Atlas Shrugs

Capitalism: The Separation of State and Economics

When I have a rare, stolen moment (say on a plane, for example, with no internet access :), I read. And I am always drawn back to Ayn Rand. I read Rand to refresh, renourish my soul. She fortifies me, my epistemology. I have been reading "The Voice of Reason" while vaca-ing with the Atlas kinderlach. One of her essays resonated so strongly during this statist seizure of America under the Communist Obamao - I thought I would share it with you.

The fundamental principle of capitalism is the separation of State and Economics - that is: the liberation of men’s economic activities, of production and trade, from any form of intervention, coercion, compulsion, regulation, or control by the government. This is the essence of capitalism, which is implicit in its theory and in the operation of a free market - but this is not the way most of its advocates saw it, and it is not the way it was translated into practice. The term “laissez-faire capitalism,” is capitalism,” which one has to use today in order to be understood, is actually a redundancy: only an economy of total “laissez-faire” is capitalism: anything else is a “mixed economy,” that is, a mixture, in varying degrees, of freedom and controls, of voluntary choice and government compulsion, of individualism and collectivism.

A full, perfect system of capitalism has never yet existed in history. Various degrees of government intervention and control remained in all the mixed, semi-free economies of the nineteenth century, undercutting, hampering, distorting, and ultimately destroying the operations of a free market. But during the nineteenth century, mankind came close to economic freedom, for the first and only time in history. Observe the results, ernment control was the degree of its progress. American was the freest and achieved the most,

When two opposite principles are operating in any issue, the scientific approach to their evaluation is to study their respective performances, trace their consequences in full, precise detail, and then pronounce judgment on their respective merits. In the case of a mixed economy, the first duty of any thinker or scholar is to study the historical record and to discover which developments were caused by the free enterprise of private individuals, by free production and trade in a free market-and which developments were caused by government intervention into the economy. It might shock you to hear that no such study has ever been made. To my knowledge, no book dealing with this issue is available. If one wants to study this question, one has to gather information from random passages and references in books on other subjects, or from the unstated implications of known but unanalyzed facts.

Those who undertake such a study will discover that all the economic evils popularly ascribed to capitalism were caused, necessitated, and made possible not by private enterprise, not by free trade on a free market, but by government intervention into the economy, by government controls, favors, subsidies, franchises, and special privileges.

The villains were not the private businessmen who made fortunes by productive ability and free trade, but the bureaucrats and their friends, the men who made fortunes by political pull and government favor. Yet it is the private businessmen, the victims, who took the blame, while the bureaucrats and their intellectual spokesmen used their own guilt as an argument for the extension of their power. Those of you who have read Atlas Shrugged will recognize the difference between a businessman such as Hank Rearden, the representative of capitalism, and a businessman such as Orren Boyle, the typical product of a mixed economy. If you want an historical example, consider the career of James Jerome Hill, who built the Great Northern Railroad without a penny of federal help, who was responsible, practically single-handedly, for the development of the entire American Northwest, and who was persecuted by the government all his life, under the Sherman Act, for allegedly being a monopolist. Consider it, then compare it to the career of the famous California businessmen known as “The Big Four,” who built the Central Pacific Railroad on federal subsidies, causing disastrous consequences and dislocations in the country’s economy, and who held a thirty-year monopoly on railroad transportation in California, by means of special privileges granted by the state legislature which made it legally impossible for any competing railroad to exist in the state.

The difference between these two types of business career has never been identified in the generally accepted view of capitalism. By imperceptible degrees - first, through the default of capitalism’s alleged defenders, then through the deliberate misrepresentations and falsifications of its enemies-the gradual rewriting of our economic history has brought us to the stage where people believe that all the economic evils of the last two centuries were caused by the free-enterprise element, the so-called “private sector,” of our mixed economy, while the economic progress of these two centuries was the result of government’s actions and interventions. People are now told that America’s spectacular industrial achievements, unmatched in any period of history of in any part of the globe, were due not to the productive genius of free men, but to the special privileges handed to them by a paternalistic government. The fact that much more autocratic governments, with much wider privilege-dispensing powers and policies, did not achieve the same results anywhere else on earth is blanked out by the proponents of this theory.

The only counterpart of the theory’s grotesque inversion and monstrous injustice is the mystics’ doctrine that man must give credit to God for all his virtues, but must place the blame for all his sins upon himself. Incidentally, the philosophical motive and purpose in both these instances is the same.

If you want a contemporary demonstration of the respective merits and performances of a free economy and of a controlled economy – a demonstration that comes as close to an historical laboratory experiment as one could hope to see – take a look at the condition of West Germany and of East Germany.

No politico-economic system in history had proved its value so eloquently or had benefited mankind so greatly as capitalism – and none has ever been attacked so savagely and blindly. Why did the majority of the intellectuals turn against capitalism from the start? Why did their victims, the businessmen, bear their attacks in silence? The cause of it is that primordial evil which, to this day, men are afraid to challenge: the morality of altruism.

Altruism has been men’s ruling moral code through most of mankind’s history. It has had many forms and variations but its essence has always remained the same: altruism holds that man has no right to exist for his own sake, that service to others is the only justification of his existence, and that self-sacrifice is his highest moral duty, virtue, and value.

The philosophical conflict which, since the Renaissance, has been tearing Western civilization and which has reached its ultimate climax in our age is the conflict between capitalism and altruist morality. Capitalism and altruism are philosophical opposites; they cannot coexist in the same man or in the same society.

The formal code which is implicit in capitalism had never been formulated explicitly. The basic premise of that code is that man – every man – is an end in himself, not the means to the ends of others, that man must exist for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself, and that men must deal with one another as traders, by voluntary choice to mutual benefit. This, in essence, is the moral premise on which the United States of America was based: the principle of man’s right to his own life, to his own liberty, to the pursuit of his own happiness.

FINANCIAL MELTDOWN: BLAME NEED, NOT GREED

UPDATE:Explosive Video, Fannie Mae CEO calling Obama and the Dems the "Family" and "Conscience" of Fannie Mae (hat tip Larwyn)

The mortgage crisis is not the product of self-interest. It is the product of an anti-self-interest morality in which responsible individuals are required to sacrifice to the needs of those who are not responsible.

Robert Tracinski of The Individual Activist is one of the free world's  leading thinkers (the slave world has no thinkers).  I am a subscriber to TIA daily (daily news and analysis from a pro-reasoned, pro-individualist perspective) and while his daily column is always smart, fresh, and reasoned sometimes Tracinski is so spot on a white hot issue, I run his whole column and run the risk of getting into copyright trouble and incurring his wrath - although he is always a perfect gentleman about it :)

This is one of these times. (PAID subscription. No link)

Moral Hazard

Blame Need, Not Greed, for the Mortgage Crisis

by Robert Tracinski  

The mainstream media and Democratic politicians—is there a difference between the two any more?—have been trying to exploit the mortgage crisis to convince the public that free markets have been discredited. A particularly obnoxious writer with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution even goes to far as to demand to know, "What happened to…[those] who denounced government regulation and read from the holy scriptures as recorded by Ayn Rand?"  

Well, here we are—or at least, here I am—and I am not impressed by the bluster of the anti-capitalists, because they are the ones who are getting this story completely wrong.  

Both Barack Obama and John McCain agree that, in McCain's words, the basic cause of the financial crisis is "self-interest, greed, irresponsibility, and corruption" on Wall Street—as if it is in a Wall Street firm's greedy self-interest to go bankrupt.  

It reminds me of the old joke from the 1939 film Ninotchka, in which a Soviet official misunderstands a basic business transaction and explains it to his comrades: "Capitalistic methods—they accumulate millions by taking loss after loss." Sadly, most politicians are just as helpless in trying to understand the workings of the private economy.  

In reality, the real culprit behind this financial crisis is not the morality of greed, but the morality of need. And speaking of Ayn Rand, what came to my mind in surveying this crisis is a passage from her masterwork, Atlas Shrugged. When the South American copper magnate Francisco D'Anconia is asked about the spectacular failure of a giant mining venture, he explains that he ran it according to the moral principles everyone kept telling him to follow: he worried only about providing employment to his workers, not about producing an actual product, and he hired his employees only the basis of their "need." For example, when he hired a mining specialist to run the operation, D'Anconia explains that "He wasn't a very good specialist, but he needed the job very badly."  

The same pattern applies to the current mortgage crisis. Mortgage lenders made a lot of loans to people who weren't very good credit risks, but who needed the loans very badly. And like D'Anconia, these lenders were merely acting according to the moral principles that everyone kept telling them to follow—as well as the policies that were required of them by government regulators and congressional leaders.  

For more than a decade, the explicit purpose of legislation and regulation coming out of Washington has been to force lenders into extending more loans to financially unstable borrowers. All of this was done for the purpose of providing "affordable housing"—to borrowers who we now know couldn't really afford it.  

The assault on lending standards began in the early 1990s, when the Community Reinvestment Act was invoked to fight alleged discrimination by lenders against minorities and residents of inner-city neighborhoods. It turns out the claims of bias were based on a faulty study, but the damage was done. To redress the supposed discrimination, lenders were encouraged to use "flexible underwriting standards."

A Federal Reserve "guide to equal opportunity lending" for example, offered banks the following advice on how to adjust their lending standards to avoid being punished. Banks should throw out the usual formula for the maximum ratio between the mortgage payment and the borrower's income, because "Many lower-income households are accustomed to allocating a large percentage of their income toward rent." Smaller down payments and closing costs should be accepted because "Accumulating enough savings to cover the various costs associated with a mortgage loan is often a significant barrier to homeownership by lower-income applicants." No comment is necessary for this next one: "Policies regarding applicants with no credit history or problem credit history should be reviewed." And the document urges a more flexible approach to verifying the borrower's income, including giving credit for "welfare payments and unemployment benefits"—which actually count as proof of the borrower's lack of income.  

All of this was meant to increase the number of loans to impoverished blacks in inner-city neighborhoods. But banks were warned that "If an institution permits flexibility in applying underwriting standards"—as they were being required to do by the government—then "it must do so consistently." Which means that the same debased lending standards were encouraged and required for everyone.  

Commentators are now complaining that lenders failed to inquire about the risks of the loans they were making—but in fact they were vigorously discouraged from making such inquiries, or from acting on that knowledge if they discovered it.  

The charge of racial discrimination was the stick the government used to drive down lending standards. But we didn't hear much complaint from the lenders after a while, because the government was also busy doling out carrots.  

Lenders became accustomed to originating loans, then selling them to third-party buyers who packaged the income from these loans into "mortgage-backed securities." This meant that the original lender could make a riskier loan without the fear that he would still be holding the mortgage when the borrower defaulted. But why weren't the buyers of these mortgage-backed securities stricter in their standards regarding what they would buy?  

Here is the next piece of the puzzle. As part of the same "affordable housing" crusade, Congress has systematically encouraged the expansion of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, two "government sponsored enterprises" that were formed precisely for the purpose of buying mortgages from the original lenders, guaranteeing the income from these mortgages, and then re-selling them to other investors. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac could keep on guaranteeing these mortgages without trashing their own credit rating because they were backed by the federal government, which put taxpayers on the hook for all of the risks involved.  

This turned out to be a honey pot for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Their government backing allowed them to raise money at lower interest rates than other lenders. This meant they could buy a mortgage originated at a higher interest rate with funds they raised at a lower interest rate—and pocket the difference between the two interest rates.  

Financial analyst Bill Burnham, who consulted for Fannie Mae in the 1990s, describes the consequences of this scam:  

Fannie began a series of largely successful political campaigns to increase the volume of mortgage securities available to fund their habit…. [I]t quickly found…[a] politically palatable way to increase the pool of mortgages it could buy: it dropped underwriting standards under the guise of increasing "home ownership" and "affordability."…  

Fannie Mae began a campaign to increase "home ownership" and "affordability." It created a home ownership "foundation" which opened offices in almost every congressional district and promptly set about mobilizing all the local advocates for "affordable" housing to put pressure on their elected representatives to let Fannie Mae offer "affordable housing programs."…  

This proved to be a highly effective political coalition for Fannie Mae. Not only did they build a huge network of grass roots political supporters through their "foundation," but politicians saw political advantages in supporting the programs because it cast them in the role of trying to help families buy a new home (as opposed to lowering underwriting standards to help a giant corporation keep up its earnings growth by taking a free ride on the US government's guarantee).

