ethics

Say what you will, call him names! A lame duck, yes mistakes have been made, the rules of laissez-faire capitalism were violated, but right now it is he who stands between prosperity through free market principles, and the forces of Statism, who wish to reduce the financial sector to a tragic shadow of its former self, a mere government utility!

Here are two opinions: one by the most underestimated US President in history, George W. Bush - and an article by Objectivists Yaron Brook and Don Watkins on the Op-Ed page of the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights: a urgent plea for the separation of Economy and State. Europeans are urged to take note of a field virtually unknown to them. But first, the news:

CNN: "Bush ready to defend free-market principles during summit" (...) President Bush signaled that he's ready to defend Western-style capitalism and free-market principles during what will be one of his last appearances on the world stage. (...) As leaders of the world's 20 largest economies, dubbed the G-20, gather in Washington, some European leaders are pushing for global financial regulation. (...) >>>

Wall Street Journal: "The Surest Path Back to Prosperity - 'If you seek economic growth, social justice and human dignity, the free-market system is the way to go'," by George W. Bush As we have seen in recent months, financial turmoil anywhere in the world affects economies everywhere in the world. And so this weekend I'm going to host a Summit on Financial Markets and the World Economy with leaders from developed and developing nations that account for nearly 90% of the world economy. The leaders attending this weekend's meeting agree on a clear purpose -- to address the current crisis, and to lay the foundation for reforms that will help prevent a similar crisis in the future. (...) the actions taken by the U.S. and other nations are having an impact. Credit markets are beginning to thaw. Businesses are gaining access to essential short-term financing. A measure of stability is returning to financial systems.

(...) we must recognize that government intervention is not a cure-all. For example, some blame the crisis on insufficient regulation of the American mortgage market. But many European countries had much more extensive regulations, and still experienced problems almost identical to our own. History has shown that the greater threat to economic prosperity is not too little government involvement in the market, it is too much government involvement in the market.

We saw this in the case of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Because these firms were chartered by the U.S. Congress, many believed they were backed by the full faith and credit of the U. S. government. Investors put huge amounts of money into Fannie and Freddie, which they used to build up irresponsibly large portfolios of mortgage-backed securities. When the housing market declined, these securities, of course, plummeted in value. It took a taxpayer-funded rescue to keep Fannie and Freddie from collapsing in a way that would have devastated the global financial system.

There is a clear lesson: Our aim should not be more government -- it should be smarter government. All this leads to the most important principle that should guide our work: While reforms in the financial sector are essential, the long-term solution to today's problems is sustained economic growth. And the surest path to that growth is free markets and free people.

In the wake of the financial crisis, voices from the left and right equate the free-enterprise system with greed and exploitation and failure. It's true this crisis included failures -- by lenders and borrowers and financial firms, and by governments and independent regulators. But the crisis was not a failure of the free-market system. And the answer is not to try to reinvent that system. It is to fix the problems, make reforms, and move forward with the free-market principles that have delivered prosperity and hope to people all across the globe. (...)

Nations that pursued other models have experienced devastating results. Soviet communism starved millions, bankrupted an empire, and collapsed as decisively as the Berlin Wall. Cuba, once known for its vast fields of cane, is now forced to ration sugar. While Iran sits atop giant oil reserves, its people cannot put enough gasoline in their cars.

The record is unmistakable: If you seek economic growth, social justice and human dignity, the free-market system is the way to go. It would be a terrible mistake to allow a few months of crisis to undermine 60 years of success. (...) >>> Give Bush a buzz z

- Caption: "The Anchorage" by Bryan Larsen -

Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights: "Stop Blaming Capitalism for Government Failures", by Yaron Brook and Don Watkins

Speaking of the financial crisis, French president Nicolas Sarkozy recently said, “Laissez-faire is finished. The all-powerful market that always knows best is finished.” Sarkozy was echoing the views of many, including president-elect Obama, who assume that the financial crisis was caused by free markets--by “unbridled greed” unleashed by decades of deregulation and a “hands off” approach to the economy. And given this premise, the solution, they say, is obvious. To solve this crisis and prevent another one, we need a heavy dose of Uncle Sam’s elixir: government intervention. (...)

