Workingclass Conservative

Anti-Media Backlash Fuels Gingrich Win in South Carolina.....

2012-01-22T16:16:00.000-05:00

Just 36 hours before the South Carolina Primary ABC “News” aired an interview with an ex-Mrs. Gingrich (there are two) that added nothing new from an early 2010 Esquire Magazine interview.

In doing so, they appeared to be looking to derail Gingrich’s surge in South Carolina (the headline of the piece was, “Exclusive: Gingrich Lacks Moral Character to Be President, Ex-Wife Says,”), a surge that had been reported earlier that same week, but what they seemed to have accomplished was twofold, (1) making a martyr of Newt Gingrich and (2) further alienating the American people from what nearly 75% seem to see as a hopelessly biased news media.

On the first score (making a sympathetic figure out of the prickly and irascible Gingrich) they performed a minor miracle, on the second, they merely amplified what the vast majority of Americans have already believed – that the news media in America is both out of step with the American people and blatantly ideologically biased.

I’ve long fought for a “disparate impact” ruling against the mainstream media. Polls show that 83% of those who do divulge their political affiliations in the media are liberal Democrats, and even the 9% who divulge a Republican affiliation, note that they are “Moderate” and “socially liberal Republicans.” That, in a country that is more than 2 to 1 Conservative! That’s akin to having a Police Department being 90% white in a city that is 2/3rds black!

The SAME standard should be applied to the news media in terms of ideological bigotry – if not enough Conservatives are applying for those positions, “It’s probably because they don’t feel welcome,” so, as is done with many city police departments, the media must be charged with the tasks of both recruiting that dispossessed group and balancing the ideological disparity UNTIL the media “adequately reflects the community it serves.”

Without question, that ideological imbalance and the implied ideological bigotry is what’s behind the fact that nearly 3/4s of the country doesn’t trust its news media (SEE: http://www.gallup.com/poll/148250/Americans-Regain-Confidence-Newspapers-News.aspx)

The backlash against America’s liberal media wasn’t merely stated in the fact that Gingrich won, but by how much he won. Gingrich surged even stronger after the ABC interview aired, from the low 30s to a resounding 41% of the vote! That’s 50% more than Romney tallied (27%)!

There’s no other way to describe this unlikely Gingrich route, except as an anti-media backlash.

Numerous people spoke to the convoluted and vile defense much of the media initially made over “Weiner-gate,” and the veritable media blackout on the Edwards scandal, even though the National Inquirer broke that story during Edwards’ run for President.

The problem for the media is that this is NOT isolated to South Carolina or the “Deep South,” instead it’s a national referendum. When over 3/4s of the American people don’t trust their own news media, that’s an issue!

Worse yet, is that since 2010, 2/3s of Independents have broken more Conservative than “Republican.” It’s unfortunate that so many in the media seem to believe they CAN (let alone should) influence public opinion. Remember the laments that “the likes of Rush Limbaugh have made America more Conservative?” The fact is that what Limbaugh proved is that the media, even commentating titans CANNOT influence public opinion, if they’re smart, they can do what Limbaugh himself claims he does – “resonate WITH the views and opinions of the general public.”

Maybe now would be a good time to begin that media recruitment effort?

Politics SHOULD NOT be a Team Sport

2012-01-12T14:09:00.001-05:00

One of the casualties of our celebrity driven culture is that too many of us have come to put brand over beliefs.

Politics SHOULD NOT be a team sport, but that’s pretty much what it’s become.

As voters too many of us are either “red” or “blue.”

Conservatives abound in BOTH major Parties. Recent polls show that appx. 43% of Democrats consider themselves ideologically Conservative.

Likewise, Progressivism was created by the Rockefeller-wing of the GOP!

Teddy Roosevelt initiated the Progressive party (“the Bull Moose” Party) as the nation’s first Progressive Party. Progressivism was and remains the vehicle which Corporatists have used to advance a decidedly anti-free market agenda. That agenda was packaged as offering “greater job security” for workers, while also offering greater Corporate and wealth-protection security for both established Corporations and the very rich.

The very first Progressive President of the United States was Herbert Hoover, the “Jimmy Carter of his day,” who began the “Alphabet Soup” that FDR later expanded.

For decades the Democratic Party had been the home of working class Conservative Americans. Tammany Hall Democrats fought vehemently AGAINST the Progressive Republican social reformers from Fiorello LaGuardia to John V. Lindsay.

The “Southern Strategy” developed by “Rockefeller Moderates” in the GOP like Richard Nixon cynically sought to stifle America’s Conservative majority by luring large number of “Southern Conservatives” and “Northern white ethnics” (especially ethnic Catholics) to the GOP whose agenda was controlled by its moneyed and very Progressive Rockefeller-wing.

That strategy has worked very effectively to date and it continues to work because the Progressives (both Rockefeller Republicans and Progressive Democrats) have been so successful at dividing Americans along racial and gender lines in order to blunt their ideological ties.

So long as politics remains a team sport for so any Americans, the Progressive moneyed elites will continue to dupe and dominate the increasingly poorer working class.

Michelle Obama’s First Lady Problem...

2012-01-12T13:45:00.000-05:00

A new book (“The Obamas” by Jodi Kantor) and some old rumblings about Rahm Emmanuel and Richard Daley Jr. not being able to get along with her, has put Michelle Obama on the defensive.

Unfortunately, even on the defensive, Ms. Obama, like many politically correct progressives, reflexively plays the race card. Headlines abound on Michelle Obama “Rejecting the ‘Angry Black Woman’ Label.”

Unfortunately retreating to identity politics makes her appear more venal, not less.

And that’s unfortunate, because all-in-all, she hasn’t been a bad First lady at all.

Her anti-obesity campaign is as vital as any that any previous First lady has endorsed.

Aside from some “inside the beltway” grumblings Michelle Obama has kept a pretty low profile and has handled her role quite well.

The unfortunate thing here is that a defensive response from the First Lady dredges up the initial resentments created by her ill-timed and ill-conceived February, 2008 remark in Milwaukee, “For the first time in my adult lifetime, I’m really proud of my country...”

There’s no reason to do that.

Her anti-obesity campaign has drawn rave reviews and she’s conducted herself so well that for 3+ years not even her harshest critics have had much to harp on at all.

Certainly this flap will further highlight the wide disparity in perspective between blacks and whites with more Conservative whites seeing this as just more evidence of Michelle Obama’s petulance, while many black women in particular being able to relate to the “angry black woman” charge as a an example of a not so subtle bigotry at work.

There’s little chance of any of this being instructive, or helping bridge that perspective divide.

Ultimately, no good comes from this flap and Ms Obama’s response to it.

On Accountability and Consent

2011-11-23T14:42:00.002-05:00

I wrote this back in 2000. It's something that makes me appreciate things more and be thankful for what is, instead of merely what I'd wish WOULD BE.

It's an all too obvious fact, that other people affect every one of us. Our parents, our peers, friends and foes, all have their impact upon us. Some of us certainly seem to take more of a beating from life than others – from domineering Mom’s, to abusive husbands and fathers, and everything in between, we’ve all dealt with some degree of physical or emotional suffering. But just as much as it’s a fact that we’re each, effected by the other people in our lives, it’s also true that no one else MAKE US what we are.

We’re all finite beings – time and gravity eventually grind us all to dust. That’s not an option, it’s a reality, and so is self-accountability. We’re all accountable for our own maturity...our own development. An abusive Dad didn’t MAKE US abusers, nor did a smothering, domineering, control freak Mom MAKE US whiny, dependent victims – WE DID!

That’s right, each of us is accountable, because we’re all responsible for how we interpret the events of our life.

Blaming others for our problems and flaws on others only keeps us from the possibility of improving ourselves. Blaming others allows us to make believe that we’re not responsible for ourselves, but so long as we do that, we wait for someone or something outside ourselves to change or improve us and that’s just not going to happen.

Think about it, whose life is it?

Mine.

Who’s living it?

I am.

Done!

We’re each responsible for our own lives because we’re the only ones living them.

Consider this complaint, “When I was younger, my best friend stole my first love. Now I get very jealous every time another guy gets too close to the woman I’m with...thanks a lot best friend.”

No!

Thank yourSELF - you’re the one who interpreted that event as “you being wronged.” Maybe the problem was that you weren’t communicating well enough with your girlfriend. Perhaps she met someone she cared for more (apparently so and that is her choice and her right). In short, maybe it was your own self centered-ness, not her unfaithfulness, nor your best friend’s treachery that caused the break-up. The real lesson of all this might be that you should’ve worked on improving yourself, so that you didn’t repeat this pattern over and over – that is generally the lesson of all life’s events.

Yes, others can often be unfair/or unkind, but we’re not accountable for others, we can’t control them, we can only change or control ourselves. The best we can hope to do is to be prepared to defend ourselves when possible and examine ourselves when surprised and hurt.

THE GIFT OF FORGIVENESS

Forgiveness is a gift that we give ourselves. It’s letting go of anger and hurt that for the most part we can do nothing about anyway. If someone hurts us or cheats on us, we can put distance between ourselves and that person, but the hurt remains. Only part of the pain is betrayal, the rest is self-doubt; “Why? What did I do? What didn’t I do? What went wrong?”

Forgiveness allows us to be forgiven. If we don’t forgive those who hurt us, how can we accept forgiveness for the pain we cause others, both deliberate and unintentional?

“Blame another and lose yourself,” is a saying my grandmother used to often repeat and it’s true. When we blame others for our pain and our faults, we surrender our control over ourselves and without self-control, we are truly lost.

THE VICIOUSNESS OF VICTIMOLOGY

An all too common mythos today is, “I’m the victim, here,” which translates into, “I’m the good guy and you’re the bad guy, so you owe me kindness, aid and comfort, while I have the right to “payback” for all the hurt I blame you for.”

Victimology is rooted in juvenile selfishness; “Me = good/right, you = bad/wrong.” It’s special pleading and asking for extra consideration because we perceive life’s been harder on us than it’s been on others. Embracing victimology is embracing selfishness. It’s putting our needs and wants above everyone else’s, based on our perception that life hasn’t been fair to us, a perception which may be extremely flawed.

