Thursday, December 31, 2009

NEW YEAR STATE OF THE UNION

JANUARY 6th: Your 11 Best No-Cost to Low-Cost Marketing &
Business Strategies for 2010!


TOP TEN CONSERVATIVES OF 2009

Times Watch's Top Ten Lowlights of the New York Times in 2009


Top 10 Bad Things That Are Good For You!

Top 10 Most Ridiculous Uses of Stimulus Funds (Updated)

Top 10 Obama White House surprises

Ten New Reasons Why Obamacare Can Still Be Killed

121 reasons to reject Obamacare

New promise: Lawsuits to challenge 'Obamacare'

The truth about airline security

Our government's spending orgy will haunt us in 2010

The 15 bloggiest stories of 2009

20 million-plus collect unemployment checks in '09


...and for you, loyal readers, some good cheer (in spite of everything :-)
  • What did a caterpillar do on New Year's Day? – It turns over a new leaf.

  • What’s once in a minute, twice in a moment, and never in a thousand years? - The letter M!

  • Did you hear about the three million dollar Redneck Lottery? - The winner gets three dollars a year for a million years.

  • What are the six worst years in a blonde's life? - The third grade.

  • What do vampires sing on New Year's Eve? - Auld Fang Syne!

  • Why did the man refuse to eat snails? - He only ate fast food.

  • Why do dragons sleep during the day? - So they can fight knights.

  • Why was the queen's room flooded? - Because she reigned for many years!

  • What do you call a dead blonde in a closet? - The REAL winner of last year's hide-and-go-seek contest.

  • What do you get when you cross the Atlantic Ocean with the Titanic? - Only half way.
  • And, finally...
  • What does the dentist of the year get? - A little plaque.



HAPPY NEW YEAR!



BUTT-BOMBS - coming soon in 2010

...when the shit hits the fan for real...

Barbara Boxer Subsidizing Relatives with Campaign Contributions

Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) has diverted nearly half a million in contributions from her political action committee to her son’s political consulting firm from 2001 to 2009, according to Federal Election Commission (FEC) filings.
Read more

Rush broadcasts out of an office building in Palm Beach...

...and NOT at his Florida mansion!

Democrats resegregate DC school system.!

Moe Lane reports

NANNYSTATE NEW YEAR: The Democrats' secret plan to FORCE us all to lose weight!

The Democrat Diet

If the Democrats in the government actually intended to go on this diet themselves, I would have called it "The Democrats' Diet" ... but, like the new, ugly healthcare they plan on foisting on all of the rest of us, they ain't changing one single thing on THEIR own plates!

The secret history of TWA Flight 800

China Confidential analysts suspect the plane [TWA Flight 800] was downed by a joint Iranian-Al Qaeda operation, and that KSM's redacted statement may indicate as much.

China Confidential analysts also suspect the jumbo jetliner was attacked on July 17--Iraqi national liberation day--in order to pin blame on the Baathist regime of Saddam Hussein, with which Iran had fought an eight-year war that cost a million Iranian lives. ...

Not for nothing did U.S. Senator John Kerry, Democrat, on two occasions on national television refer to the destruction of TWA 800 as a "terrorist act." ...

In fact, intelligence experts know Al-Jawary was involved in the TWA bombing.

His release was an early sign that the Obama administration had decided to appease Arab and Islamist terrorists.

You won't believe this history of the plane(s) attached to this story! You really owe it to yourself, especially given the recent terrorist activities in our airplanes, to read the whole story!

58% Favor Waterboarding of Plane Terrorist To Get Information

Rasmussen Reports

HAT TIP: PowerLine

New Year's Eve Obama style


Airline terrorist's VISA had expired!

SAN'A, Yemen (AP) - The Nigerian suspected in the attempted attack on a U.S. airliner had stayed on in Yemen illegally after his visa expired three months ago and should have been stopped by authorities from leaving the country, Yemeni security officials said Thursday...

No Rise of Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide Fraction in Past 160 Years, New Research Finds

Wolfgang Knorr of the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Bristol reanalyzed available atmospheric carbon dioxide and emissions data since 1850 and considers the uncertainties in the data.

In contradiction to some recent studies, he finds that the airborne fraction of carbon dioxide has not increased either during the past 150 years or during the most recent five decades.
Read the whole thing

"Today is the second worst day of my life after 12-25-09. Today is the day that I realized that my own country is lying to me and all of my fellow Americans."

Flight 253 passenger Kurt Haskell: 'I was visited by the FBI'

Wednesday, December 30, 2009

HILLBUZZ prays for Rush

...and there's a funny story about them and Rush here, too

Voter Oppositiion to Obamacare continues to GROW



From YidWithLid via GATEWAYPUNDIT

Dick Cheney accuses Obama of "trying to pretend we are not at war"

Dick Cheney:
Former Vice President Dick Cheney accused President Barack Obama on Tuesday of “trying to pretend we are not at war” with terrorists, pointing to the White House response to the attempted sky bombing as reflecting a pattern that includes banishing the term “war on terror” and attempting to close the Guantanamo Bay detention center...
Statement Obama made on Nov. 21, 2007, while taking calls on New Hampshire Public Radio:
“I truly believe that the day I’m inaugurated, that not only does the country look at itself differently, but the world looks at America differently. If I’m reaching out to the Muslim world, they understand that I’ve lived in a Muslim country and I may be a Christian, but I also can understand their point of view. …

“The world will have confidence that I am listening to them, and that our future and our security is tied up with our ability to work with other countries in the world. That will ultimately make us safer. And that’s something that this administration has failed to understand.”
Read the whole thing

Barack Obama gets an 'F' for protecting Americans

From the U.S. Editor of Britain's Daily Telegraph

Rush Limbaugh rushed to hospital in Hawaii -- SERIOUS CONDITION

This is just heard on the John Batchelor show's newsbreak at 7pm...developing...he was suffering from chest pains.

May God help him...and all of us conservatives for whom he is a Champion.

UPDATE:

Report: Rush Limbaugh taken to Hawaii hospital

Barney Frank's decision to 'roll the dice' on subsidized housing is becoming an epic disaster for taxpayers

There is more to this ugly situation. New research by Edward Pinto, a former chief credit officer for Fannie Mae and a housing expert, has found that from the time Fannie and Freddie began buying risky loans as early as 1993, they routinely misrepresented the mortgages they were acquiring, reporting them as prime when they had characteristics that made them clearly subprime or Alt-A.
The Price for Fannie and Freddie Keeps Going Up

Tuesday, December 29, 2009

There is a middle-class tax time bomb ticking in the Senate’s version of President Obama’s effort to reform health care...

A Less Than Honest Policy

What is "historic" is that this will be the first administration to show that it doesn't care one bit what the public wants or doesn't want

In short, this is not about the public's health. It is about Obama's ego and his chance to impose his will and leave a legacy.

This is not the only massive legislation to be rushed to passage in Congress and then left to go into effect slowly. The same political formula was used earlier, to pass the "stimulus" bill to spend hundreds of billions of dollars that the government doesn't have-- and that may well amount to more than a trillion dollars when the interest on the debt it creates is added, for this and the next generation to pay off.

Legislation is not the only sign of this administration's contempt for the intelligence of the public and for the safeguards of democratic government.

The appointment of White House "czars" to make policy across a wide spectrum of issues-- unknown people who get around the Constitution's requirement of Senate confirmation for Cabinet members-- is yet another sign of the mindset that sees the fundamental laws and values of this country as just something to get around, in order to impose the will of an arrogant elite.
Unhealthy Arrogance

When will this fiction finally die?

That is our future. It's real, not fiction. And it's something that no one wants to talk about...

Governors of the nation’s two largest Democratic states are leveling sharp criticism at the Senate health care bill, claiming that it would leave their already financially strapped states even deeper in the hole

Reality bites:

Blue state govs. rip Senate health bill

Sen. Dodd, D-Conn., slashed aviation security funding for pet constituency

Now that our attention is focused on airline security measures thanks to the failed airline attack on Christmas Day, it's worth mentioning that one senator took money away from aviation security to line the pockets of a constituency that supported his presidential campaign in a big way.
Read more

Marco Rubio!

GET THIS MAN ELECTED!!!

Donofrio & Pidgeon file Motion for Reconsideration in Chrysler case

Thank God some people in this country are fighting back against an out-of-control administration!

Godspeed.

DEALER’S PILING ON, IN LEGAL BID TO DEFEND RIGHTS TO THEIR FRANCHISES

Maybe it's when the president goes bowling that you're supposed to find immediate shelter and duck tape the windows

Damage Control in 5 Easy Steps!

Monday, December 28, 2009

Why We Have a Health Care Cost Problem and Why It Will Only Get Worse

Find out here

Most Americans do not understand the chokehold carbon dioxide control would give government over almost everything we do

Giving government the power to allot carbon dioxide gives it essential control over most means of production. This is "The Road to Serfdom" that the great F.A. Hayek warned about.
Clearing the Air on the Clean Air Act and Climate Change

Carbon wars: all against all

If there is any doubt that the left wing in this country is going to destroy us, this should get rid of it:

How about if we sue you for breathing?

