The Lost Arts of Empathy and Conversation. We need to revive them, and not let the extremists among us dominate our political conversation.

From The Atlantic monthly:

How We Got Trump Voters to Change Their Mind

[...] Typically, when volunteers engage in a canvassing campaign, the effort basically amounts to verbal leafleting. They make a one- to two-minute targeted pitch for a candidate or a ballot initiative, and then they leave or hang up the phone.

[...]

In a deep canvass, we want to have a real conversation. To get people to open up, we start by asking the basics: How are you doing? How are you holding up in this global pandemic? We respond not with canned answers, but with more questions: Oh, you’re watching football? Who is your team? How is your family doing? We’re really asking, and we really listen. Eventually, a true back-and-forth begins, one where we exchange stories about our lives and what is at stake for ourselves and for our communities in this election. Usually, by the end, what emerges is some kind of internal conflict—why the person is frustrated, why she can’t decide who to vote for, or why she is skeptical of Biden.

[...]

Research has shown time and again that people vote from an emotional place. It’s not so much that facts don’t matter. It’s that facts and talking points do not change minds. And arguing opinions at the start of a conversation about politics causes the interview subject to keep his defensive, partisan walls up and prevents him from connecting with the canvasser.

We don't try to directly persuade people to change their minds on a candidate or an issue. Rather, we create intimacy, in the faith that people have an ability to reexamine their politics, and their long-term worldview, if given the right context. We’ve found that when people start to see the dissonance between what they believe and what they actually want, their views change—many of them come around to a more progressive perspective. For example, if a woman says she believes that immigrants are the main problem in our society, but reveals that her top personal concern is health care, then we talk about whether immigrants have anything to do with that worry. When a man says he wants to feel safe, we ask questions about what, in particular, makes him feel unsafe. If he answers COVID-19, then we talk about which candidate might be better suited to handle the pandemic.

Throughout our effort, I’ve been struck by how willing people are to be vulnerable with our canvassers. Amazingly, more than 85 percent of those we engage in an actual conversation have shared something with which they are deeply struggling. In these personal exchanges, we are embracing empathy for people who are sometimes wildly different from ourselves, and empathy, it turns out, is an extremely effective conversion tool.

[...]

Such discussions are not transformative just for the people on whose doors we’re knocking (or whose phones we’re on the other end of)—they are also transformative for the canvassers. In our podcast, To See Each Other, about rural communities that are often described as Trump country, our organizer Caitlin Homrich-Knieling shared her experience of having deep-canvass conversations about immigration in rural Michigan. We’re strangers, she said, “starting out with a blank slate, and in that conversation, we’re showing them so much care and empathy about their own hard times and asking so many questions about their own life. We really honor their story and their wisdom and their dignity.”

The connections she made while knocking on doors made her see that she was not bringing that same spirit—of listening and radical empathy—to her relationships back home, in the state’s upper peninsula, where she and family and friends didn’t always see eye to eye. That realization has changed her relationship with her mother, her aunt, and her childhood best friend. Now, when they talk about politics, race in America, or immigration, they approach their talks with a willingness to learn and listen.

Overall, our conversations have not modeled the broader narrative of division that this election tells. They show that on the individual level, we all want to understand one another—how we have come to see the world, what we are up against—and we all want to be heard. [...]

I really liked the part where the canvasser realized that if she can find empathy with strangers she disagrees with politically, then why can't she, why isn't she doing that, with friends and family? Can't we ALL be doing that more?

The art of conversation requires the ability to listen. It seems to be a lost art. Perhaps it's time to revive it? The full article gives examples of what it's talking about, and has embedded links. It's worth reading the whole thing.

I don't strictly belive in either the Republican Party or the Democrat Party; they are both flawed and imperfect, and anyway are supposed to be political vehicles for people to use to form alliances around, not ideologies in and of themselves. I do believe in our two-party system, and the balance of power. When either party becomes too powerful, we tend to get their lunatic fringe and worst ideas trying to rule everything.

The current polarity in our politics, has eliminated conversation. Too often, it's like one side is wanting to destroy the other. It's insane, to vilify one half of the country's population. I live in a rural area that is very conservative, and have a business in town, where the politics are more liberal. Politically they are worlds apart. But I live in both of them. I have friends in both, and have to function in both. I don't attack people in either, and I don't want to see one destroying the other.

In a civilized world, people can agree to disagree, and work together to find compromises based on concensus. If we can't get back to that, I fear we will not survive. Nor will we deserve to.

A house divided against itself cannot stand. Nature does not favor the weak. We have enemies, who would like to see BOTH sides destroyed. What is it going to take, to wake us up, before it's too late?

     

Death of the working class... and of Capitalism, as we knew it?

How fighting one pandemic can deepen another Review of “Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism” by Anne Case and Angus Deaton

By Carlos Lozada, Book critic
May 1, 2020 at 5:00 a.m. PDT
DEATHS OF DESPAIR AND THE FUTURE OF CAPITALISM
By Anne Case and Angus Deaton.
Princeton University Press. 312 pp. $27.95

Even before the coronavirus struck, America was suffering an eviscerating epidemic. Its cause was not a virus; its spread could not be blamed on foreign travelers or college kids on spring break. No masks or gloves could slow its contagion, no vaccine could prevent new cases. Its toll is clear in the rising deaths of white Americans in their mid-40s to mid-50s over the past two decades, particularly in states such as Arkansas, Kentucky, Mississippi and West Virginia.

Princeton University economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton call these “deaths of despair” — the deaths from suicide, drug overdoses and alcoholic liver disease ravaging swaths of the country. The victims, overwhelmingly, are less-educated Americans whose loss of life was preceded by a loss of jobs, community and dignity, and whose deaths, the authors argue, are inextricable from the policies and politics transforming the U.S. economy into an engine of inequality and suffering. “The American economy has shifted away from serving ordinary people and toward serving businesses, their managers, and their owners,” Case and Deaton write in their new work, “Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism.”

Although the authors completed this book before the onset of the coronavirus pandemic — it was published four days after President Trump declared a national emergency — their diagnosis is still painfully relevant. Mass unemployment and mass infection, occurring simultaneously in a nation where health insurance often depends on employment, threaten to both prove and aggravate the conditions Case and Deaton describe. The debate over how quickly to ease social distancing restrictions and get the economy moving again forces a reckoning: How do we balance the risk of increased coronavirus infections if we reopen the economy too soon against the risk of more deaths of despair if we do so too late? “Jobs are not just the source of money; they are the basis for the rituals, customs, and routines of working-class life,” Case and Deaton write. “Destroy work and, in the end, working-class life cannot survive.”

Reading this book during a pandemic, I found myself bracing for more death — from the virus or from despair, and, more likely, from both.

Many memoirs, histories and investigations have been written on America’s white working class in recent years, probably too many, but fewer purely economic studies. Case and Deaton are world-renowned practitioners of the dismal science (Case is a top expert on the links between economic and health status, while Deaton snagged a Nobel in 2015 for his work on household poverty and welfare), and their lens on the subject makes for stark reading. They estimate the magnitude of the deaths of despair in the United States by comparing the improving trend lines of recent decades — i.e., if mortality rates had continued falling as before — with what actually came to pass.

