Category Archives: Socialism

Evolution, revolution, devolution

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How many of you have been watching the foreign news? Are you aware that the United Kingdom may soon be no more? Have you read the news about the upcoming Scottish Secession vote?

No? Then you probably get your news from broadcast media and the MSM.

The UK is about to fragment. Socialist around the world are applauding. British companies are anticipating the secession—by moving their assets and headquarters south. It is a disaster in the making and if the session is successful, Scotland will soon become bankrupt.

You see, the leaders of the SNP, the Scottish National Party, are socialists. They’re unhappy the UK government won’t dish out more bennies to Scotland. The truth of the matter is that the UK is about broke, too.

The secessionists are selling Scotland a pipe-dream. With independence, they declare, all will be well and Scotland will become Heaven-on-Earth. In reality, Scotland doesn’t have the income to support its existing welfare state. The UK has been propping them up and with secession, the slightly deeper pockets from the UK will be missing.

I’m very interested in the vote. My grandfather was born in Scotland. My father was born on the Scottish southern border. I admire the Scottish culture—except for the urban socialist infestation.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d5/The_Battle_of_Culloden.jpg/1280px-The_Battle_of_Culloden.jpg

An incident in the rebellion of 1746, by David Morier

The United Kingdom was created through war. The last major battle was at Culloden in 1746. The Clearances followed and many Scots fled to the New World. Yes, there is a history of animosity between the Scots and the English. At one point in their common history, Scots were forbidden to wear Tartans and kilts.

An independent Scotland will soon be a pauper. Deeply in debt, saddled with a weak economy, it will become a burden on their neighbors. If the vote is for secession, I would expect another vote in the future for reunion.

***

I looked at the Drudge Report this morning and almost lost my breakfast. Who did I see? The Clintons. Two frauds attempting more fraud. Both are infamous for two quotes. Bill: “Put some ice on it.” Hillary: “What difference does it make?”

Bill is history…a bad history for us and for Hillary. But her history isn’t any better. The difference is that Hillary supporters have been better at keeping her history hidden that Bill’s supporters were. Ed Morrissey, writing at Hot Air, has the story.

Clinton insiders screened Benghazi documents before ARB probe, official says

posted at 9:21 am on September 15, 2014 by Ed Morrissey

Just how unfettered was that “unfettered access” promised by the State Department to the Accountability Review Board in the aftermath of the Benghazi attack two years ago? According to one of the four officials punished and then cleared by State for the failures that led to the death of four men, a weekend housecleaning operation kept the ARB from seeing some of the most explosive documentation related to the attack that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens. Deputy Assistant Secretary Raymond Maxwell told Sharyl Attkisson that the operation was supervised by advisers within Hillary Clinton’s inner circle, in this Daily Signal exclusive:

As the House Select Committee on Benghazi prepares for its first hearing this week, a former State Department diplomat is coming forward with a startling allegation: Hillary Clinton confidants were part of an operation to “separate” damaging documents before they were turned over to the Accountability Review Board investigating security lapses surrounding the Sept. 11, 2012, terrorist attacks on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya.

According to former Deputy Assistant Secretary Raymond Maxwell, the after-hours session took place over a weekend in a basement operations-type center at State Department headquarters in Washington, D.C. This is the first time Maxwell has publicly come forward with the story. …

When he arrived, Maxwell says he observed boxes and stacks of documents. He says a State Department office director, whom Maxwell described as close to Clinton’s top advisers, was there. Though the office director technically worked for him, Maxwell says he wasn’t consulted about her weekend assignment.

“She told me, ‘Ray, we are to go through these stacks and pull out anything that might put anybody in the [Near Eastern Affairs] front office or the seventh floor in a bad light,’” says Maxwell. He says “seventh floor” was State Department shorthand for then-Secretary of State Clinton and her principal advisors.

