Dakota Beacon

Campaign season arrives earlier and earlier, or so it seems. Before a person settles on a candidate, it is wise to understand one’s self and the motive behind the support for their candidate.

Understanding one’s motives also helps sort through the many Republican candidates, the conservative grassroots insurgency and the mainstream Republican establishment’s rejection of that insurgency. The Republican establishment is famous for compromise and bipartisanship in search of independent voters. How soon they forget that it was the conservative appeal to the independents that won the 1994 and 2010 US House takeover by the Republicans and, earlier, the Reagan presidency. Forgotten, too, are campaigns such as that of conservative Senator Mark Rubio of Florida who beat Republican establishment heavy favorite Governor Charlie Crist.

The noun “conservative” signifies guardian or defender and expresses the essential motive of a conservator. Those who slander and excoriate as ignorant buffoons those people who identify themselves as conservative kick dirt in the face of their own conservative heritage.

A true conservative is not an ideologue. Conservatism is a disposition. Napoleon first applied the word “ideology” to leftist zealots of the French Revolution and their crazy abstractions that almost ruined France.

A conservative, on the other hand, is principled. Conservatism does not provide its adherents with an ideology. Conservatives loathe ideologies.

Systems for perfecting human beings and society are repugnant to conservatives. They know that elitist tools for forcing such systems on an unwilling public are authoritarian by design. Politically correct speech, mandated alternative energy, subsidies, health and dietary restrictions and the plethora of safety regulations come to mind.

In their inmost being, conservatives understand that to truly live is to be free from oppression and regulation to the greatest extent possible, especially from an overbearing government. That is why our founders subscribed totally to limited government. That is also why most people unconsciously aspire to conservatism even if they don’t vote that way. Constraining and molding human existence into a narrow and uniformly unnatural society for utilitarian purposes and egalitarian outcomes is ideological in the liberal progressive sense.

Conservatives respect the wisdom and thinking of their predecessors. They grow skeptical of proposed wholesale revisions of societal norms and structures. In other words, the essence of conservatism preserves the ancient moral traditions of humanity. Natural law significantly developed our legal and political practices and remains integral to the moral standards for judging individual and governmental conduct.

Edmund Burke first articulated modern conservatism in his work “Reflections on the Revolution in France.” His book distinguished between “conservation” on the one hand and “innovation” on the other. The American Revolution was, in fact, a conservative reaction to innovations by the British political establishment.

Twentieth century youth, led by progressives, migrated steadily toward secularization dominated by a material existence in which spiritual life in the western tradition meant little. Progressives in various forms influenced youth movements from a traditional to a revised social order. The effect gradually eliminated the conscious sound understanding of civics, family and traditional education from generations of youth.

It is possible that much in our culture is still worth protecting, conserving and reviving.

With this template in mind, liberals and other progressives are easily identified. More challenging are the interlopers using conservative rhetoric that compound confusion. Moderates willing to compromise, independents anxious for acceptance by the ruling class in Washington, DC, and those comprising the professional political order must be identified and dealt with for whom they are by conscientious voters.

The Republican establishment is deathly afraid of conservatism’s virtual rise. They view the conservatives as a threat to their continued hold on power.

Thanks to great thinkers in the late eighteenth through mid-nineteenth centuries like Edmund Burke, Benjamin Disraeli and Cardinal John Henry Newman followed by twentieth century thinkers like William F. Buckley, Jr., Irving Kristol and Russell Kirk, conservatism’s roots and virtues are preserved and being proclaimed to a new generation.

Dennis M. Patrick can be contacted at P. O. Box 337, Stanley, ND 58784 or (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).

“The way I think about it,” Barack Obama told a TV station in Orlando, “is, you know, this is a great, great country that had gotten a little soft.”

He has a point. This is a great, great country that got so soft that 53 per cent of electors voted for a ludicrously unqualified chief executive who would be regarded as a joke candidate in any serious nation. One should not begrudge a man who seizes his opportunity. But one should certainly hold in contempt those who allow him to seize it on the basis of such flaccid generalities as “hope” and “change”: That’s more than “a little” soft. “He’s probably the smartest guy ever to become president,” declared presidential historian Michael Beschloss the day after the 2008 election. But you don’t have to be that[<END ITAL] smart to put one over on all the smart guys. “I’m a sap, a specific kind of sap. I’m
an Obama Sap,” admits David Brooks, the softest touch at The New York Times. Tina Brown, editor of Newsweek, now says of the President: “He wasn’t ready, it turns out, really.”

If you’re a tenured columnist at The New York Times, you can just about afford the consequences of your sappiness. But out there among the hundreds of thousands of your readers who didn’t know you were a sap until you told them three years later, soft choices have hard consequences. If you’re one of Obama’s core constituencies, the ones who looked so photogenic at all the hopeychangey rallies, things are really hard: “Young Becoming ‘Lost Generation’ Amid Recession” (CBS News). Tough luck, rubes. You got a bumper sticker; he got to make things worse.

But don’t worry, it’s not much better at the other end of the spectrum: “Obama’s Wall Street Donors Look Elsewhere” (UPI). Gee, aren’t you the fellows who, when you buy a company, do something called “due diligence”? But you sunk everything into stock in Obamania Inc on the basis of his “perfectly creased pant leg” or whatever David Brooks was drooling about that day? You handed a multi-trillion-dollar economy to a community organizer and you’re surprised that it led to more taxes, more
bureaucracy, more regulation, more barnacles on an already rusting hulk?

Hard statism is usually murmured in soft, soothing, beguiling terms: Regulation is about cleaner air, healthier restaurants, safer children’s toys. Sounds so nice. But federal regulation alone sucks up ten per cent of GDP. That’s to say, Americans take the equivalent of the Canadian economy and toss it down the toilet just in complying with federal paperwork. Obama and the great toxic alphabet soup of federal regulation – EPA, OSHA, SEC, DHSS – want to take that ten per cent and crank it up to 12, 14, 15 per cent.

Who could have foreseen that? The most dismal thing about that David Brooks column conceding that “yes, I’m a sap… remember, I’m a sap… as you know, I’m a sap” was the headline his New York Times editors chose to append to it: “Obama Rejects Obamaism.”

