coolidge (6)

 
 
“Civilization and profit go hand in hand.”

“Collecting more taxes than is absolutely necessary is legalized robbery.”

“Don't expect to build up the weak by pulling down the strong.”

“Duty is not collective; it is personal.”


“Economy is the method by which we prepare today to afford the improvements of tomorrow.”**
 
All quotes by President Calvin Coolidge
 
 
 
Progressivism = Reactionary Politics,
Nihilistic Economics and Human Slavery
 
           Most thinking voters now realize, progressivism is a hideous political philosophy based upon the belief that we must ‘progress’ beyond ‘the ill-conceived and outdated U.S. Constitution’ in order to make progress toward an earthly Utopia. What most, even clear thinking, people don’t realize is that under the guise of “modernity” progressivism is an utterly reactionary approach to government. Totalitarian states and socialism have been the norm of human existence. Protecting people’s right to self-govern, is something virtually unheard of across history. It is freedom for individuals; and economic freedom; and documents that proclaim those individual and economic freedoms which are comparatively new on the world scene.
This great experiment, this United States that has stood as the “Shining City on the Hill” for the world to aspire to . . . that is something most rare. Despite the specious modernity of the word ‘progress,’ progressivism means rule by elites and that is as old as human history. Until some people somewhere else create a society, a government, a promise of human excellence better than American at her peak . . . the driving force in human political aspiration must be to recreate and imitate America at her peak . . . and for Americans: to return to and surpass that peak.
Has the world really made such great progress since our Constitution was born in 1787 and purified in 1791 with the addition of the Bill of Rights? Think even further back to the Declaration of Independence . . . think on the inspiring words of Calvin Coolidge as true today as when he spoke about the Declaration of Independence a full 85 years ago:
It is often asserted that the world has made a great deal of progress since 1776, that we have had new thoughts and new experiences which have given us a great advance over the people of that day, and that we may therefore very well discard their conclusions for something more modern.  But that reasoning cannot be applied to this great charter.  If all men are created equal, that is final.  If they are endowed with unalienable rights, that is final.  If governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, that is final.  No advance, no progress can be made beyond these propositions.  If anyone wishes to deny their truth or their soundness, the only direction in which he can proceed historically is not forward, but backward toward the time when there was no equality, no rights of the individual, no rule of the people.  Those who wish to proceed in that direction cannot lay claim to progress.  They are reactionary.  Their ideas are not more modern, but more ancient, than those of the Revolutionary fathers.
 
In this moment in history when our present American president has no compunction whatsoever about moving us toward his sorry vision of Utopia . . . all of his supporters fooling themselves that they are racing headlong into a beautiful and rarely glimpsed future . . . imagine their shock if they were ever to succeed and then necessarily discover how much of all that they’re striving to so cavalierly toss onto the trash heap of history is what all of mankind has so long been aspiring toward. A great pity that great classics like George Orwell’s 1984 and Animal Farm or Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World are no longer read and people instead watch sitcoms and reality television . . . .
As for our “fearless leader,” it’s a great misfortune that unlike Coolidge who treated his place in history very humbly, saying  "It is a great advantage to a president, and a major source of safety to the country, for him to know that he is not a great man” -- it is obvious that Barack Obama mistakenly believes himself to be a great man.  While Coolidge lived to serve his countrymen, Barack Obama lives that his countrymen might more deeply serve him.
 
Ya’all live long, strong and ornery,
Rajjpuut
 
 
** In contrast, in Obama’s world today’s debt is how we enslave tomorrow’s children.  Notice how the Coolidge quotes like Coolidge himself are soft-spoken but when you think about them you see just how powerful the concepts behind them are:  for example,  the ones above a) tying the rise of civilization to the rise of profits or surplus b) putting forward a reverse angle view of the Robin Hood mentality that would pull the rich down by taxation c) and d) tying in with b) and showing collectivism, progressivism, Marxism, socialism, and etc. up for the false religions they are and e) bringing up the duty we owe to posterity and a warning against enslaving them via debt while more obviously showing us the only proper way to live.  By comparison, the more you examine Obama's words, the more empty they become . . . .
 
Read more…

 

Is Trickle-Up Poverty the New Prosperity?

 

           While being assaulted on all sides with Barack Obama’s “trickle-up poverty” and other progressive government boondoggles like Obamacare on top of trillion-dollar national deficits as far as the eye can see and well beyond . . . a strange new phenomenon has emerged to further muddy the waters already obscuring our future hopes. China is now selling off American debt and ridding itself of dollars so that now the largest holder of American debt is . . . drum roll, please, Maestro! . . . the United States Federal Reserve Banking System. Yes, you read that correctly. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke is now in the voodoo economics business all the way up to his fuzzy skull.  

           Over the last three months, China has sold roughly $19 billion in treasury bonds and other U.S. debt instruments. China, in other words, has become concerned about the sheer size of the U.S. overall debt and the high probability that the Federal Reserve’s unceasing money printing for the last twenty-nine months has debased and devalued the world’s reserve currency for ‘lo these last 60+ years: the American Dollar. Looking back in history that’s exactly what happened to the British Pound Sterling which had been the World’s Reserve Currency for over two hundred years until the Brits ousted Winston Churchill with World War II still not entirely won and brought in their Labour (progressive-liberal) Party to run the show. Labour inflated their once proud currency so much that the citizens and nations of the world began dumping the Pound and fleeing for gold, silver, the gold-backed Swiss Franc and most commonly for the American Dollar.

            The American Federal Reserve now standing as the largest holder of U.S. Treasury debt means that financing Obama’s third trillion-dollar federal budget deficit in succession has become something the rest of the world has begun to shy away from. China is still the largest foreign-holder of American debt, but the Chinese seem determined to remove their names from the top of that dubious list (other top foreign holders of U.S. debt instruments include: Japan, Russia, Brazil, India, Korea, England, France, Germany and Saudi Arabia). It also suggests that faith and trust in the “Almighty Buck” may be reaching a low-ebb.