But while capitalism may be a convenient scapegoat, it did not cause any of these problems. Indeed, whatever one wishes to call the unruly mixture of freedom and government controls that made up our economic and political system during the last three decades, one cannot call it capitalism. (...) Take a step back.

In the lead up to the “Reagan Revolution,” the explosive growth of government during the ’60s and ’70s had left the American economy in disarray. A crushing tax burden, runaway inflation, brutal unemployment, and economic stagnation had Americans looking for an alternative. That’s what Reagan offered, denouncing big government and promising a new “morning in America.” (...) Bush Jr., often laughably called a champion of free markets, presided over massive new governmental controls like Sarbanes-Oxley and massive new welfare programs like the prescription drug benefit.

None of this is consistent with capitalism. (...) The government’s job under capitalism is single but crucial: to protect individual rights from violation by force or fraud. America came closest to this system in the latter half of the nineteenth century. The result was an unprecedented explosion of wealth creation and consequent rise in the standard of living. Even now, when the fading remnants of capitalism are badly crippled by endless controls, we see that the freest countries--those which retain the most capitalist elements--have the highest standard of living.

Why then should capitalism take the blame today--when capitalism doesn’t even exist? (...) Consider the current crisis (...) the driving force is clearly government intervention: the Fed keeping interest rates below the rate of inflation, thus encouraging people to borrow and providing the impetus for a housing bubble; the Community Reinvestment Act, which forces banks to lend money to low-income and poor-credit households; the creation of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac with government-guaranteed debt leading to artificially low mortgage rates and the illusion that the financial instruments created by bundling them are low risk; government-licensed rating agencies, which gave AAA ratings to mortgage-backed securities, creating a false sense of confidence; deposit insurance and the “too big to fail” doctrine, whose bailout promises have created huge distortions in incentives and risk-taking throughout the financial system; and so on. In the face of this long list, who can say with a straight face that the housing and financial markets were frontiers of “cowboy capitalism”? (...)

This is just the latest example of a pattern that has been going on since the rise of capitalism: capitalism is blamed for the ills of government intervention--and then even more government intervention is proposed as the cure. The Great Depression? Despite massive evidence that the Federal Reserve’s and other government policies were responsible for the crash and the inability of the economy to recover, it was laissez-faire that was blamed. Consequently, in the aftermath, the government’s power over the economy was not curtailed but dramatically expanded. Or what about the energy crisis of the 1970s? (...)It’s time to stop blaming capitalism for the sins of government intervention, and give true laissez-faire a chance. Now that would be a change we could believe in. >>>

Wall Street Journal have a touching short documentary on the Great Depression up on their video archive ...

Art in this post by the Quent Cordair Fine Art Gallery for Romantic Realism

The meltdown of Fannie and Freddie should be a transformative moment in American politics. It should discredit the whole Democratic economic agenda. It is too bad that it happened in the middle of the most interesting Presidential election in a generation because there are lessons to learn from it. Several points.

Let's start with some numbers. Contributions since 1989(!) to ALL members of Congress. Note that this is an aggregate over time. Note how a guy who has been in Congress for 3 years manages to come in 3rd on the list.

First, this is a Democratic scandal. In yesterday's WaPo Al Hubbard and Noam Neusner ask "Where was Senator Dodd?" The answer is clear. On the take. Open Secrets notes who gets money from these guys:

Fifteen of the 25 lawmakers who have received the most from the two companies combined since the 1990 election sit on either the House Financial Services Committee; the Senate Banking, Housing & Urban Affairs Committee; or the Senate Finance Committee. The others have seats on the powerful Appropriations or Ways & Means committees, are members of the congressional leadership or have run for president. Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.), chairman of the Senate banking committee, has received the most from Fannie and Freddie's PACs and employees ($133,900 since 1989). Rep. Paul Kanjorski (D-Pa.) has received $65,500. Kanjorski chairs the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Capital Markets, Insurance and Government-Sponsored Enterprises, and Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae are government-sponsored enterprises, or GSEs.