“When we add up those numbers from 1999, the critical point where the turnaround began, to 2017,” the authors report, “we get a very large total: 600,000 deaths of midlife Americans who would be alive if progress had gone on as expected.” Case and Deaton liken that number to “what we might see during the ravages of an infectious disease, like the Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918.” They also compare it to the roughly 675,000 deaths of HIV/AIDS in the United States since the early 1980s.

Case and Deaton are largely dismissive of arguments that stress the supposed individual or cultural failings of the white working class, and they focus instead on systemic shortcomings that lead to deaths of despair. Manufacturing towns and cities have seen their factories boarded up, they write, and “in the wreckage, the temptations of alcohol and drugs lured many to their deaths.” Education is another consideration, the authors argue, with “almost all” of the increase in deaths due to suicide, alcoholism and drug overdoses found among people who lack bachelor’s degrees. Deteriorating health matters as well. “Many people are experiencing pain, serious mental distress, and difficulty going about their day-to-day lives,” Case and Deaton write. These conditions make it harder for them to work, which reduces income and undercuts work as a source of “satisfaction and meaning” in their lives.

Who lives, who dies, who decides: How the virus makes us weigh the value of one life

More than 30 million Americans have sought unemployment aid since mid-March, a level of dislocation not seen since the Great Depression. In this context, the impulse to return to work is understandable. Yet the loss of earnings, Case and Deaton contend, is just part of the challenge. “Much more important for despair is the decline of family, community, and religion,” they write, a decline they regard as related to falling wages and disappearing jobs, but distinct from them. Other authors have tackled this problem recently — see, for instance, Timothy P. Carney’s insightful 2019 book, “Alienated America” — and collectively, their conclusion is clear: Long before we began social distancing, Americans had already grown far too distant from one another.

Case and Deaton focus on the white working class because it is undergoing a particularly harrowing shift, not because they believe this demographic matters more than others (they don’t) or because it is worse off in absolute terms than others (it isn’t). Black mortality rates remain persistently higher than white ones, the authors point out, even considering the increased deaths of despair among white Americans. But black mortality rates are falling faster than white rates — and the deaths of despair among white citizens are the difference. “The main reason why death rates of blacks fell more rapidly than death rates of whites at the beginning of the twenty-first century is that blacks were not suffering the epidemic of overdoses, suicide, and alcoholism,” Case and Deaton explain. [...]

It's worth reading the whole thing. While I don't consider myself an anti-capitalist at all, there have been changes in the economy, locally an globally, that have been eliminating working class jobs and incomes. It's a reality.

When Obamacare tried to force small businesses to provide health care for full time employees, the employment industry responded by making all employees part time. I worked as a tax preparer, dealing with all their W-2 forms, and was astounded at how many families were raising children, with two parents working at an assortment of part-time jobs, to pay their bills and keep thier families alive.

This article touches on many causes, and asks many questions we need to face, as it's only going to continue to get worse for the majority of people, if viable solutions are not found.

Many of these people are Trump supporters. And they will vote for Trump, no matter what anyone says, because they feel that the Democrats don't care wether they live or die, so they will vote for anyone who opposes the Democrats. You can argue about wether that perception is right or wrong. But it won't change the fact that they percieve it that way. If the Democrats are serious about winning more votes, they should be addressing this, instead of only attacking Trump non-stop. They have been doing that for the past four years, and it hasn't worked. Isn't it about time they try something that does?

I have Democrat friends who believe that all Trump supporters are racists, bigots and morons. And that if they keep repeating that mantra, it's going to win them the elections. But I think they have forgotten, what every election is about: it's the economy, stupid. Duh. It affects the most people. And the majority will vote for whoever they think, whoever they perceive, will do the better job of that.

     

Kamala Harris: an interesting choice

From the Guardian:

What to make of the Kamala Harris VP pick? Our panel's verdict

[...] Harris, like Biden, is a remarkably malleable candidate. She is not an ideologue; she’s a political animal, someone who will move with the changing tides – a representative, one might say. That makes her untrustworthy to people who want a true believer in office. But it also means that the most dynamic movements, such as Black Lives Matter, and the laudable efforts of disappointed Bernie Sanders fans to get more progressives into office, create an environment into which Harris will fit herself. As the Democratic base goes, so go both Harris and Biden. This is good news for the progressives who are winning the hearts and minds of Democratic voters. [...]

[...] In this election, it’s clear that Donald Trump is going to run as a bulwark of law and order who stands between Americans and roving anarchists and antifa. He regularly paints Democrat-run cities as “totally out of control” on crime. In a sit-down interview with Fox anchor Chris Wallace last month, Trump claimed that Biden wants to “defund the police,” which Wallace pointed out was inaccurate on-air.

That line of attack is going to be difficult when your opponents are the author of the 1994 crime bill and a hard-nosed prosecutor who laughed about cracking down on truancy.

In much the same way that partisan discipline put the kibosh on the Tara Reade accusations against Joe Biden, Democrats and the liberal media that support them will put daylight between Democrats and the disorder in the street.

Turns out all the opposition research that progressive activists used against Biden and Harris in the primary is suddenly a strength in the race against Trump. [...]

     

"Democrats cannot capture the presidency or either branch of Congress by lurching leftward"

Here is some well considered advice for the Democrat party. It explains how Donald Trump got elected, and why, if the Democrats don't change course, Trump stands a good chance of being re-elected for another term:

Commentary: The perils of mythmaking

[...] Democrats cannot capture the presidency or either branch of Congress by lurching leftward. A candidate in the AOC/BS mold would be a hero in New York, California and Massachusetts — and a disaster in states like Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, which handed Trump the presidency in 2016 and will be critical again next year.

Ed Rendell, the former governor of Pennsylvania, stressed this point to The New York Times: “The more we have presidential candidates or newly elected congresspeople talking about the Green New Deal, talking about ‘Medicare-for-all,’ talking about socialism, the more that plays into the Trump campaign’s hands.”

Christopher Borick, a political scientist at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, Pennsylvania, added: “If you want to lock up Pennsylvania for a Democrat, the more moderate Democrats are the key.”

The numbers support them. A Gallup poll in January reported that 35 percent of Americans call themselves conservatives, the same number that identify as moderates. Only 26 percent are self-described liberals, the same portion who chose that label in 2016 exit polls.

It’s true that within the Democrats’ ranks, the percentage of liberals is rising, hitting 51 percent this year according to Gallup. But pragmatists still dominate the party. Fifty-four percent of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents want the party to “move closer to the center” while 41 percent “would rather it shift further left.”

The same tension between purists and pragmatists is playing out in the House, where the AOC types are calling for the rapid impeachment of the president. But Democratic leaders are taking a much slower approach, with Rep. Jerrold Nadler, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, insisting that impeachment must meet a “very high bar.”

