Seeking Democracy in America: Vote 99

Seeking Democracy in America: Vote 99

This bogspot commendably seeks to stamp out corruption in Congress and work for the 99% instead of handing out favors to the 1% elite that are in bed with the Wall Street and Washington elites. Sound Good? Unfortunately, the writers seem to believe that the way to help the 99% is for the elites in government to hand out favors to the 99% and "to stimulate spending." Thus, a misplaced faith in government continues unabated. Instead of scaling back government, and allowing the entrepreneurs to do their thing, the proposed reform efforts are aimed at merely redirecting the failed government programs that got us in the present mess. It is so easy to state good intentions, but rarely do we see the intentions matched by actions that will gain those worthy ends.

Another Scientist Ignored--Political Correctness Strangles MSM

The Mainstream Media (MSM) is so degraded that I have recently taken to watching the Newsbusters site which reports news from a more liberated viewpoint. Plus, it features a comedy-video by Jodie Miller that happily and cryptically skewers today's political elite. Tuesday's edition was highlighted by Tom Blumer's article about Global Warming--reporting on a recent presentation by MIT Professor Richard Lindzen before the House of Commons. The professor brings a lifetime of expertise in atmospheric conditions and was introduced as "one of the world's greatest atmospheric physicists" by James Delingpole of the UK Telegraph.

Professor Lindzen remarked that "I will simply try to clarify what the debate over climate change is really about. It most certainly is not about whether climate is changing: it always is. It is not about whether CO2 is increasing: it clearly is. It is not about whether the increase in CO2, by itself, will lead to some warming: it should. The debate is simply over the matter of how much warming the increase in CO2 can lead to, and the connection of such warming to the innumerable claimed catastrophes.

. . .The evidence is that the increase in CO2 will lead to very little warming, and that the connection of this minimal warming (or even significant warming) to the purported catastrophes is also minimal. The arguments on which the catastrophic claims are made are extremely weak – and commonly acknowledged as such. They are sometimes overtly dishonest.

... Given the above, the notion that alarming warming is ‘settled science’ should be offensive to any sentient individual, though to be sure, the above is hardly emphasized by the IPCC.

... Perhaps we should stop accepting the term, ‘skeptic.’ Skepticism implies doubts about a plausible proposition. Current global warming alarm hardly represents a plausible proposition. Twenty years of repetition and escalation of claims does not make it more plausible. Quite the contrary, the failure to improve the case over 20 years makes the case even less plausible as does the evidence from climategate and other instances of overt cheating."

Professor Lindzen thus added one more expert opinion that the hysteria over GW has been grossly overblown. And Tom Blumer points out that Professor Lindzen's comment have gone virtually unreported in the U.S. establishment press. Indeed, Blumer's search for the professor's name at the Associated Press's main national site came up empty!

Read more: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/tom-blumer/2012/02/28/richard-who-ap-nyt-others-ignore-uks-lindzen-he-pwns-global-warming-alar#ixzz1nmZ2bx1e

Is President Obama to the Right or Left of Machiavelli?

It is commonly believed that Niccolo Machiavelli, the Renaissance philosopher and political advisor to the Medici Princes of Florence, was a scheming and devious man. The adjective "Machiavellian" in Webster's New World Dictionary is defined as "crafty, deceitful . . .characterized by the political principles and methods of expediency and duplicity set forth in Machiavelli's book, 'The Prince.'" However, when I read the book, most of Machiavelli's advice concerned the need of the leader to keep the good will of the people, resist the elites' demand for privilege, and not interfere with the common people. Such advice could well be given to today's leaders who constantly interfere with the people's rights, their independence, and their pocketbooks.

Machiavelli warned his Prince about excess oppression of the people: "A Prince sooner becomes hated by being rapacious and by interfering with the property and with the women of his subjects, than in any other way. From these, therefore, he should abstain. For so long as neither their property nor their honor is touched, the mass of mankind live contentedly, and the Prince has only to cope with the ambition of a few. . ." But our President ignores these admonitions and instead bails out the "few" on Wall Street and loads the people with regulations, mandates, and taxes. He talks democracy, but practices fascism, so he is to Niccolo's right!

Machiavelli also gave sound advice on budgetary matters: He advised the Prince to husband his country's resources and avoid the need to load down his subjects with taxes: "A Prince of a liberal disposition will consume his whole substance (in sumptuous display) and, after all, be obliged, if he would maintain his reputation for liberality, to burden his subjects with extraordinary taxes, and to resort to confiscations and all the other shifts whereby money is raised. But in this way he becomes hateful to his subjects, and growing impoverished is held in little esteem by many." Clearly, one of our President's shortcomings is that he is a bigger deficit spender than anything Machiavelli would have tolerated.

