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Gary Edwards

The Divider vs. the Thinker - WSJ.com - 0 views

  • There's a lot to rebel against, to want to throw off. If they want to make a serious economic and political critique, they should make the one Gretchen Morgenson and Joshua Rosner make in "Reckless Endangerment": that real elites in Washington rigged the system for themselves and their friends, became rich and powerful, caused the great catering, and then "slipped quietly from the scene."
  • It is a blow-by-blow recounting of how politicians—Democrats and Republicans—passed the laws that encouraged the banks to make the loans that would never be repaid, and that would result in your lost job.
  • It began in the early 1990s, in the Clinton administration, and continued under the Bush administration, with the help of an entrenched Congress that wanted only two things: to receive campaign contributions and to be re-elected.
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  • Specifically it is the story of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the mortgage insurers, and how their politically connected CEOs, especially Fannie's Franklin Raines and James Johnson, took actions that tanked the American economy and walked away rich.
  • "the temptation to exploit fear and envy returns." Politicians divide in order to "evade responsibility for their failures" and to advance their interests.
  • "The American Idea"
  • Which gets us to Rep. Paul Ryan. Mr. Ryan receives much praise, but I don't think his role in the current moment has been fully recognized. He is doing something unique in national politics. He thinks. He studies. He reads. Then he comes forward to speak, calmly and at some length, about what he believes to be true. He defines a problem and offers solutions, often providing the intellectual and philosophical rationale behind them.
  • But Republicans, in their desire to defend free economic activity, shouldn't be snookered by unthinking fealty to big business. They should never defend—they should actively oppose—the kind of economic activity that has contributed so heavily to the crisis.
  • Here Mr. Ryan slammed "corporate welfare and crony capitalism."
  • "Why have we extended an endless supply of taxpayer credit to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, instead of demanding that their government guarantee be wound down and their taxpayer subsidies ended?" Why are tax dollars being wasted on bankrupt, politically connected solar energy firms like Solyndra? "Why is Washington wasting your money on entrenched agribusiness?"
  • The "true sources of inequity in this country," he continued, are "corporate welfare that enriches the powerful, and empty promises that betray the powerless."
  • The real class warfare that threatens us is "a class of bureaucrats and connected crony capitalists trying to rise above the rest of us, call the shots, rig the rules, and preserve their place atop society."
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    Peggy Noonan writes about Paul Ryan's "The American Idea" speech he recently gave at the heritage Foundation.  It's a beautifully written summary that goes right to the heart of the matter:  the ruling elites have been enriching themselves, feeding at the public trough of corporate welfare and crony capitalism.  Washington DC is corrupt and rotten to the core, and the hand maiden of Banksters, Global Corporatist, Big Unions, and Big Bearucracy.   One things for sure.  Congressman Paul Ryan is a brilliant thinker aho believes in the great promise he calls "The American Idea".   Funny how, as the presidential primary race rolls on, my hopeful attention is being drawn towards four men:  Herman Cain, Paul Ryan, Ron Paul and Marco Rubio.   Herman unfortunately is soft on Banksters, totally unaware and oblivious to the need to take back the currency, and end the Federal Reserve Bankster Cartel.  I also have some difficulties with the "revenue neutral" aspects of his 999 plan.  We need less government, not more.  The private sector needs to keep more money, not less.   Too bad because everything else about Herman excites me.  Especially his authentic, from the heart love of America, American exceptionalism and opportunity, and the founders truly unique "American Idea". Ron Paul has an awesome "American Recovery" plan.  Awesome.  But his remarks on terrorism and foreign policy stray far from his usual reliance on the Constitution and the 10th Amendment.   He's right about the connection between global corporatism and the never ending militarism they push.  But he's dead ass wrong about our enemies and their intentions.  And that's scary.  If RP had stuck to the Constitution and 10th Amendment, i would fully support him.   If it's not an enumerated power, it belongs to the States and individual citizens.  End of story.   Marco Rubio is awesome in the same way Herman is.  He connects with a special authenticity that screams the principles and val
Gary Edwards

Throw Them ALL Out - Review of Peter Schweizer's book on HUMAN EVENTS - 0 views

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    n a chapter titled "Breaking the Back of Crony Capitalism," Schweizer lays out some much needed reforms that he hopes are undertaken. Here are some of his proposals: * Create a legal code that makes trading on nonpublic government information illegal both for those who pass the information and for those who trade on it.  * Corporate insiders trading their own company's stock are required to disclose these transactions to the SEC within two days. Why not apply the same standard to Congress?  * Members of Congress should not be allowed to trade stock in companies that are overseen by their committees. * Apply whistleblower laws to Congress. If it's good enough for federal workers and corporate employees, it should be good enough for Congress.  * Disallow "sweetheart" IPOs. Unless the initial public offering goes through a public auction, in which people can openly compete for shares in a bidding contest, members of Congress should not be allowed to participate. * Family members of legislators should not be allowed to become lobbyists. * The federal government needs to get out of the business of offering grants and taxpayer-backed loans.  Americans who have suspected that Washington does not have their interests at heart and wonder on their trips to the nation's capital how it is such a gilded boomtown will get answers in this book.  The country is at the beginning stages of a citizen revolt against the permanent political class whose interests are tied to the crony capitalistic system that benefits their own self-interest. 
Gary Edwards

Works and Days » Zero Jobs 101 - the Psychology of Alienating Employers - 0 views

