The Keynesian FED

Exerpts: Obama’s Fed Picks Promise More Keynesian Failure: by Amity Shlae

All hail Keynes. That’s the message in President Barack Obama’s decision to nominate Janet Yellen, Peter Diamond, and Sarah Bloom Raskin to fill vacancies at the Federal Reserve. This trio makes sense only if you believe the philosophy of the most influential economist of the modern era, John Maynard Keynes.

What makes them odd choices is that the events of the past five years don’t make Keynes look good. Other schools of economic thought come to mind instead. One is the public choice school, which holds that Keynesianism uses crises as pretext to enlarge governments.

Recent history also validates Austrian economics. This camp asserts that government involvement in markets is inherently dangerous. Austrians were among the first to warn that the hybrid status of government sponsored enterprises like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac could lead to disaster.

The Austrian school says that government doesn’t have to be the only creator of currency, an idea that seems at least plausible in the era of PayPal. These economists assert that monetary authorities often push interest rates too low, causing distortions that lead to violent economic crashes.

How did we get here? In the 1930s Keynes introduced the idea that a government’s relationship to a nation’s economy should be like that of a mechanic working on a car. The mechanic is performing constant tune-ups on the engine, always weighing trade-offs. When parts break down, the decision is whether to tinker or replace them. Too much oil, and the car fails; too little, and the engine freezes. Master Mechanics . . .

Today the Fed is deeply divided between those who would feed the economic engine a large amount of Keynesian oil and those who would use slightly less. Among those who have favored restraint is Richard Fisher, president of the Dallas Fed, who warned a few years ago that loose money can cause inflation. It’s “like kudzu, requiring near toxic doses of counter measures to overcome,” he said.

Keynes pushed his ideas to challenge the orthodoxy of classical economics. Now Keynesian orthodoxy is the rule throughout Washington. It even dominates our universities, leaving non-Keynesians with only a few redoubts such as the University of Chicago and George Mason University. Yet our society prides itself on its intellectual diversity.

Asking Democrats to give up Keynesianism is like getting suburbanites to stop driving SUVs. But Republicans aren’t much better. Most of them have been steeped in these ideas and don’t seem interested in fresh thinking.

Tough talk on education

Walter Williams on public educations malfeasance

Then there's the grossly fraudulent education delivered by the government schools that serve most black communities. The average black high school senior has a sixth- or seventh-grade achievement level and most of those who manage to graduate have what's no less than a fraudulent diploma, one that certifies a 12th-grade level of achievement when in fact the youngster might not have half that. If the Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan wanted to sabotage black academic excellence, he could not find a more effective means to do so than the government school system in most cities

What about blacks who cherish liberty and limited government and joined in the tea party movement, or blacks who are members of organizations such as the Lincoln Institute, Frederick Douglass Foundation and Project 21? They've been maligned as Oreos, Uncle Toms and traitors to their race. To make such a charge borders on stupidity, possibly racism. After all, when President Reagan disagreed with Tip O'Neill, did either charge the other with being a traitor to his race? Then why is it deemed traitorous when one black disagrees with another, unless you think that all blacks must think alike?

Why capitalism? Von Mises at his best

"The champions of socialism call themselves progressives, but they recommend a system which is characterized by rigid observance of routine and by a resistance to every kind of improvement. They call themselves liberals, but they are intent upon abolishing liberty. They call themselves democrats, but they yearn for dictatorship. They call themselves revolutionaries, but they want to make the government omnipotent. They promise the blessings of the Garden of Eden, but they plan to transform the world into a gigantic post office. Every man but a subordinate clerk in a bureau. What an alluring utopia! What a noble cause to fight!

Against all this frenzy of agitation there is but one weapon available: reason. Just common sense is needed to prevent man from falling prey to illusory fantasies and empty catchwords."

From "Bureaucracy" by Ludwig von Mises (1944)

source: Carpe Diem Blog, Mark Perry

The Greek warning to the public sector unions

Rich Lowery gives some facts and a sobering assessment of public labor unions

Growth in public-sector wages and benefits has been outstripping growth in the private sector. Some states and localities are effectively Greek isles within America. Commuter-rail workers in New York get $120,000 in annual compensation, on average, and can retire with a full pension at age 55. In the fiscal wreck of California, teachers and prison workers are the highest paid in the country. They feast on government so effectively, Greece’s powerful ADEDY union should make them honorary members.

