Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
I see that Ms. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Mr. Bernie Sanders are pushing something called a “Green New Deal”, so I thought I’d take a look. The Hill has a piece entitled “Progressives say dire climate reports point to need for ‘Green New Deal’“, and the Atlantic magazine has an article on it headlined “The Democratic Party Wants to Make Climate Policy Exciting“. Make climate policy exciting? Well, I guess so, but only if you consider economic suicide exciting …
Here are the details of the wonderful green climate deal, right from the horse’s mouth … oh, wait, vegans say we can’t use animal metaphors. So here are the details of the deal, right from the orange’s navel … it has “Four Pillars”, and the first Pillar is their “Economic Bill of Rights”.
Be clear that all opinions expressed below are my own, not those of Watts Up With That, of Charles The Moderator, or of anyone involved with the blog. So please don’t burn up their email with complaints—instead, put them in the comment section below. Ready? Hold your noses, put on your hip boots, we’re ready to wade in …
THE FOUR PILLARS OF THE GREEN NEW DEAL
I – THE ECONOMIC BILL OF RIGHTSThe Green New Deal begins with an Economic Bill of Rights that ensures all citizens:
1. The right to employment through a Full Employment Program that will create 25 million jobs by implementing a nationally funded, but locally controlled direct employment initiative replacing unemployment offices with local employment offices offering public sector jobs which are “stored” in job banks in order to take up any slack in private sector employment.
• Local communities will use a process of broad stakeholder input and democratic decisionmaking to fairly implement these programs.
• Pay-to-play prohibitions will ensure that campaign contributions or lobbying favors do not impact decision-making.
• We will end unemployment in America once and for all by guaranteeing a job at a living wage for every American willing and able to work.
End unemployment in America? Create 25 million taxpayer-funded positions?
Let’s look at that. In 2017, about 125 million people were employed in the US on a full-time basis. Ms. O-C and Mr. Sanders propose in their Green New Deal that those 125 million people pay the salaries of some 25 million workers … implying that if they are to get the average wage, all working Americans will have to pay an additions 20% tax on their income to fund the program. Oh, yeah, people are gonna totally be up for that … median household income is $62,000, so on average, each household will have to pony up $12,000 to employ those 25 million people.
Next, why are these people unemployed? We have more jobs in the US right now than people looking for jobs. The people left without jobs are folks with some kind of reason, valid or not, that they are not working—disabled, don’t need a job, untrustworthy, criminal, live with their parents, unreliable, trust-fund babies, lazy … not your ideal workforce.
Remember, the last time we had a New Deal we had thousands and thousands of hard-working people wanting jobs who couldn’t find a job. But now, to the contrary, we have thousands and thousands of jobs wanting people that can’t find people … hardly the same.
Next, what will these 25 million people do? Remember, we can’t have them doing what other people are already doing, because that will put existing workers out of a job. So we will have to invent new tasks for them … which they’ve done. Per Ms. Occasional-Cortex’s Green Nude Eel, as reported in the Atlantic:
It promises to give every American a job in that new economy: installing solar panels, retrofitting coastal infrastructure, manufacturing electric vehicles.
Look. If solar panels and windmills were economically viable, we wouldn’t have to subsidize them. There’s a reason that solar and wind, even with huge subsidies, haven’t made a dent in our electricity generation. They are hideously expensive, and you still need to build regular power plants for the times when the wind and sun don’t show up … putting people to work building them is just another kind of subsidy.
And “build electric vehicles”??? The US Government, which can’t make a profit from the Post Office, is going to go into the electric vehicle business by hiring a bunch of people who can’t find a real job and going head to head with Toyota? Oh, yeah, you gotta know that’s totally legit …
The madness continues:
2. Worker’s rights including the right to a living wage, to a safe workplace, to fair trade, and to organize a union at work without fear of firing or reprisal.
Now, Ms. O-C has tweeted the following:
It is unjust for Congress to budget a living wage for ourselves, yet rely on unpaid interns & underpaid overworked staff just bc Republicans want to make a statement about “fiscal responsibility.”
I see. Her House of Representatives salary is what she thinks of as a living wage … and how much will she be making?
ONE HUNDRED SEVENTY-FOUR THOUSAND DOLLARS PER YEAR PLUS BENEFITS AND A PENSION AFTER ONLY 5 YEARS.
That’s a “living wage” on her planet … and she thinks every worker deserves that.
