Romney responds to Obama’s attack on entrepreneurs

Well done, sir.

Obama: If your business succeeds, you sure as hell didn’t have anything to do with it.

This cretin’s hostility to private enterprise has never been more clear, other than to his mouth-breathing knuckle-dragging sycophants.  From a campaign speech in Ohio:

If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business — you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.

Apparently, if you succeed in business, it’s because of Al Gore.  Or something:

The Internet didn’t get invented on its own.  Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet.

Um…the Internet was invented by the Al Gore, or the Dept. of Defense, whichever you choose to believe.  I’m pretty sure e-commerce wasn’t factored into their decision-making process.

The Internet may have been started by the government, but the boom of Internet business has been 100% the doing of entrepreneurs, NOT the government!  This Marxist jackass would be well served if he’d recognize that.

Please, America…get this despicable vermin out of the White House in November.  Please.

California named the worst state to do business, for 8th year in a row

Why, it’s almost as if businesses are averse to burdensome regulations and oppressive taxes or something!  Almost, that is.  Excerpt:

So much for the idea of West is best. In an annual survey, executives ranked California as the worst place to do business for the eighth year in a row.

Chief Executive magazine has only been conducting its survey for eight years. Texas has been top-ranked every year.

The survey considered responses from 650 business leaders, who graded states on factors such as taxes, regulations, living environment and more.

Texas and second-ranked Florida have the highest migration rates in the nation for 2001 through 2009. California has lost 1.5 million people over the same period.
…
Its 10.9% unemployment rate is only lower than Nevada’s and Rhode Island’s. A third of U.S. welfare recipients live in California, the report noted. High state taxes and bundles of red tape make operating a business in the state unaffordable to many companies, critics say.

Last year, 254 California companies moved some or all of their work and jobs elsewhere — 26% more than 2010. Most chief executives in Silicon Valley said they won’t expand in the state, according to the survey.

Interesting observations here.  Note the performance of the red/reddish states…

Also in the top 10: North Carolina, Tennessee, Indiana, Virginia, South Carolina, Georgia and Utah.

… and blue states.

California narrowly edged out New York in what the survey called “the ninth circle of business hell,” sharing the bottom five spots with Illinois, Massachusetts and Michigan.

I’m sure the crushing regulations and taxes of the blue states have nothing to do with their rankings whatsoever.  Right?

“If I wanted America to fail…”

…then I’d vote for Chairman Zero and other members of the Jackass Party.

Newt takes down Juan Williams’ racebaiting question

Then again, Newt Gingrich calling Juan Williams by his first name is racist, or something.  So sayeth Tingles.

I’m not a big Newt fan, but dude, this one almost gave me a Matthews-like leg tingle.  As Rush points out, you would think that Williams, having been fired from NPR over saying something interpreted by NPR brass as politically incorrect and bigoted, would be loathe to whip out the race card himself.  Then again, you would think…and Williams clearly does not.

Where Newt and Perry are really screwing up the “Bain Capital” attacks on Romney

Rush does a better job explaining this than I would, slamming Newt Gingrich over this.  He hits Perry, too.

In short: any “conservative” citing a NYT article that blasts a capitalist and in a factually dishonest way sounds more like a liberal (and Rush has the audio of Obama proving the point) can forget my support.

Obama lets his communist leanings show loudly and clearly

One of the things I’ve detested about the left and the MSM (pardon the redundancy) since BHO decided to run for president was their insistence that their boy was a “centrist” or “center-left” guy.  He was raised by an anti-American Muslim father (for a while) and an anti-American socialist mother, indoctrinated with anti-American propaganda at his madrassas and in college by Marxist professors, associated with the New Party (communist, Google it), bombarded with anti-American socialist vitriol in Jeremiah Wright’s church for over two decades, palling around with anti-American left-wing terrorists Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn, and best buds with his most frequent White House visitor Andy Stern (former SEIU chief).

Yet the left would have us believe that despite incubating in such an anti-American leftist cesspool, BHO was immune to all of the effects one would expect from someone with such a background.  If you lie with dogs, you get fleas…unless you’re Obama, in which case you’re immune from fleas.

Last week, Stern wrote a column telling Americans that our capitalist model was a failure and needed to be shaped to match the Chicom model.  Stern was one of many union bosses who have openly espoused communist…er, “pro-worker”…sentiments.  When you listen to their rhetoric, it sounds exactly like something you would have heard from Lenin, Chavez, Castro, et al.  It’s official: unions are nothing more than commie front groups.  Period.  The science is settled.

