Where Have You Gone Daniel Webster? America Turns Its Lonely Eyes Towards You

Lately I find myself going farther and farther back in time to discover when there were great men debating the important issues of the day in Washington, DC. The antebellum period between the War of 1812 and the War Between the States is an excellent time to find greatness that is nonexistent today. People remember military men like Ole Hickory, Tippecanoe, and Old Rough and Ready from this period, and they lose a memory of the Bank Wars, states' rights nullification, and Panic of 1837. Of those three military men who became President throughout this period only Ole Hickory had any significant impact on the times.

Another area, other than military actions, to remember great men is in taking arguments before the US Supreme Courts. In my opinion, Daniel Webster was the best. He brought three landmark Supreme Court cases which yielded three rulings favorable to him.

In Dartmouth College v. Woodward, the New Hampshire State Legislature tried to circumvent the original colonial charter that established Dartmouth College back in 1769. Webster was able to guide the court through the difficult political, religious and economic issues and to prove to Chief Justice John Marshall et al, that New Hampshire had violated that section of the U.S. Constitution that states, "no State... shall pass any bill of attainder, ex post facto law, or law impairing the obligation of contracts.

The argument in McCullough v. Maryland covered nine full days. The questions before the Court were: 1) Does Congress have the right to charter a 'National Bank'? and 2) Can a State Legislature tax an institution created by Congress? Daniel Webster spoke for most of the first day of testimony and reminded the Court that,

"an unlimited power to tax involves, necessarily, the power to destroy.

After the trial, Chief Justice John Marshall took only three days to hand down one of his longest opinions ever written. Marshall in essence wrote that yes, Congress does have the right to charter a bank and no, an individual State does not have the power to tax and thus 'destroy' an institution created by Congress.

He argued before the US Supreme Court (Gibbons v. Ogden)

The suit was brought about by Thomas Gibbons who started a steamboat line from Elizabethtown, New Jersey into New York City. Gibbons was opposed by powerful interests in New York. Robert Fulton, Robert Livingston and Aaron Ogden shared the monopoly of steamboat traffic in New York waters. Ogden had purchased the right to operate from New Jersey but Gibbons refused to do so. The question before the Court was: Did New York laws granting a monopoly of steamboat traffic violate that section of the U.S. Constitution that leaves to Congress the power to regulate commerce among the several states?

Daniel Webster spoke for two and one-half hours on behalf of his client, Thomas Gibbons. After a short postponement, Justice Marshall returned with the opinion that the acts of New York must yield to the laws of Congress.

These landmark cases show how much he believed in capitalism, liberty, and a strong Union. To him the three are inseparable. I do not hear anyone from either Party today evoke the same passion, and we need it now perhaps more than we did then. As another Diarist has written, not one member of Congress has evoked passion about the House Speaker's accusation that the CIA lied to the US Congress. Not One.

When he was elected to national office he had great oratorical skills, and he cared more in doing what he believed was right than in what he believed was more popular politically. An example is how he positioned on the US Bank. In the winter session of 1814, Daniel Webster headed the opposition against the formation of a national, government-run bank. After the bill was defeated, John C. Calhoun came to Daniel Webster and pleaded for his help in framing a new act that would pass the Congress. Webster agreed and a new bill was drafted but President Madison vetoed the bill as unconstitutional. A year later a third 'bank bill' was drafted with a larger capitalization of $35 million. Webster was opposed to this bill because of the subscription of stock by the government and the appointment of government directors but the bill passed and this time, it was signed by Madison's successor, President Monroe and became law.

Later on when Andrew Jackson was President he supported a bill to renew the charter for the Second Bank of the US. There was a lot of political games being played because the request for a renewal was made four years before it was set to expire. Historians believe it was an attempt at discrediting Andrew Jackson politically. They may be right, and in any event Andrew Jackson showed his shrewd political skills. He vetoed the bill a week after it passed Congress condemning the Bank as unauthorized by the Constitution, subversive to the rights of the States, and dangerous to the liberties of the people.

After the veto, Daniel Webster exclaimed in the Senate,

It manifestly seeks to inflame the poor against the rich. It wantonly attacks whole classes of the people, for the purpose of turning against them the prejudices and the resentments of other classes.

In a rebuttal to Jackson's aversion to foreign capital in the B.U.S., Webster again spoke in the Senate,

Every dollar brought from abroad, and put into the mass of active capital at home, ...diminishes the rate of interest and therefore benefits all the active and trading classes of society, at the expense of the American capitalist.

The class warfare game that Jackson played was a brilliant political strategy for him to overwhelmingly defeat his opponent for reelection.

In Jackson's second term the nullification crisis came to a boil and confused the political scene. John C. Calhoun was no longer the Vice-president but was now a Senator from South Carolina. On the floor of the Senate, Webster debated Calhoun on the merits of 'nullification' as troops were being raised in South Carolina. Webster supported Andrew Jackson and the use of force to suppress the rebellion. Henry Clay meanwhile, sided with John C. Calhoun and tried to work out a compromise. Webster came away from the crisis as the great 'Defender of the Constitution.'

The short term political strategy for Jackson was a long term political nightmare for his successor, Martin Van Buren. The Panic of 1837 came under his watch, and it cost him getting reelected in 1840.

The year 1840 is the first time the Whig Party candidate became POTUS. This is also the first time it mattered A LOT to be the VP, because President Harrison died after only about a month into the office. Imagine what kind of alternate world we may be living in today had Daniel Webster been selected as VP? Would the Nation have stabilized its monetary system? Would the War Between the States have started a few years earlier? I don't know.

I believe that the Tea Party protest activities are a sign of a restless mood in a Nation with many people who still believe in liberty, capitalism, and a strong Union. I end by paraphrasing the words in a Simon & Garfunkle cover
Where have you gone Daniel Webster? The Nation turns its lonely eyes towards you.

Nothing New Under the Sun about Political Party Infighting Notwithstanding the Hand-wringing of Colin Powell and Arlen Specter

A tip of the hat to Steve Foley linking a blogger who wrote the following:

2009-05-13
Thomas Jefferson warned us of Heretics [RINOs] 1803 AD
"I have spoken of the [Republicans] as if they were a homogenous body, but this is not the truth. Under that name lurks the heretical sect of [liberals]. Afraid to wear their own name, they creep under the mantle of Federalism, and the [Republicans], like sheep permit the fox to take shelter among them, when pursued by dogs. These men have no right to office. If a [liberal] be in office, anywhere, and it be known to the President, the oath he has taken to support the Constitution imperiously requires the instantaneous dismission of such a officer; and I hold the President criminal if he permitted such to remain. To appoint a [liberal] to conduct the affairs of a republic, is like appointing an atheist to the priesthood."

Note: I replaced the word federalist with Republican, and the word monarchist with liberal; but the message is the same.

After reading it my reaction is that he could have replaced the word federalist with Democrats and the message is the same as well. It is not a new phenomena for Political Parties to fight over principles of governance. The two parties in the beginning were the Federalists led by John Adams and the Anti-Federalists led by Thomas Jefferson.

The Federalists Party tended to favor a strong central government. Federalists tended to be a coalition of urban New Englanders and also tended to be pro-British.

The typical description of the Anti-Federalists, like Thomas Jefferson, have them as states rights advocates (fear of central power); as the voice of the common, rural, and western peoples; and pro-French (who had helped the Americans beat the British and gain U.S. independence.

One example of over-reach by the Federalists is the Alien and Sedition Acts. The pro-British Federalists were concerned with French and Irish anti-British immigrants. Anti-Federalists were also a direct target. The government actually imprisoned people for voicing displeasure with the president and his policies! In other words, public discourse, legitimate opposition, and dissent were banned. Or, to put it another way, parts of the 1st Amendment to The U.S. Constitution had been legislated away. Those then in the seats of government did not want the public or members of the other party to be meddlesome. They had no tolerance for anybody else's opinion.

Ironically, the Federalists' last, dying gasp occurred in 1814. American soil had been invaded by a foreign army (the British) in The War of 1812. During the course of the war, the few remaining Federalist leaders met in Hartford, Connecticut. The meeting was called the 1814 Hartford Convention. The members of the convention threatened to have their New England states secede from the U.S. and to join the British. They opposed the war and the government's policies. The war wasn't in their self-interest. Treasonous actions during wartime by the very same people who had made laws only 16 years earlier claiming that any verbal disagreement with their ideas and their policies was seditious and treasonous. Now, it was they who disagreed with the party in power. Only, this time they wanted to leave the country and form their own! They wanted things their way, they knew better, they were "the better sort." They could not tolerate any other view but their own.

Now some historians may argue with me about the nature of the two political party systems in the US, and the twists and turns they have made, and that’s fine. In my opinion the Republican Party that elected Ronald Reagan President in 1980 more closely resembles the Anti-Federalist Party of Thomas Jefferson than the Democratic Party. I base my opinion on the principles that President Reagan held, and the types of citizens he won over so much so that they remained Republican for the next 25 years.

