INTERMEX POWER

What the Bible Teaches About Capitalism

2012-01-31T10:08:00.002-07:00

As the Ten Commandments instruct, envy is corrosive to the individual and to those societies that embrace it.

By ARYEH SPERO

Who would have expected that in a Republican primary campaign the single biggest complaint among candidates would be that the front-runner has taken capitalism too far? As if his success and achievement were evidence of something unethical and immoral? President Obama and other redistributionists must be rejoicing that their assumptions about rugged capitalism and the 1% have been given such legitimacy.
More than any other nation, the United States was founded on broad themes of morality rooted in a specific religious perspective. We call this the Judeo-Christian ethos, and within it resides a ringing endorsement of capitalism as a moral endeavor.

Regarding mankind, no theme is more salient in the Bible than the morality of personal responsibility, for it is through this that man cultivates the inner development leading to his own growth, good citizenship and happiness. The entitlement/welfare state is a paradigm that undermines that noble goal.
The Bible's proclamation that "Six days shall ye work" is its recognition that on a day-to-day basis work is the engine that brings about man's inner state of personal responsibility. Work develops the qualities of accountability and urgency, including the need for comity with others as a means for the accomplishment of tasks. With work, he becomes imbued with the knowledge that he is to be productive and that his well-being is not an entitlement. And work keeps him away from the idleness that Proverbs warns leads inevitably to actions and attitudes injurious to himself and those around him.

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Getty Images Yet capitalism is not content with people only being laborers and holders of jobs, indistinguishable members of the masses punching in and out of mammoth factories or functioning as service employees in government agencies. Nor is the Bible. Unlike socialism, mired as it is in the static reproduction of things already invented, capitalism is dynamic and energetic. It cheerfully fosters and encourages creativity, unspoken possibilities, and dreams of the individual. Because the Hebrew Bible sees us not simply as "workers" and members of the masses but, rather, as individuals, it heralds that characteristic which endows us with individuality: our creativity.
At the opening bell, Genesis announces: "Man is created in the image of God"—in other words, like Him, with individuality and creative intelligence. Unlike animals, the human being is not only a hunter and gatherer but a creative dreamer with the potential of unlocking all the hidden treasures implanted by God in our universe. The mechanism of capitalism, as manifest through investment and reasoned speculation, helps facilitate our partnership with God by bringing to the surface that which the Almighty embedded in nature for our eventual extraction and activation.
Capitalism makes possible entrepreneurship, which is the realization of an idea birthed in human creativity. Whereas statism demands that citizens think small and bow to a top-down conformity, capitalism, as has been practiced in the U.S., maximizes human potential. It provides a home for aspiration, referred to in the Bible as "the spirit of life."
The Bible speaks positively of payment and profit: "For why else should a man so labor but to receive reward?" Thus do laborers get paid wages for their hours of work and investors receive profit for their investment and risk.
The Bible is not a business-school manual. While it is comfortable with wealth creation and the need for speculation in economic markets, it has nothing to say about financial instruments and models such as private equity, hedge funds or other forms of monetary capitalization. What it does demand is honesty, fair weights and measures, respect for a borrower's collateral, timely payments of wages, resisting usury, and empathy for those injured by life's misfortunes and charity.
It also demands transparency and honesty regarding one's intentions. The command, "Thou shalt not place a stumbling block in front of the blind man" also means that you should not act deceitfully or obscure the truth from those whose choice depends upon the information you give them. There's nothing to indicate that Mitt Romney breached this biblical code of ethics, and his wealth and success should not be seen as automatic causes for suspicion.
No country has achieved such broad-based prosperity as has America, or invented as many useful things, or seen as many people achieve personal promise. This is not an accident. It is the direct result of centuries lived by the free-market ethos embodied in the Judeo-Christian outlook.
Furthermore, only a prosperous nation can protect itself from outside threats, for without prosperity the funds to support a robust military are unavailable. Having radically enlarged the welfare state and hoping to further expand it, President Obama is attempting to justify his cuts to our military by asserting that defense needs must give way to domestic programs.
Both history and the Bible show the way that leads. Countries that were once economic powerhouses atrophied and declined, like England after World War II, once they began adopting socialism. Even King Solomon's thriving kingdom crashed once his son decided to impose onerous taxes.
At the end of Genesis, we hear how after years of famine the people in Egypt gave all their property to the government in return for the promise of food. The architect of this plan was Joseph, son of Jacob, who had risen to become the pharaoh's top official, thus: "Joseph exchanged all the land of Egypt for pharaoh and the land became pharaoh's." The result was that Egyptians became indentured to the ruler and state, and Joseph's descendants ended up enslaved to the state.
Many on the religious left criticize capitalism because all do not end up monetarily equal—or, as Churchill quipped, "all equally miserable." But the Bible's prescription of equality means equality under the law, as in Deuteronomy's saying that "Judges and officers . . . shall judge the people with a just judgment: Do not . . . favor one over the other." Nowhere does the Bible refer to a utopian equality that is contrary to human nature and has never been achieved.
The motive of capitalism's detractors is a quest for their own power and an envy of those who have more money. But envy is a cardinal sin and something that ought not to be.
God begins the Ten Commandments with "I am the Lord your God" and concludes with "Thou shalt not envy your neighbor, not for his wife, nor his house, nor for any of his holdings." Envy is corrosive to the individual and to those societies that embrace it. Nations that throw over capitalism for socialism have made an immoral choice.
Rabbi Spero has led congregations in Ohio and New York and is president of Caucus for America.

The Magnetic Mr. Obama

2012-01-31T10:06:00.002-07:00

Will our "polarizing" president attract more voters than he repels?

By JAMES TARANTO

Barack Obama is, according to the headline of a Pete Wehner post at Commentary, "The Most Polarizing President Ever." Over at the Washington Post, Chris Cilizza and Aaron Blake's headline disagrees with Wehner only on what part of speech "ever" is: "Obama: The Most Polarizing President. Ever." (We couldn't find the interjectional ever in a dictionary, but we gather it is more emphatic than the old adverbial form.)
Wehner notes that "one of the core claims" of Obama's 2008 campaign was that he would "heal the nation's political breach . . . elevate the national debate . . . do away with what he called the '50 plus one' style of governing . . . 'turn the page' on the 'old politics' of division and anger . . . end a politics that 'breeds division and conflict and cynicism' . . . help us to 'rediscover our bonds to each other and … get out of this constant petty bickering that's come to characterize our politics' . . . 'cast off the worn-out ideas and politics of the past.' "

Wehner argues that Obama has failed to deliver on these promises. Gee, ya think?
Cilizza and Blake look at the same Gallup poll findings and try to let Obama off the hook:

What do those numbers tell us? Put simply: that the country is hardening along more and more strict partisan lines.

While it's easy to look at the numbers cited above and conclude that Obama has failed at his mission of bringing the country together, a deeper dig into the numbers in the Gallup poll suggests that the idea of erasing the partisan gap is simply impossible, as political polarization is rising rapidly.

In this telling, which is not unpersuasive, Obama is more a creature of his time than a creator of it. He didn't polarize the country, and it is beyond his capacity to lessen its polarization significantly. Yet even if we stipulate that his promise was impossible to fulfill, that doesn't absolve him of responsibility for his failure to fulfill it. He made either a promise he knew would be impossible to keep, which would be dishonest, or one he naively believed he had the ability to keep, which would be foolish. (Somehow this argument reminds us of the trilemma, C.S. Lewis's argument for the divinity of Jesus. It does not lead us to a similar conclusion about Obama.)
Cilizza and Blake define polarization as follows: "We are simply living in an era in which Democrats dislike a Republican president (and Republicans dislike a Democratic one) even before the commander in chief has taken a single official action." But the metaphor of polarization, in which the parties are magnetic fields, is actually a good deal more complicated than that. Magnetic fields, after all, affect different substances differently.
For one thing, magnetism is both an attractive and a repulsive force. Cilizza and Blake emphasize the latter, but polarization requires both. One Gallup chart ranks presidents from Eisenhower to Obama on polarization during their third year in office. Obama is at the very top, with a 68-point "party gap." The three least polarized presidents were Jimmy Carter in 1979, Lyndon Johnson in 1965 and Ike in 1955. Carter was very unpopular (24% approval among Republicans, 46% among Democrats), Ike was very popular (91% and 57%), and LBJ's popularity was middling (34% and 68%).
In a polarized electorate, then, partisans not only are more likely to disapprove of a president of the other party but also to approve of one from their own party. Cilizza and Blake note that "out of the ten most partisan years in terms of presidential job approval in Gallup data, seven--yes, seven--have come since 2004. [George W.] Bush had a run between 2004 and 2007 in which the partisan disparity of his job approval was at 70 points or higher." What they don't note is that polarization declined significantly in 2008 (to a 61-point gap), when even Republicans had started to turn against Bush.
Why would the electorate be more polarized today than in past decades? Because there are far more, and sharper, ideological disputes than there used to be, and because both parties have become increasingly ideological. The Gallup data begin in the 1950s, a moment of broad though temporary stability. The big political disputes over the New Deal and internationalism versus isolationism were largely settled. A reckoning on civil rights, though long overdue, had only gotten under way. And today's most polarizing "social issues," like abortion and gay rights, were practically unheard of.

Podcast

James Taranto on political polarization.

By the 1970s and '80s the country had become more ideologically polarized. But partisan identification took a while to catch up. So, for example, Reagan was less "polarizing" than Bush fils or Obama because he had the support of the "Reagan Democrats," who still identified with the donks even though they were closer to the GOP in ideology. A lot of Reagan Democrats (or their descendants) are now Republicans. Similarly, the socially liberal "Rockefeller Republicans" of yesterday are the socially liberal Democrats of today.
"The realization of that hyper-partisan reality has been slow in coming for Obama," write Cilizza and Blake. "But in recent months, he seems to have turned a rhetorical corner--taking the fight to Republicans (and Republicans in Congress, particularly) and all but daring them to call his bluff."
That's a highly implausible account. After all, during the first half of his term, when Obama had big Democratic majorities in Congress, he and they governed in a hyperpartisan way. Their two biggest legislative initiatives, the "stimulus" and ObamaCare, were enacted with a grand total of three GOP votes.
The trouble with all this talk of "polarization" is that it ignores the large share of voters who are neither Democrats nor Republicans. Just as magnetic fields have no significant effect on copper or aluminum, many voters are unmoved by the push and pull of ideological polarization. These voters--broadly speaking, those who describe themselves as independents--increasingly decide our elections.

Obama isn't a lame duck, at least not yet.

It is to them that Obama meant to appeal with his impossible promises to transcend partisan division. According to exit polls, independents made up 29% of the electorate in 2008, and Obama carried their votes, 52% to 44%, very close to his overall margin over John McCain. Obama's airy promises of postpartisanship no doubt helped him win over independents, but our guess is that an even bigger factor was the sense from the preceding few years that Republicans were incapable of governing competently.
Obama has had low approval ratings among independents for most of his presidency. That, not "polarization," is the reason he is in danger of defeat this year. The way for a Republican to beat him is to run a campaign centered on competence, not ideology.
Going for Brokaw
"NBC asked GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney on Saturday to pull a campaign advertisement made up almost entirely of a 1997 'Nightly News' report on Newt Gingrich's ethics committee reprimand," the Associated Press reports:

The footage was used without permission and the extensive use of the broadcast "inaccurately suggests that NBC News and Mr. Brokaw have consented to the use of this material and agree with the political position espoused by the videos," NBC's vice president of media law, David N. Sternlicht, wrote Romney's campaign manager, Matt Rhoades.

"Aside from the obvious copyright issues, this use of the voice of Mr. Brokaw and the NBC News name exploits him and the journalistic credibility of NBC News," the letter said. The network asked for the campaign to stop running the ad immediately and revise any other videos or commercials to remove at [sic] NBC material. . . .

NBC spokeswoman Lauren Kapp said a similar request went to other campaigns that "have inappropriately" used material from "Nightly News," ''Meet the Press," ''Today" and MSNBC. Kapp said she was not aware of such uses by other campaigns.

Seems as though Kapp manages to contradict herself in that paragraph, but whatever. The Romney campaign has thus far refused to pull the ad, arguing that it falls under the fair use provisions of copyright law. Jennifer Rubin of the Washington Post, a Romney supporter, agrees, calls NBC's legal claim "frivolous," and accuses the network of "trying to silence core First Amendment speech."
That strikes us as overwrought. We'd say the primary purpose of NBC's request to the Romney campaign is expressive, not repressive. The network is trying to distance itself from the perception that it is biased against Gingrich. It's likely the ad will end its run tomorrow anyway, after the Florida primary, having either served its purpose (if Romney wins) or proved ineffective (if Gingrich wins).
An amusing sidelight is noted by the Miami Herald's Marc Caputo in a blog post:

But perhaps NBC should send the letter to its own South Florida affiliate [actually an owned-and-operated station] as well. Shortly after this post, Fort Lauderdale real estate agent Tweeted this observation: "@TomBrokaw Against your express wishes, NBC Miami is running your Romney ad right now. Demand that NBC stop running it if you are serious."

So NBC is in high-dudgeon about the use of its material. But it'll keep airing ads like this because money talks louder than self-important puffery about TV journalistic standards

It turns out, however, that it's not money but government regulation that's doing the talking. Politico's Josh Gerstein reports that "broadcasters are legally required to run any ads candidates present--as is":

It's also worth noting that if a pro-Romney super PAC presented the same ad, NBC could have refused it, since the federal rules apply only to candidates, not freestanding political organizations.

That leads us to a mischievous question. Many newspapers--The Wall Street Journal being a notable exception--have editorialized strongly against the 2010 Supreme Court decision Citizens United v. FEC, which vindicated First Amendment rights of independent organizations. Do their corporate parents have policies against accepting any advertisements that would be illegal if that view prevailed?
Is the ACLU a Racist Organization?
Two weeks ago, when Juan Williams asked Newt Gingrich to reply to charges that his characterization of Barack Obama as the "food stamp president" were racially insensitive, this column applauded Gingrich's answer. We did not, however, take exception to Williams's question, which struck us as a reasonable one.
We do, however, think Williams goes off the rails in a commentary for the Hill:

The language of GOP racial politics is heavy on euphemisms that allow the speaker to deny any responsibility for the racial content of his message. The code words in this game are "entitlement society"--as used by Mitt Romney--and "poor work ethic" and "food stamp president"--as used by Newt Gingrich. References to a lack of respect for the "Founding Fathers" and the "Constitution" also make certain ears perk up by demonizing anyone supposedly threatening core "old-fashioned American values."

Really? Accusing someone of not respecting "the 'Constitution' " is a racial code word? If that were true, the American Civil Liberties Union would be the biggest racist organization around.
Putting Everything in Perspective

"I want to cut his nuts out."--Jesse Jackson on Barack Obama, quoted by the Chicago Tribune, July 10, 2008
"The ultimate insult."--Jesse Jackson on Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer's pointing her finger at Barack Obama, quoted by the Chicago Sun-Times, Jan. 28, 2012

Three Papers in One!
"It is time to end the ability of a single senator, or group of senators, to block the confirmation process by threatening a filibuster, which can be overcome only by the vote of 60 senators," the New York Times editorialized yesterday:

We agree with President Obama's call in the State of the Union address for the Senate to change its rules and require votes on judicial and executive nominees within 90 days.

This is a major change of position for us, and we came to it reluctantly.

In calling this "a major change of position," the Times gives the impression that it has long supported the filibuster. But a Times editorial of Jan. 1, 1995 was headlined "Time to Retire the Filibuster." It called for abolishing the process altogether, for legislation as well as nominations.
The paper's "major change" yesterday was a change from its last major change of position, which it explained in a March 29, 2005, editorial titled "Walking in the Opposition's Shoes":

A decade ago, this page expressed support for tactics that would have gone even further than the "nuclear option" in eliminating the power of the filibuster. At the time, we had vivid memories of the difficulty that Senate Republicans had given much of Bill Clinton's early agenda. But we were still wrong. To see the filibuster fully, it's obviously a good idea to have to live on both sides of it. We hope acknowledging our own error may remind some wavering Republican senators that someday they, too, will be on the other side and in need of all the protections the Senate rules can provide.

Yet amid its zigging and zagging, the Times has been consistent, in that its view on the filibuster has always been in line with the immediate interests of the Democratic Party. Its claims both in 2005 and today to have undertaken a thoughtful reconsideration of the matter look rather hypocritical.
Andrew Rosenthal, the Times's editorial page editor, seems aware of this problem. Yesterday he tweeted a link to the new editorial with this comment: "It risks fringe rightwingers getting named by a GOP president, but filibustering nominees must end." This seems to imply a promise to stick to the current antifilibuster position if, a year or two from now, President Romney's nominees are being held up by a Democratic minority's unwillingness to bring them to the Senate floor.
We'll believe that when we see it.
Two Stories in One!

"List of Pardons Included Many Tied to Power"--headline, New York Times news story, Jan. 28
"Many of those pardoned [by outgoing Gov. Haley Barbour of Mississippi] appear to have no special connections."--12th paragraph, same story

Dept. of Unfortunate Metaphors
"Speaker Gingrich is not afraid of bold ideas and I also know Speaker Gingrich is running for president and going through this sausage grinder and I know what the sausage grinder is all about."--Herman Cain endorsing Newt Gingrich, quoted by ABCNews.com, Jan. 28
Appeal to Authority
"The Associated Press reported last week that Fidel Castro . . . argued that the 'selection of a Republican candidate for the presidency of this globalized and expansive empire is--and I mean this seriously--the greatest competition of idiocy and ignorance that has ever been.' When Marxists are complaining that your party's candidates are disconnected from today's global realities, it's generally not a good sign."--Thomas Friedman, New York Times, Jan. 29
Metpahor Alert
"Our problem isn't that the sources of prosperity have dried up in a long drought; our problem is that we don't know how to swim. It is raining soup, and we are stuck holding a fork."--Walter Russell Mead, The-American-Interest.com, Jan. 29

Why Gingrich's Tax Plan Beats Romney's

2012-01-31T10:04:00.001-07:00

Newt's flat tax would do a lot more to attract capital, spur growth and reduce compliance costs.

By ARTHUR B. LAFFER

If we judge both leading contenders in the Republican primary, Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney, by what they've done in life and by what they propose to do if elected, either one could be an excellent president. But when it comes to the election's core issue—restoring a healthy economy—the key is a good tax plan and the ability to implement it.

