The Columbus Dispatch reported yesterday that invasive state government searches into the private files of Joe "The Plumber" Wurzelbacher actually ran deeper than first reported, and included inquiries into whether he owed unemployment taxes or was receiving state welfare benefits.
The Dispatch quotes Helen Jones-Kelley, director of the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services, who explains the reasoning behind the searches:
"Given our understanding that Mr. Wurzelbacher had publicly indicated that he had the means to
purchase a substantial business enterprise, ODJFS, consistent with past departmental practice,
checked confidential databases ," she wrote.
"Not surprisingly, when a person behind in child support payments or receiving public assistance
is receiving significant media attention which suggests that the person appears to have available
financial resources, the Department risks justifiable criticism if it fails to take note and
respond," Jones-Kelley wrote.
Joe: I'm getting ready to buy a company that makes about $250,000 … $270-$280,000 a year.
Obama: All right.
Joe: Your new tax plan's gonna tax me more, isn't it?
Obama:
Well, here's what's gonna happen. If you're a small business which you
would qualify as, first of all, you'd get a 50 percent tax credit, so
you get a cut on taxes for your health care costs. So you would
actually get a tax cut on that front. If your revenue is above
$250,000, then from $250,000 down, your taxes are gonna stay the same.
It is true that for … say, from $250,000 up, from $250,000 to $300,000
or so …
Joe: Well, here's my question …
Obama:
I just want to answer your question. So, for that additional amount,
you'd go from 36 to 39 percent, which is what it was under Bill
Clinton. And the reason we're doing that is because 95 percent of small
businesses make less than $250,000 so what I want to do is give them a
tax cut. I want to give all these folks who are bus drivers, teachers,
auto workers who make less … I want to give them a tax cut and so what
we're doing is, we are saying that folks who make more than $250,000
that that marginal amount above $250,000, they're gonna be taxed at a
39 instead of a 36 percent rate.
Joe: Well, the reason why I ask you about the American Dream I mean, I work hard. I'm a plumber, I work 10-12 hours a day …
Obama: Absolutely.
Joe:
… and I'm, you know, buying this company and I'm gonna continue to work
that way. Now, if I buy another truck and adding something else to it
and, you know, build the company, you know, I'm getting taxed more and
more while fulfilling the American Dream.
Obama: Well, here's a way of thinking about it. How long have you been a plumber? How long have you been working?
Joe: Fifteen years.
Obama:
Okay. So, over the last 15 years, when you weren't making $250,000, you
would have been getting a tax cut from me. So you'd actually have more
money, which means you would have saved more, which means that you
would have gotten to the point where you could build your small
business quicker than under the current tax code. So there are two ways
of looking at it. I mean, one way of looking at it is, now that you've
become more successful …
Joe: Through hard work.
Obama: … through hard work, you don't want to be taxed as much.
Joe: Exactly.
This short exchange was then followed by Obama's long-winded "spread the wealth around" explanation.
Joe simply says, "I'm getting ready to buy a company that makes about $250,000 … $270-$280,000 a year." He doesn't say what the company is worth. He doesn't say what he will be paying for the company. He doesn't say when he will purchase it. He doesn't imply that such a purchase is already in the works. Jones-Kelley wants us to think that any responsible citizen -- after hearing this exchange -- would assume that Joe The Plumber is rolling in money, and would want the state to make sure that he isn't on the welfare rolls and doesn't owe any taxes. She tries to make herself look like a heroine, looking after the best interests of John. Q. Ohio Public, but she is simply making stuff up in order to cover her own ass. Period.
By her standards, anyone who mentions, in public, a future goal of attaining
wealth is immediately considered a fair target for a state
investigation, on the assumption that you wouldn't be telling your
dream to someone else unless you already had the "available finances"
to make your dream into an immediate reality. What utter nonsense.
Such checks are run by state departments when an individual or group
actually files to purchase a company, not when they express interest,
whether on air or over a beer at the pub. That's the whole purpose of
filling out the reams and reams of official forms and applications.
Jones-Kelley's lying explanations should be treated as such, without
equivocation. (emphasis added)
Director Helen Jones-Kelley said her agency checks people who are
“thrust into the public spotlight,” amid suggestions they may have come
into money, to see if they owe support or are receiving undeserved
public assistance.
Niekamp told The Dispatch she is unfamiliar with the practice of checking on the newly famous. “I’ve
never done that before, I don’t know of anybody in my office who does
that and I don’t remember anyone ever doing that,” she said today. (emphasis added)
Conservative blogs are going wild over an excerpt from a 2001 interview with Barack Obama that was originally broadcast on Chicago Public Radio, WBEZ. Here is what Obama says that is so stunning:
You know, if you look at the victories and failures of the civil-rights
movement, and its litigation strategy in the court, I think where it
succeeded was to vest formal rights in previously dispossessed peoples.
So that I would now have the right to vote, I would now be able to sit
at a lunch counter and order and as long as I could pay for it, I’d be
okay, but the Supreme Court never entered into the issues of
redistribution of wealth, and sort of more basic issues of political
and economic justice in this society.
And uh, to that
extent, as radical as I think people tried to characterize the Warren
Court, it wasn’t that radical. It didn’t break free from the essential
constraints that were placed by the Founding Fathers in the
Constitution — at least as it’s been interpreted, and Warren Court
interpreted it in the same way, that generally the Constitution is a
charter of negative liberties: [It] says what the states can’t do to
you, says what the federal government can’t do to you, but it doesn’t
say what the federal government or the state government must do on your
behalf.
And that hasn’t shifted, and one of the, I think, the
tragedies of the civil-rights movement was because the civil-rights
movement became so court-focused, uh, I think that there was a tendency
to lose track of the political and community organizing and activities
on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalitions of
power through which you bring about redistributive change. And in some
ways we still suffer from that. (emphasis added)
My first reaction when I read this quote this morning was simply, "Okay, now we know what the Obama "litmus test" for Supreme Court justice nominees will be."
Sure, Obama says that the Court itself cannot specifically order the confiscation and redistribution of wealth. That would be unconstitutional. But the
massive power grabs that Congress must necessarily impose in order to
make socialism a reality here in the USA will certainly generate
numerous individual lawsuits challenging their constitutionality.
Just as FDR packed the Supreme Court with sympathetic justices
in order to legitimize the Constitutionality of the New Deal, so must
Barack Obama pack his Supreme Court with socialist justices, in order
to legitimize his redistribution plans. Someone has to keep discovering and defending those emanations and penumbras.
I also believe that any appellate court justice
who embraces the notion of "social justice" through the government-enforced redistribution
of wealth would, almost without exception, support
government-sanctioned abortion on demand. Therefore the abortion
"litmus test" is redundant and can probably be ignored. This will be to
Obama's advantage, as it could make his appointees more palatable to
the Religious Right.
What Obama actually seems to be advocating is a rebirth of the Poor People's Campaign,
which was about to be undertaken by Martin Luther King, Jr. at the time
of his assassination. The PPC was focused on the plight of all
poor Americans, regardless of race or geographic location. King's plans
included a demand for an "Economic Bill of Rights" that, among other
things, guaranteed a living wage-based permanent income for the poor.
You should also recall that Dr. King unapologetically supported government-sanctioned wealth redistribution
and himself wrote, "good and just society is neither the thesis of
capitalism nor the antithesis of communism, but a socially conscious
democracy which reconciles the truths of individualism and
collectivism."
MLK is considered a modern-day prophet. Could Obama's embrace of MLK's ultimate fight be the deed that elevates Obama to the level of modern-day Messiah?
In America, we have a Constitution that was written by a group of men
whose lives had been deeply affected by persecution at the hands of
various government and religious groups. The men who wrote the
Constitution wanted to make sure that future generations did not suffer from persecution as they had. That's why they wrote the Constitution in a way that stressed the limits of the government. They wanted to ensure that the government of the United States never directly interfered with the ability of its individual citizens to fully enjoy life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Has America been perfect in this regard? Of course not. Our economy has occasionally been overtaken by robber-barons. Our citizens once held slaves. Local and state governments used denial of the franchise as a powerful political weapon. Our Federal government stood by while its citizens faced discrimination and persecution. And in some cases, the government led that persecution. But even for all our failings, the principle of freedom for the individual has never been abolished.
