When the communists are calling you radical, you know you are doing something special….
Obama’s Debt Commission Chair’s Speak Out! To Increase Govt Revenue We Must: Lower the tax rates to 8, 14 and 23%. Make a new lean tax code. Lower the corporate tax rate. Public sector unions over reach. Democrats not serious about budget. Republicans should push for larger cuts.
Flashback March 2011. Remember Obama’s Deficit Commission??? The elite media dropped it like a hot potato.
UPDATE – Worlds largest bond fund dumps U.S. Treasuries – LINK.
Great interview. All credit to Erskine Bowles, who used to be one of the nastier partisan Democrat hired guns. He has almost completely adopted a near Steve Forbes like tax agenda, because that is the best way to raise government revenue. Bowles even makes the case that Democrats need to get real on spending cuts and that Republicans aren’t pushing hard enough. I am in awe. Bowles has even says that unions have over reached. I am sure Bowles is feeling the heat from his former colleagues. I never thought I would see myself typing these words; Erskine Bowles has earned my respect. My hat is off to his courage.
Bowles even uses the same analogy IUSB Vision [My old college blog – Editor] does almost verbatim from the link. The deficit in February was $232 billion (yes that is for a single month), which is substantially higher than the entire yearly deficit the last year the Republicans had fiscal control (2007).
Related: Sen. Durbin Tells FOX News Sunday: Dems Will Only Cut $10.5 Billion From Bloated Budget – UPDATED!
About the debt increase deal…
Remember that debt increase deal? Just remember come election time to remember the following…
As far as the budget deal we thought we have a few comments.
1 – We were never in danger of a default. The government brings in almost 200 billion a month in tax dollars which is more than enough to service the debt. Anyone who said that the August 2nd date would result in default is just lying straight up. Judging by how the elite media has been repeating this it furthers my personal observation that journalists are lazy and are, as a collective, the most uninformed people I have ever encountered.
2 – These polls that you here about in the news saying that the people want “republicans to compromise” are polls like the CBS News poll that had a sample which included only 25% Republicans, so the sample was rigged. Notice how the Democrats are not asked to compromise in the press? When the people were stone against Obama Care by a 60% margin where was the press pounding the polls than? Where was the compromise when the Democrats would not allow the GOP into the room and would only see the bill a few hours before a vote?
3 – “Reagan increased the debt limit”… Reagan did not have a House controlled by his own party. During that time we had the 24/7 nuclear triangle operating at the pinnacle of the Cold War and a government shut down at such a time would have undermined our efforts to posture and beat the Soviets.
4 – “We need to raise taxes on the rich”. First of all we have been “raising taxes on the rich” for decades now so why is it that John Kerry paid 12.34% on $5,072,000 worth of income? The dirty little secret is that the tax rate that the Democrats are talking about is the wage earner rate which is paid by high-end wage earners such as doctors and engineers, but it is also the rate paid by most small businesses that have employees. Most of the income that the “rich” bring is defined by the tax code as “unearned income”, so you could raise this tax rate to the moon and the multimillionaires and billionaires will laugh as it will not be they who pay it. For more details on why this is follow this LINK.
Using static models as the CBO likes to use the Democrats proposed tax increase would pay for all of 10 days of deficit spending. Of course since people do not operate in a static universe the result would be an impact on job creators and even less revenue growth to the government. Can anyone name a mainstream economic theorist who said to raise taxes during what appears to be a double dip recession?
4 – As far as spending cuts in the “deal”, we must remember base line budgeting. If we froze spending at current levels Washington would consider that to be a $9.5 trillion dollar “cut”, so all we are talking about here is a small reduction in the typical increases in spending. As far as spending cuts are concerned this is not a serious plan as spending under this deal will continue to skyrocket. Democrats and some leftist journalists are calling these “draconian cuts” and are simply engaging in the most dishonest demagoguery imaginable.
5 – But here is the rub, when we lose our AAA credit rating, which now appears unavoidable as both Moodys and S&P have said that neither the Boehner plan nor the Reid plan are serious about getting spending under control, it will cost us more than $100 billion a year in interest alone; when that is factored in there are no reductions even in the increases in spending. It gets worse. When you add the damage to the economy that loss of AAA will bring it makes all of this worse.
The loss of AAA will impact most unsecured credit, it will impact the value of the dollar (inflation), it will impact those who use short-term credit such as farmers who use seasonal loans and import/export businesses. It is going to damage the economy in such a way that most people will feel it. We did not lose AAA even during the great depression. The “deal” which passed is also easy to demagogue because the left will say that this deal IS the “Boehner Plan” (which is largely isn’t any more do to an almost total cave on spending cuts) and HIS plan caused us to lose AAA.
[Note: The first plans that were introduced by the Tea Party/GOP were much more serious and had a real chance of preventing the loss of AAA. While this is indeed a failure of government, is there any doubt that the Democratic Party is intent on blowing up our credit rating? The first proposals from the House had a chance of preserving AAA and the media/Democrats had a conniption fit calling called it extreme. Think about this folks, preserving AAA is now an extreme position according to much of the elite media and a political party. The Constitution does have limits and the GOP cannot run the government from the House. This is why elections matter.]
6 – The deal also includes a vote on the Balanced Budget Amendment to send it to the states. If this amendment resolution passes the Democrat controlled Senate and gets to the states it will be a great tool to begin to get this spending problem under control. If it looks like it will pass the Senate I expect the Democrat leadership will pull some stunt prevent the vote or prevent its passage. Government has a structural institutional incentive to spend more and more, so the only way to curb that is to make a structural change. Aside from a vote on this Amendment, which I will stress has not happened yet, this was not a tough deal or a Herculean compromise by any stretch.
This is a must see exchange between Marco Rubio and John Kerry on the debt limit debate. Be sure to watch every second as this is invaluable.
Kerry will think twice before trying to posture Marco Rubio again. Notice also, even though Rubio did not join the TEA Party Caucus he defends their position, which is to offer a plan that fixes the problem. Rubio uses a most interesting analogy to show why this is so important.
UPDATE – The latest version of the deal includes $2.1 Trillion in cuts over 10 years with half planned now and the other half planned by a “budget cut committee later”. Keep in mind that cuts in “Washington Speak” are not cuts, but rather a decrease in the increase in spending. So instead of a planned increase in spending over 10 years of $9.5 Trillion they will plan to increase spending by $7.4 trillion. The president gets his debt increase limit extended to well passed the campaign, deficit spending shoots up, no entitlement reform, no plan to balance the budget over the next eight years. There are some actual small cuts in discretionary spending, but entitlement spending that is on autopilot. Of course even this is a fraction of the increase in discretionary spending that has gone up since 2008.
