This is my Christmas wish list for America.
End legalized pre birth murder. Not only does it diminish us all in ways we don't seem to recognize to sanction the pre-meditated murder of the most innocent and defenseless among us, it has contributed to the unacceptably high incidence of fatherless homes and poverty (such as it exists in America).
Abolish the federal reserve system. Jefferson warned that such a system would ruin us financially, Andrew Jackson stopped federal deposits to and failed to renew the charter of the Second Bank of the United States. But along comes America's first fascist, Woodrow Wilson to implement the collectivist ideas of Marx and Engels (centralization of credit) using the currency panic of 1907 as an excuse.
In the same vein, return America to the gold standard. Richard Millhouse Nixon couldn't get Congress to fund the Vietnam war effort, so he abrogated the Bretton Woods agreement in order to print the money he needed. Together with boom and bust cycles caused by the central bank, the ability of the federal government to confiscate wealth by inflating the currency has imperiled us all financially.
End the failed regulatory schemes and programs of America's second fascist, the one that Mussolini so admired, FDR. The SEC, Social Security, FHA, FNMA, FDIC, farm subsidies, TVA, etc. The regulatory schemes have created a false sense of security and confidence that has led to some very poor decisions and prevented nothing from occurring that they were designed to protect us against. The programs have distorted the market and kept prices artificially high, benefiting a few, politically well positioned souls at the expense of us all. The current rage is Bernard Madoff and his self described Ponzi scheme, it pales in comparison to the world's largest Ponzi scheme, social security.
End the monopoly of public funds going to failed public schools (like the centralization of credit, another Communist Manifesto favorite). Even if an academic education for all children has been universally accepted (which it clearly has not, given the high level of drop outs and nearly unlimited funding) why should money continue to go exclusively to union dominated schools, whose primary and secondary purpose is the provision of full teacher employment and benefits? It's worse than a Halliburton no bid contract, because at least Halliburton got the job done!
Because Brother TP is going to write on LBJ's failed War on the Poor (What I call the War on the Black Family) I'll leave this until next Christmas.
Finally, Santa, please expose the global climate change mythology for the redistributionist, anti-capitalist, Malthusian tripe it is before it completely wrecks America. Roll back the corn subsidies that are incentivizing the destruction of our ecology and biodiversity and far from helping the environment through facilitating the production of ethanol, it has only caused the price of staple foods to increase around the world and raised the price of food across the board.
Oh, by the way, I think a Titans win in the Super Bowl would be good for America too.
The New Yellow Star
3 years ago
Posts
23 comments:
Oh, and you believe that in a return to a state of nature that everything will be better?
You believe that man, on his own is not corrupt but that man under the influence of government is corrupt.
Which means very simply that if we did not have laws man would not commit crimes. If it is government that destroys and corrupts everything as you note then it has to be laws and law enforcement that causes people to rob, steal and murder.
Without speed limits we all know that people would drive more prudently...it is speed limits that cause people to drive recklessly.
I guess without government there would be no need for national defense because if man left alone without government would never attack another man or another state.
Hmmm, if we are going to roll back the influence of government in our lives and the destructiveness of government in everything that it gets involved in then why not allievate government altogether and lets return to a state of nature where man is freer and more apt to do the right thing...
I hope Santa delivers. My list would be similar.
On another point...if we used your logic toward government imagine if we used that same logic in football....
Imagine a football game without rules, without refs....
Wouldn't that be a much better game of sport?
Maybe what government needs is better rules and better referees....
It would seem to me that the reason we need rules and refs in football is the same reason we need them in life. But what we need to figure out is how to rid the game of the corruption not the rules.
How enjoyable would football be if the league commissioner and the refs could be bought and owned?
I think it's a rather good list, CB.
Using the sports analogy, rules are important but how compelling would a World Series be with coach pitch and no score being kept, no winners and no losers?
By the way, The SEC didn't prevent Michael Milken, Bernard Madoff, Enron, Worldcom, Tyco, Global Crossing, Adelphia,or more recently Lehman, AIG, Bear Stearns, etc., Sarbanes Oxley didn't prevent Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac from duping everyone. The OCC hasn't kept banks from failing.
Government regulatory schemes provide a veneer of confidence not warranted whereas the market rewards competence and punishes frauds and the incompetent.
Certainly, speed limits and stop signs are warranted to improve safety and the flow of traffic, but Corporate Average Fuel Efficiency standards? Safety standards? Volvo did more for industry safety standards than government crash dummies. and requirements.
