RANT: We can’t afford ANY “bailouts”

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2008/11/18/93514/227

Why the Big 3 Bailout is Bullshit: Cadillacs Made in China
By nostalgiphile in MLP
Wed Nov 19, 2008 at 05:02:40 AM EST

Tags: bankruptcy, automobiles, Japan, made in China, Detroit, YFI (all tags)

*** begin quote ***

First, they say that between 160,000 and 3 million manufacturing jobs are on the line, but then turn around and blame the unions (the organization that represents those workers). In fact, foreign (mainly Japanese) automakers employ almost as many Americans as the “Big 3” do (113,000). Helping GM, Ford, and Chrysler could actually hurt those American auto-workers at non-Big 3 factories.

*** end quote ***

These “bailouts” are wrong on so many levels it’s hard to find a positive reason FOR them.

My pocketbook can’t afford it. So, sorry Chapter 11.

# # # # #


LIBERTY: Time to end “government education”?

Saturday, November 15, 2008

>The book is called “Raising the
>Grade: How High School Reform Can
>Save Our Youth and Our Nation.”

Maybe as a society, we are finally going to escape the “government education” paradigm. We can’t ‘afford’ it from both the input side (i.e., taxes) and the output (i.e., quality of what it produces). Socialists have used it to undermine our national commitment to individual achievement and rugged individualism that made America great. And, put them in control of everyone’s lives.

The purposes of the education system we imported from Prussia was to make cannon fodder soldiers and malleable factory workers. All that could be easily let by a powerful “elite”. Seems to have worked.

Unfortunately, cannon fodder soldiers are not how wars are fought today. Factory workers don’t exist any more in the USA. And that “smart elite” isn’t very ‘smart’ and have clay feet.

Time for a paradigm shift? Not just more meaningless diplomas.

imho!

# # # # #


MONEY: If printing money could solve all our problems, then why not just print up ten million dollars for every household in America?

Wednesday, November 12, 2008

The title says it all.

# # # # #


POLITICAL: Nuke the FED!

Monday, November 3, 2008

http://www.lewrockwell.com/rockwell/austrian-econ-more-than-ever.html

Why Austrian Economics Matters More Than Ever
by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.

*** begin quote ***

Abolishing the Fed would put a huge brake on the planning state. Without the ability to expand the money supply at will, the federal government would become about as threatening as state or local government. That is to say, the federal government would still be an intolerable imposition on life, liberty, and property. But we wouldn’t be worrying about hyperinflation, large scale bubbles in specific sectors, crazy business cycles, trillion-dollar bailouts, controls that reach into every nook and cranny of our lives, a cradle to grave welfare state, or a global empire that invades any and every country at will, and makes America the enemy to whole regions of the world.

That’s only the beginning of what the end of the Fed would mean. It would dramatically change the political culture in this country. Bureaucracies would tumble. Trade would stabilize. The investment-risk calculus would accord with the free market. The left could no longer live out its pipe dreams of socialist utopia at our expense. The right would have to give up its wacky notion of a world police state. The power ambitions of whole sectors of society would be scaled back.

The state is always and everywhere a danger, even when it has no monopoly on money and no printing press that can create money tickets at will. But a state with the ability to make its own money is a grave and relentless threat to prosperity and freedom. It leaves the future entirely to the discretion of the money managers. Every day we live under the threat that the US could be the next Weimar Republic or even another Zimbabwe. All that stands between us and that day is the wisdom and prudence of the Fed.

*** end quote ***

There was a fundamental shift in America that was done without the People even being aware of the terrible path they were being taken down.

With the financial meltdown (i.e., criminal collusion between Congress and Wall Street), it seems like an appropriate time to put the Fed out of business.

It’s un-American!

# # # # #


POLITICAL: Are elections important where there is no choice?

Monday, November 3, 2008

http://www.lifetrekcoaching.com/current/

PROVISION #589 (11/02/08): ELECTION ENERGY

>You’re also participating in that great movement called democracy. The opposite of democratic
>is not republican; the opposite of democratic is aristocratic. “Democratic” means rule of the
> people, the “demos” in Greek, while “aristocratic” means rule of the best, the “aristos”.

You have got to be kidding. This is a joke. Right? You can’t be serious. This is what the Founding Fathers feared most; the inflamed passions of the mob.

