentality: The Economy is Crashing and We have a New Dictator in Charge.

It May Be Time For a Bunker Mentality: The Economy is Crashing and We have a New Dictator in Charge.

 

We need to think seriously about a few things in light of the recent political and economic disasters we are swimming in.  We have some serious problems that are not being considered or given light treatment:

 

[1] We have a nation with fully ¼ of the population that has an IQ lower than 85[1].  We have people who cannot grasp even the simplest notions about business, society and conduct. Many of our cities are now simply rescue missions.[2] Many of our high schools have dropout rates of 50% or more.

 

[2] We have 2 million felons in prison now and some 5-10 million more on ‘probation’ and even more including those who are still committing crimes and haven’t been caught yet. There is much sympathy for druggies.[3]

 

[3] We have 12-20 million illegal aliens running around the country hustling drugs and evading taxes and 5 million of them got sub-prime or zero-down ‘affordable’ housing mortgages[4] a the urging of our government.

 

[4] We have college-educated citizens who believe that carbon dioxide is a pollutant[5] and that we must tax every form of energy to save the polar bears.

 

[5] We have fully 1/20 of our society who want to take drugs rather than work and many of these have an IQ exceeding 120.  We have cities where drugs are not only tolerated but they are celebrated.[6]  We have drug ‘rehab’ programs that do nothing but waste money.

 

[6] We have very large cities where the crime rates are the highest in the world.  The solution is to let the miscreants go free.

 

[7] We have so-called experts who advise us that paying excessive taxes is ‘patriotic[7]’ and that the government can solve our social problems if only they had some more money.

 

[8] We have millions of people who believe that we can subsidize the auto industry in Detroit[8] and that they can compete with their $80 dollar per hour wages and benefit costs against other auto makers with 1/3 of those costs.

 

[9] We have an ‘educational’ system where we cannot give and publish the results of standardized tests because it makes some students ‘feel bad.’ We have teachers in our public schools systems that apparently cannot read and are rated well in their job performances evaluations.

 

[10] We have ignoramuses that think that a ‘redistribution’ of wealth will allow everybody to live above the average. We have people who think now that Obama will pay for our mortgages and fill up our gas tanks for nothing.

 

[11] We have university professors who advocate running the printing presses so as to flood the economy with paper money and that will produce prosperity some time down the line.

 

We must do some thinking and research on human behavior on the foll0wing topics:

 

[a] How did Mussolini, Lenin, Churchill, FDR, Hitler and Franco get to power and are those enabling elements present in our society today? Who and what is Barack Obama and where did his power come from?

 

[b] How is deflation fixed?[9] The Great Depression was only ‘fixed’ with a world war. Is that the solution to the present problem? Who do we go to war against? Ourselves? Why is the price of gold rising during a deflationary period?

 

[c] How did we get into this financial mess with 6-9 of our top banks going broke? How did a single bank create a leveraged debt [$13.40 trillion[10]] exceeding the national debt? How did we wind up with 5-7 trillion dollars in toxic debt from non performing mortgages? How did Social Security wind up with some 30 trillion dollars of unfunded potential debt?

 

[d] Why are we electing politicians who want to give away free housing[11], replace traditional education with propaganda and then tax everything in sight? Where did they get the kind of people who run California[12], New York[13] and New Jersey?

 

[e] Why are we dumping on Christianity while celebrating Islam? Why do we denigrate our own soldiers and make excuses for the enemy?

 

[f] What must we do with our business plans for the future in light of the massive tax threats from the liberals? Should we close businesses and avoid taxable income? We should work and take risks for what? Higher and higher and higher taxes?

 

[g] Is it true that if we buy a car from the Big Three in Detroit that some residual of that purchase will burden us in future taxes to pay for excessive pension liabilities?

 

[h] Are we to believe that ‘science’ and ‘technology’ will ‘create new green jobs’ as we note that they as yet have no satisfactory car battery, or efficient solar energy converters [after 50 years of research] and that windmills are not very efficient? Are we trying to make cold fusion work?

 

 What are we doing here? We seem to elect losers and then it looks like we are casting swine before pearls whenever one of these parasites makes a speech. Is our wealth and our future being sold out for some phony political notion?

 

 

rycK

 

 

 

Comments: ryckki@gmail.com

 



[1] The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life (ISBN: 0029146739)

by Herrnstein, Richard J. and  Murray, Charles  Free Press of Glencoe , Inc, Old Tappan, New Jersey, U.S.A., 1994.

The Babbling Brooks of the NYT Babbles about Education.

http://rycksrationalizations.blogtownhall.com/2008/07/29/the_babbling_brooks_of_the_nyt_babbles_about_education.thtml

 

[2] San Francisco, Protects, and Adores Sleaze and Illegal Aliens.  This Effort will launch a Parasite to the CA Governor’s Office. http://rycksrationalizations.blogtownhall.com/2008/07/09/san_francisco,_protects,_and_adores_sleaze_and_illegal_aliens__this_effort_will_launch_a_parasite_to_the_ca_governor’s_office.thtml

[3] Fresh Ideas for a Tired Crusade  By TIMOTHY EGAN Contributing Columnist Published: April 1, 2008. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/01/opinion/01egan.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

[5] Europe Puts On a Little Song and Dance over their Economic Woes.  So Come to the Cabaret and celebrate Sharia.

http://rycksrationalizations.blogtownhall.com/2008/11/03/europe_puts_on_a_little_song_and_dance_over_their_economic_woes__so_come_to_the_cabaret_and_celebrate_sharia.thtml

 

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Speaking in the Future Past Perfect Subjunctive Tense: “If Bankruptcy Hits Detroit” and Other Blather from the NYT

Speaking in the Future Past Perfect Subjunctive Tense: “If Bankruptcy Hits Detroit” and Other Blather from the NYT

 The New York Times—aka the Walter Duranty Papers [1]  operates a screed generation station. They have polluted the world  with all-embracing and tortuous display of apologizing for Communism, propping up losers like Al Gore[2], underwriting the phony theater of Global Warming[3] and drooling over the tax behemoth  Carbon Caps[4], advocating the lunacy of  the  Princeling of Wails[5], celebrating AIDS, hiding illegal aliens and mumbling about education. They have no other reason to exist other than to whine and sob and push for more socialism, or worse.  No matter what disaster pops up from hurricanes to venereal disease epidemics the NYT rushes to show that the taxpayer must come to the rescue. Has anybody noticed the NYT is going broke?

 

Purporting to be written in the literary guise of an editorial, we learn that, very predictably, Detroit must be bailed out using massive tax revenue infusions. We read maudlin fluff like this:

 

Congress has given Detroit’s flailing automakers less than two weeks to come up with a restructuring plan that would justify giving them tens of billions of taxpayer dollars and ensure that they have a reasonable path back to profitability. We hope it is a good plan, because the lame-duck Congress does not have a choice.”[6]-- If Bankruptcy Hits Detroit NYT Editorial Published: November 22, 2008 [Emphasis is mine in all quotes.]This link references all quotes in this essay unless otherwise stated.

 

The tune here is called “The Inevitability of Socialism…….yah yah yoodle ..dinky…donkey doodle…gimme yer money…hoot...toot and all taxes to the rescue.”

 

There is no limit to the goodness and mercy that can be had for humanity if we just keep raising taxes and subsidizing failure wherever it occurs in our society. To point out that this verbose wreckage is just an extension of the common leftist tax-whoring[7], tautological precept is to waste our time. The Times will never offer anything else.

 

No choice??

 

Unpalatable as it seems to underwrite the proven record of failure of Detroit’s automakers, Congress must provide sufficient money to shore them up until the Obama administration takes office. Then, the new president and new Congress can decide how to manage either a rescue package with tight strings attached or a bankruptcy process that ensures the fallen companies have a reasonable shot at picking up the pieces.”

 

The translation here is: yes, we know the greedy unions have sucked the life out of this business and will use their massive union dues to continue to bribe politicians and other social parasites to subsidize their greed and poltroonery so they can continue to spread this contagion. Then O’Bozo[8] will bless and cure.

 

Economists Luigi Zingales and Joshua Rauh of the University of Chicago estimated that if General Motors were to collapse, underfunded pension liabilities would cost taxpayers roughly $23 billion.”

 

This sounds like a bargain to me. We should continue to guarantee pensions based on $80 per hour earnings and other wild benefits? What happens when the wages rise to $120 per hour or $200. How big would this bill be in 5 or 10 more years? $100 billion? More?

 

It would still be our choice that the restructuring of blundering auto companies occur in an orderly way and be combined with a national strategy to deliver more fuel-efficient cars. Congress, so far, has failed in its duty to help make that happen. What must be avoided at all costs is for a big car company to spiral into liquidation.

 

These companies must produce sound business plans because the non union plants in the US can expand and cover the production of cars. The notion that we can let the Sierra Club micromanage automobile design is preposterous. Such a plan will have to truncate salaries and benefits to be less than $30 per hour to be competitive.

 

The unions and C.A.F.E. standards have ruined this business so let us put them into Chapter 11 and restructure them and see if they can compete in the market place. I don’t think they have a chance.

 

We quit making TVs, watches, textiles and other products on our soil and our civilization managed to survive so if Detroit no longer makes cars we can probably muddle through.

 

Let the leftists at the Times bawl. They are part of the problem.

 rycK

  Comments: ryckki@gmail.com

 


[1] In honor of that celebrated Communist stooge and liar and winner of the Pulitzer Prize for the NYT. The color RED is used in my essays in honor of Walter Duranty, a saint, if there could be one, in the Marxist Archives of Honor.

[3] 21,000 Scientists Refute the Phony Global Warming Follies as The Biggest Attempt to Tax The World Has Even Seen. Monday, January 28, 2008 10:46 AM

http://rycksrationalizations.townhall.com/g/c9173a36-97a1-4108-9e7d-cdaa38b28cbf

 

[6] If Bankruptcy Hits Detroit NYT Editorial Published: November 22, 2008 http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/22/opinion/22sat1.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

[Emphasis is mine in all quotes.]This link references all quotes in this essay unless otherwise stated.

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Krugman‘s Lame Duck Thinking about Lame Duck Thinking: Half-Circular Empty Logic

 Krugman‘s Lame Duck Thinking about Lame Duck Thinking: Half-Circular Empty Logic

The New York Times—aka the Walter Duranty Papers [1]  has an all-embracing and tortuous history of apologizing for Communism, propping up losers like Al Gore[2] or the Princeling of Wails[3], celebrating AIDS along with the perverted practices that spread this horror, practicing the wanton tax whoring for higher taxes for any implausible reasons, praising African and South American dictators and despots in their opinion columns and scrounging for original new ways to reinvent Marxism as a new-fangled and magical solution to achieve a great society. The Times has relentlessly praised any leftist parasite or pervert who will openly parade their dishonor in our now degenerated society.  Today, the Times revisit, again, their revered Rooseveltian Memorabilia to propagandize us on the glory of the Democratic Party when they partied over the misery during the Great Depression.

 Our newest, but least proficient igNoble Leechette[4][5][6], has previously inculcated us with his special insights on recessions and a sweeping denunciation of Republican economics and their leadership paralysis while he heaps more praise upon the statues and legends of Franklin Del Ano. [7] He has a new New Deal for us to pay for.

 But, a recent analysis of the tautological krugmaniacal screeds suggests that maybe Paul Krugman has forgotten some of his previous erroneous opinions.  Not that someone of his high stature might be disallowed a change of his views, given an analysis of the facts.  We should be able to tolerate some latitude here, within reason, if the reversals were influenced by the guiding illumination of the facts and, or, more importantly, in light of the current political crisis, whatever that might be.  But, we can only go so far. So in a departure from my normal procedure, I post some of his previous comments and recommendations before we examine his newest and brightest advice and counsel for advanced liberalism.

 A little prep from one of his recent screeds is thusly revisited where he mumbles about the  Del Ano, tax increases, spending and war as the ‘solution’ to ending the depression:

 “Well, it wasn’t as major as you might think. The effects of federal public works spending were largely offset by other factors, notably a large tax increase, enacted by Herbert Hoover, whose full effects weren’t felt until his successor took office. Also, expansionary policy at the federal level was undercut by spending cuts and tax increases at the state and local level.”[8]-- Paul Krugman [Emphasis is mine in all quotes.]

So, no tax increases during a steep recession or depression? Spend?"

“What saved the economy, and the New Deal, was the enormous public works project known as World War II, which finally provided a fiscal stimulus adequate to the economy’s needs.”[9]-- Paul Krugman

So, we need another “enormous public works project?”

 The economic lesson is the importance of doing enough. F.D.R. thought he was being prudent by reining in his spending plans; in reality, he was taking big risks with the economy and with his legacy. My advice to the Obama people is to figure out how much help they think the economy needs, then add 50 percent. It’s much better, in a depressed economy, to err on the side of too much stimulus than on the side of too little.”[10]-- Paul Krugman

 This looks like spend, spend and spend some more.[11] Hey just add 50% to some unknown number. That is Krugman Economics at its best.

 Okay, now from today:

 Everyone’s talking about a new New Deal, for obvious reasons. In 2008, as in 1932, a long era of Republican political dominance came to an end in the face of an economic and financial crisis that, in voters’ minds, both discredited the G.O.P.’s free-market ideology and undermined its claims of competence. And for those on the progressive side of the political spectrum, these are hopeful times.”[12]--The Lame-Duck Economy by Paul Krugman Op-Ed Columnist Published: November 21, 2008

 What is the alternative to free-market ideology we might wonder? Protectionism? Subsidizing our failing industries?[13] High tariffs?

 Now, we dump on the Republicans:

 the emergence of a power vacuum at the height of the crisis…yadda… How much can go wrong in the two months before Mr. Obama takes the oath of office? …yadda…Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index has now fallen more than 50 percent from its peak. yadda…no new rescue plan is in sight. …yadda…clear deflationary pressure on the U.S. economy right now……yadda…”—Krugman Published[today]: November 21, 2008

 But a prediction from 2002 from our economist:

 And so the threat of deflation is worse now than it was a year ago.”[14]-- Crisis In Prices? By Paul Krugman Published: December 31, 2002

 He predicted this malady 6 years ago? He is indeed a sage and soothsayer. Gee, are there any time constraints or boundaries of reason or guessing that we might apply to the incoherent rants of the igNoble Leechette? No. This is the "Jeane Dixon effect." [15] All he has to do is guess every possible outcome and then claim ownership of any prediction that comes ‘true.’ There are only two absolute—cut in stone and guarded by The Ugliest San Francisco Harpies—Grand Precepts from our krugmaniacal one:

 [1] High taxes and more taxes are always necessary and [2] Big government is best  and bigger government is much better.

 Everything else in the economic basket is subject to a little sculpture and some quickie patina washes so as to put the usual spin and a little glitter on the leftist view. But, remaining true to the unions who worked with due diligence to get Obama elected we read:

 “I’m concerned, in particular, about the two D’s: deflation and Detroit.”

 Here we go! A bailout for the unions.[16]

 There’s now a real risk that, in the absence of quick federal aid, the Big Three automakers and their network of suppliers will be forced into liquidation — that is, forced to shut down, lay off all their workers and sell off their assets. And if that happens, it will be very hard to bring them back.”

 This is the Chapter 7 version, which nobody is advocating. Chapter 11, however—and our sputtering igNoble Leechette knows this—would allow judges to meet with  labor, creditors, auto executives and such and formulate a plan for restructuring. It is clear that the Big Three cannot compete with anybody in the world with their $80 per hour labor costs. This is where we see the liberals drift off into space: No matter what we must subsidize greedy unions because they are political partisans. No matter that there is no way to compete unless those labors costs are truncated some 65% to get a sound business plan—we need some “quick federal aid,” to fix this up. [17]

 Even the Reptile of San Francisco[18] a loathsome, vindictive Marxist parasite also known as Spartacus[19] in honor of the Marxist heroine Rosa Luxemburg the former chair of the Marxist Progressive Caucus[20] or Congress' Red Army caucus[21] wants to see a business plan that works, or offers lies to that effect.

 Until we see the plan…we cannot show them the money,” said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.[22]

 Why wouldn’t Nancy and Harry just dump a few hundred billion into Detroit so as to erect a permanent socialist empire there? Krugman has no problem with this. Whatever it costs just dump in 50% more.

 This appears to be just a freak show version of the Blame Game. If the Dems waste money then they will get the flak and lose seats in 2010 as they will surely do, since they will do nothing but sink us in debt in the next two years with the blessings of the IgNoble One. If they can blame Bush2 for inaction then the Dems win the current battle.

 There is one more slimy option: The Big Three Beggars and their Union Stooges might show up at some secret meeting with Nancy and Harry  shining in the splendor of their purple robes and hand off their ‘plan’ and then,  unread, the Two might announce that this is a done deal. Thus, the taxpayers get stuck with subsidizing failure, the only real option for the left in a capitalist economy.

 One missing link here: where is the soothing essay on tax hikes? Are we to accept the phony notion that Obama will NOT increase taxes on those who make less than $250,000 as he ‘promised’ and Plugs recited as he echoed his Master’s Voice?[23]

 Detroit has no future as a business center, as a non primitive society or even as a sanitary landfill. It is a rusty containment facility for losers, drug addicts and criminals of leftist persuasion.

 But, our hero sums up with this:

 And it’s scary to think how much more can go wrong before Inauguration Day.”

 And, after Inauguration Day Obama will fix all this up with high taxation and wild spending. Sure.

 My analysis:

 What we are looking at here is an ideological socialist who willingly contorts any fundamental tenets anywhere in the theory or history of economics in a manner so as the service the expediency of the leftist political vision and echo the elements of the current political crisis. He is a crisis monger. Economic theory aside, he really does hop and clap when he hears his master’s voice. His view of economics is faulty if we read his works and note that tax cuts are never appropriate and government can never be too big or oppressive. There is no balance in this view as he omits any reference to market theory or fundamental capitalism. We can only celebrate and acknowledge him for his earned image as a trusty leftist lackey and heap praise upon him for fittingly performing his role as an ideological sycophant who deserves his Nobel Prize if it can be universally accepted for what it really is.

 Given his mechanical ideology and immunity from the basics of economics and reason, we can safely check out his noisy screeds as the first place to look for the wrong thing to do in our society.

 Great work Paul. You are to be celebrated as a Bellwether in Reverse.

  rycK

 Comments: ryckki@gmail.com

 


[1] In honor of that celebrated Communist stooge and liar and winner of the Pulitzer Prize for the NYT. The color RED is used in my essays in honor of Walter Duranty, a saint, if there could be one, in the Marxist Archives of Honor.