Mr. Gingrich has a significantly better plan than does Mr. Romney, and he has twice before been instrumental in implementing a successful tax plan on a national level—once when he served in Congress as a Reagan supporter in the 1980s and again when he was President Clinton's partner as speaker of the House of Representatives in the 1990s. During both of these periods the economy prospered incredibly—in good part because of Mr. Gingrich.
Jobs and wealth are created by those who are taxed, not by those who do the taxing. Government, by its very nature, doesn't create resources but redistributes resources. To minimize the damages taxes cause the economy, the best way for government to raise revenue is a broad-based, low-rate flat tax that provides people and businesses with the fewest incentives to avoid or otherwise not report taxable income, and the least number of places where they can escape taxation. On these counts it doesn't get any better than Mr. Gingrich's optional 15% flat tax for individuals and his 12.5% flat tax for business. Each of these taxes has been tried and tested and found to be enormously successful.
Hong Kong, where there has been a 15% flat income tax on individuals since 1947, is truly a shining city on the hill and one of the most prosperous cities in history. Ireland's 12.5% flat business income tax propelled the Emerald Isle out of two and a half centuries of poverty. Mr. Romney's tax proposals—including eliminating the death tax, reducing the corporate tax rate to 25%, and extending the current tax rates on personal income, interest, dividends and capital gains—would be an improvement over those of President Obama, but they don't have the boldness or internal integrity of Mr. Gingrich's personal and business flat taxes.
Imagine what would happen to international capital flows if the U.S. went from the second highest business tax country in the world to one of the lowest. Low taxes along with all of America's other great attributes would precipitate a flood of new investment in this country as well as a quick repatriation of American funds held abroad. We would create more jobs than you could shake a stick at. And those jobs would be productive jobs, not make-work jobs like so many of Mr. Obama's stimulus jobs.

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Chad Crowe Tax codes, in order to work well, require widespread voluntary compliance from taxpayers. And for taxpayers to voluntarily comply with a tax code they have to believe that it is both fair and efficient.
Fairness in taxation means that people and businesses in like circumstances have similar tax burdens. A flat tax, whether on business or individuals, achieves fairness in spades. A person who makes 10 times as much as another person should pay 10 times more in taxes. It is also patently obvious that it is unfair to tax some people's income twice, three times or more after it has been earned, as is the case with the death tax.
The current administration's notion of fairness—taxing high-income earners at high rates and not taxing other income earners at all—is totally unfair. It is also anathema to prosperity and ultimately leads to the situation we have in our nation today.
In 2012, those least capable of navigating complex government-created economic environments find themselves in their worst economic circumstances in generations. And the reason minority, lesser-educated and younger members of our society are struggling so greatly is not because we have too few redistributionist, class-warfare policies but because we have too many. Overtaxing people who work and overpaying people not to work has its consequences.
On a bipartisan basis, government has enacted the very policies that have created the current extremely uneven distribution of income. And then in turn they have used the very desperation they created as their rationale for even more antibusiness and antirich policies. As my friend Jack Kemp used to say, "You can't love jobs and hate job creators." Economic growth achieved through a flat tax in conjunction with a pro-growth safety net is the only way to raise incomes of those on the bottom rungs of our economic ladder.
When it comes to economic efficiency, nothing holds a candle to a low-rate, simple flat tax. As I explained in a op-ed on this page last spring ("The 30-Cent Tax Premium," April 18), for every dollar of net income tax collected by the Internal Revenue Service, there is an additional 30¢ paid out of pocket by the taxpayers to maintain compliance with the tax code. Such inefficiency is outrageous. Mr. Gingrich's flat taxes would go a lot further toward reducing these additional expenses than would Mr. Romney's proposals.
Mr. Gingrich's tax proposal is not revenue-neutral, nor should it be. If there's one truism in fiscal policy, it's this: Wasteful spending will always rise to the level of revenues. Whether you're in Greece, Washington, D.C., or California, overspending is a prosperity killer of the first order. Mr. Gingrich's flat tax proposals—along with his proposed balanced budget amendment—would put a quick stop to overspending and return America to fiscal soundness. No other candidate comes close to doing this.
Mr. Laffer, chairman of Laffer Associates, is co-author with Stephen Moore of "Return to Prosperity: How America Can Regain Its Economic Superpower Status" (Threshold, 2010)

U.S. Stocks Erase Gains; Dollar, Treasuries Reverse Drop on Economic Data

2012-01-31T10:00:00.002-07:00

U.S. Stocks Erase Gains; Dollar, Treasuries Reverse Drop on Economic Data

By Michael P. Regan -

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Thomas M. Kay of Morgan Securities LLC works on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. Photographer: Jin Lee/Bloomberg

U.S. stocks erased early gains,while the dollar and Treasuries reversed declines, as reportsshowed American consumer confidence trailed estimates andbusiness activity cooled in January.

The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index fell less than 0.1 percentto 1,312.58 at 10:09 a.m. in New York after climbing as much as0.6 percent earlier. The Dollar Index (DXY) was little changed at79.148 after tumbling as much as 0.5 percent. The euro slipped0.2 percent to $1.3116, reversing a 0.5 percent increase. Ten-year Treasury yields lost one basis point to 1.83 percent.
Confidence among U.S. consumers unexpectedly dropped inJanuary as gasoline prices picked up and more Americans saidjobs were hard to get. The Conference Board’s confidence indexfell to 61.1 from a revised 64.8 reading in the prior month. Themedian forecast of economists surveyed by Bloomberg News calledfor a rise to 68. The figure was lower than the most pessimisticprojection.
The Institute for Supply Management-Chicago Inc. said todayits business barometer declined to 60.2 from 62.2 in December.Readings above 50 signal growth. Economists forecast the gaugewould rise to 63, according to the median of 57 estimates in aBloomberg survey.

How Social Security Really Began: Echoes

2012-01-31T09:57:00.002-07:00

How Social Security Really Began: Echoes

Ida May Fuller displays her first increased benefit check, Oct. 3, 1950.Source: Social Security Administration

By Kristin Aguilera

Ida May Fuller displays her first increased benefit check, Oct. 3, 1950. Source: Social Security Administration

History is filled with examples of people who achieved fame not because of a major accomplishment, but simply because they were the first to do something. Such is the case of Ida May Fuller, a resident of rural Vermont who became the first beneficiary of a recurring Social Security payment on Jan. 31, 1940.

Fuller was born on Sept. 6, 1874, and attended school in Rutland, Vermont, as a classmate of future President Calvin Coolidge. Known to her family and friends as “Aunt Ida,” she never married or had children, and she lived alone most of her adult life. After working for decades as a teacher and legal secretary, and contributing to Social Security for almost three years, she filed her retirement claim in November 1939.
The check she received two months later for $22.54 (roughly $350 in today's dollars) bears the historic number 00-000-001.
Fuller lived to be 100 and died on the 35th anniversary of receiving her first check, on Jan. 31, 1975. In her three years of contributing to the program, the accumulated taxes on her salary were $24.75. She collected $22,888.92 in benefits.
Although Fuller’s check and all the Social Security payments to follow were the direct result of the legislation known as the "crown jewel" of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal program, it was actually his distant cousin, Theodore Roosevelt, who introduced the U.S. to the notion of social insurance.
In Theodore Roosevelt’s 1912 address to the convention of the Progressive Party, he stated, "We pledge ourselves to work unceasingly in state and nation for… the protection of home life against the hazards of sickness, irregular employment, and old age through the adoption of a system of social insurance."
The idea of social insurance wasn't an American invention, however. First adopted in Germany in 1889, it was already operating in 34 countries by the time the U.S. enacted Social Security.
In the years between Roosevelt's speech in 1912 and the signing of the Social Security Act in 1935, many disparate ideas were proposed for ensuring Americans' economic security as the Great Depression took hold. Some of the more famous proponents of these plans were California doctor Francis E. Townsend (who advocated for federal government pensions), Senator Huey Long (who wanted the government to confiscate and redistribute money from the wealthy), and novelist Upton Sinclair (whose 12-point plan for California included the issuance of scrip currency, a barter system and a state pension plan).
One of the major problems FDR saw in these and other radical calls to action was the undermining of the American capitalist system. Thus, when he introduced Social Security at the depths of the Depression, he was careful to cast it as a fundamentally conservative system in which workers would contribute to their future security in the form of taxes paid while they were employed.
"We can never insure 100 percent of the population against 100 percent of the hazards and vicissitudes of life," Roosevelt said on signing the act, "but we have tried to frame a law which will give some measure of protection to the average citizen and to his family against the loss of a job and against poverty-ridden old age."
Americans generally reacted favorably to the new system. But the act did receive opposition, particularly within the business community. Many business owners opposed the employer contribution mandated by the new law, and argued that increasing taxes would slow growth and exacerbate the country's unemployment problem. Another major concern, then as now, was the program’s mounting financial burden. And many believed it to be unconstitutional, although the Supreme Court upheld the program in 1937.
The Social Security Act may not have fully achieved Theodore Roosevelt’s grand vision, but it did establish several lasting programs. In addition to what we refer to today as Social Security, the law also included features such as the first national unemployment compensation program, grants to states for medical and welfare programs, and aid to dependent children. (Many of the other benefits we now associate with Social Security, including disability coverage and medical benefits, weren't established until later decades.)
The merits and shortcomings of Social Security have been hotly debated since its inception, prompting several revisions and restructurings over the years. For better or worse, the program has had an enormous impact on three generations of Americans, including people like Ida May Fuller and the more than 50 million Americans who collect benefits today.

How to Listen for Racism on the Campaign Trail: Jeffrey Goldberg

2012-01-31T09:54:00.001-07:00

Here are some things you couldlearn about black Americans from the recent statements andinsinuations of Republican presidential candidates,Republican congressmen and Republican-friendly radiopersonalities:
Black people have lost the desire to perform a day’swork. Black people rely on food stamps provided to them bywhite taxpayers. Black people, including Barack andMichelle Obama, believe that the U.S. owes them somethingbecause they are black. Black children should work asjanitors in their high schools as a way to keep them frombecoming pimps. And the pathologies afflicting blackAmericans are caused partly by the Democratic Party, whichhas created in them a dependency on government notdissimilar to the forced dependency of slaves on theirowners.

Judging by these claims, all of which have actuallybeen put forward recently, here is a modest prediction:This presidential election will be one of the most race-soaked in recent history. It is already more race-soakedthan the 2008 election, which, of course, marked the firsttime that a black man became a major-party candidate.
I don’t know why this is. Perhaps because Senator John McCain, the Republican contender in 2008, generally andadmirably refused to race-bait. But the Republicancandidates in today’s contest aren’t so meticulous aboutavoiding the temptation to dog-whistle their way to thenomination.

A Dark Art

Dog-whistling -- the use of coded, ambiguous languageto appeal to the prejudices of certain subsets of voters --is one of the darkest political arts. In this race, Newt Gingrich is streets ahead of his nearest competitor in itsuse. In addition to his comments about black childrenworking as janitors, he has repeatedly referred to Obama asthe country’s “food-stamp president.”
Food stamps have been fixed in the minds of many whitevoters as a government subsidy misused by blacks at leastsince 1976, when Ronald Reagan complained of “strappingyoung bucks” who used public assistance to buy “T-bonesteaks.” (It is distressing to remember, in light ofReagan’s subsequent beatification, that he was to racialdog-whistling what Pat Buchanan has been to Jew-baiting; itwas Reagan who also introduced the “welfare queen” intopublic discourse.)
The genius of dog-whistling is its deniability. Itwould be difficult for a figure such as Rush Limbaugh torun for public office, given his record of fairlystraightforward race-baiting. (Limbaugh, who in the wordsof Harvard Law School’s Randall Kennedy is an “excellententrepreneur of racial resentment,” has been on a tearlately. He has accused Obama -- who he says “talks honky”around white people -- and the first lady of abusing publicfunds as payback for the ill-treatment afforded theirancestors.)
But “food-stamp president” is just indirect enoughthat Gingrich is protected from detrimental blowback, atleast during the largely white Republican primaries.
Kennedy, who studies the role of race in nationalelections, told me last week of a rule he uses to measurewhether a candidate’s appeal to prejudice will succeed: Ifit takes more than two sentences for a critic to explainwhy a dog-whistle is a dog-whistle, the whistler wins.Gingrich seems to understand this, and so, despitecriticism from blacks, has made the term “food-stamppresident” a staple of his stump speeches.

New Realization

Kennedy offers the theory that this campaign’s dog-whistling may be prompted by a realization by right-leaningprovocateurs that voters have become inured to charges ofracism. I suspect another phenomenon has hastened thisrealization: A handful of black Republicans have abetteddog-whistling by making their own bombastic statementsabout the degraded moral health of the black community, theputative foreignness of the Obamas and the DemocraticParty’s plantation-like qualities.
The former presidential candidate Herman Cain, wholast week endorsed Gingrich, told me in an interview lastyear that Obama was more “international” than American. Healso said that, unlike Obama, he rejects the label“African-American” because he feels “more of an affinityfor America than I do for Africa.”
Representative Allen West of Florida, one of two blackRepublican House members, recently called the DemocraticParty a “21st-century plantation” and compared himself toHarriet Tubman. In August, he said, “Today in the blackcommunity, we see individuals who are either wedded to asubsistence check or an employment check. Democrat physicalenslavement has now become liberal economic enslavement,which is just as horrible.”
How far in intent is West’s message from this one,recently delivered by Rick Santorum in Sioux City, Iowa: “Idon’t want to make black people’s lives better by givingthem somebody else’s money; I want to give them theopportunity to go out and earn the money.” (Santorum laterdenied that he said the word “black,” arguing that what heactually said was “blah.” The denial is not credible.)
The writer Gary Younge has noted that in WoodburyCounty, which includes Sioux City, nine times more whitesuse food stamps than blacks do. But it doesn’t matter:Santorum wasn’t driven from the race for making such ablatant appeal to white resentment -- instead, he won theIowa caucus.

An Odd Video

Recently, I watched an educational children’s videoproduced by a company part-owned by Mike Huckabee, theformer Arkansas governor and presidential candidate (andcurrent Fox News host). The video series, called “Learn OurHistory,” is meant as a corrective to a left-winginterpretation of the American story.
In one episode, a group of children are transported toWashington, in the late 1970s, a time when, we are told,“people are out of work and some of their morals are justgone.” The group, walking down a cartoon version of astreet from “The Wire,” is confronted by a black mugger ina tank-top emblazoned with the word “Disco.” (Yes,“Disco.”) The mugger says to the time-travelers, “Gimme yomoney!”
I asked Huckabee why the video advanced thisparticular stereotype. We had been speaking about therationale for the video series, and he had just finishedtelling me that the project was meant to encourage moralleadership. Then he told me he had nothing to do withwriting the show’s scripts, but it was his impression thatthe mugger wasn’t meant to be black. In any case, we weretalking about a cartoon, he said, and cartoons traffic in“caricature.”
This is something cartoons share with many of today’sleading Republicans.

Salman Rushdie Falls Victim to Indian Intolerance: Pankaj Mishra

2012-01-31T09:52:00.001-07:00

Illustration by Maxwell Holyoke-Hirsch

By Pankaj Mishra

About Pankaj Mishra

Pankaj Mishra is the author of "Temptations of the West: How to be Modern in India, Pakistan, Tibet and Beyond," "The Romantics: A Novel" and "An End to Suffering: The Buddha in the World."
More about Pankaj Mishra

In 1984, criticizing George Orwellfor having advocated political quietism to writers, Salman Rushdie asserted that “we are all irradiated by history, we areradioactive with history and politics.” He added: “Politics andliterature… do mix, are inextricably mixed, and that… mixturehas consequences.”

I was reminded of this unimpeachable truth last week, whenthe controversy over “The Satanic Verses” returned to thecountry of its origin. Back in 1988, the Indian government,responding to protests by a few self-appointed Muslim leaders,prohibited the importation of Rushdie’s novel, setting off aseries of appalling events that culminated in the death sentencepronounced by Iran’s supreme leader against the British-Indianwriter.
Earlier this month, the head of a Muslim theological schoolprotested against Rushdie’s planned visit to a literary festivalin Jaipur, the capital city of the state of Rajasthan. Thegovernment of Rajasthan not only declined to guarantee Rushdie’ssecurity; it may even have helped to circulate a false storyabout a threat to his life -- one that persuaded Rushdie tocancel his visit.
The festival opened under a cloud of relentless and mostlysensationalist media coverage and quickly descended into chaos.Two writers, who chose to express their anger over Rushdie’sabsence with public readings from “The Satanic Verses,” weretold to desist by the festival’s organizers, who believed --wrongly, it turns out -- that reading from a banned book wasillegal, and feared that the police would shut down thefestival.

Warning of Violence

Amid rumors of impending arrest, the writers were advisedto leave Jaipur. Rushdie accused the Rajasthan police of lyingto him -- a charge they denied. Finally, the organizers, warningof violence by a few Muslim protesters at the festival site,canceled a planned conversation with Rushdie through video link.
What exactly happened is still not clear. The organizersmay have panicked, and stumbled into self-censorship. TheRajasthan police might have had good reason to warn Rushdieagainst visiting the festival. And the handful of Muslimdemonstrators at the festival site might have remainednonviolent if the organizers had allowed Rushdie to speakthrough video link.
Some things, however, seemed dismally predictable:competing television channels ravenous for stories about two oftheir favorite subjects -- celebrities and Muslim extremists --and eager to oblige publicity-seeking “representatives” ofvarious “offended” communities; opportunistic politicians, whohave sighted a few uncommitted votes in the upcoming electionsin the neighboring state of Uttar Pradesh; and an ethicallyrudderless government, which repeatedly fails to uphold aprinciple essential to democracy: the freedom of artisticexpression.
In recent years, Indian authorities seem to have abdicatedtheir constitutional duties in the face of extremist assaults onwriters and artists. India’s most famous painter, M.F. Husain,was hounded out of the country by the xenophobic Hindu groupShiv Sena; he spent his last years in exile. The writerArundhati Roy was harassed by charges of sedition for voicing avery commonplace and unobjectionable opinion: that Kashmir is adisputed territory.
Still, a broad notion of the rise of intolerance in Indiaonly partly illuminates the recent episodes of the “SatanicVerses” controversy. In 1989, Rushdie could explain it in thefollowing terms:
“’Battle lines are being drawn in India today,’ one of mycharacters remarks. ‘Secular versus religious, the light versusthe dark. Better you choose which side you are on.’ Now that thebattle has spread to Britain, I only hope it will not be lost bydefault. It is time for us to choose.”