In other words, even in a column remorselessly cataloguing how one of its smartest smart guys had been repeatedly suckered by Obama on jobs, on Medicare, on deficits, on tax reform, etc, The New York Times chose to insist that there is still something called “Obamaism” – prudent, centrist, responsible – that for some perverse reason the man for whom this political philosophy is named insists on betraying, 24/7, week in, month out, spring, summer, autumn, tax season. You can set your clock by Obama’s rejection of “Obamaism”.

That’s because there’s no such thing. There never was. “Obamaism” was the Emperor’s new centrism: To a fool such as your average talk-radio host, His Majesty appears to be a man of minimal accomplishments other than self-promotion marinated in a radical faculty-lounge view of the world and the role of government. But, to a wise man such as your average presidential historian or New York Times columnist, he is the smartest guy ever to become president.

In part, this is a natural extension of an ever more conformist and unrepresentative establishment’s view of where “the center” is. On issues from abortion to climate change, a Times man or Hollywood
activist or media professor’s notion of “centrism” is well to the left of where American opinion is. That’s one reason why a supposedly “center-right” nation has wound up regulated into sclerosis, drowning in
debt and embarking on its last decade as the world’s leading economy. But in the case of Obama the chasm between soft, seductive, politico-media “centrism” and hard, grim reality is too big to bridge, and getting wider all the time.

You would think this might prompt some sober reflection from an American mainstream media dying in part because of its dreary ideological conformity. After all, a key reason why 53 per cent voted for a man who was not, in Tina Brown’s word, “ready” is that Tina and all her pals assured us he was. Occidental, Columbia, Harvard Law, a little light community organizing, a couple of years timeserving in a state
legislature: That’s what America’s elites regard as an impressive resume rather than a bleak indictment of contemporary notions of “accomplishment”. Obama would not have withstood scrutiny in any society
with a healthy, skeptical press. Yet, like the high-rolling Wall Street moneybags, they failed to do due diligence.

Three years on, nothing has changed. Obama is proposing to raise taxes because of some cockamamie yarn Warren Buffett has been peddling about his allegedly overtaxed secretary. Yet the court eunuchs of the media persist in taking Buffett seriously as a archetypal exemplar of the “American business community” rather than as an especially well-connected crony. Sometimes, Obama cronyism is merely fiscally wasteful, as in the still underreported Solyndra “green jobs” scandal. One sympathizes with reporters assigned to the story: It’s hard to get all the public monies and Solyndra-exec White House visit logs lined up in digestible form for the casual reader. But sometimes Obama cronyism is murderous: Eric Holder, a man unfit to be Attorney-General of the United States, continues to stonewall the “Fast and Furious” investigation into taxpayer-funded government gun-running to Mexican drug cartels. It is alleged that the Administration chose to facilitate the sale of American weapons to crime kingpins south of the border in order to support a case for gun control north of the border. Evidence keeps piling up: The other day, a letter emerged from ATF supervisor David Voth authorizing Special Agent John Dodson to buy Draco pistols to sell directly to known criminals. Over 200 Mexicans are believed to have been killed by “Fast and Furious” weapons – that’s to say, they were killed by a US government program.

Doesn’t The New York Times care about dead Mexicans? Doesn’t Newsweek or CBS News? Isn’t Obamaism with a body-count sufficiently eye-catching even for the US press? Or, three years in, are the enablers of Obama still so cynical that they accept it as a necessary price to pay for “change you can believe in”? You can’t make a hopenchange omelette without breaking a couple hundred Mexican eggs?

Obama says America has “gotten a little soft”. But there’s nothing soft about a dead-parrot economy, a flatline jobs market, regulatory sclerosis, “green jobs” multi-billion-dollar squandering – and a mountain of dead Mexicans. In a soft nation, “centrist” government is hard and cruel. Only the media coverage is soft-focus.  

“The way I think about it,” Barack Obama told a TV station in Orlando, “is, you know, this is a great, great country that had gotten a little soft.”

He has a point. This is a great, great country that got so soft that 53 per cent of electors voted for a ludicrously unqualified chief executive who would be regarded as a joke candidate in any serious nation. One should not begrudge a man who seizes his opportunity. But one should certainly hold in contempt those who allow him to seize it on the basis of such flaccid generalities as “hope” and “change”: That’s more than “a little” soft. “He’s probably the smartest guy ever to become president,” declared presidential historian Michael Beschloss the day after the 2008 election. But you don’t have to be that[<END ITAL] smart to put one over on all the smart guys. “I’m a sap, a specific kind of sap. I’m
an Obama Sap,” admits David Brooks, the softest touch at The New York Times. Tina Brown, editor of Newsweek, now says of the President: “He wasn’t ready, it turns out, really.”

If you’re a tenured columnist at The New York Times, you can just about afford the consequences of your sappiness. But out there among the hundreds of thousands of your readers who didn’t know you were a sap until you told them three years later, soft choices have hard consequences. If you’re one of Obama’s core constituencies, the ones who looked so photogenic at all the hopeychangey rallies, things are really hard: “Young Becoming ‘Lost Generation’ Amid Recession” (CBS News). Tough luck, rubes. You got a bumper sticker; he got to make things worse.

But don’t worry, it’s not much better at the other end of the spectrum: “Obama’s Wall Street Donors Look Elsewhere” (UPI). Gee, aren’t you the fellows who, when you buy a company, do something called “due diligence”? But you sunk everything into stock in Obamania Inc on the basis of his “perfectly creased pant leg” or whatever David Brooks was drooling about that day? You handed a multi-trillion-dollar economy to a community organizer and you’re surprised that it led to more taxes, more
bureaucracy, more regulation, more barnacles on an already rusting hulk?

Hard statism is usually murmured in soft, soothing, beguiling terms: Regulation is about cleaner air, healthier restaurants, safer children’s toys. Sounds so nice. But federal regulation alone sucks up ten per cent of GDP. That’s to say, Americans take the equivalent of the Canadian economy and toss it down the toilet just in complying with federal paperwork. Obama and the great toxic alphabet soup of federal regulation – EPA, OSHA, SEC, DHSS – want to take that ten per cent and crank it up to 12, 14, 15 per cent.

Who could have foreseen that? The most dismal thing about that David Brooks column conceding that “yes, I’m a sap… remember, I’m a sap… as you know, I’m a sap” was the headline his New York Times editors chose to append to it: “Obama Rejects Obamaism.”