“I asked her, ‘But isn’t that unethical?’ She responded, ‘Ray, those are our orders.’ ”

Not long afterward, two people high up the State Department chain arrived to check on the operation. Attkisson describes them as “close confidants” of Hillary Clinton, probably from Maxwell’s own description, although neither are named in Attkisson’s report. Maxwell says that both of them accompanied him into another office with a fourth person, where they personally vetted more documents:

Maxwell says after those two officials arrived, he, the office director and an intern moved into a small office where they looked through some papers. Maxwell says his stack included pre-attack telegrams and cables between the U.S. embassy in Tripoli and State Department headquarters. After a short time, Maxwell says he decided to leave.

“I didn’t feel good about it,” he said.

Don’t expect that this will disappear as quietly. Maxwell says that members of the select House committee on Benghazi have already deposed him on this weekend filing session, including both chair Trey Gowdy and Rep. Jason Chaffetz. Chaffetz told Attkisson that he is “100% confident the Benghazi Select Committee is going to dive deep on that issue.”

The ARB has insisted all along that they conducted a thorough and independent probe, a claim at which Maxwell scoffs on both counts in Attkisson’s report. This could let them off the hook, though. If State conspired to hide evidence from them, it will give the ARB an opening to withdraw their report — which would be a PR move entirely, since the ARB had no authoritative status otherwise — and give Congress even more validation for pursuing this in select-committee form. If Maxwell testifies to this in open session and the BSC finds one or more corroborating witnesses, it will put this right back front and center. And we may still yet hear from the unnamed advisers, too, as to what their orders were, and who gave them.

Just go away, Hillary. Take Bill with you.

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Continuing on a theme…

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The theme I speak of in today’s post title is the civil war within the GOP between the Washington establishment and the Tea Party, conservatives, and other grassroot organizations throughout the states. Karl Rove, using his Crossroads PAC, started the war several years ago. He attacked conservatives claiming they couldn’t win. He supported Romney against other conservative candidates.

He was successful. Romney lost in 2012, Obama won.

Karl Rove is still here. He continues to stir up division within the party, supporting McConnell, Boehner and other establishment RINOs against conservatives and attacking the primary opponents of establishment candidates across the country.

The establishment isn’t keeping the war secret. No, they’re proud to be known for supporting the democrat agenda saying, “we don’t want to make waves in an election year.” They ignore the political fact that during an election year is the time to make waves, to score points against the dems, else, what difference is there between the dems and the ‘Pubs if the ‘Pubs continues to support the democrat agenda?

The likely result will be a repeat of 2012 when enough conservatives stay home. When there is no difference between the two parties, what difference does it make who wins? The nation will still continue on the path of authoritarianism, and toward a one-party dictatorship like that of the old Soviet Union.

I’m not the only one who has observed the civil war. IBD, in an editorial this week, agrees.

Republicans Shouldn’t Run Away From The Tea Party

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Politics: Republican Party leaders seem willing, anxious even, to walk away from the Tea Party, certain that such bedrock support will brand the GOP as extremist in voters’ eyes. If anything, polls show, the opposite is true.

With 10 months to go before the crucial midterm elections, Republicans understandably will try to avoid screwing up their chances for victory.

Democrats have taken to vilifying any Republican who actually stands for something — such as Texas Sen. Ted Cruz — as a captive of what they’d like to label as the far-right fringe.

This can be seen in the efforts of Sen. Charles Schumer of New York — the Democrats’ top political strategist — to, in the words of The Hill, “poison the Tea Party by driving a wedge between its rich funders and its blue-collar rank and file.”

This kind of hardball has Republicans in a bit of a panic. And in case you’re wondering, it’s a big reason why they supported the pork-filled $1.1 trillion spending bill this month, and why GOP leaders are talking about legalizing millions of illegal immigrants.

But before they sell their souls to political expediency, they might want to look at a few recent polls that suggest the small-government, conservative ideals of the Tea Party are quite popular. To wit:

• A Quinnipiac Poll finds 53% believe the Obama administration has been incompetent at running the federal government. And 56% oppose ObamaCare, the Democrats’ signature accomplishment since 2008.

• In a recent Gallup Poll, almost two-thirds of Americans said the U.S. government has gotten too big and too powerful, and are unhappy with how it works.