            Unlike hard money (gold and silver) and all hard-money backed currencies such as the Swiss Franc and the Kruggerand-backed South African money . . . paper money has zero intrinsic value . . . it only exists and continues to serve so long as people trust the government issuing the paper bills (and that goes double for a nation’s paper debt instruments).    Bernanke has run the printing pressings so long that on a sheer mathematical basis the dollar of today is technically worth only as much as 3.4 pennies compared to the dollar of late 2008 when the financial crisis reached its low spot and the U.S. government started stepping in. What’s going on here? Why is Bernanke printing so much money?

            Bernanke is a well-known student of the Great Depression and has written numerous articles suggesting that the reason the Great Depression turned from a “little-d depression” into a “capital-G/capital-D Great Depression” is because there was never sufficient money in circulation to head off relentless deflation. That is, he believes a vicious-circle of deflation was created and that the continuous dropping of prices fed off itself and destroyed jobs which destroyed buying power which destroyed businesses which destroyed more jobs, etc., etc. 

            There is some truth to what Mr. Bernanke suggests . . . but it’s a lot like yanking your starting pitcher off the mound with the score going from 2-1 in the 6th to 8-1 against you in the 8th . . . once so much damage has been done . . . almost nothing will work. Perhaps the twirler should have been sent to the showers when he looked tired after 120 pitches before the start of the 7th?  Or after he’d allowed a home run and walked the next two batters with no outs in the 7th? Poor decisions early in a process can make finding good decisions later . . . very, very difficult.

            Rajjpuut suggests a different reading of history is more accurate.    Almost precisely a full decade before the infamous 1929 stock market crash we had a depression start-up that 98% of Americans never heard about. Progressive Woodrow Wilson’s so-called “Invisible Depression” started in late 1919 and was full-blown by the time Warren G. Harding was elected in November, 1920; and much worse when Harding took office in March of 1921 (they had a four-month Lame-Duck session in those days). Production had already dropped nation-wide by 26%. Ignoring the suggestions of his Commerce Secretary Herbert Hoover for immediate implementation of numerous government aid programs and other subsidies . . . Harding did only four things:

 

1.       Cut government spending by 48%

2.      Cut taxes by 49%

3.      Paid down the nation’s debt by 30%

4.       Slashed government regulatory interference across the board

 

            In fifteen months the economy had rebounded mightily (just a couple months later,  Harding died in office so he barely got to enjoy his success). The United States was now well into the “Roaring Twenties” the most single prosperous rebound of any economy in the recorded history of the planet. Calvin Coolidge, Harding’s vice-president continued the Harding policies faithfully, but chose “not to run” in 1928.   One of the most popular men in America and a famous philanthropist and author, Herbert Hoover ran for the presidency for the Republicans and won in a landslide over Democrat Al Smith.  Only three men in history have become president of the U.S. without extensive military or business executive or elected experience: Taft, Obama and Hoover.

            Hoover was a famous geologist and mining engineer who married the daughter of a rich banker.  He believed mightily in the “Efficiency Movement” (if you’ve read Cheaper by the Dozen, the father, Frank Gilbreth, was founder of the Efficiency Movement) and believed that the economy was riddled with waste and inefficiency which could be dramatically improved by “experts” like him once they identified the problems and solved them. Hoover became, according to the New York Times “one of the Ten Most Important Living Americans” for his charitable and humanitarian work during World War I.  

            Hoover administered distribution of over two and one-half million tons of food to nine million war victims and was later named head of the brand new U.S. Food administration by Woodrow Wilson when the country entered the War. A member of the Supreme Economic Council after the war, as well as head of the American Relief Administration he continued organizing shipments to millions of starving people in Central Europe.  A well-known philanthropist, Hoover like Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson was like them a self-described “Progressive and Reformer.”

             He came to be known as “Wonder-Boy” during the Harding-Coolidge administrations for his notorious and comical lust for expanding portions of everybody else’s bailiwicks into new roles for the Commerce Department. The reporters of his day called Hoover, "the Secretary of Commerce... and Under-Secretary of Everything Else!" Long before he had entered politics he had abandoned laissez-faire economic thinking. Outside of engineering and charitable work he was a terrible micro-manager always on the look out to fix what wasn’t broken.  History shows that Hoover did one very important thing as Commerce Secretary:  he codified and standardized traffic lights across the nation. 

              As soon as he was elected president Hoover set about planning the undoing of much of the good work created by Coolidge and Harding.   He raised government spending and taxes and debt.  He initiated numerous “eleemosynary” style federal activities (reminiscent of his charitable work in World War I) to protect workers and farmers and businesses from the natural vicissitudes of the free market economy. His biggest mistake was instituting a huge tariff designed to protect American farm workers from foreign competition but remove such protections from business; the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act was to cause great consternation in the business world. The agricultural tariff increase was the second highest in U.S. history and put a lot of people out of work. Overall, once the stock market crashed in 1929, Hoover instituted the biggest big-government policies the nation had ever seen.

             Franklin Delano Roosevelt (who had once praised Hoover in 1919 and tried to get him to run as the Democratic presidential candidate) and his v-p running mate Garner accused Hoover of being a socialist and promised that when elected they would:

 

1.      Cut government spending severely

2.      Cut taxes dramatically

3.      Pay down the nation’s debt

4.       Slashed government regulatory interference across the board and eliminate many of the socialistic programs of Hoover

 

          Since these amounted to little more than promises to do what Harding had succeeded with in 1921, people embraced FDR and he won in a landslide taking office in March 1933. History shows that the bottom of the Great Depression was reached in July, 1933, and the bottom of our own “Great Recession” was reached in March, 2009, in each case shortly after the new president took office. Ordinarily the expectation is that after the bottom is reached, prosperity begins to return within six months. In both FDR’s and Barack Obama’s cases, however, government interference made things much, much worse.