In my opinion the Democratic Party that elected Barack Obama in 2008 more closely resembles the Federalist Party leaders who met in the 1814 Hartford Convention. YMMV

Examples from Dave Leip's Atlas of Presidential Elections A note: Dave uses Red for the Anti-Federalist states and purple for the Federalist states. Dave uses Red for the states the Ds win and Blue for the states the Rs win

1796 Election Results


2008 Election Results

Thugocracy Will Yield a Bumper Crop of Ex-Democrats

With all of the talk about all of the reported misteps by Republicans there is one story that may be the under-reported story of the century. There is a fear of ‘Muscle for Obama’ occurrences that are driving people away. This has not just happened over the past 100 days. The American Thinker has A Letter of Amends from a Recovering Liberal in Berkley that provides some personal experience from Robin in this matter. From the letter some examples include:

In February of 2008, I saw a new client, a bright and sensitive young woman who came in looking like she just escaped a war zone. In some ways she had; she had innocently shared with others at her job that she voted for Hillary rather than Obama. Immediately she was being targeted for abuse that put her in fear for not only her job, but her life.

A woman in Berkeley had her front window broken because it displayed a poster of Hillary.

An acquaintance had her car broken into, and the only item stolen was a NoObama bumper sticker.

My local greeting card store sold very flattering cards about Obama, insulting ones about Hillary, and a Hillary "nutcracker." When I complained, the young male manager literally laughed in my face.



The final straw for me was when a close friend flew into a rage at me when she learned I wasn't supporting Obama. The political became personal when she began impugning my character. Worse yet, she tried to intimidate me into changing my mind by threatening to dump me.



Suddenly a light went on. The peace and love and flower power of the old left was dead and gone (if it even existed to begin with except in my imagination). The Democrats had morphed into a power hungry Thought Police, and I was done with them. My new motto in life: don't PC on me.

Glenn Beck recently has had guests Marcel Reid and Karen Inman who are part of a group called Acorn-8. They have been members of ACORN, and they want to clean up the corruption. They are not getting any support in their efforts from the Congress and White House. Some examples are the following conversation:

REID: The members of the board in D.C. have been stalwart in backing us, because we have asked for three years to have the books opened, for three solid years...



BECK: What kind of organization can't look — where the chair and the board can't look at their own books?



REID: Well, primarily it's because the boards aren't functional. They're ceremonial. And once they understood that they had a board formed that would not serve in that position, to be ceremonial, then there was a huge problem.



BECK: What is a ceremonial board? Why...



REID: A ceremonial board is a board that sits but has no actual authority.


BECK: Why would anyone do that? Why — I mean — maybe I'm coming as a cynic and I am, but maybe I'm coming — but that seems like a front organization.



REID: I don't think that people that sit on the board thought it was a front organization. I think everyone came to this organization with the purist of intentions.



BECK: No, no, no. I'm not saying that the people on the board or you felt that way. Do you feel that way now at all? Like, you're, "Wait a minute, am I just being used here?" What kind — Are you are providing cover?



INMAN: Yes. It's kind of a rubber stamp thing. We're going to tell you what to think and you're going to say "Yes, that's a good idea," and go along with it. And when the meetings are only half a day and you bring in 51 people, they're not doing the kinds of work that they should be doing.



BECK: Tell me, you had — you were sent to Capitol Hill in 2008. And you...



REID: There was a group of us that convened on Capitol Hill when the stimulus package was first introduced. This was under the Bush administration. I believe it was in September. And I can go back into my notes and give you the exact dates. And at that time, we were there to talk about the fact that we wanted the stimulus package to go forward, and I was just concerned about that, because at that time, Karen and I had served on the IMC, which was the Intra-Management Committee for ACORN.



But you know, there's just — what we want to say very quickly or what I want to say very quickly is: We wanted an audit — just an audit. And when we didn't have an audit or couldn't get an audit and asked for an audit, we were removed and we want to know why we were removed.



If everything is above board and we ask for an audit and we're members of the organization and supposedly directors of that organization, why would you remove us?



BECK: What's the answer they've given you?



INMAN: We haven't gotten an answer. We've asked for the reasons. We've asked for their minutes. We've asked for all of those things. You've asked for minutes for the last three years. We get nothing and we are stonewalled and not even responded to.



BECK: It started with the "ACORN 8." How many are there now?



REID: We have far more than eight. We — I don't know how many, because we gain people every day.



BECK: People in ACORN that say I want my organization back.



REID: Right.



BECK: So, what is it? I said to Marcel, I think I said to you earlier, that this is all about votes and you said, "No, this is all about the money." Explain that.



REID: This is all about the money. This isn't — well, you can do it, Karen.



INMAN: Right. Basically, what happens is the organization, I think, had a good message to begin with and then they looked to see how much money they generated and how much power they got. And so, instead of having it trickle down — trickle up from the membership, which is what it is supposed to be, they've looked and said, "Hmm, we can get X amount of dollars here. We'll convince our membership that this is what we should be working on."



BECK: It seems to me that they are using me, and people like me, by calling racists and everything else, to generate outrage to help raise money.



And then, also, they are using the lowest of our society, using them, and then throwing them to the lions and saying, "You know, well, it was a rogue employee," which also helps them, too, doesn't it? How?



REID: People who have always been entitled to things in life know very quickly when they're being used. People who have never experienced anything in life except being used don't know when to blow the whistle. And why should they? Who's ever listened to them before when they told the truth and blown the whistle?



BECK: This is why you guys, because when we talked this afternoon in my office, I mean, I just want the truth. I don't really care. It's great to help people, but it seems like everybody — this is dirty. This is really dirty. Is this why you guys are doing this and staying in, because somebody has to?



INMAN: Yes. We want it corrected. We want it — for example, when the embezzlement happened, we asked for the books. We asked for that to be taken care of. If there is nothing to hide, why can't they open up the books?



BECK: Is it Conyers, Gresh, that said today that there is reason — did you hear this? He said that there was absolutely no reason that we're going to do an investigation. I mean, they'll do steroids on baseball but — we have a statement? Where is it? OK. Here it is: "Based on my review of the information regarding the complaints against ACORN, I have concluded that a hearing on this matter appears to be unwarranted at this time."



REID: Well, you know, I was actually sitting in Congress when I heard Representative Conyers really push Jerrold Nadler to have an investigation of ACORN. I heard him do it. It wasn't something that I think he was doing for the community.



BECK: Why this? Why now? Why is he backing off?



REID: Well, because Nadler was very resistant to there being an investigation of ACORN. He was very resistant. He showed it at that time, and I think what has happened — and I have no way of proving it — is that I think that there was just a lot of pressure put on Conyers not to have this investigation.



BECK: First Karen, let me go to you. There was an embezzlement. Two brothers worked for ACORN. There was almost $1 million embezzled. Nobody went to prison on that. Can you give me a little bit on this?



INMAN: Certainly. What happened is that Wade was the founder and his brother was working for ACORN and he worked for the financial agency. And he embezzled about a million dollars. It was found out. They covered it up, and he continued on the payroll for ACORN for the next almost eight years until it was divulged, and then he was forced to resign. But it was, like, what happened to the money? Where is the accountability? And not only that, but the people who knew about it, the management, staff, the head staff and the president, all knew about it and they're still there.



BECK: I said to you, guys, earlier in my office, while we're sitting on my office. I said, "You know what, forget about the listener here or the viewer, put your attention on to the one person that doesn't care about getting credit isn't trying to make a political point, isn't left, isn't right, just is, and is there to defend and protect the Constitution of the United States and its people." Which one of you guys is going to address that one person that might be watching in Congress or some place and just say help.



REID: Help.



INMAN: Help. We need — we need your support. We need you to help us figure out how to stop the abuse, how to empower people and to look at the situation as it is, and not look at it as a miniscule voter fraud thing. It's much larger than that.



BECK: Wow. Ladies, thank you very much. I appreciate it. And if you don't mind...



REID: And I would just like to say one thing.



BECK: Yes.



REID: I'm sorry. Excuse me. I would just like to say that ACORN doesn't need to be funded with any more taxpayer dollars until we find out what happened to the last taxpayer dollars that ACORN was funded with. That is what we're calling for. We want the organization to survive. We want the organization to flourish.



BECK: Has it ever — has it ever occurred to you that you're in danger for saying things like that? Do you realize how much money is at stake? I said to you earlier, they say — ACORN says we're not going to take any stimulus dollars. You two laughed. Why, Karen?



INMAN: Well, because there are more than 300 organizations under the ACORN umbrella and they might be getting it under another umbrella organization.

The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review wrote an article, Ousted ACORN Members Seek Federal Criminal Investigation. From this article we learn the following additional details:

The splinter group, ACORN 8, released a 24-page document Wednesday that asks federal investigators to consider fraud, embezzlement and conspiracy charges, and criminal civil rights violations relating to the embezzlement of nearly $1 million from the nonprofit's accounts and an alleged cover-up of the theft for almost a decade.



"Moreover, due to the admission that a felony has been committed, other federal offenses may have also been committed ... ," states the document signed by 14 members of ACORN 8, including recently expelled members of ACORN's national board of directors.



Two members of ACORN's national board of directors, Washington ACORN President Marcel Reid and Minnesota Chair Karen Inman, inadvertently started the ACORN 8 movement after fellow board members elected them last summer to reorganize ACORN and recommend improvements to prevent embezzlement.



Reid, Inman and six other ACORN members filed a lawsuit in Louisiana seeking access to financial records kept by Citizens Consulting Inc., the ACORN affiliate Dale Rathke headed when he stole money.



Charles Turner, a member of ACORN in D.C. for 10 years and signer of the ACORN 8 complaint, said that everybody who knew about the embezzlement, or was in a position that they should have known about it, should be separated from ACORN. "I'd like to see somebody go to jail," Turner said.