[7] Italian word:  ?ano noun, masculine anus http://www.wordreference.com/iten/ano

[12] The Lame-Duck Economy by Paul Krugman Op-Ed Columnist Published: November 21, 2008 http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/21/opinion/21krugman.html?_r=1

 

[14] Crisis In Prices? By Paul Krugman Published: December 31, 2002 http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D00E7DE153FF932A05751C1A9649C8B63

[15] Dixon was so well-known that John Allen Paulos, a mathematician at Temple University, coined what he called the "Jeane Dixon effect", in which people loudly tout a few correct predictions and overlook false predictions. Many of Dixon's forecasts proved false, such as her prediction that World War III would begin in 1958 over the offshore Chinese islands of Quemoy and Matsu, that labor leader Walter Reuther would run for president in 1964 and that the Soviets would land the first man on the moon.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeane_Dixon

[18] Nancy Pelosi should go (but won't) By Yael T. Abouhalkah, Kansas City Star Editorial Page columnist http://voices.kansascity.com/node/2732

[19] Pelosi: The New Red Flag Rules of Spartacus.

Thursday, November 09, 2006 10:37 AM

[20] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congressional_Progressive_Caucus#Ideology .

“An array of national progressive organizations will work to support the efforts of the caucus, including the Institute for Policy Studies, The Nation Magazine, Moveon.org, National Priorities Project, Jobs with Justice Campaign, Peace Action, Americans for Democratic Action, and Progressive Democrats of America. Also co-sponsoring the kickoff event were the NAACP, ACLU, Progressive Majority, League of United Latin American Citizens, Rainbow/Push Coalition, National Council of La Raza, Hip Hop Caucus, Human Rights Campaign, Association of Farmworker Opportunity Programs, and the National Hip Hop Political Convention. The CPC has long maintained cordial ties with the Democratic Socialists of America, which hosted its website during the 1990s.”

[21] Congress' Red Army caucus. Here was their charter in 1998: Our purpose is to present thoughtful, practical solutions to the economic and social problems facing America," says its statement of purpose. "Our people-based agenda extends from job creation to job training, to economic conversion, to single payer health-care reform, to adequate funding for the AIDS crisis, to environmental reform and to women's rights. "Now that the Cold War is over, this nation's budget and overall priorities must reflect that reality. We support further cuts in outdated and unnecessary military spending, a more progressive tax system in which wealthy taxpayers and corporations contribute their fair share, and a substantial increase in social programs designed to meet the needs of low-and-middle-income American families. We believe that these goals fit within an overall commitment to deficit reduction." http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=14542

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Political Lies, Ghouls, Dictators and the Eternal Quest for your Wealth.

Political Lies, Ghouls, Dictators and the Eternal Quest for your Wealth.

 

We can take the simplistic view and point out, as Marx did, that the world is really divided into two factions: those who can be successful, build wealth and security and enjoy life and others who cannot. This appears to be trite and a mere scoop of  hackneyed reason from a sweeping statement of history until we look at the stark reality and then look deeper into the pond at the political types who would make promises to get at your money and assets. This dichotomy really appears to be the case and this tragedy forms the basis for leftist politics. They claim [a lie] that they can fix this and bring us a better society. So far, all they have brought is misery or stagnation.

 

The world has never seen a place of any size that has a homogeneous collection of citizens who have what some economist might describe as a resemblance of equality. The great empires such as Egypt, the Roman Empire, the feudal systems in Japan or Europe or England or China, or anywhere in Africa for the last 7000 years have never produced equality or a reasonable distribution of wealth. This quest for equality has never materialized. We have witnessed a warped version of ‘equality’ in Cambodia and North Korea after the socialists finished with their social engineering and cut away the unnecessary masses. We can discount little places such as Switzerland or Sweden as they have special forms of parasitic income [the dirty gun business or the dirty money business] or places like Bermuda where tourism is forced upon the polis and everybody has a job. These are anomalies and cannot be distinguished from certain isolated parts of bigger countries and regions such as the French Nobility and their lands, the kings of the Middle East, the City of Rome or some islands in the Caribbean. It is not possible to even start out with a homogeneous distribution of wealth [other than zero] and maintain that balance for two or three generations. Sooner or later those who cannot manage their assets and money will spend it away and return to their earned lower station in life.  An exception might be San Francisco where a sufficiently drug-addicted community might experience equality and bliss in some unknown dimension without regard for money or housing or even food. We need to ask what happened in South America after 500 years of European enlightenment and wonder why they missed the opportunity for greatness. They have achieved little more than mediocrity. Three words can describe South America [including Mexico]: Poverty, revolution and sloth.

 

Religion first offered a form of equality, for a small price, in the terms of either the existing life or the afterlife depending on which one you picked. The reward was contentment and a few cures for diseases and the notion that following the path of religions morality would produce a better society for all. But, as we see in India or just outside the Vatican or in the streets of old Saigon, any form of economic equality is clearly absent. Religion usually attempted to redistribute the essentials of life in terms of food and shelter by the alms method, which was to be understood as a solemn duty and the fulfillment of a mandate according to the tenets of the church. This worked in a few places, but the propensity to collect sufficient contributions from the supplicants to homogenize the population with charity in any given area was nil.  People living in view of the Vatican have gone hungry for centuries. In the 1970s the ugliest slum I had witnessed north of Tijuana was the human wreckage that surrounded Gracie Mansion in New York. The liberals have no solutions to social problems. All they have to offer the poor are lies, threats, phony social programs that work in reverse and acts of brutality.

 

The First Big Lies and how they wrecked your lives:

 

We can start a study of overt leftist prevarications with a strange character known as J J. Rousseau and his tautological lackey Karl Marx, two jokers who were able to warp the societies of France and Russia with phony notions, mass murder and absurd promises. Rousseau proffered a host of implausible nostrums that were supposed to improve society. Rousseau taught that man was out of place in the society as it then existed and that we should preferably  share many attributes found in the animal kingdom in nature and, thusly,  crafted a social contract for us to follow that would solve this problem. The savage was nobler than the nobles it seems. This mental patient formulated his theory as Theory of Natural Man[1] and mumbled about social justice, and equality and economics and thus was made to look like a gibbering fool. He made discourtesy a social attribute.  France promptly tested his phony notions, a pack of preposterous lies, with the glorious French Revolution that resulted in the systematic murder of thousands. Baskets of heads were paraded thought the streets and this became  the grand culmination of this lunacy. Liberalism was born and died here. All books became the ‘property of the state’ and many still lie moldering away in bins in France [in Bibliothèque Nationale de France (BnF) ]unread. The Napoleonic dictator ship followed.

 

Not to be bested in terms of terror and propaganda, Karl Marx conjured his phony notion that if the proletariat could take over the means of production from the bourgeois then the profits of capitalism might be returned to the people and eventually government would no longer be necessary. This would be the Golden Age. The fault here is that political types were put into power after the entire means of production was confiscated in a brutal revolution and some 65 million people put to death and then they couldn’t manage the economy they had usurped. This wreckage slowly degraded for 74 years until it finally crashed in infamy and shame in 1989 with a strong push from Ronald Reagan. Lenin and several of his subsequent disgusting parasites mangled the economy and mismanaged the natural resources and were able to produce 100 million dead during their reigns. That Marxism could produce any form of a decent society is a brutal lie.  Yet, there are many on the left today who enjoy prosperity in the US while they avidly celebrate the governments of Cuba, North Korea and Nicaragua.  Liberals freeze and stare off into space when prompted to explain why the last 100 or so Marxist dictatorship in Africa failed to deliver on their promises to make a decent society for their tribal members.  They also have some deep reverence and misplaced respect for Islamo-Fascism and, as such, defend overt terrorism. Many liberals and their ignorant victims lament the demise of the USSR and would want the old régime to return to power. This is happening.

 

The obvious brutality and public murder of millions in order to produce a society that would be egalitarian or at least produce some form of social justice prompted some to think of other lies that might drain the wealth of the bourgeois away even in small packets and use that to create social programs that would redistribute the wealth with fewer murders. Communism morphed into radical socialism where command economies might be created that would employ Marx’s theories such as high progressive taxes and confiscatory inheritance taxes and could ‘spread around the wealth’ as we heard recently in our Presidential election.  After two world wars, 80 million dead and a Great Depression in Europe, the European Union was formed and it is now collapsing from poor administration and the predictable defect of the manifold inefficiency of big government.  The phony notion [another lie]that some cluster of politicians can micromanage the economy of millions and adjust the economic supply and demand schedules of food, housing, transportation, defense and other societal metrics is so preposterous as to be dismissed immediately if we judge the result based on the outcome. When the means of production are controlled by politicians the number of ways to fail multiplies almost in proportion to the numerical square of the number of bureaucrats on the planning boards. Thus, the nostrum that big government can solve problems and spread around the wealth in a sane and equitable manner is a sick joke and a preposterous lie. Take a close look at Europe as a test case. The proof lies there anywhere you look.

 

The Notion of Education:

 

The quest for ‘equality’ and ‘social justice’ might be attained in other ways we are told and that ‘education’ of the masses is the way to do this. If we teach our offspring to be classless and steep them in fairness and humanity then social justice will spring forth like flowers in the meadows.  The disease that prevented this splendor was capitalism. Any intrinsic truths in the educational theory entrenched in this message failed to materialize in the society as a whole because of two factors: propaganda and the maldistribution of cognitive attributes or IQs.

 

Given the chance to edify their citizens and others, the early educators were tutors in Egypt, Greece, Rome and other empires and they first concentrated on teaching administrative theory, then diplomacy and  then into war colleges and  then into business. The Romans were highly educated with many high schools in The City/State of Rome where Greeks were revered as those who could teach Romans the essentials of philosophy, engineering, probably war and society.  Their republic lasted either 800 or 1000 years depending on when you might think it ended.  Nothing has matched this, ever. After the Roman Empire crashed, the classical education efforts  remained concentrated in Europe  and was based on the ‘authority of the ancients’ and thus Latin was the language of the educated up to about the end of the 18 century.  But, there was no equality for the masses in the strict terms of equal incomes, equivalent housing and assets and the essential fact that those who had great wealth actually provided for the poor was ignored and refuted. That form of education only benefited the adept and was wasted on the ignoranti.

 

To fix this problem, propaganda must replace education. The trickle down theory of distribution of wealth was unacceptable according to the new educated view.  Now leaders of corporations became greedy tyrants and exploited their employees instead of being benefactors and employing millions from their risk-taking and ingenuity. Only a few of these entrepreneurs would rise to power and they were not the ones who by an accident of birth became royal rulers, but they were the ones who were adept in business. In England those who were originally privileged to become educated by their royal parents or peers of the realm were supplanted by those with higher intelligence, more assertive personalities and advancing business skills. Education had now, in the views of the left, produced the same monsters as the royal bed chambers and must be severely modified to teach the masses how to recognize the proper leaders that would create a more liberal society. Education, then, must be modified and transformed into a major propaganda mechanism [a lie machine] that would create a mold where the elite could push out conditioned citizens who would conform to the liberal model. The citizens must be ‘educated’ to the phony notion that socialism or one of its variants is the best form of government for all. This, of course, is a lie and a difficult one to implement without some heavy propaganda and some other drastic measures. The left used both.  Educators must now be social tyrants and act as stooges of some leftist social agenda to hold jobs in the leftist-dominated educational system. Testing must be minimized and students passed along to higher grade levels without regard for academic credentials or any recognizable form of performance. Politics has now replaced facts.

 

The Failure of Education and Proliferation of Propaganda:

 

Somehow, the citizens of so-called democracies must be educated and properly propagandized into mere obedient and static pieces of some grand collage that can be constructed in accordance with modern concepts of liberalism. But, the difficulty here is that the skeptical must be lead to believe that they are giving up both power and wealth for some cause. Fear, compassion and hate are the strongest emotions so a good propagandist must use a complex elixir of all three to strip the affluent citizens of some or all of their wealth. The leftists have not ignored this precept.

 

World Wars 1, 2 were suitable propagandistic instruments to convince the good citizens to give up their time, lives and much wealth in order to fix some threatening situation.  The assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand precipitated the first big war that was going to proceed anyway but that was as good an excuse as any available at the time. Here, the fear that the enemy might march in and take over your house was real so Europe went bankrupt in the hasty prevention of this threat and received something worse for the effort.  The fact that militaristic politicians conjured up this behemoth was beside the point.  Without warring politicos there would never have been war. We are reminded by George F. Will[2] that diplomacy might have solved the dispute by talking it over as reasonable persons and making some compromises.  That [diplomacy] was only one of the big lies.  By definition, diplomacy has never solved any major war or aggression in the history of the world. American taxpayers, after sacrificing 160,000 soldiers, paid Europe to restructure and they managed to get along until the Great Depression. We were promised that this was the ‘war to end all wars’ or at least until the next big one, which was set up by the Treaty of Versailles and would start within a generation.

 

During the Great Depression, which may not have been so great because we have not seen the end of the new one we are entering, was an occasion to institute novel social programs with grand promises that failed to solve the problems of deflation and unemployment.  Promises to decrease the unemployment with infrastructure and building programs failed. Another war was necessary to mobilize the citizens and pull us out of the depression.

 

The American citizens originally balked at the notion of another World War as the first one was a bummer.  The lie here was that fascism would engulf us and we would be slaves of Hitler or worse. He couldn’t even handle Russia. He was lucky to survive his own army. The Neutrality Act passed by Congress to keep us out of that wasteful mêlée was ignored by FDR and he goaded Japan on numerous issues such as oil and helium and scrap metal and credit and presto—the war was on.  We took sides against Germany and Italy by helping a belligerent [England] during the ‘neutrality’ and they knew it and responded. This one war cost us a year’s GDP and 400,000 dead. The outcome was that anti-capitalistic ideological enemies were now the masters of half of Europe and they now possessed nuclear weapons so we had a cold war for half a century or so. The fear here was that the USSR would nuke us so we dug holes in the ground and put in missiles and built subs that could hide on the bottom of the ocean in wait of a signal to destroy the enemy in 15 min.  The big lie here was that the Communists were our allies. After the war, some of our more ignorant politicos like Truman found out the truth. Today, we are still counseled that anticommunism is evil and that the Soviets were really not out to get us.[3]  Did the Poles ever hear this? What about Georgia? We must tolerate communists, in our society it was proffered, because attacking or exposing them is unacceptable and sanctions the inane process of Red Baiting or McCarthyism.  We should respect these parasites and murderers. This form of propaganda gives more latitude to the leftist attacks on capitalism. With capitalism out of the way the leftists in America could party with international communists over the wreckage and fumes. We would then experience justice and freedom.

 

Unexpected Prosperity Undermines Government.

 

By accident, and entirely unpredicted, the economy surged after WW2 and prosperity if not peace stubbornly persisted. This was not some detailed plan by government.  Indeed, the government had predicted more depression, but they could not stop individualism and capitalism. The tax cuts of JFK, Ronald Reagan and George Bush produced prosperity and marginalized socialism. This process must be halted the leftists argued if egalitarian notions were to be implemented. Capitalism is inherently evil the lie goes and the government knows how to create a balanced society. They can accomplish this by redistributive tax policies.

 

Big Lies About Big Government And Their  Big Promises.

 

Several big lies from the New Deal era were worked simultaneously. The big one was that social security would provide some retirement benefits and would benefit all. The lie here was the taxes on this program were excessive and unnecessary so politicians spent the excess and let the system debt grow like a cancer upon our society. We now face some 30 trillion dollars in costs by 2050 with no obvious way to pay for this. The IOUs at the Treasury are worthless as the taxpayer is stuck with this. Other social programs such as new forms of ‘education’ were instituted with massive costs. We wonder why the SATs are down and the high school graduation rates in half the population is barely 50%.The strange notion that many who could not seem to pass courses and were marginalized in their education by insufficient unit spending was crushed when Washington, D. C. trudged on for decades with the highest spending per pupil in the Western Hemisphere and produced horrible results. Indeed, the debate over cognitive skills as described in the Bell Curve was hot and nasty and the scientific findings of the very basis of cognitive skills were dismissed by the left.[4] They could not handle even a discussion of the educational ‘gap.’ The truism that many minorities and everybody else on the left tail of the bell curve could not compete with equality on standardized tests was known from 1906, but became a major political issue in 1965 after LBJ asked Professor Jensen at Berkeley why his Great Society educational spending failed to produce results. The big lie was the tests were racially biased as any differences in cognitive skills among races would be the equivalent overt racism [a lie] hence not true.  People are ‘equal.’ Affirmative Action was then instituted to make up the difference between certain minorities and others who participated in the society. The big lie here was that if quotas and race norming test scores were instituted the results could show that everybody could have an equal outcome in economic terms. A bigger lie was that the IQ tests proved nothing and the emotional intelligence[5] was the true measure of the citizen and more important than a mere cognitive metric.  The standardized tests were ‘unfair’ and just another lie.  It is interesting that when the tests were redesigned according to norms suggested by experts in minority matters that the tests show that the IQs did not change significantly. Lies of this magnitude allowed political parties to attract minorities with the promises that they would ‘fix’ the problem. That was a lie. What else should an IQ test do except sort out the test takers by IQ?

 

The Big Lie That Tax Cuts Do Not Produce Prosperity.

 

Keynesians and other ‘economists’ insist in some big lie that lost taxes are ‘costs’ to an economy and that tax cuts result in bad economies. The New York Times publishes the foaming screeds of this failed economic theory twice a week for our amusement. [6]This lie has been disproved many times, but the left cling to this notion because if they were to agree then the funding for the politicians would decrease and they would lose power and see capitalism become even stronger. Capitalism is the enemy here and taxes curtail capitalism. Only half of this is true. Excessive taxation destroys capitalism and results in distressed economies like we see in Germany, England and France. They are now beggared by socialist levels of taxation, have lost hope and crawl to the US for money to bail them out.  We cannot afford to bail them out three times in a single century.

 

The Big Lie That ‘Affordable Housing’ Is Good For Our Society.

 

If any lie can top this one then we must look to the future and see how the Carbon Cap taxation and Climate Change taxes work out. We see now that the CRA [the Community Communist Reinvestment Act][7][8] created mountains of bad debt[9] by forcing banks to give away free houses to the uncreditworthy low class in exchange for their votes under penalty of prosecution by the government. The scam here was that banks were forced to loan money to people with poor credit, scant educational skills, drug addicts and even illegal aliens and could peddle this worthless paper into the dumpsters known as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.  What happened here is that the process demanded ‘affordable housing’ for millions and wealth was then lost from the failure to make mortgage payments. These two phony big-lie federal quasi-government corporations racked up 3-5 trillion dollars in debt [we don’t know how much yet] and started off a steep recession that will probably turn into a depression.  Somehow, this mortgage process mentality infected Europe and elsewhere and they have the same problem with the deflation of housing prices.  Europe is busted now and Japan is following. But, this may be nothing if we look for even a bigger lie.

 

The Big Lie That Global Warming Will Destroy Our Planet.