          FDR, of course, did exactly the opposite of what he promised. He dramatically raised taxes and government spending and debt and deficits. He expanded all of Hoover’s social and economic programs and added 40 of his own (just one law in 2010, Obamacare, created 384 new government agencies, so FDR was a piker compared to Barack) and made big government a way of life. He also confiscated gold coinage and then instituted an overnight inflation of 69% by pegging the dollar to gold at $35 per ounce (he’d given the citizens just $20.76) impoverishing the taxpayers while enriching the government. Of course doing what Harding did and avoiding what Hoover and FDR did is just common sense . . . something seemingly beyond Obama and Bernanke . . . .

          In June, 2009, when the full-folly of the Obama policies began to outline themselves in sharp contrast to common sense . . . the Chinese held $896 billion in American debt; today they hold $764 billion a 15% reduction in greenback holdings. Since an outright flooding of the market with U.S. debt notes would destroy China as well as the U.S., it seems the Chinese are now buying up gold and silver in large quantities and making an orderly retreat from the dollar – leaving our suspect currency in the hands of less astute nations and of Ben Bernanke. Since the American trade deficit with China alone reached a record $273.1 Billion in 2010, the Chinese are going to have to work awfully hard to keep lowering their dollar holdings . . . so one suspects that gold and silver will continue to rise quickly.

          Bernanke’s monetary policy, known as “Quantitative Easing” a.k.a. “irresponsibly printing money,” has seen the Federal Reserve recently buy up $600 billion worth of Treasury debt. Big Ben’s plan is to hold down interest rates and thus help lower the cost of federal government borrowing (to cover the Obama deficits) and incidentally increase inflation which he believes will stimulate economic growth and create jobs. This is a very Keynesian economic philosophy. In the months prior to his death in 1946, John Maynard Keynes (as the ending of the British Pound Sterling’s  200- year reign as the world’s reserve currency approached) who had long preached against the classical economic wisdom of Adam Smith and Smith’s “invisible hand of the marketplace,” like an atheist seeking God at the last hour repented . . . .

          As Britain’s economic hole under the progressive Labor Party deepened, and his own death drew near, Keynes told Henry Clay of the Bank of England of his hopes that Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” would somehow save the English economy and yank Britain out of the economic swamp it found itself in: "I find myself more and more relying for a solution of our problems on the ‘invisible hand’ which I tried to eject from economic thinking twenty years ago." The inflation destroyed the Pound Sterling as the Labor Party continued with government largesse and Keynes’ deathbed conversion went to naught.

          Here in America recent spikes in food prices and energy costs are a direct consequence of Bernanke’s unofficial devaluation of the dollar. The government continues under-reporting of inflation assisted by the Labor Statistics Bureau’s refusal to include fluctuations in prices of food and energy. Bernanke, however, believes that deflation is still the rule and continues to inflate the currency to avoid a second Great Depression. Since job creation by the private sector is the key, perhaps the government ought to try: cutting spending; cutting taxes; eliminating debt; and getting the government out of the way of the free market . . . oops, that’s been mentioned before . . . .

 

Ya’all live long, strong and ornery,

Rajjpuut

 

 
Read more…

 

 

Americans Now Learning Real History,

Might NOT Have to Repeat Ill-Effects
 

A recent Rasmussen Reports Survey seems to show that Americans are starting to understand that the country was NOT rescued from the Great Depression by government spending and government policies (a.k.a. interference in the free markets), but rather that the government actually cost the nation millions of  jobs, intensified a normal recession with its increased spending, creating and lengthening the depression and eventually turning it into the “Great Depression.” The lesson, however, is not necessarily transferring into a greater understanding of today’s economics . . . .

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/business/general_business/february_2011/43_say_government_policy_mistakes_created_great_depression_of_1930s_26_disagree

 

According to the Rasmussen survey, 43% now say that government policy mistakes created the Great Depression of the ‘30s; while only 26% disagree and 31% say they are unsure. Americans, today however, are still greatly confused about the cause of the financial meltdown which, they think, began about October, 2007. More on that later . . . .

Despite the Rasmussen poll results, thanks to two and a half generations of revisionist history ,today far too many Americans still believe that Herbert Hoover was  a) a conservative rather than a progressive  b) that greedy Wall Street created the Great Depression c) that Hoover’s administration spent almost nothing fighting the economic problems d) that government spending can create jobs in the private sector e) that in 1932 Franklin Delano Roosevelt campaigned for president against Hoover’s “conservativism” f) that FDR did virtually everything entirely different than Hoover and g) that FDR saved the country from the Great Depression. Let’s quickly put those lies to rest before dealing with today’s situation, eh?

Since progressivism (we must ‘progress’ beyond the out-dated and seriously flawed U.S. Constitution if we are ever to make ‘progress’ toward an earthly socialist or even Marxist Utopia) first became a serious undercurrent in American Politics in the 1890’s only once in the following 120 years has a serious economic downturn been handled by pure conservative restraint . . . and no, Ronald Reagan was NOT president when that happened (Reagan actually increased government spending while cutting taxes extra-severely and created some whopping deficits in the process of also creating twenty million jobs). 

Teddy Roosevelt was our first progressive president. You’ll remember that his “Bull Moose Party” was actually a third party officially known as, wait for it:  the “Progressive Party.” Teddy certainly had done a lot of questionable and presumably out-and-out unconstitutional things earlier when he was a Republican president, luckily most of them worked out pretty well for the nation.  Perhaps a Progressive president once every century or so wouldn’t be a bad thing, but certainly no more often?

Our first ultra-progressive president, Woodrow Wilson, however, was another story. Besides giving us the Federal Reserve Banking system and the income tax (still called today: “progressive” income tax), Wilson was a great propagandist who ran for a second term under the slogan “He kept us out of War” but within a month after his March, 1916 inauguration he deliberately and unnecessarily thrust us into World War I. He was the first truly big-spending president the country had ever known . . . way, way beyond the costs of the war. When his term was winding down, we were in a serious recession much worse than the recession sparked by the 1929 collapse. When he left office in March, 1921 the country was in a full-fledged depression.Curiously, those events are generally overlooked by history. People in the know, however, speak of “The Invisible Depression” or of the “Not-so-Great Depression.” Why was the Invisible Depression so invisible we don’t even know about it today?

