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  socialism during the roosevelt depression - a book review

On taxes on company profits and employment. [p. 334]

“1937 New York Times, headline: Levy on profits halts expansion

“…companies that had formerly sought to retain employees through downturns now no longer had the reserves to do so. they had likewise ceased to invest in new equipment, normally a traditional move in slow periods.”

It is hard to say whether The Forgotten Man is a very good book, or a rather boring and rambling one. I like it very much, it contains endless verbal photographs, in date order, relating to the Great Depression in the USA between 1927 and 1940.

The book wanders across the confused, inconsistent and largely ineffectual response of the American government to the Great Depression. Every now and then, with a very light hand, there is inserted a gentle observation on macro-economics.

I have a very marked preference for facts over opinion, and this book provides that. It is interesting to see the beginnings of very recent problems in the American economy originating in Roosevelt’s socialism.

It was he who was responsible for setting up Fanny Mae, and for giving untramelled power to the corrupt and ruthless unions that have seen the American Big Three motor (and other) corporations lurch from crisis to crisis ever since.

The seeds of government safety nets, such as Medicare and Welfare, which the American state has struggled with ever since, also took root during the Depression.

The pseudo-intellectuals often admired, and tried to learn from, the likes of Mussolini and Stalin. The disputes between intellectualism and pragmatism and between statism and individualism continue to shape and confuse modern society right into this new century.

God save society from enthusiastic theorists.

related material
roosevelt did not ‘end the depression’

The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression by Amity Shlaes Jonathan Cape Ltd, 2007, hbk ISBN-10: 022406312X ISBN-13: 978-0224063128 £6.99 [amazon.co.uk] {advert} amazon.com

the web address for the article above is
https://www.abelard.org/news/politics1108.php#roosevelt_socialism_301108

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modern russia - 90 years of progress thanks to socialism

“The sorry state of villages like Semlevo is the result of "negative social selection", says Ms Nefedova: the most active and able people have migrated to large towns. Few people have stayed behind, and most of those are unable to work. In Semlevo there is only one farmer who keeps his own sheep and chickens. Most houses there have no running water, plumbing or gas heating. Still, Semlevo’s old collective farm is considered lucky: it was recently bought by a businesswoman from Moscow. Most other collective farms in this district are dead.

“Russia’s demography befits a country at war. The population of 142m is shrinking by 700,000 people a year. By 2050 it could be down to 100m. The death rate is double the average for developed countries. The life expectancy of Russian males, at just 60 years, is one of the lowest in the world. Only half of Russian boys now aged 16 can expect to live to 60, much the same as at the end of the 19th century.”
—
“…Now large swathes of land in Siberia and the far east are emptying out as people move to central Russia. The population density in the country’s far east is 1.1 people per square kilometre. On the other side of the border with China it is nearly 140 times that figure”
—
“In the past couple of years the rules have become more accommodating and migrant workers can now apply for their own work permits and sign contracts with their employers. But for tax reasons only a quarter of immigrants do so. The new law has increased the number of legal migrants to more than 2m, but the real figure is thought to be five times that.”

the web address for the article above is
https://www.abelard.org/news/politics1108.php#socialist_progress_not_281108

on how the left-wing spin to forward dogma

Matthew Parris muses on the muddle of Brown the Clown and ‘New’ Labour.
Recommended scan.

It is worse than sad to watch UK leftists for ever attempting to use the country and troubles for political advantage.

“A helpful rule of thumb for assessing the fanfare that habitually precedes a Gordon Brown initiative, is that there will be less to it than meets the eye. Under scrutiny, these things tend to come apart in our hands, shot through with failures of nerve and riddled with second thoughts.”

You can see the same sort of leftist amoral eagerness to exploit the country's problems from Obama’s chief of staff.

9th November 2008
“ "Rule one: Never allow a crisis to go to waste," Mr. [Rahm] Emanuel said in an interview on Sunday. "They are opportunities to do big things." ”

the web address for the article above is
https://www.abelard.org/news/politics1108.php#leftwing_spin_221108

the truth about the clown’s economic mismanagement surfaces despite the accumulating sewage of socialist labour lies

Boris Johnson:

“You weakened the pound, Gordon, because you expanded the public sector without reforming it.

