George Phillips's Loss Is Ulster County's Loss

Joe Bubel has an excellent post on his blog. Joe notes:

"Our media-driven society accepted Obama by word only, and that is enough for them. And, there just aren't enough people left, who expect more than just words, to counter the droves of 10 second sound byte Obama followers at the polls. Time will only tell, if Obama can deliver the Christmas he promised.

"There will be those who will gloat. There are those who say to me, and others like me on the blog world, we are a blue county in a blue state, time for your 'kind' to move...So I say, I have the FREEDOM to live where I Like. You, however, are tied to where the government can take care of you, or you need to bring the government to you, which you have been doing quite successfully in Ulster County."

Sadly, Ulster County and the rest of New York's 22nd Congressional District has overwhelmingly voted another term for Comrade Maurice Hinchey, Congressman Price Control, who advocated price controls on gasoline earlier this year and never saw a socialist system he didn't wish to emulate. The 22nd district is gerrymandered to include Binghamton, Ithaca, New Paltz, Woodstock, Kingston and Poughkeepsie. They managed to slice in more than a half dozen colleges, Vassar, Marist, two SUNYs (New Paltz and Binghamton)and Cornell, plus Woodstock, home to trust left wing trust fund babies and rock stars. George Phillips mounted a noble campaign but lacked support from Ulster County's Democratic media and 2001 invasion of New York City liberals. The Obama-McCain debacle contributed as well.

Let us hope that George continues his noble efforts in pursuit of this Congressional seat.

Citizens' Welfare Preferable to Bankers'

Contrairimairi sent me an e-mail from TJ Birkheimer, part of which is copied below. Here's an alternative idea along the same lines as Birkheimer's. Rather than bail out failing banks and insurance companies, combine and liquidate them, spinning off the non-performing mortgages and going after all current and former officers for restitution.

Break the financial institutions' assets up into 250 parts, producing 250 smaller banks and insurance companies. Choose the CEOs of the new banks and insurance companies randomly from the Yahoo! people search page. Subsidize the 250 new banks to the degree necessary to make them solvent. Use the remainder of the $750 billion bailout money to provide unemployment insurance to any employees who lose their jobs and need to be on the dole.

This plan would have several advantages. First, by hiring new CEOs out of the phone book, more competent management would be obtained than through the firms' HR systems.

Second, instead of a few large firms that are too difficult for their present managers to run, there will be 250 smaller, more nimble firms with better leadership.

Third, rather than subsidize mismanaged businesses, citizens' welfare would be directly protected.

In addition, the public might consider whether commercial banking ought to be phased out and replaced by Savings & Loan (non-fractional reserve) style banking. The public ought to look at the root cause of this problem, the Federal Reserve Bank, and abolish it in place of a gold standard.

Progressivism is so dominant that public discussion about nonsensical cries of "depression" and "crisis" proceeds on silly assumptions.

Here is an excerpt from Birkenmeier's e-mail:

>Hi Pals,
I'm against the $85,000,000,000.00 bailout of AIG.
Instead, I'm in favor of giving $85,000,000,000 to America in a "We Deserve It Dividend".
As for AIG - liquidate it.
Sell off its parts.
Let American General go back to being American General.
Sell off the real estate.
Let the private sector bargain hunters cut it up and clean it up.
Birk

T. J. Birkenmeier, A Creative Guy & Citizen of the Republic