But Barack Obama wants to change that. To Obama, the failure of the Supreme Court to eliminate the limiting character of the Constitution is a tragedy! Obama wants a Constitution that empowers the government, rather than limiting it. He wants a Constitution that gives the Federal Government a mandate to guarantee financial equity and equality of outcome for all Americans, presumably with an unlimited scope of power in order to be able to enforce that mandate. And he believes that such a Constitution is the only hope for the collective salvation of our nation.
This is, in short, the most radical vision for "reinventing government" ever articulated by a major (and currently leading) Presidential candidate. And it scares the living hell out of me.
But Mike, if you're really a Christian, don't you want to see hunger and hopelessness abolished? Don't you want to see an end to the suffering of the working poor? Don't you want to see everyone have a fair chance?
Absolutely. And I have been involved in Christian social justice efforts here in Oklahoma City for about two years now. I have even attended community organizing meetings. But I would like to see true change, brought about by spiritual revival and the work of the Holy Spirit, not government mandates. Because such mandates will give the Federal Government an incredibly dangerous amount of power over our bank accounts, our income, and our private lives. And trust me, it will be used to punish those who don't toe the party line -- regardless of what party is in control. That kind of a power grab by the Federal Government is not a manifestation of "holiness," nor is it "justice," nor will it increase freedom or security for anyone. We don't need it and I don't want it. Period.
ADDED: If you want to understand the dangers of giving government absolute power to enforce its own definition of "fairness," then you should watch this disturbing video, part of a 1982 documentary on the Weather Underground -- the group co-founded and led by Barack Obama's mentor Bill Ayers -- entitled No Place To Hide:
It features former FBI informant Larry Grathwohl, who infiltrated
the Weather Underground and helped law enforcement put an end to their terrorist activities. Grathwohl's tips stopped several attempted bombing attacks by
the group. In the video, Grathwohl describes a high-level group meeting held by the group to discuss the logistics of the American People's Revolution that they were attempting to lead:
I brought up the subject of what’s going to happen after we take
over the government. You know, “we” become responsible then for
administrating, you know, 250 million people. And there was no answer. No one had given any thought to economics, how you are going to clothe and feed these people.
The only thing that I could get was that they expected the Cubans
and the North Vietnamese and the Chinese and the Russians would all
want to occupy different portions of the United States. They also
believed that their immediate responsibility would be to protect
against what they called “the counter-revolution.”
… I asked, “well what is going to happen to those people we can’t
reeducate, that are diehard capitalists?” and the reply was that they’d
have to be eliminated.
And when I pursued this further, they estimated they would have to eliminate 25 million people in these reeducation centers.
And when I say “eliminate,” I mean “kill.”
Twenty-five million people.
I want you to imagine sitting in a room with 25 people, most of
which have graduate degrees, from Columbia and other well-known
educational centers, and hear them figuring out the logistics for the
elimination of 25 million people.
And they were dead serious. (Emphasis added)
Liberals often accuse conservatives of being paranoid, suffering from delusions of Red Army bogeymen swooping down on America and locking everyone away in concentration camps. But we aren't making this stuff up. It has been discussed at the highest levels of academia and in all the major camps of the progressive movement. Does it not frighten you that a group of domestic terrorists, led by Ivy League-educated elites, sat around coldly planning the murder of 1 out of every 10 Americans for none other than purely political reasons? Does it not frighten you that the leader of that group mentored our current leading Presidential candidate? Does it not frighten you that government records were searched for evidence to discredit and destroy an ordinary citizen who dared to challenge that Presidential candidate? Does it not frighten you that the previous Democratic presidential candidate believes that the Communist reeducation camps set up in Vietnam were no big deal, because the former inmates of those camps are now "thriving?"
Maybe we'll end up like Sweden, with suffocating government control over education, career choices, employment opportunities, salaries, benefits, profit levels, and retirements, yet without the need for a secret police force, or armed troops in the streets, or "reeducation" camps. Maybe. But the truth is that the progressive intellectual and moral "brights" who walk the marble halls of our finest universities and political institutions seem to have no problem with "social justice" in America at any price, even the intimidation, imprisonment, and death of anyone who dares to oppose their vision of Utopia. If that's how we must achieve a "better America," then God help us all.
Among conservatives, the "story that won't die" about Barack Obama is the tale of his close ties to 60's radicals who still identify very strongly with Marxism. The biggie is William Ayres. Another radical who has now been linked to Obama is Michael Klonsky.
Anyone who has studied the Progressive movement in America, from its turn-of-the-twentieth-century origins up until today, should not be surprised that Marxism has always been the dominant philosophical influence of the contemporary American left. In other words, progressivism has always been synonymous with Marxist thought, particularly Marx's concern for the plight of the underpriviledged, under-educated, underpaid, and under-represented working class.
And just in case you haven't yet figured it out, progressivism and its core values of egalitarianism and benevolent distribution of wealth (as opposed to conservatism and its core values of peace through strength and the free market) is the dominant philosophy of America's "chattering class," those who craft and perpetuate our cultural mythos --philosophers, historians, social scientists, educators, journalists, artists, and entertainers. Thus our contemporary cultural narrative, as taught in universities, as expounded in editorial pages, as explored through songs and poems and films, is steeped in progressivism, and by extension, Marxist ideals.
But that wasn't always the case. The paradigm shift that brought about the wholesale conversion of the cultural chattering class to progressivism and Marxism was WWII, because the evils committed by Germany -- considered by many to be the cultural center of Western Europe -- caused the academic world to drastically re-think the theological, philosophical, and economic ideals that shaped Europe during its great period of colonial expansion during the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries.
Western intellectuals tackled not only what went wrong in Germany, but also what was happening in lands that had long been oppressed by European colonial governments and military forces, specifically Africa, India, and Southeast Asia. Support for "people's revolutions" around the world grew rapidly among intellectuals, who by this time (the early 1960's) had begun to teach their students that the treatment of natives by Western colonial powers was just as evil as the oppression inflicted by the Nazis on the European nations that they conquered.
Thus a new generation of students was indoctrinated in the philosophies of Marx, and taught to believe that capitalism and military power were de facto marks of evil, and that the third world revolutionaries who promised political and cultural equality and financial equity for their people were truly the last best hope for freedom and stability in the world. "Baby Boomers" like William Ayres and Michael Klonsky were part of this new generation. They willfully ignored, and in many cases supported, the unmitigated use of violence that coincided with "people's revolutions," and stood unwaveringly behind any Communist regime that was opposed by the United States government. And in the late 1960's, the Baby Boomers became the dominant force behind American popular culture, which remains dominated by leftist ideals to this very day.
Another branch of progressivism, one that has been heavily involved in issues of social justice for more than a century, is populated by many Christian activists who have dedicated their lives to organizing and enabling the poor and oppressed. They are almost exclusively pacifist: while they support non-violent civil disobedience, they universally condemn warfare and the sale of arms and munitions for profit. They argue that the resources spent on warfare would be much better spent educating and equipping the poor, and breaking down the barriers between the different classes within our society. Christian progressives also espouse thrift, stewardship, charitable giving, and communal living. Dorothy Day's Hospitality Houses and Clarence Jordan's Koinonia Farm are two of the best known examples of Christian-oriented communal fellowship.
Because of their absolute refusal to support the U.S. military -- even for "just" causes such as the liberation of Europe from the Nazis -- and because of their continuing efforts in support of labor unions, community organizing, and unrestricted government benefits for the poor, Christian progressives have often been accused of being Communists; this was especially true during the "red scare" decade of the 1950's. In truth, many early Christian progressives did form partnerships with socialist and Communist activists, beginning with the period of economic and racial unrest that blanketed America after the First World War. Ironically, these Christians considered the nascent Communist movement to be one of their strongest allies in the struggle to give a voice to the working poor. (Today's evangelical Christians should use this curious fact as food for thought and discussion.)