“You weakened the pound because you bloated the state pay-roll, and then you added the private finance initiative and the nationalisation of the Bradford & Bingley and Northern Rock, and all the time you somehow believed your own lunatic propaganda that you had personally defied the laws of economic gravity.

“You really thought you had created a new paradigm in which you, and only you, had beaten the economic cycle and gone "beyond boom and bust", and that you were therefore free to take whatever fiscal risks you wanted, and the markets looked at the whole thing, sucked their teeth and said, baloney.”

Also, the cowardly media dinosaurs are still twitching as they expire:

“A bright blue line divides Labour and the Conservatives over the acceptable level of borrowing and the role of the State. Mr Osborne portrays the Prime Minister as a political version of a short-seller, constantly borrowing more money in the hope that his gamble will eventually pay off. By giving warning of a run on a pound, he was simply giving a vivid illustration of the dangers of government debt. His aim is to give the voters a clear choice at the next election between tax cuts funded by savings and tax reductions paid for by borrowing.”

and trusting the crack addicts in no. 10

“Their remarks reflected the strong Treasury view that next week’s tax cut and spending package from the Chancellor, Alistair Darling, must be accompanied by evidence that he intends to get soaring borrowing back on course over the medium term. That should mean tax rises, spending cuts or both.”

And lastly, more from Boris:

“Why does the Government still spend £800 million on advertising public sector appointments - very often in the Guardian - when they could be conveniently displayed online?”

Hey, why is the Groaniad [the Guardian] not reporting on the Clown’s lying and incompetence?

the web address for the article above is
https://www.abelard.org/news/politics1108.php#boris_criticises_brown_201108

“mccain is just as bad as obama”, they say - the auroran sunset

There is little doubt in my mind that Obama is, amongst other serious problems, corrupt, a conman and a demagogue. I have started to notice a strange pattern when this topic is broached in conversation. Those that prefer Obama tend to respond with something along the lines of “McCain is just as bad” or “all politicians are corrupt/lie”. This is a amazing example of the power of the socialist policy of language corruption developed by Goebbels, ‘popularised’ by Orwell, and employed by Obama and his friends in the fossil media. In particular, these attitudes demonstrate the successful use of three standard socialist techniques of opinion manipulation:

• “the big lie”
• meaning generalisation and
• moral equivalence.

The big lie:

Say something outrageously counter to reality often enough, and people will start to believe it. A prime example from the Obama-McCain campaign was the constant repetition that “McCain is just more of the same as Bush”.

Meaning generalisation

The idea is to make the meaning of a problematic word apply to so many situations that it becomes impossible to use that word to precisely describe the actions of the troublemaker. In this case, the idea of “corrupt” is distorted out of all recognition. Thus, it becomes impossible to discuss the real behaviour of someone who has spent their whole political career seeped in graft [Obama], when the term also come to apply to someone who has spent their whole political career fighting graft [McCain].

Moral equivalence

“They are all as bad as each other” and, thus, “no judgement can be made”. This is the ‘principle’ behind politically ‘correct’ language. This technique acts in three ways to protect society’s worst:

1. It inhibits the use of clear descriptive terms, so that the behaviour of the socialists cannot be discussed with clarity.
2. It encourages apathy towards to the problem of stopping the socialists, because if they are all the same, there is no point doing anything.
3. It dishonestly reduces the credibility of those who attempt to clean up the problems, because they must be just as bad as the socialists.

So is McCain really somehow equivalent to Obama in terms of dishonesty and corruption?

Here is the reality:

Obama built his political career by working his way up through the corrupt Chicago ‘Democratic’ machine. Chicago/Illinois corruption is renowned and clearly runs from Mayor Daley’s office. Mayor Daley’s brother is currently under criminal indictment indictment and, in one election, Daley was forced to run without a supporting slate because all his main helpers were either under indictment or convicted. An indication of how far Obama rose in this sewer is his appropriation of top Daley strategist, David Axelrod.

McCain, meanwhile, built his political career fighting corruption both within his party and generally, including sending members of his party to jail for a multi-billion dollar bid-rigging and bribery scam.

Obama is one of the heaviest earmarkers in the Senate, averaging around 1 million dollars per day during his 2-year term. Many of these earmarks have already been clearly linked to matching campaign contributions - that is, the contributions were bribes.