            Two things: 1) revisionist progressive historians have done everything possible to hide this quite remarkable set of events and keep us from comparing it to Franklin D. Roosevelt’s approach while creating an enormous myth of FDR as a savior and 2) these policies worked out as the launching pad for the World’s most expansive decade in free market history and gets lost in the shuffle while everyone writes books and novels and treatises about the “Roaring ‘20’s” instead. What actually happened was this:

            Warren G. Harding and his vice president, Calvin Coolidge took office in March, 1921 with a full-fledged economic contraction underway. The full story is available from the Cato Institute here:

http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=9880

but let’s sum it up briefly.  Unemployment stood 150% higher than it was a year earlier; and GDP was only 76% of 1920 levels. Harding immediately cut government spending 49%; taxes 48%; and reduced government debt 30%.   Unlike the business-bashing that Wilson, FDR, LBJ (Lyndon Johnson) and Obama are infamous for, the Harding administration did everything it could to get government out of business’ way.   In fifteen months the country was humming again and the Invisible Depression was over. When Harding died, VP, Calvin Coolidge continued the same policies saying “the business of America is business.” 

Where did Herbert Hoover come from? Hoover was a highly respected humanitarian with an engineering background that Harding installed as his Secretary of Commerce to appease certain Eastern Republican interests.  Under both Harding and Coolidge was very ineffective. Hoover promoted government intervention under the rubric "economic modernization" and tried to get Harding to dole out unemployment benefits to ease the pain of the high 1921 joblessness. Through the next eight years both presidents Harding and Coolidge largely ignored Hoover. 

Hoover was, in short a progressive . . .   Some people are aware of that but here’s what most don’t know. At the end of World War II, Hoover’s humanitarianism including involvement in a program akin to the Marshall Program after World War II which benefitted defeated Germany and the Bolsheviks in Russia. Hoover was so influential and well respected that the New York Times named him “One of the ten most important living Americans. Woodrow Wilson considered Hoover “my ideal successor,” Democratic leaders looked upon Hoover as a strong presidential candidate and FDR said, “There could be none finer.”    Hoover, who up to then was a-political, said that because of his childhood memories, he had no interest in being a Democrat (supposedly the only Democrat in his home city was “the town drunk) and ignored Democratic overtures.   Hoover decided he’d become a Republican and announced his candidacy for president but couldn’t get much Republican support although he did finish 2nd in the 1920 California Primary.   Despite the gridlock at the RNC Convention that year, Hoover’s name was never seriously discussed and Harding became a popular compromise candidate and he won the nomination on the 10th ballot.

After the 1920 Republican -- to appease influential Republicans on both coasts -- Harding installed Hoover as his Secretary of Commerce. Hoover’s only real contributions during his stint as Commerce Secretary were some important traffic safety (embracing motor vehicle standards, rules of the road, and urban traffic control) innovations. Nevertheless, he sought to expand the Commerce Secretary domain in every possible way. He became known for trying to take over parts of other cabinets so much so that the joke was that Hoover was "the Secretary of Commerce... and Under-Secretary of Everything Else” and Coolidge called him “Wonder-boy.” 

            After the combined Harding-Coolidge administration ended in 1928, Hoover again ran for president. As soon as he was elected in 1928, he set about making the government much bigger. His biggest moves began right after his inauguration and including implementing a wide series of farm programs and a much-criticized huge tariff increase.   A self-described “Progressive” and “Reformer,” Hoover saw the presidency as a vehicle for improving the conditions of all Americans by regulation and by getting government involved encouraging of volunteerism. Long before entering politics, he had denounced laissez-faire thinking.  As Commerce Secretary, he had taken an active pro-regulation stance. As President, he helped push expensive and interventionist tariff and farm subsidy bills through Congress. Hoover also increased taxes and increased the federal budget 50% (for comparison Barack Obama so far has only increased the budget 41%). It’s obvious that the real Hoover was nothing like the do-nothing Hoover that Progressive historians have insisted he was.  

Just as they did back then, the left (the progressives of today’s  Democratic Party) is now seeking to blame the current economic crisis on a conspiracy that is an inversion of the actual facts. By the way, back in 1932 FDR and his first VP-to-be called Hoover a “socialist” and promised to use Harding’s methods to regain prosperity . . . that is FDR promised to pay down debt; slash taxes; and slash government spending. Instead he actually raised the budget 100% above Hoover’s last budget; confiscated the nation’s gold and in other ways undermined the recovery so badly that only the nation’s entry into World War II nine years later got us out of the depression.

Most Americans have no idea about the facts you’ve just read and their opinions about government’s ability to create jobs in the private sector by increased spending are largely based upon the “Savior myth” of FDR as the man who heroically saved us from the Great Depression. 

When it comes to today’s problems and today’s myths the infamous Obama-car-in-the-ditch myth (blaming all our woes on conservatives and the free markets) tops them all.   The truth, however, is:

George W. Bush saw that ACORN, the progressives, big spenders, and Bill Clinton and Barack Obama were deliberately pushing the car (our economy) toward a 500-foot cliff. He jumped into the front seat, grabbed the steering wheel and slammed on the brakes . . . guiding it into the nearest friendly ditch.        
   
To prove this surprising assertion for yourself: you’ll need a little education:
 
http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/
groupProfile.asp?grpid=7522
http://www.teapartypatriots.org/BlogPostView.aspx?id=0b1f6f49-f530-4d42-965b-7c0252850aa4
 
           That our current president was an ACORN lawyer and community organizer deliberately bankrupting our country as part of Cloward-Piven Strategy using Jimmy Carter’s 1977 Community Reinvestment Act (CRA ’77) who has the gall to repeatedly tell the car-in-the-ditch story is one of the most shocking hypocrisies imaginable.

The fact that Frances Fox Piven is today still openly calling for bloody revolution and urging the poor and unemployed to “use their anger” and begin the Marxist “revolution” while the lame-stream, mainstream media is accusing the TEA Party of hate-mongering and ignoring Piven is the greatest possible journalistic malfeasance.