 

The biggest lies are the most preposterous but like the [false] Hitlerian case[10] cited as:”… if stressed long enough then the populace will eventually be convinced of the lie’s efficacy or “…in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie,...”  Hitler was talking about somebody else and not offering this as his own propaganda mechanism.  Nevertheless, the notion of the big lie seems to work well for the left and they use it as far as they can. The lie here, thus, is that we cannot confine big lies exclusively to the narrow zones of National Socialism as this variant is only one small historical sector of the broad expanse of socialism and Communism, its charter benefactor. We cannot allow the environmentalists [read EcoNazis here] the opportunity to escape the provable accusation that they are wantonly using this fascist propaganda theme to support their big lie. The quest for wealth and control of assets and means of production has never matched this attempt at control of our society.

 

Two big lies are intertwined here: The first is that Carbon dioxide is a pollutant and the second is that the global temperature is rising due to the use of fossil fuels. CO2 is not a pollutant.[11] This is a lie. The temperature of the earth is not rising—this is a lie.  The temperature has been falling the last three years.

 

The big prize for the socialists is that the entire planet can now be taxed because the toxic gas produced from respiration of animals like us pervades the entire sphere and everybody must reduce emissions. This big lie transcends the socialist notion of confiscatory taxes on individuals or corporations as now everybody can pay for the abusive use of certain forms of energy from any source. A bigger lie would come from a few years of destroying our industrial base and living like beggars when the EcoNazis can announce that all these measures prevented the oceans from rising and boiling and saved us. Here we have the potential case where a big lie that predicted a nasty outcome was the correct path of prevention because the dire outc0me did not happen to materialize. This self-aggrandizing ‘truth’ resembles the act of hanging of garlic around the house and this prophylaxis has prevented the home owners from being bitten by vampires. Perhaps we should just howl at the moon every evening during the CBS News broadcasts and measure the height of the oceans and if the waters do not rise then we can just keep howling on key and in time. This would be proof that such nonsense fixed any problem. This is a lower cost version and just as effective.

 

The Big Lie about Tax Cuts in 2009.

 

The politicians that seem to float to the top of the heap are mostly disgusting parasites. They are crooked and tell lies to get power. We were promised ‘tax cuts’ for those making less than $250,000 by president-elect Barack Obama and this was seconded with by his VP running mate Joe Biden. [12] This is probably a lie.  We will find out soon enough.

 

We were assured by Barney Frank about the security of Fannie Mae and that story was this: on July 14, 2008:

 

I think this is a case where Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae are fundamentally sound. They're not in danger of going under. They're not the best investment these days from a long term standpoint going back. I think they are in good shape going forward. They're in the housing market. I do think their prospects going forward are very solid.”[13] [14]

 

This was probably a lie, but Barney Frank is not the kind of person we can be persuaded that knows what he believes in, if anything. He seems to speak in some political dialect so we don’t know what he knew. I doubt if he does.  Now, we face new ‘leadership’ in the form of a person who is 100% left liberal and has no accomplishments other than blindly voting for far leftist causes. So far, Obama is nobody with nothing to say outside some liberal script.

“Obama is nothing but a sophomoric political construct that is nothing more than a scripted oratorical puppet that performs on a glittering stage and gives sterling speeches that fall backward upon old, stale socialist precepts. He would be pedestrian-level, but has a new and talented style of tinsel-town stage delivery and a few hundred million dollars in funding from the Middle East and Europe. The money makes the man here.”[15] –from my previous blog by rycK

The Real Ugly Question: Do the Lefties Care if We Enter a Depression?

 

This is hard to tell at this point. The history of the various quests for power in numerous countries by those in power in leftist circles is strewn with dead bodies, wasted economies and even piles of human skulls. A crushing depression would allow our elected ‘leaders’ to institute drastic measures like setting up confiscatory taxes, the attachment of  our 401(k)s and mandated closure of banks so that we cannot get to our bank accounts. There are many political opportunities here for Democrats to proclaim that capitalism has failed and needs to be suppressed. They would then use our ill-gotten wealth to institute socialism.

 

You might watch the movie Doctor Zhivago[16] again and pay special attention to the scenes where Gromeko's house is confiscated by a citizen’s committee and his literary works condemned by the state. That movie tells us much about the left and their mentality. The outcome of Doctor Zhivago is one leftist-endorsed way to get an enlightened ending to capitalist society that matches the typical leftist’s notions of fairness and equity.  War and/or depression are the only changes that will allow for a concrete change in our society according to the left. They have nothing else but other people’s wealth.[17]revised comment from a previous blog by rycK

 

The answer to the last question will probably be revealed if and when Obama and his friends go after the tax base, place a high tax on gasoline and restructure the economy based on the EcoNazi tenets of clean and green.  The residual wealth in the US is in our bank accounts, 401(k)s and homes.  They could roll our IRAs into the phony Social Security system and close the banks for a time and reopen them with government downsized account balances.

 

We shall see how much they hate capitalism very soon. They may try to confiscate guns soon.

 

rycK

 

Comments: ryckki@gmail.com

 



[1] The first man who, having fenced in a piece of land, said "This is mine," and found people naive enough to believe him, that man was the true founder of civil society. From how many crimes, wars, and murders, from how many horrors and misfortunes might not any one have saved mankind, by pulling up the stakes, or filling up the ditch, and crying to his fellows: Beware of listening to this imposter; you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody.

[3] Richard Gid Powers, Not Without Honor, The History of American Anticommunism, The Free Press, 1995

[4] The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life (ISBN: 0029146739)  by Herrnstein, Richard J. and  Murray, Charles  Free Press of Glencoe , Inc, Old Tappan, New Jersey, U.S.A., 1994.

[7]Bear Stearns made the first public securitization of Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) loans started in 1997.[6] Editorialists in some American newspapers[7][8] and US Congressman Ron Paul[9] say the CRA loans were lent to otherwise un-credit-worthy consumers in the name of ending discrimination, although an analysis of actual lending patterns does not generally support this conclusion.[10][11][12]

On June 22, 2007, Bear Stearns pledged a collateralized loan of up to $3.2 billion to "bail out" one of its funds, the Bear Stearns High-Grade Structured Credit Fund, while negotiating with other banks to loan money against collateral to another fund, the Bear Stearns High-Grade Structured Credit Enhanced Leveraged Fund.[13] The funds were invested in thinly traded collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) found to be worth less than their mark-to-market value. Merrill Lynch seized $850 million worth of the underlying collateral but only was able to auction $100 million of them. The incident sparked concern of contagion as Bear Stearns might be forced to liquidate its CDOs, prompting a mark-down of similar assets in other portfolios.[14][15] Richard A. Marin, a senior executive at Bear Stearns Asset Management responsible for the two hedge funds, was replaced on June 29 by Jeffrey B. Lane, a former Vice Chairman of rival investment bank, Lehman Brothers.[16]

During the week of July 16, 2007, Bear Stearns disclosed that the two subprime hedge funds had lost nearly all of their value amid a rapid decline in the market for subprime mortgages.

 

[8] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_Reinvestment_Act

Community Reinvestment Act (or CRA, Pub.L. 95-128, title VIII, 91 Stat. 1147, 12 U.S.C. § 2901 et seq.)

 

[9] The Rape of the Your Wealth: Obama and his Illegal Aliens are set to Regulate and Redistribute All that you have.

http://rycksrationalizations.blogtownhall.com/2008/10/20/the_rape_of__your_wealth_obama_and_his_illegal_aliens_are_set_to_regulate_and_redistribute_all_that_you_have.thtml

"These two entities—Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac—are not facing any kind of financial crisis," said Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts, the ranking Democrat on the Financial Services Committee. "The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing."[9]— Barney Frank  http://www.usnews.com/blogs/sam-dealey/2008/9/10/barney-franks-fannie-and-freddie-muddle.html

 

[10] [It is often erroneously claimed or implied Hitler had advocated the use of the Big Lie as a viable propaganda technique.  Chapter 10 of Mein Kampf:

“... in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation. For the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying.

—Adolf Hitler , Mein Kampf, vol. I, ch. X http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Lie#Use_of_the_expression_by_Hitler

 

[12]"Read my lips," Biden  said, using Bush's famous phrase while referring to a Barack Obama administration. "Nobody, nobody making less than $250,000 is going to see a penny of their taxes go up."—Biden in an incoherent rant at some county fairgrounds near the campus of Ohio University in Athens on Oct 15, 2008.

 

[14] "Zeese-a two intities—Foonnie-a Mee-a und Freddie-a Mec—ire-a not fecing uny kind ooff finoonciel creesis[14]," said Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts[14], the ranking Democrat on the Financial Services Committee. " Zee-a more-a people-a ixeggerete-a zeese-a problems, zee-a more-a pressoore-a zeere-a is oon zeese-a compoonies, zee-a less we-a will see-a in terms ooff iffffordeble-a hooosing"."[14]

Iffffordeble-a hooosing” is what burdened Fanny Mae with three trillion dollars worth of phony mortgages and we still have failing mortgages that were given to 5 million illegal aliens. We can solve this finoonciel creesis by simply printing more money! The

 

Looming Depression and Surviving the Politicians who Lust for your Wealth.

http://rycksrationalizations.blogtownhall.com/2008/11/17/the_looming_depression_and_surviving_the_politicians_who_lust_for_your_wealth.thtml

 

[16] Yuri returns to Moscow, finding that his Aunt Anna is dead and that the Gromeko's house has been apportioned by the revolutionary government to accommodate 20 or 30 other people. Yuri meets his son Sasha for the first time, and resumes his old job at the local hospital, but is furious that his family is lacking in basic fuel and food. One night, while he tries to steal wood from a fence for his family stove, he is spotted by Yevgraf who follows him home. Yevgraf informs Zhivago that his poems have been condemned by the government as antagonistic to the new ideology, putting their whole family at risk for collective punishment. He helps arrange for rail passes for their transport to the Gromeko estate at Varykino, in theUrals. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctor_Zhivago_(1965_film)

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Paulson Speaks and Squeaks and Speaks of Confidence while He Cannot Seem to Tell Us How Much Money has been Spen

Paulson Speaks and Squeaks and Speaks of Confidence while He Cannot Seem to Tell Us How Much Money has been Spent.

 

The New York Times—aka the Walter Duranty Papers[1]--is a strange platform for a Republican to talk about success and confidence.  Apart from staying toward Dewey in 1948, the Times has a solid history of blindly rubber-stamping any Marxist dictator, any tax increase on anything, Castro’s phony healthcare system and celebrating the death of every American solider since the Korean Conflict. Today, they must have some arcane design in mind as they let somebody who does not know what to do tell us just that.

 

Paulson brings a partial account of what our government is doing in the US and brings us nothing but a revisionist version of a FDR Fireside Chat.

 

I am very proud of the decisive actions by the Treasury Department, the Federal Reserve and the F.D.I.C. to stabilize our financial system. … We have preserved the flexibility of President-elect Barack Obama and the new secretary of the Treasury to address the challenges in the economy and capital markets they will face.”[2]--Fighting the Financial Crisis, One Challenge at a Time By Henry M. Paulson Jr. Op-Ed Contributor Published: November 17, 2008 [Emphasis is mine in all quotes.]This link references all quotes in this essay unless otherwise stated.

 

This, after he seems to have told us that we wisely spent 250 billion, but the notion that we could cover ‘troubled assets’ is now out of reach.

 

A troubled-asset purchase program, to be effective, would require a huge commitment of money. In mid-September, before economic conditions worsened, $700 billion in troubled asset purchases would have had a significant impact. But half of that sum, in a worse economy, simply isn’t enough firepower.”

 

If we have learned anything throughout this year, we have learned that this financial crisis is unpredictable and difficult to counteract. We decided it was prudent to reserve our TARP money, maintaining not only our flexibility, but also that of the next administration.”

We keep wondering just how much money was spent when we look at this chart:

Given the speed at which the federal government is throwing money at the financial crisis, the average taxpayer, never mind member of Congress, might not be faulted for losing track. CNBC, however, has been paying very close attention and keeping a running tally of actual spending as well as the commitments involved.”[3]-- Financial Crisis Tab Already In The Trillions By CNBC.com |17 Nov 2008 |

FINANCIAL CRISIS BALANCE SHEET

 

Government Entity

Sum in Billions of Dollars

Federal Reserve

 

 

 

(TAF) Term Auction Facility

900

Discount Window Lending

 

Commercial Banks

99.2

Investment Banks

56.7

Loans to buy ABCP

76.5

AIG

112.5

Bear Stearns

29.5

(TSLF) Term Securities Lending Facility

225

Swap Lines

613

(MMIFF) Money Market Investor Funding Facility

540

Commercial Paper Funding Facility

257

(TARP) Treasury Asset Relief Program

700

Other:

 

Automakers

25

(FHA) Federal Housing Administration

300

Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac

350

 

 

Total

4284.5

Note: Figures as of Nov. 13, 2008

How do we reconcile this fraction of the $700 bln prattle with this list? Fannie Mae is a dumpster to hide the phony ‘affordable housing[4]’ giveaways  like the CRA[5]to people who cannot afford houses and the only asset value left is the current market price of the housing. Are we taxpayers expected to cover the losses of bad debt? This is a socialist monster that we must handle by [1] halting the phony notion that we have to give away housing to anybody and [2] that we must give them ‘loans’ or ‘adjust’ their mortgage payment and stick the banks and loan institutions with the losses.

One billion dollars is about 8$ in taxes for workers who pay taxes so 1.0 trillion dollars is $8000 in some kind of tax liability so this works out to the interesting value of $34 trillion dollars. We know that the household asset value in the US is about $58 trillion so we have just put in jeopardy more than half of our citizen’s assets. For the individual worker we are looking at $34,000 per worker except that the lower half pays essentially no taxes so let us double that just to be fair and add in a few bucks for the illegal aliens. This rises to about $80,000 in debt against an average of about $200,000[58 trillion divided by 300 million citizens is $193,000] in total assets for home owners.

To this mess we are supposed to add  in socialized medicine, aid to Africa, and spend a few hundred billion supporting the unions in Detroit who will not budge from their cushy $60-$80 dollar per hour wages and benefits that make the auto business in that area untenable. We have just a few trillion here and there in unfunded mandates in Social Security and entitlements to think about as well.

With a GDP of about 16 trillion we tax ¼ of this to about 4 trillion [3 trillion to the fed] and we now just spent another 4 trillion?! This looks like an effective tax rate of 50% on everything we do and we just elected some liberal who wants to ‘change the world?’

Well, the world has already changed. We have to keep the banks solvent and dump a lot of government rules and regulations like the Clean Air Act and the Carbon Cap taxes because they will consume a few more trillion dollars per year if we do not.

We are going broke and the liberals want to raise taxes?

rycK

 

Comments: ryckki@gmail.com

 


[1] In honor of that celebrated Communist stooge and liar and winner of the Pulitzer Prize for the NYT. The color RED is used in my essays in honor of Walter Duranty, a saint, if there could be one, in the Marxist Archives of Honor.

[2] Fighting the Financial Crisis, One Challenge at a Time By Henry M. Paulson Jr. Op-Ed Contributor Published: November 17, 2008 http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/18/opinion/18paulson.html?_r=1

[3] Financial Crisis Tab Already In The Trillions By CNBC.com |17 Nov 2008 | http://www.cnbc.com/id/27719011

[4] "Zeese-a two intities—Foonnie-a Mee-a und Freddie-a Mec—ire-a not fecing uny kind ooff finoonciel creesis[4]," said Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts[4], the ranking Democrat on the Financial Services Committee. " Zee-a more-a people-a ixeggerete-a zeese-a problems, zee-a more-a pressoore-a zeere-a is oon zeese-a compoonies, zee-a less we-a will see-a in terms ooff iffffordeble-a hooosing"."[4]

Iffffordeble-a hooosing” is what burdened Fanny Mae with three trillion dollars worth of phony mortgages and we still have failing mortgages that were given to 5 million illegal aliens. We can solve this finoonciel creesis by simply printing more money! http://www.usnews.com/blogs/sam-dealey/2008/9/10/barney-franks-fannie-and-freddie-muddle.html

[5] CRA [the phony Community Communist Reinvestment Act]

The CRA [the phony Community Communist Reinvestment Act][5][5] created mountains of bad debt by forcing banks to give away free houses to the uncreditworthy low class in exchange for their votes under penalty of prosecution by the government. You were supposed to wipe out Redlining[5]  and replace it with Greenlining.[5] Minorities must have loans [free if necessary] so they can participate in the American Dream. This is known as ‘affordable housing’—you cannot afford, but the illegal aliens and criminals and ‘poor’ certainly can.  The cost is essentially zero.  The thrust by the left now is to ‘suspend’ foreclosures that were a result of not paying off their loans and use some bank or government money [what else from a socialist?] to pay for the monthly mortgage payments.  Illegal aliens and dope dealers are most welcome.” The Obama Depression and Surviving the Leftists: Free Homes and Debt Forgiveness for your Votes.

http://rycksrationalizations.blogtownhall.com/2008/11/14/the_obama_depression_and_surviving_the_leftists_free_homes_and_debt_forgiveness_for_your_votes.thtml

 

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The Looming Depression and Surviving the Politicians who Lust for your Wealth.

The Looming Depression and Surviving the Politicians who Lust for your Wealth.

 

We are advised that socialism is the best way to control the masses as this method purports to deliver ‘fairness’ and ‘equality’ to the masses. The evils of capitalism are manifold and may be used to blame a wide assortment of social evils ranging from AIDS to crop failures in the Sudan.  We are further educated that capitalism is intrinsically flawed in that it performs some ghoulish misdistribution of wealth and is based on racism, exploitation and greed.

 

We could suggest that we might inspect the economic and social differences among the variants of the socialist themes and capitalist examples now in operation around the world. We could inquire about the ‘successes’ of socialism when compared to its counterpart. The findings are not encouraging.[1] Not only is socialism not a success but the process seems to promote dictators and mass murder al0ng with the novel creation and maintenance of pogroms, novel gulags and piles of human skulls.  Europe is now the rotting image of a long gone capitalist society that now has encouraged Islamo- Fascists to be their new overseers. Feudalism returns to reeducate the unwashed masses with a new religions message. The infidels have already earned their punishment.

 

The New Obama Socialists are politicizing the recession that will blossom into a full-blown depression by pandering to the unfortunate over the notion that the government ought to pick up their loses and probably give  them a free house at the expense of the banks or other corporations. It is difficult to imagine any socialist measure that tops giving out freebees. We are expected to salvage the union monster in Detroit[2] to pay back the leftists for their political support.

 

Now, a pack of mostly socialist politicos are now mindlessly groping for funding and offering heaps of maudlin stories about failing economies, mountains of debt and the need for the US to spread around its wealth to support Marxism and emerging economies on those soils.

