Separation of Business and State, part 2.

I wrote last week that the Obama Administration and the Democrat Congress' intervention in the banking industry could be considered a precursor to nationalization. Today The Wall Street Journal reports, "The Obama administration could end up with more direct control over some of the nation's largest banks as policy makers consider converting the government's preferred stock in these companies into common equity" (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124019955514434181.html), which could make the government the controlling stock holder in these banks. Effectively, this would be a hostile takeover of the banking industry.
I can't take much credit on this one. You didn't have to be very smart to see this coming.

Defend the Separation of Business and State

It really doesn't take much life experience to notice that Georges Santayana was right, that history does have a tendency to repeat itself, especially if we fail to learn the lessons the first time. For anyone who is paying attention, the lesson today is that our current economic troubles have a clear and recent precedent.

The social upheaval of the 1920s, the stock market crash of October 1929 and the Great Depression that followed are often explained as reactions to the horrors and expenses of World War I, but there was more to it than that. The disillusionment resulting from a bitter and protracted war was an add-on to the temptations of easy credit fanned into flame by exciting technological advances. Airmail, Ford's assembly line, radio, recorded sound, "talking pictures," and installment credit plans were all new in the 1920s, and all changed the way ordinary Americans conducted their lives. It would be silly to argue that such changes led to the downfall of civilization, but linked to the cynicism the War engendered, the result was the rejection of traditional restraints both moral and financial, a record-breaking level of personal debt, a pervasive, "easy come, easy go" philosophy, and a sense of class envy that sowed poisonous seeds in U.S. society. The only place the boom could go was directly into bust.

This is when many discovered that the "easy go" part wasn't so easy when it meant the loss of savings, businesses and homes. Many in their shock and disillusion at the crash looked for a complete change in our form of government. Some were Communists and some were Socialists and some were Fascists, but all were determined that they would overthrow the evils of Capitalism and usher in a Utopian ideal under their radical and often anarchistic plans. The dirty little secret is that as much as they hated and railed against each other, they all wanted to pursue their revolutionary goals by the same draconian methods--by nationalizing key industries, raising taxes on and seizing the property of "the rich" (that means anyone who has more money than whomever they were talking to at the moment), and finding a scapegoat that the majority of voters could resent and eventually hate. It was an agenda with a lot of appeal for some Americans, just as it was for many Germans, Italians and Spaniards. In fact, in the 1930s we came nearer to the overthrow of our democratic republic than at any time in our history to date.

Perhaps the best example from that perilous period was Huey Long, Governor of and Senator from Louisiana. Long knew two important truths about politics--that power can be had by promising people the things they don't have, and that you really don't have to give the people what you promised, as long as you show that you're taking something away from the rich who already have too much anyway. And so he promised the people of Louisiana roads and education and health care, and that's what they got--minus the huge graft payments that went into the pockets of Long and his cronies, a legacy the state continues to try to purge to this day--financed by "taxing the rich," which made it all acceptable.

The poor weren't actually getting anything of significance, but they could be happy knowing that the rich were being punished for their success. Long's "Share Our Wealth" plan (notice the "our" which actually begins the appropriation of private property) included a cap on the salaries and fortunes of businessmen, a progressive tax up to 100% of the earnings of the most prosperous, severe government regulation of major industries and a guaranteed minimum annual salary for the working man. Does any of this sound familiar to you?

Huey Long's popular support was so intense and radical that Franklin Roosevelt, certainly no conservative himself, considered Long "one of the two most dangerous men in America," and the New York Times worried that he had established the country's first Fascist State.

Our own era is every bit as dangerous as the Great Depression of the 1930s, and the call for a change in government just as radical. The proposals to cap salaries and tax earnings up to 100% we have already heard. The takeover of the automobile manufacturing industry by the Obama Administration and the Democrat Congress, and their heavy-handed intervention in the banking, investment and now the insurance industries, have been historic precursors to nationalization. The proposed establishment of a national health care system by the Administration will be, by definition, a seizure of that industry as well. What Long dreamed and Roosevelt feared, and the 1930s Fascists of Germany, Italy and Spain enforced, President Obama is pursuing headlong, and achieving.