Here’s the ugly truth. Some workers are not worth $5 per hour. Some are not worth $10 per hour. And no, I am NOT interested in pretending that those folks have a RIGHT to make a big salary or a living wage. You have to EARN your salary, you don’t have a “right” to anything like that. If you think that mandating a minimum wage helps people, please read Ending Poverty In America.
Finally, we already have laws about safe workplaces and union organization … and I have no clue what she means by “fair trade”.
Onwards …
3. The right to quality health care which will be achieved through a single-payer Medicare-for-All program.
This is the program which is estimated to cost 32 trillion for ten years, or 3.2 trillion per year. And if every other government program is any guide, it will cost much more than that. Now, we have 126 million people employed in the US. So on average, each employed person will have to pay about $25,000 per year in order to pay for Medicare For All. This is in addition to the $12,000 they’re already paying for the Full Employment Madness …. we’re up to $37,000 per worker already …
4. The right to a tuition-free, quality, federally funded, local controlled public education system from pre-school through college. We will also forgive student loan debt from the current era of unaffordable college education.
Could we start by not lying about “tuition-free” and call it by its real name, “taxpayer-paid”? Honesty is a good thing in politics, however rare it might be.
Next, there are currently some 17 million students in college. Tuition averages on the order of $20,000 per year. Of course, the poor suffering 126 million employed people have to pay for that as well. That works out to a mere $2,700 per year … plus the $37,000 per year they’re already paying, so we’re up to about $40,000 per worker already to pay for their green fantasies …
5. The right to decent affordable housing, including an immediate halt to all foreclosures and evictions. We will:
• create a federal bank with local branches to take over homes with distressed mortgages and either restructure the mortgages to affordable levels, or if the occupants cannot afford a mortgage, rent homes to the occupants;
• expand rental and home ownership assistance;
• create ample public housing; and,
• offer capital grants to non-profit developers of affordable housing until all people can obtain decent housing at no more than 25% of their income.
Can I tell you how tired I am of people inventing new “rights”? We’re just getting started, and already we’ve been told that people have the right to a taxpayer-paid job, a living wage, a safe workplace, a union, fair trade, taxpayer-paid healthcare, taxpayer-paid college tuition, and affordable housing … and they’re not done yet.
Here’s the truth. We have the rights given by the Constitution. We have the “inalienable rights” of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. We have the rights of freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom from unreasonable search, and the other rights given in the Bill Of Rights.
And at this point, that is it. That’s all of our rights. And please note—NONE of those rights require the taxpayers to give us money. Not one of them.
We do NOT have a “right” to have the taxpayers put us through college, or pay our medical bills, or provide us with a job. We may indeed decide to do those things, or not do them … but they are absolutely not “rights”. That’s pompous posturing at the taxpayer’s expense.
With that out of the way, affordable housing is a tough nut to crack. To start with, as a builder myself and the son of an architect, I can assure you that here in California it is incredibly difficult to build a house. There is a dizzying array of zoning, building, environmental, septic, lot-size, and other city, county, and state restrictions on building. Each one of these restrictions pushes up the cost of building and contributes to the lack of affordable housing. And none of their high-sounding proposals, not one of them, even touches on any of those problems.
Next, “halt all foreclosures and evictions”? Have they lost their everlovin’ minds? If you make evictions impossible, PEOPLE WILL STOP PAYING RENT, duh. And the same is true if you make foreclosure impossible—people will stop paying their mortgages, and banks will stop loaning money.
The ignorance, it burns …
Next, “create ample public housing”? Please point out where that has worked. The public housing projects in New York and other major cities have been horrible crime-ridden failures.
Finally, “capital grants” for developers? … why do these good folks assume that to solve any problem all you have to do is throw money at it? Under their plan so far each employed person has to put up $40,000, and they now want to give grants of taxpayer money to developers … what could go wrong?
6. The right to accessible and affordable utilities – heat, electricity, phone, internet, and public transportation – through democratically run, publicly owned utilities that operate at cost, not for profit.
What is a “democratically run” business? Do all the employees vote on every business decision? And why would we assume that a government monopoly will deliver cheaper services than businesses in competition? The mind reels …
7. The right to fair taxation that’s distributed in proportion to ability to pay. In addition, corporate tax subsidies will be made transparent by detailing them in public budgets where they can be scrutinized, not hidden as tax breaks.
“Distributed in proportion to ability to pay”??? How on earth can we determine someone’s “ability to pay”? Someone could make a lot of money but be supporting both parents and children; another person makes money but spends most of it on women and boats and wastes the rest … while a third person scrimps so their living costs are very small. Which one has the greater “ability to pay”? I don’t even understand what they mean by that.