Besides, who said the world would or even should be fair?

All around us we witness people born with greater and lesser degrees of talent, ability, beauty, brains, motivations and so on. Every day we witness this interplay of inequities and the results are often surprising. Natural ability is no substitute, nor often any match for hard work and focus. In reality, underdogs often do win, but in virtually every case they are people who’ve taken responsibility for themselves and worked ceaselessly in spite of all obstacles.

The most damaging thing about “victim’s status” is that it degrades us by excusing our rejection of our most basic responsibility, for and to ourselves. In that way, it allows us to reject a primary truth - that we own our own lives. Worse still, it seeks aid and assistance from “helpers” and “help” always comes from above, from those looking down at those they assist. The concept of victimhood is a dead end path devoid of opportunity for self-development.

ACCEPTABLE AND UNACCEPTABLE MYTHOS

It’s an oddity of our times that so many of us are atheists or at least agnostics based largely on the credo, “What God could allow so much cruelty.”

A 17th century Carmelite Monk named Brother Lawrence wrote a book called “The Practice of the Presence of God,” in which he said, “If you would embrace God, pray for suffering, for all God’s wisdom is shared with us through pain.”

Maybe he had something there.

Why do we suppose that ease and comfort are the goals of life?

Why do we think, “if God exists, He should do something?”

What I find really incongruous is not our abandoning faith (after all science has supplanted religion as the primary belief system of our age), but that we so readily embraced another faith with no more proof of its veracity than there is for the existence of God, the Easter Bunny or Santa Claus. The idea that we are all connected and inter-dependant is so widespread as to be nearly universal and yet I’ve never seen any evidence of such a connection.

It’s true that we’re all capable of acts of extraordinary kindness and selflessness, but we’re also capable of all sorts of calumny and deceits. Why do so many people rail against human nature and speculate on “the way things should be?” What possesses us to believe that we “should” be communal, connected and hive-like, rather than individualistic, as we are?

It seems obvious that each of us is here for only a brief time. We didn’t invent human nature and we don’t “own” life itself, merely the life we’re living. Yet we have no trouble playing God. After three or four decades of life, we’re convinced that life should be good and plentiful and that people should be kind and fair and work for some “greater good.” All this despite the fact that our own first hand experiences show us that most of us look out for ourselves first and exhibit little, if any real sense of connectedness.

To me it’s curious that a group of people skeptical enough to eschew any belief in gods, Easter Bunny’s, etc because there exists no proof of their existence, cling to the idea that “we’re all connected and responsible for each other (“I am my brother’s keeper”) when there exists no evidence that this is so. Why is the myth of human connectedness acceptable, when the myth of God is not?

A while back I’d begun writing pieces for an editor of a magazine. The editor was a black conservative. I worked with him for over three years, interviewing people like professor Walter E. Williams and Lestine Fuller and though I am neither black nor strictly conservative (at least in the sense of supporting a government enforced moral code) I enjoyed the years I worked with Mac.

At any rate, as we approached our fourth year together, Mac came into the NYC area and I suggested that since he didn’t like the crowded, hustle of Manhattan, I could put him up in a place my family owned out in Sparta, New Jersey. I told him I could shuttle him back and forth to NYC for his meetings...he also had a presentation to deliver at the Binghampton Campus of SUNY. I had reservations about making this trip but I told him I’d see what I could do.

Most of the week went well, Mac had a few radio interviews on WABC in NY. On the day we had his Binghampton engagement scheduled, I was heading to the FDNY Medical Offices and I was delayed getting back out to Sparta to pick him up and as a result we got up to Binghampton late for his speaking engagement.

Mac was furious that he had been embarrassed at Binghampton and, in his anger, went so far as to suggest that I may have deliberately sabotaged his speaking engagement. For my part, I became even angrier at what I perceived as an absence of any gratitude for the efforts and hospitality I offered. As a result, both a friendship and a fairly productive business arrangement were lost.

Though the loss was regrettable, it was also instructive that good intentions are not enough. We both interpreted the same events in vastly different ways and such varied perceptions are not at all uncommon. And even though I was angered and hurt by Mac’s reaction, I came to accept that he had a right to interpret things his way, just as I had a right to interpret things mine. We both had a “right” to be wrong and so we were, each in our own ways, leaving us little room for common ground.

Still whenever I think about Mac, I recall the better days and I remember the courageous iconoclast I admired more than the disappointing end.

MY LIFE’S LESSON

In May of 1990, I was 36 years old and in the span of eleven days I nearly died three times.

On Wednesday, May 30th while on my way from the firehouse I worked at, in the Bronx, to visit my folks on Staten Island, my car was rear-ended by a tractor-trailer, spinning my vehicle out of control. I passed in front of the huge eighteen wheeler’s grill and slammed off the guard rail as the truck scraped by. The car was totaled, but I walked away from the accident without a scratch. I should’ve been thankful, but instead I was shocked and then angry...about the car and about how close I came to dying for no reason at all.

Just six days later, I was at a top floor fire in an apartment on 165th Street and Sherman Avenue in the South Bronx. We were advancing a hose line, when part of the ceiling came down on us and fire from the cockloft lit up the room we were in. The Captain, Billy O and I were pinned on the floor, as others crawled over us toward the door. I looked up into an orange sky and watched a long finger of flame lapping out the apartment’s front door and into the public hallway, maybe 10’ from were we were still pinned by debris. The air around us grew hotter and I couldn’t move. Suddenly, the terrible awareness that I might die right here on this lovely Tuesday afternoon washed over me with an eerily calm resignation.

Once again, we were spared. Engine 71 brought in a second hose line and knocked down the flames over our heads, allowing the Ladder company to move in and free us from the debris that had fallen on us. The relief wore off fairly quickly, but the anger that I could have died, at a fire that came in at a time when I was normally already relieved (by the incoming crew) and on my way home, did not.

The following Saturday, June 9th, I was working again and we found ourselves at a vacant building fire at East Clarke Place and Walton Avenue. Upon our arrival, there was a tremendous amount of fire on the first floor and heavy smoke pushed from the windows on the floors above.

We were pushing a 2½” hose line through one of the rear first floor apartments. We’d just knocked down the flames in the first room and were getting set to move on the next room, when we noticed a few small tongues of flame lapping down into the corner behind us. We turned the hose around and just as the flames began to darken down, a low roar, grew louder and louder, like the rumbling of an oncoming freight train...Lieutenant Richie M yelled, “Back out!” We all scrambled along the hose line through the darkness to the front entrance of the building.

If we hadn’t turned around to extinguish those flames that appeared behind us, we would’ve been in one of the rooms directly inside the collapse zone.

Every one of us made it safely out of the building and survived a “pancake collapse,” where the sixth floor falls in on the fifth and they collapse down to the fourth, the third and so on. For the next hour, while we regrouped outside, four tower ladders used their buckets to dump water on the building from every side.

While we were out in the street, a few teens tossed rocks down from a nearby rooftop. A few of the rocks slammed off our rigs. Guys dove for cover. One of the projectiles ricocheted off the side of our Pumper and hit John S on the side of his helmet, knocking him to the ground.

At that moment a flash of anger swept over me. “I’d like to kill that kid,” I muttered. The Lieutenant called over police who were already on the scene and pointed out the rooftop the rocks came from. The police effected the arrests and except for John S. (taken to Jacobi Hospital's Emergency Room for observation) we went back into the vacant building to retrieve what we could of our damaged hose line.

When we emerged with two lengths of our hose, about fifteen minutes later, we were met by an irate woman (apparently a mother or sister of one of the teen’s). As I was the first out of the building, she ran up shrieking, than she spit in my face.

With every fiber of my being, I wanted to pound her into pulp, but I didn’t.

I’d like to believe it was simply because I was too tired, but it was something else – perhaps the futility of it all. Looking back on it, my rage at that woman was the same rage I felt at almost dying. I felt I deserved better. Like “how dare this happen to me!” But the truth is, I didn’t deserve better – I got what I got. I’m not responsible for that woman or those kids, any more than I can control how or when I’ll die.

You see? I’d accepted so many gifts – youth, physical abilities, camaraderie without appreciation that I’d come to expect a life filled with good things. I had no right to expect that. Life doesn’t owe me anything...God doesn’t owe me anything. I took what life offered, too often without thanks and I got what I got.

Those teens who tossed rocks at us, that woman who spit at me – their lives are their own. I’m not here to make them better people. Even if that were possible, I’ve got enough on my own plate trying to improve myself – the only person I have the power to control anyway.

Over the next few months, I looked hard at myself and realized that I didn’t do this job, in this area, for any love of humanity, but because it gave me pleasure. It delivered thrills and allowed me to think of myself as “exceptional,” even when all evidence indicated that in most ways, I was not exceptional at all.

Of course that realization didn’t come right away. It came in bits and pieces over time.

About a year after the East Clarke Place collapse, Lieutenant Mike F was conducting a drill with us inside a nearby housing project. As we entered an elevator, Mike, an excellent fireman said, “You all know how dangerous this is going in, right? There may come a time when the elevator opens on the wrong floor, maybe the fire floor. I hope you all know how to don your face pieces in complete darkness, because I do. In a fireproof building, the elevator will fill with thick black smoke in seconds and when the doors open, the heat’ll be tremendous – I sure hope you all remember where the enclosed stairway doors are located, because you’re not gonna have time to think or figure it out. What I’m saying is that I’m gonna get out of that situation alive. I just hope all of you can do the same, for your own sakes.”

Sound cruel?

It wasn’t! It was a message of pure truth...the voice of God, if you will. Mike was telling us that he’d worked hard to become an excellent fireman and that it was up to each of us to take the same responsibility for ourselves. In other words, “Ya get what ya get.”

I took Mike’s message to heart – I own my life. I’m responsible for myself and whether you accept it or not, you are too.

So what did I get from all this?

Acceptance and consent - I accept life as it is and consent to it freely, both the good that I’ve taken from it without gratitude and the bad that inevitably must come.

