A number of small indicators — the poor reviews of Sonia Sotomayor, attempts by Hillary Clinton to regain the center stage of foreign policy, and admissions by the President that unemployment will continue to rise — suggest that the Barack Obama’s initial political capital is running out. Maybe the most dangerous indicator that the impetus for Hope and Change is petering out is from Bizzyblog (hat tip: Tigerhawk); it’s a chart showing that tax revenue from the corresponding period last year is down. The source data from Treasury is here.
Tigerhawk asks, how long can the current policy regime keep going?
The problem with having an MBA is that your mind is trained to reduce expenditures and cash disbursements in such a situation, when clearly, the correct solution (we know this from the people who have Masters in Governmental Affairs, or some such equivalent degree, who are currently in charge) is to massively increase spending. A 31% drop in 2Q receipts 2009 vs. 2008, and we are going pedal to the metal in spending — not just a tweak of federal spending, but testing the outer limits of our debt capacity by any absolute or relative measure. What happened to the self-description of Democrats being the “reality-based” party?
My answer is ‘as long as it can and then some’. Yet ultimately the laws of gravity must come into play.
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Now the question to ask is how much of the contraction in collections is due to the horrid economy and how much is due other causes (‘Going Galt’, greater efforts at tax avoidance, or similar).
This now meets the functional description of insanity. My question is when does the US populace wake up and stop this madness? I won’t hold my breathe for the wake up call.
Anecdotally, an acquaintance owns a small shop that has luxury goods for women and decorating. The shop is full of what I call girl stuff. Her business is horribly down with the exception of the annual sale when she discounts heavily. BTW, she is an Obama supporter and WILL NOT hear anything critical of the ‘New Messiah’. Sad situation in that she cannot or will not identify the causation of the current doldrums unless it is framed as “It is ALL Bush’s fault.”
I think it’s clear that Obama’s political capital is evaporating. However what worries me is that Obama may feel compelled to pursue his socialist agenda before his political capital goes to zero. The two center pieces of his socialist agenda are “Cap and Trade” and Obama-care. Each policy if enacted could accelerate our economic decline. Obama may feel compelled by the left-wing that elected him and the MSM to pursue the socialist agenda even though it is not in the nation’s best interests.
The sooner Obama is “neutered” by current events, the better it will be for us as a nation.
The interview process for this administration appears to be handing a set of numbers to the applicant such as those given above and selecting the candidate who grins and goes “Woo Hoo.”
In the old Soviet Army the standing policy for an officer when in doubt was to generate “activity.” Note that this is not the same as achieving results. These policies were designed by people who dream of going on casino cruises where they can prove the infallibility of a secret system called always double down.
A client told me that Conan O’brien last night on his show had a video clip where our Savior morphed into W and back again. It showed the One tripping and flubbing speeches similarly to W. And apparently one of the clips, had a written message that said:
Worst President Ever.
Jeffry Immelt at GE must have had a sleepless night. The hit squads are on the move this
morning.
This episode shows that the facade is cracking, and may come tumbling down soon, if a popular late night can poke fun at our Savior. I sure hope so.
It will be interesting to see if Buraq jumps the shark, or has a meltdown if he doesn’t get his way on Crap N’ Tax, or Healthcare.
Nanny Obananarama says: “My regime can keep going as long as I OWN the media. I may be a smoker with undersized biceps, who can’t bowl or toss a baseball, but as long my media SAYS that I’m athletic and Michelle’s beautiful and glamorous and my economy keeps SAVING jobs,” THEN IT’S ALL TRUE, for as long as good old AMERICAN PRAVDA keeps tooting the horn.”
Don’t forget that the administration set the example by nominating tax avoiders like Geithner and Daschle. They kind of let the dirty secret out that taxes are only ment for the “little” people. Maybe some of the little people resent that.
Those numbers are stunning and should dispel any reasonable person of notions that we are coming out of recession. It can certainly get worse in the event we get CapandTrade or Gov healthcare passed but we are already on dangerously thin ice with regard to the future of our great country particularly in regard to the U.S. dollar. My only two remaining reasons for hope are 1)the fact that we are America and history compels me NOT to underestimate that ace in the hole and 2) which other country or troika of countries will take our place?…and please don’t say ‘China’.
I think the deficits, reduced tax receipts, mountains of debt, etc., are irrelevant to Obama, Pelosi, etc. They simply don’t care about the train wreck happening in front of their eyes. This is all about the accumulation of power, AS FAST AS POSSIBLE, into a central government controlled by THEM. They know they have to get these collectivist programs into place FAST. They know these programs will be almost impossible to reverse once they are in place. They certainly see the math, they just have their own priorities, the main one being power, no matter the consequences.
Just as one only gets a vote in a corporation if one owns a share, we need to find a way to create a voting threshold based on paying some diminimus amount of federal income tax. While I realize that scaling voting influence with the amount of taxes paid would never fly, we could solve so many moral hazard issues in government spending if they people who voted actually had some financial skin in the game.
As long as so many people have a free option on government largess, we will continuously have to fight these battles.
CBO 2006 individual income tax receipt data, just as a reminder:
Top 20% earners paid 86% of individual income taxes (up from 81% at the start of Bush 43)
Second 20% paid 13%
Bottom 60% paid 1%
“Mr. Ready to Lead” stikes again, if I recall correctly this was all supposed to stop being a problem with the Porkulous Magnificus Plan passed. It seems that the Sec of Treasury is no better at economics than he was at filing his taxes in a timely manner.
I wonder what he will have to say when the deficit comes in at twice the predicted amount for the year, remember his predictions assumed a 3% growth in the economy with the attendant rise in Federal income. What kind of chaos will accompany the bankruptcy of the Federal Government? I’m not one of those apocalypse types but this is really getting out of hand.
What I can’t imagine is why the Administration blithely assumes that investors will keep flocking to the market to generate big-dollar incomes when the Government keeps taking a larger share of that income. They seem to miss the point behind capitalism; if you are smart and work real hard and are a bit lucky you get to become RICH, no get to become the largest supporter of Govenment lackeys and dole receipients.
But none of them have ever had a job where they produced anything of value. Tends to skew one’s point of veiw.
“The sooner Obama is “neutered” by current events, the better it will be for us as a nation.”
Defending themselves against impeachment had a pretty good neutering effect on both Nixon and Clinton. Of course, in Clinton’s case it distracted him so much from conducting the nation’s business that he neglected to do anything about Al-Queda, but since Obama has no intention of conducting a war on terror any way, let the impeachments begin.
I wonder what Obama and all his non-taxpaying czars will do when Americans finally become fed up enough to just quit paying taxes. At all. Period. 60 million people saying as one, “come and make me, B. Hussein.”
RE: Sotomayor
I obviously haven’t watched the entire hearings, but from what I did see, I was underwhelmed, to say the least. Not just her misstatements and dissembling about the “wise Latina” stuff, but her weak grasp of constitutional law and principles. It was almost embarrassing to watch her stumble around trying to throw out legal phrases without ever demonstrating more than a rudimentary knowledge of constitutional law.
I know I have flubbed more than one interview in my life, but this is the best Sotomayor could do, with the weeks/months of preparation and practice? Roberts and Alito were masters of case law, principles, and judicial philosophy; Sotomayor just doesn’t play in their league. Really, I mourn for Leftist jurisprudence if Sotomayor will be the new standard-bearer.
With tax revenue down, that must explain why Bonnie Frank has got monies TARP recipients are paying back already slated for spending.
The main flaw in the analysis of the Obama administration is the assumption that it is a liberal administration. It is not. In fact it is a radical administration bent on changing the structure of The United States of America.
