(NOTE: There will be no update of the news Friday, instead, we will be covering a most interesting story – an untold one about US POWs captured at the Battle of the Bulge, then sent to concentration camps as slave laborers)
The day’s top political news:
Bush Bids farewell
President George W. Bush's farewell speech is more than a goodbye to the nation that elected him twice. It is his last chance in office to define his tumultuous presidency in his own, unfiltered terms - a mission that will keep his fire burning even after he fades off to a quieter life.
Bush will say goodbye to the country tonight. He will follow the script of Presidents Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter and many before them:
Express thanks to the country and pride in the honor of serving, wish the next president well and outline what he considers to be the biggest challenges ahead.
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20090115/D95NHOO80.html
Barack Obama's inauguration is set be the most expensive swearing-in ceremony in US history.
The President-elect will take less than a minute to recite the oath of office in front of an estimated two million people in the US capital next week.
But by the time the final dance has been held at one of the many inaugural balls the costs for the day will be staggering.
The cost was revealed as Mr Obama scrambled to answer questions about the nomination of Treasury Secretary pick Timothy Geithner who has been caught having failed to pay taxes.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell says Republicans want assurances the remaining $350 billion of government rescue funds will be limited to financial firms.
"What we're looking for is that the second tranche of TARP is not going to be used to implement an industrial policy ... where the government basically decides winners and losers in the economy."
McConnell said he was unable to estimate how many of his fellow party members would vote to block disbursement of the funds, which have been requested by President George W. Bush on behalf of the Obama administration.
"We thought the $700 billion, not just $350 billion of it, but all of it, was designed to save the credit system," says McConnell.
http://www.reuters.com/article/GCA-CreditCrisis/idUSTRE50D7O320090114
Opinion:
Shifting sands and uncertain times
We are about to sail into strange waters. What may lie ahead, hidden in the mists, can only be surmised. We have far too few solid indications.
Of course the financial crisis continues. Republicans are joining a majority of Americans in skepticism regarding the wisdom of releasing another $350 billion dollars. Republicans point out there are no stated plans for how the money will be spent, and where it will go.
In an appearance on Fox, Congressman Spencer Bachus, the savvy top Republican on the Financial Services committee, explains it this way:
“...there are no details. To make a good judgment, to make the right decision, you have to be fully informed, you have to have the facts. And, really we are flying through clouds here. The main thing is we haven’t been told why. I’m not sure when it gets beyond stabilizing the financial system, that we ought to even go there. You go there and you pick winners and losers. Some people participate others don’t. Where do you end the bailouts? Barney’s plan a good part of it is pushing transparency and accountability but he’s turning it into a grab bag. A little bit for this group, a little bit for that group. Where does it end?”
Where indeed? Yet this morning, Bachus’ opposite number, infamous Democrat Barney Frank, was ablaze with blaming the Bush Administration and Republicans for the quandary. This is the same Barney Frank who about a year ago, offered assurances that such financial institutions as Freddy Mac and Fannie Mae were sound. A few months later, they collapsed, and were bailed out with massive funding.
Did I mention Frank also wants to slash our nation’s ability to protect itself by 25%?
As I said, we are sailing into uncharted waters. To make matters worse, we are not being told Mexico is teetering on a potential total collapse. Don’t I recall Clinton Administration Financial Guru Robert Rubin, get millions of US dollars to bail out Mexico only a few years ago.
I think I failed to mention Rubin had had Mexico as a client and that Barney Frank had close friends who profited from bailing out Fannie Mae. Hmmmmm.
A cynic would ask, if Mexico collapse, will anyone be able to tell it happened? No doubt, it will be another target for Democrat bail out.
Oh well.
Buddy
The day’s top blogs:
First, a brief overview:
1.
http://townhall.com/columnists/RossMackenzie/2009/01/15/what_sort_of_change_does_obama_have_in_mind
What sort of change does Obama have in mind
Ross Mackenzie
In the contemporary environment of all Obama all the time, who does not know that, come Tuesday, the nation will have a new president?
Barack Obama arrives at the presidency bearing the goodwill of many (including your correspondent) and the messianic hopes of many more. The latter group has elevated him above criticism. Jesse Jackson sees in him "theological qualities." Congressman Bobby Rush, who once opposed him, regards his election as part of God's plan. A press that Obama does not particularly like accords him a reverence comparable only to media adulation of JFK.
Yet as a people we know precious little about Obama, at least partly because a national press, consumed with combing Wasilla, Alaska, to get the goods on Sarah Palin, could muster neither the resources nor the interest -- nor hence the will -- to plow the Chicago garden in which Obama (and, e.g., Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich) took political root. Odd -- isn't it? -- Obama's conspicuous silence about the all-consuming corruption in Chicago and Illinois, despite his eloquence about its ill effects in, for instance, the Kenya of his heritage.