The fact that George W. Bush’s administration recognized the problem as early as January, 2005 and sought to repeal the horrific CRA ’77 laws but the vote was defeated. And that Bush made at least 19 separate speeches on the matter and continued to strive for elimination of CRA ’77 right up until finally in July, 2007 (30 months later) when a much weaker law was passed has not been allowed as part of the history of the meltdown even though Obama’s Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner in August, 2010 credited Bush with preventing an absolute collapse of our financial system and with preventing total disintegration of the housing market again reflects poorly on the so-called journalistic “profession.” The “watchdogs of the Republic” have turned on us . . . this is the biggest story of the last half of the 20th and of the first decade of the 21st Century and naturally, it’ll never be reported by the present generation of mainstream journalists . . . .

 

Ya’all live long, strong and ornery,

Rajjpuut

           

 
Read more…

http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/02/the_clowardpiven_strategy_of_e.html

“If all you have is a hammer, after a while, the whole world starts looking like a nail.”

Were Democrats Victimized

by their Own Shenanigans?

Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats find themselves fully flummoxed and feeling flimflammed by the voters they’ve been working so feverishly and frantically for. It seems that in the 21st Century, government throwing large amounts of money at problems A) is not that popular with the voters and B) doesn’t work. Hey, what’s that all about?

Rajjpuut used to work as a health educator for Blue Cross and Blue Shield. One of the “studies” that BC and BS did involved a series of actors going around to physicians reportedly suffering severely with fictitious but reasonable symptoms). It was discovered that surgeons wanted to surge into the body with a scalpel; radiologists thought the patients needed to be zapped; internists considered only the wisdom of potions, powders and pills; and chiropractors thought that body alignment was clearly necessary.

In a different study, psychologists found that chess masters routinely either missed or took much longer to discover unique two-move checkmate patterns when their thinking process got tangled up in five- eight- or ten-move combinations leading to far more familiar patterns . . . what’s up? In a phrase: it’s a scientific principle called the “Einstellung Effect” which is a fancy way to say that when all you have is a hammer, after a while the whole world starts to look an awful lot like a nail. Specifically, the Democrats are “one-trick ponies” who solve problems (or invent problems to solve; or cause problems and then set out to cure them) with only one specialized technique: upping taxes and throwing money at the symptoms of the problem (never the underlying cause which is all too often an initial excess of government involvement).

So our current exacerbation of our fiscal problems under Barack Obama may well be a lesson in the futility of money-throwing and an example of redistributive wealth (as a solution) coming out second-best to the Einstellung Effect, at least that’s one possibility, but other than in revisionist history (where the progressives change things to be more to their liking calling, for example, the Italian Fascists an example of the evils of right-wing ideology when anyone doing a modicum of research finds out that the Italian labor unions rose up against the corporate bosses and seized power and then after seizing power across all of Italy, they elected Benito Mussolini to lead the entire nation. Last time anyone checked, labor unions are NOT a right-wing, but rather a left-wing manifestation. The progressives who used to call themselves Liberals are guilty of revisionism at least 100 times a day in major comments found in print, on the air or online.

Hmmmmm, the Einstellung Effect or progressives’ own historical revisionism coming back to bite them in the butt, ooh what a “Behar” (as in calling someone “a son of a Behar”). Of course, if you believe as Rajjpuut does that the 100% accurate and real ditch story is this one:

George W. Bush saw Obama, Clinton, ACORN and progressive politicians deliberately pushing the car (the economy) toward a 500-foot cliff (utter financial disaster) and jumped into the front seat, grabbed the wheel and slammed on the brakes, thus initiating a controlled skid that deposited the vehicle into the nearest friendly-looking ditch.

For more on the details of this version of the now famous car and ditch showing that progressives created a bad law under Jimmy Carter (CRA ’77 which forced mortgage lenders to make knowingly bad loans) which was first expanded by regulatory fiat under Clinton and then expanded legislatively by Slick Willy three times (twice in 1995; and the steroid-version expansion in 1998); and all the while abused by ACORN to at day’s end cause us our worst financial comeuppance since 1929 . . . . Go here for those details and be shocked to find that supposedly 'stupid' G.W. was acutely aware economically and proved himself a hero according to Treasury Sec. Timoth Geithner:

http://rajjpuutsfolly.blogtownhall.com/2010/11/05/avoiding_1994%e2%80%99s_mistakes_crucial_for_conservatives.thtml

So the truth is that former ACORN lawyer and bank brow-beater and shake-down solicitor for the propagation of CRA ’77, Barack Obama, actually did 10,000 as much harm to the U.S. economy prior to October 2009 as George Bush ever did . . . and that since taking office in January, 2009, he’s done more harm to the U.S. economy than any man since the days of Herbert Hoover and FDR (two infamous progressives) . . . . it all sounds like the Democrats have been hoisted upon their own petard just as they were back in 1933 when FDR came into office and started breaking his campaign vows to, you guessed it, lower taxes and lower spending which is what Warren G. Harding had done in 1920 when he inherited a much fiercer depression from Woodrow Wilson than anything we’ve seen since: Harding cut taxes 48%; government spending 49%; and paid down the national debt by 30%.

http://www.theproletariatsnews.com/2008/11/special-report-do-we-need-a-new-fdr-to-save-us-from-depression/

http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2010/09/22/1920_the_great_depression_that_wasnt_98679.html

So, is Rajjpuut saying that Democrats deliberately did the country in? As a matter of fact, he’s saying that the Progressive ultra-left-wing of the Democratic Party which has co-opted the Democratic Party did just that . . . but let’s pretend you consider such utterances to be “conspiracy theory” nonsense . . . well, given the facts as they stand you can instead call them extraordinarily INEPT instead and we’ll both be happy.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/02/the_clowardpiven_strategy_of_e.html