But they miss the important point. The GSEs give to Democrats primarily.

And this is the second point. These are partisan instituttions. Republicans tried to reform it, but got out lobbied every time. Hubbard and Neusner described how this works:

The administration did not accept half-measures. In 2005, Republican Mike Oxley, then chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, brought up a reform bill (H.R. 1461), and Fannie and Freddie's lobbyists set out to weaken it. The bill was rendered so toothless that Card called Oxley the night before markup and promised to oppose it. Oxley pulled the bill instead.

When there was a Republican Congress, Congressional leadership tried to do the right thing, but Fannie and Freddie's lobbyists picked off some weak Republicans. With a Democratic Congress, Fannie and Freddie just feed at the trough.

Third, these guys are some of the most powerful figures in the Democratic lobbyist-operative firmament. Obama was forced to fire James Johnson, his first VP Vetter. Johnson had been CEO of Fannie Mae.  But it doesn't stop there. Johnson, while a consultant for Fannie and Countrywide, was passing out below market loans to Senator Dodd, among others.

The recent CEO of Fannie was Franklin Delano Raines. (what do you bet his parents politics were?) Raines was a Clinton OMB Director and worked in the Carter White House. Raines was replaced with an actual business guy.

Fourth, it doesn't stop there. Not only that, but the affordable housing racket is also used as a way to launder government money into corrupt Democratic voter registration practices. One of the organizations pushing subprime loans and other "affordable housing" financial vehicles... ACORN, which got a sweet deal in the Housing Bill.

What is the upshot of all of this?  The housing meltdown has both causes and effects that are ideologically aligned with Democratic objectives.  While gutting the regulatory apparatus for a huge segment of our economy, leading Democrats were receiving contributions and below market loans from the very people whose regulations their were gutting. It was used to move money into Democratic grassroots campaign vehicles. And it moved substantial parts of the economy into government control. According to financial analyst Barry Richoltz, "socialism for the rich."

This should be a long-term stain on the credibility of Democratic Party's economic management.  Too bad no one has the attention span to notice.

 Today, the a twist of fate delivered a great softball to John McCain. Jack Abramoff was sentenced to 4 years in prison. What do the speechwriters add to the speech?

"I brought change to Washington. I exposed the corrupt Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff. I helped put a figure of the Washington establishment in prison. That's change."

I have been floating around the GOP Convention pre-events and talking to people about Sarah Palin. At the meeting of the Convention's Rules Committee meeting, I have heard that women on the committee and female staff were so excited and moved that they literally started crying. The amount of energy from all parts of the coalition here seem very excited.

Over the last 24 hours, I have started to hear some good, positive, fact-driven arguments for her successes. (after all, the optics are great, but lets start proving some details)

First, from a friend in Canada (!), a statement about one of her achievements as Governor. My friend says:

In the past 18 months she's gone toe-to-toe with big oil companies like Exxon, Conoco Phillips and BP to get a $30 billion pipeline deal through that will deliver natural gas to the lower 48 states without being owned by the big oilcartel.

For those who follow pipeline politics, which includes the entire Canadian energy sector, it is well known that Palin has revived the Alaska pipeline project from the grave - this was kicking around going nowhere for years under Knowles and Murkowski - and taken it out of the hands of the multinational companies.   The Alaska legislature just passed Palin's plan this summer.

I don't understand this point. Something to do more research on. What my friend suggests is that she, once again, challenged "Big Oil"

Another point about ethics. She came to power by fighting for ethics in Alaska. She beat the corrupt Frank Murkowski in a primary. She also fought with individuals in the state party:

This is a state party whose chairman, Randy Ruedrich, has been feuding with Palin for years. Palin exposed Ruedrich for ethical violations in 2004 when both served on the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission — and their relationship has been frosty ever since.

Ruedrich declined to comment at the historic nature of having an Alaskan on the national ticket for the first time in the state’s history.

Contrast this with Barack Obama's failure to challenge Daley corruption, Emil Jones corruption, union corruption, etc.

This morning, Barack Obama's campaign woke to a headline that might have made the strategy guys nervous. Roll Call ran a piece entitled "Lobbyists Give to Obama Campaign" with the even better subtitle "Despite Policy, Their Checks Clear".