In other words, even in a column remorselessly cataloguing how one of its smartest smart guys had been repeatedly suckered by Obama on jobs, on Medicare, on deficits, on tax reform, etc, The New York Times chose to insist that there is still something called “Obamaism” – prudent, centrist, responsible – that for some perverse reason the man for whom this political philosophy is named insists on betraying, 24/7, week in, month out, spring, summer, autumn, tax season. You can set your clock by Obama’s rejection of “Obamaism”.

That’s because there’s no such thing. There never was. “Obamaism” was the Emperor’s new centrism: To a fool such as your average talk-radio host, His Majesty appears to be a man of minimal accomplishments other than self-promotion marinated in a radical faculty-lounge view of the world and the role of government. But, to a wise man such as your average presidential historian or New York Times columnist, he is the smartest guy ever to become president.

In part, this is a natural extension of an ever more conformist and unrepresentative establishment’s view of where “the center” is. On issues from abortion to climate change, a Times man or Hollywood
activist or media professor’s notion of “centrism” is well to the left of where American opinion is. That’s one reason why a supposedly “center-right” nation has wound up regulated into sclerosis, drowning in
debt and embarking on its last decade as the world’s leading economy. But in the case of Obama the chasm between soft, seductive, politico-media “centrism” and hard, grim reality is too big to bridge, and getting wider all the time.

You would think this might prompt some sober reflection from an American mainstream media dying in part because of its dreary ideological conformity. After all, a key reason why 53 per cent voted for a man who was not, in Tina Brown’s word, “ready” is that Tina and all her pals assured us he was. Occidental, Columbia, Harvard Law, a little light community organizing, a couple of years timeserving in a state
legislature: That’s what America’s elites regard as an impressive resume rather than a bleak indictment of contemporary notions of “accomplishment”. Obama would not have withstood scrutiny in any society
with a healthy, skeptical press. Yet, like the high-rolling Wall Street moneybags, they failed to do due diligence.

Three years on, nothing has changed. Obama is proposing to raise taxes because of some cockamamie yarn Warren Buffett has been peddling about his allegedly overtaxed secretary. Yet the court eunuchs of the media persist in taking Buffett seriously as a archetypal exemplar of the “American business community” rather than as an especially well-connected crony. Sometimes, Obama cronyism is merely fiscally wasteful, as in the still underreported Solyndra “green jobs” scandal. One sympathizes with reporters assigned to the story: It’s hard to get all the public monies and Solyndra-exec White House visit logs lined up in digestible form for the casual reader. But sometimes Obama cronyism is murderous: Eric Holder, a man unfit to be Attorney-General of the United States, continues to stonewall the “Fast and Furious” investigation into taxpayer-funded government gun-running to Mexican drug cartels. It is alleged that the Administration chose to facilitate the sale of American weapons to crime kingpins south of the border in order to support a case for gun control north of the border. Evidence keeps piling up: The other day, a letter emerged from ATF supervisor David Voth authorizing Special Agent John Dodson to buy Draco pistols to sell directly to known criminals. Over 200 Mexicans are believed to have been killed by “Fast and Furious” weapons – that’s to say, they were killed by a US government program.

Doesn’t The New York Times care about dead Mexicans? Doesn’t Newsweek or CBS News? Isn’t Obamaism with a body-count sufficiently eye-catching even for the US press? Or, three years in, are the enablers of Obama still so cynical that they accept it as a necessary price to pay for “change you can believe in”? You can’t make a hopenchange omelette without breaking a couple hundred Mexican eggs?

Obama says America has “gotten a little soft”. But there’s nothing soft about a dead-parrot economy, a flatline jobs market, regulatory sclerosis, “green jobs” multi-billion-dollar squandering – and a mountain of dead Mexicans. In a soft nation, “centrist” government is hard and cruel. Only the media coverage is soft-focus.  

“The way I think about it,” Barack Obama told a TV station in Orlando, “is, you know, this is a great, great country that had gotten a little soft.”

He has a point. This is a great, great country that got so soft that 53 per cent of electors voted for a ludicrously unqualified chief executive who would be regarded as a joke candidate in any serious nation. One should not begrudge a man who seizes his opportunity. But one should certainly hold in contempt those who allow him to seize it on the basis of such flaccid generalities as “hope” and “change”: That’s more than “a little” soft. “He’s probably the smartest guy ever to become president,” declared presidential historian Michael Beschloss the day after the 2008 election. But you don’t have to be that[<END ITAL] smart to put one over on all the smart guys. “I’m a sap, a specific kind of sap. I’m
an Obama Sap,” admits David Brooks, the softest touch at The New York Times. Tina Brown, editor of Newsweek, now says of the President: “He wasn’t ready, it turns out, really.”

If you’re a tenured columnist at The New York Times, you can just about afford the consequences of your sappiness. But out there among the hundreds of thousands of your readers who didn’t know you were a sap until you told them three years later, soft choices have hard consequences. If you’re one of Obama’s core constituencies, the ones who looked so photogenic at all the hopeychangey rallies, things are really hard: “Young Becoming ‘Lost Generation’ Amid Recession” (CBS News). Tough luck, rubes. You got a bumper sticker; he got to make things worse.

But don’t worry, it’s not much better at the other end of the spectrum: “Obama’s Wall Street Donors Look Elsewhere” (UPI). Gee, aren’t you the fellows who, when you buy a company, do something called “due diligence”? But you sunk everything into stock in Obamania Inc on the basis of his “perfectly creased pant leg” or whatever David Brooks was drooling about that day? You handed a multi-trillion-dollar economy to a community organizer and you’re surprised that it led to more taxes, more
bureaucracy, more regulation, more barnacles on an already rusting hulk?

Hard statism is usually murmured in soft, soothing, beguiling terms: Regulation is about cleaner air, healthier restaurants, safer children’s toys. Sounds so nice. But federal regulation alone sucks up ten per cent of GDP. That’s to say, Americans take the equivalent of the Canadian economy and toss it down the toilet just in complying with federal paperwork. Obama and the great toxic alphabet soup of federal regulation – EPA, OSHA, SEC, DHSS – want to take that ten per cent and crank it up to 12, 14, 15 per cent.

Who could have foreseen that? The most dismal thing about that David Brooks column conceding that “yes, I’m a sap… remember, I’m a sap… as you know, I’m a sap” was the headline his New York Times editors chose to append to it: “Obama Rejects Obamaism.”