Either by nature or by choice, Obama is opaque. If by choice, the decision may flow from his discipleship of extremist Saul Alinsky (another Alinsky disciple: Hillary Clinton), who urged ideologically compatible pols to say or do whatever they must to win elections while revealing as little as possible about their beliefs.
2.
(The ACLU renews its war on normal Americans – religious Americans. Another case demonstrating the ACLU effort to impose atheism as a national religion)
http://www.nwfdailynews.com/news/aclu_14132___article.html/district_judge.html
Federal judge orders school district to stop promoting religion
Kelli Hernandez
Daily News
A federal judge has issued a temporary injunction forcing Santa Rosa schools to discontinue policies and practices that "promote religion throughout district schools," a press release from the ACLU states.
U.S. District Court Judge M. Casey Rodgers granted the preliminary injunction late Friday following the district's admission to the court that it has violated the constitutional rights of students.
"Overall, school officials should not be using their official positions to promote personal religious beliefs," said Benjamin James Stevenson, principal ACLU litigator. "We are pleased with the school district for admitting and accepting responsibility and we are pleased with the court's order."
The ACLU filed suit against the district on Aug. 27, 2008, on behalf of two Pace High School students and their parents.
3.
Does Capitalism Need Adjustment?
Laurence M. Vance
One of the worst things that has happened during this economic crisis is that capitalism itself has been attacked without mercy — even by some who generally support the free market. Calls for more regulations, more bailouts, more Fed action, more stimulus packages, more recovery programs, and more government intervention in general can be heard from every quarter.
Not that capitalism hasn't always had its share of critics — even among those who usually espouse some degree of it, like evangelicals. In his recent book, How to Be Evangelical without Being Conservative (Zondervan, 2008), Roger Olson advocates "a highly graduated income tax combined with redistribution of wealth to the poor through education, job training, direct aid to children, subsidized day care for children of poor working mothers and fathers, and other forms of welfare." He rejects Robert Nozick's belief in "small government that interferes as little as possible in the economy" for John Rawls's "limited but active government."[1]
Olson recognizes that "one might argue that Rawls's principles would also require guaranteed work with a living wage for everyone and universal entitlement to health care." But it should not scare us that "these social policies are often labeled 'socialism' by conservatives." Socialism, according to Olson, is "just a word." In fact, these policies are not socialistic at all; they are "simply adjustments to capitalism to ameliorate its tendency to widen the gap between the rich and the poor."[2]
But rather than an adjustment, what capitalism needs is a vigorous defense. This is true now more than at any other time since the Great Depression because all the Depression-era economic fallacies are being resurrected to try to combat the current financial crisis.
Now for the details:
1.
http://townhall.com/columnists/RossMackenzie/2009/01/15/what_sort_of_change_does_obama_have_in_mind
What sort of change does Obama have in mind
Ross Mackenzie
In the contemporary environment of all Obama all the time, who does not know that, come Tuesday, the nation will have a new president?
Barack Obama arrives at the presidency bearing the goodwill of many (including your correspondent) and the messianic hopes of many more. The latter group has elevated him above criticism. Jesse Jackson sees in him "theological qualities." Congressman Bobby Rush, who once opposed him, regards his election as part of God's plan. A press that Obama does not particularly like accords him a reverence comparable only to media adulation of JFK.
Yet as a people we know precious little about Obama, at least partly because a national press, consumed with combing Wasilla, Alaska, to get the goods on Sarah Palin, could muster neither the resources nor the interest -- nor hence the will -- to plow the Chicago garden in which Obama (and, e.g., Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich) took political root. Odd -- isn't it? -- Obama's conspicuous silence about the all-consuming corruption in Chicago and Illinois, despite his eloquence about its ill effects in, for instance, the Kenya of his heritage.
Either by nature or by choice, Obama is opaque. If by choice, the decision may flow from his discipleship of extremist Saul Alinsky (another Alinsky disciple: Hillary Clinton), who urged ideologically compatible pols to say or do whatever they must to win elections while revealing as little as possible about their beliefs.
Tellingly, Obama has written that, in 1983, college classmates inquired what he would be doing in his chosen profession as a community organizer: "I couldn't tell them directly. Instead, I'd pronounce on the need for change -- change in the White House, change in the Congress, change in the mood of the country."
Obama does indeed have the potential to be a transformational president, to move the country from what it is toward something else. He has buckets of money, popular support, and a Congress pliant as rarely before.