Next, what are “corporate tax subsidies”? If they mean the tax laws, how are they not transparent? They are written down so they can be enforced, they are totally transparent. Anyone can go online and look them up …
So that’s the First Pillar. The Second Pillar is “A Green Transition” …
II – A GREEN TRANSITION
The second priority of the Green New Deal is a Green Transition Program that will convert the old, gray economy into a new, sustainable economy that is environmentally sound, economically viable and socially responsible. We will:
1. Invest in green business by providing grants and low-interest loans to grow green businesses and cooperatives, with an emphasis on small, locally-based companies that keep the wealth created by local labor circulating in the community rather than being drained off to enrich absentee investors.
Oh, man, these folks learned absolutely nothing from the Obama green boondoggle. Remember Solyndra? Obama provided them with half a billion dollars worth of taxpayer money, and they went belly-up. And Solyndra was far from the only such waste of taxpayer money. The US Government has a horrible record of choosing which businesses to support. In Solyndra’s case, guess what? The owners were pals of Obama and his friends … surprising, I know. Go green!
This brings up another issue. The Founding Fathers were smart in that they didn’t trust anyone. That’s why we have three branches of government—so they can watch each other and keep each other straight.
Modern lawmakers, on the other hand, seem to think that everyone is a noble, upstanding citizen. So they propose things like “ending evictions” when a moment’s thought reveals that people will just scam that all day long. And the same is true with this kind of government largesse—it invites and encourages corruption.
And guess what?
If you invite corruption … it will come …
2. Prioritize green research by redirecting research funds from fossil fuels and other dead-end industries toward research in wind, solar and geothermal. We will invest in research in sustainable, nontoxic materials, closed-loop cycles that eliminate waste and pollution, as well as organic agriculture, permaculture, and sustainable forestry.
Fossil fuels are a “dead-end industry”? I want some of what these people are smoking … fossil fuels have lifted billions of people out of poverty. Fossil fuels protect us from the ravages of nature and enable our modern lifestyles. Far from being a “dead-end industry”, they are the basis and foundation of our modern world.
Anyone making that claim about a “dead-end industry” should be permanently banned from giving any kind of economic advice or making any economic decisions forever. These folks are happy to enjoy all that fossil fuels bring us, and then they work to kill what makes them wealthy. That kind of stupidity should not be rewarded.
Next, we have already subsidized wind and solar to the tune of billions and billions of dollars, and they are STILL not economically competitive. The idea that a few more billions spent on research will make it all come right is a sick joke.
3. Provide green jobs by enacting the Full Employment Program which will directly provide 16 million jobs in sustainable energy and energy efficiency retrofitting, mass transit and “complete streets” that promote safe bike and pedestrian traffic, regional food systems based on sustainable organic agriculture, and clean manufacturing.
My local town, Sebastopol, just did their best to “promote safe bike traffic” by closing half of the only through-town north-south street to automobiles, and reserving it for bicycles. Me, I love my mountain bike, I’m a dedicated rider … but in all the times I’ve gone through the semi-permanent new traffic jam caused by closing off half of the street, I have yet to see one single bike rider using the bike half of the street … not one.
And sadly, this is typical of these kinds of pie-in-the-sky green dreams. They are so concerned with green and renewable and good feelz that they don’t notice that they have jammed up all the traffic, 24/7/365, for absolutely no gain. Go green!
Then we have the Third Pillar of the Green New Deal, viz:
III – REAL FINANCIAL REFORM
The takeover of our economy by big banks and well-connected financiers has destabilized both our democracy and our economy. It’s time to take Wall Street out of the driver’s seat and to free the truly productive segments of working America to make this economy work for all of us. Real Financial Reform will:
1. Relieve the debt overhang holding back the economy by reducing homeowner and student debt burdens.
Huh? How do they propose to “reduce homeowner and student debt burdens”? Are they going to pay off the debt using taxpayer money? And if so, won’t that “hold back the economy” by impoverishing the workers?
People sometimes make stupid decisions, like taking a student loan to study Underwater Basket Weaving or getting a degree in anything with the word “Studies” in the title. Of course, when they graduate they can’t find a job, so they can’t pay off the loan for a long time.
It’s not clear to me how to fix that historical problem. They borrowed the money and they spent it. Unless they pay it back, somebody’s gonna lose …
What I would do going forward, on the other hand, is to restrict the use of student loans to people going into STEM studies (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Medicine), or going to technical schools to learn skills like welding. Those folks will get jobs and will be able to pay the loan back.