By the calculations of Jagadeesh Gokhale of the Cato Institute, Greece’s debt is 875 percent of its GDP when pension obligations are included. Sounds outlandish. But the figure for the U.S., including programs like Medicare and Social Security, is 500 percent. The worst thing we could do is to add to the burden with an onerous new spending program, pushed by the unions and justified with Greek-style budgetary math. Of course, that’s a working definition of Obamacare.

The scapegoat for personal failings: resentment and cries of racism

Excerpts, Thomas Sowell: Resenting Achievement More than Wealth

Achievement is a slap in the face to those who had the same opportunities but did not succeed; inherited wealth is no such insult. . .

Those who explain racial antagonisms on rational bases will have a hard time demonstrating how Asian Americans have made blacks worse off. Certainly none of the historic wrongs done to blacks was done by the small Asian-American population; for most of their history in this country, they have not had enough clout to prevent themselves from being discriminated against.

While ugly racial or ethnic conflicts can seldom be explained by rational economic or other self-interest, they have been too common to be just inexplicable oddities — whether in America or in other countries around the world, and whether today or in centuries past.

Resentments and hostility toward people with higher achievements are one of the most widespread of human failings. Resentments of achievements are more deadly than envy of wealth.

The hatred of people who started at the bottom and worked their way up has far exceeded hostility toward those who were simply born into wealth. None of the sultans who inherited extraordinary fortunes in Malaysia has been hated like the Chinese, who arrived there destitute and rose by their own efforts.

Inheritors of the Rockefeller fortune have been elected as popular governors in three states, attracting nothing like the hostility toward the Jewish immigrants who rose from poverty on Manhattan’s Lower East Side to prosperity in a variety of fields. Others who started at the bottom and rose to prosperity — the Lebanese in West Africa, the Indians in Fiji, and the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, for example — have likewise been hated for their achievements. Being born a sultan or a Rockefeller is not an achievement.

Achievements are a reflection on others who may have had similar, and sometimes better, chances but who did not make the most of their chances. Achievements are like a slap across the face to those who are not achieving, and many people react with the same kind of anger that such an insult would provoke.

In our own times, especially, this is not just a spontaneous reaction. Many of our educators, our intelligentsia, and our media — not to mention our politicians — promote an attitude that other people’s achievements are grievances, rather than examples.

When black schoolchildren who are working hard in school and succeeding academically are attacked and beaten up by black classmates for “acting white,” why is it surprising that similar hostility is turned against Asian Americans, who are often achieving academically more so than whites?

This attitude is not peculiar to some in the black community or to the United States. The same phenomenon is found among lower-class whites in Britain, where academically achieving white students have been beaten up badly enough by their white classmates to require hospital treatment.

These are poisonous and self-destructive consequences of a steady drumbeat of ideological hype — differences are translated into “disparities” and “inequities,” provoking envy and resentments under the more prettied-up name of “social justice.” . . .

People who call differences “inequities” and achievements “privilege” leave social havoc in their wake, while feeling noble about siding with the less fortunate. It would never occur to them that they have any responsibility for the harm done to both blacks and Asian Americans.

Selective outrage over the Gulf oil spill

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Nobody cheers the environment being out of balance, and some people would like to believe that man is perfectible and the ills of human nature can be tamed. Even capitalists are the strongest of conservationists as they constantly strive to conserve scarce resources by moving them to their most efficient use.

With that said, the hysterics regarding the Gulf oil spill are not aligned with reality and facts.

Lets get and keep some perspective on the size and environmental impact with the current oil spill.

From1940- 2009: 4,848,769 – 5,763,337 tonnes of crude oil have spilled worldwide. The environmental impacts, although tragic, have not ended the planet as we know it.

1 tonne = 308 U.S. gallons 0r 7.33 barrels.

8000 tonnes have spilled so far in the current Gulf spill.

In comparison, the Exxon Valdez spill, 1989 = 37,000 tonnes.

A short list of some major spills since 1990 that were larger than the current Gulf spill. Where was the outrage? How did the planet survive?

Lebanon, Jiyeh power station oil spill in 2006, 20,000-30000 tonnes
Pakistan, Tasman Spirit , in 2006, 20,000-30,000 tonnes
Spain, Prestige spill, 2002 = 63,000 tonnes
France, Erica spill, 1999 = 15,000-25,000 tonnes
U.K., Sea Empress spill, 1996 = 40,000 - 72,000 tonnes
Puerto Rico, Morris J.Berman spill, 1994 = 109,000 tonnes
Scotland, Braer spill, 1993 = 85,000 tonnes
Uzbekistan, Fergana Valley spill, 1992 = 285,000 tonnes
Spain, Agean Sea spill, 1992 = 74,000 tonnes
Mozambique, Katina P spill, 1992, 72,000 tonnes
Angola, ABT Summer spill, 1991 = 260,00 tonnes
Italy, MT Haven spill, 1991 = 144,000 tonnes
Persian Gulf, Gulf War spill, 1991 = 780,000- 1,500,000 tonnes

As John Adams said:"Facts are stubborn things"

Middle East politics and hypocrisy

A truly eye opening story about war, peace, and human self interest the media ignores.

