Category Archives: Economy

Beat This, Barack

Barack Obama, Bush, Economy, Foreign Policy, Government

Obama apparatchiks of change like to accuse Bush of starving state programs when in fact he has presided over the greatest expansion of government since Lyndon B. Johnson. The truth is that Bush’s party, the Republicans Party, has always come through as a “reliable engine of government growth.”

Since 2001, reports the Wall Street Journal, federal outlays have increased to the tune of 16 percent on energy, 91 percent on “community development,” 22 percent on highways and mass transit, 57 percent on education, 55 percent on health research, 58 percent on veteran benefits, 51 percent on Medicare, 16 percent on social security, and a walloping 64 percent on national defense.

In case you forget the costs of America’s crumbling empire: economist Robert Higgs has pegged all “defense-related” spending at approximately $1 trillion per year.

Sadly, Barack will best Bush in spades.

Jews Against Judaism

Capitalism, Democrats, Economy, Free Markets, Judaism & Jews

The excerpt is from “Jews Against Judaism,” which you can read on WND.com:

“Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Florida) has become a popular participant on cable TV shout-fests. The pretty blond puts her velvety voice and forceful personality to use in promoting Obama’s statist schemes. (“Obama, a leftist big-government progressive”, has, naturally, captured the media’s imagination more so than “McCain, a conservative big-government progressive.”) …

Wasserman Schultz’s Jewishness is central to her political pitch. (But her double-barreled, affectatious surname isn’t; so I’m dropping it.) Her congressional page states that she is “the first Jewish Congresswoman ever elected from Florida.” Another of Wasserman’s listed accomplishments is to have called on the president to declare a Jewish American Heritage Month. He, and the House, obliged her. Wasserman regularly touts Obama, former friend to race-baiters and Israel haters, as a solid ally of Israel. …

Jews, with the exception of Wasserman and her ilk, have always been among the most individualistic, original, and entrepreneurial members of American society. Think of Ayn Rand, Ludwig von Mises, Murray Rothbard, and Milton Friedman. Or, of Google co-founder Sergey Brin, the eponymous mastermind of Dell Inc., casino mogul Sheldon Adelson, and many more.

Unfortunately, fellow Jews like Wasserman have done more than their fair share to swell the counterproductive ranks of the State. The congresswoman fits the well-founded stereotype of the well-to-do, left-liberal Jew. …

An existential contradiction, really. Overwhelmingly self-reliant and self-made, Jews thrive in the free market—and in bygone, perilous times have survived by it. Nevertheless, they’ve consistently championed an elaborate, intrusive welfare state.

“American Jews are the most educated ethnic group in the United States,” write Corinne and Robert Sauer of the Jerusalem Institute for Market Studies. …

“Champaign Socialism” is how the Sauers characterize this penchant among American Jews—they tenaciously defy “any empirical regularity that links higher income levels with more conservative, or economically liberal (in the European sense), political positions.”

The complete column, “Jews Against Judaism,” now on WND.com.

Updated: Canada Votes

Canada, Democracy, Drug War, Economy, The State

It was swift and efficient. It took a day. There was little fuss. Campaigning did not begin three years earlier. Voters and election officials managed to cast and count the ballots. There are no reports of systemic voter fraud. Conservatives have returned to form a minority government. (As the American duopoly merges into undifferentiated socialism.)

The Wall Street Journal once called Canada “an honorary Third World country.” The tables are turned.

Update: (October 18) It’s important to make finer distinctions. Canada is more socialistic than the US; the US is more fascistic. Take the Drug War. Canada doesn’t have one nearly as destructive to lives and liberties as the US’s. Ditto an SEC. The US put Canadian newspaper mogul Conrad Black in jail; not the other way round. When last did you hear of an SEC witch hunt in Canada? Canada has tried to follow the US’s lead in these areas, but has not lived up to the latter’s brutality. Not by any measure.

Insane McCain

Conservatism, Economy, Elections 2008, John McCain, Morality

I’ve just heard McMussolini say that the American dream of home ownership should not be crushed under the weight of a bad mortgage.

What about that fundament of the American founding: self-reliance and responsibility?

McMussolin went on to promise to buy up bad home mortgages, which is what I thought the Sell-Out Bill did indirectly. These idiots don’t really understand the bill they just signed. As Ron Paul cautioned, Warren Buffet confessed to not understanding the derivatives market. Do we really think the buffoons in Congress get it?