By Thomas Sowell
The politically clever way to get special privileges is to call them "rights"— especially "equal rights."
Some local election campaigns in various states are using that tactic this year, trying to get special privileges through affirmative action quotas or through demands that the definition of marriage be changed to suit homosexuals.
Equality of rights does not mean equality of results. I can have all the equal treatment in the world on a golf course and I will not finish within shouting distance of Tiger Woods.
When arbitrary numerical "goals" or "quotas" under affirmative action are not met, the burden of proof is put on the employer to prove that he did not discriminate against minorities or women. No burden of proof whatever is put on the advocates of "goals" or "quotas" to show that people would be equally represented in jobs, colleges or anywhere else in the absence of discrimination.
Tons of evidence from countries around the world, and over centuries of history, show that statistical disparities are the rule, not the exception— even in situations where discrimination is virtually impossible.
Anonymously graded tests do not show the same results from one group to another. In many countries there are minorities who completely outperform members of the majority population, whether in education, in the economy or in sports, even when there is no way that they can discriminate against the majority.
Putting the burden of proof on everybody except yourself is a slick political ploy. The time is long overdue for the voting public to see through it.
Another fraud on the ballot this year is gay "marriage."
Marriage has existed for centuries and, until recent times, it has always meant a union between a man and a woman. Over those centuries, a vast array of laws has grown up, all based on circumstances that arise in unions between a man and a woman.
Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes said that law has not been based on logic but on experience. To apply a mountain of laws based specifically on experience with relations between a man and a woman to a different relationship where sex differences are not involved would be like applying the rules of baseball to football.
The argument that current marriage laws "discriminate" against homosexuals confuses discrimination against people with making distinctions among different kinds of behavior.
All laws distinguish among different kinds of behavior. What other purpose does law have?
While people may be treated the same, all their behaviors are not. Laws that forbid bicycles from being ridden on freeways obviously have a different effect on people who have bicycles but no cars.
But this is not discrimination against a person. The cyclist who gets into a car is just as free to drive on the freeway as anybody else.
The question is not whether gays should be permitted to marry. Many gays have already married people of the opposite sex. Conversely, heterosexuals who might want to marry someone of the same sex in order to make some point will be forbidden to do so, just as gays are.
The real issue is whether marriage should be redefined— and, if for gays, why not for polygamists? Why not for pedophiles?
Despite heavy television advertising in California for "gay marriage," showing blacks being set upon by police dogs during civil right marches, and implying that homosexuals face the same discrimination today, the analogy is completely false.
Blacks had to sit in the back of the bus because they were black. They were doing exactly what white people were doing— riding a bus. That is what made it racial discrimination.
Marriage is not a right but a set of legal obligations imposed because the government has a vested interest in unions that, among other things, have the potential to produce children, which is to say, the future population of the nation.
Gays were on their strongest ground when they said that what they did was nobody else's business. Now they are asserting a right to other people's approval, which is wholly different.
None of us has a right to other people's approval.
Showing posts with label sowell. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sowell. Show all posts
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
Friday, October 31, 2008
The power to tax is the power to destroy...
Taxing times
By Thomas Sowell
Chief Justice John Marshall said it all in one sentence: "The power to tax is the power to destroy."
It is not the money that is taxed away that is destroyed. What is destroyed is the wealth that does not get produced in the first place, because high taxes make its production not worthwhile.
Those who are receptive to Senator Barack Obama's plan to increase taxes on "the rich" seem not to understand that the issue is the nation's loss of wealth. Today, wealth can leave the country when heavy taxes threaten it— instantly, in an age of electronic financial transfers— and create jobs and economic growth overseas, instead of at home.
The two months between the time of a presidential election and the time when the new president takes office is an eternity in terms of how much money can be transferred out of the country electronically before any new high-tax laws can be enacted.
Like so much that is said glibly by Barack Obama, raising taxes on "the rich" has serious— and potentially disastrous— implications for the whole country that have been ignored amid the political euphoria.
Moreover, like so much that is proposed under the magic mantra of "change," it is something that has been tried before in many countries and failed before in many countries.
Much wealth from Third World countries flows out to richer countries like Switzerland or the United States, where it is safer from confiscation. Jack up the capital gains tax rate in the United States and more Americans can be expected to send their capital elsewhere.
That means sending jobs elsewhere, so that even people with no capital to invest lose employment opportunities.
Economists have trouble determining how many people are affected by a tax increase because those affected extend far beyond those who write the checks to pay the government.
Taxes on businesses can get passed along to consumers, in whole or in part, even though it is only the business that writes the check to the government.