Kwanzaa Schmanzaa

What do you get when you take a bad science fiction writer with a desire for immortality and add a lust for tax breaks? Scientology. What do you get when you take a neo-marxist felon and add a desire for black nationalism? Kwanzaa. What do both Kwanzaa and Scientology have in common? They are fraudulent products of post-modern culture given legitimacy by a press hell bent on diminishing the Judeo-Christian heritage in the United States.

Over the next few weeks, the media will be wishing people “Happy Holidays” and profiling families celebrating Kwanzaa -- advent wreath lighters are too religious for media profiles. What they won’t tell you is what I will tell you.

Kwanzaa has absolutely nothing to do with Africa and everything to do with hating the United States.
Read the whole thing

President Obama's year of blunders is ending with the worst failure yet by the president and his team

Obama has proved himself remarkably skilled for the role of celebrity talking head and woefully ill-prepared for the job of leader of the free world and defender of American security. He campaigned as the opposite of George W. Bush and he has delivered, as the attack on Detroit demonstrates.

The country cannot afford two years in a row of such incompetence and close calls. Let us hope that senior statesmen in the president's party summon the courage to demand the changes in staff and policies that halt this accelerating parade of fiascos.

And let's hope they begin with the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security, where change must come soon, before less incompetent terrorists make their way into the airspace above America's great cities.
Hugh Hewitt: President Obama's year of failure

What Is Putative President Obama’s Current U.S. Citizenship Status?

These are the reasons for the existing doubts regarding Obama's place of birth...

Homeland Insecurity

Had the device not malfunctioned, everyone on Flight 253 from Amsterdam to Detroit would have perished...what went wrong?
• Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab's father raised concerns about his son's increasing radicalism with Nigerian security agencies and US embassy staff but his warning was not acted upon.


• US embassy officials granted Abdulmutallab a visa to enter the US despite his father's warnings.


• Abdulmutallab was allowed to fly even though he was on a UK Home Office "watch list" and had been barred from entering Britain.


• Security officials at two airports failed to detect the explosives Abdulmutallab had strapped to his body.


• Security services in the UK, US and Africa failed to swap information on Abdulmutallab in the months and weeks leading up to the attack.
Read the whole thing

And the device that almost exploded is "easily detected"!!!

WASHINGTON - The explosive device used by the would-be Detroit bomber contained a widely available — and easily detected — chemical explosive that has a long history of terrorist use, according to government officials and explosive experts.



Sunday, December 27, 2009

Legendary lawyer and politician Percy Sutton has died at the age of 89, and the major media are omitting mention of one of his most notable acts...

...one of Sutton's most notable moments is absent from the media hagiographies I have seen: he stated on television that he knew that an Islamic supremacist, Dr. Khalid al-Mansour, and advisor to a wealthy Saudi, had paid for Barack Obama's education at Harvard Law School.

How the real War on Terror was lost through domestic collaborators hired by the same oil rich gulf states behind Al Queda

The real story of course as always is behind the scenes....

DEFUND TAXPAYER SUPPORTED SCIENCE FRAUD

Trofim Lysenko was Stalin’s favorite scientist because he liked his meshing of evolution and Marxism. Comrade Lysenko “proved” that there is no such thing as a gene. A lot of money was dumped into the “research” of this crackpot, and woe to those who declared that the emperor had no clothes.

Lysenko’s gene-free view of science led to claims that wheat plants could produce rye. Any disagreement was labeled as “political sabotage” -- similar to the contemporary global warming “elite” who libel and banish those who do not worship at their altar.

It turns out that Lysenko’s spiritual children are the global warming alarmists in today’s scientific establishment.
Read more

The Return of Slavery to America...ironically ushered in by a black man, an African-American!

The next eleven months will be critical for America. America will live or die depending upon the results of the election of 2010...We can save America. But we cannot save America with the government we have now. The Socialist government America has today is a death sentence for the country. It will be a slow agonizing death. Like cancer it must be cut from the body if the body is expected to have any chance of survival.
Read the whole thing

Wanna get rich???

Then you'd better check this out first: War Against the Wannabe Rich

Health care bill: "...monstrous mountain of toxic pustules sprouting from greasy boils metastasizing from malign carbuncles that passed the Senate on Christmas Eve..."

Nobody says it better than Mark Steyn, Canadian writer, political commentator and cultural critic:
Government can’t just annex “one-sixth of the U.S. economy” (i.e., the equivalent of annexing the entire British or French economy, or annexing the entire Indian economy twice over) and then just say: “Okay, what’s next? On to cap-and-trade . . . ” Nations that governmentalize health care soon find themselves talking about little else.
Obamacare is the fast-track to a permanent left-of-center political culture...

Amending Executive Order 12425: Obama suddenly signs dangerous Executive Order

THE CORNER: Andy McCarthy
You just can't make up how brazen this crowd is. One week ago, President Obama quietly signed an executive order that makes an international police force immune from the restraints of American law.

Interpol is the shorthand for the International Criminal Police Organization. It was established in 1923 and operates in about 188 countries. By executive order 12425, issued in 1983, President Reagan recognized Interpol as an international organization and gave it some of the privileges and immunities customarily extended to foreign diplomats. Interpol, however, is also an active law-enforcement agency, so critical privileges and immunities (set forth in Section 2(c) of the International Organizations Immunities Act) were withheld. Specifically, Interpol's property and assets remained subject to search and seizure, and its archived records remained subject to public scrutiny under provisions like the Freedom of Information Act. Being constrained by the Fourth Amendment, FOIA, and other limitations of the Constitution and federal law that protect the liberty and privacy of Americans is what prevents law-enforcement and its controlling government authority from becoming tyrannical.

On Wednesday, however, for no apparent reason, President Obama issued an executive order removing the Reagan limitations. That is, Interpol's property and assets are no longer subject to search and confiscation, and its archives are now considered inviolable. This international police force (whose U.S. headquarters is in the Justice Department in Washington) will be unrestrained by the U.S. Constitution and American law while it operates in the United States and affects both Americans and American interests outside the United States.

Interpol works closely with international tribunals (such as the International Criminal Court — which the United States has refused to join because of its sovereignty surrendering provisions, though top Obama officials want us in it). It also works closely with foreign courts and law-enforcement authorities (such as those in Europe that are investigating former Bush administration officials for purported war crimes — i.e., for actions taken in America's defense).

Why would we elevate an international police force above American law? Why would we immunize an international police force from the limitations that constrain the FBI and other American law-enforcement agencies? Why is it suddenly necessary to have, within the Justice Department, a repository for stashing government files which, therefore, will be beyond the ability of Congress, American law-enforcement, the media, and the American people to scrutinize?
Why Does Interpol Need Immunity from American Law?

More here: ThreatsWatch.Org

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano: dumb as a rock

Or maybe it's just that she thinks we're all dumb as a rocks.

"The system worked..." she told CNN's Candy Crowley on "State of the Union."

How did it work? Did "the system" pre-plan a faulty bomb and just let the Nigerian guy on Flight 253 to show us how clever Obama's White House is?

And then, of course, "the system" put heroic passenger Jasper Schuringa ID'd as Flight 253 Hero in place for extra measure...

But here's the kicker: Napolitano added that there was "no suggestion that [the suspect] was improperly screened."

Feel safer now?

What is Obama hiding...and why?

As with the shooting at Ft. Hood in November, the White House has ordered federal agencies not to provide briefings or answer inquiries from members of Congress...

Saturday, December 26, 2009

Mystery on Flight 253

About an hour after landing, Haskell said he saw another man being taken into custody. But a spokeswoman from the FBI in Detroit said Mutallab was the only person taken into custody...

Detroit Muslim Calls for Islamic State Within America

...if Pamela Geller at Atlas Shrugs weren't so totally on top of this type of thing, most of us would just someday wakeup and find ourselves under Sharia Law

Cash for Caulkers… Government Spent $2 Million of Stimulus Money to Caulk 7 Homes

...but we're supposed to believe these same jokers are going to save us all money on our healthcare...did I mention that Bridge in Brooklyn that's for sale???

Obama and Iran: It was a year of spectacularly squandered opportunity

2009: The Year of Living Fecklessly

Owner of TheReligionOfPeace.com threatened with beheading...by members of 'the religion of peace'

Evil can never abide Truth...

The 800 pound gorilla in the health care bill

"Don't the American people deserve to know the "true" cost of ObamaCare?"
Throughout the debate on President Obama's relentless push to reform Americas Health Care both the House and the Senate have taken great care to keep the price tag close to the arbitrary $900 Billion cost target proposed by the President.

