Posted on 07/16/2010 4:35:54 AM PDT by rellimpank
As over-leveraged investment houses began to fail in September 2008, the leaders of the Republican and Democratic parties, of major corporations, and opinion leaders stretching from the National Review magazine (and the Wall Street Journal) on the right to the Nation magazine on the left, agreed that spending some $700 billion to buy the investors' "toxic assets" was the only alternative to the U.S. economy's "systemic collapse." In this, President George W. Bush and his would-be Republican successor John McCain agreed with the Democratic candidate, Barack Obama. Many, if not most, people around them also agreed upon the eventual commitment of some 10 trillion nonexistent dollars in ways unprecedented in America. They explained neither the difference between the assets' nominal and real values, nor precisely why letting the market find the latter would collapse America. The public objected immediately, by margins of three or four to one.
When this majority discovered that virtually no one in a position of power in either party or with a national voice would take their objections seriously, that decisions about their money were being made in bipartisan backroom deals with interested parties, and that the laws on these matters were being voted by people who had not read them, the term "political class" came into use. Then, after those in power changed their plans from buying toxic assets to buying up equity in banks and major industries but refused to explain why, when they reasserted their right to decide ad hoc on these and so many other matters, supposing them to be beyond the general public's understanding, the American people started referring to those in and around government as the "ruling class."
(Excerpt) Read more at spectator.org ...
‘Mike Rowe does “Dirty Jobs”...’
At one time I’d have seen his ads for Ford in that category, but not at this time.
“...I do “Dissing Libtards”.”
So sez N Effing Hale? :)
“..So sez N Effing Hale? :)...”
Right on the money, my good Patriot brother Sulla...Right on the “Effing” money!! Haha!
...and Ford stood tall and didn’t take the bailout.
I’ll buy their products instead of the other two or foreign.
The problem is, similar to Greece, nearly half our population is now on the King's payroll.
Those are the options the Patriots, our ancestors, faced.
I presume that you are fully prepared to survive, belong to an organized and trained group with ZERO moles, and have secure communications?
There's a certain Somebody who cooked up the organizing principles 3,000 years ago.
It’s Tea Party time for cleaning out the RINOs. Without these RINOs votes, the rats wouldn’t be passing 1000 - 2000 plus page bills that nobody reads.
There was no hidden agenda. Bush trusted people would act in good faith FAR TOO MUCH. Which pissed me off.
The rest is a history lesson learned the hard way. I hope that's in Bush's upcoming book.
It seems to me a lot of them don't want Obama near them until the next election.
bump for later reading
“Bush’s clearly stated goal was to promote home ownership so people have a stake in their communities. He was clear.”
Talk is cheap. The implementation expensive.
“The rats then screwed with the loan processing rules.”
Yes Bush’s regulator was treated very badly in Barny Frank’s committee.
Bad enough as that was, then Bush said NOTHING, which is abrogation of his responsibility to see that the law is obeyed.
You’d expect of Frank what he did — but did you expect that of Bush?
“Bush trusted people would act in good faith FAR TOO MUCH. Which pissed me off.”
Good faith is not enough. Neither Bush, Daddy or W, learned from Reagan — “trust but verify.” That was supposed to have been W’s promise — that he’d be more like RR than Bush41. Remember? Yet this is only one of several areas where he failed. I’m glad you’re pissed off too. Keep that reminder. I have.
“There was no hidden agenda.”
You do not KNOW that.
I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt that you TRUST that it is so. What were you saying about trusting FAR TOO MUCH?
The verification for what you are denying is still wanting. There’s a great deal to fear from globalist influence. Money can be used to buy allegiance,
or to spy and then twist arms,
or buy thugs who break arms and more.
Statism is today’s true threat.
Somebody explain to me why the ONLY thing W really fought for was amnesty with chain migration. THAT I want to hear.
What caught my eye:
Much less does membership in the ruling class depend on high academic achievement. To see something closer to an academic meritocracy consider France, where elected officials have little power, a vast bureaucracy explicitly controls details from how babies are raised to how to make cheese, and people get into and advance in that bureaucracy strictly by competitive exams. Hence for good or ill, France's ruling class are bright people -- certifiably. Not ours. But didn't ours go to Harvard and Princeton and Stanford? Didn't most of them get good grades? Yes. But while getting into the Ecole Nationale d'Administration or the Ecole Polytechnique or the dozens of other entry points to France's ruling class requires outperforming others in blindly graded exams, and graduating from such places requires passing exams that many fail, getting into America's "top schools" is less a matter of passing exams than of showing up with acceptable grades and an attractive social profile. American secondary schools are generous with their As. Since the 1970s, it has been virtually impossible to flunk out of American colleges. And it is an open secret that "the best" colleges require the least work and give out the highest grade point averages. No, our ruling class recruits and renews itself not through meritocracy but rather by taking into itself people whose most prominent feature is their commitment to fit in. The most successful neither write books and papers that stand up to criticism nor release their academic records. Thus does our ruling class stunt itself through negative selection. But the more it has dumbed itself down, the more it has defined itself by the presumption of intellectual superiority.
....
The grandparents of today's Americans (132 million in 1940) had opportunities to serve on 117,000 school boards. To exercise responsibilities comparable to their grandparents', today's 310 million Americans would have radically to decentralize the mere 15,000 districts into which public school children are now concentrated. They would have to take responsibility for curriculum and administration away from credentialed experts, and they would have to explain why they know better. This would involve a level of political articulation of the body politic far beyond voting in elections every two years.
” How about Bush pushing home loans for totally unqualified minorities several years before the housing market imploded....
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American Dream Downpayment Initiative - Affordable Housing - In FY2007, Congress appropriated $24,750,000 for ADDI. Previously, Congress appropriated $74,513,000 in FY2003 and $86,984 in FY2004, $49,600,000 in FY2005 and $24,750,000 in FY2006 http://www.hud.gov/offices/cpd/affordablehousing/programs/home/addi/ Seems ADDI turned out to be chicken feed in relation to the current crisis.
Obama Sued Citibank Under CRA to Force it to Make Bad Loans – Posted on September 30, 2008 http://iusbvision.wordpress.com/2008/09/30/obama-sued-citibank-under-cra-to-force-it-to-make-bad-loans/
He wasn’t talking about combat, but about standing there pulling a lever on a guillotine.
Some vague parallels emerging wrt the French Revolution. (Nobles and clergy exempt from taxation (read: their own rules for everyone else), for instance)
I stand corrected. Add their release/pardon to the list of campaign promises I expect next election cycle.
“These a$$holes take turns mounting a phony opposition. Bob Dole, Al Gore, John Kerry, McLame is simply the most obvious Prez candidate ever.”
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I won’t argue against the theory, it certainly seems the case but do you really believe Gore was a phony opponent? I think they really believed Gore would win, at least with their fraud operation. He did get the majority of the popular vote and if people in his own state of Tennessee hadn’t refused to vote for him he would have been president.
Actually it seems to me that the Republicans have a hard time finding a way to lose sometimes. GHW Bush acted as though he couldn’t wait to retire and was just going through the motions against Clinton, Dole, who can be found on video making some masterful speeches performed like a wooden dummy and still Clinton only won a plurality of the popular vote, they had to have Ross Perot in the mix to get Clinton elected twice. I sometimes think W was elected by accident, as I said if Gore had carried his own home state he would have been president. How many candidates can’t carry their own state?
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