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At a time when the credit/money bubble financial institutions are in crises the Economist chooses to lead with a story on Mr Cameron – the leader of the British Conservative party. I can not claim to have read the story as I do not find Mr Cameron very interesting – at least compared to other matters. And, as I am British and have been an active member of the Conservative party since the end of the 1970’s, if he was of such great interest to anyone (other than his family and friends) it would be surely be me.
In case anyone makes the defence that the financial crises was not known at the time when the Economist went to press…
Well the absurd government created Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae had not lost 50% of their stock market value when the Economist went to press – but their problems were obvious, as were the problems of the compassionate lender to the poor (always run a mile from a company that says it is in business to help the poor) Indybank of California, the run on that enterprise was well under way.
The people at the Economist could have made some reasonable predictions about the general financial situation, but they did not – or at least did not lead with them. I will make the prediction now that the the gutless Bush Administration will not order the arrest of the corrupt Mr Johnson (the ex head of Fannie Mae and leading Democrat) as this would upset his friends, such as Senators Obama and Durbin and Congressman Barney Frank – and we must not upset these upstanding individuals…
…Any more than we must upset Speaker Nancy Pelosi by having a Presidential press conference asking people to telephone her to ask why she will not allow a vote in Congress on whether or not to allow more drilling for oil at a time of record fuel prices – although it is fine for Speaker Pelosi to have a press conference telling everyone to telephone the President Bush to blame him for high fuel prices.
Of course the Economist did have other stuff in it:
A brief look, thanks to the library, showed an article sneering at Governor Bobby Jindal (the upcoming Republican and someone the Economist shows signs of fearing) and another puff piece about the all wise Senator Obama – this one claiming that his cynical habit of saying anything to get elected (even, supposedly, reversing positions he has held all his life – well reversing them till after the election) is a good thing, and pointing to his economic advisers as the height of “sensibleness”.
No doubt they will prove about as sensible as the fanatical collectivist Paul Krugman – a man the Economist long favoured.
I could go on, for example examining their obituary of the late Senator Richard Helms and showing how the obituary shows the Economist writers do not understand the nature or effects of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, but I will stop here.
Anyone who is still buying the Economist is beyond rational argument.
The power of the American left (the “liberals” the “progressives” the “radicals” – call them what you will) is very great. About 9 out of 10 newspapers lean to the left in their editorials (and, to be blunt, in the rest of their content also – from news coverage to book and film reviews) and most television networks also lean to the left. Some more than others – but the general direction is plain.
This is perhaps the result of the “education system” – in which the “public” (i.e. government) schools are dominated by people with a leftist world view. They are saturated in this view of the world during their time at college and it is reflected in what they teach and how they teach it – and in the open political allegiances of their organizations. And would anyone like to deny that the vast majority of American universities are dominated by the left?
In Congress the Speaker of the House is someone, Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco, who would have been considered way to the left of the Democrat mainstream only a few years ago. And Speaker Pelosi has shown that the oft mentioned moderate “Blue Dog” Democrats are a busted flush – they are people who fall in line when the Speaker and her associates put the pressure on.
In the Senate, Harry Reid was once considered a moderate – but these days it is clear he is either on board with the left, or just a front man (a cardboard cutout) who does not prevent the control of the Senate by people like the senior Senator for Illinois.
But in spite of all of the above it is clear that the left is not satisfied – they demand total control of all aspects of life, totalitarianism.
This is made clear by such evidence as the effort by elements within the Californian courts to de facto ban home schooling (by demanding that parents have teaching training qualifications – indeed perhaps in every subject they teach) and that private schools only be allowed to hire people who have undergone a training process that the left control.
In other States (such as supposedly strongly conservative Tennessee) there are efforts to refuse to recognise the qualifications of children who did not go to approved schools – it seems that independent testing is not considered enough, indeed is the very thing that the left wish to avoid.
And at the Federal level there is a very strong movement to use all the agencies of the government (from the FCC to the IRS) to eliminate or castrate that minority of media outlets where the left do not already have the main influence.
All under nice sounding words of course – such as “the fairness doctrine”, or “freedom” and diversity”, but, under the Orwellian words, the intent is plain – no dissent will be tolerated. Either it will be declared “hate speech” or it will be declared “biased”. With an “unbiased” presentation of news and current affairs (and everything else – from music to sports) being a leftist one of course.
And with judges that a President Woods Fund Obama would appoint and who would be confirmed by a Democrat Senate, with a Republican minority brow beaten by “main stream media” that the left already control (who will declare that any opposition is “racist”), there will be no First Amendment problems (or any other constitutional problems) for any of the above.
The Bar in almost every State in under the control of the left (and I am not just talking about the ambulance chasing Trial Lawyers Association). Which is why States in which the lawyers have great influence in deciding who become judge, the courts are on the left. For example, Alaska is a very conservative State, but the courts are very much on the other side.
