Posted on 03/23/2009 1:16:07 PM PDT by cowboyusa
J.C. WATTS: Lessons from bailout, stimulus boondoggles J.C. WATTS We have seen this principle unfold over the past months with the introduction of the so-called $787 billion stimulus package, the $410 billion omnibus bill and the $700 billion bank bailout fund.
In churches, synagogues, parishes, small businesses and households, we know we have to make good decisions, manage well and not live beyond our means or spend more money than we take in. Most of us make our financial decisions knowing if we blow it, there will not be an opportunity for a bailout.
Given that, there's a rift in Washington between House Republicans and one of their allies, Big Business.
When the Obama administration announced its rescue of Citigroup, Rep. Tom Price, R-Ga., called it corporate welfare. House Republican Conference Chairman Mike Pence of Indiana said, "Bailing out every failing business in America means we're burying generations under a mountain of debt."
House Republican Leader John Boehner said recently that he wasn't happy the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers supported the stimulus bill that every House Republican opposed.
Well guys, wake up and smell the reality. The chamber is probably always going to do whatever protects their deal. Many of the companies that got us where we are today with their fraud, bad decisions and manipulation of market activity are chamber members.
I will remind my former colleagues that corporate welfare is not new. Why is it just now being raised as a concern? It existed before the bailout and before the stimulus, yet Republicans ignored it in the name of "job creation."
Americans have picked up on this, and it's another reason why Republicans have lost much moral authority.
Why would one be surprised that the National Association of Manufacturers and the chamber would support a stimulus bill that was 30 percent stimulus and 70 percent skunk?
While Republicans have turned a cold shoulder to Big Business in Washington, small business -- the real warriors in the trenches -- should also turn a cold shoulder to Republicans in Washington. The very people the majority of Republicans supported in the first bailout -- big banks like Citigroup, Bank of America and the like -- have turned their backs on small business.
Ironically, the institutions that government said were too big to fail are in turn saying that small business is too small to fool with.
Republicans should be defending their natural allies in small business.
Yet manufacturers and the chamber's support for the poorly crafted stimulus package is another example of "protecting my deal," or the practice of "If I can get something out of it, I'll support the deal, no matter how bad it is."
Bill Clay, a former congressional colleague of mine who retired a few years ago, once said, "In politics there are no permanent friends or permanent enemies, just permanent interests."
The great majority of business interest groups in Washington supported the stimulus. Why? In spite of 70 percent of the stimulus package being bad, it protected their deal.
Small business and the consumer continue getting the shaft at every turn. Not only have the Citigroups and Bank of Americas of the world shafted small business in lending, they take billions in federal loan guarantees and billions in cash, then turn around and raise interest rates on consumers.
Republicans are finally waking up and recognizing what I discovered long ago: that the virtues of some in big business can sometimes be as bad as the virtues of big government.
Because of this, there's always room for oversight. Not over-regulation of market activities, but oversight of the human abuse of market activities.
If you are a Republican or a Democrat and you disagree with me on oversight of human abuse of market activities, just consider Bernie Madoff, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and every other name that has had to take bailout money due to unsupervised human greed and unsupervised manipulation of market activities.
As a nation, we must not forget that true wealth is created by real gross domestic product, and not by falsified, fictitious equity.
Thomas Jefferson said in 1842: "I believe banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around the banks will deprive the people of all properties until their children wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered."
The third president of the United States is speaking to us today from his grave.
J.C. Watts (JCWatts01@jcwatts.com) is chairman of J.C. Watts Companies, a business consulting group. He is former chairman of the Republican Conference of the U.S. House, where he served as an Oklahoma representative from 1995 to 2002. He writes twice monthly for the Review-Journal.
Did JC ever decide who to vote for?
The founders wer unbelievably brilliant:
Thomas Jefferson said in 1842: “I believe banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around the banks will deprive the people of all properties until their children wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.”
What’s up with this? Didn’t Jefferson die in 1826?
He did. I thought about changing this, but I decided to leave the article as written.
And long lived...
He died in 1826.
Ahh, you made the same point. That’s the problem with an innocent typo early in a thread. That’s what people will focus on instead of the intent of the post. :(
I was very disappointed that JC was very unenthusiastic about the Republican candidate this last election.
I believe that McCaniac would have over the long four years of office, out performed Jug head Obama and his Bevis sidekicks.
Maybe the Republicans will someday nominate a candidate not hand picked by the New York Times.
JC,
You still a Big 0 supporter?
If not, welcome back. We need you — if you are with us. Otherwise, Adios Amigo.
The quote itself was terrific. I just don’t want people to dismiss the quote because the date was wrong. Not that many here would do that, I’m just sayin’....
Maybe so, but after 16 years in the after life, you would expect him to know a lot.
Last time I heard him on Hannity he was undecided on whether he would vote for Obama due to the “historical significance” of electing a black president.
Seemed to me just another black politician in the vein of Colin Powell or Michael Steele, unprincipled of value and color-biased.
Exactly! By the fact that he backed such an unabashed Marxist based on skin color shows he’s not a conservative. He’s not even a RINO.
The couple of times I heard him speak, he was a poor speaker. He made GWB look like Will Rogers.
Screw you Watts, Rice, Powell and all of the a*s*h*l*s who voted for race only. They chose to ignore the warnings about Barry.
Are they happy now?
Yes, Watts supported the Republican, even had a good line of “big business is small business”, context meaning over-taxing any business is wrong, seen him on c-span, Colin Powell was the kind of Republican trader fit for the media, not Watts
Color is EVERYTHING.
http://wiki.monticello.org/mediawiki/index.php/Private_Banks_(Quotation)
""Earliest known appearance in print: 1937
Other attributions: None known.
Status: This quotation is at least partly spurious; see comments below.
Comments: This quotation is often cited as being in an 1802 letter to Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin, and/or "later published in The Debate Over the Recharter of the Bank Bill (1809)."
The first part of the quotation ("If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their Fathers conquered") has not been found anywhere in Thomas Jefferson's writings, to Albert Gallatin or otherwise. It is identified in Respectfully Quoted as spurious, and the editor further points out that the words "inflation" and "deflation" did not come into use until 1864 and 1920, respectively. [3]
The second part of the quotation ("I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies...") may well be a paraphrase of a statement Jefferson made in a letter to John Taylor in 1816. He wrote, "And I sincerely believe, with you, that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies; and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale."[4]
The third part of this quotation ("The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs") may be a misquotation of Jefferson's comment to John Wayles Eppes, "Bank-paper must be suppressed, and the circulating medium must be restored to the nation to whom it belongs." [5]
Lastly, we have not found a record of any publication called The Debate Over the Recharter of the Bank Bill. There was certainly debate over the recharter of the National Bank leading up to its expiration in 1811, but a search of Congressional documents of that period yields none of the verbiage discussed above.
See this article's Discussion page for further insight into the formation and use of the latter portion of this quotation. ""
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