Oh, but I forgot: Just because ObaMao is best buds with Stern, Hoffa, et al, does NOT mean he shares their communist sensibilities.  To think otherwise is crazy.  I mean, aside from a rare moment of honesty with Joe the Plumber, when has BHO ever advocated anything other than a capitalist model?

Now.  The answer to the prior question is now.  In Kansas, no less.  Here’s what he had to say about capitalism:

“It’s a simple theory — one that speaks to our rugged individualism and healthy skepticism of too much government. It fits well on a bumper sticker. Here’s the problem: It doesn’t work,” Obama said of supply-side economics, drawing extended applause. “It’s never worked.”

Oh, sure, some would argue that he wasn’t talking about capitalism per se, but of supply-side economics.  Folks, that is a distinction without a difference.  As Ace rightly notes:

He says “trickle-down economics” rather than capitalism, but “trickle-down economics” is merely an argument in favor of capitalism. There is no such thing as “trickle-down economics.” There is capitalism, and the argued advantage of it, which is the trickling down of created wealth.
…
…But Europe is probably going to plunge into something in between a recession or a depression, and may erupt in violence and political disorder.

And Europe is Obama’s lodestar. That’s where he wants to take us. To the extent we haven’t gotten there yet, it’s because Americans are soft, lazy bitter clingers who hate other sorts of people (and their politico-economic systems).

So Europe’s 60 or 70 year history with socialism is about to end in violent upheavals and misery… and here’s this ignoramus saying that it’s capitalism which is the proven failure.

As an intemperate interjection, might I note that if, by “never worked”, the organizer-in-chief means “increased government revenues every time”, then yeah, “never worked.”  If, by “never worked”, he means the creation of 16 million new jobs, then he’s right…”never worked”.

But that’s not what he means.  Those aren’t benefits…not to the people he seeks to please.  No, by “never worked”, he means “it has never taken more money from the producers and funded the non-producers’ chosen lifestyles of lethargy and dependence in perpetuity.”  That’s what he means.  See, when 16 million new jobs were created, you had to be handicapped or lazy to not get a job, because they were everywhere.  Every time supply side economics has been tried, the economy has picked back up, jobs have been created, and revenues to the government have increased as a result of more people working and paying income taxes (and not on public dependence).  But to ObaMao, public dependence is a feature, NOT a bug!

The son of a motherless goat is a commie.  He’s had it pounded into his head since he was a fetus (that, luckily for him, escaped medical procedures that he endorses, to the point of infanticide).  No amount of results will shake his belief that it is communism, and not capitalism, that has failed every time.  He just knows it will be different this time…it’s got to be!  (Sidebar: I know that communism and socialism aren’t exactly the same thing. But the differences are not great, so as far as I’m concerned, for the sake of B.O.’s leftist leanings, they’re the same thing.)

For the sake of the republic, this #sshat must be removed from office in next year’s election.  This country cannot survive eight years of Obamunism.

Rapper Jay-Z, who sympathizes with Occupy Wall Street, plans to cash in on OWS movement and keep all the money for himself

Heh.

Right now there is a slightly heated debate going on in the Abrams Media office as we’ve found a story that somehow intersects the purviews of three of our different sites; Jay-Z’s company, Rocawear, is now selling a t-shirt that says “Occupy Wall Street” with graffiti style lettering modifying the message to read “Occupy All Streets.” A mini scandal has brewed over the shirt as it’s become clear that Rocawear, currently, has no plans to give any of the procedes to the occupiers themselves.

Not big on “spreading the wealth around” like their boy Barry is, huh?

So is Mr. Z really sympathetic to the OWS crowd?  I mean, here he is teaching them a lesson in capitalism, and my guess is that the morons will be stupid enough to buy his attire, oblivious to the irony of the situation.  They already are clueless, railing against corporations while buying goods and services from corporations.

Either he really is sympathetic to their cause and is just another clueless celebrity who doesn’t recognize his own hypocrisy, or he isn’t sympathetic to the OWS cretins and is simply being a savvy capitalist.  If it is the latter, then well played, sir!

Lefties in the 1990’s: Bill Clinton SO deserves credit for the US economy! Lefties today: Rick Perry deserves NO credit for the TX economy!

There’s a logical fallacy known as post hoc ergo propter hoc, which means “after this, therefore because of this”.  Basically, it means that it’s illogical to assume that simply because event B happens after event A, then that must mean that event B was caused by event A.  Example:  In 1912, the Titanic sank.  In 1914, World War I broke out.  Therefore, the sinking of the Titanic caused the outbreak of WW I.  Absurd, right?