In other words, even in a column remorselessly cataloguing how one of its smartest smart guys had been repeatedly suckered by Obama on jobs, on Medicare, on deficits, on tax reform, etc, The New York Times chose to insist that there is still something called “Obamaism” – prudent, centrist, responsible – that for some perverse reason the man for whom this political philosophy is named insists on betraying, 24/7, week in, month out, spring, summer, autumn, tax season. You can set your clock by Obama’s rejection of “Obamaism”.

That’s because there’s no such thing. There never was. “Obamaism” was the Emperor’s new centrism: To a fool such as your average talk-radio host, His Majesty appears to be a man of minimal accomplishments other than self-promotion marinated in a radical faculty-lounge view of the world and the role of government. But, to a wise man such as your average presidential historian or New York Times columnist, he is the smartest guy ever to become president.

In part, this is a natural extension of an ever more conformist and unrepresentative establishment’s view of where “the center” is. On issues from abortion to climate change, a Times man or Hollywood
activist or media professor’s notion of “centrism” is well to the left of where American opinion is. That’s one reason why a supposedly “center-right” nation has wound up regulated into sclerosis, drowning in
debt and embarking on its last decade as the world’s leading economy. But in the case of Obama the chasm between soft, seductive, politico-media “centrism” and hard, grim reality is too big to bridge, and getting wider all the time.

You would think this might prompt some sober reflection from an American mainstream media dying in part because of its dreary ideological conformity. After all, a key reason why 53 per cent voted for a man who was not, in Tina Brown’s word, “ready” is that Tina and all her pals assured us he was. Occidental, Columbia, Harvard Law, a little light community organizing, a couple of years timeserving in a state
legislature: That’s what America’s elites regard as an impressive resume rather than a bleak indictment of contemporary notions of “accomplishment”. Obama would not have withstood scrutiny in any society
with a healthy, skeptical press. Yet, like the high-rolling Wall Street moneybags, they failed to do due diligence.

Three years on, nothing has changed. Obama is proposing to raise taxes because of some cockamamie yarn Warren Buffett has been peddling about his allegedly overtaxed secretary. Yet the court eunuchs of the media persist in taking Buffett seriously as a archetypal exemplar of the “American business community” rather than as an especially well-connected crony. Sometimes, Obama cronyism is merely fiscally wasteful, as in the still underreported Solyndra “green jobs” scandal. One sympathizes with reporters assigned to the story: It’s hard to get all the public monies and Solyndra-exec White House visit logs lined up in digestible form for the casual reader. But sometimes Obama cronyism is murderous: Eric Holder, a man unfit to be Attorney-General of the United States, continues to stonewall the “Fast and Furious” investigation into taxpayer-funded government gun-running to Mexican drug cartels. It is alleged that the Administration chose to facilitate the sale of American weapons to crime kingpins south of the border in order to support a case for gun control north of the border. Evidence keeps piling up: The other day, a letter emerged from ATF supervisor David Voth authorizing Special Agent John Dodson to buy Draco pistols to sell directly to known criminals. Over 200 Mexicans are believed to have been killed by “Fast and Furious” weapons – that’s to say, they were killed by a US government program.

Doesn’t The New York Times care about dead Mexicans? Doesn’t Newsweek or CBS News? Isn’t Obamaism with a body-count sufficiently eye-catching even for the US press? Or, three years in, are the enablers of Obama still so cynical that they accept it as a necessary price to pay for “change you can believe in”? You can’t make a hopenchange omelette without breaking a couple hundred Mexican eggs?

Obama says America has “gotten a little soft”. But there’s nothing soft about a dead-parrot economy, a flatline jobs market, regulatory sclerosis, “green jobs” multi-billion-dollar squandering – and a mountain of dead Mexicans. In a soft nation, “centrist” government is hard and cruel. Only the media coverage is soft-focus. 

Desperate times call for desperate measures; and we see desperate measures coming out of Washington D.C. at alarming regularity. One of the latest from The Desperados in the White House is the "millionaires tax" for lack of a better term--what else could it be called? Government needs money so you go where the money is. As the noted bank robber Willy Sutton said when asked why he robs banks, "that's where the money is". It's a sorry state of affairs when our federal government deliberately intends to discriminate against a specific class of citizens by taking property from them; the taking for no better reason than they want it, and if congress approves and the president signs, it will be legal.

There is much opposition to this Millionaires Tax for many good reasons, a few will follow. First of all the opposition is not, repeat, is not defending millionaires because they are in our political corner--some are, some are not. They are not defended because they are people of such sterling character that they are above reproach--some are some are not. They are defended because the power of government threatens them; and, if allowed, that same government may threaten or discriminate against any of us when it so desires. "The government that can give you everything may also be able to deny you anything." The writings of F.A. Hayek in "The Road to Serfdom" warned of the intentions and power of government; he wrote during the times that Fascism, National Socialism, and Communism were on the rise in Europe; all three of these governmental forms promised prosperity and well-being for their peoples. None turned out well. We say it cannot happen here in America, yet there are those who cheer and support this dangerous over-reach of power; others passively watch thinking it doesn't concern me; others succumb to the feelings of envy--they have it, take it from them.

How distressing to watch as our federal government, led by congress and a president, are unable to rein-in the out-of-control spending by even modest amounts. In the past three years there have been three groups or commissions or "gangs' of six or twelve who have spent millions of dollars of our money, supposedly looking at reining-in government, none of the recommendations of these groups have resulted in a bill passed by congress. As a result the political fixes are now coming forth from the White House: tax the people who have money; extract money from any industry that is regulated or beholden to the government---specifically energy industries of coal and oil; apply taxes and fees upon the healthcare industry and its suppliers; and levy more tax on the wage earners starting at $200,000 per year. This is government doing what it does best (if the term 'best' may apply), and that is government perpetuating and feeding itself--its most basic instinct.

The multitude and expanse of our federal programs of assistance and largess of money grants have created a population dependent upon the "free money and assistance" that we are convinced we cannot live without. A dependency as deeply set as that of a drug addict. We know that we must kick the dependency, but we are unwilling to go through the painful ordeal. Our government is acutely aware that it cannot continue spending as the money has run out. The dilemma: how to reduce the spending without causing the severe pain of withdrawal among many people, the result will be that many office holders in government will lose their jobs and power. Again, the first instinct of government is to preserve itself--once grown it willingly relinquishes nothing.