Observing in 1938 the same radical political measures we are seeing today, Professor Halford E. Luccock of Yale Divinity School warned, "When and if fascism comes to America it will not be labeled 'made in Germany;' it will not be marked with a swastika; it will not even be called fascism; it will be called, of course, 'Americanism.'" Consider that the next time Vice President Biden tells us how patriotic it is to pay more taxes.

TEA--Taxed Enough Already!

Dear Friends,
On Tax Day, Wednesday, April 15, local groups will be holding TEA Parties all over the country. Because of my schedule, I won't be able to get away to go to one, but I will be wearing a tea bag pinned to my lapel all day. I'll be looking forward to explaining it to anyone who asks.
How about you?
PS

A Whole Herd of Goats

Under the Mosaic Law, on the Day of Atonement a goat was brought into the Tabernacle, and over him the priest enumerated all the sins of the people, symbolically transferring those sins from the people to the goat. The animal was then taken out into the wilderness far from the camp and released, never to return. It was a symbolic purging of the people from their sins, and the source of our term "scapegoat," someone to blame to distract us from those who might share the guilt. Not only individuals but whole races and ethnic groups have been persecuted as scapegoats over the centuries. It's a classic Propaganda Technique, and it's being worked hard by the Obama administration.
The AIG executives who received bonuses paid out of the bailout funds provided by the Obama administration out of our pockets, are the most obvious examples. No question, it is galling to think the tax dollars of $30,000/yr laborers are paying the six-figure compensation checks of Wall Street types walking away from the train wreck of our retirement programs, and Congress, the Department of Commerce and the media are making sure everyone stays angry about it. What the media, the Administration and the Congressional harpies, Democrats and Republicans alike, have left out is that the vast majority of those who received the bonuses had no involvement in the "credit default swaps" that brought the company down. They also haven't told you that many of those who received those bonuses had worked the entire previous year for for one dollar to try to address the impending problems, accepting that and the promise of "deferred payments"--spelled b-o-n-u-s--as their total compensation. They also haven't told you that the bonuses were specifically authorized in the 1100 page bailout package that the Congress voted on and the President signed, without either of them ever having read it, or that the clause that authorized the payments was inserted as an amendment by Senator Chris Dodd, Chairman of the Senate Banking Committee which was supposed to oversee AIG's activities! No wonder they want to keep the heat on the AIG execs. If they couldn't transfer their sins to the scapegoats, those dirty little secrets might be darn hard to explain.
Also trussed up and waiting to be led out into the wilderness are the chairmen of Ford and GM. These guys are in a little different situation than the AIG employees. They've galloped forward and volunteered to serve as scapegoats. It's true that the auto companies have been shamefully mismanaged not only by Alan Mulally (Ford) and Rick Wagoner (GM), but by their predecessors as well, and it didn't help their image to fly in for Congressional hearings in their private jets without any plan for recovery beyond demanding a bailout. The part that nobody is talking about is fact that Congressional interference in the auto industry, in the form of Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) regulations, have forced the automakers to build whole fleets of cars that nobody wants to buy. Popular "green" rhetoric and public proclamations to the contrary, the best-selling vehicles in the United States are and remain trucks, SUVS and family cars. The over-priced and under-performing hybrids, the Ford Escape and Chevy Volt, just haven't won public acceptance, and for obvious reasons. They don't do the job Americans expect of their vehicles. Nevertheless, Congress has mandated the manufacture of these ornamental offerings to the eco-lobby, and the companies keep producing them because they haven't got the guts to oppose the politically correct sentiment that says the government knows better than the free market what the people should have. So Ford and Wagoner will be led off into the woods, never to return. After last week's hostile takeover, the new CEO, President Barack Obama, has fired them, so the people will think their sins are purged. But that won't make the automakers profitable.
To change the metaphor, it's the old Roman trick of placating the people with bread and circuses. On the one hand the Administration is promising to make sure the masses have food on the table and health care down the road, and on the other they provide the spectacle of corporate fat cats being devoured by the lions of official scorn and public outrage, all so that we won't notice the orgy being enjoyed by Caesar and his friends.
PS

Cut Deficit by Half?

