Free Republic

Tough year, 2008. Many Americans got badly hurt by the economic chaos, which hit them like a back alley mugger. What a disgrace. Wall Street hustlers gamed the system by trafficking in bad loans, while Congress and the Securities and Exchange Commission looked the other way. Awful. So, I learned a painful lesson from all that: Big Brother is not watching out for us. Orwell had it wrong. We are pretty much on our own as the federal government simply cannot or will not protect the folks from danger. Never again will I assume the feds are looking out for...

Tough year, 2008. Many Americans got badly hurt by the economic chaos, which hit them like a back alley mugger. What a disgrace. Wall Street hustlers gamed the system by trafficking in bad loans, while Congress and the Securities and Exchange Commission looked the other way. Awful. So, I learned a painful lesson from all that: Big Brother is not watching out for us. Orwell had it wrong. We are pretty much on our own as the federal government simply cannot or will not protect the folks from danger. Never again will I assume the feds are looking out for...

L’affaire Madoff is an exclamation point for all that has preceded in the last 18 months: It reveals to us who we are and what we have been in the first decade of the new century; naive adventurers in a world we didn’t understand. We all accepted the easy money and the bull market as a divine right. We turned the other way when a few Cassandras cried that risk was alive and well. We shrugged when the credit rating agencies turned into lapdogs for Wall Street’s financial engineers. Main Street investors were no different from Bernie’s A-list investo...

Can we learn anything from our current economic situation? With Uncle Sam throwing his protective tarp over the investment bankers who got us into this mess, you know those pirates won't learn anything other than, "let's do it again!"We commoners must be content with nothing but good advice. WikiHow provides us with seven steps for applying lessons from the Great Depression:1. Stop using credit2. Nurture positive relationships with family and friends 3. Do it yourself4. See Frugality as a virtue5. Treat food with respect6. Reuse, reuse, reuse7. Be thankful Those of us who grew up in a working class family...

With every year comes rich new lessons from life. 1996, for example, was the year that I learned not to attempt dancing to Nine Inch Nails in platforms after drinking Midori and 151, lest one’s derriere hit the dance floor. The following year I became a journalist, and the life lessons have (thankfully) become a bit more profound each year. Here’s reflecting on 10 things we learned in 2008: 1. You don’t need a lot of experience to be president. You just need a Teflon exterior, some good speeches, a pack of devoted followers, the ability to be photographed without...

         See also: Iraq and Its Lessons, Part 1What went wrong in Iraq?  Why?  Who was to blame?  Still comfortably ensconced in my armchair on Monday morning, after telling you what happened and what went right, we now get to what went wrong. There is no way that seven years, 3,393 Coalition fatalities and 95,000 Iraqi civilian fatalities can be considered "good."  But again, the proper measure is not a comparison to zero casualties, but to the best that could have been achieved with any feasible alternative. By what went "wrong", I mean when viewed with 20-20 hindsight.  It is...

The Nation has a profile on Howard Dean that's well worth reading. Money Graf: A few months later the state chairs asked Dean and the other contenders for DNC chair to give $200,000 a year to each state party. Dean enthusiastically embraced and enlarged the plan en route to easily winning the DNC race and gave every state the resources to hire at least three or four organizers and access to a high-tech database of voters, which became the twin cornerstones of the fifty-state strategy. Under Dean, battlegrounds like Ohio still took priority, but every state got something. That might...

Though most Harvard students have not been directly touched by the tragedy in Mumbai, how our community reacts to the events remains critically important. In so doing, let us not be afraid to acknowledge what these attacks represent: Modern Islam has a problem, and it is that shockingly large numbers of today’s Muslims favor a domination of those who espouse Western principles. Whenever terrorist attacks such as these are carried out (such generalizations can be made because they occur so frequently), pundits predictably exclaim that we must not allow hatred for Islam to fester, but rather, we must remind ourselves...

What lessons are to be learned from recent news that conservative advocacy group, Freedom’s Watch (FW), is shutting their doors? Mistakes of 2008 must be the stepping stones upon which the future of the conservative movement is built. Here are some thoughts on the FW collapse: 1) Speak softly and carry a big stick. FW turned this concept on its head. From the onset they proclaimed themselves to be the “conservative answer” to MoveOn.org. In addition, they made public the fact they were planning to raise $200million for the 2008 cycle, falling embarrassingly short at $30million. Making public their lofty...

After the campaign, I grew a beard as a rebellion against those consultants who told me I had to comb my hair, shave, lose weight. I said, You know, I’m gonna do what I want now. That was a good feeling. I named my horse after Toby Keith because I really like the guy. Genuine—that’s Toby Keith. One of the great things about him is that during dinner he’ll start singing a song. Right there. Not to perform, but to tell you what he was feeling the particular day that he wrote it. As I’m chatting with Obama, the moderator...