Excerpts: News Not Fit To Print By Joseph Shattan

If the governments of Israel and Jordan joined forces to save the life of a three-year old Palestinian child -- and if the three-year old child happened to be the daughter of a top Hamas official -- that would be big news, right? It would be covered by all the major American newspapers, right? Oprah might even talk about it, right?

If you answered "right" to any of the above, dear reader, you are living on another planet.

Here is a brief summary of the story, as reported in the April 27 issue of the Hebrew-language weekly, Sha'ar LaMathil:

The young daughter of Fathi Hamad, one of the heads of Hamas and its government in the Gaza Strip, was in urgent need of medical attention in a Jordanian hospital. King Abdallah of Jordan requested the Prime Minister and Defense Minister to facilitate the girl's transfer to a hospital in Amman.

Israel acceded to the request. A Red Cross ambulance transferred the girl from a hospital in Gaza to Barzilai Hospital in Ashkelon, and from there a Jordanian helicopter transferred her to Amman. The heads of Hamas ordered all the Gaza Strip media not to publish the story.

This is just a bare-bones version of what happened. A more detailed account might have mentioned that the southern Israeli city of Ashkelon was a frequent target of Hamas rocket attacks; that the child received emergency medical treatment at Barzilai Hospital to stabilize her condition before being flown on to Amman; that she is just one of hundreds of Gazans who receive medical care in Israel; that her father, Hamas' Interior Minister and a leading advocate of suicide bombing, publicly thanked King Abdallah, but omitted any mention of Israel; and that the Jordanian press also left out Israel's role. But let's not get bogged down in petty details. . .

Remember the milk man?

The wacky world of capitalism. I wonder what 180 degree shift is next?


from Tom McMahan, 4 block world blog

The phenomenon of a federal government that seems less and less competent attempting to do more and more by passing bigger and bigger laws

Alienation is often followed by full-blown antagonism, and antagonism by breakage. The people are ready to break up the two party system and start anew.

Selections: The Big Alienation, By Peggy Noonan

We are at a remarkable moment.

We have an open, 2,000-mile border to our south, and the entity with the power to enforce the law and impose safety and order will not do it. Wall Street collapsed, taking Main Street's money with it, and the government can't really figure out what to do about it because the government itself was deeply implicated in the crash, and both political parties are full of people whose political careers have been made possible by Wall Street contributions. Meanwhile we pass huge laws, bills so comprehensive, omnibus and transformative that no one knows what's in them and no one—literally, no one—knows how exactly they will be executed or interpreted. . .

It is not that no one's in control. Washington is full of people who insist they're in control and who go to great lengths to display their power. It's that no one takes responsibility and authority. Washington daily delivers to the people two stark and utterly conflicting messages: "We control everything" and "You're on your own." All this contributes to a deep and growing alienation between the people of America and the government of America in Washington. . .

None of this happened overnight. . . It is, the phenomenon of a federal government that seemed less and less competent attempting to do more and more by passing bigger and bigger laws. Add to this states on the verge of bankruptcy, the looming debt crisis of the federal government, the likelihood of ever-rising taxes. Shake it all together, and you have the makings of the big alienation.

Alienation is often followed by full-blown antagonism, and antagonism by breakage.

Which brings us to Arizona and its much-criticized attempt to institute a law aimed at controlling its own border with Mexico. It is doing this because the federal government won't, and because Arizonans have a crisis on their hands, areas on the border where criminal behavior flourishes, where there have been kidnappings, murders and gang violence. If the law is abusive, it will be determined quickly enough, in the courts. . .

Arizona is moving forward because the government in Washington has completely abdicated its responsibility. For 10 years—at least—through two administrations, Washington deliberately did nothing to ease the crisis on the borders because politicians calculated that an air of mounting crisis would spur mounting support for what Washington thought was appropriate reform—i.e., reform that would help the Democratic and Republican parties.

Both parties resemble Gordon Brown, who is about to lose the prime ministership of Britain. On the campaign trail this week, he was famously questioned by a party voter about his stand on immigration. He gave her the verbal runaround, all boilerplate and shrugs, and later complained to an aide, on an open mic, that he'd been forced into conversation with that "bigoted woman." He really thought she was a bigot. Because she asked about immigration. Which is, to him, a sign of at least latent racism.

