"THE LAST EIGHT YEARS"???

Here is a video clip sent to me by Lisa, LIFE ON A BISON FARM. The title of her blog is a clickable link, so please be sure to visit and comment. She actually does live on a bison farm, and she has many photos of not only the bison, but the many other animals too. I'm sure you will enjoy it very much!

This video is about the warnings that were given as far back as 2002-3 about the coming economic crisis that we're experiencing now. This is exactly what I've been saying about the "voices in the wilderness" warnings of disaster. Of course, REPRESENTATIVE BARNEY FRANK, D-MA, and SENATOR CHARLES SHUMER, D-NY, both basically said there was no problem. Former President Bush recommended a major regulatory overhaul that would have increased oversight of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. And just WHO stopped it? THE DEMOCRATS. You can read the New York Times article for yourself by clicking HERE. As far as they were concerned, there was no problem. They, along with many other Washington politicians, including President Obama, were lining their pockets with kickbacks from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Being a state employee myself, if I did anything like that, I would be UNDER the prison soooo fast. A government employee, elected or not, can NOT profit from other government agencies or companies that contract with the government. It's a crime for people like you and I, but it's alright (at YOURS AND MINE expense) for the corrupt Washington system.





After reading Mr. Labaton's article in the New York Times, and hearing it on the video, I really don't want to hear any more accusations from the left about this crisis originating during "the last eight years." President Bush and Senator John McCain tried to get the Democrats to listen, but as we can see, they refused. They definitely have forgotten who they really work for. Now, we're paying the price for "the last six years" of crooked politicians in Congress.

By the way, I haven't been able to verify this one way or the other, but the e-mail had a note that said the American media didn't want anyone to see this video clip, and had Time Warner threaten to sue YouTube if it wasn't removed. The video link was rerouted through Canada and was apparently posted by PROUD TO BE CANADIAN. This wouldn't be surprising at all if true.

WHEN THE GOING GETS TOUGH . . . THEN RECESS!

I'm sure that most of you have been following the so-called economic stimulus legislation news over the past weeks. Yes, I'm still calling it "so-called" because not even ten percent of it has anything at all to do with strengthening the economy. Can you say OINK? That's not the point, though.

Care to know what Congressional Democrats have been doing this weekend? While we've been listening to company CEO's being lambasted by members of Congress for their "excesses" (which by the way, salary and benefits are not set by the CEO's, but by the company boards), on and on ad nauseum, Democrats spent the weekend at KINGSMILL RESORT AND SPA, in Williamsburg, Virginia for their annual retreat according to a February 6, 2009 Associated Press article by Laurie Kellman. Now I know that the Republicans did the same thing earlier this year at the HOMESTEAD RESORT in Hot Springs, Virginia. But with one "small" difference. The Republicans paid for their retreat out of their own pockets. The Democrats on the other hand, spent $100,000 of YOUR tax money for the three-day weekend. The first thing that should be understood is that all of these people in Congress are all wealthy people. They can well afford to pay for such things themselves. I know that $100,000 to the Federal budget is dipping the ocean with a teaspoon. But if $100,000 of taxpayers' money is spent on "excesses" to use their phraseology, then there will be no more conviction about spending $1,000,000, or $1,000,000,000, and so on.

This is also another indication that they have no intention of living by the same rules as they want us to. Cutbacks? Will we live long enough to actually see it in Washington?

A SIDE NOTE ON THE ECONOMY WITH A LOOK BACK

We've seen on the news recently that we now have a national unemployment rate of about 8%. That's all we've heard. What we haven't heard is that 92% of America's work force is still employed. During the Carter administration? Unemployment was 11%.

Inflation rate for 2008, despite the brief dramatic spike in oil prices, considerable price increases of most grocery items due to ethanol and increased transportation costs, 3.85% (INFLATIONDATA.COM). During the Carter Administration, say 1980, 13.58% (INFLATIONDATA.COM).