A book written several years ago is spot-on this dilemma, the writer, a former liberal thinker turned not-so-liberal, must have seen this crash coming; the book is "Eat The Rich" by P.J. O'Rourke who sets the scene we are currently in. The federal government has grown to mammoth size and consumes more than it takes in revenue, it must now find more revenue so it searches for untapped sources and it finds the "rich and the wealthy." These are the Gates, Waltons, Buffetts, Jobs, Kochs, Zuckermans, et al. So, if we took it all, how long would the wealth of our richest Americans keep our government going? The estimate is about a week--when their money is gone--who is next?

Not talked about so far is the choosing of sides in this debate of those in favor of "taxing the rich", and those opposed to this envy-driven discrimination of part of our population. It is ugly and noisy. People are characterized as greedy, selfish, uncaring, dishonest, gougers, cheaters, self-indulgent, despoilers, and more. How sad this is. Think about what is happening--we are talking about people who are no different than we--they work or don't, care about others or don't, give of their time and money to causes or don't, religious or not religious, enjoy and respect this land or don't, polite or not, considerate or not, live modestly or not, generous or not, etc. Their transgression is that they are considered "rich" and that is our reason to discriminate. Surely we are better people than that!

“It’s the end of the world as we know it,” sang the popular musical artistes REM many years ago. And it is. REM has announced that they’re splitting up after almost a third of a century. But these days who
isn’t? The Eurozone, the world’s first geriatric boy band, is on the verge of busting apart. Chimerica (Professor Niall Ferguson’s amusing name for the Chinese-American economic partnership that started around the same time REM did) is going the way of Wham!, with Beijing figuring it’s the George Michael of the relationship and that it’s tired of wossname, the other fellow, who gets equal billing but doesn’t really do anything. The deeper problem may be that this is a double-act with two wossnames.

Still, it’s the end of the world as we know it. Headline from CNBC: “Global Meltdown: Investors Are Dumping Nearly Everything.” I assumed “Nearly Everything” was the cute name of a bankrupt, worthless, planet-saving green-jobs start-up backed by Obama bundlers and funded with a gazillion dollars of stimulus payback. But apparently it’s “Nearly Everything” in the sense of the entire global economy. Headline from The Daily Telegraph of London: “David Cameron: Euro Debt ‘Threatens
World Stability’.” But, if you’re not in the general vicinity of the world, you should be okay. Headline from The Wall Street Journal: “World Bank’s Zoellick: World In ‘Danger Zone’.” But, if you’re not in the
general vicinity of …no, wait, I did that gag with the last headline.

I mentioned in this space a few weeks ago the IMF’s calculation that China will become the planet’s leading economic power by the year 2016. And I added that, if that proves correct, it means the fellow elected next November will be the last President of the United States to preside over the world’s dominant economy. I thought that line might catch on. After all, we’re always told that every election is the most critical consequential watershed election of all time, but this one actually would be: For the first time since Grover Cleveland’s first term, America would be electing a global also-ran. But there's not a lot of sense of America's looming date with destiny in these Presidential debates. I don't mean so much from the candidates as from their media interrogators - which is more revealing of where the meter on our political conversation is likely to be during the general election. On Thursday night, there was a question on gays in the military but none on the accelerating European debt crisis. It is certainly important to establish whether a would-be president is sufficiently non-homophobic to authorize a crack team of lesbian paratroopers to rappel into the Chinese treasury, break the safe and burn all our IOUs. But the curious complacency about the bigger questions is disturbing.

Greece is reported to be within weeks if not days of default. There are two likely outcomes to this scenario: 1) Greece will default. 2) Germany and the  Eurocrats will decide that default would be too embarrassing for the EU's pretentions and will throw whatever sum of money is necessary into the great sucking maw of toxic ouzo to stave it off a while longer.

But Option Two doesn't alter the underlying reality - that, if words have any meaning, Greece is insolvent, and given its rapidly aging population (100 grandparents have 42 grandchildren) is unlikely to be non-insolvent under any conceivable scenario, no matter how tightly German taxpayers are squeezed to pay for it. By the same measure, so are many other western nations.

On the other hand, attempting to postpone the Club Med welfare junkies’ rendezvous with self-extinction will destabilize internal German politics (which always adds to the gaiety of nations) and strain to breaking point what's left of the European banking system. BNP Paribas, formerly Saddam's favorite banker and Gallicly insouciant about who it climbs into bed with, was reported in recent days to be cruising the flusher sheikhdoms and emirates in search of a new sugar daddy. Delivering French banks into the hands of Islamic imperialists seems a high price to pay for bailing out Athenian deadbeats.

The question to ask is: what's holding the joint up? In the case of the global economy, the answer is: not much. The developed world's combined economic growth rate for 2012 is projected to be under two percent - and that's a best-case scenario in times that don't warrant much optimism. As its own contribution to the end of the world as we know it, the Obama Administration has just released a document called "Living Within Our Means And Investing In The Future: The President's Plan For Economic Growth And Deficit Reduction". If you're curious about the first part of the title - "Living Within Our Means" - Veronique de Rugy pointed out at National Review that under this plan debt held by the public will grow from just over 10 trillion dollars to 17.7 trillion dollars by 2021. In other words, the President's definition of "Living Within Our Means" is to burn through the equivalent of the entire German, French and British economies in new debt between now and the end of the decade. You can try this yourself next time your bank manager politely suggests you should try “living within your means”: tell him you've got an ingenious plan to get your spending under control by near doubling your present debt in the course of a mere decade. He's sure to be impressed.

As for the "Investing In The Future" part of the President's plan,  that means lots more government, lots more half billion dollar payoffs to pseudo-businesses cooked up by cronies, lots more 4.8 million-dollar-per job taxpayer subsidies paid for with money borrowed from our unborn grandchildren. In a perfect snapshot of this Administration's witless banality, the President travelled last week to the Brent Spence Bridge across the Ohio River and claimed that, despite the fact that the structure connects the home states of the Republican House leader and the Republican Senate leader, the mean spirited GOP is going to kill the jobs bill and thus all prospects for a new bridge between their two states.

The bridge has nothing to do with the jobs bill. Work on a new bridge is not scheduled to begin for four years and wouldn't be completed until 2022 at the earliest. Because in the Republic at twilight you can run up another seven-and-a-half trillion dollars of new debt in less time than it takes to put up a bridge. Even as cheap political showboating the President's photo op was a pathetic joke, with the laugh on you.

If this is the best America can do, there won't be a 2022, not for the United States, or anything that would be recognizable as such. Like REM says, it’s the end of the world as we know it. And, as their split
suggests, they no longer feel fine. And nor should you.