Blurry Lines

The battle lines have become more blurred since Rushdiewrote this; the ideological choices no longer seem so simple ineither the U.K. or India. The pressing issues for most ofIndia (IPOPIND)’s 200 million Muslims is not the clash between secular andreligious identities, or indeed, as Rushdie himself pointed outin an interview last week, the alleged injury caused to theirsensibilities by “The Satanic Verses”: They are poverty,prejudice, discrimination, and, most importantly, anti-Muslimviolence and injustice.
For instance, Narendra Modi, the Hindu nationalist hard-liner who was allegedly complicit in the killing of almost 2,000Muslims in the state of Gujarat in 2002, not only remains awildly popular chief minister; he now aims, plausibly, to occupythe highest political office in the country.
Successive commissions appointed by the government haverecommended affirmative action for India’s economicallydepressed Muslim minority. One such proposed measure is beingtouted by political parties aiming for Muslim votes. Butpoliticians, fearful of a Hindu backlash, would rather resort tosymbolic politics -- banning this or that book, keeping Rushdieout of India -- than take concrete measures to ameliorate thelot of a demoralized community.
And they can always find a few Muslims who are satisfiedwith temporary boosts to their communal self-esteem, which inthe previous two decades has been continuously battered by aresurgent Hindu nationalism and a general ideological climate inwhich terrorist violence is routinely identified with Islam.
Hari Kunzru, one of the four writers who read from “TheSatanic Verses” in Jaipur, is more than aware of this near-criminalizing of Muslim identity in large parts of the world. Onhis website, he explains that he “had no interest in causinggratuitous offense. I apologise unreservedly to anyone who feelsI have disrespected his or her faith.”

‘Islam-Bashing’

Responding to one of the more egregious spokesmen forIndian Muslims, Kunzru writes, “I refute absolutely theaccusation of Asaduddin Owaisi, the Hyderabadi MP who hasaccused me of ‘Islam-bashing under the guise of liberalism.’ Istand on my public record as a defender of the human rights ofMuslims, notably my work for Moazzam Begg and other BritishMuslims detained without trial in Guantanamo Bay.”
Kunzru directly addresses those Muslims who “feel that thenotion of ‘freedom of speech’ is just a tool of secular Westerninterests, a license to insult them.” Freedom of speech, heasserts, “is the sole guarantee of their right to be heard inour complex and plural global culture. It is the only way ofasserting our common life across borders of race, class andreligion.”
Reaching out to Indian critics of Rushdie, Kunzru seems totake an impeccably liberal position. Yet many Western liberals,convinced of Islam’s incompatibility with the modern world andthe necessity of Muslim assimilation to secular lifestyles, areprone to regard Kunzru as an appeaser of reactionary Muslimpoliticians and clerics.
At the same time, Kunzru is unlikely to persuade the manyIndian Muslims who are convinced that an abstract notion of freespeech, which doesn’t take into account severe imbalances ofpolitical and socio-economic power, cannot help them transcendthe very real barriers of race, class and religion.
In this sense, the kulturkampf inaugurated during thepublication of “The Satanic Verses” remains radioactive withhistory and politics. As Rushdie himself argued in 1984, in whatnow seems an innocent time: “Works of art, even works ofentertainment, do not come into being in a social and politicalvacuum; and ... the way they operate in a society cannot beseparated from politics, from history. For every text, acontext.”
The events of the past week remind us that while a textmay remain the same, the political and social settings in whichit operates keep changing with bewildering frequency. Almost 25years after the controversy first erupted over “The SatanicVerses,” it seems to have lost none of its power to seed whatRushdie called “the unceasing storm, the continual quarrel, thedialectic of history.”

Buffett Rule Fixes a Non-Existent Problem: Douglas Holtz-Eakin

2012-01-31T09:48:00.003-07:00

Although Warren Buffett may be astellar investor, his entry into the world of federal tax policyhas brought forth nothing but bad ideas based on flawedinformation and misleading demagoguery. Let’s review the record.

In his State of the Union address last week, PresidentBarack Obama called for enactment of the so-called Buffett rule,saying it wasn’t fair that a rich person pays a lower tax ratethan Buffett’s secretary. In a bald act of political theater,Obama invited Buffett’s secretary to sit in one of the guestseats in the gallery near first lady Michelle Obama during thespeech.
Last year, the president proposed that no household makingmore than $1 million a year pay a smaller share of its income intaxes than middle-class families. In support of this rule, hecalled for these earners to pay a minimum effective tax rate ofat least 30 percent.
The trouble with the Buffett rule is that it is an exampleof the dangers of making policy based on anecdote, instead offacts. As the Congressional Research Service documents, theaverage effective tax rate among millionaires is already about30 percent. The president is trying to solve a problem thatdoesn’t exist.

Taxation Objectives

Of course, it is true that not every millionaire has aneffective tax rate of 30 percent. But what does that tell us?Tax policy reflects a balance among the objectives of economicgrowth, ease of compliance, cost of administration, socialpolicy and -- yes -- fairness. Because millionaires can legallyreduce their tax liability below some perceived “fair” level,it implies that they are contributing to some or all of theseother objectives. Obama may succeed in his single-minded,fairness-only approach to income taxation, although I think hewill come to regret it.
Let’s think for a second about the other consequences ofinstituting the Buffett rule. Taken at face value, it could meananother alternative minimum tax. An early version of the AMT wasborn in 1969 to make sure that 155 high-income Americans didn’tuse loopholes to avoid paying taxes. Today, it stands as aperennial threat to the middle class because it was neverindexed to inflation. Each year Congress struggles to devise a“patch” to protect the middle class from being hit by the AMT,which deprives millions of taxpayers from taking deductions fordependent children and local real-estate taxes.
Maybe Obama envisions it as part of a reform of the AMT. Ifso, imposing the Buffett rule would mean an overhaul not worthundertaking. Why spend the political capital and energy fixingthe AMT when the entire code is a mess?
That brings me to the primary cost of the Buffett rule: Itgets in the way of real and needed tax reform. The veryexistence of the AMT is striking evidence of a broken system.The U.S. should be able to raise the revenue needed to pay forgovernment operations with a code that promotes the needed mixof growth, fairness and other objectives. Tax reform would meanraising the desired revenue with a broader base and the lowestrates possible. The Buffett rule (as would every tax-policyproposal in Obama’s speech) goes in the wrong direction: anarrowing base (millionaires) and a desire for higher rates.
Of course, the biggest misconception about the Buffett ruleis that it would help balance the budget. Not really. A roughstatic estimate -- meaning no assumptions about growth orchanges in behavior -- suggests that the additional revenuewould amount to about $35 billion a year. This works out to lessthan 3 percent of the $1.3 trillion annual federal budgetdeficit.

Boosting Growth

Compare this with a tax reform that broadens the base andlowers rates. Some studies indicate this might raise the U.S.’saverage growth by roughly 0.3 percentage point annually. Thatincrease in growth might boost federal revenue by $80 billion to$100 billion. Put differently, adopting the Buffett rule,instead of a fundamental tax reform, would deprive thegovernment of a net $45 billion to $65 billion a year.
Fairness in public policy is important, but the Buffettrule gets it wrong. With spending racing out of control, thereare many better places to look for fairness. One place to startis to reduce the entitlement benefits of the affluent. In an erawhen a debt crisis could cripple the economy and bequeath alower standard of living to the next generation, it is a moralimperative to undertake tax and entitlement reform.
Perhaps Buffett could have that conversation with hissecretary.
(Douglas Holtz-Eakin, who was chief economist for the Council of Economic Advisers to Presdient George W. Bush from2001 to 2002 and the director of the Congressional BudgetOffice from 2003 to 2005, is the president of the AmericanAction Forum, a public-policy institute. The opinionsexpressed are his own.)

What Krugman Didn't Say About the U.K.'s Austerity Plan: The Ticker

2012-01-31T09:47:00.001-07:00

By Mark Whitehouse

In his latest New York Times column, economist Paul Krugman rightly notes that the economic troubles of Britain, which has been implementing austerity measures, serve to undermine the conservative idea that slashing government spending will somehow bring about a confidence-driven economic boom.
That doesn't, however, mean the U.K.'s austerity plan is a failure.

True, the U.K. economy shrank in the fourth quarter of 2011, and by at least one measure -- change in real gross domestic product since the recession began -- Britain is in worse shape than it was in the wake of the Great Depression.
But by another measure -- the cost of insuring sovereign debt against default -- Britain is doing a lot better than other European nations that didn’t implement similarly ambitious deficit-reducing measures. The cost of insuring U.K. government debt currently stands at about 80 basis points (meaning 80,000 pounds a year to insure 10 million pounds of UK government debt for five years). By contrast, the same insurance on Italian and French debt costs 400 basis points and 165 basis points, respectively.
During the darkest days of the financial crisis in 2009, before the U.K. started acting on its austerity plans, the picture was very different. Insurance on Italian debt cost only slightly more than that on U.K. debt, and insurance on French debt cost a lot less.
In other words, markets have lost much more faith in the creditworthiness of Italy and France than they have in Britain's. That means Britain doesn't have to pay as much interest on its current debts, giving it a much better chance of getting those debts under control and avoiding the kind of market-enforced austerity that much of continental Europe now faces.
Britain's relative success in the credit markets isn't necessarily an argument against a combination in the U.S. of short-term stimulus with longer-term plans to get debt and deficits under control. Nor does it mean that austerity is the sole answer to Europe's troubles. We can never know what would have happened if Britain had embarked on a stimulus program instead of opting for austerity. But it's certainly possible that it would be even worse off than it is.

Fed’s New Wordplay to Yield Negligible Results: Caroline Baum

2012-01-31T09:45:00.001-07:00

A forecast is a forecast. In manycases, it’s not worth the paper it’s printed on.
Some forecasts are more important than others, which is notto say they’re more accurate, just that they matter more. TheFederal Reserve’s forecasts belong in this category.
Unlike the average Wall Street prognosticator, the Fed hasthe unique ability to make its forecast become reality throughits manipulation of the federal funds rate (the overnight rateat which banks lend to one another) and control of the monetarybase (ARDIMTBA). That’s why the central bank’s forecasts, and what’srequired to achieve them, matter.

Starting with the Jan. 24-25 meeting, we will learn for thefirst time what funds rate is associated with the Fed’sprojections for inflation, unemployment and real gross-domestic-product growth in the current year, the next few calendar yearsand “over the longer run,” according to minutes of the Dec. 13meeting released this week.
“Over the longer run” can only mean the rate that willkeep the economy growing at its non-inflationary potential inperpetuity, otherwise known as the neutral funds rate. It willbe an interesting academic exercise to see what neutral rate theFed expects to yield real GDP growth of 2.4 percent to 2.7percent; an unemployment rate of 5.2 percent to 6 percent; andinflation of 1.7 percent to 2 percent -- the central bank’scurrent long-term targets. How this will affect investment andspending decisions in the short run remains to be seen.

Unintended Consequences

The argument in favor of greater transparency on theexpected interest-rate path is that it provides greater clarityand certainty for business investment.
It could have the opposite effect. If the Fed projects slowgrowth, elevated unemployment (USURTOT), benign inflation and a funds rateof zero to 0.25 percent through 2014, businesses might be lulledinto inaction. Why invest now? What’s the rush? My widgetsaren’t flying off the shelf, and everything I read saysconsumers don’t have the wherewithal to spend.
Transparency is better than the alternative. Still, one canenvision potential landmines down the road.
For starters, forecasting is an art, not a science. Whathappens when the Fed is forced to reverse its accommodativepolicy quickly because inflation isn’t behaving as it’s supposedto (even with food, energy and half of the consumer-price indexexcluded), inflation expectations (FED5YEAR) lose their mooring, the U.S.economy gathers steam, or signs of froth appear in some assetmarket, the product of years of near-zero interest rates?Goodbye, certainty; hello, volatility.
Second, even in the normal course of the business cycle,projecting a higher funds rate may have untoward consequences.
“It’s a tricky situation going forward, when the timecomes to start normalizing policy and the Fed revealsprojections of a rising funds rate,” says Dana Saporta, a U.S.economist at Credit Suisse in New York. “We could get anoutsized, undesirable market response: one of the risks ofenhanced transparency.”
Would other short-term rates adjust instantaneously? Whatabout long-term rates?
“The markets are looking at the same data as the Fed,”says Scott Sumner, a professor of economics at BentleyUniversity in Waltham, Massachusetts.
In other words, the Fed will be behind the curve.
Finally, the Fed is opening itself up to increasedpolitical pressure. Some members of Congress may not see theneed for higher interest rates, telegraphed by the Fed, at atime when unemployment is unacceptably high.
That said, it’s “a tiny baby step forward and better thanwhat the Fed did in August,” which was to make an unconditionalpledge to hold the funds rate near zero at least until mid-2013,Sumner says. Under the new procedure, which is “not a veryprecise or effective tool,” the promise about the funds rate isat least “contingent on an outcome for the economy.”

Window Dressing

The biggest problem with the Fed’s elevation ofcommunication to the level of policy tool is that it’s a poorsubstitute for the real thing. Just because short-term rates areclose to zero doesn’t mean the Fed is out of bullets.
As I wrote in a column two months ago, the Fed has apowerful tool in the printing press. If policy makers determinethat more stimulus is warranted, and I’m not saying it is, theyshould crank up the presses. Everything else is window dressing-- and some of it more effective than mere talk.
Want banks to lend? Stop paying them 0.25 percent intereston the $1.5 trillion they’re holding on deposit at the Fed inthe form of excess reserves (ARDIERNA). Better yet, charge them a fee forholding those deposits.
David Beckworth, an economist at Texas State University inSan Marco, compared the new strategy to a ship’s captainfocusing on the rudder instead of the destination. (“Fullemployment” and “price stability” are both fuzzy.) Both heand Sumner advocate targeting nominal GDP. The decline in NGDPin 2008 and 2009, the biggest since the Great Depression, was asign that monetary policy was too tight.
Monetary policy can only affect nominal aggregates, Sumnerexplained in a recent online interview with EconTalk’s Russ Roberts. “Real outcomes” depend on things such as structuralfactors, government policy and productivity, he said.
When the economy experiences a deep contraction, thepresumption is that for any given increase in nominal income,the split between growth and inflation will favor the former.
For the moment, the Fed seems content to tinker around theedges.
“Why did the Fed put all this effort into this maybe-it-adds-something policy” when it could do something that reallymakes a difference? Beckworth asks.
Answer: Transparency is good. Talk is cheap. It won’t domuch harm. The unintended consequences can be dealt with later.

Farmers Making $100 Billion Don’t Need Subsidies to Grow

2012-01-31T09:43:00.000-07:00

Illustration by Bloomberg View

By the Editors

Imagine an industry on a roll. Itsincome surpassed the $100 billion mark last year for the firsttime. On top of these riches, those in the business got anadditional $25 billion or so in federal handouts.
The 1 percenters of Wall Street? Not even close. Thebeneficiaries are America’s farmers, or to be more accurate, thewealthy owners of very big farms.

Considering how flush the farming industry is these days,thanks to surging commodity prices, Congress should have noqualms about eliminating the most egregious agriculture policiesand using the savings to chip away at the budget deficit.
Every five years, Congress writes a new farm bill -- thenext one must be adopted in 2013 -- which means that Congressmight start drafting new legislation soon.
A lot of the political horse-trading in this cycle involvesthe worst of the giveaways -- the roughly $5 billion in directpayments -- that go to a small slice of the largestagribusinesses, most of which produce a handful of commoditycrops such as corn, wheat and soybeans. The owners receive thesesubsidies regardless of need or the health of the farmingindustry.

Promised Savings

What’s notable now is that the farming industry has givenup on preserving this particular subsidy bonanza. Earlier thismonth, the American Farm Bureau Federation said it would dropits opposition to direct payments. But in exchange, theagriculture lobby and its defenders in Congress are angling fora broadening of subsidized crop insurance instead of the morelimited coverage offered now. The danger is that the promisedsavings from the end of the direct-payments program will bediverted into yet another revenue stream for well-off farmers.
Direct payments were themselves “reforms” adopted in 1996in an effort to wean farmers from traditional price supportsthat dated to 1930s-era New Deal programs. The payments weresupposed to decline and be phased out over a five-year period.But subsidies in Washington are like well-tended crops: With thebenefit of lobbying from farming interests, they persisted andgrew.
President Barack Obama last year proposed ending directpayments, arguing that more than half the benefits go torecipients with annual incomes of more than $100,000. (The U.S.Department of Agriculture reported that 20 percent of all directpayments went to just 1 percent of farming businesses.)The proposal was included in a package of $23 billion inagricultural program cuts that Congress’s so-calledsupercommittee was considering as part of its mandate to reducethe federal budget deficit. Although the committee disbanded inNovember without reaching an agreement, the push to end directpayments has bipartisan support: Republican Senator Tom Coburnof Oklahoma sponsored legislation that would have made richfarmers ineligible for the program.
With direct payments at risk, the agriculture industry lastyear began pressing for more federal support for crop insurance.It’s already one of the fastest-growing benefits for theagriculture industry, with subsidies for insurance premiumsrising to more than $7 billion in 2011 from a little more than a$1 billion in 2000.
Crop insurance normally pays a claim if a farmer’s revenuefalls to between 75 percent and 85 percent of a historicalaverage, whether as a result of weather, floods or fallingprices. Facing the loss of direct payments, the industry wantedto bump this up by an additional 10 to 15 percentage points.This would mean a payout to farmers even in years when revenuefell only modestly.

Misguided Incentives

The result would have set up incentives more perverse thanthose already in place: Farmers, understandably, would try toraise their historical average by planting more crops. In turn,they would need more insurance and still bigger governmentsubsidies. In other words, as crop prices went up, insurancecosts would rise and so would the cost to taxpayers. And sincecrop prices are so high today, farmers could collect hugepayoffs if prices were to return to levels seen before thefinancial crisis touched off the commodities boom.
To blunt criticism, the farming industry has floated adifferent plan it says would only provide insurance payouts incase of larger losses. The most troubling aspect of thisproposal? Farmers might bear even less of the cost, which canonly mean that the government would pay more. Congress shouldresist these proposals.
Direct payments and crop insurance aren’t the only farmhandouts that should be eliminated or scaled back. A $7 billionloan program, in effect, ensures minimum prices for crops.Farmers borrow from the government, pledging their crops ascollateral. If prices are high, a farmer can repay the loan withcash left over from selling the crop. If prices are low, afarmer can repay the loan at the lower value and keep the cropto sell later when prices are higher. The heads-we-win, tails-you-lose structure of this program has to end.
The loan program is paired with a $4 billion counter-cyclical payment system adopted in 2002 that rewards farmersbased on historical production. If prices fall, a farmer can geta payment, even if there is no financial need. It is all tooreminiscent of the old price-support regimen that directpayments were supposed to replace.
Eliminating agricultural subsidies altogether isn’trealistic, given how much sway the industry has in Washington.Spending on research and development is crucial, as are programsto encourage people to take up farming. But whatever Congressdecides in the next farm bill, it should resist swapping onefarming gravy train for another.

Why Gingrich Is Right About Food Stamps

2012-01-31T09:41:00.002-07:00

By Ramesh Ponnuru

Ramesh Ponnuru

Newt Gingrich, as is his wont, hasstarted a controversy. President Barack Obama, Gingrich hassaid, is the “best food-stamp president in American history.”And: “He will always prefer a food-stamp economy to a paycheckeconomy.”