“If you’re serious about removing a president from office, what you’re really doing is overturning the result of the last election,” Nadler told Roll Call in November. “You don’t want to have a situation where you tear this country apart, and for the next 30 years half the country’s saying, ‘We won the election; you stole it.’”

That’s why Democrats should be focusing on the next election, not impeachment. No president has ever been removed through impeachment (although Richard Nixon probably would have been the first, had he not resigned). The bar is and should be “very high.” [...]

Read the whole thing. It explains so much. Good advice, and like much good advice, will probably be ignored. Elections are about demographics, and numbers. If Democrats insist on letting the most leftist and shrill among them lead their party, they will lose again.

Also see:

How can Republicans defend Trump? Because of the Clintons

     

Russia Gate: no "golden ticket" for clueless Democrat Leaders?

I think even most Democrats see it for what it is, even if their party leadership is clueless. A case in point:

Russia-gate Flops as Democrats’ Golden Ticket

The national Democratic Party and many liberals have bet heavily on the Russia-gate investigation as a way to oust President Trump from office and to catapult Democrats to victories this year and in 2018, but the gamble appears not to be paying off.

[...]

Indeed, the Democrats may be digging a deeper hole for themselves in terms of reaching out to white working-class voters who abandoned the party in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin to put Trump over the top in the Electoral College even though Clinton’s landslide win in California gave her almost three million more votes nationwide.

Clinton’s popular-vote plurality and the #Resistance, which manifested itself in massive protests against Trump’s presidency, gave hope to the Democrats that they didn’t need to undertake a serious self-examination into why the party is in decline across the nation’s heartland. Instead, they decided to stoke the hysteria over alleged Russian “meddling” in the election as the short-cut to bring down Trump and his populist movement.

A Party of Snobs?

From conversations that I’ve had with some Trump voters in recent weeks, I was struck by how they viewed the Democratic Party as snobbish, elitist and looking down its nose at “average Americans.” And in conversations with some Clinton voters, I found confirmation for that view in the open disdain that the Clinton backers expressed toward the stupidity of anyone who voted for Trump. In other words, the Trump voters were not wrong to feel “dissed.”

It seems the Republicans – and Trump in particular – have done a better job in presenting themselves to these Middle Americans as respecting their opinions and representing their fears, even though the policies being pushed by Trump and the GOP still favor the rich and will do little good – and significant harm – to the middle and working classes.

This article, I could argue with that last comment or any number of assumptions and assertions that the author makes throughout. But I'm not going to bother. Because far more interesting to me, is the arguments he makes about how the Dems are out of touch and really screwing things up. Read on:

By contrast, many of Hillary Clinton’s domestic proposals might well have benefited average Americans but she alienated many of them by telling a group of her supporters that half of Trump’s backers belonged in a “basket of deplorables.” Although she later reduced the percentage, she had committed a cardinal political sin: she had put the liberal disdain for millions of Americans into words – and easily remembered words at that.

By insisting that Hillary Clinton be the Democratic nominee – after leftist populist Bernie Sanders was pushed aside – the party also ignored the fact that many Americans, including many Democrats, viewed Clinton as the perfectly imperfect candidate for an anti-Establishment year with many Americans still fuming over the Wall Street bailouts and amid the growing sense that the system was rigged for the well-connected and against the average guy or gal.

In the face of those sentiments, the Democrats nominated a candidate who personified how a relatively small number of lucky Americans can play the system and make tons of money while the masses have seen their dreams crushed and their bank accounts drained. And Clinton apparently still hasn’t learned that lesson.

Citing Women’s Rights

Last month, when asked why she accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars for speaking to Goldman Sachs, Clinton rationalized her greed as a women’s rights issue, saying: “you know, men got paid for the speeches they made. I got paid for the speeches I made.”

Her excuse captured much of what has gone wrong with the Democratic Party as it moved from its working-class roots and New Deal traditions to becoming a party that places “identity politics” ahead of a duty to fight for the common men and women of America.

Demonstrating her political cluelessness, Clinton used the serious issue of women not getting fair treatment in the workplace to justify taking her turn at the Wall Street money trough, gobbling up in one half-hour speech what it would take many American families a decade to earn.

While it’s a bit unfair to personalize the Democratic Party’s problems, Hillary and Bill Clinton have come to represent how the party is viewed by many Americans. Instead of the FDR Democrats, we have the Davos Democrats, the Wall Street Democrats, the Hollywood Democrats, the Silicon Valley Democrats, and now increasingly the Military-Industrial Complex Democrats.

To many Americans struggling to make ends meet, the national Democrats seem committed to the interests of the worldwide elites: global trade, financialization of the economy, robotization of the workplace, and endless war against endless enemies.

Now, the national Democrats are clambering onto the bandwagon for a costly and dangerous New Cold War with nuclear-armed Russia. Indeed, it is hard to distinguish their foreign policy from that of neoconservatives, although these Democrats view themselves as liberal interventionists citing humanitarian impulses to justify the endless slaughter.

Earlier this year, a Washington Post/ABC News poll found only 28 percent of Americans saying that the Democrats were “in touch with the concerns of most people” – an astounding result given the Democrats’ long tradition as the party of the American working class and the party’s post-Vietnam War reputation as favoring butter over guns.

Yet rather than rethink the recent policies, the Democrats prefer to fantasize about impeaching President Trump and continuing a blame-game about who – other than Hillary Clinton, her campaign and the Democratic National Committee – is responsible for Trump’s election. Of course, it’s the Russians, Russians, Russians! [...]

He's nailed it! Read the whole thing for even more about the deep roots of the problem, and the serious errors the Democrat Party are continuing to make.
     

I agree with President Obama...

...about this Nike thing:

As Obama Visits Portland, Trade Deal Divides Liberal Community

As President Barack Obama visited Nike's headquarters in Portland — a city known for lush greenery, constant drizzle and liberal politics — the left-leaning enclave has become ground zero Friday for the debate over the administration's push for a sweeping, multinational trade deal.

The president acknowledged that he's faced hurdles in his quest to garner support for an ambitious trade accord between the United States and 11 South American and Pacific Rim nations, known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership. He told workers at the Nike campus that the people opposing this "typically they're my friends and coming from my own party. On this one, they're like, whooping on me."

Obama insisted the trade push is not political for him, since he's run his last election. He said the trade accord is the right thing to do for working families.

"The only reason I do something is because I think it's good for the economy," Obama said.

Still, in Portland, with its normally laid back vibe, the debate over the trade issue is splitting residents into two camps.

On the one side are companies like Nike, one of the city's largest employers. The company employs 8,500 people in Oregon and 26,000 nationwide. Nike says its economic impact on the state of Oregon is $2.5 billion.

And the company promises to add 10,000 jobs and an additional 40,000 indirect and supply chain service jobs if the trade deal is approved.

"We believe agreements that encourage free and fair trade allow Nike to do what we do best: innovate, expand our businesses and drive economic growth," said Mark Parker, Nike's president and CEO.

On the other side are labor unions that argue that the trade accord would repress worker wages and encourage companies — like Nike — to outsource jobs.