Payroll taxes or government-mandated employee benefits may be paid for directly by the employer, but these costs reduce the value of an employee to the employer. If these costs add up to $10,000, for example, employers bidding for labor may bid $10,000 less in salary than they would have otherwise.
As in other cases, who writes the checks does not tell you who really pays the costs, since the worker is now $10,000 worse off. The idea that you can single out one segment of society to be taxed or mandated, for the benefit of the rest of society, is reminiscent of a San Francisco automobile dealer's sign: "We cheat the other guy and pass the savings on to you."
The economy is not a zero-sum game where someone gains what others lose. The whole economy can lose when ill-considered policies gain political popularity and stifle economic growth.
People who do not own a single share of corporate stock can still lose big time when capital gains taxes are raised— not only because jobs can follow capital out of the country, but also because millions of working people's pension plans own corporate stock, and those people's retirement incomes will depend on the value of those stocks, which is reduced by capital gains taxes.
One of the biggest taxes is one that is not even called a tax — inflation. When the government spends money that it creates, it is transferring part of the value of your money to themselves. It is quiet taxation but often heavy taxation, falling on everyone, no matter how low their incomes might be.
By the end of the 20th century, a $100 bill would not buy as much as a $20 bill would buy in the middle of that century. For people who saved cash, inflation amounted to an 80 percent tax. For others, it was an 80 percent tax minus whatever cumulative interest or dividends they received on the money they invested.
Given the staggering cost of the government's financial bailouts, there is no way that Barack Obama's grandiose spending plans can be carried out without inflation.
When politicians start talking about taxing "the rich," remember the old saying: "Send not to know for whom the bell tolls. It tolls for thee."
By Thomas Sowell
Chief Justice John Marshall said it all in one sentence: "The power to tax is the power to destroy."
It is not the money that is taxed away that is destroyed. What is destroyed is the wealth that does not get produced in the first place, because high taxes make its production not worthwhile.
Those who are receptive to Senator Barack Obama's plan to increase taxes on "the rich" seem not to understand that the issue is the nation's loss of wealth. Today, wealth can leave the country when heavy taxes threaten it— instantly, in an age of electronic financial transfers— and create jobs and economic growth overseas, instead of at home.
The two months between the time of a presidential election and the time when the new president takes office is an eternity in terms of how much money can be transferred out of the country electronically before any new high-tax laws can be enacted.
Like so much that is said glibly by Barack Obama, raising taxes on "the rich" has serious— and potentially disastrous— implications for the whole country that have been ignored amid the political euphoria.
Moreover, like so much that is proposed under the magic mantra of "change," it is something that has been tried before in many countries and failed before in many countries.
Much wealth from Third World countries flows out to richer countries like Switzerland or the United States, where it is safer from confiscation. Jack up the capital gains tax rate in the United States and more Americans can be expected to send their capital elsewhere.
That means sending jobs elsewhere, so that even people with no capital to invest lose employment opportunities.
Economists have trouble determining how many people are affected by a tax increase because those affected extend far beyond those who write the checks to pay the government.
Taxes on businesses can get passed along to consumers, in whole or in part, even though it is only the business that writes the check to the government.
Payroll taxes or government-mandated employee benefits may be paid for directly by the employer, but these costs reduce the value of an employee to the employer. If these costs add up to $10,000, for example, employers bidding for labor may bid $10,000 less in salary than they would have otherwise.
As in other cases, who writes the checks does not tell you who really pays the costs, since the worker is now $10,000 worse off. The idea that you can single out one segment of society to be taxed or mandated, for the benefit of the rest of society, is reminiscent of a San Francisco automobile dealer's sign: "We cheat the other guy and pass the savings on to you."
The economy is not a zero-sum game where someone gains what others lose. The whole economy can lose when ill-considered policies gain political popularity and stifle economic growth.
People who do not own a single share of corporate stock can still lose big time when capital gains taxes are raised— not only because jobs can follow capital out of the country, but also because millions of working people's pension plans own corporate stock, and those people's retirement incomes will depend on the value of those stocks, which is reduced by capital gains taxes.
One of the biggest taxes is one that is not even called a tax — inflation. When the government spends money that it creates, it is transferring part of the value of your money to themselves. It is quiet taxation but often heavy taxation, falling on everyone, no matter how low their incomes might be.
By the end of the 20th century, a $100 bill would not buy as much as a $20 bill would buy in the middle of that century. For people who saved cash, inflation amounted to an 80 percent tax. For others, it was an 80 percent tax minus whatever cumulative interest or dividends they received on the money they invested.
Given the staggering cost of the government's financial bailouts, there is no way that Barack Obama's grandiose spending plans can be carried out without inflation.
When politicians start talking about taxing "the rich," remember the old saying: "Send not to know for whom the bell tolls. It tolls for thee."