In one town-hall appearance in New Hampshire, Gingrich saidhe would be happy to address a convention of the NationalAssociation for the Advancement of Colored People to explainthat “the African American community should demand paychecks andnot be satisfied with food stamps.”
The resulting furor has highlighted what Gingrich gotwrong. But Gingrich isn’t wrong to be troubled by theextraordinary growth of the federal food-stamp program.
Liberals have taken Gingrich to be promoting and exploitingracist sentiments. In their view, he is insinuating to whitevoters that a black president is handing out money to idleblacks because he is hostile to working for a living.
I may be naive, or just biased because I’m a conservative,but I’m inclined to take a more charitable view. Gingrich hadbeen making the paychecks-versus-food-stamps contrast for monthswithout referring to race. He may have been -- clumsily --making the point that policies that weaken the private sectorand encourage dependency on government harm blacks more thanother Americans. That view may or may not be sound, but it isn’tbased on racial animosity.

Stretching the Truth

Gingrich is, however, stretching the truth when he says“the fact is that more people have been put on food stamps byBarack Obama than any president in American history.” The numberof people on food stamps -- the program is now officially calledthe Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which makes foran easy abbreviation -- rose by roughly 14.7 million underGeorge W. Bush’s administration and has risen an additional 14.2million under Obama. (In recent months, the number has beenfalling.)
Neither administration “put” all those people on foodstamps. The sharp recession and weak recovery are responsiblefor much of the increase. Gingrich, presumably, blames Obama forprolonging the economic pain and thus for indirectly increasingthe food-stamp numbers; but that’s not the same thing as sayinghe directly put people on the program.
Economic weakness, though, isn’t the whole story. For muchof the last decade, and with bipartisan support, governments atall levels have sought to reduce the stigma of food stamps andencourage people who are eligible for it to sign up. (“Nutritionis a SNAP!”)
A more troubling reason for the increase is that stategovernments have found it easy to get their constituents federalmoney -- that is, money mostly raised from current and futuretaxpayers in other states -- by making more people eligible forfood stamps. According to a mid-2010 report from the GovernmentAccountability Office, 35 states have no limit on the amount ofassets a food-stamp recipient can possess. More and more states-- the count was 36 at the time of the report -- are providing“categorical eligibility” for food stamps to anyone who receiveswelfare services. Merely getting an informational brochure fromthe Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program counts asreceiving a service.
Another way that states and localities can get federalmoney flowing to them is by providing token amounts ofassistance with home heating bills. Even a dollar of energysubsidies can make someone eligible for food stamps, or increasethe benefit level for someone already on SNAP. Vermont, forexample, sends $5 checks to public-housing residents, eventhough their subsidized rent already covers heating, to qualifythem for food stamps. Liberal activists call this strategy forgetting federal money “heat and eat.”

Change the Rules

It’s hard to blame cash-strapped jurisdictions for usingthe rules of the program to get what they can for their people.But the rules ought to change. Allowing state officials to raisefederal spending at will is a recipe for trouble.
Able-bodied adults on the main welfare program (TANF again)have to abide by work requirements -- they have to work, or lookfor work, or train to work to receive benefits. This seems likea reasonable condition to apply to the food-stamp program, aswell. Some congressional Republicans have advocated this policy,but the Obama administration hasn’t been interested.
Gingrich’s hyperbole, and the reaction to it, shouldn’tobscure the need to reform the food-stamp program as the economyimproves. The program ought to be focused on people in real need-- not people who are taking no steps to find work, or whohappen to have had minimal contact with the welfare bureaucracy.And changes to the program ought to be accompanied by reforms toprograms that raise the price of food. We know that ethanolsubsidies boost food prices significantly, for example, even ifthe exact amount is disputed. Federal dairy policies raise theprice of milk: They are designed to do so.
Gingrich promises to be “the best paycheck president inAmerican history” if elected. We could use a “cheaper-foodpresident,” too: one who would stand up to the farm lobby.

Poll: Obama 48% - Paul 46%, CNN Baffled, Asks College Students Why Ron P...

2012-01-30T23:54:00.000-07:00

Palin: It’s Now the GOP Establishment vs. the Tea Party

2012-01-30T23:17:00.002-07:00

We have witnessed something very disturbing this week. The Republican establishment which fought Ronald Reagan in the 1970s and which continues to fight the grassroots Tea Party movement today has adopted the tactics of the left in using the media and the politics of personal destruction to attack an opponent.
We will look back on this week and realize that something changed. I have given numerous interviews wherein I espoused the benefits of thorough vetting during aggressive contested primary elections, but this week’s tactics aren’t what I meant. Those who claim allegiance to Ronald Reagan’s 11th Commandment should stop and think about where we are today. Ronald Reagan and Barry Goldwater, the fathers of the modern conservative movement, would be ashamed of us in this primary. Let me make clear that I have no problem with the routine rough and tumble of a heated campaign. As I said at the first Tea Party convention two years ago, I am in favor of contested primaries and healthy, pointed debate. They help focus candidates and the electorate. I have fought in tough and heated contested primaries myself. But what we have seen in Florida this week is beyond the pale. It was unprecedented in GOP primaries. I’ve seen it before – heck, I lived it before – but not in a GOP primary race.
I am sadly too familiar with these tactics because they were used against the GOP ticket in 2008. The left seeks to single someone out and destroy his or her record and reputation and family using the media as a channel to dump handpicked and half-baked campaign opposition research on the public. The difference in 2008 was that I was largely unknown to the American public, so they had no way of differentiating between the lies and the truth. All of it came at them at once as “facts” about me. But Newt Gingrich is known to us – both the good and the bad.
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Obama’s Low-Ball Vision: Tax Success, Tax Growth

2012-01-30T23:03:00.000-07:00

By Larry Kudlow

You would think that with one of the weakest economic recoveries on record, President Barack Obama would be desperately searching for ways to promote economic growth. It is, after all, an election year. Most pundit and pollsters agree that it’s the economy stupid.

But instead, Obama used his State of the Union speech to rail on about fairness, inequality, and redistribution. The Obama strategy is simple: Tax the rich because they don’t pay enough.

The problem is, they do pay enough. According to the Tax Foundation, Americans making $1 million or more pay a 25 percent average tax rate. People in the $50,000 to $100,000 income category — call it the middle class — pay 7 to 8 percent.

But no, Obama’s one big idea in his Tuesday night speech was a 30 percent minimum tax on millionaires. This, by the way, is really a hike in the capital-gains tax. And this Obama penalty is aimed squarely at his likely election opponent, Mitt Romney. Talk about taxing success. Talk about taxing growth.

The capital-gains tax is the single most important economy-wide tax on wealth, risk-taking, and investment. It’s a tax on seed corn. What a brilliant idea, Mr. President.

I remember the late Jack Kemp always saying you can’t have successful capitalism without capital. But that wasn’t in the president’s State of the Union.

It’s not as though the economy is prepared to a take another tax hit. The fourth-quarter GDP report adjusted for inflation came in at a mediocre 2.8 percent. Wall Street promptly sold off on the news.

And we’re now ten quarters into the tepid Obama recovery, with its average quarterly growth rate of 2.4 percent annually.

Deep recessions are supposed to breed strong snap-back recoveries. But it’s not happening — even after an $800 billion government-spending package, a $2 trillion Federal Reserve balance-sheet expansion, a zero Fed interest rate (for three years and counting), and a whole bunch of temporary targeted tax cuts.

It’s the whole Keynesian bag of tricks, but it’s still a very subpar recovery.

Way back when, Ronald Reagan used the supply-side model, and rejected big-government Keynesianism. He permanently lowered marginal tax rates, deregulated the economy, went to a strong King Dollar that collapsed oil and gold prices, and limited domestic spending (as a share of GDP). After ten quarters of recovery, the Reagan growth rate was 6 percent.

Compare that to Obama’s 2.4 percent. Or compare Obama’s 2.4 percent to the 4.6 percent post-WWII average recovery rate after ten quarters. The average is twice as good as Obama. But Obama is only roughly a third of Reagan. That tells you something.

On top of all this, under current-law Obama policy, the vitally important capital-gains tax is going up, even without the millionaire’s minimum. Next year, the capital-gains tax will revert to 20 percent from today’s 15 percent. Then Obamacare will raise investment tax rates by 4 percent, bringing us up to 24 percent. That equals an 11 percent rollback of wealth and growth incentives.

But that’s not all, since the capital-gains tax is paid on top of the 35 percent corporate tax. So under Obama, a 24 percent cap-gains tax is really a 51 percent tax rate on capital.

As Mitt Romney found out, even today’s 15 percent cap-gains tax is really a 45 percent double tax on top of the corporate levy. But there’s a better way here: Slash the corporate tax rate, and leave the cap-gains rate alone until full-fledged tax reform can take place.

In other words, increase incentives to grow and invest. Make it pay more after tax to invest and take risks. That’s a growth prescription, the exact opposite of Obama’s redistributionism.

Why is it fair or equal to create a lower tide that pulls down all boats?

I interviewed Mitt Romney on CNBC, and it’s clear that he gets this. And as he aggressively argued in the Jacksonville, Fla., debate, he is proud of his success and doesn’t want to give it back to the tax man.

More important, Team Romney is cooking up a stronger tax-reform plan. Romney intends to broaden the base by getting rid of deductions, exemptions, and loopholes, and then bring down the rates. I asked him if the plan would be ready during the primary season. He said yes.

There is a growing consensus around the country for full-fledged reform of the personal and corporate tax codes. People yearn for simplicity, competitiveness, and new incentives. Obama’s great mistake in the State of the Union was his low-ball vision of class warfare and redistribution when the country wants growth measures.

This November we’ll see a great debate between a big-government entitlement society that emphasizes fairness and a smaller-government growth society based on free-market capitalism. Pro-growth tax reform is essential to this debate.

To find out more about Lawrence Kudlow and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at www.creators.com.

David Malpass: Fed's Actions Will Kill US Dollar Read more: David Malpass: Fed's Actions Will Kill US Dollar Important: Can you afford to Retire? Shocking Poll Results

2012-01-30T23:00:00.001-07:00

By Julie Crawshaw

Encima Global president David Malpass says the actions of the Federal Reserve will boost inflation and harm the U.S. dollar.

"Dollar weakness doesn't work at all for economic well-being," Malpass writes in The Wall Street Journal. "The corollary to the Fed's policy of manipulating interest rates downward at the expense of savers is declining median incomes."

It's no coincidence that inflation-adjusted median incomes rose in the sound-money booms of the Reagan and Clinton administrations and fell in the weak-dollar busts during the Carter, Bush and Obama years, according to Malpass.

"When the currency weakens, the prices of staples rise faster than wages, hurting all but the rich who buy protection," he says.
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The economy and median incomes would do much better if the Fed said simply that it would set interest rates as best it could in order to keep the dollar's value strong and stable in coming decades, with the goal of attracting capital, maintaining price stability and encouraging full employment.

Obfuscation on the dollar works fine for Wall Street, which reaps billions in profits from the Fed's unstable dollar policy, says Malpass.

“It trades currencies and volatility, and makes a bundle protecting investors from the Fed by selling complex derivatives, interest-rate swaps, even triple-leveraged gold and currency funds pitched on television,” he says.

“After the Fed's statement, markets bid gold above $1,700 per ounce, the latest insult to the Founders' clear intent for the dollar's value to be strong and stable relative to gold and silver over the life of our republic.”

The Fed's status in Washington is unique and practically unassailable, Malpass notes.

“It alone is a colossal self-funder operating outside the congressional appropriations process. Even the CIA and Navy Seals don't enjoy the Fed's unlimited spending power, checked only by its handpicked board and senior leadership.”

Thestreet.com reports that gold prices have rallied almost 4 percent in two days after the Fed announced it will leave interest rates low through the end of 2014 and the door open to more bond buying.

As the Fed commits to a weak dollar policy, gold becomes attractive to investors as a wealth preserver.

Banks set to double crisis loans from ECB

2012-01-30T22:29:00.000-07:00

By Patrick Jenkins and David Oakley in London and Ralph Atkins in Frankfurt

European banks are preparing to tap the European Central Bank’s emergency funding scheme for up to twice as much as the ECB supplied in its debut €489bn auction last month, providing further evidence of the sector’s liquidity squeeze.
Several of the eurozone’s biggest banks have told the Financial Times that they could well double or triple their request for funds in the ECB’s three-year money auction on February 29.

“Banks are not going to be as shy second time round,” said the head of one eurozone bank at last week’s World Economic Forum in Davos. “We should have done more first time.”
Three bank chief executives, all of whom asked to remain anonymous, said they were planning to increase their participation twofold or threefold.
Goldman Sachs has told clients that banks could ask for twice as much in the February auction as in December when more than 500 lenders raised €489bn. “They could do another €1tn easily in February,” said one senior banker. “It could be way more than that if things get worse in the markets.”
The ECB, under new president Mario Draghi, launched its funding facility in December to avert a looming credit crunch, with €230bn of bank bonds coming due for repayment in the first quarter of 2012 while bond markets remained largely closed to new issuance.
Bankers credit Mr Draghi with helping to destigmatise the ECB’s funding operation by persuading as many institutions as possible to participate. Previously, banks had shied away from such support schemes for fear of appearing weak.
Bankers expect many more banks to take part in the February auction, encouraged by the widespread participation last time, as well as the promise of unlimited cheap money – the funds attract an interest rate of only 1 per cent.
Analysts suggest banks have used some of this money to invest in higher-yielding eurozone sovereign bonds, helping to drive down borrowing costs for several hard-pressed eurozone governments, including Italy, Spain, Ireland, and Greece.
But on Monday yields were mostly higher across the eurozone periphery amid concerns over the Greek rescue plan. Portuguese 10-year bond yields leapt more than 2 percentage points to 17.26 per cent, as investors increasingly expect the country to default.
The ECB’s decision to broaden the pool of collateral that banks can use to obtain its funds is also expected to encourage higher bidding. Mr Draghi has said he expects “substantial” appetite for the February allotment of three-year loans.
If demand extends anywhere near the €1tn figure, the scheme would be far bigger than the market broadly expects. A poll of traders by Reuters, published on Monday, predicted the ECB would allot a total of €325bn.
Italian banks dominated demand for the December money, according to data collated by Morgan Stanley.
Bankers at Spanish, French and German institutions said they were also big takers. Even Royal Bank of Scotland tapped the scheme for €5bn of liquidity, using its Dutch subsidiary as a conduit.

Hildebrand case puts spotlight on bank secrecy

2012-01-30T22:23:00.005-07:00

By Haig Simonian in Bern

Switzerland’s private banks, smarting under tax crackdowns in many neighbouring countries, could face new challenges after this week’s resignation of Philipp Hildebrand as central bank chairman again highlighted the dangers of data breaches.
Mr Hlidebrand stepped down after revelations that his wife engaged in controversial foreign exchange transactions, rather than any tax issues. But his departure makes him one of the highest profile victims of a data breach since 2008, when Klaus Zumwinkel resigned from his position as Deutsche Post chief executive after stolen data revealed he held undeclared accounts in Liechtenstein.
But with its much bigger banking sector and famed bank secrecy, it is Switzerland’s private banks that are now worried.

“What happened is the worst that can happen to a bank . . . but we have to live with this latent risk”, says Christoph Gloor, deputy chairman of Switzerland’s private bankers association and partner at Basel-based La Roche & Co.
“It is highly likely now that so-called “politically exposed persons” such as government officials and top business leaders, may become increasingly undesirable as clients for some banks”, says Ray Soudah, founder of Millenium Associates, a private banking specialist.
“These are names that can carry reputational risks in the case of disclosure”, he adds.
In recent months, Credit Suisse and Julius Baer have both suffered from data theft. The two Swiss banks paid the German authorities €150m and €50m respectively to settle investigations prompted after unknown thieves stolen hundreds of account details of clients with potentially undeclared holdings.
Earlier, HSBC, which has a big Geneva private banking operation, suffered similar embarrassment after information about more than 100,000 accounts was stolen by Hervé Falciani, an information technology employee. Mr Falciani passed the information to French investigators, who then transferred information about non-French account holders to other countries’ tax authorities.
Swiss private bankers are understandably reluctant to discuss the subject, as they fear publicity will undermine client confidence. Many have taken expensive steps to improve security.
“There are task forces now in almost every bank re-examining and improving internal security”, says Mr Soudah, whose company has been involved in many private bank mergers and acquisitions.
In spite of such efforts Swiss bankers recognise data breaches remain a powerful risk – especially when foreign tax authorities are willing to pay handsomely for information.
Mr Hildebrand’s example was politically, rather than financially, motivated. But the ease with which his account information reached third parties shows how easy it can be to fall foul of theft or leaks of data.
The Hildebrands’ account details were called up by a Sarasin IT support employee. The latter took three “screenshots”, with a mobile phone or camera, which he then gave to Switzerland’s ultranationalist People’s party, which had been waging a campaign against Mr Hildebrand over his monetary intervention policies at the SNB.
The employee, who has since been admitted to a psychiatric hospital, this week told three Swiss newspapers he had not wanted to create a political storm or bring down Mr Hildebrand, but just to shed light on the controversial foreign exchange trades.
Although exonerated from having broken SNB rules, Mr Hildebrand stepped down after being unable to demonstrate conclusively that the most controversial trade, made in the thick of the SNB’s attempts to hold down the Swiss franc, had been ordered by his wife without his knowledge. Mr Hildebrand maintains that he did not know about the large dollar purchase executed on August 15 until the following day.
However, as he conceded on Monday, documents released by the Swiss National Bank didn’t entirely support his version of events. In fact, they suggested the former central bank chairman played a more active role in steering his family’s foreign exchange exposure than implied.
An account of a conversation between Mr Hildebrand and his investment manager, Felix Scheuber, appears to show that on the very day of the transaction apparently carried out without his knowledge, Mr Hildebrand had discussed “increasing his USD [dollar] exposure but he would leave it up to his wife Kashya to so decide”.
Sarasin has launched legal action against the employee and unnamed others for breaching bank secrecy. Zurich prosecutors, who have taken up the case, are currently gathering evidence and interviewing those involved.
Although their inquiries are secret, lawyers close to the investigations say criminal proceedings are likely to be instituted soon.

The shame of living in a corrupt country

2012-01-30T22:21:00.003-07:00

This has reference to the article, “Caught in web of corruption” (January 20) by Arindam Chaudhuri. A high GDP growth is critical for our country from a purely economic point of view as it creates a positive atmosphere for the domestic and foreign investors. But at the same time, we should be seriously worried about our pathetic ranking in the Corruption Perception Index.
This ranking is directly proportional to the sentiments of foreign investors. One the one hand the investors are aware that India is an emerging economy and it is the country to be doing business in at this juncture. But on the other hand they are apprehensive and develop cold feat when they know that nothing moves in India if palms are not greased properly.