Well, in 1994, Republicans took control of both chambers of Congress, when Bill Clinton was as popular as a prostate exam by Dr. Edward Scissorhands.  Bubba had passed, with the newly deposed Democrats controlling both chambers at the time, a massive tax increase, which caused the economy to stumble in 1993 and 1994.  When the Republicans took over, they dragged Bubba away from his mistresses long enough to sign a bill that included, among other business-friendly features, a reduction in the capital gains tax.  After that, the economy began to take off.  So all he did was sign a bill that he didn’t want and didn’t like, constructed by those evil pro-business Republicans.  That’s it.  Nothing else.

So what did the left and the MSM (pardon the redundancy) do?  “Well, Clinton got elected in 1992 and the economy took off in late 1995 and early 1996.  Therefore, the economy improved because of Bill Clinton.”  Interestingly, when Reagan signed tax CUTS into law in the 1980’s and the economy began to boom, the MSM paid as much attention to that inconvenient truth as Barney Frank pays to a 42DD bikini-clad blond.  But I digress.

The left loved giving Bubba credit that he was not due.  They could not point to a single policy position that BJ championed into law.  All we were told was “the economy is great, and it’s Clinton’s doing!”  No explanations were necessary.  He got elected and re-elected, the economy hummed, and…well, just connect the dots, you rubes!  Post hoc ergo propter hoc.

What a difference a decade (and a party affiliation later) makes, huh?

The new lefty talking point is that while the national economy sucks under ObaMao, which by the way is NOT his fault, the Texas economy is roaring along, which by the way is NOT Rick Perry’s credit to take.  Apparently, the same economy that B.O. inherits and blames his ills on is NOT the same economy that Perry inherited in TX.  Funny, that.  So now, the left is trying to say “Well, the only reason that TX is doing better than everywhere else is because (insert excuse du jour here)!”  The current talking point: TX is an oil-rich state, so that and that alone is why TX is doing well.

Slate is riding that pony for all it is worth.  The trouble is that this pony is worth nothing.  James Taylor at Forbes (he’s seen fire and he’s seen rain 😆 ) does a masterful job demolishing that pathetic argument, noting that Perry has had the wisdom to implement energy-friendly policies and the courage to fight the envirokooks (especially those at the federal level) who have tried and continue to try to shut down Texas’ oil industry.  (Sidebar: Taylor rightly notes that it’s funny how NOW, after 2.5 years of fighting oil production under Chairman Zero, the left FINALLY acknowledges that oil production  is vital to improving the economy.  I don’t think that’s the argument they wanted to make, but make it they did!  😆 )

Additionally, Perry has championed business-friendly policies for a decade now, and not coincidentally, Texas is now #1 in the nation in business-friendly states (my current state of FL is #2).  Reduced regulations on businesses, no crippling anti-capitalist policies, etc., have enticed many a businesses to leave less friendly states (goodbye, Cali!) and move to Texas.  Those businesses have taken their tax base with them, so nice work, blue states!

Anywho, my point: the left is a bunch of mindless hypocrites who, as usual, feel before they think (apologies if the implication is that at some point they actually DO think).  BJC got credit for a good economy, though the left has no idea what, if anything, he did.  But these same people crediting BJ would have you believe that Rick Perry is merely a lucky recipient of a good economy, an economy that has excelled while the rest of the nation has floundered.  But while BJ can’t point to anything he did to improve the economy, Rick Perry can.  And my hunch is that over the next 14 months or so, Perry will have no problem telling you what he did.

College student asks his fellow students: Say, how’s about redistributing your 4.0 GPA?

Ah, college!  In between bong hits and raging keggers, America’s youths have their feeble minds molded by leftist professors who preach the evils of capitalism and merit-based earning.  Lost on these stoners is the irony that their own grades are earned, for good or for ill.

Well, leave it to one student bright enough to recognize the hypocrisy of these ivory-tower cocooned know-nothings.  From FNC (with video clip):

A California college student is conducting a social experiment where he’s trying to get his peers to sign a petition in favor of distributing grade point averages to show how the federal government distributes wealth.

Oliver Darcy, a recent college graduate, proposes that students with good grades contribute their GPA to their academically sluggish friends. He argues that this is how the federal government takes wealth from the country’s high wage earners and distributes it to the low income earners.

“They all earn their GPA,” said Darcy in an interview with “Fox and Friends.” “So we asked them if they’d be interested in redistributing the GPA points that they earned to students who may be having trouble getting a high GPA.”

Darcy, who films his encounters with teachers and fellow students, doesn’t have much luck selling this theory.

He said many students on college campuses support high taxes on the rich, but when put into relative terms, cringed at the thought of spreading around their academic wealth.

In a video posted on Exposingleftists.com, one student said, “If I do give GPA points to students that don’t deserve it, it isn’t fair, I work for what I have.”

