While everyone, including Congress, the media, and the public, have focused on AIG’s $100-million bonus payments to key employees, and most recently on AIG’s stealth payments to counterparties like Chase and the French giant Société Générale — the latter made worse by the fact that it was the Federal Reserve (FED) that wanted to keep these payments hidden from public view — the problem with the AIG bailout is much deeper and more fundamental.
Just about everyone has had something to say about this bailout — mostly that it was an ugly but necessary step to stave off a domino effect that would have brought the world’s financial system to its knees. But what we have not yet heard is just how Treasury Secretary Geithner, as then-head of the NY FED, got away with taking ownership of 77.9% of AIG’s equity and voting rights in clear violation of the law.
GLENN BECK: I got a letter from a woman in Arizona . She writes an open letter to our nation’s leadership: “I am a home grown American citizen, 53, registered Democrat all my life. Before the last presidential election I registered as a Republican because I no longer felt the Democratic Party represents my views or works to pursue issues important to me. Now I no longer feel the Republican Party represents my views or works to pursue issues important to me. The fact is I no longer feel anypolitical party or representative in Washington represents my views or works to pursue the issues important to me. Instead, we are burdened with Congressional Dukes and Duchesses who think they know better than the citizens they are supposed to represent.
There must be someone. Please tell me who you are. Please stand up and tell me that you are there and that you’re willing to fight for our Constitution as it was written. Please stand up now. You might ask yourself what my views and issues are that I would feel so horribly disenfranchised by both major political parties. What kind of nut-job am I? Well, these briefly are the views and issues for which I seekrepresentation: One, illegal immigration. I want you to stop coddling illegal immigrants and secure our borders. Close the underground tunnels.. Stop the violence and the trafficking in drugs and people. No amnesty, not again. Been there, done that, no resolution.
P.S., I’m not a racist. This is not to be confused withlegal immigration. Two, the STIMULUS bill. I want it repealed and I want no further funding supplied to it. We told you No, but you did it anyway. I want the remaining unfunded 95% repealed. Freeze, repeal. Three: Czars. I want the circumvention of our constitutional checks and balances stopped immediately. Fire the czars. No more czars. Government officials answer to the process, not to the president. Stop trampling on our Constitution, and honor it. Four, cap and trade. The debate on global warming is not over. There are many conflicting opinions and it is too soon for this radical legislation. Quit throwing our nation into politically-correct quicksand. Five, universal healthcare. I will not be rushed into another expensive decision that will burden me, my children, and grandchildren. Don’t you dare try to pass this in the middle of the night without even reading it. Slow down! Fix only what is broken — we have the best health care system in the world — and test any new program in one or two states first.
WASHINGTON—Democrats, stung by criticism of their $787 billion economic-stimulus plan, are targeting Republicans who have attacked the program and then lobbied to get money for their districts.
More than a dozen Republican lawmakers supported stimulus-funding requests submitted to the Department of Labor, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Forest Service, in letters obtained by The Wall Street Journal through the Freedom of Information Act.
Lawmakers routinely send letters in support of federal funding for projects in their constituencies; some Republican lawmakers have deliberately avoided sending requests for stimulus dollars because of their opposition to the bill.
The election of Scott Brown in Massachusetts reduced the likelihood that union boss supporters on Capitol Hill will be able to “pay back” their benefactors with the Employee ‘Forced’ Choice Act.
As a result, union bosses are working furiously on a new way to get their agenda passed – by pushing to get their own lawyer a seat on the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).
The NLRB is an “independent federal agency created by Congress in 1935 to administer the National Labor Relations Act, the primary law governing relations between unions and employers in the private sector.”
In some ways, this is even more dangerous than the EFCA legislation. If Big Labor is successful in placing their crony on the NLRB, he can push the main components of the Employee ‘Forced’ Choice Act with no regard for the outcome or its consequences.
We know that both voters at large and even rank-and-file union members oppose the basic elements of EFCA, eliminating the secret ballot and mandatory, binding arbitration, but Big Labor has no concern about the job losses that would result as forced unionization would line their pockets.
Faced with the threat that they can’t get the Employee ‘Forced’ Choice Act passed in Congress, union bosses are working to ram through Craig Becker, an SEIU and AFL-CIO lawyer.
Becker believes “employers should be stripped of any legally cognizable interest in their employees’ election of representatives.”