Finally, black intellectuals have wrestled with the themes of socialism and government intervention for over a century. Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. DuBois led both sides of this debate: Washington argued that the black man was capable of achieving surpassing greatness if the government simply kept others from impeding him; DuBois felt that the government had an obligation to directly give back both the financial and social status that it had robbed from the black man. DuBois' side eventually won out, and his line of thinking culminated in the democratic socialism espoused by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and in the Affirmative Action programs implemented by the Federal Government.
So what does all of this have to do with Barack Obama? Well, it's rather simple really -- Barack Obama is the first major Presidential nominee who is entirely a product of these three main streams of progressivism: Afrocentric democratic socialism, Christian social justice and pacifism, and the Marxist ideal of worker-led revolution, or "change" if you prefer. Obama's mother was a self-proclaimed Bohemian free spirit, politically progressive and disdainful of traditional Protestant Christianity. Obama went to Ivy League schools and was heavily involved in community organizing and social justice issues. He was mentored by William Ayres and became a trusted peer, aiding Ayres in his attempts to reform the public education system in Chicago. He struggled to identify with the black community (which originally shunned him because he is Ivy League educated and half white) so he joined Rev. Jeremiah Wright's Trinity United Church of Christ, perhaps the most Afrocentric church in Chicago and unabashed practitioners of social justice, community organizing, and Black Liberation Theology.
Naturally, Barack Obama is going to have many associations with people whom conservatives would immediately label "communist." (And a few associations with people such as William Ayres, who describe themselves as full-blown revolutionaries and Communists.)
So what does all of this mean? Well, first off let me say that I don't expect an immediate "people's revolution" and the establishment of the Democratic Socialist States of America if Obama wins. But what is troubling to me is that on the campaign trail, Obama himself has never been straightforward about where he stands within the continuum of hard-left, left, and moderate-left ideals. "Joe The Plumber" Wurzelbacher coaxed Obama into accidentally admitting that he believes government has an obligation to "spread the wealth around." But what else does Obama believe? It's probably safe to say that he doesn't directly endorse the kind of violent Communist revolution that Bill Ayers was hoping for thirty five years ago. But exactly what does he want? This?
House Democrats recently invited Teresa Ghilarducci, a professor at the
New School of Social Research, to testify before a subcommittee on her
idea to eliminate the preferential tax treatment of the popular
retirement plans. In place of 401(k) plans, she would have workers
transfer their dough into government-created "guaranteed retirement
accounts" for every worker. The government would deposit $600
(inflation indexed) every year into the GRAs. Each worker would also
have to save 5 percent of pay into the accounts, to which the
government would pay a measly 3 percent return.
Such a plan would of course make it impossible for workers and employers to afford to continue contributing to private 401(k) retirement accounts. And on top of potentially massive corporate income and capital gains tax increases, the loss of market capital from such a plan would be devastating not only to the stock market, but to our economy as a whole.
Also, Obama has pledged to slash defense spending, to eliminate new weapons systems development, and to pursue unilateral disarmament. He has even pledged to meet with the leaders of dangerous nations without preconditions. Just exactly what are his views on defense and the necessity of military preparedness? We really don't know.
The true danger in an Obama victory lies in the seriousness with which his star-struck radical leftist and Marxist supporters will interpret such a win. Will it be considered a "mandate" for hard-left public policies and a final attempt to purge the last traces of traditional conservative political thought, free market economics, and Protestant Christianity from contemporary American culture?
A sobering truth about progressivism is that it is fundamentally incompatible with free thought. Progressivism celebrates the triumph of the human intellect, and such a philosophical underpinning necessitates the creation of intellectual classes, particularly the "enlightened" vs. the "helpless" or "ignorant." The "brights" know that eventually the inferior intellectual classes will tire of being controlled. I absolutely believe that given enough access to government power, contemporary progressive intellectuals will try to stifle any dissent or inquiry that deviates from the progressive party line, because deep down inside they know that such chilling policies are the only way to keep the "non-enlightened" from becoming discontent with their intellectual overlords.
My concern about all of this can be summed up in one of Ronald Reagan's famous quotes -- it's not that our liberal friends are ignorant, it's just that they know so much that simply isn't true. If Barack Obama wins, we will have a perfect opportunity to find out just how much Progressives really know -- or don't have a common-sense clue about.
...
ADDED: Here's yet another video about Barack Obama that is being circulated through conservative blogs:
The video contains audio excerpts from a 1995 interview with Obama about his book Dreams of My Father. During the interview, Obama uses a favorite stereotype of progressives -- the "white executive" who lives out in the suburbs because he "doesn't want to pay taxes to inner city children." (I wonder what Obama thinks today, about his own Rev. Jeremiah Wright moving to one of Chicago's choicest suburbs?)
Obama also articulates the belief that his own salvation is dependent upon "a collective salvation of the country," which in turn is directly related to the elimination of systems that allow certain groups to prosper, while other groups (specifically African-Americans) are doing "bad if not worse."
How do we save the country? We "make sacrifices."
Obama is not just espousing Marxism here. Obama's statements also represent one of the fundamental tenants of Liberation Theology, which is that God not only judges individuals, but nations (that is, communities bound by covenant in the Old Testament sense, not just modern nation-states). The "Black Liberation Theology" of James Cone that Rev. Jeremiah Wright
so fervently taught to his flock at Trinity UCC is simply an
Afrocentric variation of classic liberation theology.
Liberation theology expands the definition of "sin" beyond personal transgressions; it teaches that communities can collectively sin, based on how they treat the least among themselves. (Recall that God judged the entire nation of Egypt, not just Pharaoh.) Liberation
theologians teach that even though God's plan for personal salvation
has been fulfilled through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, God's nature is consistent, and He still judges righteousness
collectively, just as He did in the Old Testament -- specifically among
communities who claim to follow Him and whose leaders publicly pray for
His
guidance. Under such a standard, of course, the United States stands
to be judged most harshly by God; this makes American liberation
theologians particularly fearful, because there have always been
drastic inequalities between the poorest and the richest in our nation.
I have blogged about economic injustice and God's judgment of nations elsewhere. And while I agree with much of what liberation theology teaches, I am strongly concerned about the Marxist plans that Obama and his minions have for America. There is a massive difference between a people led to justice through the work of the Holy Spirit voluntarily sacrificing in order to create equality and security among their bretheren, and a group of ruling elites forcing the masses to "sacrifice" in order to feed an enormous, inefficient, and corrupt bureaucracy. Such a system is guaranteed to make everyone poorer, and to do little else.
I haven't put together a random news story post in a while, so here goes --
The current Battleground Polls show a statistical tie between Barack Obama and John McCain. And the latest AP poll seems to confirm what Battleground is finding. But it's the trend of the Battleground results that is important -- over the past two weeks, Obama has been losing momentum, and McCain has been steadily gaining. Undecideds have remained relatively steady.
Yet John Zogby just released a poll showing a nearly 10 percentage point lead for Obama. What gives?
DJ Drummond the "go-to" source for poll analysis, has repeatedly stated that polling internal numbers have been skewed heavily in favor of registered Democrat voters, based on the premise that Democrats are more excited about their candidate and therefore will go to the polls in greater numbers. Drummond also notes that state-by-state polling results tell a different story than national polling results -- Barack Obama is in trouble in a lot of states that should be decidedly blue. (As for Oklahoma, my home state, McCain has a roughly 2:1 lead over Obama.)
The conclusion is simply this -- it ain't over 'till it's over. The race is currently too close to call. Despite the outward confidence of Democrats, they are secretly very nervous. Always remember this simple rule -- the only poll that matters is the one open on Nov. 4.