UPDATE –
LARGEST DEBT HIKE IN HISTORY…
$32.4 billion per page?
Borrowing to surge…
FLASHBACK: Democrats taped on phone acting in bad faith, plotting a government shutdown
Remember when we said that the Democrats are pushing for a government shut down, which is why they keep moving the goal posts in trying to boost deficit spending? Well here is the proof. It is called acting in bad faith folks.
How could anyone who wants fiscal responsibility ever vote for any of these people again. You heard me. If you take exception to that comment please try to justify what we have just seen in the comments below.
UPDATE: Rand Paul: What Schumer is doing to the country is extreme
Michelle Bachmann responds as well:
Mike Pence: If the Democrats want a shutdown so bad, do it and see what happens…
Boehner/Bachmann: Democrats rooting for a shutdown
Its true too. Every time the Republicans make a compromise the Democrats move the goal post. First it was move spending back to 2008 levels; then it was cut by $100 billion; then it was $61 billion’ then it was, 10.5 or 33 billion dollars depending on what Democrat you were talking to. How anyone, and I mean anyone who tells you that they are for fiscal responsibility and want to vote Democrat in 2012 is either duped or just lying to you.
AIM: American tax dollars for Al-Jazeera inspired terrorism
Amazing. Your money being used to fund enemy propaganda, but Democrats say we cannot cut funds for this nonsense.
AIM:
An analysis of the propaganda campaign to get Al-Jazeera carried by more cable and satellite systems reveals an interesting fact. The terrorist TV channel is already available through something called MHz Networks. And it turns out that the MHz Networks is supported by the American taxpayers at the federal and state levels.
MHz Networks is a division of Commonwealth Public Broadcasting and receives over $2 million a year from federal and state governments. In this case, because Commonwealth is based in Virginia, the culprit is the state of Virginia. However, Governor Robert F. McDonnell has proposed eliminating state funding of public broadcasting by cutting $2 million in fiscal 2012 and $2 million in fiscal 2013. Even if state legislators go along with this proposal, that still leaves the federal subsidies for Commonwealth and MHz Networks.
According to figures supplied by Joseph H. Koch, Commonwealth Public Broadcasting Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, $1.4 million of that $2 million came from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), which is funded by Congress. The CPB distributes taxpayer money to public broadcasting stations and entities.
Since Al-Jazeera is totally owned, run, and paid for by the Emir of Qatar, officially known as “His Highness,” this means that American tax dollars are paying for foreign propaganda in the U.S.
Not only that, but American taxpayers are being fleeced on behalf of an Arab dictator with billions of oil dollars. The Emir, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, is number 8 on the Forbes list of the “richest royals,” with an estimated net worth of $2.4 billion. His channel has been labeled “the greatest Arab media organization” by the Muslim Brotherhood, which has spawned various terrorist organizations and is now poised to take power in Egypt and perhaps other countries.
MHz distributes Al-Jazeera, as well as the Moscow-funded Russia Today channel, under the rubric of “Programming for globally-minded people.”
Obama’s Favorite CEO: GE Paid No Taxes in 2010 Despite Making $14.2 Billion in Profits
Obama ally Google paid 2.4% federal tax earlier and threw gala events for Democrats while President Obama blasted the Chamber of Commerce as greedy for not wanting small businesses to pay a 39.9% tax.
General Electric paid no American taxes in 2010, the New York Times reports:
The company reported worldwide profits of $14.2 billion, and said $5.1 billion of the total came from its operations in the United States.
Its American tax bill? None. In fact, G.E. claimed a tax benefit of $3.2 billion.
That may be hard to fathom for the millions of American business owners and households now preparing their own returns, but low taxes are nothing new for G.E. The company has been cutting the percentage of its American profits paid to the Internal Revenue Service for years, resulting in a far lower rate than at most multinational companies.
G.E.’s CEO, Jeffrey Immelt, is considered Barack Obama’s favorite businessman and serves as the head of the president’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness. Fred Barnes wrote about Immelt here.
Related:
Big Business Buying Influence With Democrats: Google Pays 2.4% Federal Taxes
Google Comes Under Fire for ‘Secret’ Relationship with NSA. Cozy with Administration.
Dana Perino: Interesting How Obama Says Things That Are So Quickly Proven False
Obama takes credit for global oil production going up, but this is in spite of him not because of him. domestic Oil production is down 13% since he was elected, he has instituted an illegal offshore drilling ban which he is in contempt of court for. Thousands have lost their jobs. But look at what Obama says below.
Obama knows he can tell the fattest whoppers imaginable and the elite media will cover for him. Luckily we have blogs, talk radio and a Fox News willing to tell both sides.
Via Gateway Pundit:
President Obama told the American public on Friday:
So any notion that my administration has shut down oil production might make for a good political sound bite, but it doesn’t match up with reality. We are encouraging offshore exploration and production.
It was a horrible lie.
The American Petroleum Institute responded to the president:
The Obama administration continues to delay or defer action on developing our domestic resources of oil and natural gas at every turn.
“The trend is alarming. The administration has postponed lease sales in offshore areas. It has cancelled lease sales in onshore federal lands. It has extended permitting timelines for current leases and added unnecessary regulatory burdens. It has chosen inaction on essential energy projects that would create jobs, drive economic growth, and boost federal revenues.
“The administration is well on its way toward creating higher gasoline prices for Americans.
“To get more oil and gas, we need more access. Placing more government lands and waters off-limits and forcing companies to focus on areas that may show little promise even if already under lease will not solve our energy challenges.
Dana Perino is right.
It is frightening that the Obama Administration is so willing to openly lie to the American public.
Gov. Chris Christie To Public Sector Union Worker: We Can’t Afford To Pay Ninety Percent Of Your Health Care Anymore
Rush Limbaugh comments as well. This is a must see.
“The top 1% of income payers pay 41% of all state income tax. We already have the highest taxes in America and the neighbor who lives next door to you who works in the private sector, is already paying much more for his health care than you are for yours and they are paying the taxes to pay for yours on top of it.”
Governor Christie didn’t even mention that public sector employees tend to make much more than those in the private sector as well. The simple truth is that government employees have been well shielded from the pain of this recession. They have been promised pay and benefits by Democrats who left office years ago that government just cant afford.
GOA Report: Dozens of Govt. Agencies in Duplicate. Massive Waste.