While both the House and Senate versions claim to have met the Presidents objective, everyone with the exception of Mary Landrieu and Ben Nelson are ignoring the proverbial 800 pound gorilla in the bill.
Read the whole thing

The Magic Transition: a plan to save America

by Dick McDonald

When I tell people that the Rise Up America plan has a way to simultaneously
1.
place $1.3 trillion in payroll taxes annually collected by the government into personal accounts owned by the tax payer and immediately invested in the stock market to ignite the creation of new businesses and jobs,

2.
pay $1.1 trillion in Social Security and Medicare benefits to participants, and

3.
magically increase the value of the US Dollar heretofore crippled by the overuse of the printing press

I get looks that can best be described as “Are You Nuts?”

So I best explain.

OK, let’s start with a fictitious country where we pretend it is worth $400. That is all its cash, bonds, stock, real estate, its ports, airports, roads, bridges, corporations, businesses – in fact all tangible and intangible assets owned by the private sector and the public (government) sector total $400.

Now let’s assume the people make $14 a year but after $3 in taxes they spent every dime leaving no money to invest in the economy. So the government decides because it is a capitalist economy to print $1 dollar every year for the next 40 years and give that dollar to the people and let them invest it in the stock market.

Because the way capitalism works the people would get a return investing in the stock market for 40 years. For the last 30 years the S&P 500 stock index had an average annual return of 12.8% so let’s assume the return the people of our fictitious country got was 10% annually. Under those circumstances the $1 invested for 40 years compounds into $443 at the end of 40 years.

Now let’s compare the results. Every year for forty the government printed $1 dollar for a total of $40 dollars. The investment by the people of those $40 dollars increased the assets of the country by $443. So we can conclude that there was a small devaluation of the dollar - $40 over 40 years – whereas there was an immense increase in the country’s net worth of $443, Quite a bargain wouldn’t you say?

Investing is the trick –The simple truth this example illustrates is that investing money increases value of a country even if you invest money you print. A country who’s net worth increases has a currency worth owning from an international a trader’s standpoint.

Consuming is at fault –The reason the value of our dollar has fallen regularly ever since we went off the gold standard in the 1930’s is that we insist on printing money to pay for our mistakes. The most recent example was our use of the printing press to enable the banks to lend money to home buyers at 1% which has resulted in a 40% fall in the value of the dollar. It has been a costly mistake the government supported. We needed help out of a recession but we didn’t need to leave the door to the vault wide open.

The magic transition –

Now – it is as simple as this. We take $1.3 trillion in payroll tax receipts, put them in the taxpayer’s personal accounts, invest them in the stock market and start the compounding miracle of $443 for a $40 investment. Simultaneously we print $1.1 trillion in new money and pay retirement benefits. As the recipients will be dieing off during that 40 year period and others will be self-funding their needs from the income off their personal accounts we will never print the entire $40.

Increase in the value of the dollar –Establishing an economic policy wherein investment in the country is the tool used to create wealth can only convince international traders into bidding up the price of the US Dollar.

It is just as simple as that.

A Historical Clue –

It has been the international socialist movement that has encouraged consumption and the confiscation of property from the productive elements of society. Unfortunately the free market capitalists have failed to fully support the investment principle and have too long tolerated the inflationary effects devaluations have fomented because socialists always spend more than they have.

It is time America wakes up to the fact that socialism is a failed economic philosophy and adopts Rise Up America’s plan to vault the USA into the 21st Century.

RISE UP AMERICA!

Omen: Michigan Forces Business Owners Into Public Sector Unions

"The situation is crazy—and it's happening elsewhere in the country."
After hemorrhaging members for decades, labor unions have hit upon a new way to shore up their annual dues revenue...

Friday, December 25, 2009

A Christmas Carol

I just watched the George C. Scott 1980's version of "A Christmas Carol" today...it's all about personal giving, individual generousity, and NOT about government bureaucracy which has NEVER delivered exceptional service in an expedient manner and can NEVER substitute for the human soul:

A walk on the wild side...

His charm works with hyenas and lions too. Hyenas are usually vicious...


Youe will LOVE the rest of the pictures here!

THE BEST CHRISTMAS PRESENT EVER

...because of the Senator DeMint’s objection, unless the House votes for the Senate bill unchanged — which is highly unlikely (see below) — then the Senate ObamaCare bill must be amended on the House floor to gain the votes they need to pass it on the House floor. And because of Senator DeMint’s objection to the appointment of the conferees, there will be no conference, or conference report.

If the House amends the Senate bill, they then have to send the amended bill back to the Senate — where all the 60 vote margin cloture votes still apply — cloture on the motion to proceed, and cloture to end the filibuster and cloture on any amendment.

Do I believe that this objection to the appointment of the conferees will kill ObamaCare? Yes, if the progressives or those 64 House Democrats who voted for the Stupak amendment do not roll over and play dead.

This monkey wrench may explain why the White House is putting out the word that it wants the health care bill to pass the House after the State of the Union, in February.
Read the whole thing!

Wednesday, December 23, 2009

Breaking: Rahm Emanuel investigation

Jane Hamsher of the liberal group blog Firedoglake.com and Grover Norquist (Americans for Tax Reform) have issued a joint letter demanding the resignation of Rahm Emanuel, and an investigation into Emanuel's activities at Freddie Mac before the statute of limitations runs out...

Will the Tea Party Patriots help reverse the vote?

IMPORTANT:A test of the movement is directly ahead. To defeat Obamacare, it is going to have to team up with the GOP. The next few weeks will tell us a lot about the motives, and staying power, of the new activists of 2009.

Obama's Latest Health Care Lie

There are actually multiple lies and deceptions...
The CBO, as Peter Suderman documented in his foundational Reason feature on the organization, does not "report," it "projects," in highly speculative fashion, what a proposed piece of legislation may cost. What's more, as Suderman detailed in a more recent piece that every American should read before listening to a word the president says, the CBO is bound in its "scoring" to take at face value what every living politician–Obama included–knows to be a stinking lie. That is, Congress' promises to make hundreds of billions of dollars worth of unspecified future spending "cuts."

Most depressing Top Ten list this year

Top Ten Foreign Policy Blunders of 2009

ObamaCare: No exit

...The very rich, of course, will be able to buy their way out of ObamaCare. Many of the best doctors will go cash only, opting entirely out of the Obama program, to cater to a wealthy clientele. But only the truly affluent will have the cash to escape.

The vast rest of us will be locked inside the new system — stuck with the same collection of government-decreed medical benefits.
Read the whole thing

Professor Epstein: my new hero!

Apologies to Leo Donofrio, who just might slip to 2nd place...(I sure hope you respond to Mr. Lawrence Loeb's 12/21 post!)
Duquesne Light carries extra weight here because health-insurance industries are far from natural monopolies, so that regulating their rates calls for an extra dollop of judicial scrutiny. At this point, the Reid bill is on a collision course with the Constitution...The Supreme Court should apply the constitutional brakes to this foolhardy scheme if Congress doesn't come to its senses first.
Harry Reid Turns Insurance Into a Public Utility

Sarah Palin confirms "death panels" in Reid health care bill

Democrats are protecting this rationing “death panel” from future change with a procedural hurdle. You have to ask why they’re so concerned about protecting this particular provision. Could it be because bureaucratic rationing is one important way Democrats want to “bend the cost curve” and keep health care spending down?

The Congressional Budget Office seems to think that such rationing has something to do with cost. In a letter to Harry Reid last week, CBO Director Douglas Elmendorf noted (with a number of caveats) that the bill’s calculations call for a reduction in Medicare’s spending rate by about 2 percent in the next two decades, but then he writes the kicker:
“It is unclear whether such a reduction in the growth rate could be achieved, and if so, whether it would be accomplished through greater efficiencies in the delivery of health care or would reduce access to care or diminish the quality of care.”
Though Nancy Pelosi and friends have tried to call “death panels” the “lie of the year,” this type of rationing – what the CBO calls “reduc[ed] access to care” and “diminish[ed] quality of care” – is precisely what I meant when I used that metaphor.

This health care bill is one of the most far-reaching and expensive expansions of the role of government into our lives. We’re talking about putting one-seventh of our economy under the government’s thumb. We’re also talking about something as intimate to our personal well-being as medical care.
Read the whole thing

Obamacare sparking 10th Amendment rebellion, action in seven states

Looks like the steadily growing list of constitutional, ethical and political outrages that constitute the Harry Reid version of Obamacare is sparking a rebellion in the states, as AP reports South Carolina's attorney general plans to investigate the vote-buying that surrounded the proposal in the Senate majority leader's office.

According to AP, South Carolina's Henry McMaster is being joined by the attorneys general of Michigan and Washington state in a suit to determine the constitutionality of the Obamacare proposal. Their initiative was prompted by a request from South Carolina's two senators, Lindsay Graham and Jim DeMint, both Republicans.

Attorneys-general in at least four other states are also considering joining McMasters...
Read more

The Senate's healthcare bill is fatally flawed, a senior Democrat atop a powerful committee said on Wednesday

So they're not all insane...wonder if it'll make any difference? God help us all...