Sorry, given today’s education system, which is right out of the Socialist Horace Mann’s playbook, we have functionally illiterate people picking based on TV. I’ve got more respect for “Dancing with the Stars” election process than I do “the gooferment’s one”. (Have you seen the mechanics of voting?) Mann wanted an education system to create good factory workers and soldiers for the army. People who were easily lead by the elite.

See any elite in this election?

I sure do!

Sarah is the only wild card in the deck. And, at least she has some demonstrated executive ability. She is probably the most qualified of all of them. At least she hasn’t been in Washington DC at all.

No, this isn’t about an Athenian democracy. Or Plato’s “Republic”. This is about “manipulation”. Yes, you did see raw intelligent passion as folks came out for Ron Paul. There was a TRUE choice. A completely different path! Hopeless; throwing themselves against the entrenched elites of the Republican Party. Mao said “All power comes from the end of a gun”. He was dead on.

We have an American because some Dead Old White Guys stood up to the entrached power elite and said “hell, no!” and were willing to die for their liberty. We’ve seen from time to time that fighting spirit come out — the Second American Revolution aka the War of Norther Aggression aka the Civil War (there’s a misnomer).

The elite allows “elections” on the hope that the sheeple will carry on the illusion of “their government”. In fact, it is a fraud. Your friend was absolutely right there’s no difference between the two “parties”. In the election that you abhor the Supreme Court deciding, there was only two choices the Harvard guy with the blue tie and the Harvard guy with the red tie. They are so much alike I can even remember who wore what!

No, the whole thing is a farce! Except at the end of it, the gooferment kills. It kills with its diversion of our attention to REAL problems. To the real loss of liberty here at home and abroad. Eventually, the chickens do come home to roost.

At some point in time, the oppressed decide that they are tired of “the shit end of the stick”. They look at their lot in life and make a decision to say “enuf”! If we are lucky, it’s relatively peaceful like Ghandi, the Polish Soladarity, or the Russian Communism collapse. If we are not, it’s bloody like the French Revolution, Mao taking China Communicst, North Korea, Nazi Germany.

I fear we are merely traveling the road that ends in disaster. Election, or not. When you have Socialism, whether it be from a Democrat or a Republican, that takes an ever increasing percentage of wealth and earnings, while one’s accumulated wealth is inflated away, you have the focus point of revolution. At some point, even American’s will say “enuf”?

Can’t tell you at what point exactly that is. When the taxes so much, that survival is in doubt? When a life’s savings are stolen? When the insame gooferment diktats about drugs have half the people in prison? When the unemployment is 50%? When the dollar ceases to be the reserve currency and we have a Zimbabwe inflation? When Hispanics become the dominent race here in America? If Obama loses and half the people think the other half are racists? If McCain loses and half the people think the other half are Marxist Communist Socialists?

Eventually, all gooferments get around to killing their citizens. Like the JPFO says: “Frist comes disarmament; then genocide.” We will have a “vote” then. I pray it’s Ghandi-like. But, I’m not so sure of that. I do know that “cold dead hands” will decide the issue eventually. Not ballots.

Peace,
fjohn

# # # # #


POTUS08: FLASH! Obama calls me “selfish”!

Saturday, November 1, 2008

http://tinyurl.com/6dm767

Political Punch
Power, pop, and probings from ABC News Senior National Correspondent Jake Tapper
October 31, 2008 10:58 AM

*** begin quote ***

“John McCain and Sarah Palin they call this socialistic,” Obama continued. “You know I don’t know when, when they decided they wanted to make a virtue out of selfishness.”

*** end quote ***

Well, that tears it! It’s all out in the open now. His stealth campaign is unmasked.

Think it’s just big gooferment; you’re selfish.

<shaking my head at the hubris of the socialists>

Argh!

# # # # #


RANT: erases from everyone’s conscience the distinction between justice and injustice

Friday, October 31, 2008

http://bastiat.org/en/the_law.html#SECTION_G1798

Frédéric Bastiat
The Law

*** begin quote ***

The Results of Legal Plunder

It is impossible to introduce into society a greater change and a greater evil than this: the conversion of the law into an instrument of plunder.