52 programs funding entreprenurial efforts.
35 agencies for infrastructure.
26 agencies to fund telecommunications.
18 food assistance programs
47 job training programs
82 programs to improve teachers
…well you get the picture.
GAO report expected to show hundreds of duplicate programs
By Vicki Needham – 02/28/11 09:00 PM ET
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) found hundreds of possibly duplicate programs throughout the federal government’s agencies, according to a report scheduled for release on Tuesday.
The GAO, an independent, nonpartisan agency that works for Congress and investigates how the federal government spends taxpayer dollars, identified programs across the agencies including Defense and Energy departments, the Wall Street Journal reported Monday night.
Congress and the White House have targeted many duplicate programs for elimination, including several that are included in the House Republicans’ two-week continuing resolution, also in President Obama’s fiscal 2012 budget, that cuts $4 billion in spending through March 18.
The Journal reported these duplications from the GAO study:
1. Food safety: 15 agencies that implement several federal laws.
2. Defense: Duplication in the purchasing of tactical wheeled vehicles, procurement and medical costs.
3. Economic development: 80 programs spread across several agencies that share goals.
4. Surface transportation: More than 100 programs run by five divisions within the Transportation Department.
5. Energy: Cutting ethanol production programs could save $5.7 billion each year.
6. Government information technology: 24 federal agencies handle IT.
7. Health: The Defense and Veterans Affairs departments are still working separately to update electronic health records.
8. Homelessness: There are more than 20 federal programs dealing with the issue.
9. Teachers: 82 programs and several agencies deal with teacher quality.
10. Job training: 44 employment and training programs.
AFL-CIO Union Chief: The Best Way To Create Jobs is to Raise Taxes
This is from the same man who said that government should take over all private business, who speaks in front of communist revolutionary groups, and has a long history of violence. Trumka talks to the White House every day and visits twice a week – LINK.
What’s the best way to get Americans back to work?
Raise taxes, according to AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka. Specifically, he wants to raise the federal gas tax as a means to fund infrastructure spending. “We need a dedicated source of revenue to create infrastructure in this country,” he tells Aaron Task in the accompanying clip.
“We need to create jobs. The best way to do that is through infrastructure development.” Simply maintaining the existing infrastructure in this country will cost $2.2 trillion over five years, according to the American Society of Civil Engineers. That doesn’t include Obama’s objective of high-speed rails and green energy projects.
Oh yes, we can tax ourselves into prosperity, and we can spend trillions on more stimulus packages most of the money goes to government unions to make this man even more wealthy. This line of “reasoning” from those who call small business owners greedy.
Obama Administration Hiding Meetings with Lobbyists
Flashback February 2011
Editor’s Note – It is tenacity and vigilance like this that has kept Michelle Malkin the queen of conservative internet news since the invention of the medium. The respect she enjoys is well deserved.
Via the queen of the blogosphere Michelle Malkin:
In Culture of Corruption, I exposed Team Obama’s big lie about its commitment to public disclosure and openness in government.
Liberals balked. “How can you possibly make such a judgment so early on in the presidency?” they squawked.
After the book was published, the White House’s selective transparency and subversion of disclosure rules and regs continued apace.
Democrats played hide-and-seek on the Hill.
President Obama cut endless backroom deals and cut C-SPAN out.
The White House carved out a Coffee House loophole to keep lobbyist meetings off the books.
And, finally, the White House press corps started complaining about lack of access.
Now, this today from Politico:
Caught between their boss’s anti-lobbyist rhetoric and the reality of governing, President Barack Obama’s aides often steer meetings with lobbyists to a complex just off the White House grounds – and several of the lobbyists involved say they believe the choice of venue is no accident.
It allows the Obama administration to keep these lobbyist meetings shielded from public view — and out of Secret Service logs collected on visitors to the White House and later released to the public.
…Obama’s administration has touted its release of White House visitors logs as a breakthrough in transparency, as the first White House team ever to reveal the comings and goings around the West Wing and the Old Executive Office Building.
The Jackson Place townhouses are a different story.
There are no records of meetings at the row houses just off Lafayette Square that house the White House Conference Center and the Council on Environmental Quality, home to two of the busiest meeting spaces. The White House can’t say who attended meetings there, or how often. The Secret Service doesn’t log in visitors or require a background check the way it does at the main gates of the White House.
…It’s not only Jackson Place. Another favorite off-campus meeting spot is a nearby Caribou Coffee, which, according to the New York Times, has hosted hundreds of meetings among lobbyists and White House staffers since Obama took office.
And administration officials recently asked some lobbyists and others who met with them to sign confidentiality agreements barring them from disclosing what was discussed at meetings with administration officials, in that case a rental policy working group.
Obama lied, transparency died, Part 989.
See, I told you so.
So much for transparency.
Google Comes Under Fire for ‘Secret’ Relationship with NSA. Cozy with Administration.
Flashback February 2011
Related – Big Business Buying Influence With Democrats: Google Pays 2.4% Federal Taxes
We have talked about the cozy and monetary relationship that the Obama Administration has with Google before.
Consumer Watchdog, an advocacy group largely focused in recent years on Google’s privacy practices, has called on a congressional investigation into the Internet giant’s “cozy” relationship with U.S. President Barack Obama’s administration.
In a letter sent Monday, Consumer Watchdog asked Representative Darrell Issa, the new chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, to investigate the relationship between Google and several government agencies.
The group asked Issa to investigate contracts at several U.S. agencies for Google technology and services, the “secretive” relationship between Google and the U.S. National Security Agency, and the company’s use of a U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration airfield in California.
Federal agencies have also taken “insufficient” action in response to revelations last year that Google Street View cars were collecting data from open Wi-Fi connections they passed, Consumer Watchdog said in the letter.
“We believe Google has inappropriately benefited from close ties to the administration,” the letter said. “Google is most consumers’ gateway to the Internet. Nonetheless, it should not get special treatment and access because of a special relationship with the administration.”
Consumer Watchdog may have an ally in Issa, a California Republican. In July he sent a letter to Google raising concerns that White House Deputy Chief Technology Officer Andrew McLaughlin, the former head of global public policy for Google, had inappropriate e-mail contact with company employees.
A Google spokeswoman questioned Consumer Watchdog’s objectivity. Some groups have questioned the group’s relationship with Google rival Microsoft, and Consumer Watchdog’s criticisms of online privacy efforts have also exclusively zeroed in on Google, with the group rarely mentioning Microsoft, Facebook and other Web-based companies in the past two years.