Obama lied. No transparency.

Look for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to try to circumvent the traditional conference committee process by which the different versions of health care reform passed by each house will be reconciled. If so, it will be the latest example of violating principles of transparency and accountability in the single-minded pursuit of legislative victory...
For Their Next Trick . . .

PS: This WSJ article also reminds of of a little recent history that was prelude:
When Democrats took over Congress in 2007, they increasingly did not send bills through the regular conference process. "We have to defer to the bigger picture," explained Rep. Henry Waxman of California. So the children's health insurance bill passed by the House that year was largely dumped in favor of the Senate's version. House Ways and Means Chairman Charles Rangel and other Democrats complained the House had been "cut off at the knees" but ultimately supported the bill. Legislation on lobbying reform and the 2007 energy bill were handled the same way -- without appointing an actual conference.

Rather than appoint members to a public conference committee, those measures were "ping-ponged" -- i.e. changes to reconcile the two versions were transmitted by messenger between the two houses as the final product was crafted behind closed doors solely by the leadership. Many Democrats grumbled at the secrecy. "We need to get back to the point where we use conference committees . . . and have serious dialogue," said Rep. Artur Davis of Alabama at the time.
The Democratic Party used to be a VERY different party...

Tuesday, December 22, 2009

CIVIL RIGHTS COMMISSION WARNINGS IGNORED RE: HEALTHCARE BILLS

Within the last three months, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights has twice sent letters to the president and the leaders of the House and Senate warning them of discriminatory provisions in both bills. But those warnings have been ignored, and the problems remain...

Obama's Christmas present: He's now more hated than Bush was at the end of his 2nd term!





Change… Obama Now More Loathed Than Bush at End of His Second Term

Democratic Doctor, Representative from Alabama, is switching parties!

A lot of headlines don't mention he's a doctor and focus on his "blue dog" status, but that certainly must have been an important factor in his decision given that the Democrats are responsible for this health care monstrousity which is very bad for patients and doctors!

HotAir.com covers this scoop from Politico

STRANGE FRUIT: What is Mao Tse-tung doing hanging from Obama's Christmas tree?

White House: We didn’t know Mao was on our Christmas ornaments

Paging Sarah Palin: the death panel is unkillable

...the issue Jim DeMint raised on the floor of the Senate last night. Why did the authors of the legislation want to specially protect the Independent Medicare Advisory Board by making it difficult for future Congresses to legislate in that area? Because the heart of the bill is the attempt to get control of our health care permanently in the hands of federal bureaucrats, who would allegedly know better than doctors and patients what’s good for them, and who would cut access to care and the quality of care so there’s more money left over for various big government liberal social programs.

As people learn more about the sleazy sweetheart deals and the creepy permanent death panels—this thing could still go down in the House next month in the face of popular outrage.
Read the whole thing

Immigration and abortion: how Americans will get screwed and foot the bill

The differences Senate and House leaders will have to work out between their two versions of reform have focused primarily on abortion and how the bill is paid for. But, as TNR's Suzy Khimm points out, immigration could also be a sticking point.
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WHITEHOUSE ABORTION COVER-UP

(CNSNews.com) - Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.) said the White House and the Democratic leadership in the House of Representatives have been pressuring him not to speak out on the "compromise" abortion language in the Senate version of the health care bill.

“They think I shouldn’t be expressing my views on this bill until they get a chance to try to sell me the language,” Stupak told CNSNews.com in an interview on Tuesday. “Well, I don’t need anyone to sell me the language. I can read it. I’ve seen it. I’ve worked with it. I know what it says. I don’t need to have a conference with the White House. I have the legislation in front of me here.”
Read more

Carbon nutbags play God: pets are greatest danger to environment

Nutjobs like Cass Sunstein and these jerks are starting to give higher education a very bad name:
PARIS (AFP) – Man's best friend could be one of the environment's worst enemies, according to a new study which says the carbon pawprint of a pet dog is more than double that of a gas-guzzling sports utility vehicle.

But the revelation in the book "Time to Eat the Dog: The Real Guide to Sustainable Living" by New Zealanders Robert and Brenda Vale has angered pet owners who feel they are being singled out as troublemakers.

The Vales, specialists in sustainable living at Victoria University of Wellington
Read more


Monday, December 21, 2009

TEA PARTY PATRIOTS: Update

It ain't over yet...

Oklahoma State Rep. Mike Ritze to File ObamaCare “Opt Out” Legislation!

JUST SAY NO

Section 3403: Repeal of health care bill is virtually impossible!!!

On December 21, 2009 Harry Reid sold out the Constitutional Republic of the United States of America:
Upon examination of Senator Harry Reid’s amendment to the health care legislation, Senators discovered section 3403. That section changes the rules of the United States Senate.

To change the rules of the United States Senate, there must be sixty-seven votes.

Section 3403 of Senator Harry Reid’s amendment requires that “it shall not be in order in the Senate or the House of Representatives to consider any bill, resolution, amendment, or conference report that would repeal or otherwise change this subsection.” The good news is that this only applies to one section of the Obamacare legislation. The bad news is that it applies to regulations imposed on doctors and patients by the Independent Medical Advisory Boards a/k/a the Death Panels.
Senate Sets Up Requirement for Super-Majority to Ever Repeal Obamacare

ENDGAME: TYRANNY

Do you think you already know all the reasons to oppose the climate bill pending approval in the U.S. Senate?

Think again...

The bill requires a declaration of a "climate emergency" if the concentration of carbon dioxide and other so-called "greenhouse gases" in the Earth's atmosphere exceeds 450 parts per million. According to the "experts," it now rests at 368 ppm.

Why 450 ppm?
I submit to you the endgame is tyranny.

Better than Ambien? Obama sued for secret abortion meetings!

In haste to socialize medicine, president violated commitment to transparency'

PS: I saw an ad for "Ambien" when I was reading this article and it struck me that, yes, knowing about this lawsuit against Hussein Obama just might be able to help us sleep at night!

(All the way) through the looking glass

Exclusive: ACORN Qualifies for Funding in Senate Health Care Bill

HAT TIP: Big Government

Too bad, Barry

Even if Congress passes legislation -- a good bet -- the finished product will fall far short of Obama's extravagant promises. It will not cover everyone. It will not control costs. It will worsen the budget outlook. It will lead to higher taxes. It will disrupt how, or whether, companies provide insurance for their workers. As the real-life (as opposed to rhetorical) consequences unfold, they will rebut Obama's claim that he has "solved" the health care problem. His reputation will suffer.

It already has. Despite Obama's eloquence and command of the airwaves, public suspicions are rising...
Read the whole thing

SPLAT! It's like what happens when a butterfly collides with the windshield of a speeding SUV...

When Liberal Dreams Collide With Public Opinion

What if Mother Mary Had Obamacare?

"As we near the eve of another Christmas, I wonder: What would have happened if Mother Mary had been covered by Obamacare? What if that young, poor and uninsured teenage woman had been provided the federal funds (via Obamacare) and facilities (via Planned Parenthood, etc.) to avoid the ridicule, ostracizing, persecution and possible stoning because of her out-of-wedlock pregnancy? Imagine all the great souls who could have been erased from history and the influence of mankind if their parents had been as progressive as Washington's wise men and women! Will Obamacare morph into Herodcare for the unborn? America doesn't need to turn the page on culture wars, such as the one on abortion. It needs to reopen the pages of its history to our Founders' elevated views of and rights for all human beings (including those in the womb), as documented in the Declaration of Independence and our Constitution. We need to revive and re-instill their value of humanity back into society, our children and our children's children. And most of all, Washington needs to run our government as Thomas Jefferson outlined in an 1809 letter: 'The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only legitimate object of good government.'"
--columnist Chuck Norris

HAT TIP: PatriotPost.us

Impermissible Ratemaking in Health-Insurance Reform: Why the Reid Bill is Unconstitutional

By Richard A. Epstein
...In effect, the onerous obligations under the Reid Bill would convert private health insurance companies into virtual public utilities. This action is not only a source of real anxiety but also a decision of constitutional proportions, for it systematically strips the regulated health-insurance issuers of their constitutional entitlement to earn a reasonable rate of return on the massive amounts of capital that they have already invested in building out their businesses.

In order to make out this argument, let me proceed as follows. In part I, I shall give a general overview in order to place in context the system of health-care regulation that shall be operated through the State Exchanges that would be formed under the Reid Bill. In part II, I shall give a detailed analysis of some of the major provisions of the Reid Bill. In part III, I shall give a brief analysis of the economic assumptions that underlie the Reid Bill, and the way in which they are likely to lead to extensive price fixing. In part IV, I shall flesh out the constitutional implications of the above analysis. I shall then close with a brief conclusion, which recommends that the Reid Bill be scrapped...
Read the whole thing

HAT TIP: INSTAPUNDIT

Sunday, December 20, 2009

A dog...a marine...a miracle!