"So what?" you might ask.

When Obama was busy with his post-February primary losing streak, he ran ads against Hillary Clinton attacking her over this issue. "Obama doesn't take money from lobbyists, but Hillary does. Not in the pocket of special interests." I never understood how this was supposed to help him win the votes of people who support corrupt machine politicians like Rep. John Murtha (D-PA) and Rep. Paul Kanjorski (D-PA). Working class Democratic voters don't care about this issue. But they care about liars.

So now, imagine the response ad that McCain would run.

First it starts with one of Obama's statements about not taking money from lobbyists. Perhaps even using Obama's own ad.

Then, put up headlines about him taking -- and asking for -- money from the spouses of lobbyists. (by the way, that's another brilliantly titled piece "Obama's K-street Project')

And then one his former staffers emailed DC lobbying firms demanded contracts.

And now it turns out that he even takes money from lobbyists. "despite policy, checks clear."

And then you flash up the headline "Obama's Lobbyist Connection", from Michael Isikoff's piece earlier this year.

And then throw in Obama breaking his pledge on public financing. (I am sure that there's a good headline here)

Then it ends with something like "Barack Obama: You can't trust what he says"

The words need to be improved, of course. But the point is that the material is there to undermine his character and his trustworthiness, Obama's only real assets in this race. And you do it at the same time as you rip off the "reformer" mask, a fundamental part of his "change" mantra.

The collective swoon over B. Barak Hussein Muhammed Obama is getting corrosive. If Bush Derangement Syndrome (BDS) (see parts I and II) was a public health hazard, we ain't seen nothing yet. The Morbid Obama Intoxication (MOI) beats BDS on all fronts.

For a proper understanding we must turn beyond the field of psychology - to philosophy - which explains matters in broad abstracts. As is happens, a number of parameters alarmingly coincide - and here it gets sticky - with the German interbellum.

We all know how that ended. Nota bene, I'm not collating Obama with Adolf Hitler, or lumping him with Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels; although he is playing the campaign like a full-fledged demagogue, the problem rather lies with his fans and admirers.

The American Left is traditionally steeped in pragmatism. That may sound innocent and practical, but it comes with a few less known consequences which seldom come to the fore all at once.

The champion of pragmatism is the American pioneering psychologist William James (1842-1910), who gave the concept its name. The brother of novelist Henry James and of diarist Alice James wrote: 'The true,' to put it very briefly, is only the expedient in the way of our thinking, just as 'the right' is only the expedient in the way of our behaving." Dewey applied pragmatism to education.

Pragmatism is a Romanticist version of relativism. Extrovert action and passion are valued over introvert reflexion and reason. Pragmatism is essentially amoral. It has contributed to the nastiness of Postmodernism by positing a sort of secular, Western form of taqqiyah, which is governed by the same principle: our goal is so ethical that even the unethical is justified in reaching it - the aim justifies the means, truth is flexible and depends on the need of the moment, a utility expedient towards realization of the goal.

As a consequence pragmatism is rather dishonestly presented as the opposite of what it aims to achieve. It seemingly is the practical over theory, portends to position the individual in a central role, ostensibly respects reason and facts, while its very principle constitutes an assault on logic (everything is in flux), gives a central role to feelings and passions (subjectivism), denies reality (nothing is absolute), and reduces the individual to an atom of the collective. That collective - in pragmatism is usually 'our generation,' 'liberals,' or 'society'; it is not an aggregate, but an 'organic entity.'

It holds a number of Orwellian concepts, as Hegel's 'Ethical Whole' to which individual free will must be sacrificed for the good of the Collective Will, and Rousseau's notion which has come down to us in Marxism, of 'true freedom through the state'. A picture of mystical group-think is emerging from the Obama campaign which looks ominously familiar, but is by itself not enough to warrant great concern.

Is gets more hazardous when pragmatism is coupled to dogma and subjective passions spiral out of control. This is the winning ticket that made National Socialism such a lethal ideology: they strengthen one another. One can see how that works: our aim justifies the means because we say so. Dogmatism couples blind belief to an already brutal concept. It beckons: stop thinking, follow me and I'll give you what you want so passionately!