The establishments of the American political parties, and the media, are full of people who think concern about illegal immigration is a mark of racism. If you were Freud you might say, "How odd that's where their minds so quickly go, how strange they're so eager to point an accusing finger. Could they be projecting onto others their own, heavily defended-against inner emotions?" But let's not do Freud, he's too interesting. Maybe they're just smug and sanctimonious.

The American president has the power to control America's borders if he wants to, but George W. Bush and Barack Obama did not and do not want to, and for the same reason, and we all know what it is. The fastest-growing demographic in America is the Hispanic vote, and if either party cracks down on illegal immigration, it risks losing that vote for generations.

But while the Democrats worry about the prospects of the Democrats and the Republicans about the well-being of the Republicans, who worries about America? No one. Which the American people have noticed, and which adds to the dangerous alienation—actually it's at the heart of the alienation—of the age. . .

Instead, our national establishments deliberately allow the crisis to grow and fester, ignoring public unrest and amusing themselves by damning anyone's attempt to deal with the problem they fear to address. Why does the federal government do this? Because so many within it are stupid and unimaginative and don't trust the American people. Which of course the American people have noticed. . .

The American people fear they are losing their place and authority in the daily, unwinding drama of American history. They feel increasingly alienated from their government. And alienation, again, is often followed by deep animosity, and animosity by the breaking up of things.

The worldview of king Obama

We’re not, we’re not trying to push financial reform because we begrudge success that’s fairly earned. I mean, I do think at a certain point you’ve made enough money. But, you know, part of the American way is, you know, you can just keep on making it if you’re providing a good product or providing good service. We don’t want people to stop, ah, fulfilling the core responsibilities of the financial system to help grow our economy.-President Barack Obama, 4/27/10, via Newsalert

Who will get to decide?
What will that power do to freedom and free market capitalism?

Universities racial profile everyday, and yet the elite protest "profiling" when Arizona wants to uphold the rule of law

Excerpts: Deconstructing the Outrage, Victor Davis Hanson, From National Review Online-The corner

I have been trying to collate all the furor over the Arizona law, much of it written by those who do not live in locales that have been transformed by illegal immigration.

On the unfortunate matter of "presenting papers": I have done that numerous times this year — boarding airplanes, purchasing things on a credit card, checking into a hotel, showing a doorman an I.D. when locked out, going to the DMV, and, in one case, pulling off a rural road to use my cell phone in a way that alarmed a chance highway patrolman. An I.D. check to allay "reasonable suspicion" or "probable cause" is very American.

On the matter of racial profiling: No one wishes to harass citizens by race or gender, but, again unfortunately, we already profile constantly. When I had top classics students, I quite bluntly explained to graduating seniors that those who were Mexican American and African American had very good chances of entering Ivy League or other top graduate schools from Fresno, those who were women and Asians so-so chances, and those who were white males [had] very little chance, despite straight A's and top GRE scores.

The students themselves knew all that better than I — and, except the latter category, had packaged and self-profiled themselves for years in applying for grants, admissions, fellowships, and awards. I can remember being told by a dean in 1989 exactly the gender and racial profile of the person I was to hire before the search had even started, and not even to "waste my time" by interviewing a white male candidate. Again, the modern university works on the principle that faculty, staff, and students are constantly identified by racial and gender status.

These were not minor matters, but questions that affected hundreds of lives for many decades to come. (As a postscript I can also remember calling frantically to an Ivy League chair to explain that our top student that he had accepted had just confessed to me that in fact he was an illegal alien, and remember him "being delighted" at the news, as if it were an added bonus.)

On the matter of equality, fairness, and compassion, it is even more problematic. Literally thousands of highly skilled would-be legal immigrants from Latin America, Africa, Asia, and Europe wait patiently while others cut in front and illegally obtain what others legally wait for — residence in the U.S. Meanwhile, millions of Mexican-American, African-American, and poor white citizens have seen their wages fall because of competition from illegal aliens who will work for far less compensation. It is a bit strange that those of the upper classes are outraged over Arizona without empathy for entry-level U.S. workers or lower-middle-class taxpayers who end up paying the most for illegal immigration. But then, those who express the most moral outrage often are the least sensitive to the moral questions involved.

What "social justice" really means to the left.

This is where we are heading. Government "do-gooders" to the point of insanity.

Does the near-absence of blacks and Hispanics in the New York Philharmonic imply racism on the part of that orchestra?