And, with fiscal deficit at an alarming level in the country it is all the more essential to change the perception that India is a corrupt nation, by bringing in revolutionary changes in the way things function here. The Global Financial Integrity’s finding in its report sums up the issue of how hundreds of crores of rupees in black are flowing out of country with ease and our Government is not able to control it, leave alone name the guilty and act against them. Should we then assume that our Government is incapable or is there is more to it than meets the eye?
Whatever be the case, we should be ashamed of the image that our country has developed because of corruption. The sooner we do something about it the better it will be for all of us. If we do not act soon, the double-digit growth that we talk about and can achieve, will remain a dream on paper. After all, sustainable growth and prosperity to all citizens of the country is just not possible with corruption eating away into the vitals of the economy.

Mitt Romney's Bermuda (tax) holiday

2012-01-30T22:20:00.001-07:00

Romney exploited perfectly legal tax loopholes with Bain Capital, the author writes. | AP Photo

By DIETLIND LERNER and E.J. FAGAN | 1/20/12 4:33 AM EST

Mitt Romney’s direction of Bain Capital’s tax avoidance activities now threaten to become a major campaign issue. But how questionable are his actions? We need to ask: “What would I do if I could legally avoid paying income tax?”

In taking advantage of tax regulation for personal gain, Romney followed a legal strategy likely used by countless other businessmen and politicians. But since he is running for office, maybe we need to establish some safe-guards so that such problematic choices are not legally condoned.

A plausible scenario plays out like this: I hire an accountant. Doing her job, my accountant tells me that if I sign a few legal documents and route my money through a small Caribbean island, I could keep more of my paycheck and pay a lower tax rate. I may have earned my money in the United States, but legally I can claim that it was, in fact, earned in a tax haven.

If it is entirely legal, which your accountant later assures you is the case, then what’s the problem? Well, this loop-hole, so beneficial to you, deprives the government of cash to help fund, for example, public libraries, or new trucks for fire departments or subsidized heating for the elderly. .
This is more or less what happens when wealthy people and corporations shelter their money in Bermuda — or another of some 60-odd tax havens available around the globe. It’s essentially what Romney did with Bain Capital.
According to a 2007 Los Angeles Times article, under Romney’s leadership, Bain Capital set up a shell corporation called Sankaty High Yield Asset Investors Ltd, based in Bermuda. It has no documented staff or actual office in Bermuda. Without breaking any laws, Bain Capital could avoid paying corporate tax in the United States
Bain was in total accordance with the law by using these offshore arrangements. It was just taking advantage of a serious problem in our tax code, which allows well-off companies and individuals to shift money out of the economy to avoid paying their fair share of tax.
It’s difficult even to estimate exactly how much tax money the U.S. government is deprived of each year through what is now-legal tax avoidance. Companies don’t have to report money invested in offshore vehicles. The use of these vehicles is now common practice in the finance industry. Consider that Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) estimates that we lose approximately $100 billion per year in illegal tax evasion – which is more risky than mere tax avoidance. This number must be far higher.
As international financial crises threaten governments in Europe and Africa, and Occupy Wall Street protests continue in cities around the country, the measure of a future president should not be that he took advantage of a great business deal. Rather should be that, if elected, he could be trusted to put an end to this entire process of legally sanctioned tax avoidance which is so harmful to our country.
Certainly, with greater transparency, we wouldn’t need estimates and imagination to understand the damage being done.
Dietlind Lerner is the communications director of the Task Force on Financial Integrity and Economic Development. E.J. Fagan is new media / advocacy coordinator for the organization.

Mexico Hemorrhages US$872 Billion to Crime, Corruption, Tax Evasion from 1970-2010

2012-01-30T22:17:00.002-07:00

Illicit Financial Outflows Average Over 5% of GDP, Driven by Underground Economy, Spiked in Wake of NAFTA

MEXICO CITY / WASHINGTON, DC – Crime, corruption and tax evasion cost the Mexican economy US$872 billion between 1970 and 2010 according to a new report from Global Financial Integrity (GFI), a Washington, DC-based research and advocacy organization. The illicit financial outflows, which averaged a massive 5.2% of GDP, grew significantly over the 41-year period studied from just US$1 billion in 1970 to US$68.5 billion in 2010.

“This is a devastatingly large amount of money for any developing country to lose,” said Raymond W. Baker, director of GFI. “$872 billion is gone, which could have been used to develop the Mexican economy, to invest in education, to build roads, or to fight the drug cartels. The negative ramifications are huge for everyday Mexicans.”
The study, which was authored by Dr. Dev Kar, GFI lead economist, saw illicit outflows explode from an annual average of US$3.0 billion in the 1970s, to US$10.4 billion in the 1980s, to US$17.4 billion in the 1990s, and US$49.6 billion in the decade ending 2009.

Underground Economy

Moreover, illicit outflows were found to drive the domestic underground economy, which includes—among other things—drug smuggling, arms trafficking and human trafficking. Thus, illegal capital flight was found to contribute to a deterioration in governance. Likewise, growth in the underground economy was also shown to drive illicit flows, creating “a snowballing effect whereby both the underground economy and illicit flows continue to grow at an increasing rate unless policy measures and institutions intervene,” according to Dr. Kar, who worked as a senior economist at the International Monetary Fund before joining GFI.

Trade Mispricing and NAFTA

The report concluded that policymakers should focus on measures to curtail trade mispricing, a form of trade based money-laundering, which skyrocketed in the years after NAFTA came into effect and which was shown to account for 73.7% of total illicit financial outflows over the 41-year time period.
The study recommends three policy measures to reduce trade mispricing:

· Require the utilization of computer software to detect export and import prices that are clearly out of line with international norms; (49)
· Require that the parties conducting a sale of goods or services in a cross-border transaction sign a statement in the commercial invoice certifying that no trade mispricing has taken place in an attempt to avoid duties or taxes and that the transaction is priced using the OECD arms-length principle; (51) and
· Undertake additional measures to curb abusive transfer pricing. (51)

Further Policy Recommendations

In addition to recommending policies to curtail trade mispricing, the report recommends four additional policy actions to reduce illegal capital flight from Mexico:
· Expand double tax avoidance agreements with other jurisdictions; (53)
· Require automatic cross-border exchange of tax information with other jurisdictions on personal and business accounts; (54)
· Maintain macroeconomic stability, which includes maintaining low budget deficits, low external debt levels, and low and stable inflation rates; (56) and
· Take steps to reign in the role of offshore financial centers (OFCs) and banks. (59)

Destination of Illicit Outflows

While the report cannot specifically breakdown into which jurisdictions illicit outflows from Mexico are deposited, the study does indicate that a majority of Mexican capital outflows, which include both licit and illicit capital, end up in U.S. banks. The large spike in illicit outflows following the implementation of NAFTA would imply that much of those outflows were indeed headed for the United States. This suggests that U.S. policymakers have a significant role to play in curtailing the flow of illicit money out of their southern neighbor.

In addition to the U.S., tax havens in the Caribbean and Europe were the second and third largest recipients of Mexican capital outflows.

Drug Cartels and National Security Risk

A large portion of drug cartel activity is conducted in cash, and none of those cash transactions are detected in GFI’s data, which is one of the reasons why the organization believes its figures to be extremely conservative. That said, drug cartels like many criminal enterprises also utilize legitimate commercial transactions to launder their profits. In fact, the Los Angeles Times reported last month that Mexican drug cartels were utilizing trade-based money laundering techniques to move their money across the U.S.-Mexico border. Those kinds of business transactions would show up in the organizations data, however it cannot be determined exactly how much of the trade mispricing in GFI’s report is attributable to the activities of drug cartels.
As such, the organization believes that this has serious implications for national security.
“The ease with which money can be laundered across the U.S.-Mexico border via trade mispricing poses a major national security risk to both the United States and Mexico,” said Mr. Baker. “Drug traffickers, like kleptocrats, terrorists and tax dodgers, all gain from anonymous shell companies, tax haven secrecy, and nefarious trade mispricing tactics. Taking steps to address these issues would curtail a number of societal ills.”

Unattainable Government Goals

2012-01-30T22:10:00.004-07:00

By Bill Bonner

Baltimore, Maryland – Yesterday, investors digested the big news from Wednesday…the Fed’s announcement that it would continue handing out money, asking nothing in return, for the next three years.

Stocks went down. Oil stayed under $100. The yield on the 10-year note fell under 2%. And gold just kept going up.
The New York Times reported:

The Fed said that it now planned to keep short-term interest rates near zero until late 2014, continuing the transformation of a policy that began as shock therapy in the winter of 2008 into a six-year campaign to increase spending by rewarding borrowers and punishing savers.

“What did we learn today? Things are bad, and they’re not improving at the rate that they want them to improve,” said Kevin Logan, chief United States economist at HSBC. “That’s what they concluded — ‘We’ve eased policy a lot, but we haven’t eased it enough.’”

The new forecast showed that the Fed expects to hit its inflation target over the next three years, but to fall well short of its goals for unemployment. The Fed projected that unemployment would drop no lower than 8.2 percent this year, just slightly below the current rate of 8.5 percent, and no lower than 7.4 percent by the end of next year. By the end of 2014, the Fed still expects that at least 6.7 percent of people actively interested in working would not be able to find jobs.

How do you like that, dear reader? The Fed has goals for unemployment and inflation. Targets. And it moves its policies around in order to achieve its goals.
Of course, it doesn’t necessarily hit its goals. Still, we’re supposed to believe that by trying to hit them it somehow encourages them in the right direction…
Most people believe they are successful. Which makes us wonder. Maybe the Fed should set goals for other things? Weight-loss goals, for example.
The idea is that by changing interest rate and banking policies the Fed actually influences inflation and employment. So, there’s a logic to thinking that the Fed should set targets and try to hit them. Trouble is, if it could really change things for the better, why does it put up with an 8.5% unemployment rate now — four years after the subprime crisis began? Why doesn’t it exercise its magic to bring the rate down…?
Well, we all know the answer. It can’t. Once you’ve taken interest rates down to zero…and announced that you’ll leave them there for the next three years…what more can you do? Drop money from helicopters? Right!
But no point in getting ahead of ourselves. Right now, interest rate policy doesn’t work. Because the money supply is expanded by retail and commercial bank lending, not central bank lending. The Fed lends money to the money-center banks. They’re happy to take the Fed’s money. But that doesn’t mean they will multiply it out by risking it in the economy.
So, for the moment, they might as well set a fat goal…too…
Excuse us as we pause in admiration and shock…
We had a sneaking suspicion that Alan Greenspan, former Fed chief, was not as dumb as he pretended to be. When he was on the job he could barely say a straight sentence. Probably because he didn’t really believe what he was saying.
Since he’s been unemployed, he’s begun to speak more clearly. In yesterday’s Financial Times he has an opinion on capitalism which is actually among the best in the series. In it, he makes a good point. Anti-capitalists are not really annoyed at capitalism. What bothers them is “crony capitalism:”

“Crony capitalism abounds when government leaders, usually in exchange for political support, routinely bestow favors on private individuals or business. That is not capitalism. It is called corruption.”

Or you could call it zombification…or geriatric capitalism…or, as Kurt Richebächer used to call it, “degenerate capitalism.” But it’s not real capitalism.
The ‘greed’ that preoccupies Occupy Wall Street demonstrators is not a feature of capitalism, Greenspan points out. It’s a feature of human nature. He might have pointed out that socialists are just as greedy as capitalists. They are just more corrupt. Rather than get their gains by honest deception, they get it by brute force — by using the police power of government to take it from others.
Greenspan provides an example of a corrupt system, designed to protect the wealthy from competition — immigration law. It keeps out qualified foreigners willing to work for less:
“The H1B program is in effect a subsidy for the wealthy, a policy that is anathema to the supporters of capitalism.”
He goes on to suggest that “improvements” to capitalism, such as those to be considered today in Davos, are not likely to be good ones.
Good on you, Alan.
*** “Hey Bill,” writes a Dear Reader, “How can you say America is going to Hell? We’re the most Christian country in the world.”
The trouble with Christians is that from time to time they render unto Caesar far more than he deserves…and lose sight of their own faith. Hardly had the martyrdoms stopped under Emperor Constantine than early Christians began pointing the figure, calling one another heretics…and then murdering each other.
Christian crusaders sacked the Christian city of Constantinople on their way to the Holy Land …where they did even worse mischief. In the 15th century, Lutherans under Charles V gave Rome a worse sack than the barbarians had a thousand years before. They raped nuns, murdered priests, and stole whatever they could carry off.
And now, once again, Christian mobs are calling for blood. Jon Utley, who we met Tuesday night, explains why America’s evangelical Christians are an ungodly bunch. Logically, they should support Ron Paul. He opposes abortion, gay marriage and promiscuity. He’s never been divorced. Two of his brothers are ministers. And he’s a Baptist. What more could they want?
What they want, Utley explains, is to live by the sword:

Why…are evangelical leaders now opting for Santorum, and before him Gingrich? The one big area of disagreement with Ron Paul is war; foreign wars and the domestic one against drugs. For this they oppose him. Santorum supports unending war in Afghanistan, backing Israel without limit and a new war against Iran.

Earlier there was a major far leftist candidate who supported all the issues that evangelicals oppose, and was a vocal proponent for expanding Israeli settlements on the West Bank and promoting the war on Iraq. He was overjoyed when open homosexuality became allowed in the military, he supports abortion, gay marriage and the leftist agenda for big, intrusive government; power to labor unions as well as expanded, unconstitutional police powers within the US. Evangelicals adore him and went all out to support him 2006, when he lost his primary race and ran as an independent for the Senate. He is Senator Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut.

All this shows how evangelical leaders put support for wars ahead of their social values. Their support includes every new law giving Washington ever greater police powers over American citizens, such as the Patriot Act, Military Commissions Act and the recent National Defense Authorization Act which tear asunder much of the Bill of Rights. Most also supported torture of prisoners of war (with the notable exception of Chuck Colson of Prison Fellowship). All this comes with their “social values.”

They loved George Bush. They were major supporters of the two wars against Iraq and the occupation of Afghanistan. Fear and ignorance of the outside world joins together with a belief that God uniquely favors America. Mostly poorer Southerners they also have strong affinity for the American military and its industrial complex. In addition, author Chris Hedges has written about how they are joined by many Northern blue collar families hurting from new technology, globalization, and poor schools in seeing government as out to undermine their communities and social values. Their solace is to hope for Armageddon.

Evangelicals like to quote a biblical text that God favors those who favor the Jews. However, for them they mean only Jews who make wars and contribute to chaos in the Middle East. Jewish peacemakers are cursed in their view. No tears were shed for Yitzak Rabin who negotiated peace with the Arabs until Israeli fanatics killed him. Indeed Pat Robertson said that Rabin was killed because he was trying to thwart God’s plans.

Herein lies their antipathy to Ron Paul, who in all other respects is a family values conservative. Indeed, most of them are Baptists who used to look upon Catholics with suspicion. Today they would prefer Senator Santorum or Newt Gingrich, both Catholics, to Ron Paul, who is Baptist. Santorum is no libertarian believer in limited government (he would use government to enforce his social values) and urges absolute support for Israel and the military industrial complex. These evangelicals don’t want peace because it would mean postponing Armageddon. That’s why their leaders oppose Ron Paul.

Jon Basil Utley is Associate Publisher of The American Conservative.

Regards,
Bill Bonner

Why Economic Growth Will Continue to Disappoint in 2012

2012-01-30T22:07:00.002-07:00

By Bill Bonner

01/30/12 Baltimore, Maryland – Tutto va bene…
That was what the crew told passengers on the Costa Concordia just before it sank.
And it was what the crew of the USS America — the biggest cruise ship of all — were telling passengers last week.
Tutto va bene.
Trouble was, tutto was not going as bene as they claimed. Instead, the ship is sinking.
Stocks sank on Friday. Oil slipped below $100. And the yield on a 10-year T-note dropped to 1.89%. Gold kept going up.

None of these are signs that the voyage is going well.
The US economy has come back to output levels of ’07. But this feeble rebound not only holds the title of “weakest post-war recovery ever,” it also shows that something else is going on. Most economists have no idea what. So, they just think this “recovery” is unusually slow. Ben Bernanke, for example, has pledged to hold down interest rates (at negative real levels) for another three years. He also let it be known that he has his finger on the trigger, ready to blast out some more QE at a moment’s notice.
Last week produced news that the economy expanded in the previous quarter. It went up at a 1.8% annual rate, far below the 3% consensus estimate of economists. That returned it to ’07 output levels, but at what cost? The feds have added $6 trillion in new debt to regain some $600 billion in annual output. Whoa!
And indications are that growth will be just as disappointing this year as it was last. Bloomberg has the story:

US economic growth may not top 2 percent this year and a third round of quantitative easing by the Federal Reserve would have little effect, said Martin Feldstein, a professor of economics at Harvard University.

“We’re going to have a hard time reaching 2 percent this coming year,” he said… The economy is still in a “danger zone,” Feldstein said, even as the recession risk “is less now than it was.”

Feldstein, speaking before the GDP report was released, said last year’s growth in household spending was largely due to consumers drawing down their savings, which he said they won’t be able to maintain this year.

Another Bloomberg report tells that consumer spending is already weakening:

Spending at retailers lost momentum each month in the fourth quarter, slowing from a 0.7 percent gain in October to a 0.1 percent increase last month. Merchants including Macy’s Inc., Gap Inc. and Target Corp. cut prices to attract more business during the holiday shopping season…

Government agencies also struggled last quarter as they cut spending at a 4.6 percent annual rate, the fifth straight decline. For all of 2011, government spending dropped 2.1 percent, the biggest decline since 1971.

Our guess is that consumer spending will weaken further as the bear market in housing gets worse. December house sales were the worst in nearly half a century. AP is on the beat:

The Commerce Department said Thursday new-home sales fell 2.2 percent last month to a seasonally adjusted annual pace of 307,000. The pace is less than half the 700,000 that economists say must be sold in a healthy economy.

About 302,000 new homes were sold last year. That’s less than the 323,000 sold in 2010, making last year’s sales the worst on records dating back to 1963. And it coincides with a report last week that said 2011 was the weakest year for single-family home construction on record.

The median sales prices for new homes dropped in December to $210,300. Builders continued to [slash prices] to stay competitive in the depressed market.

And guess what? The outlook for housing is still not improving. Business Insider explains why:

Michelle Meyer, the well-known housing analyst for BofA/ML, has some bad news: The housing crisis isn’t over.

In fact, in her 2012 outlook piece, she says it’s “far from over” and that prices still have another 7% to decline nationally.

The basic problem: There are still tons more foreclosures or “liquidations” yet to come…our securitized products research team estimates another eight million homes will be liquidated over the next four years, which adds to the six million homes that have already been liquidated since 2007. All told, we expect 14 million foreclosures or a quarter of all homeowners with a mortgage.

