Thursday 4 November 2010

Peter Schiff et al: The Day After [update 7]

The day after the Republicans forced the resignation of Speaker Pelosi and gained the biggest political turnaround since the War, Peter Schiff asks, which bums will the voters throw out in 2012?

And the day after Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke (“Helicopter Ben” to his friends) announces it’s about to start spraying around a half-trillion dollars worth of paper out of his whirly-bird, Schiff ponders whether this golden shower from the Fed presages an even bigger paper shower from the government—and wonders how that will sit with the people who just voted out last year’s big-spending bums.

UPDATE 1: PaulHsieh tells America’s newly-elected representatives that they should Celebrate Tuesday's election results, “but don't forget who put you in office and why — namely, the independent-minded Tea Party voters.” If they’re going to “dance with the one that brung them,” he says, they need to stay true to three basic principles…

1) Americans don’t want “ObamaLite”…
The 2010 vote was a powerful message from Americans rejecting the socialist policies of President Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid — including the bailouts, the out-of-control federal spending, the higher taxes, and the nationalized health care scheme.
Voters elected Republicans to halt and reverse these policies — not compromise to pass watered-down versions of those same bad ideas…
2) Don’t mistake this as a mandate to pursue a divisive “social conservative” agenda
The Republicans’ electoral rebound has been driven by millions of independent voters like the Colorado small businessman Ron Vaughn, who
told the New York Times, “I want the Democrats out of my pocket and Republicans out of my bedroom…
3) Respect the Constitution
The newly elected (or re-elected) congressmen and senators must remember that rightful authority flows from the U.S. Constitution…Nothing enraged Tea Party protestors more than seeing elected officials betray this solemn promise … and although some pundits like Dahlia Lithwick
think it’s “weird” for legislators to consider whether a proposed bill is constitutional, that is indeed one of their primary responsibilities.

Read the whole article: GOP: Dance With The One Who Brung You.

UPDATE 2: Fresh from celebrating victories with “a couple hundred U.S. patriots at the Tea Party Patriot's election night party at the Capitol Hyatt in Washington, D.C.,” invigorated Christchurch blogger Trevor Loudon counts off some of the wins and losses.  “A Good night Was Had by Freedom Lovers - Dems and Communists, Not So Much.” He concludes:

_QuoteThe G.O.P. now controls Congress and has made big gains in the Senate and Governor's races. It's goodbye to your favorite House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and hello John Boehner the new Republican House Majority Leader!
This is the Republicans' last chance to prove they can be trusted to live up to their own principles.
If they don't , they will be finished - and so may we be all.

UPDATE 3: Scott Holleran reckons that it’s now time for the Tea Party movement “to shed its dingbats,” and for everyone else to begin choosing up sides in the power struggle(s) to come.

Having lost its highest profile races partly due to their blatant proselytizing for religion in government , the Tea Party movement, which represents a rejection of Big Government, should oppose the mixture of religion and state.
    Whatever else Tuesday’s election results may mean, the Tea Party movement clearly has the potential to shed its dingbats, to paraphrase
Harry Binswanger, sponsor candidates who stand for man’s rights and capitalism, and restore the Republicans to the ideals of Lincoln, Jefferson, and reason. In the meantime, watch for strange, sudden alliances, power struggles, and a political shift in conflict from left/right to religious/secular.
    With the core principles of the GOP in play, a radically restructured Congress, and an overwhelmingly rejected but strikingly dishonest and divisive American president, it’s best to choose a side now; the battle has not yet begun.

UPDATE 4: David Galland from Casey Research tosses more cold water on the fresh blossoms of economic and political hope that many American readers may be feeling today, “I’m more convinced than ever that we’re about to go through a crash of epic proportions,” he says. “It won’t just be bad, it’s going to be horrific, worse than even I can imagine.”  And there’s really nothing even the few newly elected energiser bunnies can do about that. America has already made its fiscal bed—and now it’s too late. It’s already flat broke.

_Quote The debt problems are now so extreme that the Republicans, tea partiers, and desperate Democrats now rediscovering good old fiscal sanity have no feasible way of making a dent.   Even the stingiest Republicans are only talking about freezing spending at 2008 levels. For the record, that still means an annual federal budget deficit of just shy of half a trillion dollars.
Add to that approximately $150 billion in annual state budget shortfalls. And that’s before the economy is knocked sideways by the onrushing tidal wave of retiring baby boomers… or body slammed by the inevitable increase in U.S. interest rate expenses, as rates move up sharply from today’s unsustainable historic lows.
    The point is that, even to get back to 2008’s budget deficits, will require cutting almost a trillion dollars in federal spending. And that’s just for starters.