Watch the video.  It’s funny (yet sad) to see these naive rose-colored-glasses-wearing moonbats protest that “That’s different!”, yet when pressed as to how it’s different to spread around the earned monetary wealth vs. earned academic wealth, their response is basically “Because shut up, that’s how!”

Wait until they get into the real world.  Reality will hit them harder than a Barney Frank chair fart.

Socialist Senator finds ONE good thing about capitalism: selling HIS OWN book!

We accuse many Democrats of being socialist in their philosophy and voting record, and rightly so.  However, one Senator is an actual confessed, self-described socialist: Bernie Sanders of Vermont.  To be fair, Sanders is officially an “independent”, but he caucuses with the Dems and votes with them nearly 100% of the time.  Birds of a feather flock together, no?

With that in mind, savor the hypocrisy:

Vermont’s Sen. Bernie Sanders is a different kind of socialist: the kind who will partake in the capitalist venture of freely exchanging money for products… at least when it comes to selling his own book.

The self-described socialist is out promoting his straight-to-paperback The Speech: A Historic Filibuster on Corporate Greed and the Decline of Our Middle Class, and was eager to sign and sell copies at corporate entities like Barnes & Noble in Washington, D.C.

Video clip at the link of Sanders confronted (at a book signing, no less) with his hypocrisy.

That’s one thing I notice about all American socialists: they sure think that socialism is superwickedawesome, so long as they aren’t expected to live under its gruesome grip.

Chavez: All this rain is because of capitalism, or something

Looks like someone’s gotten into Grandpa Joe’s liquor cabinet and found the secret bottle of Crazy!  Excerpt:

President Hugo Chavez blamed “criminal” capitalism on Sunday for global climate phenomena including incessant rains that have brought chaos to Venezuela, killing 32 people and leaving 70,000 homeless.
…
“The developed nations irresponsibly shatter the environmental order, in their desire to maintain a criminal development model, while the immense majority of the earth’s people suffer the most terrible consequences,” Chavez added.

The irony of hearing this pap from a gi-normous exporter of oil is rich indeed.

Copenhagen climate summit proves that “climate change” cult is nothing more than activist anti-capitalists

I have maintained for years that the single biggest motivation of the global “warming” crowd is not an intense desire to “save the planet” from boiling away, but instead is a desire by anti-capitalist leftists to destroy capitalism under the guise of averting a planetary catastrophe.

Doubt it?  Well, doubt no more.

Then President Chavez brought the house down.

When he said the process in Copenhagen was “not democratic, it is not inclusive, but isn’t that the reality of our world, the world is really and imperial dictatorship…down with imperial dictatorships” he got a rousing round of applause.

When he said there was a “silent and terrible ghost in the room” and that ghost was called capitalism, the applause was deafening.

But then he wound up to his grand conclusion – 20 minutes after his 5 minute speaking time was supposed to have ended and after quoting everyone from Karl Marx to Jesus Christ – “our revolution seeks to help all people…socialism, the other ghost that is probably wandering around this room, that’s the way to save the planet, capitalism is the road to hell….let’s fight against capitalism and make it obey us.” He won a standing ovation.

Your disguise has been foiled, you global “warming” frauds.  You almost got away with it, though, didn’t you?

Obama “paymaster” slashes executive pay at bailed-out companies

Story here.

Topic of discussion: Do you have a problem with this?

My answer may surprise you: No, I do not have a problem with it.  Hear me out, please.

These companies asked the taxpayers to bail them out for their lousy business decisions.  When they agreed to take our money in order to survive, they agreed to be subjects of the federal government and its whims.  Everyone knows that nearly all forms of federal assistance come with a boatload of provisions.  For example, if you’re on welfare and you get a job, your welfare money gets cut.  If you take a federal student loan (or a private loan subsidized in whole or in part by the government), you MUST pay it back, and even bankruptcy won’t get rid of it.  In short, accepting taxpayer funds makes the companies, in essence, wards of the state.

Yes, I know that B.O. is doing this because he’s anti-capitalist and is playing the class warfare card.  And if he were doing this to a private company that had not accepted taxpayer bailout money, I would be raising quite a stink over it and would support a lawsuit against the government to stop such an action.  As such, I don’t have any pity for companies that fail on their own, ask us to bail them out, then get stepped on by the feds.

What say you?

Cuba: Hey, our socialist economy works so well that we’re going to…implement some aspects of capitalism

“Socialist lite”, if you prefer.  Baby steps, my friends.  Baby steps.  Excerpt:

In the 18 months since he took office, Castro restructured the nation’s agricultural system to give idle land to farmers, hoping they would revive a deeply troubled state-run agricultural industry plagued by inefficiency. He also allowed taxi drivers to have private licenses; many were working illegally anyway.