When news stations announced that Barack Obama had won the presidency, I released tears of joy and relief, followed by tears of sadness and fear over what he was about to inherit. The joy was still in me when I saw my friend in her yard, stopped my car, and we stood hugging and screaming in the middle of the road while the fall leaves fell. And that joy has stayed with me. But so has the sadness, the fear and, I'll be honest, the anger. Such is the legacy of the last eight years.

Whether you like him or hate him, Robert Novak’s combination of insider dope, political pronouncements, and glowering TV presence have made him a Washington institution. So the announcement in July that he was suspending his newspaper column because of a brain tumor came as a jolt. What other journalist has been tearing up the town with so much relish for the past 51 years? I spent some time with Novak five years ago for The Washingtonian, chronicling his journey from secular Jew to devout Catholic. Somewhat to my surprise, the scowling, sardonic columnist turned out to be a peach of...

Many Americans and Iraqis think of the recent surge in Iraq as simply the temporary addition of more U.S. troops to the war effort in 2007 and the first half of 2008. This is incorrect. It is also dangerous. Partly because they misunderstand the true nature of the surge, many American and Iraqi political leaders now seem to want American forces out of Iraq as fast as possible. Iraqi leaders also now seem unwilling to accept a reasonable Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) to govern the actions of U.S. troops in their country after the current U.N. Security Council mandate...

Election '08: This year's presidential contest was not, as some predicted, a historic blowout handing unfettered power to the Democrats. A credible Reaganite, in fact, could have even beaten Barack Obama.One of the most telling numbers in the IBD/TIPP Poll during the final days of the campaign was the survey's unique measure of intensity among supporters of Barack Obama vs. those of John McCain. Obama backers expressed enthusiasm and confidence that registered in the high 70s, finally finishing at well over 80% on the eve of his election. McCain devotees, by comparison, rarely topped 70% in this gauge of voter...

I cannot accept, your canon that we are to judge pope and king unlike other men, with a favorable presumption that they do no wrong. If there is any presumption, it is the other way against holders of power ... Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. ~Lord Acton Government is instituted for the common good; for the protection, safety, prosperity, and happiness of the people; and not for profit, honor, or private interest of any one man, family, or class of men; therefore, the people alone have an incontestable, unalienable, and indefeasible right to institute government; and...

You can't help the poor, by destroying the rich. You can't bring about prosperity, by discouraging thrift. You can't lift the wage earner up, by pulling the wage payer down. You can't further the brotherhood of man, by inciting class hatred. You can't build character and courage, by taking away men's initiative and independence. You can't help men by doing for them what they could and should, do for themselves. ~William J. H. Boetcker One of the sad signs of our times is that we have demonized those who produce, subsidized those who refuse to produce, and canonized those who...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: I went back, because I remembered something. This past summer, Gallup put out a poll, McCain needs to hammer this. It was June 27th, headline: "Americans oppose income redistribution to fix economy," by 84-13%. Hello, Joe the Plumber. "When given a choice about how government should address the numerous economic difficulties facing today's consumer, Americans overwhelmingly, 84-13, prefer that government focus on improving overall economic conditions and the job situation in the country as opposed to taking steps to distribute wealth more evenly among Americans. Eighty-four to 13. This is back in June. Now, granted, gas prices...

Thanks to the fantastic and timely recent IMF paper and database on historical financial crises by Luc Laeven and Fabian Valencia, we can identify other instances in which a government took equity stakes in major banks as part of a recapitalization program. This has happened five times since 1970, according to Laeven and Valencia: Finland Jamaica Japan Korea Norway Crisis date (year and month, respectively ) Sep-91 Dec-96 Nov-97 Aug-97 Oct-91 Recap cost to government (gross) (as % of GDP respectively) 8.63% 13.90% 6.61% 19.31% 2.61% Recovery proceeds (% of GDP respectively) 1.72% 4.95% 0.09% 3.50% 2.00% Recap cost to...

Record numbers of American voters tuned in to the three debates, proving only two things. Americans are very concerned about the future of their nation and they want to know more about the two tickets running for the highest office in the land. What we have learned so far... 1) Modern debates are designed to hide facts, not provide facts. 2) It’s a mistake to allow only left-wing Democrats like Jim Lehrer, Gwen Ifill and Tom Brokaw, to control the most important debates of our generation. 3) Style trumps substance for too many Americans. 4) We need an electric hot...

Yes, this problem is maddeningly big and complicated. But America is full of smart and caring people; surely there exists a handful of wise men and women who can stow their axes and their differences to right the ship. The solution back then was to create an entity called Municipal Assistance Corp. that raised money selling bonds backed by sales tax receipts and stock transfer taxes. The goal was to revive the city's economy while balancing its budget. It worked. A few years later, the budget was balanced and New York was back on its feet. Every crisis is different,...