Looking at the continuum between anarchy and FDR style authoritarianism, anarchy looks better and better with each passing day. Prior to FDR, there were less than 2,400 pages in the federal register. With one act, the National Recovery Act, he added over 100,000 pages to the federal register and never failed to add less than that every year he was in office.
By your own example there are winners and losers. While in our frustration we may believe that anarchy is the better option but do you really believe things would be better, man more pure, and companies more forward thinking if there was less government....
If you think so then I say Party Hardy and lets bring on the survival of the fittest!
Titans? Really? I'm not so sure about that! ;)
What we've got now is an economy of political patronage. The smart businessman in the face of Obama pledges and campaign promises pares staff now, in anticipation of the mandates, taxes and slow down that must follow such a regime. The smart investor isn't as concerned about fundamentals as she is what the government is going to next, or should I say, whom the government will favor next.
Belinda,
Titans all the way!
The uncertainty involved with government intervention keeps the smart money on the sidelines and out of the game until it is clear when those at the helm of government realize they've done far more harm than good and it is politically untenable not to admit it. That's when things will get moving on a broad scale again, but not until then.
"In the last year the government has assumed about 7.8 trillion dollars in direct and indirect financial obligations...which is equal to about half the size of the nations entire economy."
So, the taxpayers OWN directly or indirectly almost half of our economy.
So, that puts us a lot further from the days of FDR than I thought....to say nothing about anarchy....
Looks pretty much like socialism to me! So when did Obama take office?
So, would one of you free market folks and closet Bush supporters (who claims to be a "free market guy") explain to me how a belief in free markets leads to corporate socialism?
Kind of wonder, since the liberals support poor people and their support of poor people makes the poor lazy and dependent on welfare if the same thing can't be said about conservatives and their support of big business doesn't kind of do the same thing....
Oh, and lets get all hyped up about Obama and his plans to spend a trillion dollars....the current administration did that in a MONTH...
So now I know why we went into Iraq...it was to distract our attention from the greed and corruption on Wall Street and Washington DC...gives a whole new meaning to the term "Band of Brothers.."
Shoot them all and lets start over....
TAO,
I could get with your criticism if I supported the Bear Stearns intervention, the bailout to nowhere or even a controlled liquidation of Detroit, I didn't and do not. You get no argument from me that what Bush, Paulson and Bernanke are doing is fascist, nationalization of industry and/or socialist centralization of credit.
As it relates to Obama, market economies function on information. Since November 4, what he said, who he selected, the beliefs he expressed, all factor into business decisions. Since, for most businesses, the largest expense is related to employment and capital, both of which Obama intends to penalize, then smart businesses will shed employment and capital. It's as simple as that.
How does he intend to punish employment and capital you ask? Health insurance mandates, higher corporate tax rates, carbon tax (income redistribution) schemes, protectionist schemes that punish domestic employers with off shore employment, card check (automatic unionization), just to name a few.
I run businesses, just like you. Do you wait for things to hit you before you respond, or do you anticipate what's going to happen and make appropriate adjustments? I'll assume that like me, you didn't start yesterday.
I have fought unionization efforts four times in my life, none with my own company...and won each time.
I have already lived through "schemes that punish domestic employers" it was called NAFTA...
It isn't a week goes by when some retailer calls me up and wants to know why my shirts are so expensive when he can get the same shirts from Asia for half the price of mine...it doesn't take a brain surgeon to realize that at 3.00 a shirt, there about, and with cotton prices being what they are, some foreign government is subsidizing somebody.
I have already switched my employees over to health insurance via an HSA (which is the absolutely ONLY thing that Bush did right in 8 years in office.)
Obama says he is going to penalize employers who ship jobs overseas....which really is too late because it will not be retroactive. But if he decides to flip on that promise then I plan on switching part of my line to another label and moving production to Latin America but the fabric its self will still be American.
If he decides to stand by his promise then I will subcontract my excess production to an American firm.
I normally do not give a hoot what the government does...when a government employee comes to audit or visit or when a politican stops in to visit I normally am quite rude and short to them....vultures is what I see when I am sitting there being entertained.
Right now I am more focussed on my competition, which is Casual Male...and they are in the news and I am going to milk that one to the point of being close to a lawsuit! :)
I told my employees years ago if they want a union then please let me know and I would set up a space for sign ups and I would provide the donuts....and if the union wins then we start from zero in regards to pay and benefits.
I am sorry, I do not believe ANY party or candidate gives a hoot about small business. Truthfully, the best thing they could do for me is leave me alone....but big business LOVES big government and they are like two peas in a pod.
Any conservative that goes on and rants about wanting smaller government and then doesn't believe that their shopping habits are funding and supporting big government through big business is gravely naive.