Put that in your belly and devour it, Michael Moore.  😆

Michael Moore: All that caviar I wolf down (and believe you me, I wolf down a TON of that stuff) was not the fruits of capitalism

When he’s not making dishonest mockumentaries and getting tossed out of Barnhill’s for pulling up a chair to the dessert line, Michael Moore likes to spend his time biting the hand that feeds his ample mouth bashing the system that made him filthy rich.  Excerpt:

Documentary film director Michael Moore, who has become a millionaire thanks to the profits from his movies, told CNSNews.com that “capitalism did nothing” for him.  

CNSNews.com spoke with Moore on the red carpet at the Uptown Theatre in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday night before the premiere of his upcoming documentary, “Capitalism: A Love Story.”
…
CNSNews.com then asked Moore: “Critics would say he’s [Moore] been very successful under a capitalist system. How would you justify making a movie where you paint capitalism as evil?”
 
Moore said: “Well, capitalism did nothing for me, starting with my first film.”
…
“You know, I had to pretty much beg, borrow and steal,” he said. “The system is not set up to help somebody from the working class make a movie like this and get the truth out there.”

This is what slays me about leftist jack#sses like him: economic ignorance.  You would think a guy that made a lot of money would have some basic idea about how said pile of money materialized.

He acts like it’s not capitalism that has allowed him to flourish.  Was it socialism that made him rich?  If so, I’d love to hear how that happened.  He thinks that coming from nothing and achieving what he has (even if by similarly dishonest means) is evidence that capitalism doesn’t work?  He thinks that overcoming obstacles and making it big isn’t a part of capitalism?

Clearly, he is no student of American enterprise.  Nearly every successful entrepreneur has had to overcome failures, doubts, criticisms, and economic obstacles to attain success.  Why does this talentless buttclown think he’s any different?

Speaker Botox Pelosi goes ape feces on those horrible people who provide your health insurance

From Allah:

Good stuff. Take one of the most unpopular politicians in America, have her go off half-cocked in a crude attempt to satisfy Democratic demands for a villain to demagogue in selling ObamaCare, then wait for the backlash. Bonus points for using the same Orwellian rhetorical device Paul Ryan called Katrina Vanden Heuvel on last night, namely, exploiting the language of competition to push one of the most anti-competitive domestic measures in American history.

So what was it that San Fran Nan said?  Just some nutso anti-capitalist dog squeeze that made her underlings want to whisk her away:

“They are the villains in this,” Pelosi said of private insurers. “They have been part of the problem in a major way. They are doing everything in their power to stop a public option from happening. And the public has to know that. They can disguise their arguments any way they want, but the fact is that they don’t want the competition.”…

“It’s almost immoral what they are doing,” added Pelosi, who stood outside her office long after her press conference ended to continue speaking to reporters, even as aides tried in vain to usher her inside. “Of course they’ve been immoral all along in how they have treated the people that they insure with pre-existing conditions, you know, the litany of it all.”

I mean, the nerve of those insurance companies! To think that they wouldn’t want to sit by idly and watch the imperial federal government drive them into bankruptcy and closure while the feds create a monopoly. Of course, federal monopolies aren’t nearly as bad as private sector monopolies, right?

Oil speculators are at it again

I’m sure that you have all noticed the cost of gas going up about a quarter in the last couple of weeks.  Ever since gas climbed over $4 last year, I’ve been following “petropolitics” to keep my fingers on the pulse of the state of gasoline and oil products in the world.  I knew that speculators were to blame for last year’s detached-from-reality spike in prices, and I know that they’re going back to the buffet for seconds right now.

For a primer on my take, refer to last year’s post called “Is this REALLY capitalism?”  You’ll get the full version on how speculators artificially inflate prices that have no basis in supply-and-demand economics, all while contributing jack squat to the oil-to-consumer process.  Here’s what is going on today:

…But Jim Smith, president and CEO of the Florida Petroleum Marketers and Convenience Store Association Inc., said a global drop in demand has created a glut of crude and refined oil product reserves, precluding normal price increases from the explanation.

“Oil speculators have entered back into the market,” he said. “It’s the only excuse.”

Smith said customers have contacted him expressing worry or anger about the increases, but calls from concerned member retailers have outnumbered them.

“They’re upset,” he said. “It has a signification impact on their business operations.”

That’s because most retailers price close to the wholesale prices on gasoline, depending on profits from other items they sell in convenience stores, to stay competitive, he said. 

“We’re price takers, not price makers. We have to buy from oil companies,” he said.