My take on the President's proposed budget, for those who care, is posted below, but did you hear this one?
Radio commentator Michael Medved and one of his guests (I'm sorry I missed the name) were discussing President Obama's "goal" to cut the deficit by 50% in next year's budget (Propaganda Alert: Glittering Generality), but then Medved also pointed out that a 50% cut still leaves us with a $650 billion deficit! That's larger than any deficit presented in eight years of the George W. Bush administration, even with the impact of 9/11 and a two-front war figured in.
And it gets better. To meet that "goal," the Obama administration is projecting three-and-a-half, four and even four-and-a-half percent growth rates in the U.S. economy over the next three years (Another Propaganda Alert: Card Stacking). Those are incredible (literally) boom time growth rates, and the chances of the U.S. experiencing the kind of growth that will result in a significant reduction of the Obama Deficit, even in ten years, are minuscule.
In marketing, when someone tells you a tale like that, it's called "blue sky," and only a sucker buys.
PS

Post-Modern Mardi Gras

Along with many other professors, Dr. Mary Ann Gillies of Canada's Simon Fraser University points out that "post modernism uses irony as a primary mode of expression." Irony in this context means "the use of words to express something other than and especially the opposite of the literal meaning," or an "incongruity between the actual result...and the normal or expected result" (http://www.merriam-webster.com/). If Dr. Gillies wants examples to illustrate her lectures, she need look no further than President Obama's speech last Tuesday to the Joint Session of Congress. It was a post modern headtrip.

Arguably the most ironic feature of the speech was the day upon which it was delivered. Is it even possible that his staff overlooked the fact that he was to present the rationale of his budget proposals to Congress on Mardi Gras--Fat Tuesday? According to AmericanCatholic.org, "Fat Tuesday is the last hurrah before the Catholic season of Lent." The other name for the holiday of course, is Carnival, literally an exuberant and hedonistic "farewell to the flesh," a medieval opportunity to revel in sensual pleasures before the denials of Lent. It is a time for indulging appetites, for gluttony, excess, intemperance and dissipation. In other words, it is the opportunity the Democrat Party has been waiting for to call up the overwhelming tide of new spending and pet projects which have been thwarted by twelve years of Republican domination in the Congress. It's just the season for indulging pent-up desires, they say, and the President picked this one day to announce them. That's irony.

It's also bad news for all of us. The Democrat Congress is having the party, but we're going to suffer the hangover. The forty days of Lent began on Ash Wednesday, the day after the President's speech, and are a period of fasting, abstinence and the humiliation of the flesh, to cleanse us from the influences of world, and more pointedly, to atone for the excesses of Fat Tuesday. That's the scary part about the President's budget proposals. The load of taxation and borrowing that will have to be born to pay for the largest increase in government in history cannot possibly result in anything other than tight credit, a depressed business climate, and ultimately Carter Era style inflation. We may be making Lenten payments against the Fat Tuesday Budget literally for generations, which only heightens the irony of his timing.

It can't be that President Obama doesn't grasp the connection. In fact, the President himself clearly has a keen sense of irony. It's no secret that the total cost of his budget proposals, $3.6 trillion, will make Barak Obama the man who spent more money in one year than anyone, ever! One commentator noted that if the Federal Government spent a dollar a minute, a million dollars would last a little less than two years, a billion dollars would last until the year 3911, and a trillion dollars would last nearly two million years into the future. Barak Obama is going to spend over three-and-a-half times that amount in just one year. And what is the title of his budget document? "A New Era of Responsibility." That's either monumental irony or epic arrogance. It's hard to say which.

Perhaps the answer lies in the rest of Dr. Gillies' definition of post modern irony. "Post modernism uses irony as a primary mode of expression," she says, "but it also abuses, installs, and subverts conventions and usually negotiates contradictions through irony." President Obama and his Party have promised us change which will stand the conventions of the American system on its head. The change will be what falls out of our pockets.

PS

Bad Omen?

Do I have this right?
The catalyst for our current economic disaster was the collapse of the housing market, leading to mass foreclosures in which millions of people may lose their homes. Now the President's plan is to deal with this crisis by building more park benches, bridges, tunnels and overpasses.
Does anyone besides me think this is a bad omen?

Who do You Think You're Stimulating?

This site is dedicated to pointing out logical fallacies and propaganda techniques employed by newsmakers--ok, politicians and the media, really--but it's always fun to find examples in the news and illustrate them with my own experiences.

