Category Archives: Economy

Time For A Canadian Community Organizer

Canada, Economy, Elections

Canadians (not this ex-pat) want their own Barack Obama, so they elected Justin Trudeau: a community organizer with a better political pedigree, a prettier face, more privilege and less brain power than even the ass with ears, Obama.

By profession, young Justin Trudeau is “A substitute drama teacher” to quote Kathy Shaidle. His resume is emptier than a banker’s heart.

Canada has enjoyed solid economic fundamentals, having averted the economic meltdown of 2008 due to more conservative fiscal policies, including no affirmative action in money lending.

The Central Bank of Canada is not nearly as inflationary as our Fed. Its banks, in fact, were the healthiest in the world as ours collapsed in 2008. The Canadian immigration system is generally geared to serve the country’s shifting needs. The country’s corporate tax rate is lower than ours.

The voters, however, thought it was time for less austerity and more government spending.

“Sunny ways my friends. Sunny ways,” Trudeau told his enthusiastic supporters in Montreal. “This is what positive politics can do.”

Very weird. Is “Sunny ways” some sort of a chant?

UPDATED: Lowlights In Bite-Size Tweets From First Democratic Debate

Democrats, Economy, Elections, Foreign Policy, Hillary Clinton

Democratic Debate lowlights from the latest bite-size tweet to the first:

UPDATE (10/4): These tweets got left out of my laborious, URL cut-and-paste from Twitter to Barely a Blog (we’re working on a plugin between the two cyber-places, for auto-propagation):

UPDATE II: Methuselah And The Democratic Gang Cometh (Debate Ratings)

Democrats, Economy, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Socialism

The tension is mounting (not), as two washed-out, walking cliches of the hard left (Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders), join two other political phantoms no one has heard of before (Martin O’Malley and Lincoln Chafee), to malign and bring down their betters—the “highly productive and provident one percent that provides the standard of living of a largely ignorant and ungrateful ninety-nine percent,” as Professor George Reisman calls the deservedly rich.

In attendance at Tuesday’s CNN Facebook Democratic Debate in Las Vegas will be one good guy: Jim Webb, who’ll probably be nudged to the left and will cease to be who he once was, to keep-up with the awfulness on stage.

I’ll be surprised if the Las Vegas Democratic Debate draws more than 4 million viewers.

Sheryl Crow will perform. She’s the singer known for applying her cerebral sinew, as is Hollywood’s wont, to solving global warming. Hint: It has to do with using your sleeve. Yes, she’s an indelicate creature.

UPDATE I: Wow, at the time of writing, the hashtag #CNNDemocraticDebate had … 3 tweets to its name. It could well be that the debate will draw only 2 viewers. (One of the #CNNDemocraticDebate tweets is mine.)

https://twitter.com/hashtag/CNNDemocraticDebate?src=hash

UPDATE II (10/12): Well, well, what do you know? I was right to bring up the ratings issue way back on 10.07.15, with respect to the forthcoming Democratic primary debate.

Mainstream media has awoken to the Real Story behind the Dem debate: No one but them cares about it. It also seems that my predictions of the number of viewers who’ll tune in to watch elderly has-beens dream up plans to rob Peter to pay Paul are not out of whack. See “CNN expects ‘significantly smaller’ ratings for Dem debate.”

PAULI ON THE PILLARS OF REPUBLICAN & DEMOCRATIC POLITICS

BAB's A List, Democrats, Economy, Federal Reserve Bank, Inflation, libertarianism, Republicans

By Myron Pauli

The 2015 Republicans rest upon 3 fundamental pillars:

[1] SUPPORT OF “FAMILY VALUES”: whereby government promotes abstinence education, school prayer, and the old “Leave It To Beaver” lifestyle of sexual abstinent; of heterosexuals who married until death do us part with no drugs, abortions, or much booze. Those values were nostalgic and on the way out even in Beaver’s 1950s. While Bruce Jenner may no longer suffer gender confusion; many can appreciate that a nation that worships an Olympic athlete who is considering lopping off his manhood suffers moral confusion. The old time ideals still hold sway especially among the rural white Protestants in the “Red States”.