...
Connect the dots:
1) The United States Military is the only -- ONLY -- area specifically mentioned by Barack Obama as a target for budget cuts.
2) Joe Biden admits, "It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy."
3) Ralph Peters lists 15 possible tests, and concludes, "Think Bush weakened America? Just wait."
...
This item didn't receive much mainstream press coverage, but when Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was in New York last month addressing the United Nations General Assembly, a group of Quakers and Mennonites held a dinner and invited Ahmadinejad as their honored guest. The dinner was hailed as a success, and according to the American Friends Service Committee, "The president was
glad to meet. He was genuinely interested in further conversation with the
religious community and engaging in a real discussion with the U.S.
government." A concurrent counter-protest, held outside the hotel that hosted the dinner, was organized by Women United, the Jewish Action Alliance, Stand With Us, Center for
Security Policy, the Catholic League, the The Ethics & Religious
Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, and the Alliance of
Iranian Women. It is interesting to observe how Christians who espouse absolute pacifism, and those who support the doctrine of Holy War, choose to interact with leaders of nations hostile to the United States and Israel.
...
Those who consider "spreading the wealth around" to be a superior economic policy should note that a cholera outbreak in Africa's most oppressive Communist nation, Zimbabwe, has already claimed dozens of lives. When Zimbabwe was Rhodesia, it was the bread basket of Africa. But after years of violent, corrupt, and inept Communist rule at the hands if dictator Robert Mugabe, the nation has been economically destroyed. Zimbabwe no longer has enough resources to provide even basic health care for its people.
Meanwhile, the same level of corruption and ineptitude that has crippled Zimbabwe has also severely damaged Venezuelan oil production. Oil is Venezuela's primary source of income, and falling oil prices coupled with Hugo Chavez' clumsy mismanagement of Venezuela's oil production infrastructure could mean trouble ahead for this nation. We could very well see a Venezuela-Cuba-Russia alliance form during the next 24 months.
Here is a comprehensive report on ACORN activities in Oklahoma. I guess the Obama campaign's $800,000 never made it this far south. Apparently ACORN abandoned its OKC office with rent left unpaid. Sifting through the papers that ACORN left behind, a reporter found evidence of deliberate attempts by ACORN (supposedly a "non-partisan" organization) to use their organization efforts strictly for the benefit of Democrats.
...
Stanley Kurtz recently published a must-read piece at National Review Online about ACORN's direct involvement in the low-income sub-prime mortgage business. Poor people didn't break the banks, but outfits like ACORN certainly helped because ACORN failed to understand simple mathematics -- within any income group looking to purchase homes within any price range (starter homes to McMansions) there will be a finite number of people who are a match for both the kind of home you are selling, and the cost of the loan. ACORN simply kept pushing people into mortgage loans they couldn't afford, after the pool of qualified home buyers had essentially run dry.
Steven Sailer published a similar article a few weeks earlier, citing the pursuit of diversity over common sense as a prime reason for bank failures.
Orson Scott Card believes that if the chain of events leading to the current credit crisis clearly pointed to Republican malfeasance, the mainstream press would have immediately christened it "Fanniegate" and would still be running lead news stories about every Republican who was involved. He asks, "Is getting people to vote for Barack Obama
so important that you will throw away everything that journalism is
supposed to stand for?"
But then again, who knows? Maybe it's all God's doing. It seems that a lot of charismatic/Word of Faith churches who preach the "prosperity gospel" foolishly interpreted easy credit as a blessing from God. Yet another reason to stay as far away from the prosperity gospel peddlers as possible.
...
With all the worrying going on about politics, and the helplessness that each of us as individuals seems to feel when financial and economic circumstances are completely out of our hands, it is easy to succumb to acedia. "At its Greek root, acedia means the absence of care, and in personal
terms it means refusing to care, even that you can't care. It is a
supreme form of indifference, a kind of spiritual morphine: you know
the pain is there, but can't rouse yourself to give a damn."
For Christians, acedia represents a pattern of thinking that, along with pride and anger, has the potential to lead us into periods of deep despair. Kathleen Norris writes,
Acedia in particular could shake the very foundations of monastic
life: once a monk succumbed to the notion that his efforts at daily
prayer and contemplation were futile, life loomed like a prison
sentence, day after day of nothingness. In a similar way, acedia can
make a once-treasured marriage or vocation seem oppressive and
meaningless.
Western culture lost the word acedia because the monks' subtle
psychology of the bad thoughts was eventually solidified into the
Church's doctrine of the seven deadly sins. What the monks had
recognized as temptations that all people are subject to became seen as
specific acts or omissions, and as acedia was not easily characterized
as either, it was subsumed into the sin of sloth, which came to signify
physical laziness rather than a more serious existential indifference. (emphasis added)
Even though the world around us confounds us, we should never forget that there is always hope in Christ, and in the work necessary to build His Kingdom. In the face of insurmountable adversity and turmoil, what can we do? Perhaps it is as simple as helping the defeated among us wash away the dust of everyday life:
With her hair dyed an unnatural shade of red and a thin green shawl
draped over her, Carmelite Sister Begona Arroya stands out among nuns
in a convent overlooking St. Peter’s Square.
But when she is ministering in southern Spain to prostitutes from all over the world, she blends right in.
“I dress so I won’t intimidate the women I need to reach,” said
Sister Begona, 41, with a smile.
... “It is so terrible. The girls get in the car, and when they come back,
most look completely gone, like they don’t exist, they are destroyed by
this,” she said. “We talk to them and pray with them. We serve them hot
tea.”
We can also pray for our brothers and sisters in Christ around the world whose lives are threatened every day because they believe in the Gospel. In Saudi Arabia, a young Christian girl was recently burned alive by her father in an honor killing, because she had published a profession of Christian faith on the Internet. And this weekend, a young Christian missionary was gunned down by a Taliban remnant group in Kabul, Afghanistan.
And finally, we can pray for our nation and for ourselves as we vote. We can pray that the election is honest, and we can ask for God's divine guidance to be bestowed upon the winner. Above all, we can ask that we, the American people, continually seek His will and work to build His Kingdom.
And why did it fail? Would you believe ... "People who were already able to afford health care began to stop
paying for it so they could get it for free," said Dr. Kenny Fink, the
administrator for Med-QUEST at the Department of Human Services. "I
don't believe that was the intent of the program."
No shit, Sherlock. But can you blame them? Think about it. You and your wife both work, you make a decent living, and then get gouged by the government through taxes so you can have the privilege of paying for someone else's health care, while barely being able to afford your own. Who wouldn't want to get back just a little of what they were forced to pay into the system?
The reason for this, of course, is that the failure of socialized medicine in Hawaii doesn't fit "the narrative." It doesn't jibe with the image of the compassionate Big Rock Candy Government lending a helping hand to anyone in need, and the unteachable, pitifully-ignorant masses wiping the tears from their eyes and kissing the feet of their Dear Leaders, unspeakably grateful to them for "leveling the playing field" and "spreading the wealth around."
...
The next item is the endorsement of Barack Obama by Colin Powell. Powell is a Republican (Ooooooooo!) and served as Secretary of State during George W. Bush's first term, so the cable networks, mainstream media bloggers, and newspapers have been wild with anticipation about it all weekend -- there used to be a lot of buzz among Republicans about a Colin Powell presidential run, and if Powell is endorsing Obama, then that must mean that a lot of Republicans will give Obama a second look, and if that happens ... so you see why the mainstream media is so excited.
Now let's look at another interesting political endorsement -- the endorsement of John McCain by JOE LIEBERMAN. Remember him? The 2000 DEMOCRAT VICE PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE? Bet you didn't even hear about that endorsement, unless you read a lot of conservative blogs. Where is the media hype? Where is the buzz? Where is the day-in/day-out news cycle coverage of his continued campaigning for McCain? Why isn't every Sunday talking-head show chattering endlessly about it?
