Replies

“What a lie we have been sold! On paper (like communism) it should have worked based on what we were told. It has not.”

Thank you for your thoughtful response to my post.

I stood in line for 5 hours in 2004 to vote for the reelection of George W. Bush. The Democrats who controlled the state at the time made sure the voters being bussed to the polls in minority precincts were efficiently processed while undermanning conservative precincts so Republican voters would go home instead of standing in long lines. Upon reflection, I wasted my time.

The two Bush terms did it for me with respect to any belief in the system. I watched Bush deliberately push non-entity jurists (Roberts and Miers) to fill Supreme Court vacancies and decline to put up a real fight for Miguel Estrada’s appointment to the court of appeals. I saw him fail to protect the border, push amnesty, and substitute a “virtual” border fence for the physical border fence Congress mandated. I watched him pass new “free trade” legislation costing millions of American jobs. After 9/11 he shamefully called Islam the “religion of peace” and then publicly held hands with a Saudi prince. He used the 9/11 tragedy to pass the abominable “Patriot Act” and set up the oppressive Department of Homeland Security. He squandered the balanced budget he inherited by putting his veto pen away while the corrupt Hastert and Frist led Republican Congress went on an obscene deficit spending spree. After Katrina, he went missing in action, declining to respond to any partisan attack no matter how vicious and false. Under his watch, Ben Bernanke became Chairman of the Federal Reserve, Timothy Geithner President of the New York Federal Reserve Bank, and Goldman Sachs Chairman of the Board Henry Paulson the Secretary of the Treasury. All in time for a manufactured financial crisis in September 2008. No one has ever explained what nations, institutions, or individuals precipitated the sudden run on the US banks resulting in the near collapse of the global financial system. Bush and his henchmen had to know, yet those hidden actors were never identified, much less tried on RICO and securities charges. His successor, Obama, who frequently speaks out against the wealthy special interests has demonstrated a similar reluctance to out and prosecute the real villains.

If Republicans were supposed to be the defenders of free enterprise, I knew when Bush completely abdicated management of the 2008 financial crisis to Bernanke, Paulson, and Geithner the system was totally corrupt given he was turning over the chicken coop to the foxes and snakes. True to form, these Wall Street insiders shamelessly bailed out the New York banking cartel on the backs of the American taxpayer. Instead of taking the less expensive route of covering FDIC insured accounts with tax money and forcing the big banks to break up and reorganize in bankruptcy, Bush’s team exploded the deficit and expanded the money supply with bailouts and later the ill conceived TARP program. Instead of making the bank bondholders, shareholders, and management take the financial haircut for their reckless behavior, the US Treasury was raided to make them whole. The overburdened taxpayers not only took on trillions more in debt, many lost their jobs, homes, and savings in the months that followed.

Two years after the crash Goldman Sachs and the other taxpayer bailed out big banks were paying billions in management bonuses again to top executives while the nation was mired in an economic depression. At that time I concluded the president and the party did not matter. Bush was clearly not an independent actor, he was a puppet dancing on a string. Every action he took, or didn’t take, during his last four years in office seems to have been part of a master plan to put Obama in office.

Trump fully understands the corruption in business and government as he has built a huge business dealing with the corrupt Wall Street investment firms and politicians at every level. I’m not yet convinced, but I would like to believe, he understands rarely do institutions reform themselves. Reform almost always comes with revolution or collapse, not with tinkering. The only time corrupt institutions reform themselves is when a fearless, passionate, and skillful leader empowered by the people to make painful changes and overcome the powerful interests.

I doubt Trump really understands the philosophy underlying the founding of the nation, or the brilliance of the Constitution as written. However he seems to have an innate sense of evil and the need to crush the powerful interests allied against the republic and the people. While intellectually Cruz may seem the better leader, he lacks the personality and sheer force of will embodied in Trump. Plus, Trump is a take no prisoners fighter who knows how to hire the right people to do a job.

If Trump is who I hope he is, he will put like minded fighters into cabinet positions, instead of retread political hacks, and will do everything he can to shake up the entrenched bureaucracy. With capable people, and control of the IRS, FBI, and NSA files, someone with the take no prisoners fighting spirit of Trump may be able to goad the special interest controlled politicians in Congress to actually do some work to roll back the tyrannical socialist state.

If Trump is real, he may be the last hope of a Republic heading for economic and social collapse. He may even be the last hope of western civilization. If Trump is just another tool of the shadowy figures behind the curtain, then the barbarians are at the gates and the guardians are consciously handing them the key.

As to your comment on Elizabeth Warren, I also agree with her there is a need for intervention to protect the consumer against “too big to fail” financial institutions empowered by the corrupted political system to fleece the people. Her remedies though are draconian and tyrannical, putting even more power in the hands of the politicians and bureaucrats who continuously fail us.

The prescription for fixing the system, by returning to founding principles, will require another post. One of my biggest fears about Trump is he does not have the philosophical and religious education our founders benefited from when they established the Republic. I can only hope if he reaches the office he is pursuing he has enough self awareness to know he will need intellectuals like Cruz to help him downsize the government, restore the power of the states, and return the three federal branches to equal status.

In this time of despair I take some hope in a quote from Winston Churchill. “You can always count on Americans to do the right thing - after they’ve tried everything else.”