© Mark Steyn 2011

“It’s the end of the world as we know it,” sang the popular musical artistes REM many years ago. And it is. REM has announced that they’re splitting up after almost a third of a century. But these days who
isn’t? The Eurozone, the world’s first geriatric boy band, is on the verge of busting apart. Chimerica (Professor Niall Ferguson’s amusing name for the Chinese-American economic partnership that started around the same time REM did) is going the way of Wham!, with Beijing figuring it’s the George Michael of the relationship and that it’s tired of wossname, the other fellow, who gets equal billing but doesn’t really do anything. The deeper problem may be that this is a double-act with two wossnames.

Still, it’s the end of the world as we know it. Headline from CNBC: “Global Meltdown: Investors Are Dumping Nearly Everything.” I assumed “Nearly Everything” was the cute name of a bankrupt, worthless, planet-saving green-jobs start-up backed by Obama bundlers and funded with a gazillion dollars of stimulus payback. But apparently it’s “Nearly Everything” in the sense of the entire global economy. Headline from The Daily Telegraph of London: “David Cameron: Euro Debt ‘Threatens
World Stability’.” But, if you’re not in the general vicinity of the world, you should be okay. Headline from The Wall Street Journal: “World Bank’s Zoellick: World In ‘Danger Zone’.” But, if you’re not in the
general vicinity of …no, wait, I did that gag with the last headline.

I mentioned in this space a few weeks ago the IMF’s calculation that China will become the planet’s leading economic power by the year 2016. And I added that, if that proves correct, it means the fellow elected next November will be the last President of the United States to preside over the world’s dominant economy. I thought that line might catch on. After all, we’re always told that every election is the most critical consequential watershed election of all time, but this one actually would be: For the first time since Grover Cleveland’s first term, America would be electing a global also-ran. But there's not a lot of sense of America's looming date with destiny in these Presidential debates. I don't mean so much from the candidates as from their media interrogators - which is more revealing of where the meter on our political conversation is likely to be during the general election. On Thursday night, there was a question on gays in the military but none on the accelerating European debt crisis. It is certainly important to establish whether a would-be president is sufficiently non-homophobic to authorize a crack team of lesbian paratroopers to rappel into the Chinese treasury, break the safe and burn all our IOUs. But the curious complacency about the bigger questions is disturbing.

Greece is reported to be within weeks if not days of default. There are two likely outcomes to this scenario: 1) Greece will default. 2) Germany and the  Eurocrats will decide that default would be too embarrassing for the EU's pretentions and will throw whatever sum of money is necessary into the great sucking maw of toxic ouzo to stave it off a while longer.

But Option Two doesn't alter the underlying reality - that, if words have any meaning, Greece is insolvent, and given its rapidly aging population (100 grandparents have 42 grandchildren) is unlikely to be non-insolvent under any conceivable scenario, no matter how tightly German taxpayers are squeezed to pay for it. By the same measure, so are many other western nations.

On the other hand, attempting to postpone the Club Med welfare junkies’ rendezvous with self-extinction will destabilize internal German politics (which always adds to the gaiety of nations) and strain to breaking point what's left of the European banking system. BNP Paribas, formerly Saddam's favorite banker and Gallicly insouciant about who it climbs into bed with, was reported in recent days to be cruising the flusher sheikhdoms and emirates in search of a new sugar daddy. Delivering French banks into the hands of Islamic imperialists seems a high price to pay for bailing out Athenian deadbeats.

The question to ask is: what's holding the joint up? In the case of the global economy, the answer is: not much. The developed world's combined economic growth rate for 2012 is projected to be under two percent - and that's a best-case scenario in times that don't warrant much optimism. As its own contribution to the end of the world as we know it, the Obama Administration has just released a document called "Living Within Our Means And Investing In The Future: The President's Plan For Economic Growth And Deficit Reduction". If you're curious about the first part of the title - "Living Within Our Means" - Veronique de Rugy pointed out at National Review that under this plan debt held by the public will grow from just over 10 trillion dollars to 17.7 trillion dollars by 2021. In other words, the President's definition of "Living Within Our Means" is to burn through the equivalent of the entire German, French and British economies in new debt between now and the end of the decade. You can try this yourself next time your bank manager politely suggests you should try “living within your means”: tell him you've got an ingenious plan to get your spending under control by near doubling your present debt in the course of a mere decade. He's sure to be impressed.

As for the "Investing In The Future" part of the President's plan,  that means lots more government, lots more half billion dollar payoffs to pseudo-businesses cooked up by cronies, lots more 4.8 million-dollar-per job taxpayer subsidies paid for with money borrowed from our unborn grandchildren. In a perfect snapshot of this Administration's witless banality, the President travelled last week to the Brent Spence Bridge across the Ohio River and claimed that, despite the fact that the structure connects the home states of the Republican House leader and the Republican Senate leader, the mean spirited GOP is going to kill the jobs bill and thus all prospects for a new bridge between their two states.

The bridge has nothing to do with the jobs bill. Work on a new bridge is not scheduled to begin for four years and wouldn't be completed until 2022 at the earliest. Because in the Republic at twilight you can run up another seven-and-a-half trillion dollars of new debt in less time than it takes to put up a bridge. Even as cheap political showboating the President's photo op was a pathetic joke, with the laugh on you.

If this is the best America can do, there won't be a 2022, not for the United States, or anything that would be recognizable as such. Like REM says, it’s the end of the world as we know it. And, as their split
suggests, they no longer feel fine. And nor should you.

© Mark Steyn 2011

Last week brought disappointing news that the US had fallen to fifth place as the world’s most competitive economy. This according to the Swiss-based World Economic Forum. The report considers a broad range of economic trends in its assessment of 142 countries surveyed.

Switzerland held the top spot for the third consecutive year followed by Singapore, Sweden and Finland.

A parallel report by the Heritage Foundation’s Index of Economic Freedom placed the US at 9th sliding from 8th in 2010 and 6th in 2009. The Index compiles data from 183 countries using ten benchmarks ranging from property rights and government spending to entrepreneurship and corruption.

Major contributing factors in the US decline include ongoing regulatory changes together with fading confidence in the direction of government policies.

If the US is in economic decline, is our military next?

The Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction known as the “Super Committee,” created in August as part of the debt ceiling deal, is tasked with finding a minimum of $1.5 trillion in deficit reductions by November 23. If a plan is approved, it will go to the House and Senate for an up or down vote not later than December 23. If the Super Committee or congress cannot adopt a plan, automatic spending cuts go into effect. Fifty percent of the cuts must come from Defense and fifty percent from the rest of the federal budget. The automatic $700 billion in defense cuts would be in addition to the $400 billion already imposed by the administration. This is political gamesmanship on a Machiavellian level.

In fact, Defense spending is not the cause of the US debt or deficit and should not bear the brunt of the solution. Contrary to popular belief, the Defense budget shrank through the last two decades and now stands at 5.1 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP). Throughout the Cold War defense spending averaged between 6 and 8 percent of GDP. By contrast, Social Security and Medicare consume 8.1 percent of GDP. Splitting $1.5 trillion 50-50 between the Defense Budget and the rest of the federal budget is not equitable.

Senior US military leaders testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee in late July delivered a stark yet truthful assessment which they are professionally obliged to do on matters of national security. Theirs was not a revolt as some imply but an estimate to assist congress in their constitutional obligation in keeping the US safe.

With one voice US military leaders  warned that very large cuts in defense spending will, in their words, “break the force.” Their point is that our armed forces cannot collectively engage in two or three decades-long wars, maintain a forward presence in the world, conduct endless overseas deployments, provide humanitarian disaster relief at home and abroad, conduct military training for dozens of allied countries and then be expected to absorb as much as a $1 trillion budget cut over ten years while sustaining those missions.

Army General Martin Dempsey, Obama’s nominee for Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Admiral James Winnefeld, nominee for Vice Chief of Staff, presented the assessment. Echoing the same argument, each military service Vice Chief testified before the House Armed Services Readiness Subcommittee delivering the same message.

A cynic could argue that senior generals have a parochial interest in defending their business-as-usual budget. However, the new Secretary of Defense, Leon Panetta, who is known as a deficit hawk, posted a similar warning on his website. As civilian head of the Defense Department he fears massive cuts “will result in a force undersized and underfunded relative to missions and responsibilities.”

Withdrawing into Fortress America makes no strategic sense when non-governmental organizations (NGO) worldwide threaten our security. It is preferable to fight a conflict as far forward as possible taking advantage of room to maneuver as well as intelligence collection while accepting the risk of an extended line of communication. There are advantages to fighting on an opponent’s turf rather than your own turf with your back against the wall. Without the ability to project and sustain power overseas, we may risk fighting a conflict on our own soil.

Our economy and defense are inextricably linked. Adam Smith understood this when he wrote in The Wealth of Nations in 1776, “When institutions protect the liberty of individuals, greater prosperity results for all.”

The converse could well spell disaster.

Dennis M. Patrick can be contacted at P. O. Box 337, Stanley, ND 58784 or (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).

Barron’s August 29, 2011 edition, titled “Good, Bad, and Ugly” by Jonathon R. Laing is referenced. It can be read on the web at:

 http://online.barrons.com/article/SB50001424052702303545104576524533718027022.html#articleTabs_panel_article%3D1

Standard & Poor’s rating of North Dakota is AA+, the same as their credit rating of the United States (which was downgraded from AAA to AA+ on August 5^th, 2011 for the first time since granting its AAA rating in 1917). North Dakota’s AA+ credit rating is not an economic parameter that North Dakota politicians brag about during re-election campaigns, nor should it be.

A summary of the credit ratings of the states is shown below:

AAA

Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Maryland, Minnesota, Missouri, North Carolina, Utah, Virginia, Wyoming.

Average of 12 states:

Federal Spending As a Percent of State GDP = 236/12 = 19.7%

Medicaid As a Percent of Outlays = 252/12 = 21.0%

Percent Change in Tax Receipts = 101.5/12 = 8.46%

Tax Backed Debt as a Percent of State GDP = 40.75/12 = 3.40%

Funded Percent of State Pensions = 986/12 = 82.2%

Troubled Mortgages = 84.8/12 = 7.07%

June Unemployment Rate = 94.5/12 = 7.88%

AA+

Alaska, Idaho, Kansas, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont, Washington.

Average of 15 states:

Federal Spending As a Percent of State GDP = 321.8/15 = 21.5%

Medicaid As a Percent of Outlays = 283/15 = 18.9%

Percent Change in Tax Receipts = 212.9/15 = 14.2%

Tax Backed Debt as a Percent of State GDP = 58.58/15 = 3.91%

Funded Percent of State Pensions = 1160/15 = 77.3%

Troubled Mortgages = 76.9/15 = 5.13%

June Unemployment Rate = 109.1/15 = 7.27%

AA

Alabama, Arkansas, Colorado, Connecticut, Hawaii, Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, West Virginia, Wisconsin.

Average of 17 states:

Federal Spending As a Percent of State GDP = 489.7/17 = 28.8%

Medicaid As a Percent of Outlays = 346/17 = 20.4%

Percent Change in Tax Receipts = 118.5/17 = 6.97%

Tax Backed Debt as a Percent of State GDP = 95.25/17 = 5.60%

Funded Percent of State Pensions = 1221/17 = 71.8%

Troubled Mortgages = 120/17 = 7.06%

June Unemployment Rate = 142.4/17 = 8.38%

AA-

Arizona, Kentucky, Michigan, New Jersey

Average of 4 states:

Federal Spending As a Percent of State GDP = 92.1/4 = 23.0%

Medicaid As a Percent of Outlays = 96/4 = 24%

Percent Change in Tax Receipts = 48.1/4 = 12.0%

Tax Backed Debt as a Percent of State GDP = 20.44/4 = 5.11%

Funded Percent of State Pensions = 281/4 = 70.3%

Troubled Mortgages = 34.7/4 = 8.68%

June Unemployment Rate = 38.9/4 = 9.73%

A+

Illinois 

Federal Spending As a Percent of State GDP = 15.9%

Medicaid As a Percent of Outlays = 33.0%

Percent Change in Tax Receipts = 13.7%

Tax Backed Debt as a Percent of State GDP = 3.97%

Funded Percent of State Pensions = 51%

Troubled Mortgages = 10.5%

June Unemployment Rate = 9.20%

A-

California 

Federal Spending As a Percent of State GDP = 16.2%

Medicaid As a Percent of Outlays = 22.0%

Percent Change in Tax Receipts = 5.70%

Tax Backed Debt as a Percent of State GDP = 5.08%

Funded Percent of State Pensions = 81%

Troubled Mortgages = 8.80%

June Unemployment Rate = 11.8%

Summary Narrative

Metaphors are sometimes the most accurate way to explain these things. So let’s compare an individual’s credit rating with a state’s credit rating. But first, let’s study a Summary Table and Summary Graph that highlight the factors that affect a state’s credit rating:

Summary Table (all numbers are percents)

Summary Chart

Number One Factor - Employment

The most important factor in receiving a good personal credit rating is a permanent job!

