US in Extremists' Hands: Ron and Rand Paul the Only Moderates in Washington

I was in the gym this evening and watched CNN for a few minutes.  In that few minutes I heard the phrase "Republican extremists" more than half a dozen times.  I do not consider CNN a news channel, but even for Democratic propagandists the shrill advocacy sounded extreme. 

The American government is in the hands of extremists.  Spending has increased by 50% in less than a decade, yet the cranks in Washington and their cheer leaders in the legacy media believe that everything that the federal government spends money on, from trillions in subsidies to Wall Street, to billions in subsidies to failed automobile firms, to hundreds of millions in pointless government bureaucracies, is essential. 

John Tate of Ron Paul 2012 just e-mailed:

As Congress and the White House cut another "deal" to benefit their Wall Street buddies and further empower Big Government-loving lobbyists, Ron Paul has once again strongly condemned the status quo and promised to implement legitimate changes if elected President.

I hope you'll take a moment to read his statement below and then pass it on to your family and friends to show them that Ron Paul is the leader we need in the White House.

After you read the statement, let your representative and senators know you support Ron Paul's call for fiscal sanity.

Tell them to reject this latest sellout and instead join Dr. Paul in fighting to balance the budget and return government to its constitutional limits.

You can reach them by calling the Capitol Hill switchboard at (202) 224-3121.

And you can help us recruit millions of more voters for Dr. Paul by contributing today at www.RonPaul2012.com.  Every dollar goes toward growing our campaign, spreading Ron Paul's message of freedom, and winning this race.

A few days ago Matt Hawes of the Campaign for Liberty urged against the GOP's agreement on the debt ceiling:

Why is the GOP leadership scrambling for support? Because they know the American people are outraged at yet another surrender and are putting historic pressure on Republican members to reject any business as usual proposal that will keep our country running full steam ahead toward economic disaster.

I hope you contact your representative today with one simple message. When threatened to “get in line” to support the statist quo and presented with the leadership’s plan today, tell them to just say “no.”

No to phony deals.

No to more debt.

No to more runaway spending.

No to selling out our futures so they can make an unpopular, desperate president happy.

To try to pacify those who actually want to solve our nation’s problems, the leadership put together a plan that the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates will reduce the deficit by $917 billion.

Over the next ten years.

Meanwhile, they’ll let the President have a $900 billion increase in the debt ceiling – right away.

But wait! The leadership is bragging that their plan will reduce the Fiscal Year 2012 budget deficit by a whole $22 billion – in what’s expected to be an over $1 trillion deficit.

That is, frankly, insulting.

You know how you convince people to “get in line”?

You lead.

Real leadership wouldn’t require a panicked scramble that involves cursing at the people you courted to get power less than a year ago.

Real leadership wouldn’t require threatening your fellow members of Congress.

Real leadership during this economic crisis would inspire the American people, who would take care of putting the pressure on their elected officials because they would see that you were willing to fight for legitimate change.

Real leadership would follow Senator Rand Paul’s example by calling for at least $500 billion in cuts this year and an immediate, fundamental change in how government operates.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve had enough of being told I’m “extreme” because I think it’s fiscally responsible to drastically cut spending when we’re trillions of dollars in debt.

So, please, join me in contacting Congress to urge our representatives to oppose the House Republican Leadership’s so-called “plan.”

Over half a million Americans have “gotten in line” with the freedom message by joining Campaign for Liberty because they know we are fighting for solutions – not surrender.

If the House Republican Leadership expects people to join them, then they should start trying to give people something worth following. 

xxx

Let us face the facts, my friends. The United States is in the hands of insane extremists. Led by a Wall Street owned and ignorance purveying media, the American public is hocking its freedom and its financial welfare. In the end, moderates like Paul will be proven right. But many Americans are going to personally suffer, and they only have themselves to blame.

Inside Job

My wife and I watched Charles Ferguson's Inside Job on one of the cable channels last night.  The film is one of the best documentaries in the past decade--based on my limited sample it is second only to Errol Morris's Fog of War.  One of the film's premises is wrong, though. The financial system did not operate well before 1980.  Mr. Ferguson may not remember the 1970s' stagflation (13.5% inflation in 1980 plus 9.7% and 9.6% unemployment in 1982 and 1983 respectively), when the economy was worse than now.  The American financial system has been unstable since the establishment of the Federal Reserve Bank, but Ferguson glosses over the role that the Fed played as the source of the bank credit that expanded so rapidly in the early 2000s.  In fact, the massive expansion of real estate loans that caused the problems beginning in 2007 was due to the Fed's core mission of managing the money supply. Milton Friedman was as much to blame for today's fallen economy as his acolytes Ben Bernanke and Alan Greenspan. 

As well, the film overrates regulation.  There were bubbles in the 1950s and 1960s, including the "nifty fifty" bubble of the late 1960s and, as well, corrective recessions in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s.  The greater degree of regulation of that era was not what caused the post-war bubbles and recessions to be less severe than the early and late 1970s, early 1980s and today's. (Of these the early 1980s was the worst period, although today's problems are likely to be extended much longer, possibly for decades.)

Rather, the Fed was constrained from printing money by the gold standard, which Nixon abolished in 1971. Subsequently, there was the stiff inflation of the late 1970s, followed by the sharp correction of 1979-82, followed by the 25-year bubble starting in 1982. Reagan reignited inflation (why sources like Newsmax keep attributing Volker's policies to Reagan is a mystery; Carter appointed Volker and Volker's anti-inflation policies were initiated under Carter), and the 25 years of stock and real estate bubbles were largely due to the Republicans, especially Reagan and George W. Bush.  The excuse that the Democrats pushed for sub-prime mortgages is lame. Had the Fed expanded the money supply as it did under George W. Bush and there were no sub-prime mortgages there would have been other kinds of bubbles and similar results now.

Thus, the film is marred by Ferguson's lack of understanding of the role of the central and commercial banks in creating any and every financial bubble starting with the first bubble in 1790, which involved speculation in the stock of the First Bank of the United States, and his failure to question the necessity for Wall Street and the financial industry at all--an industry that requires $16 trillion or more in public subsidies may be said to be a cancer on the economy, not a legitimate part of it.

Despite these criticisms the film is chock full of important information. The penultimate segment on the corruption of academia is understated. As a Columbia Business School Ph.D. alum I found it embarrassing to see two of the senior faculty (Professor Mishkin and Dean Hubbard) humiliating themselves in public, but the filmmakers did nothing wrong. The professors spoke for themselves. Actually, I think they are less corrupt than the left wing faculty who have for decades supported totalitarian murder in the name of humanism. Viva Che.

Inside Job gets a B+ or 88% for accuracy. For entertainment value, the grade is higher, A-. If you followed the news surrounding the bailout the information is not all that surprising, but it is well put together and it is fascinating to see some of the players. I had no idea that Lloyd Blankfein looks like a weasel, for instance. Weasels on welfare make for a spectacle indeed.

Oath Keepers Say "No" to American Totalitarianism

H/t Mairi. The video illustrates the threat that the federal government poses to your safety.

Aftershock

Newsmax is using this video on Facebook to advertise a newsletter associated with the book Aftershock. I haven't read the book or looked at the newsletter, but found the video to be a pretty good depiction of what is likely to happen in the economy and in the financial markets. I think I will pick up a copy of Aftershock from Amazon.com.