A liberal administration would be more concerned about unemployment than this one is. A liberal administration would not knowingly enact policies that would put people out of work or close down industries. A liberal administration would favor easy money. This administration has put people out of work, is closing down industries by its policies, and has created a climate in which it is extremely difficult to get financing.
No, they are not liberal. They want to structurally change our economy, making it far more dependent on the central government. They want to change our position in the world, reducing American exceptionalism and turning us into just one of the larger countries participating in the United Nations. They are supporting a dictatorial coup over the Honduran Congress, Supreme Court, and Constitution. They are transforming our alliances.
You will see that they will try to change some of our electoral policies — at minimum through Soros supported groups such as ACORN, at maximum by enfranchising felons and illegal immigrants.
They have already transformed the criteria by which one gets a Cabinet position. Not since Harding or Grant have so many people with shaky financial backgrounds been approved for the Cabinet. They are in the process of getting a Justice on the Supreme Court who falls below the qualifications of the two Nixon appointees, Clement and Haynesworth, who were drummed out because they were deemed incompetent. (Was it Senator Roman Hruska or someone else who opined, “Don’t mediocre people deserve representation on the Court too?)
We will see political speech curtailed, or at least they will try; we will see political decisions and advice criminalized, or at least they will try.
As long as we see this administration through the typical liberal/conservative lens we will be missing what is going on. See it as a radical administration and things will come into clearer focus.
RE: #1 and #2 – My question is: When will the discussion begin, and hence a movement formed, where concerned citizens (starting with those in the blogosphere) refuse paying their income tax? What could the government do if millions of “average Joe citizens” go Galt?
It is time for Bread and Circuses!: Haul W and Cheney and Rove into “hearings on their Lies Lies Lies”, televised, covered cover to cover by Newsweek and Vanity Fair…
this will be so much FUN, in a sophisticated way of course.
If everybody else cheats…I’m safe!
A quick look at the economy under the old Soviets or the current Canadian Govt shows our future if things don’t change. Ever larger portions of the economy will move underground, further reducing Federal income (which will demand higher taxes to offset the declining income).
Corruption will flourish as people bribe petty government officials to look the other way while they conduct “under the table” business. Cash and barter will become king.
As far as the rest of The One’s political power goes to me it always looked like a balloon, pretty and solid looking but very vulnerable to the first sharp impact. It won’t leak, it will burst suddenly.
Agree with others who think that this is a radical administration with the intention of fundamentally changing the country. If their goal was merely to maintain power I doubt that they would be stupid enough to do some of the things they’ve done already (although, it is plausible that they are merely stupid rather than diabolical – although it is more plausible that their front man, Obama, is stupid, but that his handlers are not).
Either way, I suspect that the forthcoming drop in popularity will only add urgency to their agenda, forcing them to push it through faster while they still have some remaining political capital to spend.
Also agree with the commentary on Sotomayor. She’s a horrible choice for the supreme court, not only because of her radical ideology, but also because it’s pretty obvious that her IQ isn’t what we should expect for people nominated to be on the Supreme Court.
I’ll say it again, I was e-mailing senators over the Cap & Trade bill for the second time, and my wife told me that the vote for cap and trade is being “postponed” until September (so I switched to emails about Sotomayor’s dishonesty about her activism).
That means there’s big trouble in the democrat ranks: dems don’t want to sign on to this jobs killer. Jobs killer, hmmm, that was the way I emailed it to the senators, I told them C&T would drive businesses elsewhere, where neither C&T, nor KeeeeYO-TOE apply to them, China, y India. And that it won’t reduce Co2 output one iota. The money quotation “jobs killer” turns up in Palins op-ed three days later. (Those paranoid scuttering politicoes probably think I got those words from Palin, but it could only be the other way round, or independently more like.)
Dems won in 2006 congressional election by campaigning as conservative, “fiscally responsible” balderdash. Well, let’s hold them to it: Divide and rule; that’s how you succeed when you’re the minority (just ask the dems), not by talk of “third parties” etc
We must pressure these frail jerks. Find and exploit the ones who can’t afford to commit to 0bamas radicalism. Its an uphill battle, and appears to be the losing battle, but I’m not so sure. Whit Chambers and Livitsky endured far worse. There is just no instant gratification in going up the list to tell these oligarchs the bleeding obvious. Talk radio and blogs can’t afford the redundancy of exhorting people to contact their reps in con=gress time and time again, so I will. It’s solitary and repetitive, but I’m not letting this gummit ballyhoo go unanswered from moi.
So its on to 0bamas “Destroy Health Care As We Know It” schemes.
Obama will get all of his agenda passed, because Women, Gays, the Media, Blacks, and Hispanics all love him. For who he is (a Black guy) and who he is not (a White Guy). No one of course hates White guys more than women. It’s a pure identity politics play.
The only way to counter Obama is through fear. Fear of what was done to Joe the Plumber and Sarah Palin. Only to Media people, Dem politicians, bureaucrats, and Dem backers. At all levels. Fear must be intense, it must be everywhere, and it must be all the time. It requires an Army of Davids.
An Army, digging into the personal lives of Dem politicians, their families, and their backers and their families. A Dem Senator has a daughter in drug rehab? Put up pictures all over the internet, and as many icky details as possible. FEAR. A Dem Congressperson has a spouse who had a DUI? Plaster the icky details all over the web. Same for the backers, and the family of the backers. Only fear, fear of being destroyed, along with one’s family, by having every dirty or uncomfortable fact public beyond belief, and every aspect of one’s own personal life subject to ridicule, can make Obama’s backers climb down.
Cap and Trade is a given, and so is Obama Care (Rahm Emmanuel plans to “ram it through” according to Drudge). Unless raw fear comes into play. No one will lose re-election for voting for Cap and Trade, or Obama Care. Not with the Media flying Air cover and identity politics by Women and non-Whites. That’s 52% or more most places.
But fear, now that’s something else. Particularly if combined with ethics charges, lawsuits, and constant humiliation and exposure of one’s family.
This ain’t beanbag. Obama plans nothing less than the destruction of America, and in particular a death sentence for the Elderly (under Obama Care) and poverty for the rest. Most women would gladly trade a life of poverty just to stick it to White guys (watch any ad to see the attitude of most women towards White guys — we’re portrayed as bumbling idiots who can’t tie our own shoes). Thus IMHO the path to salvation requires taking the tactics that Kos, Huffington, CBS News, and Obama pioneered, and giving it back to them with vast increases in quantity, quality, and pacing.
Everything, all the time.
ricpic:
Well, the IRS is not designed to aggressively enforce tax laws. Its an accounting machine that depends on people voluntarily reporting their income and computing and paying their own taxes. They run at least four months behind on just the slightly less than routine paperwork. Its a house of cards. A DNS sort of attack on that system and it would crash like a rotten pine tree, never to arise again.
It seemed fairly obvious to me at the beginning of the current recession that it was time then to remove the tax on corporations, since it only has a price impact and reduced the capital available for investment. I read also that Corps are/were fleeing to offshore locations for tax avoidance reasons. By the table above there isnt that much income derived that wouldnt be recovered from individuals. I see a number of reasons to stop taxing them and damn few to continue it.
Gaffe Prices said:
“my wife told me that the vote for cap and trade is being “postponed” until September”
The Fed has been propping up the economy through illegal market manipulation, fraud and deceit (refer to Karl Denninger and “the Market Ticker”). Despite the deception, the current economic crisis won’t resolve until after price discovery takes place for all those toxic assets held by the major banks. My guess is the Fed will lose control of situation sometime between now and November. If Cap-and-Trade and Obama-care can be delayed in the Senate until after the next market implosion then the political momentum will go away. That’s the only good thing I can see about the current economic situation: Obama’s socialist agenda would have been an unmitigated catastrophe but in the end, he’ll prove harmless because the economy soured his political opportunity.