If we turn our attention to the Obama campaign we hear one mantra: Change, Action, Belief. The latter represents the dogmatic side: blind faith, not in the Obama ideas (he doesn't have any) but in his method, while Change through Action suggests Will to Power: the dogmatic approach to a subjective aim that justifies the pragmatist means.

There is the negative myth as summed up in part II by Front Page Magazine author Ben Johnson's "The Left's Fairy Tale," a shortlist of the main delusions that the Dems and the Leftist world at large have convinced themselves of. The demonization of George Bush is not a Sorelian myth, but it lends sufficient fire and motivation to reach the goal: getting Obama into 'our' White House.

Sit tight for Leonard Peikoff quoting Herman Goerring in "The Ominous Parallels" (Meridian, 1982, p. 55):

"Just as the Roman Catholic Church considers the Pope as infallible (...) so do we National Socialists believe with the same inner conviction that for us the Leader is (...) simply infallible. [Hitler's authority derives from] something mystical, inexpressible, almost incomprehensible which this unique man possesses, and he who cannot feel it instinctively will not be able to grasp it at all."

If you think that's tacky, compare that to this load of Postmodern 'spirituality,' according to which Obama is both the infallible Pope and the celestial Leader rolled into One:

"Barack Obama isn't really one of us. Not in the normal way, anyway. (...) The appeal, the pull, the ethereal and magical thing that seems to enthrall millions of people from all over the world, that keeps opening up and firing into new channels of the culture normally completely unaffected by politics? No, it's not merely his youthful vigor, or handsomeness, or even inspiring rhetoric. It is not fresh ideas or cool charisma or the fact that a black president will be historic and revolutionary in about a thousand different ways. It is something more. Even Bill Clinton, with all his effortless, winking charm, didn't have what Obama has, which is a sort of powerful luminosity, a unique high-vibration integrity. Dismiss it all you like, but I've heard from far too many enormously smart, wise, spiritually attuned people who've been intuitively blown away by Obama's presence - not speeches, not policies, but sheer presence - to say it's just a clever marketing ploy, a slick gambit carefully orchestrated by hotshot campaign organizers who, once Obama gets into office, will suddenly turn from perky optimists to vile soul-sucking lobbyist whores, with Obama as their suddenly evil, cackling overlord. Here's where it gets gooey. Many spiritually advanced people I know (not coweringly religious, mind you, but deeply spiritual) identify Obama as a Lightworker, that rare kind of attuned being who has the ability to lead us not merely to new foreign policies or health care plans or whatnot, but who can actually help usher in a new way of being on the planet, of relating and connecting and engaging with this bizarre earthly experiment. These kinds of people actually help us evolve. They are philosophers and peacemakers of a very high order, and they speak not just to reason or emotion, but to the soul. The unusual thing is, true Lightworkers almost never appear on such a brutal, spiritually demeaning stage as national politics. This is why Obama is so rare."

Mark Steyn noticed it too:

"Obama the humble savior:" "I face this challenge with profound humility (...) limitless faith (...) I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal … . This was the moment – this was the time – when we came together to remake this great nation."

It's a good thing he's facing it with "profound humility," isn't it? ... Yeah, and divorced from reason ...

Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal talks about how stopping earmarks is the path back to a majority:

 The key parts:

It's about opposing these earmarks, these bridges to nowhere.It's about going after corruption. Whether they're Republicans or Democrats, we can't make excuses for them. It's about being on principled positions. ... Republicans aren't going to get the majority simply by being cheaper Democrats. We've got to stick to our core principles and understand the reason that conservatives go out and vote is they want lower taxes and effective, competent government. They're not looking for earmarks or cheaper versions of liberal programs.

 Why aren't more people saying this stuff? This guy is single handedly reshaping his state after running on reversing a history of corruption.

In particular, why haven't the Republicans offered an ethics pledge like a tax pledge? We have a couple of primaries that will be a showdown over ethics. Sean Parnell in Alaska (give here) but who else?