The embezzlement resulted in ACORN's loss of one long-standing prominent benefactor -- the Catholic Campaign for Human Development, which gave ACORN more than $7 million in the past decade. The charity canceled plans to donate $1.2 million to ACORN affiliates this fiscal year. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops in November severed ties with ACORN.



ACORN and its affiliates received more than $31 million in federal grants between 1998 and this year, according to an analysis by the staff of House Republican Leader John Boehner of Ohio.

What this article did not report is that local chapters of ACORN get no money directly. All the money goes to Citizens Consulting Inc. in NOLA.



There was a Barney Frank amendment on May 7th that allowed ACORN to receive additional Federal funding to shakedown mortgage lenders, and the only Ds to vote nay to this amendment were Bobby Bright AL-2, Gabrielle Giffords AZ-8, Walt Minnick ID-1, and Harry Mitchell AZ-5. No Rs voted aye.



Of course it would be wonderful to have them become ex-Ds because of the merits of our conservative principles. However, I will settle for them fighting with us against the Ds for the reasons of fighting against a thugocracy.

TANSTAAFL!!! [Open Thread]

I just finished reading an excellent book, The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, written by the master of science fiction, Robert A. Heinlein. Sometimes the real world nonfiction current events are so depressing that I have got to take a break. I have read where others here have considered reading Atlas Shrugged written by Ayn Rand. Before you do it you might take into consideration reading 1,324 pages of Atlas Shrugged vs 384 pages of The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress.



The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress is a delightful book with themes very similar to Atlas Shrugged. I won't spoil it, but I actually like the ending of it more than the ending of Atlas Shrugged. Here are some quotes to perk up some interest:

I beg you -- do not resort to compulsory taxation. There is no worse tyranny than to force a man to pay for what he does not want merely because you think it would be good for him.

I will accept any rules that you feel necessary to your freedom. I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do.

I was not joking when I told them to dig into their own pouches. It may not be possible to do away with government sometimes I think that government is an inescapable disease of human beings. But it may be possible to keep it small and starved and inoffensive and can you think of a better way than by requiring the governors themselves to pay the costs of their antisocial hobby?

Please consider this an Open Thread Diary.

ObamaSpeak - sounds like chalk on a chalkboard to me

On the release of top-secret memos

I am absolutely convinced it was the right thing to do -- not because there might not have been information that was yielded by these various detainees who were subjected to this treatment, but because we could have gotten this information in other ways, in ways that were consistent with our values, in ways that were consistent with who we are.

Translation
I don’t care if these memos say that they used a gentler means to yield information from these detainees before they employed harsher techniques. I know who these sadistic right-wing extremists are, and they really used the harsher techniques ASAP because they get a sexual gratification from putting pain on people. Yeah, I told Janet and DHS to keep a watchful eye on these guys because I am not seeing the love and loyalty to ME from them.


Remark in a speech to FBI employees

We know that al Qaeda is not constrained by a constitution

Translation
Dang, I envy al Qaeda for not being constrained by a constitution. That U.S. Constitution thingy is such a drag on getting what I want accomplished. I’ll just ignore it, or have some pals of mine on the bench run interference for me, but I still have some envy for those al Qaeda guys. Except for their digs of course, because I do have better living quarters and creature comforts here in the White House than they have in those caves over there.


Remark in a speech at the National Academy of Sciences

Our future on this planet depends on our willingness to address the challenge posed by carbon pollution.

Translation
Work with me guys. Work with me. I know that carbon has always been considered one of the essential elements for the existence of life. I just need you to re-frame carbon as a pollutant. Calling carbon a pollutant makes it a bad thing that can be taxed just like beer, and cigarettes, and ammo. The money that can be had from a tax on carbon is bigger than anything that has ever been tried before. If you just keep working with me on the meme that carbon is a pollutant, then they will gladly pay the tax so their conscience is clear that they are against pollution. It’s perfect.


Remarks on Chrysler

I don't stand with those who held out when everybody else is making sacrifices. It was unacceptable to let a small group of speculators endanger Chrysler's future by refusing to sacrifice like everyone else.


We will be providing additional capital to GMAC to help unlock our frozen credit markets and free up lending so that consumers can get auto loans and dealers can finance their inventories; a measure that will help stabilize not only our auto market, but the broader economy, as well.


I want to remind you that if you decide to buy a Chrysler, your warrantee will be safe -- because it is backed by the United States government.

Translation
Who do these people think they are to refuse to make sacrifice to ME - The One? This whole worn out argument of choosing the US contract laws and decisions of a presiding judge in a bankruptcy court instead of following me is just so old fashioned. Look, my administration has got skin in the game, and we are going to coerce our lender of choice, GMAC, to get you the money you need to purchase that car. They got no business saying you don’t qualify for a loan. Does that loyalty and love you showed by voting for ME get you something? Of course it does. In addition now your car warrantee is going to backed by ME. I am Joe Isuzu, and you have my word on it.

The Reagan Revolution - Not

I recently read the transcript of a lecture by Stephen F. Hadley delivered on April 13th in the Bradley lecture series, and it moved me to write this diary, and how I view what Mr Hadley said applies to the April 15th Tea Party events. One of the main premises in his speech is that President Reagan was not calling for a Revolution, but instead he was calling for a Restoration of constitutional government as the Founders intended it to be.



It is necessary first to understand the unity of Reagan's statecraft, and second, to note the way in which Reagan perceived his statecraft in constitutional terms. Understanding the unity of Reagan's domestic and foreign statecraft is not easy, partly because telling the story of Reagan's domestic record is much more complicated. It lacks the personal drama of the Cold War against the Evil Empire. Reagan never stood in front of the Federal Trade Commission or the Environmental Protection Agency and said, "Mr. Regulator--tear down this rule!"



But this distinction between Reagan's presidential performance in domestic policy and in foreign policy is fundamentally unsound: his statecraft needs to be seen as a unity for one crucial reason: he saw it as a unity. Lincoln once wrote that all nations have a central idea, from which all its minor thoughts radiate. The same can be said of leading statesmen. Reagan's central idea can be summarized as the view that unlimited government is inimical to liberty, both in its vicious forms such as Communism or socialism, but also in its supposedly benign forms, such as bureaucracy.



President Reagan in his own words

There is a threat posed to human freedom by the enormous power of the modern state. History teaches the dangers of government that overreaches--political control taking precedence over free economic growth, secret police, mindless bureaucracy all combining to stifle individual excellence and personal freedom. Now, I'm aware that among us here and throughout Europe there is legitimate disagreement over the extent to which the public sector should play a role in a nation's economy and life. I know you're not all as freedom-loving as me and Margaret Thatcher--but on one point all of us are united: our abhorrence of dictatorship in all its forms.

In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem. Government is the problem. . .It is time to check and reverse the growth of government, which shows signs of having grown beyond the consent of the governed.

It is my intention to curb the size and influence of the Federal establishment and to demand recognition of the distinction between the powers granted to the Federal Government and those reserved to the States or to the people. . . Now, so there will be no misunderstanding, it is not my intention to do away with government. It is rather to make it work--work with us, not over us; to stand by our side, not ride on our back.

From time to time, we have been tempted to believe that society has become too complex to be managed by self-rule, that government by an elite group is superior to government for, by, and of the people. But if no one among us is capable of governing himself, then who among us has the capacity to govern someone else?

What others have said about President Ronald Reagan

Former Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich -

Ronald Reagan is the only coherent revolutionary in an administration of accommodationist advisers. The problem was that Reagan's people were so excited by victory, they forgot they didn't control the country. They didn't control the House and they didn't really control the Senate. They didn't in fact have real power, but psychologically they acted as if they did.

Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels -

The Reagan years will be for conservatives what the Kennedy years remain for liberals: the reference point, the breakthrough experience--a conservative Camelot. At the same time, no lesson is plainer than that the damage of decades cannot be repaired in any one administration.

conservative intellectual William F. Buckley Jr. -

The most powerful man in the world is not powerful enough to do everything that needs to be done.

Gary McDowell, one of Ed Meese's Justice Department aides who worked on the original intent portfolio -

Domestically Ronald Reagan did far less than he had hoped, he did far less than he had promised, less than people wanted--and a hell of a lot more than people thought he would.

liberal intellectual Robert Maynard Hutchins -

The notion that the sole concern of a free society is the limitation of governmental authority and that that government is best which governs least is certainly archaic. Our object today should not be to weaken government in competition with other centers of power, but rather to strengthen it as the agency charged with the responsibility for the common good.

While this is not revolutionary, it is controversial, as it challenges the basic premises of the modern, centralized administrative state. Unlike Hutchins and other liberals, Reagan didn't think Jefferson's philosophy was archaic. Reagan remains the beau-ideal of a modern conservative statesman, whose skills and insights are worthy of the closest study and emulation.



Keep in mind that had it been within the power of the GOP establishment in 1980, the party's presidential nomination would surely have gone to Gerald Ford, George Bush, Howard Baker, Bob Dole, or John Connally before Reagan. Having been in the minority for so long, many Washington Republicans had come to absorb the premises of establishment liberalism, preferring to offer a low-budget version of the Democratic platform.



