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Tuesday, August 9, 2011

Re: Every time you call Obama a Socialist...

Okay, which is it Stevie, am I a "Doodie Head" or am I a "Stupid Head"?

Why don't you just admit that the Democratic Party has been infiltrated by communists and socialists? THat is it broken beyond repair, and has caused the financial debacle that we as a Nation currently face?

That's pretty much what your response was, other than calling me a "Doodie Head/Stupid Head". Typical Moonbat, when confronted with truth, logic and fact, all you can do is look like a deer caught in the headlights and sling out nasty names at the messenger.

Industrial Democracy is nothing but spin. A tried and true failure on all counts, and something that socialists such as yourself attempt to masquerade under.

On Mon, Aug 8, 2011 at 12:33 PM, Stephen Stink <not4udude@yahoo.com> wrote:

On Aug 7, 11:07 am, Keith In Tampa <keithinta...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hey Steve,
>
> Every now and then, I have to repost this to remind Socialists such as
> yourself that the Democratic Party no longer finds the term "Socialist"
> offensive.
>
> Nationalizing the oil companies? You have already tried, and failed.
REPLY: WAS THAT DURING THE REAGAN PRESIDENCY? SILLY BOY!

>
> The truth is, that the Democratic Party now openly advocates socialism,
> which by its very definition, is some middle ground and transition to
> communism. Although the Democrats used to try and evade the moniker, and
> distance themselves from being classified as socialists, they do so no more.
> Congresswoman Maxine Waters, (D. Cal.) several months ago, parroted the
> Venezuelan socialist dictator, Hugo Chavez, calling for the nationalization
> of the oil companies:
> REPLY; SO BILL GATES IS A COMMIE? HUGO CHAVEZ? ARE YOU BOYCOTTING CITCO ?
MAXINE WATERS OWNS HER OWN BUSINESS YOU SILLY GOOSE! THE FACT SHE'S
BLACK DOES ENTER THE EQUATION? SURE IT DOESN'T!

> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PUaY3LhJ-IQ
>
> Current Chicago Mayor, former Obama Administration Chief of Staff, and
> former House Democratic Caucus Chairman Rahm Emanuel (D-IL) said:

>
> *"So if there's any seriousness about what some of our Republican colleagues
> are saying here in the House and elsewhere about improving the number of
> refineries, then maybe they'd be willing to have these refineries owned
> publicly, owned by the people of the United States, so that the people of
> the United States can determine how much of the product is refined and put

> out on the market.*
reply:OH MONOPOLY IS JUST SWELL. MAYBE THE STOCK INVESTORS SHOULD JUST
FIRE EVERYBODY ON THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS! THAT IS SO GAY!!!
>
> *"To me, that sounds like a very good idea."*
>
> * *
>
> http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/06/why_do_we_call_them_democrats....

>
> Congressman Maurice Hinchey (D-NY) on June 18, 2008 in a Press Conference
> of the Democratic Leadership said:
>
> *"Should the people of the United States own refineries? Maybe so. Frankly,
> I think that's a good idea. Then we could control the amount of refined
> product much more capably that gets out on the market...*
>
> http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/06/why_do_we_call_them_democrats....

>
> Democrats openly call for redistribution of wealth in our Nation, they call
> for socialized medicine, socialized energy, and in general, the Democratic
> Party openly advocates the federal government's involvement in each and
> every facet of our lives. Period. What part of the above can you sit here
> and argue, Lil' Stevie, with a straight face, is NOT socialism?
NO IT AINT DOOTY HEAD; IT'S CALLED INDUSTRIAL DEMOCRACY! LOOK IT UP
BRIGHT BOY!

>
> By example, here in President Obama's own words, he openly advocates a
> redistribution of wealth:
>
> http://www.breitbart.tv/html/195153.html
>
> Of course, Vice President Biden believes that a socialist, "redistribution
> of wealth" plan, is the "patriotic thing to do":
REPLY; THERE IS SUCH THING AS REDISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH. IT'S A FAKE
TERM THAT RIGHT WINGERS MADE UP! ACCORDING TO MARXS, THERE IS
EGALITARIAN DISTRIBUTION OF PROFIT! YOU CAN'T REDISTRIBUTE WEALTH
ONCE IT'S IN THE HANDS OF RICH PIGS. THEY ALREADY PUT IT IN A SWISH
BANK.