  • Here is the lament I heard: the near $5 trillion in borrowing in just three years, the radical growth in the size of the federal government and its regulatory zeal, ObamaCare, the Boeing plant closure threat, the green jobs sweet-heart deals and Van Jones-like “Millions of Green Jobs” nonsense, the vast expansion in food stamps and unemployment pay-outs, the reversal of the Chrysler creditors, politically driven interference in the car industry, the failed efforts to get card check and cap and trade, the moratoria on new drilling in the Gulf, the general antipathy to new fossil fuel exploitation coupled with new finds of vast new reserves, the new financial regulations, an aggressive EPA oblivious to the effects of its advocacy on jobs, the threatened close-down of energy plants, the support for idling thousands of acres of irrigated farmland due to environmental regulations, the constant talk of higher taxes, the needlessly provocative rhetoric of “fat cat”, “millionaires and billionaires,” “corporate jet owners,” etc. juxtaposed, in hypocritical fashion, to Martha’s Vineyard, Costa del Sol, and Vail First Family getaways — all of these isolated strains finally are becoming a harrowing opera to business people.
  • “This bunch doesn’t like me much and I’m going to hunker down, hoard my cash, and sit out the next year and a half until they are gone.”
  • And the administration’s efforts to counteract these symbols and impressions by courting a high-profile, hyper-capitalist Warren Buffett, or a GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt have proven even more ironic:
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  • the former calls for higher taxes that his firms seek to avoid, or targets his post-mortem wealth to (more efficient?) private foundations that rob the Treasury of billions in lost inheritance taxes, or knows higher taxes won’t much matter to his tens of billions in net worth;
  • the latter’s firm paid no 2010 U.S. income taxes on many of its profits and outsourced jobs overseas.
  • Borrow another $5 trillion?
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    Nobody lays it out so quickly and too the point as VDH..... awesome summary of sweeping reach.  I've been hesitant to apply the term "crony capitalism" to Obama even though his Bankster relationships and continuing bailouts scream loudly.  It seems to me that the term "crony socialism" better fits the full range of fascist power brokering Obama engages in.  Big Government, Big Banksters, Big Unions, Big Media, Big Education.  If anything, Obammunism is BIG! VDH excerpt: Here is the lament I heard: the near $5 trillion in borrowing in just three years, the radical growth in the size of the federal government and its regulatory zeal, ObamaCare, the Boeing plant closure threat, the green jobs sweet-heart deals and Van Jones-like "Millions of Green Jobs" nonsense, the vast expansion in food stamps and unemployment pay-outs, the reversal of the Chrysler creditors, politically driven interference in the car industry, the failed efforts to get card check and cap and trade, the moratoria on new drilling in the Gulf, the general antipathy to new fossil fuel exploitation coupled with new finds of vast new reserves, the new financial regulations, an aggressive EPA oblivious to the effects of its advocacy on jobs, the threatened close-down of energy plants, the support for idling thousands of acres of irrigated farmland due to environmental regulations, the constant talk of higher taxes, the needlessly provocative rhetoric of "fat cat", "millionaires and billionaires," "corporate jet owners," etc. juxtaposed, in hypocritical fashion, to Martha's Vineyard, Costa del Sol, and Vail First Family getaways - all of these isolated strains finally are becoming a harrowing opera to business people.
Gary Edwards

Jim Kunstler's 2014 Forecast - Burning Down The House | Zero Hedge - 0 views

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    Incredible must read analysis. Take away: the world is going to go "medevil". It's the only way out of this mess. Since the zero hedge layout is so bad, i'm going to post as much of the article as Diigo will allow: Jim Kunstler's 2014 Forecast - Burning Down The House Submitted by Tyler Durden on 01/06/2014 19:36 -0500 Submitted by James H. Kunstler of Kunstler.com , Many of us in the Long Emergency crowd and like-minded brother-and-sisterhoods remain perplexed by the amazing stasis in our national life, despite the gathering tsunami of forces arrayed to rock our economy, our culture, and our politics. Nothing has yielded to these forces already in motion, so far. Nothing changes, nothing gives, yet. It's like being buried alive in Jell-O. It's embarrassing to appear so out-of-tune with the consensus, but we persevere like good soldiers in a just war. Paper and digital markets levitate, central banks pull out all the stops of their magical reality-tweaking machine to manipulate everything, accounting fraud pervades public and private enterprise, everything is mis-priced, all official statistics are lies of one kind or another, the regulating authorities sit on their hands, lost in raptures of online pornography (or dreams of future employment at Goldman Sachs), the news media sprinkles wishful-thinking propaganda about a mythical "recovery" and the "shale gas miracle" on a credulous public desperate to believe, the routine swindles of medicine get more cruel and blatant each month, a tiny cohort of financial vampire squids suck in all the nominal wealth of society, and everybody else is left whirling down the drain of posterity in a vortex of diminishing returns and scuttled expectations. Life in the USA is like living in a broken-down, cob-jobbed, vermin-infested house that needs to be gutted, disinfected, and rebuilt - with the hope that it might come out of the restoration process retaining the better qualities of our heritage.
Gary Edwards

Carter: Economic Stagnation Explained, at 30,000 Feet - Bloomberg - 0 views

  • Party Doesn’t Matter
  • “I don’t understand why Washington does this to us," he resumes. By "us," he means people who run businesses of less- than-Fortune-500 size. He tells me that it doesn’t much matter which party is in office. Every change of power means a whole new set of rules to which he and those like him must respond. ‘‘I don’t understand,” he continues, “why Washington won’t just get out of our way and let us hire.”
  • Thinking of Selling
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  • No `Installed Base'
  • `Invisible
  • “I know there are things the government has to do. But they need to find a way to do them without people like me having to bump into a new regulation every time we turn a corner.” He reflects for a moment, then finds the analogy he seeks. “Government should act like my assistant, not my boss.”
  • For medium-sized firms like his, however, there is little wiggle room to absorb the costs of regulatory change. Because he possesses neither lobbyists nor clout, he says, Washington doesn’t care whether he hires more workers or closes up shop.
  • Recessions have complex causes, but, as the man on the aisle reminded me, we do nothing to make things better when the companies on which we rely see Washington as adversary rather than partner.
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    Simplicity.  Who would have guessed it's this easy!  It turns out that Obammunism is a political formula of Spend Big, Borrow Big, Regulate with a heavy boot, Take care of your big big campaign contributors (Call it Fascism or Crony Politics - it's still the same criminal corruption of using power to enrich yourself and your friends at the expense of your countrymen). excerpt from a conversation on a plane flight that takes place between an ivy league elitist and a SMB business owner: Demand for his product is up. But he still won't hire. "Why not?" "Because I don't know how much it will cost," he explains. "How can I hire new workers today, when I don't know how much they will cost me tomorrow?" He's referring not to wages, but to regulation: He has no way of telling what new rules will go into effect when. His business, although it covers several states, operates on low margins. He can't afford to take the chance of losing what little profit there is to the next round of regulatory changes. And so he's hiring nobody until he has some certainty about cost.
Paul Merrell