I learned along time ago that my money talks louder than my vote and I have more influence and more options with my money than I do with my vote.
If Obama wants to raise my taxes be my guest...just make sure that you get the economy fixed so that my sales improve too...
By the way, I like the pick of Hillary for secretary of state....that should shutdown the Bill Clinton money machine for awhile....now that I see his list of donors I understand why he buddied up to Bush Senior....what a guy that Bill....
Oh, and I know taxes are going up somebody has to pay for the war in Iraq and all the bailouts....
GWB, the most expensive conservative, free market president the world has ever seen....
At first, I thought this post was the funniest parody I've read in a long time until I realized you were actually serious ... or rather lunatic (on a scale of 0 to 10, I'd give you a 99).
So you want to abolish the SEC because it didn't prevent the Bernie Madoff swindle, and social security is just another Ponzi scheme because two new vocabulary words were learned in the same week, and the government is either fascist or communist or both depending upon your epithet de jour, and global warming is merely a case of halitosis easily remedied by just shutting one's mouth.
This is the worst, most incoherent drivel I've ever read!! Get a life!
TAO,
We're not too far off. I agree that your business has been penalized by foreign subsidies but it has also been penalized by domestic tariffs. African cotton literally rots in the fields which penalizes you and American consumers. Who benefits? A few domestic producers protected from competition.
With all of the unnecessary regulations you face in your businesses and I face in mine, I can't believe that you don't rail against the bureaucracies as I do.
Tentacles,
Glad you could join the party! Are you sucking up to be head of my fan club?
Tentatively, I'd very much like to be part of your fan club, but this stuff is so painfully bizarre it staggers the imagination. I'm just being more blunt than TAO.
Ok,
I'll bite, but let's work the drivel backward beginning with the ever morphing climate hypothesis, requiring ever more anti-capitalist remedy. Aside from the dozens of scientists who seem to be bailing from the IPCC's transparently political posturing weekly, let's examine the history of their logic.
This article is a good summary of my position. Here are just a few excerpts:
"The hypothesis predicted, and the computers affirmed, an exponential increase in temperatures was being caused by the exponential increase in man made green house gases. Al Gore's famous (and refuted) "hockey stick graph" proved it. In other words, the earth would heat fast, then faster, then faster still."
"But while concentrations of CO2, the culprit behind man made global warming, continued to rise -- the temperature did not. The empirical data refused to cooperate with the hypothesis. In the last few years the earth's temperature has leveled off. It may be dropping."
"Oops. Another hypothesis bites the dust. Not to worry. The hypothesis has been rewritten, once again... The official reason being given is that the "weather is not the climate." For those readers not skilled in dialectical huckstering, the argument seems to be that the weather can get colder while the climate gets warmer... Proponents of global warming finally have an irrefutable, because incoherent, theory guaranteed to win any debate. This hypothesis cannot be refuted. If the "weather" cools it proves that the "climate" is getting warmer. If the weather gets warmer then the climate gets warmer. As the barker shouts out at the carnival,
Winner! Winner! Winner!"
This should keep the drivel accessible for the time being.
CB - I am also one who does not subscribe to the Henny Penny model of "The sky is falling!" when it comes to global warming. Climate change on the other hand is another matter. I don't think we can or should ignore signs like the melting of the polar ice cap and receding glacier sheets.
My contention is that this ancient planet has been through quite a few "ages" and is perhaps entering yet a new "age." I don't think we can stop it, but I do believe that which ever side of this issue you stand on, surely the reasonable, compassionate people on both sides can get together on measures to help reduce our impact on the earth so as to try to preserve what we can for future generations. Setting aside nature preserves, supporting programs that reduce harmful gases or reduce the use of unreplenishable resources, cleaning up our water ways, etc. All these things have nothing to do with liberal or conservative values but rather with good stewardship. We can argue the merits/demerits of global warming endlessly or we can shut up and get to work taking care of our planet. Time will tell which theory is "right", in the meantime, what should be happening is a plan of action needs to be presented with the rationale of why and how it will help. We debate. perhaps compromise and then we get to work.
rocky,
I am an outdoorsman and a conservationist. I support clean air, water, etc. What I object to is the leveraging of carbon dioxide, a naturally occurring gas and not a pollutant, into anti-capitalist redistribution schemes.
I also read conflicting information about the melting or reforming ice and whether the planet has actually been warming or cooling. None of the IPCC models account for the greatest factor in our climate, the sun and their hypotheses keep changing.