McCain does not take earmarks and has campaigned for years to ban this egregious form of corruption.

Obama is a top recipient of Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac contributions, despite only being a senator for two years. The corruption and sweet-heart deals of the FMs [Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac] are at the heart of current housing and credit problems in the US. Obama employed two ex-CEOs of Fannie Mae - both resigned in disgrace due to shady accounting practices (known as “fraud” in plain English). Jim Johnson was appointed as one of three people on Obama’s VP search committee; and Franklin Raines acted as a housing and mortgage advisor. Note that in both cases, Obama attempted to cover up and deny the connections once they became inconvenient, much as he did with his long-term black-supremacist preacher, Jeremiah Wright and with domestic terrorist and Obama’s long-term political ally, Bill Ayers.

McCain attempted to force regulation on the FMs and repeatedly warned of their behaviour, but was blocked by the ‘Democrats’ in Congress, led by one of the top FM largesse recipients, Barney Franks. Franks shut down debate by threatening a campaign painting as racists any who attempting to stop the FM corruption.

Tony Rezko has been convicted on 16 federal bribery and fraud charges. Rezko was Obama’s top campaign fund-raiser and a close advisor. Rezko and Obama bought two halves of a piece of land On the same day. For some reason Obama paid under value for his half and Rezko paid over value for his. Then later, Rezko sold cheaply part of his half to Obama. In an amazing coincidence, Rezko obtained a series of government contracts in Obama’s district to build housing for the poor. Rezko’s convictions relate to his deliberate sub-standard building, and to defrauding of his poor and often ignorant tenants. In other words, Obama took bribes to aid and abet the defrauding and endangerment of his poorest constituents. Of course, Obama claims to be on the side of the poor.

Obama claims to support “Sunshine in Government” attempts to force corruption into the light. However, in his campaign he sued, and threatened to sue, bloggers and news organizations publishing information that he did not want publicised.

McCain has consistently campaigned and voted for Sunshine policies, including the “McCain-Feingold” act.

Obama disabled the standard anti-fraud credit card checks on his campaign contribution website, allowing anyone to get around the election laws limiting individual donations, undeclared donations and donations from foreign nationals, as well as enabling simple identity theft frauds. By co-incidence, he managed to haul in over 600 million dollars in contributions.

McCain has campaigned and voted to both reduce money in political campaigns, and to increase the openness. This is at the heart of the “McCain-Feingold” campaign finance reform act. He also promised to, and then stuck to the federal matching limits for presidential campaign financing. Obama also promised to do this, but then broke that promise. Of course, McCain’s website kept the standard anti-fraud checks turned on.

Obama selected a well-known buffoon as his running mate (Joe Biden), someone who also happens to be heavily involved in earmark corruption - he has requested more than 250 million dollars of earmarks for 2009 alone.

McCain selected a proven anti-corruption reformer as his running mate (Sarah Palin), someone who’s 80%+ approval rating - the highest of any governor in the union - comes from her political history of fighting the corruption in her own state Republican party, including sending some members to jail for graft. Compare this to Obama’s handling of his state party’s corruption.

Obama worked for Acorn as a lawyer, funded Acorn activities via his committees, and then contributed to Acorn from his campaign funds. Acorn is under federal election fraud indictment in most states of the union for systematically paying people to fraudulently register to vote. In a particularly impressive example, they claimed that for this campaign they submitted approximately 1.5 million registrations in Ohio. In fact, they submitted around 600 thousand. Of those, over two thirds were found to be fraudulent. To add icing to the cake, the ‘Democratic’ Secretary of State, Jennifer Brunner, refused to pass on her department’s analysis of the fraudulent registrations to the counties - thus making it inevitable that the non-existent voters would remain on the roles. (This is one of the reasons that I put ‘Democratic’ Party in quotes.)