• A Fox News Poll found 62% believing income inequality is acceptable “because that’s just how the economy works.” Another 21% agreed inequality was bad, but that the government “shouldn’t get involved.”

Get the picture? Average Americans show a strong preference for smaller, more-accountable government. And which group most closely fits that description in its basic beliefs? Why, the Tea Party, of course.

Republicans would be wise to heed the people’s clear will and not fall for Democrat ploys to make them feel “extreme.” If anything, it’s the Democrats, now a party of the far left, who are the extremists.

Republicans shouldn’t look at them and say, “Me, too.” As a statesman once said, Americans deserve a choice, not an echo.

“Americans deserve a choice, not an echo.” What a closing statement. I wish I could come up with ones of that caliber.

***

Other news today is a reflection on the liberals new attacks against capitalism in favor of “income equality.” Income, whether to individuals or corporations, is dependent on a single statement: Wages and salaries are dependent on the revenue the individual brings to his employer.

Income has no relationship to individual worth. Everyone has worth. Income is driven by the value an employee provides to his or her employer. The more value an individual provides, the more income he should receive. If not, find another job using the skills and training you received from your prior employer. Note: you aren’t likely to gain any marketable skills flippin’ burgers. Choose a job or career, wisely.

McDonald’s Fighting To Be ‘Relevant’ To Customers, CEO Concedes

January 23, 2014 6:46 PM

NEW YORK (AP) — McDonald’s is losing customers, as the world’s biggest hamburger chain struggles to attract diners with its higher-priced sandwiches and new offerings like Mighty Wings.

“We’ve lost some of our customer relevance,” CEO Don Thompson conceded Thursday on a call with analysts.

The Oak Brook, Ill.-based company reported disappointing sales for its fourth quarter, as fewer customers visited its established restaurants. Guest counts at those locations fell nearly 2 percent globally and 1.6 percent in the U.S. in 2013, according to a regulatory filing. And McDonald’s expects some challenges to persist this year.

There’s more to the article, you can read it here. The point I’m making is this: consider McDonald’s position if the minimum wage is raised to $15, almost twice the minimum wage in most states. How would that increase in the cost of doing business affect McDonald’s plans for more service, more value for the customer’s dollar?

When income, as it is happening to McDonald’s, goes down, the last thing the company needs is more expenses. It matters not if the increased expenses come from higher taxes, federal mandates like Obamacare (when McDonald’s waiver expires) or increased wages, such as would occur if the minimum wage is raised. Increased cost, with little or no improvement in revenue equals reduced or no profits.

McDonald’s employs 1.7 million people around the world. It’s certainly more than those employed in California and the other socialist states in the nation who would rather destroy an employer affecting hundreds of thousands, rather than admit their agenda does not work.

 

No, what income equality creates is not higher incomes, it is less. Why? Because with the increased employee cost, McDonald’s only choice is to layoff people and reduce their cost of doing business to a level that will allow them to remain profitable. Without profits, there is no McDonalds.

But, that is inconsequential according to the levelers who drive income equality. They would rather see McDonald’s cease to exist than admit income equality, like all such socialist schemes, doesn’t work.

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Repost: "Did Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal Lift the United States Out of the Depression?"

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I do a lot of reading. Most of it is fiction I admit, but not all.  A couple of years ago, I read a book by Thomas Woods titled, “33 Questions about American History You’re Not Supposed to Ask.” After I finished, I wrote several reviews on segments discussed in the book.  One of those was about the myth that FDR saved America from the Great Depression.  To my Father, this myth was gospel.  My studies of that portion of history when I was in college lead me to believe otherwise.  Woods affirmed my opinions.

Here is that  review again.  With Obama in the White House, it’s pertinent to review the mistakes and errors of the past. This was originally posted on May 21, 2009.

I’ve posted previously about some of the historical myths debunked in this book. For the previous posting, go HERE. This time, I’d like to address the myth: “Did Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal Lift the United States Out of the Depression?”