I'll tell you why -- if Lieberman is endorsing McCain, then a lot of disgruntled/PUMA/conservative/redneck Democrats might give McCain a second look, and if that happens ... which doesn't fit the narrative of an Obama landslide of hope and change on Nov. 4. So it cannot be discussed, period.
...
Finally we come to "Joe the Plumber," Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher, a plumber's apprentice from Ohio who was approached by Barack Obama last week during an afternoon of door-to-door campaigning by The One. Wurzelbacher committed the unpardonable sin -- he coaxed His Holiness into giving an off-the-cuff speech, sans teleprompter, and Obama made a little Marxist Freudian slip. John McCain seized upon Obama's slip and mercilessly beat him with it during last Wednesday's debate.
The dirt-diggers started Googling. And the next morning, six-term Sen. Biden launched
the first salvo against the Ohio entrepreneur on NBC’s Today Show,
challenging the veracity of his story: “I don’t have any ‘Joe the
Plumbers’ in my neighborhood that make $250,000 a year.” (Does Biden have ANY plumbers in his neighborhood? -ed)
... Wurzelbacher never claimed to be making $250,000 a year. He told Obama
that he might be “getting ready to buy a company that makes about
$250,000, $270,000″ a year. His simple point was that Obama’s punitive
tax proposals would make it more difficult to realize his dream.
Obama’s followers couldn’t handle the incontrovertible truth. Left-wing blogs immediately went to work, blaring headlines like “Not A Real $250k Plumber!” Next, they falsely accused
Wurzelbacher of not being registered to vote (he’s registered in Lucas
County, Ohio, and voted as a Republican in this year’s primary).
... Then, suddenly, the journalists who wouldn’t lift a finger to
investigate Barack Obama’s longtime relationships with Weather
Underground terrorist Bill Ayers and Jeremiah Wright sprang into action
rifling through citizen Joe Wurzelbacher’s tax records. Politico.com
reported breathlessly: “Samuel J. Wurzelbacher has a lien placed
against him to the tune of $1,182.92. The lien is dated from January of
‘07.” Press outlets probed his divorce
records. The local plumbers’ union, which has endorsed Obama, claimed
he didn’t do their required apprenticeship work and didn’t have a license to work outside his local township. (DailyKos also published Wurzelbacher's home address. -ed)
... After Wurzelbacher told Katie Couric that Obama’s rhetorical tap dance was “almost as good as Sammy Davis, Jr.,” the inevitable cries of “bigotry” followed. (There are now tens of thousands of hits on the Internet for “Joe the Plumber racist.”)
And if that wasn't enough, The Messiah then took it upon himself to mock Joe Wurzelbacher:
A commenter noted, "Obama says the words "a plumber making $250,000 a year" with such disdainful contempt. Like a mere plumber couldn't possibly
work his way into the elite white-collar tax bracket that Obama and his
Ivy League pals inhabit, oh no, that's a laughable presumption for
peasants like Joe."
Jim Treacher observed, "Is it just me, or have we seen more vetting of an Ohio plumber in the
last 2 days than we've seen of Obama's mentor William Ayers all year?
(Not to mention Obama himself!) Both Bill and Joe are embarrassing to
Obama because they've given us glimpses of his true nature, and yet
only one of them is being put through the wringer. Only one of them has
to fear for his job. Weird, huh?" He also notes, "The whole "He's not a licensed plumber!" non sequitur is really
fantastic. So, if you happen to be standing in front of Obama when he
publicly reveals his socialism, what does the media do? Demands to see your papers. That's just delicious, is what that is."
Well here's a funny thing, Mr. Messiah-to-Assholes. I happen to know an honest, hard-working young man who is an apprentice plumber. He is not "licensed." Currently he manages a plumbing supply store. Yet a friend and customer of his, a retiring plumber, really, really likes my friend and has offered to sell him his plumbing business when he retires. When that happens, of course, my friend will get his license and join the union. Incredibly, it happens all the time! So thank you, Barack Obama, for making it perfectly clear how you feel about people like my friend -- "Screw you, you'll never be successful, and I only give a shit about you when it makes me look good. And here's your puny tax cut, because you're too dumb to ever make enough money to afford my glorious tax increases."
I've written a lot during the past few months with regard to concerns that I have about an Obama presidency. But finally -- FINALLY -- I can tell you without reservation why Obama in the White House scares the living shit out of me. Well, actually I think I'll let IowaHawk tell you:
Politicians -- Sarah Palin, Bill Clinton, et al. -- obviously have to
put up with some rude, nasty shit, but it's right there in the jobs
description. Joe the Plumber is different. He was a guy tossing a
football with his kid in the front yard of his $125,000 house when a
politician picked him out as a prop for a 30 second newsbite for the
cable news cameras. Joe simply had the temerity to speak truth (or, if
you prefer, an uninformed opinion) to power, for which the
politico-media axis apparently determined that he must be humiliated,
harassed, smashed, destroyed. The viciousness and glee with which they
set about the task ought to concern anyone who still cares about
citizen participation, and freedom of speech, and all that old crap
they taught in Civics class before politics turned into Narrative
Deathrace 3000, and Web 2.0 turned into Berlin 1932.0.
Make no mistake about this. This is pure Nazi-style propaganda. You want to Godwin me? Fine. But the media's obsession with Joe The Plumber is meant for one thing and one thing only, which is to distract you from what Barack Obama actually said in reply to Joe's question. That's a primary function of propaganda, and the media is serving it up in heaping spoonfuls right now.
When radicals went a little crazy and burned down the Reichstag in 1933 (the assembly hall for the Wiemar German Parliament) Adolf Hitler and his minions wasted no time demanding an "investigation" into the fire, while stirring up fear of an impending violent revolution if "something wasn't done" about the German Communist Party. The Nazis quickly fixed blame for the fire upon a group of Communist operatives, and Chancellor Hitler wasted no time petitioning President von Hindenburg to enact restrictions aimed at limiting the influence of the Communist Party in Wiemar Germany. With the Communist party outlawed, the Nazis and their sympathizers were able to easily win control of Parliament. And because they were caught up in the sensationalism of the Riechstag fire conspiracy, average Germans failed to notice that the real purpose of Hitler's decrees was to limit all civil liberties in Germany, and outlaw every publication critical of the Nazi cause. Hitler had successfully used the Reichstag fire to distract Germans just long enough to establish the mechanism that would enable him to gain absolute power over the German government. The man was a master of smokescreen propaganda.
Obama's message. Obama's message. Obama's message. Please stay focused. Ignore the smokescreen. Listen to the message.
With the exception of African-Americans (and I do wonder if they’re
doing better since welfare changed in the 1990s), America is still
a singularly fluid social and economic country. That’s part of why,
despite our vast immigrant influxes, we don’t have the banlieus of
France (riot central a few years ago, as you may recall), or the
tremendous immigrant unrest one sees in other European countries such
as Germany, Italy and England. Our immigrants start poor, work hard
and, always, have the possibility of “moving on up” — and this is true even if not all of them are able to act upon that possibility. It’s the American dream.
Obama’s plan, however, announces the end of the American dream. In
Obama’s USA, there’s no benefit to be had in moving on up. If you move
to the head of the line, his government is just going to bat you right
back down again.
There’s no doubt, of course, that those who are really, really rich
will probably still stay fairly rich, because their vast wealth may
take decades of government siphoning before it vanishes entirely. The
problem is that those who wish to be rich — and who for America’s whole
history could reasonably make that happen — will never get rich in
Obama’s America. That’s what Obama told Joe the Plumber.
America just heard the President Presumptive tell them, essentially, “don’t dream too big. Don’t dare to dream too big, because if you do, we’re just going to chop you down to size, so that everyone is the same.”
That is not an American recipe. It is a recipe that’s been tried
several times and all it ever does is sap people of ambition,
creativity and freedom. What’s the point in excelling if your
excellence will be the equal of mediocrity? What’s the point of
dreaming, if your dreams are going to be subject to the whims of others?