CAPITALISM: THE UNKNOWN IDEAL

Posted on a private YahooGroup last week:
Some of you may not be Ayn Randfans, but the following chapter from Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal seemed very relevant to what is happening currently. It's amazing that this was written over 40 years ago! Make sure to read the excerpt from the Nazi Party political program adopted in Munich, on February 24, 1920.
From Ayn Rand, Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal,1967

20. THE NEW FASCISM: RULE BY CONSENSUS
by Ayn Rand

I shall begin by doing a very unpopular thing that does not fit today's intellectual fashions and is, therefore, "anti-consensus": I shall begin by defining my terms, so that you will know what I am talking about. Let me give you the dictionary definitions of three political terms: socialism, fascism, and statism:

Socialism - a theory or system of social organization which advocates the vesting of the ownership and con­trol of the means of production, capital, land, etc. in the community as a whole.

Fascism - a governmental system with strong cen­tralized power, permitting no opposition or criticism, controlling all affairs of the nation (industrial, commercial, etc.)

Statism - the principle or policy of concentrating extensive economic, political, and related controls in the state at the cost of individual liberty.(1)

It is obvious that "statism" is the wider, generic term, of which the other two are specific variants. It is also obvious that statism is the dominant political trend of our day. But which of those two variants represents the specific direction of that trend?

Observe that both "socialism" and "fascism" involve the issue of property rights. The right to property is the right of use and disposal. Observe the difference in those two theories: socialism negates private property rights altogether, and advocates "the vesting of ownership and control" in the community as a whole, i.e., in the state; fascism leaves ownership in the hands of private individuals, but transfers control of the property to the government.

Ownership without control is a contradiction in terms: it means "property," without the right to use it or to dispose of it. It means that the citizens retain the responsibility of holding property, without any of its advantages, while the government acquires all the advantages without any of the responsibility.

In this respect, socialism is the more honest of the two theories. I say "more honest," not "better"-because, in practice, there is no difference between them: both come from the same collectivist-statist principle, both negate individual rights and subordinate the individual to the collective, both deliver the livelihood and the lives of the citizens into the power of an omnipotent government-and the differences between them are only a matter of time, degree, and superficial detail, such as the choice of slogans by which the rulers delude their enslaved subjects.

Which of these two variants of statism are we moving toward: socialism or fascism?

To answer this question, one must first ask: Which is the
dominant ideological trend of today's culture?

The disgraceful and terrifying answer is: there is no ideological trend today. There is no ideology. There are no political principles, theories, ideals, or philosophy. There is no direction, no goal, no compass, no vision of the future, no intellectual element of leadership. Are there any emotional elements dominating today's culture? Yes. One. Fear.

A country without a political philosophy is like a ship drifting at random in mid-ocean, at the mercy of any chance wind, wave, or current, a ship whose passengers huddle in their cabins and cry: "Don't rock the boat!"-for fear of discovering that the captain's bridge is empty.

It is obvious that a boat which cannot stand rocking is doomed already and that it had better be rocked hard, if it is to regain its course-but this realization presupposes a grasp of facts, of reality, of principles and a long-range view, all of which are precisely the things that the "non-rockers" are frantically struggling to evade.

Just as a neurotic believes that the facts of reality will vanish if he refuses to recognize them-so, today, the neurosis of an entire culture leads men to believe that their desperate need of political principles and concepts will vanish if they succeed in obliterating all principles and concepts. But since, in fact, neither an individual nor a nation can exist without some form of ideology, this sort of anti-ideology is now the formal, explicit, dom­inant ideology of our bankrupt culture.

This anti-ideology has a new and very ugly name: it is called "Government by Consensus."

If some demagogue were to offer us, as a guiding creed, the following tenets: that statistics should be substituted for truth, vote-counting for principles, numbers for rights, and public polls for morality-that pragmatic, range-of-the-moment expediency should be the criterion of a country's interests, and that the number of its adherents should be the criterion of an idea's truth or falsehood-that any desire of any nature whatsoever should be accepted as a valid claim, provided it is held by a sufficient number of people-that a majority may do anything it pleases to a minority-in short, gang rule and mob rule-if a demagogue were to offer it, he would not get very far. Yet all of it is contained in-and camouflaged by-the notion of "Government by Consensus."

This notion is now being plugged, not as an ideology, but as an anti-ideology; not as a principle, but as a means of obliterating principles; not as reason, but as rationalization, as a verbal ritual or a magic formula to assuage the national anxiety neurosis-a kind of pep pill or goofball for the "non-boat-rockers," and a chance to play it deuces wild, for the others.

It is only today's lethargic contempt for the pro­nouncements of our political and intellectual leaders that blinds people to the meaning, implications, and consequences of the notion of "Government by Consensus." You have all heard it and, I suspect, dismissed it as politicians' oratory, giving no thought to its actual meaning. But that is what I urge you to consider.

A significant clue to that meaning was given in an article by Tom Wicker in The New York Times (October 11, 1964). Referring to "what Nelson Rockefeller used to call `the mainstream of American thought,' "Mr. Wicker writes: That mainstream is what political theorists have been projecting for years as "the national consensus"-what Walter Lippmann has aptly called "the vital center."...Political moderation, almost by definition, is at the heart of the consensus. That is, the consensus gener­ally sprawls over all acceptable political views-all ideas that are not totally repugnant to and do not directly threaten some major segment of the population. Therefore, acceptable ideas must take the views of others into account and that is what is meant by moderation.

Now let us identify what this means. "The consensus generally sprawls over all acceptable political views..." Acceptable-to whom? To the consensus. And since the government is to be ruled by the consensus, this means that political views are to be divided into those which are "acceptable" and those which are "unacceptable" to the government. What would be the criterion of "acceptability"? Mr. Wicker supplies it. Observe that the crite­rion is not intellectual, not a question of whether certain views are true or false; the criterion is not moral, not a question of whether the views are right or wrong; the criterion is emotional: whether the views are or are not "repugnant." To whom? "To some major segment of the population." There is also the additional proviso that those views must not "directly threaten" that major segment.

What about the minor segments of the population? Are the views that threaten them "acceptable"? What about the smallest segment: the individual? Obviously, the individual and the minority groups are not to be considered; no matter how repugnant an idea may be to a man and no matter how gravely it may threaten his life, his work, his future, he is to be ignored or sacrificed by the omnipotent consensus and its government-unless hehas a gang, a sizable gang, to support him.

What exactly is a "direct threat" to any part of the population? In a mixed economy, every government action is a direct threat to some men and an indirect threat to all. Every government interference in the economy consists of giving an unearned benefit, extorted by force, to some men at the expense of others. By what criterion of justice is a consensus-government to be guided? By the size of the victim's gang.

Now note Mr. Wicker's last sentence: "Therefore, ac­ceptable ideas must take the views of others into account and that is what is meant by moderation." And just what is meant here by "the views of others"? Of which others? Since it is not the views of individuals nor of minori­ties, the only discernible meaning is that every "major segment" must take into account the views of all the other "major segments." But suppose that a group of socialists wants to nationalize all factories, and a group of industrialists wants to keep its properties? What would it mean, for either group, to "take into account" the views of the other? And what would "moderation" consist of, in such a case? What would constitute "moderation" in a conflict between a group of men who want to be supported at public expense-and a group of tax-payers who have other uses for their money? What would constitute "moderation" in a conflict between the member of a smaller group, such as a Negro in the South, who believes that he has an inalienable right to a fair trial-and the larger group of Southern racists who believe that the "public good" of their community permits them to lynch him? What would constitute "moderation" in a conflict between me and a communist (or between our respective followers), when my views are that I have an inalienable right to my life, liberty, and happiness-and his views are that the "public good" of the state permits him to rob, enslave, or murder me?

There can be no meeting ground, no middle, no com­promise between opposite principles. There can be no such thing as "moderation" in the realm of reason and of morality. But reason and morality are precisely the two concepts abrogated by the notion of "Government by Consensus."

The advocates of that notion would declare at this point that any idea which permits no compromise constitutes "extremism"-that any form of "extremism," any uncompromising stand, is evil-that the consensus "sprawls" only over those ideas which are amenable to "moderation"-and that "moderation" is the supreme virtue, superseding reason and morality.

This is the clue to the core, essence, motive, and real meaning of the doctrine of "Government by Consensus": the cult of compromise. Compromise is the pre-condition, the necessity, the imperative of a mixed economy. The "consensus" doctrine is an attempt to translate the brute facts of a mixed economy into an ideological-or anti-ideological-system and to provide them with a semblance of justification.

A mixed economy is a mixture of freedom and controls-with no principles, rules, or theories to define either. Since the introduction of controls necessitates and leads to further controls, it is an unstable, explosive mixture which, ultimately, has to repeal the controls or collapse into dictatorship. A mixed economy has no principles to define its policies, its goals, its laws-no principles to limit the power of its government.