According to the Wall Street Journal's PRIME RATE HISTORY, the prme lending rate now is 3.25%. During the Carter administration, 1980, 20.0% (yes, you read that right, 20.0%).

And also according to INFLATIONDATA.COM, gasoline prices broke $1.00 per gallon for the first time ever 1980. The reason this was so extremely hard was that in 1976, just four years earlier, the price was around $0.60 per gallon. By the end of 1981, the average price was $1.35 per gallon. The price more than doubled in five years, but wages did not, not to mention waiting in lines for an hour or more to get gas, the fights and some shootings in the gas lines. Adjusting for inflation, this would translate to about $3.17 per gallon or so - and staying there.

Worst economy since the Great Depression? Don't think so. While I'm in no way minimizing those suffering because of the Democrats' mishandling of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, and their blocking every attempt several years ago to prevent this from happening, it could be a whole lot worse. It has been. In way less than a lifetime. But since many Americans' memories are short, I thought I would put a little reminder out there so we could remember how it was, and how it could be right now.

BAILOUT AFTER BAILOUT . . . WHERE DOES IT END?

NATALIE commented in an entry some time ago asking for my thoughts on the automaker bailout. It has been some weeks ago, but I haven't had the opportunity to research it out. I already had my opinions about all of the bailouts, so I'll include the first one too.

The first bailout is known as the TROUBLED ASSET RELIEF PROGRAM (TARP) (clickable link to see a brief explanation). I won't go into a lot of details about the particulars. I'm sure everyone has heard enough about for about three lifetimes.

These funds are basically in two parts although the first part was broken up into an initial $250 billion and then $100 billion for a total of $350 billion. The total package is slated to be $700 billion. This bailout was to buy bad mortgages as taxpayer expense. YOU AND I NOW OWN BILLIONS OF DOLLARS OF "BAD DEBT." As we all know, "bad debt" is debt that can't be collected. So the bottom line is that YOUR MONEY AND MINE is being used to eliminate that losses of FANNIE MAE , FREDDIE MAC, LEHMAN BROTHERS, AIG, and others. The cause of this crisis was giving mortgages to people who had no business having them in the first place. If you visit Fannie Mae's website, for example, you'll see their purpose is to make home ownership possible. Problem is, mortgages were extended to people with bad credit or otherwise high risk. A tremendous amount of pressure was put on lending insitututions by the Federal government starting with the CARTER ADMINISTRATION and continued through the CLINTON ADMINISTRATION including a lawsuit led by ACORN that Barack Obama, then an attorney with the lawfirm of David, Miner, Barnhill, and Galland, forced Citigroup to make SUBPRIME MORTGAGES. And one of the chief problems identiified as being one of the major causes of this crisis? Subprime mortgages. Now, you don't have to understand what subprime mortgages to see the hypocrisy here. The proverbial chickens have come home to roost. Now the Federal government is using US the taxpayers to pay for this mess. The politicians in Washington didn't listen to us, the voters. EIGHTY-EIGHT PERCENT of the American public was AGAINST the bailout and extremely angry over this. I totally agree with the 88%. The Democrats' attempt to find a Republican to blame completely failed. That's because there was no Republican to blame. The vast majority of the American public didn't go for it. Amercia said very loudly, "NO!" Yet, as we all know, they did it anyway. I hope the 88% doesn't forget, and remembers those who voted for this bailout during upcoming elections.

I say don't distribute the remaining $350 billion until some accountability measures are put into place. Just like the Hurrican Katrina funding, this first $350 billion has absolutely no accountability measures, so there can't be any accounting for where all this money goes. Without accountability, this taxpayer money can be used by the individual companies or entities any way they like, which isn't the intention of the handing over of this money.