There will be no real resistance from the legal establishment against a leftist takeover of the Federal courts (to make them all like the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals) – there is no great love for things like the Second Amendment in this establishment.
“The internet Paul, the internet”.
The power of the left on the internet is actually very great – and not just in organizations like MoveOn (which claims three million activists), but in the internet companies themselves. Companies that most of us use (such as Google) have already shown which way they lean – whose world view they share.
And even if some (perhaps rather difficult to reach) conservative and libertarian websites remain – so what? Sorry, but a handful of websites with no broadcasters to work with are not going to defeat the left.
“But surely the rich in America will not allow the left to take over”.
This view shows the influence of the false doctrines of Marxism. The billionaires are not going to prevent anything – indeed they are often supporters of the left.
Billionaires like Warren Buffet may be more moderate than such men as George Soros, Peter Lewis and Marc Cuban – but they are still no more likely to come to the defence of talk radio than they are to oppose higher taxes (in fact they are often the loudest voices demanding higher taxes).
Indeed many of the billionaires in the United States resemble the baddies in Ian Fleming’s James Bond stories (super rich people in league with the Reds) more than they do the sustainers of the “intellectual superstructure of capitalism” of Marxist theory.
“But what about the big corporations”.
Such as General Electric?
The controllers of MSNBC and NBC (The distinction between the two has been breaking down for some time) can hardly be called enemies of the left.
I suspect that even nationalization would not really bother the top management at General Electric – they would not have to explain why the share value has done so badly over the last five years. Life would be so much less irritating without any real shareholders.
After all such de facto government owned entities (for all the claims that they are private) as Fannie Mae do not prevent top managers earning many millions of Dollars – ask Senator Woods Fund Obama’s friend Mr Johnson.
Of course ever more taxes, regulations and outright government control (from the oil refineries to insurance) makes no economic sense – but that has not stopped the left in the past and will not now.
“But why should non-Americans care what happens in the United States?”
Because the brutal truth is that neither Britain or any other part of the West can stand if America falls – there is not, and can not be, any Plan B.
In 2004 anti-leftists were determined to prevent the Democrats capturing the Presidency. “No Child Left Behind” and all the rest of the Bush’s absurd wild spending (opposed by John McCain and a some other Republicans) were forgotten about. Even Saddam turning out not to have stockpiles of WMDs (although, yes, he had plans to get them) was downplayed by people trying to prevent a President Kerry, and lots of evidence of serious mismanagement of the war in Iraq was ignored (apart from by McCain and a few others). Total focus was on winning the election.
However, even if Senator Kerry had won – the Republicans would still have controlled Congress. Now in 2008 there is the most leftist leadership of House and Senate there has ever been. Speaker Pelosi (who has shown that the “Blue dog” moderate Democrats are either a myth or a joke) and her friends in the House (such as Barney Frank). And a Senate in the hands of people like Senator Durbin – with pathetic “coal makes you sick” Harry Reid acting as front man.
Yet no one cares that the Presidency may be about to fall to the Democrats – indeed a Democrat whose record and background is of the hard left.
Total power over every part of government (from the FCC to the IRS) via control over the Executive and the Legislature – and power over the appointment of judges. And there is no focus – no will to prevent it happening.
“But they are corrupt, Paul”.
Someone can be corrupt and still work for a cause.
For example Senator Dodd is corrupt (and in the most old fashioned sweet heart loan from a corporation way), but this is not stopping him putting a housing bill into law that will send yet more millions upon millions of tax Dollars to leftist activist groups. Think how much more the left will be able to do when they have total power.
Or stay as you are and do not think – after all thinking about it might mean it would occur to you that you should do something.
I make a point of looking at the Economist each week, in order to see what this part of the establishment are thinking. I can not normally stand to read it for than a couple of minutes (as it makes me feel unclean), but that is enough time to find some utter absurdity with which amuse people.
However, this week I think I have come upon the worst Economist article of all time:
The title, featured on the front cover, is “McCain’s lurch to the right”… For those who do not know British “political speak”, “lurch to the right” is what the Labour party (and so on) have long said whenever a Conservative party politician gives any sign of not agreeing with everything the BBC and Guardian newspaper hold to be correct.
However, in the case of John McCain the Economist goes overboard.
First he is, as normal with the Economist, damned with faint praise – for example we are told that although it “may be wrong-headed” he does genuinely believe in the right of individuals to own firearms – so at least he is an honest lunatic. We are to forget the basis of freedom in the right of freeman to be armed, in both Classical Civilization and in English (and other Germanic) Common Law – only a few insane Americans believe in the right to keep and bear arms.
But McCain is worse than wrong-headed – he is also a liar.