 

The G-2o met Sunday and then  issued a  slobbery screed [see ref[3]] replete  with mushy syntax, drippy clauses and imbedded sobs with all anchored to the nostrum that President-Elect Obama will sort of ignore the levels or our federal budget deficits for a couple of years. We can spend ourselves into prosperity! Who blamed Bush2 for spending too much money? Oh, well, that is just politics.

 

Placing blame is all the emerging ‘countries’ have and here it is inscribed in this hallowed document: DECLARATION SUMMIT ON FINANCIAL MARKETS AND THE WORLD ECONOMY:

 

Root Causes of the Current Crisis

[3]. During a period of strong global growth, growing capital flows, and prolonged stability earlier this decade, market participants sought higher yields without an adequate appreciation of the risks and failed to exercise proper due diligence. At the same time, weak underwriting standards, unsound risk management practices, increasingly complex and opaque financial products, and consequent excessive leverage combined to create vulnerabilities in the system. Policy-makers, regulators and supervisors, in some advanced countries, did not adequately appreciate and address the risks building up in financial markets, keep pace with financial innovation, or take into account the systemic ramifications of domestic regulatory actions.”[4]-- DECLARATION SUMMIT ON FINANCIAL MARKETS AND THE WORLD ECONOMY November 15, 2008  [Emphasis is mine in all quotes.]

This all so much whine and blow and all we have left from a tortured distillation of this declaration is that the US must have caused this problem and certainly ought to bail out the world. Not to be left out, the ‘emerging countries,’ innocent by definition here, must get their due and presumable act in a leadership manner that would be a shining example of what Americans failed to do. The notion that we have about 90 countries that have failed economies based, mostly, on the ugly social acts of tribalism and Marxism seems to be missing here. It has only been 7,000 years so they need more time and, of course, more money. We need to learn all about the diversity of tribal holocausts, celebration of terrorism and the worship of dictatorships and then shovel money into these garbage pits during the learning exercise.

A solution here is proffered:

[7]… we agreed that a broader policy response is needed, based on closer macroeconomic cooperation, to restore growth, avoid negative spillovers and support emerging market economies and developing countries.

Much of this piffle of the prostrate emerges  from the outrageous Obama promise that he will ‘change the world’ and that he will heed nonsense like this from the New York Times—aka the Walter Duranty Papers[5]--who never saw either a crushing tax or a Marxist revolution that they couldn’t celebrate with drugs, song and dance. Money money money.

Well, there’s no question that fighting the crisis will cost a lot of money. Rescuing the financial system will probably require large outlays beyond the funds already disbursed. And on top of that, we badly need a program of increased government spending to support output and employment. Could next year’s federal budget deficit reach $1 trillion? Yes.”[6]--Paul Krugman November 7, 2008

The Slush Pump will be some ‘revised’ version of the Bretton Woods Institutions:

 

Reforming International Financial Institutions: We are committed to advancing the reform of the Bretton Woods Institutions so that they can more adequately reflect changing economic weights in the world economy in order to increase their legitimacy and effectiveness. In this respect, emerging and developing economies, including the poorest countries, should have greater voice and representation.

 

So. Let us witness a cluster of Marxian Primitives all dancing around the money pit as Obama chucks in truckloads of freshly printed US dollars to the tune of the L'Internationale.[7] 

We might inquire where the funding for all this might be found as now Japan is entering its second major recession[8] since its 15 year encounter with deflation. The US is financially stalling in a similar deflationary manner and entering into a deep recession. The EU losers are now confirmed slobbering beggars and as proof we seem them prostrate and crawling up the steps of the US Treasury to beg alms form Paulson and others who do not know what do.  We might inquire where the World Trade Organization [WTO] is faring now.[9] They are being led down the economic rut by such characters as Princeling of Wails[10] and other losers.

We wonder how primitive societies like India, Viet Nam and France can cope with massive Carbon Cap taxes although the US might be generous and print money for them too.  The Carbon Cap Follies of the EcoNazis and their Latent Lysenko lackeys [(LLLs) like Al Gore[11]] might cost the world 500 billion in phony taxes in the next 5 years alone. This is all to ‘save the planet’ as they watch their phony computer models spit out crap. They looked like fools as the earth’s temperature fell when they had nosily predicted a constant rise.[12] They didn’t even blink before they changed their slogan form Global Warming to Climate Change. Now, either up or down is bad for the ecology. They need your money and will concoct any stupid lie that will scare the mentally disnimble into supporting their phony science.

And at home we are going to bailout our worthless auto industry in Michigan with the legislative assistance of Barney Frank, the Carbuncle of Society, issuing mystical runes in this Elmer Fudd dialect:

"Zeese-a two intities—Foonnie-a Mee-a und Freddie-a Mec—ire-a not fecing uny kind ooff finoonciel creesis[13]," said Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts[14], the ranking Democrat on the Financial Services Committee. " Zee-a more-a people-a ixeggerete-a zeese-a problems, zee-a more-a pressoore-a zeere-a is oon zeese-a compoonies, zee-a less we-a will see-a in terms ooff iffffordeble-a hooosing"."[15]

Iffffordeble-a hooosing” is what burdened Fanny Mae with three trillion dollars worth of phony mortgages and we still have failing mortgages that were given to 5 million illegal aliens. We can solve this finoonciel creesis by simply printing more money!

So, the world again crashes in socialism and folly and the United States is supposed to provide the corn mean, the sympathy and sanitary rump swabs to clean up this mess. And, all they have left in the world is your home, your 410(k)s and the rest of your assets.

It is now time to institute a World-Wide Wealth Tax so the greedy capitalists can be hunted down and cannot escape their crimes and a nifty global and ‘transparent’[16] banking system is just the item to sort out who has money and seize it.

rycK

 

Comments: ryckki@gmail.com



[2] A Translation of the Bailout Plan for Detroit: Bigger Government, Bigger Unions and Cars Designed by EcoNazis http://rycksrationalizations.blogtownhall.com/2008/11/16/a_translation_of_the_bailout_plan_for_detroit_bigger_government,_bigger_unions_and_cars_designed_by_econazis.thtml

 

[4] DECLARATION SUMMIT ON FINANCIAL MARKETS AND THE WORLD ECONOMY November 15, 2008

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122677642316131071.html#articleTabs%3Darticle

 

[5] In honor of that celebrated Communist stooge and liar and winner of the Pulitzer Prize for the NYT. The color RED is used in my essays in honor of Walter Duranty, a saint, if there could be one, in the Marxist Archives of Honor.

[12] Can the Global Warming Zombies Admit they look like Fools Yet??

Posted by rycK on Thursday, February 28, 2008 4:49:57 PM

http://rycksrationalizations.blogtownhall.com/2008/02/28/can_the_global_warming_zombies_admit_they_look_like_fools_yet.thtml

 

[14] Soon to go bankrupt.

[16] Strengthening Transparency and Accountability. “With a view toward promoting financial stability, the governance of the international accounting standard setting body should be further enhanced, including by undertaking a review of its membership, in particular in order to ensure transparency, accountability, and an appropriate relationship between this independent body and the relevant authorities.” http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122677642316131071.html#articleTabs%3Darticle

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A Translation of the Bailout Plan for Detroit: Bigger Government, Bigger Unions and Cars Designed by EcoNazis

A Translation of the Bailout Plan for Detroit: Bigger Government, Bigger Unions and Cars Designed by EcoNazis

 

When we hear the speeches and promises and begging from the leftists that we have mistakenly placed in power in Washington, we need some translation for their words.  In the initial phase of an economic catastrophe that may become the world’s biggest depression the lefties are telling us that we need to bail out the Big Three in Detroit. Here are some of their comments and mine follow:

Recent News:

WASHINGTON – House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Saturday the House would provide aid to the ailing U.S. auto industry, requiring that the industry meet new fuel-efficiency standards, produce advanced vehicles and restructure "to ensure their long-term economic viability."[1]--Pelosi outlines aid package for US automakers By Ken Thomas, AP– Sat Nov 15 [Emphasis is mine in all quotes.]

Let us think about the bailout for a minute and ask the following question: Why are we doing this? You might skip the lengthy quotes and read my analysis at the bottom of this essay and then check the actual wording to check my thinking on the matter.  We already have successful automakers that do not need a bailout so why would we subsidize failure?

 

Auto wages:

 

Toyota Motor Corp. gave workers at its largest U.S. plant bonuses of $6,000 to $8,000, boosting the average pay at the Georgetown, KY, plant to the equivalent of $30 an hour. That compares with a $27 hourly average for UAW workers, most of whom did not receive profit-sharing checks last year[2]-- UAW Losing Pay Edge: Foreign Automakers' Bonuses Boost Wages in U.S. Plants as Detroit Car Companies Struggle  February 1, 2007

 

 Auto wages as viewed from the far-left Nation:

 

“Hourly wages for union and nonunion autoworkers in fact have been roughly comparable for some time, although the UAW's vaunted benefits packages have brought total compensation for members well above that of their nonunion peers. By saving as much as $30 an hour on benefits, foreign automakers have been able to dampen interest in the union by paying wages well above the regional standard in places like Canton, Mississippi, where Nissan workers can make more than double the state average. The overall effect throughout the industry is downward pressure on earnings, as the Big Three demand concessions to remain competitive on labor costs, while the UAW mortgages what remains of the union advantage for dubious promises of job security.”[3]--  UAW R.I.P.? by Max Fraser This article appeared in the November 5, 2007 edition of The Nation. October 18, 2007

With American automakers tanking and taking their membership with them, the UAW is trying to rebound by targeting the North American factories of Toyota and Honda. But the transplants have carefully avoided building plants in union strongholds, and have thus far held off attempts to unionize their American factories. And no wonder. Although the UAW has done well by its members over the years, its colossal pension liabilities and uncompetitive approach to wages have been an undeniable factor in the decline of Detroit.”[4]-- UAW Membership Drops To Post WWII Low By Edward Niedermeyer March 31, 2008  [Emphasis is mine in all quotes.]

Analysis for the Above:

Factors:

[1] We have two different manufacturing clusters here and they are run very differently, have different management, have vastly different business successes and can be divided confidently into two main groups: union and non union.

[2] When we compare the wages by adjusting for benefits, local tax factors from Detroit, the union costs to the non union plants we find that the pay is nearly equal when you add in bonuses.

[3] We know the new plants that are non union have judiciously chosen geographic regions that are not union strongholds and do not have politicians hanging onto the apron strings of the unions. We know that they are profitable.

[4] Democrats, the sponsors of the unions for decades are all for a bailout at almost any cost.

[5] The bailout will include concessions to the EcoNazis.[5]environmental activists and others.

[6] The design features will be dictated by leftist political activists.

[7] The government will have close supervision of the operation.

Conclusion:

This is politics as usual with the difference that the liberals now have precedence to divert your tax liability to one of their pet special interests. Here, we see two types of auto makers with union and non union attributes and, glaringly, but not surprisingly, we find the union flavor has failed. This is not unusual.

Not only will the liberals attempt to prop up the failed Big Three, but they will legislate in a manner that the non union auto manufacturers will be at a disadvantage in terms of new design and performance criteria. The other leftist special interests will get to have their prejudices incorporated into the design specs and will thus indirectly affect the successful competition.

The net effect is that the government will subsidize and effectively nationalize a failing industry that has been destroyed by unions like the rail roads and some airlines and will burden buyers with political nostrums on the environment. The government will attempt to restructure the auto industry in a valiant attempt to match what we already have in the nonunion plants.  They will use truckloads of your tax money to do this. Even if they were able to match the performance of Toyota or Honda they would have spend the money for nothing. The existing non union auto plants can buy up assets from the bankrupt Big Three and absorb the products now heading for Detroit since they will garner the new business from the failed ones. The non union plants can make excellent cars even if the Big Three go down. They can probably make better cars.

The government wants to make little teeny weenie cars that will have horrendous costs and will be very expensive to drive and maintain.

Government is not the solution to our problems—government is the problem.” –Ronald Reagan.

It is a grave mistake to let the government subsidize failure and particularly failure from one of their most-dedicated supplicants.

rycK

 

Comments: ryckki@gmail.com

 



[1] Pelosi outlines aid package for US automakers By Ken Thomas, Associated Press Writers – Sat Nov 15, 5:43 pm ET [Emphasis is mine in all quotes.] http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081115/ap_on_go_co/auto_bailout

[2] UAW Losing Pay Edge: Foreign Automakers' Bonuses Boost Wages in U.S. Plants as Detroit Car Companies Struggle  February 1, 2007 http://www.aftermarketnews.com/Item/28594/uaw_losing_pay_edge_foreign_automakers_bonuses_boost_wages_in_us_plants_as_detroit_car_companies_struggle.aspx

[3] UAW R.I.P.? by Max Fraser This article appeared in the November 5, 2007 edition of The Nation. October 18, 2007 http://www.thenation.com/doc/20071105/fraser

[4] UAW Membership Drops To Post WWII Low By Edward Niedermeyer March 31, 2008. http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/uaw-membership-drops-to-post-wwii-low/

 

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Bailout Babbling at the New York Times: Brooks and Herbert take Both Sides of the Issue

Bailout Babbling at the New York Times: Brooks and Herbert take Both Sides of the Issue

 

The New York Times—aka the Walter Duranty Papers[1]--celebrates its first century of unerring propaganda secretion with an unblemished  record of apologizing for Communism, propping up losers and dope addicts, celebrating dictators and despots in their opinion columns, pushing unionism and scrounging for new ways to reinvent Marxism.  But, sometimes, the writers who pose as journalists seem to demonstrate that they have no knowledge of what mumblings bubble forth from the word processors in the very next cell and wander off in different political directions.  When such a lack of coordination is allowed to germinate and infect the neurons of those who would be expected to sing in the same chorus, on key and on time, we view chaos.  Today we celebrate chaos of reason from the Times.

 

At first glance at this pulp  we might theorize that this effect is merely a display of independent thinking and the process of arriving at the proper political position on the matter of bailouts via the handy use of dialectics, but this theory demands that the Times management is either asleep or on drugs in this case. You cannot have opposing views in any coherent political organization. This notion fractures dogma and leads to dissention.

 

The first writer who threw his jumbled thoughts into the tank was the Resident EcoNazi Thomas L. Friedman who screeds:

“How could these companies be so bad for so long? Clearly the combination of a very un-innovative business culture, visionless management and overly generous labor contracts explains a lot of it. It led to a situation whereby General Motors could make money only by selling big, gas-guzzling S.U.V.’s and trucks.[2] [Emphasis is mine in all quotes.]

Apparently, we are not going to be educated on how the government burdened the auto makers with rules, regulations and constraints that added costs and forced the design and sale of uncompetitive cars. The absurd C.A.F.E. standards and the California boutique mixtures apparently only helped Detroit descend into bankruptcy. [3]

Upon pondering this declaration I wondered.

 

I wonder if our business green expert at the Times is aware that Toyota and certain German and other Japanese and automakers make SUVs that only get 20 mpg in the US and they make good profits selling them.[4] This is nonsense. GM makes small fuel efficient cars and sells them all over the world.

 

When we feed a covey of frogs near the pond we expect to hear the same old croaking by the chorus and Friedman dutifully blames the auto manufacturers for not being clean and green.  Friedman exceeds the boundaries of his tether, however, when he brazenly attempts to implant doubt on the question over the wisdom of overly generous labor contracts--that provide the funds and political power for Detroit and also much of the liberal world. This is a form of heresy. What does he suggest here? That the wages be reduced so the Detroit bunch can be more competitive? This is a facet of capitalism that is so abhorrent to the left that they usually cannot even mention the free market for labor. To think that wages might rise and fall are unthinkable to the left.

 

Next up on deck with a view from a different perch is the Senior Resident in Racism Bob Herbert, who dependably cranks out his rote leftist fluff in an article that has this nonsense:

 

This whole matter needs some intensive thought. At the moment, Washington has tremendous leverage over the failing auto industry. The government should craft a rescue plan that is both tough and very, very smart. That means dragging the industry (kicking and screaming, no doubt) into the 21st century by insisting on ironclad commitments to design and develop vehicles that make sense economically and that serve the nation’s long-term energy security requirements.”[5]-- “The famous Daily News headline, “Ford to City: Drop Dead” ran on Oct. 30, 1975.[6]-- ‘Drop Dead’ Is Not an Option by Bob Herbert Op-Ed Columnist November 15, 2008 

 

Bob’s screed launches off with an intensively thoughtless historical indictment of Gerald Ford’s refusal to bail out NYC in the 1970s and wanders around to economics and finally proffers a spoonful of the usual stroking juice of the current tax monster EcoNazism.[7]  He insists on economic sensibility and insists on a tunnel-vision theorem to control designs.  Herbert is little more than an affirmative action chum chucker and we are amused that he pretends at deep thought. He misses his chance to bring race into this issue as this industry and the cities they reside in are a grand haven for minorities to be shielded from various hideous crimes. Detroit has 5.16 times the average murder rate and most of the victims are black. He could have at least blamed Gerald Ford for part of that. Crime might rise if the unemployment levels shot up in that utopia and the failure to subsidize minorities should have been discussed and denounced as prima facie evidence of racism. Bob Herbert miscued here.

 

Then enters our tokenized conservative token who offers this theme:

 

Democrats from Barack Obama to Nancy Pelosi want to grant immortality to General Motors, Chrysler and Ford. They have decided to follow an earlier $25 billion loan with a $50 billion bailout, which would inevitably be followed by more billions later, because if these companies are not permitted to go bankrupt now, they never will be.”[8]-- Bailout to Nowhere by David Brooks Op-Ed Columnist Published: November 14, 2008

 

Yes, and this is tantamount to just burning money in some big hole near the city while adoring and performing exotic rites in the fumes. It really makes no political sense as the money could be used to bribe folk in the Red states as the Blue states are rolled in the proper dumb dust and will push the proper election button in the booths with no hint of thinking or a heart beat.

 

And more:

 

A Detroit bailout would set a precedent for every single politically connected corporation in America. There already is a long line of lobbyists bidding for federal money. If Detroit gets money, then everyone would have a case. “--David Brooks

 

Yes, and this is much worse than socialism where, presumably, the corporations are treated with a level and mannerly dose of contempt.  The political jewel hidden in the much here is that the Big Three might be number one sugar daddies and have their management max out their political contributions for every pipsqueak who can hum the old left liberal tunes and wants a seat in the power somewhere in the US.

