Category Archives: Journalism

UPDATED: 'Tax Cuts Not Paid For' Says Thief

Debt, Democrats, Journalism, Media, Natural Law, Republicans, Taxation, The State

The execrable bunch that convened to Meet The Press on Sunday carried out a conversation about the irresponsible Republikeynesians’ tax policy.

Against the Republikeynesians, moderator DAVID GREGORY argued that “if you’re concerned, as Republicans say they are, about cutting spending and the deficit, you have to acknowledge that tax cuts are not paid for.”

“It’s still borrowed money,” contended Gregory, paraphrasing the Great Inflater, ALAN GREENSPAN.

Other than meekly pointing out that the problem we have is a problem of spending, Mitch McConnel, being a Republican, made various weak appeals such as that “if you push this economy further backward, we’ll get less revenue for the government, not more.” And “raising taxes in the middle of a recession on the major job generator in America, small business, is a very, very bad idea.”

TAXES ARE STOLEN PROPERTY. A tax cut, especially to high income earners who pay most of the taxes, is a return of stolen goods. To say that you need to “pay for tax cuts,” as Gregory does, is akin to a thief saying he can’t return the TV he just stole until he is in a better financial position.

On the other hand, “taxation hits the pocketbook directly; government’s borrowing and counterfeiting does so indirectly—it devalues Joe the Plumber’s labor, assets, purchasing power, and savings. Unaware of how he’s being ground down, Generic Joe keeps on consuming until he crashes.”

UPDATE (Aug. 24): “Arguing for higher taxes for the rich” is tantamount to arguing for a transfer of wealth from those who pay taxes to those who habitually consume them. It’s always an election-winning strategy given that the last group outnumbers the first. Ask Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Reuters: “Thousands have taken to the streets this summer to demonstrate against plans by Merkel’s center-right government to cut billions of euros in spending on the unemployed without imposing a similar burden on the other end of society.”

Come again? Does the correspondent mean to imply that the pain of doing without as much welfare as before is on par with having to fork out for it (without being entitled to it?)

In mobocracy, some are more equal than others.

Want proof that, the world over, “Statism begins With YOU”?

“Surveys indicate that if a national vote were held now, the opposition would crush Merkel and her allies, whose coalition lost its majority in the upper house of parliament after defeat in a regional election in May.”

Speaking of statism, HERE AT HOME, the booboisie want their “runny egg yolks for mopping up with toast” better monitored by Big Daddy.

A salmonella outbreak, and “the largest egg recall that has happened in recent history,” simply show that the fatter the feds the happier egg-scarfing Americans stand to be.

Naughty Laura

Free Speech, Journalism, Media, Political Correctness, Race

The difference between the racial transgressions of broadcasters Don Imus and Dr. Laura Schlessinger is that Imus’s “nappy-headed hos” utterance was used to describe the black Rutgers women’s basketball team that he was admiring at the time. Dr. Laura was not describing or addressing blacks when she rattled off the “N” word yesterday on her radio show; she was merely describing the way other blacks use the word liberally. Evidently, you are not even allowed to use the words in reporting on another’s use of it.

Given the level of language policing under which we all labor, it took me some time to locate Dr. Laura’s verbatim words. News reports must have redacted even the indirect use of the word. Here’s the account via ABC.com. Note the childish blanks in “n****r”:

“Schlessinger ignited a firestorm of criticism after Media Matters posted audio from a Tuesday conversation she had with a black female caller. The caller was complaining about her white husband’s friends and their use of the N-word. In response, Schlessinger said:

‘lack guys use it all the time. Turn on HBO and listen to a black comic, and all you hear is n****r, n****r, n****r. I don’t get it. If anybody without enough melanin says it, it’s a horrible thing. But when black people say it, it’s affectionate. It’s very confusing.

When the caller said she was appalled by Schlessinger’s use of the N-word, the radio host demurred, ‘Oh, then I guess you don’t watch HBO or listen to any black comedians. My dear, the point I am trying to make … we’ve got a black man as president and we’ve got more complaining about racism than ever. I think that’s hilarious.'”

“She then criticized the caller, saying ‘Don’t take things out of context. Don’t NAACP me.'”

[SNIP]

Laura has decided to “end her radio show.” If she wishes to “come back,” she’ll need to commence her Via Dolorosa. “It [could be] time for page two of the white-celebrity-struggling-with-racism playbook: sitting down with Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson.”