Now, here come the U. S. automakers while the Washington politicians are in the handout mood. I have a few of problems with this. Other than the obvious socialism involved here, in my opinion, from having lived through the '70's, the Federal government once again shares a large part of the responsibility. It was during the '70's that I saw the foreign automakers allowed to export their vehicles to the United States with no restrictions whatsoever. Now before anyone yells "protectionism" here, I'll go ahead and say "you betcha." Although I don't support massive protectionism, I think a certain amount was in order here to protect American industry. There have always been many, many other industries directly tied to the U. S. automakers. But, Washington did nothing. So the market was swamped by foreign imports produced by non-union labor and therefore could be sold at a much lower price. After a time, Washington finally placed some import tariffs on foreign imports. Then the foreign automakers started building plants here, shipping the parts from overseas, and started building their cars in the U.S. to bypass the import tariffs. Washington was again very slow to respond, but it was too little too late. The damage had been done. And speaking of the Federal government, I don't think I have to go into the massive Federal regulation of the automotive industry. As with any set of Federal regulations, only about 20% are really meaningful. The rest just drives up the cost to John Q. Consumer.

The UNITED AUTO WORKERS union is a large part of this too. Again, having lived through the '70's, I witnessed strike after strike after strike and negotiation after negotiation for more company benefits, higher and higher wages, on and on it went. These chickens have also come home to roost. A company absolutely cannot continue to pay out more and more benefits and higher and higher wages and still expect to maintain enough of a profit to remain in business. An example of this is that between fifteen and twenty years ago, a worker for General Motors was laid off. He moved from Michigan to Duluth, Georgia. According to his UAW contract, he was to received FULL PAY for TWO SOLID YEARS WITHOUT PRODUCING SO MUCH AS A DOORHANDLE. Just how many businesses can stay in business with such outgo? I'm surprised they've lasted this long.

The solution to this is not a taxpayer funded bailout, uh, excuse me, it's not a "bailout", they are "bridge loans". I think that the automakers should be allowed to go bankrupt. Again, before anyone has kittens about this, bankruptcy does not mean out of business. The type of bankruptcy the automakers should file is not to go out of business, but to reorganize. In the words of one of my readers, God knows they need to. Overlapping makes and models should be eliminated and union contracts renegotiated. Bankruptcy reorganization is the only way this could be accomplished. The U. S. automakers would emerge with a less expensive employee base, fewer product lines, and new strategic operational plans. This would also allow the U. S. automakers to bring back manufacturing which is being outsourced offshore. Employement would be provided for people no longer needed on assembly lines for duplicate makes such as the Ford Explorer and Mercury Mountaineer - same vehicle, different nameplates. It would be far cheaper for the taxpayers if this were to happen, even if extended unemployment benefits were granted by the Federal government during the reorganization time.

One last major problem with all of these bailouts is this: JUST WHERE DOES IT STOP? These bailouts just open the door for more bailouts funded with YOUR money. It shouldn't have been started, and I say end it now.

OUR LIBERAL NEWS MEDIA SUMMED UP - BY A DEMOCRAT JOURNALIST!

Here is an article sent to me by Carolyn, NO APOLOGIES ROUND 2. She has an excellent journal, so please visit and leave a comment.

This article was written by a journalist for THE RHINO TIMES in Greensboro, North Carolina who is a Democrat (confirmed by TRUTHORFICTION.COM). It is an excellent summation of the state of the American news media. This is nothing new. Our news media has slanted the news as far back as I can remember (which goes back to around 1970 when I became interested in world events and politics). I became disgusted as a pre-teen with the distortions and outright lies of the media. The most blatant lies were perpetrated by the television news networks, and this was of course before cable news, about the Vietnam war. Primarily CBS News kept on giving the American public on how we were being defeated in Vietnam, and the sick, morbid body count was heard daily. CBS News made one mistake that began my questioning them - their video was of the SAME AIRCRAFT CRASH over and over again. I said at the time it was either the same airplane, which looked like a C-130, or the soldier standing in the lower right hand corner really got around! It was obviously the same man while the newscaster was leading the American public to believe that these were different photos of different crashes. After listening to the BBC World News for a while on shortwave radio, I found stark differences between the accounting of the war by our media and theirs. I finally drew the conclusion, and told a number of my friends, that the only thing one could count on in this news coverage was that there was a war in Vietnam. Beyond that, we had no way of knowing what was fact or fiction. The same holds true today.