Ms. Meyer’s estimates seem rather optimistic to us. We’d guess that house prices will go down another 20%. Maybe more. Because, people have less money to spend on housing. Real disposable incomes are lower today than they were a year ago.
People who buy houses don’t really worry too much about the price. What concerns them is the monthly payment. They buy as much house as their monthly income will allow.
That was the real driver of the housing bubble of ’05-’07. Interest rates had been going down for 30 years, lowering monthly mortgage payments. That made it easier to pay a mortgage. Housing prices were going up steadily, giving the impression that houses were a good investment. And the mortgage industry would lend to anyone, solvent or insolvent, jobless or working, dead or alive. That put a lot of air into the housing market.
Now, interest rates are still going down, as near as we can tell. But with incomes going down and lenders much more cautious, the air has whooshed out of the market. It’s no longer pressure-packed. Now it’s vacuum-sealed.
Remember, household debt-to-income was only 70% at the beginning of the ’80s. Now, it’s 120%. In order to get it down, households need to unload debt — especially mortgage debt.
That is, they need to save. Savings rates have recently fallen…to 3.5% down from 5.7%. They will probably go back up as the Great Correction continues.
Which will mean…housing will fall, maybe by 20% more.
Let’s see, housing falling…incomes falling…consumers retrenching…negligible GDP growth…
Tutto va bene!
But back to why the US is going to hell…
The country has been at war in two out of three years since 1989. The interesting thing about it is that 1989 marked an historic juncture. It was the year that the US had no more worthy enemies. The Berlin Wall fell that year. The Soviet Union bit the dust. Francis Fukayama said it was maybe the “end of history.” Charles Krauthammer said it was the beginning of a new world, with only one superpower. He called in a “uni-polar world.”
But a country that has been taken over by its military industry cannot permit peace. It must make war — either against its own people or against some other people. Having no suitable enemies, the deficit-fatted pentagon, its rich lobbyists and the nation’s lard-butt patriots had to find some unsuitable ones.
One of our new, old-fashioned conservative friends explained what happened next:

They turned to the Mideast. Why? As enemies, the Arabs/Muslims have several advantages:

There are not many in the continental US; not enough to influence elections or run much of a counter-propaganda campaign

There’s oil in the Mideast; the oil companies contribute a lot of money to campaign coffers. And oil really is a strategic commodity

Americans don’t understand Arabs or Muslims…yahoo Christians don’t trust them. The Jews hate them.

They can’t really do us much harm. We can fight them forever…at huge expense and never win or lose.

It allows us to make common cause with Israel’s right-wingers…and brings in a lot campaign money from Jewish groups. That’s why all the Republican candidates — except Ron Paul — are pro-war.

Bill Bonner

First in Line for New Money | Douglas E. French

2012-01-30T20:42:00.000-07:00

GBTV: Predictions come true Part 2

2012-01-30T20:35:00.000-07:00

Ron Paul on CNBC The Kudlow Report 1/30/12

2012-01-30T20:34:00.000-07:00

Peter Schiff on Lou Dobbs Tonight 71211 Fox Business Channel

2012-01-30T19:52:00.000-07:00

American Exceptionalists Love Their Primitive Secular State Theocracy. by Scott Lazarowitz

2012-01-30T17:30:00.001-07:00

At a recent debate when Ron Paul mentioned the "Golden Rule," that we should treat foreigners as we should be treated, he was booed by a number of people in the audience. This happened at a previous debate. At that previous debate, Paul further questioned how we would like it if a foreign government invaded and occupied the U.S. and set up its military bases here.

How can so many people (and so many popular radio talk hosts and their listeners) condemn the suggestion that everyone must be equal under the rule of law?

The myth of American exceptionalism is that the U.S. is an example of moral progress, peace and prosperity for the rest of the world to follow. But that has not been the case during most of America’s existence.

Perhaps America was somewhat exceptional at its founding, when the ideas of the rights of the individual and private property were taken seriously. But when a Constitution, which limited the rights of the individual and empowered a centralized government, was written and ratified, that was really the end of such moral exceptionalism.

The Founders had the right idea, but the statists, centralists and fraudsters took control, and that was the end of that.

The societal and moral advancement that the Founders took from the Enlightenment has tended to regress backwards, as America’s federal government continually expanded in size and intrusiveness, and its actions overseas became more primitively aggressive.

The moral degeneracy of America escalated considerably when Honest Abe Lincoln waged a brutal and immoral war against civilians in order to compel the population into a life of enslavement by central planners. Woodrow Wilson unnecessarily extended World War I, which contributed to the rise of Hitler. FDR’s New Deal really was the final nail in the coffin for whatever freedom there was remaining in America.

In foreign affairs, for the past century the reality of American exceptionalism has been this: that our government may interfere in the internal affairs of foreign nations, may place its governmental apparatus and military bases on other peoples’ territories, may commit acts of aggression, murder, and property destruction, and get away with it through rationalization and propaganda – but other governments may not do that on our lands or do those things to our people.

American exceptionalism is the belief that our government need not be accountable under the rule of law, while we hold foreigners accountable.

Regarding the current "War on Terror," yes, real terrorists attacked America on September 11, 2001. But when our government then invades and destroys whole countries that had nothing to do with 9/11, then you should logically expect the targeted innocent foreigners to defend their territories.

One thing that America’s government-controlled schools (both public and private) have accomplished over the past century is the suppression of critical thinking skills. Instead, because the people have allowed the almighty State and its media stenographers and propagandists so much influence and intrusion into the entire education system, the result has been generations of people with an instilled unquestioned loyalty to the State theocracy.

Because of this, America has become increasingly authoritarian and restrictive in its liberty to the point of the police state and non-sustainable, bankrupting empire we currently suffer. Those who question The Powers That Be are themselves stigmatized and marginalized, and in some cases, punished and persecuted. Americans have been cheering their government’s illicit aggressions overseas, and booing those who stand for the Golden rule and the rule of law.

In fact, some of the same people who have been supporting the U.S. government’s immoral aggressions overseas have been those preaching the loudest about "Christian moral values." Sorry, but when one supports one’s government invading other countries that were of no threat to us, one’s preaching of Christian morality is just hypocrisy.

And when people assert Americans’ right to defend America against invaders, yet refer to foreigners who defend their own lands, their lives and their families from invaders and occupiers as "terrorists," no wonder Christianity and moral values have declined in America.

The narcissism of modern State worship is such that, when the exceptionalists assert that the U.S government must have a "presence" on foreign lands, it is as though they view those lands as theirs, just like a possessive child would do. It seems more like covetousness, if you ask me.

No, the narcissistic exceptionalists, who pray to the democratic god of the secular State, seem to believe that their government may commit acts of aggression against foreigners, but not the other way around. Praise the almighty State, as it can do no wrong.

Former Senator and current presidential candidate Rick Santorum seems to be one of those more outspoken worshipers of the State and its aggressive expansion overseas. Santorum even believes in the central planning of the almighty State domestically, in the social area.

Santorum wants to use the armed police apparatus of the State to impose his own personal social views onto the rest of the population, much like the Islamists that he ironically criticizes for wanting to impose their Sharia Law onto others.

If we don’t behave in our private lives as Santorum and his beloved almighty State order us to do, then we are infidels, apparently.

And I heard another American exceptionalist recently, Sean Hannity, express total cluelessness in his pushing the anti-Iran fear-mongering that is being used to start yet another unnecessary, counter-productive war. In arguing with a caller, Hannity was saying that (and I am paraphrasing) he merely wanted to prevent mass violence and bloodshed that could be prevented by forcibly removing Iran’s nuclear capability. Hannity was referring primarily to protecting Israel (despite the fact that Israel has a few hundred nuclear warheads and Iran knows this).

So regarding the possibility of mass bloodshed, Hannity has apparently been oblivious to the hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqis throughout the 1990s, killed by U.S. government violence and sanctions, and the further hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqis since the U.S. government’s 2003 invasion.

Because of reliance on mainstream news outlets and talk radio for their ~~brainwashing~~ information, most people don’t even know recent history, and they therefore don’t seem to understand Ron Paul’s point about "blowback."

When dissidents openly criticize the State, its intrusions and its violence, the faithful seem intensely threatened, as though they have been personally harmed. The dissidents must be booed and ostracized, even though here Ron Paul is the one with the sense of morality and he is the one who believes that our government must be accountable under the rule of law as others must be.

But as our society gradually degenerated over the past century in its abandonment of moral values and the rule of law, it should be of no surprise now that the exceptionalists have no problem with their primitive priests of the almighty State apprehending and detaining someone without charges, without even being required to show evidence against the accused, as agents in an advanced society would have to do. The exceptionalists have faith in their beloved State (until they find themselves falsely accused and unlawfully detained, of course).

The religion of State has shown its ugliness with the Bradley Manning whistleblower case. Many people have reacted emotionally to this case, and with much ignorance, that’s for sure. It is as though whistleblower critics have been on a medieval witch hunt with the Manning case.

This young soldier allegedly released "classified" information to WikiLeaks. But, if the chat logs are legitimate, Manning’s motivations were not on behalf of any foreign government, financial interest or any element hostile to America.

On the contrary, Manning’s motive was out of love for his country, and to expose the corruption of our government’s imbecilic bureaucrats and expose the military’s war crimes. If anything were un-American, it would be covering up those crimes.

And despite the government’s hysterical propaganda, the truth is that the release of the classified information probably could not have caused any harm to any U.S. soldier overseas or to any American at home.

Some critics of Manning and WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange have been calling for their imprisonment or death. That is because the critics’ loyalty just doesn’t seem to be as much to their country as it seems to be to the government, the almighty State.

That is what our sick culture has become: an authoritarian theocracy with total rule over us. The Total State seems to be what the primitive-thinking narcissists want, and that is why so many people cheer the State, cheer its wars and the deaths of foreigners, and that is why they boo the ideas of freedom, personal responsibility and accountability under the rule of law.

With our authoritarian culture now, we are definitely surrounded – not by Muslims, but by the almighty criminal State, by federal, state and local government Gestapo bureaucrats.

And we are doomed unless we reverse course – and that means chopping away at the many, many layers of Leviathan, the bureaucracies, the foreign bases and the domestic camps, chopping away until we finally are able to restore the freedom the founders envisioned when they created America.

Gallup: Romney edges Obama in swing states

2012-01-30T15:40:00.004-07:00

by Ed Morrissey

Mitt Romney edges Barack Obama among registered voters in swing states, according to a new Gallup/USA Today poll. By “edge,” I mean barely edges — by a single point. Even with that, though, Romney fares far better than his competitors in the same polling:

Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney essentially ties Barack Obama in the nation’s key battlegrounds, a USA TODAY/Gallup Swing States survey finds, while rival Newt Gingrich now trails the president by a decisive 14 percentage points.
That reflects a significant decline by the former House speaker since early December, when he led Obama by three points. …
In a head-to-head race, Romney leads Obama by a statistically insignificant percentage point, 48%-47%, the survey finds.
But Obama leads Gingrich, 54%-40%. The president’s standing against him has risen nine points since early December; Gingrich has fallen by eight.
Gingrich fares less well than Texas Rep. Ron Paul, who trails Obama by seven points, 50%-43%, and former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum, who also trails by seven points, 51%-44%.

As I’ve written before, this is a bit of an apples-to-oranges comparison. While the GOP continues its primary slugfest, it’s natural to have some voters refuse to back primary candidates against Obama as a form of principle protest, at least for the moment. Democrats are united behind Barack Obama and have no such reservations.
The key to this poll is the fact that Obama as incumbent falls below 50%, especially in a poll of registered rather than likely voters, regardless of which head-to-head matchup it appears. That’s a soft re-elect number — not fatal to re-election at that level, but a problem that could grow after the Republicans actually pick their nominee. Since likely voter samples tend to produce less favorable results for Democrats, that problem is probably worse than it seems at the moment.
Gingrich still has a problem, though. Even though he has regained his top-tier status in the Republican primary, he seems to have alienated a lot of voters to have a 17-point swing in the gap over just six or seven weeks. Given the tone of the campaign and especially Gingrich’s angry attacks over the past week, that may not be a big surprise. What might play well with the Tea Party base won’t play well in a general election, and the polling results of the last few days indicates that it doesn’t play well with the Tea Party base, either.
That being said, scroll all the way down to look at the sample sizes in the states Gallup polled. The overall poll is of 737 registered voters, which is a respectable sample size for a national poll, and should be as well for a subset of a national poll. Some states in this sample only got as few as 11 or 17 voters included in the survey, though. The participation seems to be proportional to state population sizes, but I think this poll would have benefited from a healthier sample from some of the swing states involved.

Jeb Bush on the Florida Primary

2012-01-30T15:35:00.002-07:00

2012-01-30T15:22:00.001-07:00

SWEET DREAMS

2012-01-30T15:21:00.000-07:00

Florida GOP trying to force Allen West out of Congress through redistricting?

2012-01-30T15:04:00.003-07:00

by Allahpundit

Via Legal Insurrection and our own J.E. Dyer in the Greenroom. According to WaPo, the new congressional map under consideration in Florida’s legislature would make West’s district four points more Democratic than it is now — a tough haul for a guy who lost that district by nine points in 2008 before riding the big red wave to a nine-point win last year. Turns out Will Weatherford, the GOP’s state House redistricting chairman, is also a Mitt Romney fan. Coincidence, or evidence that the Republican establishment is trying to push one of the tea party’s biggest rock stars towards the door? Javier Manjarres of the Shark Tank confronted Weatherford about it last Thursday and was told there’s little that can be done about the map due to legal guidelines about redistricting. But here’s what Manjarres reported back on January 10:

So why would the “most conservative legislature” in Florida’s history look the other way as West’s congressional district lines are re-drawn? Is the fix really in to knock Allen West out of Congress? About five months ago, a very high ranking member of the Florida legislature gave me a very disturbing prediction regarding redistricting- “Allen West is screwed.” Take note that comment was made five months ago, long before the proposed maps were made public…
There is no love lost between the Florida legislature and Congressman Allen West, who has proven to be the anti-Republican establishment congressman. Back in the 2008 election cycle when West unsuccessfully ran for Congress, Republicans in the legislature did not support West. Former indicted Republican Party of Florida Boss Jim Greer and Governor Charlie Crist stayed out of the race until the very end, even after West’s Republican primary race was over…
You may ask yourself why would the Florida GOP legislature not protect one of the most respected and beloved congressman in Washington D.C.? Could the reasons be as simple as sheer arrogance and self-political preservation by the Tallahassee elites?

Follow the link for Manjarres’s theories on motives, not all of which involve establishment animosity towards West. His post this weekend got enough attention that Weatherford felt compelled to post this to his Facebook page this afternoon:

As the House Chairman of Redistricting, I have the responsibility to ensure there is a fair, open, and legally compliant process. The newly approved constitutional amendments, passed by more than 60% of Florida voters, require the legislature to follow a set of standards. This is the first time the legislature has been required to follow these legal standards
These new standards have resulted in disrupting the current districts for incumbents. The Tampa Bay Times stated that the House, Senate, and Congressional maps represent “a record-breaking shakeup in incumbency.” It has been reported that at least 38 members of the Florida legislature do not currently live in their district.
There are rumors that the Florida Legislature has targeted Congressman Allen West. This is patently false. I personally have supported and endorsed Allen West. I will continue to support this extraordinary member of Congress who has brought a much needed conservative voice to Washington, D.C.
However, my personal support cannot and will not trump the Constitution.

As Dyer notes, Tom Rooney’s district is also about to get more Democratic — and, coincidentally, Rooney also happens to be a stalwart conservative. Even so, it’s odd to me that “establishment Republicans” would zero in on West when West has proven to be an effective gap-bridger between “the establishment” and the grassroots at times. Remember when he went to bat for Boehner on the debt-ceiling deal when other tea-party freshmen were balking? It’s true that he’s had harsher things to say about the leadership recently and he’s also clearly not a huge fan of Romney’s, but go back to the Manjarres post I quoted above. This has, allegedly, been in the works for at least five months, dating back to around the time that West was encouraging grassroots conservatives to accept the debt-ceiling compromise. Why hand over a congressional seat held by a guy who’s capable of raising boatloads of money for the party and of reconciling tea partiers to a party apparatus from which they feel disaffected?

Ingraham: Maybe the Tea Party isn’t as strong as the media thinks

2012-01-30T15:03:00.003-07:00

by Ed Morrissey

Does the slate of surviving Republican presidential choices in this primary mean that the Tea Party’s strength has been overrated — or just directed elsewhere? The Daily Caller has a clip from a fascinating discussion between Laura Ingraham and George Will from ABC’s This Week: Green Room over what a Mitt Romney nomination would mean:

“They don’t have the power that they thought they had, perhaps,” Ingraham said. “I mean, Romney is not a tea party candidate, and they’re talking about 27 percent of the Republican Party that still believe it’s tea party infused. The tea party, they have a lot of energy but you know … more of a moderate view of conservatism seems to get nominated every time. And that’s just a fact. The tea party doesn’t have the great strength that the old media believe.”
Washington Post columnist George Will didn’t completely agree that the tea party has lost it’s strength. He suggested that Romney pick a tea party running mate, and said the grassroots should focus on winning in the Senate until they have stronger national candidates.
“It’s too soon to say that,” Will said. “If the tea party withdraws its enthusiasm and says we’re going to concentrate on carrying the Senate and fight again when our bench is stronger in 2016 … I think [Romney’s] going to want a running mate who can connect with the people he can’t, and that is the Republican base.”

I wrote about this less than two weeks ago, although it seems like an age now. In my column for The Week, I pointed out that lasting grassroots movements take years to work their way into the leadership of major parties and produce credible candidates for high office. I’d call the 2010 midterms a big success and a huge head start, but it’s far too early to have a ready-made Tea Party candidate that can win election at this juncture. Look for 2016 or 2020, depending on the outcome of this election, for that kind of impact.
In that sense, I agree with both Ingraham and Will. I disagree with Will on his prescription for Tea Party support and for running-mate strategy:

“In 2010, the Republican Party got 63 percent of the votes of whites without college educations,” Will continued. “That is the Republican base and that is exactly the base he can’t connect with. This is the case for Chris Christie.”

Will isn’t alone in making this suggestion, either:

If Mitt Romney is the Republican nominee, my model estimates that he is 25 percent likely to pick Chris Christie as his running mate, a popular moderate governor from New Jersey who himself flirted with running for president before strongly endorsing Romney. (This in spite of the fact that you’d have two Northeasterners on the ticket.) The market puts Christie’s overall chance of being the VP of any Republican nominee at only 14 percent, but because his odds tend to rise in tandem with Romney’s, my model boosts his chances to 25 percent in the scenario where Romney is the nominee. Rubio is a close second to be Romney’s right-hand man at 22 percent. Rubio’s VP odds actually drop whenever Romney’s go up (they are anti-correlated), but because Rubio’s such a likely overall pick, he’s still the second-most likely Romney pairing. Rubio so far hasn’t endorsed a presidential candidate and has repeatedly said he’s not interested in the VP job. No other candidate rises above single digits as Mitt’s pick for a-heartbeat-away.
If Gingrich wins the Republican primary, he’s most likely, at 30 percent, to pair up with Rubio. Christie virtually falls out of the running for VP at below 5 percent if Gingrich emerges the primary winner. Over the past 90 days, when Gingrich rose in the presidential market, Rubio tended to rise too and Christie tended to fall in the vice presidential market.