He has disclosed little about his intentions by what he has said, but much by the company he has kept (for instance Bill Ayers and the Rev. Jeremiah Wright) and now by the appointments he is making.
Such as:
A multiplicity of Clinton administration retreads. An attorney general who (1) led the Justice Department effort to return Elian Gonzalez to the arms of Fidel Castro and (2) worked to commute the sentences of two Weather Underground domestic terrorists.
A labor secretary who is the daughter of a Teamster.
A treasury secretary who has had to explain why he did not fully pay his income taxes.
An education secretary who (1) as superintendent in Chicago oversaw schools whose students still greatly lag national averages in English and math, and (2) urged creation of a separate-but-equal school for students with alternative affectional preferences.
And, more broadly:
Communications-team recruits from adamantly leftist lobbies. Science and energy appointees who embrace Al Gore's "green" agenda on issues from drilling and the climate and automobile mileage standards to coal and nuclear power and "alternative" fuels. In foreign policy, those who stress rapping with terrorists and downplay the need -- even ultimately -- to intervene. But, on the economy, an army of militant interventionists who, with all barriers now collapsed, will roll the federal juggernaut into private (and private-sector) lives to an extent unscreened in even the most ghoulish nightmares.
So to borrow from the Johnny Carson Show, Heeeere's Barack!
He will be the nation's first minority president, and that is good. (Note: During the campaign, Obama reportedly met several times with the Episcopal Church's first homosexual bishop, Eugene Robinson, as he tried to get a handle on what it means to be "the first.") And unquestionably -- in concert with Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Barney Frank, et al. -- he will accomplish change. But change to what?
Given the amalgam that is his constituency, will he oppose easing (or lifting) the military's Clinton-imposed "don't ask don't tell" policy? Will he resist Big Labor demands for still more anti-business advantages in union organizing drives? Will he, as he said in July, "end this war (in Iraq) -- my first day in office"? And bomb Pakistan, as he famously suggested? And talk Iran out of developing nuclear weapons to rub out Israel and terrorize the Western world?
Biographer David Mendell has noted about Barack Obama "an ingenious lack of specificity." That has helped make him, even now, essentially a blank slate. Some years back, a Democratic operative told Rolling Stone, "People don't come to Obama for what he has done. They come because of what they hope he can be."
He could be, likely will be, a transformational president. In his ideological predilections and in his appointments, one finds key indicators of what sort of transformation -- what sort of change -- he has in mind. They don't make for easy sleeping. Goodwill for Obama, and high hopes for his presidency? Of course. Still, for the nation, the signs provide little comfort. Maybe that is because not all change is for the better. Going to hell is a form of change, too.
Copyright © 2008 Salem Web
.
2.
http://www.nwfdailynews.com/news/aclu_14132___article.html/district_judge.html
Federal judge orders school district to stop promoting religion Kelli Hernandez
Daily News
A federal judge has issued a temporary injunction forcing Santa Rosa schools to discontinue policies and practices that "promote religion throughout district schools," a press release from the ACLU states.
U.S. District Court Judge M. Casey Rodgers granted the preliminary injunction late Friday following the district's admission to the court that it has violated the constitutional rights of students.
"Overall, school officials should not be using their official positions to promote personal religious beliefs," said Benjamin James Stevenson, principal ACLU litigator. "We are pleased with the school district for admitting and accepting responsibility and we are pleased with the court's order."
The ACLU filed suit against the district on Aug. 27, 2008, on behalf of two Pace High School students and their parents.
The lawsuit claims that students at Pace "not only face overt compulsion to adopt the religious beliefs of school officials, but also must contend with subtle, coercive pressures to conform their religious beliefs to those favored by school officials."
Both students who approached the ACLU about the perceived First Amendment violations said they had attended school district functions at which they were subjected to "the district's policies, practices, and customs promoting religion."
The lawsuit alleges that Bible readings were offered during student meetings and prayers at graduation ceremonies were "nearly always" led by student representatives of the Christian World Order or Fellowship of Christian Athletes. Similar practices were documented at Milton, Navarre, Jay and Central high schools and Santa Rosa Learning Academy.
The injunction prohibits all district officials from:
- Promoting or sponsoring prayer during school-sponsored events, including graduation;
- Planning or financing religious baccalaureate services;
- Holding school-sponsored events at religious venues when alternative venues are reasonably available;
- Permitting school officials to promote their personal religious beliefs and proselytize in class or during school-sponsored events and activities;
- doing anything else that unconstitutionally endorses or coerces religion.