Eric Cantor's Opponent Beat Him By Calling Out GOP Corruption | - 0 views

  • “All of the investment banks, up in New York and D.C., they should have gone to jail.” That isn’t a quote from an Occupy Wall Street protester or Senator Elizabeth Warren. That’s a common campaign slogan repeated by Dave Brat, the Virginia college professor who scored one of the biggest political upsets in over a century by defeating Majority Leader Eric Cantor in the Republican primary last night. The national media is buzzing about Brat’s victory, but for all of the wrong reasons.
  • Did the Tea Party swoop in and help Brat, as many in the Democratic Party are suggesting? Actually, the Wall Street Journal reports no major Tea Party or anti-establishment GOP group spent funds to defeat Cantor. Did Cantor, the only Jewish Republican in Congress, lose because of his religion, as some have suggested? There’s no evidence so far of anti-Semitism during the campaign. Was Cantor caught flatfooted? Nope; Cantor’s campaign spent close to $1 million on the race and several outside advocacy groups, including the National Rifle Association, the National Realtors Association and the American Chemistry Council (a chemical industry lobbying association) came in and poured money into the district to defeat Brat. The New York Times claims that Brat focused his campaign primarily on immigration reform. Brat certainly made immigration a visible topic in his race, but Republic Report listened to several hours of Brat stump speeches and radio appearances, and that issue came up far less than what Brat called the main problem in government: corruption and cronyism. Brat told Internet radio host Flint Engelman that the “number one plank” in his campaign is “free markets.” Brat went on to explain, “Eric Cantor and the Republican leadership do not know what a free market is at all, and the clearest evidence of that is the financial crisis … When I say free markets, I mean no favoritism to K Street lobbyists.” Banks like Goldman Sachs were not fined for their role in the financial crisis — rather, they were rewarded with bailouts, Brat has said.
  • rat, who has identified with maverick GOP lawmakers like Representative Justin Amash of Michigan, spent much of the campaign slamming both parties for being in the pocket of “Wall Street crooks” and D.C. insiders. The folks who caused the financial crisis, Brat says, “went onto Obama’s rolodex, the Republican leadership, Eric’s rolodex.” During several campaign appearances, Brat says what upset him the most about Cantor was his role in gutting the last attempt at congressional ethics reform. “If you want to find out the smoking gun in this campaign,” Brat told Engelman, “just go Google and type the STOCK Act and CNN and Eric Cantor.” (On Twitter, Brat has praised the conservative author Peter Schweizer, whose work on congressional corruption forced lawmakers into action on the STOCK Act.) The STOCK Act, a bill to crack down on insider trading, was significantly watered down by Cantor in early 2012. The lawmaker took out provisions that would have forced Wall Street “political intelligence” firms to register as traditional lobbyists would, and removed a section of the bill to empower prosecutors to go after public officials who illegally trade on insider knowledge. And Brat may be right to charge that Cantor’s moves on the STOCK Act were motivated by self interest. Cantor played a leading role in blocking legislation to fix the foreclosure crisis while his wife and his stock portfolio were deeply invested in mortgage banks.
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  • Most self-described Tea Party Republicans, including Rand Paul and Ted Cruz, have railed against Washington in a general sense without calling out the powerful – often Republican-leaning — groups that wield the most power. Not Brat. “Eric is running on Chamber of Commerce and Business Roundtable principles,” Brat told a town hall audience, later clarifying that he meant the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the largest lobbying trade group in the country. He also called out the American Chemistry Council for funding ads in his race with Cantor, telling a radio host that his opponent had asked his “crony capitalist friends to run more ads.” Brat repeats his mantra: “I’m not against business. I’m against big business in bed with big government.” Indeed, Cantor has been a close ally to top lobbyists and the financial industry. “Many lobbyists on K Street whose clients include major financial institutions consider Cantor a go to member in leadership on policy debates, including overhauling the mortgage finance market, extending the government backstop for terrorism insurance, how Wall Street should be taxed and flood insurance,” noted Politico following Cantor’s loss last night. In 2011, Cantor was caught on video promising a group of commodity speculators that he would roll back regulations on their industry. 
  • There are many lessons to be learned from the Cantor-Brat race. For one, it’s worth reflecting on the fact that not only did Cantor easily out raise and outspend Brat by over $5 million to around $200,000 in campaign funds, but burned through a significant amount on lavish travel and entertainment instead of election advocacy. Federal Election Commission records show Cantor’s PAC spent at least $168,637 on steakhouses, $116,668 on luxury hotels (including a $17,903 charge to the Beverly Hills Hotel & Bungalows) and nearly a quarter million on airfare (with about $140,000 in chartered flights) — just in the last year and a half! But on the policy issues and political ramifications of this race, it’s not easy to box Brat into a neat caricature of an anti-immigration zealot or Tea Party demagogue, or, in TIME’s hasty reporting, a “shopworn conservative boilerplate.” If Brat ascends to Congress, which is quite likely given the Republican-leaning district that he’ll run in as the GOP nominee, he may actually continue taking on powerful elites in Washington.  
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    The Cantor defeat was not a Tea Party upset victory as claimed by MSM, according to this article. Instead, Brat's stump speeches were about crony capitalism, bankster corruption of Congress, and libertarian principles. So if this article is correct, then MSM would rather claim that Cantor was a victim of the Tea Party than acknowledge the issues that Brat actually raised, Congressional corruption and big government/big corporation cronyism.  Very interesting food for thought.
Gary Edwards

