Ten Ways That Barack H. Obama Is A George W. Bush Clone

Barack H. Obama eerily parallels the patterns and style of George W. Bush. Let us consider some of the infinite number of similarities.

1. George W. Bush went to Harvard Business School, Barack H. Obama went to Harvard Law School.

2. Neither George W. Bush nor Barack H. Obama has a distinguished military record.

3. George W. Bush said that he was for "compassionate conservatism" and no one knew what that meant. Barack H. Obama says that he is for "change" and no one knows what that means.

4. George W. Bush said that he believes that government is an effective tool. Barack H. Obama believes the same.

5. George W. Bush has been indifferent to government bloat. Barack H. Obama has never done anything to reduce government bloat and does not indicate that he intends to do anything.

6. George W. Bush had the support of the oil industry. Barack H. Obama has the support of Wall Street, Goldman Sachs, Warren Buffett, Morgan Stanley and George Soros.

7. The media did not ask many questions about George W. Bush. The media is not asking any questions about Barack H. Obama.

8. George W. Bush was a stylized conservative. Barack H. Obama is a stylized "progressive".

9. George W. Bush's followers did not know what he was going to do. Barack H. Obama's followers do not know what he is going to do.

10. George W. Bush, claiming to be a conservative, was willing to increase government spending. Barack H. Obama, claiming to aim to reduce the deficit, is willing to increase government spending.

McCain's Ethical Vision Is Awesome

Watching the Republican Convention at 10:32 EST, McCain is awesome. He is a great candidate, and the Republicans are a great party. They make me proud to be an American. McCain is the real deal, a war hero, a man of conscience. The Republicans will win. God bless him.

At 11:35, listening to the media pundits on Fox, I think they missed the main point. Bill Kristol's comment about McCain's reorienting his campaign and taking some of Obama's themes was insightful, though.

The main point is this. The change that Mr. Obama is advocating is that he will remove the bloat and corruption that has occurred under George Bush and replace it with the bloat and corruption in which he is steeped in the Chicago cesspool.

In contrast, Mr. McCain said that he believes in traditional American values and that these high ethical values will drive the change in which he believes. He does not work for faction, for party, for special interests. He works for you. The pundits do not hear this because they are part of the mainstream of political corruption in Washington. They do not hear Mr. McCain's ethical voice because they do not believe that there is such a thing as ethics, and even if they do, they are not used to hearing it.

Jim on Sarah Palin

>Mitchell:

If Sara Palin succeeds, everything the left has worked for will evaporate. If she performs well on the road, and has one good debate, Obama is done.

The left is completely apoplectic right now. They are in big trouble, right now. They have no answers, anywhere. The established media and the 527’s are the only players really left to do damage, so they will pick up the mud and start slinging. This plays to Obama’s roots, so get ready to see the long knives.

I understand that they want to “trooper gate” her a few days before the election. Good luck! The idiot trooper was tazering a 12 year old and threatening to kill the family. You’ll win no votes trying to pursue wrongful dismissal or abuse of office on that one. It will backfire-badly.

Palin is not perfect, and that is her appeal. She is real, not contrived. She is human, but chooses to work through the problems than just blame or give up.

I have followed politics for 22 years, and I have never seen a VP speech like hers.

My reply:

Hear, hear.

Bob Robbins Asks O'Reilly -- Where is the Birth Certificate?

Bob Robbins sent this letter to Bill O'Reilly. I just wrote a follow up. The O'Reilly interview is tonight.

Bob Robbins writes:

Mr. O'Reilly -

While you're on the air on Sep. 4th, 2008, please ask Barack Obama to soon show his real birth certificate to the U.S. public at large.

Many of us are not willing to accept what clearly shows to be an image of a phony Certificate Of Live Birth for him on some internet sites.


As the media seems to be doing the vetting process on Sarah Palin, - ... please do your media part tomorrow to do this vetting of Mr. Obama.

I followed up:

I have been trying to obtain a copy of Senator Obama's actual birth certificate for several months. I have blogged about this quest repeatedly. What concerns me is not only the Obama campaign's method of handling my and others' requests--posting a digital copy of a certificate of live birth on an unofficial website (which has been alleged to be a forgery) but also the government offices' refusal to collect this information on a systematic basis from all candidates. Of the 15,000 elected state and federal officials around the country (not to mention another 500,000 local officials) are we certain that not one has committed identity theft? I have submitted a petition with over 5,400 signatures to the FEC, but Mr. Donald McGahan has not replied. If Mr. Obama is serious about openness and change, he will allow all Americans to see his actual birth certificate, not a digital copy of his certificate of live birth.