What are the consequences of such a perversion? It would require volumes to describe them all. Thus we must content ourselves with pointing out the most striking.

In the first place, it erases from everyone’s conscience the distinction between justice and injustice.

No society can exist unless the laws are respected to a certain degree. The safest way to make laws respected is to make them respectable. When law and morality contradict each other, the citizen has the cruel alternative of either losing his moral sense or losing his respect for the law. These two evils are of equal consequence, and it would be difficult for a person to choose between them.

The nature of law is to maintain justice. This is so much the case that, in the minds of the people, law and justice are one and the same thing. There is in all of us a strong disposition to believe that anything lawful is also legitimate. This belief is so widespread that many persons have erroneously held that things are “just” because law makes them so. Thus, in order to make plunder appear just and sacred to many consciences, it is only necessary for the law to decree and sanction it. Slavery, restrictions, and monopoly find defenders not only among those who profit from them but also among those who suffer from them.

*** end quote ***

Bottom line: Our current system is flawed by politicians who use the gooferment to enrich their friends, punish their enemies, and feather their own nests in the process.

# # # # #


GLOBAL: Looking for an exemplar of what might happen here

Sunday, October 12, 2008

http://www.impactlab.com/2008/10/11/studying-japans-dark-years-to-see-how-the-us-might-fare/

October 11th, 2008 at 4:32 am

Studying Japan’s Dark Years to See How the U.S. Might Fare

*** begin quote ***

Japan in the 1990s saw billions of dollars worth of wealth disappear. A generation of “parasite singles” grew up, living with their parents well into their 30s. The suicide rate spiked, and university graduates spent years in part-time jobs. Japanese entrepreneurs had no or limited access to capital, stymieing innovation. Yet the standard of living for the average Japanese did not dramatically change — the pain of the crisis unfolded over many years and the government refrained from dire pronouncements.

Unemployment would peak at only 5.5 percent, an enviable rate for much of the world in good times. Deflation — or price declines as gloomy consumers and skeptical businesses put off purchasing — sickened the economy. Yet leading experts now agree its impact was not as severe as originally thought.

Japan saw repeated years of low or negative growth, but the final tally was something short of a decade-long recession — with the 10 years leading up to 2000 averaging out at almost 1 percent growth. Companies like Toyota would prosper in adverse times, forced to sharpen their competitive edge. Emerging in the 2000s as the leader in hybrid cars, Toyota found itself on stronger footing than its U.S. counterparts.

*** end quote ***

Well, our politicians are dumber than the average bear in the woods. So what is our five or ten year forecast?

On the plus side, they can’t hide the distress. Unlike the Japanese did.

On the minus side, the Japanese people are savers; we aren’t. (As a nation. Not me personally. Now that I’m in the retirement red zone, I’m trying to make up for lost time and all my relatives will have to fend for themselves. Unless one of my books goes platinum, they would be kept in the style that they’d like to become accustomed to! And Frau Reinke could make a frugal squirrel look like a spendthrift.)

On the minus side, more than half of the people work for the gooferment. That’s not a model that can sustain itself. Especially, if the gooferment raises taxes and “producers” decide to chuck it all and go on the dole.

Inflation is unavoidable. Where do they get all these billions they are printing? Certainly not from savings. “Re capital ization”, my tush. Capital only comes from savings. You know Robinson Crusoe forgoes eating a fish so he can eat while he makes a fish net. Savings. Real savings.

Unfortunately, the sheeple are going to get a real “eddykation in ecckkyynomicks”. It’s called the dismal science for a reason. It’s dismal. There are NO silver bullets in real life. You can’t have it all. And, no amount of printing press money is going to make it so.

Forecast: Runaway inflation. More gooferment spending. More pain in the country at below the Teddie Kennedy level. (Don’t you love how rich politicians — redundant repetition of terms –have the audacity to say “i feel your pain”!) Fixed income folk takes the brunt.

# # # # #


RANT: It’s not an “economy” failure, nor a “free market” failure. It’s a “political” failure!

Saturday, October 11, 2008

On Oct 10, 2008, at 10:08 PM, P wrote:

*** begin quote ***

From: “Chuck & Joyce”
Date: October 10, 2008 7:18:54 PM EDT
To: <Undisclosed-Recipient:;>
Subject: Fw: Our failed economy

Back in 1990, the Government seized the Mustang Ranch brothel in Nevada for tax evasion and, as required by law, tried to run it. They failed and it closed. Now we are trusting the economy of our country to a pack of nit-wits who couldn’t make money running a whore house and selling booze?