“This is just the latest in a long list of press stunts from an organization that admits to working closely with our competitors,” said the Google spokeswoman.
But Consumer Watchdog gets no funding from Microsoft or any other Google competitor, said John Simpson, consumer advocate with the group. “We don’t have any relationship with Microsoft at all,” he said. “We don’t take any of their money.”
Consumer Watchdog has decided to focus on Google’s privacy practices because the company’s services serve as a gateway to the Internet for many people, Simpson said. If the group can push Google, “without a doubt the dominant Internet company,” to change its privacy practices, other companies will follow suit, he said.
“Google’s held itself to be the company that says its motto is, ‘don’t be evil,’ and they also advocate openness for everyone else,” he said. “We’re trying to hold them to their own word.”
Consumer Watchdog, in January 2009, suggested that Google was preparing a lobbying campaign asking Congress to allow the sale of electronic health records. Google called the allegations “100 percent false and unfounded.”
In September, Consumer Watchdog bought space on a 540-square-foot video screen in New York’s Times Square with the video criticizing Google’s privacy practices.
In April, Consumer Watchdog officials called for the U.S. Department of Justice to break up Google. They appeared at a press conference with a representative of the Microsoft- and Amazon.com-funded Open Book Alliance.
Consumer Watchdog’s latest complaints about the relationship of Google and the Obama administration are outlined in a 32-page report.
The paper questions a decision by NASA allowing Google executives to use its Moffett Federal Airfield near Google headquarters. Although H211, a company controlled by Google top executives, pays NASA rent, they enjoy access to the airfield that other companies or groups don’t have, Simpson said.
The paper also questions Google contracts with the U.S. Department of Defense and other agencies, suggesting that, in some cases, Google contracts were fast-tracked. The paper also questions Google’s relationship with the U.S. National Security Agency and calls for the company to be more open about what consumer information it shares with the spy agency.
When asked if other companies, including broadband providers, should disclose what customer information they share with the NSA, Simpson said they should, too.
“I understand the NSA is a super-secret spook organization,” he said. “But given Google’s very special situation where it possesses so much personal data about people, I think that there ought to be a little more openness about what precisely goes on between the two.”
John Wayne: What he wanted most for his newborn daughter
Must see.
A word about the GOP primaries being moved up in some states…
It is damn foolish. We got Obama in part because some of the primaries were front loaded. The result is candidates that do not get properly vetted. It gives the one with the big money an early advantage and it gives the one the media hypes an advantage as well. Stop this madness now. The media already has too much influence picking our candidates.
Chuck Norton
Politicalarena.org Editor
Reminder to the ‘Civility Police’: Reagan Savaged Carter and the Democrats With the Truth
The Carter record is a litany of despair, of broken promises, of sacred trusts abandoned and forgotten. Eight million — eight million out of work. Inflation running at 18 percent in the first quarter of this year. Black unemployment at 14 percent, higher than any single year since the government began keeping separate statistics. Four straight major deficits run up by Carter and his friends in Congress. The highest interest rates since the Civil War, reaching at times close to 20 percent, lately they’re down to more than 11 percent but now they’ve begun to go up again. Productivity falling for six straight quarters among the most productive people in the world.
Through his inflation he has raised taxes on the American people by 30 percent, while their real income has risen only 20 percent. The Lady standing there in the harbor has never betrayed us once. But this Administration in Washington has betrayed the working men and women of this country.
The President promised that he would not increase taxes for the low and middle-income people, the workers of America. Then he imposed on American families the largest single tax increase in our nation’s history. His answer to all this misery? He tries to tell us that we’re “only” in a recession, not a depression, as if definitions, words, relieve our suffering.
Let it show on the record that when the American people cried out for economic help, Jimmy Carter took refuge behind a dictionary. Well if it’s a definition — if it’s a definition he wants, I’ll give him one. A recession is when your neighbor loses his job. A depression is when you lose yours. And recovery is when Jimmy Carter loses his.
http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/ronaldreaganlibertypark.htm
Niall Ferguson: Decline of the USA and the Rise of Asian Economies
Ferguson: Chinese economic growth has been almost 10% but more importantly China’s consumer growth has been even higher.
[Editor’s Note – America’s “recovery” if that is what you want to call it is not consumer friendly, it is not investor friendly, it is not production friendly which means it is just not business friendly unless of course that business is well-connected to government, but even that is not a guarantee when one looks at Solyndra and these other “green jobs” boondoggles that have proved to be a colossal waste of money with the only people who benefitted were those who were politically connected who paid themselves ridiculously.
China and even Canada’s recovery has been more consumer and risk taker friendly. China has no capital gains tax and they are still bringing in revenue in a big way which is another indicator of the utter brokenness of our gargantuan tax code.
I disagree with Ferguson that we need to weaken our dollar even further, quite frankly enough is enough. We have weakened it plenty and we have not seen the desired/theoretical increase in manufacturing exports. Why? Confidence in America, its leadership, and as a place to do business cannot recover while we are trashing the dollar. Of course this interview was done in June 2010 so perhaps Ferguson has moderated his view on this by now. There are other reasons the consumer and the risk taker have lost confidence besides the deliberate trashing of the dollar, but it is a significant reason nonetheless.
Ferguson correctly states that what is bigger than our current economic problem is the lack of those in power to deal with our unsustainable fiscal path. The Paul Krugman/leftist idea of trillion dollar deficits for the next 70 years is ridiculous because those who by our bonds will just stop loaning us the money. The TEA Party zeal to tackle this problem combined with the genius of those like Paul Ryan/Mitch Daniels/Herman Cain etc may yet save America.]
Michael Chertoff: Current and Future Security Threats Ten Years After 9/11
Niall Ferguson on The West and the Rest: The Changing Global Balance of Power in Historical Perspective
A one hour lecture at Chatham House speaking on history, economics, empires, and global security.
Niall Ferguson speaks out on Paul Ryan, Paul Krugman, and America’s debt
Pardon the dopey 15 second introduction before the substance of the video begins (we didn’t edit this piece), but watch this video.
The Chinese have noticed what the rest of the worlds investors pretend not to see: The United States is on a completely unsustainable fiscal course with no apparent political means of self correction…
Prof Niall Ferguson: Paul Krugman is a joke, Keynesianism is dead, China is more capitalist than we are, get the debt under control or Western Civilization is done for…
Have you ever heard one of those sports guys on the radio who can tell you the stats of every football and baseball game since 1940 right off the top of their head? Prof. Niall Ferguson is like that, but with history and the history of economics. Prof Niall Ferguson is accepted by many academics as the most brilliant historian alive and judging by all I have seen in recent years I have only seen one man in my lifetime who is in the same ballpark as far as ability in this area is concerned. Take a look at his bio HERE.
