Ron Paul was a guest on the Steve Gill show yesterday. He discussed his position on earmarks again, the financial crisis, the end of the currency, socialized medicine, and his belief that we are on the wrong path. There is not much new, but when Ron Paul speaks we liberty lovers listen.
I especially liked the portion where he discusses the ill advised efforts to pass bills quickly in the name of crisis prevention like we did after 9-11 and are doing now to “fix” the economy.
Well, Obama gave an answer anyway. His response was a bit long-winded and another attempt at political misdirection that he is becoming quite famous for these days. The Washington Times reports:
“It was hard for me to believe that you were entirely serious about that socialist question,” he told reporters, who had interviewed the president aboard Air Force One on Friday.
Opening the unusual presidential call to reporters by saying that there was “just one thing I was thinking about as I was getting on the copter,” he said it wasn’t he who started the federal government’s intervention into the nation’s financial system.
“I did think it might be useful to point out that it wasn’t under me that we started buying a bunch of shares of banks. It wasn’t on my watch. And it wasn’t on my watch that we passed a massive new entitlement -– the prescription drug plan — without a source of funding. And so I think it’s important just to note when you start hearing folks throw these words around that we’ve actually been operating in a way that has been entirely consistent with free-market principles and that some of the same folks who are throwing the word ‘socialist’ around can’t say the same.”
Wow. He contradicts himself in a paragraph. Obama has learned “free market” principles from George W. Bush because he’s doing the same thing. Yet he blames Bush for not following “free market” principles. Here he comes off like a child arguing that two wrongs make a right, or should I say two Leftist policies make a right?
It continues:
The New York Times asked, “So whose watch are we talking about here?” but Obama wouldn’t name names.
“Well, I just think it’s clear by the time we got here, there already had been an enormous infusion of taxpayer money into the financial system. And the thing I constantly try to emphasize to people if that coming in, the market was doing fine, nobody would be happier than me to stay out of it. I have more than enough to do without having to worry the financial system. The fact that we’ve had to take these extraordinary measures and intervene is not an indication of my ideological preference, but an indication of the degree to which lax regulation and extravagant risk taking has precipitated a crisis.”
He concluded the brief call by saying, “I think that covers it.”
In essence Obama has no free market principles if he believes “we’ve had to take these extraordinary measures and intervene.” The second you start throwing around the words “intervene” and “free market” on the same side of an argument you have already lost.
The real answer is that Obama may not be a Socialist in the purest sense, but he is certainly driving on the left side of the road. Truthfully his belief in wealth redistribution is Socialist in nature and his belief in regulatory control over the financial markets is Fascist in nature. In the end this name calling from the Right and blaming from the Left (Obama) do not matter.
What matters is getting out of this mess. Simultaneously blaming the Bush policies while expanding the reach and cost of those policies is not the way out. But apparently, Obama thinks it is. Aren’t we lucky he’s our President now? So much for change.
Enough bailouts? One bailout is one bailout too many. As many have pointed out it is a fallacy to blame capitalism or the free market for our economic woes because we haven’t had a free market system for about 100 years. Just because the modern day conventional wisdom (or lack thereof) is that deregulation caused our problems does not make it true.
Too many of us are Obama-blind. We smile and drool at our new king as he reaches his hand into our pockets and steals whatever he wants for whatever purpose he wants. Obama is using the economic crisis as an opportunity to mold America into a clone of Venezuela. I certainly hope in 20 years we aren’t going to be hailing Hugo Chavez as our new Founding Father.
If you’d like to do something to oppose the bailouts and path toward nationalization then Right.Org is a great place to start.
They have a great web site where you can sign a petition in opposition to the bailouts, participate in a video competition to win your own bailout, keep up on the latest bailout related news, and grab a bailout calculator flash widget to place on your own site like the one below.
Head on over there and make everyone else understand that capitalism is not dead yet, and the free market is not the cause of our economic troubles, but the solution. Go to Right.Org now.
Finishing up the first week of our new series, we find that a total of 218 new bills were introduced in Congress in only five days, the vast majority of which are quite clearly unconstitutional.
47 new bills we introduced on Friday. Below are some of the more asinine ones. (My commentary will appear in red).
HR221 – Recognizing and honoring Johnny Grant for his work as the Honorary Mayor of Hollywood, California for more than a quarter of a century. [Huh? It takes a vote of 535 elected officials to "honor" someone? How it this the business of government?]
HR220 – Urging Turkey to respect the rights and religious freedoms of the Ecumenical Patriarchate. [More unnecessary foreign meddling].
HR1381 – To amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to permanently extend existing elective tax treatment for Alaska Native Settlement Trusts. [It's clearly unconstitutional for a law to benefit a group less than all Americans].
HR1380 – To establish a grant program for automated external defibrillators in elementary and secondary schools. [Don't get me started on government schooling].
HR1379 – To prohibit the commercial harvesting of Atlantic striped bass in the coastal waters and the exclusive economic zone.