A Perfect Storm
I'm kind of Thomas Sowell intensive today... but this guy is so spot on. He is the greatest philosopher of our time.
------------------------------
A perfect storm
By Thomas Sowell
Some elections are routine, some are important and some are historic. If Senator John McCain wins this election, it will probably go down in history as routine. But if Senator Barack Obama wins, it is more likely to be historic— and catastrophic.
Once the election is over, the glittering generalities of rhetoric and style will mean nothing. Everything will depend on performance in facing huge challenges, domestic and foreign.
Performance is where Barack Obama has nothing to show for his political career, either in Illinois or in Washington.
Policies that he proposes under the banner of "change" are almost all policies that have been tried repeatedly in other countries— and failed repeatedly in other countries.
Politicians telling businesses how to operate? That's been tried in countries around the world, especially during the second half of the 20th century. It has failed so often and so badly that even socialist and communist governments were freeing up their markets by the end of the century.
The economies of China and India began their take-off into high rates of growth when they got rid of precisely the kinds of policies that Obama is advocating for the United States under the magic mantra of "change."
Putting restrictions on international trade in order to save jobs at home? That was tried here with the Hawley-Smoot tariff during the Great Depression.
Unemployment was 9 percent when that tariff was passed to save jobs, but unemployment went up instead of down, and reached 25 percent before the decade was over.
Higher taxes to "spread the well around," as Obama puts it? The idea of redistributing wealth has turned into the reality of redistributing poverty, in countries where wealth has fled and the production of new wealth has been stifled by a lack of incentives.
Economic disasters, however, may pale by comparison with the catastrophe of Iran with nuclear weapons. Glib rhetoric about Iran being "a small country," as Obama called it, will be a bitter irony for Americans who will have to live in the shadow of a nuclear threat that cannot be deterred, as that of the Soviet Union could be, by the threat of a nuclear counter-attack.
Suicidal fanatics cannot be deterred. If they are willing to die and we are not, then we are at their mercy— and they have no mercy. Moreover, once they get nuclear weapons, that is a situation which cannot be reversed, either in this generation or in generations to come.
Is this the legacy we wish to leave our children and grandchildren, by voting on the basis of style and symbolism, rather than substance?
If Barack Obama thinks that such a catastrophe can be avoided by sitting down and talking with the leaders of Iran, then he is repeating a fallacy that helped bring on World War II.
In a nuclear age, one country does not have to send troops to occupy another country in order to conquer it. A country is conquered if another country can dictate who rules it, as the Mongols once did with Russia, and as Osama bin Laden tried to do when he threatened retaliation against places in the United States that voted for George W. Bush. But he didn't have nuclear weapons to back up that threat— yet.
America has never been a conquered country, so it may be very hard for most Americans even to conceive what that can mean. After France was conquered in 1940, it was reduced to turning over some of its own innocent citizens to the Nazis to kill, just because those citizens were Jewish.
Do you think our leaders wouldn't do that? Not even if the alternative was to see New York and Los Angeles go up in mushroom clouds? If I were Jewish, I wouldn't bet my life on that.
What the Middle East fanatics want is not just our resources or even our lives, but our humiliation first, in whatever sadistic ways they can think of. Their lust for humiliation has already been repeatedly demonstrated in their videotaped beheadings that find such an eager market in the Middle East.
None of this can be prevented by glib talk, but only by character, courage and decisive actions— none of which Barack Obama has ever demonstrated.
------------------------------
A perfect storm
By Thomas Sowell
Some elections are routine, some are important and some are historic. If Senator John McCain wins this election, it will probably go down in history as routine. But if Senator Barack Obama wins, it is more likely to be historic— and catastrophic.
Once the election is over, the glittering generalities of rhetoric and style will mean nothing. Everything will depend on performance in facing huge challenges, domestic and foreign.
Performance is where Barack Obama has nothing to show for his political career, either in Illinois or in Washington.
Policies that he proposes under the banner of "change" are almost all policies that have been tried repeatedly in other countries— and failed repeatedly in other countries.
Politicians telling businesses how to operate? That's been tried in countries around the world, especially during the second half of the 20th century. It has failed so often and so badly that even socialist and communist governments were freeing up their markets by the end of the century.
The economies of China and India began their take-off into high rates of growth when they got rid of precisely the kinds of policies that Obama is advocating for the United States under the magic mantra of "change."
Putting restrictions on international trade in order to save jobs at home? That was tried here with the Hawley-Smoot tariff during the Great Depression.
Unemployment was 9 percent when that tariff was passed to save jobs, but unemployment went up instead of down, and reached 25 percent before the decade was over.