Brooks sums up with:

But the larger principle is over the nature of America’s political system. Is this country going to slide into progressive corporatism, a merger of corporate and federal power that will inevitably stifle competition, empower corporate and federal bureaucrats and protect entrenched interests? Or is the U.S. going to stick with its historic model: Helping workers weather the storms of a dynamic economy, but preserving the dynamism that is the core of the country’s success. “--David Brooks

Brooks correctly signals socialism in on the horizon. It is interesting that a recovering conservative might suffer flashbacks from his earlier leanings and question the very process that was able to transform Marxism and its cousin Fascism into rotting masses. As a reeducated conservative he should have wallowed in the kind of rhetoric that Friedman and Krugman [our igNoble Leechette[9][10] routinely pump down the pipe. His warning that the dynamism of the corporations would be in jeopardy actually fits with the zero-growth parasites that have destroyed much of Europe and provides comfort for their Snail Darter antics. We need to review the history of government-business interactions in Europe to understand the scope and depth of this capitalism-destroying movement.  

The Manifesto tells us:

The bourgeoisie keeps more and more doing away with the scattered state of the population, of the means of production, and of property. It has agglomerated population, centralized the means of production, and has concentrated property in a few hands. The necessary consequence of this was political centralization.”—Communist Manifesto 1848.

 

But, Communism in the USSR controlled all means of production. There, power and money were also concentrated in the hands of a very few thus rendering this indictment somewhat silly. The difference between the Marxian and feudalism in the Manifesto is merely those who can keep control of power. That the Marxists would simply slide back into capitalism was the fear of Leon Trotsky who had to flee paradise to Mexico.  It is now our government who wants to centralize means of production and effect a political centralization. Fascism handles this a bit more smoothly than Stalinism.

 

Modern bourgeois society, with its relations of production, of exchange and of property, a society that has conjured up such gigantic means of production and of exchange, is like the sorcerer who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom he has called up by his spells. For many a decade past, the history of industry and commerce is but the history of the revolt of modern productive forces against modern conditions of production, against the property relations that are the conditions for the existence of the bourgeois and of its rule.”—Communist Manifesto 1848.

From Fascism we read:

The Nazis viewed private property rights as conditional upon the mode of use. If the property was not being used to further Nazi goals, it could be nationalized. Government takeovers and threats of takeovers were used to encourage complance[sic] with government production plans, even if following these plans cost profits for companies.”

The conditional utility of the means of production fits well here. If we cannot produce autos that are politically correct then we need to nationalize the auto industry. This works for the left.

Thesis to antithesis to synthesis:

What all this may lead up to is an attempt to institute a “planned economy or directed economy [which]  is an economic system in which the government or workers' councils manages the economy[11]” at least in part on the auto industry.  When the government becomes the owner and/or the back-bench executive officers of any corporation then the business acumen is replaced with the inefficiency and divisiveness that is characteristic of government. This is creeping socialism with the added complication that special interests groups have demands and restrictions on design, materials of composition, function and the final use of the product.

Worse, this measure means that other competent and profitable automakers would be in competition with the government-financed incompetent auto business with the probable result that the government interactions with management would render the Big Three the least profitable in the auto group. The outcome of this would be an inferior selection of cars at elevated prices subsidized by the taxpayer.  This would look like AMTRAK.

The auto industry is already a primary target of environmental supremacists [EcoNazis] who have been able to attract politicians like Al Gore[12] or the Princeling of Wails[13] and the feeder industries that produce the starting materials for this industry are similar targets of the Zero-Growth energy haters. The Carbon Cap system has probably already contributed to the Depression in Europe. England has foolishly voted to limit CO2 emissions by 80% by some target date and this will crush their society and all this is based on the preposterous lie that carbon dioxide is a pollutant. Obama has threatened to shut down coal companies if they cannot produce energy sans CO2.[14] The fact that the strange notion that CO2 is a pollutant ranks well with the works of Mesmer, the Snake Oil Society and Merlin and  is actually amplified by  the faulty  predictions by the computer models. Moronic theatre like the lyrics inscribed in the famous book Limits to Growth[15] whose sophistical computer models clearly predicted, with ringing praise from the ‘scientists,’ that we would run out of oil, copper and lead by 1992 by and natural gas reservoirs by 1993.  I had to deal with these fools  on the corporate and ‘innovative level’ in the 90s. Apparently, they missed a few inputs as their GIGO[16] reward is all they have left.[17] The fact that they have predicted the opposite temperature gyrations of the earth merely strengthens the resolve of those who would peddle plastic gold for gain. The fact that the models were useless just means we need to spend more money in ‘research’ to make them produce a more believable political fairy tail. The global warming Zombies look like fools given the recent drop in earth surface temperature.[18]

The politicians cannot deal effectively with the thorny issue of overly generous labor contracts. To keep unions as benefactors of leftist political themes the wages and benefits of the auto industry could not be downsized. Indeed, a nationalization of the auto industries would call for higher wages and even better benefits and the threat of unionizing the competitive auto makers would drive them out of the country. That would leave us with an urgent need to build even bigger government-controlled behemoths to meet the consumer demand and all this would be connected to the taxpayer.

Amusingly, the usual leftist song about ‘public transportation’ is absent from this circus. Given a rational reasoning scenario conjured up by the leftist government, the unions and the environments we would assume that they might outlaw cars altogether. That will come in the future.

The straying from the narrow dogmatic leftist ditch by the Three Supplicants[19] is probably justified by the Trial Balloon Theory that nobody knows what to do with the now worthless Detroit Big Three.  Merely publicly voicing the issues and injecting stock leftist clichés and complaints are the litter that soaks up the stink from the instant literary cat crap and that keeps the New York Times financially afloat, at least for the time being.  We are probably entering a time of severe depression and the NYT editorial staff persons are worried. The Times faces bankruptcy itself. In truth, the employees of the Big Three and other lesser-grade corporations will pay the ultimate price of unemployment and bankruptcy because the ‘smart money’ has already sold off and can circumvent the mindless tax whoring of O’Bozo and his rabid leftists. We will buy cars from the nonunion corporations as a matter of policy and good politics.

The liberals have never learned about capitalism and that is an advantage to conservatives.

rycK

 

Comments: ryckki@gmail.com



[1] In honor of that celebrated Communist stooge and liar and winner of the Pulitzer Prize for the NYT. The color RED is used in my essays in honor of Walter Duranty, a saint, if there could be one, in the Marxist Archives of Honor.

[2] How to Fix a Flat By Thomas L. Friedman Op-Ed Columnist http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/12/opinion/12friedman.html?ref=opinion

Published: November 11, 2008

 

[5] The famous Daily News headline, “Ford to City: Drop Dead,” ran on Oct. 30, 1975.[5]-- ‘Drop Dead’ Is Not an Option By Bob Herbert Op-Ed Columnist

Published: November 15, 2008  http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/15/opinion/15herbert.html?hp

 

[6] ‘Drop Dead’ Is Not an Option By Bob Herbert Op-Ed Columnist

Published: November 15, 2008 http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/15/opinion/15herbert.html?hp

 

[8] Bailout to Nowhere By David Brooks Op-Ed Columnist Published: November 14, 2008 http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/14/opinion/14brooks.html?em

 

[15] The Limits to Growth in 1972. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limits_to_Growth.

[16] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garbage_in,_garbage_out

[18] Can the Global Warming Zombies Admit they look like Fools Yet??

Posted by rycK on Thursday, February 28, 2008 4:49:57 PM

http://rycksrationalizations.blogtownhall.com/2008/02/28/can_the_global_warming_zombies_admit_they_look_like_fools_yet.thtml

 

[19] The authors of this recent fluff.

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Puffington Huffs and Snuffs Over the Bailout. She has No Suggestions but Waits for Jan 20.

Puffington Huffs and Snuffs Over the Bailout. She has No Suggestions but  Waits for Jan 20.

 

One of the more animated utensils of the far leftist political wherewithal is Arianna Huffington or The HuffyPuffer[1][2][3] as I like to call her.  She routinely turns the crank on her old rusty hurdy-gurdy and toots the matching old stale songs for the idiot, Marxist left with pieces illustrated by this reference:[4]

 

The Puffer is always instantly annoyed by the right, but was outraged by the lack of glitter and foam on the Paulson Bailout. She has no solutions to offer, but will suffer in this conservative cesspool until Jan 20, when the Afro-Leninism [5]of Obama and his SDS allies in crime and are solemnly installed  and saluted. The Glory will begin soon after that. Peace and prosperity will flow like honey from the trees and mountains. Wonderfulness will be beyond belief.

 

So, $290 billion into his bailout plan, Hank Paulson is calling for a do-over. Now there is a confidence booster[6]-- House Dawdles, and Congress Dithers, the Economy Continues to Burn. Arianna Huffington Posted November 13, 2008 [Emphasis is mine in all quotes.  This link references all quotes in this essay unless otherwise noted. ]

 

Can we Huff or Puff a better plan? Let us hear it! Give us some confidence in Obama.

 

Providing "I-told-you-so" talking points to the what's-the-rush crowd, the Secretary of the Treasury announced yesterday that the government is no longer going to use any of the $700 billion Congress allocated to the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) to buy, well, Troubled Assets from financial institutions -- the original centerpiece of the plan.”

 

The Democrats bawled for this and urged Republicans to vote along with them. Are you sorry now? We need to hear from the howling left that using government money to buy up worthless debts is a good idea. Nancy Pelosi thought so as she pushed hard for this and risked cracking her brittle face again in the battle.

 

We struggle to find a neat Puffy solution to the upcoming depression.  Instead, she focuses on oversight. Poor planning for Pelosi and Reid?

 

But despite over a quarter of a trillion dollars having already been doled out by Paulson, so far both the inspector general position and the five Congressional Oversight Panel slots remain unfilled.”

 

When Pelosi writes in things like this:

 

(A) INJUNCTION.—No injunction or other  form of equitable relief shall be issued against  the Secretary for actions pursuant to section  101, 102, 106, and 109, other than to remedy a violation of the Constitution. [7] 110TH CONGRESS 2D SESSION H. R. ll To provide authority for the Federal Government to purchase certain types of troubled assets for the purposes of providing stability to and preventing disruption in the economy and financial system and protecting taxpayers, and for other purposes.

 

Just what would oversight do? Paulson has more power than Hitler and more wealth to chuck around Wall Street than Cleopatra. The Democrats gave him that power.

 

Huffing the Depression Ariana quotes:

 

"The labor market is deteriorating more rapidly than previously thought," Andrew Gledhill, economist at Moody's Economy.com, told CNNMoney.”

 

We are facing a depression. [8]

 

On the housing front, another 84,868 homes were lost to foreclosure in October; there have been 936,439 home foreclosures since August 2007. And the housing future continues to look bleak: in October, 279,561 borrowers received at least one foreclosure-related notice, including default notices, notices of auction sales and bank repossessions, according to RealtyTrac. One in every 452 housing units received one of these. Nevada, Arizona, and Florida had the country's top three foreclosure rates.”

 

How about the 5 million mortgages held by illegal aliens?  Can we ask if giving zero-down mortgages to illegal aliens and those with no credit was a good idea?

 

January 20th cannot arrive fast enough for the American people.”

 

And what would you suggest Obama do then? Raise taxes? Dissolve the army. Put in a local Gestapo? Raise some more taxes?

 

The time for criticizing the Republicans is nearly over. Those morons who voted for O’Bozo now want to hear that some of their problems will be solved. So far, we have heard nothing but criticism and bladder splatter from the rabid left.

 

There is no hope. The phony CRA and other Marxist giveaways to the ‘poor’ and illegal aliens has put us down 3 trillion in debt and there is no way to recover from this especially if we just soak the taxpayers for the rescue. Let them go down I say as I did for Bear Stearns and the rest of the Wall Street bozos.

 

From a previous blog of mine:

 

The CRA [the phony Community Communist Reinvestment Act][9][10] created mountains of bad debt by forcing banks to give away free houses to the uncreditworthy low class in exchange for their votes under penalty of prosecution by the government. You were supposed to wipe out Redlining[11]  and replace it with Greenlining.[12] Minorities must have loans [free if necessary] so they can participate in the American Dream. This is known as ‘affordable housing’—you cannot afford, but the illegal aliens and criminals and ‘poor’ certainly can.  The cost is essentially zero.  The thrust by the left now is to ‘suspend’ foreclosures that were a result of not paying off their loans and use some bank or government money [what else from a socialist?] to pay for the monthly mortgage payments.  Illegal aliens and dope dealers are most welcome.” [13]

 

 

Get Huffied and Puffed! Get into the soup lines. The tax-whoring and socialism of California, New York, Michigan and New Jersey are the real chickens that are coming home to roost. [14] The New Great Depression is upon us and we can abandon all hope:

 

“The modern warning to us all is the "Lost Decade" in Japan, a loose term for the on-again, off-again slump that ultimately led to zero interest rates and – when that failed – to the printing of money. After 18 years, the Nikkei stock index is now trading at 8,700 – down from a peak of nearly 40,000. House prices have fallen by half. Yet after all the stimulus, the country is once again tipping back into deflation.”-- Abandon All Hope Once You Enter Deflation by By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard. Telegraph [London] 12 Nov 2008.

 

Yer turn in the toilet liberals. Hike taxes first and tax us back into prosperity.

 

 

rycK

 

Comments to: ryckki@gmail.com

 



[6] House Dawdles, and Congress Dithers, the Economy Continues to Burn. Arianna Huffington Posted November 13, 2008 | 03:31 PM (EST) http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/while-paulson-waffles-the_b_143666.html

[9]Bear Stearns made the first public securitization of Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) loans started in 1997.[6] Editorialists in some American newspapers[7][8] and US Congressman Ron Paul[9] say the CRA loans were lent to otherwise un-credit-worthy consumers in the name of ending discrimination, although an analysis of actual lending patterns does not generally support this conclusion.[10][11][12]

On June 22, 2007, Bear Stearns pledged a collateralized loan of up to $3.2 billion to "bail out" one of its funds, the Bear Stearns High-Grade Structured Credit Fund, while negotiating with other banks to loan money against collateral to another fund, the Bear Stearns High-Grade Structured Credit Enhanced Leveraged Fund.[13] The funds were invested in thinly traded collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) found to be worth less than their mark-to-market value. Merrill Lynch seized $850 million worth of the underlying collateral but only was able to auction $100 million of them. The incident sparked concern of contagion as Bear Stearns might be forced to liquidate its CDOs, prompting a mark-down of similar assets in other portfolios.[14][15] Richard A. Marin, a senior executive at Bear Stearns Asset Management responsible for the two hedge funds, was replaced on June 29 by Jeffrey B. Lane, a former Vice Chairman of rival investment bank, Lehman Brothers.[16]

During the week of July 16, 2007, Bear Stearns disclosed that the two subprime hedge funds had lost nearly all of their value amid a rapid decline in the market for subprime mortgages.

 

[10] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_Reinvestment_Act

Community Reinvestment Act (or CRA, Pub.L. 95-128, title VIII, 91 Stat. 1147, 12 U.S.C. § 2901 et seq.)

 

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The Obama Depression and Surviving the Leftists: Free Homes and Debt Forgiveness for your Votes.

The Obama Depression and Surviving the Leftists: Free Homes and Debt Forgiveness for your Votes.

 

We are advised that socialism is the best way to control the masses as this method purports to deliver ‘fairness’ and ‘equality’ to the victims of this farce while strangling them and truncating their futures. Those who work the levers of socialism frequently live in splendor. The harms of capitalism, we are told, are manifold and may be used to blame capitalists for a wide assortment of social evils ranging from AIDS, global warning and crop failures in the Sudan. We are further educated that capitalism is intrinsically flawed in that it performs some ghoulish maldistribution of wealth and is secretly based on racism, exploitation and greed.  This is a confidence scam and a good one. Extending this logic to the world, we might expect to find cheerful peasants in North Korea who are thrilled to eat weeds than suffer under the ills of capitalism.  We know that Cubans are free of the burdens of their prosperous relatives in Miami and better off for this blessing.

 

We could suggest that we might inspect the economic and social differences among the variants of the socialist themes and contrast them with some corresponding capitalist examples now in operation around the world. Upon doing so, we seem to always be reminded of Sweden or the Cuban health system as counterpoints. We could inquire about the ‘successes’ of socialism when compared to its counterpart and cite the USSR, People’s Republic, North Korea, 100 places in Africa or Haiti and such, but these offerings only force a comical  reverberation with  the hackneyed retort that ‘it works in Sweden and Cuba has great healthcare.’ The findings about average socialism are not encouraging.[1] Not only is socialism not a success, but the process seems to promote dictators and mass murder al0ng with the novel creation and maintenance of pogroms and piles of human skulls in more than one place.  Good socialists or their semi- mentally-retarded liberal cousins seem to glide off into the ether in some 1000-mile away trance when confronted with the facts that 100,000,000 people died under Communism in the last century alone.  Upon finding a pet rabbit almost completely eaten by rats they can always assert that there are some good pieces left and the rats are misunderstood.  A mere rumor of success in some far-leftist social experiment is sufficient to pursue a century of sadistic human butchery in search of a favorable recurrence. The rational can suffer no confidence in socialism or the uglier variants thereof. The irrational will sacrifice all in that maelstrom.

 

The Obama Socialists are politicizing the current recession that might blossom into a full-blown depression by pandering to the unfortunate using the notion that the government ought to pick up their economic losses and probably give them a free house at the expense of the banks or other corporations.  Such an offer builds confidence in Obama for those with little minds. It is difficult, we can admit, to imagine any capitalist measure that surpasses handing out such freebees as houses, condoms, dope and needles and then pays for the rehabilitation from these fatal excesses. This is a full-circle social system.  The successful economy is always the daughter of confidence and those who think ill of a good economy may find a way to initiate a crisis of confidence and crash the system. Those who work the levers of the economy must have confidence that the government will provide support and not be in the business of sandbagging the system with spite and revenge. Such confidence must not be placed in leftists such as Obama and his European Marxist Friends. Their notions are a crisis of confidence. Most of these parasites hate capitalism and want to redistribute your wealth.

 

We can always check out The New York Times—aka the Walter Duranty Papers [2]  for an instant and noisy endorsement of anything that pulls capital from any corporation and trades whatever is left for votes from their victims. This is the first place to check out the true and patented ways to sink an economy while blaming free markets and capitalism in the process.  That is their business.

 

We begin our perusal of the usual pedestrian-level screeds that are cranked out like sticky sausages that sally forth in little kinky rows from this webzine that used to ‘print all the news that was fit to read.”  So I offer a condensed decontaminated version of their current propaganda piece, known as an editorial, so as not to bore my readers with unnecessary fluff:

 

The opening several paragraphs of this screed distilled:

YaddaSecretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. was notably absent … Yadda.. The nation’s banks and other financial firms also are undergoing a necessary correction for which there is no silver bullet…. Fannie Mae and Freddie MacThat is a huge policy error…Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac… Yadda …difficulty of getting the often-conflicting parties to agree to modified loan terms has derailed all previous attempts to stem mass foreclosuresThe half measures have to stop….yadda yadda yadda.[3]-- Foreclosure Prevention Lite  NYT  EDITORIAL Published: November 12, 2008   [Emphasis is mine in all quotes.]