HR1378 – To direct the Secretary of Health and Human Services, in consultation with the Secretary of Education, to develop guidelines to be used on a voluntary basis to develop plans to manage the risk of food allergy and anaphylaxis in schools and early childhood education programs, to establish school-based food allergy management grants, and for other purposes.
HR1377 – To amend title 38, United States Code, to expand veteran eligibility for reimbursement by the Secretary of Veterans Affairs for emergency treatment furnished in a non-Department facility, and for other purposes. [Isee a lot of bills come through with regards veteran benefits. Somehow I have a hard time making sense of the idiocy of spending so much money to go out and blow stuff up, and then having to pay for the endless benefits of soldiers for the rest of their lives. CLARIFICATION: Since one reader took exception to my statement, let me clarify. For those who have served our country, I believe the U.S. has a responsibility to care for their physical and mental well-being. However, the umbrella of "veteran's benefits" has become another huge sinkhole of taxpayer money and resources due to the hugely overreaching U.S. military policy. If we dismantle the U.S. military-industrial complex, we'll be able to ramp down on all these benefits because we'll be deploying a lot fewer troops, and therefore much less in the way of benefits will be required in the long run].
S-543 – A bill to require a pilot program on training, certification, and support for family caregivers of seriously disabled veterans and members of the Armed Forces to provide caregiver services to such veterans and members, and for other purposes.
HR1376 – To authorize the Secretary of the Interior to establish the Waco Mammoth National Monument in the State of Texas. [Huh?]
HR1373 – To direct the Secretary of the Interior to conduct a resource study along the “Ox-Bow Route” of the Butterfield Overland Trail in the States of Missouri, Tennessee, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California, and for other purposes. [So it's fair for people in Maine to share in paying for this?]
SR68 – A resolution recognizing the contributions of the Pennsylvania National Guard in service to the Nation.
Congress is busy wasting your money. Yesterday, a whopping 79 new bills were introduced. Again we have more pleas to allow special exceptions in immigratory status for aliens living in the United States. Then there are a large number of bills which are simply tinkering with unconstitutional laws already on the books. And of course, there are the bills designed to protect the children. (Oh, how could we ever deny these?!?) Below are some of the worst examples. (Most are quite obviously unconstitutional, but for those I couldn’t resist commenting on, my comments will be in red).
HR217 – Recognizing the week of March 15 through March 21, 2009, as “National Safe Place Week” (to protect the children).
HR215 – Congratulating the Minority Business Development Agency on its 40th anniversary and commending its achievements in fostering the establishment and growth of minority businesses in the United States. (Please explain to me why we need 535 people in Congress to vote to send congratulations?)
H214 – Recognizing the efforts of the countless volunteers who helped the Commonwealth of Kentucky recover from the ice storm of January 2009. (I’m sure this was just an oversight on the part of the founding fathers when they penned the Constitution…of course how could they have possibly known about the big storm of ’09…?)
HR213 – Urging the establishment and observation of a legal public holiday in honor of Cesar E. Chavez. (Another day off work?)
HR211 – Supporting the goals and ideals of National Women’s History Month
HR1371 – To require the establishment of regional consumer price indices to compute cost-of-living increases under the programs for Social Security and Medicare and other medical benefits under titles II and XVIII of the Social Security Act.
HR1370 – To improve the protections afforded under Federal law to consumers from contaminated seafood by directing the Secretary of Commerce to establish a program, in coordination with other appropriate Federal agencies, to strengthen activities for ensuring that seafood sold or offered for sale to the public in or affecting interstate commerce is fit for human consumption. (Since the mountain of FDA regulation is working so well already…)
HR1366 – To protect innocent parties from certain fees imposed by depository institutions for dishonored checks, and for other purposes.
HR1364 – To amend the Social Security Act and the Public Health Service Act to provide for sex education, substance abuse treatment and prevention, and for other purposes.
HR1363 – Establishes the GothamCorps program. Directs the Corporation for National and Community Service to provide, through such program, for the award of grants to certain units of local government to carry out volunteer projects. Requires local government units to provide each participant in a volunteer project with a scholarship equal to the cost of one year’s tuition at a local public college. Authorizes grant funding from amounts made available in the National Service Trust.
HR1362 – To amend the Public Health Service Act to provide for the establishment of permanent national surveillance systems for multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s disease, and other neurological diseases and disorders.
It seems that America is always at war with some country or some thing. We have the War on Drugs, the War on Poverty, and the War on Terror. The media made a point to mention that the Obama administration has chosen to cease using the term “War on Terror”. That’s certainly a good move, but semantics matter little when the soft-spoken administration continues to act hard, like drone bombing Pakistan and increasing troop levels in Afghanistan. There is another unspoken war going on right now from the Obama administration. Obama and his Keynesian minions have declared a War on Capitalism.
For our sake I hope it is a complete failure like the government’s other perpetual wars. Though I fear that with the popularity of Obama and his “wolf in sheep’s clothing” words it may end in success. If that happens, America will no longer be America as we once knew it. Some may argue that America is already gone, capitalism is dead, and those of us who fancy liberty should self-immolate. Thank god the nature of liberty coexists with the burning desire to keep it intact. Rather than self-immolate we should immolate, through the ballot box, all of those in DC who are enemies to liberty. As Chuck Norris has suggested, Ron Paul could be the arbiter of which of his colleagues deserve to be choked out of office.