Excerpts: Dennis Prage, Race and the Tea Parties

Opponents of the popular expression of conservative opposition to big government — the tea-party movement — regularly note that tea partiers are overwhelmingly white. This is intended to disqualify the tea parties from serious moral consideration. But there are two other facts that are far more troubling:

The first is the observation itself. The fact that the Left believes that the preponderance of whites among tea partiers invalidates the tea-party movement tells us much more about the Left than it does about the tea partiers. It confirms that the Left really does see the world through the prism of race, gender, and class, rather than through the moral prism of right and wrong.

One of the more dangerous features of the Left has been its replacement of moral categories of right and wrong and good and evil with three other categories: black and white (race), male and female (gender), and rich and poor (class). Therefore the Left pays attention to the skin color — and gender (not just “whites” but “white males”) — of the tea partiers rather than to their ideas.

One would hope that all people would assess ideas by their moral rightness or wrongness, not by the race, gender, or class of those who hold them. But in the world of the Left, people are taught not to assess ideas but to identify the race, class, and gender of those who espouse those ideas. This helps explain the widespread use of ad hominem attacks by the Left: Rather than argue against their opponents’ ideas, the Left usually dismisses those making an argument with which it disagrees as “racist,” “intolerant,” “bigoted,” “sexist,” ”homophobic,” “xenophobic,” and/or “homophobic.” . . .

As a leftist rule of thumb — once again rendering intellectual debate unnecessary and impossible — white is wrong and bad and non-white is right and good; male is wrong and bad and female is right and good; and the rich are wrong and bad and the poor right and good. For the record, there is one additional division on the Left — strong and weak — to which the same rule applies: The strong are wrong and bad and the weak are right and good. That is a major reason for leftist support of the Palestinians against the Israelis, for example. . .

In this morally inverted world, the virtual absence of blacks and minorities from tea-party rallies cannot possibly reflect anything negative on the blacks and minorities’ absence, only on the white tea partiers’ presence.

And that’s the second troubling fact about the obsession over the color of the tea-party rallies. In a more rational and morally clearer world — where people judge ideas by their legitimacy rather than by the race of those who held them — people would be as likely to ask why blacks and ethnic minorities are virtually absent at tea parties as they would ask why whites predominate. They would want to know if this racial imbalance said anything about black and minority views, rather than assume that this imbalance necessarily reflected only on the whites attending those rallies.

If they were to ask such un-PC questions, they might draw rather different conclusions than the Left does. They would know that the near-absence of blacks and Hispanics no more implied racism on the part of tea partiers than the near-absence of blacks and Hispanics in the New York Philharmonic implies racism on the art of that orchestra.

They might even conclude — Heaven forbid — that it does not reflect well on the political outlook of blacks and Hispanics that they so overwhelmingly identify with ever-larger government. Leftist big-government policies have been disastrous for black America just as they were in the countries that most Hispanics emigrated from. But like the gambling addict who keeps gambling the more he loses, those addicted to government entitlements seem eager to increase the size of the government even as their situation worsens.

If the history of slavery ought to teach us anything, it is that human beings cannot be trusted with unbridled power over other human beings

Excerpts: Thomas Sowell, Misusing History

Inhumanity, like humanity, is universal.

. . . The history of slavery across the centuries and in many countries around the world is a painful history to read — not only in terms of how slaves have been treated, but because of what that says about the whole human species — because slaves and enslavers alike have been of every race, religion, and nationality.

If the history of slavery ought to teach us anything, it is that human beings cannot be trusted with unbridled power over other human beings — no matter what color or creed any of them are. The history of ancient despotism and modern totalitarianism practically shouts that same message from the blood-stained pages of history.

But that is not the message that is being taught in our schools and colleges, or dramatized on television and in the movies. The message that is pounded home again and again is that white people enslaved black people. It is true, just as it is true that I don’t go sky-diving with blacks. But it is also false in its implications for the same reason. Just as Europeans enslaved Africans, North Africans enslaved Europeans — more Europeans than there were Africans enslaved in the United States or in the 13 colonies from which the nation was formed. The treatment of white galley slaves was even worse than the treatment of black slaves who picked cotton. But there are no movies or television dramas about it comparable to Roots, and our schools and colleges don’t pound it into the heads of students.

The inhumanity of human beings toward other human beings is not a new story, much less a local story. There is no need to hide it, because there are lessons we can learn from it. But there is also no need to distort it, so that sins of the whole human species around the world are presented as special defects of “our society” or the sins of a particular race.