But Smith said he doesn’t blame the oil companies for the increase. He thinks the rise in crude oil prices — from $49.92 a barrel April 28 to $58.50 Monday — signals that speculators are affecting pricing.

“There is not a single, solitary reason to justify increases in crude oil prices,” he said.

The average price for a gallon of regular unleaded gas in Jacksonville hadn’t gone above $2.11 a gallon since late last year, according to jacksonvillegasprices .com.

Smith said he’s concerned that the price of gas can go even higher — despite high supply, low demand and an economic recession — because of a loophole Congress left open.

Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., hopes to close that loophole, which would allow certain energy and metal futures traders to manipulate prices via the Internet, through a bill he introduced in January, Nelson spokesman Dan McLaughlin said.

Nelson and Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash, as well as J. Stephen Simon, executive vice president of Exxon-Mobil, have said speculators were largely, if not entirely, responsible for gasoline’s spike above $4 a gallon last summer.

Right now, unemployment is sky high.  The Dow is in the tank.  Our oil storage facilities are busting at the seams with supply.  Demand is lower than it has been in nearly a generation.  People are pinching their pennies.  Therefore, there is absolutely no single reason whatsoever for oil prices to be rising!

This isn’t capitalism, my friends.  It’s not Big Oil, nor the treehuggers or the global warming nuts, nor China and India (two countries that speculators and their apologists tried to blame last year) causing this irrational jump in prices.  This is extortion by investment firms that are starving for profit, even ill-gotten ones.  As much as I hate to say it, I fully support Sens. Nelson and Cantwell in their efforts to rein in the big money speculators who are trying once again to drive oil prices sky high while they line their pockets with money that was earned on deception.

Quote of the day, “I hate capitalism” edition

From the head of the DNC, Howard Scream…er, Dean (video clip provided at link):

Thank God for politicians like Joe Biden and Howard Dean. Sometimes, the truth just slips out of their mouths, and when we are lucky, their words are recorded for the liberal media to ignore and conservative alternate media to shout out. Today, former Vermont governor and former DNC Charmain, Dean obliged.

We had CNBC on in the background as we were writing our IHTM stories this morning and heard Howard Dean telling talk show host Jason Lewis to “stop using his talk radio voice.” Our ears perked up and then we heard one of the most honest lines ever to come out of the mouth of a liberal lawmaker yet. Here’s what he said (minute 5:00):

“I think we’ve had quite enough capitalism in the last eight years.”

Remember when the media jumped all over McCain and Palin during the election for suggesting the left and Obama were socialistic? Well…

But hey, where would you get the crazy idea that the Dems are a bunch of anti-capitalists or anything?

Bushism, “free market” edition

Dude.  Seriously.  From AFP:

US President George W. Bush said in an interview Tuesday he was forced to sacrifice free market principles to save the economy from “collapse.”

“I’ve abandoned free-market principles to save the free-market system,” Bush told CNN television, saying he had made the decision “to make sure the economy doesn’t collapse.”

Isn’t that the defense used by serial killers over the years?  “I killed my victims in order to save my victims”?  Killing capitalism to save capitalism is just as psychotic.

Someone give me a shoe…

MoveOn moonbats need new ad executive

The one they have really sucks at market research!  From Politico:

A series of new MoveOn.org radio advertisements looks like they could backfire, big-time.  (Don’t they all? – Ed.)

The liberal group is up with ads against six House Republicans attacking them for their support of offshore drilling. Problem is: most of the targets represent energy-rich districts where drilling is viewed favorably, to put it mildly.

One target, Rep. Mike Conaway (R-Texas), represents a west Texas district where the discovery of oil in the 1940s created wealth throughout the region, and the energy industry has since dominated the region’s economy.

And four of the six GOP targets hold heavily Republican seats and aren’t even facing credible challengers this election.

D’oh!

The National Republican Congressional Committee also wasted no time in responding to the ads.

“We wholeheartedly endorse this colossal waste of funds,” said NRCC spokesman Ken Spain. “Not only is MoveOn.org’s anti-drilling position out of step with 70 percent of Americans, but a member like Mike Conaway who represents the Texas oil patch will probably see his approval rating surge upward as a result of these ads.”

Heh.

I’m willing to cut Morons.org a little slack here.  I mean, they are a bunch of leftist commie pinkos, so advertising and capitalism and stuff like that are as foreign to moonbats as French is to Obama (“merci beaucoup!”).

Australia getting the hang of this “capitalism” thingy

Check out the Aussies, will ya?  They’re getting the crazy idea that lowering taxes will create a financial incentive that will ultimately increase their revenues!  What’s next, an understanding of how supply and demand works?  From Oz:

Australia will reduce the amount of tax overseas investors pay on dividends from managed funds to 7.5 percent to encourage investments in real estate trusts.

