Category Archives: Political philosophy

OCCUPY WALL STREET, GRASS ROOTS OR ORGANIZED FROM THE START?

Both sides of the media are reporting that the movement known as Occupy Wall Street is a serendipitous event, something that just sprung up naturally from a garden of discontent.  But did it?

On September 17, 2011 a few students sat on the sidewalk in lower Manhattan and called their little protest group Days of Rage (DoR).  Supposedly this was the genesis of the larger movement now known as Occupy Wall Street (OWS).  If OWS was a spontaneous outgrowth from DoR how do you account for the fact that occupywallst.org was registered as a website domain on July 14, 2011, a full two months prior to the first day of the Wall St Days of Rage sit in ?

OWS appears to be a well planned fully orchestrated program in response to the Tea Party.  Make no mistake, OWS is a national operation.  Just days into the launch at the Brooklyn Bridge nearly 900 local community organizations from Florida to the State of Washington are up and running with event dates and websites.

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Locations of OWS operations

A long list of supporters was posted on the website at www.occupywallst.org on Oct 4th but the page appears to have been taken down.  The SEIU and a NY Local of the American Federation of Teachers were among a list of ten to 15 unions.  MoveOn.org was one of the well known names on the longer list of advocacy groups behind the movement.

OWS is developing as a mirror image of the Tea Party, well dressed non-violent, heavily middle class and united behind a cause.  The Tea Party argues for less intrusive government and for getting federal spending under control.  The Tea Party is a force moving the country to the right.  OWS demonstrates against the rich, against the banks and against the financial foundations of capitalism.  OWS is a force that would move the country to the left.  At this nascent stage they appear to have a great deal of popular support, particularly from the middle class.

Socialist leaders have long known that a large and satisfied middle class is the greatest obstacle to gaining control in a democratic nation as prosperous as the U.S.  As long as the middle class is content with their status they will reject the appropriation and redistribution of their assets that socialism requires, supposedly for the common good.  One answer is force, i.e. violent revolution.  The other, and far better answer, is to foment unrest, build anger to the point where there is widespread dissatisfaction within the middle class.  And then present free markets as the cause and socialism as the cure.  The voters will do the rest.

Anger requires a target.  The rich, the banks and Wall Street suit the bill perfectly.  The rich are a defenseless minority that engender very little sympathy.  All that’s needed is a strong community organizer to set them up as the target, someone with some clout, someone with a bully pulpit.  Enter stage left – Barack Obama.

Saul Alinsky taught that socialism’s path to power is like a three act play.

Act I is join the crowd, gain respect, gain acceptance and legitimacy.
Barack Obama has done that.

Act II is the development of anger and the spreading of discontent to enroll as many supporters as possible for Act III.
By intent or not, Barack Obama is doing that.

Act III is the final wresting of control of the government from the establishment.
Barack Obama won’t be doing that, but it’s not for lack of trying.

There is no way to know the President’s real goal, but if it is the establishment of a socialist state he’s doing everything just right; and that includes Occupy Wall Street.

DAVID BROOKS and THE LOST DECADE

David Brooks

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Give the devil his due and the devil’s domain too.  When they’re right, they’re right.  David Brooks has an excellent Op Ed piece in today’s New York Times.  The title belies the content.  The article is better than its label.

Brooks points out that “Roger Altman, a former deputy Treasury secretary, is arguing that America and Europe are on the verge of a disastrous double-dip recession”.  Republicans and Democrats are stuck in their own one cure solutions.  Democrats say government needs to spend more to jump start the economy. They always say that.  Republicans say the government needs to tax less and get out of the way, and then the recovery will begin.  They always say that.

Brooks is more disposed to the idea of throwing out the bath water, throwing out the baby, throwing out the tub, throwing out the towels, the soap, the powder, the whole ball of wax.  Then he would start anew with a flat tax.  He doesn’t say it but he describes it.  Brooks would give the whole international banking and monetary system the Ron Paul treatment and start from scratch.  But he calls it the holistic approach.  Read it if you want to see David’s solutions.

[David, did I read you right?]

Roger Altman, a former deputy Treasury secretary, is arguing that America and Europe are on the verge of a disastrous double-dip recession

THE SUPER-RICH AND THE SATURDAY NIGHT BOWLING LEAGUE

The super-rich don’t need all that money.

Hi there!  My name is Joe.  There is no question about it; the super-rich don’t need all of their money.  Let me restate that so it sounds better; they don’t need all of the money they have.  I make 135,000 dollars a year.  That’s not bad but it doesn’t mean I’m rich.  If I made 200,000 I could live like a king.  That’s enough for anybody.  No one in my Saturday night bowling league makes that kind of money.