Ya’all live long, strong and ornery,

Rajjpuut

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”. . . and then there’s welfare . . . . Obamacare created 388 brand new government agencies or offices and a whole new welfare culture so that now the whole mess (national debt; unfunded liabilities (in Medicare, Social Security and the federal side of Medicaid), Obamacare, Medicaid funding by the states; and welfare + interest will amount to roughly a $225 TRillion obligation. The Gross Domestic Product of the whole world is only about $56 Trillion, roughly one fourth of the mountain of debt and obligations we’re now facing. How can this be handled without impoverishing our children and grandchildren? Without reducing the nation to 4th world status?” Rajjpuut

Crocodile Tears of the Left

Flood America with Corruption

as the “BIG LIE” Dominates

Part V: Victim #5, The American Dream

Loyal readers are advised to skip ahead as we give a brief review. In this blog series, we’ve been exposing the self-described “victimhood” of progressives at the hands of their evil, racist, etc. conservative oppressors and showing you where the real victimhood is . . . .

http://rajjpuutsfolly.blogtownhall.com/2010/09/04/first_crocodile_tears,_then_dismemberment_part_i.thtml

The highlight of part I of this blog series (the link immediately above), and it was difficult to pick a single highlight with “TRUTH” the victim, was this well-documented statement:

Using the same Cloward-Piven** strategy that DELIBERATELY created the bankruptcy of New York City earlier between 1967 and 1975 by deliberately overloading the welfare rolls . . . beginning especially after 1992, ACORN, OBAMA, First ACORN PRESIDENT Bill Clinton, and oodles of progressives (98% of them Democrats) DELIBERATELY were pushing the car toward a 500-foot cliff. George W. Bush jumped in and grabbed the steering wheel and hit the brakes. Bush was able to create a controlled-skid and guide the car to rest in a friendly-looking ditch!

The fact that such a statement is made NOW, 44 years after the chain of events began producing that statement is something that every American ought to be aware of, just as every American ought to be aware of the identities of Saul Alinsky, Richard Cloward and Frances Piven and be able to articulate what Cloward-Piven strategy is . . . the fact that most Americans are totally ignorant of these things means someone hasn’t been doing their job. In Part II the victim was journalistic integrity . . . .

http://rajjpuutsfolly.blogtownhall.com/2010/09/05/first_crocodile_tears,_then_dismemberment___part_ii.thtml

In Part III of the series we examined how the false victimhood of the progressives (we must “progress” beyond the outdated and deeply flawed U.S. Constitution) has created another real victim: “Responsibility” in the guise of the rising numbers of single-mother-families (a problem obviously created by everybody else’s sexism, according to feminists). As the irresponsible notion of deliberately choosing a single-parent family drags down all of society (see this link) destroys the American family and creates a new impoverished class in the country . . . .

http://rajjpuutsfolly.blogtownhall.com/2010/09/06/first_crocodile_tears,_then_dismemberment___part_iii.thtml

Economics is a very simple area that the left has sought to hijack with the creation of their own branch of economic science called Keynesian economics. Keynesian economics only sort of explains what happens in Socialist and Totalitarian regimes, that’s why there’s about 80 different schools of Keynesian economics out there. Rajjpuut gives the basics of real (Classical) economics which NOT surprisingly explains everything that happens in any type of political system pretty much perfectly. Classical economics is not the same as Obamanomics, not at all. Taxing and spending and government interference boondoggles (GIBs) and government spending boondoggles and the deficits and debt they create are the antithesis of common-sense classical economics as we saw in our 4th installment . . . .

http://teapartypatriots.org/BlogPostView.aspx?id=15869898-cbf1-4968-8dbc-3d0550f77bbd

And while the left and their media sycophants are crying, “racists, sexists, bigots, etc. all day long proving themselves always the long-suffering victims and conservative Americans always the eternal oppressors, the fifth REAL victim of all these progressive-victim tales is:

Victim #5: The American Dream

The American Dream is a simple, beautiful thing . . . from the start people came here to find freedom from the heavy hand of big government they’d known in other lands. They continued to come here during the last 233 years because freedom was incarnated in the rule of law, the Constitution of the United States (itself based upon the Declaration of Independence) knowing that the Republic created upon America’s shores was a Meritocracy, that every man or woman who came here would find no real obstacles to their American Dream, to build a good life and open to all of them was the opportunity to leave their children a lot better off then they themselves started out. Thanks to a Century of Progressivism, the American Dream is on the endangered list . . . .

The American Dream is endangered because the very core principles of this nation have been set aside for far too long now. Thrift; industry; equality before the law; capitalism; freedom itself; integrity; and small, non-interfering government that lived by these principles

http://www.econlib.org/library/Essays/rdPncl1.html

http://fee.org/library/books/economics-in-one-lesson/#0.1_L2

http://fee.org/library/books/economics-in-one-lesson/#0.1_L3

http://fee.org/library/books/economics-in-one-lesson/

has all but disappeared from the American scene. The meritocracy has virtually vanished. Thrift has been replaced by personal, corporate and particularly government excesses and debt creation. Industry? Why? 48% of the people pay no taxes, the industrious and the job creators are taxed relentlessly as their 52% supports all the rest of society, most shamelessly, a bloated bureaucracy of unionized government workers who almost can’t be fired no matter how poorly they perform.

Repeatedly hard-working, hard-studying men and women who seek to advance themselves by entering important civil-service fields like the fire-department, police-department and first-responder medical crews find that it does no good to ace the test . . . because affirmative-action critics will steal the positions the hard-working/hard-studying folks actually earned; “capitalism” has become a dirty word and PROFIT has become the dirtiest of vile words as freedom itself has been perverted in a thousand ways . . . most often by abusing the once honored word “reform.”

Citizens are becoming aware that the word “reform” attached to a bill doesn’t mean anything is ever improved, it only means that government is expanding, spending is going up and taxes too . . . and the last time Obama, Pelosi and Reid showed integrity . . . . well, it hasn’t happened in Rajjpuut’s lifetime. Our ever expanding, ever spending, ever interfering government is the problem and the political class (the politicians and bureaucrats within the government) is the only group who benefits while the rest of us suffer. The biggest losers, the biggest victims? Our children and grandchildren.