I won't go into the long history of why the cabal of Malthusians, eco drama queens and anti-capitalist have come together under the banner of carbon emissions but I'll ask a question instead.
If Kyoto was supposed to address climate change, pollution etc., why were the world's two largest polluters exempted?
CB: I am an outdoorsman and a conservationist.
When I read statements from self-avowed conservationists about how much they like the great outdoors while debunking AGW in the next sentence, it reminds me of pedaphiles who say: “I like children.”
At least I put my money where my mouth is.
Over the past 8 years, over 2,000 of the world’s most renowned scientists have examined the data, confirmed the findings, and worked diligently to raise public awareness of the problem … and yet there are always holdouts, people like you, who think they are smarter and more knowledgeable than experts in the field ... and think their opinions are more important. Are you really that arrogant to profess more knowledge than 2,000 PhDs? This willful embrace of ignorance makes me quite angry.
Here a story about James Hansen, the NASA scientists who has been sounding the alarm for decades:
James Hansen, one of the world's leading climate scientists, will today call for the chief executives of large fossil fuel companies to be put on trial for high crimes against humanity and nature, accusing them of actively spreading doubt about global warming in the same way that tobacco companies blurred the links between smoking and cancer.
And I couldn’t agree more.
This is not the first time I have engaged the ignorati in this argument. I look at the AGW debate from the perspective of an advertising jingle. There is that catchy melody played endlessly on the telly over months and years that repeat continuously inside the head. Perhaps one never purchased the product, even hated the product, or the product has long since disappeared, but that catchy tune is forever there. “Its not how long you make it, its how you make it long.” Once firmly imprinted, it is difficult to reshape public opinion.
Or perhaps one can look at this phenomenon from the perspective of a psychotherapist whose client engages in reckless behaviors and understands the consequences in rational terms but cannot make the emotional break. A chain smoker, for instance, who understands the risks and yet reaches for another cigarette. Even when understood in intellectual terms, it is hard to change behaviors and perceptions.
For those of us who study AGW, the data are compelling, but how do we convince those who don’t study graphs and maps, who listen only to long imprinted jungles?
And then there are the lobbyists trying to protect their dirty little franchises. They would have you focus attention, not on the data points clustered around a trend line, but on the statistical outliers and base their arguments on exceptions, the confounding dodge and feint.
This is what makes public education and outreach a daunting task. While I try to understand these quirks of human nature, I have run out of tolerance and patience in the face of sheer stupidity.
"If Kyoto was supposed to address climate change, pollution etc., why were the world's two largest polluters exempted?"
That is precisely the problem; it has been made into a political issue instead of a humanity issue.
Do you really need a pissing contest over whether projected climate catastrophes are real or imagined?
Would it not be more responsible and a good example to our young people to simply find practical ways to conserve and protect our planet on a global scale?
I am not questioning your conservationism or anyone else's. What I'm saying is a more organized global effort would be much more effective.
While carbon dioxide is a naturally occuring gas, it is also a byproduct of manufactured events and too much of anything is usually not a good thing. So what is the huge stumbling block to reducing our carbon footprint along with other things like recycling and clean air/water initiatives?
rocky,
The problem is that what's been accepted as science is a fiction of IPCC impostors and the media. As tentacles knows, the hypothesis has changed more times, to fit the narrative (when the data irrefutably don't support it) than a runway model at a fashion show. What's the fix? Destroy the economy of the productive, place massive amounts of confiscated cash in the hands of the corrupt and incompetent.
I certainly don't want any individual or enterprise dumping toxic substances into our waterways or air or anywhere else but before we begin dismantling our progress or consigning African villagers to burning dung in huts forever we should know that it is necessary, beneficial and based on sound science, not simply because some want to bring down capitalism like the den of thugs and thieves at the UN.
CB, I enjoyed your post and agree with it. I also agree with your comments here, and especially with the last one. The entire Global Warming bs is a myth, and Gore is getting rich off of it! You would think he had made enough money from inventing the internet. ;)
Merry Christmas!
CB: As tentacles knows ...
CB, I resent false attributions, especially when they concern me. You have no idea what I know, what I read, what I believe, or what I do. In fact, you know nothing about me at all. So don't misquote me. I consider it a form of abuse. Another form of false attribution: Footnote your sources. You seem to be long on platitudes and certitudes but short on proper academic referencing, as in:
This report released today from Scientific American, Top 10 Places Already Affected by Climate Change:
Darfur
The Gulf Coast
Italy
Northern Europe
Great Barrier Reef
Island nations such as Maldives and Kiribati
Bangladesh
Northwest Passage
The Alps
Uganda
Denialism is no longer an option.
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