The only principle of a mixed economy-which, necessarily, has to remain unnamed and unacknowledged-is that no one's interests are safe, everyone's interests are on a public auction block, and anything goes for anyone who can get away with it. Such a system- or, more precisely, anti-system - breaks up a country into an ever-growing number of enemy camps, into economic groups fighting one another for self-preservation in an indeterminate mixture of defense and offense, as the nature of such a jungle demands. While, politically, a mixed economy preserves the semblance of an organized society with a semblance of law and order, economically it is the equivalent of the chaos that had ruled China for centuries: a chaos of robber gangs looting-and draining-the productive ele­ments of the country.

A mixed economy is rule by pressure groups. It is an amoral, institutionalized civil war of special interests and lobbies, all fighting to seize a momentary control of the legislative machinery, to extort some special privilege at one mother's expense by an act of government-i.e., by force. In the absence of individual rights, in the absence of any moral or legal principles, a mixed economy's only hope to preserve its precarious semblance of order, to restrain the savage, desperately rapacious groups it itself has created, and to prevent the legalized plunder from running over into plain, unlegalized looting of all by all-is compromise; compromise on everything and in every realm-material, spiritual, intellectual-so that no group would step over the line by demanding too much and topple the whole rotted structure. If the game is to continue, nothing can be permitted to remain firm, solid, absolute, untouchable; everything (and everyone) has to be fluid, flexible, indeterminate, approximate. By what standard are anyone's actions to be guided? By the expediency of any immediate moment.

The only danger, to a mixed economy, is any not-to-be-compromised value, virtue, or idea. The only threat is any uncompromising person, group, or movement. The only enemy is integrity.

It is unnecessary to point out who will be the steady winners and who the constant losers in a game of that kind.

It is also clear what sort of unity (of consensus) that game requires: the unity of a tacit agreement that any-thing goes, anything is for sale (or for "negotiation"), and the rest is up to the free-for-all of pressuring, lobbying, manipulating, favor-swapping, public-relation'ing, give-and-taking, double-crossing, begging, bribing, betraying-and chance, the blind chance of a war in which the prize is the privilege of using legal armed force against legally disarmed victims.

Observe that this type of prize establishes one basic interest held in common by all the players: the desire to have a strong government-a government of unlimited power, strong enough to let the winners and would-be winners get away with whatever they're seeking; a government uncommitted to any policy, unrestrained by any ideology, a government that hoards an ever-growing power, power for power's sake-which means: for the sake and use of any "major" gang who might seize it momentarily to ram their particular piece of legislation down the country's throat. Observe, therefore, that the doctrine of "compromise" and "moderation" applies to everything except one issue: any suggestion to limit the power of the government.


Observe the torrents of vilification, abuse, and hysterical hatred unleashed by the "moderates" against any advocate of freedom, i.e., of capitalism. Observe that such designations as "extreme middle" or "militant middle" are being used by people seriously and self-righteously. Observe the inordinately vicious intensity of the smear-campaign against Senator Goldwater, which had the overtones of panic: the panic of the "moderates," the "vital-centrists," the "middle-of-the-roaders" in the face of the possibility that a real, pro-capitalism movement might put an end to their game. A movement, incidentally, which does not exist, as yet, since Senator Goldwater was not an advocate of capitalism-and since his meaningless, unphilosophical, unintellectual cam­paign has contributed to the entrenchment of the consensus-advocates. But what is significant here is the nature of their panic: it gave us a glimpse of their vaunted "moderation," their "democratic" respect for the people's choices and their tolerance of disagreements or opposition.

In a letter to The New York Times (June 23. 1964), an assistant professor of political science, fearing Goldwater's nomination, wrote as follows:

The real danger lies in the divisive campaign which his nomination would provoke. . . . The result of a Goldwater candidacy would be a divided and embittered electorate. . . . To be effective, American government requires a high degree of consensus and bipartisanship on basic issues... .

When and by whom has statism been accepted as the basic principle of America-and as a principle which should now be placed beyond debate or dissension, so that no basic issues are to be raised any longer? Isn't that the formula of a one-party government? The professor did not specify.

Another letter-writer in The New York Times (June 24, 1964), identified in print as a "Liberal Democrat," went a little farther.

Let the American people choose in November. If they choose overwhelmingly for Lyndon Johnson and the Democrats, then once and for all the Federal Government can get on, with no excuses, with the job millions of Negroes, unemployed, aged, sick and otherwise handicapped persons expect it to do-to say nothing of our overseas commitments. If the people choose Goldwater, then it would seem the nation was hardly worth saving after all.

Woodrow Wilson once said that there is such a thing as being too proud to fight; then he had to go to war. Once and for all let us have it out, while the battle yet can be fought with ballots instead of bullets.

Does this gentleman mean that if we don't vote his way, he will resort to bullets? Your guess is as good as mine.

The New York Times, which had been a conspicuous advocate of "Government by Consensus," said some curious things in its comment on President Johnson's victory. Its editorial of November 8, 1964, stated:

No matter how massive the electoral victory-and it was massive-the Administration cannot merely ride the crest of the popular wave rolling along on a sea of platitudinous generalizations and euphoric promises ... now that it has a broad popular mandate, it has the moral as well as the political obligation not to try to be all things to all men but to settle down to a hard, concrete,purposeful course of action.

What kind of purposeful action? If the voters were offered nothing but "platitudinous generalizations and euphoricpromises," how can their vote be taken as a "broad popular mandate"? A mandate for an unnamed purpose? A political blank check? And if Mr. Johnson did win a massive victory by trying "to be all things to all men," then which things is he now expected to be, which voters is he to disappoint or betray-and what becomes of the broad popular consensus?

Morally and philosophically, that editorial is highly dubious and contradictory. But it becomes clear and consis­tent in the context of a mixed economy's anti-ideology. The president of a mixed economy is not expected to have a specific program or policy. A blank check on power is all that he asks the voters to give him. Thereafter, it's up to the pressure-group game, which everybody is supposed to understand and endorse, but never mention. Which things he will be to which men depends on the chances of the game-and on the "major segments of the population." His job is only to hold the power-and to dispense the favors.

In the 1930's, the "liberals" had a program of broad social reforms and a crusading spirit, they advocated a planned society,they talked in terms of abstract princi­ples, they propounded theories of a predominantly socialistic nature-and most of them were touchy about the accusation that they were enlarging the government's power; most of them were assuring their opponents that government power was only a temporary means to an end-a "noble end," the liberation of the individual from his bondage to material needs.

Today, nobody talks of a planned society in the "liberal" camp; long-range programs, theories, principles, abstractions, and "noble ends" are not fashionable any longer. Modern "liberals" deride any political concern with such large-scale matters as an entire society or an economy as a whole: they concern themselves with single, concrete-bound, range-of-the-moment projects and demands, without regard to cost, context, or consequences. "Pragmatic"-not "idealistic"-is their favorite adjective when they are called upon to justify their "stance," as they call it, not "stand." They are militantly opposed to political philosophy; they denounce political concepts as "tags," "labels," "myths," "illusions"-and resist any attempt to "label"-i.e., to identify-their own views. They are belligerently anti-theoretical and-with a faded mantle of intellectuality still clinging to their shoulders-they are anti-intellectual. The only remnant of their former "idealism" is a tired, cynical, ritualistic quoting of shopworn "humanitarian" slogans, when the occasion demands it.

Cynicism, uncertainty, and fear are the insignia of the culture which they are still dominating by default. And the only thing that has not rusted in their ideological equipment, but has grown savagely brighter and clearer through the years, is their lust for power-for an autocratic, statist, totalitarian government power. It is not a crusading brightness, it is not the lust of a fanatic with a mission-it is more like the glassy-eyed brightness of a somnambulist whose stuporous despair has long since swallowed the memory of his purpose, but who still clings to his mystic weapon in the stubborn belief that "there ought to be a law," that everything will be all right if only somebody will pass a law, that every problem can be solved by the magic power of brute force... .


Such is the present intellectual state and ideological trend of our culture.

Now I shall ask you to consider the question I raised at the beginning of this discussion: Which of these two variants of statism are we moving toward: socialism or fascism?

Let me submit in evidence, as part of the answer, a quotation from an editorial that appeared in the Washington Star (October 1964). It is an eloquent mixture of truth and misinformation, and a typical example of the state of today's political knowledge:

Socialism is quite simply the state ownership of the means of production. This has never been proposed by a major party candidate for the Presidency and is not now proposed by Lyndon Johnson. [True.] There is, however, a whole series of American legislative acts that increase either government regulation of private business or government responsibility for individual welfare. [True.] It is to such legislation that warning cries of "socialism!" refer.

Besides the Constitutional provision for Federal regulation of interstate commerce, such "intrusion" of government into the market-place begins with the antitrust laws. [Very true.] To them we owe the contin­ued existence of competitive capitalism and the non-arrival of cartel capitalism. [Untrue.] Inasmuch as socialism is the product, one way or another, of cartel capitalism [untrue], it may reasonably be said that such government interference with business has in fact prevented socialism. [Worse than untrue.]