This is a myth long perpetrated by democrats, liberals, statists and the unions. The depression began in 1929 with the famous stock market crash. The root cause was the indebtedness of some key corporations (sound familiar?). When they could no longer service their debt and declared bankruptcy, that action triggered other bankruptcies when those debts went unpaid. The fact was that for some time, credit had been extended far in excess to the assets used for collateral for that debt. (Ring any bells? Can we say “sub-prime” mortgages and the credit extended to those who wouldn’t have qualified for those mortgages without the arm-twisting of the financial industry by Congress? Fanny Mae? Freddy Mack?)

The popular thinking of the time was Keynesian Economics and that theory was adopted by Herbert Hoover. The gist of the theory was that there was insufficient spending and cash in the economy (just like the current stimulus bills passed by our democrat congress.) The remedy chosen by Hoover was wage supports. Needless to say, this didn’t work and the depression deepened and Roosevelt was elected.

For you history buffs, there was another depression in 1920 just after WW1 with a crash just as severe as the one in 1929. However, that time there was no government interference and the economy recovered in less than a year.

When Roosevelt entered office, he continued all the programs created by Hoover but changed their names. Roosevelt and congress enacted two new programs, the National Industrial Recovery Act and the National Recovery Administration. The purpose of these two acts was wage and price controls. An idea copied from Benito’s Mussolini’s Fascist government.
This was the beginning of the “New Deal”. The New Deal wasn’t a single piece of legislation but a series of acts creating new bureaucracies, regulations, additional central control of industry and the economy that collectively were the components of the New Deal.

The basic premise of the New Deal was that government could control the economy better than natural capitalistic economic forces. As an aside, if you review all the depressions that have occurred in American history, you find that governmental meddling either caused the depression or delayed the recovery of that depression.

From Woods…

If the word fascism seems over the top, consider that NRA head Hugh Johnson (who once referred to the administration he led as a “Holy Thing…the Greatest Social Advance Since the Days of Jesus Christ [1]” gave Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins a copy of Rallaello Viglione’s The Corporate State, a book that looked sympathetically on Mussolini’s policies in Italy.[2]

The National Industrial Recovery Act and the National Recovery Administration were later declared unconstitutional, fortunately for us. Post-analysis found that the policies enacted by the NRA during it’s short life deepened the depression and weaken the economy by blocking the free enterprise forces that would have created a better business environment and would have lead to the end of the depression. In short, the early components of the New Deal stopped the recovery from the depression and actually caused the depression to continue and get worse!

Again, from Woods…

Each New Deal program had its negative effests, but the collective effect was also substantial. Ohio University economists Richard Vedeer and Lowell Gallaway summed it up: “The Great Depression was very significantly prolonged in both its duration and its magnitude by the impact of the New Deal programs. The impact of all these multitudinous measures—industrial, agricultural, financial, monetary and other—upon a bewildered industrial and financial community was extraordinarily heavy. We must add the effect of continuing disquieting utterances by the President. He had castigated the bankers in his inaugural speech. He had made a slurring comparison of bankers in a speech in the summer of 1934.” That the private sector could survive and even show early signs of recovery “in the midst of so great a disorder is an amazing demonstration of the vitality of private enterprise.

Re-read that last paragraph of the events of Roosevelt first year in office and compare it with the actions and works of Barack Obama since his inauguration in 2009. You would think they both had the same speech writer.

The New Deals admirers assure us that FDR’s massive spending projects provided jobs and economic stimulus. True, government make-work projects benefit those who get the jobs. But we need to take the analysis further than this single obvious step. When considering the likely outcome of some economic policy, we cannot focus only on the short-term effects on its alleged beneficiaries. It is necessary to think about the long-term effect on the entire economy.

… 

These programs did not simply divert jobs from some people to others, or capital from some projects to others, in a zero-sum game. They destroyed wealth and made society worse off. In the private sector, resources must be employed in line with consumer preferences if entrepreneurs wsh to see a profit. If they do not employ resources according to consumer desires, they make losses and must either change their business plans or see the rest of their capital slip out of their hands.

Every action of the New Deal was aimed to hinder free enterprise and those engaged in free enterprise. The purpose was to create agencies of central control to force economic trends in the direction they thought would benefit them and their acolytes. Free enterprise and capitalism is the mortal enemy of those who favor state control, the statists, socialists, Marxists who cannot abide a free and open economy and personal liberty.