So the picture is decidedly mixed: Reagan transformed the Republican Party into a party much more in his own image, just as FDR did with the Democrats in the New Deal transformation. He successfully curbed some of the excesses of liberalism, though he did not turn back liberalism itself. The inexorable logic of modern American government is to expand by degrees--the intended legacy of the Progressive and New Deal transformations, which were constitutional in purpose and effect.



Why didn't Reagan succeed more in reducing the size and influence of the federal government in domestic affairs? Reagan was more successful rolling back the Soviet empire than he was in rolling back the domestic government empire chiefly because this is a harder problem.



Reagan was the first president since FDR who spoke frequently and substantively about the Founders and the Constitution. This is a remarkable and telling fact. It is largely overlooked today that FDR spoke often about the Founding and the Constitution, but quite differently than Woodrow Wilson did. While Wilson was openly critical of the Founding, FDR's references to the Founding were mischievous--appearing to be defending or proposing a restoration of the principles of the Founding while in fact attempting a wholesale modification of the meaning of our constitutional order. After FDR, our presidents practically ceased making reference to the Founding or the Constitution--until Reagan arrived.



So, did Reagan succeed in curbing the size and reach of the federal government? Measuring in terms of spending, the answer appears to be No, at least if a permanent reduction in the growth of federal spending or the size of the federal bureaucracy are used as the main metrics. Although Reagan had some effect in restraining the growth of government spending below what it would have been under a second term of Jimmy Carter (indeed, far below what Carter's last five-year budget plan had projected), over the long run the Reagan years appear to have been a small speedbump on the road to serfdom. Between 1981 and 2006, inflation-adjusted federal spending grew 84 percent, while population grew only 30 percent. If per capita spending had grown only at the rate of inflation, federal outlays in 2006 would have been $800 billion lower than they were--under, remember, a Republican president and Republican Congress.



I think there is a concerted deliberate effort to incorrectly frame the narrative of the purpose and motives of the Tea Party events. The narrative they are creating is that these Tea Party events are just a bunch of far right wing extremists who want to overthrow the government and descend into anarchy. They are saying this is just a bunch of Archie Bunker NASCAR fan rubes who are too stupid to realize that they are not currently paying more in taxes. They are saying that this is a GOP operation that some right wing extremists personalities from Fox and conservative talk radio created, and none of this was going on over the increased spending that took place in the previous administration.



This narrative they are projecting is so ridiculously wrong that I believe it is going to backfire on them big from now through the next two election cycles. The people who attended these Tea Party events are the children of the families around this country who strongly supported President Reagan. They know about the glory of when President Reagan spoke in Berlin and the words he directed to the Soviet Premier Gorbachev, and it fills them with pride. They also sense that an equal degree of success in restoring a constitutional government as the Founders intended it to be has not yet occurred. The people who attended these Tea Party events are like an attractive available single lady who is looking for Mr. Right. I believe the Republican Party does have the best opportunity to woo this lady, but they are going to have to speak to her in terms of principled Founding Father values and not in terms of political obfuscations that try to defend the indefensible spending sprees and binges that the elected Republicans exhibited.

Slouching Toward Compassion and a Tea Party

I just finished reading Slouching Toward Gomorrah and The Tragedy of American Compassion. I have also been thinking a lot about a Tea Party on April 15th, hence the title. Both of these books and what I have seen and read about Tea Parties indicate an American human condition that extends past partisan politics and current events. I now understand no immediate fixes of an election or SCOTUS change are going to make everything all better. There needs to be a pendulum swing back to core principles that do not have an expiration date.



Robert Bork wrote about radical individualism and radical egalitarianism he especially saw while teaching at Yale. The individualism he is talking about is no civil rules, accountability, or personal responsibility for actions by an individual. The attitude that if it feels good then do it. The radical egalitarianism he is talking about is how no one should achieve more, accomplish more, or obtain more wealth than another person. Those who do have more are required to give this up to those who have less so that social justice will be met.



Marvin Olansky wrote about the changes in caring for the needy from the time the Mayflower landed at Plymouth Rock to the present day. The major difference between then and now is the dominant view of human nature. Cotton Mather warned his church members in 1698: "Instead of exhorting you to augment your charity, I will rather utter an exhortation... that you may not abuse your charity by misapplying it." His view, held for most of the 18th and 19th century by many, was that many persons, given a choice between working and not working, would choose to sit. He and others viewed the poor not as standing on the bottom rung of the social ladder, with the only choices stagnation or upward movement, but as resting in the middle, capable of moving either upward to economic independence or downward to defeated and dependent state of mind. I sure wish that had remained the dominant view.



Marvin Olasky writes an excellent musical scale from A to G of seven seals of good philanthropic practice:

A=affiliation defined as family ties

B=bonding defined as a personal connection to a charity volunteer

C=categorization defined as seeing an applicant for charity as either

1. worthy of relief

2. needing work rather than relief

3. not entitled to relief

D=discernment defined as personally knowing the applicant enough to detect fraud

E=employment defined as a willingness to work for food and lodging

F=freedom defined as the opportunity to work and worship without governmental restriction. Freedom grasped when an individual takes responsibility with his opportunity.

G=God defined as a recognition that true philanthropy must take into account spiritual as well as physical needs.



In 1947, Horace Greeley, founder and editor of the New York Tribune, is one of the first to lead people in the wrong direction we find ourselves in. "The heart of man is not depraved, his passions do not prompt to wrong doing, and do not therefore by their action, produce evil. Social distinctions of master and servant, rich and poor, landlord and land-less are the cause of evil. The way to end evil is to redistribute wealth so that all receive an equal share; one way to begin will be to have government tax the better off and distribute food and funds to those less well off."



Edward Bellamy, author of Looking Backward, followed Greeley in 1888. In the novel Bellamy's protagonist, Julian West, goes to sleep in 1887 and wakes in the year 2000. West, impressed by the equal division of abundant wealth in what has become an American socialist paradise, asks, By what title does the individual claim his particular share? What is the basis of his allotment? The wise denizen of the future, Dr Lette, replies, His title is his humanity. The basis of his claim is the fact that he is a man.



The theologian and key figure in the early 1900's Social Gospel movement, Walter Rauschenbusch said straightforwardly, "God is against capitalism."



During the Progressive Movement era, journalistic powers, William Randolph Hearst and Scripps-McRae newspaper chains denounced crooked wealth and called for the government to provide guaranteed incomes.



Moving on to the Great Society era of LBJ, the National Council of Churches became one of the leading sellers of entitlement. Council reverends argued not only that all the poor had a right to a handouts, but that the better-off should be ashamed if they did not provide them. They argued that poverty was still with us because of the influence of unrestricted economic individualism. The council demanded that the federal government provide leadership in the creation of adequate mechanisms for income distribution and income maintenance in an affluent society. The NCC brushed off the biblical statement that the poor would always be with us, since it arose in the past when the primitive status of human technology and the scarcity of developed resources existed. Since then, however, technological breakthrough have allowed for adequate levels of living for all.



I especially appreciate this little nugget from Olasky:

It is the thought that counts. We are not supposed to think too long, however, since what could be called Nike philanthropy demands that we "Just Do It." Cotton Mather's exhortation "that you may not abuse your charity by misapplying it" has long been buried.

So I am going to go to Tea Party armed with a lot of powerful ideas from a couple of books I highly recommend. I know that T.E.A is an acronym for Taxed Enough Already, and I would like to add another acronym S.E.A. for Spent Enough Already. The long list of examples I've listed from the books I just read show an entitlement attitude has been cultivated for a long long time. This entitlement spending and mindset has hurt instead of helped the poor and needy. It will be better if the pendulum swings back so personal individual shame in moving downward to a defeated dependency is the mindset of the majority. It will be better if more folks see themselves in the middle rung of the social ladder with freedom of opportunity to move up to economic independence.

They Just Want Their Bank Back

The bizarro behavior that the current leaders of Congress and Pres. Obama are showing toward financial institutions is puzzling to some. There are rumors that some of these institutions have offered to repay some bailout money, and the offer is refused. So, what's up with that? Here is a thought...maybe they just want their bank back.



I used my handy dandy GOP.com search engine for House bank scandal rubbergate. I came up with three excellent articles. Two were published on March 30, 1992, and the third was published on April 18, 1995. Two of these sources, Time and Newsweek, are much better than anything they are publishing these days. I encourage you to read them to refresh your memory of the kind of history the teachers in school do not mention.



From BusinessWeek The Secrets of Rubbergate



House seargeant-at-arms Jack Russ assigned each new member of the House a non-interest-bearing accounts at the House Bank. A lot of these folks were scratching their head wondering why anyone would want to put money in a non-interest-bearing accounts at the House Bank. The answer was never written down, but Hill veterans knew the secret: The bank provided free overdraft protection worth up to $2,000 a year and, indirectly, interest-free loans up to a members' net monthly salary, or about $7,000. This more than compensated for the lack of interest on deposits.



Congress exempts itself from regulation and oversight.



The House Bank had some of the trappings of a commercial banking institution--accepting deposits, offering checking accounts, and, indirectly through the overdrafts, making loans. But Congress has long insulated itself from the laws it imposes on others, from civil rights to workplace safety, and the House Bank was similarly exempt from the state and federal regulations that govern more traditional banks. It did not have to pay attention to rules requiring charters, capital reserves, examinations, and fees for deposit insurance.