>
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCqgNWRjmAc
>
> Here Lil' Stevie, is the definition of socialism, (which I had encouraged
> you to go and look up for yourself) you are clearly uninformed as to what
> the term means:
>
> *"Date: 1837. From Latin socialis for "friend" or "companion" or
> "associate". Any of various economic and political theories advocating
> collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of
> production and distribution of goods; usually there is no private property;
> in Marxist theory this is also considered just a transitional stage between
> capitalism and communism and it is distinguished by unequal distribution of
> goods and pay according to work done."*
THAT IS A SUBJECTIVE DEFINITION OF SOCIALISM! the etymology of the
word is NOT defined
by Webster. It's Thomas Debs; look it up dummy!

>
> The above definition is by Mr. John Spargo, from his work titled:
> "Socialism, A Summary And Interpretation Of Socialist Principles" (McMillan
> & Co. 1913). Below is the Wiki definition, which is quite similar.

REPLY; WAS DISCREDIT BY THE FIRST INTERNATIONAL.
>
> *"Any of various economic and political theories advocating collective or

> governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and
> distribution of goods. A stage of society in Marxist theory transitional
> between capitalism and communism and distinguished by unequal distribution

> of goods and pay according to work done"*
WRONG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! read das kapital fool!

>
> There is no question that President Obama is calling for the very tenets of
> socialism, which is the forerunner of communism, and a economic and
> political system that has failed miserably throughout recorded
> history. President
> Obama's, and many Democrats' belief, is that "Socialism, Communism,
> Marxism, Trotskyism, and Stalinism were all wonderful political, social and
> economic systems, we just haven't had the right folks try and implement them
> yet!"
> What about Michael Bukunian? How Anarcho-Communism in general! YOU ANTI-COMMUNISM IS
SO AMATEURISH! YOU AINT NO WILLIAM F BUCKLYey!!! You Are a stupid
head!
> ====================

>
>
>
> On Sun, Aug 7, 2011 at 1:53 PM, Stephen Stink <not4ud...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > On Aug 7, 10:46 am, Keith In Tampa <keithinta...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > Steve,
>
> > > Why does it offend you, (and other socialists) when one identifies the
> > type
> > > of economic, social and political ideology that our President and the
> > > current Democratic Party Platform advocates and espouses? This is not
> > name
> > > calling, this is an actuality, a fact, an accurate description.
> > Name one idiot! Are the oil companies nationalized yet? Oh? Could it
> > be Obama supports Free Enterprise you moron!
>
> > > Unlike you, and your socialist brethren, when you call folks "Fags";
> > > "Terrorists", and "racists". You demonstrate your hatred, and your lack
> > of
> > > any defense to your socialist political activitism.
> > Hey! Shit for brains! I am not a socialist! But you too dense to
> > figure that out!
>
> > > Once again, a picture says a thousand words:
> > Why don't put your ma! Mas photo up!
>
> > > On Sun, Aug 7, 2011 at 1:40 PM, Stephen Stink <not4ud...@yahoo.com>
> > wrote:
> > > > A Koch Brothers ass is kissed!
> > > > WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
>
> > > > --
> > > > Thanks for being part of "PoliticalForum" at Google Groups.
> > > > For options & help seehttp://groups.google.com/group/PoliticalForum
>
> > > > * Visit our other community athttp://www.PoliticalForum.com/<http://www.politicalforum.com/>
> > <http://www.politicalforum.com/>
> > > > * It's active and moderated. Register and vote in our polls.
> > > > * Read the latest breaking news, and more.
>
> > > Lil'MoonbatStevie.In.Search.Of.George.Soros..jpg
> > > 79KViewDownload- Hide quoted text -
>
> > > - Show quoted text -
>
> > --
> > Thanks for being part of "PoliticalForum" at Google Groups.
> > For options & help seehttp://groups.google.com/group/PoliticalForum
>
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> > * Read the latest breaking news, and more.- Hide quoted text -

>
> - Show quoted text -

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Compromise, D.C.-Style

Compromise, D.C.-Style
by Vedran Vuk

With a last-minute debt deal reached, I'm reminded of two holy words in Washington: "compromise" and "bipartisanship." It's amazing that the political elite have so twisted the English language as to lend virtue to these terms. In Washington, these words hold intrinsic value… similar to how "truth" and "honesty" do outside D.C. Unfortunately for the American public, Washington compromises have been and will continue to be the death knell of the U.S. economy – and particularly the free market.