Ferguson said in another interview that only one time in history has a major power emerged from this kind of debt and survived and that was England after the wars of the 1800’s. It doesn’t look good unless we change course now.
The volume is low on some of the videos so you may have to adjust your speaker volume.
Governor Christie: Mayor Booker and Michelle Rhee are Putting Students First
“This situation is obscene and we must change it now.”
Michelle Rhee: Some schools got their funding doubled and scores still went down…
For those of you who do not know Michelle Rhee, she is one of the stars from the hit film “Waiting for Superman”. The film is a brilliant documentary about people who made a difference or who tried to make a difference in public schools. Rhee was the Washington D.C. Schools Chancellor. While she was able to make positive changes, the key aspects of her reform plan were stopped by the teachers union who is desperate to maintain the failing status quo [if you think that what I just said is even a MILD exaggeration please consider this your personal invitation to demonstrate otherwise in the comments below – Editor].
Gov. Christie to superintendants of failing schools: I am capping your salary to what I make. If you want to qualify for a bonus your students need to show improvement.
If you care about kids or education at all this is a must see.
Profiles in ridiculous: 70% of the superintendents in New Jersey make more than the governor…
“You achieve I’ll pay you…”
Sarah Palin: What We Were Saying One Year Ago About Obama’s Failed Energy Policy
Related – The latest lie from the left: Two-thirds of oil and gas leases in Gulf inactive
[Sarah Palin from April 2011. Those who say that Sarah is dumb or parrot other such elite media smears just didn’t do their homework – Editor]
It’s unbelievable (literally) the rhetoric coming from President Obama today. This is coming from he who is manipulating the U.S. energy supply. President Obama is once again giving lip service to a “new energy proposal”; but let’s remember the last time he trotted out a “new energy proposal” – nearly a year ago to the day. The main difference is today we have $4 a gallon gas in some places in the country. This is no accident. This administration is not a passive observer to the trends that have inflated oil prices to dangerous levels. His war on domestic oil and gas exploration and production has caused us pain at the pump, endangered our already sluggish economic recovery, and threatened our national security. Through a process of what candidate Obama once called “gradual adjustment,” American consumers have seen prices at the pump rise 67 percent since he took office. Meanwhile, the vast undeveloped reserves that could help to keep prices at the pump affordable remain locked up because of President Obama’s deliberate unwillingness to drill here and drill now. We’re subsidizing offshore drilling in Brazil and purchasing energy from them, instead of drilling ourselves and keeping those dollars circulating in our own economy to generate jobs here. The President said today, “There are no quick fixes.” He’s been in office for nearly three years now, and he’s about to launch his $1 billion re-election campaign. When can we expect any “fixes” from him? How high does the price of energy have to go?
So, here’s a little flashback to what I wrote on March 31, 2010, at National Review Online’s The Corner:
Many Americans fear that President Obama’s new energy proposal is once again “all talk and no real action,” this time in an effort to shore up fading support for the Democrats’ job-killing cap-and-trade (a.k.a. cap-and-tax) proposals. Behind the rhetoric lie new drilling bans and leasing delays; soon to follow are burdensome new environmental regulations. Instead of “drill, baby, drill,” the more you look into this the more you realize it’s “stall, baby, stall.”
Today the president said he’ll “consider potential areas for development in the mid and south Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico, while studying and protecting sensitive areas in the Arctic.” As the former governor of one of America’s largest energy-producing states, a state oil and gas commissioner, and chair of the nation’s Interstate Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, I’ve seen plenty of such studies. What we need is action — action that results in the job growth and revenue that a robust drilling policy could provide. And let’s not forget that while Interior Department bureaucrats continue to hold up actual offshore drilling from taking place, Russia is moving full steam ahead on Arctic drilling, and China, Russia, and Venezuela are buying leases off the coast of Cuba.
As an Alaskan, I’m especially disheartened by the new ban on drilling in parts of the 49th state and the cancellation of lease sales in the Chukchi and Beaufort seas. These areas contain rich oil and gas reserves whose development is key to our country’s energy security. As I told Secretary Salazar last April, “Arctic exploration and development is a slow, demanding process. Delays or major restrictions in accessing these resources for environmentally responsible development are not in the national interest or the interests of the State of Alaska.”
Since I wrote the above, we have even more evidence of the President’s anti-drilling agenda. We have the moratorium in the Gulf of Mexico as well as the de-facto moratorium in the Arctic. We have his 2012 budget that proposes to eliminate several vital oil and natural gas production tax incentives. We have his anti-drilling regulatory policies that have stymied responsible development. And the list goes on. The President says that we can’t “drill” our way out of the problem. But we can’t drive our cars on solar shingles either. We have to live in the real world where we must continue to develop the conventional resources that we actually use right now to fuel our economy as we continue to look for a renewable source of energy. If we are looking for an affordable, environmentally friendly, and abundant domestic source of energy, why not turn to our own domestic supply of natural gas? Whether we use it to power natural-gas cars or to run natural-gas power plants that charge electric cars, natural gas is an ideal “bridge fuel” to a future when more renewable sources are available, affordable, and economically viable on their own. It’s a lot more viable than subsidizing boondoggles like these inefficient electric cars that no one wants. I’m all for electric cars if you can develop one I can actually use in Alaska, where you can drive hundreds of miles without seeing many people, let alone many electrical sockets. But these electric and hybrid cars are not a quick fix because we still need an energy source to power them. That’s why I like natural gas, but we still have to drill for natural gas, and this administration doesn’t like drilling or apparently the jobs that come with responsible oil and natural gas development. They don’t have a coherent energy policy. They have piecemeal ideas for subsidizing impractical pet “green” projects.
I have always been in favor of an “all-of-the-above” approach to energy independence, but “all-of-the-above” means conventional resource development too. It means a coherent, practical, and forward-looking energy policy. I wish the President would understand this. The good news is there is nothing wrong with America’s energy policy that another good old-fashion election can’t solve. 2012 is just around the corner.
– Sarah Palin
The latest lie from the left: Two-thirds of oil and gas leases in Gulf inactive
The talking point: What do you mean drill for more oil, the oil companies do not want to drill for more oil, they bought the leases and just let them sit there so we will pay Brazil to look for oil there. [Oh by the way who has a money stake in Petro-Brazil? Obama money man and buddy George Soros – Editor]
That entire narrative is a complete scam as you will soon see.