Those differences were on display Friday morning as Nike workers, most wearing Nike shoes, lined up to cheer the president. Meanwhile, about a hundred protesters crowded outside and chanted their outrage.

"Nike represents everything about corporate America that stinks," said Andrew Crosby, as he carried a protest sign.

The pact has even split Oregon's senators, both Democrats.

Sen. Ron Wyden is helping lead the charge to pass "fast-track" authority which would grant Obama and future presidents the right to ask for an up-or-down vote in Congress on trade agreements. Obama and supporters say the president needs this authority to better negotiate with other nations.

Opponents worry that such large trade deals deserve vetting by Congress. Sen. Jeff Merkley has said he is "dubious" about the impact of such broad trade accords. [...]

Wyden is a reasonable Democrat. Merkley is a Moron. Oregon desperately needs the jobs and revenue. The unions here are too powerful, and dragging our state down. I have to agree with president Obama on this one.

     

The Coronation of Hillary Clinton?

Dick Meyer: The problem isn't Hillary, it's the Democrats

[...] The scandal is not that she may have broken rules, it's that the Democratic Party is allowing her to march unopposed to a coronation.

[...]

There cannot be a single voter in America that is surprised Hillary is already boiling in a scandal, or pseudo-scandal, depending on your perspective. Love them or hate them, this is what they do and this is what happens to them. Fair or unfair, this is their mythic cycle, their dramatic fate.

Perhaps this is the act that ends Hillary's performance, but probably not. And perhaps, if she stays in the race, there will be no more scandal dramas before November 2016, but probably not.

The very simple point is that Democratic Party is insane to have put itself in this position - this entirely predictable situation. After all, Hillary did lose to an unlikely newcomer in 2008, Barack Obama. She'll obviously be beatable in a general election.

Some blame the Clintons, which is wrongheaded. It's not their fault that they scared off all credible opposition and ran the most effective pre-primary of any modern campaign (thus far). That is exactly what they are supposed to do.

It is the job of the party to create competition and breed national candidates of stature. Mock the Republican field if you want, at least it is a field and not just a pitcher's mound.

I have argued before that the Democrats have become the conservative party in America, the Establishment Party more protective of the status quo and big business than the Republicans. This is yet another sign.

The Democrats are arguably more invested in the Political-Industrial Complex. Their legions aren't true believers but consultants, lobbyists, vendors, hacks, ambassadors-in-waiting and aspiring political appointees. Not backing Team Clinton is a bad career move. But now they have a problem. [...]

Do they? Have a problem? The author rightly points out that people have come to expect this sort of thing from the Clintons. The email controversy would likely be fatal for a Republican, but for a Democrat? I doubt it. Her supporters are not likely to stop supporting her. I think the coronation will proceed.

Ever since Ted Kennedy was allowed to continue in office even after he left a woman to die of suffocation underwater in the back seat of his car, the Democrats lowered the bar for what is acceptable from their candidates. I doubt that the email scandal will derail the coronation of Hillary, or even slow it down much, but we'll see.
     

Clinton's email spin-control, and the questions that nobody is asking

Fact check: Clinton e-mails and the privacy 'privilege'

[...] Clinton, a likely presidential candidate in 2016, has been embroiled in an e-mail controversy since March 2, when The New York Times reported that she exclusively used a private e-mail account at clintonemail.com to conduct government business. At a press conference on March 10, Clinton said she sent and received more than 60,000 e-mails during her time in office. At the State Department's request, Clinton turned over about half of them to the government in December. The rest were deleted because they were personal, she said.

Asked whether she would agree to allow an "independent third party to come in and examine your e-mails," Clinton replied that she should be treated no differently than federal employees who have a government e-mail account and a personal e-mail account. They can decide when they send an e-mail whether to use the government or private account.

"So, even if you have a work-related device with a work-related .gov account, you choose what goes on that," she told reporters.

That's true, of course, but the situation she describes is not entirely analogous, since Clinton had no government account. She made the choice to use only a personal e-mail account set up on a personal server.

Moreover, Clinton's office went too far when answering the same question in a Q&A it released on the day of the press conference. The Q&A detailed the Clinton team's review process and answered some common questions that have been raised since the Times story first appeared.

One of the questions in the Q&A: "Do you think a third party should be allowed to review what was turned over to the Department, as well as the remainder that was not?" Clinton's office answered, in part: "Government officials are granted the privacy of their personal, non-work related emails, including personal emails on .gov accounts. Secretary Clinton exercised her privilege to ensure the continued privacy of her personal, non-work related emails."

That characterization of the rules governing government e-mail systems is not accurate.

State Department policy — spelled out in the Foreign Affairs Manual under "Points to Remember About E-mail" — says there is "no expectation of privacy." Specifically, 5 FAM 443.5 says, in part: "Department E-mail systems are for official use only by authorized personnel" and "The information in the systems is Departmental, not personal. No expectation of privacy or confidentiality applies."

Clinton is correct that the department policy allows employees to delete e-mails that are not work-related. The 5 FAM 443.5 rule also says, "Messages that are not records may be deleted when no longer needed."

But Baron — who served 13 years as director of litigation at the National Archives, which is responsible for maintaining government records — said in an interview that Clinton's use of a private server gave her exclusive control, thus preventing the department from having full access to e-mails she sent and received while a federal employee. Government employees have no right to privacy on government computers and even personal e-mails are subject to review and perhaps release at the department's discretion.

"Setting up a private server to conduct public business inappropriately shifts control of what is accessible to the end user alone rather than allowing the institution to decide threshold questions," he told us.

We sent e-mails to Clinton's office and to the State Department asking about the privacy claim but received no response. [...]

Read the whole thing for embedded links and more.

The article goes on to say that Clinton claims that she was emailing people in the State Department with .gov email accounts, and that they have copies of the emails she sent. Sure, the one's she sent to THEM. What about the other emails she sent other people, as Secretary of State? Ironically, her statement also confirms something else. The people in the State Department that she was emailing, knew that she was not using a .gov account, and they just let her do it anyway. Why was she allowed to do this?

If this were a Republican being investigated, the press would be asking those people, "What did you know and when did you know it? Why was she allowed to break the rules her position required her to follow?" Will the press do so this time? If they don't, then WE need to.

ALL politicians, regardless of party affiliation, need to be questioned and held accountable for their actions, if we are to get better people in office. Clinton has been let off the hook so many times, she just keeps on acting as if she has privileges no one else has. Why? Because too many people let her do it. And that just encourages more of the same. It has to stop.

     

Is the nearly extinct Northeast species of Republicans being brought back from the brink?

I once did a post about the demise of New England Republicans. It seemed like they were gone for good. But could it be they are making a comeback?

Return of the Northeastern Republican

[...] Republican political operatives say the gains the GOP is set to make are due to a convergence of causes. There is the fact that in the wave election year that 2014 seems poised to become, the party could win in even the most unexpected of places. There is the fact that in many of these states Democratic legislatures are entrenched, and voters are looking for a counterweight.