Rarely does compromise ever benefit the small-government side of the argument. Instead, compromise increases the size of the state step by step. For example, suppose the left wants $2 billion for organic school lunches. Of course, the free-market guys are against this bill; they want $0 dollars in extra spending. So, what's the compromise? The two meet at $1 billion.

But this only makes one side better off. In a true compromise, each side would get something. In this case, spending grows by $1 billion, and the small-government side gets nothing from the deal. Future spending was simply reduced from $2 billion to $1 billion. The small-government advocates are further away from their goal than they were prior to the deal. In a way, this really isn't a compromise at all.

One could think of similar examples to prove the point. Suppose someone wanted to put ten drops of arsenic in your food. Does negotiating the person down to five drops improve the situation? No, it doesn't. That's exactly how America has been poisoned over time. Sometimes the dosages are smaller, but it's the same lethal stuff for our long-term fiscal situation.

This happens with regulation as well. Think about the Dodd-Frank Act. The financial industry has been fighting tooth and nail first with Congressmen and now with the government bureaucrats implementing the law to reach a compromise on the particulars of the law. But it's not a compromise where the financials win: Rather, it's a battle to lose less. "The struggle to lose less" has become the definition of a Washington compromise.

A real compromise would involve a tradeoff where both parties gain. For example, regulations could be increased on derivatives, with deregulation occurring in other parts of the financial sector. Trust me; there are plenty of harmful regulations on the books. Each party gains something and trades something else. That's how compromise works in the real world.

But don't expect to see this happen anytime soon – at least not in regard to the free market. In reality, these tradeoffs do happen. However, it works more like this: "I'll sign your war spending bill if you sign my local pork stimulus bill." Sure, that's a real D.C. compromise – and a third party is the real loser, i.e., the American taxpayer.

These kinds of compromises have also allowed the political leaches to bleed your bank accounts. Read this free report to learn all about it and to start profiting from it.

http://www.caseyresearch.com/articles/compromise-dc-style

Decade of Stimulus Yields Nothing But Mountain of Debt; What to Do About It?

Decade of Stimulus Yields Nothing But Mountain of Debt; What to Do About It?
Mike "Mish" Shedlock

Is there any kind of stimulus the US did not try in the last 10 years?

We had 1% interest rates from Greenspan fueling housing.
We had wars from Bush and Obama fueling defense industry employment.
We had two rounds of Quantitative easing from the Fed.
We had cash-for-clunkers.
We had two housing tax credit packages.
We had an $800 billion stimulus package from Congress for "shovel-ready" projects.
We had stimulus kickbacks to states.
We had HAMP (Home Affordable Mortgage Program).
We had bank bailouts out the wazoo to stimulate lending.
We had Small Business lending programs.
We had central bank liquidity swaps.
We had Maiden Lane, Maiden Lane II, and Maiden Lane III
We had Single Tranche Repurchase agreements
We had the Citi Asset Guarantee
We had TALF, TARP, TAF, CPFF, TSLF, MMIFF, TLGP, AMLF, PPIP, and PDCF
We had so many programs the Fed must have run out of letters because they were not given an acronym.

That is a partial list. Other than bailing out bondholders what exactly do we have to show for any of it? The one-word answer is "debt".

Decade of Stimulus Yields Nothing But Debt

Bloomberg's Caroline Baum wrote an excellent article on this theme. It was so good I asked if I could reproduce it in entirety.

With permission please consider Decade of Stimulus Yields Nothing but Debt: Caroline Baum

When George W. Bush took up residence in the White House in January 2001, total U.S. debt stood at $5.95 trillion. Last week it was $14.3 trillion, with $2.4 trillion freshly authorized by Congress Tuesday.