The Myth:
Franklin Roosevelt lifted the country out of the Depression and saved American capitalism from its own internal flaws. At the very least he gave people hope at a time of despair.

The Truth:
As a growing body of scholarship continues to show, the New Deal actually prolonged the Depression and crippled American capitalism.

In all honesty, the Depression did not end until the advent of World War 2 when much of the available work force was inducted into the Military services and took them out of the job pool. In fact, the Depression continued for a year after the end of the War as the returning veterans re-entered the job pool. But that is another story.

[1] On these conferences, see Shaffer, In Restraint of Trade; see also Eisner, From Warfare State to Welfare State, 128-33.

[2] For a critique of this system and its spiritual cousins, the medieval guilds, see Thomas E. Woods, Jr., The Church and the Market (Lanham, Md.: Lexington, 2005).

Subversion

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Define: Subversion.

“Subversion is the undermining or detachment of the loyalties of significant political and social groups within the victimized state, and their transference, under ideal conditions, to the symbols and institutions of the aggressor.” [2]

“Subversion — Actions designed to undermine the military, economic, psychological, or political strength or morale of a governing authority.” [3]

“Subversive Activity — Anyone lending aid, comfort, and moral support to individuals, groups, or organizations that advocate the overthrow of incumbent governments by force and violence is subversive and is engaged in subversive activity. All willful acts that are intended to be detrimental to the best interests of the government and that do not fall into the categories of treason, sedition, sabotage, or espionage will be placed in the category of subversive activity.” [3]

“Subversive Political Action — A planned series of activities designed to accomplish political objectives by influencing, dominating, or displacing individuals or groups who are so placed as to affect the decisions and actions of another government.” [3]

My interest today in this subject was spurred by an article in the Washington Times by Matt Patterson.

PATTERSON: Labor unions and communism

Revolting history is playing out again in modern America

Trade unions are a school of communism.
Labor leader Andy Stern has seen the future. There’s no freedom there, but he’s OK with that. Mr. Stern, a former president of the Service Employees International UnionSEIU), recently returned from a trip to China, where he had the opportunity to meet with “high-ranking” government officials, who outlined for the former labor leader the authoritarian regime’s long-term economic plan. (
Mr. Stern was so enamored with what he saw in the Middle Kingdom that he praised the communist country’s state-planned economy in the pages of the Wall Street Journal and urged the United States to embark on a similar path. Among the more revolting passages of Mr. Stern’s love letter to Leninism:
“The conservative-preferred, free-market fundamentalist, shareholder-only model – so successful in the 20th century – is being thrown onto the trash heap of history in the 21st century. In an era when countries need to become economic teams, Team USA’s results – a jobless decade, 30 years of flat median wages, a trade deficit, a shrinking middle class and phenomenal gains in wealth but only for the top 1 percent – are pathetic. This should motivate leaders to rethink, rather than double down on an empirically failing free-market extremism.”

The Occupy Wall Street crowds were supported, openly and clandestinely, by unions, mostly public service unions like the UAW, the SEIU, the AFT, and the NEA.  If you look at the photos of those demonstrators, you see sights such as this.

UAW Local 2110 Vice President Booker Washington shows Solidarity with the Occupy movement

And this.

FDR, like our current President, was a socialist.  He tried all the usual liberal schemes, Tax and Spend, “stimulous” programs that didn’t work and packing the Supreme Court with his cronies.  That last tactic didn’t work, fortunately for us.

But getting back to the original topic. Unions were and are socialists.  I remember my father and grandfather talking once about the Wobblies, or Industrial Workers or the World.  It was 1917.  My father, at age 15, had just started working in the coal mines.  The coal from his, and other neighboring mines, fed the steel mills of Chicago, Northern Indiana, Pittsburg and Birmingham.  The government needed more production to feed the war effort.  Like many things that roll down hill, the mines went to three shifts and worked through the weekend.

The unions, where they existed, objected.  The mine where my father and grandfather worked was not unionized at that time but union organizers were present. Among these were representatives of the Wobblies.