If I were cynical and realized I not only controlled the money but controlled the audit, I’d spend a lot of that “stimulus” money to buy just enough crap to make sure certain “bellwether” companies beat quarterly profitably expectations, thus sending the stockmarket – and voters’ hearts – soaring…
But actually I hope today’s surge is a genuine indicator of better fundamentals. We’ll see.
Even if (when) the US economy goes into the toilet enormous sums of money will still be exchanged on a daily basis. The more bankruptcies the more assets that will become available at bargain prices. Fewer jobs means cheaper rates for labor. Economic crashes are at worst opportunities to accumulate additional wealth for plutocrats.
In the United States, wealth is highly concentrated in a relatively few hands. As of 2004, the top 1% of households (the upper class) owned 34.3% of all privately held wealth, and the next 19% (the managerial, professional, and small business stratum) had 50.3%.
http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html
The Obama economy will eviscerate the small business and professional class moving even a higher concentration of national wealth to the 1%.
Political power follows the money. In my opinion Obama is more a plutocrat than a Marxist. The end game for all his economic trickery is the establishment of a Guardian Class that will use the coercive power of government to structure a society based on some Progressive, Utopian view of social justice and guardianship of the environment.
Also agree with the commentary on Sotomayor. She’s a horrible choice for the supreme court, not only because of her radical ideology, but also because it’s pretty obvious that her IQ isn’t what we should expect for people nominated to be on the Supreme Court.
Yes, after observing her for a bit, I’m convinced that her “wise Latina” comment is not only reprehensible, but moot too. Whatever advantages a wise Latina might have are clearly irrelevant when discussing Sotomayor.
I do expect that as his capital evaporates Obama will try to do things even faster. Whether it’s because he wants to wreck everything while he still can or whether its because he’ll be desperate for some victory to salvage his administration, he’s going to put the petal to the metal on his idiot agenda.
I think Gaffe Prices has it right. We’ve got to pressure Congressional Dems to abandon Obama out of self-preservation. Make them think the only way to get re-elected is to fight his policies (then chuck ‘em out anyway).
dan said:
“But actually I hope today’s surge is a genuine indicator of better fundamentals. We’ll see.”
Today’s surge was due to Intel’s better than expected earnings and a statement from the Fed. However Intel’s earnings are mostly smoke and mirrors, refer to:
http://market-ticker.denninger.net/archives/1216-Intel-Too-Much,-Too-Far,-Too-Fast.html
The sheeple are being lied to (as usual).
Obamacare is stuck in a House committee.
With cap-and-tax delayed until September, it looks like momentum is already fading.
Thanks to admissions that no one could have read C&T before voting on it, Rep. Hoyer’s public admission that “If every member pledged to not vote for it if they hadn’t read it in its entirety, I think we would have very few votes” just takes the cake. Members of Congress get paid $175K a year to do what? Be a rubber stamp for their leaders? The campaign ads practically write themselves.
“”"”"Just as one only gets a vote in a corporation if one owns a share, we need to find a way to create a voting threshold based on paying some diminimus amount of federal income tax. While I realize that scaling voting influence with the amount of taxes paid would never fly, we could solve so many moral hazard issues in government spending if they people who voted actually had some financial skin in the game.”"”"”"
That’s sort of how we started out. At first, only people with property could vote. Of course it was more restrictive than that, since those “people” were almost invariably white men of at least 21 years of age. Nevertheless, it does bring up the issue of voter responsibility. De Toqueville warned us over 170 years ago about the possible hazards of enfranchising too many people. We now have 18 year olds who can vote, but not drink; a portion of our voting public has been infantilized by the law itself. There was a reason why 21 was the voting age even in colonial times, even with the shorter life spans: it was understood that a young adult male already had his hands full with homesteading and raising and feeding his new little family. Once he had put 3-4 years of adult responsibilities under his belt, he could be vetted to vote.
The revenue table above reminds me of what I said in an earlier post: we’re trying to do $5 trillion worth of governing for $4 trillion and have only $2.5 trillion on hand. This means that even the $1-to-$1.5 trillion in deficit is misleading, because there is an additional phantom deficit of unfunded mandates both within the bureaucracies, and without in the general economy.
At these hearings, Sotomayor is pretending to be someone different than what her record and associations have demonstrated. Hmmmm . . . . remind you of anyone?
It worked for the man who nominated her, and I imagine it will work for her.
Re: voting age
If I were to use my own life as a barometer of when young folks have enough life experience and maturity to cast a well-informed vote in a national election…I’m afraid that would be around 28…
Video: Maj. Cook-Obama Birth Certificate story makes Fox News – 7/14/09
3. Eggplant
I seen an analogy to the early Soviet Union of the late 1920s. Stalin had just succeeded in breaking the power of Trotsky and his other rivals and had begun to embark on his policies of super-industrialization and rearmament, fueled by agricultural collectivization. Initially the result was major resistance throughout the country and a decline in his popularity within The Party. This led to the first of the show trials –
Shakhty and Promparty, and the purge of the Military Resistance. When this failed to curtail opposition, Stalin escalated to the Great Famine, the use of troops and Komsomol mobs to enforce de-kulakization campaigns, and ultimately the “Great Terror” show trials of the 1930s. We are not there yet, but would Ear Leader, Rahmbo, and Ayers balk at similar measures, if they thought the Civilian National Security Mob could make it work? Might we see some disturbing analogies and foreshadowings? Might our Marxist true believers react with a power grab? Those events were unprecedented in scope even by Russian standards; just as the entire Nazi horror was unthinkable in a civilized Germany. We have already crossed so many Rubicons in only a half year.
Chavez: ‘Obama is biting off more than he can chew’
Liberal Talk Show Host Lynn Samuels Questions Obama’s Place of Birth – Audio 7/15/09
10. steeple:
I’m with you on that, however, that is essentially a poll tax. In the not so distant past such ideas were denounced as virtual crimes against humanity.
We might also consider revising and reclassifying our rights into three levels, a core of basic human rights,such as the rights to life, liberty, property; and sendary and trtiary of citizens rights, including rights to public expression and political participation, variosu procedudral protections, economic and welfare benefits, and soforth. There might be argument over which rights adhered at which tier, but I argue that citizens should have greater rights than non-citizen residents, with more rights than visitors, than illegal intruders -who should have no rights, except a ten minute head start.
Rurik said,
I’m hopeful (perhaps naive) that we won’t go down the same path as the Soviet Union. I’m less hopeful that we won’t go down the path of the German Weimar Republic or the Roman Republic.
Roderick Reilly said:
“That’s sort of how we started out. At first, only people with property could vote.”
I’m attracted to the idea of a qualified franchise. However one must be very careful about writing the qualifications. Also, once the precident is established, it’s not difficult to pervert the franchise qualifications such that only members of the American Socialist Party are allowed to vote.
Perhaps a better system would be to take the College of Electors as defined by the US Constitution to its ultimate extreme. Setup a political system where a College of Electors is voted in by the general public. Make the qualifications for the Electors restrictive, e.g. they need to have a certain degree of education, be successfully employed, no criminal history, etc. Establish a lifetime prohibition against an Elector holding any government funded position or having a commerical relationship with the government. The Electors could only meet once every four years and only for one week. They would perform their service for a nominal fee and then be banned for life from ever serving again as an Elector (any form of “revolving door” would be prohibitied). During the one week that they served as Electors, they would vote in public officials for vacant positions and could remove anyone from office as they saw fit. The electors could chose anyone for public office from the general public. There would be no campaigning or posturing before the MSM. The typical elected public official would be some noteworthy individual with a well established reputation who had political power thrust upon him.