Tea Party adherents may admire Christie’s passion and bluntness, but they’re not going to like some of his political positions. Christie didn’t win statewide in New Jersey by being a rock-ribbed conservative. He’s as conservative as one is likely to find in that position in New Jersey, but he’s hardly the kind of laissez-faire moderately-libertarian activist that populates the Tea Party. That doesn’t mean Christie doesn’t have a future in the GOP either, but pairing Romney with another Northeastern Republican, even one as pugnacious as Christie, is not a recipe for exciting the base.
If Romney wins, I’d look for a call to Marco Rubio (although I think it would be a mistake for Rubio to agree), or perhaps Susannah Martinez in New Mexico, who has been governor for about the same amount of time Rubio has been Senator. I think it’s more likely to be Bobby Jindal, though, who has a record of reform and a solid base of support from conservatives, plus is a current Southern governor on his second term. It’s a stronger position for a ticket that would put itself as an outsider pairing coming to take on Washington DC and the corruption of crony capitalism.

Mark Levin: Lay off Matt Drudge! The MSM hates his guts, remember?

2012-01-30T15:00:00.002-07:00

by Tina Korbe

Mark Levin Friday came to the defense of headline aggregator Matt Drudge, who, last week, took some heated criticism from conservatives for a series of links he posted that suggested Newt Gingrich was not a loyal Reaganite.
Levin, who said he knows Drudge personally and characterizes him as “a good man,” encouraged critics to remember all the good Drudge has done for the country and to allow little annoyances to slide.

“Another friend of mine: Matt Drudge. I would encourage you to lay off Matt Drudge. Matt Drudge has done so much good for the country, so much good for journalism,” Levin said. …
“Some days he’s got links on there that are more about one candidate than another – so be it; who cares? He’s not some…he’s not taking sides in the election; he’s not taking sides in the Republican Party. I know him extremely well; he’s a good man.”
“And, the mainstream media hates his guts – so, just keep all that in mind. He provides an enormous service, I think, to us. So, I would just lay off him.”

Levin’s comments come as a refreshing reminder that, among conservatives who care deeply about this election, differences of opinion are often motivated by the same root concerns and desires. None of us want to nominate a Republican who will perpetuate big-government-style policies that render Republicans nothing but Democrats Lite. None of us want four more years of Obama.
Among those whose job it is to curate information about the candidates, the desire typically is to leave no stone unturned so as to prepare the eventual GOP nominee for the general election, in which he will face opposition researchers who don’t share the same values and concerns as conservative voters. The vetting process has been and will continue to be messy, inevitably colored by individual prejudices, unrecognized visceral reactions and the sheer inability to be aware of all the information that’s out there. The advantage to the Internet is that, once a bit of info is out there, anybody and everybody is free to respond — and does. That’s what happened in the case of “The Drudge Distort” of Newt Gingrich, as upset critics called it. In the end, something pretty close to the truth emerges — at least for those with eyes to see it.

Tags: 2012 elections, GOP primaries, mark levin, Matt Drud

How Big Is Romney's Florida Lead?

2012-01-30T14:57:00.000-07:00

How Big Is Romney's Florida Lead?

Guy Benson

FORT MYERS, FL - Tomorrow is election day here in the Sunshine State, and up-to-the-minute polling indicates that former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney is poised to win the state's closed (ie, Republicans only) primary election. Given Florida's winner-take-all status in 2012, Tuesday's victor will reap all 50 of Florida's delegates. Over the weekend, Dan chronicled Romney's favorable polling trends, but just how far is Romney actually ahead? A final batch of state surveys paints a somewhat murky picture, with various data points telling remarkably different stories. If you're a Romney supporter, there's significant evidence that your man could win in a blowout. Several outlets show the former governor leading by double digits, including Suffolk (20 points), Survey USA (15 points), and Quinnipiac (14 points):

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney has a 43 - 29 percent lead over former House Speaker Newt Gingrich among Republican likely voters in Florida, the nation's first big-state presidential primary, according to Quinnipiac University poll released today. Only 7 percent are undecided, but 24 percent say they might change their mind by tomorrow's election. In today's survey, self-described conservatives go to Romney 40 - 31 percent. He gets 38 percent of white evangelical Christians to Gingrich's 33 percent and wins 40 percent of Tea Party members to Gingrich's 35 percent. Texas U.S. Rep. Ron Paul and former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum each have 11 percent of likely primary voters today.

If Romney beats Newt among self-described conservatives and Tea Partiers, that result could sound the death knell of the Gingrich campaign. However, two other polls show the race much closer -- and possibly tightening. First, PPP's numbers, which reflect a single-digit Romney edge, largely bolstered by moderates and women:

Mitt Romney leads with 39% to 32% for Newt Gingrich with Rick Santorum at 14% and Ron Paul at 11%. Romney and Santorum are both down a single point from Saturday's polling while Paul has gained 2 points and Gingrich has stayed in place. Almost Romney's entire lead in Florida is coming from moderate voters. He has a 58-15 lead over Gingrich with them and only a 1 point advantage with the rest of the electorate. Other groups that continue to be a particular source of strength for Romney are seniors (48-32) and women (43-30).

The bad news for Team Newt? A lot of Florida Republicans voted early (as many as 600,000 ballots have already been cast down here), and a large bulk of those tallies went to Romney:

Romney continues to have a large lead in the bank in Florida. 34% of our respondents said they'd already voted and with those folks he has a 45-33 lead. That puts Gingrich in a position where he'd have to not only win the election day vote, but win it by 6 or 7 points to upset Romney in the state. The kind of reversal necessary to make that happen seems unlikely to occur in the next 48 hours.

The most promising data for Newt backers comes via Insider Advantage. Gingrich's camp blasted out this poll in a press email earlier today:

A new InsiderAdvantage poll conducted Sunday night of likely Republican voters in the state of Florida shows a significant surge for former House Speaker Newt Gingrich. The poll has former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney leading with 36 percent of voters, followed by Gingrich at 31 percent. "The race will be tighter than expected," Matt Towery, chief pollster of InsiderAdvantage [said]. "The trend is favoring Gingrich," Towery said, noting that while Romney's lead was still outside the margin of error of 3.8 percent, "It's not by much."

To recap, Romney leads in every poll -- and may have a substantial early vote advantage in his back pocket to fend off any potential last-minute Newt surge -- but his projected margin of victory is all over the map. Team Mitt is either coasting to a double-digit landslide, or gutting out a close-shave win, a distinction that could be the difference between "destroying" Newt and emboldening his plan to press ahead to Round Five and beyond. We'll see tomorrow tomorrow evening. One undeniable factor: The Romney forces have massively outspent pro-Newt groups (and everyone else, for that matter) here in Florida:

Newt Gingrich has been outspent on the Florida airwaves by a nearly $12 million margin, according to a source monitoring the Sunshine State ad war. Through Friday, the Romney campaign and the super PAC Restore Our Future had spent a combined $15,340,000, the source said. Gingrich’s campaign and the super PAC Winning Our Future spent a comparatively paltry $3,390,000. That’s just the differential in paid-media spending, so it doesn’t include Romney’s edge in field operations, mail, et cetera.

I can attest that pro-Romney and anti-Gingrich ads have been ubiquitous across both the AM and FM radio dial, and up and down broadcast and cable television over the last few days. Newt has been complaining bitterly about this disparity on the stump, prompting Rush Limbaugh to issue an anti-"whining" rebuke on today's radio program.

Pax Americana. Charles Payne

2012-01-30T14:53:00.001-07:00

Father Father Father (continue to) Help Us
People killin’, people dyin’
Children hurt and you hear them cryin’
Can you practice what you preach
And would you turn the other cheek
Father, Father, Father help us
Send some guidance from above
‘Cause people got me, got me questionin’
Where is the love (Love)
-Black Eyed Peas
Earlier this week, I began an interview on Fox Business by asking the guest if the market had entered into some kind of Pax Romana period. It wasn’t a planned question; it just popped into my head since I knew the guest was bullish on the market. Yesterday another guest described a backdrop for the Fed that wasn’t deflationary or inflation which gives them room to risk zero percent interest rates for the next three years. While the stock market has been anything but peaceful for the past decade and major economies face serious treats, the world itself may be entering a modern version of Roman Peace.

It is certainly counterintuitive in light of American’s two wars, the one we sponsored in Libya, the Arab Spring and the general notion the planet is spinning out of control.
Believe it or not, this might be the most peaceful period in the history of the planet. It’s all laid out in the latest from Steven Pinker, Harvard psychologist, and author of “The Blank Slate,” that shook up generally accepted norms about human behavior. In “The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined,” Pinker uses mounds of statistical evidence to first prove violence is down significantly from earlier ages but also reasons for this miraculous turn of events. (I haven’t read the book but plan to do so very soon, but I wonder if it clashes with the premise of “Blank Slate.”)
Each night we are greeted with horrific news of senseless crime, more often than not within our own community, but when that’s not available, the media always has an atrocity from somewhere on the planet.   Songs of violence and the quest for peace and justice are always on the airwaves with megahits in the past from the Eagles, Emerson Lake and Palmer, Jackson Browne, Peter Paul and Mary, U2, Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, John Meyers, Jimmy Hendrix, Michael Jackson and Bob Marley- to name a few.   Most of the time the lyrics, like those from the Black Eyed Peas “Where is the love,” point to a world self-destructing in senseless and hopeless violence.
The answer to that question might be that love is all around us…or at least as much love as there has ever been before.
That Stats and the Reason
People killed in battle
Before countries organized 500 per 100,000
19^th century France 70 per 100,000
20^th century (with two world wars) 60 per 100,000
Now 3/10 out of every 100,000
Genocide deaths per world population were 1,400 times higher in 1942 then 2008
In US wives killing husbands 0.2 per 100,000 now from 1.2 per 100,000 1976
In US husbands killing wives 0.8 per 100,000 now from 1.4 per 100,000 1976
The main reason for this amazing peace in the world even as media and entertainment paint a picture of a world covered in blood, according to Steven Pinker, smarter people. Apparently the average teenager is smarter with each generation. Pinker points to IQ test which are adjusted to keep the average at 100 so teenagers that now score 100 would have hit 118 in 1950 and 130 in 1910. (I’m not sure I believe this part per se, but I think my son has more knowledge than I had although not sure it means he’s smarter.)
"As we get smarter, we try to think up better ways of getting everyone to turn their swords into plowshares at the same time." Steven Pinker
The world being less violent does make a lot of sense and not only dovetails with the idea I continue to push that never has the entire planet been this upwardly mobile but provides the perfect backdrop for that to happen.   It’s difficult to make money and fight civil wars at the same time.   Take Angola which suffered under a brutal civil war that lasted from 1975 to 2002 and took 500,000 lives while displacing 1,500,000 additional citizens. Now Luanda, the capital of Angola, ranks as the most expensive for expats to live. Called the Dubai of Africa, a two bedroom luxury apartment rents for $7,000, substantially more than $4,300 in New York, $3,300 Shanghai, $2,456 Rome, and $1,800 Buenos Aires.
Sources for Steven Pinker background http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/22/world-less-violent-stats_n_1026723.html?view=print&comm_ref=false and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Blank_Slate
To me the formula seems to be Smarts + Peace = Prosperity.
American Peace
The period of peace in Rome described by Gibbons is known as Pax Romana and has been the dream of many since then. Beginning in 27BC with the rule of Augustus to 180AD, and the end of the rule of Marcus Aurelius, that 207 period of peace was sparked by the end of civil wars, the spread of the rule of law and strong military protection (but fewer wars). Rome learned to be prosperous with less violent plunder but rather domestic self sufficiency.   It is said Augustus convinced his citizens to avoid risky wars through skillful propaganda. On the other end of this period was Marcus Aurelius, author of “Meditations.” His work is timeless and considered to this day to be one of the greatest works of literature ever.
So much of his ideas need to be read by leaders and would-be leaders in this nation today including:
From my governor, to be neither of the green nor of the blue party as the games in the Circus, nor a partisan either of the Parmularius or the Scutarius at the gladiators’ fights; from him too I learned endurance of labor, and to want little, and to work with my own hands, and not to meddle with other people’s affairs, and not to be ready to listen to slander.
From Fronto I learned to observe what envy, and duplicity, and hypocrisy are in a tyrant, and that generally those among us who are called Patricians are rather deficient in paternal affection.
Wow! It is amazing how timely his observations and advise to the world was then and now. For more of this timely wisdom go to and send your local lawmaker to:
http://classics.mit.edu/Antoninus/meditations.1.one.html.
End of Peace and the decline of Rome began through a combination of class warfare, the invasion of Huns and terrible leadership. So in this world of nuclear bombs, a billion handguns and amazing animosity, it would seem the peace is tenuous at best. Of course according to the Black Eyed Peas this peace doesn’t exist in the first place. For our nation where crime has been declining for years it’s truly amazing and belies the notion that gun ownership kills people or increased poverty would unleash a wave of lawlessness.
Yet with our difficult financial circumstance and mean-spirited leadership we could tumble out of this otherwise Pax Americana. I hope Pinker is right and we are too smart for that, but there is another formula at work too.
Less Prosperity + Harsh Propaganda of Blame = Something Less than Peace.

Charles Payne

Charles V. Payne is a regular contributor to the Fox Business and Fox News Networks.He is also the Chief Executive Officer and Principle Analyst of Wall Street Strategies, Inc. (WSSI), founded in 1991 which provides subscription analytical services to both individual and institutional investors.

Former Massachusetts Congressman Takes Graft to Next Level. Daniel J. Mitchell

2012-01-30T14:51:00.000-07:00

I’ve written before about the sleazy and corrupting impact of earmarks.
And I’ve debunked the lobbyist arguments in favor of earmarks.
Heck, I’ve even done NPR interviews about this unseemly Washington practice.
So I like to think I’m reasonably knowledgeable about the system. But even I’m shocked to learn how a former Massachusetts Congressman has taken graft to the next level.
And I’m slightly happy that he’s been caught with his hand in the cookie jar and feels compelled to give up his share of the loot.
Here are some excerpts from a report in the New York Times.

A former congressman who became a lobbyist has abandoned his plans to collect $90,000 from working on an energy project that he helped finance through Congress. …An apologetic Mr. Delahunt told town officials he wanted to eliminate the “black mark” created by questions of a possible financial conflict, Patrick Cannon, chairman of the Hull Light Board, said on Saturday. …Mr. Delahunt, a Democrat who retired from Congress last year, had faced criticism for the last week from legal and ethics specialists over the unusual lobbying arrangement he had struck with the town, which is seeking federal help to build an offshore wind energy plant at a cost of more than $60 million. While in Congress, Mr. Delahunt earmarked $1.7 million for the same project, and he was to be paid 80 percent of his monthly consulting fees out of that same pot of money. …Mr. Delahunt and executives at his firm did not respond to e-mails Saturday seeking further comment on the decision.

Wow. For all intents and purposes, Congressman Delahunt directly pilfered the Treasury for personal gain.
This is amazing. But what’s remarkable isn’t that he stole money. After all, the federal budget is largely a big scam enabling various groups of people to obtain unearned loot.
The noteworthy thing about this story is that he didn’t launder the money.
In most cases, politicians do earmarks as part of a corrupt quid pro quo. They direct money to a certain group of beneficiaries and, in exchange, get campaign contributions from both the lobbyists who facilitated the deal and the interest groups that receive the taxpayer funds.
But Delahunt cut out one of the middlemen. He created an earmark, and then became one of the lobbyists pocketing the cash.
So it is poetic justice that this unsavory deal has become public knowledge and the former Congressman has been shamed into giving up his fees.
But don’t be deluded into thinking this is a victory.
The earmark is still there. Money is still being wasted. Delahunt is still a lobbyist. Government is still too big. And corruption is still rampant.
And if you think the former Congressman is genuinely apologetic….well, please get in touch with me. I’m selling a bridge in Brooklyn and need a gullible buyer – i.e., the kind of person who doesn’t think there’s anything wrong with this unseemly example of sleaze.

Aborting Hitler. Mike Adams

2012-01-30T14:48:00.004-07:00

Someone once asked me whether I would abort Adolf Hitler if I knew in advance he would try to launch a Holocaust against millions of Jews. I said I would not. That is because aborting Hitler would not have prevented the Holocaust. It would have justified it. The killing of millions of innocents does not begin with the killing of one innocent. It begins with the idea that in the larger scheme of things it is permissible to kill one innocent person.
The movie Judgment in Nuremburg (1961) shows that, even in Hollywood, Americans once appreciated this important principle. The movie is three hours long. But one only needs to watch the last ten minutes of the movie in order to see how far we have fallen in just a half-century.

For those who do not remember the end of the movie, Spencer Tracy plays an American judge who sentences former Nazis for their involvement in the Holocaust. One Nazi judge who sentenced innocents to death was himself sentenced to life in prison. As the sentence is read, he stares off in disbelief. He initially believes he is innocent because he was simply following the law. He later realizes his life sentence was just.
Only a couple of days after he is sentenced, the former Nazi judge requests that the American judge visit him in his jail cell. As he faces the man who sentenced him, he makes an odd request: he asks him to keep his personal memoirs - adding that they must be placed in the hands of a man who can be trusted. It is then that he declares the sentence passed upon him was just.
After pausing for a moment, the condemned Nazi judge says of the millions of dead Jews, “Those millions of people. I never knew it would come to that.” Spencer Tracy, playing the American judge, responds with one of the most profound lines of his storied acting career saying, “It came to that the first time you sentenced a man to death you knew to be innocent.”
That has been the story of the American Holocaust as well. It began in 1966 in my native state of Mississippi. Just two years after I was born, a law was passed that made it legal to abort in the case of rape or incest. But then, the very next year, Colorado passed legislation allowing abortion in cases of rape, incest, or threat to the health of the mother.
Then the floodgates were opened. By the end of the year, several states were pushing legislation modeled after the Colorado statute. Within just six years, abortion for mere convenience was not just permitted by several states. It was enshrined as a fundamental constitutional right.
Some have declared that they will not rest until Roe v. Wade is overturned. Others say that is too lofty a goal. I disagree. I believe it is too shortsighted. We must reach further back if we want to reverse our moral free fall. Pre-1973 thinking is not enough. We must go back to the time when no state authorized the killing of innocents – a time when only the rapist, not the product of rape, was eligible for a sentence of death.
Ideas have consequences. And so do exceptions. One of the consequences of embracing an evil exception is that it hardens our hearts and clouds our thinking in advance of our consideration of other exceptions. Eventually we come to a point where we cannot imagine life without that initial exception.
It is fitting that it all began in Mississippi. We have a legacy of executing innocents by denying their personhood. It happened with slavery. It happened again with abortion. Now we have learned to justify our own Holocaust. We didn’t need Hitler after all.