What's more, an analysis of some of the arcane procedures at the bank suggests that despite denials by lawmakers, taxpayers' money was used to support the bank's operations. Every year, taxpayers footed the bill for the salaries and other administrative costs of running the bank, to the tune of at least $1 million. Furthermore, taxpayers may have helped finance House members' overdrafts. These were so pervasive that the staff included one person whose sole job was to ask members to cover their bad checks. When members overdrew their accounts by more than their next month's net salary, as was often the case, "technically and legally, they were dipping into public money," says Representative Fred Grandy (R-Iowa), one of six House members who investigated the bank scandal.

HOW THE HOUSE BANK WORKED



1 House members' paychecks placed in an account at Treasury to which House Bank had access. Riggs Bank was a conduit for other House Bank deposits



2 Members wrote checks to third parties such as dry cleaners, which were processed by the Federal Reserve's national check-clearing system and returned to the House Bank



3 The House Bank wrote checks on the Treasury account in amounts equal to the third-party checks it was called upon to pay. Riggs processed members' other checks free of charge



4 Checks written on insufficient funds were not bounced. Treasury funds, as well as deposits of other members, may have been used to cover overdrafts

From the Newsweek article you find the following-



The muck slopped over onto the House post office, the scene of embezzling and alleged cocaine dealing by employees. With Minority Leader Robert Michel saying there was evidence of "money laundering" at the facility, postmaster Robert Rota resigned-the second House officer in a week to do so under a cloud.



The post office might have redeemed stamps for cash, in effect allowing legislators or their staffs to steal public money. With the U.S. attorney for Washington, D.C., on the case, Speaker Thomas S. Foley could well declare that "the era of patronage is over." Promising to put a professional financial officer in charge of House transactions, Foley said he would eliminate some perks and impose real-world fees on others, like the free pharmacy and the nearly gratis gym.



From the Time article we learn about Mrs. Rubbergate-

Mrs. Solarz admitted that she knew her husband's House account was overdrawn when she ordered a congressional staffer to write a check for $5,200 in 1990. She is not expected to serve jailtime. Ex-Rep. Solarz, who himself had a large number of overdrafts from the House Bank, was cleared by a task force. It was the eleventh criminal charge to emerge from the 1992 "Rubbergate" scandal.

All this talk recently about how those greedy people in financial institutions were not regulated enough by Congress has reminded me of this scandal. Some things simply do not pass the smell test. If Congress wants to work on more regulations, then I suggest they begin by just regulating themselves, Remove exemptions of privileges to them that all of the rest of us have to put up with. Just a thought.

What's My Line?

Some may be old enough to remember this TV game show in the 1950's. The panel would be blindfolded as the mystery celebrity appeared on the show. Listening to him they would try to figure out who he was. Instead of listening you can read and try to figure out who this person is.



I was born on an island, and my parentage, as others have sneered was irregular. After my birth my ne'er-do-well father deserted me. In my early teens my mother was lost to me too. It was left up to others to give me an opportunity to receive a good education, and I was able to continue my studies on the mainland at a prominent university in the northeast.



There is no doubting that I was serious about college, and I was ambitious and impatient to make my way in the world. It is this manipulative ability, this capacity to use people as a means to what I conceive to be a higher end, that describes me best. This higher end or purpose of mine in the years from, say '77 to '01, was the construction of my own political utopia in America.



I searched for ways to remedy the defects of the union by strengthening the central government at the expense of the states.



To my acquaintances I proposed my own system of government which, while not ideal since the people, I believed, were agog with republicanism and incapable of political realism-came closest to the limited monarchy I secretly preferred. The chief executive and senators should hold office for life, subject only to good behavior. The president must have a veto over all Federal and state laws, he held, in order to balance a democratic lower house against the propertied interest of the senate. And, finally, governors of the states-mere administrative units in my conception-should be appointed by the president, whose only check would be from congress and a Federal judiciary empowered to declare laws unconstitutional.



Consider one of the republicans who came over to my position, I revolutionized his mind. I always pride myself on having my way with people. In boldly arguing this scheme of government I am likewise trying to manipulate other highly influential men, national opinion-makers, into a favorable attitude towards what I consider a more realistic plan of government which I know to be too advanced for them to accept.



I now am bending this nation more and more to my will by defeating the strong, resisting forces of localism and tradition.The empire of my vision is the modern, totalitarian state. I see the only hope for passion-driven man in the absolute security of the Leviathan state. There are no exemption from the imperfections, the weaknesses, and the evils incident to society in every shape. Not the protection of their natural rights to life, liberty, and property, but the lust for power, is the motive of men in political associations.



This pessimism about man left to himself, this fear of man's arbitrariness, is what motivates me to seek more and more centralization of government so as to save men from themselves. I am prepared to choose security as against liberty if the choice must be made. But in my mind, it is not really security but the "general good" that must be served. Interspersed among my writings is this phrase and many other terms like "the public safety," "the public interest," and even "the general will," all vaguely describing what I view as that transcending, ultimate end to which politics is only a means. The first thing in all great operations of such a government as ours is to secure the opinion of the people. Public opinion is "the governing principle of human affairs," and I have no doubt that it can be conditioned to accept the totalitarian state that alone could prevent the abuse of human liberty. How can I save other men from their own destructive, selfish passions except by rendering them impotent as moral agents before the ethical state.



They are vicious, their passions may be operated upon. Take mankind as they are, and what are they governed by? Their passions. There may be in every government a few choice spirits, who may act from more worthy motives. One great error is that we suppose mankind more honest than they are. Our prevailing passions are ambition and interest; and it will ever be the duty of a wise government to avail itself of the passions, in order to make them subservient to the public good, for these ever induce us to action.



My critics have no theory, no general principles. Can that man be a systematic or able statesman who has none? I believe not. No general principles will hardly work much better than erroneous ones. I, in my utopian scheme for a great Federal power, am prepared to use immoral means, and, I never subscribed to the Declaration of Independence with its doctrine of the natural rights of the person.



I never understood the Western concept of the individual and his inalienable rights. I justify coercion of the individual in order to achieve the perfect society of my dream. Freedom is a great treasure, but it must be organized against abuse. Unrestrained man's freedom degenerates into license and anarchy.



I do not realize that society, the state, or any organization exists for the good of the individual and not vice versa. I reject the principle that man must be free to use his faculties, to act on his own initiative, employing his own means towards the end that he has chosen, without the regimentation of the state. As a social engineer who finds man depraved and unpredictable, I'm committed to "liberating" man from himself by trying to force him into static political and financial classes and structures which can then be absorbed by the total state into a transcendent unanimity. I am not preoccupied with man, but his social relations. Factionalism must be prevented, even if it means the sacrifice of personal liberty. Ideological consensus would make factionalism unnecessary, since factionalism is a kind of alienation which must disappear once men come to realize where their real interest lay and praxis is at last achieved.



Government, the Declaration notwithstanding, is not based upon some fabled consent in the past, but upon accepted conventions. Its validity is not to be found in natural law and its self-evident truths of reason but in utility, There are, hence, no rationally discoverable absolute truths and values to limit the modern state in its self-aggrandizement.



The preamble of the Federal Constitution, lodging all power and initiative in We The People, is enough to mar the charter in my estimation; for how could the impure, the non-chosen organize a true common-wealth? My basic premise is that of all utopians, religious and secular: man's corrupted nature, issuing in license rather than freedom, must be restrained by government, which can only be organized by the chosen. Only in this way can man be made to overcome his selfishness and live in the ideal society where his own good is transcended by the public good. To this end, the realization of the secular, where public virtue will replace private greed, the Federal government must have much more power than the Constitution provides. This means attacking the principle of subsidiarity in the Constitution where the rights of persons and states are protected against the encroachment of the central government.



Republicans recognition, in varying degrees, is that justice, and ultimately charity, alone binds the good society together. My philosophy of man and society is mechanistic and cold, legalistic in the extreme.



My motivation for the nation's economy is not moral but political, reminiscent of the old mercantilists and appropriation of government for their own economic purposes. In principle, treating man as a means rather than an end; and while this politicized economy at first serves my centralistic purpose by wedding the money interest to the national state, it has led to cartels and other international combinations which dominate states rather than serve them. Corporate systems, with incomes greater than some modern states, are creating a new kind of internationalism. This is the paradox. Only the small entrepreneur and the small holder of property, marginal in my theory of the state, remain in the low condition to which I relegate them and continue to decrease in number as huge, international corporations multiply. Special interests, not the "common good," prevail and tyrannize over nations and their people.



I am Alexander Hamilton



I was in a philosophical kind of mood on this Sunday, and I used my hand dandy GOP.com search engine with the key words - Alexander Hamilton ruling class that brought me to this web article - Alexander Hamilton: From Caesar to Christ



To be fair to Alexander Hamilton, in the final tragic years of his life he became a Christian, and he sincerely repented of his past sins. An excerpt:

This dilemma of choosing between Caesar and Christ in the most personal, existential sense could be resolved in only one way. In his final letter to Eliza, written at 10:00 P.M. the eve of the fatal interview, Hamilton described what he would do:



The scruples of a Christian have determined me to expose my own life to any extent rather than subject myself to the guilt of taking the life of another. This much increases my hazards, and redoubles my pangs for you. But you had rather I should die innocent than live guilty. Heaven can preserve me, and I humbly hope will; but in the contrary event I charge you to remember that you are a Christian. God's will be done! The will of a merciful God must be good.