Our $14 TRillion national debt is multiplying geometrically as this is being written. But that’s small potatoes. Since 1935 for Social Security and 1965 for Medicare and the federal side of Medicaid, the progressives have established these three entitlement programs as “pay as you go, set-aside” entities . . . but of course, the progressives in congress have seen to it that we never pay as we go, we never set aside the money collected for these purposes . . . the result? We now own $115 Trillion in unfunded liabilities (promises made to our people – often our aged) that we have not one single dollar set aside to pay off these promises.

On top of that as all three of these unfunded liabilities grow . . . the new Obamacare program will between 2019 and 2024 bankrupt every state in the union as they force states to fund the greater role for Medicaid required by that law. And then there’s welfare . . . . Obamacare created 388 brand new government agencies or offices and a whole new welfare culture so that now the whole mess (national debt; unfunded liabilities (in Medicare, Social Security and the federal side of Medicaid), Obamacare, Medicaid funding by the states; and welfare + interest will amount to roughly a $225 TRillion obligation. The Gross Domestic Product of the whole world is only about $56 Trillion, roughly one fourth of the mountain of debt and obligations we’re now facing. How can this be handled without impoverishing our children and grandchildren? Without reducing the nation to 4th world status? Can it be done?

Yes, it can and it can be done simply (but definitely NOT EASILY and definitely NOT QUICKLY). Barack Obama is committing the country to the path that Republican Progressive Herbert Hoover and Democratic Progressive Franklin Roosevelt took which turned a simple panic into first a depression (under Hoover) and then a Great Depression (under Roosevelt) that lasted over twelve years. The strange thing is that Roosevelt ran against the big government, big spending philosophies of Hoover and promised to revert to the strategies of Harding and Coolidge (cutting taxes by 47% and taxes by 49% and paying down 30% of the national debt) and then, of course, FDR pulled a Barack Obama on the country doing such things as confiscating the people’s gold (forced) at $20.76 per ounce and then devaluing the paper dollars he’d given them to $35 per ounce – stealing almost 70% of the value of the gold he’d confiscated.

The reason he won the election in 1932? Hoover was totally unpopular and FDR was promising common sense solutions that the people knew worked because they’d seen them work in making the “Invisible Depression” of 1920-21, well “invisible” . . . .

http://www.theproletariatsnews.com/2008/11/special-report-do-we-need-a-new-fdr-to-save-us-from-depression/

http://www.thefreemanonline.org/featured/the-depression-youve-never-heard-of-1920-1921/

One proviso, our current situation and our current direction is much worse than what Harding faced taking over from progressive Democrat Woodrow Wilson . . . so how tough could things be? Imagine elimination of Obamacare; government spending reduced 60%; taxes reduced the same 60%; and a commitment to reduce the national debt by 12% per year . . . does that sound austere to you?

Then consider this, let’s say, the problem with the economy and the national debt is wiped out in five years . . . NICE! Not so fast! Remember the $225 TRillion total we mentioned? Well that’s taken care of perhaps $16 TRillion and all the states are meanwhile going bankrupt and the federal government as well because of state and federal government pensions going through the roof to our unionized state and federal employees . . .

So we’re talking about letting states fail (go bankrupt) and state and federal workers getting their contracts renegotiated markedly downward and we’re talking about our wonderful union employees “pulling a Greece” and holding the country hostage with street violence . . . simple is one thing, easy solutions are yet another . . . .

Next Time: First Crocodile Tears, then Dismemberment Part VI

Ya’all live long, strong and ornery,

Rajjpuut

Read more…



http://www.swifteconomics.com/2009/08/03/if-only-barack-hoover-obama-was-barack-harding-obama/