Now, it is true that Machiavelli also suggests that a Prince, in order to maintain stability, must on occasion be aggressive, cunning, and willing to change direction; that because of the vicissitudes of leadership, and the many dissidents who would overthrow or undermine his administration, the competent Prince cannot be above fighting fire with fire. Sometimes that requires some deception, dissembling, and heartlessness. Such realism sounds completely practical to me, and does not in my opinion make Machiavelli an evil man. Knowing that most intellectuals and academics almost universally demand perfection in their design or evaluation of political and social issues , I can see why they denigrate the wise and balanced advice of Niccolo M. When you seek perfection in human affairs, no system will prove satisfactory, and you will seek in vain.

The failed "theory" of utopian socialism calls for perfect equality and happiness-- and from that viewpoint, Machiavelli's acceptance of an occasional need to play hardball appears to socialist dreamers as both deceitful and immoral. But, let's look at how we are governed. In order to get ObamaCare passed by Congress, the administration gave huge exceptions to some to gain their vote. The supporters who are contributing a billion dollars to Obama's reelection are primarily the nobles--the elite that Machiavelli warned Princes to avoid: "The demands of the nobles cannot be satisfied with credit to the Prince, nor without injury to others, while those of the people well may, the aim of the people being more honorable than that of the nobles, the latter seeking to oppress, the former not to be oppressed.." President Obama ignored this counsel, and instead, went for the Bailouts and Stimulus packages which were rife with payola to special friends and supporters among the financial elites of America. The sad truth is that the utopian socialists seek a perfect and unattainable world, and to force their theories into practice, they end by oppressing the people and favoring the few--the 1%'s who provide the money for electioneering.

My reading of Machiavelli indicates that Americans would be better off and freer if the President followed the advice of Niccolo Machiavelli than the precepts of his community organizer background. The academics and the Leftist radicals have given Niccolo a bad rap and are actually to his right in favoring the all-powerful State and its elites with their constant regulation, oppression, and taxation of the common people.

PRESS RELEASE --- march 15, 2011 --- Now Being Published -- from Lost Nation Books

WASTED GENIUS -- The Sequel to Common Genius

Learn why Darwin is so irrelevant when dealing with human beings. Discover why all children, of all races, everywhere on earth, are truly born equal, possess comparable potential, and must be accorded equal opportunity, nurturing, and respect.

Wasted Genius takes a new look at how we raise our children and shows the harm done by the inflated role given to test scores and school grades. Based on recent discoveries on how our minds develop, the author explains the relative importance of the four factors that shape each person: human nature, the environment, genes, and free will.

Greene has coined the term “TCQ” -- a new yardstick to measure all of a child’s abilities--capabilities that go beyond IQ, EQ, and people skills--aptitudes that our schools and colleges are neglecting. Current standards reward “test-taking” ability while neglecting the real objective of schools--to teach everyone the basic skills required to survive in the modern world.

For More Information, or to order the book, go to

http://www.thewastedgenius.com/

THE FALLACIOUS REASONING OF ABSTRACT THINKERS

Margaret Tuchman's fine book The March of Folly reveals mankind’s propensity to follow disastrous policies to their most adverse ends. Her book, written in 1984, is about some of history's greatest blunders, and apparently has gone unnoticed by today's leaders for folly still permeates the world's capitols and the minds of those in power. The first decade of the new millennium, rather than showing a return to any measure of common sense, has indicated a continuation of folly among our leadership elites on the grandest scale.

In my new book, Wasted Genius, I attribute much of such folly to the rise of a new Ruling Class that is distinguished by their love of abstract concepts and theoretical reasoning which they arrogantly maintain is superior to the practical reasoning and simple common sense employed by the majority of Americans. Angelo Codevilla has written about how this new Ruling Class elite stands in stark contrast to the "Country Class" which includes most of the hard-working, less educated mass of common people. And, yet it is that country class of workers who make America run while the elites merely advise, criticize, commentate, and then initiate the disastrous policies that are bringing America to its knees and bankrupting the future financial well being of our children.

Our major problem comes from a previously unrecognized mental and moral deficiency in our intellectual elite, now exposed for the first time--for details go to http://www.thewastedgenius.com/

This new ruling class has been created by an educational establishment that maintains an almost religious Faith in the supreme importance of test scores and school grades. School policy and college selection has become a slave to the unfounded notion that IQ and SAT tests indicate an individual's worth. In fact, they merely reward abstract thinkers and hold back the practical minds needed to restore America's success story.