Most of the unions, at that time, supported the war effort.  Their intent was to get the best deal possible for their members while they could.  Once a pay-raise or benefit was acquired by the union, it would be difficult to be removed later.  That was not the tactic of the Wobblies.  They wanted strikes—violent strikes and disruption of production.

The Russian revolution had just started and the Wobblies were more interested in acquiring aid and money for the communists than they were for the betterment of their members.  Their message did not go well among the coal miners of southern Illinois.  Many unions actively supported the Russian communists but they did so quietly.  My grandfather was a local union official and read first-hand messages from union headquarters ordering a percentage of collected dues to be set aside for Russian aid.

Flash forward nearly forty years to the early 1950s.  John L. Lewis was president of the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA). I’ve written about Lewis before.  One incident is still fresh in my mind. John L. Lewis came to our county for a union fundraiser and my father took me along.  I remember the crowds, Lewis on the podium, the smell of cigars and alcohol.  Some years later my father told of the meeting and I understood what happened.

My father was not a socialist. Nor, was my grandfather. John L. Lewis was.  At that meeting, Lewis brought along a representative of the Socialist Workers Party of America.  They had some candidates running for office and were soliciting money from the unions. This was the time of Joe McCarthy and McCarthy was investigating communists. Lewis did not want to be in McCarthy’s sights.  So he brought a stalking horse.

Dad was aware that the SWPA was a communist front.  Many of his co-workers did not.  After that meeting, Dad had little to do with the UMWA but remained a member because he was approaching retirement age.

Now we have people like Andy Stern, a socialist, as the head of a major union, a union that is actively working against the interests of this nation to advance that union’s political agenda.  Unions, once, provided a benefit. No longer.  Today they are subverting the interest of our nation to advance their political position. 

That position is NOT to our benefit. We must oppose the unions at event opportunity or loose our liberty. The coming election may be the worst, most violent we’ve seen since the Civil War.  The socialists, the Occupiers already call for violence and civil war.  Whether that occurs is problematic, it is already happening.  The scale just hasn’t risen to public view, yet.


I watch the news and reports closely. I would not be surprised at anything the left may plan or attempt.

Friday Follies for October 14, 2011

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The Barbarians at the Gates.

In a campaign speech recently, Joe Biden called actions by states to curtail the power of public sector unions as barbarism and those governors and legislators who supported those actions as “barbarians at the gates.”  But in reality, just who are the barbarians?  Those who strive to curtail the wild spending and graft that is the creed of public sector unions or the unions themselves?

Matt Patterson, writing in the Washington Times, has this to say about “barbarians.”

Unions: The new barbarians

In a recent address to a union rally in Ohio, Vice President Joseph R. Biden underscored the threat to organized labor posed by the wave of collective bargaining-reform legislation sweeping the country, spearheaded by governors like Wisconsin’s Scott Walker and Ohio’s John Kasich.
“This is a fight for the existence of organized labor,” said Mr. Biden. “You are the only ones who can stop the barbarians at the gate!”
Mr. Biden’s use of “barbarian” to describe politicians – of both parties – who have come to realize that decades of union-negotiated public-employee contracts are bankrupting cities, states and whole sectors of the federal government (the U.S. Postal Service, for example) is quite interesting. The word conjures up images of Gothic hordes laying waste to Roman civilization, plunging the world into the Dark Ages. Given that government employees now comprise the majority of union members in the United States, public-sector unions form the core of the “civilization” Mr. Biden calls to defend.