Boobus Americanus Understanding Little
Believes History’s Biggest Lies,
Do We Need a Negative Stimulus Package?
The great cynical journalist H.L. Mencken often talked about that utterly strange creature he called “Boobus Americanus.” Mencken would be greatly heartened to know that in this era of “endangered species” Boobus Americanus has multiplied twenty-fold thanks to cross-breeding with Couch-us Potat-us Americanus and Sitcomus Addictus. Here are four great myths from the 20th Century spread by Progressive historians (“we must progress beyond the outdated ill-conceived Constitution”) and Progressive politicians . . . myths that Boobus Americanus believes with all his heart and soul.
I. Progressive Woodrow Wilson was one of our greatest presidents
II. Warren G. Harding was one of the worst presidents and a crook
III. Herbert Hoover, who did nothing to head off the Great Depression, was a conservative who “fiddled like Nero while Rome burned.”
IV. Progressive Franklin Delano Roosevelt was our greatest president and he saved us from the Great Depression.
Here are the facts:
A. Democrat Progressive Woodrow Wilson was, among other failings, a racist who premiered D.W. Griffiths’ racist classic “Birth of a Nation” in the White House and instigated segregation in government hiring from the White House. He was also our first true tax-and-spend President. He left behind a much worse recession than G.W. Bush did. He also wrote a history of America that called into question virtually everything noble about the country and the founding fathers. He was definitely a progressive and tried to change history to move things more along the progressive path with much greater government size and control of our lives. As Wilson’s last year, 1920, ticked away the economic situation was grim . . . unemployment had jumped from 4% to 12% and GDP dipped 17%. It would get worse.
B. Things got so bad that new president Warren G. Harding’s Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover (falsely characterized as a do-nothing laissez-faire conservative) urged Harding to consider a huge array of interventions in order to turn the economy around. Harding ignored Hoover and calmly paid down the national debt by 33%.
Harding facing a GDP drop of about 25% because of Wilson’s policies, also cut taxes and spending both between 45%-49% and the recesssion became known as the “Invisible Depression” because it ended within 15 months. Indeed within six months signs of recovery were already visible. In 1922, unemployment was back to 6.7% and had dropped to 2.4% by 1923. His vice president Calvin Coolidge continued Harding’s policies and the resulting “Roaring 20’s” was the single most prosperous decade in American history as the standard of living rose dramatically. For the first time Americans in large numbers owned automobiles, indoor plumbing, electric lighting, and appliances like the ice box and radio and took yearly vacations. The Teapot Dome scandal that’s been blamed on Harding by the Progressive historians occurred after his death and was created by fraudulent dealings initiated by his Secretary of the Interior Albert Fall.
C. Hoover, who replaced Coolidge in 1928, was a Republican Progressive and up until FDR was the most interfering president in American History. Almost as soon as he took office he abandoned the business friendly policies of Harding and Coolidge and jumped in to interfere in agriculture and business. To be specific:
Hoover . . . .
1) increased taxes on top wage earners from 25% to 63%
2) increased government spending by 47%
3) ran a deficit of 4.5% of GDP
4) against the wishes of over 1000 economists, he signed the Smoot-Hawley Tariff, effectively shutting down international trade
5) established the Reconstruction Finance Corporation to make loans to the state governments
6) appropriated money for public works construction (Hoover Dam among others)
7) met with major industry leaders and put significant pressure on them to maintain wages at current levels, despite the amount of money in the economy falling by one-third. This led, predictably, to massive unemployment thanks to those first wage controls in American history.
8) the myth or misconception of Hoover’s non-interference gets so absurd it’s almost unbelievable. The truth is diametrically opposed to that myth, for example, during the 1932 campaign, Franklin Roosevelt’s first vice president, John Garner, accused Herbert Hoover of “leading the country down the path of socialism.” Furthermore, FDR brain-truster, Rexford Tugwell admitted that, “most of what (Hoover) began would be taken over by Roosevelt and renamed the “New Deal.”
D. Progressive Democrat Franklin Delano Roosevelt campaigned against virtually everything Hoover did. He promised to return to the policies of Harding and Coolidge (low taxes, low spending and non-interference), but once elected continued Hardings policies with a vengeance. Higher taxes, much higher spending. He also confiscated gold and then soon changed the exchange rate from $21.76 per ounce of gold to $35 per ounce, effectively robbing all savers and investors of 61% of the value of their holdings. FDR made even Hoover’s interference look like penny-ante stuff . . . among other things he created 40 brand new federal agencies. Far from saving the country from the depression, he and his policies turned a little ‘d’ depression into the Great Depression which the rest of the world suffering a little ‘d’ depression avoided. In fact, except for the outbreak of World War II, almost nine years after he was first elected, the Great Depression showed no signs of ceasing under FDR.
E. Just for comparison, Barack Obama is making Hoover and Roosevelt both look like pikers. Imagine this, in just one law (Obamacare), Obama has created more than 385 brand new government agencies about ten times what FDR did in 12+ years . . . in just one law. And, of course, like Hoover and FDR, Obama is raising taxes, raising spending, raising deficits, and raising the national debt while doing nothing about unemployment.
So what’s to be learned now that real history’s been unearthed? Well, the very first time (under Hoover and FDR) that government involved itself seriously in intervening to stop an economic downturn . . . just happens to coincide with the onset of the greatest downturn of all . . . almost as if government interference made things much worse, do you think? In comparison Harding 12 years earlier did what any sensible family or business would do in hard times . . . took in the belt a few extra notches. According to the Cato Institute:
“Harding inherited (Woodrow) Wilson’s mess—in particular, a post–World War I depression that was almost as severe, from peak to trough, as the Great Contraction from 1929 to 1933 that FDR would later inherit. The estimated gross national product plunged 24 percent from $91.5 billion in 1920 to $69.6 billion in 1921. The number of unemployed people jumped from 2.1 million to 4.9 million.”
So what did Harding do? He cut government spending from $6.3 billion in 1920, to $5 billion in 1921, and then again to $3.2 billion in 1922. This would amount to a negative stimulus package! Income taxes were left as is and corporate taxes were cut. There was no push for new regulations and the Federal Reserve did nothing.
What was the result of Harding’s negative stimulus package? By 1922, unemployment was down to 6.7% and the Roaring Twenties had begun. The economy set new production records year after year until the infamous Black Tuesday on October 29th, 1929 created by Hoover’s profligate policies.
Of course the Progressive historians have altered the facts significantly and made FDR a hero and Harding a villain. And befuddled by their own histories, they’ve made all the wrong conclusions over and over and over again and the country enamored of the false-legacy of FDR has eagerly joined them . . . .
Ya’ll live long, strong and ornery,
Rajjpuut
My friend Tish Gance forwarded me the following which explains perfectly how false history comes to dominate our reality . . . .

Monkeys --

Start with a cage containing five monkeys. Inside the cage, hang a banana on a string

and place a set of stairs under it.

Before long, a monkey will go to the stairs and start to climb towards the banana.

As soon as he touches the stairs, spray all the other monkeys with cold water.

After a while another monkey makes the attempt with same result, all the other monkeys are sprayed with cold water.

Pretty soon when another Monkey tries to climb the stairs, the other monkeys will try to prevent it.

Now, put the cold water away. Remove one monkey from the cage and replace it with a new one.

The new monkey sees the banana and wants to climb the stairs.

To his shock, all of the other monkeys beat the snot out of him. After another attempt and attack,

he knows that if he tries to climb the stairs he will be assaulted.

Next, remove another of the original five monkeys and replace it with a new one.

The newcomer goes to the stairs and is attacked.

The previous newcomer takes part in the punishment with enthusiasm.

Likewise, replace a third original monkey with a new one, then a fourth, then the fifth.

Every time the newest monkey takes to the stairs he is attacked.

Most of the monkeys that are beating him up have no idea why they were not permitted to climb the stairs

OR even why they are participating in the beating of the newest monkey. Finally, after replacing all of the

original monkeys, none of the remaining monkeys have ever been sprayed with cold water.

Nevertheless, no monkey ever again approaches the stairs to try for the banana.

Why not?

Because as far as they know, that is the way it has always been done around here.

And that, my fellow monkeys, is how Congress operates -

And precisely why we need to REPLACE all the original monkeys this November

Read more…