The professional politician would cease to exist under this system. The political process would be largely composed of people who normally would have had nothing to do with politics.
The problem with assuming that all women, gays, media, blacks, and hispanics love Obama is that such rhetoric often becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. One should stick to one’s principles and give other people an opportunity to agree rather than simply assuming that entire demographic groups will forever be in the thrall of Obama.
Rhetoric that assumes that people will necessarily believe in an idea simply because of some identity tag is not merely prejudiced, but makes the work of the Obama administration much easier. One should make a point of making it easy for apathetic people and “soft” Obama voters to join opposing ranks rather than sounding like a mirror image of the worst racist comments made by Sonia Sotomayor.
Anton writes: “What I can’t imagine is why the Administration blithely assumes that investors will keep flocking to the market to generate big-dollar incomes when the Government keeps taking a larger share of that income.”
The liberal tribes are like Wile E. Coyote. They are in mid-air and looking puzzled.
For decades the big foundations—Ford, Rockefeller, McKnight, etc., etc.—have put their resources into ‘change,’ meaing grants to ACORN kinds of lobbying entities that would lobby for legislation that would provide support for favored positions. Their message was, “Let the government pay for it.”
Now they have succeeded. And the government is borrowing money to spend on the kinds of programs that the foundations favored.
But the unintended consequence is that the economy will have less capital, which results in less borrowing and investment, which reduces the endowment returns of the endowments . . .
There are going to be lots of Wile E. Coyote’s out there.
If you doubt that the economy is seriously hosed then read the following link:
http://sprott.com/Docs/marketsataglance/June_2009.pdf
The key phrase is “quantitative easing” which translates to “the US government buying its own bonds because no one else wants them”.
We’re right on the hairy edge of collapse of the US bond market along with the US dollar. If the bond market collapses then there will be no money available for Obama’s socialist programs or for the Federal Reserve to fiddle the stock markets or to do anything. The US government will effectively become insolvent.
Of course the rest of the world is almost as screwed up as we are. As the dollar collapses, the Euro, Swiss Franc, Japanese Yen, etc. will collapse in sync along with us.
2010 will be a very “interesting” year.
To boil it down, Obama is out to ruin what makes this country work. However, Galt, capital flight, and an underground economy are going to make it difficult.
#10 Steeple
One way to implement this might be to limit one’s right to vote for candidates in the House of Representatives. The Constitution says that all revenue bills must originate there. Make it so that if you haven’t paid any federal taxes, you can’t vote in these elections. On the other hand, even if you don’t pay taxes you’re not disenfranchised –you can still vote in Senatorial and Presidential elections.
…just a thought.
I think the most disturbing aspect of the Left’s socioeconomic views is that they cannot conceive that any action on their part could result in there being less wealth to tax.
On one blog a while back a man in the refining industry described the Feds wonderful new way of enforcing laws. They would charge the refinery manager directly, as an individual, and forbid the company from paying the fine. When asked how this would affect the industry the reply was “Us affect an economy this large? You have to be joking!” But every other regulator and bureaucrat – and Raise Taxes politician thinks the same way.
The current assertion even among most conservatives is that “America will always come back.” I am not so sure about that now. And come back to what?
Another chart that says we art
In doo doo deep and troubling
With O in charge it’s looming large
That taxes will be doubling
Cap and trade puts in the shade
All taxes gone before
It’s a good bet our national debt
Will melt our finance core
Economies when taxes ease
Rebound with mighty force
But O it seems will take our dreams
And stomp on them of course
When will it end when can we send
Chicago’s men back home
In three short years we’ll quell our fears
And elect the gal from Nome
Mini Option ARMs – Second Mortgage Homeowner Program: Bailing out the Home Equity Withdrawal Machine.
The irony must be clear to others because people take out second liens on their homes to make them more unaffordable.
That is, they increase the overall debt they owe.
In the real world people are still doubtful of the future of housing:
Tcobb:
What could be more perfect than to have Mr. Tax Crook hisself, Al Sharpton, soak the rich to pay for the destruction of our medical system?
linearthinker said…
Organizational Chart of House Democrats Health Plan.
I can’t find the “Patient”.
Now I see. There is no “Patient”.
There are “Consumers”.
From whom the taxes flow.
Well, from a technical standpoint, it would be easy enough to turn it around: Do away with Corp tax, radically reduce the size of government at all levels, reduce all levels of taxation, regulation. etc. It might also take having another look at globalism.
Politically, of course, it is another matter. Somehow the current elites would have to be rejected and side-lined.
Walt, I think #46 is my favorite one so far. It’s tightly packaged and comes to a pointed finish. Keep’r up, Mate!
Alexis, I sent my radical feminist professor/friend a copy of Whiskey’s thesis. Since he usually states it clearly and succinctly in the first paragraph of every comment, she didn’t need to read far…
…When, suddenly, she lowered the paper and started laughing HARD. Then, looking over the tops of her glasses to see me, steam and spittle having spotted her lenses, she told me it was the most “sophomoric” attempt at mimicking her curriculum that she’d ever read – and boy does she read a lot of them!
She said that, every year in her gender-studies classes there is always one student, “usually a male,” who decides to “take her on” by inverting her gender-centric word-play to “target” womyn. She said Whiskey’s tactical flip, making women the hegemons instead of “white males,” tracked the mimicry template perfectly.
“Nice try!” She said, a little out of breath. “Thanks!” I said, as I stifled a mischievous smirk.
Regarding #1, #2, #12 and #16, several anecdotes dont make a trend, but there are signs that some are “waking up”. I see it in the quality and length of comments left by commentators reagrding Peggy Noonan’s ridicule of Sarah Palin, and also reagrding Powerline’s hit pieces on her. 99% of those commenting observed how the elite (including the Powerline authors and Noonan) really don’t get it that a large number of Americans want a real, authentic, God-fearing and honest person to lead the country. One of us instead of one of them. Usually there are trolls and lots of liberal ankle biters who even out the comments, but not on either of those threads. Each had hundreds of comments. Likewise with articles describing the economic idiocy of Obama’s policies, although the # of comments were smaller in total numbers. That’s purely anecdotal, but it to my knowledge, it wasn’t there previously. Provides some encouragement, however, I’m guessing most people are just “hoping” that the politicians come to their sense (a false hope to be sure for that corrupt group). I doubt we will get major energy in opposition until the reality of one or more of these absurdities becomes law. At that point, Obama’s birth certificate (or lack of same) may become a lightning rod, simply because it is easier for folks to understand and rally around as a means of opposing Obama, Pelosi, Reid, et al.
Treasury’s “investment” programs are making hash of what was once comprehensible.
Did you miss the “good news” on May 12?
The Treasury Department, led by Tax Cheat Tim Geithner, retroactively reduced the deficit through March 31, the first six months of Uncle Sam’s fiscal year, by over $175 billion.
Here’s the evidence. March’s Monthly Treasury Statement showed a year-to-date deficit of $956.8 billion — but (voila!) April’s statement showed that the deficit through March was only $781.4 billion (items in red and October-March total box added by me):
—
What Treasury did in April was to convert the TARP “investments” it began making in October in the country’s financial institutions, General Motors, Chrysler, and who knows what else to NPV accounting. That accounting change reduced the previously reported March deficit by $175 billion.
As you might have noticed, Barack Obama and Tim Geithner are not done “investing.” There are hundreds of billions of dollars in outlays yet to come that I anticipate Geithner will handle using NPV, including additional TARP “investments,” the toxic asset program, and perhaps the ever-expanding mortgage relief efforts. At some point, Geithner might even decide that the tens of billions disbursed to prop up Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac thus far also have “investment” value.