Higher taxes to "spread the well around," as Obama puts it? The idea of redistributing wealth has turned into the reality of redistributing poverty, in countries where wealth has fled and the production of new wealth has been stifled by a lack of incentives.
Economic disasters, however, may pale by comparison with the catastrophe of Iran with nuclear weapons. Glib rhetoric about Iran being "a small country," as Obama called it, will be a bitter irony for Americans who will have to live in the shadow of a nuclear threat that cannot be deterred, as that of the Soviet Union could be, by the threat of a nuclear counter-attack.
Suicidal fanatics cannot be deterred. If they are willing to die and we are not, then we are at their mercy— and they have no mercy. Moreover, once they get nuclear weapons, that is a situation which cannot be reversed, either in this generation or in generations to come.
Is this the legacy we wish to leave our children and grandchildren, by voting on the basis of style and symbolism, rather than substance?
If Barack Obama thinks that such a catastrophe can be avoided by sitting down and talking with the leaders of Iran, then he is repeating a fallacy that helped bring on World War II.
In a nuclear age, one country does not have to send troops to occupy another country in order to conquer it. A country is conquered if another country can dictate who rules it, as the Mongols once did with Russia, and as Osama bin Laden tried to do when he threatened retaliation against places in the United States that voted for George W. Bush. But he didn't have nuclear weapons to back up that threat— yet.
America has never been a conquered country, so it may be very hard for most Americans even to conceive what that can mean. After France was conquered in 1940, it was reduced to turning over some of its own innocent citizens to the Nazis to kill, just because those citizens were Jewish.
Do you think our leaders wouldn't do that? Not even if the alternative was to see New York and Los Angeles go up in mushroom clouds? If I were Jewish, I wouldn't bet my life on that.
What the Middle East fanatics want is not just our resources or even our lives, but our humiliation first, in whatever sadistic ways they can think of. Their lust for humiliation has already been repeatedly demonstrated in their videotaped beheadings that find such an eager market in the Middle East.
None of this can be prevented by glib talk, but only by character, courage and decisive actions— none of which Barack Obama has ever demonstrated.
obama and the left
Obama and ‘The Left’
By Thomas Sowell
Although Senator Barack Obama has been allied with a succession of far left individuals over the years, that is only half the story. There are, after all, some honest and decent people on the left. But these have not been the ones that Obama has been allied with — allied, not merely "associated" with.
ACORN is not just an organization on the left. In addition to the voter frauds that ACORN has been involved in over the years, it is an organization with a history of thuggery, including going to bankers' homes to harass them and their families, in order to force banks to lend to people with low credit ratings.
Nor was Barack Obama's relationship with ACORN just a matter of once being their attorney long ago. More recently, he has directed hundreds of thousands of dollars their way. Money talks — and what it says is more important than a politician's rhetoric in an election year.
Jeremiah Wright and Michael Pfleger are not just people with left-wing opinions. They are reckless demagogues preaching hatred of the lowest sort — and both are recipients of money from Obama.
Bill Ayers is not just "an education professor" who has some left-wing views. He is a confessed and unrepentant terrorist, who more recently has put his message of resentment into the schools — an effort using money from a foundation that Obama headed.
Nor has the help all been one way. During the last debate between John McCain and Barack Obama, Senator McCain mentioned that Senator Obama's political campaign began in Bill Ayers' home. Obama immediately denied it and McCain had no real follow-up.
It was not this year's political campaign that Obama began in Bill Ayers' home but an earlier campaign for the Illinois state legislature. Barack Obama can match Bill Clinton in slickness at parsing words to evade accusations.
That is one way to get to the White House. But slickness with words is not going to help a president deal with either domestic economic crises or the looming dangers of a nuclear Iran.
People who think that talking points on this or that problem constitute "the real issues" that we should be talking about, instead of Obama's track record, ignore a very fundamental fact about representative government.
Representative government exists, in the first place, because we the voters cannot possibly have all the information necessary to make rational decisions on all the things that the government does. We cannot rule through polls or referendums. We must trust someone to represent us, especially as President of the United States.
Once we recognize this basic fact of representative government, then the question of how trustworthy a candidate is becomes a more urgent question than any of the so-called "real issues."
A candidate who spends two decades promoting polarization and then runs as a healer and uniter, rather than a divider, forfeits all trust by that fact alone.
If Ronald Reagan had attempted to run for President of the United States as a liberal, the media would have been all over him. His support for Barry Goldwater would have been in the headlines and in editorial denunciations across the country.
No way would he have been able to get away with using soothing words to suggest that he and Barry Goldwater were like ships that passed in the night.
If Barack Obama had run as what he has always been, rather than as what he has never been, then we could simply cast our votes based on whether or not we agree with what he has always stood for.