America likes its dreams, its ambitions and its freedoms. Between Obama’s slip-of-the-tongue and the increasingly troubling stories of voter fraud - excuse me, voter registration fraud (which is mean to enable voter fraud) - rampant in one state after another, he’s making a lot of Americans wary.
America is the can-do nation; it does not like being told it can’t do something. Americans do not like being told not to dream glorious dreams.
They do not like being told that excellence must subdue itself. And
they really don’t like cheating the vote. And while Americans may
tolerate little lies, the big, bold ones can get under their skin.
Things turn on a dime. This election may well turn not on who “Joe
the Plumber” is - but who Barack Obama is revealing himself - finally -
to be.
Team Messiah knows this. They really do. That's why they've resorted to harassment and intimidation in order to suppress any effort to connect Obama with William Ayers and Jeremiah Wright. That's why they want to shut down conservative talk radio and blogs with the "Fairness Doctrine." That's why they've targeted Sarah Palin. That's why they are destroying Joe The Plumber. And they will continue to take away your right to free speech and destroy average people as long as it allows them to keep their precious 'Obama Is Our Savior' narrative untarnished.
Hitler had his gangs of youth -- not really card-carrying Nazis, so their association could be disavowed whenever it was beneficial -- to do his dirty work. And today's liberal media has the loony fever-swamps of Daily Kos and Democratic Underground and MoveOn.org. They're not official paid members of the Obama Campaign or staff writers at The New York Times, but somehow they always end up being go-to sources every time the mainstream media needs pro-Obama dirt for its front pages.
It is now obvious beyond all counter-reasoning that the very things liberals accused Bush and Cheney of promoting -- fascism, statism, intimidation, persecution -- are the very same tactics that liberals can't wait to employ against enemies of the Messiah once they assume power. The difference is that you would have a damn hard time finding specific examples of exactly how Bush and Cheney intimidated, persecuted, and indoctrinated average Americans. Yet I've just given you a whole laundry list of examples of how Obama supporters on the Internet, in the mainstream press, and perhaps eventually in the Commerce Department, Justice Department, IRS, and Congress, will do whatever it takes to establish Obamaism as the lone ideology that is legal in the United States. Any dissenters will be castigated as liars, capitalist thieves, and racists. That's going to be the big one. RACIST.
Of course we still have the power to vote. And in 2010, if we no longer approve of our new socialist overlords, we can vote them out. Just like we did in 1994. Because unlike 20th century Europeans, we Americans still have the power to decide our own destiny.
A big Nelson Muntz "Ha-Ha!" to the voters of Palm Beach Florida, who replaced sleazy Republican Mark Foley with sleazy Democrat Tim Mahoney. Mahoney won Foley's House of Representatives seat after it was revealed that Foley had sent sexually suggestive text messages to teenage boys working in Washington, DC.
On Monday, it was revealed that Mahoney had an affair with a staffer named Patricia Allen. Mahoney promised Allen in a cushy $50,000 per year job with the agency that produces his campaign ads, and allegedly agreed to pay her $121,000 in order to avoid a lawsuit.
It was further revealed today that Mahoney -- who is married, of course -- might have been involved in yet another affair at the same time he was seeing Patricia Allen. Ironically, Mahoney fashioned himself as a champion of family values and morality and promised to help restore integrity to the House of Representatives. (By the way, Speaker Pelosi, how is that whole "most ethical Congress in history" thing working out?)
It seems that Democrat leaders will throw Mahoney under the bus (a very unusual thing for Democrats to do to a party member accused of a sex scandal) but only because they feel assured that they will retain a majority in the House. Spealer Pelosi has called for a full ethics investigation (although the House is currently adjourned), and the FBI is reportedly involved. As for Mahoney, he released a non-descript statement that said in part: “I have not violated my oath of office, nor have I violated any laws,
and I consider this to be a private matter. No
marriage is perfect, but our private life is our private life, and I am
sorry that these allegations have caused embarrassment and heartache.”
Naturally the talking heads on the major cable news networks are swarming all over this story:
NURENBERG: Five weeks before the election it seems unlikely that those Democrats will let the issue die.
MALVEAUX: This is the last thing they anticipated five weeks before the midterm elections.
CHRIS CUOMO: The implications could be very big for the election.
LIASSON: I think the question now is how this affects the midterms.
EPSTEIN: You begin to get a very strong, wave and a sentiment out in the public to throw the bums out.
HARRIS: A potentially massive, metastasizing scandal, just five weeks before Election Day.
Ha-ha again! That was the press buzzing two years ago about Mark Foley. The Mahoney case elicited virtually nothing yesterday. Sure, it will get lots of local coverage and plenty of writeups (like this one) on blogs, but look for the network talking heads to give this story only scant, obligatory attention.
After all, they have an election to win for Barack Obama.
UPDATE - NewsBusters is reporting that in the two weeks following the breaking news about Mark Foley in 2006, the Big Three networks aired 152 stories. In the three days following the breaking news about Tim Mahoney, there were ZERO broadcast news stories from the Big Three networks about the scandal.
If you follow the conservative blogosphere, you are no doubt aware of some of these curious stories:
In Ohio, during the first week in October, residents could register to vote and cast a ballot at the same time in an effort dubbed "Golden Week." Needless to say, Democrats and their minions at ACORN pushed very hard to enfranchise thousands of homeless and severely low income Ohioans, mostly Blacks and Hispanics. Although the folks involved in this effort seemed sincere, some of the results, needless to say, were quite comical.
Cuyahoga County Election Board members grilled representatives of a
community group Tuesday about their links to suspicious voter
registration cards.
In one case, a Cleveland resident was registered to vote three times in a single day, listing two different addresses.
The man's registration was submitted to the Board of Elections by ACORN.
... Board Member Robert Frost said the group failed to follow guidelines in
its own manual to turn over suspected voter fraud to law enforcement to
investigate.
Election officials subpoenaed three voters to appear before the Board next week to explain their multiple registrations.
The list includes a Cuyahoga County resident whose name appears on 22 registration cards submitted in six months.
Barkley estimated he'd registered to vote "10 to 15" times after
canvassers for ACORN, whose political wing has endorsed Barack Obama,
relentlessly pursued him and others.
Claims such as his have sparked election officials to probe ACORN.
"I kept getting approached by folks who asked me to register,"
Barkley said. "They'd ask me if I was registered. I'd say yes, and
they'd ask me to do it [register] again.
"Some of them were getting paid to collect names. That was their sob story, and I bought it," he said.
Barkley is one of at least three people who have been subpoenaed by
the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections as part of a wider inquiry into
possible voter fraud by ACORN. The group seeks to register low-income
voters, who skew overwhelmingly Democratic.
State
authorities on Tuesday raided an organization that registers low-income
people to vote, alleging that its canvassers falsified forms with bogus
names, fake addresses or famous personalities.
The secretary of state's office launched an investigation after
noticing that names did not match addresses and that most members of
the Dallas Cowboys appeared to be registering in Nevada to vote in
November's general election.
"Some of these (forms) were
facially fraudulent; we basically had the starting lineup for the
Dallas Cowboys," Secretary of State Ross Miller said. "Tony Romo is not
registered to vote in Nevada. Anyone trying to pose as Terrell Owens
won't be able to cast a ballot."
Agents with the secretary of state and state attorney general
offices served a search warrant on the headquarters of the Association
of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN, at 953 E. Sahara
Ave. shortly after 9 a.m. They seized voter registration forms and
computer databases to determine how many fake forms were submitted and
identify employees who were responsible.
They also sought information regarding current and past employees and managers.
"We don't know how many (falsified forms) are here; there may be
two, or there may be thousands," said Bob Walsh, spokesman for the
secretary of state's office.
Registration fraud typically stems from workers striving to meet their daily quota of submitted voter forms, Miller said.
Most organizations require their workers to sign up 20 voters a day.