And the most important factor influencing a state’s credit rating is its Employment Rate. By far the most influential factor in North Dakota’s relatively good credit rating is its 96.8% Employment Rate. Proof of this fact can be found by examining the correlation factor (R² = 0.7837 on the Chart) of 78.37% for employment. A correlation of 95% or better may be safely used to project the future.

Number Two Factor – Tax Backed Debt

The second most important factor in receiving a good personal credit rating is a low enough “debt to income” ratio to allow one to pay bills on time. When I sought my first home loan 40 years ago, a loan up to 25% of one’s income was the norm.

A state borrows using future tax revenues as collateral. If a state is over extended, its credit rating can suffer. The correlation factor (R² = 0.2489 on the Chart) of 24.89% is only about one-third the magnitude of that for employment. This is an area where North Dakota can directly affect its future by reducing its debt. It is not surprising that North Dakota’s tax backed debt of 4.26% of state GDP is closest to the average debt of Illinois, arguably the most corrupt state in the union. Ten years of leadership from a governor with a “rich” banking heritage has resulted in North Dakota’s credit excesses. It is probably safe to say that, if North Dakota’s tax backed debt were closer to the 3.4% average of all states with a AAA credit rating, North Dakota would have a AAA rating to make it a “bakers dozen” (13 states) in that category instead of 12 states.

Number Three Factor – Federal spending as a percent of state GDP

In order to pay one’s bills on time, an individual must budget to prevent over spending. Dependence on others (i.e. an uncle) for necessities (food, clothing, shelter) makes an individual vulnerable in the event that the source of supplemental funding dries up.

North Dakota receives 23.5% of its GDP in federal resources, falling closest, in this category, to the average of the four states (Arizona, Kentucky, Michigan and New Jersey) with a AA- credit rating. Arizona has suffered greatly from the housing bubble, Michigan from the economic woes of the U.S. auto industry, and New Jersey was its own worst enemy, having passed a sales tax increase immediately prior to the onset of the “great recession”. To prevent this vulnerability, North Dakota must begin to understand that federal funding too often comes with long term state obligations that are untenable. State elected officials and legislators can learn from Burleigh County commissioners who found the courage to turn down stimulus funding…preventing severe long term maintenance costs that would have arisen from such funding.

Number Four Factor – Funded Percent of State Pensions

When an individual agrees to a contract with an employer, the viability of the employer’s business is important to consider.

Likewise, the ability of a state to fulfill its lawful obligations is important. While North Dakota funds its state pensions programs at 81%, it can learn from the states of Delaware (94%), North Carolina (97%), Washington (99%), New York (101%), and Wisconsin (100%). Sadly, North Dakota seems intent to emulate California’s 81% funding of state pensions…stuck in the “Defined Benefits” rut when many states have already switched to the “Defined Contributions” plans so prevalent in the private sector.

What must be done to raise our credit rating from AA+ to AAA?

North Dakota’s booming oil and gas industry is largely responsible for our credit rating being relatively high by providing for our great state the equivalent of “full employment”.

Action by legislators and our governor are necessary in the near future to reduce North Dakota’s tax backed debt, to decline federal funds in new areas and even reject federal funds in historically federally funded areas, and to change state pension plans from “defined benefits” to “defined contributions”. These actions will require courage and commitment to the well being of future generations of North Dakotans…but the reward will be a AAA credit rating and a state government to be proud of.

Today, all North Dakotans can be proud of our work ethic. But “courage” will be required of our elected officials to make us proud of THEM!  Our future must employ the equation of life…Love = Work + Courage.

Monday, September 12, 2011

CHUCK ROGÉR: OBAMA’S NEWEST WORST IDEA EVER—FANNIE II

By Beacon Author on September 12, 2011 at 08:50 am

4 Comments

Originally at American Thinker February 2009 brought us Barack Obama’s “stimulus” plan—$800 billion worth of progressive agenda-packed deficit spending that produced zero economic improvement and increased the national debt. One year later, President Obama offered the American people a $3.8 trillion 2011 budget that increased the national debt by another $1.3 trillion. March 2010 saw Obamacare become law. The measure, pitched as a job-creating economic stimulus, was but a federal power-grab for a sixth of the U.S. economy, a power-grab which will degrade medical care, increase industry-strangling regulation, and balloon the national debt. Then in February 2011, an arrogant, debt-ignoring Obama tried but failed to sell Congress and the people an insane $3.7 trillion budget which would have exploded the national debt by another $1.65 trillion. All throughout, Mr. Obama has cast his fiscal shenanigans in a green tint by issuing nonstop calls for increased taxpayer subsidization of manufacturing of the type engaged in by a now-bankrupt Obama favorite, solar technology producer Solyndra. The Wall Street Journal nicely encapsulates The One’s newest fiscal absurdity. Obama wants to see “Congress create a ‘bank’ that could borrow huge sums with only a small federal outlay and would be independent of any political interference.” The bank would allegedly “stimulate” the economy by funding public works projects and jobs that would otherwise go unfunded. The WSJ points out that the tactic would result in unions and construction companies benefiting from the same taxpayer largesse–a recipe for another subprime-like economic meltdown. The Journal also observes that an infrastructure bank would end up functioning just as characterized by Connecticut Democrat Rosa DeLauro in 2008, as a “public private partnership like Fannie Mae.” Surely it is only that we unenlightened masses are too, well, unenlightened to appreciate that since Fannie functioned so brilliantly in the private sector, we must put a public-sector Fannie to work right away. This will clearly, yet the clarity escapes us, “stimulate” the economy—or something like that, there, then… Yet chances are good that the DeLauro-Obama union-construction marriage will present America with a replay of the ACORN-Obama Fannie-Freddie-banking debacle that killed the U.S. economy. But in this new murder, the American people would get a bonus. Obama has given us a heads-up, so we’ll know exactly what to look for as the latest crony-capitalist nightmare unfolds right before our eyes—and in pursuit of our wallets.