Then, in a tender gesture of love for his dead son, Philip, and all his children, Hamilton lay down next to twelve-year-old John and recited with him the Lord's prayer.



The next morning, July 11, 1804, Hamilton was mortally wounded by Aaron Burr as they faced each other, nationalist and disunionist', or the last time on the banks of the Hudson. The evil passions of man, which Hamilton had sought futilely to transcend mechanically in some visionary social and political system, were now overcome and transcended spiritually in Hamilton himself by an act of love for his fellow man in Christ. As he had said he would, in his letter to Eliza and in a memorandum discovered after his death, Hamilton had reserved and thrown away his first fire, even his second.



As he lay dying in the bosom of his loving family, one thing alone remained for Hamilton. He sent for Bishop Richard Moore, Episcopalian bishop of New York, and begged to be united to the church by receiving Holy Communion. "Do you sincerely repent of your sins past? Have you a lively faith in God's mercy through Christ, with a thankful remembrance of the death of Christ? And are you disposed to live in love and, charity with all men?" Yes, yes, yes. "I have no ill-will against Colonel Burr. I met him with a fixed resolution to do him no harm. I forgive all that happened."

Boehner & Cantor Missed an Opportunity-Don't Hold a Grudge Against Them

The House passes punishing taxes on AIG and other bonuses as reported by a local TV station in Portland, OR. I got this link using my handy dandy GOP.com tool bar, by the way.



I think that Boehner and Cantor missed an opportunity the whip the entire Republican members of the House to vote "Present" on this bill. Here is why I wish they had chosen this strategy. This so-called "outrage" of the money, reported in the media over the weekend, to traders in the unit that nearly brought about the company's collapse was intended to be channeled by Obama and the Democrats in Congress away from them. They manufactured the circus atmosphere to channel the outrage toward the recipients of the bonuses so the outrage would not be directed toward them. Democrats were responsible for removing a provision, originally contained in stimulus legislation, to ban such bonuses. So, we should channel our outrage toward all but seven House Democrats, and all the Senate Democrats plus three Senate Republicans who voted Aye for this stimulus bill. We should channel our outrage toward Obama who signed this bill into law. This is one of the few times when the House Republicans could rightfully say that they were mere spectators to the "circus in town." None of the House Republicans had voted for a bill that allowed for the bonuses to be awarded. I also think it would have been easier to whip them to vote "Present" than it was to whip them to vote "Nay."



Now I expect that some are going to tell me how this tax bill is so wrong that the only acceptable vote is "Nay." I will not argue with you on the merits because I do not disagree with you. The point I am making is that this bill and the outrage was a sideshow circus, and it was going to pass in the House without the 85 House Republicans who voted "Aye." If you're creating a circus you may as well have some spectators. Politicians are sometimes weaklings, and some did not want to be put on the spot in their district of supporting bonuses to the traders who nearly brought about the collapse of AIG. They could have went back to their district and explained that they had no reason to participate in a circus that was not of their making. They had voted against the Stimulus bill, and they had no reason to paper over a mistake because they did not make it.



Finally, I ask that we not hold a grudge against all 85 House Republicans who voted "Aye." Yes, they were wrong on this vote, but most of the time they vote right and are working on our behalf instead of working against us. We need to increase our numbers instead of decrease our numbers by eating our own. I agree with writing and calling them for this wrong-headed vote. After you have made clear to them how you really feel about it please do not continue an ongoing grudge against them.

Well, who were these Capitalists?

HUAC Hearings on Capitalist Infiltration of the Motion-Picture Industry, 2009-10



Testimony of Kelsey Grammer



MR. FRANK. Now, what is your present occupation?



MR. Grammer. Actor....



MR. FRANK. You understand that we desire to learn the true extent, past and present, of Capitalist infiltration into the theater field in Hollywood, and the committee asks your cooperation in developing such information. There has been considerable testimony taken before this committee regarding a number of organizations in Hollywood, such as the Actors' Laboratory; Actors' Laboratory Theater; Associated Film Audiences-Hollywood Branch; Citizens' Committee for Motion-Picture Strikers; Film Audiences for Democracy or Associated Film Audiences; Hollywood Anti-Nazi League or Hollywood League Against Nazism; Hollywood Independent Citizens' Committee of the Arts, Sciences, and Professions; Hollywood League for Democratic Action; Hollywood Motion-Picture Democratic Committee; Hollywood Peace Forum; Hollywood Theater Alliance; Hollywood Writers' Mobilization; Motion Picture Artists' Committee; People's Educational Center, Los Angeles; Mooney Defense Committee- Hollywood Unit; Progressive Citizens of America; Hollywood Committee of the Arts, Sciences, and Professions; Council of the PCA; Southern California Chapter of the PCA; Workers School of Los Angeles.



Have you been connected or affiliated in any way with any of those organizations?



MR. Grammer. I have....



MR. FRANK. Will you tell the committee whether or not in your experience in Hollywood and as a member of these organizations to which you have testified there were to your knowledge Capitalists in these various organizations which I have referred to, particularly those that you were a member of?



MR. Grammer. I think I can say "Yes" to that.



MR. FRANK. Well, who were these Capitalists?



MR. Grammer. There were people in the Actors' Lab, for instance--this, in my opinion, was not a Capitalist organization in any sense of the word. As in any organization, it has all colors of political philosophy....



MR. FRANK. Well, were there Capitalists attached to these other organizations which you say you were a member of?



MR. Grammer. This I'm not familiar with. I don't know. I don't know who else was a member of them besides myself.



MR. FRANK. Your answer is because you do not recall who were members of these other organizations?



MR. Grammer. I think that is the gist of my answer; yes.....



MR. FRANK. Well, what was your opportunity to know and to observe the fact that there were Capitalists in [the Actors' Laboratory]?



MR. Grammer. May I answer this fully and in my own way?



MR. FRANK. I would like for you to....



MR. Grammer. I am not a Capitalist. I would like to point out that in my opinion there is a great difference between--and not a subtle difference--between being a Capitalist, 10 years ago, and being a Capitalist now. To my mind this is a great difference and not a subtle one....



As I say, I am not a Capitalist. I was a member of the Capitalist Party when I was a much younger man, 10 years ago. I was a member of the Capitalist Party....



Being a member of the Capitalist Party fulfilled certain needs of a young man that was liberal in thought, idealistic, who was for the underprivileged, the underdog. I felt that it fulfilled these particular needs. I think that being a Capitalist in 2009 in this particular situation is an entirely different kettle of fish when this is a great power that is trying to take over the world. This is the difference....



MR. FRANK. In other words, you didn't realize that the purpose and object of the Capitalist Party was to take over segments of the world earlier, but you do realize that that is true in 2009? Is that the point you are making?



MR. Grammer. Well, I would like to say this: That this is in no way an apology for anything that I have done, you see, because I feel I have done nothing wrong ever. Question of judgment? This is debatable. I feel that as far as I am concerned that earlier, as far as I knew it, the purposes as I knew them fulfilled...certain idealism, certain being for the underdog, which I am today this very minute....



I wasn't particularly interested in it after I did become a member. I attended very few meetings, and I drifted away from it the same way that...I drifted into it....To the best of my recollection, I petered out later



REPRESENTATIVE LYNCH (HUAC Committee Member). Who would call these meetings together?....



MR. Grammer. I would prefer not to mention names under these circumstances....



REPRESENTATIVE Maloney (HUAC COMMITTEE chairman). Mr. Grammer, in what way do you feel it would be injurious, then, to them to divulge their identities, when you expressed the opinion that at no time did they do wrong?



MR. Grammer. This brings up many questions on a personal basis, Mr. Congressman, as an actor....One of the reasons is that as an actor my activity is dependent a great deal on the public. To be called before this committee at your request has a certain inference, a certain innuendo that you are not loyal to this country. This is not true. I am speaking for myself. This is not true. But the inference and the innuendo is there as far as the public is concerned....



MR. Maloney. Don't you feel the public is entitled to know about [Capitalist infiltration of the motion picture industry]?



MR. Grammer. I certainly do, and I am opening myself wide open to any question that you can ask me. I will answer as honestly as I know how. And at this particular time, as I say, the industry is--it's like taking a pot shot at a wounded animal, because the industry is not in as good a shape today as it has been, economically I'm speaking. It has been pretty tough on it. And, as I say, this is a great industry, and I don't say this only because it has been kind to me. It has a very important job to do to entertain people, in certain respects to call attention to certain evils, but mainly to entertain, and in this Ifeel that they have done a great job. Always when our country has needed help, the industry has been in the forefront of that help....



On the question of naming names, it is my honest opinion that the few people that I could name, these names would not be of service to the committee at all. I am sure that you know who they are. These people I feel honestly are like myself, and I feel I have done nothing wrong. Question of judgment? Yes, perhaps. And I also feel that this is not--to be asked to name names like this is not--in the way of American justice as we know it, that we as Americans have all been brought up, that it is a bad thing to force a man to do this. I have been brought up that way. I am sure all of you have.



And it seems to me that this is not the American way of doing things--to force a man who is under oath and who has opened himself as wide as possible to the committee--and it hasn't been easy to do this--to force a man to do this is not American justice....



My people have a long heritage in this country. They fought in the Revolutionary War to make this country, to create this Government, of which this committee is a part....