'Clinton death list': 33 spine-tingling cases - 0 views

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    "(Editor's note: This list was originally published in August 2016 and has gone viral on the web. WND is running it again as American voters cast their ballots for the nation's next president on Election Day.) How many people do you personally know who have died mysteriously? How about in plane crashes or car wrecks? Bizarre suicides? People beaten to death or murdered in a hail of bullets? And what about violent freak accidents - like separate mountain biking and skiing collisions in Aspen, Colorado? Or barbells crushing a person's throat? Bill and Hillary Clinton attend a funeral Apparently, if you're Bill or Hillary Clinton, the answer to that question is at least 33 - and possibly many more. Talk-radio star Rush Limbaugh addressed the issue of the "Clinton body count" during an August show. "I swear, I could swear I saw these stories back in 1992, back in 1993, 1994," Limbaugh said. He cited a report from Rachel Alexander at Townhall.com titled, "Clinton body count or left-wing conspiracy? Three with ties to DNC mysteriously die." Limbaugh said he recalled Ted Koppel, then-anchor of ABC News' "Nightline," routinely having discussions on the issue following the July 20, 1993, death of White House Deputy Counsel Vince Foster. In fact, Limbaugh said, he appeared on Koppel's show. "One of the things I said was, 'Who knows what happened here? But let me ask you a question.' I said, 'Ted, how many people do you know in your life who've been murdered? Ted, how many people do you know in your life that have died under suspicious circumstances?' "Of course, the answer is zilch, zero, nada, none, very few," Limbaugh chuckled. "Ask the Clintons that question. And it's a significant number. It's a lot of people that they know who have died, who've been murdered. "And the same question here from Rachel Alexander. It's amazing the cycle that exists with the Clintons. [Citing Townhall]: 'What it
Gary Edwards

Does Trump Trump? Angelo Codevilla on Our Present Moment | Power Line - 1 views

  • Angelo Codevilla is a former staff member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, professor emeritus of international relations at Boston University, and the author of more than a dozen fine books on politics, arms control, and intelligence (if I had to pick a favorite it might be The Character of Nations), including a fine translation of Machiavelli’s Prince published by Yale University Press. Most recently his essay-turned-book The Ruling Class: How They Corrupted America and What We Can Do About It caught the attention of Rush Limbaugh and many others. It argues that our fundamental political problem is not “big government,” but the creation of a ruling class, inhabiting both parties, that is steadily increasing its authoritarian control over the nation. In a conversation a few months ago Angelo remarked, “The 2016 election is simple; the person who runs on the platform ‘Who do they think they are?’ will win.”
  • Donald Trump leapt atop other contenders for the Republican presidential nomination when he acted on the primordial fact in American public life today, from which most of the others hide their eyes, namely: most Americans distrust, fear, are sick and tired of, the elected, appointed, and bureaucratic officials who rule over us, as well as their cronies in the corporate, media, and academic world.
  • Trump’s attraction lies less in his words’ grace or even precision than in the extent to which Americans are searching for someone, anyone, to lead against this ruling class, that is making America less prosperous, less free, and more dangerous.
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  • three fifths of Democratic voters approve the conduct of their officials, only about one fifth of Republican voters approve what theirs do.
  • Moreover, Americans are becoming increasingly skeptical about their celebrities’ integrity. With good reason. McCain is just a minor example of a phenomenon that characterizes our ruling class: reputations built on lies and cover-ups, lives of myth protected by mutual forbearance, by complicitous journalists, or by records deep-sixed, including in in government archives.
  • As they lord it over us, they live lives that cannot stand scrutiny.
  • The point here is simple: our ruling class has succeeded in ruling not by reason or persuasion, never mind integrity, but by occupying society’s commanding heights, by imposing itself and its ever-changing appetites on the rest of us. It has coopted or intimidated potential opponents by denying the legitimacy of opposition. Donald Trump, haplessness and clownishness notwithstanding, has shown how easily this regime may be threatened just by refusing to be intimidated.
  • At increasing speed, our ruling class has created “protected classes” of Americans defined by race, sex, age, disability, origin, religion, and now homosexuality, whose members have privileges that outsider do not. By so doing, they have shattered the principle of equality – the bedrock of the rule of law. Ruling class insiders use these officious classifications to harass their socio-political opponents. An unintimidated statesman would ask: Why should not all “classes” be equally protected? Does the rule of law even admit of “classes”? Does not the 14th amendment promise “the equal protection of the laws” to all alike? He would note that when the government sets aside written law in favor of what the powerful want, it thereby absolves citizens any obligation to obey government.
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    "Does Trump trump? By Angelo M. Codevilla "In the land of the blind," so goes the saying, "the one-eyed man is king." Donald Trump leapt atop other contenders for the Republican presidential nomination when he acted on the primordial fact in American public life today, from which most of the others hide their eyes, namely: most Americans distrust, fear, are sick and tired of, the elected, appointed, and bureaucratic officials who rule over us, as well as their cronies in the corporate, media, and academic world. Trump's attraction lies less in his words' grace or even precision than in the extent to which Americans are searching for someone, anyone, to lead against this ruling class, that is making America less prosperous, less free, and more dangerous. Trump's rise reminds this class's members that they sit atop a rumbling volcano of rejection. Republicans and Democrats hope to exorcise its explosion by telling the public that Trump's remarks on immigration and on the character of fellow member John McCain (without bothering to try showing that he errs on substance), place him outside the boundaries of their polite society. Thus do they throw Br'er Rabbit into the proverbial briar patch. Now what? The continued rise in Trump's poll numbers reminds all that Ross Perot - in an era that was far more tolerant of the Establishment than is ours - outdistanced both Bush 41 and Bill Clinton before self-destructing, just by speaking ill of both parties before he self destructed. Republicans brahmins have the greater reason to fear. Whereas some three fifths of Democratic voters approve the conduct of their officials, only about one fifth of Republican voters approve what theirs do. If Americans in general are primed for revolt, Republican (and independent) voters fairly thirst for it. Trump's barest hints about what he opposes (never mind proposes) regarding just a few items on the public agenda have had such effect because they accord with
Paul Merrell

Voters Say "Yes" to the Republican Who Said "No" to Wall Street | The Nation - 0 views