The tests are the darlings of academics and school teachers who like the ease of use and their seemingly scientific basis. Not to mention that a theory "proving" the stupidity of their students relieves the teaching establishment of responsibility for results. This long-standing infatuation with tests has been further cultivated by intellectual wanna-be’s who enjoy feelings of superiority, even if such pride is based simply on a good memory, a quickness with words, and well developed test-taking skills. And yet such academic virtuosity represents only a fraction of a person's total competency. We are neglecting the education of many superior students that possess more of several other essential cognitive abilities unmeasured by today's favored tests.

Because Americans have been hood-winked into respecting academic grades and abstract thought, and subordinate their visceral common sense to the apparent expertise of over-educated theorists, we have become dominated by a ruling elite that may appear very “bright” but is, in fact, subject to the worst kinds of folly. If there was a tipping point to this victory of abstractions over sense it may have been during the administration of Woodrow Wilson, the very revered and intellectual Princeton professor who (count these follies!) managed to launch us into “the war to end all wars,” invigorate the Progressive movement of big government, establish the IRS and Federal Reserve System, dream up the impotent League of Nations, and sign off on a Treaty that so crippled Germany that a subsequent World War became inevitable. No wonder the egg-heads loved him--he created a future for all the bright kids that didn't want to get jobs in the real workplaces of America.

Only an intellectual possesses the conceptualizing flexibility to believe in “a war to end all wars.” Similarly, it is primarily a mind crippled by abstractions that finds sense in such lofty phrases as “a war on poverty,” a war “to spread democracy,” a mantra about "hope and change," or foreign aid programs that give billions of dollars to dictators to “help” third world countries.

We currently are hearing an impossibly nuanced explanation about why our planes are bombing people in Libya--the administration claims to be "walking a fine line over the end game of the assault." It is avoiding for now any appearance that it aims to take out Gadhafi or help the rebels oust him, instead limiting its stated goals to protecting civilians, notwithstanding the fact that our bombers are killing many of those they seek to "protect."

We have just recently seen the folly in domestic affairs where our leaders in Washington took on a mission impossible--to boost the commendable goal of home ownership by subsidizing mortgages to individuals with little prospect of ever repaying the loans. Of course, this folly may have been perpetuated more by cupidity than by stupidity because the Ruling Class insiders stood to benefit financially by the conspiracy between bankers and politicians who rode the bubble in real estate to obscene profits and then dumped off the losses with securitized packages of worthless paper to unsuspecting investors, and ended by bailing out any favored insiders who got caught holding the worthless paper they had not yet succeeded in dumping on the public.

Only those with the cognitive agility to take great leaps of conceptual fancy will advance those kinds of incredible ideas as national policy and then forge ahead, convinced of the soundness of their reasoning, confident of the veracity of their theoretical justifications, enthusiastic with a confidence undiminished by any lack of positive results, oblivious or in denial concerning the adverse unintended consequences of their actions, but still managing to line their own pockets through it all.

Such persistence shows that this well-connected elite is empowered by an intellectual arrogance, a conviction that their critics are wrong and mean-spirited, and that the sheer power of their own intellect anoints them with the right to profit and rule over the common people, the Country Party to use Professor Codevilla's words, or what we have historically referred to as grass roots America.

Those are the kinds of minds that have usurped power in America. It is their new way of thinking that has reduced our leadership to community organizers, agitators, Wall Street speculators, and other self aggrandizing groups representing, not the ordinary people of this country, but the insiders concentrated on ripping off for themselves whatever they can get away with.

Unfortunately, many well meaning voters are in thrall to the supposed expertise of these frauds. And many voters are swayed by the promises offered, whether they be public employees, farmers, union members, grant recipients, subsidized businesses, or all the recipients of government hand-outs. Out of this muddled blend of self-interest and self-righteous compassion for others, half the country supports this elite's call for expanded government bureaucracies--even if the consequences bear constant witness to their folly.

Why Does Our "Naive" President Surround Himself with Wall Street Insiders!

Paul Farrell has an excellent article on The Wall Street Website where he summarizes the Rolling Stones reporter, Matt Tabbi, who pulls no punches about who was to blame for the recent financial melt-down that wiped out the saving of many Americans. See "Four Time Bombs that will Blow up Wall Street," March 1, 2011

"During the S&L crisis two decades ago America had a backbone, indicted 3,800 executives and bankers. Today’s leaders have no backbone. Besides jail time won’t reform the darkness consuming Wall Street’s soul. We’re all asleep, in denial about the moral crisis facing America. Yes, we need a new revolution.