But not all of this pressure for lower standards was originated by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac. Some of it came back down from Congress. A recent New York Times article describes how "executives of both companies maintain that one of the reasons the firms hold so many bad loans is that Congress has leaned on them for years to buy mortgages from low-income borrowers to encourage affordable housing." In fact, "Once, a high-ranking Democrat telephoned executives and screamed at them to purchase more loans from low-income borrowers, according to a congressional source."   

A Grand Comeuppance

In the yet another grossly unreported story with worldwide implication and reverberation - the NY Sun reveals what's really behind the current cash crisis.

David Allen sent it and weighed in, "James Grant makes his living off interest rates he does not believe anyone should have the power to set them....."

IMAO, we never should have abandoned the Gold standard and I am thrilled big brains are talking and writing about it. It's all too late but even so, you cant correct something if you cant diagnose and identufy what initially went wrong.

Walter Bagehot Was Wrong James Grant NY Sun

In the United States this election year, the galloping socialization of the mortgage market proceeds with hardly a peep of discussion, let alone protest. Thus, mortgage originations by the government-sponsored enterprises reached 81% of overall originations in the fourth quarter of 2007, up from 37% in the second quarter of 2006. In the first quarter of this year, Fannie copped a 50% share of originations, double its take in calendar 2006. But in comparison to the biggest GSE, Fannie and Freddie might as well be standing still.

In Boston, before a Mortgage Bankers Association audience on May 6, the chairman of the Federal Housing Finance Board, Ronald Rosenfeld, noted that the Federal Home Loan Banks, which his agency supervises, are closing in on $1 trillion in outstanding loans, or "advances" ($925 billion currently are outstanding, up by $300 billion since last June). "The FHLBs," Reuters reported of Mr. Rosenfeld's remarks, "are facing increased risk due to the concentration of loans to big financial institutions that recently 'decided to become very involved in the FHLB system,' Mr. Rosenfeld said. Those banks include Countrywide, Washington Mutual Inc. and Wells Fargo & Co., he said. The top borrowers of the FHLB system account for 37% of all advances, he said. 'That's an astonishing number, and an astonishing amount of concentration,' he said.

"The FHLBs can continue to provide money for their commercial bank members as long as demand persists in the market for agency debt." Foreign central banks can't seem to get their fill. In the 12 months through March, according to a recent Home Loan Bank slide show, central banks took down 40% of the system's debt issuance. Russia's central bank has shown a particularly hearty appetite for the GSEs' emissions: 21% of Russian monetary reserves are parked in the obligations of Fannie, Freddie, and the Home Loan Banks, according to a May 19 Bloomberg report.

Taking an evolutionary view of present-day monetary disturbances, we see a kind of grand comeuppance. Embracing Bagehot and rejecting Hankey, central bankers have pushed aside the classical doctrines of liquidity. In the way that financial ideas seem always to be carried to an extreme, they have pushed too hard. Under their noses, the global credit apparatus froze up, and now it falls to them to thaw it out. A measure of the difficulty of that work is the huge volume of lending that the Bank of England and the ECB, especially, have chosen to undertake; over the past 12 months, the balance sheets of the ECB and the Bank of England have grown by 21% and 19.4%, respectively. (In comparison, the Fed is a model of restraint.)

In his critique of the Bagehot doctrine, Hankey understandably failed to foresee how the financial engineers of the future would respond to the opportunities presented to them by ambulance-chasing central banks of the 21st century. According to the Financial Times, investment bankers the world over are bundling up mortgages to deposit in the special liquidity facilities created by the ECB and the Bank of England. "The Bank of England," the paper reported on May 16, "recently created a facility for UK banks to access funding for mortgages and the Financial Times has learnt that almost £90 billion ($175 billion) worth of bonds are being created to be placed there — almost twice the £50 billion initially expected when the scheme was launched only three weeks ago. ...

"Investment bankers who work in securitization," the FT went on, "say that their main business is structuring bonds that are eligible for ECB liquidity operations. Some analysts have concerns about whether the bonds being created will ever be saleable if markets recover."

We believe that more analysts ought to be concerned about the risk that these monetary exertions will result in a new cycle of currency debasement. For ourselves, we expect it. A brilliant man was Walter Bagehot, but Hankey had the foresight.

Please read it all and get educated.

COUNT THOSE SQUARE FEET IN GOLD Amity Shlaes, NY SUN

American leaders tell themselves that citizens aren't interested in the nuances of the dollar's value. The yuan exchange rate? That is something Treasury Secretary PaulsonAnnapolis, Md. deals with at summits like the one this week with China's Vice Premier, Wang Qishan, at  The inflation rate? Federal Reserve Chairman Bernanke grapples with it. The rest just live with the results.

The politicians deceive themselves. Each American brain is constantly updating and editing its own personal dollar index. Americans also try out their theories about their greenbacks in all fields, including mundane thickets of contract law cases.

Just such a case involving a 400,000-square-foot building in Cleveland is now being decided in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. The case illuminates the American government mischief with the dollar over the past century so well that it might even be worthy of the attention of Mr. Wang.

This story begins more than nine decades ago, when Americans were sanguine about the prospects for their country's growth. But they were also concerned about two sources of dollar anxiety.

Gitmo's tools: Sympathy for the Devil

Cinnamon writes Gitmo: Myth vs. Reality:

Those pushing to close down Guantanamo Bay might want to read an op-ed by Air Force colonel and chief prosecutor in the Defense Department’s Office of Military Commissions Morris D. Davis in today's New York Times. As Col. Davis makes clear, the reality of Gitmo is a far cry from the myths put forward by its opponents:

Today, most of the detainees are housed in new buildings modeled after civilian prisons in Indiana and Michigan. Detainees receive three culturally appropriate meals a day. Each has a copy of the Koran. Guards maintain respectful silence during Islam’s five daily prayer periods, and medical care is provided by the same practitioners who treat American service members. Detainees are offered at least two hours of outdoor recreation each day, double that allowed inmates, including convicted terrorists, at the “supermax” federal penitentiary in Florence, Colo.

Standards at Guantánamo rival or exceed those at similar institutions in the United States and abroad. After an inspection by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe in March 2006, a Belgian police official said, “At the level of detention facilities, it is a model prison, where people are better treated than in Belgian prisons.”

Clearly, the standards being maintained at Gitmo are above and beyond what, some might argue, hardened Islamic terrorists deserve. But to demand further accomodations is beyond the pale. And why should terrorists who wear no uniform and subscribe to none of its precepts be accorded the rights of the Geneva Convention anyway?

There's more here. Meanwhile, Pamela caught this moonbat rally in the hometown of greatest Islamic attack on the West.

Clinton- Schumer crowd listens to MORE speakers

This asshat can't get enough of that abu ghraib stuff

A Gershwin tune "Leftarded in NY"

Pamela's counter protest poster .....heh Check back later .........Pamela is uploading video

UPDATE: As promised, the videos. Click each link below;

Berrigan's substitute speaker.MOV"

the speakers assemble #1.MOV"

the speakers #2.MOV

the speakers #3.MOV"

end Rabbi Michael Feinberg.MOV"

the muslim speaker.MOV

indian song in hebrew.MOV

Exit for the march to HRC.MOV"

The march begins to Clinton-Schumer offices

the march #2.MOV"

the march # 3.MOV"

In front of clinton schumer offices.MOV"

Clinton-Schumer offices # 2.MOV"

Clinton-Schumer offices # 3.MOV"

The first speaker who spoke in place of Daniel Berrigan was from the Catholic Worker. Ten minutes into his speech he reminded us we were marching to the Clinton-schumer offices and STRESSED that he was NOT supporting HRC for President.  That more children were murdered in Iraq by her husband than the current administration.IS THAT LEGAL? In a CHURCH? What about the income tax thing for churches...And he repeated is opposition to her candidacy about 10 minutes later. It was a LONG tedious and predictable speech.

Those terrible Americans are at it againTax Cuts for the Rich?

And remember, Republicans outgive Libs by a large measure. The red states rank higher than the blue in charitable giving.

Americans Set Record for Charity in 2006 hat tip Irwin
By Vinnee Tong, AP Business Writer

Jin adds , "this is particularly noteworthy"In philanthropic giving as a percentage of gross domestic product, the U.S. ranked first at 1.7 percent. No. 2 Britain gave 0.73 percent, while France, with a 0.14 percent rate, trailed such countries as South Africa, Singapore, Turkey and Germany."

Who really cares? Remember this study?

The Chronicle, 11/23/2006: Charity's Political Divide

Republicans give a bigger share of their incomes to charity, says a prominent economist ... In his research, he has focused on the arts and charitable giving.

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"Krugman lied, profits died!"

Snarky Irwin, my sandbox playmate, sends this pearl; From Crossing Wall Street;

June 20, 2007 Paul Krugman Four Years Ago Today

The big rise in the stock market is definitely telling us something. Bulls think it says the economy is about to take off. But I think it's a sign that America is still blowing bubbles — that a three-year bear market and the biggest corporate scandals in history haven't cured investors of irrational exuberance yet.

And.

In short, the current surge in stocks looks like another bubble, one that will eventually burst.

June 20, 2003

From a reader:

He lied! Krugman knew there was disagreement among investment consultants as to whether the market was a bubble or for real, and he intentionally massaged the indicators, and hyped the financial intelligence to make everyone believe there was a link between the current bull market and the bubble of 2000.

How many people sold their stocks on Krugman's intentionally misleading misrepresentation and failed to realize the gain that came with the continuing bull market?

Krugman lied, profits died!

DEFICIT DROPS 1/3! CRICKETS CHIRPING

It's funny. I was having it out with some libtarded, erudite (of course!)  commentator on the Canadian Radio show last night, The Remains of the Day, and the amount of WRONG being spewed was staggering. The killer claim was the  "bleeding US economy," and the terrible state of fiscal affairs here (BLAMED BUSH!) Much thanks to the wonderful Beryl Wajsman for having me on and inviting me to contribute to his show, The Last Angry Man,  regularly.

Well the deficit was down by a third and the media does not want you to know. Imagine if the economy was up a third. The thought of the media glee leaves me exhausted. I hope to have an MP3 file of that show, I was on a panel that needed serious ass kicking "Iraq is a diversion!"

Combine this news, with unemployment, oil prices, inflation, yada yada yada. The leftists should hiding in shame.

DEFICIT DOWN BY 1/3  Newsbusters via LGF

The deficit through the first three months of the current fiscal year is almost $39 billion, or 32.7%, lower than last year's comparable figure. Receipts are up a bit over 8%, as the supply-side tax cuts continue their "magic." The real surprise is that outlays have barely budged, actually going up at a rate that is substantially lower than inflation (Psst -- Don't tell Congress that). Will the media notice?

Welcome news. Nice break from watching the new Congress descend into madness. Faux Klingnons! Barren Condi! Smelly Starkist tuna! Killing earmark reform! Barney Frank turned fuhrer.

America is in for a rude awakening.

UPDATE: MP3 audio here of the show.

UPDATE: Economists upgrade US outlook after surprisingly strong data...

 

 

Net Neutrality is anything but Neutral

After reading Andy Kessler's take on net neutrality in the fresh Weekly Standard,  it is painfully clear that the American people are getting the shaft, from both sides.

Hate to break the news, but your "fast" DSL Internet access is no longer considered high speed. In parts of the world, cell phones are faster. Have you wondered why Internet video doesn't fill your computer monitor and look like a DVD, but instead is pixelated dreck in a tiny one or two inch square? Well, Comcast is dragging its heels, too. With better video over the Internet, who would want E!, let alone the Style Network? Because of this Fred and Wilma thinking, the United States is 16th in the world in broadband use (behind Liechtenstein!) with East Timor catching up fast. The French may burn Citroëns, but they get 10 megabits for 10 euros--50 times your "fast" Internet access for half the price. That's just not right.

Betcha didn't know that. But Kessler doesn't think the net neutrality act is the answer. That would be like taking the slow boat to China (no pun intended.)

We'll  never get 10 megabits to our homes, let alone the multiples of that speed that are possible and affordable today if these telco Goliaths keep covering up their crown jewels. As Dean Wormer might put it: Fat, drunk (on profits), and stupid is no way to go through life, son. But the answer is not regulations imposing net neutrality. You can already smell the mandates and the loopholes once Congress gets involved.