I accept people as they are. Their flaws are their own and mine are my own and even though I’m convinced I can see theirs so much clearer, I know that my own glare just as bright. So, today, if I could tell those kids and that woman anything, I’d tell them that they’re already forgiven. Even if they wouldn’t ask for it, nor accept it...they are forgiven none the less - not that what they did was OK, it's just over - I've moved on and I accept my flaws and my finiteness. I consent to the rest of this life, whether it ends all alone in a hospital bed four decades hence, or on some street corner tomorrow. I consent to death as I’ve consented to life. I only have to look at all the sprawling cemeteries to know how this ends.

I’ve come close to death and I’ve been humbled to my core. What I’m left with is gratitude for all the things I’ve taken for granted...all the gifts I’ve accepted without thanks. I have no desire to “lead” others, nor attempt to improve anyone other than myself. I’ve learned to love life because it is fleeting and so often hard to enjoy. I appreciate the fact that life can only be appreciated for a short time – gravity and time gradually rob us all of our energies and enthusiasms. Our joys, if we live long enough, are restricted by age, one by one.

I’ve learned to say thanks and to consent to myself as the source of my own happiness and not to expect that “I deserve better” – I know that I don’t. Most of all, I consent to my responsibility for myself and accept the consequences of both my actions and inaction.

If asked for advice, I’d have to say, “Who am I to give it?” But if pressed, perhaps the best I could offer might be; “Since we’ve all embraced so many of the good things...the blessings of life, with neither grace nor gratitude, perhaps the least we can strive for, is the class and dignity to accept the hard times and the bad things that ultimately befall us all, without complaint.”

I’ve Been Stymied....

2011-11-20T23:17:00.001-05:00

Lately I’ve hit a writing rut. I’ve had a hard time writing lately and I’ve finally figured out why.

I’m out of step, maybe hopelessly so.

I don’t like stories like the NASCAR crowd booing Michelle Obama. She’s been a fine First Lady. She’s raising two daughters in a way that most “Values Voters” would approve of. Her campaign against childhood obesity is timely and urgent.

I may not agree with her politics, but I have nothing personal against her.

In FACT, I have to admit. . .and I’ve said this for eons now, I’ve been pleasantly surprised by the Obama administration’s aggressive foreign policy and distressed that it’s FOLLOWED G W Bush’s disastrous lead on the economy, in fact, it’s doubled down on Bush era Keynesian over-spending!

I’ve been wondering aloud, until recently, why liberals haven’t had an issue with Barack Obama and lately liberals from Cornell West to Keith Olbermann HAVE!

So what gives?

WHY have so many liberals applauded so much of this administration’s “Bushiness,” while too many Conservatives have focused on inanities like his birth certificate and his being a “closet Muslim.”

Barack Obama IS an American citizen. He DOES have a legitimate Hawaiian birth certificate and he is NOT a Muslim any more than whacky Christian pastor, Jeremiah Wright is!

Barack Obama is guilty of doing a “Reverse Reagan,” while Reagan took the REAL “worst American economy since the Great Depression,” complete with DOUBLE DIGIT unemployment, interest and inflation rates and a record high Misery Index (the inflation and unemployment rates added together) and made it better year after, Barack Obama inherited an economy in crisis due to the previous administration’s over-spending and expanding government and doubled down on that policy, making things worse, year after year!

He is NOT guilty of ‘secretly looking to help the jihadists,” nor does he appear to be looking to “destroy America.” Hell, if he is, than the previous administration (G W Bush’s) is equally guilty of the SAME thing.

What distresses me most is that Conservatives seem focused on the wrong things. Hundreds of tacky and tasteless photo-shopped pictures have gone viral and while G W Bush was assailed just as vilely from the Left, that’s hardly an excuse for engaging in what many of those now sliming Obama, objected so strenuously to when their guy was getting the brunt of it.

Ironically enough, what Barack Obama is MOST “guilty of” is delivering G W Bush’s THIRD TERM!

He’s followed the Bush Doctrine and Bush’s aggressive foreign policy to a tee. Drone attacks and rendition are BOTH way up, some 50,000 U.S. Troops remain in Iraq, Afghanistan has been ratcheted way up. . .even after the killing of OBL, not to mention Gitmo is STILL operating and this administration engaged in yet another front (Libya) without Congressional approval or oversight!

I supported the Bush foreign policies and so, I support Obama’s foreign policies as well!

Now, I DID NOT support the Bush economic agenda and so, I DO NOT support the Obama economic agenda either. Yes, at times, Barack Obama has been a shrill opponent of private industry while cynically raising record amounts of cash from Wall Street and the financial sector, as well as from other Corporate denizens, like BP Amocco, etc.

I’d agree that Barack Obama has apparently lacked the experience and judgment to do the job he was elected to do, BUT he is NOT the Anti-Christ. . .not by a long shot.

I support the Tea Party’s views (smaller government, lower taxes and more private sector job creation) but I do not always support their methods.

Derogatory pictures of Barack Obama don’t win converts or change minds, and they don’t help your credibility much, neither does booing Michelle Obama at a NASCAR race (http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2011/11/20/nascar_crowd_boos_michelle_obama_at_season_finale.html).

It’s been perplexing to me to hear so many liberals support a guy who’s delivered another term of G. W. Bushiness, as much as it’s been uncomfortable listening to so many Conservatives continue to waste time and squander credibility over this “Birther issue” and “the Muslim issue.”

BOTH are complete non-starters and relegate those who espouse them to the same “kook pile” the 9/11 Truthers belong in!

For over two years now, I’ve been honest, in that TO ME, neither G W Bush nor Barack Obama seemed like “evil guys.” In fact, both seem quite affable and decent, the kind of guy’s you could easily become friends with, DESPITE the fact that I disagree with BOTH of them vehemently on the economy.

I’ve come to believe that ODS (Obama Derangement Syndrome) is every bit as real as BDS (Bush Derangement Syndrome) and equally perverse.

None of that has sat well with me and lately it’s made it harder to express myself.
Maybe coming to these exact conclusions will make that a little easier.

Contrasting Sex Scandals....

2011-11-09T20:39:00.000-05:00

Recent days have delivered two entirely different and distinct sex abuse scandals.

Over the past ten days, Hermann Cain has been embroiled in a sordid swirl of sexual harassment claims – the first two accusers wouldn’t come forward for fear of breaching their confidentiality agreements upon which their severance packages were based.

One claim is that Hermann Cain told one of the complainants that “She was the same height as his wife.”

The credibility of those allegations are dampened by the women’s refusal to come forward.

Sharon Bialek has become the first woman to come forward with charges that Cain engaged in inappropriate sexual conduct, BUT her own credibility is tainted by the fact that she never filed a police report for the 14 year old sexual assault, her ties to David Axelrod and investigations showing that she’s filed numerous (dropped and dismissed) allegations at many of her workplaces.

Now, even a fifth woman has come forward, though that too doesn’t seem at all substantial.

“Donna Donella, 40, of Arlington, said the USAID paid Cain to deliver a speech to businessmen and women in Egypt in 2002, during which an Egyptian businesswoman in her 30s asked Cain a question.

“And after the seminar was over,” Donella told The Washington Examiner, “Cain came over to me and a colleague and said, ‘Could you put me in touch with that lovely young lady who asked the question, so I can give her a more thorough answer over dinner?’”

“Donella, who no longer works for USAID, said they were suspicious of Cain’s motives and declined to set up the date. Cain responded, “Then you and I can have dinner.” That’s when two female colleagues intervened and suggested they all go to dinner together, Donella said.

“Cain exhibited no inappropriate sexual behavior during the dinner, though he did order two $400 bottles of wine and stuck the women with the bill, she said.”

SEE: http://campaign2012.washingtonexaminer.com/article/fifth-woman-raises-questions-about-cains-behavior

But the allegations haven’t hurt Cain’s popularity nor his support, as USA Today noted; http://www.usatoday.com/news/politics/story/2011-11-07/herman-cain-sexual-harassment-allegations/51116794/1 and that’s almost certainly because, as Howard Stern wryly noted, “Herman Cain Sex Scandal Allegations Are ‘Smear Job’”

SEE: http://washington.cbslocal.com/2011/11/07/howard-stern-herman-cain-sex-scandal-allegations-are-smear-job/

In stark contrast to those allegations, Penn State’s been rocked by a very serious and demonstrably provable child sex scandal and an apparent widespread cover-up by the football team, the Athletic Department and the school.

The Penn State allegations surround the football team’s long time defensive coordinator, Jerry Sandusky, who was at least four times reported as having had inappropriate conduct with children as young as ten, by witnesses.

A janitor caught him coming out of the coaches shower with a very young boy in 1998.

Another coach (Mike McQueary, then an unpaid graduate assistant) is unnamed in the grand jury report, but sources say McQueary witnessed Sandusky committing a sexual assault on a young boy at Penn State’s Lasch Football building in 2002. McQueary called his father, then reported the incident to his boss, Joe Paterno.

The mother of one of the victims in the grand jury indictment told the Patriot-News of Harrisburg: “I don’t even have words to talk about the betrayal that I feel. [McQueary] was a grown man, and he saw a boy being sodomized … He ran and called his daddy?”

Sandusky himself is said to have confessed to at least one of the children’s mothers, “He admitted to taking the shower, he admitted to some extent something bad happened,” the woman, who was not identified, said. “He asked her for forgiveness. He said ‘I probably won’t get it from you,’ and then he said ‘I wish I were dead.’”

As one close observer to the Penn State program has said, Nothing happens on campus that JoPa (Joe Paterno) doesn’t know about.”

The chronology of events reads like a deliberate cover-up by men who put a football program above the health and safety of some very young and at-risk children.

Today, Jerry Sandusky has been charged with 40 counts related to the sexual abuse of young boys and as of Monday, Penn State announced that athletic director Tim Curley and school administrator Gary Schultz — who were charged with perjury and failure to report to authorities what they knew of the allegations on Saturday — will both step down. There is ongoing pressure for both Graham Spanier, Penn State University’s President since 1995 and Joe Paterno to resign immediately. Paterno’s said he’d resign at the end of the football season.

What a difference a scandal makes!

There isn’t a SINGLE “unsubstantiated allegation” in the Penn State case!

To date there are ONLY unsubstantiated allegations in the Cain case.

