Archive for the ‘Socialism’ Category
Rich People Who Voted for O! are Idiots
I can hardly believe this.
Election gains in some of these affluent regions have helped give Democrats big majorities in the House and Senate. Of the 25 richest districts, 14 are represented by Democrats, according to Congressional Quarterly. In 1995, Democrats represented just five of those districts.
Recently elected Democrats from higher-income areas also have been cautious about legislation that would make it easier for labor unions to organize, and about legislation imposing tough new rules on banks. Republicans have savaged the new Democrats for supporting legislation to stem global warming by capping greenhouse-gas emissions, then forcing polluters to purchase and trade emissions credits — a “cap and tax,” the GOP says.
But planned tax increases are likely the source of the toughest intra-Democratic tensions.
Let me get this straight. A bunch of rich people voted for Obama, and now they are shocked -shocked! – to discover O! wants to raise taxes, over-regulate business, and punish productivity and entrepreneurship? Seriously? They didn’t know? ROFLMAO
Liberal rich people are stupid. There’s just no other explanation. That’s strange I can believe in.
Liberal pundits: partisanship as something more nasty
James Taranto writes about The Biden Curve.
Over the weekend, as we noted yesterday, Vice President Biden said that if Israel decides it needs to take military action against the Iranian nuclear-weapons program, the U.S. will not “dictate” otherwise. A reader points out that Sarah Palin, who ran against Biden in last year’s election, said much the same thing [...]
When Palin says it, it’s stupid. When Biden says it, he gets graded on a curve: The problem [say liberal pundits] is that other people are too stupid to understand the deep subtlety of Biden’s thinking. [...]
What Palin said last year was precisely what Obama and Biden have now said: Diplomacy is the optimal way of dealing with the Iranian nuclear threat, but if it fails, Israel has a right to defend itself. In a way, the inconsistency of some of Palin’s critics is reassuring. It shows that a good deal of anti-Israel sentiment is mere partisanship masquerading as something uglier.
Something uglier. Hmmm. What could it be? The Socialism of Fools.
Anti-Semitism, someone once said, is the socialism of fools: but he might just as well have said that socialism is anti-Semitism with the Jews left out, for both doctrines appeal to the same resentments, hatreds, and style of thought. It was no accident, as the Marxists used to put it, that Marx himself, though Jewish, was a ferocious anti-Semite who accepted the ancient stereotype of the Jew as a bloodsucking usurer. Socialist and anti-Semite alike seek an all-encompassing explanation of the imperfection of the world, and for the persistence of poverty and injustice: and each thinks he has found an answer.
The Fed has fashioned the instruments of economic decline
Insty links to a sobering story in The Telegraph about our fiscal future.
The US economy is lurching towards crisis with long-term interest rates on course to double, crippling the country’s ability to pay its debts and potentially plunging it into another recession, according to a study by the US’s own central bank
As I’ve written before, the Fed is skewered upon the horns of a dilemma. The Telegraph article understands the problem as government debt. They are correct. But the rise in interest rates is a result of debt combined with the inflationary bailouts of Bush and Obama.
On one horn, the Fed can’t lower interest rates for fear of creating even more inflation, bleeding the citizenry of their wealth. On the other horn, the Fed can’t raise interest rates for fear of illiquidity, bleeding entrepreneurs of financing. But maybe there is a middle way between the horns. Ben Bernanke asks a liberal congress for fiscal conservatism. Fat chance with the fat cats.
The budget deficit this year is projected to reach $1.85 trillion, equivalent to 13 percent of the nation’s economy, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.
“Either cuts in spending or increases in taxes will be necessary to stabilize the fiscal situation,” Bernanke said in response to a question. “The Federal Reserve will not monetize the debt.”
Bernanke speaks as if he could monetize the debt. How long does he think foreign central banks will prop up the dollar? Perhaps anticipating inflation scares, the US government no longer even reports M3. Shadow Government Statistics estimates the rate of growth in M3.
Their estimates show a huge, compounding rate of growth in the money supply between early 2005 and early 2008.
Inflation favors a debtor and harms a creditor, because the debtor can pay back the dollars owed in the less valuable inflated currency. Suppose you loan ten dollars to a friend. Before he were to pay, inflation devalues the dollar by 90%. Now your friend pays you back, giving you ten dollars. Before the trade, ten dollars would have paid for lunch, but now it wouldn’t even buy a cup of coffee. The debtor comes out ahead, because he gets the pre-inflated use of the money.
The US is debtor nation. We like inflation. Our creditors don’t. With the spectre of hyperinflation stalking every Fed policy move, the Chairman wants to ensure the blame lands on Congress. Bernanke plays the hero, refusing to monetize federal debt that he knows no foreign bank will buy anyway! In other words, he refuses to monetize debt that he can’t monetize. Whoopty freakin’ do. And these are the smart guys running stuff.
There is no middle way. Foreign banks are going to stop buying our debt. It’s only a matter of time. When that happens the dollar is going to crash, leading to massive inflation.
The French detest the habit of the English to make a virtue of necessity. Except for a preternatural desire for their women, and for some lovers of France who I wish would check me out like a chilled juice bottle, ahem, with those exceptions in mind, I am no Francophile. Still, Bernanke’s virtue of necessity is a rather sickening cowardice. It’s more like unthinking chest beating than sprezzatura.
Damn the architects of the bailout. All of them. They have fashioned the instruments of our economic decline. Now they act surprised to find the instruments in their own hands. Pfft.
GM gives a whole new meaning to planned obsolescence.
Obamanomics® in action. According to Rassmusen,
Only 42% of those who currently own a General Motors car are even somewhat likely to buy a GM product for their next car. That figure includes just 30% who are Very Likely to do so.
This sequence of videos explains why. First, the original GM commercial.