  • House Speaker John Boehner and his cronies removed North Carolina Congressman Walter Jones from the House Financial Services Committee in late 2012, as part of a purge that removed Republicans who were not all in for Wall Street -- and for Boehner's brand of "service" to the industries that are supposed to be regulated by Congress -- from the one panel with the power to hold bankers and brokers to account. But Jones, who had opposed bank bailouts and favored Wall Street regulation, did not go quietly. He spoke up about the purge and made little secret of his sense that -- though he had split with Boehner on a number of issues -- his biggest "sin" in the eyes of the party leadership was his refusal to bow to the demands of big campaign donors. “This whole place is all about money. Money is more important than policy,” complained Jones, who has in recent years co-sponsored most major pieces of campaign-finance reform legislation in the House -- including a call for a constitutional amendment designed to restore the ability of federal, state and local officials to regulate campaign spending.
  • The congressman's bluntness did not go over well with the masters of the universe on Wall Street. So, this spring, they set out to purge Walter Jones from Congress altogether. They found a consummate DC insider with close ties to the financial-services industry, Taylor Griffin, and filled the challenger's campaign treasury with PAC checks from J.P. Morgan, Wells Fargo and Bank of America, as well as political powerbrokers like former Republican National Committee chairman Haley Barbour and Wayne Berman of the Blackstone Group. It did not stop there. Jones' independence extended far beyond debates over Wall Street bailouts and regulation. The Republican is a social and economic conservative -- make that a social and economic very conservative -- but he has repeatedly broken with the party establishment on issues of war and peace, privacy rights, trade policy and budgets. He even voted against proposals by the darling of Wall Street and the party establishment, Congressman Paul Ryan
  • Bush administration aides and apologists rushed in with public statements and "independent" expenditures to attack Jones for his opposition to wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and for his refusal to go along with moves that might lead to wars with Iran and other countries. Former Bush White House spokesman Ari Fleischer gave his enthusiastic backing to Griffin, as did former national security adviser Juan Zarate. Sarah Palin, one of the party's most consistent militarists, came in big for Griffin, who hailed her as an "old friend." A neo-conservative group, the Emergency Committee For Israel, spent at least $250,000 on ads that claimed Jones "preaches American decline." What Jones actually said was that, “Lyndon Johnson’s probably rotting in hell right now because of the Vietnam War, and he probably needs to move over for Dick Cheney.” At the same time, the wealthy champions of Ryan's crony-capitalist approach to budgeting were in with big money for TV ads and direct mail from the "Ending Spending Action Fund" -- a super PAC backed by billionaire businessman Joe Ricketts. By a lot of DC measures, Jones should have been doomed.
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  • But the ten-term congressman bet that the voters of eastern North Carolina would stick with him. “I’m not going to sacrifice my integrity for anyone or any party,” he said. “It’s the price you pay. I didn’t come (to Washington) to be a puppet for anyone. And I think the public back in my district, which is the most important, has seen I’m willing to do what I think is right.” It was the right bet. On Tuesday, Republican primary voters in eastern North Carolina decided to purge the Wall Street donors and the special interests. The reelected Walter Jones by a solid 51-45 margin.
Gary Edwards

Federal Loans Fund Big-Ticket Energy Projects At Firms Outside Of U.S. | Fox News - 0 views

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    Solyndra II - The Spanish company, Abenoga has recieved a massive DOE taxpayer funded "investment".  Looks like another example of corrupt Obama crony socialism and blatant money laundering for the Socialist party, USA. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), such solar thermal power is far and away the most expensive option that it considered in projecting the cost of new electricity technologies over the next four years.Using a complex calculation known as "levelized cost," EIA says that solar thermal energy will weigh in at $311.60 per megawatt/hour, vs. $210.70 for more conventional solar paneling, and $113.90 for "advanced nuclear."Click here for the EIA cost estimatesCompared to more conventional energy sources, solar thermal is even pricier -- much pricier. The EIA says that natural gas-fueled energy plants, even using advanced techniques to remove carbon from their emissions, would cost $89.3 per megawatt/hour, while ordinary gas fueled natural gas generation would cost $66.10.A conventional coal-fired electrical plant -- anathema in green circles -- would provide energy at $94.80 per megawatt/hour, and one equipped with "clean" coal technology and sequestration of carbon emissions would provide electricity at a cost of $136.20 per megawatt/hour.The second-most pricey option on the EIA list, after solar thermal, is energy from wind turbines placed in the ocean, which comes in at $243.20 per megawatt/hour.In other words, even that difficult and costly-to-produce energy source is projected to cost only three-quarters as much. Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/09/22/federal-loans-fund-big-ticket-energy-projects-at-firms-outside-us/?intcmp=obinsite#ixzz1Zs0en100
Gary Edwards

Will you choose liberty, or just a new boss? - Tea Party Command Center - 0 views

  • Let’s get our terms right first. “The establishment” is the network of special interests—politicians, crony capitalists, lobbyists and career bureaucrats—who feed at the public trough at the expense of the common good. Members of the establishment don’t like rocking the boat, because they have worked so hard to ensure that they are always the ones riding high and dry. “The establishment” is neither Democratic nor Republican, nor is it “liberal” or “conservative.” It’s not even “the rich” versus “the poor.” It is simply the cancer that can consume great nations when government gets too big, too involved, and too powerful.
  • Too much concentrated power in Washington always accrues to the benefit of the establishment, because they will always get to the table first.
  • Compromise is the currency, because that’s how everyone gets paid. Everyone wants something from someone. Everyone is looking for a play, wanting to cut a better deal.
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  • The real alternative to the tyranny of the D.C. establishment has always been more liberty, not a better, more benevolent despot. America’s genius comes from each of us, working together in voluntary cooperation to solve problems, from the bottom, up. We need a leader who gets it. Someone who respects our Constitution’s essential role in limiting power. Someone who wants to rein in intrusive government, and all of the inside dealers who feed off of it. A president can never give you liberty, but we should all insist on one who respects it.
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    "Socialist Bernie Sanders is beating Hillary Clinton over the head with his figurative Birkenstocks, and The Donald is plowing through the Republican presidential field like a giant, perfectly coiffed, Stay Puft Marshmallow Man. The establishment is freaking out, and it's about damn time. Their collective panic suggests that entrenched interests finally understand that their world is threatened; that the rules have changed, that insider power is waning, that we are onto their game. We now know what the establishment has been up to behind the cloistered marble walls of our government, and we are royally pissed. This is an opportunity of a lifetime, if we get it right. But you have to choose. Will you choose liberty, or just a new boss? Let's get our terms right first. "The establishment" is the network of special interests-politicians, crony capitalists, lobbyists and career bureaucrats-who feed at the public trough at the expense of the common good. Members of the establishment don't like rocking the boat, because they have worked so hard to ensure that they are always the ones riding high and dry. "The establishment" is neither Democratic nor Republican, nor is it "liberal" or "conservative." It's not even "the rich" versus "the poor." It is simply the cancer that can consume great nations when government gets too big, too involved, and too powerful. "Are you willing to hold your nose this time, cut the best deal you think you can, simply because you want to beat the establishment?" "The establishment" is the fortress of political inertia that makes it so difficult to reform Washington, or to stop "them" from spending money we don't have. They are just insiders with a seat at the table redirecting taxpayer resources to their benefit, and always resisting reformers and "outsiders" who might upset their apple cart."
Gary Edwards