The tax, currently 30 percent, will be cut to 22.5 percent in the year starting July 1; 15 percent the following year; and 7.5 percent the year after that, Treasurer Wayne Swan said in his first budget in Canberra today.

“These arrangements will make Australia’s withholding tax rate one of the most competitive in the world,” Swan said. “The arrangements will ensure Australian property trusts are well placed to attract foreign investment.”

Australian money managers oversee more than A$1.4 trillion ($1.3 trillion) in assets, and that is forecast to exceed A$2.5 trillion by 2015, Swan said. Foreign investors account for only 3 percent of fee income, he said.

We could do something like that here in America that will attract foreign investors by the boatloads.  It’s called the FairTax.

Private sector works…again

Warning to any socialist or otherwise Big Government advocates: the following information may disrupt your worldview.  Unless, of course, you’re impervious to facts, in which case you may feel little to no discomfort at all.  From Hot Air:

In the aftermath of the Northridge earthquake, California needed to take quick action to repair damaged freeways to restore order to traffic in the Los Angeles area — or at least as much order as one can get in the region.  Instead of using Caltrans to repair the destroyed overpasses and roads, the state government waived volumes of regulation to allow outsourcing to the private sector.  The result?  The contractor restored the roads and bridges in months instead of years, and at a fraction of the cost that Caltrans would have incurred.

Minnesotans learned a lesson from that when the St. Anthony Bridge collapsed last August into the Mississippi river.  The rebuilding project may finish as much as three months ahead of schedule, thanks to a series of financial incentives and the hands-off management by MnDOT:
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The project has had its share of detractors ever since Flatiron won the contract.  It was the most expensive of the bids, but the state chose it for its overall package.  If they can deliver a high-quality bridge three months earlier than expected, no one will spend much of that extra time criticizing the contract award.

Like California, this proves a lesson in free-market power to solve problems efficiently, and in the long run, less expensively.  Instead of running the project themselves, the decision by MnDOT and the legislature to outsource the project applied the skill and experience of the private sector to a critical part of the traffic infrastructure.  The early completion of the project will save millions of dollars in traffic inefficiencies and relieve stress on parts of the local traffic system that weren’t designed for the loads that the bridge’s failure created for them.

Perhaps at some point, people will learn to harness the power of the private sector more completely for future public efforts as well.  If we started to apply this lesson to non-emergencies as well as emergencies, perhaps we would have fewer of the latter.   When we incentivize succes, we succeed.  When we incentivize bureaucracy, we get red tape, delays, and frustration.

Imagine that…the private sector doing better than a Big Government bureaucracy at solving problems!  But hey, let’s go ahead and have the government manage our health care, right?

UPDATED: Is this really capitalism?

(Updates at the bottom of this post!)

As you all know, I am a huge proponent of capitalism.  No economic system has done more for the world in terms of lifting standards of living, giving opportunities to move up the economic latter, and representing true individual freedom and liberty.  In short, capitalism rocks, and everything else sucks.

Having said that, I ask this question geniunely and sincerely: Is this what capitalism really is?  From the Washington Times:

Farmers and food executives appealed fruitlessly to federal officials yesterday for regulatory steps to limit speculative buying that is helping to drive food prices higher. Meanwhile, some Americans are stocking up on staples such as rice, flour and oil in anticipation of high prices and shortages spreading from overseas.

Their pleas did not find a sympathetic audience at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), where regulators said high prices are mostly the result of soaring world demand for grains combined with high fuel prices and drought-induced shortages in many countries.

The regulatory clash came amid evidence that a rash of headlines in recent weeks about food riots around the world has prompted some in the United States to stock up on staples.

Costco and other grocery stores in California reported a run on rice, which has forced them to set limits on how many sacks of rice each customer can buy. Filipinos in Canada are scooping up all the rice they can find and shipping it to relatives in the Philippines, which is suffering a severe shortage that is leaving many people hungry.

What in the hell is wrong with this picture?  There isn’t a single reason that people in the United States of America, the single greatest country in the history of the world, should be stocking up on food items!  Continuing: 

“Something is wrong,” said National Farmers Union President Tom Buis, adding that the CFTC’s refusal to rein in speculators will force farmers and consumers to take their case to Congress.

“It may warrant congressional intervention,” he said. “The public is all too aware of the recent credit crisis on Wall Street. We don’t want a lack of oversight and regulation to lead to a similar crisis in rural America.”
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In addition, the diversion of one-third of the U.S. corn crop into making ethanol for vehicles has increased prices for corn and other staples such as soybeans and cotton as more acreage is set aside for ethanol production. (Yeah, thanks for that, treehuggers! – Ed.)