See:

http://mitchell-langbert.blogspot.com/2008/08/democracy-in-inaction-where-is-don.html

http://www.showusthecertificate.blogspot.com/

http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/Federal-Elections-Commssion/index.html


Please pass this message on to MANY others, -
... and ask each receiver to send a message to Bill O'Reilly, - ... just to show many Americans care.

Sarah Palin for President in 2012

I heard that the McCain campaign is suing the National Enquirer over lies about Sarah Palin (I think I heard that on Mark Levin's radio program).

I got back home in time to hear Palin's speech. Wow! Messrs. Obama and Biden must be running scared, along with the jugglers, clowns, jesters and acrobats at CNN and the New York Times.

After McCain/Palin win in 08, we can look forward to Palin in the Whitehouse in 12. The Republican convention is awesome, and they're hitting Obama with the right jabs. Palin lacks experience? Don't make me giggle. The Democrats should look before they leap. Raising experience as an issue with Palin is funny when Obama has less experience than Palin. As they were chanting, Zero. Zero executive experience.

The Republicans make me proud to be an American. I don't know how anyone can vote Democratic at this point.

Democrats Jam Republican Convention Radio Broadcast

Not really, but I was driving on Route 28 near Woodstock, NY and the broadcast of Mike Huckabee's and Governor Linda Lingle's speeches kept getting interrupted by Grateful Dead music. I'm betting Maurice Hinchey and the animal rights activists in the Woodstock Democratic party were copying the Soviet Communist Party when they used to jam Radio Free Europe.

Centralization of Federal Power Has Led to Coddling of Business

The relationship between the state and federal governments fluctuates, but the overall trend has been toward centralization, with a few blips. This came about in part because of the Civil War, which enforced centralization in order to achieve noble objectives. The 13th, 14th and 15th amendments enhanced federal power over the states, requiring states to recognize citizenship, right to make contracts, equal treatment under the laws and voting rights to former slaves and, for that matter, to all citizens. The states' reaction to the growth of the railroads in the late 19th century was to subsidize them, and they enhanced the natural advantages of economies of scale through land grants, rights of way and other subsidies. In turn, the new, complex corporations faced multiple regulatory regimes across the states. This raised their costs. In the 1876 Munn v. Illinois Chief Justice Morrison R. Waite, writing for the Court, held that states have the right to regulate railroads because railroads reflect the public interest. In the 1886 Wabash, St. Louis and Pacific Railroad v. Illinois, law concerning the Illinois Grange's clamoring for regulation of railroad rates was federalized. The court held that states could engage in indirect regulation like safety regulation but not direct burdens on interstate commerce like rate regulation. The following year Congress passed and President Grover Cleveland signed the Interstate Commerce, which established the Interstate Commerce Commission. The ICC's responsibility was to set maximum railroad rates and eliminate individual discrimination. Thus, the age of centralization was born.

The aim of centralization was regulation coupled with subsidization. The regulation part reflected the impetus of Populist movements like the Grange, social Gospel Christianity, fear of labor unions and socialism and pressure from Progressives like Walter Weyl and Herbert Croly who, in the early 1900s argued that European-style social democracy was more "progressive" than American laissez-faire.

The centralization of regulation helped big business because it established a stable, unitary source of regulation that made it easy to comply. Fifty states pose a fifty times greater compliance problem than a single federal government. Moreover, industry or what Williams calls "syndicalist" influence over government is easier to organize. Mancur Olson and George Stigler have written about the economic conditions for effective lobbying, and centralization of power makes lobbying considerably easier for large firms and gives them considerable advantages over small. Many small firms over a national market are far more difficult to organize than one fiftieth the number over a state-wide market. At the same time, it is far cheaper for a few large firms to lobby a single federal government than it is for them to lobby fifty state governments. Thus, in the name of "regulation" the Progressives tipped the political scale in big business's favor.

Theodore Roosevelt and other Progressives of the early 20th century believed that big business produced wealth. Historians such as Alfred Chandler argued that transportation and communication advances with respect not only to canals, railroads and then trucking and air delivery but also with respect to telegraph, telephone, and then fax, e-mail and Internet, expanded markets facilitating reduced costs and enhanced economies of scale. There were other subsidies to big business, specifically the creation of federally subsidized credit and banking through the Federal Reserve System, tariffs almost continuously to the days of Wilson and then after, cartels and price fixing during World War I, and a host of regulations that make it more expensive for small business to compete with big.