Clearly the idea that McCain is just as corrupt or dishonest as Obama is absurd. Just as clearly, the big lie employed by the fossil media and the rest of Obama’s campaign has made this absurdity a ‘fact’ in many people’s minds.

the web address for the article above is
https://www.abelard.org/news/politics1108.php#mccain_obama_191108

voting for obama

9:54 mins

“512 Obama Voters 11/13/08-11/15/08 MOE ± 4.4 points

“97.1% High School Graduate or higher, 55% College Graduates

“Results to 12 simple Multiple Choice Questions

“57.4% could NOT correctly say which party controls congress (50/50 shot just by guessing)

“81.8% could NOT correctly say Joe Biden quit a previous campaign because of plagiarism (25% chance by guessing)

“82.6% could NOT correctly say that Barack Obama won his first election by getting opponents kicked off the ballot (25% chance by guessing)

“88.4% could NOT correctly say that Obama said his policies would likely bankrupt the coal industry and make energy rates skyrocket (25% chance by guessing)

“56.1% could NOT correctly say Obama started his political career at the home of two former members of the Weather Underground (25% chance by guessing).

“And yet.....

“Only 13.7% failed to identify Sarah Palin as the person on which their party spent $150,000 in clothes

“Only 6.2% failed to identify Palin as the one with a pregnant teenage daughter

“And 86.9 % thought that Palin said that she could see Russia from her "house," even though that was Tina Fey who said that!!

“Only 2.4% got at least 11 correct.

“Only .5% got all of them correct. (And we "gave" one answer that was technically not Palin, but actually Tina Fey)”

the web address for the article above is
https://www.abelard.org/news/politics1108.php#obama_voting_181108

brown the clown is to star in a new multibillion blockbuster film - ‘carry on lying’

“ "If I am right that wise people do not know the answer to the problem the world faces, it is surely folly for our leaders to pretend that they do. In normal times, one puts up with quite a lot of dishonesty from politicians, but in the face of this slump, it is truly dangerous, because it means that trust cannot be restored.

“In the past 14 months, Mr Brown has shifted his rhetoric a bit, but always in the wake of events. Rather than doing what the markets call "kitchen-sinking", and putting the whole enormous problem before us, he prefers over-optimistic forecasts, and boasts about how well placed we are. (Our household debt, by the way, is nearly twice as much as the European average.)” [Quoted from telegraph.co.uk]

“Britain is heading for a "collapse of sterling" if Gordon Brown persists with trying to borrow his way out of trouble, George Osborne says in an interview with The Times today.”
—
“The pound yesterday slipped to a 13-year low against a basket of other currencies. The dollar rate fell to below $1.48 and the euro rate to €1.17, a record low, capping its biggest weekly fall against the single currency.” [timesonline.co.uk]

the web address for the article above is
https://www.abelard.org/news/politics1108.php#lying_brown_151108

watching the NZ election - invincy

I watched the election coverage. Polls closed at 7pm, and John Key’s acceptance speech was at about 12pm. Helen Clark made a concession speech before this.

Over here, people are more relaxed about what they say. One United Future (part of the right coalition) MP won a constituency seat, but as the party got less that 1% of the party vote, he is the only one in that party who got a seat. So he was referred to as ‘Noddy No Mates’ by the presenter!

One of the panel said that slogan for Labour in this election, “This one’s about trust” depended on the attempt to dig dirt on Key, and thus portray him as untrustworthy, being successful. It all backfired. It appears that Labour had intended to manipulate voters into voting against Key.

Another story that paid a bit part in this election was that of Winston Peters. He accepted money from a billionaire who was hoping for a government role in Monaco, but didn’t declare it. The voters did not believe his various explanations about why he didn’t declare the money. Nor did they believe that Helen Clark did not know that Winston Peters was acting improperly. The voters were not impressed when Helen Clark didn’t fire Winston Peters from his cabinet position, and didn’t rule herself out of working with him in the future. His party got just under 5% of the vote, and he didn’t come close to winning his seat, so he and his party are out.

There were lots of tears in the Labour camp. Clark in her speech referred to a ‘Cause’ they were all working for. Key in his speech said that New Zealand could do better - this is not as good as it gets. He said he will lead a government that valued individual achievement, and “What will determine success is the unity of purpose – a willingness to work together while recognising that our collective success rests on the success of individuals”. Key won his seat with about 22,000 votes, the next closest was about 5,000.

Also heard, something that sums up New Zealanders’ attitudes amongst unionized and disappointed Labour supporters. “Well maybe John Key will make us rich”.