Sorry folks. Few Republicans, tea partiers or Democrats are even thinking in those terms. Which they would need to do to avert America’s coming sovereign debt tsunami, which is already tens of trillions of dollars underwater, and climbing fast. 

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UPDATE 5Kris Sayce comments:

_Quote    Welcome to America’s Lost Decade
   …Or should that be Last Decade?
    This morning’s decision by the US Federal Reserve’s Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) is the final act in American global economic dominance.
    If the US economy wasn’t already terminally ill, then this morning’s news from the FOMC has pushed it into terminal illness……
    I tell you what, for a bunch of people who are supposedly super-bright, what they’ve done is nothing short of criminally comical….

UPDATE 6: Here’s a nice parable explaining what all Ben Bernanke’s counterfeit trillions are doing.

UPDATE 7:  Congressman Ron Paul suggests that both he and his son, new Senator Randall Paul, will introduce 'End the Fed' legislation first day in office! (HT Capitalism)

7 comments:

Christian Libz said...

Victory for Palin and her supporters.

Anonymous said...

Even the stingiest Republicans are only talking about freezing spending at 2008 levels.

You don't get it. It's the Tea Party, not the RINOs that has the balance of power!

And the Tea Party will balance the budget. This year. Now. They will cut rather more than $1Trillion, don't you worry.

There is no reason to pass any apportionment whatsoever except the military.

Who really needs the Federal Department of education, or housing, or health? No one - only the civil service bludgers in Washington and around the country.

So we defund the lot. Easily done.

Then there is medicare & medicate etc -appropraited entitlements. So we tie their being defunded to military appropriations bills - and they are the only bills we pass.

And when you do the sums: we'll override the veto if the few spineless Dems left in the senate have to decide to terminated medicare or betray the troops

Fuck the RINOs. The Tea Party is in Washington - locked, loaded, and ready to kill every commie in the city if that's what it takes to reclaim America!

Kurt said...

Christian Libz, you sound like a poster who used to post messages here on this blog a few years ago called Tim Whikiriki. Are you the same one?

Anonymous said...

"Victory for Palin and her supporters."

She cost the Republicans the Senate by endorsing nutbars like O'Donnell, Buck, Angle and Miller. Hilarious.

Judge Holden

Robert Winefield said...

Observe a contradiction here:

Scott Holleran (an Objectivist - so it would seem) believes that Rand Paul is one of the dingbats that the Tea Party needs to shed.

Several short paragraphs later, Rand Paul and his father are attempting (a futile but valiant attempt) to remove the hand of Ben Bernake from the throats of the American people.

Meanwhile Objectivists (perhaps even Holleran himself) are entangled in the latest dick-measuring contest to take place amongst their own ranks.

I speak of the shit fight over Peikoff's denouncement of McCaskey over a (to put it in global context) minor academic philosophical point - the role of induction in science.

Regardless of Peikoff's previous achievements (and they are many and significant) he is acting like a twat. That's right, I said it. Even though I hope that it is a temporary maliase he IS a ding-bat and he needs to pipe-down, stand down or just fuck-off.

Why? Because his stand-over tactics are weakening the street cred of the most effective prosthelytizers the modern Objectivist movement has: Yaron Brook and the ARI/ARC for individual rights.

So, I find it ironic - nay, obscene, that an Objectivist (Holleran - and doubtless many others) would look down their snoots at the Tea Party and the Pauls WHILE both are engaged in the yeoman's work of fighting off the very tyrants that Peikoff endorsed.

At the risk of being Biblical - remove the dingbats from your own eye, Objectivists before you start criticizing the folks who are doing the work you are seemingly too busy infighting amongst themselves to do - or at least to do without sabotaging themselves.

Of all the sodding things to get worked up about. The role of induction in Science?!? I am a scientist. And I'm telling you that without the money that capitalism provides and the freedom of inquiry that the US Constitution provides, it won't fucking matter whether scientific breakthroughs occur through the application of induction or copious imbibing of beer. There won't BE any science done.

Richard McGrath said...

Judge Holden is right - the Republicans would do well to keep right away from Palin. The woman is poison.

I would love to see Schiff and Napolitano as the Republican nominees in 2012.

Robert Winefield - well said. Peikoff and his coterie of sycophants need to be ousted as spokesmen for the Objectivist movement, or at least sidelined and told to carry on their petty squabble elsewhere.

Richard McGrath said...

Kurt - I think you're thinking of Tim Wikiriwhi.