By John W. Whitehead
President, The Rutherford Institute
“As I look at America today, I am not afraid to say that I am afraid.” – Bertram Gross, Friendly Fascism: The New Face of Power in America
Ominous developments in America have been a long time coming, in part precipitated by “we the people” – a citizenry that has been asleep at the wheel for too long. And while there have been wake-up calls, we have failed to heed the warnings.
Just consider the state of our nation:
We’re encased in what some are calling an electronic concentration camp. The government continues to amass data files on more and more Americans. Everywhere we go, we are watched: at the banks, at the grocery store, at the mall, crossing the street. This loss of privacy is symptomatic of the growing surveillance being carried out on average Americans. Such surveillance gradually poisons the soul of a nation, transforming us from one in which we’re presumed innocent until proven guilty to one in which everyone is a suspect and presumed guilty. Thus, the question that must be asked is: can freedom in the United States flourish in an age when the physical movements, individual purchases, conversations and meetings of every citizen are under constant surveillance by private companies and government agencies?
We are metamorphosing into a police state. Governmental tentacles now invade virtually every facet of our lives, with agents of the government listening in on our telephone calls and reading our emails. Technology, which has developed at a rapid pace, offers those in power more invasive, awesome tools than ever before. Fusion centers – data collecting agencies spread throughout the country, aided by the National Security Agency – constantly monitor our communications, everything from our internet activity and web searches to text messages, phone calls and emails. This data is then fed to government agencies, which are now interconnected – the CIA to the FBI, the FBI to local police – a relationship which will make a transition to martial law that much easier. We may very well be one terrorist attack away from seeing armed forces on our streets – and the American people may not put up much resistance. According to a recent study, a greater percentage of Americans are now willing to sacrifice their civil liberties in order to feel safer in the wake of the failed crotch bomber’s attack on Christmas Day.
The U.S. lost ground on many fronts. Scores declined in seven of the 10 categories of economic freedom. Losses were particularly significant in the areas of financial and monetary freedom and property rights. Driving it all were the federal government’s interventionist responses to the financial and economic crises of the last two years, which have included politically influenced regulatory changes, protectionist trade restrictions, massive stimulus spending and bailouts of financial and automotive firms deemed “too big to fail.” These policies have resulted in job losses, discouraged entrepreneurship, and saddled America with unprecedented government deficits.
In the world-wide rankings of economic freedom, the U.S. fell to eighth from sixth place. Canada now ranks higher and boasts North America’s freest economy. More worrisome, for the first time in the Index’s 16-year history, the U.S. has fallen out of the elite group of countries identified as “economically free” by the objective measures of the Index. Four Asia-Pacific economies now sit atop the global rankings. Hong Kong stands in first place for the 16th consecutive year, followed by Singapore, Australia and New Zealand. Every region of the world maintains at least one country among those deemed “free” or “mostly free” by the Index.
And yet, as the following two reports indicate, those who are closest to the action on the ground,business owners and managers, appear to believe otherwise [red italics mine]:
Senators will be asked to cast their votes on numerous amendments as they begin a debate to reshape the country’s healthcare system.
Some amendments will be designed to improve the bill, some to satisfy a special interest or pet peeve. Still others will be presented as poison pills.
Here are seven issues likely to arise during the amendment process.
Public option: An issue that unites Republicans and divides Democrats on ideological grounds inevitably was bound to haunt the Senate Democratic leadership. The notion of creating a government-run health insuranceplan to compete with private companies is seen as vital by liberal Democrats but centrists range from skeptical to deeply antagonistic, even though states could opt out.
The best hope for a positive outcome for the Democrats could rest on the chances that liberal Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) along with centrist public option supporter Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.) can forge yet another compromise version of the program to satisfy centrists such as Sens. Ben Nelson(D-Neb.) and Joe Lieberman(I-Conn.), who have threatened to filibuster the bill over the public option. Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) is waiting in the wings with her “trigger” compromise.
In “Economists: Wrong Again,”I highlighted a major flaw in the logic of those Keynesian Kool-Aid drinkers who believe current low yields and stable markets can be seen as validation of Washington’s aggressive policy of spending and borrowing to “rescue” the crisis-hit U.S.economy.
"Someone recently said that credit
was the life blood of the economy.
This happens to be a lie.
Hard work, production, and the creation
of products that are needed and wanted
by others—these are the true life blood
of an economy."
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