The Daily Bell - Thomas DiLorenzo: More on the Myth of Lincoln, Secession and the 'Civi... - 1 views

  • The state cannot tell the people that it is bankrupting them and sending their sons and daughters to die by the thousands in aggressive and unconstitutional wars so that crony capitalism can be imposed at gunpoint in foreign countries, and so that the military-industrial complex can continue to rake in billions. That might risk a revolution. So instead, they have to use the happy talk of American virtue and American exceptionalism, the "god" of democracy," etc.
  • Specifically, he repeated the "All Men are Created Equal" line from the Gettysburg Address to make the case that it is somehow the duty of Americans to force "freedom" on all men and women everywhere, all around the globe, at gunpoint if need be. This is the murderous, bankrupting, imperialistic game that Lincoln mythology is used to "justify."
  • Lincoln spent his entire life in politics, from 1832 until his dying day, as a lobbyist for the American banking industry and the Northern manufacturing corporations that wanted cheaper credit funded by a government-run bank.
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  • No member of the Whig Party was more in bed with the American banking establishment than Lincoln was, according to University of Virginia historian Michael Holt in his book on the history of the American Whig party.
  • Bank of the United States
  • The Whig Party "had no platform to announce," Masters wrote, "because its principles were plunder and nothing else." Lincoln himself once said that he got ALL of his political ideas from Henry Clay, the icon and longtime leader of the Whig Party.
    • Gary Edwards
       
      Nice insult.  But watch how the interviewer responds; "Thanks for the insight".  These guys are funny!
  • I don't usually answer "when did you stop beating your wife"-type questions since they always come from people with I.Q.s in the single digits.
  • Thanks for the insights
  • War is always destructive to a nation's economy regardless of whether it wins or loses the war.
  • War is the opposite of capitalism.
  • Capitalism is a system of peaceful, mutually-advantageous exchanges at market prices based on the international division of labor.
  • War destroys the international division of labor and diverts resources from peaceful, capitalistic exchange to death and destruction.
  • However, there are always war profiteers – the people who profit from selling and financing the military. One doesn't need to invent a conspiracy theory about this: War profiteering is war profiteering and has always existed as an essential feature of all wars.
  • "American exceptionalism" did not become a tool of American imperialism until AFTER the Civil War.
  • British intellectuals like Lord Acton understood and wrote about how the result of the war would be a US government that would become more tyrannical and imperialistic.
  • Knights of the Golden Circle
  • Davis was not a dictator. He had a lot of help losing the war, especially from his generals who insisted on the Napoleonic battlefield tactics they were taught at West Point and which had become defunct because of the advent of more deadly military technology by the middle of the nineteenth century.
  • One of his biggest failures was waiting until the last year of the war to finally do what General Robert E. Lee had been arguing from the beginning – offering the slaves freedom in return for fighting with the Confederate Army in defense of their country.
  • eaceful secession is the only way out of the new slavery for the average American, and it will only happen if we have a president who is more like Gorbachev than Lincoln.
  • The union of the founders was voluntary, and several states reserved the right to withdraw from the union in the future if it became destructive of their rights. Since each state has equal rights in the union, this became true for all states.
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    Thank you Thomas DiLorenzo for having the courage to set the record straight.  IMHO, Lincoln should be remembered for freeing the slaves and standing up to the International Bankster Cartel and Wall Street.  But what he did to the USA Constitution and the Bill of Rights was an unprecedented assault on individual liberty.  Good thing the guy could write beautifully on liberty and freedom because his actions amounted to a historic assault on everything the founding fathers held near and dear. excerpt:    "confronting academic "Lincoln revisionism." "Who was Lincoln really and why have you spent so much of your career trying to return Lincoln's academic profile to reality? Thomas DiLorenzo: Lincoln mythology is the ideological cornerstone of American statism. He was in reality the most hated of all American presidents during his lifetime according to an excellent book by historian Larry Tagg entitled The Unpopular Mr. Lincoln: America's Most Reviled President. He was so hated in the North that the New York Times editorialized a wish that he would be assassinated. This is perfectly understandable: He illegally suspended Habeas Corpus and imprisoned tens of thousands of Northern political critics without due process; shut down over 300 opposition newspapers; committed treason by invading the Southern states (Article 3, Section 3 of the Constitution defines treason as "only levying war upon the states" or "giving aid and comfort to their enemies," which of course is exactly what Lincoln did). He enforced military conscription with the murder of hundreds of New York City draft protesters in 1863 and with the mass execution of deserters from his army. He deported a congressional critic (Democratic Congressman Clement Vallandigham of Ohio); confiscated firearms; and issued an arrest warrant for the Chief Justice when the jurist issued an opinion that only Congress could legally suspend Habeas Corpus. He waged an unnecessary war (all other countries ended slavery
Gary Edwards