And finally, there is the fact that most of the culture wars have reached a stalemate. In Massachusetts, for example, Baker is running as a pro-choice, pro same-sex marriage Republican nominee. Other Republicans are similarly downplaying these hot-button issues of old, and pollsters say most voters see them now as settled matters. And so if two candidates are a wash on matters of civil rights, why not go for the guy who is going to cut your taxes?

“Republicans have just been putting together a more coherent message of change in New England,” said Will Ritter, a Republican political operative who worked on a number of statewide races in Massachusetts. “The Democrats’ message is what—‘Hey, it is not so bad?’ People look to candidates who have a business background, or at least have conservative underpinnings, when it looks like budgets are going off the rails.”

The major question for the Republican Party going forward is what all these Yankee newcomers will mean for its direction. The GOP has been at odds with itself as it tries to decide how to appeal to a diverse and changing electorate, and some Republicans think a handful of new voices from states not necessarily of the reddest hue could help the eventual 2016 presidential nominee.

“It takes a lot of Democrats to elect a Republican in one of these places,” said John McLaughlin, a Republican pollster. “You can’t win otherwise. You broaden your base, you broaden your message, it shows that you really want to get things done. And we need do to that, not just racially but demographically.”

But will the Republican party welcome these blue-state Republicans, or will they shoot themselves in the foot (again!) by declaring them to be RHINOs and try to drum them out of the party with social issues litmus tests, insuring that the Republican Party remains small, with only limited appeal to a small minority of the vast demographic of voters? You can be sure that the latter is what the Democrats are hoping and praying for.
     

The Grace Commission: Good Advice Ignored

I've often heard the Grace Commission mentioned in various articles, so decided to look it up. From Wikipedia:

The Grace Commission

The Private Sector Survey on Cost Control (PSSCC), commonly referred to as The Grace Commission, was an investigation requested by United States President Ronald Reagan, in 1982. The focus of it was waste and inefficiency in the US Federal government. Its head, businessman J. Peter Grace,[1] asked the members of that commission to "be bold" and "work like tireless bloodhounds. Don't leave any stone unturned in your search to root out inefficiency."[2]

The report
The Grace Commission Report[3] was presented to Congress in January 1984. The report claimed that if its recommendations were followed, $424 billion could be saved in three years, rising to $1.9 trillion per year by the year 2000. It estimated that the national debt, without these reforms, would rise to $13 trillion by the year 2000, while with the reforms they projected it would rise to only $2.5 trillion.[4] Congress ignored the commission's report. The debt reached $5.8 trillion in the year 2000.[5][6] The national debt reached 13 trillion after the subprime mortgage-collateralized debt obligation crisis in 2008.

The report said that one-third of all income taxes are consumed by waste and inefficiency in the federal government, and another one-third escapes collection owing to the underground economy. “With two thirds of everyone’s personal income taxes wasted or not collected, 100 percent of what is collected is absorbed solely by interest on the federal debt and by federal government contributions to transfer payments. In other words, all individual income tax revenues are gone before one nickel is spent on the services [that] taxpayers expect from their government."[4]

Congress was warned. They had the chance to do something about it, and did nothing. We The People, let them do it. Now we are living the consequences.

Mr. Grace, a Democrat Businessman, was an interesting fellow:

J. Peter Grace

[...] In the Kennedy administration, J. Peter Grace was head of the Commerce Department Committee on the Alliance for Progress.[5] President Reagan, in announcing the selection of J. Peter Grace to lead The Grace Commission on waste and inefficiency in the Federal government, said:

We have a problem that's been 40 years in the making, and we have to find ways to solve it. And I didn't want to ruin your appetites, so I waited till now to tell you this, but during the hour we're together here eating and talking, the Government has spent $83 million. And by the way, that includes the price of your lunch. [Laughter] Milton Friedman is right. There really is no such thing as a free lunch. The interest on our debt for the last hour was about $10 million of that.

In selecting your Committee, we didn't care whether you were Democrats or Republicans. Starting with Peter Grace, we just wanted to get the very best people we could find, and I think we were successful.

I'll repeat to you today what I said a week ago when I announced Peter's appointment: Be bold. We want your team to work like tireless bloodhounds. Don't leave any stone unturned in your search to root out inefficiency.[6]

Mr. Grace, a Democrat, was asked what he would say to the campaign theme of Walter Mondale, the 1984 Democratic Presidential candidate, that higher taxes would be required to ease the deficit regardless of who wins the November election.

"I'd tell him he's nuts," Grace said. "He's wrong. He's wrong."[7] [...]

   

No photoshop here; the real Joe Biden at work

Biden Dorks Out

Vice President Joe Biden appears to temporarily lose his mind during President Obama's jobs speech on 9-8-11. This is not an altered photo. Absolutely no Photoshop tricks. Evidently the vice president had a bad case of dry mouth and was using his tongue to try and lubricate his lips. It only lasted a couple of seconds, but thanks to my DVR, I was able to freeze-frame the image for a photo.

Isn't technology wonderful.

(HT: The Blind Man In The White House)
     

Obama's New Deal: destroy and replace?

Well, that looks like the plan for this Administration:

Does Obama Want the Best for America or Does He Want to Destroy It?

[...] Obama knows that his economic policies are productive of neither liberty as traditionally conceived by Americans nor prosperity. He would have to be, not just the most incompetent president ever, but among the most dense of human beings, for given the extensive exposure that he has had to both Keynesian and neo-Marxian philosophy -- anyone who takes the time to read his memoirs, particularly his first, and who considers the worldview of the people with whom he has surrounded himself for most of his life would know this -- he could only know by now full well the fruits that these policies promise to reap.

But from this it doesn't follow that Obama anticipates the ruination of America as such. There can be no doubt, I think, that he wants to preside over an America that is morally superior and, hence, better, than the country that elected him two years ago. The problem, though, is that the America of Obama's imaginings is radically unlike the America to which most of its citizens have an acquired affection and even more unlike the America within which their ancestors made their home. That is, the "fundamental transformation" that Obama wants to visit upon America demands nothing more or less than the death of America as it is currently constituted; only once America as a living reality is eliminated can America as Obama's ideal be substituted for it.

The philosopher Ronald Dworkin once said that "a more equal society" -- a society the resources of which are equally "distributed" -- is better than the contrary, even if its citizens prefer inequality. Anyone who has paid any attention at all to Obama must know that he couldn't agree more with this thought.

So, our president does indeed think that as a people, Americans will be "better" in the wake of the "fundamental transformation" that he wants to impose upon us. [...]

Duh! He meant what he said about "change". Too bad nobody insisted he be more specific and explain it, though I doubt he would ever admit it was change of the Cloward-Piven kind.

Elections have consequences, and we are living it now.

     

Why This Republican Majority will be Different

Some worry that the new Republican Majority will be trounced in confrontations with Obama next year, similar to what happened when the new majority in 1995 confronted Bill Clinton. But there are many considerable differences this time:

Congresses Compared

Next year in Washington is not going to be a replay of 1995. The analogy is on everyone’s mind in the capital. Many Republicans worry that President Obama will win the public-relations war against Speaker-to-be John Boehner as handily as Bill Clinton bested Newt Gingrich. They should relax.