For example, he has “recently” been saying that there should only be immigration reform after the borders of the United States are secured – which everyone knows is impossible.
Actually it is not a recent “lurch to the right” as McCain has been saying this (over and over again) for more than a year. And everyone clearly does not include the vast majority of Americans who support securing the borders.
On taxation the evil McCain now supports the Bush tax rate cuts – which he once wisely opposed (no mention of John McCain also opposing the Bush spending increases of course), and the crazy man even wants more tax cuts.
The Economist of course does not mention that the American tax code is absurdly complex and something like a voluntary flat tax would be sensible – but it is more than this.
According to what is implicit in the article this recent “lurch to the right” by McCain, actually – again something he has been saying for ages, is wrong (indeed obviously wrong) – McCain should come out and support higher taxes. Which is what “ending the Bush tax cuts” actually means.
So the Economist holds that taxes should be increased at a time of economic weakness – this is a position that even Lord Keynes would have had trouble with. Even a few months off the Federal fuel tax is an insane thing that the all-wise Senator Obama “cleverly opposed”.
Finally we are told that McCain’s support for off shore drilling, if the States agree, is the sort of thing that centrists and moderates would never go for.
This is odd on two grounds:
Firstly as John McCain’s main task at this election is to bring out the conservative, or rather conservative and libertarian – i.e. the anti left, base (a lot bigger than the Republican base) which includes many people who really dislike him. The stay-at-home threat is a terrible one for McCain.
Secondly – the Economist folk simply do not know what they are talking about.
In reality, with the price of fuel being what it is – and set to get a lot higher over time, about 70% of American voters support an end to the Federal de facto ban on new off shore drilling. Nor does the Economist even mention alternatives like opening up the areas of the Western States for oil shale, and allowing new nuclear power stations (both of which McCain has supported and Obama has not).
So by “centrists and moderates” the Economist in fact means “committed hard core leftists who would never vote for McCain if their lives depended on it”.
I do not expect to influence some people to vote for McCain with the above, John McCain has too much baggage (McCain-Feingold, the amnesty bill for illegals, and so on) for that.
However, I do hope to have finally have convinced the die hards that if the Economist is a “free market” publication then I am the Emperor Augustus.
The Economist is written by a group of people who were taught a lot of semi, and not so semi, collectivist doctrines at university – and simply trot them out each week in vague connection to the events of the time.
I notice that the this week’s Economist is taking the same basic line as its sister publication the Financial Times did the Saturday after the Irish ‘no’ vote, that the EU can carry on without the text that was voted down. And, from their own stand point, both publications may well be correct.
It would be nice for them if the European Union had total power (which the ‘Treaty of Lisbon’ would have given it – especially with its amending clause), but the E.U. already has vast power (about 80% of new regulations are a response to its orders) so there is great scope for more collectivism of the involuntary, statist, sort.
And as the European Union contains almost all the major nations of Europe (with the exception of Russia) it can bully the remaining nations – at least with these nations being dominated by a political class who go along with basic philosophy of the EU anyway, due to their education and to the influence of the mainstream media, and so are looking for excuses to give in.
Meanwhile, in the United States the totalitarians look set to take over soon. I have presented evidence that they (both key members of Congress and others) are totalitarians in a previous posting and I will not type it all out again – so I will content myself with wondering whether, when the spiritual son of Saul Alinsky becomes President of the United States, he will invite Bill Ayers (and the other comrades he left Harvard to join in Chicago) to his inauguration.
So the United States and the European Union will sit grinning at each other as vital parts of the “world community”.
It will be rather like Tolkien’s Orthanc and Barad Dur. Or a fallen Minas Tirith grinning at Minas Morgul – over a land “filled with rotteness”.
Try to prevent this, or do not, as you choose. But do not lie and say you did not know what was coming.
The Economist ran a comparison of Senator McCain and Senator Obama this week. Senator McCain was damned with faint praise for his ‘orthodox’ supply side deregulation proposals (things the Economist itself is supposed to believe in) and then the magazine (sorry ‘newspaper’) dismissed proposals to deregulate health care and other areas of life with the following statement.
“America is already a pretty deregulated place”.
So the thousands of pages of Federal, State and local regulations that are strangling life in the United States, do not really exist?
And people wonder why I hate the Economist. The writers know nothing about the political economy of the United States – or anywhere else. Ignorance is not fatal if someone understands that they are ignorant (for example, I am ignorant of spelling and grammar) but to be ignorant and to think oneself knowledgeable is a fatal combination.
However, how can the writers of the Economist be anything other than ignorant – when they are the products of modern universities?
I recently heard a Professor of Economics from the University of York on BBC Radio. This person suggested that a good way to reduce inflation (so that the Bank of England could reduce interest rates) would be to take yet more things out of the (already rigged) Consumer Price Index. The Professor was not being ironic – the man really thought he was making a sensible suggestion.