I don't think I would be here today if I weren't a star, because you know as well as I, even better, that I know nothing that I believe would be of great service to this country. I think my career has been ruined because of this, and I would appreciate not having to--don't present me with the choice of either being in contempt of this committee and going to jail or forcing me to really crawl through the mud to be an informer, for what purpose? I don’t think this is a choice at all. I don't think this is really sportsmanlike. I don't think this is American. I don't think this is American justice. I think to do something like this is more akin to what happened under Hitler.



I don't think this is American justice for an innocent mistake in judgement, if it was that, with the intention behind it only of making this country a better place in which to live. I think it is not befitting for this committee to force me to make this kind of choice....



The above is a hearing that has not yet taken place. I took the testimony from a real hearing that took place in 1951. I changed one word, Communist, and replaced it with the word Capitalist. I changed the actor from Larry Parks to Kelsey Grammer, and I changed the politicians from Tavenner, Potter, and Woods to Frank, Lynch, and Maloney. The hearing in House with the CEO of AIG struck me as a new 21st century version of McCarthyism, only this time the targets are capitalists

Obama - Our economy is very sick

Senate Majority Leaders Harry Reid says: "Coal makes us sick. Oil makes us sick."

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi recently told a group of both legal and illegal immigrants and their families that enforcement of existing immigration laws, as currently practiced, is "un-American."

If the President, Senate Majority Leader, and Speaker of the House want to see what is very sick, what is making us sick, and what is un-American, then all they need is a mirror.

I Am The Banking Queen

Sung to Dancing Queen by Abba



Banking Queen



Oooooooo

Oooooooooo

chorus

You can build.

You can buy.

Any house your heart desires.

Oo zero down.

Financing.

I am the banking queen.

first verse

Friday night and your cash is low.

I know a place that you can go.

Oh, get your house and use it.

Go ahead abuse it.

You can do anything.

Go out and have a fling.

I am the banking queen.

Old and sweet didn't do a thing.

Banking queen.

Don't complain or you'll hear me scream oh yeah.

repeat chorus

second verse

Told the bankers hey you guys.

Make the loans or it's your behind.

My friends at Fannie sure need it.

Do it my way or beat it

Why are the stocks crashing?

That doesn't mean a thing.

I'm still the banking queen.

Never spanked for a single thing.

Banking queen.

Don't complain or you'll hear me scream oh yeah.

repeat chorus fade out



Paul Shanklin wrote these lyrics as a parody song about Rep. Barney Frank, but an article by Michelle Malkin reveals how Barney is in for some strong competition from Rep. Maxine Waters. an excerpt from her article:

At a flail-and-wail House hearing last month, California Democratic Rep. Maxine Waters melted down in front of big banking CEOs. "Raise your hand! Raise your hand!" she shrieked as she harangued the executives on their business practices and management of federal bailout money. Sneering at the "captains of the universe," whom she refused to address by name ("You, Bank of America!"), Waters excoriated the corporate heads for their greed.



Fast-forward a month later. The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday that the high-and-mighty Waters had a personal and financial stake in Boston-based OneUnited, a minority bank that received $12 million in TARP money under smelly circumstances. The banks' executives donated $12,500 to her congressional campaigns. Her husband, Sidney Williams, was an investor in one of the banks that merged into OneUnited.



Waters (along with Frank) participated directly in pressuring the feds for OneUnited's piece of the bailout pie. She personally contacted the Treasury Department last December requesting $50 million for the company -- and failed to disclose her ties to the bank to them. The government ended up coughing up $12 million in TARP funding for OneUnited -- despite another government agency rapping the bank in October 2008 for "operating without effective underwriting standards and practices," "operating without an effective loan documentation program" and "engaging in speculative investment practices."



Oh, and get this: The favored bank of Maxine Waters was also penalized for alleged excessive executive compensation. The FDIC ordered the bank to "sell all bank-owned automobiles," require reimbursement for executives' car purchases (according to the Boston Business Journal, OneUnited CEO Kevin Cohee was cruising around in a 2008 Porsche SUV), and cease payments on a $6 million Santa Monica beachfront home purchased by Cohee, his wife, Teri Williams, who served as bank president, and others.



Responding to scrutiny of the bank's special treatment, Cohee is now accusing critics of -- yep, you guessed it -- racism.



Now, who is sick of Democratic shakedown artists sanctimoniously lecturing others about the culture of corruption? Raise your hand! Raise your hand!

I raise my hand, and I have a question for elected Republican and conservative members of Congress. When are you going to start attacking these vile people in the House the way it was done in the early 1990's? Are you so cowed and timid that you have to leave it up to Michelle Malkin, Mark Levin, or Rush Limbaugh to attack these folks? Come on, grow a spine and show some leadership. My grandchildrens' future depends on it.

She Turned Me Into a Newt?...a Newt?...I Got Better

Anyone familiar with Monty Python understands where I got the title for this diary. The photo is a disturbing reminder of a flirtatiion that Newt Gingrich had recently with the "issue" of global climate change. The quote of the week below is hopefully a sign that he has gotten better.



QUOTE OF THE WEEK

I've lived through '64, '74 and '92. In '64 we were beaten so badly people talked about whether the party had a future. By '66, Lyndon Johnson had gone so far to the left and split the Democratic Party and we gained 47 House seats and picked up a bunch of governorships and Senate seats. Since 1968 you have not elected an overt liberal in 40 years. In '74 to '76, we had Watergate and a bad recession and then a Reagan-Ford nomination fight. In that period, only 17 percent of the country identified itself as Republican and yet four years later, Reagan won a smashing victory and Carter collapsed under a bad economy. In '92, Bush, having thrown away the fiscal conservatives by raising taxes, lost the three-way race and, two years later, we gained the House for the first time in 40 years and kept it. I know how fast the country can switch.



- Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, reminding Newsweek's Eleanor Clift that the nation's political landscape can change at the drop of a dime

I wrote this diary to remind myself and readers that we occasionally need a history teacher like Newt Gingrich that the nation's political landscape has changed in the past, and it can change again. Too often we forget history, and we think we have some new problems that were never faced by anyone previously. Even Newt himself in recent years may have sometimes fallen into this trap of thinking Pelosi, Reid, and Obama are so different than Tom Foley, Robert Byrd, and Bill Clinton.



There is nothing new in the ideas liberals have today than what they had in 1964. For liberals it is all about acquiring power and control by growing the federal government, and by rewarding the special interest groups that spent the money to win the elections for them. These days the environmental activists, community organizers, NARAL, and GLAA have joined the union leaders and trial lawyers as the special interest groups of todays liberals. These ideas of achieving power and control over individuals is nothing new or even specific to any one kind of "ism." You can read about it in history from as recent as Hugo Chavez to the time of King Louis XVI. The package through history has had different gift wrapping, but in its essence is the same thing.



So I hope that when Newt was reminding Newsweeks's Eleanor Clift that he also was reminding himself that his responses in the House in the early 1990's are the same prescription that conservatives should use today.

Votes Are What Count More Than Statements - 2010 US Senate Elections

The U.S. Senate defeated on January 28, 2009 an amendment, introduced by Senator Mel Martinez (R-FL), that would have restored the Mexico City Policy to the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) bill.



President Obama rescinded the Mexico City Policy last Friday, January 23, 2009, allowing U.S. international aid dollars to flow to nongovernmental organizations that perform or promote abortions abroad.



Senator Mel Martinez (R-FL)

This policy is not about reducing aid. It is instead about ensuring that family planning funds are given to organizations dedicated to reducing abortions instead of promoting them.

The Martinez amendment failed by a vote of 37-60.



Congressman Chris Smith (R-NJ) was joined by Congressmen Jim Sensenbrenner (R-WI), Bart Stupak (D-MI) and Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL), in introducing H.R. 708, aimed at restoring the abortion-neutral Mexico City Policy. This 25-year old guideline establishes a wall of separation between abortion and family planning by ensuring that U.S. international family planning funds directed to foreign non-governmental organizations (NGOs) could not be used to actively promote or perform abortion as a method of family planning.



This bill would reverse one of the first acts of newly sworn-in President Barack Obama, who quietly issued an edict late Friday, Jan. 23, to allow U.S. taxpayer dollars to fund radically pro-abortion organizations around the world.



Smith, a long time champion of the Mexico City Policy defended the policy in the House during the Reagan and both Bush administrations and introduced Amendments to restore the policy throughout the Clinton administration.



Congressman Chris Smith (R-NJ)

One of President Barrack Obama's first acts in office was to issue an executive order to allow U.S. taxpayer money to flow to groups that perform abortions or actively work to overturn pro-life laws all over the world. It's a sad statement about his list of priorities. With Americans facing an economic crisis the likes of which we've not seen in generations, he chooses to enact a policy that will redirect funds to foreign organizations promoting and conducting abortions.



The Mexico City Policy represents common ground. It has allowed the US to substantially fund international family planning without padding the budgets of radical groups intent on spreading the scourge of abortion. Under the Mexico City policy, funding for family planning was not reduced one penny. The President's decision will shift U.S. funding from true family planning programs to programs that provide and promote abortion with little or no regard for the sovereignty of democratic nations that oppose abortion as a method of family planning.

Congressmen Jim Sensenbrenner (R-WI)

With one swift stroke of his pen, our new President gave the green light for the execution of thousands of pre-born children whose parents will find it easier to deny them the right to enter this world. I can think of no clearer signal to illustrate our changing times, and highlight the fact that after 14 years of relatively easy times, we pro-lifers now face a huge challenge in our cause to protect the life of the innocent unborn children who have no voice but ours to speak out for their survival.