Mixing hundreds of billions of dollars of NPV into what has essentially been a cash flow report turns the Monthly Treasury Statement, and deficit reporting in general, into an exercise that will become not only become ever more difficult to comprehend, but one that will also be routinely subject to political manipulation.
52. j willie:
Esteemed “conservative” political pro Mike Murphy was on Dennis Miller Show repeating his contention that McCain blew it with his selection of Palin, and that he should have picked Tom Ridge!
Callers and posters were nearly unanimous in their disagreement/disgust.
(but I think Murphy got a job with TIME, so all’s well)
I totally agree with Batman @15,
If large groups, like BC, don’t grok ObamaCo. is not about liberal VS conservative, but is in fact a revolutionary wrecking ball, aimed at USA law and key institutional structures, we are _all_ going to be deeply effected by how bad things will get. At least us non-swinging with the flow types.
If large numbers of folks don’t stop staring at the Republican/Democratic shell games…
Is there anybody out there? USA is entering the twilight zone, as if the only perspective for DC viewing glasses has two lenses, A/B, left/right, liberal/conservative, demo/rep. One isn’t allowed or able to just throw the glasses on the ground and actually look at what is happening?
22 whiskey
What accounts for the widespread antipathy of white women to white men? From the extreme (Johanna Rytel’s essay “I will never give birth to a white man”) to the ridiculous (any network TV show), this seems to be the muse of the moment. And yet, even in Europe, marriages of white women to Muslim men are surging.
When I was in college (all men), the travails of getting a date for the weekend were legendary. Except for BT. BT was an average looking guy with an average car and average money. Every weekend, he had a ten – all different, all amazing. They used to cry because he beat the sh*t out of them.
Maybe women really like men who slap them around, or worse.
What could be more perfect than to have Mr. Tax Crook hisself, Al Sharpton, soak the rich to pay for the destruction of our medical system?
Doug –I think you meant to address this question to someone else other than me. The one comment(other than this one) I posted on this thread had nothing to do with health care.
But since you asked—if we have to have mandatory health care (which I don’t think we should) it should work like this: It would be financed as a set percentage of one’s paycheck, it would only apply to life threatening conditions (in other words, catastrophic) and there would be a deductible of 25% of your yearly income. If your health is so unimportant that you won’t spend 25% of your income on it then don’t expect it to be important to me.
Eggplant @24,
Agree that the economic _recovery_ is a Federal Reserve mirage. Astronomical funding components that a healthy economy would carry via corporate and private funding have magically been covered by _thin_air_, adding zeros onto accounting ledgers within the esteemed dark and misty hallows of said Reserve.
Beware!
I agree that the Obama administration and the current Congress are intent on re-forging the American Republic into a new form. The bottom line goal is totalitarianism, total control by the State. In order to get that control a major crisis is needed. I suspect that the major crisis was to have been manufactured later in the game after all the right positions had been filled by all the right people.
Because of their fundamental misreading of the situation the crisis is sweeping down upon them sooner than expected. I don’t think they are ready for it. So they have two options. 1. Try and ride the tiger until they get it to a point more aligned with the original plan then implement a modified plan. 2. Try and use this crisis now and figure a way to finagle absolute power out of it sooner than expected, then clean up the pieces later. I’ll bet on the latter. Things will get interesting either way. Things will get well and truly fascinating if they feel cornered and panic.
Doug, thanks for the July 12th good news insights.
Seems like another tool for change is subtracting zeros from accounting ledgers… Hey, even I round my financial tracking to the nearest N dollars; but hundreds of billions is a whole new art form. A form foreign and subversive of our law.
Well those are some eye opening numbers.
Test.. Well it is nice to be back. Seems I got myself banned somehow???
Any way 0 is getting exactly what he wants. He figures to be a one term president and then Sheik Obama for life.
From the two stats posted in the comments, I’ve calculated that 20% of American taxpayers own 84.6% of the wealth and pay 86% of taxes. The remaining 80% of taxpayers own 15.4% of the wealth and pay 14% of the taxes.
Adding the surtax to the top 20% of families earning $350,000 or more could increase their tax contribution to 91.4%.
So what’s another 8.6%?
Mongoose,
USA is much more than material measured in dollars. It is built on long standing towers of hegemony, massive buttresses of ancient law and God given inalieable rights. Gargantuan systems like these took ages to build; war by army, economic or policy destroys swaths of them in months.
It is this very fact that allowed Israel to stop in the last Lebonan war. Although Hez wasn’t annihilated and needed to be, the destruction of large instructure, decades in the making, in mere weeks of bombing, cost Hez a great deal.
Well I just read that the unemployment figures don’t take into account the number of people who have given up looking for work through the State employment offices.
It looks like we are on fire and the flames are heading for the fuel tank.
Took a stroll over to the sporting goods section of a local WalMart 7/13/2009. Looked over the ammo case. Limit of six items per customer not a box of center fire pistol ammo or military rifle round to be found. Asked the girl working the counter when would be a good time to come in for pistol ammo. She said all you can do is call early in the morning and try to beat the crowd.
By the way, my Mom had to make visit to the dentist yesterday and to the dental surgeon today. She said that a nurse there told her that the doctor’s rates are going up because there has been an absolute explosion of medical litigation over the past few months, lawsuits being filed for the least little thing.
I wonder if this is the result of “typical” rent-seeking behavior from lawyers and their clients as their normal sources of income dry up or a deliberate effort to help out their Big Lawyer Pal by driving medical costs up to usher in Obamacare?
When reality slaps the statists, the fascism takes the gloves off. Senator Kyl in Arizona dared to question the stimulus waste. Now four cabinet level apparatchiks are slandering him here. These folks are stupid, crazy and evil. Bad combination.
There’s one white woman in the USA that just loves her old white guy. Been so for 29 years now.
Phenomenal rise of India’s savings
In India, amid all the news of the dogged rise of the nation’s foreign currency reserves, the obduracy of inflation, and the waxing and waning of the Sensex (not to mention Shilpa Shetty’s moods), what has gone unnoticed is the phenomenal rise of the savings and investment rates.
These now stand at 32% and 34%, respectively.
“Don’t stretch your feet beyond your sheet.”
veracious, well, geez, thanks for the history lesson, but i am quite well aware of the history of our civilization, thank you very much. I was talking about the economy per se, obviously.
And just as obviously, should we take the steps I mentioned we would be in a good position to take on the broader issues that bedevil our culture, spirits, institutions, etc. If Obama can destroy all of this in a couple of years, well there was not much there to begin with.
I rather suspect that should the populace finally see what the game is with the Left the cultural, spiritual issues and political issues would clear themselves up in due course.
The strength of the Republic is mostly a matter politics, information and economics at this point. Once these are freed from the current round of usurpers, things will work themselves out. This is the true challenge of these times: To face the internal enemy of Marxism. We yet may be up to it. Perhaps it was inevitable that we should find ourselves in this struggle.
These issues must be settled sooner or later. Better now than latter is my guess. There is much more to this country than the Elites reckon.
I would also suggest that in an objective sense, American institutions have little to do with “towers of hegemony” (whatever that might be), and the “buttress of ancient law”, though perhaps there some truth to the latter case is some formative analytical sense. Of course, if by “ancient law” you mean the Judeo-Christian heritage, then I could not agree more.
I think that our institutions foundations are quite pragmatic, informed by a measured understanding of the nature of man and nations, and more due to rational assent and a peculiarly American tradition rather than some sort of embodiment of some notion of “the laws of the eons”. I do not think that the founding principles are difficult to understand objectively.
All we really need do is return to our own traditions and we will be just fine. Getting there certainly requires some passionate leadership and some profound soul searching by us all, but it is not impossible.
#66, good point to bring up the Kyl issue. There really is a reason the founders set up a limited government with a system of separated powers so that corrupt actor like Obama shouldn’t have the ability to do things like threaten a Senator for speaking out about a public issue.