The students of such people go on to be writers for the Economist.
It might seem strange that I would be saddened by the death of man who was supposed to have admired Lord Keynes, but Tony Dye knew a credit-money bubble when he saw one. What Tony Dye did not understand was politics. Every time he was certain that the crash must come, Alan Greenspan (and the mini me versions of him in charge of such institutions as the Bank of England) would just create more money to keep the credit boom going.
“But if he does that it will just make the crash worse when it does finally come” seemed to be Tony Dye’s position, and he was right.
However, he did not understand that political types (and Greenspan was certainly a political type) do not care about the long term.
“In the long run we are all dead” was the position of Lord Keyes, and Tony Dye is now dead. However, he did care about the long term – and the people who are left to live in it.
Oscar for best documentary feature goes to a film, ‘Taxi ride to the Dark Side’, about how evil Americans torture people to death in Afghanistan – no doubt at the command of the evil Darth W. Bush.
And Oscar for best documentary short goes to a film about lesbian pension rights.
Hollywood has become a parody of itself.
This article is in the LA Times titled Doctors balk at request for data:
The state’s largest for-profit health insurer is asking California physicians to look for conditions it can use to cancel their new patients’ medical coverage. Blue Cross of California is sending physicians copies of health insurance applications filled out by new patients, along with a letter advising them that the company has a right to drop members who fail to disclose “material medical history,” including “pre-existing pregnancies”.
Firstly all aspects of medical care, including insurance, are regulated to bits in the United States (especially in California), and it is the government regulations and subsidy programs (such as Medicare and Medicaid – but in recent years SCHIP as well) that are at the root of the high price of medical cover. But to turn to the specific question:
If someone lies about their medical history when filling out a contract, in order to get less expensive medical cover, they are guilty of fraud. In an alternative world, which I am not saying I would support, they would not only be dropped by their insurance company when their fraud was exposed – they would also be prosecuted.
Of course, in our world, they will not be prosecuted and would not be convicted if they were prosecuted. It is much the same with all the political talk about “fraudulent lending” in the mortgage market. There has been vastly more fraudulent borrowing, but I doubt that the vast number of people who lied on their mortgage applications (for example claiming to have an income much greater than they really have) will be prosecuted.
However, in an alternative world (which, again, I am not saying I support) prosecution and conviction would solve the problems of customers guilty of fraud – medical cover and a roof over their heads.
Prison provides both.
On the BBC Radio Four News at 18:00 tonight, there was a story about a ceremony in Spain marking the two hundredth anniversary of a ‘liberation struggle’.
The listeners were informed that this was a struggle against the Empire of Napoleon and it had helped create ‘modern Europe’ where everyone works together. Of course it was actually Napoleon who was working to ‘get all of Europe working together’ (it was called the Code Napoléon and Continental System). The words ‘national independence’, what the Spanish were actually fighting for, were not mentioned. And although it was mentioned that the British call the conflict ‘the Peninsula War’ the name “Wellington” was also not mentioned.
Sometimes I suspect that even North Korean radio presents a slightly less distorted view of the world than the BBC does.
Americans: Do not fear, you are not going to lose a conservative President next January and no conservative is going to be defeated on Super Tuesday.
First I must point out that this posting is not about Congressman Dr Ron Paul – no offence meant, I am just not going to be writing about him here. The United States will not lose a conservative President next January because George Walker Bush is no conservative.
No shock there – he is the man who gave the Republic such things as “No-Child-Left-Behind” and the Medicare extension (and so much other stuff). But just how un-conservative President Bush is was brought home to me by watching the rerun of the ‘Bush Special’ on FNC.
President Bush was asked about his 30 billion Dollar aid package for Africa and he replied that he had pushed it into effect because it was a religious moral duty to give to the poor and because terrorism was bred by poverty – the money would keep people away from the “ideology of hate”, which could never convince people with a chance in life. Mrs Bush then said something about a healthy workforce being good for the economy of these various African nations… → Continue reading: Conservative rule will not end next January, and no Conservative will lose on Super Tuesday
CNN man to Senators Clinton and Obama: “People all over the country are saying if you got together it would be a Dream Ticket”.
Senator Obama: “I was a friend of Senator Clinton before the nomination race began and I will be a friend of Senator Clinton’s after the nomination race is over”.
Senator Clinton: “The Republicans are more-of-the-same, we represent change. You can tell that just by looking at us”.
In short “change” means race and gender – not lower government spending or less regulations.
Indeed both Senators Clinton and Obama think the Republicans should have spent even more taxpayers money on health, education and welfare, and passed even more regulations.
As for CNN – it is like the rest of the main stream media. It can not ask tough questions to ‘liberals’ because its folk share all their basic assumptions.
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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