Ten years and $8.35 trillion later, what do we have to show for this decade of deficit spending? A glut of unoccupied homes, unemployment exceeding 9 percent, a stalled economy and a huge mountain of debt. Real gross domestic product growth averaged 1.6 percent from the first quarter of 2001 through the second quarter of 2011.

It doesn't sound like a very good trade-off. And now Keynesians are whining about discretionary spending cuts of $21 billion next year? That's one-half of one percent. And it qualifies as a "cut" only in the fanciful world of government accounting.

The Budget Control Act of 2011 will save $917 billion over 10 years relative to the Congressional Budget Office's baseline. It leaves the tough work to a bipartisan congressional committee of 12, to be appointed by the leadership in each house. If this supercommittee fails to agree on a minimum of $1.2 trillion of additional savings over 10 years, automatic spending cuts -- evenly divided between defense and nondefense -- will kick in.

Is there any reason to think the same folks who couldn't agree on a grand bargain this past month will join hands and find commonality in the next three, with one month off for vacation?

Rosy Scenario

Even if the committee agrees on the prescribed savings by Nov. 23 and Congress enacts them by Dec. 23, as required, laws passed today aren't binding on future congresses.

Throw in the fact that revenue and budget forecasts tend to be overly optimistic, and there's even less reason to think Congress has put the U.S. on a sound fiscal path.

In a July 2011 working paper for the National Bureau of Economic Research, Harvard economist Jeffrey Frankel identified a pattern of over-optimism in official forecasts, a bias that gets bigger in outer years. (Who can forget the CBO's 2001 estimate of a 10-year, $5.7 trillion budget surplus?) A fixed budget rule, such as the euro area's Stability and Growth Pact with its mandated deficit-to-GDP ratios, only exacerbates the tendency.

"Political leaders meet their target by adjusting their forecasts rather than by adjusting their policies," Frankel writes.

First Installment

The deal hashed out in Washington at the eleventh hour this week does nothing to curb the unsustainable growth of entitlement spending -- on programs such as Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. Medicare outlays have risen 9 percent a year for the last 30 years in a period of stable demographics, according to Steven Wieting, U.S. economist at Citigroup Inc. The automatic spending cuts outlined in the budget act would limit reductions in Medicare expenditures to no more than 2 percent a year.

By the end of 2012 or start of 2013, the federal government will be back at the trough with a request for additional borrowing authority. The debt will keep rising, and the ratio of publicly held debt to GDP will increase from 62 percent last year to as much as 90 percent in 2021, according to some private estimates, depending on what Congress does about the expiring tax cuts, the Medicare "doc fix" and the alternative minimum tax.

The CBO's estimate of $2.1 trillion in savings over 10 years is well short of the $4 trillion Standard & Poor's says is necessary to stabilize the debt and avoid a rating downgrade.

'Architectural Change'

No matter. Some prominent Keynesians are advocating more spending now for an economy that is sputtering. Alas, there is little appetite in this country, and less in Congress, for more spending in light of the questionable results. A lost decade doesn't seem like a good return on an $8.35 trillion investment. (For purists, only $6 trillion of the increase was in marketable debt, the kind of good old deficit spending Keynesians love.)

Maybe it's time to try something new and different. In 2002 I wrote a column titled, "How About Some Tax Reform Along With Tax Relief?"

How about it? Get rid of the loopholes. Better yet, scrap the entire tax code, which would decimate the lobbying industry. Implement a flat tax or a national sales tax. The time has come for what former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill calls "architectural change."

Can the Code

The current tax code is burdensome, inefficient and costly to administer. O'Neill says it costs the Treasury an estimated $800 billion annually, divided equally between administrative costs and uncollected revenue.

Eliminate the corporate and individual income tax, he says, and replace them with a value-added or consumption tax, with tax refundability for lower-income households.

"We should focus the tax system on raising revenue for the things we as a society need," O'Neill says.