This kind of whining [read a celebration of the misfortunes of their political enemies] and maudlin hand-wringing brings an undisputed vote of no confidence to investors.   Slogans like ‘no silver bullets, half measures and mass foreclosures’ are the phrases of the loser. They want the economy to go down. We must never be surprised that the left fails to attract more victims when the economy is soaring. They like depressions and famine so they tend to counsel failure.

After this puffy-fluff  propaganda piece has been strained through the Filter of Reason and the shrunken remains has been chucked into the dumpster way down wind,  we lay bear the certified socialist themes embedded  in this editorial and, not surprisingly, we notice that the essence is reserved for the last two paragraphs [where else?]

Broaching some substance:

As a candidate, President-elect Barack Obama favored amending the law so bankrupt homeowners could have their mortgages revised in court, an avenue currently denied them. The next Congress must move forward on the bankruptcy amendment first thing in January. - Foreclosure Prevention Lite [sic]

Let us all rush to seal the doom of the middle class.

Hundreds of thousands of homeowners would qualify for bankruptcy, and hundreds of thousands more would be helped if lenders and investors opted to restructure bad loans rather than having to go to court. Better still, bankruptcy restructurings would cost the taxpayers nothing and concentrate the pain on those responsible: borrowers who took on more debt than they could handle, and lenders who made bad loans.” - Foreclosure Prevention Lite 

After dipping my yellow gloves in Clorox in the fear that my keyboard might upload some mental diseases toward my neuron set from a seemingly innocent gaggle of electrons that puts this stuff up on my screen, we get down to the socialist essence:

[1] The originator of this measure is identified with trumpets, little dangling bells and enchanted song. Obama has promised this! That doesn’t matter as Obama is nothing but a sophomoric political construct that is nothing more than a scripted oratorical puppet that performs on a glittering stage and gives sterling speeches that fall backward upon old, stale socialist precepts. He would be pedestrian-level, but has a new and talented style of tinsel-town stage delivery and a few hundred million dollars in funding from the Middle East and Europe. The money makes the man here.

[2] Socialism and its uglier congeners cannot proceed without some phony theories proffered for the simple. In this episode, two lies are incorporated into some slobbering sob session and commingled with tears, anti-capitalist innuendos and leftist propaganda.

Lie number One:

The outrageous notion that we must deal with “responsible: borrowers who took on more debt than they could handle..” is so obscene that we recoil from the intrinsic illogic of such a notion.  Responsible? Firstly, we must note that the word ‘responsible’ has no defined meaning here and that is deliberate. Can we review a bit of history here about greenlining from a previous blog[4]:

Free Bank Loans to the ‘poor’:

 

The CRA [the phony Community Communist Reinvestment Act][5][6] created mountains of bad debt by forcing banks to give away free houses to the uncreditworthy low class in exchange for their votes under penalty of prosecution by the government. You were supposed to wipe out Redlining[7]  and replace it with Greenlining.[8] Minorities must have loans [free if necessary] so they can participate in the American Dream. This is known as ‘affordable housing’—you cannot afford, but the illegal aliens and criminals and ‘poor’ certainly can.  The cost is essentially zero.  The thrust by the left now is to ‘suspend’ foreclosures that were a result of not paying off their loans and use some bank or government money [what else from a socialist?] to pay for the monthly mortgage payments.  Illegal aliens and dope dealers are most welcome.

 

This is more fully explained by a noted leftist from a more progressive state than NYC:

 

 The best way out of the current mess that avoids a taxpayer rescue is for lenders to modify loans.”[9]-- Pia Lopez, Sacramento Bee.

 

But the role of loans for people who don't qualify for a lower-cost, prime loan should be to provide them with a loan so they can build a credit history and refinance into a conventional loan with better terms when their credit improves.”[10][11]—Pia Lopez[12], Sacramento Bee.

 

The more progressive Californikan Pia Lopez advances the tenets of the socialist game a bit beyond how far the Times will slither. The editorial staff the Times ought to read some more about the new insights into Marxism that are being hatched in the Golden State. They fall behind the times at the Times. From some unspecified source, loans should be given to the inept to teach them how to handle credit! This folly approaches the absurd notion that California has a functioning education system, as they do not.

 

In order to explain this to a liberal, even one that might have a near-full set of chromosomes, we need to clarify a few definitions used in the tangled syntax of the left:

 

[a] The word ‘responsible ‘must be defined  as an economic victim of capitalism to make any Marxian sense  here. It is difficult to discuss with a liberal the salient facts that 95% off all current mortgages are performing well and that people with good credit ratings, off drugs, lacking a criminal rap sheet, do not fit into this group unless some disaster befell them. Any person who has a good job, a juicy 401(k), neat home and a SUV cannot be deemed responsible by the left. They are the ‘rich’ and need to be taxed into oblivion. Apparently a ‘loan’ from some unknown but benevolent source will produce a responsible person after a time. We can build up a suitable credit history for them if we shovel enough money into the exercise. This is called ‘education.’ California is famous for that. Who grants this loan?

 

[b] The description of a person who “took on more debt than they could handle” prompts us to ask: Are illegal aliens, the ones that now hold 5 million of the mortgages in foreclosure, are considered to be responsible? Can we expand this question to wonder about drug addicts, perverts who stalk children, professional criminals, and drug dealers, coyotes who deal in human flesh or other undesirables? Can these persons ‘handle’ their debts? Are they innocent but responsible if they first voted for leftists in the past so as to be eligible for get zero-down loans and just couldn’t seem to make mortgage payments--and then used their criminal proceeds to enjoy their tax-free life?

 

We are probably going to have to face the fact that the leftists can argue that anybody can be responsible in some way or another if we spend enough money [in return for their votes, of course].

Lie Number Two:

We must be believed that this bailout would cost the taxpayers nothing? It must be free!

[a] This strange notion, imbedded somewhere deep  in the liberal convention of the word taxpayer, must be placed in some socialist context to make sense. We could surmise that since the top 4% pay 96% of the federal taxes we could utilize this factoid to slice off the corners of this game chip and satisfy the mentally marginal on this identity. Thus, the non-taxpaying good citizens who are not ‘rich’ must be those who would pay nothing, and that must somehow ring true within the boundaries of the socialist essence of this scenario. The reverse of this idea leads nowhere. We must conclude that taxpayers are those lenders or investors that own the banks and related businesses or equities therein.  Using the contorted logic of the left we must believe that lenders are not taxpayers? That must be it. This is more complicated than it first appears. This is disinformation and a flat lie.

[b] We must, then, also refute the notion that if we tax the rich that the ‘little guy’ will NOT PAY any of tax because it is  just punishment for a corporation and the government can reclaim these ‘costs’ to the society from these taxes.  We can offer the following terse explanation to the liberal, in vain, in an attempt to counter his brain-washed notion about taxes that:

Corporations Do Not Pay Taxes

, but to no avail.  Customers pay the taxes! Attempting to educate liberals and their victims on economic matters is like trying to return fresh donkey flatulence to its previous state as corn meal.

Tax theory:

If some corporation makes a widget that sells for $100 in stores everywhere and then the government adds on some special $5 widget tax and the price rises to $105, then we bang our heads on the Anvil or Reason because the victim of socialism will not believe that they are paying the new tax. Indeed, if the price of the widget increased then that would be prima facie evidence of greed on the part of the corporations and rich and the urgent need to attach another 5$ tax to the widget is in order and that the government would return the recovered profit from the corporation to the poor in the form of social programs.  Victims such a pitiful mentality  and swampish levels of ignorance would sooner believe in Global Warming[13] and Carbon Caps[14], the Tooth Fairy or the benefits of mega doses of vitamin C than believe this.

[c] To this discussion, we must include the phony notion of the zero sum theory [15]  to this futile attempt to educate the liberals where we learn that if anybody has something much more than the average then they attained that extra stuff unfairly and that the little guy was the victim and his rightful due was stolen. This political notion keeps the ignoranti steeped in the sticky stuff, happy and in a state of delirious admiration for their torturers. You are a victim and we know who the guilty are and we can punish them and return to you your lost inheritance.  All we need is your vote. Sure.

The notion that the taxpayers would pay nothing is just plain crap. But, to be fair, crap is probably the most precious and effective commodity in the leftist camp.

Danger Alert Number One:

Here, the Rule of Law is slated to be abrogated [or destroyed] as we need to learn how the process that mortgages[would] be revised in court.  We are going to hand over the modification of a contract to some judge! Really?

So, now peace and justice will be economically dispensed by the courts that will modify private contracts. The states may already have the power to alter and redirect the obligations of a mortgage contract.[16]

 Conclusion:

We are entering a massive recession that will probably turn out to be the biggest depression in the history of organized society. The result will be a massive hunt for the renaming wealth and assets and that will be enabled by your government in the form of redistributive taxation[17] whereby they will attempt to crush capitalism and free enterprise and transfer your wealth to the ‘poor.’ Those who detest capitalism now have a chance to blame that for the depression.

They will confiscate and then give away your assets to illegal aliens, pry open your 401(k)s and ‘spread that around’ and institute a Gestapo-like civilian security force that will certainly operate as tax collectors, the secret police, and policy enforcers  in the name of community activism, social justice and worse.

You wanted ‘change?’ You are going to get it.

rycK

 

Comments: ryckki@gmail.com



[2] In honor of that celebrated Communist stooge and liar and winner of the Pulitzer Prize for the NYT. The color RED is used in my essays in honor of Walter Duranty, a saint, if there could be one, in the Marxist Archives of Honor.

[3] Foreclosure Prevention Lite  NYT  EDITORIAL Published: November 12, 2008 http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/13/opinion/13thu1.html

[4] The Rape of the Your Wealth: Obama and his Illegal Aliens are set to Regulate and Redistribute All that you have.

http://rycksrationalizations.blogtownhall.com/2008/10/20/the_rape_of__your_wealth_obama_and_his_illegal_aliens_are_set_to_regulate_and_redistribute_all_that_you_have.thtml

 

 

[5]Bear Stearns made the first public securitization of Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) loans started in 1997.[6] Editorialists in some American newspapers[7][8] and US Congressman Ron Paul[9] say the CRA loans were lent to otherwise un-credit-worthy consumers in the name of ending discrimination, although an analysis of actual lending patterns does not generally support this conclusion.[10][11][12]

On June 22, 2007, Bear Stearns pledged a collateralized loan of up to $3.2 billion to "bail out" one of its funds, the Bear Stearns High-Grade Structured Credit Fund, while negotiating with other banks to loan money against collateral to another fund, the Bear Stearns High-Grade Structured Credit Enhanced Leveraged Fund.[13] The funds were invested in thinly traded collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) found to be worth less than their mark-to-market value. Merrill Lynch seized $850 million worth of the underlying collateral but only was able to auction $100 million of them. The incident sparked concern of contagion as Bear Stearns might be forced to liquidate its CDOs, prompting a mark-down of similar assets in other portfolios.[14][15] Richard A. Marin, a senior executive at Bear Stearns Asset Management responsible for the two hedge funds, was replaced on June 29 by Jeffrey B. Lane, a former Vice Chairman of rival investment bank, Lehman Brothers.[16]

During the week of July 16, 2007, Bear Stearns disclosed that the two subprime hedge funds had lost nearly all of their value amid a rapid decline in the market for subprime mortgages.

 

[6] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_Reinvestment_Act

Community Reinvestment Act (or CRA, Pub.L. 95-128, title VIII, 91 Stat. 1147, 12 U.S.C. § 2901 et seq.)

 

[9] Pia Lopez: The party's over; now comes the big cleanup With state at heart of credit crisis, it's up to governor to propose bold steps By Pia Lopez plopez@sacbee.com Published: Sunday, Oct. 12, 2008 http://www.sacbee.com/110/story/1305207-p2.html

http://www.sacbee.com/110/story/1305207-p3.html

[11] Pia Lopez: The party's over; now comes the big cleanup With state at heart of credit crisis, it's up to governor to propose bold steps By Pia Lopez plopez@sacbee.com Published: Sunday, Oct. 12, 2008 http://www.sacbee.com/110/story/1305207-p2.html

http://www.sacbee.com/110/story/1305207-p3.html

[13] 21,000 Scientists Refute the Phony Global Warming Follies as The Biggest Attempt to Tax The World Has Even Seen. Monday, January 28, 2008 10:46 AM

http://rycksrationalizations.townhall.com/g/c9173a36-97a1-4108-9e7d-cdaa38b28cbf

 

[15] “Many economic situations are not zero-sum, since valuable goods and services can be created, destroyed, or badly allocated, and any of these will create a net gain or loss. Assuming the counterparties are acting rationally, any commercial exchange is a non-zero-sum activity, because each party must consider the goods s/he is receiving as being at least fractionally more valuable to him/her than the goods he/she is delivering. Economic exchanges must benefit both parties enough above the zero-sum such that each party can overcome his or her transaction costs.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-sum#Economics_and_non-zero-sum.

The New York Times Returns to Mindlessly Advocating Tax Hikes: Propaganda Lesson #50,001.

Monday, January 07, 2008 11:25 AM

http://rycksrationalizations.townhall.com/g/a9715023-f043-4d78-8e23-1cf0d1fd118a

 

[16] The prevailing doctrine was stated by the Supreme Court of the United States in the following words: “It is the settled law of this court that the interdiction of statutes impairing the obligation of contracts does not prevent the State from exercising such powers as are vested in it for the promotion of the common weal, or are necessary for the general good of the public, though contracts previously entered into between individuals may thereby be affected.... In other words, that parties by entering into contracts may not estop the legislature from enacting laws intended for the public good.” http://law.onecle.com/constitution/article-1/65-private-contracts-and-police-power.html

[17]http://rycksrationalizations.blogtownhall.com/2008/11/14/krugman_lectures_us_on_depression_politics__we_need_to_%e2%80%9cto_transcend_several_conventional_prejudices%e2%80%9d_and_spend_spend_spend.thtml

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Krugman Lectures Us on Depression Politics. We need to “to transcend several conventional prejudices” and Spend Spend Spend.

Krugman Lectures Us on Depression Politics.  We need to “to transcend several conventional prejudices” and Spend Spend Spend.

The New York Times—aka the Walter Duranty Papers [1]  has an all-embracing and tortuous history of apologizing for Communism, propping up losers, celebrating AIDS along with the perverted practices that spread this horror, practicing the wanton tax whoring of higher taxes for any implausible reasons, praising African and South American dictators and despots in their opinion columns and scrounging for original new ways to reinvent Marxism as a new-fangled and magical solution to achieve a great society.  The Times has never relented from its pathological contempt for capitalism. The Times has relentlessly praised any leftist parasite or pervert who will openly parade their dishonor in our now degenerated society.  Today, the Times instructs us on the essence of the Obama Depression Politics.

 

Our newest, but least intellectually gifted  igNoble Leechette[2][3], blessed with insights and the arcane ability to divine  the particulars of Depression government policies will now ‘’splain’ to us what  depression politics looks like, but without any mention of taxes or government revenues:

 

The preamble:

The economic news, in case you haven’t noticed, keeps getting worse. Bad as it is, however, I don’t expect another Great Depression. In fact, we probably won’t see the unemployment rate match its post-Depression peak of 10.7 percent, reached in 1982 (although I wish I was sure about that)”[4]-- Depression Economics Returns By Paul Krugman Op-Ed Columnist Published: November 14, 2008 [Emphasis is mine in all quotes.]This link references all quotes in this essay unless otherwise stated.

Not a depression:

We are already, however, well into the realm of what I call depression economics. “

Depression-Level News #1

To see what I’m talking about, consider the implications of the latest piece of terrible economic news: Thursday’s report on new claims for unemployment insurance, which have now passed the half-million mark.”

Depression-Level News #2

And with no possibility of further interest rate cuts, there’s nothing to stop the economy’s downward momentum. Rising unemployment will lead to further cuts in consumer spending, which Best Buy warned this week has already suffered a “seismic” decline. Weak consumer spending will lead to cutbacks in business investment plans. And the weakening economy will lead to more job cuts, provoking a further cycle of contraction.”

Fact: Deflation is the current disease. Liquidity [that is money and bank accounts for the benefit of those who live in Philly or Baltimore] is increased by injecting money into the society with interest rates. This is the only known way to fight deflation, the major problem we face now. Deflation happens when the money supply contracts. Let us hear from an English expert in this field:

The truth about Deflation and Its Cure, if any from Ambrose Evans-Pritchard:

"It is going to be absolute murder in Britain if inflation turns negative [the definition of deflation-- ed]," said Professor Peter Spencer from York University. "The big difference with past episodes is that we are now much more heavily indebted. Few people owned their own houses in 1930s. Debts were miniscule."

 

Deflation has other insidious traits. It causes shoppers to hold back. They wait for lower prices. Once this psychology gains a grip, it can gradually set off a self-feeding spiral that is hard to stop.

It also redistributes wealth – the wrong way. Savings appreciate, which is nice for the "rentiers" with capital. The effect is a large transfer of income from working people with mortgages to bondholders. (These may be pension funds, of course).

 

The modern warning to us all is the "Lost Decade" in Japan, a loose term for the on-again, off-again slump that ultimately led to zero interest rates and – when that failed – to the printing of money. After 18 years, the Nikkei stock index is now trading at 8,700 – down from a peak of nearly 40,000. House prices have fallen by half. Yet after all the stimulus, the country is once again tipping back into deflation.”-- Abandon All Hope Once You Enter Deflation by By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard. Telegraph [London] 12 Nov 2008

 

rycK’s Analysis so far on this propaganda piece.

 

It is astonishing that our krugmaniacal essayist here cannot seem to discuss deflation in level terms. Only spending in massive quantities is offered. No discussion of taxes. Why even think about Federal revenues when the government can just print money? Any tax hikes would just make a depression much worse and that is probably the goal of the left. They cannot survive in the arena of capitalism so why not take this opportunity to end it and institute socialism? Sounds like a wonderful program for the left.

This is the time to ‘redistribute the wealth’ and not the way Ambrose Evans-Pritchard tells us about from LondonO’bozo and Krugman want to grab wealth from the capitalists and give it to the ‘poor.’

They haven’t had an opportunity like this since the October Revolution.

To pull us out of this downward spiral, the federal government will have to provide economic stimulus in the form of higher spending and greater aid to those in distress — and the stimulus plan won’t come soon enough or be strong enough unless politicians and economic officials are able to transcend several conventional prejudices.”-- Paul Krugman

Like the prejudice against capitalism, profits and free markets?

One of these prejudices is the fear of red ink…. Another prejudice is the belief that policy should move cautiously…. So when depression economics prevails, prudence is folly.”