[2] CUTTING TAXES ON THE WEALTHY: In other words, “supply side economics” from the 1980s where tax rates of 70% were cut while the Federal Reserve jacked interest rates to 18% and led to renewed prosperity when inflation was finally conquered. People forget that Ronald Reagan and Bob Dole raised payroll taxes and that government spending skyrocketed. The “supply side” formula did not work under Bush-II and most people see that the bailouts enrich Wall Street megabanks and that billionaires like Donald Trump buy politicians of both parties, and don’t shy away from using eminent domain laws to grab private property and bankruptcy laws to default on $5 billion of debt. The middle-class treads water and the “working class” drowns (as its jobs disappear overseas or are lost to robots) while the Fiorinas come in, fire employees, tank the stock, and walk away with $100,000,000. Nevertheless, the “supply side” idea has enough libertarian appeal and sufficient economic common sense to garner political support.

[3] GLOBAL WARMONGERING: Where the neocons make war on demons intent on destroying us – Afghans, Yemenis, Libyans, Russians, Chinese, Syrians, Iranians, “terrorists,” and where we pump billions into defense contractors. The “bad guy” drumbeat never stops, with every beheading or “Russians expanding influence” or some or other existential threat to Peoria—such as Saddam Hussein’s nuclear-armed cruise missile “mushroom cloud”—constituting a reason to keep up the drumbeat. Fear is not only a great motivator but wins votes as well.

The 2015 Democrats have their basic pillars:

[1] TO BE THE MAJORITY OF THE “MINORITIES”: Immigrants, Hispanics, non-whites, non-Christians, non-heterosexuals, and feminists with enough identity grievances constitute a Democratic majority. Lesbians and Muslims may not have common cause, but do have a common enemy. Blacks and Asians have little love for one another, but the enemy of my enemy is my friend; and rural, heterosexual, anti-immigrant, white Protestant men are The Enemy.

[2] CIVILIAN GOVERNMENT EMPLOYEES/DEPENDENTS: Discounting the military and defense contractors who lean Republican, millions of academicians, Amtrak employees, elderly, students, welfare recipients, firefighters, Sallie Mae employees, social workers, TSA gropers, and their families get their compensation from the government. This forms an almost unstoppable bulwark even if a small percentage of that constituency are Republicans. Money means self-interest and money talks.

The libertarians, constitutionalists and non-interventionists who’re not into the Red and Blue- State identity politics only have apathy and cynicism to turn to. Also stuck in the middle of this muck are old rural white, gun-owning Jacksonians like Confederate descendant James Webb who started as a Democrat, left the party of McGovernization, worked as Reagan’s Navy Secretary, and then returned to the “old Democracy” after watching the neocon plutocrats of Bush-II screwing over his rural Virginian constituents.

Webb and others are as much political orphans as the libertarians.

The political season opens up with 2/3 of Republicans rejecting their own politicians for 3 candidates who never served in any public capacity. The Democrats are stuck with an openly corrupt ex-Secretary of State and Presidential spouse who raises billions from the Wall Street crowd. Or an aging Marxist who does not even belong to the party.

While a majority will stay home on election day, the only major motivation to vote is fear of the other party!

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Barely a Blog (BAB) contributor Myron Pauli grew up in Sunnyside Queens, went off to college in Cleveland and then spent time in a mental institution in Cambridge MA (MIT) with Benjamin Netanyahu (did not know him), and others until he was released with the “hostages” and Jimmy Carter on January 20, 1981, having defended his dissertation in nuclear physics. Most of the time since, he has worked on infrared sensors, mainly at Naval Research Laboratory in Washington DC. He was NOT named after Ron Paul but is distantly related to physicist Wolftgang Pauli; unfortunately, only the “good looks” were handed down and not the brains. He writes assorted song lyrics and essays reflecting his cynicism and classical liberalism. Click on the “BAB’s A List” category to access the Pauli archive.