Of course, what society needs is a matter of opinion. Without strong economic growth, the options are more limited, the choices more difficult. Fiscal stimulus can have only a short-term impact. The government taxes or borrows from Peter to pay Paul, reflecting a temporary transfer of resources, nothing more.

What does the nation have to show for chronic short-term thinking and policies like these? Long-term problems and a mountain of debt.

Keynesians Always Want More Stimulus

Baum wrote "Some prominent Keynesians are advocating more spending now for an economy that is sputtering."

She is too polite, but to follow suit I will not name-drop either.

Keynesians always want more stimulus. They claim they don't, but there is never a time any of them ever wanted to run surpluses or even a balanced budget out of fear of ending a nascent recovery or starting a "recession of choice" as one Keynesian clown put it.

More to the point, the idea that government or the Fed can micro-manage the economy stepping in as needed is absurd. Heck the Fed could not even see a housing bubble or a recession and it is supposed to manage the economy?

Look at the supporters of Fannie Mae in Congress. Look at Democrats whining about cutbacks in social programs 100% of the time. They are supposed to run a surplus?

Lesson of Japan

For over 20 years Japan tried Monetarist (various QE and interest rate) stimulus as well as Keynesian (fiscal) stimulus and all it has to show for it is the highest debt-to-GDP ratio of any major country in the word. Rest assured that is going to matter sometime within the next 5 years.

Right now we are following their path and it clearly is not working.

How About We Try Something Different?

I am with Caroline here, how about trying something different like scrapping the tax code?

I will add my standard three ideas 100% guaranteed to help cities and states.

Scrap Davis and all prevailing wage laws
Eliminate collective bargaining of public unions
Institute national right-to-work laws

If you want to try something really radical (yet perfectly sensible), here is an idea that is also guaranteed to help: get rid of the Fed and its perpetual bubble-blowing, moral-hazard, bail-out-the-bondholder policies.

http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2011/08/decade-of-stimulus-yields-nothing-but.html

Al Gore Hissy Fit - Recorded for Our Delight

lowtechgrannie | August 8, 2011 at 11:01 am | Tags: Al Gore, Aspen Institute, Bullshit, carbon, climate, climate change, CO2, global warming, volcanoes | Categories: Crazy Politicians, Culture War, Economy, Global Warming, Humor, Idiots In General, Just Plain Nuts, Liberals, The Powers That Be | URL: http://wp.me/pKuKY-8zd

watch?v=VKiepplqmow

Verbatim Text provided on Michelle Malkin's website:

The model of media manipulation used then [cigarette companies delaying implementation of the surgeon general's report on the hazards of smoking], Gore said, "was transported whole cloth into the climate debate. And some of the exact same people — I can go down a list of their names — are involved in this. And so what do they do? They pay pseudo-scientists to pretend to be scientists to put out the message: 'This climate thing, it's nonsense. Man-made CO2 doesn't trap heat. It may be volcanoes.' Bullshit! 'It may be sun spots.' Bullshit! 'It's not getting warmer.' Bullshit!" Gore exclaimed.

"When you go and talk to any audience about climate, you hear them washing back at you the same crap over and over and over again," he continued. "There's no longer a shared reality on an issue like climate even though the very existence of our civilization is threatened. People have no idea! … It's no longer acceptable in mixed company, meaning bipartisan company, to use the goddamn word climate. It is not acceptable. They have polluted it to the point where we cannot possibly come to an agreement on it."

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Why Is the Stock Market Plunging?

Why Is the Stock Market Plunging?
Monday, August 08, 2011
by Robert P. Murphy

Investors the world over are still reeling from last Thursday's massive plunge in the US equity markets, in which the major indices all gave up more than 4 percent. It was the worst day for the US stock market since December 2008.

None of this should surprise those conversant with Austrian economics. The "fundamentals" of the economy have been and remain awful because the government and Federal Reserve are consistently doing the wrong things. The apparent recovery, fueled by Bernanke's sheer money creation, has been bogus all along.