Fraudulent forms start filtering in when workers struggle to meet their
quota and either fill in bogus names or accept documents with names
that are clearly falsified, Miller said.
Officials in Missouri,
a hard-fought jewel in the presidential race, are sifting through
possibly hundreds of questionable or duplicate voter-registration forms
submitted by an advocacy group that has been accused of election fraud
in other states.
Charlene Davis, co-director of the election board in Jackson County, where Kansas City is, said the fraudulent registration forms came from the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN. She said they were bogging down work Wednesday, the final day Missourians could register to vote.
"I don't even know the entire scope of it because registrations are
coming in so heavy," Davis said. "We have identified about 100
duplicates, and probably 280 addresses that don't exist, people who
have driver's license numbers that won't verify or Social Security numbers that won't verify. Some have no address at all."
And there's more in Wisconsin, Connecticut, and Indiana; apparently Indianapolis
has 105% of its eligible population now registered to vote. Is ACORN being targeted unfairly? Not if you consider that ACORN was involved in virtually every major voter registration fraud investigation during the 2006 and 2004 elections, including investigations in Ohio, Missouri, and Washington State -- a case described by state officials as "the worst case of voter-registration fraud in state history."
How does ACORN respond to these allegations? By playing the "Republicans hate the poor" card, of course:
[Jess Ordower, Midwest director of ACORN] said Wednesday that ACORN registered about 53,500 people in Missouri
this year. He believes his group is being targeted because some
politicians don't want that many low-income people having a voice.
"It's par for the course," he said. "When you're doing more
registrations than anyone else in the country, some don't want
low-income people being empowered to vote. There are pretty targeted
attacks on us, but we're proud to be out there doing the patriotic
thing getting people registered to vote."
So, what do we make of all of this?
Although ACORN's goal is noble, their methods, quite frankly, stink. Paying workers based on how many signatures they have at the end of the day is irresponsible and an invitation to fraud. Can't ACORN find workers and volunteers (say, from local churches or high schools or colleges) who would be willing to sign up voters without being paid off? Is the value of the franchise, undoubtedly our most precious right, now worth nothing more than "What's in it for me?" And why are poor Americans so lacking in initiative that they cannot register to vote on their own?
This reminds me of the current row over requiring voters to present an ID at the polls in order to vote. "Poor people would be discriminated against," is the story we always hear. It's true that a surprisingly high number of poor people do not have driver's licenses (either they've never applied, or their driving privilege has been suspended, usually due to unpaid tickets -- don't get me started on that!) but it is relatively easy to get a state-issued ID card if you have a Social Security card and a birth certificate. Again, why are poor Americans so lacking in initiative that they cannot obtain proper documentation and get an ID card?
Am I understanding this right? -- the forebears of today's Black youth risked their lives to challenge Jim Crow and earn the right to vote for their people, yet poor Blacks today just can't be bothered to get an ID card or register to vote on their own? Is it because numerous stupid, pointless run-ins with the police and other authorities (those unpaid parking tickets again!) have created such overwhelming anxiety and contempt for the state among Blacks? Or do they simply think that the system is for suckers, because groups like ACORN will always be there to toss the system aside and guarantee them unfettered access to the polls?
A responsible organization would have reformed itself by now, and gotten rid of procedures that it knew to be an invitation to fraud. But ACORN-tinged voter registration fraud seems to be increasing, so I'm going to draw the logical conclusion and state that ACORN is not a responsible organization. When you add in the provisional ballots cast by by the same people who were fraudulently registered to vote, you have an organization that seems to encourage actual voter fraud. And the $800,000 funneled by the Obama campaign to ACORN through a front organization, Citizen Services, Inc., doesn't exactly give ACORN an air of impartiality.
Fortunately for us, county election boards take elections much more seriously than ACORN, and their efforts at identifying and discarding fraudulent ballots led the New York Times to famously report that nationwide, there was scant evidence of actual voter fraud from 2001 through 2006. That's reassuring, but things could be better.
I know that it is difficult to get poor and minority residents to vote. I don't have a good solution for this problem, but I am frustrated by how badly existing efforts have failed. Really frustrated. And I know that blaming the Republicans for everything is nothing more than a cop-out. Certainly some segment of the population does not want to see their own interests overturned in favor of the poor, and will work very hard to keep the voices of the poor from being heard. But does that justify voter fraud in the name of the poor? If every poor person in America voted Democrat, that would be fine with me. I really don't care how they vote. I just wish that their votes could be obtained in an honest fashion, free from race baiting, fear mongering, and fraud.
Okay -- enough ranting for now. Here in Oklahoma, the last day to register to vote is tomorrow, Oct. 10. If you are not registered to vote, DO IT TODAY. And do it legally, please.
...
ADDED:Michelle Malkin is reporting that an Ohio judge has ruled that Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner is in violation of Federal election laws:
A federal court ruled tonight that Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer
Brunner violated federal election laws by not taking adequate steps to
validate the identity of newly registered voters.
The ruling from U.S. District Court Judge George C. Smith called the
identification breakdown “a serious problem” and ordered Brunner to
immediately comply with federal requirements to match voter
registration data with the information in the Ohio Bureau of Motor
Vehicles and Social Security Administration databases. The court
accused Brunner of failing to provide county election administrators
with “an effective way to access and review mismatches.” She
immediately appealed the ruling.
I suppose I should ask the question that many others are asking -- if Democrats are so certain that they have already won this election, why are they working so hard to steal it?
The House of Representatives passed an amended version of the "bailout" bill on Friday -- a bill that is now over 450 pages in length (as opposed to three pages when it was first presented by the Treasury Secretary) and includes a staggering $100 billion+ in targeted special-interest tax breaks and pork barrel spending.
As I said before, this bill is our 9% confidence Congress at its worst. It gives Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, whose monumental misjudgments in part kept us from addressing the problem sooner, an unprecedented amount of unchecked power. There are compelling arguments why it could fail spectacularly, just like Hoover's depression-proofing plans did in 1930. And really -- if we are on the brink of disaster, how in God's name can we afford all this new government spending? My feeling, obviously, is that we are not at the brink of disaster, and that the current crisis was manufactured -- after years of Democrat stalling and opposing any measure that would reign in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- solely to justify the biggest government power grab in my lifetime.
And again following what I wrote in an earlier blog post, the bill still completely fails to address the underlying cause of the problem -- the ever-increasing number of loans that banks were forced to make to un-creditworthy borrowers. But in an effort to sugar-coat that critical defect, the "bailout" bill increased the FDIC insurance limit on bank deposits from $100,000 to $250,000, and was further amended to include a mandate requiring health insurance coverage "parity" between psychotherapy and treatment of mental disorders, and physical therapy and treatment of physical disorders. Neither of these things are bad (they are both good, actually) but they do not make up for this fundamental shortcoming.
Actually,
the thinking behind the push for "parity" and the now-questionable
decades-long push to extend mortgages to "underserved" groups seems
eerily parallel: 1) Stodgy/greedy old bankers say they can't afford to lend to minorities who don't meet traditional mortgage criteria. But we have a noble social goal to fulfill and we know they're wrong! ... 2) Stodgy/greedy
old health plan administrators say they can't afford to cover
hard-to-diagnose mental problems (e.g., anxiety) and substance abuse to
the same extent that they cover easy-to-diagnose physical problems. But
we have a noble social goal and ....
The article, written by Steve Malanga, to which Kaus links with respect to the "noble social goal" of loans for low income and minority borrowers, is so good that I'm going to excerpt it at length:
In the early 1990s I attended a conference designed to teach
journalists the tools of an emerging field known as computer-assisted
investigative reporting. One of the hottest sessions of the conference
explained how journalists could replicate stories that other papers had
done locally using computer tools, including one especially popular
project to determine if banks in your community were discriminating
against minority borrowers in making mortgages. One newspaper, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, had already won a Pulitzer Prize for its computer-assisted series on the subject, and others, including the Washington Post and the Detroit Free Press,
had also weighed in with their own analysis based on government loan
data. Everyone sounded keen to learn if their local banks were guilty,
too.