Named as defendants in the lawsuit are the Santa Rosa County School Board, former superintendent John Rogers and H. Frank Lay, principal of Pace High School.
The ACLU filed the lawsuit after two years of unsuccessful negotiations, the press release states.
Current Superintendent Tim Wyrosdick said that the school district was involved in self-analysis regarding processes and procedures related to religion before any ACLU lawsuit. The suit was filed after School District Attorney Paul Green informed the ACLU that a new policy would be discussed at the Aug. 28, 2008, meeting and invited the plaintiffs' attorney and ACLU representatives to appear and address the board.
"As a result of the plaintiffs' filing this action (the lawsuit) on the day before the school board meeting ... the School Board took no action to discuss or approve the policy for advertisement at the August 28, 2008 meeting," the district's Admission of Liability states.
"The next step is the same step as what we were employing prior to the lawsuit," Wyrosdick said. "We will continue that process of self-reflection and the business of self-correction. We were doing that prior to any ACLU litigation."
The temporary injunction becomes effective Friday and will remain in effect for 90 days. A permanent relief in the form of a consent decree will be fashioned between the parties under the supervision of Magistrate Judge Elizabeth M. Timothy, according to the injunction.
Extra comment on other matters:
While we have your attention, let me repeat four other points:
• The man President-elect Barack Obama has tapped to head the agency that overseas the collection of taxes, made $42,702 worth of “honest mistakes” in past taxes owed.
• Obama’s choice for Transportation Secretary sponsored millions in earmarks and directed taxpayer money to donors.
• Obama’s stimulus plan currently includes a $170 billion bailout for spendthrift state and local governments. • Physicist Steven Chu, President-elect Barack Obama’s choice to run the Department of Energy, softened previously critical comments about coal and nuclear power, and distanced himself from earlier statements that U.S. gas taxes should be higher.
3.
Does Capitalism Need Adjustment?
Laurence M. Vance
One of the worst things that has happened during this economic crisis is that capitalism itself has been attacked without mercy — even by some who generally support the free market. Calls for more regulations, more bailouts, more Fed action, more stimulus packages, more recovery programs, and more government intervention in general can be heard from every quarter.
Not that capitalism hasn't always had its share of critics — even among those who usually espouse some degree of it, like evangelicals. In his recent book, How to Be Evangelical without Being Conservative (Zondervan, 2008), Roger Olson advocates "a highly graduated income tax combined with redistribution of wealth to the poor through education, job training, direct aid to children, subsidized day care for children of poor working mothers and fathers, and other forms of welfare." He rejects Robert Nozick's belief in "small government that interferes as little as possible in the economy" for John Rawls's "limited but active government."[1]
Olson recognizes that "one might argue that Rawls's principles would also require guaranteed work with a living wage for everyone and universal entitlement to health care." But it should not scare us that "these social policies are often labeled 'socialism' by conservatives." Socialism, according to Olson, is "just a word." In fact, these policies are not socialistic at all; they are "simply adjustments to capitalism to ameliorate its tendency to widen the gap between the rich and the poor."[2]
But rather than an adjustment, what capitalism needs is a vigorous defense. This is true now more than at any other time since the Great Depression because all the Depression-era economic fallacies are being resurrected to try to combat the current financial crisis.
Fortunately, I do not need to write a defense of capitalism: that has already been done — twice —and by men more qualified than I. These defenses of capitalism are not only vigorous; they are uncompromising, up to date, understandable, and eminently readable. And neither one is a textbook on economics.
The first book is The Politically Incorrect Guide to Capitalism by Robert P. Murphy, an adjunct scholar of the Mises Institute and frequent contributor to this website.
Murphy wastes no time in his introductory chapter. Not only does government intervention in the market trample on "freedom and individual rights," it "often hurts the very people it presumes to help." It is "precisely backward" that capitalism exploits the poor for the benefit of the rich. The problem with most modern critics of capitalism is that they "fear freedom — they fear the results of allowing people to decide their own economic affairs and letting the unregulated market run its course."
Capitalism's critics "think regulators and bureaucrats know better than private citizens making their own voluntary arrangements."
In his defense of capitalism, Murphy discusses every conceivable topic: supply and demand, price controls, profits, taxes, labor laws, antidiscrimination laws, environmental issues, workplace safety, money, banking, monopolies, trade, trade deficits, outsourcing, depressions, business cycles, and interest. Along the way he defends robber barons, middlemen, speculators, CEOs, Big Oil, and other "capitalist pigs," while skewering unions, environmentalists, and government bureaucrats, programs, businesses, deficits, and market interventions. After the introduction, each myth-exploding chapter can be read independently. An added bonus is the procapitalist books we are "not supposed to read" that are mentioned throughout each chapter.