Bubble, Bubble, Bubble

For some reason, people still cling to the vague hope that -- at least if we wait long enough -- the market always goes up, and "buy and hold" is a great strategy. Let's look at a long-term chart of the S&P 500:

Does the above chart really look like the US stock market is in store for smooth sailing? Just about everyone except Chicago School economists now recognizes, after the fact, that the United States obviously went through a tech and dot-com bubble in the late 1990s and then a housing bubble a few years later. Is it really so difficult to understand that trillions in government budget deficits over the past few years, coupled with unprecedented inflation by the central bank, have set the economy up for yet another crash?

To recapitulate my argument from a previous article: Alan Greenspan's low-interest-rate policy in the wake of the dot-com crash spawned the housing bubble. Greenspan's Fed didn't actually eliminate the need for a recession, but instead postponed the crisis and made it fester. When reality hit in September 2008, Ben Bernanke was in charge of the Fed and implemented his predecessor's failed approach times ten.

No matter how many pundits and famous economists declare otherwise, Bernanke did not save the day with his interventions. He has simply postponed the day of reckoning yet again, and we can expect the final crisis to be much worse than the mere collapse of a few major investment banks. (The short documentary Overdose makes the case in a chilling fashion.)

Ben Bernanke Engineered the "Recovery," All Right

In a perverse way, the pundits are correct in crediting Ben Bernanke's extraordinary programs for "rescuing" the stock market. If we zoom in on the chart of the S&P 500 and superimpose the monetary base, we can see how closely the two have moved since the crisis began.

Although the above chart shows a decent fit, in reality the stock market responded very quickly to changes in the expectations of Fed expansion. Specifically, the sharp upswing in the S&P 500 in March 2009 coincided with the announcement of the Fed's full strategy for (what we now call) QE1, and the market rally in the late summer of 2010 began as knowledgeable Fed officials made it clearer and clearer that QE2 would kick in after the fall elections.

Of course, those economists who believe Bernanke is engaging in a tight-money policy would point to the above as evidence in their favor -- the Fed just needs to print more, because it's worked twice already! But if one believes that showering trillions of newly created dollars into the financial sector (with the specific aim of bailing out the very parties who made reckless loans and investments during the housing bubble) is not conducive to a healthy recovery, then the booming stock market of the last few years should have been an ominous sign. Note that this isn't 20/20 hindsight; other Austrians and I have been warning that this "recovery" has been bogus all along, and that the stock market could collapse at any time.

Inflation Lifts All Boats

None of the above analysis implies that investors should dump all equities immediately. It is true that the prospects for real economic growth are terrible -- especially in the Western countries -- over the next decade, because of increased regulations and swollen government debt loads. But at the same time, various central banks, especially the Federal Reserve, have been all too willing to create new money as an apparent solution to every crisis. (A case in point was the absurd proposal for the Treasury to issue two trillion-dollar platinum coins to evade the statutory debt ceiling.)

In this environment, someone relying on fixed-income investments (such as private annuities or, heaven forbid, government retirement checks) could be wiped out by massive price inflation. As awful as the US real-estate and stock markets might be in the short and medium run, holding a portion of one's wealth in assets not denominated in fiat currency may turn out to be a very wise defensive move. (The problem with shooting the moon on precious metals is that for all we know the dollar will crash next year and Obama will make it illegal to buy and sell gold.)

Conclusion

The US economy still needs to recover from the festering malinvestments that accumulated during the previous two booms. By pushing interest rates down to zero and bailing out the very people who made such bad financial decisions in the first place, the Fed and Treasury are doing everything they can to exacerbate the problem.

In this volatile world economy, investors can expect continued volatility in the stock market. The only thing we can really be sure of is that the government will use each new crisis to justify further extensions of its power. At some point the feds will probably seize the highly volatile 401(k)s and other stock-market holdings from citizens and replace them with "safe" government annuities.

Knowledge of Austrian economics doesn't render someone an expert investor, but it certainly gives advance warning of the major trends in the economy. Those investors who rely on the Keynesians featured at CNBC think that another stimulus package or QE3 might do the trick.

Robert Murphy is an adjunct scholar of the Mises Institute, where he teaches at the Mises Academy. He runs the blog Free Advice and is the author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to Capitalism, the Study Guide to "Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market," the "Human Action" Study Guide, The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Great Depression and the New Deal, and his newest book, Lessons for the Young Economist.