The man who gave me my job is super-rich.  I don’t know how much he makes but it must be big bucks because he has a lot of people working for him.  The government should take some of it away from people like that.  Let me say that differently so it sounds better.  They should pay more taxes.

Hola!  My name is José.  Rosa and me, we come here 4 year ago.  We both honest, and Rosa and me we both work hard.  We do okay.  We make, I think thirty, thirty five thousand.  I drive a truck.  Rosa cleans house for some rich people who make 135,000 dollars every year.  I don’t think they need all that mucho monies.  That’s okay; they give Rosa a job.

Hello!  People call me Horse because I am bigger and stronger than most of the other workers on the farm.  This year I pick strawberries.  Last year I worked on apples and peaches.  I loaded the heavy crates on a truck.  The driver was a nice man named José.  He didn’t lift crates; he didn’t have to.  José was rich.

—  oOo —

It’s true; the super rich don’t need all that much money.  But somehow I think we are all better off because they have it.  Think jobs,  Think hospitals and other philanthropies.  What would the world be like if no one was rich?

WOODROW WILSON AND THE LAFFER CURVE

If you were to ask the question, “Who was America’s most socialistic president ever?” A young person would say Barack Obama (an honest young person, that is).  An older person might say Franklin Roosevelt.  A historian would probably name Woodrow Wilson.  He at least belongs high on the list.  The only reason Wilson is not better known for his socialism is that he accomplished little of it because the American people were not yet ready to accept any of it.

Wilson was a Democrat, of course.  To see how far that party has come in the last 90 years, consider this quote.  (Hat Tip to Stephen Hayward)

“The Congress might well consider whether the higher rates of income and profits tax can [ ] be effectively productive of revenue, and whether they may not, on the contrary, be destructive of business activity and productive of waste and inefficiency.  There is a point at which [ ] high rates of income and profits taxes destroy energy, remove the incentive to new enterprise, encourage extravagant expenditures and produce industrial stagnation with consequent unemployment and other attendant evils.” Woodrow Wilson 1919

Can you imagine any Democrat making that statement today?  How high would tax rates need to go before the Left might say something like that again?  In 1919 the top tax bracketwas applied both to wages and to capital gains from investment.  The rate was 73%.  Wilson was beginning to wonder if that might be enough.

DAN MITCHELL

Dan Mitchell is here from the CATO Institute. Poke him in the nose with your cursor and he will explain it for you. (Sorry about that, Dan)

OBAMA DISAPPROVAL HITS 71%

If you hire a demolition expert you should not be surprised when the building collapses.

A community organizer knows nothing about building the wealth of a nation, only about how to appropriate wealth that has already been created.  The process is a destructive one.  That’s obvious.

In 2007 there was an economic meltdown due to excessive issuance of sub-prime mortgages.  ACORN was in the forefront of the activist community pressuring banks and regulators to make more and more of these loans until the inevitable collapse.  To fix it we hired an ACORN trainer.

You can hire an arsonist to put out a fire if you wish.  But don’t expect his heart to be in it.

KRUGMAN’S KIND OF KOMMON SENSE

Paul Krugman, Laureate of the Sveriges Riksban...

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Justice Samuel Alito is a Princeton graduate and very proud of it. Nevertheless, if memory serves me right, he said he heard more common sense when talking to one man in the street than he heard from all the Princeton elites. Personally, I suspect the judge must have been thinking of Joe the Plumber and Paul Krugman at the time.

In a recent column in the New York Times, Krugman writes that we are seeing “what happens when influential people exploit a crisis rather than try to solve it.” Shades of Rahm Emmanuel and his “We must not let this crisis go to waste”? Not at all. That would be common sense. In Krugman’s Princetonian mind, unemployment is the crisis, more debt is the solution and opposing debt is exploitation. If you find that confusing, it’s because you have common sense.

Standard & Poor warned that if something wasn’t done to curb the federal debt it could lead to a reduction of the credit rating. When an agreement was reached that prompted an immediate increase in debt with no more than promises to reduce spending the stock market took a plunge. Every householder knows that a credit rating is based on a combination payment history and outstanding debt. But as Krugman sees it, when the markets tanked, they “were signaling, as clearly as anyone could ask, that unemployment rather than deficits is our biggest problem.” In other words, to improve your credit rating you must increase your debt.

The elite economist closes with “The usual suspects will, of course, denounce such ideas as irresponsible.” No, Paul, such ideas are not irresponsible, they’re just plain stupid. Have you no common sense?

IT’S THE INTERNET, STUPID

Thomas Friedman, American journalist, columnis...