Some people take solace from the fact that Senator Obama has verbally shifted position on some issues, like drilling for oil or gun control, since this is supposed to show that he is "pragmatic" rather than ideological.
But political zig-zags show no such moderation as some seem to assume. Lenin zig-zagged and so did Hitler. Zig-zags may show no more than that someone is playing the public for fools.
Some people who see the fraud in what Obama is saying are amazed that others do not. But Obama knows what con men have long known, that their job is not to convince skeptics but to enable the gullible to continue to believe what they want to believe. He does that very well
By Thomas Sowell
Although Senator Barack Obama has been allied with a succession of far left individuals over the years, that is only half the story. There are, after all, some honest and decent people on the left. But these have not been the ones that Obama has been allied with — allied, not merely "associated" with.
ACORN is not just an organization on the left. In addition to the voter frauds that ACORN has been involved in over the years, it is an organization with a history of thuggery, including going to bankers' homes to harass them and their families, in order to force banks to lend to people with low credit ratings.
Nor was Barack Obama's relationship with ACORN just a matter of once being their attorney long ago. More recently, he has directed hundreds of thousands of dollars their way. Money talks — and what it says is more important than a politician's rhetoric in an election year.
Jeremiah Wright and Michael Pfleger are not just people with left-wing opinions. They are reckless demagogues preaching hatred of the lowest sort — and both are recipients of money from Obama.
Bill Ayers is not just "an education professor" who has some left-wing views. He is a confessed and unrepentant terrorist, who more recently has put his message of resentment into the schools — an effort using money from a foundation that Obama headed.
Nor has the help all been one way. During the last debate between John McCain and Barack Obama, Senator McCain mentioned that Senator Obama's political campaign began in Bill Ayers' home. Obama immediately denied it and McCain had no real follow-up.
It was not this year's political campaign that Obama began in Bill Ayers' home but an earlier campaign for the Illinois state legislature. Barack Obama can match Bill Clinton in slickness at parsing words to evade accusations.
That is one way to get to the White House. But slickness with words is not going to help a president deal with either domestic economic crises or the looming dangers of a nuclear Iran.
People who think that talking points on this or that problem constitute "the real issues" that we should be talking about, instead of Obama's track record, ignore a very fundamental fact about representative government.
Representative government exists, in the first place, because we the voters cannot possibly have all the information necessary to make rational decisions on all the things that the government does. We cannot rule through polls or referendums. We must trust someone to represent us, especially as President of the United States.
Once we recognize this basic fact of representative government, then the question of how trustworthy a candidate is becomes a more urgent question than any of the so-called "real issues."
A candidate who spends two decades promoting polarization and then runs as a healer and uniter, rather than a divider, forfeits all trust by that fact alone.
If Ronald Reagan had attempted to run for President of the United States as a liberal, the media would have been all over him. His support for Barry Goldwater would have been in the headlines and in editorial denunciations across the country.
No way would he have been able to get away with using soothing words to suggest that he and Barry Goldwater were like ships that passed in the night.
If Barack Obama had run as what he has always been, rather than as what he has never been, then we could simply cast our votes based on whether or not we agree with what he has always stood for.
Some people take solace from the fact that Senator Obama has verbally shifted position on some issues, like drilling for oil or gun control, since this is supposed to show that he is "pragmatic" rather than ideological.
But political zig-zags show no such moderation as some seem to assume. Lenin zig-zagged and so did Hitler. Zig-zags may show no more than that someone is playing the public for fools.
Some people who see the fraud in what Obama is saying are amazed that others do not. But Obama knows what con men have long known, that their job is not to convince skeptics but to enable the gullible to continue to believe what they want to believe. He does that very well
Thursday, October 9, 2008
do facts matter...?
from the true genius of our age, Thomas Sowell:
Abraham Lincoln said, "You can fool all the people some of the time and some of the people all the time, but you can't fool all the people all the time."
Unfortunately, the future of this country, as well as the fate of the Western world, depends on how many people can be fooled on election day, just a few weeks from now.
Right now, the polls indicate that a whole lot of the people are being fooled a whole lot of the time.
The current financial bailout crisis has propelled Barack Obama back into a substantial lead over John McCain— which is astonishing in view of which man and which party has had the most to do with bringing on this crisis.
It raises the question: Do facts matter? Or is Obama's rhetoric and the media's spin enough to make facts irrelevant?
Fact Number One: It was liberal Democrats, led by Senator Christopher Dodd and Congressman Barney Frank, who for years— including the present year— denied that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were taking big risks that could lead to a financial crisis.