The Libertarian View: Are Tariffs Bad? - 1 views

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    As many know, i spent quite a bit of time working for a Chinese Company seeking to enter the USA-European software market.  My task was to research the market, discover and define a market opportunity, design the product, and then work as product manager to get that service to market.  I took this job to better understand the Chinese marketplace and how sovereign Chinese companies work.  What i learned is how the Chinese seek to exploit and totally dominate open markets.  Software is just a category whose time has come.  and there are thousands of Chinese companies lining up.  The first step though is to fine tune the existing blueprint used by other Sina sovereigns.  amazing stuff. My take away from this experience is that the USA MUST set up a 30% tariff on ALL imports, and do so IMMEDIATELY!!!  Yesterday is not soon enough! As a newly minted libertarian, i wondered about the obvious conflict with Austrian Economics and their dedication to free markets and free trade?  I found the answer at this Libertarian forum, where many members were in heated discussion.  Comment #7 sums it up best i think.  Including a link to Ron Paul's Tariff-NAFTA speech. The thing is, the 30% Tariff should be part of an overall TAX REDUCTION PLAN.  I support the FAIR TAX and the Balanced Budget Amendment.  As an alternative to the Fair Tax, I would also support a 17% flat tax with no exceptions.  The ideal situation being an immediate, uncompromising, no exceptions 30% tariff on ALL imports coupled with the Fair Tax and the Balanced Budget Amendment.   And yes, i do believe this plan is consistent with the Founding Fathers Constitution.  But it took some kind of research to establish that opinion.   I've also concluded that "conservatism" is a convenient philosophical vehicle for the corrupt crony corporatism of both the military-industrial-complex, banksters and, international corporations.  Free trade and open markets concepts are perverted to become a thin veil
Gary Edwards

Liberty in the Breach - 0 views

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    Stick to the Constitution and your principles become a matter of individual liberty.  Put your personal principles ahead of the Constitution, and big government socialist and establishment trough feeders will paint your wagon with the tyranny of conservative social, Christian, and national security "values". So goes my response to the Red State article: "Principle as Political Liability - even as Reagan understood it".  The article was written at the height of Obama's assault on Santorum.  Pretty cheeky stuff, even for Obama.  With Romney, Obama went all out with a class warfare assault.  Even went so far as to marshal an army of brown and purple shirt anarchist occupying and protesting the very same Banksters who funded Obama in 2008, and have been taking huge bailouts and kickbacks at the taxpayers expense ever since.  Today Santorum is the threat, so Obama has switched to religious warfare and the supposed threat of conservative Christian values to socialist civil liberties.  Awful stuff.  Especially when Obama is busy trying to convince independents that not only is he a Christian, but Christ himself would support the peculiar social marxism - bankster crony corrupt corporatism combination that defines Obammunism. The point i tried to make is that of a recent discovery having a great impact on my own political, economic and philosophical identification; my conversion from that of a long time Reagan conservative to that of a Reagan libertarian.   My "discovery" was that the Constitution champions only one "value" - that of individual liberty and the necessary cornerstones needed for limited governance based on ordered liberty.  The threat any principled position based on conservative values holds is that conservatives will try to burn those values into Federal law, policy and regulatory practice.  
Gary Edwards

'Boomtown' Special Angers, Resonates with Americans - 0 views

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    "On the show, Peter Schweizer, the president of the nonpartisan Government Accountability Institute (GAI), Steve Bannon, Breitbart News' Executive Chairman, and Fox News host Sean Hannity detailed how Washington, D.C. has become the nation's wealthiest and most lavish region. Their investigation concluded and revealed those in Washington's permanent political class and aristocracy only have incentives to grow the size and scope of government to further enrich themselves and their cronies.  Viewers expressed their outrage at the permanent political class on Twitter as they were watching the show. After the show, viewers sent heartfelt emails to GAI and Breitbart News. Many asked if the show would re-air and if they could purchase DVDs of "Boomtown.""
Gary Edwards

Revealed: Obama's Immense Shadow Army & Its Shocking Takeover Plan - 1 views

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    Is the ObamaCare train wreck a wreck by design? Another notch in the Bankster belt marking another step in the bankrupting of America? Revealed: Obama's Immense Shadow Army & Its Shocking Takeover Plan October 26, 2013  //  By: Eric Odom  //   The ObamaCare train wreck - it's awful, possibly purposeful, certainly useful for team Obama and its growing army of community activists and organizers. In a previous report, we explored the question, "What if the ObamaCare debacle is really a diversion, using a military term a "feint" - a tactical distraction to draw our attention, our focus and our fire away from the real point of attack on liberty?" Remember that horrible train wreck in Spain not long ago, captured on video? As tragic as it was, watching the crash and its gruesome aftermath was almost irresistible, wasn't it? Well, what if the disastrous rollout of the President's signature legislative achievement - what if this spectacular slow motion ObamaCare train wreck has been and is being allowed to happen so that what's going on around the bend from the fiery crash site gets little attention, from the public, from the media or from Congressional investigators? Think about it, friends. How could Barack Obama and his celebrated team of incredibly proficient, plugged in techies - the team that twice got him elected - be behind the utterly disastrous launch of the ObamaCare online storefront, healthcare.gov - arguably the biggest website failure in history? How could so much money have been spent to produce such a problem-plagued site that apparently was doomed in its developmental confusion? And how to fix this monumental mess, well, there doesn't seem to be any clear plan…other than hope. And now we learn that many, if not most, of the people actually signing up for ObamaCare through the website are enrolling in Medicaid, not signing up for private insurance policies they pay for, but adding their names onto government roll
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    There is no doubt in my mind that corporations (and their Chamber of Commerce boot licking lackys) believe that employer provided healthcare benefits was a HUGE MISTAKE. The key feature of ObamaCare is that of ENDING the HMO-Employee Healthcare profit draining quagmire these corporations somehow stumbled into. (Hint: they traded healthcare benefits for wide open government assisted Globalization - the new world order Merchantilism). IMHO, the insurance companies know full well that the entire HMO-Employee Healthcare bandwagon is going to end. Not because of socialism; because of profit hungry out of control mercantilism. So they are trying to cut the best deal possible with the government. The merchantilist doesn't care that their employees are going to suffer. They only care that this cost and the blame for losing the benefit is moved from their books to the government. Nor does the merchantilist care about protecting our borders. They want cheap labor. Even if the social cost of that cheap labor lands on the government and destroys the nation. That's why the merchantilist and his Bankster financiers support Open Borders. The merchantilist could care less about the trade deficit and the massive transfer of American manufacturing jobs overseas. As long as they can sell their junk back into the USA market without a 33% import tax these bastardos are happy to destroy their country. I wonder whose army and navy will secure their investments when the USA no longer can? Are their private armies enough? Just wondering.
Gary Edwards