I put up a short post about this earlier today:
http://buanadha.wordpress.com/2009/07/15/a-bit-on-freedom/
All in all, it isn’t shocking that a Chicago politician would look to use corrupt means to enforce control while rewarding their supporter and putting down their enemies.
Two predictions, ya heard ‘em here first.
1) Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will prominently resign, and not like Powell, who resigned at a perfectly appropriate time, right as term two began. She will resign, possibly soon after the 2010 elections, but there will be no escaping, no matter what she says, that she will resign due to irreconcilable policy differences with Obama, and her questioning of his competence.
2) After Obama leves office (in 2013 if there is a merciful God), he will announce that he is a Muslim. Whether he is right now, he may choose not to comment on at that time, and that issue is an open question to many of us today, but it will not be a question not long after he leaves office. It will be his statement of fact.
Ya heard ‘em here first.
The United States
Library of Congress
has selected
TheObamaFile.com
for inclusion in its
historic collection
of Internet materials.
To Whom It May Concern:
The United States Library of Congress has selected your Web site for inclusion in its historic collections of Internet materials related to the Presidential Transition during a Time of Crises.
This site says that Obama’s birth certificate is bogus.
.
CIT- Not too big to fail
Some of the guys I hang with on another financial site seem to think that this might be THE domino that starts it off and ends with a bank holiday.
72. JFSanders031,
More of the same:
Cutting the blood supply to America’s Heartland:
The Trickle-Down Effect An Auto-Parts Maker Fades in the Fallout From Detroit.
(at one time it would have been impossible to imagine Washington so openly paying off the fat cats while driving everyman bankrupt)
doug/53; that’s what they used to call “Enron accounting”, shuffling P&L and Balance Sheet items via that third instrument. Three Card Monte. Enron used subsidiary companies to hold certain liabilities and balanced those books with Enron stock –which worked as long as that stock valuation was high, whichy for a time it was, due to Enron’s P&L showing income from transactions between it and itself. Our gov’t third entity is the transaction between Treasury and Fed, and the dealers are, for the last few months since Goldman and Morgan were encouraged to become Bank Holding Companies rather than Broker/Dealers, not regulated by SEC but by –you guessed it –the Fed. Now you know why Bernanke is being set up for a fall –so that capo Summers gets the job and –voila –
BTW, Gary Gensler, O’s head regulator, helped design the Enron model, and help write the regulations which seemed to legalize the model (of course, it wasn’t as dirty in the beginning, before the left-open channels filled up). The target was then as it is now,, of course the prevention of ‘price discovery’.
Anyhoo, ‘quantitative easing” is the same principle, improved via being legal because it’s the gov’t doing it. The Fed balance ratios don’t change, the transaction just goes on both sides at once –the balance sheet doesn’t load up with liabilities, it simply expands. How can this be? because the Fed is pricing the collateral, and the price rule is, a dollar of liability equals a dollar of asset.
USA can do this awhile, so long as the military is globally dominant and also willing to follow orders from the executive branch.
Toad @64,
Yup, if you don’t file for unemployment benefits, you aren’t counted as unemployed. Crazy huh? The datum doesn’t really measure “unemployment, does it?
There’re lies, damned Lies, and statistics (or so I think the saying goes)!
And guess what? If you’re employed in the underground economy, you can still file for unemployment benefits! Given this perverse set of incentives (and that a fella gets tossed into mandatory income withholdings like FICA, SS and “pooled” health insurance premium installments), ya wonder why a guy’d ever get a recorded, ‘fficial “job” in the first place.
In fact, I wonder just how many of the documented “unemployed” in cities across our nation are actually gainfully employed, just not on the Fed’s books.
A fella could be putting 60 hours a week in at the “office,” hiring, firing and promoting, just any other middle management guy, but, ‘cuz he’s paid under the table, he can still collect a tax-payer provided stipend. He’s just got to sidle up to the welfare office and sign up!
Whiskey @22:
Your new theme, “The terrifying power of the searchlight on all rodents Democratic”, can only gain traction if you are willing to drop the gender and race theme.
You might even be able to influence some of your gender and race adversaries, see Alexis @40.
Madame Sotomayor has a long way to go to demonstrate judicial temperament and wit.
Hearing her testimony was truly sickening. She would first repeat her original statement and claim that it didn’t really mean what the words said; she meant something different from that, but hadn’t expressed it accurately. Or she would say the OPPOSITE of her original “wise Latina” statement, and claim that the new statement was what she actually meant. Or she would claim that she only meant the statement as inspiration and encouragement to young people to aim high.
How the f*** does someone who is claiming to be ready to tackle the monumental intellectual challenges of this age expect us to take her seriously when she acknowledges that she has repeatedly been unable to articulate precisely what she meant, so she has to repeatedly correct herself and deny the obvious meaning of what she actually said???
This is insane!
veracious @ 55:
Hmm, I do not recognize your handle but this is precisely what I have been touting for a couple of weeks now, at least since SP resigned. My hope then was that she would break the mold and go “renegade” as it were. It looks like that is what she will do. McCain did her no service, just the opposite. He may be a ‘hero’ but he lost all my respect when he did and said nothing to defend SP. Not. One. Thing. The old git is useless.
We must dethrone the elite that has designs on ruling us. The professional political classes have sold this country to the enemy for less than 30 pieces of silver. It is long past time that US citizens regain control of the country. As I say:
As to your question of “Is anybody out there?”, the answer is “Yes!”
And we are armed and dangerous. Where did you think all of that ammo has gone?
Slightly O/T, I found this web based magazine that reads pretty well:
The New Ledger
Check out this article, it is good:
Sarah Palin and the Scum of the Earth
And most likely most of the kind commenters read this already.
steveaz @ 75:
Yup. Did you also know that 44% of all statistics are made up on the spot?
The 0bamanation is a Fascist. He already controls some large percentage of the means of production in this country. Fascists by nature are totalitarians. What the manufactured crisis is going to be (Cloward-Piven) that will cause martial law to be declared and the Constitution to be suspended in this country (it’s for the children, you know) has yet to be revealed. Civil unrest? (HR 645) Internal sedition? (HR 1966) Who knows. But I do believe it will be an early Christmas present to the country and this year. I hope I am wrong.
Fiddler,
You expect her to be an Originalist wrt her own record?
A bit too audacious, my man.
78. Robohobo,
Imagine the crowd size for Tea Parties featuring Palin as guest speaker!
Repeat endlessly in new venues.
Patterns do repeat and, recalling that the dot com financial crash came at the very end of Clinton2 with 9/11/01 eight months into the new administration, well, we best be prepared.
The disgusting attacks on Sarah Palin and her family, done so casually by the leaders of American alleged culture – the Leftist bastards of Hollywood and the Democratic Leadership – merely confirm the viciousness this country faces from those people.
For decades these people have made it a central claim of their dogma that they detest the exploitation of children, or any action that exposes children to sexual taunts or abuse involving sex. But all that is ignored if there’s political capital to be gleaned from sexual taunts against Palin’s children.
For decades they have claimed to be profoundly opposed to discrimination on the basis of sex. Recall how the Left including the Democrats smeared, insulted, and tried to destroy any woman who came forward with stories and evidence of the sexual misconduct of William Jefferson Clinton.
For decades they have claimed to be deeply opposed to discrimination on the basis of age. Remember the vicious depictions of Reagan as a doddering incontinent Alzheimer’s sufferer WHILE IN OFFICE! (But God Help you if you say anything about the superannuated ex-KKK Democrat of the White Mane!)