No anticapitalist myth is too sacrosanct for his sharp and witty pen.
(For a more detailed look at The Politically Incorrect Guide to Capitalism, see David Gordon's review in the Mises Review. Murphy's own introduction to his book can be read here.)
The second book is How Capitalism Saved America: The Untold History of Our Country, from the Pilgrims to the Present by Thomas J. DiLorenzo, one of the senior faculty of the Mises Institute and also a frequent contributor to this website.
DiLorenzo takes a historical approach but begins with two crucial introductory chapters on the nature of capitalism and the perpetrators of anticapitalism. DiLorenzo takes us through American history — from the Pilgrims to the 2001–2002 California energy crisis — and shows "how, from the very beginning, capitalism has been vital to America's growth, and how excessive government interference in the economy has only exacerbated economic problems and stifled growth." Although the book is written chronologically, the chapters of How Capitalism Saved America (after the introductory chapters) can, like Robert Murphy's book, be read independently.
DiLorenzo dismisses as Marxist propaganda the idea that capitalism is "a zero-sum game in which 'somebody wins, somebody loses.'" Instead, "Capitalism succeeds precisely because free exchange is mutually advantageous."
And not only does it succeed, it is "the source of civilizations and human progress." Capitalism has "brought to the masses products and services that were once considered luxuries available only to the rich." Capitalism is not only "the best-known source of upward economic mobility," it "actually reduces income inequalities within a nation." In short, capitalism alleviates poverty, raises living standards, expands economic opportunity, and enables scores of millions to live longer, healthier, and more peaceful lives.
Why then is capitalism blamed for causing monopolies, harming consumers, endangering workers, damaging the environment, causing instability, exploiting the Third World, breeding discrimination, and causing war? DiLorenzo believes that because there is "a widespread misunderstanding of what capitalism is, our leaders — and also much of the general public — incorrectly blame capitalism for any economic problems we face."
This anticapitalism bias is so pervasive — in the entertainment industry, universities, private foundations, the media, and among government regulators and agencies, environmentalists, ministers — that "most businesspeople are not even capitalists." DiLorenzo indicts large corporations, not because they are large or because they are corporations but because "many corporations support interventionist or anticapitalist policies like trade protectionism or corporate welfare because they hope to benefit from the policies at everyone else's expense."[3]
For a more detailed look at How Capitalism Saved America see David Gordon's review in the Mises Review and my own review from the Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics.
Together, these two books on capitalism are a double-barreled shotgun pointed in the face of socialism, mercantilism, protectionism, interventionism, anticapitalist myths, and every bogus idea that has passed for capitalism since Karl Marx invented the term. Both books are sorely needed to counteract the numerous myths, distortions, and falsehoods about capitalism that appear daily in newspapers and magazines and come out of the mouths of government officials, political commentators, preachers in pulpits, and teachers in classrooms.
Although there are other important books on this subject — see the works of Mises and Rothbard, and George Reisman's massive Capitalism: A Treatise on Economics — these two books by Murphy and DiLorenzo are the most accessible for the general reader. They should be distributed far and wide — whatever direction the economy takes in the future.
The recent attacks on capitalism are not only wrong, they are misdirected. One of the greatest myths about capitalism is that the US economy is a capitalistic one.
As George Reisman has well said, "Laissez-faire capitalism is a politico-economic system based on private ownership of the means of production and in which the powers of the state are limited to the protection of the individual's rights against the initiation of physical force." The US economy (now a "mixed economy") began its permanent decline from real capitalism with the establishment of the Interstate Commerce Commission in 1887.The Progressive Era reforms, the Square Deal, the New Deal, and a myriad of government restrictions and regulations have further severed the US economy from real capitalism.
Capitalism needs no adjustment. It needs to be understood and put into practice. Not only is capitalism never the cause of a financial crisis, it is always the cure. Government intervention is never ever under any circumstances the solution to any problem, large or small, economic or otherwise. When will men ever learn that more government is not only never the solution, it is usually part of the problem?
Real capitalism — that is, capitalism based on secure private-property rights, sound money, the division of labor, social cooperation, freedom of contract, freedom of association, voluntary exchange, and the absence of government control, oversight, and regulation — is the answer to the current economic crisis.
Not state capitalism, not crony capitalism, not mixed-market capitalism, not fascism and interventionism under the guise of capitalism, but unfettered, laissez-faire, free-market capitalism.
Laurence M. Vance is a freelance writer and an adjunct instructor in accounting at Pensacola Junior College in Pensacola, Florida. Send him mail. Comment on the blog.
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