All indications are that the new administration will offer a major stimulus package. My own back-of-the-envelope calculations say that the package should be huge, on the order of $600 billion.”-- Paul Krugman

From a recent proclamation from our Leechette:

Well, there’s no question that fighting the crisis will cost a lot of money. Rescuing the financial system will probably require large outlays beyond the funds already disbursed. And on top of that, we badly need a program of increased government spending to support output and employment. Could next year’s federal budget deficit reach $1 trillion? Yes.”--Paul Krugman November 7, 2008

The Leechette’s Economic Hero writes during the 1930ss Great Depression:

Keynes himself placed equal emphasis on redistributive taxation and a monetary policy of ‘cheap money’ as well as fiscal policy, and he did not believe governments should run deficits for current consumption, as opposed to public investment. He was by no means a socialist in the usual sense and did not advocate big government for its own sake.”[5]Wikipedia on the Keynes book: The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money 1936 [3-4 years after the low point of the depression.]

 

The final act in our socialist intermezzo:

My own back-of-the-envelope calculations say that the package should be huge, on the order of $600 billion.”

“So the question becomes, will the Obama people dare to propose something on that scale?”

rycK’s Analysis on this: My back-of-the-envelope calculations tells me that our homes and 401(k)s are in jeopardy and the drooling tax whores will be howling for our assets. All they can do is seize our property and means of production with taxes or worse. The last 150 bln stimulus did nothing. 4 x nothing is still nothing.

Where is the Krugman analysis of raising taxes or, as Plugs Promised, giving a tax cut to everybody who makes less than $250,000? Did our krugmaniacal economist forget to mention taxes and the cost of socialized medicine and a KGB civilian security force that is the size of the army? Do the Democrats want a redistributive taxation in the Keynesian m0de?

From an O’Bozo Solemn Promise to the masses:

What I’ve said is I want to provide a tax cut for 95 percent of working Americans, 95 percent. If you make more — if you make less than a quarter million dollars a year, then you will not see your income tax go up, your capital gains tax go up, your payroll tax. Not one dime.[6]—Obama in the McCain/Obama Debate Oct 15, 2008.

And Plugs [The Buffoon] responds with the same song as he hears his master’s voice:

"Read my lips," Biden [this is the guy Plugs ed] said, using Bush's famous phrase while referring to a Barack Obama administration. "Nobody, nobody making less than $250,000 is going to see a penny of their taxes go up."[7]Biden in an incoherent rant at some county fairgrounds near the campus of Ohio University in Athens on Oct 15, 2008.

There is now a half a world of persons who will be socially and economically mangled in this Depression and they will howl for our money. Where there is capital, as in our 401(k)s the world will root and toot and bawl for our money. Examples of Third World swarming masses that are now doing that include California, Michigan, New York and New Jersey. The illegal aliens are set to march in Washington on Jan 21, only 1 day after O’Bozo is elevated to the office of Commissar.

There will be howls to blame capitalism for this and grand speeches that sanction the confiscation of your savings and other assets like They do not like private wealth or private property  and will grab as much as they can. [8]

Why don’t we legalize 20 million illegal aliens and give them some new civil rights benefits, job quotas, and see how they vote for that?

Look out when a slavering Marxist gets in power. Everybody loses. Your home and savings are one the chopping block now. Aren’t you thrilled that you wanted ‘change?’ You are going to see more of this than you dreamed.

rycK

 

Comments: ryckki@gmail.com

 



[1] In honor of that celebrated Communist stooge and liar and winner of the Pulitzer Prize for the NYT. The color RED is used in my essays in honor of Walter Duranty, a saint, if there could be one, in the Marxist Archives of Honor.

[4] Depression Economics Returns By Paul Krugman Op-Ed Columnist Published: November 14, 2008 http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/14/opinion/14krugman.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

 

[6] McCain, Obama go head to head in last debate Wed October 15, 2008 http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/10/15/debate.transcript/?iref=mpstoryview

 

[8] The Rape of the Your Wealth: Obama and his Illegal Aliens are set to Regulate and Redistribute All that you have.

http://rycksrationalizations.blogtownhall.com/2008/10/20/the_rape_of_the_your_wealth_obama_and_his_illegal_aliens_are_set_to_regulate_and_redistribute_all_that_you_have.thtml

Krugman of the NYT Knocks Private Property: Home Ownership Should Not be a National Policy.

http://rycksrationalizations.blogtownhall.com/2008/06/24/krugman_of_the_nyt_knocks_private_property_home_ownership_should_not_be_a_national_policy.thtml

Private Property and the Leftist Quest for Political Power

Posted by rycK on Friday, March 28, 2008 12:28:41 PM

http://rycksrationalizations.blogtownhall.com/2008/03/28/private_property_and_the_leftist_quest_for_political_power.thtml

 

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The NYT’s Friedman’s Flat Propagandistic Thinking on Auto Bailouts: Ignore Unions and Blame Management.

The NYT’s Friedman’s Flat Propagandistic Thinking on Auto Bailouts: Ignore Unions and Blame Management.

 

The New York Times—aka the Walter Duranty Papers [1]  culminates its first century of unerring propaganda secretion with an unblemished  record of apologizing for Communism, propping up losers and dope addicts, celebrating dictators and despots in their opinion columns, pushing unionism and scrounging for new ways to reinvent Marxism.  They did blunder with the endorsement of Dewey in 1948, but recovered from that mistake and have mindless endorsed any far left political candidates ever since as a penance. Specializing in propaganda and chauvinistic adherence to unionism, socialism and other proven failed themes they recruit and culture  resident journalists writers who masquerade as ‘analysts’ or ‘experts’ and who share their quasi-Marxian delusions with the diminishing list of readers of this morally and intellectually and finically bankrupt rag. Today we are educated on the proper management of the auto industry and how the Times knew the best path forward to business glory from the birth of Henry Ford.

 

In an article entitled: How to Fix a Flat by Thomas L. Friedman we are given lessons in elementary business acumen:

 

“[Our Hero Friedman was listening to]… Bob Nardelli, the C.E.O. of Chrysler… explaining why the auto industry, at that time, needed $25 billion in loan guarantees. It wasn’t a bailout, he said. It was a way to enable the car companies to retool for innovation. [2]-- How to Fix a Flat By Thomas L. Friedman Op-Ed Columnist  November 11, 2008

 

Our hero explodes with:

 

How could these companies be so bad for so long? Clearly the combination of a very un-innovative business culture, visionless management and overly generous labor contracts explains a lot of it. It led to a situation whereby General Motors could make money only by selling big, gas-guzzling S.U.V.’s and trucks. Therefore, instead of focusing on making money by innovating around fuel efficiency, productivity and design, G.M. threw way too much energy into lobbying and maneuvering to protect its gas guzzlers.” [All quotes references this link in this blog unless otherwise noted. [Emphasis is mine in all quotes.]

 

I wonder if our business expert at the Times is aware that Toyota and certain German and other Japanese and automakers make SUVs that only get 20 mpg in the US and they make good profits selling them.

 

Here, Friedman casually guides us past by a key point in his propaganda piece as he seems to blame the automakers for offering “overly generous labor contracts.” This is part of the propagandist’s art [of which the New York Times is a Grand Master[3]]: the distortion of the facts and shifting blame to the political target.  If this was a mistake then perhaps they ought to offer lower wages to their union employees. They might want to remain silent as the United Auto Workers continue on with their lobbying and study how to do business the Friedman Way.

 

Here the work of a competitor is thrown into the discussion:

 

Nothing typified this more than statements like those of Bob Lutz, G.M.’s vice chairman. He has been quoted as saying that hybrids like the Toyota Prius “make no economic sense.” And, in February, D Magazine of Dallas quoted him as saying that global warming “is a total crock of [expletive].”-- Friedman

 

Do we hear that [1] the Toyota Prius is very expensive and that extra cost must be compared with the so-called gas mileage of this non-union manufactured car. Owners cannot seem to even approach the advertised gas mileage claim of 60 miles per gallon on the highway and 51 in the city.[4] Many owners only get half of that. See Sandra C.’s case in the footnotes.

 

The economics of this works out to the notion that if you expect 60 mpg and get only 34 then you have lost 34/60 x 100,000 miles at $4 per gallon or a loss by the customer of about $5100 dollars. Cost of the car is about $24,000.

 

mpg

$/g

Miles

cost

Loss

60

4

100,000

$6,667

 

34

4

100,000

$11,765

$5,098

 

Customers were offered very high savings on fuel by purchasing this car that was more expensive and harder to get than comparable cars that also got 28-30 mpg from Detroit.

 

And please, spare me the alligator tears about G.M.’s health care costs. Sure, they are outrageous. “But then why did G.M. refuse to lift a finger to support a national health care program when Hillary Clinton was pushing for it?” asks Dan Becker, a top environmental lobbyist.”

 

Was there an option to shift these HC costs to the government without penalty? I don’t think so.

 

It is customary in the construction of propaganda pieces  to highlight some improper action by the opposition to make a point but to cover that blunder with a need to overlook the error for the ‘common good’ or ‘jobs’ or other excuse:

 

The blame for this travesty not only belongs to the auto executives, but must be shared equally with the entire Michigan delegation in the House and Senate, virtually all of whom, year after year, voted however the Detroit automakers and unions instructed them to vote. That shielded General Motors, Ford and Chrysler from environmental concerns, mileage concerns and the full impact of global competition that could have forced Detroit to adapt long ago.”-- Friedman

 

The advice of experts is now solicited:

 

O.K., now that I have all that off my chest, what do we do? I am as terrified as anyone of the domino effect [Cliché alert see below, ed] on industry and workers if G.M. were to collapse. But if we are going to use taxpayer money to rescue Detroit, then it should be done along the lines proposed in The Wall Street Journal on Monday by Paul Ingrassia, a former Detroit bureau chief for that paper.”—Friedman

 

Finally, you have broader considerations that might follow what you would call the "falling domino" principle. You have a row of dominoes set up, you knock over the first one, and what will happen to the last one is the certainty that it will go over very quickly. So you could have a beginning of a disintegration that would have the most profound influences.”-- U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower on Viet Nam 1954.[5]

 

Which includes a lot of hatchet work:

 

““In return for any direct government aid,” he wrote, “the board and the management [of G.M.] should go. Shareholders should lose their paltry remaining equity. And a government-appointed receiver — someone hard-nosed and nonpolitical — should have broad power to revamp G.M. with a viable business plan and return it to a private operation as soon as possible. That will mean tearing up existing contracts with unions, dealers and suppliers, closing some operations and selling others and downsizing the company ... Giving G.M. a blank check — which the company and the United Auto Workers union badly want, and which Washington will be tempted to grant — would be an enormous mistake.”

 

Our hero closes with this:

 

Lastly, somebody ought to call Steve Jobs, who doesn’t need to be bribed to do innovation, and ask him if he’d like to do national service and run a car company for a year. I’d bet it wouldn’t take him much longer than that to come up with the G.M. iCar.”

 

Perhaps California[6] should tax the electrons on Apple computers with, say, $500 in taxes, on all machines sold in that state or exported to the Real World. Would Steve move his business to Michigan or Taiwan or Dubai? We need to save the planet. Raise taxes!

 

Our hero strays too far from the nourishment of the Kool-Aid reservoirs as he merely offers a license for any good business person to get in and whack the unions, dump the excessive bennies and come up with a viable business plan. This last tidbit spells doom for the unions and their wages and benefits for retirees.  The UAW knows this and went to court to lower benefits and such was roundly criticized by the socialists.[7] The union workers saw this coming.[8]

 

The ugly facts are that foreign [read non union auto makers] seem to thrive in the US and have not asked for bailouts. Isn’t that strange? Do we see a pattern here? We need to compare this union-political cohabitation exercise in the case of cars with what the unions and their paid stooges did to the rail industry, airline industry[9] and elsewhere. Can we see a pattern here?

 

Friedman blunders here as he unwittingly  supports a business-oriented reorganization and cost-cutting scenario that will elimate the unions and their benefits altogether and one that would  force Detroit to mimic existing automakers that are already successful. That means we use government money to duplicate existing success and that is inefficient. We reinvent the wheel at government expense. That is liberalism. That is not a business plan—that is tax whoring. The best business plan is to let GM, Ford and Chrysler to go bankrupt and allow the non union automakers enjoy the marginal business and make more profits. That, alone, makes business sense. Friedman has boogered this one. He needs to be reeducated in the following socialist theme:

 

The typical socialist government [France, Italy, Spain] would merely give the automakers some generous subsidy for every hour worked [say $30 dollars per hour], put up tariffs, severely tax non union auto plants and then also subsidize healthcare benefits [how about $10,000 per worker] and finally guarantee the retirement benefits of 750,000 loyal Democrats who voted for all those wonderful politicos in Michigan all these years.  We need to recruit some veterans from the allies and friends of the former Mayor Coleman A. Young Administration (1974-1993). They know how to handle this. They might push for a subsidy of $60 dollars per hour and bring economic justice to Detroit.

 

Socialism and high taxes are the New Obama Way.  Join a union!

 

"I know that General Motors received some bad news yesterday," Obama said. "I also know how much progress you've made, how many hybrids and fuel-efficient vehicles you're churning out. And I believe that if our government is there to support you, and give you the assistance you need to retool and make this transition, that[sic] this plant will be here for another hundred years."[10]O’Bozo

 

100 more years of unionism! We can all celebrate.

 

rycK

 

Comments to: ryckki@gmail.com



[1] In honor of that celebrated Communist stooge and liar and winner of the Pulitzer Prize for the NYT. The color RED is used in my essays in honor of Walter Duranty, a saint, if there could be one, in the Marxist Archives of Honor.

[2] How to Fix a Flat By Thomas L. Friedman Op-Ed Columnist http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/12/opinion/12friedman.html?ref=opinion

Published: November 11, 2008

 

[3] [3] Propaganda Gem:  Krugman Distorts History as He Grubs for More Taxes.

http://rycksrationalizations.blogtownhall.com/2008/06/16/propaganda_gem__krugman_distorts_history_as_he_grubs_for_more_taxes.thtml

Propaganda Gem: Frank the Crank Clarifies Anger for the Women Voters and the Polls Show Obama Wins the Most Women!

http://rycksrationalizations.blogtownhall.com/2008/06/15/propaganda_gem_frank_the_crank_clarifies_anger_for_the_women_voters_and_the_polls_show_obama_wins_the_most_women!.thtml

Propaganda Alert: The New York Times Axes the Right Questions and then Answers Them with the Left Answers.

http://rycksrationalizations.blogtownhall.com/2008/06/13/propaganda_alert_the_new_york_times_axes_the_right_questions_and_thenanswers_them_with_the_left_answers.thtml

The New York Times Essays Us on ‘Values?”!! This is Really Just a Propaganda Piece on Taxation and Control

http://rycksrationalizations.blogtownhall.com/2008/06/11/the_new_york_times_essays_us_on_‘values”!!_this_is_really_just_a_propaganda_piece_on_taxation_and_control.thtml

Political Lessons from the Fairy Tales by the New York Times: Propaganda at Work.

http://rycksrationalizations.blogtownhall.com/2008/04/11/political_lessons_from_the_fairy_tales_by_the_new_york_times_propaganda_at_work.thtml

Propaganda Lesson: Economics and Recessions from The NYT: A Long [Sad] Story and Stern Tutorial on Tax Cuts.

Friday, February 08, 2008 10:16 AM

http://rycksrationalizations.townhall.com/g/2bea69e5-bb30-4923-9ed4-192199970c1a

Debunking the New York Time’s Mythical Debunking of the Reagan Myth, a New Lesson In Propaganda.

Monday, January 21, 2008 2:40 PM

http://rycksrationalizations.townhall.com/g/891a796e-1a05-4978-898d-6b537e47c718

Another Lesson in Propaganda, Lies and Sleaze From The New York Times.

Wednesday, January 16, 2008 8:51 AM

http://rycksrationalizations.townhall.com/g/1a8b21b3-4d72-4558-bece-fce7920b4d13

Propaganda Lesson # 50,001 From The NYT: Krugman Advises Us About Personalities And Their Effects On Economics.

Monday, January 14, 2008 12:58 PM

http://rycksrationalizations.townhall.com/g/4183cd6c-8a51-4286-9fe8-c13c74fdf651

More Lessons in Propaganda from the NYT: The Great Divide Phantasm.

Monday, December 31, 2007 11:44 AM

http://rycksrationalizations.townhall.com/g/d743c810-d793-4810-afd5-288fa3cb35cd

Arizona: A NYT Propaganda Lesson on the Abrogation of the Rule of Law for Illegal Aliens

Thursday, December 20, 2007 10:51 AM

http://rycksrationalizations.townhall.com/g/33b5a5af-d556-4b51-9a29-97934a13cc4e

The New York Times Gives Another Propaganda Lesson on Hillary

Sunday, December 09, 2007 1:43 PM

http://rycksrationalizations.townhall.com/g/a33cb63b-2c81-4747-be4d-99c54799f358

Propaganda Alert: New York Times calls for "Fair Tests?!"

Monday, November 26, 2007 3:44 PM

http://rycksrationalizations.townhall.com/g/32b0c232-e531-4f91-bd33-50d2cf604304

More Propaganda and Half Truths from the New York Times

Sunday, November 18, 2007 1:55 PM

http://rycksrationalizations.townhall.com/g/d51aca44-ba27-44a4-aed7-9afe7b9e36dc

Sleaze, Propaganda, the New York Times and the Jena Six

Friday, October 05, 2007 12:08 PM

http://rycksrationalizations.townhall.com/g/d65178da-b194-49a9-82ac-ab1d329201b5

More New York Times Propaganda and Stale Revisionism

Friday, August 24, 2007 4:04 PM

http://rycksrationalizations.townhall.com/g/d4111b60-1b6f-4bed-9dfb-74bc88bcedf3

A Propaganda Lesson from the New York Times.

Thursday, May 31, 2007 4:16 PM

http://rycksrationalizations.townhall.com/g/294a56b1-833d-4cb2-a050-dd88adf2f433

 

[4] But for Sandra C. of Bloomington, Indiana, the figures just don't add up. In fact, she says she was told the onboard computer in her car is programmed to provide high mileage numbers that may exceed the miles per gallon the car actually achieves.

 

Sandra bought her new Prius in the spring of 2005. ?I've been watching my gas mileage and have consistently gotten around 34 miles per gallon,? she wrote to ConsumerAffairs.com. ?That is far below the sticker information and hype.?

 

The Toyota Prius advertises on its sticker that the EPA has determined through testing that the car achieves an average of 60 mpg in city driving and 51 mpg on the highway.

 

Sandra took her Prius into the dealer for a check-up and was initially told that she was getting 46 miles to a gallon, which is less than the amount claimed by Toyota for city driving but still a pretty enviable figure. The service technician turned on the gas mileage icon of the onboard computer for her to prove his point.

 

?The computer did say 46 miles per gallon,? Sandra wrote. ?I asked them why it is that when I divide the miles from fill-up to fill-up by the gallons I put in, I get 34 or 33 miles a gallon??