National will probably not just be in coalition with ACT and UnitedFuture, but also with the Maori party. This gives the coalition, as a whole, more chance of winning the next election in 3 years time. Party leaders and panel acknowledged that this is going to be a hard time to be Prime Minister - due to the world economic problems. Also with Maori onboard, National will not have to rely on ACT support. A commentator suggests that the Maori could propose less palatable policies - like ending the dole!

kiwiblog is the best New Zealand political blog I have come across. The writer asks, “What will I blog about now Winston Peters has gone?” Also on the blog, I read that National made a smart political move in ruling out a deal with NZ First (Winston Peter’s party). This showed that a vote for NZ First, which has supported National party in the past, was a vote for Labour. And a vote for Labour, who wanted to keep Winston on side, was a vote for more nonsense from Winston.

related material
congratulations to nz as another socialist falls

the web address for the article above is
https://www.abelard.org/news/politics1108.php#nz_invincy_121108

congratulations to nz as another socialist falls

Maybe NZ can now move forward.

“John Key’s conservative National Party easily won power in New Zelaland, known internationally for its pristine environment and as the backdrop to the 'Lord of the Rings' movies.

“ "Today, New Zealand has spoken, in their hundreds of thousands, and they have voted for change," Key told supporters at a victory celebration in Auckland.

“The National Party looked unlikely to have gained an outright majority in parliament but is assured of assuming power due to the support of the small free-market ACT party.

“When final counts were received from all polling stations, National had 45 per cent of the vote and Labour had 34 percent. That would translate into 59 seats for National in a 122-seat parliament, up 48 seats from the previous parliament, compared to Labour’s 43, a fall from 49. The ACT Party won 5 seats and the centrist United Future, which also offered support for National, took one." ”

the web address for the article above is
https://www.abelard.org/news/politics1108.php#nz_election_091108

obama is the one!

0:41 min

Obama:

“A light will shine down from somewhere, it will light upon you, you will experience an epiphany, and you will say to yourself, I have to vote for Barack.”

Hitler:

“This is the miracle of our age, that you have found me, that you have found me among so many millions! And that I have found you, that is Germany’s good fortune!”

But Hitler never got 50% of the vote, until he ran his own ‘plebiscites’.

related material
the psychology and development of Adolph Hitler Schicklgruber - abelard
Did Hitler know about the holocaust? A psychological assessment

the web address for the article above is
https://www.abelard.org/news/politics1108.php#obamas_method_081108

george w. bush - a great man and a great president, ill-served by a dishonest leftist media and by many a shallow babbler

“Initial failures in Iraq acted like a solar eclipse, blocking the light on every other achievement. But those achievements, with the eclipse finally passing, are considerable by the measure of any presidency. Because of the passage of Medicare Part D, nearly 10 million low-income seniors are receiving prescription drugs at little or no cost. No Child Left Behind education reform has helped raise the average reading scores of fourth-graders to their highest level in 15 years, and narrowed the achievement gap between white and African American children. The President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief has helped provide treatment for more than 1.7 million people and compassionate care for at least 2.7 million orphans and vulnerable children. And the decision to pursue the surge in Iraq will be studied as a model of presidential leadership.”
—
“Before the Group of Eight summit in 2005, the White House senior staff overwhelmingly opposed a new initiative to fight malaria in Africa for reasons of cost and ideology -- a measure designed to save hundreds of thousands of lives, mainly of children under 5. In the crucial policy meeting, one person supported it: the president of the United States, shutting off debate with a moral certitude that others have criticized. I saw how this moral framework led him to an immediate identification with the dying African child, the Chinese dissident, the Sudanese former slave, the Burmese women's advocatec…”

George Bush will be a very hard act to follow.

the web address for the article above is
https://www.abelard.org/news/politics1108.php#gwbush_051108

  obama - focus on reality, so far

No supermajority in the Senate.
Still a balanced Supreme Court.
Markets down nearly 5%.
Dow down nearly 5%.
Coal sector down nearly 10%.
Gold up 5%, now only 3%.
Russia posturing.
Iran also posturing.

Will the socialist fools compete with the free markets?
One of the grave errors of the 1930s.

the web address for the article above is
https://www.abelard.org/news/politics1108.php#obama_focus_051108

email email_abelard [at] abelard.org

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