For decades (well, since the Southern Democrats shed their KKK robes) they have beaten their breasts claiming to be utterly opposed to any discrimination based on race. Remember the Dems calling Michael Steel an Oreo and tossing their Nabiscos on the stage where he spoke? Remember the political cartoons depicting Condoleeza Rice as a “Picaninny” in the crudest style of the Jim Crow era racists? Remember how NOT A SINGLE LEADING DEMOCRAT denounced those????? Remember the astounding lengths the Left went to attempting to prevent the elevation of Justice Thomas to the Supreme Court of the U.S.????
Remember, please, how the Left has maintained the moral leper Ted Kennedy as the MODEL of what a leader should be. They have worshipped this puke for four decades after he drunkenly drove Mary Jo Kopechne into the Chappaquiddick Creek, left her to drown, then had his rich father grease the Massachusetts authorities to let the matter drop.
These, friends finished it for me. I have to admit: there was a time in my life I called myself a Democrat.
If I had a tattoo, at least I could slice or bleach, or burn it off my flesh.
California Approaches a Deal on Budget Cuts
Looks like California is finally starting to nibble on the bullet.
Too bad the Feds don’t have to do that.
How can individual taxes be down a ton, but employment taxes flat? Guess “individual” includes a ton of self-employed, and those must be down like 80%. Also capital gains being replaced by capital losses – stock market loss deducations are going to be heroic this year!
btw, I agree with Eggplan #24, it’s obvious to me the Fed has been manipulating not just the debt markets but the equity markets, for some years now. Just wait until this secret comes out, as I suppose it must, eventually, speaking of gravity.
Andrew X/70
0gabe is a gonnabe and I have a feeling he’s gonna be gone sooner than the full term.
My union local emailed members advising attendance to a Single Payer Health Care meeting on July 14th. In part, it said “Make Single-Payer Health Care Happen!” HR 676. One of the sentences was: “Please join our historic effort to make sure everyone is guaranteed health care as a right under the law.”
The email Reply-To addresses were to Rapid Response “Working Families e-Response Network.” at unionvoice.org.
No word on attendance numbers at the meeting.
P. Boston:
Political power follows the money. In my opinion Obama is more a plutocrat than a Marxist. The end game for all his economic trickery is the establishment of a Guardian Class that will use the coercive power of government to structure a society based on some Progressive, Utopian view of social justice and guardianship of the environment.
This is pretty much a definition of what Socialism is in the practical and historical senses of the word, academic snake-oil to the contrary notwithstanding. Again, “Progressivism” in the modern world is just code for Marxism, socialism be a goal along the path to full communism.
“Plutocrats”, BTW, is a key Marxist concept used its critique of capitalism. American leftists wish to tar all of 19th century America with this smear, generally accompanied by the “robber baron ” slander. But it is profoundly not true.
I do not think that you are a Marxist, but your prose and thought is full of Marxist terms and concepts. Are you aware of that?
Correction: When referring to Nixon’s nominees to the Supreme Court I named them as Clement and Haynesworth. My error. It was G. Harold Carswell and Clement Haynesworth.
FWIW, just a nit to pick really. The quote Wretchard attributes to Tigerhawk in his post was actually written by co-blogger Escort 81.
Although I acknowledge that Whiskey tends to takes some concepts to the extreme, there is no denying that identity politics have come to dominate American politics in the last 30 years. And as identity politics have surged, policy driven statecraft has naturally suffered.
During the last election, identity politics and single issue voting were by far the predominant factor in the ‘water cooler’ conversations I overheard. So much so, that most of the folks I chatted with were not even able to intelligently discuss policy issues let alone pick a candidate based their stance.
Obama’s platform in the last election was so blatantly false that no one who cared to examine it would have believed it. Yet he was easily elected. Inner city political machines (primarily democrats) routinely plunder their constituents and destroy their cities. Yet they are re-elected decade after decade.
Why does this happen? Identity politics pure and simple. California and Oregon are good examples. In most areas of those two states, the democrat will win any election. Period. The democrat could be a scoundral and a cheat and in some cases a criminal, but they will win because ‘republicans are evil’. I live near Portland Oregon, and that is a continual mantra out here come election time. The fact that in many locales elections have been decided by identity politics for years is one of the reasons we are in this mess.
If this practice contiues, ongoing demographic trends virtually guarantee a single party government in the USA (democrat) jsut as they have guaranteed democrat domination of inner city politics since the 60′s. Just imagine the whole country looking and living like the poor souls trapped in the slums of every major American city.
#89 ws1835:
yeah, I know, that crazy Whiskey. He does make us cringe and roll our eyes sometimes, doesn’t he? It won’t be long before he starts insisting that men have been hardest hit by this recession, or that men are a minority on campuses, and boys are ignored in schools, or that dozens of mem are sitting in jail because they’re ex-wives have falsely accused them of molesting the kids. Then maybe he’ll go into a tirade about how the women’s vote and Prohibition was a two’fer — you voted for one and you got the other, or maybe he’ll rant about Title IX crippling many men’s sports programs at many universities. You know, stuff like that. And just to change the pace, maybe he’ll remind us about the dynamics behind the Duke LaCrosse “rape” case, or the Jenna Six debacle. But you are right, Whiskey may take it a bit far for most of our tastes, but he’s uncomfortably close to reality in his observations.
“”"”"”An Army, digging into the personal lives of Dem politicians, their families, and their backers and their families. A Dem Senator has a daughter in drug rehab? Put up pictures all over the internet, and as many icky details as possible. FEAR. “”"”"
That may have utility, but I believe the biggest Achilles heel for Democrats is criminally-prosecutable corruption. These days, nothing bothers the largest number of people than politicians stealing from us in every observable sense of the word. When Democrats are indicted in large numbers for raking off billions from the trillions they have shaken loose, it could be devastating. But here’s the thing: both your suggestions and mine assume an aggressive, savvy, relentless opposition that finds ways to get around efforts to suppress these crimes and scandals. Unfortunately, Republicans, conservatives and libertarians these days have little stomach or competence for any of this — they figuratevely can’t find their collective dick with both their collective hands and a collective flashlight.
Until they (we) are willing to observe the Sean Connery/Untouchables version of the “Chicago Rules” to counter this administration’s Chicago Rules, we’re ineffectual.
Roderick (and Whiskey if he’s reading),
I think Whiskey’s thesis has a deeper utility that I can appreciate. As propaganda goes, it offers a cutting critique of any of the post-modern, dualistic antagonisms that the Progressives rely on to spook their identity groups this way or that.
The thesis is commendable, too, for a sincerity borne of rote consistency. I never get the impression that the repeated enunciations of his thesis I read are deliberately propagandistic, only that he feels they are salient, current and sufficiently rousing in a thread’s context to bear rementioning.
That said, if his audience is sincere, thinking women, he’s probably gonna miss them with his current tack. And, if he’s trying, instead, to reach those “metrosexual men,” to rekindle their “warrior spirits” and drive them to reconsider their feminization, then a little more content reminding them about what’s in it for them might help as well. Likewise his “hispanic,” “black,” and other ethnic-group agents: individuals who, by no act of their own, find themselves sorted into facile “groups” might be more open to being convinced by Whiskey’s thesis if their intransigent groupiness were not so boldly emphasized, and if, instead, their abilities to choose and think fluidly as individuals got more mention.
Just sayin’s all.
Personally, so long as I consider Whiskey’s thesis a clever propaganda exercise designed to get Progressive’s heads to explode, then I enjoy Whiskey’s stuff: served with a hoppy beer and a mustard dressing, it’s great. But, as an encomium to America’s ethnic groups to shed their group identities and join America “the melting pot,” it’s unfortunately lacking, and perhaps even harmful, too.
-Steve
Eggplant @ 24
Not sure if your name implies anything, but this song certainly could.