Criminal reports were made immediately in numerous instances (1998, 2000, 2002, 2007 and 2011) in the Penn State case, but with the DA (now missing) unable to make a case back in 1998, the officials at that school were emboldened to allow the alleged perpetrator back on campus and he continued his work with the 2^nd mile foundation he’d started for “at-risk” youth in 1977.

In the Cain case, the allegations made by the two women at the NRA were basically claims of “offense” – Cain remarking that one of them was “the same height as his wife.” There was no criminal report filed in the alleged sexual assault by Sharon Bialek.

There are numerous actual witnesses available in the Penn State case.

To date, there are NO witnesses, but the accusers, in the Cain case.

The 50-Hour Day-Tour

2011-09-12T23:15:00.000-04:00

Everyone in New York has their own “9/11 Story,” this is one is mine – it’s one of the more fortunate ones.

I’d worked with the FDNY (New York City’s Fire Dept.) since March of 1986. 2001 opened as a particularly deadly year for the FDNY. There are just TWO tours in the FDNY, a 9-hour day tour that begins at 9am and ends at 6pm and a 15-hour night tour that begins at 6pm and ends at 9am. Generally firefighters arrive early (about an hour before their shift begins) and dress in their work-duty uniforms and relieve another firefighter on shift. Overwhelmingly most FDNY firefighters “exchange tours,” in what is called a “Mutual,” or “mutual exchange of tours,” which allows two members to, in effect trade tours and work 24 hours straight, with more time off in between tours. You can either work “a slant,” (a night tour followed by a day tour), or an “up and down” (a day tour followed by a night tour).

I worked an “up/down” 24-hour shift on Friday, January 12^th of 2001 in Ladder-44, stationed on Morris Avenue near 167^th Street in the Morrisania section of the South Bronx. We had three major fires in that twenty-four, the first two were first due and on the third, we were assigned on a 2^nd Alarm around 7am and overhauled a fire building a little north of us in the West Tremont section of the Bronx until after 10 am. As a result I didn’t get back to quarters until after 10am and finally finished showering and dressing just before 11am Saturday morning!

I remember thinking to myself, “Well, they’ll probably have a quiet weekend.”

Usually after a spurt like that, things quieted down a little afterwards.

I was scheduled off until Tuesday night.

Early Sunday morning I got a call from Mike Ciampo, who’d worked the Saturday night tour. Turns out they’d had another fire around 8pm that night at 166^th Street and Teller Avenue…and Don Franklin, who’d had the Roof position, was killed. He’d died when his heart gave out after lugging over 100 pounds of gear to the roof (including his SCBA, the Roof Rope and the gas-powered Partner Saw), then dropping down to the fifth floor fire apartment and helping them overhaul that, digging out the bodies of the two tenants who’d died smoking in bed.

The entire next week was a blur. A lot of Donny’s family lived on Staten Island, as did I, so I spent that week driving them up to the Middletown, New York funeral home for the wake and funeral in the FDNY’s family transport van.

Don’s death tore up the firehouse and it took a long while for many of the guys to recover afterwards. My last exchange with Don was jokingly profane, hardly what I’d have liked to have been my last words to him. I’d caught a number of recent jobs (fires) with Don before his untimely death. One, in which I joined him in 44′s bucket to take a bunch of HUD windows that were always a chore to remove (lots of cutting, then separating the broken pieces and then tearing the broken pieces out of the frame. . .and another in which he took me via the bucket to the roof of an isolated building and then dropped down to cover some of the windows as the OV. The roof was already bubbling when I got up there and fire was showing through a few of the roof vents. I cut a first hole and before I was ready to “pull it” (remove the roofing material and push the ceiling below down into the building to vent the roof), Donnie was back to give me a hand. generally you never leave a man alone on an isolated roof, but I know Don would make it back for me no matter WHAT, so I never really gave that a second thought.

I missed Don and miss him still. . .and I wish our last exchange was firehouse “ball-busting.”

In March, the city began “drafting” guys from various firehouses to teach at “the Rock” (the FDNY’s Training Academy). Another firefighter in our firehouse was grabbed, but he had three small kids at home and his wife worked, meaning tremendous child-care costs. He asked if I’d take the detail to teach two classes in Ladder Company Operations over that summer and I did, despite the fact that it was four day weeks opposed to two 24s each week.

In early April, I was sent for “Ed Meth” (Educational Methodologies) in advance of the training. The first class began later that month.

During that first class, “The Father’s Day Fire” occurred with dozens of firefighters injured and three (Brian Fahey, Harry Ford and John Downing) killed.

Our firehouse Engine-92/Ladder-44 hosted that Collation as the firehouse with the last Line-of-Duty (LOD) death always holds the Collation for the next member killed LOD.

It was a three day Collation in Queens and after the third day, I was called in for Overtime in ladder-44. Only Danny Perella (the Chauffeur) and I (the OV or Outside Vent) were assigned to L-44. Around 1am we were called to a taxpayer (a one-story commercial building) on 161^st Street.

There was a lot of fire in that building and Danny took the pedestal controls on top of the rig, as I set to “fly” our Tower Ladder’s bucket. As I entered the bucket, Danny said, “It looks they’ve got about a dozen bays roaring inside. Maybe we can get this bucket into the store and start knocking that down.” I nodded and gave him a thumbs up to make sure he knew I was good with that.

I’d taken an SCBA (Self Contained breathing Apparatus) but hadn’t donned it (put it on), so it lay on the floor of the bucket as I hovered ten feet over the store’s entrance, while firefighters cut the gate. It was pretty hot right there and I was beginning to think about donning the SCBA to get a few breaths, when I saw our Roof-man, a detail from nearby L-27 pouring out what looked to be a sandy or gravelly mix from his hand.

He notified the battalion Chief on the Roof that we might have a gypsum roof. Given the gypsum roof’s penchant for collapse, there are generally no fire operations conducted on gypsum roofs. The Chief ordered an evacuation of the roof and I brought the bucket down to roof level to get our detail and the members of Rescue Company 3 off the roof. R-3 refused to comply and continued their cut, finding wood boards beneath and alleviating the gypsum roof concerns.

It was the first fire I’d been to since March and I was glad to get it.

In August, a first year (probationary) firefighter died at a brush fire on Staten Island. This was during the 2^nd class I taught. It brought the LOD death toll for 2001 to five before the end of the third quarter of that year even began.

On Saturday, September 8^th, the 2^nd class I was with graduated from the Rock. Monday the 10^th and Tuesday the 11^th would be my first tours back in the firehouse. Monday was a brilliantly sunny day, with temps in the mid 70s and Tuesday was expected to be the same, making me wish I’d had a 24 set up so that I could’ve had at least one of them off.

I got in around 8am as usual and changed into my work duty uniform. Tuesday was a relatively uneventful day with about a half dozen runs for minor incidents like food on the stove, electrical emergencies, water leaks, etc.

Tuesday started out the same way, except at 8:45 am Billy Heaney announced from house watch that a plane had hit one of the Twin Towers at the World Trade Center.

I was in the kitchen with most of the other guys and remember assuming that it must’ve been a small plane because commercial pilots are trained to dump a plane into water rather than risk hitting a populated area, but when the news came on seconds later, the hole in the North Tower looked to be too big for a small plane.

That quickly escalated to a Fifth Alarm and then around 9 am a second jetliner hit the South Tower and Lieutenant Mike Finer came into the kitchen and said, “THIS is WAR!”

I was still trying to process all this, but it turns out Mike was right.

A little before 10am the South Tower collapsed and around 10:30am the North Tower fell, as well. There were TWO people very close to me, one I KNEW was downtown that day and the other could’ve been. My wife worked in lower Manhattan at Mitchell and Titus an accounting firm. She wound up one of those people covered in dust walking across the Brooklyn Bridge. My brother Jim worked in ladder-105 in Brooklyn. They lost their rig and six guys that day.

I tried calling them but the cell phones weren’t working any longer. Jim was on vacation (the first vacation he’d split in 20 years), and was at a Company golf outing in Virginia. He came back to New York that day as the FDNY instituted a full recall, requiring every member on active duty to report in.

The FDNY’s day tour starts at 9am and ends at 6pm, but after the two towers collapsed we knew for sure we weren’t going home anywhere near 6pm that night.

As the day wore on we were initially scheduled to head down to Ground Zero a little after 6pm, then it was moved back until 9pm, then midnight and finally we were taken down there around 4am.

On the way down, we were told “there were only six stories left standing.”

That turned out to be wrong, there weren’t ANY parts of the buildings left standing, just two large, maybe 40’ piles of rubble, mostly pulverized and powdered contents, with some jagged steel girders jutting out at odd angles. The cement lattice that ran up the first three stories of the Twin Towers jutted from the ground like the fingers of a skeleton’s hand jutting up through the earth.

On the West Side Highway, two enclosed walkway bridges were collapsed down across the roadway and most of the surrounding buildings were stricken by large pieces of debris from the Towers.

The streets around the area ran like rivers and everything in the area was covered in a thick coating of dust that looked yellow in the generator-fed emergency lights that turned the night into day.

The other thing that stood out was the strange, pungent smell that pervaded that entire area, a mixture of fuels, burning materials (fires still raged hundreds of feet beneath the street level and other things...impossible to describe but I’d remember in a second if I came across it again.

Those first few hours were near chaos. We searched areas on our own, until a Chief Officer would come to move us somewhere else. We worked through all of Wednesday and through most of Wednesday night searching some of the surrounding buildings facing the Towers. No one had come out alive from the rubble since noon of the 11^th and no one would after that. Initially it was reported that some 30,000 body bags were ordered, but that was before, they realized that they weren’t going to find many bodies, nor even many body parts. . .mainly only small pieces (a part of a jaw bone, a single digit) that were DNA tested to ID the victims.

We stayed there until a little after 10am on Thursday morning, the 13^th. After that we worked one 24-hour shift ON and one OFF, alternating between the firehouse and Ground Zero – the first 24-hour shift at Ground Zero, the next in the firehouse.

The first few days we had only those painter’s dust masks, then they gave us filtered re-breathers, which most guys just hung around their necks.

On a sunny day during the second week, I was standing on the perimeter of one of the piles with about a half dozen other firefighters with our re-breathers around our necks.