The Death Heads Are Just Dandy

Iraq, Journalism, Just War, Media, Military, Neoconservatism, Propaganda, Republicans, The State, War

The New Individualist’s Spring 2010 edition doesn’t carry one of my columns (The Winter issue featured two), but it has a good, much-needed photo-journalism spread titled “This is War.” Iraqi family homes flatted by SCUDS (ours), streets in the aftermath of stupid bombs (from the US with love), the purest of the pure—the body of a beautiful little girl—washed for burial (“we love ya, democratized Iraqis”).

Scrutinizing the ever-so sad images of war brought back those horrible years during which, in vain it seemed, I pelted my readers with non-stop facts and doses of reality, the kind these images transmit with such ease. I tried the power of the Jewish teachings; these instruct Jews to robustly and actively seek justice; Just War Theory, developed by great Christian minds like St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Augustine, the libertarian axiom, which prohibits aggression against non-aggressors. And I mentioned over and over again the natural law, and what the Founding Fathers provided: “A limited, constitutional republican government, by definition,” I wrote in March 12, 2003, doesn’t, cannot, and must never pursue what Bush is after—a sort of 21st-century Manifest Destiny.”

If you have a moral compass I ask you to patronize moral writers (provided they have talent, of course), not the apologists who supported this wicked foray, and are still unapologetic about it. All of them, I wager, are doing well—walking around, grins on their smug, death-head mugs, their claws dripping with blood, their wallets stuffed with wads, the Empire’s counterfeit currency. Incitement to murder and war profiteering are lucrative occupations in fin de siècle America.

The blowhards and blonds who slithered on their bellies for Bush (still do)—why do you read them? Buy their sick-making “Obama-this; Obama That” Micky-mouse books? (Okay, some like Coulter and Malkin have real talent, but the rest? Nothing but a T & A show all.)

It’s the story of Job, that Hebrew individualist, all over again; the wicked and the foolisher prosper, the righteous suffer, isn’t it?

Demographic Diversity In Borrowing, Again

Affirmative Action, Business, Economy, Journalism, Multiculturalism, Racism, Regulation

Building On yesteryear’s willful errors, the Orwellian named “Restoring American Financial Stability Act of 2010”—“the 2,300-plus-page conference bill which is designed to protect households from predatory practices by banks, subprime lenders, brokerages and other financial intermediaries”—entrenches yet more affirmative action in lending, the kind that contributed to this depression.

The fecund female who has set-up the same pigment-based privileges that guided state lenders Freddy and Fanny is Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif. Carl Horowitz’s Townhall column is extremely edifying (this is the kind of comment I will read on Townhall because it does vital shoe-leather journalism. Ditto Malkin’s work; she does the footwork. The punditocracy’s ignorant opinions I don’t bother with):

“… The measure, in addition to giving the U.S. Treasury the authority to liquidate banks that pose a threat to financial stability (a mixed blessing at best), all but exempts lenders from shutdown if black and other minority borrowers account for high portions of their loan portfolios, especially in minority neighborhoods. The bill states: ‘The orderly liquidation plan shall take into account actions to avoid or mitigate potential adverse effects on low-income, minority or underserved communities affected by the failure of the covered financial company.’ In other words, federal bank examiners should make every effort to keep a failing institution open so long as it underwrites lots of mortgages to the kinds of borrowers instrumental to the disaster in the first place!

There is more. The amended bill would create a Financial Stability Oversight Council headed by the Secretary of the Treasury to consider a struggling financial institution’s ‘importance as a source of credit for low-income, minority or underserved communities’ before any takeover. The measure also would establish an Office of Minority and Women Inclusion within each of the Treasury Department, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the Federal Housing Finance Agency, the Securities & Exchange Commission, and the Federal Reserve System. Rep. Waters’ amendment is explicit: ‘Each agency shall take affirmative steps to seek diversity in the workplace of the agency, at all levels of the agency.’

All of this looks like quota legislation, even if Rep. Waters can’t quite bring herself to admit as much. And although these diversity-or-else offices wouldn’t be vested with formal enforcement powers, one can be sure that the Justice Department, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and other agencies with a civil rights mandate will find every pretext possible, however flimsy, to crack down on lenders whose practices create disparate impacts by race.”

MORE.