It was Senator Dodd, Congressman Frank and other liberal Democrats who for years refused requests from the Bush administration to set up an agency to regulate Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
It was liberal Democrats, again led by Dodd and Frank, who for years pushed for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to go even further in promoting subprime mortgage loans, which are at the heart of today's financial crisis.
Alan Greenspan warned them four years ago. So did the Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers to the President. So did Bush's Secretary of the Treasury, five years ago.
Yet, today, what are we hearing? That it was the Bush administration "right-wing ideology" of "de-regulation" that set the stage for the financial crisis. Do facts matter?
We also hear that it is the free market that is to blame. But the facts show that it was the government that pressured financial institutions in general to lend to subprime borrowers, with such things as the Community Reinvestment Act and, later, threats of legal action by then Attorney General Janet Reno if the feds did not like the statistics on who was getting loans and who wasn't.
Is that the free market? Or do facts not matter?
Then there is the question of being against the "greed" of CEOs and for "the people." Franklin Raines made $90 million while he was head of Fannie Mae and mismanaging that institution into crisis.
Who in Congress defended Franklin Raines? Liberal Democrats, including Maxine Waters and the Congressional Black Caucus, at least one of whom referred to the "lynching" of Raines, as if it was racist to hold him to the same standard as white CEOs.
Even after he was deposed as head of Fannie Mae, Franklin Raines was consulted this year by the Obama campaign for his advice on housing!
The Washington Post criticized the McCain campaign for calling Raines an adviser to Obama, even though that fact was reported in the Washington Post itself on July 16th. The technicality and the spin here is that Raines is not officially listed as an adviser. But someone who advises is an adviser, whether or not his name appears on a letterhead.
The tie between Barack Obama and Franklin Raines is not all one-way. Obama has been the second-largest recipient of Fannie Mae's financial contributions, right after Senator Christopher Dodd.
But ties between Obama and Raines? Not if you read the mainstream media.
Facts don't matter much politically if they are not reported.
The media alone are not alone in keeping the facts from the public. Republicans, for reasons unknown, don't seem to know what it is to counter-attack. They deserve to lose.
But the country does not deserve to be put in the hands of a glib and cocky know-it-all, who has accomplished absolutely nothing beyond the advancement of his own career with rhetoric, and who has for years allied himself with a succession of people who have openly expressed their hatred of America.
Abraham Lincoln said, "You can fool all the people some of the time and some of the people all the time, but you can't fool all the people all the time."
Unfortunately, the future of this country, as well as the fate of the Western world, depends on how many people can be fooled on election day, just a few weeks from now.
Right now, the polls indicate that a whole lot of the people are being fooled a whole lot of the time.
The current financial bailout crisis has propelled Barack Obama back into a substantial lead over John McCain— which is astonishing in view of which man and which party has had the most to do with bringing on this crisis.
It raises the question: Do facts matter? Or is Obama's rhetoric and the media's spin enough to make facts irrelevant?
Fact Number One: It was liberal Democrats, led by Senator Christopher Dodd and Congressman Barney Frank, who for years— including the present year— denied that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were taking big risks that could lead to a financial crisis.
It was Senator Dodd, Congressman Frank and other liberal Democrats who for years refused requests from the Bush administration to set up an agency to regulate Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
It was liberal Democrats, again led by Dodd and Frank, who for years pushed for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to go even further in promoting subprime mortgage loans, which are at the heart of today's financial crisis.
Alan Greenspan warned them four years ago. So did the Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers to the President. So did Bush's Secretary of the Treasury, five years ago.
Yet, today, what are we hearing? That it was the Bush administration "right-wing ideology" of "de-regulation" that set the stage for the financial crisis. Do facts matter?
We also hear that it is the free market that is to blame. But the facts show that it was the government that pressured financial institutions in general to lend to subprime borrowers, with such things as the Community Reinvestment Act and, later, threats of legal action by then Attorney General Janet Reno if the feds did not like the statistics on who was getting loans and who wasn't.
Is that the free market? Or do facts not matter?
Then there is the question of being against the "greed" of CEOs and for "the people." Franklin Raines made $90 million while he was head of Fannie Mae and mismanaging that institution into crisis.
Who in Congress defended Franklin Raines? Liberal Democrats, including Maxine Waters and the Congressional Black Caucus, at least one of whom referred to the "lynching" of Raines, as if it was racist to hold him to the same standard as white CEOs.
Even after he was deposed as head of Fannie Mae, Franklin Raines was consulted this year by the Obama campaign for his advice on housing!
The Washington Post criticized the McCain campaign for calling Raines an adviser to Obama, even though that fact was reported in the Washington Post itself on July 16th. The technicality and the spin here is that Raines is not officially listed as an adviser. But someone who advises is an adviser, whether or not his name appears on a letterhead.