Initially I was focused on the pile, we were the “FAST Truck” (prepared to pull out any workers who went down in the pile) and didn’t notice, but after a few minutes, I started noticing what looked like white particles floating in the air. It certainly wasn’t snow, so whatever it was couldn’t be good. I looked around and no one else had their re-breathers on, so I sheepishly began pulling the straps of the thing over my head and fastened it into place. When I looked around after I’d pulled it up, the other guys had done or were doing the same thing.

The first couple of weeks were a blur and the final week down there had us on a weird schedule, with 19 hours off between sets. You’d work 7am to 3pm, than you’d be back 8pm to 3am and so on. That schedule really threw off your internal clock, prompting some complaints from some quarters to which then Commissioner Tom von Essen infamously quipped, “Suck it up,” resulting in a barrage of abuse headed his way.

By October we were pretty much back in our firehouses for good, with a crew from across the Department permanently detailed to ground Zero.

The Memorials began shortly after and for a long time, we spent most of our off days attending Funerals or memorial services. Most of the time you’d look for the names of guys you knew and attend those, other times you just picked one and went.

As jarring as Donnie’s death was nine months previous, this was unfathomably more momentous and E-92/L-44 lost no one that day! I knew about 45 of the guys killed that day, about a dozen were from the first class I taught and the rest were guys I’d worked with along the way.

Occasionally I’d think of the irony of how I’d never wanted to work in lower Manhattan or downtown Brooklyn, even though they were closer to where I lived, because they weren’t busy enough – L-44 had been among the busiest Truck Companies in the FDNY in Occupied Structural Work, or OSW. I’d always felt better off, even safer working in busy Units because everyone there wanted to do the work, many transferred into such places and they were used to doing work, so there were generally fewer major mistakes.

I was lucky.

Lucky I didn’t choose to work where I lived (Staten Island). Lucky I chose to pay the tolls to work in a busier firehouse. I began my career in East Harlem in the 30^th busiest Engine Company in OSW, moved to the 8^th busiest Engine Company in the University Heights section of the South Bronx, then on to the busiest Engine (E-92) in the Morrisania section of the South Bronx. I “crossed the floor” to Ladder-44.

I was even luckier that BOTH my wife and my brother Jim made it home.

My wife’s been symptom free since day one and though my brother was on four different lung medications right after 9/11, he was able to work until 2004. While he is in the early stages of emphysema, he’s been working with and doing well so far.

Everything until early October of 2001 remains a blur of images in my memory and for awhile I’ve noticed that everything AFTER 9/11 seems to have occurred “only yesterday” (seems so close, I can touch it), while the things that occurred even just before that day, seems like a million years ago.

Two events in October of that year stayed with me. The first was getting home after a night tour and turning on the TV as I shaved. My wife must’ve left it on C-Span before she went to work and I remember hearing shouts and wild slogans, but I couldn’t make it out from the other room.

I remember walking half shaved into the bedroom to see an A.N.S.W.E.R. rally with a bunch of filthy scumbags blaming America for the attacks of 9/11.

I remember thinking, “It didn’t take long for these scumbags to crawl out from under their rocks.”

The other was an exchange with a younger firefighter in L-44. Jimmy W approached me on the apparatus floor and said, “That could’ve been ANY of us, down there on a detail.”

I thought about that for a moment. He was right, but he was also wrong.

I told Jimmy, “I wouldn’t count ourselves lucky Jim, neither of us knows what coming down the pike for either of us. We could die tomorrow or forty years from now…and if either of us could know what was in store for us, maybe six or eight years of agonizing suffering with some kind of cancer or lung ailment, maybe we’d consider these guys who at least got a quick death to be the lucky ones.”

There were a lot of really sad stories around 9/11, as you’d expect. In my brother’s Company (L-105) Frank Palumbo, a man my brother Jim called “the greatest father he’d ever seen,” as he kept his ten kids perfectly orderly whenever they visited the firehouse. Or Henry Miller, a 28 year veteran less than two weeks short of retirement, or Tim Stackpole, who’d been severely burned on June 5^th, 1998 that left two firefighters (Scott laPiedre and James Blackmore) dead.

After that fire, Lt. Timothy Stackpole worried he might never return to work again, but he threw himself into months of arduous treatment and physical therapy, and after finally making it back to Light Duty, after some months working light duty at Ladder 103 in Brooklyn, he was finally allowed to return to full duty just months before 9/11.

In fact, just the Thursday before the terrorist attacks of 9/11, Lieutenant Stackpole was promoted to captain.

He died just five days in that rank in the attacks of 9/11.

The Harrell family lost two members, Stephen and Harvey, both FDNY Lieutenants.

Stephen Harrell was part of one of the most tragic 9/11 stories. Marty Celic, who ran track at Mssg. Farrell H.S. on Staten Island was killed in 1977 in an arson fire on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. His brother Tom ran “the Marty Celic Run” for over two decades after Marty’s untimely death at twenty-five. Tom Celic heeded his parent’s wishes that he not join the FDNY, so he took a job with Marsh and McLennan. Ironically enough, despite never working in the FDNY, Tom Celic was killed in the 9/11 attacks that turned out to be the largest disaster in FDNY history. Odder still, is that Marty’s former fiancée, went on to Marry another firefighter...Stephen Harrell.

Why Wisconsin's Unions Fought so Hard to Stay at the Trough...

2011-08-09T13:43:00.001-04:00

And THIS from the great state of Wisconsin;

Remember the violent demonstrations over Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s challenging the WI teacher's unions?

The results are in.

Some school districts went from a $400,000 deficit to a $1,500,000 surplus as a result.

Why?

It seems that the insurance company that provided all the "so-called" benefits to the teachers, was an insurance company owned and operated by the teacher's union. Since they were guaranteed to get the insurance business from the teachers and the State had to pay for it, and not the teachers, they were increasing the annual costs every single year to become the most expensive insurance company in the state. Then the insurance company was donating millions and millions of dollars to their favorite democrat politicians, who when they got elected, guaranteed to keep funding the unions outrageous costs. In other words, the insurance company was a "pass through" for Wisconsin taxpayer money directly to the democrat politicians.

Nice racket, and this is the racket that is going on in every single State that allows collective bargaining. No wonder the States are taking it away. Now that the State is free to put the insurance contract out for bid, and lo and behold, they have saved so much money it has turned deficits into surplus amounts. As a result, none of the teachers had to be laid off, everyone got a raise, etc., etc., and the taxpayers of Wisconsin don't have to pay more taxes to fund the union's political ambitions.

If you weren't aware of exactly what Gov. Walker was fighting for, then that should give you an idea of the problem the Conservatives have. Very few of them knew how to properly articulate the problem.

We could sure use someone like Ronald Reagan now, someone who could explain things for people to understand, since we know that people don't like to read anymore.

SEE a supporting article in the Washington Examiner:

http://washingtonexaminer.com/politics/2011/06/union-curbs-rescue-wisconsin-school-district

Check The MATH in Your News!....

2011-08-04T09:26:00.000-04:00

Just saw this, this morning; “Mayor Bloomberg plans to announce a $127 million program today that changes how they interact with city government.

“More than half the funding is coming from two billionaires - the mayor himself, through his foundation, and philanthropist George Soros. They are putting up $30 million apiece.

“The remaining $67 million will come from taxpayers for what will be a program designed to break the pattern of poverty and incarceration that afflicts about 315,000 young minorities.”
SEE: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/mike_rx_for_minorities_lvXcyBep2igcFtlS1lQ3MI

OK, the program will cost an (ESTIMATED) $127 MILLION and Soros and Bloomberg will BOTH put up $30 MILLION, which adds up to $60 MILLION.

How, exactly, is $60 MILLION “more than half” of $127 MILLION?

How about “almost half?” Or even more accurately, “Approximately 45% of the ESTIMATED cost of the program.”

Because we all know the track record of such programs coming in “On time and under budget,” don’t we?

Where Did “Red-Lining” Come From?....

2011-07-31T22:00:00.000-04:00

In the 1980s one of the issues that “housing activists” used to sue banks for “housing discrimination” over, was a practice called “Red-Lining.”

Interestingly enough, that practice was the result of one of the earliest intrusions of government into the mortgage business.

During the Great Depression, the federal Home Owners Loan Corporation (HOLC), a New Deal agency established in 1933 by the Home Owners' Loan Corporation Act, decided that America’s banks needed improved mortgage lending criteria and created what came to be called “Residential Security Maps” for every city in the United States.

The HOLC had over 40,000 people grading each neighborhood’s fitness for loans on a scale from A to D.

To accomplish this, the HOLC relied on hard (numerical) data, mostly in the form of housing statistics and local economic data to determine each community’s grade.

As Joe Flood (author of The Fires) noted, “...the maps became an early warning about the weaknesses of the kind of centralized, statistical decision-making that would come to dominate American government and business in the ensuing decades, as complex issues were reduced to a handful of the most easily obtainable and often misleading statistics.”

Those Residential Security Maps of the HOLC became the basis for and the foundation of the practice of “Red-Lining.”

Ironically enough, planners thought that those Residential Security maps would lead to slum clearance and urban renewal, but they resulted in the expansion of the slum, in practice.

In fact, no issue has been more abused than claims of “discrimination.” It was “discrimination lawsuits against traditional lending criteria that allowed both HUD and the DoJ to litigate American banks to cease using “traditional lending criteria,” because they “discriminated against low income Americans.”

U.S. law won’t permit banks to treat well-off borrowers any differently than they treat lower income borrowers, so traditional lending criteria CAN’T be used ONLY with more affluent borrowers. Neither can American banks charge higher fees and interest rates to higher income borrowers to make more loans available to lower income borrowers, by offsetting its riskier loans with higher rates and fees from more reliable and stable borrowers.

Andy Cuomo called the government’s abuse of the U.S. banking industry and forcing MORE subprime loans (loans to sub-prime borrowers) “affirmative action in lending.”