But has big business really delivered? Since 1980 manufacturing firms increasingly exited the United States. Hence, the subsidization of manufacturing through credit and protection did not yield permanent jobs to average Americans. Executive compensation, rationalized through artificially elevated stock prices due to Federal Reserve policy, has been an exercise in self indulgence and waste. Increasingly, Americans hanker after a few high-wage investment banking and celebrity jobs, and are unwilling to work hard in traditional crafts. The images of today's youth, rap singers since the 1980s, Beavis and Butthead in the 1990s, Paris Hilton today, suggest a culture of dim wittedness and sloth. These images are broadcast by subsidized big business concerns, the media conglomerates, who profit from popular music that advocates drug use and violence. Television shows like "Entourage" suggest that the way to succeed is to hang out with other self indulgent boneheads, as long as they are good looking.

The transition from decentralized to centralized federalism and from laissez-faire to statism altered incentives in the economy. The combination of centralized creation of credit and inflation of scale enhances returns to stock offerings, first because large firms are artificially profitable because of their subsidization and second because monetary expansion itself inflates the stock market by reducing interest rates. This inflation of stock returns makes investment and commercial banking far more profitable than they would be in a decentralized and laissez-faire system. In turn, firms are encouraged to maximize stock returns by minimizing costs in that low interest rates make stock returns more elastic with respect to increases in net profit. This does several things. First, firms are encouraged to move plants overseas, where labor costs are lower. Second, their incentive to innovate is reduced because ample returns can be obtained due to the reduced interest rates and the elasticity of stock prices to small gains. Why risk invention of a new technology, when you can, like the typical US CEO, simply think about reorganization or moving plants to another country and so earn $100 million? Third, the returns to initial stock offerings are enhanced. Thus, returns to investment banking exceed market levels. Because the manpower needed to issue and trade securities is small relative to the inflated returns, the high salaries divert human resources from manufacturing to investment and speculation.

It is likely for these reasons that the innovation level of late nineteenth century laissez faire America was far greater than during the Progressive twentieth century. The most innovative Americans have been attracted to investment banking and law rather than manufacturing. Firms like Intel need to recruit engineers from overseas in order to compete. This misallocation of human resources leads to lower growth and less innovation in the economy than there would have been in a decentralized, laissez-faire economy.

The coddling of business results in a trade off between risk and return. In a laissez faire economy credit is difficult to obtain, profits are reduced and stock returns are reduced because interest rates are relatively high. This results in considerable discomfort to business executives, who in the nineteenth century complained about "overproduction" and "depression". However, the decreasing prices resulting from slow monetary growth increase real gains to labor. Real wages rise because firms are forced to think carefully about productivity given the intensely competitive milieu. Moreover, innovation is stimulated because that is the only way to earn large profits. Thus, the laissez-faire economy is rocky soil in which only the hardiest firms can grow, and they grow by extending roots that crush even the largest competitive rocks. Workers, the soil in which these competitive plants grow, benefit from the nutrients that the innovative stems produce. But the weaker plants, the firms that thrive in politically driven, low-innovation "Progressivism" complain endlessly about depression, the need for subsidization, the need for a central bank, the unfairness of the competitive economy. They are, of course, backed by feudalists and socialists, who similarly yearn for stability at the price of innovation.

The Progressive economy does not reward achievement. It rewards potential. Investment banks hire from the ranks of Ivy League students, who are in turn admitted to Ivy League schools on the basis of SAT scores. But SAT scores are not achievement, they are just potential, and they do not explain the majority of what might explain achievement. Americans are rewarded for ability, and this reduces their risk. But this also has the effect of draining men and women of ability from the ranks of the innovators into the ranks of transfer recipients. There may indeed be economic gains from stock offerings and trading, but they are minute compared to the potential gains from innovation. A single Tesla is worth all of the investment bankers in history times 10. Yet of all of the thousands of potential Teslas, only a handful will succeed. Why risk failure, when a certain career in investment banking has a far greater probability of significant success. Thus, elite Americans have become increasingly risk averse. They have chosen the way of relatively certain but high returns, but sacrificed the moral rectitude of economic creation and productivity. They have come to favor the sleight of hand that Wall Street capitalism offers, claiming to create efficiency but depending upon credit expansion and government largess.