AP:
WASHINGTON – An Interior Department report to be released Tuesday says more than two-thirds of offshore oil and gas leases in the Gulf of Mexico are sitting idle.
According to the report, obtained by The Associated Press, those inactive swaths of the Gulf could potentially hold more than 11 billion barrels of oil and 50 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. The report also shows that 45 percent of all onshore oil and gas leases are inactive.
President Barack Obama ordered the Interior Department review earlier this month amid pressure to curb rising gas prices. The White House says Obama will address his plans for the country’s energy security during a speech in Washington Wednesday.
The first problem is that the permitting process to actually get the permits to drill on the lease take years.The government puts years worth of roadblocks in the permitting process, this complicated by the fact that in each stage of the permitting process that gets approved by the federal government, eco-extremist groups sue to stop it.
Obama instituted an offshore drilling ban as was widely reported. The ban was illegal and a federal judge ordered him to stop. Obama ignored the court order. Then look at what Obama did to the regulations to have a de facto ban anyways. The film below explains how they did it. It will infuriate you.
So here is the situation, the government charges money for the lease and then works with anti-capitalist and eco-extremist groups to prevent that lease from ever getting the permits.
Related:
Obama Administration Held in Contempt for Violating Court Order
API: Recent Studies Show Obama Drilling Moratorium Will Cost 50,000 Jobs; 160,000 by 2032.
Heritage: Anti-Drilling Policies Costing Federal Government Billions in Lost Revenue
If You Ever Needed Proof that Democrats Want Higher Gas Prices…
UPDATE –
Sarah Palin (from April 2011): What We Were Saying One Year Ago About Obama’s Failed Energy Policy
UPDATE II – Dick Morris:Obama has zeroed out new drilling permits. The few that are starting now are left over from permits that were approved from the Bush Administration
Gov. Rick Perry on the stream of lies from the Obama Administration. Withholding disaster funds for political reasons.
Talk about a slow response to Katrina, how about no response because you are a Republican.
White House: Gov. Perry disrespected us because he would not greet us when the President flew in.
The Facts: Obama flew into El Paso, a two-hour flight for Gov. Perry and yet just a few hours later Obama was to be in Austin, where Gov. Perry was, for two fund-raisers. “We offered to meet the President here in Austin” says Gov. Perry. President Obama refused to meet with him.
White House: Border counties are safer than ever.
The Facts: The White House bases that number on the number of illegal immigration apprehensions. The apprehensions are down because the economy in the USA is bad and fewer people are coming across, but the drug cartels and border violence are up and some parts of the border have been ceded to the drug cartels and are not under our control.
White House: Gov. Perry is not telling the truth about the fires as the federal government is paying 75% of the bill.
The Facts: The Federal Government is helping with 25 fires out of 9000. [Editor’s Note – By the way, wild fires would not be so bad if the federal government did not have restrictions on forest management such as cutting fire breaks and cleaning underbrush.]
UPDATE – If you want to see the depth of President Obama’s border security lie, the Federal Government through the BLM is posting these signs in Arizona just south of Interstate 8. This is not just on the border as Interstate 8 is THREE COUNTIES inland.
If the border is safer than ever, why are these signs needed now and say not when Reagan was in office or even Clinton?
The Arizona TEA Party recently posted this message on one of their web sites:
“Sheriff Dever’s Dept. (Cochise County) and also the Pinal County Sheriff’s Depts (Sheriff Paul Babeu) which are the two counties that are directly on the AZ/Mexican border, are now being sued by Obama and Eric Holder to prevent them from enforcing immigration laws? Mark, this situation has become extremely dangerous now. Not only are thousands of illegal Mexican immigrants crossing our border daily, we have thousands of OTM’s (Other Than Mexican….a-hem, middle-easterners). Obama and Holder want to stop these Sheriff Depts from apprehending them, and handing them over to ICE for deportation.”
ABC’s Jake Tapper makes a few observations about the president’s border speech. He quotes the increase in border agents from the early Bush Administration, counting the increases authorized by the former president as his own. In short putting up a light fence on a few hundred miles of border when that border is thousands of miles long is hardly securing it, and neither is adding 3000 border agents which is an ounce in the bucket. Obama has hardly secured the border and in fact files harassment suits against local law enforcement to stop serious enforcement of it.
Veronique de Rugy: The Alternative Minimum Tax Targets the Productive Middle Class, Not the Rich
The taxes Democrats propose to “soak the rich” always seem to miss those who they demagogue for not paying their fair share. They have been “soaking the rich” for decades and keep missing the target. Why?
Veronique de Rugy is one of the most respected economists alive today.
Political Arena Editor Chuck Norton comments from June 2011:
[Note – some people who are just reading the first few paragraphs are assuming that we are endorsing any form of class warfare, actually it is quite the opposite. Class Warfare is foolish because it not only causes wealth to flee, but it eventually destroys wealth. The opposite of poverty is wealth. One cannot be against poverty and against wealth at the same time as it is as perfect an economic paradox as is possible. Class warfare spreads poverty and that is what it is designed to do, because a prospering middle class whose wealth is growing doesn’t a host of government dependence programs.]
UPDATE 10-10-2002 – I have repeatedly talked about “Consolidation” as Obama’s economic theory. Dick Morris is on Sean Hannity right now saying that Obama wants to have one big union, one big corporation in each industry, along with one big government. He is describing Obama’s merging of Corporatism and Socialism. “The left voted for socialism and got Goldman Sachs”. Anyone mind of I just gloat for a minute 🙂 I started saying this over a year ago on my old college blog. We try to always bring you the cutting edge. ]
This came as absolutely no surprise to me. As with most taxes that are “designed to target the rich” they do no such thing and the “alternative minimum tax” is no different.
The Democratic Party leadership pretends to be interested in genuine class warfare. You hear President Obama talk about “taxing millionaires and billionaires” yet the very policies he and much of the Democratic leadership advocate do no such thing.
Democrats have not been interested in taxing the genuinely rich and aren’t today. John Kerry made $5,072,000 in 2003 and had a total federal tax burden of 12.34%. The very wealthy enjoy a 60,000 page tax code that is filled with exceptions. Much of the income those like John and Teresa Kerry receive is defined as “unearned income” or earnings that are not taxable at the wage earner rate so even if the regular income tax rate was increased to 50% the percentage the Kerry’s would pay would only go up by a couple of points, if that.