*** end quote ***

TO WHICH I REPLIED:

the economy hasn’t failed. we’ve failed to keep our politicians in line with what the dead old white guys outlined as the proper role of gooferment. at our own peril. anyone who votes for an incumbent this year is part of the problem. even if the incumbent had NOTHING to do with it or did nothing bad, they were: (1) tacitly complicit; (2) too stupid to realize what was coming down the road; OR (3) ineffective to stop it. Look at how many times Ron Paul was the lone voice “no”! No on the war. No on taxes. No on Fannie and Freddie. No on the Fed. Sigh. Best gooferment money can buy. Sorry. It wasn’t an economy failure; it was a political failure. We may become the next hyperinflation — like present day Rhodesia, Argentina of the 70s, or Germany of the 1930s. We know how well those all worked out. Gold coins may be needed. The Dead Old White Guys told us that was money. But we didn’t listen as FDR and Nixon fooled us. The 1913 FED started to procession to where we are today. Spinning out of control. Does no good to be right when the commonweal goes over the cliff taking us all to perdition. Argh. It’s all socialism and the elite in their hubris have led us there. Now where is my pitchfork and torch!

# – # – #

Warning! Don’t stick your fingers in the Libertarian’s cage and poke or prod them. They can snap back. Us little L libertarians are very frustrated. No amount of warning “Here comes The Cliff” has done any good. All we get are dumb looks as people ask “Who’s Cliff?” Guess you know now. Welcome to what Mises, Hayek, Rothfarb, and all the “Austrian School” economists have been warning about!

Don’t blame me. I supported Ron Paul!

# # # # #


RANT: It’s not a “financial crisis”; it’s a moral crisis!

Tuesday, October 7, 2008

http://www.glennbeck.com/content/articles/article/198/16171/


Glenn Beck: What happened?

October 6, 2008 – 13:01 ET
Glenn’s letter to his family explaining how we got into this economic crisis…
Yes, another email letter from your crazy brother. You raised a lot of questions in your last email and I am going to try to answer all of them.

I think all of your questions fall into three areas: (1) how did we get here; (2) what’s coming; and (3) what can I do to prepare myself and my family.

Consider this email as my answer to your first question, “how did we get here?”. I’ll be sending you 2 more emails answering your other two questions. Since there’s a lot of misinformation out there I will document each of the facts in my emails so you know where I pulled the information from and where you can go to read and learn more.


{Article Continues}

*** end quote ***

A well-reasoned well-documented apolitical (there’s a lot of blame to go around!) piece. Clearly, there are a lot of people who deserve some tar and feathers. Clearly, it ain’t going to change anytime soon. Clearly, not only will NEITHER prez candidate be ABLE to DO anything about it. So what’s some one to do. (1) Get rid of incumbent politicians. Good start. (2) DownsizeDC dot org to slow them down and put them under a microscope. (3) Get ready for a “japan decade” of low growth tight times and look at the stagflation of the Carter years. Morose, yes. Realistic, yes. We need to summon up the Dead Old White Guys for government reform, the courage to start making hard political choices, and good old American ingenuity. We have to THINK our way out of this mess. And, “thinking” is not Washington’s strong suit. Spending is. We have to follow the lead of Andrew Jackson and kill the FED. It’s the root of all evil in that the inflation tax allows COngress to spend money it doesn’t get from taxes. We need them to run an honest set of books. You want a war, pay for it. You want welfare, pay for it. You want spending, where is the tax to cover it. Painful, yes. Necessary, yes. Unavoidable, yes.

# # # # #


LIBERTY: Don’t privitize Social Security. It’s too risky!

Thursday, October 2, 2008

http://channel-surfing.blogspot.com/2008/10/market-meltdown-is-best-argument.html

Thursday, October 02, 2008

Market meltdown is best argument against privatizing Social Security

*** begin quote ***

It has always been pretty clear to me that the notion that we could fix our retirement system by handing it over to Wall Street was, well, nuts.