A few years ago I was teaching a pre-college composition course. This is a course that used to be called developmental, and before that remedial, and before that "bonehead" English (Propaganda Alert: Euphemism). One member of the class was a big, beefy young man with an attitude about English, so when I handed back his first in-class essay with a "D" grade on it, he wasn't happy with me. After class he dropped his paper on my desk, glared at me and said, "Why can't we have a real test?"

I confess I have a weakness for sarcasm, but I hasten to point out that while it may not be particularly polite, it's not a fallacy. I replied, "This was a real test. See your real grade?"

I think that was clever, but it was lost on my student. He said, "No, like, one where there's different answers, and I pick the right one."

I patiently explained that this was a writing class, and to determine his abilities I had to evaluate his writing. He replied, "Well, that's just stupid. I've taken this class three times before, and nobody else does it like that."

Besides providing me with a great teaching story, my student was falling victim to a classic fallacy. He thought that because everybody does something one way, that must be the only right way to do it. Vox populi, vox dei. "The voice of the people is the Voice of God." Except it's not.

Now President Obama is getting caught in the same type of error, and it's catching him from both directions. In fact, the whole Democrat power structure is engaged in the same kind of fallacious thinking. After his "stimulus" bill squeaked out of the House last week without a single Republican vote, the President held a pep rally to hearten his fainting party members. "We won," he told them, referring to last November's election, and so they get to do whatever they want. There's the Fallacy Alert: Vox populi, Vox dei.

The problem is that in our democratic republic the election is only the first opportunity for the people to speak, and the leaders continue to be accountable to them throughout their terms. Even if the Democrats did win last fall, they really can't do whatever they want because the people can change their minds so fast. At this point, less than a month after the Inauguration, barely 35% of the people--the same ones who voted for him last fall--now support the President's "stimulus" bill. They still like the President, but they recognize a pork-padded catastrophe when they see one. In fact, Congressional emails and telephones have been slammed by The People voicing their opposition. If the voice of the people really were the the great power in the land, the President would have withdrawn the bill long since. Hold your breath and wait for that to happen. At this point he really doesn't want to hear the voice of "God."

Instead the President is travelling around the country attempting to pump up support for his plan. It's a bad sign that he has to take to this extremity so early in his Presidency. If he really had the people behind him, it wouldn't be necessary to go out on the stump for it. President Obama has an unstoppable majority in both Houses of Congress that can pass whatever bills he wants, and probably will for a while. But I wonder if the President is starting to suspect the same thing that I am--that the people elected him as a symbolic President rather than as a working President. If that's the case, and it's looking more like it every day, it won't take long for them to begin resenting all that change he campaigned on in such vague terms.

PS

post script: After the quarter was over, I found out that beefy "kid" was twenty-six years old and had done time for assaulting an officer. It's probably just as well I didn't know that at the time.

Isn't that just like him?!

Dang. Whether as Senate Majority Leader or as a disgraced Cabinet nominee, I can always count on Tom Daschle to work counter to my interests. Just when I've got him nailed as an example of media propaganda (see Dizzy is Just How They Want Us, below), he goes and withdraws his name from consideration. Still, it was spin that kept him on the table for as long as he was.

PS

Dizzy is Just How They Want Us

There is an email making the rounds, which a good and honest man assures me he has researched and verified, comparing the media's reaction to Pres. Obama's Inauguration versus that to Pres. Bush's 2nd Inauguration. The contrast very effectively illustrates the political propaganda technique known as "spin" (see Propaganda Techniques).

Headlines On This Date 4 Years Ago:
"Republicans spending $42 million on inauguration while troops die in unarmored Humvees"
"Bush extravagance exceeds any reason during tough economic times"
"Fat cats get their $42 million inauguration party, Ordinary Americans get the shaft"

Headlines Today:
"Historic Obama Inauguration will cost only $120 million"
"Obama Spends $120 million on inauguration; America Needs A Big Party"
"Citibank executives contribute $8 million to Obama Inauguration"
"Everyman Obama shows America how to celebrate"

The content, the details, indicate that both Presidential parties were extravagant (I mean the "celebrations," not the "organizations," although...), but the difference in tone communicates volumes about how the media desires people to perceive the different administrations. That's spin.