If American society and Western civilization are different from other societies and civilizations, it is in that they eventually turned against slavery, and stamped it out, at a time when non-Western societies around the world were still maintaining slavery and resisting Western pressures to end slavery — including, in some cases, by armed resistance.

Only the fact that the West had more firepower put an end to slavery in many non-Western societies during the age of Western imperialism. Yet today there are Americans who have gone to Africa to apologize for slavery — on a continent where slavery has still not been completely ended, to this very moment.

It is not just the history of slavery that gets distorted beyond recognition by the selective filtering of facts. Those who mine history in order to find everything they can to undermine American society or Western civilization have very little interest in the Bataan death march, the atrocities of the Ottoman Empire, or similar atrocities in other times and places.

Those who mine history for sins are not searching for truth but for opportunities to denigrate their own society, or for grievances that can be cashed in today at the expense of people who were not even born when the sins of the past were committed.

An ancient adage says: “Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof.” But apparently it is not sufficient for many among our educators, the intelligentsia, or the media. They are busy poisoning the present by the way they present the past.

The solution to capitalism’s problems is more capitalism

Excerpts: Jonah Goldberg, Capitalism vs. Capitalists

Willi Schlamm- "‘The trouble with socialism is socialism. The trouble with capitalism is capitalists.’”

If by “capitalist” you mean someone who cares more about his own profit than yours; if you mean someone who cares more about providing for his family than providing for yours; if you mean someone who trusts that he is a better caretaker of his own interests and desires than a bureaucrat he’s never met, often in a city he’s never been to: then we are all capitalists. Because, by that standard, capitalism isn’t some far-off theory about the allocation of capital; it is a commonsense description of what motivates pretty much all human beings everywhere.

And that was one of the reasons why the hard socialism of the Soviet Union failed, and it is why the soft socialism of Western Europe is so anemic. At the end of the day, it is entirely natural for humans to work the system — any system — for their own betterment, whatever kind of system that may be. That’s why the black-market economy of the Soviet Union might have in fact been bigger than the official socialist economy. That is why devoted socialists worked the bureaucracy to get the best homes, get their kids into the best schools, and provide their families with the best food, clothes, and amenities they could. Just like people in capitalist countries.

The problem with socialism is socialism, because there are no socialists. Socialism is a system based upon an assumption about human nature that simply isn’t true. I can design a perfect canine community in which dogs never chase squirrels or groom their nether regions in an indelicate manner. But the moment I take that idea from the drawing board to the real world, I will discover that I cannot get dogs to behave against their nature — at least not without inflicting a terrible amount of punishment. Likewise, it’s easy to design a society that rewards each according to his need instead of his ability. The hard part is getting the crooked timber of humanity to yield to your vision.

And it’s also why the problem with capitalism is capitalists. Some people will always abuse the system and take things too far. Some will do it out of the hubris of intellect. Some will do it out of the venality of greed.

I bring all of this up because many in Washington seem convinced that the solution to the problem with capitalists is always less capitalism. To be sure, a free-market society is in some sense a government program. The government must prosecute criminality, enforce contracts, and demand that the rules be observed. Few lovers of free markets are so laissez-faire as to want to strip the government of its role as referee. . .

Washington’s solution to Wall Street’s problems is to get Washington deeply, deeply involved in Wall Street. So involved that the savvier capitalists will recognize — once again — that the safest bets are not to be found in the vicissitudes of a fickle marketplace, but in gaming the system run from Washington. The “reform” coming down the pike will put bureaucrats in charge of investors. If bureaucrats were better than investors, they wouldn’t be bureaucrats. The government will decide which firms are worthy — “systemically important” — and which are not. Those that are will use their official “importance” to game the system. Instead of eradicating “too big to fail,” we will systematize it.

We are fond of saying that the answer to free-speech problems is more free speech. But we seem incapable of grasping that sometimes — and only sometimes — the solution to capitalism’s problems is more capitalism.

The patriotism of the protest

The liberals are playing a dangerous power game- saying they want to save the nation they love from a seditious right and the tea parties. The true agenda is to acquire unconstitutional power and control to forever take over and change America's constitutional, social, historical and cultural roots. In short, the liberal left want to hind behind and use the Constitution to destroy the Constitution. All patriots must stop this suicide pack and save our nation from itself. -Dean


Excerpts: Liberals and the Violence Card: Conservative protest is motivated by a love of what America stands for.
By RUSH LIMBAUGH

The latest liberal meme is to equate skepticism of the Obama administration with a tendency toward violence. That takes me back 15 years ago to the time President Bill Clinton accused "loud and angry voices" on the airwaves (i.e., radio talk-show hosts like me) of having incited Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh. What self-serving nonsense. Liberals are perfectly comfortable with antigovernment protest when they're not in power.