As to welfare legislation, it is still light years away from the "cradle to grave" security sponsored by contemporary socialism. [Not quite true.] It seems much more like ordinary human concern for human distress than like an ideological program of any kind. [The last part of this sentence is true: it is not an ideological program. As to the first part, ordinary human concern for human distress does not manifest itself ordinarily in the form of a gun aimed at the wallets and earnings of one's neighbors.]

This editorial did not mention, of course, that a system in which the government does not nationalize the means of production, but assumes total control over the economy is fascism.

It is true that the welfare-statists are not socialists, that they never advocated or intended the socialization of private property, that they want to "preserve" private property-with government control of its use and disposal. But that is the fundamental characteristic of fascism.

Here is another piece of evidence. This one is less crudely naive than the first and much more insidiously wrong. This is froma letter to The New York Times (November 1, 1964), written by an assistant professor of economics:

Viewed by almost every yardstick, the United States today is more committed to private enterprise than probably any other industrial country and is not even remotely approaching a socialist system. As the term is understood by students of comparative economic systems and others who do not use it loosely, socialism is identified with extensive nationalization, a dominant public sector, a strong cooperative movement, egali­tarian income distribution, a total welfare state and central planning.

In the United States not only has there been no nationalization, but Government concerns have been turned over to private enterprise... .
Income distribution in this country is one of the most unequal among the developed nations, and tax cuts and tax loopholes have blunted the moderate progressivity of our tax structure. Thirty years after the New Deal, the United States has a very limited welfare state, compared with the comprehensive social security and public housing schemes in many Euro­pean countries.

By no stretch of the imagination is the real issue in this campaign a choice between capitalism and socialism or between a free and a planned economy. The issue is about two differing concepts of the role of government within the framework of an essentially private enterprise system.

The role of government in a private enterprise system is that of a policeman who protects man's individual rights (including property rights) by protecting men from physical force; in a free economy, the government does not control, regulate, coerce, or interfere with men's economic activities.

I do not know the political views of the writer of that letter; he may be a "liberal" or he may be an alleged defender of capitalism. But if he is this last, then I must point out that such views as his-which are shared by many "conservatives"-are more damaging and derogatory to capitalism than the ideas of its avowed enemies.

Such "conservatives" regard capitalism as a system compatible with government controls, and thus help to spread the most dangerous misconceptions. While full, laissez-faire capitalism has not yet existed anywhere, while some (unnecessary) government controls were allowed to dilute and undercut the original American system (more through error than through theoretical intention)-such controls were minor impediments, the mixed economies of the nineteenth century were predominantly free, and it is this unprecedented freedom that brought about mankind's unprecedented progress. The principles, the theory, and the actual practice of capitalism rest on a free, unregulated market, as the his­tory of the last two centuries has amply demonstrated. No defender of capitalism can permit himself to ignore the exact meaning of the term "laissez-faire"-and of the term "mixed economy," which clearly indicates the two opposite elements involved in the mixture: the element of economic freedom, which is capitalism, and the element of government controls, which is statism.

An insistent campaign has been going on for years to make us accept the Marxist view that all governments are tools of economic class interests and that capitalism is not a free economy, but a system of government controls serving some privileged class. The purpose of that campaign is to distort economics, rewrite history, and obliterate the existence and the possibility of a free country and an uncontrolled economy. Since a system of nominal private property ruled by government controls is not capitalism, but fascism, the only choice this obliteration would leave us is the choice between fascism and socialism (or communism)-which all the statists in the world, of all varieties, degrees, and denominations, are struggling frantically to make us believe. (The destruction of freedom is their common goal, after which they hope to fight one another for power.)
It is thus that the views of that professor and of many "conservatives" lend credence and support to the vicious leftist propaganda which equates capitalism with fascism.


But there is a bitter kind of justice in the logic of events. That propaganda is having an effect which may be advantageous to the communists, but which is the opposite of the effect intended by the "liberals," the welfare-statists, the socialists, who share the guilt of spreading it: instead of smearing capitalism, that propaganda has succeeded in whitewashing and disguising fascism.

In this country, few people care to advocate, to defend, or even to understand capitalism; yet fewer still wish to give up its advantages. So if they are told that capitalism is compatible with controls, with the particular controls which further their particular interests-be it government handouts, or minimum wages, or price-supports, or subsidies, or antitrust laws, or censorship of dirty movies-they will go along with such programs, in the comforting belief that the results will be nothing worse than a "modified" capitalism. And thus a country which does abhor fascism is moving by imperceptible degrees-through ignorance, confusion, evasion, moral cowardice, and intellectual default-not toward socialism or any mawkish altruistic ideal, but toward a plain, brutal, predatory, power-grubbing, de facto fascism.

No, we have not reached that stage. But we are certainly not "an essentially private enterprise system" any longer. At present, we are a disintegrating, unsound, precariously unstable mixed economy-a random, mongrel mixture ofsocialistic schemes, communistic influences, fascist controls, and shrinking remnants of capitalism still paying the costs of it all-the total of it rolling in the direction of a fascist state.

Consider our present Administration. I don't think I'll be accused of unfairness if I say that President Johnson is not a philosophical thinker. No, he is not a fascist, he is not a socialist, he is not a pro-capitalist. Ideologically, he is not anything in particular. Judging by his past record and by the consensus of his own supporters, the concept of an ideology is not applicable in his case. He is a politician-a very dangerous, yet very appropriate phenomenon in our present state. He is an almost fiction-like, archetypical embodiment of the perfect leader of a mixed economy: a man who enjoys power for power's sake, who is expert at the game of manipulating pressure groups, of playing them all against one another, who loves the process of dispensing smiles, frowns, and favors, particularly sudden favors, and whose vision does not extend beyond the range of the next election.

Neither President Johnson nor any of today's promi­nent groups would advocate the socialization of industry. Like his modern predecessors in office, Mr. Johnson knows that businessmen are the milch-cows of a mixed economy, and he does not want to destroy them, he wants them to prosper and to feed his welfare projects (which the next election requires),while they, the busi­nessmen, are eating out of his hand, as they seem to be anxiously eager to do. The business lobby is certain to get its fair share of influence and of recognition just like the labor lobby or the farm lobby or the lobby of any "major segment" - on his own terms. He will be particularly adept at the task of creating and encouraging the type of businessmen whom I call "the aristocracy of pull." This is not a socialistic pattern; it is the typical pattern of fascism.

The political, intellectual, and moral meaning of Mr. Johnson's policy toward businessmen was summed up eloquently in an article in The New York Times of January 4, 1965:

Mr. Johnson is an out-and-out Keynesian in his assiduous wooing of the business community. Unlike President Roosevelt, who delighted in attacking businessmen until World War II forced him into a reluctant truce, and President Kennedy, who also incurred business hostility, President Johnson has worked long and hard to get businessmen to join ranks in a national consensus for his programs. This campaign may perturb many Keynesians, but it is pure Keynes. Indeed, Lord Keynes, who once was regarded as a dangerous and Machiavellian figure by American businessmen, made specific suggestions for improving relations between the President and the business community.

He set down his views in 1938 in a letter to President Roosevelt, who was running into renewed criticism from businessmen following the recession that took place the previous year. Lord Keynes, who always sought to transform capitalism in order to save it, recognized the importance of business confidence and tried to convince Mr. Roosevelt to repair the damage that had been done.

He advised the President that businessmen were not politicians and did not respond to the same treatment. They are, he wrote "much milder than politicians, at the same time allured and terrified by the glare of publicity, easily persuaded to be `patriots,' perplexed, bemused, indeed terrified, yet only too anxious to take a cheerful view, vain perhaps but very unsure of themselves, pathetically responsive to a kindword...."

He was confident that Mr. Roosevelt could tame them and make them do his bidding, provided he followed some simple Keynesian rules.

"You could do anything you liked with them," the letter continued, "if you would treat them (even the big ones), not as wolves and tigers, but as domestic animals by nature, even though they have been badly brought up and not trained as you would wish."

President Roosevelt ignored his advice. So, apparently, did President Kennedy. But President Johnson seems to have got the message. . . . By kind words and frequent pats on the head, he had had the business community eating out of his hand.

Mr. Johnson appears to agree with Lord Keynes's view that there is little to be gained by carrying on a feud with businessmen. As he put it,"If you work them into the surly, obstinate, terrified mood of which domestic animals, wrongly handled, are capable, the nation's burden will not get carried to market; and in the end, public opinion will veer their way."

The view of businessmen as "domestic animals" who carry "the nation's burden" and who must be "trained" by the President "to do his bidding" is certainly not a view compatible with capitalism. It is not a view applica­ble to socialism, since there are no businessmen in a socialist state. It is a view that expresses the economic essence of fascism, of the relationship between business and government in a fascist state.