Here's an idea: Start screaming like a madman and using four letter words--like K-E-L-O. And fancier words like "eminent domain." I know, I know. This sounds wrong. These are privately owned wires hanging on poles. But so what? The government-mandated owners have been neglecting them for years--we are left with slums in need of redevelopment. Horse-drawn trolleys ruled cities, too, but had to be destroyed to make way for progress. How do we rip the telco's trolley tracks out and enable something modern and real competition?

Forget the argument that telcos need to be guaranteed a return on investment or they won't upgrade our bandwidth. No one guarantees Intel a return before they spend billions in R&D on their next Pentium chip to beat their competitors at AMD. No one guarantees Cisco a return on their investment before they deploy their next router to beat Juniper. In real, competitive markets, the market provides access to capital.

Without even being paid by the hour, I read through the Supreme Court's Kelo v. City of New London eminent domain rulings. Surely there exists some clever Silicon Valley counsel to twist the wording of the precedent. The telcos may want to treat the Internet like a shopping mall that they own, but the premises are looking awfully sketchy. So start with this line: "Economic underdevelopment and stagnation are also threats to the public sufficient to make their removal cognizable as a public purpose."

Sure, property rights are important, but that doesn't mean we can't shake a cattle prod at our stagnant monopolists and say "update or get out of the way." The mantra should be "megabits to phones and gigabits to homes." We'll only get there via competition. Regulations--even regulations that look friendly to the Googles and Yahoos and hostile to the telcos--will just freeze us where we are today.

IN THE LONG RUN, technology doesn't sleep. You can't keep competitive King Kong in chains. But why wait a decade while lobbyists run interference? If Congress does nothing, we will probably end up paying more for a fast network optimized for Internet phone calls and video and shopping. But this may not be the only possible outcome. Maybe the incumbent network providers--the Verizons, Comcasts, AT&Ts--can be made to compete; threatening to seize their stagnating networks via eminent domain is just one creative idea to get them to do this. A truly competitive, non-neutral network could work, but only if we know its real economic value. If telcos or cable charge too much, someone should be in a position to steal the customer. Maybe then we'd see useful services and a better Internet. Sounds like capitalism.

What new things? It's not just more bandwidth and better Internet video--how about no more phone numbers, just a name and the service finds you? How about subscribing to a channel and being able to watch it when and where you want, on your TV, iPod, or laptop? How about a baby monitor you can view through your cell phone? Something worth paying for. And that's just the easy stuff.

We don't even know what new things are possible. Bandwidth is like putty in the hands of entrepreneurs--new regulations are cement. We don't want a town square or a dilapidated mall--we want a vibrant metropolis. Net neutrality is already the boring old status quo. But don't give in to the cable/telco status quo either. Far better to have competition, as long as it's real, than let Congress shape the coming communications chaos and creativity.

Read it all. There's much we don't know.

UPDATE: from David Holcberg from the Ayn rand Institute;

    "Net Neutrality" is an idea that has no place in a free market.

    Cable and phone companies have no obligation to treat all Internet traffic     equally. If these companies judge it to be in their self-interest to sell     speedier delivery to certain content providers, they should be free to do     so.

    Just as FedEx and UPS are free to charge their customers for faster     delivery, so should cable and phone companies.

    The idea that cable and phone companies cannot offer superior services to     some of their customers is an attack on their freedom. As owners of their     networks, they have the right to run their businesses as they see fit.

Atlas Monday Rant Vlog

Dispatch from Iraq: "All this time I thought we were winning," said a sergeant first class sarcastically. "Seems folks back home have already run up the white flag."

More on the FOX hunt here

BTW, all my vlogs are on the Atlas VLOGS! page here.
 

The New York Times Continues To Ignore America's Economic Progress

The New York Times Says "Fixed Costs, Like Housing, Health Care And Gasoline" Are "Rapidly Outpacing" Paychecks And Benefits.   (Editorial, "Barely Staying Afloat," The New York Times, 5/10/06)

But Average Hourly Earnings Have Risen 3.8 Percent Over The Past 12 Months, Their Largest Increase In Nearly Five Years.  Hourly compensation rose at a 5.7 percent rate in the first quarter.  Personal income rose 0.5 percent in March. 

Real After-Tax Income Has Risen By 13.8 Percent Since January 2001. Real after-tax income has risen by $2,398 (8.2 percent) per person since January 2001.

Securities Prices Show The Market Believes That Inflation Is Expected To Remain In Check.

More Than 5.2 Million Jobs Have Been Created Since August 2003, And 138,000 Jobs Were Created In April.  The unemployment rate is 4.7 percent.

Yesterday, The Dow Jones Industrial Closed Within 83 Points Of An All-Time Record High.  The Dow is up 8.6 percent this year and closed yesterday at a six-year high.

GDP Grew At A Strong 4.8 Percent Annual Rate In The First Quarter.  This follows our economic growth of 3.5 percent in 2005 – the fastest rate of any major industrialized nation.

At $52 Trillion, Household Total Net Worth (Assets Minus Liabilities) Is At An All-Time High And Has Increased 8 Percent Over The Past Year And 33 Percent Over The Past Three Years.  The growth is due to both real estate and other financial investments (i.e. it's not just a result of rising housing prices).  Household financial net worth (which excludes housing and other tangible assets) is also at an all-time high.

The Conference Board Index Of Consumer Confidence Increased In April To Its Highest Level In Almost Four Years.

Productivity Increased At A Strong Annual Rate Of 3.2 %  in the First Quarter.

Real Consumer Spending (Which Adjusts For The Price Of Gasoline) Grew At A  5.5% Annual Rate In The First Quarter And 3.4 Percent Over The Past Four Quarters.

The President's Tax Relief Has Helped Spur America's Economic Momentum

The President Worked With Congress To Reduce Income Taxes For Every American Who Pays Income Taxes.  The Administration and Congress doubled the child tax credit, reduced the marriage penalty, cut taxes on capital gains and dividends, created incentives for small businesses to purchase new equipment and hire new workers, and put the death tax on the path to extinction.  Altogether, this tax relief left $880 billion in the hands of American workers and businesses.

The Wall Street Journal: President Bush's Tax Relief Is Responsible For Economic Growth.  "Critics continue to complain that President Bush's tax policies have only benefited the super-wealthy, but that would come as news to the five million Americans who were jobless before the 2003 tax cuts, and thus had no income, but now have a weekly paycheck." (Editorial, "Help [Very Much] Wanted," The Wall Street Journal, 4/10/06)

Yesterday, Congressional Leaders Agreed To A Tax Relief Extension Package That Will Help Millions Of Middle Class Families.  "Republican congressional leaders agreed Tuesday on a $70 billion measure to extend tax breaks for investors and prevent 15 million middle-income families from being hit by the alternative minimum tax, which was intended to affect only the wealthy."  (Jim Drinkard, "$70B Measure Would Extend Tax Breaks," USA Today, 5/10/06)

UPDATE: From Taranto today in WSJ;

[...] The breezy transition from a terrorist atrocity in Iraq to the president's approval rating is awfully crass, but it's also revealing. For many in the media and the Democratic Party, the Iraq war is merely a proxy for domestic politics. That is, "antiwar" passions are largely the result of anti-Republican, or anti-Bush, passions. Anger over Iraq today is barely distinguishable from anger over impeachment seven years ago or over Florida five years ago.

You Can Keep Wal-Mart out of the NYC, But you can't Keep NYC Outta Wal-Mart

Tell me again why we even need a city council? Abolish the council, they don't do anything but piss our tax dollars away and serve their own socialist agenda while acting as tools for special interest groups that fund their campaigns.

WAL-MART: SHOPPERS EXIT CITY

TAX REVENUES LOST

   City Council members have so far managed to keep Wal-Mart out of the city, but they can’t stop New York City residents from shopping at Wal-Mart.    The nation’s largest retailer will announce today that city residents are heading to suburban Wal-Mart stores in record numbers — spending 30% more at the region’s half dozen or so Wal-Mart stores last year than they did in 2004.

   The retailer hopes these statistics will persuade City Council members to approveWal-Mart stores within the five boroughs. Using credit card data, the company says city residents spent about $128 million in 2005 at stores in New Jersey, Long Island, Connecticut, and Westchester County. In 2004, New Yorkers spent about $98 million in those stores.    The loss of tax revenue to the city from these sales is significant. Wal-Mart says every new store in New York City would create about 300 new jobs and generate about $5 million in tax revenue for the city.

   A Wal-Mart spokesman, Philip Serghini, said the leakage of dollars to suburban stores proves “consumers in New York are interested in stretching their paychecks and they see Wal-Mart as a way to do that.”

D'oh. The Democratic party machine is New York City is killing this town.

Mr. Malanga said the City Council is the biggest hurdle to Wal-Mart opening in New York City. “The City Council is almost completely a tool of the unions,” he said. “This is not what is good for consumers, it is about city councilmen who have to appease the union movement.” More here.

Indeed.

Wal-Mart makes it possible for lower wage earners to purchase items the could never afford at regular store prices. Wal-mart enhances the quality of life.

 

No I didn't make this up, the Mainstream Media did -ACk!

From the MSM, the Washington Post no less;

Babies, Bigotry and 9/11
The ugly wave of anti-Arab feelings immediately after Sept. 11, 2001, may have been responsible for a sharp increase in the incidence of premature and low-birth-weight babies born to women of Arab descent in the United States in the months that followed the terrorist attacks

And they wonder why they are becoming increasingly irrelevant?

And this lefty wing counter intuituve jewel from Larry Elder here;

In February, our economy created 243,000 new jobs.

Yet one of our major newspapers tells us almost half of Americans consider the economy in a recession. American Research Group's latest monthly survey found 59 percent of Americans rate the economy as bad, very bad, or terrible. Why are Americans so negative?

Because the Mainstream media is clubbing the American people to death with that lie for years now.

Compare the first few paragraphs of this particular story by Investors Business Daily to the way the New York Times  [shocka!- Atlas] reported the story.

Investors Business Daily, paragraph 1: "U.S. companies in nearly every sector increased hiring last month, lifting job growth to better than forecast levels and enticing more people into the labor market."

New York Times, paragraph 1: "American employers added 243,000 jobs in February and workers posted their highest salary gains in more than four years, the government reported yesterday, igniting concerns among many Wall Street economists that higher wages could fuel inflation and increase expectations that the Federal Reserve will raise interest rates further." [Emphasis added.]

Note the New York Times felt compelled to add a "but" or a "cautionary note" to the economic expansion. Someone made a decision to add a cautionary note, not that the proviso is wrong, or necessarily inappropriate, but it absolutely changes the tone of the story. But couldn't one also accuse Investors Business Daily of failing to provide balance by omitting this cautionary note?

No, for America's economy, by virtually any standard, remains an incredible economic powerhouse. Read it all Hat tip Paul T

hat tip jay and he adds;

As Canadians under the Liberals didn't accept to go to war, we have to count on other countries to free our own hostages today.

In case you missed it, the Lefist-Media is distorting the truth again. The hostages were not released, nor freed.

They were rescued. Big difference. The media refuses to report any good the US military does. The US captured an insurgent and forced him to say where the captives were. US and Brits raided the place. The insurgents did not have guards at the time, so the Allies rescued the prisoners without a shot being fired.

One of the ironies the media won't report is that these anti-war Leftists were freed by the very people who they were protesting against.

UPDATE: TWO STORIES DEMONSTRATE MSM'S ANTI POST- SADDAM IRAQ BIAS

Wal-Mart - Bad! Crack Cocaine - Good!

"I think it's obvious what people would like, if they have a choice between a dilapidated, crack-infested old building with no jobs versus a thriving retail box with supporting retail shops, providing jobs and services and improving the property value," he said. "I think it's a no-brainer."

Ya think?

From the Atlanta Journal-Constitution,

"Wal-Mart gets a warm welcome"

Wal-Mart may be unwanted in other parts of metro Atlanta but south DeKalb County is rolling out the welcome mat.
Community leaders and residents will be on hand today when Wal-Mart celebrates the grand opening of its first store inside the Perimeter .

The 214,000-square-foot supercenter could help revitalize an economically depressed area and provide much-needed jobs.
"It's a good shot in the arm for the community," said John Evans, a community activist and former president of the DeKalb NAACP. "We needed development there. It may serve as a real catalyst to bring in new businesses."