From the halls of the Ivy League to the halls of Congress, from the antiwar protests during the Vietnam War and the war in Iraq to the anticapitalist protests during International Monetary Fund and World Bank meetings, we're used to seeing leftist malcontents take to the streets. Sometimes they're violent, breaking shop windows with bricks and throwing rocks at police. Sometimes there are arrests. Not all leftists are violent, of course. But most are angry. It's in their DNA. They view the culture as corrupt and capitalism as unjust.

Now the liberals run the government and they're using their power to implement their radical agenda. Mr. Obama and his party believe that the election of November 2008 entitled them to make permanent, "transformational" changes to our society. In just 16 months they've added more than $2 trillion to the national debt, essentially nationalized the health-care system, the student-loan industry, and have their sights set on draconian cap-and-trade regulations on carbon emissions and amnesty for illegal aliens. . .

Like the millions of citizens who've peacefully risen up and attended thousands of rallies in protest, I seek nothing more than the preservation of the social contract that undergirds our society. I do not hate the government, as the left does when it is not running it. I love this country. And because I do, I insist that the temporary inhabitants of high political office comply with the Constitution, honor our God-given unalienable rights, and respect our hard-earned private property. For this I am called seditious, among other things, by some of the very people who've condemned this society?

I reject the notion that America is in a well-deserved decline, that she and her citizens are unexceptional. I do not believe America is the problem in the world. I believe America is the solution to the world's problems. I reject a foreign policy that treats our allies like our enemies and our enemies like our allies. I condemn the president traveling the world apologizing for America's great contributions to mankind. And I condemn his soft-peddling the dangers we face from terrorism. For this I am inciting violence? . .

Let me just say it. The Obama/Clinton/media left are comfortable with the unrest in our society today. It allows them to blame and demonize their opponents (doctors, insurance companies, Wall Street, talk radio, Fox News) in order to portray their regime as the great healer of all our ills, thus expanding their power and control over our society.

A clear majority of the American people want no part of this. They instinctively know that the Obama way is not how things get done in this country. They are motivated by love. Not hate, not sedition. They love their country and want to save it from those who do not.

The left sermonizes civility to middle America's who "cling to their guns and God." Are you kidding me?

Excerpts: From Woodstock to Civility Commissions By George Neumayr

To see Alinskyites, radical intellectuals, and Woodstock yuppies lecturing fellow Americans on the virtue of civility is tiresome but unsurprising. No one is more authoritarian than a successful left-wing revolutionary: he rises to power by extolling dissent, then stays in power by suppressing it.

Were the Tea Partiers rabid left-wing professors instead of patriotic Americans, they would receive tenure and places of honor at high-brow luncheons. Were they veterans of UC Berkeley's Free Speech Movement, they would serve as nostalgic subjects for a Time retrospective. Were Tea Partiers "demonizing" the American government in the deepest sense -- teaching the young to view the Founding Fathers with patronizing contempt and the documents they wrote as reactionary relics to be replaced by a "living Constitution" -- they would have jobs in the Obama administration.

Barack Obama would have the public believe that placard-waving grandmothers sitting in lawn chairs pose a greater threat to the country than Bill Ayers. One would think a former Alinskyite like Obama who wrote a gushing blurb for a book by that domestic terrorist -- a book addressing the subject of educating the young, no less -- and sat placidly through the "God damn America" sermons of Jeremiah Wright might approach the topic of civility a little more gingerly. . .

Nothing is more perilous to public discourse than the "demonization" of government, Bill Clinton solemnly warns. But all he means by "government" is liberals in power, and all he means by "demonization" is resistance to the contempt that those liberals show for the constitutional authority underpinning just government. . .

Then as now, "civility" was nothing more than a euphemism for the docile acceptance of liberalism's advance and "incivility" was equated with effective resistance to it.

Once again blaming conservative talk radio for the Oklahoma City bombing, Bill Clinton says, "The words we use really do matter because there are, there's this vast echo chamber. And they go across space and they fall on the serious and the delirious alike." This is as fatuous as saying that 9/11 wouldn't have happened if America had spoken more nicely about the Taliban. Moreover, if "words" mattered as much as the self-appointed custodians of civility now claim, they wouldn't waste their time trying to purge Tea Partiers and talk show hosts from politics. They would spend it clearing out the Ward Churchills from their academic lounges and editorial luncheons.