*** and ***

American workers shouldn’t have to face this kind of uncertainty. The cautionary tale is before us — listen to this NPR Morning Edition report on soon-to-be retirees who thought they would live off their savings and investments, but whom the experts now council to “keep on working.”

Posted by Hank Kalet at 3:00 PM

*** end quote ***

Of course, I was enraged and commented:

fjohn said…

Arghhh!

So let me understand this.

It’s OK to rob poor black men to pay off rich white women? (Who designed this one out, the KKK?)

It’s OK to rob the future generations in an intergenerational transfer of wealth. (Like eating your young?)

It’s OK to have a forced savings plan that has an implied interest rate of negative 2 percent. (OK, you may not have enough left from your job, but nanny gooferment will save you some dog food for your retirement.)

It’s OK for a poor person’s largest asset (i.e, “their” social security accrued benefits) to “evaporate” when they die. Absorbed back into the gooferment till for a $225 ‘death benefit’. (Even a passbook savings account can be inherited.)

Argh!

Yes, save us from the Stock Market that earns an average of 8% a year over LONG periods of time.

Save us mommy gooferment from the big bad real world. The fact the the gooferment — specifically the congress critters took payoff from the monsters they created — caused the problem and you seek to save us by MORE gooferment.

Really explain it to me again. Use littler words. Cause I’m getting screwed by all you socialists and I can’t stand it any more.

Explain to me how Chile privitized their social security in 1970 with a population so illiterate they had to use pictures for the investment companies because people could NOT read the names. (Haven’t heard about dying old folks in Chile lately. Maybe everyone died of privitazation there and we have NOT had it reported yet?)

Argh!

It must by the fault of those Liberty loving dead old white guys.

I’m sure they must have mentioned Social Security in the enumerated powers.

Please give me a break with this circular logic on an un-Constitutional un-Liberty disabling disempowering Socialist program.

Karl Marx must be laughing in his beer at us! Him and his cousin Groucho. They couldn’t have made a funnier skit.

4:39 PM

# – # – #

In summation, don’t fix a failed program because of stock market volatility. What caused the volatility, criminal negligence by the ploiltical class.

OK. Lets kill the porgram completely.

Even if one stipulates that a bunch of dead old white guys 200 years ago can bind me to an obligation, let’s see where it says that you Socialists can steal my money “for my own good” of course.

Argh!

Leave me alone. Take your Socialism and keep it to yourself.

# # # # #


POLITICAL: FDIC Insurance higher?

Tuesday, September 30, 2008

http://news.yahoo.com/s/bloomberg/20080930/pl_bloomberg/ar8q_hit0nyi

Obama Proposes Increasing Federal Deposit Insurance to $250,000 Nadine Elsibai 1 hour, 58 minutes ago

*** begin quote ***

Sept. 30 (Bloomberg) — Barack Obama, the Democratic presidential nominee, today proposed increasing the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. limit to $250,000 from the current level of $100,000.

*** end quote ***

Sorry, I disagree. The taxpayer is not supposed to be an insurance company. The limit when it was raised led to the Savings & Loan problem. There’s no reason in today’s marketplace to have FDIC Insurance at 100k. I can understand wanting to protect small savers. But let them use Treasury Bills, just like the big boys. In the “old days” those were not available to the  little people. They are now!

No, no need for a larger FDIC, unless you want to insulate the bankers.

# # # # #


MONEY: Are we going to be left with a banking oligarchy?

Monday, September 29, 2008

http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/080929/wachovia_citigroup.html?.v=1

Citigroup to buy Wachovia banking operations
Monday September 29, 9:24 am ET

*** begin quote ***

NEW YORK (AP) — In the latest byproduct of the widening global financial crisis, Citigroup Inc. will acquire the banking operations of Wachovia Corp. in a deal facilitated by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.

*** end quote ***

Doesn’t anyone think that banks are becoming too big?

# # # # #


LIBERTY: Fiat money ALWAYS fails!

Thursday, September 25, 2008

Ron Paul Discussing his Bernanke Confrontation 9/24/2008

Like the old Fram Oil Filter commercial, pay for it now or later. Pay now is better in the long run. Don’t bail them out. “Too Big To Fail” is an illusion. Capitalism REQUIRES us to let them fail. TO teach EVERYONE a lesson!