The Eggplant That Ate Chicago”
Hey, buddy,
I appreciated your investment advice the other day.
A slight move away from energy and into consumer/discretionaries and chemicals is in the works this week. Charles’ Fisher-link swayed my thinking, too.
I still think a naval blockade, a rogue-state take-down, or a manned defense of Georgia is in the cards, so it’s figurin’ into my plans.
Thanks, guys.
How long can this last was the question.
This isn’t about collectivism… this isn’t about John Galt– a fictional character. This is about money,,, and taking yours and mine and everone elses.
You are forgetting MONEY IS NOT CAPITAL. Money is an instrument that represents capital. The only “real capital comes from the ground..
There is about $800b in cash assets in the fed. The multinational companies funding both dems and reps have nearly 4million foreign workers in the US collecting $280m in salaries and compensations and sending nearly $100b home annually, That is 12.5% of our money leaving the country, never to return. Corporations are shifting investments offshore, further driving the value of the dollar into the dirt. And, like all good capitalists firing domestic workers and replacing them with offshore.
Here is Metlife’s personnel plan:
In 2007 they have 75/25 in IT work force in Outsource(India, china, etc)/US
In 2009 they have 85/15 in IT work force in Outsource(India, china, etc)/US
For 2011 their target is 90/10 in work force in Outsource(India, china, etc)/US
This is your money leaving the country.
Before you go off holding your impotent manhood in despair and howling about “going Gault”, realize you are being played, you’ve been punked by some fictional character. Anyone couldn’t ask for a better savior –diversion…
The truth, the ugly truth is there is not enough capital in the world today for everyone to live a comfortable life with the current cost of goods driven up by factoring and other debt. India and China opened the doors and needed 50% of the worlds capital and got it. Where did all that “capital” come from? Your pockets and the pockets of every person on earth that had anything to take. Who gave it to them ? Every major company and financial institution in the world, they didn’t want to be left out.. And all the countries keep printing paper money…
Every time you swipe that visa debit card, that is another 2% of that transaction leaving our economy, eroding the value of your currency… Keep having your jobs being shipped offshore in the name of “capitalism”. Keep supporting the institutions screwing you and in turn, everyone else too. Yeahh, “going John Gault” alright, sure…. you need to “put down the pipe” and get the lobbyist out of government.
For those interested by Whiskey’s thesis, here is video of a tussle between Senator Barbara “Maam” Boxer and an earnest business-sector representative from California that captures my feelings on his thesis.
Except when it is used tactically and obviously to mimic the Democrats’ neo-racialist spew, the politicization of racial categories, “White,” “Black,” “Colored,” etc., in oratory only leads to resentment, civic friction and ultimately, hopefully, folks like Boxer’s being turned out of office.
I have just invited a black female friend whom I have never discussed politics with to accompany me to a Tea Party. I’m assuming she voted for Obama, but told her the Tea Party would be anti-tax so she won’t think I’m attacking That Person. Be interesting to see what her response is.
One Eye,
I always thought currency represented labor.
Capitalism, and eventually currency valuations rely on a nation possessing both a surfeit of resources and a high grade of human capital (that means humans that possess skills, innovation and enthusiasm for achievement).
America still has an abundance of both.
So, don’t confuse the roiling markets of middle-men, snake-oil salesmen, and financial hi-rollers with “Capitalism” per se. We’re all looking at the same confusion of flotsam and jetsam fter this latest bubble’s burst.
What a mess!
And, although it is easy to mistake the melee of water-logged penny-loafers, up-ended patio-lounges and broken champagne flutes for evidence of Capitalism’s demise, don’t be fooled.
The Eggplant That Ate Chicago. Thanks for mentioning this. My kids have refused to believe such a song existed though I do sing it during random moments when we are being silly. Thanks again.
steveaz, could you please provide a link to buddy’s advice? Ive been away for a bit…
thanks
Aristide said:
“Not sure if your name implies anything, but this song certainly could.”
Cool song. I wasn’t previously aware of it.
wacka-do, wacka-do, wacka-do…
You’d better watch out for the eggplant that ate Chicago, If he’s still hungry, the whole country’s doomed….
@steveaz
Don’t misinterpret my cynicism, with pessimistic media coverage of the embroiled financial markets. Those chickens have come home to roost, only the fools that misread tail ending were left holding the bag. We have just witnessed a replay of Micheal Milkin’s penny stock once more buttressed across a different risk mitigation instrument. Capitalism is far from dead, we are just realizing how deep the rabbit hole goes. Real estate, once a mainstay of debt redemption, is now realized as the great false hope.
The middlemen and finacial high roller are the pinnacle of capitalism. The raw short the most prominent transaction. You “borrow” securities, at one price, and sell them on the way down. No overhead, no interest, raw profit.
Are you saying socialize the financial markets and a leave manufacturing and services alone ?
Just had a buddy of mine come back from the U.S. He told me that he was able to get some really good deals on used guns, but that ammunition was almost impossible to come by. He wasn’t looking for the military calibers, either. He asked me what was going to happen when hunting season came around this year. I truthfully told him I have no idea.
I’m just glad I’m sitting on the ammo I am, and I try to get more whenever I can. I have a very bad feeling that it may become a real necessity in the not too distant future.
Funny how there was no ammo supply problem in 2007…
#93 Roderick Reilly
That may have utility, but I believe the biggest Achilles heel for Democrats is criminally-prosecutable corruption.
In an ideal civics textbook world, that would be right. However for well over a generation we have been operating on a dual set of laws. There has been an implicit separate set of laws and standards for our aristocracy of both political parties that involved minimal enforcement and even more minimal penalties; and the other set of laws and sanctions for the rest of us. What we are seeing now is the implicit becoming explicit.
Can you realistically conceive of any American prosecutor in any jurisdiction taking the political, financial, and yes physical risk to himself and his family by prosecuting a supporter of the regime [a formulation I use ever since the concept of "regime risk" suddenly became a de facto part of our economy post 01-20-2009] for profiting illegally or doing the bidding of the regime regardless of statute? Can you conceive of a judge taking the same risks by allowing the case to be heard? These people will not come back under the equal rule of law, until a number of them discover what the word “tumbrel” means.
The ability to prosecute regime corruption will be a sign that we have begun to reclaim the country and Constitution, not the initial means to that end. For now, they are beyond any official sanctions or penalties.
The collection of gormless and goolie-less wonders in charge of the Republican party have been paralysed by fear of losing their status as part of the aristocracy, and probably long term by their fear of a late night knock on the door. Depending on a corrupt system to suddenly become marginally non-corrupt in the absence of coercion to do so does not strike me as a workable tactical plan.
Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit has a concept called an “Army of Davids” involving using the power of the internet to work around the institutions of society and the economy. Just that type of action is needed. If we can do as Whiskey suggests at #22, we can have a non-violent impact IF we have fair elections in 2010 and 2012. Of course, if those elections are either cancelled or blatantly rigged; we are in another paradigm completely, where the legal system will not be driving any macro-events.
Subotai Bahadur
one eye left @ 97:
You make the assumption that wealth is a zero sum. It is not. When you make your assumption it naturally leads to the class warfare that is hidden in your words.
Mac @ 105:
There was also not a clear picture of who the POTUS would be either. By the time it was clear guns and ammo FLEW off the shelves. I was recently able to find .223REM at the local gun show @ .28 per round, which is good. But, all handgun calibers except .40S&W are non-existent. Most rifle calibers are in the same condition – there ain’t any to be had. I did find 8mm Mauser via CheaperThanDirt.
Subotai @ 106:
Look to see how much is going to what was ACORN. (COI?) That will be the determinate factor as to whether the next elections are ‘fair’.
Personally I think that something else will be in place before that time. “Wag The Dog” anyone?