Expertise is very limited, the arrogance of omniscience is dangerous

One receives the Nobel Prize in economics for research in a specific area, Milton Friedman used to say, but prize winners then tend to believe that they’ve been implicitly granted the right to express their personal, nonscientific opinions about everything. Stiglitz’s Nobel Prize on market asymmetry was well deserved. His opinions on everything else are just opinions and deserve to be treated as such.-Guy Sorman, a City Journal contributing editor

Freedom is taken...one shake at a time

Excerpts: First they took the salt …by Bruce McQuain

Interesting how the Washington Post chooses to begin this article:

The Food and Drug Administration is planning an unprecedented effort to gradually reduce the salt consumed each day by Americans, saying that less sodium in everything from soup to nuts would prevent thousands of deaths from hypertension and heart disease. The initiative, to be launched this year, would eventually lead to the first legal limits on the amount of salt allowed in food products.

Anyone care to guess why the FDA hadn’t planned an “unprecedented effort” before?

Because until a month or so ago, we could all claim it was none of the government’s business couldn’t we? But now that they’ve invested themselves with the power to save healthcare in this country by cutting costs – and doing so with “preventive medicine” – where do you suppose this “unprecedented effort” is founded?

If you don’t believe me, read the article.

But for the past 30 years, health officials have grown increasingly alarmed as salt intake has increased with the explosion in processed foods and restaurant meals. Most adults consume about twice the government’s daily recommended limit, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Until now, the government has pushed the food industry to voluntarily reduce salt and tried to educate consumers about the dangers of excessive sodium. But in a study to be released Wednesday, an expert panel convened by the Institute of Medicine concludes that those measures have failed. The panel will recommend that the government take action, according to sources familiar with the findings.

Wow … for you that have been paying attention I sarcastically ask, “are you surprised?” Is this not the next logical step in taking over every aspect of your life.

You see, a panel of experts have determined that too much sodium is bad for you. They have tried to play this freedom game with you and have you voluntarily cut your consumption, but you didn’t. So to hell with the charade – since you don’t know what’s good for you and won’t do what is necessary to comply with the experts, they’ll just recommend you be forced to do so.

Are salt rationing cards far behind?

"Greed is good" because we are all greedy, and thus must serve another before we gain for ourselves.

Excerpts:

Myths About Capitalism by John Stossel

I was glad to see the publication of "The 5 Big Lies About American Business" by Michael Medved

"You can only make a profit in this country by giving people a product or a service that they want," Medved recently told me. "It's the golden rule in action." . . .

"What's interesting," Medved commented, "is that in the old days, Hollywood would have businesspeople who were very positive: George Bailey, the Jimmy Stewart character, is a banker in 'It's a Wonderful Life.'" No longer. Today's movie capitalists are criminals or playboys. Apparently, Hollywood writers think it's plausible that CEOs have lots of time to sip cocktails and chase women.

"In school, we all studied a book called "The Theory of the Leisure Class," which ... indicted the leisure class and these people who were out there exploiting other people and really had nothing to do except sit on their yachts and go to their swimming pools and their vacations." In real life, that's nonsense. "The higher up on the income scale you go, the less leisure time you have. You make money in this country by working hard."

Medved's second myth is that when the rich get richer, the poor get poorer. This is the old zero-sum fallacy, which ignores that when two people engage in free exchange, both gain -- or they wouldn't have traded. It's what I call the double thank-you phenomenon. I understand why politicians and lawyers believe it: It's true in their world. But it's not true in business. "If you believe that when the rich get richer, the poor get poorer, then you believe that creating wealth causes poverty, and you're an idiot," said Medved.

Myth No. 3: Government is more fair and reliable than business. "Remember the last time you went into Starbucks, and then remember the last time you went into the DMV to get your license," Medved said. "Where did you get better treated? And it's not because the barista is some kind of idealist or humanitarian. She wants a tip. She wants you to come back to the Starbucks ... ."

Myth No. 4: The current downturn means the death of capitalism. "Capitalism is alive and well," Medved said. I'm also bugged when people argue that today's problems prove that capitalism "failed." What failed? We had a correction. A bubble popped. But from 1982 to now, the Dow rose from 800 to 11,000. Had it happened without the bubble, we'd say this is one of the great boom periods.

Medved added: "This is one of the biggest lies -- the idea that because of capitalism, we're all suffering. ... Poor people in America today, people who are officially in poverty, have a higher standard of living in terms of medical standards, in terms of the chances of going to college, in terms of the way people live, than middle-class people did 30 years ago. It's an extraordinary achievement of technology and of the profit sector."