The reality is actually the opposite.
…
In a series of sieges leading up to the sacking [of Rome], the Romans had attempted to make peace with Alaric, sending ambassadors to his camp to ask his price for sparing Rome. Alaric asked for all the gold and silver, movable property and barbarian slaves in the city. The Romans, seeing an offer they couldn’t refuse, obliged, delivering to Alaric 5,000 pounds of gold and 30,000 pounds of silver, as well as untold pounds of spices and silks.
That sounds a lot like what government employee unions have done to the coffers of our cities and states.
The cycle goes like this: Unions spend millions to elect pro-union politicians, who then give their union supporters fat contracts, which usually include generous defined benefit pensions, health care benefits that extend well into retirement, and budget-busting raise escalator clauses. If the politicians don’t show enough gratitude, unions threaten strikes, putting basic public services in jeopardy.
This vicious circle has brought many state and local governments across the country to the brink of insolvency. To give but a few examples, last August, the city of Central Falls, R.I., was forced to file for bankruptcy largely because of the city’s pension plan and its promised $80 million in retirement benefits for city employees, a sum five times the city’s general operating budget. And then there are the fiscal basket cases of California, New Jersey and Illinois, where government unions have long wreaked havoc on state budgets.

So who are the real barbarians? Big Labor is acting a lot like Alaric’s hordes, enriching itself at public expense, either not knowing or not caring about the poverty and decay its actions will unleash.

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Dear Government, U.S. Business Doesn’t Need You
In a “pro vs. con” column in Bloomberg’s Businessweek, the subject was the need for government to assist business in job growth. The “pro” side repeated the left’s mantra that only government had the ability to “stimulate” the economy.  We all know the falseness of that position. The government can only put into the economy what it first takes from the economy.  And, during that cycle, less is returned, through graft and wastage, than is returned.

Thomas Bowden, of the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights, refutes that argument.

We Don’t Want Your Kind of Help

Why does anyone think that business needs government help? If assistance from a large central government were really necessary for economic growth and job creation, the U.S. could never have blossomed from an agrarian economy into an industrial giant. Yet that 19th century growth miracle (the population alone soared from 5 million to 76 million) happened without “help” from Washington.
Many people think business needs Uncle Sam’s help to get out of the current economic mess. But wait, that mess was caused by government intervention in the first place. The solution, therefore, cannot be more of the same poison that sickened the economy—whether it comes in the form of runaway spending, mortgage promotion, import quotas, tax favors, or other forms of “welfare for business.”
Take job creation, for example. President Barack Obama, Congress, and state governments all claim to have solutions for high unemployment. But high jobless rates are easily traceable to government programs that hamstring investment, product development, manufacturing, global free trade, and everything else that makes for a healthy economy.
Jobs are created by private businesses when they expand production, launch new products, and develop new markets. Government’s proper task is to protect the rights of these job creators (and the people who fill the jobs). That means enforcing laws against embezzlement, fraud, breach of contract, and all the other crimes and civil wrongs that violate the right to free, voluntary trade.
After that, government’s No. 1 priority is to butt out. Our lawmakers need to be pondering how to roll back the programs that stifle job creation. From Federal Reserve-driven currency manipulation that fogs up the economic prediction windshield to costly and demoralizing regulations such as Sarbanes-Oxley that treat businesspeople as guilty until certified innocent and on to runaway “stimulus” spending that sucks capital out of the private sector, government “help” actually kills business initiative.
If Washington wants to help business, it should focus on providing the freedom businesspeople need to succeed.

If appears the dems and lib really have no inkling how our economy works.  Even Keynes didn’t expect “priming the pump” to be the end-all solution that is the bible of progressives around the world.  There is no endless supply of money and resources for them to steal to prop up their power base.  Eventually, you’ll, to paraphrase Margaret Thatcher, run out of other people’s money.

That is where we are today.  The source of tax money is exhausted and we can no longer support the parasite class.The “occupy Wall Street” crowd will last only as long as George Soros provides the money.  When he cuts them off, like other parasites, they’ll drop out and look for some one else to leech.  It won’t be too soon for them to discover that well is dry too.

Cyborg, Mk II

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Mrs. Crucis is off to get the other eye fixed today. We’ll go back tomorrow, Friday, for a one-day-post-op exam.  Here’s something to tide you over. 

From Glenn McCoy.

Next, here’s one from Chuck Asay.

And, this from Lisa Benson.
Finally, this one from Michael Ramirez.

Did FDR end the Great Depression?

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(Note: I had this post in queue for Wednesday, April 14th. Now, as I listen to Rush Limbaugh, I’m hearing him speak about the same article. Oh well. I’ll post anyway.)

