Go Ask Alice

The net result of the present Keynsian stimulus and government bailouts is that instead of the companies, agencies and individuals that made poor economic decisions losing a few trillion, we get those whom rightfully should bear the financial burden cushioned from their just desserts and the economic consequences of their by-in-large self-afflicted fiscal malfeasance spread injudiciously throughout the public at large. **The size and cost of the total loss is magnified by a negative multiplier effect as the ramifications of the borrowed stimulus dollars' unintended consequences ripple through market after market and the total pain is dragged out over many years instead of just a few quarters. (Does anyone anywhere, for even a minute, expect high speed rail to break even or government subsidized battery factories to pay taxes?) Tragically, the vast majority of Americans in 2013 will never make the correlation between a hypothetical 8% unemployment rate instead of 6% or 2.1% GNP growth instead of 3.3% and the government's economic decisions that were made in 2008 and 2009. By then they will, in all likelihood, be blaming it on the new Republican president, the Chinese or the immigrant population.

The American Dream hasn’t been flushed down the toilet, just slowly bled and borrowed to death by an insulated minority that would protect us from ourselves at no consequence to themselves. And they dare to call themselves compassionate! How can there be any genuinely altruistic action where there is no self-sacrifice? Now, if the public sector would voluntarily take a 10% pay cut, retire at 65 like the rest of us and accept the same fringe benefit plans as the average private sector employee to voluntarily assist in the spurring of a real economic recovery, now that would be compassionate. But the public sector making sacrifices for the private sector?* An oxymoron. It's positively twisted that economically 98% of the sacrifice is made within the private sector but it is they who are excoriated as being greedy and selfish. Or did I miss somewhere the headlines about hundreds of thousands of government workers being laid off? So how did those who make the largest economic contributions and sacrifice to society get morally flip-flopped with the least productive? Go ask Alice. I think she'll know.

* The majority of them see their entire professional lives as one big sacrifice...
**When California goes bankrupt, the Golden State’s woes will be nationalized and shared with the nation at large. As with everything from mortgages to credit cards, so it goes for states: the feckless must have their pathologies rewarded and the prudent get stuck with the tab. Mark Stein


M.D.T.

Ass Whupper in Chief

Clearly Obama’s latest 'kick ass' comment reflects a deeply ingrained sentiment that business is always cutting corners to make a buck - that without the punitive hand of government's stiff regulations and fines, business would run amok endangering lives en masse. Far left Democrats like Obama think that the pockets of the private sector are infinitely deep and there's no limit to what discipline can be inflicted upon them. They’ll always be there to fleece and humiliate. The Golden Goose is immortal. ‘Kicking ass’ is a childish way of dealing with that which they, the liberal elite, can make no constructive contribution to. Hell we don't know how to drill oil, make cars, develop drugs, treat sick people; we don’t really fix anything... but we do know how to punish those productive members of society that try and don't meet our penumbrious utopian standards. If one child gets sick a year in the whole country from some flavored fruit punch confectioneer, the answer’s always more regulation and a generous portion from a fresh can of 'Whoop Ass'. We really ought to thank Obama for finally openly verbally distilling the primary function of government down into a crude colloquialism that is easy for everyone to understand. Guess that makes the President Ass Whupper in Chief!

The discipline of the marketplace is and has always been a proven effective ‘ass-whupper’ and the financial losses, legal ramifications and potentially bankrupting effects of malfeasance are more than adequate in maintaining a commercial moral order. Additional government threats and the introduction of individual criminality can potentially have severely deleterious effects on the necessary incentives required to maintain a healthy private sector.

The ubiquitous assault on business prevalent in our present sociopolitical climate, I fear, succeeds in significantly reducing the prestige and social allure for those seeking a successful business career thereby possibly deflecting the entrance of many talented and ambitious citizens from lifestyles dedicated to economic innovation. In a word, it could create a private sector brain drain. The lure of higher compensation in many cases might not be sufficient to overcome the psychological fear of being branded as a social pariah. Success and happiness for most people is the combination of earned personal wealth with the earned admiration and respect of one’s fellows. The dominance of ubiquitous leftist anti-business sentiment may at this point have unfortunately succeeded in making too many of America’s most significantly required business careers morally repugnant. “I’d like to introduce you to my son Marvin. He’s a very successful oil driller. I don’t know where we went wrong. We really tried to direct him into a more meaningful vocation like urban planning or the environmental sciences but, in truth, he always did like picking the wings off flies.”

In short, I fear we’ve finally arrived historically at a point where the most attractive career option for the vast majority of the best and the brightest is working for the government. Looking at the lifestyles and retirements of the bulk of our federal and state employees it’s, unfortunately getting pretty hard to argue against - plus you'll never get your chicken-shit non-presidential ass whupped....