The parallels are obvious. Both times, a young Democrat had succeeded George Bush in the presidency and then worked with a Democratic Congress to push a liberal agenda. In the next election Republicans ran against big government and won elections up and down the ballot, picking up governorships and seats in the Senate, the House, and state legislatures. Pollster Kristen Soltis points out that much of the data from the 2010 election looks nearly identical to the numbers from 1994. In both elections, for example, roughly 55 percent of independents chose Republican congressional candidates.

Republicans don’t want what happened after the last Republican takeover to recur. During the winter of 1995–96, the new Republican Congress battled with Clinton over the budget — a battle that reached its climax in partial shutdowns of the government. The public sided with Clinton. His approval ratings rose while Gingrich’s plummeted.

The conservative campaign to limit the size and scope of the federal government never really recovered from this defeat. Within a few years congressional Republicans were beginning to run for reelection on pork and incumbency rather than reform, and George W. Bush was advancing a “compassionate conservatism” as a way of distinguishing himself from the Gingrichites.

But there are several differences between 2011 and 1995 that should work in favor of Republicans.

First, Republicans won a larger House majority. In 1995, Republicans had the smallest majority of any Congress since the 1950s. Conservatives were a majority of the majority, but not a majority of the House. Holding the conference together on votes was a constant challenge: Budgets would be too tight for party moderates and too loose for conservative firebrands.

Boehner’s task will be easier. Republicans have the largest majority they have had since the 1940s. For the first time in the modern history of conservatism, the House has an outright conservative majority. Michael Barone says that House Republicans are in the sweet spot: They have enough members that Boehner can let some Republicans out of tough votes, but not so many that they have no cohesion.

Second, Republicans did not take the Senate, as they did in 1995. As a result, the public will be less likely to hold them responsible for governing the country. When House Republicans passed legislation that could not pass a Republican Senate, conservatives were demoralized and the party looked incompetent. Neither effect will be as pronounced if a Democratic Senate kills House-passed conservative legislation.

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, meanwhile, will have an easier time keeping his conference together in the minority. Getting Rand Paul to sign off on a McConnell agenda would be a lot harder than getting him to agree to oppose Harry Reid’s. Finally, if there are veto fights with President Obama, they will necessarily involve legislation that had significant Democratic support.

Third, the fact that Republicans came up short in the Senate elections will probably temper their triumphalism. At the start of 1995, a lot of conservatives believed that history was on their side and would roll over anyone standing in their way. They thought Clinton was a sure loser. The Republican takeover was widely described as a “revolution.” This time Republicans are well aware that Obama could win reelection and that Republicans could lose House seats in 2012. [...]

Ramesh Ponnuru goes on to give a total of eleven reasons why things are going to be substantially different this time. Read the whole thing; there are so many reasons! The way he explains it is very well thought out.

At last, some hope for optimism. If the Republicans screw up this time, it will have to be for very different reasons than last time. Lets keep their feet to the fire, and say our prayers that they do good this time.

Also see:

Obama Can't Play Center

Should Obama pull a Clinton? This has been a burning question inside the Beltway ever since the polls showed the Great Shellacking bearing down on the White House.

As most know by now, pulling a Clinton isn't anything kinky; it simply means moving to the center, or "triangulating" between the unpopular left and the unpopular right. That's what President Clinton did after the Democrats' historic drubbing at the polls in 1994, and it's what a lot of would-be sages argue President Obama must do now after the rout of 2010.

But the argument is deeply flawed for a few simple reasons: 2011 will be very different than 1995; the Republicans and the Democrats are different than they were then; and Obama is very, very different than Clinton.

Other than that, the analogy is perfect.

Even outgoing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi concedes the political importance of the economy. In 1995, the economy was poised to take off like a rocket. Today, no one thinks the economy is about to perform in a way that would provide a glide path to re-election for Obama. If at the end of Obama's first term, near 10 percent unemployment is the "new normal," as Obama fretted recently on "60 Minutes," then his chances for re-election are bleak -- so long as the GOP doesn't throw him a lifeline, the way it did Clinton in 1995-96.

And the GOP is not only determined not to repeat those mistakes, it is well positioned to avoid them. With Democrats controlling the Senate, it will be much harder for Obama to run against a do-nothing Congress. [...]

Yep. It will indeed be different this time. It goes on to point out that Clinton's road map wouldn't help Obama, even if he were inclined to use it. The terrain is too different. It will be up to Obama to find his own way through it, and make it work. If he can.
     

Who is George Soros?

Glenn Beck: Making of the Puppet Master

[...] Who is George Soros? And is he involved in the changes in our country? And if he is and if he is using his money to greatly influence our country, why don't I know about it? And do I agree with him? Maybe you do.

George Soros had a rough childhood. He was born in Hungary in 1930. Not the place you wanted to be in 1930, especially if you were a Jew. His mother was wildly anti-Semitic.

Again, for anybody who is crying, you know, is this some sort of anti- Semitic attack on George Soros? No, it's not. I'm not calling his mother an anti-Semite. George Soros did. Those are his words, not mine.

Quote, "My mother quite anti-Semitic and ashamed of being Jewish. Given the culture in which we lived, being Jewish was a clear-cut stigma, a disadvantage, a handicap. And therefore, she always had the desire to transcend it, to escape it."

That is pretty powerful in a child's life.

Both of his parents were non-practicing Jews. His real family name was not Soros. It was Schwartz. But what would you do if you lived in Hungary in the 1930s and '40s? Would you keep the name Schwartz?

When George was six years old, the family changed the name from Schwartz to Soros. Now, at first, it just makes sense on the surface because you're like, OK, well, of course, they're trying to stay alive. There were mad men rounding you Jews up.

But when you look at the name Soros, it's an obscure name. What does it mean? Where did it come from? Well, it means to soar.

More importantly, it derives from Esperanto, which is a made-up trans- European language that started I think in the 1880s. And it was promoted by those who dreamt of a world free of nationalities. Get it? A world free of nationalities, an open society.

His father was very much into this. That's how they picked the name Soros.

So when George Soros was 14, his father basically bribed a government official to take his son in and let him pretend to be a Christian. His father was just trying to keep him alive. He even had to go around confiscating property of Jewish people.

Now, imagine you are Jewish and you have to go and confiscate the property of your fellow Jews. And you are pretending to not be a Jew and if anybody finds out, you're dead. He actually had to endure watching people sendoff to their eventual murders, watching people gathering their stuff, sending them off knowing that they were going to go to their death.

What does that do to somebody? How do you deal with that? How many years of therapy would somebody need after something like that?

This is where George — I think this is important — this is where George Soros first learned to pretend to be something other than who he was. He had to.

I am not blaming or questioning a 14-year-old or his parents for trying to keep him alive, trying to keep the family alive. I don't think anyone can understand what it must have been like to be Jewish in that scenario. Can you? Especially 14.