Take another example. It was revealed in confirmation hearings that Timothy Geithner, Secretary of the Treasury in the Obama Administration, had failed to pay "tens of thousands of dollars in taxes," according to CBS News, over a period of four years during which he signed 16 quarterly statements affirming that he knew those taxes were due. Nevertheless, CBS and many others defended his confirmation, observing, "The 47-year-old is seen by many as the best candidate for the job, and there was concern that rejecting him would mean a delay in confirming a replacement that the country could not afford." So he's in, and with media approval.

But Geithner won't be alone at the Obama Presidential Cabinet table filing his amended return. Health and Human Services Secretary Designate, former Senator Tom Daschle, has admitted he owes nearly $100,000 in back taxes on "gifts" he received as professional courtesies. (Has anyone ever given you a gift that would trigger a $100,000 tax bill?!) The Obama administration is referring to Daschle's delinquencies as the result of "an honest mistake." It's an interesting phrase, "honest mistake." Have you ever heard of a politician who made a "dishonest mistake?" But the media is accepting that explanation without question or investigation.

Compare that to the treatment received by members of the Bush Administration. I can tell this one from personal experience. I get so tired of hearing of the inherent evil of that team that I occasionally invite my students to consider other possibilities. When I point out that Dick and Lynn Cheney donated over 70% of their 2007 income to charity, I never hear any appreciative response. Invariably I hear, "It was probably a tax dodge." Spin, you see, is subject to the Laws of Inertia--an idea set in motion by the media tends to stay in motion. That one will keep spinning long after the former Vice President's ashes are scattered over the Tetons.

Certainly no one party has a monopoly on spin as a propaganda technique. Both employ it regularly, and neither is as adept at spinning as their colleagues in the media. But judging from the current PR successes of the Obama Administration, supported by their media allies, and the dismal PR failures of the Bush Administration, there should be little doubt who is better at it.

Circus Animals for a Recession

A note to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell as the Democrats' "Stimulus Package" moves from the House to the Senate without a single Republican vote:

Dear Senator McConnell,
I'm sure I'm not the first to notice the similarities between the work done by Congress and the labor of certain familiar draft animals. Getting legislative work done must indeed seem like pulling a wagon full of rocks on some days, and the abilities of those who work with you must count for much.
Donkeys and Elephants have a historic reputation for such work. For generations, various cultures have looked for them to get things done. I've seen both pull heavy loads over poor roads until they reach their goals. I've seen Donkeys carry heavy packs, walk impossibly narrow roads between a cliff on one side and an avalanche on the other, jump suddenly on command and form an impregnable circle to defend the herd. I've seen Elephants lift unbelievable burdens, walk faster than most others can run, and balance on one foot while picking a single straw out of a half-ton of hay. These are feats I cannot help but admire.
On the other hand, I've never seen a RINO* that could be trained to do anything. They're just not working animals. A RINO is blundering, intractable, unpredictable and dangerous. To keep them around in flush times as a curiousity is one thing; to expend precious resources on them when times are hard is just foolishness. Fence them in. Cut them off and let them forage for themselves or starve. Then later, if you want to display the stuffed head on the wall, that's fine. But don't waste our scant resources on a rogue beast that serves no useful purpose.
I hope as Minority Leader of the Senate, you'll be able to make the majority party own the upcoming "Stimulus" bill the way your House colleagues did.
Good luck!
PS

*Republican In Name Only

Religious Freedom Day

For the past eleven years, under both a Republican and a Democrat, the Office of the President has issued a proclamation declaring January 16 to be Religious Freedom Day in the United States. There are a couple of coincidences in this that interest me--first that even though I'm an addicted news junkie, I've never heard of this in the past eleven years; and second that it should be scheduled just days before the inauguration of the President. I suspect there is significance in both those facts, but I don't intend to pursue them here. Something else has caught my attention.


Michael Newdow, the professional gadfly and theophobe who brought suit to have the phrase "under God" stricken from the Pledge of Allegiance, has sued now to prevent the offering of prayers at the Obama inauguration and to prohibit the President-Elect from uttering the words "...so help me God" at the end of Oath of Office, as every President since Washington has. He's been making these protests quadrennially for many years, never with any success, but he keeps at it, and he backs his argument with several egregious fallacies.