M.D.T.

2D or Not 2D

History sometimes coalesces around a few serendipitous events that momentarily converge to divulge a deeper social meaning. And so we witness today upon our national stage the spontaneous juxtaposition of the micro with the macro - the portentous with the inane. Can it be purely coincidental that Obamacare, legalized pot and the revival of big screen 3D pictures pop their Orwellian heads through our Spenglerian door collectively at just this precise moment in history? Maleficently imbued within this seemingly unrelated trio we could very well be witnessing a newly minted triumvirate for mass social control. Marijuana has clearly become the Soma* drug of modern America, lifting spirits and minds away from the arduous reality of the daily grind while simultaneously softening the wills and self-direction of its habitual users. At long last, Saint Alice B Toklas be praised, it looks like we’re going to finally have legalized pot in California, in all likelihood releasing a tide of similar legislation across the country as the billions of deperately needed tax dollars begin to flow into the coffers of our most profligate and fiscally irresponsible legislatures. But really, doesn’t it seems oddly convenient that the incipient smell of our nation’s first state sanctioned cannabis wafts woefully just as millions of Americans are propping cheap 3-D glasses on their soon to be collectively stoned and health-subsidized noses escaping into the fantasy world of Avatar ( Beam me up James C. to enviro-nirvana ), Alice in Wonderland ( Isn’t there a hookah smoking caterpillar in there somewhere? ) and Clash of the Titans ( Who needs God, let alone Gods )? Let's get 'em all stoned and send them off to see the latest politically correct Hollywood flaptrap!

And now with Obamacare it won’t be long before we can get Uncle Sam to pick up the tab for our prescription medical marijuana. After all, isn't marijuana abuse a disease like any addiction? How can it be purely accidental all this happening under the stewardship of our first self-admitted President that inhaled? Don’t you think health insurance should be required to cover my Zig-Zag rolling papers and bong pipes? Do you think it's possible that somewhere in that two thousand page health care bill there's a subsidy for Hollywood or 3D movie production? ( Hell, details are still leaking out what's in this thing ) Damn it all, I have a right to get high and see first-run 3-D pictures in Cinemax to relieve my clinical depression caused by my Bush-induced two and half years on unemployment through no fault of my own! I just can’t make up my mind whether I’d ultimately rather get high and live my state subsidized virtual life in the 3-D Pandora or the more visually passe’ 2-D Tolkien Hobbit's Shire?** Maybe I should ask my Facebook friends?

Do pot smokers ever get paranoid that the government they previously feared was going to bust them is now almost encouraging them to get stoned? What a long strange trip it's been.....

*Soma was the mythical drug prognosticated by Aldous Huxley in his famous dystopic novel Brave New World
** Damn I hope Peter Jackson's new Hobbit film is in 3D. That would really help to take my mind off my negative home equity!

M.D.T.

Zombie Nation

My take on the new 'health reform' bill? It is, literally, the proverbial straw. America's is now bankrupt. It just doesn't know it quite yet. But a good portion of the citizenry suspects it - feels it - viscerally. The country can't possibly shoulder the overwhelming weight of this latest multi-trillion dollar entitlement on top of our already egregiously underfunded Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and public employee pension plans. Just before the federal bailout of our largest banks last year there was talk amongst the financial community of the danger of creating 'zombie' banks; banks that could never stand on their own feet again; hooked up eternally to the life-sustaining I.V. of government subsidies. Or creating 'zombie' car companies like the once proud GM, now linguistically derided as our 'Government Motors', it's heart, the profit motive, ripped out of it's obese, dying no longer competitive carcass. Tragically, and I truly mean tragically, we, in time I fear are doomed to become, sooner rather than later, a 'zombie' nation, cursed to a kind of living dead status, perpetually failing, overspending and endlessly bailing ourselves out, like only a corrupt government and complicit federal reserve can do with its printing press. The price? Nothing less than the American Dream itself. Feel better now?

The problem with socialism is that sooner or later they run out of other people's money.... Margaret Thatcher

M.D.T.

An Eruditious Antinomy

Though it's certainly cynical to believe that both political parties just take all our taxes, and then some, to pay off their own individual constituencies, it’s worth at least considering that at least when the Republicans are in power and cut taxes for the wealthy and funnel billions to the military that the country at least benefits economically by creating new jobs, higher GDP, more rich people plus arguably slight economic improvements over time for the middle and lower classes. But when the Democrats are in power and raise taxes and funnel billions to their constituency of unions, public employees, the educational system, politically correct scientists and the downtrodden, both real and imagined, the economy stagnates and no one does any better economically except those with a government job or those receiving grants, subsidies or stipends of some nature from Uncle Sam. I think it was H.L. Mencken who touched eruditiously on this antinomy when he said,* ‘Democracy is an exercise in pillage and each election is a referendum on future stolen property.’ The antinomy being that from a flawed system driven by a ostensibly single underlying, corrupting, political process, the greater economic common good is better served by the one party favoring self-interest and the more productive elite minority.