I don't want to question the 14-year-old. I would have, however, like to question the 80-year-old man who has never once said he regretted it. But more than that, he views it as the happiest year of his life — again, not my words, his words. Listen:

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SOROS: It was actually probably the happiest year of my life, that year of German occupation. For me, it was a very positive experience. It's a strange thing because you see incredible suffering around you and the fact you are in considerable danger yourself. But you're 14 years old and you don't believe that it can actually touch you. You have a belief in yourself. You have a belief in your father. It's a very happy-making exhilarating experience.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BECK: I don't think I've ever heard anybody describe the Holocaust years like that. Maybe he's the most healthy man you've ever met. Maybe somehow or another he just got through it.

But he also has spoken how his experience in Hungary has effected his psyche. Listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Did anybody tell you in Hungary why they didn't like Jews at the time?

SOROS: Oh, yes. And that, of course, is something again very, very much part of my psyche, anti-Semitism, and, you know, hatred of Jews. It was quite widespread within Hungary.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BECK: Even to his own home. I mean, I would love to spend an hour — he's not going to come on this program and spend an hour with me. And we'd have bigger fish to fry than this, but I would love to understand how it affected his psyche having his mother basically agree apparently — I don't mean to judge — with the Germans on the hatred of Jews being anti-Semitic in his own home. How has he navigated that?

I'm not going to spend the time. I had invited George Soros to come on this program. He has declined.

We have bigger fish to fry, like how does he view the world? It sure would be interesting to explore how this affected his feelings on Israel, which he does not support. He donates so much money to organizations that speak out against Israel. Some stick out more than others on the donations. But is there any connection there?

I'm going to concentrate on the fact I think the lesson he learned in the horrific year of 1944 was that if you hide your true identify, you can gain power, you can survive. And those who are seen as disadvantaged or handicapped and don't hide their identity — well, they don't survive.

The next formulative step in Soros' life was college. Now, this is where he attended the London School of Economics. Now, this is the same school that Hayek was from. He wrote "Road to Serfdom." This is freedom fighter.

But it's also the school where the Fabian socialists hung out, a Fabian socialist university. You remember — the Fabian window we told you about. This is the famous English Fabian society. We took this picture — actually, Blair was standing here with it.

Fabian socialist — what are they doing? They're heating the world up in the fire that they, themselves are stoking. Why are they heating it up? Because they are about to hammer it and remold it nearer to the heart's desire.

Fabian socialists are the American progressives. It's the same thing. Heat the world up, cause the problems so the world heats up so you can remold it.

So which part of the London School of Economics does Soros favor? The Hayek side or the Fabian side? Which one? [...]

It goes on to say a lot more. Soros' education, where he gets his money from, and what he's doing with it. Much of this I knew, but some of it I didn't. Beck pulls it all together nicely. The information about Soros' Hedge funds was interesting, in light of what I've posted previously about Bill Clinton and Hedge Funds:

Hedge Funds, Democrats & the Financial Crisis

Democrats. Soros. Hedge Funds. Is it any wonder Soros owns the Democrat party? Birds of a feather, invest together. And these are some dirty hedge fund birds.


Also see:

Glenn Beck is Airing the Dirt on George Soros

What's Wrong with Hedge Funds?

F. A. Hayek: The Road to Serfdom

     

Glenn Beck is Airing the Dirt on George Soros

No wonder Soros is funding NPR's expansion in order to compete against FOX News. It's just one of many things Soros is doing, that's mentioned in the two transcripts from Becks most recent shows:


The Puppet Master: How much does George Soros control?

     


Five Step Plan: How George Soros is trying to bring down America

I've known about a lot of that stuff for years, I post about it occasionally. But Soros is buying influence everywhere: there is so much he's up too, I can hardly keep up with it all. I'm glad Glenn Beck is compiling it.

It's nice to see Soros' plans getting some main-stream exposure for a change. It's too bad Beck didn't do this years ago. I have to wonder if it isn't too little, too late now? But I'm not giving up hope. And forewarned is forearmed. The snake in the grass, waiting to bite you, loses the element of surprise when you know it's there. Now where's that pitch fork...
     

Election day. And so it begins...

... the intolerance by the so-called "tolerant" Democrats:



Unhinged Perriello/Obama supporter rips up GOP signs, screams “You f**king House nigger white-black bitch!”

Follow the link to see the video. And more.

Locally, during our last election, some Democrats went around with a baseball bat in the wee hours of the morning, and beat all the GOP signs into the ground. This year it's been better; they've only run over a couple of the signs with their cars.

Some Democrats have trouble understanding the difference between opponents and enemies. Not surprising, since members of their leadership often demonstrate the same problem.

     

P. J. O'Rourke: "This is not an election on November 2. This is a restraining order."

They Hate Our Guts And they’re drunk on power.

Perhaps you’re having a tiny last minute qualm about voting Republican. Take heart. And take the House and the Senate. Yes, there are a few flakes of dander in the fair tresses of the GOP’s crowning glory—an isolated isolationist or two, a hint of gold buggery, and Christine O’Donnell announcing that she’s not a witch. (I ask you, has Hillary Clinton ever cleared this up?) Fret not over Republican peccadilloes such as the Tea Party finding the single, solitary person in Nevada who couldn’t poll ten to one against Harry Reid. Better to have a few cockeyed mutts running the dog pound than Michael Vick. [...]

Read the whole thing. It's true to my experience of the Democrat party, which is why I stopped being one long ago.

Remember in November.
     

From California's Stark Raving Mad Pete Stark

Has power gone to his head? Sounds like it:

No, Congressman, government does have limits

When Rep. Pete Stark, D-Calif., was told during a July 24 town hall meeting with constituents that he and public officials like him were "destroying this nation," he smirkingly replied, "And I guess you're here to save it. And that makes me very uncomfortable." This derision of a constituent was particularly poignant, considering that the questioner had only asked what limits would remain on the federal government if Congress could get away with passing a bill as destructive of individual rights as Obamacare. Stark responded that "I think that there are very few constitutional limits that would prevent the federal government from rules that could affect your private life." He was roundly booed, but then given another opportunity to respond. He observed that "the federal government, yes, can do most anything in this country."

Unfortunately, Stark's extreme views are common among the current congressional majority. Still, we have no doubt that those who wrote the Constitution would be astounded to hear such monarchical attitudes today since they were exactly what the American Revolution was fought to overcome.

Sadly, it probably comes as no surprise to most Americans that Washington politicians like Stark hold such a self-serving view of the Constitution. It's still shocking to hear it put in such stark terms. But Americans have been hearing this theme from their leaders throughout the current economic crisis: Those in power are mainstream agents of change, whereas those who, like Tea Partiers, protest bailouts, deficits, tax hikes and exploding national debt are disreputable radicals and even racists. This is the incumbent- protection narrative that seeks to discredit the middle-American rebellion sparked in 2009 when President Obama proposed an $862 billion economic stimulus program that most knew would mostly line the pockets of his political allies. [...]