The stated objective of the bank bailout programs is to alleviate the banks’ burden of bad debts and non-performing loans. In actuality what is happening is that these massive amounts of money are being used by a handful of institutions to consolidate their position in global banking.
Chossudovsky does a fantastic job of explaining all of the facts, starting at the beginning. He goes into specifics regarding not only the bailouts, but also the entire Fiscal Year 2010 Budget and how they go far beyond merely accelerating the current deficits and the overall national debt, and how the costs of the bailouts will force the current Administration to completely abandon the infrastructure of the United States:
…all the revenue accruing from individual federal income taxes ($1.061 trillion), (FY 2010) namely all the money households across America pay in the form of federal taxes, will not suffice to finance the handouts to the banks, which officially are of the order of 1.45 trillion…
Public spending will be slashed with a view to curtailing a spiralling budget deficit. Health and education programs will not only remain heavily underfunded, they will be slashed, revamped and privatized. The likely outcome is the outright privatization of public services and the sale of State assets including public infrastructure, urban services, highways, national parks, etc. Fiscal collapse leads to the privatization of the State…
The fiscal crisis is further exacerbated by the compression of tax revenues resulting from decline of the real economy. Unemployed workers do not pay taxes nor do bankrupt firms. The process is cumulative. The solution to the fiscal crisis becomes the cause of further collapse… The proposed solution becomes the cause of the crisis.
…Who will be buying State assets at rock bottom prices? The financial elites, which are also the recipients of the bank bailout.
Ron Paul appeared 3 times yesterday on Television news channels.
First he appeared on Bloomberg TV to discuss Geithner’s testimony and to rail against the bailouts, as usual:
Speaking of Congress Paul says, “I don’t know if they brainwash themselves or not!”, “It’s a fairy tale!”.
Next, Paul appeared on Glenn Beck’s FOX News show. They discussed the potential for “FEMA Camps”, Obama reducing tax deductions on charitable donations, and the bailouts. Paul brings it all back to the government’s thirst for power and reduction of individual liberty.
And finally, truly the best was last as Ron Paul appears on MSNBC and takes on the media for focusing on semantics instead of the real issues and Rush Limbaugh for not being a better conservative. Paul even indirectly challenges Limbaugh to a debate. It is likely that Limbaugh will have something to say about this on his radio show tomorrow. Then again doing so may give Ron Paul more media than Rush wants him to have, so we’ll see.
Ron Paul delivered an excellent speech at CPAC this afternoon. He received a lot of applause and cheering for many of his lines. There were some obvious skeptics and shaking of heads in the audience as well, but overall he was on his game and hit all of his talking points and then some.
He talked about his bill calling for more Federal Reserve transparency. He claims it is getting bipartisan support in the Congress. That would be a great first step. He also spoke about abortion, foreign policy, and individual vs. groups with respect to liberty.
There were a few lines that I loved. It reminded me of the many rallies during his campaign in 2007 and and early 2008.
Quote of the Day: “The whole reason we have elected officials is so we don’t have to think all the time.” — Homer Simpson
Yesterday we called falling home prices “good news” because they’re helping to clear the housing glut. Some may quarrel with this — especially if they’ve watched their home value plummet. Our praise for falling real estate prices deserves more comment . . .
Two responsible DC Downsizers are affected differently by the housing market.
* One member of our Downsize DC Team has an “upside down mortgage.” He continues to pay it. He wants an end to the crisis. He views falling home prices as the precondition for rising value — sooner, rather than later. He also recognizes that Federal Reserve monetary policy is to blame for his situation.
* Another member of our Downsize DC Team has been saving to buy a home for a long time. He recognized that there was a housing bubble, and looked forward to the day when home prices would fall to realistic levels. He “hopes” to buy a home soon.
Both of these responsible men view real, free market prices as essential to their personal financial aspirations.
* The upside down mortgage holder sees the elimination of the current housing surplus as the way to higher values. Clear the excess and marginal home sales will start to occur at slightly higher prices. This is the only way the upside down mortgage can ever become right side up.
* The hopeful homeowner wants to pay the true value, not the bubble price created by the Federal Reserve and various government housing policies. The proposed government housing bailout will deny this DC Downsizer the ability to buy a home at a real market price.
Do you really think politicians can make this better?
* Politicians lack power to help the upside down mortgage holder. The federal government couldn’t possibly borrow enough money to cover all the losses. Even the token attempts proposed by President Obama to stop foreclosures robs money from other people and other parts of the economy. This DC Downsizer’s only hope is that the housing glut will be allowed to clear, sooner rather than later.
* The hopeful home buyer is being robbed of the best opportunity to fulfill his dream by the politicians’ desire to rescue people who bought more housing than they could safely afford. This person’s prudence is being punished in order to reward the imprudence of others.
We reassert our claim: falling home prices are good news. Those who embrace liberty and reality understand . . .
Liberty Maven
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