Although academic researchers leveled substantial criticisms against
these newspaper efforts (namely, that they relied on incomplete data
and did not take into account lower savings rates, higher debt levels,
and higher loan defaults rates for many minority borrowers), bank
lending to minority borrowers still became an enormous issue—mostly
because newspaper reporters and editors in this pre-talk radio,
pre-blogging era were determined to make it so. Editorialists called
for the government to force banks to end the alleged discrimination,
and they castigated federal banking regulators who said they saw no
proof of wrongdoing in the data.
... One economist for the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. who looked
more deeply into the data, for instance, found that the difference in
denial rates on loans for whites and minorities could be accounted for
by such factors as higher rates of delinquencies on prior loans for
minorities, or the inability of lenders to verify information provided
to them by some minority applicants.
Ignoring the import of such data, federal officials went on a
campaign to encourage banks to lower their lending standards in order
to make more minority loans. One result of this campaign is a
remarkable document produced by the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston in
1998 titled “Closing the Gap: A Guide to Equal Opportunity Lending”.
Quoting from a study which declared that “underwriting
guidelines…may be unintentionally racially biased,” the Boston Fed then
called for what amounted to undermining many of the lending criteria
that banks had used for decades. It told banks they should consider
junking the industry’s traditional debt-to-income ratio, which lenders
used to determine whether an applicant’s income was sufficient to cover
housing costs plus loan payments. It instructed banks that an
applicant’s “lack of credit history should not be seen as a negative
factor” in obtaining a mortgage, even though a mortgage is the biggest
financial obligation most individuals will undertake in life. In cases
where applicants had bad credit (as opposed to no credit), the Boston
Fed told banks to “consider extenuating circumstances” that might still
make the borrower creditworthy. When applicants didn’t have enough
savings to make a down payment, the Boston Fed urged banks to allow
loans from nonprofits or government assistance agencies to count toward
a down payment, even though banks had traditionally disallowed such
sources because applicants who have little of their own savings
invested in a home are more likely to walk away from a loan when they
have trouble paying. (emphasis added)
Of course, the new federal standards couldn’t just apply to
minorities. If they could pay back loans under these terms, then so
could the majority of loan applicants. Quickly, in other words, these
became the new standards in the industry. [Perhaps this is where one could make the case for corporate greed among lending institutions and bond traders. -ed] In 1999, the New York Times
reported that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were easing credit
requirements for mortgages it purchased from lenders, and as the
housing market boomed, banks embraced these new standards with a
vengeance. Between 2004 and 2007, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac became the
biggest purchasers of subprime mortgages from all kinds of applicants,
white and minority, and most of these loans were based on the lending
standards promoted by the government.
Meanwhile, those who raced to make these mortgages were lionized.
Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies even invited
Angelo Mozilo, CEO of the lender which made more loans purchased by
Fannie and Freddie than anyone else, Countrywide Financial, to give its
prestigious 2003 Dunlop Lecture on the subject of "The American Dream
of Homeownership: From Cliché to Mission.” A brief, innocuous
description of the event still exists online here.
Of course Mozilo is now the disgraced former CEO of Countrywide, who resigned after it was discovered that he not only massaged his company's books in order to pay himself and his cronies undeserved bonuses, but he also gave sweetheart mortgage deals to influential members of Congress.
The hero worship of Mozilo reminded me of the way that Franklin Raines, former OMB director under Bill Clinton and former CEO of Fannie Mae, was praised for his "outstanding leadership" by Rep. Maxine Waters in 2004. The criterion for her lavish compliment? "The GSE's have exceeded their housing goals." Apparently it didn't matter one whit to Rep. Waters that Raines' accounting shenanigans caused Fannie Mae to eat nearly $10 billion, or that he received at least $50 million in undeserved bonuses -- none of which has he ever offered to pay back, or give to his precious struggling low-income mortgage-holders.
Unfortunately, such irresponsibility is often part of the whirlwind of populism that accompanies broad-based "we're helping the little guy and sticking it to the system and everyone knows we're doing the right thing" policy efforts. And in the case of loans for minorities and low-income borrowers, a crusade against "racial discrimination" became the primary motivator. And no one -- NO ONE -- dares to challenge a crusade against "racial discrimination" because any such challenge would be labeled a de facto case of racism. Because if you want a career as a civic leader or politician, or if you want your business to be successful or have a non-adversarial relationship with the government, then you will avoid being smeared as a racist at all costs, even if it means the abdication of common sense.
So far, only one Democrat has admitted his party's failure to objectively study the problems at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. And characteristically, the Democrat leadership has announced, in completely unambiguous terms, that they bear absolutely no responsibility for the current banking mess. Their willingness to lie about this issue is surpassed perhaps only by the willingness of Republicans to say anything or sign anything in order to avoid being labeled as "racists."
And guess who's left paying the bill? That's right -- us. The American taxpayer. We will pay for it through outright taxation. We will pay for it through higher mortgage fees, higher interest rates, and less available credit. And really -- is anyone expecting this $700 billion to actually "fix" the problem? Of course not. This bill only sets a precedent for request after request after request for bailouts to come. Joe Biden is already talking about giving courts the power to reset the principal amount for mortgage loans. What kind of financial insanity will be next?
Elizabeth Scalia, "The Anchoress," is by far my favorite Christian blogger. Over the past few weeks, she has been praying and fasting. Really doing it. Really. She had this to say a few days ago:
My prayer is not for victory. It is for the
very best outcome for the country, and for God’s will to be done. Our
ways are not God’s way, nor our minds God’s mind. To us, the “best”
outcome might seem obvious, but really, when you think about it, when
does God ever do the “obvious” thing?
... I’m thinking we’re in the middle of a mystery, that this whole, odd,
unpredictable and too-long election season has been run along one of
those threads connecting things seen and unseen, and we are so
disoriented today that we do not really know which outcome is the
outcome pleasing to God, and meant - by Him - to draw us into Himself.
The Holy Spirit, of course, uses whatever He chooses, to bring
things about. Who knows if we are meant to be shaken, soundly, in order
to be roused from our complacency and the status quo?
The sense I have is that the status quo won’t do any longer. That we
are stagnant, too deeply comfortable in too much of the muck and mud of
materialism, and we’ve lost sight of what and who we are meant to cling
to.
So, let us not worry. Let us not wring our hands. For the Christian,
anyway, I believe we are in a moment where the rubber meets the road.
How do you respond to that? With trust that no matter what things seem
like, that “all things work for good and to the Glory of God” or with wringing hands, depression and doubt?
If you are doubting…if you are thinking that only electoral victory
- as defined by the world - will be a validation of either the
existence of God, or His Intent, then you need to hunker down into
scripture and get out of your own head. Do you believe that Christ is
the Son of God, or do you not? If you do, do you really think that this
election is all there is, and that a loss here is somehow static, and
works to nothing in God’s purpose?
To everything there is a season, a time for every purpose under the heaven.
You either believe that, or you don’t.
“Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.”
You either believe it, or you don’t.
But if you’re calling yourself a Christian, and you’re not believing it, then question what you say you believe.
I'm going to close this post by saying that over the last few months, God has been steadily dealing with me over the subjects of materialism and money. Without going into a lot of details, my immediate future contains a disturbing amount of uncertainty, and like all of us, my first reaction is to worry obsessively over how all the bills are going to get paid. I don't solicit prayers for myself very often on this blog (perhaps I should do it more often!) but the events of the past week have made it abundantly clear to me that my previous faith in financial systems and markets and government was grievously misplaced. Please don't misunderstand -- I'm not giving up on hard work or sound investing, or throwing everything I have to the wind and hoping for some far-out miracle. But now I realize how much I should have been trusting God rather than relying on my own skill and luck. Please pray for a spiritual transformation that gives me the strength to place everything in God's hands first.
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