Voting for Democrats is, at least in respect to America’s economy, quite simply throwing out the good in pursuit of the perfect - the practical for the ideal. Americans seem to have a terrible time these days accepting that timeless colloquial maxim, that everything in politics is a choice between the lesser of two evils. Sorry guys, but just because you don’t like either Party very well, you still gotta choose. So you might as well be practical and choose the one that at least has a vague recollection how to balance a checkbook, has the 'immoral' constitution necessary to terminate an underperforming employee and knows how to create something other than a government job.

Politicians who believe they can 'fix everything' historically and inevitably do more damage than good. This widespread belief that America is broken and needs to be overhauled is dangerous. We’d all be a lot better off if our leaders and our citizenry were content with making small improvements over time. I apologize for raining on many of the idealistic Obamanista’s parades out there, but as far as our economy is concerned, trickle down is better than nothing and there is no 'third way'.

*I very well might be the first person in human history to use those two words together in the same sentence.

M.D.T.

Was Santa Clause a Conservative?

Thank you Doug. You and I have concertedly for most of a year now strived our utmost to throw light on the most perplexing issues of our era. I now propose to you and our listeners that we not only have a cultural war on our hands, but worse yet, a ‘Santa Claus Crisis’! It all goes back to that ‘naughty or nice’ thing. Have recent generations really been rewarded differently when they were children dependent upon their individual good or bad behavior? I know I had my doubts early on, since even though I was clearly the more exemplary child in every respect, my two brothers enjoyed consistently equal holiday compensation.

Did Santa Claus ever deny a child a present because they were just plain rotten? Did drugs? Cheated at school? Tortured the family cat?

I’d like to think that at one time, a long time ago, it made a difference to Santa and others how kid’s behaved. But clearly today that would be impossible since it would require making an actual personal judgment about what is good or bad, naughty or nice. Plus we’d have to hold children responsible for their behavior. Just think of the irreparable psychological damage that could be done if we denied one of our children a Christmas present for any reason! It’s bad enough that some children get lavish, expensive gifts while others receive only menial K-Mart trinkets! On the grounds of the need for achieving higher self-esteem for young people everywhere I propose immediate emergency national legislation to equalize the monetary value of Christmas gifts to all children under 18, even those in prison. None should receive a gift worth more than $29.95, the national mean average for a Christmas present! ( Price check by Amazon.com )

Yes, friends and listeners, we have a Santa Clause crisis. Are we a nation where wealth and position are determined by virtuous behavior and individual judgment, or a ‘St. Nickocracy’ where all benefit equally irrespective of their individual hard work, free decisions and self-restraint? Can we ever agree again, as a people, on what behaviors should or should not be rewarded?

Alas, I’m afraid Santa is no longer a conservative. Though at one time I think that he most certainly was. If he hadn't been, he would never have imposed such ridiculous conditions like being “naughty or nice” as a prerequisite for judicious Christmas remuneration in the first place.

MERRY CHRISTMAS FREEDOM FORUM LISTENERS AND THANK YOU FOR TUNING IN TO OUR PROGRAM!

FREEDOM FORUM – 12/18/99


M.D.T.

Done Gone Rogue

You know, sometimes I think it would almost be worth it, to me, to live in a country where everyone was middle class or less just so I wouldn’t ever have to hear again, ‘In such a rich country it’s a shame this… or a disgrace that...’ Now listen up s.f.b.’s ... COUNTRIES WOULDN’T BE RICH IN THE FIRST PLACE IF THEY HAD DIVIDED UP THE WEALTH OF THOSE WHO HAD ATTAINED IT! DEVELOPING COUNTRIES THAT ADOPT THIS LEFTIST, NEO-MARXIST, CLAPTRAP IDEALOGY REMAIN POOR FOREVER! That’s why liberals only exist in rich countries: there’s no ‘somebody else’s money’ to spend more compassionately in the poor ones. Leftists in poor countries are revolutionaries, not liberals. They simply physically expropriate, at the point of a gun, wealth from the few remaining 'haves' to pay for their cigars and the people’s annual medical exams* . Not a bad definition of a liberal enshrouded there; a liberal is someone who wants to force someone else to spend their own money to assuage what they and their ilk perceive to be the world’ s injustices.

Actually heard a caller on Mark Levine state that they didn’t have health insurance but saw no reason why someone else should be taxed at half their income to provide it for them. Are there more than 10% of Americans born after 1960 that would agree with that?

*Ever heard that, ‘In Cuba at least they have health care.' ( Eee Gad )


M.D.T.