Everything the left stands for is so counter intuitive, it makes my brain hurt.

 

Attention Wal-Mart Bashers: Wal-Mart and 150,000 Jobs are going to China

This ought to make all those Wal-Mart haters happy. Wal-Mart is taking their act to China and 150,000 jobs along with it here. And I can just bet the Chinese are over the moon with glee.

I know I'd be but then again New York legislators wouldn't let Wal-Mart open in New York so I wouldn't know what shopping in Wal-Mart is like. They are going to China. Good for the Chinese, bad for us.

You got your wish you socialist bastards.

More Good Can Come from the Dubai Port Deal: END ISRAEL BOYCOTT, DEAL BREAKER

I stand behind my original call of the Post deal with Dubai here and here and here.
It is not a security detail, good economic deals make good friends and the more Arab friends we have in the war on terror the better.
Vital Perspective points out that Dubai Ports World Participates in Arab Boycott of Israel

Dubai Ports World, the company involved in the UAE port deal, participates in the Arab boycott against Israel.

"Yes, of course the boycott is still in place and is still enforced," Muhammad Rashid a-Din, a staff member of the Dubai Customs Department's Office for the Boycott of Israel, told the The Jerusalem Post in a telephone interview. U.S. law bars firms from complying with such requests or cooperating with attempts by Arab governments to boycott Israel. The U.S. Department of Commerce lists the UAE anti-Israel boycott requirement as a "prohibited boycott condition in an invitation to bid" under examples of boycott requests from the UAE that has been reported to the Office of Antiboycott Compliance. The "prohibited boycott condition" reads:

"Documents to accompany tenders [include] the declaration and Israel boycott certificate. It states the tenderer must accompany his offer with the following, written signed declaration. "We declare that we are a company which is not owned by any companies that have violated the approved rules of the boycott and that we do not own or participate in companies that are in violation of the approved rules of the boycott. Further, we do not have, nor does any of the companies that are considered to be a parent company or a branch of ours, any dealings with any Israeli party, whether directly or indirectly." Furthermore, a certificate issued by the Israel boycott office in UAE confirming that neither the supplier nor the manufacturer are blacklisted, should also be accompanied."

In one instance, according to a Department of Commerce press release, a New York-based exporter paid a $13,500 fine for violating the antiboycott provisions of the Export Administration Regulations (EAR). The antiboycott provisions of the EAR prohibit U.S. persons from complying with certain requirements of unsanctioned foreign boycotts, including furnishing information about business relationships with or in Israel. In addition, the EAR requires that U.S. persons report their receipt of certain boycott requests to the Department of Commerce.

Importers to the UAE, however, need to comply with the terms of the boycott. In the Frequently Asked Questions area of the Jebel Ali Free Zone Area website, six documents are listed that are required in order to clear an item through the Dubai Customs Department. One of them, called a Certificate of Origin, " is used by customs to confirm the country of origin and needs to be seen by the office which ensures any trade boycotts are enforced ."

Clearly their boycott of Israel would have to end. That's a deal breaker. No fines, no violations, no bullshit. NO BOYCOTT. And that would be a good thing. Changing the way they do business would be a good thing. And yes, we would have to enforce it.

Israel is a great nation. This decades long boycott must be broken. This is how we do it.

UPDATE:But now Little Green Footballs  has even more info to suggest that DP is not de facto much of a boycotter  --hat tip Kahn;

Here’s a report at Globes Online that appears to contradict the Jerusalem Post story we noted earlier today: Dubai Ports World uses Zim connection in US deal.

Dubai Ports World, the company involved in the UAE port deal, participates in the Arab boycott against Israel.

"Yes, of course the boycott is still in place and is still enforced," Muhammad Rashid a-Din, a staff member of the Dubai Customs Department's Office for the Boycott of Israel, told the The Jerusalem Post in a telephone interview. U.S. law bars firms from complying with such requests or cooperating with attempts by Arab governments to boycott Israel. The U.S. Department of Commerce lists the UAE anti-Israel boycott requirement as a "prohibited boycott condition in an invitation to bid" under examples of boycott requests from the UAE that has been reported to the Office of Antiboycott Compliance. The "prohibited boycott condition" reads:

"Documents to accompany tenders [include] the declaration and Israel boycott certificate. It states the tenderer must accompany his offer with the following, written signed declaration. "We declare that we are a company which is not owned by any companies that have violated the approved rules of the boycott and that we do not own or participate in companies that are in violation of the approved rules of the boycott. Further, we do not have, nor does any of the companies that are considered to be a parent company or a branch of ours, any dealings with any Israeli party, whether directly or indirectly." Furthermore, a certificate issued by the Israel boycott office in UAE confirming that neither the supplier nor the manufacturer are blacklisted, should also be accompanied."

In one instance, according to a Department of Commerce press release, a New York-based exporter paid a $13,500 fine for violating the antiboycott provisions of the Export Administration Regulations (EAR). The antiboycott provisions of the EAR prohibit U.S. persons from complying with certain requirements of unsanctioned foreign boycotts, including furnishing information about business relationships with or in Israel. In addition, the EAR requires that U.S. persons report their receipt of certain boycott requests to the Department of Commerce.

Importers to the UAE, however, need to comply with the terms of the boycott. In the Frequently Asked Questions area of the Jebel Ali Free Zone Area website, six documents are listed that are required in order to clear an item through the Dubai Customs Department. One of them, called a Certificate of Origin, " is used by customs to confirm the country of origin and needs to be seen by the office which ensures any trade boycotts are enforced ."

Clearly their boycott of Israel would have to end. That's a deal breaker. No fines, no violations, no bullshit. NO BOYCOTT. And that would be a good thing. Changing the way they do business would be a good thing. And yes, we would have to enforce it.

Israel is a great nation. This decades long boycott must be broken. This is how we do it.

UPDATE:But now Little Green Footballs  has even more info to suggest that DP is not de facto much of a boycotter  --hat tip Kahn;

Here’s a report at Globes Online that appears to contradict the Jerusalem Post story we noted earlier today: Dubai Ports World uses Zim connection in US deal.

Disraeli in Dubai

I am not at all surprised that Dr. Wheeler and I  see eye to eye, tooth to tooth, and reason to reason on the current burlesque the  Democrats have manufactured to distract and confuse the American people. And with a willing and complicit fifth column fourth estate (the press), it's a no brainer getting their knee jerk message out there. Those lap dogs can't lap it up fast enough.

The Republicans chasing lefty tail on this is unfortunate but they will see through this ruse of that I am sure.

The first casualty of political conquest is the truth.

The Federalist Patriot makes points here

Despite the rancor, the U.S. does not outsource the protection of our critical national-security infrastructure.

Approval of the DPW proposal underwent three months of interagency review. According to Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England, "This review definitely was not cursory and it definitely was not casual. Rather, it was in depth and comprehensive." This is the same review that management companies based in China, Denmark, Japan, Singapore and Taiwan underwent before being authorized to manage terminals in the port of Los Angeles. We might add, China now manages some terminals on both ends of the Panama Canal.

Foreign investment in the U.S., including port management, is nothing new.

Dr. Jack Wheeler's take is much more in depth than my previous post earlier this week here.
But Wheeler is a paid subscription only so I am running the whole thing. And if you don't have a subscription - get one here, NOW, worth every last penny. Jack rocks - bad dah bing, bad dah boom

DISRAELI IN DUBAI Written by Dr. Jack Wheeler

The 19^th century British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881) once commented on accusations that a political opponent of his was lying regarding an important issue before Parliament:  "It is worse than a lie - it is a blunder."

We can be sure that the Earl of Beaconsfield (the peerage awarded to Disraeli by Queen Victoria) would make the same observation today over the travails of George Bush and the port scandal.

There is no secret deal here.  CFIUS, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, that vets these things, ran it through 12 agencies including Defense, Treasury, State, Homeland Security, and the White House National Security Council.  Their approval was unanimous.  Had just one objected, it would have been put on a 45-day investigative hold.

Bush was blindsided on this out of sheer naiveté.  He still can't accept as real the bottomless mendacity of Democrats.  For Barbara Boxer and Chuck Schumer to foment in protest over a deal with America's closest Arab ally, when they have gone far more ballistic at any suggestion that Arabs be profiled at US airports - well, I guess it's standard liberal chutzpah.

Outdoing Bush in naiveté are Republicans in Congress being led with rings in their noses by Boxer and Schumer into an orgy of Bush-bashing.  It would be nice if they all took a deep breath, switched on their brains, and began thinking of how to take advantage of this fiasco.

Wouldn't it be great if Bill Frist stood up in the Senate Chamber and congratulated his Democrat colleagues for their concern over the safety of America's ports, and that he was sure they would now show their concern for the safety of America's airports by mandating Arab Moslem male passengers instead of grandmas and others at politically correct random?

Or if Denny Hastert stood up in the House Chamber to say he was sure his Democrat colleagues, so newly passionate about national security and concerned over our dependence on Arab oil, would now support drilling oil in Alaska's ANWR, offshore drilling in Florida and the East Coast, and eliminating government restrictions so that nuclear power plants and oil refineries can be built in three to four years.

So, should the deal with Dubai Ports World be toast?  Because the Dems have demonized the UAE in order to demonize Bush once again, this is going to be tricky.  So let's talk about this place, the United Arab Emirates.

It's a collection of seven tiny Persian Gulf sheikhdoms welded together by the Brits in 1892, changing what was called the Pirate Coast to the Trucial Coast, and creating a British Protectorate protecting them from the Ottoman Turks.  The truce between the seven - Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Sharjah, Fujaira, Ajman, Umm al Qaiwan, and Ras al-Kaimah - worked so well that by 1972, they were transformed into the UAE, with their respective leaders being upgraded from sheikhs to emirs.

They were all mud hut fishing villages until oil was found in Abu Dhabi and pumped out in quantity in the 1960s.  With one exception, the other emirates were happy to kick back and live off Abu Dhabi's largesse.  The exception was Dubai.  The Maktoum clan of the Babi Yas tribe that runs Dubai have always been traders.  So they made a decision in the 1970s to prosper on their own.

They did it be transforming their mud hut fishing village into the Hong Kong of the Middle East.  Their success in doing so has been beyond spectacular.

If you associate "Arabs" with "camel-herding" and "poverty," if you visit Dubai you're in for the shock of your life.  For openers, there's the world's only seven star hotel, the Burj al-Arab (see photo)

The amount of business being done in Dubai is staggering, thanks to a zero corporate tax rate, no restrictions on repatriation of capital, and 100% foreign ownership of businesses permitted.  The Dubai International Finance Center, with millions of square feet of state-of-the-art hi-tech office space, is rapidly becoming the Wall Street of the Middle East.

Dubai Healthcare City is a $3 billion project, making the emirate a world class center for medical treatment, research, and education that includes branches of the Mayo Clinic and the Harvard Medical School.

With a $5 billion dollar project called Dubailand, it plans on being the Disneyland of the Middle East, with 15 million additional tourists as year.

There are millions of tourists and businessmen coming every year to Dubai already.  The lubricant of tourism, of course, is booze, rivers of which flow through Dubai's hotels, bars, and discos.  Remember this is a Moslem country.

And wherever there are hordes of tourists with money, there are hordes of hookers.  Prostitution is as illegal as it is in Las Vegas.  Every bar in every 4 and 5 star hotel in Dubai offers a selection of ladies from Russia, England, China, Pakistan, the Philippines, Ethiopia, and elsewhere.  The Cyclone Disco is legendary for being a "United Nations of prostitution," with over 500 international ladies of the evening available on an average night.

You would think that this debauch of money, booze, and sex would outrage the Islamists.  Yet Dubai has never been hit with a terrorist attack.  Right across the sandy border, Saudi Arabia has been hit by suicidal Moslem crazies numerous times.  But Dubai - America's best friend in Arab-land, the Moslem Fleshpot - never.

That's because Dubai, besides being the Middle East's Hong Kong, Wall Street, Disneyland, and Las Vegas, is also the Middle East's Switzerland, where everyone's money no matter how drug, mafia, or terrorist-tainted, is handled with equal discretion.

That's the trade-off.  As it's the place where terrorists can do business, the terrorists leave it alone.