Newdow's website (http://www.restorethepledge.com/) asserts that he is pursuing his agenda in order to protect the "right of Christians to worship God and Jesus whenever and wherever they choose," and that the only way to do this is to banish all mention of God, Jesus or religion from the mouths of any public servant. This is a fallacious twofer. His proposition is both self-contradictory and absurd in its extremity. He suggests that in order for Christians (or anyone else) to freely exercise their Constitutional rights of unhindered religious belief (or non-belief), all statements of belief, all recognition of beliefs, all actions, symbols, behaviors and words that might remotely infer belief should be prohibited to anyone connected in any way with government and entirely banished from public view. In other words, he wants to protect religious worship by making it utterly and completely invisible, private and without any form of mutual support system (Fallacy alert: see Oxymoron). This is like the 19th century naturalists who sought to preserve wildlife by killing it and having it stuffed.

Newdow's arguments against public expressions of religious belief are based in an extension of the concept of freedom of religion. The right itself is well-established in law (even though it appears in the Constitution only by inference), but Newdow's interpretation carries it to an absurd extreme (Fallacy alert: see Reductio ad absurdum), contending that the only way to freely exercise religious belief or non-belief is never to have to acknowledge the existence of any belief that differs from your own. Consequently, Americans could only enjoy freedom OF religion when they are made free FROM religion. It's an interpretation that suits Newdow's belief system, but only at the expense of all others who may disagree.


When challenged on this Newdow responds with his own question: "Why don't you want to follow the Constitution?" Sadly, he's gotten away with this false choice fallacy for so long that he feels smugly secure in making the charge. Here's the rub. The Constitution doesn't say what he wants it to say. The 1st Amendment prohibits Congress from creating any law "respecting an establishment of religion." Granted, the phrase can be read in various ways, either to prohibit legislative action to "establish" a state-sponsored religion or to prohibit legislative interference with any religious establishment, i.e. an organized church. But the Constitution does not say that religious organizations must be forced out of the public arena. Newdow is right when he contends that the Presidential Oath required by the Constitution does not include the the phrase "...so help me God," but neither did the Constitution prohibit George Washington from appending that humble phrase when he took the Oath. Nor does it require any other President to depart from the tradition Washington established, and which has been followed by every American President since, without exception. What Newdow fails to understand is the essential nature of the Constitution itself, and that the rights, powers and actions not specifically enumerated in the Constitution are "retained by" and "reserved to...the people," to be exercised at their discretion (9th and 10th Amendments). The people, by an 80-90% majority, retain the right to practice their religion openly, and no court can take that from them however many suits Newdow brings. His contention that the supporters of an appeal to God's grace appended to the Presidential Oath are not following the Constitution poses a false dilemma.

In defending his legal actions in various interviews, Newdow has jumped behind the favorite of his verbal barricades. He habitually recites that tired old argument that more wars have been fought over religion than any other cause or issue. He's right, or course--unless you count the Peloponnesian Wars, the Philippic and Alexandrian Conquests, the First and Second Punic Wars, Caesar's Conquests of Germany, Gaul and Britain (not to mention the Roman Civil War), the Gothic, Frankish and Vandal Invasions of Rome, the Incan and Mayan Conquests, the Norse Invasions of Europe, the Hundred Years' War, the Seven Years' War, the American, French and Russian Revolutionary Wars, the Napoleonic Wars (engulfing four continents for a generation)the American and Spanish Civil Wars, the Spanish-American War, the Philippine War, the Russo-Japanese War, the Manchurian Invasion, the First and Second World Wars, the Cold War, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and hundreds of other conflicts that have consumed lives and treasure and in the course of steering history. The truth is that mankind has found a hundred excuses for war, including religion, and no one of them can reasonably be burdened with the entire blame. Newdow's claim is a textbook example of the Big Lie, told loudly, told often and told consistently until even the liars believe it, but it's a load of hooey.


It is cliche to note that the 1st amendment protects Newdow's right to make these ridiculous and fallacious claims, but it's also beside the point. He is free to be as wrong as he wants to be. It's just that his arguments don't hold up under scrutiny. That's why he and his supporters are so often wrong at the top of their lungs.