Bruce Krasting: The Fed bombed the market - I ask, "Why?" - 1 views

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    This is an interesting post.  The WSJ published an article yesterday claiming that the Federal Reserve Bankster Cartel was looking at European Banksters and assessing the quality of "funding positions" and asset status for their USA branch operations.  The Fed Banksters are also consulting with EU regulators about European Bankster concerns. The WSJ article (http://on.wsj.com/nugr7s) triggered a massive market crash on Thursday.  Over $2 Trillion was washed away in the panic following the publication of this WSJ story.  That's on top of the $6 Trillion lost following the Obama Debt-Man-Walking deal with Congress. But here's where it gets interesting.  Bruce Krasting contacted Zero Hedge's Tyler Durden and got this reply; "the story is a Fed plant". Tyler Durden believes that the Feds want to create a world economic crisis to justify a massive QE3 where tens of trillions of dollars would be created and distributed to the worlds Banksters.  This follows the $16.1 Trillion created and distributed to the world's Banksters in 2009 - 2010 under QE1 and QE2. Incredible.  Just a few days ago Republican presidential candidate Gov Rick Perry warned the Fed Banksters not to flood the market with a new QE3.  No doubt what Perry has in mind is that the Fed will flood the world's economy with dollars, debasing the currency even further, but providing a phony and very temporary veil of prosperity - just enough to get Obama into a second term.   Not a bad concept for the Banksters since Obam has proven himself time and again as the bes tfriend the Banksters have ever had.  Obama has overseen the transfer of over $23 Trillion of USA taxpayer debt to the world Bankster community.
Gary Edwards

A New Solyndra Everywhere You Turn: Obama Using Your Tax dollars backing some "risky" e... - 0 views

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    A CBS News report has discovered 12 Clean Energy Firms that Received $6.5B in Taxpayer Money.  All are in Solyndra bankruptcy lsimilar Financial Trouble.  It gets worse.  The CBS News investigation found a clear pattern of the government pouring your tax dollars into clean energy projects wretched with crony democratic party political ties.  It's payback time for the Obama campaign finance bundlers.  This isn't clean energy.  This is the taxpayers getting cleaned by Obama and his corporatist supporters.  Awful, disgusting stuff.  At least Mitt Romney and Bain Capital used their own money. excerpt: Solar panel maker Solyndra received a $528 million Energy Department loan in 2009 - and  went bankrupt last year. The government's risky investment strategy didn't stop there, as a CBS News investigation has uncovered a pattern of cases of the government pouring your tax dollars into clean energy.
Gary Edwards

» For the GOP, Moderate Is the New Conservative - Big Government - 1 views

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    Whoa! Great read!   I think i've met my doppleganger. And he can write.  Funny but earlier today Marbux and i had a lengthy eMail exchange about this exact same topic.  Clearly we are not alone in wondering what has happened to the Tea Party?   I have been trying to get my thoughts together about the rope-a-dope of Rush Limbaugh, which predictably resulted in the fragmentation and total route of the Tea Party Patriot movement. Thirty three days into the election primary cycle and the hands down winner is, The Big Government Establishment".  How did the establishment of trough feeding repubicans, democrats and corporatist/banksters do this? And do it so quickly and efficiently? This article attempts to describe the gradual push towards big government socialism.  No doubt the democratic party is the party of socialism, running the gamut from liberals, to progressives, to Euro socialist, to Marxist, communists and hard core Stalinist. Obammunism itself is a rather unique blend of Marxist enviro socialism driven and funded by fascist crony corporatism/banksterism.    The article further describes what used to be moderates as big government social progressives with a strong dose of military merchatilist interventionism.  The artile also calls these types "neo conservatives"  I guess because the neo moderates are describing themselves as new conservatives. Which is an insult to any Goldwater - Reagan conservative.  Like me.  Or at least i was until this past summer when a kind group of libertarians educated me on the Constitution.  I was Federalist  style, social/militarist conservative.  Now i'm a Jefferson-Madison libertarian strict Constitutionalist. So i've been there.  And "neo conservative" is not conservative in any sense other than that of militarist-merchantilist make the world safe for democracy through big, really big, government social and military programs.  And oh yeah, the neo moderate is a Federal Reserve big corporatist/bankster ty
Gary Edwards

Chris Dodd's carve-outs for cronies - NYPOST.com - 0 views

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    Dangerous and sickening!  In Dodd's Bill, The Property Transaction Industry (Mortgage, Real Estate, Insurance, Legal, Appraisal, and Title) are exempted from the 1974 RESPA full disclosure act!   Regulators are authorized to take over and "bail out" any financial operation they deem troubled. excerpt: The financial-regulatory bill now before the Senate is so filled with special-interest loopholes and exclusions that it makes the health-care "reform" bill, with its "Cornhusker Kickback" and "Louisiana Purchase," look like a model of rectitude.The Senate bill, sponsored by Democrat Chris Dodd, claims to subject all "too big to fail" institutions to greater federal supervision, but in fact it only mandates such regulation for bank-holding companies. Regulators would have to make a case-by-case decision on whether to apply it to other financial companies.The Senate financial-regulation bill offers a stark choice: Do we aspire to be a country where everyone is subject to the same rules? Or do we accept a system where power, influence and money can buy exclusions and exemptions?The public needs to understand that, far from protecting the little guy and sticking it to the fat cats, this bill keeps good, old-fashioned political patronage alive and well. Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/chris_dodd_carve_outs_for_cronies_MT1U7GBEPvzX3QXProqC9L#ixzz0mKJmEdn4 Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/chris_dodd_carve_outs_for_cronies_MT1U7GBEPvzX3QXProqC9L#ixzz0mKJmEdn4Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/chris_dodd_carve_outs_for_cronies_MT1U7GBEPvzX3QXProqC9L#ixzz0mKJcsmlN
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