Do you know what kind of discomfort it brings me to find myself somewhat siding with these “more regulation” types?!?  Me, the free market neo-libertarian capitalist!  But again, is this speculator-induced plague a legit part of capitalism?  Continuing:

The upswing in prices has been exaggerated by the massive influx of investors and speculators seeking to profit from rising prices for corn, wheat, oil, gold and other commodities. Big Wall Street firms and hedge funds have taken huge positions in futures markets that once were dominated by relatively small operators such as farmers and grain-elevator owners.
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“During such turbulent times, it is tempting to shoot first and ask questions later,” Mr. Lukken said, but he contended the commission should be “cautious” about doing anything to curb speculation. He and other regulators argued that speculators add volume and liquidity to the markets, which makes them operate more efficiently and helps farmers and other players.

What a crock of bovine feces!  Speculators add nothing to the equation but higher prices for the entire freaking world!  It may “help farmers and other players”, but it doesn’t help consumers, particularly low-income  consumers who have no choice but to pay higher prices for food so they don’t starve!  The commodities market was working just fine until these big money speculators took it over.

I have absolutely no problems whatsoever with investors sinking their money into stocks, bonds, T-bills, mutual funds, etc.  But isn’t there something just awfully perverse about flooding a market they were never a part of in order to convince producers of food and oil that situations are more dire than they really are, all in order to drive those prices up and make a tidy profit while the rest of us suffer?  Isn’t capitalism based largely on supply and demand, and in the case of these parasite speculators, aren’t they disrupting that model that has served humanity well for centuries?

Here’s an analogy: Let’s say I come over to your house and breathlessly warn you that a fire is rapidly approaching your house (even though I know it’s not true).  Fortunately for you, I just so happen to have bought a firehose (that I paid $10 for at The Firehose Store).  I will sell you (or lease you) the firehose for $100.  After a convincing sales pitch, you believe me and say “Wow, $100 is kinda steep, but I need to save my house!  OK, I’ll take the hose.”  The fire never comes, and I just profited $90 off of feeding you a load of crap.  I created my own lies-based wealth, and I added nothing of value to your life’s equation.

Was that a normal case of “supply and demand”?  No!  Demand was artificially, and knowingly so, inflated by the speculator in order to make a profit.  That, my friends, is what is happening right now with this commodities market speculation, especially with food and oil.  Speculators pump their money into the commodities market by buying low, they convince the producers that conditions suck in order to get the prodcuers to jack their prices up, then they sell high and profit off the mess they created.  Speculators helped create the real estate mess by driving the price of homes up to irrational levels, and the correction came, hurting a bunch of people in the process (after most speculators cashed in first, though).  Not content with having damaged the real estate sector, they’re now setting their sights on inflicting pain and suffering on the food and energy sectors.  So I ask again: Is this really what capitalism is about?  Frankly, I don’t think so.

This isn’t a class warfare argument.  In my view, I’m defending capitalism, not damning it.  What say you, my friends?

UPDATE (04/24/2008 – 03:00 P.M. EST):  I see that some in Congress share my views.  Congressman John Larson (D-CT) is proposing a ban on oil contract speculation.  I say that we shouldn’t stop at oil, but include food as well.  Basically, speculators never actually buy the commodity.  They buy the contracts, then turn around and sell them for an artificially inflated profit.  Larson is proposing to stop that on the oil side of the commodities shell game, saying that if you want to be an oil speculator, you have to actually buy the oil product.  Excerpt:

“People shouldn’t be allowed to speculate purely with paper, fluctuating and driving the cost of oil, especially when we have adequate supply,” Larson said during a news conference in the Capitol complex. “And demand, in fact, has gone down because of the crunch that everyone finds themselves in.”

Gene Guilford, executive director of the Independent Connecticut Petroleum Association, said most Americans don’t realize that the daily setting of prices for oil, natural gas, electricity, gasoline and diesel fuel contracts takes place on worldwide commodities exchanges, led by the New York Mercantile Exchange.

He said over the last five or six years investment banks, hedge funds and pension funds have forced up demand in the contracts above and beyond the basic rules of supply and demand.

“It’s the financial-services industry in this country that over the last few years has started telling the American people and the Congress of the United States that supply and demand no longer matter,” Guilford said. “When supply and demand no longer matters, then the marketplace no longer works the way it was supposed to work.“

“Amen!” to that last sentence, which addresses the question of this post.  A ban such as Larson’s could go along way to stopping those scumbag speculators once and for all.