I’ve written before about the myth that FDR ended the Great Depression. That theme is a mantra with the democrat party and it’s a part of their core belief that anything can be fixed with more money (taxes) and government control (statism.) I’ve disparaged that theory before and now a new report comes from Hillsdale College that supports my earlier postings.

From the Wall Street Journal…

The Wall Street Journal


APRIL 12, 2010

Did FDR End the Depression?

The economy took off after the postwar Congress cut taxes

By BURTON FOLSOM JR. AND ANITA FOLSOM

‘He got us out of the Great Depression.” That’s probably the most frequent comment made about President Franklin Roosevelt, who died 65 years ago today. Every Democratic president from Truman to Obama has believed it, and each has used FDR’s New Deal as a model for expanding the government.

It’s a myth. FDR did not get us out of the Great Depression—not during the 1930s, and only in a limited sense during World War II.

Let’s start with the New Deal. Its various alphabet-soup agencies—the WPA, AAA, NRA and even the TVA (Tennessee Valley Authority)—failed to create sustainable jobs. In May 1939, U.S. unemployment still exceeded 20%. European countries, according to a League of Nations survey, averaged only about 12% in 1938. The New Deal, by forcing taxes up and discouraging entrepreneurs from investing, probably did more harm than good.

What about World War II? We need to understand that the near-full employment during the conflict was temporary. Ten million to 12 million soldiers overseas and another 10 million to 15 million people making tanks, bullets and war materiel do not a lasting recovery make. The country essentially traded temporary jobs for a skyrocketing national debt. Many of those jobs had little or no value after the war.

No one knew this more than FDR himself. His key advisers were frantic at the possibility of the Great Depression’s return when the war ended and the soldiers came home. The president believed a New Deal revival was the answer—and on Oct. 28, 1944, about six months before his death, he spelled out his vision for a postwar America. It included government-subsidized housing, federal involvement in health care, more TVA projects, and the “right to a useful and remunerative job” provided by the federal government if necessary.

Roosevelt died before the war ended and before he could implement his New Deal revival. His successor, Harry Truman, in a 16,000 word message on Sept. 6, 1945, urged Congress to enact FDR’s ideas as the best way to achieve full employment after the war.

Congress—both chambers with Democratic majorities—responded by just saying “no.” No to the whole New Deal revival: no federal program for health care, no full-employment act, only limited federal housing, and no increase in minimum wage or Social Security benefits.

Instead, Congress reduced taxes. Income tax rates were cut across the board. FDR’s top marginal rate, 94% on all income over $200,000, was cut to 86.45%. The lowest rate was cut to 19% from 23%, and with a change in the amount of income exempt from taxation an estimated 12 million Americans were eliminated from the tax rolls entirely.

Corporate tax rates were trimmed and FDR’s “excess profits” tax was repealed, which meant that top marginal corporate tax rates effectively went to 38% from 90% after 1945.

Georgia Sen. Walter George, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, defended the Revenue Act of 1945 with arguments that today we would call “supply-side economics.” If the tax bill “has the effect which it is hoped it will have,” George said, “it will so stimulate the expansion of business as to bring in a greater total revenue.”

He was prophetic. By the late 1940s, a revived economy was generating more annual federal revenue than the U.S. had received during the war years, when tax rates were higher. Price controls from the war were also eliminated by the end of 1946. The U.S. began running budget surpluses.

Congress substituted the tonic of freedom for FDR’s New Deal revival and the American economy recovered well. Unemployment, which had been in double digits throughout the 1930s, was only 3.9% in 1946 and, except for a couple of short recessions, remained in that range for the next decade.

The Great Depression was over, no thanks to FDR. Yet the myth of his New Deal lives on. With the current effort by President Obama to emulate some of FDR’s programs to get us out of the recent deep recession, this myth should be laid to rest.

Mr. Folsom, a professor of history at Hillsdale College, is the author of “New Deal or Raw Deal?” (Simon & Schuster, 2008). Mrs. Folsom is director of Hillsdale College’s annual Free Market Forum.