The author, Orson Scott Card, also explains the origin of the current mortgage crisis - and the fact that it was completely and totally preventable.

Would the Last Honest Reporter Please Turn On the Lights?

By Orson Scott Card
October 5, 2008

An open letter to the local daily paper -- almost every local daily paper in America:

I remember reading All the President's Men and thinking: That's journalism. You do what it takes to get the truth and you lay it before the public, because the public has a right to know.

This housing crisis didn't come out of nowhere. It was not a vague emanation of the evil Bush administration. It was a direct result of the political decision, back in the late 1990s, to loosen the rules of lending so that home loans would be more accessible to poor people. FANNIE MAE and FREDDIE MAC were authorized to approve risky loans. What is a risky loan? It's a loan that the recipient is likely not to be able to repay. The goal of this rule change was to help the poor -- which especially would help members of minority groups. But how does it help these people to give them a loan that they can't repay? They get into a house, yes, but when they can't make the payments, they lose the house -- along with their credit rating. They end up worse off than before. This was completely foreseeable and in fact many people did foresee it. One political party, in Congress and in the executive branch, tried repeatedly to tighten up the rules. The other party blocked every such attempt and tried to loosen them. Furthermore, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae were making political contributions to the very members of Congress who were allowing them to make irresponsible loans. (Though why quasi-federal agencies were allowed to do so baffles me. It's as if the Pentagon were allowed to contribute to the political campaigns of Congressmen who support increasing their budget.)

Isn't there a story here? Doesn't journalism require that you who produce our daily paper tell the truth about who brought us to a position where the only way to keep confidence in our economy was a $700 billion bailout? Aren't you supposed to follow the money and see which politicians were benefitting personally from the deregulation of mortgage lending? I have no doubt that if these facts had pointed to the Republican Party or to John McCain as the guilty parties, you would be treating it as a vast scandal. "Housing-gate," no doubt. Or "Fannie-gate." Instead, it was Senator Christopher Dodd and Congressman Barney Frank, both Democrats, who denied that there were any problems, who refused Bush administration requests to set up a regulatory agency to watch over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and who were still pushing for these agencies to go even further in promoting subprime mortgage loans almost up to the minute they failed. As Thomas Sowell points out in a TownHall.com essay entitled Do Facts Matter? "Alan Greenspan warned them four years ago. So did the Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers to the President. So did Bush's Secretary of the Treasury." These are facts. This financial crisis was completely preventable. The party that blocked any attempt to prevent it was ... the Democratic Party. The party that tried to prevent it was ... the Republican Party. Yet when Nancy Pelosi accused the Bush administration and Republican deregulation of causing the crisis, you in the press did not hold her to account for her lie. Instead, you criticized Republicans who took offense at this lie and refused to vote for the bailout! What? It's not the liar, but the victims of the lie who are to blame?

Now let's follow the money ... right to the presidential candidate who is the number-two recipient of campaign contributions from Fannie Mae. And after Freddie Raines, the CEO of Fannie Mae who made $90 million while running it into the ground, was fired for his incompetence, one presidential candidate's campaign actually consulted him for advice on housing. If that presidential candidate had been John McCain, you would have called it a major scandal and we would be getting stories in your paper every day about how incompetent and corrupt he was. But instead, that candidate was Barack Obama, and so you have buried this story, and when the McCain campaign dared to call Raines an "adviser" to the Obama campaign -- because that campaign had sought his advice -- you actually let Obama's people get away with accusing McCain of lying, merely because Raines wasn't listed as an official adviser to the Obama campaign. You would never tolerate such weasely nit-picking from a Republican. If you who produce our local daily paper actually had any principles, you would be pounding this story, because the prosperity of all Americans was put at risk by the foolish, short-sighted, politically selfish, and possibly corrupt actions of leading Democrats, including Obama. If you who produce our local daily paper had any personal honor, you would find it unbearable to let the American people believe that somehow Republicans were to blame for this crisis.