Read the rest of it. It's time to vote these jerks out in November, while we still have a vote.


Also see:

American politics has caught the British disease

Pampered Populists

THE RULING CLASS
     

Why is D.C. broken? Could it be, because of the ambitions of America's "Ruling" class?

From Neal Boortz:

THE RULING CLASS

Barack Obama's chief dogwasher Valerie Jarrett said that Barack Obama would be ready to "rule" by day one. At the time, one would hope that this was a slip-of-the-tongue. Turns out that it wasn't. This should have been a huge red flag, a warning sign that we were about to anoint a ruling class in Washington, rather than elected representative officials. We should have known then that Jarrett was serving a ruler, not a leader. These people would have little concept of what it is like to function in the private sector and an inherent disdain for free enterprise. Their love of government and ultimately their role within that government would be the driving force behind every decision and every policy. It is purely based on survival - these rulers know that their success is based on their ability to manipulate the government educated into believing that they need them in order to survive. Angelo Codevilla of the American Spectator can pick up where I've left off ...

Today's ruling class, from Boston to San Diego, was formed by an educational system that exposed them to the same ideas and gave them remarkably uniform guidance, as well as tastes and habits. These amount to a social canon of judgments about good and evil, complete with secular sacred history, sins (against minorities and the environment), and saints. Using the right words and avoiding the wrong ones when referring to such matters -- speaking the "in" language -- serves as a badge of identity. Regardless of what business or profession they are in, their road up included government channels and government money because, as government has grown, its boundary with the rest of American life has become indistinct. Many began their careers in government and leveraged their way into the private sector. Some, e.g., Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner, never held a non-government job. Hence whether formally in government, out of it, or halfway, America's ruling class speaks the language and has the tastes, habits, and tools of bureaucrats. It rules uneasily over the majority of Americans not oriented to government.

You could argue - I think accurately -- that the Tea Party movement is a visceral reaction to this elitism, this ruling class. These politicians currently in Washington are synonymous with "big government" because they lived, eaten and breathed nothing but government since they were begat. They believe that we exist for the purpose of serving out government. Actually ... I think that I found the perfect way to describe these people, and their ruler, several years ago: They believe that America's greatness is centered on Washington DC and flows from government, not from the dynamic of a free people working and cooperating together in a system based on freedom, economic liberty and the rule of law.

Also see:

The clash between the ruling class and the "country class"

     

Hedge Funds, Democrats & the Financial Crisis

While posting about the Chelsea Clinton Wedding, I came across some links about Clinton/Democrat corruption, and our current financial crisis. Here are some of the more interesting bits:

Bridegroom's Father is Ex-Congressman & Convicted Felon

[...] It Runs in the Family

Edward Mezvinsky was convicted of fraud for shady business deals that had prosecutors calling him a "one-man crime wave." Prosecutors claimed that in 20 years of doing business between 1980 and 2000, every single deal he consummated displayed aspects of fraud. After his indictment in 2001, he pleaded guilty to 31charges of bank fraud, mail fraud, and wire fraud. He tried to raise a defense of diminished capacity due to his suffering from bipolar disorder, but the judge disallowed it.

His rip-off of almost $10 million got him seven years in the hoosegow. Ed Mezvinsky got out of the federal lock-up in 2008. By then, his son Marc was dating Chelsea Clinton. Both children of politicos attended Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, where they studied finance. They became friends at Stanford, and the friendship ripened into a romance sometime around 2007.

Post-Palo Alto, while Marc decided to enter the more venerable profession of investment banking, Chelsea opted to join a hedge funds. She eventually got a job with the Avenue Capital Group, big campaign donors for both her parents.

Hedge funds as they are now constituted were illegal from 1933 to 2000, as their type of activity was outlawed as it was considered as destabilizing speculation that helped cause the Great Depression. In the year 2000, her papa bear Bill Clinton turned his back on 67 years of proven financial regulation and signed a bill legitimating speculation. Mama bear Hillary was running for the U.S. Senate in the State of New York, Moloch's Big Town, and needed the big bucks from the free-booting financiers.

Baby bear Chelsea is doing very nicely as one of the parasitical class that has turned the United States into an economic and financial casino. A "casino" economy and stock market is a state of affairs which economists considered to be the antithesis of a well-managed economy well into the 1990s, when the hustlers took over and began to brazenly rule the roost. [...]

Of course, you aren't hearing any of this from the MSM, as they gush, and gush, and GUSH over the $3,000,000 dollar Clinton wedding. After all, as they keep telling us, the Clintons are political ROYALTY. And isn't that what America's all about? Worshiping Royalty?

Unfortunately, the corruption continues. Lest you think this is all in the past, it's tentacles most definitely reach into the present:

The Soul of the Democratic Party Sold

[...] Hedge funds have been major financial backers of Democratic candidates ever since Bill Clinton made like Abe Lincoln, the Great Emancipator, and set them free. Chelsea's mother Hillary received mucho hedge fund loot during her 2008 bid for the Democratic Presidential nomination. Hedge fund managers hedge their bets, and they also heavily backed Barack Obama, who rewarded them with a watered down "financial reform" bill that left hedge funds unmolested and hedge fund mangers' incomes taxed at the lower capital gains tax rate.

Former Goldman Sachs trading desk honcho Rahm Emmanul is President Obama's chief of staff, whilst his recent Supreme Court nominee, Elena Kagan, worked as a paid "adviser" to the financial power house. Goldman Sachs is what J.P. Morgan and the House of Morgan and Paul Mellon and the Mellon Bank were to Republican Administrations in previous years, the marionette master who pulls the strings.

As predicted by naysayers, within seven years of Clinton legitimating financial speculation, hedge funds and other speculative financial schemes helped bring the U.S. economy back on its knees in the worse political catastrophe since the Great Depression.

Since it was Bill Clinton's "centrist" Democratic Leadership Council that sold the soul of the Democratic Party to Wall Street, it is fitting that Chelsea Clinton should be marrying the son of a convicted felon who works for the titan of Wall Street, a firm that engages in legal robbery. It recently got off easy from double dealing in the subprime mortgage market with a half-billion-dollar fine. [...]

Remember when the Goldman-Sachs executives were hauled before Congress to testify? It was just a dog-and-pony show for the cameras. Sachs went along with it, and in return were basically getting a bail-out.

Bill Clinton's administration occurred during one of the most prosperous times in American history, but he had little to do with it. He was riding the coattails of prosperity set into motion by previous Republican Administrations. Clinton's spending was held in check by a Republican dominated Congress, so Clinton didn't over-spend. Where the Republican's failed, was in going along with Clinton's "Centrist" financial reforms and his expansion of the Community Reinvestment Act in 1997, which was then used by "activists" and "community organizers" (like Obama?) to coerce lending institutions to make millions of bad loans.

When there were signs that the melt-down was coming, some Republicans tried to make corrective reforms, but they were blocked by Democrats. Thus, the inevitable happened.

Now, what can we do about it? Remember in November.


Also see:

The roots of the financial crisis