SEE: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lr1M1T2Y314&feature=PlayList&p=529CA6593D352484&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=97

Moreover, Janet Reno’s mentee (Eric Holder) is looking to do the very same thing TODAY in the wake of the disastrous results of the last attempt at this;

http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article/577794/201107081851/DOJ-Begins-Bank-Witch-Hunt.aspx?src=HPLNews

“In what could be a repeat of the easy-lending cycle that led to the housing crisis, the Justice Department has asked several banks to relax their mortgage underwriting standards and approve loans for low income Americans with poor credit as part of a new crackdown on alleged discrimination, according to court documents reviewed by IBD...

“...Settlements include setting aside prime-rate mortgages for low-income Americans with blemished credit and even counting “public assistance” as valid income in mortgage applications.

“In several cases, the government has ordered bank defendants to post in all their branches and marketing materials a notice informing low income customers that they cannot be turned down for credit because they receive public aid, such as unemployment benefits, welfare payments or food stamps.

“Among other remedies: favorable interest rates and down-payment assistance for minority borrowers with weak credit.”
.
.
That’s exactly the kind of litigation that forced banks into poor (subprime loans) last time and it indicts Holder now.

The court’s ruling is flawed and forces banks to comply with flawed policies that once nearly destroyed our economy...and the start of these subprime abuses (mandating banks to lend to more sub-prime borrowers) started with the federal program (those Residential Security maps) that became the foundation of what would come to be called “Red-Lining.”

Why Journalists and Commentators Must Define Their Terms....

2011-07-29T23:22:00.000-04:00

There’s a huge argument over income and taxation that’s been going on for a very long time.

The problem is, as we ALL know (yes, even journalists and commentators know this), income is NOT the same as compensation, nor should they be.

While ALL income is compensation, NOT all compensation is income.

Chris Matthews repeated a long-standing lie the other night and in his case, I’ll admit that I can’t be sure if Matthews knows the difference between compensation and income. I’ve met Mr. Matthews and he does not tend to strike one as a deep thinker, to say the least.

Still, he claimed, as Mr. Buffett had many months ago, that “Many CEO’s pay a lower tax rate than their secretaries.”

That’s clearly and demonstrably untrue.

Few, if any CEOs earn less than Costco’s Jim Sinegal ($400,000/year) and few, if any secretaries earn over $50,000/year. The tax rates on those incomes is vastly different AND the tax rate for the CEO is substantially HIGHER.

Of course, most major executives are NOT primarily compensated with income. They get stock options, and are often even able to buy additional shares at a very low “insider’s price.”

A CEO who was given 100,000 shares of stock as a compensatory “stock option, now valued at $50/share, has been given an additional $5 MILLION in compensation. If he keeps that for two years (and he WILL), he’ll pay the prevailing Capital Gains tax on that stock – 15%, which IS lower than the secretaries income tax rate.

And it SHOULD BE! NO ONE has ever argued that ALL compensation should be taxed equally. Not one such argument has ever been made.

What’s pathetic is seeing the likes of Warren Buffett, a member of the group that lobbies for LOWER Capital gains taxes on investments, making such ridiculous claims that confuse common income with legitimate Capital Gains based compensation.

There are also other, more nebulous ways that certain positions get around the income tax. Private equity funds, venture capital funds and hedge funds all use a “points system,” by which managers don’t take stocks and hold them, but convert their commissions into “points” and then hold them, claiming those as Capital Gains!

My wife has worked on some Hedge Fund clients and seen mangers with portfolios of over $100,000,000 in “points,” that will be taxed as Capital Gains.

Now THAT practice of converting commissions from managed investments into “points” that the IRS (the government set that loophole up, NOT any fund managers) devised CAN BE changed with the stroke of a pen.

Jeffrey Carter of the CME Board defends the points system this way; “Let’s say you set your fund up and it’s a 2.5%/20 fund. This means that you will collect a salary of 2.5% of the value of the fund, the money raised, and you will collect 20% of the growth of the fund if it’s successful. If it’s unsuccessful you get nothing. Assume a ten million dollar fund just for fun. As you know, sometimes these funds are in the billions. The manager of a ten million dollar fund will make the magical amount of $250,000/yr. That money ought to be taxed at the highest rate because they is guaranteed that salary. There isn’t any risk once the money is raised."

“An aside, it’s not easy to raise money. Not just every Tom, Dick, or Harriet can raise a fund.

“On the 20% gains any manager ought to pay only 15%, or whatever the capital gains rate is. Why? Because the fund manager is using his talent to take a measured risk. Not all these deals work out, not every trade a hedge fund makes works out. Hyde Park Angels, my angel group in Chicago, did some research and found out some of the best funds make all their money on two deals. The rest of the deals they invest in go broke.

“Wall Street and Greenwich are littered with the remains of busted hedge funds, and fund of funds. Silicon Valley and Boston have had plenty of Venture Capitalists go belly up. Leverage buyout and Private Equity firms go out of business too.

“If America wants venture capital, and other risk loving funds out there, then they can’t overtax them. They provide much needed growth capital to really big businesses. The backbone of the internet you are reading this blog on was financed by some risk loving venture capitalists. So was most of the software you use. Tax risk capital at a high rate, you will have less of it. It means less growth, lower GDP, higher unemployment.

In other words, Carter argues that those who guide those investments are also creating a legitimate Capital Gain and that their skill-sets and the commissions derived from those SHOULD BE taxed at the Capital gains rate.

However, Berkshire Hathaway Vice Chairman, Charles Munger vehemently disagrees with Carter over "points" (commissions) being allowed to be taxed as Capital gains. "I think the idea that the hedge fund manager gets lower taxes than the taxi driver or the physics professor is insane. The legislators who leave that policy in place are derelict in their duties to be rational and fair. There are plenty of them in both political parties. It's totally outrageous.

"Hedge funds treat the money that's really paid to him for management [as a deferred capital gain.] It's the equivalent of doing your work [points to journalist]. You pay ordinary income taxes, and they pay 15%. Or even less than 15%, which is not quite understood! There's a lot of untaxed appreciation that accretes to them with no taxes at all.

"The situation is crazy. Yet these people make political contributions and they wrap themselves in the flag of enterprise, and we end up with hedge fund managers who have what you and I would call ordinary income taxed way lower than the income of a taxi driver. It's totally outrageous.

The ONE area hopefully everyone CAN agree on is that should higher tax rates lead to LESS investment in critical areas, then government in ANY form must be barred from filling that void.

Otherwise that might serve to undermine the Capitalist system’s foundation (independent investment and the private ownership of property) while supporting the foundation of the failed Command system (government direction of both investment and industry). The world’s already been littered with the carcasses of such failed experiments (Bulgaria, Albania, the former USSR, etc.).

Anders Behring Breivik’s Assault on the Global Corporatist Culture!....

2011-07-25T12:33:00.001-04:00

The hideous murder of 76 innocent Norwegians by the anti-globalist terrorist, Anders Behring Breivik (pictured above) is a VERY BIG DEAL, not only on account of the staggering death toll, most of them teenagers, but because it seems to evidence something that global Corporatists didn’t believe really existed – actual, serious resistance, especially among ethnic Western Europeans. That’s NOT a good thing from their view. So, ultimately this is a story about all of us having to change and adapt to the NEW and still forming global culture.

In a statement Anders Behring Breivik said he’d carried out the attacks because he wanted to "save Norway and Western Europe from a Muslim takeover". He accused the Labour party of "mass imports of Muslims."

Unfortunately for those like Breivik, it isn’t only the Labour Party or "the left" that’s complicit in the mass immigration he sees changing his country and his culture, it’s every political Party in Norway, because EVERY political Party in Norway, like every political Party everywhere is funded by and beholden to its own global (multi-national) Corporate interests and the global Corporatists have a plan in place and it’s going to be cemented in place, come what may.

There’s a very difficult transition going on and it’s going to get even more difficult as we try to merge a number of fundamentally different moral systems into as much of a “unified whole” as possible.

BUT the die has already been cast. Long ago, the Corporatists of the West saw the very simple math that it would be better to sell to 5 BILLION customers worldwide than to the 1 BILLION in the industrialized West.

But to do that, wouldn’t be easy. A plan had to be devised to not only “Westernize” the developing world, but to somewhat “de-Westernize” the West!

That was accepted as the most effective way to achieve those aims over the shortest haul. So, starting in the 1960s America and Western Europe radically changed their immigration policies and allowed millions to flee Third World poverty and come to those industrialized lands. At the same time, Western companies were changing the very cultures and languages of those in the developing world.

It’s a brilliant strategy, but even this one is not without some pain and dislocation. Like any kind of major transition, this one is fraught with much dislocation and human misery.

In America, most people know absolutely nothing about Scandinavia. The most misinformed think it’s some kind of “democratic socialist utopia,” when nothing could be further from the truth. 

One Swedish blogger puts the cultural question into a pretty poignant perspective with, “Very few of the Swedes does not understand English. Some of us might not speak Swedish! Not even those who are born here. . .”  (Pela)

Pela is even more stark about Sweden’s new multi-cultural crime stats!

The following Swedish crime stats come from Sweden’s National Council for Crime Prevention:

. In 2003 New York City had: 591 homicides - Sweden had 189.

. NY City had 1,789 rapes - Sweden had 2,565.

. NYC had 18764 aggravated assaults - Sweden had 65175.

. NYC had 29207 burglaries, Sweden had 122700.

. It should be noted that NYC has almost 1.5 times the population than does all of Sweden, so to accurately compare Sweden’s stats to New York City’s you have to multiply our numbers by 1.5X!

Pela asks, “If Sweden were a city; where would you choose to live?

“And I promise you that the numbers have not gone down here since then!”

Pela notes: ("About the murder rates- you have to keep in mind that it is very hard to get someone convicted for murder here in Sweden. Most killers are just sentenced for manslaughter and those convictions are not listed under homicides.")

Certainly any reasonable person could see where that immigrant-fed crime wave would be at the very least “disconcerting,” to traditional, native-born Swedes like Pela.

In Norway they have a very similar “Muslim issue.” In Norway, one moderate Muslim scholar Mulla Krekar, who’d long been very dismissive of Osama bin laden and other radicals, switched his views in 2009 claiming that “Muslims in Norway need their own state,” and that he hoped that Osama bin Laden, or another like-minded radical Islamist leader would become the head of  Islamic super-state.