There are precedents. Even though President Bush and his administration never said that Iraq sponsored or was linked to 9/11, you could not stand the fact that Americans had that misapprehension -- so you pounded us with the fact that there was no such link. (Along the way, you created the false impression that Bush had lied to them and said that there was a connection.) If you had any principles, then surely right now, when the American people are set to blame President Bush and John McCain for a crisis they tried to prevent, and are actually shifting to approve of Barack Obama because of a crisis he helped cause, you would be laboring at least as hard to correct that false impression. Your job, as journalists, is to tell the truth. That's what you claim you do, when you accept people's money to buy or subscribe to your paper. But right now, you are consenting to or actively promoting a big fat lie -- that the housing crisis should somehow be blamed on Bush, McCain, and the Republicans. You have trained the American people to blame everything bad -- even bad weather -- on Bush, and they are responding as you have taught them to. If you had any personal honor, each reporter and editor would be insisting on telling the truth -- even if it hurts the election chances of your favorite candidate. Because that's what honorable people do. Honest people tell the truth even when they don't like the probable consequences. That's what honesty means. That's how trust is earned. Barack Obama is just another politician, and not a very wise one. He has revealed his ignorance and naivete time after time -- and you have swept it under the rug, treated it as nothing. Meanwhile, you have participated in the borking of Sarah Palin, reporting savage attacks on her for the pregnancy of her unmarried daughter -- while you ignored the story of John Edwards's own adultery for many months.

So I ask you now: Do you have any standards at all? Do you even know what honesty means? Is getting people to vote for Barack Obama so important that you will throw away everything that journalism is supposed to stand for? You might want to remember the way the National Organization of Women threw away their integrity by supporting Bill Clinton despite his well-known pattern of sexual exploitation of powerless women. Who listens to NOW anymore? We know they stand for nothing; they have no principles. That's where you are right now. It's not too late. You know that if the situation were reversed, and the truth would damage McCain and help Obama, you would be moving heaven and earth to get the true story out there.

If you want to redeem your honor, you will swallow hard and make a list of all the stories you would print if it were McCain who had been getting money from Fannie Mae, McCain whose campaign had consulted with its discredited former CEO, McCain who had voted against tightening its lending practices. Then you will print them, even though every one of those true stories will point the finger of blame at the reckless Democratic Party, which put our nation's prosperity at risk so they could feel good about helping the poor, and lay a fair share of the blame at Obama's door.

You will also tell the truth about John McCain: that he tried, as a Senator, to do what it took to prevent this crisis. You will tell the truth about President Bush: that his administration tried more than once to get Congress to regulate lending in a responsible way. This was a Congress-caused crisis, beginning during the Clinton administration, with Democrats leading the way into the crisis and blocking every effort to get out of it in a timely fashion.

If you at our local daily newspaper continue to let Americans believe --and vote as if -- President Bush and the Republicans caused the crisis, then you are joining in that lie. If you do not tell the truth about the Democrats -- including Barack Obama -- and do so with the same energy you would use if the miscreants were Republicans -- then you are not journalists by any standard. You're just the public relations machine of the Democratic Party, and it's time you were all fired and real journalists brought in, so that we can actually have a daily newspaper in our city.

Mr. Card did an excellent job here. This could be said of most of the television news media too. There will be no recanting of any mispresentations or admissions of one-sidedness at all. I agree entirely with Mr. Card's remedy. Thank you, Carolyn, for sharing this.