Yet small business “sub-s corporations” (most domestic small businesses that have between 1-200 employees) are taxed at the wage earner rate and would be devastated by a 50% rate. Small businesses do most of the hiring in this country. Would someone care to explain how Democrats can claim to be for workers while being against their employers?
We need to be mindful of how a politician defines “The Rich”. I have a close friend who owns a small car repair business. My friend qualified as “The Rich” because his small business is an s-corp that brings in more than 250k per year. Out of that 250K he pays federal and state taxes, his employees, the payroll tax matching, rent, equipment, insurance, parts to put on cars, consumables such as motor oil, advertising etc. What is left is what he gets for his family. He drives an old Chevy truck because that is what he can afford.
The truth is that very few people make over $250k in taxable wages. President Obama talks about taxing billionaires and millionaires (defined as those who make over $250k), but the way the tax code works the wealth of George Soros like billionaires is almost perfectly protected. If George Soros and the Kerry’s paid a percentage like small businesses must, who would fund the Tides Foundation and the Democrat’s 527 groups?
As you may be aware, Google made $3.1 BILLION last year and had a federal tax burden of 2.4%. Google throws fund-raising galas for Obama and the Democrats and have given the Democrats massive donations. Where are the “liberals” condemning the Google Corps of the world? How about GE, whose former CEO now works at the White House, earned 14.2 billion dollars and not only did they have a tax bill of zero, they received taxpayer subsidies.
Yet Obama has waged a rhetorical war against the Chamber of Commerce and who do they represent, you guessed it, most small and medium-sized domestic businesses. Obama blasted the Chamber of Commerce for daring to oppose his plan to tax such businesses at a rate of 39.6%.
[Note: In some cases capital gains is double taxed in that the corporate income tax is paid before hand on the same money. Some connected corporations pay next to zero tax anyways, and if the company is overseas the corporate income tax is usually less and is paid to another country. Once again it is the case of the medium sized corporation here in America that gets creamed because we have the highest corporate income tax in the industrialized world and those American companies do not have the resources to get goodies in the tax code or how it is enforced. Japan and several other countries have lowered their corporate income tax dramatically so now the US is the highest. – Editor]
Policies such as ObamaCare, tax increases, and other actions that cause regulatory uncertainty all but force the producers and investors to stop moving their money domestically. They have the option of just parking it or investing it in China, all of which has the effect of transferring the tax burden away from the wealthy onto the working poor and middle class. Democrats are not interested in taxing the wealthy; they are interested in taxing the domestic producer class.
This brings us to Norton’s First Law: big Business loves big government because big government taxes and regulates the small and medium-sized competition out of the competition. This is a staple of modern “Alinsky” style Democrat strategy. This process is called “consolidation”. The goal of leftist philosophy is to control the wealth “rationally” from above so that less is “left to chance”. With all of these small businesses creating wealth that is chaos which is difficult to control. Through consolidation more of the wealth that is created flows through large corporations that are easier to control.
The Obama bipartisan deficit commission was tasked with the challenge of how to raise revenue, grow the economy and pay off the debt. After an exhaustive study the commission concluded that lowering tax rates, lowering the corporate tax rate and simplifying the tax code to encourage tax compliance, and to encourage more wealth to come back home (so it at least can be taxed), was the most prudent course of action. Reagan would have been pleased with those recommendations.
If you wonder why so many jobs have moved overseas and in some cases to places where governments are corrupt and workers are really exploited; now you are seeing the other side of the coin. The private sector and the jobs that go with it cannot be expected to pay for a government that costs $4 trillion a year and hope to remain competitive. If you want to see demand for American labor to rise, start by making it more economical for jobs to come home.
UPDATE – The Obama Administration is using a variation of this very theme that I wrote about last June in it’s recent effort to raise taxes. Rest assured in the 6o,000 plus pages of the tax code that those who are the Democrats biggest donors will not be impacted greatly. As we have seen with Solyndra, the Stimulus Bill, and the other spending in this administration, much of the spending is done for the purpose of Chicago style kickbacks. One can be most confident that taxes will continue to follow that same path just as the so called Alternative Minimum Tax has.
UPDATE II – Warren Buffet opposes Obama’s new “Buffet Rule” campaign trial balloon because he sees it for what it really is. Real Clear Politics (follow the link to see the video):
CNBC: “Are you happy that the way it is being described. Is the program that the White House has presented a million dollars and over your program? ”
Warren Buffett: “Well, the precise program which will — I don’t know what their program will be. My program would be on the very high incomes that are taxed very low. Not just high incomes. Somebody making $50 million a year playing baseball, his taxes won’t change. Make $50 million a year appearing on television, his income won’t change. But, if they make a lot of money and pay a very low tax rate, like me, it would be changed by a minimum tax that would only bring them up to what other people pay.”
CNBC: “Does that mean you disagree with the president’s new jobs proposal which would be paid for by raising taxes on households with incomes of over $250,000.”
Buffett: “That’s another program that I won’t be discussing. My program is to have a tax on ultra-rich people who are very tax rates. Not just all rich people. It would probably apply to 50,000 people in a population of 300 million.”
Indeed. There is a small group of people who greatly benefit from the way the tax code works which is only a small portion of who most people would consider wealthy. Among these people are among the largest political donors in the country.
I am glad that Buffet clarified (read changed his tune just slightly) on this issue because the way his close friend President Obama had presented this it was going to just as we had described it earlier, a new tax that would barely touch him but sock smaller competition and CNBC called him out on it:
Prof. Niall Ferguson on Obama: A colossal failure of American foreign policy.
WANTED: A Grand Strategy for America
“The statesman can only wait and listen until he hears the footsteps of God resounding through events; then he must jump up and grasp the hem of His coat, that is all.” Thus Otto von Bismarck, the great Prussian statesman who united Germany and thereby reshaped Europe’s balance of power nearly a century and a half ago.
Last week, for the second time in his presidency, Barack Obama heard those footsteps, jumped up to grasp a historic opportunity . . . and missed it completely.
In Bismarck’s case it was not so much God’s coattails he caught as the revolutionary wave of mid-19th-century German nationalism. And he did more than catch it; he managed to surf it in a direction of his own choosing. The wave Obama just missed—again—is the revolutionary wave of Middle Eastern democracy. It has surged through the region twice since he was elected: once in Iran in the summer of 2009, the second time right across North Africa, from Tunisia all the way down the Red Sea toYemen. But the swell has been biggest in Egypt, the Middle East’s most populous country.