The tie between Barack Obama and Franklin Raines is not all one-way. Obama has been the second-largest recipient of Fannie Mae's financial contributions, right after Senator Christopher Dodd.
But ties between Obama and Raines? Not if you read the mainstream media.
Facts don't matter much politically if they are not reported.
The media alone are not alone in keeping the facts from the public. Republicans, for reasons unknown, don't seem to know what it is to counter-attack. They deserve to lose.
But the country does not deserve to be put in the hands of a glib and cocky know-it-all, who has accomplished absolutely nothing beyond the advancement of his own career with rhetoric, and who has for years allied himself with a succession of people who have openly expressed their hatred of America.
quote of the day:
I have never understood why it is "greed" to want to keep the money you have earned but not greed to want to take somebody else's money. - Thomas Sowell
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
bailout politics
Once again Thomas Sowell knocks the ball out of the park..
Some highlights:
Among the Congressional "leaders" invited to the White House to devise a bailout "solution" are the very people who have for years created the risks that have now come home to roost.
Five years ago, Barney Frank vouched for the "soundness" of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and said "I do not see" any "possibility of serious financial losses to the treasury."
Moreover, he said that the federal government has "probably done too little rather than too much to push them to meet the goals of affordable housing."
Earlier this year, Senator Christopher Dodd praised Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac for "riding to the rescue" when other financial institutions were cutting back on mortgage loans. He too said that they "need to do more" to help subprime borrowers get better loans.
In other words, Congressman Frank and Senator Dodd wanted the government to push financial institutions to lend to people they would not lend to otherwise, because of the risk of default.
The idea that politicians can assess risks better than people who have spent their whole careers assessing risks should have been so obviously absurd that no one would take it seriously.
If Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were free market institutions they could not have gotten away with their risky financial practices because no one would have bought their securities without the implicit assumption that the politicians would bail them out.
read the whole thing - the more Thomas Sowell you read, the smarter you will be.
Some highlights:
Among the Congressional "leaders" invited to the White House to devise a bailout "solution" are the very people who have for years created the risks that have now come home to roost.
Five years ago, Barney Frank vouched for the "soundness" of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and said "I do not see" any "possibility of serious financial losses to the treasury."
Moreover, he said that the federal government has "probably done too little rather than too much to push them to meet the goals of affordable housing."
Earlier this year, Senator Christopher Dodd praised Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac for "riding to the rescue" when other financial institutions were cutting back on mortgage loans. He too said that they "need to do more" to help subprime borrowers get better loans.
In other words, Congressman Frank and Senator Dodd wanted the government to push financial institutions to lend to people they would not lend to otherwise, because of the risk of default.
The idea that politicians can assess risks better than people who have spent their whole careers assessing risks should have been so obviously absurd that no one would take it seriously.
If Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were free market institutions they could not have gotten away with their risky financial practices because no one would have bought their securities without the implicit assumption that the politicians would bail them out.
read the whole thing - the more Thomas Sowell you read, the smarter you will be.
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
quote of the day:
Much of the social history of the Western world over the past three decades has involved replacing what worked with what sounded good. In area after area - crime, education, housing, race relations - the situation has gotten worse after the bright new theories were put into operation. The amazing thing is that this history of failure and disaster has neither discouraged the social engineers nor discredited them. - Thomas Sowell
Monday, September 22, 2008
the vision of the left
ok, so i have a man crush on thomas sowell - but he has such a command of the philosophy that is in my head, it's impossibly to deny his genius :D
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The Vision of the Left
Conservatives, as well as liberals, would undoubtedly be happier living in the kind of world envisioned by the left.
Very few people have either a vested interest or an ideological preference for a world in which there are many inequalities.
Even fewer would prefer a world in which vast sums of money have to be devoted to military defense, when so much benefit could be produced if those resources were directed into medical research instead.
It is hardly surprising that young people prefer the political left. The only reason for rejecting the left's vision is that the real world in which we live is very different from the world that the left perceives today or envisions for tomorrow.
Most of us learn that from experience — but experience is precisely what the young are lacking.
"Experience" is often just a fancy word for the mistakes that we belatedly realized we were making, only after the realities of the world made us pay a painful price for being wrong.
Those who are insulated from that pain — whether by being born into affluence or wealth, or shielded by the welfare state, or insulated by tenure in academia or in the federal judiciary — can remain in a state of perpetual immaturity.
Individuals can refuse to grow up, especially when surrounded in their work and in their social life by similarly situated and like-minded people.
Even people born into normal lives, but who have been able through talent or luck to escape into a world of celebrity and wealth, can likewise find themselves in the enviable position of being able to choose whether to grow up or not.