SEE: http://www.topix.com/forum/world/norway/T5CP5456U6JUK9SVU

To be sure, Westerners are NOT going to embrace an Islamic/Sharia moral code, one that stones gays and adulterers to death and doesn’t allow women to drive cars or go out in public unescorted, BUT be sure that Muslims are also NOT going to accept today’s excessively open and liberal Western morality either.

Some accord will have to be brokered. . .and THAT’S really what all this comes down to. There WILL BE resistance, but that resistance WILL BE put down, by media and by governments, all of whom are beholden to the same global Corporatist interests.

Suffice to say, most global corporatists are very aware of their own “preconceived Western biases,” and feel that their initial impulses should be to make the non-Western world feel as “welcome” in this new global marketplace as possible.

That DOES NOT mean that the West will ever have to accept the barbarous abuses of Sharia law, BUT it DOES mean that the West’s current acceptance of things like adulterous promiscuity, open-relationships, homosexuality and female immodesty will have to change and probably change somewhat radically from what many in the today’s West find acceptable.

Right now, it’s traditionalists who want to cling to their old cultures who are most dislocated, but mark my words, soon it’ll be the most liberal people of the West and the most radicalized/fundamentalist people in the Arab-Muslim world who’ll be the most dislocated and prone to lashing out.

BUT ultimately the corporate globalists will win. Come what may, THEY will win out. They’ve been playing chess for fifty-plus years, while the rest of the world was playing checkers.

Ultimately, no matter how much any of us resists, we’ll ALL eventually become members of a NEW globalized culture prepackaged for us by the same global Corporatists that sell us breakfast cereals and Coke!

Can We be Saved...From OURSELVES?...

2011-07-23T23:31:00.001-04:00

SEE: http://www.american.com/archive/2007/november-december-magazine-contents/guess-who-really-pays-the-taxes

Recently we were treated to the DSK “outrage” – a pompous, self-important “world leader” allegedly feeling entitled to “do as he would” with a lowly hotel maid in New York City.

The American media blared its outrage, “How dare this autocrat think he could force his will on another merely by dint of his station or position?”

REALLY, America?!

Try looking in the mirror once in awhile!

We are today a nation that is entrenched in the very SAME “entitlement ethos” that infects Mssr Kahn.

America’s seniors feel “entitled” to a retirement and increasingly expensive medical benefits paid for by everyone else (“the little people”). Public sector workers feel “entitled” to generous pensions and medical benefits also paid for by everyone else (again, “the little people”).

Some of it comes down to “two ways of viewing the world,” HOWEVER, contrary to what some folks claim, BOTH views are not and CANNOT be true at the same time;

The liberal view that, “Everybody needs to step up to the plate and contribute to erasing the deficit, rather than rob money from Medicare to pay off the deficit, taxing the rich is the much better way to go," couldn't be more wrong!

Even a cursory look at the above graph clearly shows that the top 10% of income earners in America pay 68% of all income taxes on just 44% of the aggregate annual wages.

The bottom 50% of wage earners pay just 3% of all income taxes on 13% of the annual aggregate income.

Fact is, “It’s the BOTTOM 50% of income earners who are UNDER-TAXED!”

We have too many Americans in for a free ride.

People are living longer and healthier, so the social security and Medicare eligibility ages should be raised and we need to drastically CUT federal, state and local/city budgets and workforces to spur REAL job growth in the private sector.

EVERY single government job is paid for by private sector revenues, so we NEED to keep government workforces SMALL, so the private sector can expand and grow the economy.

That's why liberal calls for "tax the rich," ALWAYS fall hardest on those earning the least!

As Ronald Reagan said, "It isn't that liberals are bad people, it's just that they know so much that simply isn't so."

Tax Policy as Social Control and the Fallacy of Finite Wealth....

2011-07-23T23:13:00.000-04:00

Too often tax policy is sold to people as, “a means to benevolent social control.” So called “sin-taxes,” are said to be deigned to limit people’s exposure to harmful vices, like smoking, excessive drinking, even sweet snacks.

Others are designed to do things like “make driving more expensive and inconvenient,” so people pollute less.

All of those ideas are too simple-minded because they (1) misunderstand the problems they intend to try to solve and (2) don’t take into account nearly enough variables.

Some even argue that “tax breaks” and “tax abatements” are “social programs” in the form of “pay offs that benefit the well-connected” and that they actually harm others who don’t get them.

That’s as short-sighted and simplistic as the idea that “there is only so much wealth to go around, so a wealthy individual creates many poor people by hoarding so much of that finite resource for themselves.” THAT could ONLY be true IF an economy was static, with a fixed amount of wealth within a closed system. BUT no economy is a closed system, every economy is an open, dynamic system, in which the more wealth one accrues, the more wealth is produced, thereby expanding the economy AND the amount of wealth available to all.

Of course tax breaks are neither social benefits (legalized bribes) nor “social programs” UNLESS government or “the people” have a right to all the proceeds produced in their communities.

They DO NOT.

There is no such “chicken or egg” argument when it comes to commerce and government.

Commerce is not only the sole purpose government came into being, but the sole purpose language was developed, as humans sought a way to communicate in order to make exchanges. Likewise, math, in fact numbers themselves were developed solely as a medium of exchange.

Governments arose out of the necessity to protect commerce from both foreign invasion and domestic strife. Certainly well-off merchants COULD provide their own security/protection, but that often led to armed conflicts over business locations and prime trading routes. Governments arose out of the desire to make commerce more orderly and less violent.

Moreover, WHAT are taxes on businesses other than de fact sales taxes?

That is indeed what they are.

Every levy heaped upon business raises the costs of production and thus the price consumers pay for those goods.

Business PAYS NO TAXES, they simply pass along ALL their costs onto their consumers, as they MUST and as they SHOULD. So, in the end, piling on taxes on businesses amounts to taxing ourselves!

Jacob Riis and the Failure of Good Intentions and Social Engineering...

2011-07-07T10:05:00.000-04:00

Pete Hamill, one of New York’s many working class liberal pundits from two generations ago, once said, “New York’s, or then, New Amsterdam’s good fortune was that it was started by a company, the Dutch East India Company, not run by a religious sect, not a king, but by a company.”

What set New Amsterdam/New York from aristocratic Virginia and Puritan New England was that it’s sole purpose for being was the boundless pursuit of money.

That founding ethos brought forward a number of noble virtues, primarily and specifically the willingness to take in anyone that was good for business.

Within a few short years of its founding, no less than 18 languages were spoken on the streets of that city.

It was the pursuit of wealth, not human nature, nor government decree that ALLOWED such a tolerance, just it allowed the slave trade to flourish there, while also allowing masters, seeking a better return on their investments to train slaves as skilled craftsmen and to offer them freedom, in return for cheap labor and hard work.

This ethos flourished past Dutch rule, through the Colonial times and very much into the dawn of the modern day.

New York took in immigrants by the millions, Chinese, Jews, Russians, blacks from the south and the West Indies, Italians, Turks, Irish and Poles. By the late 19^th Century new York was the world’s largest and greatest economic engine.

Today, Russia and India are utilizing cheap labor free-for-all economics to create the same kind of dynamic economic growth. China has been able to move 100 MILLION Chinese out of poverty EVERY YEAR through its market-based economic reforms.

At the start of the 20^th Century one reporter observed, “Every four years, new York adds to itself a city the size of Boston or St. Louis. It is the largest Jewish city in the world, the largest Irish city in the world, one of the largest German cities. More than 700,000 Russians call it home and it houses more Italians than Rome. New York is the great whirlpool of the races.”

Generations of poor people flooded into New York to provide the cheap labor it needed, often working in appalling conditions, to give their children better opportunities. Milton Friedman’s mother was a seamstress in a Lower East Side sweatshop and she toiled so that Milton would never see the inside of one.

And these sweatshops created unheralded opportunities for these poor. People who would’ve been peasants, serfs, veritable slaves and “human garbage” under Monarchs and dictators, were free people, able to leverage their own labors into a better life for their children.

Entire generations went from peasant-class to property owners in a generation, thanks to the “miracle that was New York.”

But that same success also spawned the impetus for the move from unfettered freedom and toward a more regulated, more government controlled economy. Ironically enough, the trigger for this shift came in the form of New York’s cheap housing – it’s slums.

Jacob Riis (pictured above) came to New York a penniless Danish immigrant, but given that he had a working understanding of English, along with some marketable skills, including familiarity with the new flash-powder photography, he was able to land a job as a police photographer and move out of the slums after a few years here.

In 1890 Riis put together a pictorial of New York’s slums in all their horrors and penned some compelling stories that outlined the magnitude of the issue, not merely a few malnourished or diseased kids on Delancey Street, or some hardened thugs around what was then called but “Bandit’s Roost,” but a population spread over 37,316 tenements that housed over one and quarter MILLION (1,250,000) New Yorkers.

This book, “How The Other Half Lives,” catapulted Jacob Riis into national and eventually international acclaim.

New York City’s leading social reformer at the time was Teddy Roosevelt, then U.S. Civil Service Commissioner and he devoured Riis’ book with fascination. When Teddy Roosevelt became New York’s Police Commissioner a few years later, Jacob Riis implored him to shutter the brutal police department-run lodging houses, where Riis himself had sought shelter upon his arrival.

In fact, Riis began working with many upper class housing reformers, who ultimately were able to convince the city to engage in some of the nation’s first active “slum clearance movements.”

Riis, with Teddy Roosevelt’s assistance was able to get some of the country’s first tenement regulations passed through Albany.

Across New York City, slum housing, rookeries (old, dilapidated mansions and warehouses, illegally set up for lodgings) and the police department’s lodging houses were closed down and cleared away and the lands were either sold off to developers (mostly from among that same group of upper class social reformers) or turned into parks.

The SINGLE “modern” (more human) lodging house that Commissioner Roosevelt built was unable to house more than a small fraction of the hordes of the now homeless and dispossessed poor. This created what’s been called, “A veritable refugee crisis on the Lower East Side of Manhattan,” as slum clearance forced many onto the streets, as those slums had housed those who simply couldn’t afford a better place to stay.