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Anything written by Thomas Friedman is always worth a read. Agree or not, he always makes you think and rarely makes you mad. In last Sunday’s New York Times he has the temerity to propose The Theory of Everything (Sort of). He just may be right (sort of).

Friedman notes the pestilent (Arab Spring) and the peaceful (Tea Party) rebellions taking place around the world and asks, why now?

It starts with the fact that globalization and the information technology revolution have gone to a whole new level. Thanks to cloud computing, robotics, 3G wireless connectivity, Skype, Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Twitter, the iPad, and cheap Internet-enabled smartphones, the world has gone from connected to hyper-connected.

This is the single most important trend in the world today.

The columnist mixes in his observations of changes in the workplace and the evolution of those skills required for success. Many are falling short. At the same time the “globalization/I.T. revolution enables the globalization of anger, with all of these demonstrations now inspiring each other.”  Today, any displeased soul with an internet connection is a potential community organizer.

DEMOCRAT’S REMORSE

Garden variety Democrats are beginning to say in public what they have privately felt for quite some time. Barack Obama is failing as president. The thought that Hillary would have been a better choice is widespread. I wonder.

Hillary certainly outshines Obama on foreign policy matters but the plummeting of Obama’s star is tied to issues here at home. His bumbling abroad was of concern to conservatives but mostly taken in stride by Democrats. The two candidate’s agendas at home were much the same – government run health care, Cap & Trade, Card Check, more industry regulation and enhanced “entitlements”.

Nancy Pelosi would still have been running the house and Harry Reid would still be running the Senate. Instead of a president experienced in the application of Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals, we would have a president who wrote her doctoral thesis on the author and the teachings outlined in his book. There is a difference, but does it matter? The 60’s radicals would still be in control of all three of the branches of government that run the show.

And then there is the big question; would Hillary have been elected? Obama won handily and always held the lead, but a month or so before election day, the pollsters reported the race was getting close. It’s a safe assumption to say there was greater passion to elect the first black man to the presidency than the first woman. And Hillary didn’t have the slogan Hope and Change. The power of that theme cannot be underestimated. Intentionally vague, it was a blank check for fulfillment of your hopes and dreams whatever they may be.

Blaming the leader and not the system is as routine an act for the Left as breakfast in the morning. Eventually a point is reached where blaming the opposition is just not credible. The only reason Communism didn’t work in Russia was that Lenin and Stalin were corrupt and ineffective. Socialism works. It just has to be done right. That’s the unshakable belief.

Barack Obama did not initiate the decline of America that is taking place. But he is presiding over the culmination. Sometimes a disease has to get really serious before we will submit to the cure. In that sense, Obama may have done the country a service.

CENTRAL PLANNING GONE WILD

When a private enterprise operates with the same efficiency as the government, the private enterprise runs out of money and declares bankruptcy.  When a government runs the government as governments do, and runs out of money, the government does not declare bankruptcy; it raises taxes.

Nothing is more inefficient than a central planning government.  Ask Adam Smith.  Many people believe President Reagan ended the Cold War.  That may be, but he had help from central planning, not ours, but theirs.  The economic system in the U.S.S.R. was Socialism about as pure as it gets.  The government planned everything.  Eighty years of central planning left the Soviet empire financially destitute.  Reagan held all the cards.  All he had to do was play them.

That’s history, now to the present.  China is the dominant Communist country today.  China’s Socialism is less pure, but still heavily imbued with central planning.  The Australian video China’s Ghost Cities and Malls is an eye popping revelation of what can happen when central planning goes wild.

COL. WEST – IT’S IN THE KORAN

Don’t be misled by the title frame image. Col. West is far from asleep. The Colonel, now Rep. Allen West (R FL), explains all you need to know about Islam in less than two minutes.  At the moment we have bigger fish to fry within the country but we must not forget the enemy without.

The Bible teaches Christians to compare scripture with scripture. Clarification, expansion and depth of understanding are to be gained by studying the Bible in its entirety. Muslims have the Koran and and also have the Hadith. Both must be studied for a proper understanding of Islam.

The Hadith are the supplementary recorded teachings by early Muslim holy men that give practical guidance to believers. The guidance is based on many sayings attributed to Mohamed and on the authors own interpretations of the Koran.  The Koran is divided into 114 chapter called Sura.  Because the Sura are written in a pleasing poetic style they are sometimes referred to as poems. The terms Hadith and Sura are used as both plural and singular nouns.

Col West, was elected to Congress in 2010.

In addition to the Hadith and the Sura, Col. West refers to the Battle of Tours in France in the year 732AD. It was at Tours that French General Charles Martel turned back the Muslim invasion that had been destined to occupy and control all of Europe.

Possibly the most significant battle in all of history, The Battle of Tours determined the destiny of Europe.