"Jail time? We’ve heard that many times before. Journalists have been beating that dead horse for three years. Jailing CEOs made sense in early 2009. But our naïve president missed that opportunity, instead surrounded himself with Wall Street insiders as Bush did with Blankfein’s predecessor. Trojan Horses manipulating a Congress filled with clueless Dems mismanaging tired Keynesian theories.

"Taibbi got it right: Washington’s error was in protecting Wall Street’s billion-dollar crooks when they should have been prosecuting CEOs for criminal behavior in getting us into the 2008 mess. So today, the political statute-of-limitations has run. Jail solution is wishful thinking, like praying to the tooth fairy for a miracle. Time for action. Time for a revolution on Wall Street."

The article can be seen in full at
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/four-time-bombs-that-will-blow-up-wall-street-2011-03-01?pagenumber=2

The fact that this important news comes from Rolling Syones and not the mainstream media indicates part of the problem: The American public is being perpetually misled by an elite group of leading politicains, financiers, and the media. But Tibbi reports the real stuff: "Put Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein in jail for six months, and all this will stop, all over Wall Street and America, a former congressional aide tells Matt Taibbi in his latest Rolling Stone attack, “Why Isn’t Wall Street in Jail? Financial crooks brought down the world’s economy — but the feds are doing more to protect them than to prosecute them.

"Taibbi’s right, everyone knows Wall Street’s run by a bunch of dictators who are doing more damage to democracy and capitalism than North Africa’s dictators. But jail the CEOs of Goldman, Citi, B. of A. or my old firm Morgan Stanley? Too late."

It is incomprehensible why Obama keeps Goldman Sachs officials heading the United States Treasury Department and bails out the biggest wrong-doers on Wall Street. His administration paid out hundreds of billions of dollars to bail out the perps. Of course they were all major contributors to his campaign coffers. Why else would a Democrat, a self-described man of trhe people, sleep with the enemy?

Is Obama Fit To Be an International Policeman?

I have always enjoyed the old line about how even a stopped clock is right twice a day. After all, in view of the recent government induced mortgage melt-down and the ongoing trillion-dollar fiscal disaster that is our government's budget, one can seriously question whether our fearless leaders in the nation's Capitol are "right" even once a day!

Which brings up a point from today's international news: Libya's dictator Gadhafi, who has a reputation for deceit surpassing perhaps even that of our own politicians, was dead on right today about one thing. He questioned our own president Obama's right to meddle in the affairs of other nations.

For one thing, Gadhafi said Obama was certainly misinformed about the situation in Libya and should stick to his own problems at home. Knowing what we know about the unreliability of our CIA and State Department, it is a fair bet that Obama is misinformed and has no "exit plan" for what will come after Gadhafi. Bad mouthing Gadhafi and freezing his assets may just allow Islamic extremists more opportunity to take over. And why is Obama now complaining about Gadhafi's human rights violations that have been going on throughout Obama's various terms in office? Is Obama just indulging in a case of piggy pile on? And for what purpose?

For another thing, and, with a real sense of sound geo-politik, as well as international law, Gadhafi reminded the ABC reporters today that "America is not the international police of the world." There we can see the stopped clock at high noon, right-on with a truth that has escaped most American foreign policy experts--we are not so Holy or brilliant that we can tell everyone else what to do. And even if we were, would it pay to antagonize everyone with our self righteous bossiness?

Obama projects the same arrogance as the far left intellectuals who always see fit to tell even us Americans what we can and cannot do. Give Gadhafi credit--he called Obama out about his sophmoric meddling in foreign affairs. If there is a reason we are not loved around the world, the blame maybe should be born by the intellectual theorists that run our foreign policy as if they were Gods on high. Results in Libya may show they have clay feet.

Obama's Money Tree and Washington's Ponzi Schemes

February 21, 2011

The latest news out of Washington indicates that our fearless leaders have not let the recent financial meltdown lessen their affection for Ponzi-type schemes. It may be recalled that the 2009 stimulus act saw the federal government lending the most bankrupt state governments billions of dollars to postpone their imminent financial crises. The loans were interest free for two years and "easily" financed by the feds because they can just print money as needed!

However, on this past December 31 the two years were up, 30 states owed $42 billion, with interest now accruing, and their resident businesses faced with increased mandated federal payroll taxes to help repay the loans. It appeared that the Ponzi scheme might unravel. The states are too broke to make any substantial repayment, and the Administration is leery of hiking taxes on the beleaguered business community. So, a tough and courageous decision was called for. Guess what we got?