Those of us who can recall what it was like to be an adolescent must know that growing up can be a painful transition from the sheltered world of childhood.
No matter how much we may have wanted adult freedom, there was seldom the same enthusiasm for taking on the burdens of adult responsibilities and having to weigh painful trade-offs in a world that hemmed us in on all sides, long after we were liberated from parental restrictions.
Should we be surprised that the strongest supporters of the political left are found among the young, academics, limousine liberals with trust funds, media celebrities and federal judges?
These are hardly Karl Marx's proletarians, who were supposed to bring on the revolution. The working class are in fact today among those most skeptical about the visions of the left.
Ordinary working class people did not lead the stampede to Barack Obama, even before his disdain for them slipped out in unguarded moments.
The agenda of the left is fine for the world that they envision as existing today and the world they want to create tomorrow.
That is a world not hemmed in on all sides by inherent constraints and the painful trade-offs that these constraints imply. Theirs is a world where there are attractive, win-win "solutions" in place of those ugly trade-offs in the world that the rest of us live in.
Theirs is a world where we can just talk to opposing nations and work things out, instead of having to pour tons of money into military equipment to keep them at bay. The left calls this "change" but in fact it is a set of notions that were tried out by the Western democracies in the 1930s — and which led to the most catastrophic war in history.
For those who bother to study history, it was precisely the opposite policies in the 1980s — pouring tons of money into military equipment — which brought the Cold War and its threat of nuclear annihilation to an end.
The left fought bitterly against that "arms race" which in fact lifted the burden of the Soviet threat, instead of leading to war as the elites claimed.
Personally, I wish Ronald Reagan could have talked the Soviets into being nicer, instead of having to spend all that money. Only experience makes me skeptical about that "kinder and gentler" approach and the vision behind it.
----------------------------------------------
The Vision of the Left
Conservatives, as well as liberals, would undoubtedly be happier living in the kind of world envisioned by the left.
Very few people have either a vested interest or an ideological preference for a world in which there are many inequalities.
Even fewer would prefer a world in which vast sums of money have to be devoted to military defense, when so much benefit could be produced if those resources were directed into medical research instead.
It is hardly surprising that young people prefer the political left. The only reason for rejecting the left's vision is that the real world in which we live is very different from the world that the left perceives today or envisions for tomorrow.
Most of us learn that from experience — but experience is precisely what the young are lacking.
"Experience" is often just a fancy word for the mistakes that we belatedly realized we were making, only after the realities of the world made us pay a painful price for being wrong.
Those who are insulated from that pain — whether by being born into affluence or wealth, or shielded by the welfare state, or insulated by tenure in academia or in the federal judiciary — can remain in a state of perpetual immaturity.
Individuals can refuse to grow up, especially when surrounded in their work and in their social life by similarly situated and like-minded people.
Even people born into normal lives, but who have been able through talent or luck to escape into a world of celebrity and wealth, can likewise find themselves in the enviable position of being able to choose whether to grow up or not.
Those of us who can recall what it was like to be an adolescent must know that growing up can be a painful transition from the sheltered world of childhood.
No matter how much we may have wanted adult freedom, there was seldom the same enthusiasm for taking on the burdens of adult responsibilities and having to weigh painful trade-offs in a world that hemmed us in on all sides, long after we were liberated from parental restrictions.
Should we be surprised that the strongest supporters of the political left are found among the young, academics, limousine liberals with trust funds, media celebrities and federal judges?
These are hardly Karl Marx's proletarians, who were supposed to bring on the revolution. The working class are in fact today among those most skeptical about the visions of the left.
Ordinary working class people did not lead the stampede to Barack Obama, even before his disdain for them slipped out in unguarded moments.
The agenda of the left is fine for the world that they envision as existing today and the world they want to create tomorrow.
That is a world not hemmed in on all sides by inherent constraints and the painful trade-offs that these constraints imply. Theirs is a world where there are attractive, win-win "solutions" in place of those ugly trade-offs in the world that the rest of us live in.
Theirs is a world where we can just talk to opposing nations and work things out, instead of having to pour tons of money into military equipment to keep them at bay. The left calls this "change" but in fact it is a set of notions that were tried out by the Western democracies in the 1930s — and which led to the most catastrophic war in history.
For those who bother to study history, it was precisely the opposite policies in the 1980s — pouring tons of money into military equipment — which brought the Cold War and its threat of nuclear annihilation to an end.
The left fought bitterly against that "arms race" which in fact lifted the burden of the Soviet threat, instead of leading to war as the elites claimed.
Personally, I wish Ronald Reagan could have talked the Soviets into being nicer, instead of having to spend all that money. Only experience makes me skeptical about that "kinder and gentler" approach and the vision behind it.
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