 

The service technician admonished Sandra that she probably had her math wrong. ?I said no and I wanted an answer,? she said.

 

Finally the service department manager told Sandra, ?Yes, you are right, you probably are getting 34 miles to a gallon.?

 

When Sandra asked why the computer spit out the higher inaccurate, number the service manager told her, ?That is a number Toyota has programmed into the car which accounts for wind resistance and other factors,? she said

http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2005/hybridwatch01.html

[7] US auto union goes to court against its own members By Jerry Isaacs

22 October 2005 http://dev.wsws.org/articles/2005/oct2005/uaw-o22.shtml

[8] Protecting Jobs, Union Wages & Benefits

“The 'above-all-else' drive to increase profits often leads to decisions involving outsourcing, subcontracting and privatization. We're faced with it ... and we have to deal with it.” http://www.ueunion.org/stwd_subc.html

[10] Obama Proposes $210 Billion for New Jobs    Ibid. 

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The Continuing Collapse of California and other Third World Marxist Economies in the Coming Depression.

The Continuing Collapse of California and other Third World Marxist Economies in the Coming Depression.

 

The Marxist Utopia of California has yet again, as predicted, demonstrated that they cannot sustain their image as even a random cluster of remotely rational human beings. This conclusion is attained in view of their progressive drug addiction celebrations, the political worship of illegal aliens, political correctness, sloth, sodomy and sedition [SSS] and, most importantly, the EcoNazi[1] Mentality of Environmentalism.  O’Bozo believes in the green revolution and tax whoring behemoths like Global Warming[2] and Carbon Caps[3] that will destroy our society like they are doing now in England.[4] The Brits are just about finished and ready to submit to Sharia Law. The citizens on the Left Coast [and of numerous other unknown nations] are grand subscribers to this lunacy and are now simple wanton tax whores and the situation is much worse than merely hopeless.[5] [6] [7] [8] The Golden State is besplattered from bay to bridge to desert with decaying social matter, littered with the glittering remains of broken crack vials, drunks feeding hungrily in the dumpsters and a few odd dry [unused] condoms scattered about the parks and has now emerged as a potential terminal burden to the rest of the planet. They cannot wait to institute a huge Carbon Cap tax on autos and everything else that emits CO2.  We haven’t seen a mess like this since Sodom and Gomorrah were in their halcyon days.

 

Today we read this:

 

SACRAMENTO (AP) - California's budget deficit will grow to $28 billion through June 2010 unless lawmakers take bold action, possibly including a hike in the state income tax, the Legislature's nonpartisan analyst said Tuesday.”[9]-- Analyst: California faces $28 billion deficit Nov 11 03:48 PM US/Eastern by Judy Lin

 

The drug-crazed fools now announce that their recent and glorious 4.4 bln dollar ‘fast fix’ bond issue was at best a joke and a temporary fleeting grab for sanity. This new news is like being caught in some absurd maelstrom. It is like enduring an attack of impossible groping beings like ghouls or carnivorous gastric worms that feed on your money, illegal aliens and drugs. There is no end to this lunacy. They will spend and hike taxes until there nothing but chaos. The more they spend the more they will beg. They more they beg the more tax money they will be given.

 

We are apparently invited to believe in the strange chronicle that predicts that the parasites in California, who haunt the Assembly and the alleyways, will willingly jack up yet another massive tax hike and drive away every business wage earner or business owner in the state.  They are this psychotic? Of course!  They will do this and more and that is not the end of it. Once the oppressive taxes crush their economy, they will again hike taxes and then crawl to O’Bozo[10] for more sustenance. Then, they will celebrate, hop and clap and toot their crack pipes, mainline some more crystal meth, and celebrate in the streets after they get a hold on some more money from the printing presses at the US Treasury that now run hot and fast like a hungry rat in the desert. There is now some metaphysical metastatic feeding tube that is connected to a sweet federal teat in Washington and they will blindly suck their way to socialism. They are still furious about Prop 13, the measure that saved California from the Tax Zombies who would have taxed the middle class out of existence while giving free mortgages and tax breaks to illegal aliens. They will have another chance.

 

Their idiot governor has now called for the California State Supreme Court to again overrule the voters on such items as gay marriages. Why not declare all housing the property of the state? Why vote? The courts can proclaim justice for all and spread around the wealth.

 

There is no hint of restraint in this wild tax-whoring circus of sloth and depravity anywhere in this Left Coast Containment facility that stubbornly purports to be recognized an organized state of the union. Oregon will follow along in this ditch. Their social philosophy is disgusting[11] and devoid of reason, morality or civility. The ugly fact is that the federal system is also going down in a deep recession and the only thing we can do is truck them tons of worthless paper money.

 

No, the liberals think they need to bail out Detroit first as if our automotive industry was not crushed by government regulation, fees, taxes and the mandates of the EcoNazis who seek the destruction of the internal combustion engine. We no longer have any means of producing cars in competition with Japan or Korea or Germany.  Unions and federal restraints have sucked the system dry. The ultimate result will probably be a nationalization of the shrunken remains of  this mess with the ugly result that the wreckage will resemble Amtrak or the Postal Service. We can have political hacks design cars.

 

Get out of California while you can! The End is in sight.

 

rycK

 

Comments to: ryckki@gmail.com

 



[2] 21,000 Scientists Refute the Phony Global Warming Follies as The Biggest Attempt to Tax The World Has Even Seen. Monday, January 28, 2008 10:46 AM

http://rycksrationalizations.townhall.com/g/c9173a36-97a1-4108-9e7d-cdaa38b28cbf

 

[9] Analyst: California faces $28 billion deficit Nov 11 03:48 PM US/Eastern By Judy Lin

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D94CU54O0&show_article=1

 

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Herbert at the NYT: We Need More Race-Based Government and Higher Taxes to Be Fair.

Herbert at the NYT: We Need More Race-Based Government and Higher Taxes to Be Fair.

 

We are always privileged to study and digest the frantic political theorizing that poses as thinking at the New York Times —aka the Walter Duranty Papers. [1] When certain events threaten the intended outcome for one of their precious leftist candidates or when new political actions are required so that the public can be reeducated and vote accordingly for whatever new taxes and oppressive government will favor the minority causes, Herbert wanders in with the usual stack of soiled clichés and ‘teaches’ us all about equality and fairness.

 

Bob Herbert of the NYT has been selected to unwarp our narrow little minds on certain matters of equality and fairness[2] as we shall see today:

 

From a recent comment by Herbert who handles only racial matters for the Times:

 

Ignorance must really be bliss. How else, over so many years, could the G.O.P. get away with ridiculing all things liberal?”-- Hold Your Heads Up by Bob Herbert[3] Op-Ed Columnist Published: September 8, 2008

 

Actually, I have a long list some of which is given below.

 

This could also read in different venue:

 

Ignorance must really be bliss. How else, over so many years, could the Democrats get away with ridiculing all things conservative?”— Hold Your Heads Up Down[4] rycK November 11, 2008

 

From today’s hackneyed essay:

 

The most important thing the Democrats and President-elect Obama can do with regard to the economy is bring back a sense of fairness and equity[sic].”[5]-- Beyond the Fat Cats by Bob Herbert Op-Ed Columnist Published: November 10, 2008 [All quotes references this link in this blog unless otherwise noted. [Emphasis is mine in all quotes.]

 

Ah, Bob, did you might not know fairness and equity are synonyms.  Did you mean equality or did you mean real estate equity here or ownership in corporations? In our quest to be ‘fair’ and ‘ tolerant’ we need to let this  conundrum slide for the moment and try to deduce what he means here from the context of the rest of this screed.

 

We struggle on:

 

Back in September, with the credit markets frozen and the stock markets panicking, the treasury secretary, Henry Paulson, was telling anyone who would listen that his $700 billion bailout package had to be passed with lightning speed — no time to look at it too closely, no time for dissent.”

 

If you struggle to keep up with the news you might tell us about the billions headed for the failed auto industry and more billions to rescue some states like California, New York and probably New Jersey and the failure of the 150 bln stimulus package that Democrats overwhelmingly voted for and the new  150 bln dollar stimulus that Nancy Pelosi begs for in the Lame Duck session and the 1 trillion dollars in new spending by B. Hussein Obama. Is all that going to the fat cats?  Is Nancy a multimillionaire? You seem to forget that the liberals were all in favor of this mess and only some conservatives and some blacks voted against it. Check out the vote Herbert. You might learn something about truth.

 

But, Herbert seems to grovel forward in his customary and obsequious prone position with his hand out for more and more and more money for the ‘poor’  and plead the case that many  were abused by the fat cats:

 

A glubberance[6]:

In an article on Sunday, The Times mentioned a young woman in Philadelphia, Kyuana Everett, who is 21 years old, has a high school diploma and is desperate for work. “I’ve tried everything,” she said, “retail sales, office work, but the employers all say they have too many staff and they’re not hiring now.”

The article noted that Ms. Everett cannot even afford to rent a room for herself. She stays with her grandmother, secretly, in a home for the aged.

This is no ordinary recession. With brokerage houses, banks and a mammoth multinational insurance company depending on the Treasury for resuscitation, and with automakers like General Motors staring bankruptcy in the face, it has the feel of a monster downturn, a recession on steroids.”

Having a high school diploma certainly ranks her up in the top 80th percentile of African-Americans. And it is true that she ought to have a job and participate in the Great Society.  Did you notice the tax whoring and the anti-business climate in Philadelphia? They have lost half their city population since 1950.  Do you know why? Do you wonder if Nutter and his thugs drove away business?

 

Congress and the new administration need to think big — bigger than the stimulus package of $100 billion or so, which is being kicked around. Now is the time for a coast-to-coast “Rebuild America” infrastructure program. Put people to work repairing and rebuilding roads and bridges, decrepit schools and ancient sewer systems. Get the construction industry back on its feet.”

 

What is the cost of that Bob? Who pays for that Bob?

 

How much did we spend on financing zero-down mortgages for ‘the poor’ who could never pay their monthly mortgages Bob?  How about 3 trillion dollars Bob? Was that enough money for the poor Bob? 5 million of those phony mortgages went to illegal aliens Bob. Is that part of your fairness and equity [sic] theme of today? Or was that fairness in equity?

 

Bob seems to be blissfully unaware that the CRA [the phony Community Communist Reinvestment Act][7][8]  forced banks to lend out money at a loss and that this contributed to the collapse of the credit markets. The phony mortgages were bundled and sold as ‘investments.’ Fanny Mae was the toilet where bad loans could be flushed and Franklin Raines made a cool $90,000,000 dollars off this scam. Oh, he is black and works for Obama? Oh, yes. Is Raines a fat cat under your definition Bob?

 

Bob also might tell us about the fairness and equity in affirmative action, busing, welfare, Social Security, crime control and why cities like New Orleans, Detroit, Philly, Baltimore, Oakland, San Francisco and other crime centers were operated by liberal Democrats and now have the highest murder rates in the Western Hemisphere. What went wrong here Bob? Here are some numbers from Newark New Jersey:[9] Did you know about the crime statistics for Baltimore City [5.48 times the national average murder rate!], Oakland [3.5 times the national murder rate] , Houston [1.78 times] , Detroit [5.16 times!!] and other places and see similar corresponding trends and numbers. These are all liberal Democratic enclaves with high welfare demands and very high black populations.[10] Could you explain that to us Bob?

 

Please answer the following questions for us Bob:

 

Why is the Washington, DC school system the worst rated in the US [with the possible exception of the LA Unified School System] when it spends more money per student than any other district? Do we need educated people as employees or can we just ‘put people to work doing any old thing’ and call that full employment? How about our spending some more money on ‘education?’

 

Why is the crime rate so high in cities controlled by Democrats? Are criminals and druggies not good workers? Why is the high school dropout rate so high? Did Bear Stearns cause this? Did the Iraq war cause this?

 

Why the prisons are filled with mostly minorities Bob? What is the race factor here Bob?

 

Here are some facts Bob: the auto industry is finished and was killed off by C.A.F.E. standards, union demands, high gas taxes and bias against their industry by the EcoNazism[11] movement and now you want to rescue them for what? To save the unions? To build more cars and burn more gas? To provide more jobs? Do we need to provide more cars so then we can drive across your new bridges and infrastructure you give us in you plea for coast-to-coast “Rebuild America” infrastructure program. You didn’t know Al Gore wants to ban the internal combustion engine?[12] Didn’t you read Earth in the Balance? The way the auto industry went down reminds us of what happened to rail system in the US. Will the auto industry look like Amtrak?

 

Do you really want to raise taxes and do some really massive spending during a recession that looks like the beginning of some new monster version of the Great Depression? Your colleague Paul Krugman at the Times seems to think so. Read Krugman as he thinks we need to spend 50% more than we think we need to.[13] A trillion here and there is needed he thinks.

 

I don’t think you understand how capitalism works and the need for educated workers that are free of drugs, STDs and other hang-ups. But, you are certainly going to find out with your fairness and equity mumblings.

 

If you really want to help the ‘poor’ and criminal types you can advocate they be recruited into "… a civilian national security force that's just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded as…”[the army].[14]

 

Then, they can go door to door and ‘tax’ the rich and bring equality upon the land. How about 500 bln to fund this new political force? That is about the cost of the army.

 

All this is possible Bob if you just raise taxes and do some heavier spending in your quest for equity?

 

The answered is always the same from Bob Herbert: racism is the root cause of all our social problems. We can never find any blame to lay around on African-Americans for their sloth, drug addiction, high crime rates and dismal performance in the business and academic worlds. Affirmative action programs are a tacit admission that blacks cannot make it in a competitive society. The ‘educational’ programs are unproductive and that makes for good leftist politics. The only signal advance that blacks have made in the social world is abortion [politically sanctioned and celebrated murder] now running at about 1500 per day. That has spared us 25,000,000 unwanted citizens, so far, along with the welcome absence of their votes and that is probably the most praiseworthy social advance we can credit the New York Times with. That one really worked out well.

 

You might watch Doctor Zhivago[15] again and pay special attention to the scenes where Gromeko's house is confiscated and his literary works condemned by the state. That movie tells us much about the left and their mentality. The outcome of Doctor Zhivago is one leftist-endorsed way to get an enlightened ending to capitalist society that matches your notions of fairness and equity.  War and/or depression are the only changes that will allow for a concrete change in our society according to the left. They have nothing else but other people’s wealth.

 

We need a new version of the song Der morgige Tag ist mein[16] translated into Ebonics or Spanish of course and played on loudspeakers from the White House Lawn. Maybe Obama will phase out the military and replace them with a civilian national security force. That makes sense to a Marxist.  That is community activism using the theme of the Brown Shirts[17] or Black Shirts.

 

rycK

 

Comments to: ryckki@gmail.com

 



[1] In honor of that celebrated Communist stooge and liar and winner of the Pulitzer Prize for the NYT. The color RED is used in my essays in honor of Walter Duranty, a saint, if there could be one, in the Marxist Archives of Honor.

[3] Hold Your Heads Up by Bob Herbert Op-Ed Columnist Published: September 8, 2008 http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/09/opinion/09herbert.html?hp

[4] Probably the proper title for this blog today.

[5] Beyond the Fat Cats By Bob Herbert Op-Ed Columnist Published: November 10, 2008 http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/11/opinion/11herbert.html?ref=opinion

 

[6] A glubberance is any maudlin plea for tax money or other assistance based on emotion ...

[7]Bear Stearns made the first public securitization of Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) loans started in 1997.[6] Editorialists in some American newspapers[7][8] and US Congressman Ron Paul[9] say the CRA loans were lent to otherwise un-credit-worthy consumers in the name of ending discrimination, although an analysis of actual lending patterns does not generally support this conclusion.[10][11][12]

On June 22, 2007, Bear Stearns pledged a collateralized loan of up to $3.2 billion to "bail out" one of its funds, the Bear Stearns High-Grade Structured Credit Fund, while negotiating with other banks to loan money against collateral to another fund, the Bear Stearns High-Grade Structured Credit Enhanced Leveraged Fund.[13] The funds were invested in thinly traded collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) found to be worth less than their mark-to-market value. Merrill Lynch seized $850 million worth of the underlying collateral but only was able to auction $100 million of them. The incident sparked concern of contagion as Bear Stearns might be forced to liquidate its CDOs, prompting a mark-down of similar assets in other portfolios.[14][15] Richard A. Marin, a senior executive at Bear Stearns Asset Management responsible for the two hedge funds, was replaced on June 29 by Jeffrey B. Lane, a former Vice Chairman of rival investment bank, Lehman Brothers.[16]

During the week of July 16, 2007, Bear Stearns disclosed that the two subprime hedge funds had lost nearly all of their value amid a rapid decline in the market for subprime mortgages.

 

[8] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_Reinvestment_Act

Community Reinvestment Act (or CRA, Pub.L. 95-128, title VIII, 91 Stat. 1147, 12 U.S.C. § 2901 et seq.)

 

[9] Newark is a city of 278,551 people with 81 murders, 85 faceable rapes, 1304 robberies, 1261 aggravated assaults, 2281 burglaries, 5562 thefts, 6018 stolen cars and 238 cases of arson. This, to date, sums to 2731 violent crimes and 13,861 property crimes. Quite a place and 3.8 times the national average for murder and 3.6 times the national average for car theft.  For comparison, Philadelphia had 406 murders for 2006. Philadelphia’s population from the 2000 census is 1517550 so the normalized murder rate for Newark, compared to Philly is 18% of that city’s population and runs an astonishing 75% of the Murder Capital of the United States to datehttp://www.cityrating.com/results.asp, Newark.

[12] When Al Gore talks cars, the auto industry listens. But it's often with a worried ear. Automakers have never fully trusted America's Vice President, ever since his best-selling 1992 book, Earth in the Balance, called the automobile "a mortal threat to the security of every nation," supported tougher fuel-economy mandates and advocated a global industrial-ecology policy. http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m3012/is_/ai_53663593

[14]WASHINGTON (AP) — A Republican congressman from Georgia said Monday he fears that President-elect Obama will establish a Gestapo-like security force to impose a Marxist dictatorship. http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5iRxZox4GFoIweckPDP1oRhKBlHOwD94CDDM80

[15] Yuri returns to Moscow, finding that his Aunt Anna is dead and that the Gromeko's house has been apportioned by the revolutionary government to accommodate 20 or 30 other people. Yuri meets his son Sasha for the first time, and resumes his old job at the local hospital, but is furious that his family is lacking in basic fuel and food. One night, while he tries to steal wood from a fence for his family stove, he is spotted by Yevgraf who follows him home. Yevgraf informs Zhivago that his poems have been condemned by the government as antagonistic to the new ideology, putting their whole family at risk for collective punishment. He helps arrange for rail passes for their transport to the Gromeko estate at Varykino, in theUrals. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctor_Zhivago_(1965_film)

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