No matter what the verbal camouflage, such is the actual meaning of any variant of "transformed" (or "modified" or "modernized" or "humanized")capitalism. In all such doctrines, the "humanization" consists of turning some members of society (the most productive ones) into beasts of burden.

The formula by which the sacrificial animals are to be fooled and tamed is being repeated today with growing insistence and frequency: businessmen, it is said, must regard the government, not as an enemy, but as a "partner." The notion of a "partnership" between a private group and public officials, between business and government, between production and force, is a linguistic corruption (an "anti-concept") typical of a fascist ideology-an ideology that regards force as the basic element and ultimate arbiter in all human relationships.

"Partnership" is an indecent euphemism for "government control." There can be nopartnership between armed bureaucrats and defenseless private citizens who have no choice but to obey. What chance would you have against a "partner"whose arbitrary word is law, who may give you a hearing (if your pressure group is big enough), but who will play favorites and bargain your interests away, who will always have the last word and the legal "right" to enforce it on you at the point of a gun, holding your property, your work, your future, your life in his power? Is that the meaning of"partnership"?(2)

But there are men who may find such a prospect attractive; they exist among businessmen as among every other group or profession: the men who dread the competition of a free market and would welcome an armed "partner" to extort special advantages over their abler competitors; men who seek to rise, not by merit but by pull, men who are willing and eager to live not by right, but by favor. Among businessmen, this type of mentality was responsible for the passage of the antitrust laws and is still supporting them today.

A substantial number of Republican businessmen switched to the side of Mr. Johnson in the last election. Here are some interesting observations on this subject, from a survey by The New York Times (September 16, 1964):

Interviews in five cities in the industrial Northeast and Midwest disclose striking differences in political outlook between officials of large corporations and men who operate smaller businesses. . . . The business executives who expect to cast the first Democratic Presidential vote of their lives are nearly all affiliated with large companies. . . . There is more support for President Johnson among business executives who are in their 40's and 50's than there is among either older or younger businessmen. . . . Many businessmen in their 40'sand 50's say they find relatively little shifting toward support of Mr. Johnsonon the part of younger business executives. Interviews with those in their 30's confirm this. . . . The younger executives themselves speak with pride of their generation as the one that interrupted and reversed the trend toward more liberalism in younger persons. .. . It is on the issue of Government deficits that the division of opinion between small and large businessmen emerges most dramatically. Officials of giant corporations have a far greater tendency to accept the idea that budget deficits are sometimes necessary and even desirable. The typical small businessman, however, reserves a very special scorn for deficit spending... .

This gives us an indication of who are the vested inter­ests in a mixed economy-and what such an economy does to the beginners or the young.

An essential aspect of the socialistically inclined men­tality is the desire to obliterate the difference between the earned and the unearned, and, therefore,to permit no differentiation between such businessmen as Hank Rearden and Orren Boyle. To a concrete-bound, range-of-the-moment, primitive socialistmentality-a mentality that clamors for a "redistribution of wealth" without any concern for the origin of wealth-the enemy is all those who are rich, regardless of the source of their riches.

Such mentalities, those aging,graying "liberals," who had been the "idealists" of the 30's, are clinging desperately to the illusion that we are moving toward some sort of socialist state inimical to the rich and beneficial to the poor-while frantically evading the spectacle of what kind of rich are being destroyed and what kind are flourishing under the system they, the "liberals," have established. The grim joke is on them: their alleged "ideals" have paved the way, not toward socialism, but toward fascism. The collector of their efforts is not the helplessly, brainlessly virtuous "little man" of their flat-footed imagination and shopworn fiction, but the worst type of predatory rich, the rich-by-force, the rich-by-political-privilege, the type who has no chance under capitalism, but who is always there to cash in on every collectivist "noble experiment."

It is the creators of wealth, the Hank Reardens, who are destroyed under any form of statism-socialist, communist, or fascist; it is the parasites, the Orren Boyles, who are the privileged "elite" and the profiteers of stat­ism, particularly of fascism. (The special profiteers of socialism are the James Taggarts; of communism-the Floyd Ferrises.) The same is true of their psychological counterparts among the poor and among the men of all the economic levels in-between.

The particular form of economic organization, which is becoming more and more apparent in this country, as an outgrowth of the power of pressure groups, is one of the worst variants of statism: guild socialism.

Guild socialism robs the talented young of their future-by freezing men into professional castes under rigid rules. It represents an open embodiment of the basic motiveof most statists, though they usually prefer not to confess it: the entrenchment and protection of mediocrity from abler competitors, the shackling of the men of superior ability down to the mean average of their professions. That theory is not too popular among socialists (though it has its advocates)-but the most famous instance of its large-scale practice was Fascist Italy.

In the 1930's, a few perceptive men said that Roosevelt's New Deal was a form of guild socialism and that it was closer to Mussolini's system than to any other. They were ignored. Today, the evidence is unmistakable.

It was also said that if fascism ever came to the United States, it would come disguised as socialism. In this connection, I recommend that you read or re-read Sinclair Lewis' It Can't Happen Here - with special reference to the character, style, and ideology of Berzelius Windrip, the fascist leader.

Now let me mention, and answer, some of the standard objections by which today's "liberals" attempt to camouflage (to differentiate from fascism) the nature of the system they are supporting.
  • "Fascism requires one-party rule." What will the no­tion of "Government by Consensus" amount to in practice?

  • "Fascism's goal is the conquest of the world." What is the goal of those global-minded, bipartisan champi­ons of the United Nations? And, if they reach it, what positions do they expect to acquire in the power-structure of "One World"?

  • "Fascism preaches racism." Not necessarily. Hitler's Germany did; Mussolini's Italy did not.

  • "Fascism is opposed to the welfare state." Check your premises and your history books. The father and originator of the welfare state, the man who put into practice the notion of buying the loyalty of some groups with money extorted from others, was Bismarck-the political ancestor of Hitler. Let me remind you that the full title of the Nazi Party was: the National Socialist Workers Party of Germany.
Let me remind you also of some excerpts from the political program of that party, adopted in Munich, on February 24, 1920:
  • We ask that the government undertake the obligation above all of providing citizens with adequate opportunity for employment and earning a living. The activities of the individual must not be allowed to clash with the interests of the community, but must take place within its confines and be for the good of all. Therefore, we demand: . . . an end to the power of the financial interests.

  • We demand profit sharing in big business.

  • We demand a broad extension of care for the aged.

  • We demand . . . the greatest possible considerationof small business in the purchases of the national, state, and municipal governments.

  • In order to make possible to every capable and industrious [citizen] the attainment of higher education and thus the achievement of a post of leadership, the government must provide an all-around enlargement of our entire system of public education. . . . We demand the education at government expense of gifted children of poor parents... .

  • The government must undertake the improvement of public health-by protecting mother and child, by prohibiting child labor . . .by the greatest possible support for all clubs concerned with the physical education of youth.

  • [We] combat the . . . materialistic spirit within and without us, and are convinced that a permanent recovery of our people can only proceed from within on the foundation of The Common Good Before the Individual Good.(3)
There is, however, one difference between the type of fascism toward which we are drifting, and the type that ravaged European countries: ours is not a militant kind of fascism, not an organized movement of shrill demagogues, bloody thugs, hysterical third-rate intellectuals, and juvenile delinquents-ours is a tired, worn, cynical fascism, fascism by default, not like a flaming disaster, but more like the quiet collapse of a lethargic body slowly eaten by internal corruption. Did it have to happen? No. Can it still be averted? Yes. If you doubt the power of philosophy to set the course and shape the destiny of human societies, observe that our mixed economy is the literal, faithfully carried-out product of Pragmatism-and of the generation brought up under its influence. Pragmatism is the philosophy which holds that there is no objective reality or permanent truth, that there are no absolute principles, no valid abstractions, no firm concepts,that anything may be tried by rule-of-thumb, that objectivity consists of collective subjectivism, that whatever people wish to be true, is true, whatever people wish to exist, does exist-provided a consensus says so. If you want to avert the final disaster, it is this type of thinking-every one of those propositions and all of them-that you must face, grasp, and reject. Then you will have grasped the connection of philosophy to politics and to the daily events of your life. Then you will have learned that no society is better than its philosophical foundation. And then-to paraphrase John Galt-you will be ready, not to return to capitalism, but to discover it.

Based on a lecturegiven at The Ford Hall Forum, Boston, on April 18, 1965. Published in TheObjectivist Newsletter May and June 1965.' 1. These definitionsare from The American College Dictionary, New York: Random House, 1957. 2. Ayn Rand, The Fascist New Frontier, New York: Nathaniel Branden Institute, 1963, p.8. 3. Der Nationalsozialismus Dokumente 1933-1945,edited by Walther Hofer, Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Bucherei, 1957, pp. 29-31. For many more quotations of this kind, revealing the altruist-collectivist base of the Nazi and fascist ideology, I refer you to "The Fascist New Frontier".