2012-01-30T12:49:00.001-07:00

2012-01-30T12:48:00.002-07:00

2012-01-30T12:47:00.001-07:00

'We Like Ron Paul' - Fox News Focus Group and Fox Five Panel

2012-01-30T12:40:00.000-07:00

One Million Terrorists?

2012-01-30T12:20:00.001-07:00

by Paul Craig Roberts

The Bush Regime's "terrorist" protection schemes have reached the height of total incompetence and utter absurdity. According to the American Civil Liberties Union, a private organization that defends the US Constitution that inattentive Americans neglect, there are now one million names on the "terrorist" watch list.
One of them is that of former Assistant US Attorney General Jim Robinson, whose top security clearances are current. Every time Mr. Robinson flies away on business, he is delayed by a totally incompetent "terrorist" protection racket that cannot tell a person named Jim Robinson, who served in the highest echelons of the US government, from a Muslim terrorist.

What confidence can we have in a regime that is incapable of differentiating an Assistant US Attorney General from a terrorist?
Mr. Robinson said: "If I were convinced that America is a safer place because I get hassled at the airport, I might put up with it, but I doubt it. I expect my story is similar to hundreds of thousands of people who are on this list and find themselves inconvenienced."
"Hundreds of thousands of people" on a watch list that they have no business being on?
Yes. "Members of Congress, nuns, war heroes and other 'suspicious characters,' with names like Robert Johnson and Gary Smith, have become trapped in the Kafkaesque clutches of this list, with little hope of escape," said Caroline Fredrickson, director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office.
And this is America, not Nazi Germany?
How can Airport "Security" possibly protect anyone when the idiots cannot differentiate a high level American government official from a terrorist?
Do you really believe there are one million terrorists and nothing has blown up in the US since September 11, 2001 (assuming you believe the government's account of that episode)?
How can there possibly be 1,000,000 terrorists and America still be in one piece? If there were 1,000,000 terrorists, America would be in ruins. According to the Bush Regime's line, it only took a handful of terrorists to destroy America's tallest skyscrapers and a section of the Pentagon and to send the President of the United States scurrying to a hiding place.
One million terrorists could bring America to its knees, and they wouldn't need to fly on airplanes to accomplish this.
What we are witnessing with the one million person "watch list" is bureaucracy run amok. One Million Terrorists makes the danger seem overwhelming. Such overwhelming danger rationalizes the aggressive behavior of the bullies and thugs attracted by the power of confiscating your toothpaste and bottled water and riffling your belongings in your luggage.
Show your ID.
Take off your shoes.
Take off your belt.
Take off your jacket.
Empty your pockets.
Don't complain about being searched without a warrant or you will miss your flight. You might be arrested, handcuffed, kicked and otherwise abused – the fate of many American citizens.
The morons who comprise the US government call the "watch list" one of the government's "most effective tools in the fight against terrorism."
What an effective tool it is! It cannot tell the difference between Jim Robinson and a Muslim terrorist.
The "watch list" has not apprehended a single terrorist, but thousands of American citizens have been inconvenienced and arrested.
The ACLU says that "putting a million names on a watch list is a guarantee that the list will do more harm than good by interfering with the travel of innocent people and wasting huge amounts of our limited security resources on bureaucratic wheel-spinning."
It is worse than that. What the "watch list" or "no-fly list" is doing is training Americans to submit to warrantless searches, to abandon their constitutional rights, and to submit to humiliation by thugs and bullies. A Gestapo is being trained to have no qualms about searching and intimidating fellow citizens, using any excuse to delay or arrest them. Americans are being taught to use arbitrary power and to submit to arbitrary power. In the false name of "safety from terrorists," Americans are being made the least safe people on earth.

Who Remembers 'Guns and Butter'?

2012-01-30T12:18:00.002-07:00

by Paul Craig Roberts

President Lyndon B. Johnson's policy of Great Society spending and the Vietnam War is credited with the rising American inflation that persisted until checked by President Reagan's supply-side policy.
In Johnson's time, the American economy and the U.S. dollar were strong, and there was no current account deficit. Yet LBJ's policy of guns and butter did long-term harm.
The Bush-Obama 21st-century policy of guns and butter makes LBJ look like a piker. The 2009 and 2010, federal budget deficits will be monstrous even without guns. But Obama is exiting (apparently) the Iraq War in order to start two, possibly three, more wars.

Obama has announced a surge of U.S. troops in Afghanistan. Widening that war will require the United States to occupy, or attempt to occupy, parts of Pakistan. The disrespect for Pakistan's sovereignty will further radicalize that large, nuclear-armed country and bring Pakistan, or at least parts of it, into armed conflict with the United States.
As if this isn't enough new war, President Obama (and the incoming CIA director, Leon Panetta) accused Iran of developing a nuclear weapon, an uninformed charge that stands in conflict with the National Intelligence Estimate, which concludes that Iran halted all work on a nuclear weapon years ago.
Shades of "weapons of mass destruction" and "al-Qaeda connections"! The Bush regime and the complicit U.S. media persisted in accusing Saddam Hussein of possessing weapons of mass destruction – weapons that the prime minister of Britain, Tony Blair, otherwise known as Bush's poodle, said could be employed in "45 minutes." National Security Adviser Condi Rice and VP Cheney warned of "mushroom clouds" going up over American cities.
All of these lies were told in the face of the documented evidence from weapons inspectors on the ground in Iraq that no weapons of mass destruction existed.
Now Obama is employing the same tactic, creating fear over nonexistent Iranian nuclear weapons.
Even without the massive expense of the bailout and stimulus programs, the United States has no capability to fight wars in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Iran. Conflict with Iran would likely bring Iraq, now in the hands of Shi'ites allied with Iran, into the conflict. The entire Middle East would likely explode. Considering that the United States had to end the war in Iraq by paying the Sunni insurgents not to fight and by signing on to a withdrawal agreement dictated by the Shi'ite government, there are no prospects for U.S. success in such an extensive new war.
Before Obama overcommits the United States both financially and militarily, he needs to find some competent advisers. Overreach is heading for new levels that will bring America to its knees.
Obama has only been in office a couple of weeks, and he is already proving to be even more reckless than Bush. Bush's largest guns-and-butter deficit was $455 billion. Obama's 2009 budget deficit will be at least $2 trillion, a fivefold increase in one year, to be followed by another monster deficit in 2010.
The United States has never had such near-term massive financing requirements, much less at a time when the rest of the world is in economic turmoil and very displeased with the United States.
Obama needs a reality check and an escape from Washington hubris. If the United States cannot finance its monster deficits except by printing money, it will mean the end of the dollar as reserve currency and the end of American power.
Mr. President, as you said in your first press conference on Feb. 9, the party really is over.

Another Reason Not to Go to War So Often

2012-01-30T12:11:00.001-07:00

by Charles V. Peña

Bynow, everyone has either seen or knows about the video of U.S. Marines urinatingon the corpses of dead Taliban fighters. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta saidthat “the conduct depicted in the footage is utterly deplorable.” According to Secretary of State HillaryClinton, the actions of the Marines in the video are “absolutely inconsistentwith American values and the standards we expect from our military personnel.”Not surprisingly, Afghan President Hamid Karzai is none too pleased:“This act by American soldiers is completely inhumane and condemnablein the strongest possible terms.”

Butnot everyone seems to feel that way about the incident. Rep.Allen West (R-Fla.), a former U.S. Army lieutenant colonel, saysthat “the Marines were wrong” but that critics need to “chill”and that “unless you have been shot at by the Taliban, shut your mouth.” But this should come as no surprise,since West is apparently from the school of “the endsjustify the means.” His Army career was cut short after he fireda gun near the head of an Iraqi detainee to scare him into divulgingdetails of a suspected ambush. For that, he was relieved of his command, fined $5,000, and given a full military pension.
GOPhopeful Rick Perry also does not condone the Marines’ behavior, but like Allen, he believes condemnation is uncalledfor. Indeed, according to Perry, “whatis really disturbing to me is the over-the-top rhetoric from this administrationand their disdain for the military.”
Leadingthe chickenhawk brigade is Bill Kristol at The Weekly Standard.Kristol believes that urinating on corpses (arguably aviolation of the Geneva Conventions, which forbid “outrages upon personal dignity,in particular humiliating and degrading treatment” and require that “thedead are honorably interred”) is the equivalent of Gen. George S.Patton urinating in the Rhine and Winston Churchill doing the same onHitler’s Siegfried Line (the same arguments Rick Perry made) in WorldWar II. Instead of The Weekly Standard, it should probablybe The Double Standard, because Kristol wouldalmost certainly be more than outraged by a video of Taliban soldiersurinating on American dead. (Read my good friend and fellow Antiwar.comcontributorKelley Vlahos’s excellent commentary on Kristol et al.)
Beyondthe arguments about the incident itself, however, are two importantissues raised by what transpired.
Firstis that we have seemingly elevated the military — both the institutionand the individuals who serve in it — to heroic status, much likeRome’s legions. To be sure, many in the military have performedheroic actions. One such person is Marine Cpl. Jarred Adams,who was awarded the Silver Star.

It was Jan. 5, 2005, andthe Marine from Palmer, Alaska, was in a Humvee, providing cover fora reconnaissance team sweeping through Husaybah, the infamous gatewayfor guns, money and insurgent fighters making their way into Iraq.
Adams’sunit was heading for the “intersection of death,” so named by CampPendleton Marines and others for the frequency of sniper fire, roadsidebombs, and all measures of attack.
Shotsrang out, followed quickly by rocket-propelled grenades. The Humveeexploded in a mass of fire and twisted wreckage before crashing.
Adamsfought his way out, alive but seriously injured. He shucked aside theshrapnel wounds to his hands and left forearm, ignored the pain fromhis broken right arm and a sprained ankle, and set about helping hisbuddies.
Armedwith an M40 sniper rifle and a 9mm handgun, Adams charged back to aHumvee where some of his friends had not been so lucky. With bulletswhizzing by, he retrieved the body of Lance Cpl. Julio Carneros Alvaraz,a young son of Texas who died in the explosion.

Butnot everyone in the military is a Jarred Adams. And just becausethe military has the likes of Jarred Adams in its ranks doesn’t meanthat the military as a whole should have special status. For example,Disneyland offers to military personnel (active duty and retired) a4-day discounted ticket for $138 (a similar deal is being offered to the publicfor over $200). There might be a case for making such deals tojunior enlisted personnel (base pay for a private, E-1, is $1,491 permonth, or $17,892 per year), especially those returningfrom a tour of duty in a combat zone. But does a lieutenant colonelwith more than 10 years of service who makes $6,766 per month ($81,192per year, exclusive of any housing or other allowances) really needa special discount? Ditto for a retired lieutenant colonel collecting50% of his or her base pay (currently $8,199 per month, or $98,388 peryear, for more than 20 years of service) who may be workingas a government contractor making substantially more as a civilian.
Certainly,the men and women who serve in the military deserve our respect, butthat doesn’t mean everyone who wears a uniform is automatically andunquestionably a hero. Yet many view thosewho serve in the military as heroes because we have been led to believethat they are defending the country and our freedom (I know this iswhat my daughter was taught when she was in elementary school).That may have been true during World War II. But at least sincethe end of the Cold War, the United States has used significant militaryforce on at least 11 occasions:

1989 invasion of Panamato arrest Manuel Noriega
Operation Desert Storm toforce Iraq out of Kuwait in 1991
Enforcement of no-fly zonesin northern and southern Iraq from 1991/1992 until U.S. invasion ofIraq in 2003
1993 “Blackhawk Down”mission in Somalia
Haiti in 1994 to restoreousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide to power and head off a potentialwave of Haitian refugees
Airstrikes in Bosnia in1995
1998 missile attacks againstSudan and Afghanistan in retaliation for the bombings of U.S. embassiesin Kenya and Tanzania
More airstrikes in Kosovoin 1999 against Hitler du jour Slobodan Milosevic
Operation Enduring Freedomafter 9/11
Operation Iraqi Freedomin 2003 against Hitler du jour Saddam Hussein
Operation Odyssey Dawn in 2011 against Libya to support rebel forces against MuammarGadhafi

Yet only one of those – the decisionto take military action against the Taliban regime in the wake of the9/11 terrorist attacks — was related to a direct threat toU.S. national security. But now — especially with Osamabin Laden killed by U.S. forces last May — the continued U.S. military presence inAfghanistan has little, if anything, to do with national security andmore to do with nation-building (that and being able to conduct dronewars in Pakistan, which also has little or nothing to do with U.S. nationalsecurity).
Whichleads to the second issue: the policy that results in the useof military force. Like it or not, the unfortunate truth is thatthis sort of incident is bound to happen. There probably hasn’tbeen a conflict where one side or the other didn’t commit some sortof atrocity or similar transgression. That’s not an excuse forit happening, but it’s the reality of war. Why? Becausethe military is composed of human beings, and humans are imperfect andfallible. Mistakes and misjudgments will happen. Stupidstuff will happen. Even with a chain of command, that doesn’tmean the troops will always be under control or in control of theirimpulses. Probably more so when you’re talking about testosterone-infused18- and 19-year-olds who believe what they’re doing is simply playing a Red Bull and steroids version of Call of Duty.This is why the use of military force(and putting 18- and 19-year-olds in foreign countries where they don’tspeak the language, know the history, or understand the people orculture — they’re just there to kill those they believe are the enemy)shouldbe reserved only for when U.S. national security is truly at stake.

The hypocrisy of America's Cuba policy

2012-01-30T12:09:00.003-07:00

By Roland Martin

In Cuba, a man checks his motorcycle in front of political billboards that allude to the US embargo on Cuba

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

Roland Martin notes Cuba has come up as issue in Florida GOP primary race
The candidates have looked silly defending America's failed Cuba policy, he says
Martin says only Ron Paul has the right idea about Cuba

Editor's note: Roland S. Martin is a syndicated columnist and author of "The First: President Barack Obama's Road to the White House." He is a commentator for the TV One cable network and host/managing editor of its Sunday morning news show, "Washington Watch with Roland Martin."

(CNN) -- For more than 50 years, the United States has had an embargo against the island of Cuba, all because we supposedly hate communism and believe the nation 90 miles from our borders should institute democracy.

As the GOP candidates battle it out for votes in Florida's primary election on Tuesday, the subject of Cuba has come up in a couple of debates. Nearly all the candidates, except for Texas Rep. Ron Paul, have sounded ridiculous trying to defend what is clearly a failed policy, all in an effort to curry favor among the large population of Cuban voters in the state.
Take, for instance, Newt Gingrich.

Roland Martin

The former speaker of the House was his usual fire-breathing self in the NBC-National Journal debate when he called on the United States to authorize regime change to get Fidel and Raul Castro out of their positions as leaders of the country.
"I would suggest to you the policy of the United States should be aggressively to overthrow the regime and to do everything we can to support those Cubans who want freedom," Gingrich said. "You know, Obama is very infatuated with an Arab Spring. He doesn't seem to be able to look 90 miles south of the United States to have a Cuban Spring.
"So I would try to put in place a very aggressive policy of reaching out to every single Cuban who would like to be free, helping network them together, reaching out to the younger generation inside the dictatorship, and indicating they don't have a future as a dictatorship because a Gingrich presidency will not tolerate four more years of this dictatorship."
In what was the most ridiculous comment of the night, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum said that if Cuba were China in terms of its geographical proximity to the United States, he would be just as against the country.
"This is an important doctrine of the United States to make sure that our hemisphere and those who are close to us are — are folks that we can and should deal with," Santorum said.
"And right now, we have and have had for 50 years a dictatorship in Cuba. We've had sanctions on them. They should continue. They should continue until the Castros are dead, and then we should make it very clear that if you want mountains of aid, if you want normal relationships, if you want to improve your economy, if you want to have the opportunity for freedom, that the United States stands ready now to embrace you now that you've gotten rid of these tyrants who — who have controlled you for these 50-plus years. That's why the sanctions have to stay in place, because we need to have a — a very solid offer to come forward and help the Cuban people."
Seriously? Is it possible for us to have a grown-folks conversation here?
There is no logical reason that candidates should deplore normalizing relations with Cuba, while we do whatever we can to help China.
Hmmm, let's see. Cuba is a communist country. China is a communist country. The people of Cuba aren't living in a democratic system. The people of China aren't living in a democratic system.
Yet China has been granted most favored nation status, allowing the free flow of goods back and forth. Sorry, Rick, that has nothing to do with proximity. It's all about China being a great outpost for U.S. businesses, and the fact that the communist country is essentially the banker of America, owning hundreds of billions of dollars of our debt.
Santorum wants to suggest that Cuba is in bed with Nicaragua and Venezuela, and they are in alignment with Iran, helping potential terrorists. Last I checked, we have relations with Russia, and they do huge business with Iran. We despise North Korea, yet China does a lot of business with North Korea.
Folks, I'm fully supportive of democracy, and we should be preaching that gospel wherever we go. But there is no way I can believe that thawing our relationship with Cuba will somehow harm America.
The Cuban-American community is loud, has major political clout and writes big checks, mainly to the GOP. But surely it's time for the adults to admit that the embargo has not forced Castro out of office, and all it has done is give him the best bogeyman he could get when talking to Cuban citizens.
The United States should step up and end the embargo against Cuba and recognize that having real and substantive relationships with the nation could spur the democracy we say we want.
"I think it's time ... to quit this isolation business of not talking to people," Paul said. "We talked to the Soviets. We talk to the Chinese. And we opened up trade, and we're not killing each other now. We fought with the Vietnamese for a long time. We finally gave up, started talking to them, now we trade with them. I don't know why — why the Cuban people should be so intimidating.
"I think we're living in the dark ages when we can't even talk to the Cuban people. I think it's not 1962 anymore. And we don't have to use force and intimidation and overthrow of a — in governments. I just don't think that's going to work."
It's time that the GOP candidates and officials in both parties stop the political pandering to Cuban Americans and say that if we want a free Cuba, it can begin with ending a senseless and failed embargo.

Ron Paul - destroys stupid media Dog

2012-01-30T11:37:00.000-07:00

Ron Paul To CNN "I Don't Know How Long You Wanna Beat A Dead Horse!"

2012-01-30T11:36:00.000-07:00

Rep. Allen West - "Obama, Reid, Pelosi, get the hell out of the USA" - 2...

2012-01-30T11:34:00.000-07:00