But what if Al Qaeda or an Al Qaeda wannabe decides to blackmail the Dubai government, owners of Dubai Ports World?  One suicide bomber wiping out the lobby of the Burj al-Arab could cost Dubai billions in tourist and investment revenue.  To prevent this, all DPW has to do is insert a few Al Qaeda boys to work in American ports.

Terrorist Blackmail is the security issue that needs to be discussed.

The Bushistas have made a bewildering blunder in not briefing Congress and preempting Democratic demagoguery.  A lot of conservatives knee-jerk reacted with a "not just no but hell no!" unthinking rejection like Sue Myrick (R-NC).  This is going to change as conservatives calm down and actually start to reflect on the matter, instead of venting and demagoguing like liberals do.

Take a look at the White House's reasoning in its Fact Sheet on the CFIUS Process and the DP World Transaction.  The case is well made.  If the White House can effectively assuage the terrorist blackmail concern, then you'll see a shift in support for the president.

It has already begun - Jack Kelly's column, Is It Smart To Attack All Moslems?,  this week is example. 

Look at it this way - to be on the side of Barbara Boxer, Chuck Schumer, and Hillary Clinton and against George Bush on an issue is prima facie not pro-American. 

Maybe - just maybe - the port scandal will turn out not to be a Bushie blunder at all.  You wonder what Disraeli would say about that.

Thanks Jack........... (click below for Kelly's column)

Wal-Mart: What happened to America?

Look at these numbers, LOOK! And still the limos liberals of New York refuse to allow Wal-Mart to open here. What kind of a country are we living in? What is it going to take to get fed up aget off our asses  and scream I AM NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!"

New Yorkers support allowing the retail giant to open here and two- thirds would shop at one of the stores if it were near them, according to a poll released yesterday.

The findings didn't sway Wal-Mart's opponents, including James Oddo (R-S.I.), the Republican leader of the City Council. Of course not, why would it sway Oddo? He is only supposed to represent the people. Remember them Mr Oddo?

The vast approval ratings for Wal-Mart came just days after the CITY COUNCIL APPROVED ZONING CHANGES FOR A GINORMOUS RETAIL COMPLEX AT THE BRONX TERMINAL MARKET WHERE ALL BUT ONE BUSINESS WOULD BE WELCOME - WAL-MART!

I say we eliminate the City Council, they don't do anything but piss our tax dollars away and serve their own socialist agenda while acting as tools for special interest groups that fund their campaigns.

The joke is even UNION HOUSEHOLDS BY A WIDE PERCENTAGE MARGIN , 47 -- 37 , SAID WAL-MART HAS A RIGHT TO DO BUSINESS IN NEW YORK!  What is happening to this country? And 65% of those union households said they would shop at Wal-Mart if they opened in New York. Of course they would, it's lower prices for people without a lot of money!

Lower income folks know that Wal-Mart provides enormous savings for their customers, jobs for the un employed, and increased tax revenues to the city (not to mention all the charity$ they spread through the local communities).

25,000 people applied for the 325 available job openings at the new Wal-Mart in the Chicago area.

Graph cand data ourtesy New York Post.

UPDATE: 2/6 NYSUN

The majority of New Yorkers don't want their policy-makers to tell them where to shop. They want to decide on their own," he said. "The grocers' union has basically gone in and vilified us with policy-makers in this city. We hope one day soon to be able to sit with City Council members and make our case."

Good Luck, ever try reason with an irrational person?

But the money quote, the beautiful disgusting irony;

only 39% of Manhattan residents said they supported a Wal-Mart in the city, but 64% of Bronx residents said they would welcome the retailer. In Staten Island, 58% supported Wal-Mart opening, and in Brooklyn and Queens, 52% supported it.

A senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, Steven Malanga, said the results were unsurprising based on the socioeconomic differences between the boroughs.

"In Manhattan, those are more well-off people who probably wouldn't be caught dead in a Wal-Mart anyway," Mr. Malanga said. "There is also a clear indication the people and politicians of the Bronx want a big box store and it is being denied to them by a highly politicized City Council."

That's rich isn't it? The limo sine liberals in New York that consider everything south of 57th street "downtown" are against it (like they might ever set foot in the Bronx) and the lower income people in the Bronx are very much for it.

OH THOSE ENLIGHTENED LIBERALS! Like I've said a million times, the left loves ideas, Hates people.

This is a disgrace. I say to New York--  get rid of this Boss Tweed Democratic criminal regime of corruption that we have been living under for decades and let's give the Republicans a chance (except ODDO).

UPDATE: HILLARY CLINTON'S WAL-MART , click HERE

Alan Greenspan, Randite retires

Alan Greenspan on Ayn Rand Alan Greenspan once wrote the following to the New York Times Book Review, circa 1957:

"To the Editor:

Atlas Shrugged is a celebration of life and happiness. Justice is unrelenting. Creative individuals and undeviating purpose and rationality achieve joy and fulfillment. Parasites who persistently avoid either purpose or reason perish as they should. Mr. Hicks suspiciously wonders "about a person who sustains such a mood through the writing of 1,168 pages and some fourteen years of work." This reader wonders about a person who finds unrelenting justice personally disturbing.

Alan Greenspan, NY"

It is well-known that Alan Greenspan was an acolyte of Ayn Rand in his early years. It is also well known that Greenspan presided over the longest economic expansion in American history.

A group of admirers of Ayn Rand gathered on Saturday evenings in Rand’s living room “for discussions of philosophy,” Greenspan is listed among members of the group and identified only as “an economic consultant.”

Greenspan had recommended to a Senate committee that all economic regulations should have fixed lifespans. Senator Paul Sarbanes (D-Md.) accused him of “playing with fire, or indeed throwing gasoline on the fire,” and asked him whether he favored a similar provision in the Fed’s authorization. Greenspan coolly answered that he did. Do you actually mean, demanded the senator, that the Fed “should cease to function unless affirmatively continued?” “That is correct, sir,” Greenspan responded. “All right,” the senator came back, “the Defense Department?” “Yes.”

The Senator could scarcely believe his ears. “Now my next question is, is it your intention that the report of this hearing should be that Greenspan recommends a return to the gold standard?” Greenspan responded, “I’ve been recommending that for years, there’s nothing new about that…. It would probably mean there is only one vote in the Federal Open Market Committee for that, but it is mine.” This may be the first time that advocating a policy on a nationally televised Senate committee meeting has been characterized as trying to implement a policy “ever so quietly.”

Greenspan doesn’t talk to the press as a matter of policy. But it appears he has tried to implement policy changes coherent with laissez-faire capitalism whenever it was possible, and he has articulated his case when given the opportunity. As Barbara Branden observes, “Alan believes in the art of the possible.” And, as his friend Joan Mitchell Blumenthal has observed, “Alan is very devoted to Ayn. He still thinks of her most kindly.”

War against America: KELO & Wal-Mart

The War against Surburbia

Suburbia, the preferred way of life across the advanced capitalist world, is under an unprecedented attack -- one that seeks to replace single-family residences and shopping centers with an "anti-sprawl" model beloved of planners and environmental activists. The latest battleground is Los Angeles, which gave birth to the suburban metropolis. Many in the political, planning and media elites are itching to use the regulatory process to turn L.A. from a sprawling collection of low-rise communities into a dense, multistory metropolis on the order of New York or Chicago. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa has outlined this vision, and it does not conform to the way that most Angelenos prefer to live: "This old concept that all of us are going to live in a three-bedroom home, you know this 2,500 square feet, with a big frontyard and a big backyard -- well, that's an old concept."

Land seize for animal shelter to go to donor developer here.

A year after Los Angeles seized three acres from a private company to construct a public building, a city councilman wants to sell the land to another private firm for a commercial development. Hat tip Daryl S

City attorney Rocky Delgadillo, whose office must provide legal justification for the change in the project, has received $13,600 in contributions from two Cisco Bros. executives in the last five years, including a $5,600 check in June to his campaign for state attorney general.

Wake up America!

The War against Business

AMERICAN BUSINESS has few whipping boys so irresistibly whippable as Wal-Mart Stores Inc., whose treatment of employees, competitors and suppliers conjures cold-eyed corporate heartlessness.  But state lawmakers in Maryland are preparing to impose legislation on the retailer so arbitrary that it may achieve the near-impossible feat of casting Wal-Mart as the victim.

This is very bad for business. And if it's bad for business, it's bad for you and me. That's a fact. Business creates jobs, creates wealth, creates is the operative word.

Legislators, OTOH, create nothing. Legislators steal. These social parasites tax, spend and punish those who contribute the most to society. Most of them have have rarely worked an honest day in their "collective" lives.

The Maryland bill is a legislative mugging masquerading as an act of benevolent social engineering.

Other thoughts here and Below the Beltway blog does a great job here and here.  I liked Bruce's take as well over at The Democracy Project.

Legislators want to do something meaningful about healthcare. How about tacklng the thorny issue of illegal aliens exploiting healthcare systems to fiscal death and having family members come in on "tourist visas" to have major surgeries costing hundreds of thousands of dollars. And while your at it, have a chat with all those hospitals on the TexMex border..........they'll open up your eyes.

My position on Wal-mart is here. Walmart's position? Sober and rational,

These bills will do nothing to address the enormous number of uninsured or control the soaring cost of health care in America. 1.3 million Americans work at Wal-Mart. According to one study, 86% of Wal-Mart associates are insured through the company, a spouse’s plan or Medicare. There are 46 million uninsured Americans.

Wal-Mart is deeply committed to finding solutions to the health care challenges facing our associates, our communities, and our company. Every associate, full and part-time, can become eligible for plans that cost less than $25 per month for individuals, $37 per month for a single parent and child, and $65 per month for a family. None of our health plans come with a lifetime maximum – protecting associates and their families from catastrophic costs.

We need  guys like these  running the country..........

Wall Street Journal poll here;
Is Wal-Mart's presence mostly good or mostly bad for a community?

• Mostly good 2131 votes (51%)
• Equally good and bad 814 votes (20%)
• Mostly bad 1214 votes (29%)

The Wal-mart movement is a political fraud.

In a fully free economy, all development is controlled by individuals. That is my ideal. 

The anti Wal-mart movements are dangerous. Big union backed, they represent the tendency to move toward dictatorship policy and collectivism, and away from freedom.

Their weapon of choice is guilt. Guilt is used by the establishment as a means of social control. Guilt is isolated as a tool that keeps individuals tied to the parasitic elements of the community.  Well I aint having none of it, thank you very much.

It is interesting to note that—contrary to the popular misconception—the great sin of the Sodomites was not sexual perversion but collectivism. According to the Talmudic account, Sodom's egalitarian government institutionalized envy, even forbidding private charity because some recipients might get more than others. The judicial system was perverted into an instrument for expropriating the wealthy and successful. The ultimate crime for which the Sodomites were destroyed was placing envy and equality above benevolence and justice.

UPDATE January 16:  HillaryCare Returns in the Wall Street Journal here, read it all:

Unions and Democrats argue that companies must be commanded to do this because employees without health insurance often turn up on Medicaid, which is busting state budgets. But rather than reform Medicaid to control its costs or stop its rampant fraud, the politicians find it easier to sock it to private business. One result will be that companies will create fewer new jobs, as in Old Europe.

As for Wal-Mart, it is hardly an ogre as an employer for 1.3 million Americans. It now offers an array of health plans to all full and part-time employees with monthly premiums as low as $23 for an individual and $65 for a family anywhere in the country (less in some areas). Employees can also choose to set up health savings accounts with Wal-Mart matching contributions up to $1,000

Wal-Mart hasn't said how it will respond to the new Maryland law, but we'd suggest at a minimum that it cancel its plans for a new regional distribution center in the state that would create about 800 jobs. Maryland's politicians need to understand that policies punishing business have bad economic consequences. Let a more enlightened state benefit from Wal-Mart's prosperity.

I second that.

News Room Home to Fiction Writers

Brain freeze! Take back your brain  from the MSM. More news control aka news you wont see or hear

Expansion Continues

Weekly jobless claims plunge to lowest level in more than five years

The number of newly laid-off workers filing claims for unemployment benefits fell to the lowest level in more than five years last week, providing strong evidence that the labor market is shaking off the effects of a string of devastating hurricanes.

The Labor Department reported Thursday that applications for unemployment benefits dropped by 35,000 to 291,000, the smallest number since Sept. 23, 2000, when the economy was in the concluding months of the longest economic expansion in history.