The apparent "solution" will apparently come in President Obama's 2012 budget where he will propose waiving the tax increase and postponing the interest charges for two more years. Presumably he could also lend them more money and defer repayment till some future undesignated date. Thus the money tree at the Federal Reserve takes on the State deficits as well as the federal deficits. The problem is thus postponed, true to its Ponzian roots, and the escalating debt will only come home to roost at some future time.

We can only hope that some intrepid, brilliant, and unscrupulous Goldman Sachs employee will accumulate these "sub-prime" notes, securitize them, and sell them to the Chinese. Otherwise they will not go away quietly.

Is The Commerce Department Becoming the EPA?

Recent events have revealed the huge disparity between what our leaders say in speeches and what they actually do behind closed doors. While president Obama has been giving speeches about helping business, removing restrictions, and encouraging entrepreneurs, his appointments within the federal bureaucracy are doing the opposite.

The New Bedford Standard Times featured an editorial today that illustrated how even such a Democratic stronghold is getting the shaft from the Obama administration. Columnist Jack Spillane directed a spotlight on the Department of Commerce and its National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, documenting how “the Commerce Department‘s NOAA has become a wholesale arm of the environmental lobby under Obama.” He writes, “Unbelievably, the president appointed Jane Lubchenco, the former vice-chair of the Environmental Defense Fund, to head all of NOAA.” Spillane observes that the Commerce Department’s mission is to help business, but that it is not staffed by people from the aerospace, ocean, or marine business or scientific communities, but instead by extreme environmentalists.

Spillane reports that Obama has “packed the Commerce Department to the gills with former lobbyists for the environmental community.“ And, he gives the evidence--it isn‘t just the top job: Lubchenco’s director of policy and senior advisor is Sally Yozell, the former director of Marine Conservation for the Nature Conservancy’s eastern region. And her second in command, Monica Medina, is a former advisor for the Pew Environmental Group, a former lawyer for the EDF, and former head of the Justice Department‘s Environmental Division.

And, it gets worse: Monica Medina is married to Joe Biden’s Chief of Staff, Ron Klain, who was before that chief of Staff to environmental-whacko Al Gore. Columnist Spillane calls it a revolving door that has allowed the environmental lobby to become entrenched in every nook of our government, and blames “Obama himself who stacked NOAA with the powerful environmentalists who, by their own words, want to put small business fisherman out of business.” He also points out that Senator John Kerry “has certainly not tried very hard to stop it,“ because his primary allegiance is to his rich wife Teresa who uses her tax exempt Foundation‘s millions to bankroll most of the big national environmental groups.

It is a fair bet that all those appointees are not just activist members of the environmental movement, but have a few other things in common. They all probably were top students with high IQ’s and good college records. And their combined actual business experience is probably next to nothing. They are the well-educated, abstract-thinking, new Ruling Class that has taken over the levers of power in Washington. They love complex theories that don’t work and deficits that bankrupt us. They promote themselves to the best colleges and jobs by shilling their big brains. I call it “A conspiracy of the Egg-Heads” and it is destroying America.

Obama Blames Big Business and Lobbyists---what else is new?

In his State of The Union Speech, President Obama surprisingly called for a reduction of corporate tax rates. Such a reduction would be a much needed reform, and including it in the big speech is a clear indication that the president has turned to the center in anticipation of a difficult re-election race in 2012. However, whatever his purposes may be, the change in tax policy would help America, and we can only say, It is about time.



Conservatives have been pointing to the high corporate rate for decades as harmful to America's economy. But, all we have heard from the Left is their attack on "big business" for having cruelly exported jobs to third world countries and thereby creating massive unemployment in the American industrial heartland--Thus, the Left criticizes big business for moving operations overseas, without seeing that it is America's high tax laws that drive the companies out. As usual, the problem is the government, and the flight of industry is largely caused by bad tax policy, and yet they blame the companies for reacting in a totally logical and sensible way to those policies.



The same "blame big business" approach was re-affirmed yesterday by the President in his related remarks about having to close loopholes in order to pay for the corporate tax cuts. He explained the need to close those loopholes by stating: "Over the years, a parade of lobbyists has rigged the tax code to benefit particular companies and industries."



Now, we all know that lobbyists do not pass laws or change IRS regulations--such actions can only be taken by Congress. All the loopholes, which are just one of the many horrors of our Tax Code, are the work solely of Congress. Lobbyists may seek benefits, and we know they have to maintain continual lobbying efforts just to minimize destructive new taxes and regulations that would impair their ability to do business, but they can only ask--the politicians do the rest. Both the flight of industry overseas and the loopholes are caused by the actions of our elected government officials. It thus becomes clear, but not surprising, that the president is blaming others for his own harmful policy.