In each case, the president faced stark alternatives. He could try to catch the wave, Bismarck style, by lending his support to the youthful revolutionaries and trying to ride it in a direction advantageous to American interests. Or he could do nothing and let the forces of reaction prevail. In the case of Iran, he did nothing, and the thugs of the Islamic Republic ruthlessly crushed the demonstrations. This time around,
in Egypt, it was worse. He did both—some days exhorting Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak to leave, other days drawing back and recommending an “orderly transition.”
The result has been a foreign-policy debacle. The president has alienated everybody: not only Mubarak’s cronies in the military, but also the youthful crowds in the streets of Cairo. Whoever ultimately wins, Obama loses. And the alienation doesn’t end there. America’s two closest friends in the region—Israel and Saudi Arabia—are both disgusted. The Saudis, who dread all manifestations of revolution, are appalled at Washington’s failure to resolutely prop up Mubarak. The Israelis, meanwhile, are dismayed by the administration’s apparent cluelessness.
Last week, while other commentators ran around Cairo’s Tahrir Square, hyperventilating about what they saw as an Arab 1989, I flew to Tel Aviv for the annual Herzliya security conference. The consensus among the assembled experts on the Middle East? A colossal failure of American foreign policy.
This failure was not the result of bad luck. It was the predictable consequence of the Obama administration’s lack of any kind of coherent grand strategy, a deficit about which more than a few veterans of U.S. foreign policy making have long worried. The president himself is not wholly to blame. Although cosmopolitan by both birth and upbringing, Obama was an unusually parochial politician prior to his election, judging by his scant public pronouncements on foreign-policy issues.
Yet no president can be expected to be omniscient. That is what advisers are for. The real responsibility for the current strategic vacuum lies not with Obama himself, but with the National Security Council, and in particular with the man who ran it until last October: retired Gen. James L. Jones. I suspected at the time of his appointment that General Jones was a poor choice. A big, bluff Marine, he once astonished me by recommending that Turkish troops might lend the United States support in Iraq. He seemed mildly surprised when I suggested the Iraqis might resent such a reminder of centuries of Ottoman Turkish rule.
The best national-security advisers have combined deep knowledge of international relations with an ability to play the Machiavellian Beltway game, which means competing for the president’s ear against the other would-be players in the policymaking process: not only the defense secretary but also the secretary of state and the head of the Central Intelligence Agency. No one has ever done this better than Henry Kissinger. But the crucial thing about Kissinger as national-security adviser was not the speed with which he learned the dark arts of interdepartmental turf warfare. It was the skill with which he, in partnership with Richard Nixon, forged a grand strategy for the United States at a time of alarming geopolitical instability.
The essence of that strategy was, first, to prioritize (for example, détente with the Soviets before human-rights issues within the U.S.S.R.) and then to exert pressure by deliberately linking key issues. In their hardest task—salvaging peace with honor in Indochina by preserving the independence of South Vietnam—Nixon and Kissinger ultimately could not succeed. But in the Middle East they were able to eject the Soviets from a position of influence and turn Egypt from a threat into a malleable ally. And their overtures to China exploited the divisions within the Communist bloc, helping to set Beijing on an epoch-making new course of economic openness.
The contrast between the foreign policy of the Nixon-Ford years and that of President Jimmy Carter is a stark reminder of how easily foreign policy can founder when there is a failure of strategic thinking. The Iranian Revolution of 1979, which took the Carter administration wholly by surprise, was a catastrophe far greater than the loss of South Vietnam.
Remind you of anything? “This is what happens when you get caught by surprise,” an anonymous American official told The New York Times last week.
“We’ve had endless strategy sessions for the past two years on Mideast peace, on
containing Iran. And how many of them factored in the possibility that Egypt
moves from stability to turmoil? None.”
I can think of no more damning indictment of the administration’s strategic thinking than this: it never once considered a scenario in which Mubarak faced a popular revolt. Yet the very essence of rigorous strategic thinking is to devise such a scenario and to think through the best responses to them, preferably two or three moves ahead of actual or potential adversaries. It is only by doing these things—ranking priorities and gaming scenarios—that a coherent foreign policy can be made. The Israelis have been hard at work doing this. All the president and his NSC team seem to have done is to draft touchy-feely speeches like the one he delivered in Cairo early in his presidency.
These were his words back in June 2009: America and Islam are not exclusive and need not be in competition. Instead, they overlap, and share common principles—principles of justice and progress; tolerance and the dignity of all human beings.
Those lines will come back to haunt Obama if, as cannot be ruled out, the ultimate beneficiary of his bungling in Egypt is the Muslim Brotherhood, which remains by far the best organized opposition force in the country—and wholly committed to the restoration of the caliphate and the strict application of Sharia. Would such an outcome advance “tolerance and the dignity of all human beings” in Egypt? Somehow, I don’t think so.
Grand strategy is all about the necessity of choice. Today, it means choosing between a daunting list of objectives: to resist the spread of radical Islam, to limit Iran’s ambition to become dominant in the Middle East, to contain the rise of China as an economic rival, to guard against a Russian “reconquista” of Eastern Europe—and so on. The defining characteristic of Obama’s foreign policy has been not just a failure to prioritize, but also a failure to recognize the need to do so. A succession of speeches saying, in essence, “I am not George W. Bush” is no substitute for a strategy.
Bismarck knew how to choose. He understood that riding the nationalist wave would enable Prussia to become the dominant force in Germany, but that thereafter the No. 1 objective must be to keep France and Russia from uniting against his new Reich. When asked for his opinion about colonizing Africa, Bismarck famously replied: “My map of Africa lies in Europe. Here lies Russia and here lies France, and we are in the middle. That is my map of Africa.”
Tragically, no one knows where Barack Obama’s map of the Middle East is. At best, it is in the heartland states of America, where the fate of his presidency will be decided next year, just as Jimmy Carter’s was back in 1980.
At worst, he has no map at all.
Niall Ferguson: The Ascent of Money
This five hour series is not only very informative, it is also very entertaining. Ferguson really “gets it” and I would argue with very little of what he has to say.
This is the history of money and the ascent of man and the West. This is invaluable and everyone should watch it.
Niall Ferguson: Civilization – Is the West History?
This is the complete documentary of the six “killer apps” or ideals that made Western Civilization great by Prof. Niall Ferguson.
This six part series that explains the rise of the West, why it rose and why other civilizations did not. After looking into why our civilization became great, you will realize we are now struggling because we are abandoning those things that made us great. Get ready to learn and understand history better in a few hours than years of college would bring you. This series is entertaining and mega-informative. Every person alive should watch them as they are invaluable.
Political Arena 