In exchange for news they make up.m Where do you find the most polivic Fiction writes? Newsrooms of course;

Commentary: Fear and Loathing in Business NewsThanks to news reports, Americans are suffering from the fear of everything. Pick any letter of the alphabet and you’ll find something to make you run and hide – from avian flu to a bust in housing or cloning. This anxious hype is an avoidable man-made disaster.

CBS Conjures Recession Specter in New Year’s Newscast
Economic forecasts for 2006 are looking bright, but that didn’t stop the “CBS Evening News” from warning that recession might be in store.
.
This week:  Strong U.S. economy; ABC weighed and found lacking on calorie-counting; IBD joins other media in snowing public on housing news. Media Research Center

Note term: "Militant" me? I would have leaned towards terrorist, barbarian but militant nah.

Afghan Principal Beheaded
Associated Press
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - Militants broke into the home of an Afghan headmaster and beheaded him while forcing his wife and eight children to watch, the latest in a spate of

Technorati Tags: economy, business, politics, blog, news, weblog, bush

Wal-Mart: Under Attack from the Left, Bank on it!

SHOCKA! Congressman Barney Frank of Massachusetts and a gang of other Capitol Hill liberals have cast a negative eye toward Wal-Mart's entry into banking. If they decide to regulate Wal-Mart out of the industry, the end result will be higher banking service costs for the poor constituents they claim to represent.

Once again, limousine liberals are keeping the poor down lest they lose their constituency.  My previous pieces on Wal-Mart here and here , the Wal-mart movement is a political fraud.

Great article over at the WSJ here (subscription necessary)

If the bankers succeed in this protectionist gambit, the biggest loser won't be Wal-Mart, but rather consumers, particularly those in lower-income neighborhoods where competition in retail banking is traditionally scarce. Wal-Mart banking services in these areas might even solve the longstanding problems of red-lining and discriminatory lending practices. Wal-Mart already performs many bank-like functions that are especially popular in poor areas -- including wire transfers, money orders, paycheck cashing, and express bill payment services.

The protest is all the more curious since Wal-Mart's immediate banking ambitions are quite modest. To head off the mounting opposition from the bankers, Wal-Mart insists that in the short term it merely wants to create an in-house banking affiliate so it can lower costs on credit card transactions at its stores. Traditionally, banks charge an interchange fee of roughly 2% on the cost of the retail credit/debit card transaction. Wal-Mart has determined that if it owns its own bank it can cut the transaction fee in half, and pass the cost-savings on to its customers who pay with Visa or MasterCard.

But why shouldn't Wal-Mart be permitted to engage in a whole range of banking services down the line, if it wishes to? That's the meaty policy issue at stake here: whether the traditional firewall between banks and commercial enterprises (i.e., the commercial lenders and the borrowers) should be officially torn down. The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999 effectively abandoned this traditional separation between commerce and banking when it allowed securities and insurance firms to engage in most banking activities. This has all been part of a 25-year-long deregulation of banking that has led to huge increases in efficiency in American financial markets as well as vastly improved consumer services. (Remember the quaint notion of "banker's hours?")

Studies have found, for example, that in neighborhoods where Wal-Mart has entered the grocery business, its prices range from 8% to 27% below those charged at the incumbent grocery chains. Moreover, if there were a repeat of the kind of bank failures we witnessed in the late 1980s, financially sturdy Wal-Mart would be far less susceptible to the risk of closure (and FDIC deposit insurance payments to depositors) than small and less capitalized community banks.

I make no secret of my support and position on Wal-mart. I own no stock in Wal-mart, do not shop at Wal-mart - as the city council stopped the proposed Wal-mart store in the NYC area and so I have no private agenda, only that as an American wishing to preserve the Declaration of Independence,  the greatest document in human history.

"We need not give in to the barbarians, but they are certainly waiting anxiously" Ayn Rand.

I expect the banking industry to be unhappy with the idea of a stealth competitor entering the arena but hey that's too bad.
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) will soon have to make a big decision: we can only hope that non-partisan free market heads will prevail.

UPDATE: More Commentary: Michael Barone of U.S. News and World Report argues that Wal-Mart succeeds where General Motors has failed: it continually adapts to the shifting demands of the marketplace and in doing so benefits its customers and employees alike.

UPDATE January 5th  MORE WAL-MART BASHING:

What is  it with union leaders?   Their duplicity never ceases to astound, eh?

An yet last summer, as millions of teachers saved money on their back-to-school supplies by shopping at Wal-Mart, the NEA called for a boycott.Today, Working Families for Wal-Mart released a poll that shows that even as union leaders continue their anti-Wal-Mart campaign, 96% of union households shop at Wal-Mart and 63 percent of union households think Wal-Mart is good for consumers. Poll here: .

Some more highlights:

A majority of union households (54 percent) say that unions should make protecting jobs at places like GM a higher priority than attacking Wal-Mart.

Overall, 71 percent of Americans believe Wal-Mart is good for consumers and 60 percent of Americans say the campaign against Wal-Mart is not a good use of union dues.

These lefties made me sick and do everything in their power to hurt the American working class and that my dear is a fact.

Technorati Tags: economy, business, politics, blog, news, weblog, Wal-Mart

NY TRANSIT STRIKE: FIRE THEM ALL

                   Fire them all.
Me, Scrooge? NO! The transit workers union is guilty of that, striking at the height of the Christmas season  in the freezing cold. How dare they?

The transit worker makes a better living than cops or fireman.

This strike is illegal. This strike wreaks hell on the common folk. I am not sure if Bloomberg has the balls that Reagan did but they should all be fired, every last one of them. How dare they?

Cogito ergo, sum............in their case I exist, therefore give me a raise. Uh Uh.

Many members of the union are not in favor of this strike at all, and feel fortunate to have landed such a cushy job. But the hard left union has their own agenda. Transit Workers Union president, Roger Toussaint, knows that the real battle occurs in the public eye. Alicia Colon believes New Yorkers have become so used to having their creature comforts safeguarded and indulged that principles and logic are easily ignored.

I have no love for the unions. My father had a small business growing up and I saw first hand the ILGWU put him out of business. When I joined The New York Daily News I had to pay UNION dues even though I didn't want to join the union. And while I loved my career at The News I was told repeatedly by union reps that I was "overproducing", making the labors of my less than motivated co-workers look inaedquate. *spit*

New York has not recovered from 9/11, no matter what anyone one tells you. Read my previous post here on the dismal state of New York's finances.

A big chunk of what has passed for private-sector job growth in New York has also occurred in industries that are nominally private but are actually supported by tax revenues and therefore don’t create wealth but at best merely redistribute it. These industries—health care and social services—have accounted for nearly half the city’s job growth in the past 12 months and now represent 18 percent of all “private”-sector jobs in the city. Moreover, concentrated in areas like nonprofit social-services agencies, home health-care services, and nursing homes, these are mostly low-wage jobs. The typical home health-care job in the city, for instance, pays about $25,000 a year. New York will never earn back its title as one of the country’s leading entrepreneurial centers when tax-supported low-wage jobs account for so much of its economic growth.

Anyone who has watched the long decline of New York’s economy—which today employs nearly 200,000 fewer people than 35 years ago—will understand what’s happening, because it has happened before, repeatedly. The city’s economic slide began in the mid-1960s, when city and state pols began sharply raising taxes to pay for an expanded social agenda—saddling New York with the heaviest tax burden among U.S. cities. Today, Gotham taxes residents and businesses at about 75 percent more than the average of the next ten largest American cities—and that startling percentage is growing.

Best STRIKE coverage at New York blog News Copy-kick ass and take names Bob! It seems Ohio is having it's fair share of transit crimes here

UPDATE: Tuesday evening: TROW DAH BUMS OUT!

 

Wal-Mart: America's Persecuted Minority, Big Business

The Wal-mart movement is a political fraud, Wal-mart has saved towns (all the way back to Bentonville, Arkansas).

In a fully free economy, all development is controlled by individuals. I always found it fascinating that Wal-mart would emerge from the South. The South is the one part of America that has never been capitalist. Rand held that it  was  agrarian - and had more in common with collective  feudalism than individual capitalism, which was why the South held onto slavery so long. And if you think about it, capitalism wiped out slavery in the 1800s.

The anti Wal-mart movements are dangerous. Big union backed, this represents the tendency to move toward dictatorship policy and collectivism, and away from freedom.

The left keeping Wal-mart out of the hands of the poor for the good of the poor is at once elitism at its worst. From Ted Kennedy no less. The man never worked a day in his life and no less about the value of a dollar than my 8 year old (actually she knows more).  Teddy "I can swim but she can't" Kennedy waxing poetic on Wal-mart.

We must free the most essential and productive group in  our society - businesspeople.  I believe in free collective bargaining, not forced union. If people want to organize into a group and bargain collectively - cool.  That is their right. Today's labor movement against Wal-mart is an attempt to to force people to join, or force Wal-mart to negotiate with them. I see that as the violation of rights.

I make no secret of my support and position on Wal-mart. I own no stock in Wal-mart, do not shop at Wal-mart - as the city council stopped the proposed Wal-mart store in the NYC area and so I have no private agenda, only that as an American wishing to preserve the Declaration of Independence,  the greatest document in human history. Look how much this nation achieved so long as it stood by its principles. Namely, freedom. The parallels between the collapse of Western Civilization and the collapse of Rome are obvious. The growth of taxation and government control caused the collapse of Rome, the same thing is happening today.

"We need not give in to the barbarians, but they are certainly waiting anxiously" Ayn Rand.

Fear and Loathing Wal-Mart The high cost of progress.  Rich Lowry NRO

A new documentary, Wal-Mart: Ths High Cost of Low Price trashes the much-maligned discount retailer. What the company’s executives are now encountering is the high cost of progress. The political reaction against Wal-Mart is the latest iteration of the fear and loathing that greets any major innovation in American retailing.
A new paper from the Competitive Enterprise Institute details the long history of resistance to retail advances. In the late 19th century, the advent of department stores caused outrage. The same reaction met the rise of mail-order catalogs, which were burned in public at the behest of local retailers. The rise of chain stores in the 1920s also inflamed local merchants, who claimed that they threatened "the future of the children."

Now, it’s Wal-Mart’s turn. Founder Sam Walton realized that by offering customers discount prices he could make more profits based on increased volume. Hence, the Wal-Mart revolution, and the movement against it that The High Cost celebrates. Wal-Mart is faring the film surprisingly well, since its release has coincided with the publication of studies that debunk the image of the company crucifying its employees on a cross of low wages and nonexistent benefits as it forces them onto welfare.
The first thing to know about low price is that it has a wonderfully low cost for Wal-Mart customers, a category that includes 8 in 10 Americans a year. A study by Global Insight — paid by Wal-Mart to study the company’s economic effects, but granted independence — estimated that Wal-Mart lowered the consumer price index by 3.1 percent between 1985 and 2004, making for $263 billion in consumer savings by 2004. In a widely cited report, Jason Furman of New York University notes that Wal-Mart and other discount stores make "consumers better off by the equivalent of 25 percent of annual food spending."
But only at the price of wage slavery? No, Wal-Mart’s average wage of roughly $9 an hour is on par with other retailers. Because the jobs tend to be low-skill, retail workers earn less than the average wage for all U.S. workers. According to Furman, this has been the case for the past 20 years and holds true even in areas without Wal-Marts.

Read it all and make sure you read my Thanksgiving day piece on why Wal-mart is the best of America and must be allowed to operate freely in the marketplace. An economy of abundance works, not an economy of scarcity! Read Basquiat, Economic Sophisms.

UPDATE: Tangential but on point and spot on;

"[A]nywhere other than Antarctica and a few sparsely inhabited islands, the first condition for a healthy environment is a strong economy. In the past third of a century, the American economy has swollen by 150 per cent, automobile traffic has increased by 143 per cent, and energy consumption has grown 45 per cent. During this same period, air pollutants have declined by 29 per cent, toxic emissions by 48.5 per cent, sulphur dioxide levels by 65.3 per cent, and airborne lead by 97.3 per cent. Despite signing on to Kyoto, European greenhouse gas emissions have increased since 2001, whereas America's emissions have fallen by nearly one per cent, despite the Toxic Texan's best efforts to destroy the planet" -- columnist Mark Steyn, writing in the Daily Telegraph of London.