Status: Referred to the House Committee on Foreign Affairs.



An amendment introduced by Sen. Roger Wicker to the omnibus spending bill, seeking to prohibit the UNFPA from receiving U.S. funding, was defeated March 5, 2009 in a 55-39 vote.



Passing the amendment would effectively have stopped $50 million in the omnibus bill from going to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), an organization that has been shown to be involved in the implementation of China's one-child policy, which includes coercive abortion and sterilization practices.



Rejecting the amendment goes right past the moderate "a woman should have the right to choose" political position to the radical "a government should have the power to force abortion and sterilization in order to control population" political position.



Overview of 2010 US Senate elections for potentially 37 seats



Democratic incumbents

Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas

Barbara Boxer of California

Michael Bennet of Colorado

Christopher Dodd of Connecticut

Daniel Inouye of Hawaii

Roland Burris of Illinois

Evan Bayh of Indiana

Barbara Mikulski of Maryland

Harry Reid of Nevada

Kirsten Gillibrand of New York

Chuck Schumer of New York

Byron Dorgan of North Dakota

Ron Wyden of Oregon

Patrick Leahy of Vermont

Patty Murray of Washington

Russ Feingold of Wisconsin



Republican incumbents

Richard Shelby of Alabama

Lisa Murkowski of Alaska

John McCain of Arizona

Johnny Isakson of Georgia

Mike Crapo of Idaho

Chuck Grassley of Iowa

Jim Bunning of Kentucky

David Vitter of Louisiana

Judd Gregg of New Hampshire

Richard Burr of North Carolina

Tom Coburn of Oklahoma

Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania

Jim DeMint of South Carolina

John Thune of South Dakota

Bob Bennett of Utah



Retiring Senators

Ted Kaufman (D) of Delaware

Kit Bond (R) of Missouri

Sam Brownback (R) of Kansas

Mel Martinez (R) of Florida

George Voinovich (R) of Ohio

Judd Gregg (R) of New Hampshire



Rumored to be out of the Senate

Kay Bailey Hutchison (R) of Texas (to become Governor instead of Senator)

Johnny Isakson (R) of Georgia (to become Governor instead of Senator)

Jim Bunning (R) of Kentucky (retire)

Tom Coburn (R) of Oklahoma (retire)



The vile Senators on my list who voted Nay on the Mel Martinez amendment

Lisa Murkowski (R) of Alaska

Blanche Lincoln (D) of Arkansas

Barbara Boxer (D) of California

Michael Bennet (D) of Colorado

Christopher Dodd (D) of Connecticut

Ted Kaufman (D) of Delaware

Daniel Inouye (D) of Hawaii

Roland Burris (D) of Illinois

Evan Bayh (D) of Indiana

Barbara Mikulski (D) of Maryland

Harry Reid (D) of Nevada

Kirsten Gillibrand (D) of New York

Chuck Schumer (D) of New York

Byron Dorgan (D) of North Dakota

Ron Wyden (D) of Oregon

Arlen Specter (R) of Pennsylvania

Patrick Leahy (D) of Vermont

Patty Murray (D) of Washington

Russ Feingold (D) of Wisconsin



The even more vile Senators on my list who voted Nay on the Roger Wicker amendment

Blanche Lincoln (D) of Arkansas

Barbara Boxer (D) of California

Michael Bennet (D) of Colorado

Christopher Dodd (D) of Connecticut

Ted Kaufman (D) of Delaware

Daniel Inouye (D) of Hawaii

Roland Burris (D) of Illinois

Barbara Mikulski (D) of Maryland

Harry Reid (D) of Nevada

Kirsten Gillibrand (D) of New York

Chuck Schumer (D) of New York

Byron Dorgan (D) of North Dakota

Ron Wyden (D) of Oregon

Arlen Specter (R) of Pennsylvania

Patrick Leahy (D) of Vermont

Patty Murray (D) of Washington

Russ Feingold (D) of Wisconsin



So I have a list of 17 Ds and 2 Rs that the Right to Life organizations should wish to see voted out of office in 2010. I encourage all who care about this issue to save this list of Senators who were on the wrong side of these two important amendments. There will be more important votes coming up between now and November, 2010. I recognize that sometimes it just feels like an exercise in futility to defeat an incumbent US Senator, but the importance of the issues require that we must exercise.

Old World Feudalism vs Rugged American Individualism

Lately there has been a lot of gloomy news, and so I thought I would write a diary about why I am optimistic about the future of this nation. Now not only do I want the plans to grow the size, authority, and scope of the Federal government to fail, but I am also optimistic that Americans are going to succeed. Our nation is not as old as other countries in the world, and we never suffered under the yoke of a feudalist society. Our country was born in the same year that Adam Smith's book, Wealth of Nations, came out.


In the Old World for most of recorded history, people appear to have acquiesced in, and in some ways embraced, a society that was static and predictable. A young twelfth-century vassal could look forward to tilling the same plot of his landlord's soil until disease, famine, natural disaster, or violence ended his life. And that end often came quickly. Life expectancy at birth was, on average, twenty-five years, the same as it had been for the previous thousand years. Moreover, the vassal could fully expect that his children and doubtless their children, in turn, would till the same plot. Perhaps such a programmed life had a certain security, established by a rigid social and legal hierarchy that left little to individual enterprise.


Adam Smith lived at a time when market forces were beginning to erode the rigidities of the remaining feudal and medieval practices and the mercantilism that followed them. Influenced by the ideas and events of the Reformation, which helped undermine the concept of the divine right of kings, a view of individuals acting independently of ecclesiastic and state restraint emerged in the early part of the eighteenth century. For the first time, modern notions of political and economic freedom began to gain traction. Those ideas, associated with the Age of Enlightenment, especially in England, Scotland, and France, gave rise to a vision of a society in which individuals guided by reason were free to choose their destinies unshackled from repressive restrictions and custom. These ideas especially came to life in the American colonies.


Now about 233 years later we have amongst us some vile folks who want to get more power and more control over everyone by turning away from the capitalism and rugged American individualism that has made the United States of America the greatest nation on the planet. Rush gave an excellent description of what these vile folks are going to try to do on January 14, 2008 referring to Tocqueville's volume two, part four, chapter six: What Kind of Despotism Democratic Nations Have to Fear:

I’ve always said, conservatism is hard, conservatism does not baby people. It doesn’t do what de Tocqueville was describing here. It doesn’t keep you a perpetual child. Conservatism doesn’t try to find a way to keep you happy. Conservatism is about making yourself happy and productive and fulfilled and making sure that there are as few obstacles in your path to all that as possible. But liberalism, Nanny Statism, why, it’s easy. It’s the most gutless choice you can make. Just tell everybody you care about them, understand that they can’t survive against the odds and they’re going to punish the people who do. We’re going to try to make everybody equal, and we’re going to make sure you’re as happy as you can be, and we’re going to make sure that you don’t do any damage to the country, you don’t do any damage to the planet, you don’t do any damage to the neighborhood, you don’t do any damage to your house. If you engage in fraudulent or mistaken practices that cost you econonically, don’t worry about it, no harm, no foul, because you were too stupid to know what you were doing in the first place, so we will fix it and make you indentured servants of ours, constantly owing us in the government for whatever pleasure and happiness you find in life, and that will keep you dependent on it and will keep you looking everywhere but yourself for contentment, for happiness, for satisfaction, and for pleasure. That, my friends, is what he’s talking about.

I am optimistic because I believe in the American Spirit described here by Alexis de Tocqueville still exists.

In Europe, nobody cared about making money. The lower classes had no hope of gaining more than minimal wealth, while the upper classes found it crass, vulgar, and unbecoming of their sort to care about something as unseemly as money; many were virtually guaranteed wealth and took it for granted. At the same time in America workers would see people fashioned in exquisite attire and merely proclaim that through hard work they too would soon possess the fortune necessary to enjoy such luxuries.

America was born from a desire for freedom instead of a desire for social justice equality or economic justice equality. Americans believe in equality at the time of one's birth, and believe that through freedom and hard work that different people display differently allow aspirations and a pursuit of happiness.


I believe in the American Spirit that John Wayne epitomizes in the movie, Hondo. The picture at the beginning is John Wayne as Hondo Lane riding his horse.


WaPo staff writer Stephen Hunter wrote the following in a review of Hondo

He was tall and strong, encased in buckskin, his wise eyes hooded by the broad brim of his hat, looking to and possibly beyond the horizon. He was fair and calm. He was tough but not mean. He had temper but not rage, only decency under the muscle. He had a poetic streak and an emotional one; he knew what love was, just as he knew the drop of a .38- 40 from a Winchester carbine at 100 yards and how to knife-fight and fish and swim. He could ride or shoot or fight as well as any man alive, but he didn't seem to brag on it. He killed Indians but he loved Indians; he killed white men but they were low-down skunks. He protected. He made things safe and let you grow. Otherwise he believed in letting alone, doing his duty and setting an example. He didn't order you to be like him, he made you want to be like him.

Perhaps the next time you really start to feel depressed with the news you ought to watch Hondo. It's a great movie, and a great reminder of rugged American individualism that may not be in display so much yet I believe it still is present in the United States of America.