As this drove a teeming throng into the already overcrowded tenements that were left and into Bowery flop houses, usually situated above bars, Riis blamed saloonkeepers “for plying the poor with cheap drink and shelter”. . .BUT, they’d been doing that for eons. It was, ironically enough, Jacob Riis and TR’s misguided plan to improve housing conditions that actually drove the crisis.

When the Columbus park project was completed and some 10,000 homes were converted into a lush, green park, Riis called it, “Little less than a revolution,” a slum housing was razed and “in its place come trees and grass and flowers, for its dark hovels, light and sunshine and air.”

An improvement for the middle and upper classes who enjoyed the park, and reveled in the eradication of that urban blight, but a disaster for the displaced poor.

Like many misguided social reformers, the reforms proposed by Riis and Roosevelt transformed the LAND itself, but did nothing to help and much to harm the poor whose name these reforms were done.

Around the same time that Progressive housing reform (“slum clearance”) was underway, the same “Progressive forces” took aim at the jobs those poor people relied on. The Triangle Shirtwaist fire, which occurred on March 25^th, 1911 created the impetus for massive workplace reforms.

By the time Woodrow Wilson took office as President, not only had the homes of the poor in new York city transformed for the worse by the patronizing pity of the rich, so were their livelihoods.

A part of the issue wealthy, well educated people have in understanding and really sympathizing with poverty is that even those who’ve experienced briefly never possessed any of the internal or intrinsic causes of poverty – physical or mental infirmity, a lack of marketable skills or a language barrier. In the case of Jacob Riis, he came to New York a young, well-educated, middle class, Protestant Danish immigrant, who spoke at least some English when he arrived here. For Riis and those like him, simply removing the trappings of poverty, gaining employment and finding better lodgings was all they had to do to put the external effects of poverty behind them.

As a result, Riis and others felt it HAD TO BE the same for all the other poor, even though it wasn’t, which is why his view that “If you get rid of the slum, you get rid of poverty” was so disastrous when translated into public policy.

The Progressive ideal first championed wholesale by Teddy Roosevelt came out of the desire of the established wealthy patricians to maintain their positions.

In social and economic cauldrons like New York’s they saw a furnace that forged “sharks,” with new ideas and ruthless determination and the ability, IF left unfettered, to displace the established order of things. . .to replace the established businesses and industries with newer ones.

That AND New York’s upper classes saw that the wretched poor, the factories and sweatshops that supported them and the tenement slums that housed them took up would could and SHOULD be valuable real estate.

As much as anything the Progressive movement was motivated by greed in the form of a land grab by some of its more prominent constituents. The Morgan and Vanderbilt controlled New York Central Railroad, which owned the industrial land along Manhattan’s Hudson River side, sought to transform that industrial landscape into more high-value office space that could be built higher than industrial spaces could, thus generating much higher rents.

These patricians formed what was then called the Regional Plan Association or RPA and they immediately gravitated to the idea of planned communities, or “Urban Planning.” FDR’s uncle, Frederic Delano was the RPA’s first chairman.

Their plan at the start was to move New York’s industry and its teeming mass of lower class, working poor across the Hudson. The only thing that kept the RPA from moving those things immediately was the pesky fact all that “teeming confusion” was the basis of the city’s economy. It would have to be done over time, as New York would transition to a newer, less industrialized economy.

Robert Moses (NYC’s “Master Builder”) became an integral part of that plan that continued after WW II. Robert Moses benefitted from a number of pieces of national housing legislation. The first was the 1937 United States Housing Act, which was the nation’s first public housing law. It sprang directly from New York City’s housing reform movement and was often called “the Wagner Act,” after its primary patron, NY State Senator and Tammany Hall legend, Robert F. Wagner Sr. Within a few decades public housing projects were strewn across cities throughout America. Those concrete slab housing projects housed over 500,000 people in New York City alone!

However, Moses came to rely on the 1949 Housing Act even more than its predecessor. That law allowed him to use federal funds to condemn and clear “slums” and sell off the land to private developers on the cheap.

Robert Moses developed the system of highways and bridges that crisscrossed New York City connecting it with Long Island to the East, the upstate mainland to the north and New jersey and points west, while in the process, the man who would never drive a car himself created that highway system by tearing apart and separating once tight knit neighborhoods, in effect, dismantling the last of the pre-FIRE takeover of New York city.

By the mid-1960s, the FIRE (Finance, Insurance and Real Estate) economy was in place and pretty much dominated New York. The Rockefellers (owners of Chase Manhattan Bank) led a consortium of FIRE business leaders. One of their major projects completed much of what the RPA wanted done. The World Trade Center complex eradicated lower Manhattan’s famed “Radio Row,” which housed scores of small factories, electronic appliance dealers and repair shops and quickly moved them and all those jobs out of the city.

By the late 1960s New York had ceased being a major commercial port, as the FIRE industries DID NOT rely on large quantities of goods brought into the city daily, so thousands of Long Shoreman and Teamster jobs were eradicated.

The “Progressive agenda,” as played out in New York eliminated the unheralded opportunities for upward mobility among the teeming throng of working poor who’d poured into that city for generations, eradicated their cheap lodgings, the factories that employed them and replaced New York’s once bustling, dynamic economy with a staid and static FIRE economy, one which oddly true to its name would play a part in the coming “fire storm” that cleansed new York of the last vestiges of what was before.

The primary impetus for the “progressive agenda” was self-protection for the upper classes and the chance to rake in windfall profits from the clearing of slums and factories and the conversion of those lands into vehicles that better benefitted New York’s patrician class.

That’s why Progressivism and the Keynesian economics that was its hallmark is a Country Club Republican ideology, endorsed by the likes of J. P Morgan, Bernard Baruch and the Rockefellers.

Progressivism transformed dynamic old New York with its teeming factories and myriad industries and commercial hodge podges into the well coifed and more exclusive and far less dynamic FIRE economy of today.

Assessing the Obama Administration’s First Thirty Months...

2011-06-02T13:36:00.001-04:00

I received an interesting email from Captain (FDNY-retired) Bob Howell the other day and I added to it. This email really shows how far we've fallen!

	January 2009	TODAY	% chg	^Source
Avg.. Retail price/gallon gas in U.S.	$1.83	$3.44	84%	¹
Crude oil, European Brent (barrel)	$43..48	$99..02	127.7%	²
Crude oil, West TX Inter. (barrel)	$38..74	$91..38	135.9%	²
Gold: London (per troy oz.)	$853.25	$1,369.50	60.5%	²
Corn, No.2 yellow, Central IL	$3.56	$6.33	78.1%	²
Soybeans, No. 1 yellow, IL	$9.66	$13..75	42.3%	²
Sugar, cane, raw, world, lb. Fob	$13..37	$35..39	164.7%	²
Unemployment rate, non-farm, overall	7.6%	9.4%	23.7%	³
Unemployment rate, blacks	12.6%	15.8%	25.4%	³
Number of unemployed	11,616,000	14,485,000	24.7%	³
Number of fed. Employees	2,779,000	2,840,000	2.2%	³
Real median household income	$50,112	$49,777	-0.7%	⁴
Number of food stamp recipients	31,983,716	43,200,878	35.1%	⁵
Number of unemployment benefit recipients	7,526,598	9,193,838	22.2%	⁶
Number of long-term unemployed	2,600,000	6,400,000	146.2%	³
Poverty rate, individuals	13.2%	14.3%	8.3%	⁴
People in poverty in U.S.	39,800,000	43,600,000	9.5%	⁴
U.S.. Rank in Economic Freedom World Rankings	5	9	n/a	¹⁰
Present Situation Index	29.9	23.5	-21.4%	¹¹
Failed banks	140	164	17.1%	¹²
U.S.. Dollar versus Japanese yen exchange rate	89.76	82.03	-8.6%	²
U.S.. Money supply, M1, in billions	1,575.1	1,865.7	18.4%	¹³
U.S.. Money supply, M2, in billions	8,310.9	8,852.3	6.5%	¹³
National debt, in trillions	$10..627	$14..052	32.2%	¹⁴

Just take this last item: In the last two years we have accumulated national debt at a rate more than 27 times as fast as during the rest of our entire nation's history.

Over 27 times as fast! Metaphorically speaking, if you are driving in the right lane doing 65 MPH and a car rockets past you in the left lane, 27 times faster, it would be doing 1,755 MPH! 

Sources:

(1) U.S. Energy Information Administration; 

(2) Wall Street Journal;

(3) Bureau of Labor Statistics;

(4) Census Bureau;

(5) USDA;

(6) U.S. Dept. Of Labor; 
(7) FHFA;

(8) Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller;

(9) RealtyTrac;

(10) Heritage Foundation and WSJ;

(11) The Conference Board;

(12) FDIC; 
(13) Federal Reserve;

(14) U.S. Treasury

Those ARE some very frightening numbers, but we are where we are because the current administration has not only continued to follow the “Pelosi-Reid agenda” (the bulk of G W Bush’s non-military overspending came over his last few years...his “Pelosi/Reid years”) it’s accelerated those failed policies! 

Accelerating those poor policies merely accelerated the poor results.

These figures are a good snapshot as to where we are.

AND for all those who’d harken back to Reagan, claiming that, “Reagan didn’t turn the economy around overnight,” au contraire, when the Reagan administration came into office in January of 1981, the Misery Index (merely the INFLATION and UNEMPLOYMENT rates added together) was appx. 21 (20.76)! By the end of 1981 the Misery Index had fallen to 17.97, by 1982 it had fallen further to 15.87 and by the end of 1983, the end of his 3rd year in office, it had fallen even further to 12.82.

The Reagan administration saw the Misery index fall by OVER 30% in its first three years!

When the Obama administration came into office in January of 2009 the Misery Index stood at 8.92. By the end of 2010 it stood at 11.29 and now, midway through his 3rd year (2011) it’s averaging 12.16 for the year 2011 (so far). Find the U.S. Misery Index month to month and from 1948 thru the present at; http://www.miseryindex.us/

The Obama administration has seen the Misery index rise by over 25% midway through its 3rd year!

Look at those two sets of Misery Indexes, Reagan reduced the record-high Misery Index he inherited by over 30%, while Obama has increased the Misery Index he inherited by over 25% during the same time periods of their respective administrations – we’re clearly heading in the WRONG direction!