This from the  demon seed, Rush Limbaugh;

Only the Rich Pay Taxes  

The Top 50% pay 96.54% of All Income Taxes
The Top 1% Pay More Than a Third: 34.27%

Got Proof?

The most significant proof of Bush's begrudged, resented successes hit me like a pie in the face.
Last night I attended a rather glam fundraiser for the Michael S. Modell Memorial Awards Dinner Crohn’s & Colitis Foundation of America hosted by the Modell family, of the ginormous Modell retailing family. I am loathe to attend these functions and rarely- if ever go - but these are wonderful people and the huge attendance and ourpouring of support is a testament to their good will and character.

That said, I attended despite my antipathy to these types of social gatherings.  I loathe tiny talk.

True to my nature I hated it but what  dumbfounded me, truly truly left me astonished, was the lack of any real concern or knowledge on any of the attendees parts for  Radical Islamofascism (radical whaaaaat?)  the War on Terror, the impending nuclear Iran -  mind you these were not the uneducated or uninvolved people. These were Masters of the Universe, big swingin dicks. And like I said hugely attended.

These were the very same people that stood on the streets of 9/11 and watched in horrified awe and wept as those giant edifices cascaded to the ground vaporizing thousands of fellow New Yorkers and citizens of the world.

These were the same people that kept looking over there shoulders after 9/11 for months, years - anticipating the next terror attack. Anthrax! Bioterror!  These were the same left blue state New Yorkers that placed a godlike status on Rudy Guiliani, rendering unto him a reverential respect.

These were those people. Bush has been so successful, 9/11 has now become a "a couple of jerks that got lucky"( is how one of those Masters referred to al qaida 9/11). Imagine that. Who'd a thunk it? It made me sick.

Who could have imagined that  Bush could  become in the this leftist world a victim of his own success?

And the threat is so far from over, from the infamous doomsday clock ticking in Iran to

Nuclear Terrorism by Graham Allison  an informed analysis of the atomic weapons that have gone AWOL from Soviet arsenals and of the keenness of groups like al-Qaeda to obtain and deploy them. Billionaire businessman Warren Buffet is quoted as saying that a nuclear terrorist attack is "the ultimate depressing thing. It will happen. It's inevitable. I don't see that it won't happen."’

Democrats' war criticism irresponsible - more here with  predictable bias from CCN.
The White House called irresponsible those Democrats who said that President George W. Bush lacked a strategy on Iraq.

Continued Reconstruction Success from 15 Nov to 27 Nov  05

1. Completion of police stations in Babil, Basrah, Erbil, Kirkuk Ninewa, and Salah ad Din Provinces, and a holding facility in Al Muthanna Province will provide approximately 250,000 people a safer environment and greater security as police operate from these improved facilities.

2. The completion of renovations to 12 schools in Baghdad, Basrah, and Al Anbar Provinces will equal a better learning environment and brighter future for over 7,200 Iraqi schoolchildren and 50 teachers.

3. Over 29 km of new roads between Qadisiya, Province and WassitProvince will provide a safer travel route for farming villages to transport their crops to the market and reaching larger towns such as Baghdad.

4. 500,000 people annually will benefit from six renovated railroad station in Qadisiyah Province will provide protection from the environment while the passengers wait to board the train and for the stationmaster to schedule freight movements.

5. 150,000 residents between Baghdad,, Ninewa, and Wassit Provincenow enjoy more reliable electricity as their 15 km of electrical power feeder were installed to local distribution substations.

6. 80,000 people between Maysan, Najaf, and Ninewa Provinces now enjoy potable water with the installation of three compact water units and repair of 27 km of water line.

 7. Four border forts in Maysan Province and two border forts in Al Anbar Province will increase the security along the border with Iran and Saudia Arabia, allow for the proper training of the border police, and provide additional logistical support for border patrols.

 8. The completion of a Port of Entry in Ninewa province will expedite the safe passage of thousands of vehicles and persons traveling between Iran and Syria daily.

9. Fire stations in Al Anbar, Basrah, Diyala, and Kirkuk Provinces will increase fire security for 100,000 residents in local towns and provide an excellent training facility for firefighters.

 10. Completion of cluster pump station is part of an overall project to restore water injection to pre-war levels.  The water injection infrastructure is critical to providing adequate pressure on the oil reservoir in the Rumaylah field and has a direct impact on crude oil production output.

Saddam Hussein: The big black book of horrors. (Hat tip: Lady of Shalott at LGF)

Turning Point: President Bush's address to the U.S. Naval Academy

President Bush addressed the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis and outlined his vision for achieving success in the Iraqi war. The speech will without question be referred to in upcoming days and will mark a turning point in his presidency.

Every quote is a pull quote so I am insisting Click below to read READ IT ALL.
Now if only he would the same for the state of the economy and do it DAILY! From Fellow Pajamas Media Contributor and Editorial member;

"Will someone please explain why the Bush White House and the Republican Congress are not trumpeting this economic boom on a daily basis? Their polls are sagging, but the economy is soaring. This simply shouldn't be. If former President Clinton had overseen this economy, he'd have held daily Rose Garden news conferences to mark the occasion. In fact, former President Reagan did just that in the booming 1980s -- he gave speech after speech touting the success of his supply-side tax cuts. Yet President Bush seldom goes into the current economic story, and when he does it's just a mention" -- Larry Kudlow, CNBC host and former Reagan Administration economist.

BLACK FRIDAY! Wal-mart, Thanksgiving, the Left, and the Poor

In Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged the productive, inventive minds of the world are constantly belittled and attacked by the envious and agenda-driven in a society whose squeaky wheel gets the most grease. Sound familiar? R. Galloway

The left keeping Wal-mart out of the hands of the poor for the good of the poor is at once laughable and disgusting. From Ted Kennedy no less. What does he know about working, actually paying for things through hard work?  Here's  Teddy "I can swim but she can't" Kennedy waxing poetic on Wal-mart;

We are working hard in Congress to make the Wal-Marts of the world accountable to workers, families and communities. We have introduced legislation to expose Wal-Mart's practice of dumping responsibility for health care for its employers on the American taxpayer. We have introduced the Employee Free Choice Act to give workers a voice at work and to stop anti-union intimidation tactics. We continue to fight for an increase in the minimum wage, to ensure that no one who works for a living lives in poverty. We have sponsored legislation to ensure equal pay for men and women. And we are increasing penalties against companies with dangerous working conditions.

Where does this murdering drunk get off giving business advice?

Successful business people who have made it on their own have a healthy respect for the effort and the system of capitalism that make success possible. Jack Wheeler describes it brilliantly here.

Envy-appeasement explains why Hollywood is so liberal. The vast amounts of money entertainment stars make is so grossly disproportionate to the effort it took them to make it that they feel it is unearned. So they apologize for it. The Liberal strategy is to apologize for his success, his country’s success, his civilization’s success, in order to appease the envious.

Liberalism is thus not a political ideology or set of beliefs. It is an envy-deflection device, a psychological strategy to avoid being envied. Liberalism is the politicalization of envy-appeasement.

Rich children with their unearned inheritance are easy targets for guilt mongering by the envious. So they assume a posture of liberal compassion as an envy deflection device.
"Please don't envy for my father's money ---look at all the liberal causes and government social programs I advocate!" Teddy Kennedy is the archetype of this phenomenon.

Wal-mart was forced to drop its plans for its first New York city store. And New York was the loser for it. The lower middle and middle class was the loser for it.
A "coalition"  of lefties is planning hundreds of anti-Wal-Mart actions nationwide in mid-November as the key retailing holiday season kicks into gear. The Nov. 13-19 campaign, dubbed "Higher Expectations Week," is being coordinated by Wal-MartWatch, an "umbrella group" started early this year by maverick union leader Andy Stern, head of the Service Employees International Union.

Uh, what? Wal-mart Watch? WTF? Here is the board;

Wal-Mart Watch is a 501c3 organization
'devoted to studying the impact of large corporations on society, and its advocacy arm, Five Stones [I am looking into these folks]

The Center’s Board of Directors includes:

• Andrew Stern, President, Service Employees International Union [old time labor, shocka!]
• Judy Lichtman, Founder, National Partnership for Women & Families [typical lefty feminazi ]
• Chellie Pingree, President and CEO, Common Cause ["It's a really good time to be one of the good guys when the bad guys are so bad," Chellie Pingree said.]
  
• Carl Pope, Executive Director, Sierra Club [environ-mentalists? huh?]
• Roger Wilkins, George Mason University [welfare lawyer from Cleveland, Ohio turned Pulitzer Prize-winner, Wilkins is
  best know for his role in exposing Watergate in the '70s]
• Ed Goeas, The Tarrance Group [token pollster]
  

I argue Wal-Mart would provide jobs, generate tremendous sales, and offer low prices that would benefit low-wage earners greatly.

Wal-Mart pays above minimum wage, has an excellent pay plan, always promotes from within and has an excellent benefits package. And WTF is wrong with the lowest prices in town?

An economy of abundance works! Not an economy of scarcity! Read Basquiat, Economic Sophisms.

Wal-Mart makes it possible for lower wage earners to purchase items the could never afford at regular store prices. Wal-mart enhances the quality of life for ALL AMERICANS. 
These limo libs speak for who? Not for them, they don't shop at Wal-Mart, believe me. They speak for the little guy? HA! The little guy needs Wal-Mart.

Wal-Mart is an exemplar case history of a great AMERICAN success story but the lefties hate when the American experiment works. They trot out their Lenin/Marxist bullshit and fail to mention 100 million people murdered at the hands of communists outside of war.
Market based economies work. Let the market handle inferior merchandise............people will stop buying it and buy higher quality goods, if they want to.
I believe the undoing of American competitive edge has more to do with collectivist unionizing and decimated meritocracy.

Freedom, choose freedom. Not various shades of slavery whether it be forced union membership and dues (something I experienced when I signed on to work for The New York Daily News), impossible taxation, heavy tariffs, and crippling government regulation.
I live in New York and believe me when I tell you it's a welfare state and has become increasingly IMPOSSIBLE to make any kind of money/profit here.

FREE THE PRODUCERS. CREATE AN ENVIRONMENT THAT IS FRIENDLY OPEN TO THE PRODUCER. STOP PUNISHING THE PRODUCERS.It seems to me the left is attempting to "kill the messenger"

Back in the late 70s early 80's the ILGWU put my daddy's factory out of business. Impossible demands and automatic wage increases forced him out of business. HE HAD NO CHOICE.............helloooooooooooooooo.

So what did he do? Necessity is the Mother of Invention. He subcontracted to a non welfare state (North Carolina) and then to Taiwan...............we are not talking child slavery, or slave labor here.
We must remove the shackles on the American producers. We must advocate for a FREE economy. Get the governement off our backs!  DON'T TREAD ON ME.

The key question to ask of any action, is whether it was undertaken with a gun held to the head. This is a vital question because of its economic results.

Tom, hamster motortime wrote;

If Walmart does not hold a gun to the head of a man who purchases a product, this indicates that the man is choosing to spend his money in this manner- that he is picking on option out of other alternative ways to satisfy his wants. He buys the product because he values the alternatives less. Mutatis mutandis if Walmart purchases his labor- both value his labor more than the alternative.

The Asian manufacturers who supply Walmart with products, do not hold guns to the heads of the Board of Directors. Walmart purchases those goods because they value them more than their alternative.

Now, freedom is not a key to utopia- reality imposes limits within which humans may live, and you will find that these limits prohibit precisely the utopias sought by the barrel of a gun. Do not ask whether this freedom could be better, but whether the use of force in these transactions could achieve the results you seek without negative effects greater than would occur in a state of freedom. In other words: how many people living in "subsistence wages" now, would be dead under your system of interventionism, or any variant of it?

UPDATE: NOVEMBER 27th: Apparently I have a new career here. heh heh

Viva La Jooooos: Israelis Developing Alternatives to Arab Oil

My money is Israel.........Exxon, Sunoco, Shell PAY ATTENTON!

Israelis Developing Alternatives to Arab Oil

By Ezra HaLevi An Israeli inventor and company are trying to use garbage and leftover olive pulp from olive-oil factories, respectively, to replace oil in providing fuel and electricity to the Jewish State.

From one ton of garbage, half a ton of oil, 300 kg of gas or 150 kg of green coal, from which electricity is produced, can be extracted, according to inventor Dr. Sergei Rosenberg.

Read it all over at Arutz Sheva here

The Jews are just like everyone else-----only more so.   Anon

UPDATE: Loving the rabbis;

Local rabbis help stop anti-Semitic TV show
The Jewish Advocate Tue, 08 Nov 2005
A letter to Jordanian King Abdullah II signed by 24 prominent American rabbis, including four from the Greater Boston area, resulted in last week’s cancellation of an anti-Semitic program being featured on Jordanian TV. The program was a Syrian-made series called “The Diaspora.”

THIRTY FIVE PERCENT, BEEE-YOTCH! WORST SINCE NIXON! HAHAHAH!

The above headline was from a commenter on the previous drinking thread.

And while I put as much stock in an a cBS poll as I do put in the therapeutic properties of snake oil, I do believe certain things must be said.
To the 35% I salute the mainstream media for so successfully and so relentlessly clubbing the America psyche into Bush bashed submission.

To the 65% I wish to submit to you the following:

There have been no terror attacks in the US since 9/11. Think about that. All through the Clinton years, US targets were fair game. Islamic Terrorists have carried out more than 3,192 deadly terror attacks since 9/11. We can thank George Bush for that.

He is fighting Radical Islamofascism in spite of a corrupt UN and international community. 

The Left says Bush used WMD to manipulate into war. I say 9/11 "manipulated" us into war with a shadowy enemy. Conventional thinking about war is obsolete and Bush was sagacious to see it. But here we are 5 years later and the left is still crying about it. Never decrying the dead at ground zero, but using the military dead as a tool.

Londonastan, Paris Burning, Theo Von Gogh................Europe is finished, dying. America was follwoing the same trajectory under Clinton. Clinton was the Champion of appeasement, the man entertained Yasser Arafat at the White House as frequently as Jfk had Marilyn in the White House swimming pool.

The following scenario is typical of America's response top terror under a Democratic leadership from Frontpage.mag;

What follows is an excerpt from My FBI by Louis Freeh, in which the former FBI director describes the reaction of the Clinton White House to evidence provided by the bureau that Iran was behind the Khobar Tower attacks of 1996, which killed 19 American servicemen:

…Remarkably (although that’s an insufficient word), Sandy’s people had prepared a script A and script B for spinning the story once it became public…Clearly, someone had been having a nightmare that featured a headline along the lines of “FBI Investigation Determines Iran Responsible for Khobar Attack…It seemed we were here to manage the issue, not do a damn thing about it."

"Wait a minute," I finally said, “are we going to talk about the fact that Iranians killed nineteen Americans?"

…At some point, I tried to catch George Tenet’s eye to give him one of those "What the hell is going on?" looks.  Instead, I had to wait to buttonhole him as we were walking out of the meeting.

"Do you believe that?" I asked.

"We have a lot of meetings like that around here," George answered.

The light shined by Louis Freeh on the backroom machinations of the Clinton administration confirms much of what most foreign policy observers already suspected: the Clinton White House was willing to sacrifice the security of the United States for the goal of better relations with the Islamic Republic of Iran.  The Khobar Towers incident, while certainly one of the more graphic and disturbing outcomes of this Faustian bargain, is simply one example.  During the eight years of his presidency, President Bill Clinton oversaw one of the most damaging and foolish foreign policy initiatives in recent American history: the institutionalized appeasement of Iran.   

 

The unfolding of global events since 9/11 is the case for going into Iraq.  17 years of flouting sanctions, the tip of the iceberg.

I believe the missing WMD is in Iran or Syria but even so the following has been found;

Did you know WMDs have been found in Iraq?
* 1.77 metric tons of enriched uranium
* 1,500 gallons of chemical weapons agents
* 17 chemical warheads containing cyclosarin (a nerve agent five times more deadly than sarin gas)
* Over 1,000 radioactive materials in powdered form meant for dispersal over populated areas
* Roadside bombs loaded with mustard and “conventional” sarin gas, assembled in binary chemical projectiles for maximum potency

This is only a PARTIAL LIST of the horrific weapons verified to have been recovered in Iraq to date. Yet, Americans are consistently misled by the left and the mainstream media that U.S. and coalition forces found NO weapons of mass destruction. Iraq was a weapon of mass destruction.

The UN pressures Syria to turn over suspects in the Rafiq al-Hariri assassination,and the Lebanon Cedar revolution could topple the Arab world's Berlin Wall. Lebanese citizens are clearly no longer afraid of the Syrians and are moving quickly toward regaining their independence and becoming a truly democratic society. This phenomenon obviously poses a huge threat not only to Syria, but also to Islamists throughout the Middle East terrified of liberty in their midst. This first true pro-democratic revolution in the Arab world

Thank George Bush for that. 

Despite the economic devastation of 9/11, dramatic spending increases on national security, the costs of war, KKKatrina, U.S. Government Action to Assist American Citizens Mexico/Hurricane Wilma , Rescuing Victims of Modern-Day Slavery, Tsunami aid etc. etc., Corporate Profits on a Tear.
Third-quarter corporate profits have extended one of the most robust winning streaks in recent history --The President is doing a brilliant job. Yes yes that is what I said. Stocks surged on the back of a strong GDP report, to cap off a week of big swings. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 172.82, or 1.69%, to 10402.77. The Nasdaq Composite Index gained 1.26% and the Standard & Poor's 500-stock index rose 1.65%.

Private home ownership is at an all time high. Black home ownership the highest in our nation's history.

Retail sales surged in October.

Low unemployment.

Low inflation.

Gas prices? Blame the left. Blame the left for our lack of refineries, blame the left for locking us out of our own natural resources, blame the left for ANWR, blame the left for blocking energy reform. Everyone is angry at the oil companies. Why? It's the law of supply and demand. Why wasn't everyone mad at the tech companies when demand was high and they were making a ton of money? The subway used to be a nickel, houses could be bought for 10k.............who are we to expect the price of a gallon of gas to remain the same?  Why aren't the American people enraged at the left for the lack of refineries? What happens when you have the United States, China, India, Europe, and Japan all competing over the same oil? We are seeing today the beginning of a new era in which the Middle East will no longer be a unipolar arena. There will be other players, particularly China, that will move in and want to cut deals and alliances. Interruptions from the hurricanes tightened supply, but consumer demand stayed high, fueled by China and India – so gasoline prices went up. Oil companies profited from the situation, but they didn’t arbitrarily set their prices extra-high. Market forces determined prices.

The left berates Bush on racism and yet the man has the most diverse and multicultural staff/cabinet in our nation's history.

"Three of Maryland's top Democrats -- including the two leading candidates for governor next year -- declined to repudiate comments by black Democratic leaders who said racially tinged attacks against Lt. Gov. Michael S. Steele are fair because he is a black conservative Republican." hat tip Fred

My only issues with Bush stem from his placating the left with bloated spending programs (IE prescription drug benefit), lack of real tax reform (VIVA THE FLAT TAX), medicare fraud and misuse - IE slashed my finger and made my first trip to the emergency room and I can tell you it is basically a ginormous doctor's office for anyone and any malady large and small. People must pay. And I mean everyone, legal and illegal. Sorry. As soon as people have to pay for something they won't go running to the doctor or emergency room for every runny nose. Four hours for a stinking stitch. I know too may stories of immigrants overstaying their tourist visas, bringing in sick family members and getting free heart operations and follow up care. The hospitals actually encourage illegals to come for superfluous testing - because the taxpayer (you and me) are footing the bill.The only way to bring down health care costs is to consume less in terms of health care services. That will require a major cultural change.

Katrina was a bitchslap to the welfare state. A Rainbow in the Aftermath of Katrina: Realization that Overspending Must Stop - let us hope.

Social Security reform - that ponzi scheme has got to stop. The third rail of politics? Why? Because seniors are the largest voting bloc. Oh puhleeeeeeeze. Seniors had their whole life to make a living and squirrel away for their old age................lavish on the children to quote a long lost ghost. Lavish on the children.

Rant over for now. To be continued

Photo toon: Pete at IHILLARY

The Intellectual and Moral Bankurptc of Todays Left: Dr.Sanity
great piece, read it

 

Capitalism for Dummies: Defend Your Nuts!

The best post this week  is at Hamster Motortime, Tom is America's greatest untapped resource. He is my nomination for Alan Greenspan's successor. You must read it all and send it to your Democrat socialist elected officials (so good they are at spending my money);

Defend your nuts: a parable on property rights and hippies

Suppose you were a squirrel. You would work hard to find the biggest nuts, and then stash those large nuts in secret places. You'd only do so if you had a high degree of assurance that those nuts would be there, unrotted and ready to eat, when your life depended on them. You'd have to depend on other squirrels to not steal your nuts, and assure them that you would do likewise.

Now suppose that a pack of liberal chinchillas, calling themselves the Friends of the Forest, came along preaching the evils of despoiling the forest by the secretion of nuts. They would climb onto tree stumps and proclaim,  "You have destroyed our natural panoply and ruined the aesthetic balance of nature, man. Your lives are a blight on the harmony of our forest. For the greater good of our nurturing forest, you must change your ways. Or else."

Then they would harass every squirrel out trying to find nuts, calling them fascists incomparably more evil than the infamous squirrel known as "Muffins." They would raid all the nut caches they could find, throwing the hard-sought nuts into the river. They would carry around chunks of sandalwood and tufts of unknown leaves that had been struck by lightning, claiming they "enhanced the psychic atmosphere." Worse yet, they would subject every young squirrel to merciless indoctrination, turning them into anemic grass-eating advocates of Chinchillism ready to denounce their thrifty parents to the nearest Friend of the Forest. Squirrels would wake up uncertain of whether they would be able to collect any nuts at all that day, or whether any nuts they did find would be safe from the chinchillas or their squirrel abettors. Each squirrel would look out only for himself, eager to strike a deal with the Friends of the Forest.

You would be righteously indignant and would express your rage in a barely audible "scrick," by which you mean, "you malodorous chinchilla marauders have destroyed our right to the rightfully acquired fruits of our labor, and in doing so secured our certain death by starvation. We, the squirrels, depend upon the continued existence of immutable property rights for the maintainance of any survival above the savage existence of our early squirrel ancestors.

Shhhhhhhhhhhh.............The Media Doesn't Want you to Know

SURPRISE SURPRISE SURPRISE!  The Economy is on a tear. Say what? You haven't heard? SHOCKA!
Unprecedented, unheralded, hush hush economic news. Bizzy Blog and the WSJ expose the gorgeous truth.

First - today's Wall Street Journal reports;

We would like to take a moment to pause and marvel at the U.S. economy. Friday's Labor Department report of more than 200,000 new jobs in July, and two million over the past year, provides the latest bullish details. But the larger story of American job creation, and its causes, is even more impressive.

First, more Americans have jobs today than at any other time in history. Second, over the past two decades or so, the U.S. has created more than 40 million jobs -- twice as many as Europe and Japan combined. And third, the U.S. has one of the lowest jobless rates of all developed nations.

It was only a year ago that John Kerry was blasting the "jobless recovery." Lou Dobbs was flogging "outsourcing" every night on CNN as a sign of peril for the American workforce. That criticism now looks wildly off base

And  Tom over at Bizzy Blog has the most Brilliant economic piece on the US economy;

The Economy Must Be Good Since You’re Not Hearing About

1. Did you know manufacturing (manu-what?) has been on a sustained tear?

Manufacturing growth accelerated in July, continuing steady and historic consistency
manufacturing has grown for 26 straight months, the longest expansion in the sector in more than 16 years, since nearly three years of uninterrupted growth ended in April 1989

2.  The NASDAQ is just about at a 4-year high. And imagine this–Not that the dollar amounts are enough to guarantee lifetime stays at the beach, but balances in 401(k) plans are at a 5-year high (link requires registration)

3. Has anyone told you that this recovery is better from an employment standpoint than the previous one?

Unless you’re a reader of Don Luskin at poorandstupid.com (which is neither) or Jim Glass at scrivener.net, there’s a good chance you don’t know that. Comparing this recovery to the previous one on five objective criteria, the score is 3.5 to 1.5 in favor of THIS recovery

4. Geez, I almost didn’t m>ntion the 3.4% GDP growth in the second quarter.

Go over to Tom's Bizzy Blog and read it all.......can you imagine if these were the numbers of a Democrat Administration, they'd be chiseling Mount Rushmore as we speak.