As to homeowners, if you can’t afford to pay the mortgage, sell the dang house! How complex can it be?
2. Democratize monetary policy to bring about public control of the money supply and credit creation. This means we’ll nationalize the private bank-dominated Federal Reserve Banks and place them under a Monetary Authority within the Treasury Department.
I don’t understand this one. “Democratize monetary policy”?? It simply makes no sense. Someone else will have to explain it, I can’t.
3. Break up the oversized banks that are “too big to fail.”
That one actually might be worth discussing.
4. End taxpayer-funded bailouts for banks, insurers, and other financial companies. We’ll use the FDIC resolution process for failed banks to reopen them as public banks where possible after failed loans and underlying assets are auctioned off.
They keep talking about “public banks” and “democratic banking” and such. Again, I don’t understand that.
Also, I’m glad the US bailed out the banks because it kept the global financial crisis from getting far worse. What I didn’t like was that after we bailed them out, we didn’t require them to pay back every penny … but bailing them out was the right move.
5. Regulate all financial derivatives and require them to be traded on open exchanges.
I thought that all financial derivatives were already regulated, but I could be wrong.
6. Restore the Glass-Steagall separation of depository commercial banks from speculative investment banks.
This is the first reasonable proposal that they’ve made. I notice that they didn’t mention that the Glass-Steagall Act was repealed under President Clinton … likely an oversight …
7. Establish a 90% tax on bonuses for bailed out bankers.
Second reasonable proposal. I didn’t like the CEOs of bailed-out banks getting bonuses.
8. Support the formation of federal, state, and municipal public-owned banks that function as non-profit utilities. Under the Green New Deal, we will start building a financial system that is open, honest, stable, and serves the real economy rather than the phony economy of high finance.
The “real economy” rather than the “phony economy of high finance”? What on earth does that mean? What is “high finance”? How is it not “real”?
And public-owned banks? I’m not seeing any advantage in that. People involved in private banks have skin in the game. If they fail, the owners lose money. But people involved in publicly owned businesses of any type have no skin in the game—if they fail, nobody gets fired, nobody gets demoted, nobody loses money.
And that is a recipe for failure.
Finally, we get to the Fourth Pillar of the Green Bad Deal …
IV – A FUNCTIONING DEMOCRACY
We won’t get these vital reforms without a fourth and final set of reforms to give us a real, functioning democracy. Just as we are replacing the old economy with a new one, we need a new politics to restore the promise of American democracy. The New Green Deal will:
1. Revoke corporate personhood by amending our Constitution to make clear that corporations are not persons and money is not speech. Those rights belong to living, breathing human beings – not to business entities controlled by the wealthy.
People are always shouting that the Citizen’s United decision allowing corporations to have and promote political opinions was a mistake. But consider—if that is repealed, the following groups will NOT be able to be involved in the political process in any manner whatsoever, because they are all corporations:
Unions
Newspapers
Charities
Political Action Groups
Radio and TV stations
Non-Governmental Organizations like Greenpeace or Save The Children
You sure that’s what you want?
Also, corporations are not persons—they can’t get engaged, get married, go to the bathroom, vote in elections, or do a host of things that people can do. They do have certain limited powers, to do things like sign contracts, to own property, to have employees, etc. This points out the one tiny problem with their proposal—getting rid of these person-like powers would destroy our entire economic system.
You sure that’s what you want?
Whoever put forward point number one above hasn’t thought this through.
2. Protect our right to vote by supporting Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr.’s proposed “Right to Vote Amendment,” to clarify to the Supreme Court that yes, we do have a constitutional right to vote.
Mmmm … I’d never heard of it, so I went to take a look. Not impressed. Constitutional amendments need to be restricted to critically important things and should be crystal clear. To my eye, that one is neither.
3. Enact the Voter Bill of Rights that will:
guarantee us a voter-marked paper ballot for all voting;
require that all votes are counted before election results are released;
replace partisan oversight of elections with non-partisan election commissions;
celebrate our democratic aspirations by making Election Day a national holiday;
bring simplified, safe same-day voter registration to the nation so that no qualified voter is barred from the polls;
do away with so-called “winner take all” elections in which the “winner” does not have the support of most of the voters, and replace that system with instant runoff voting and proportional representation, systems most advanced countries now use to good effect;
replace big money control of election campaigns with full public financing and free and equal access to the airwaves;
guarantee equal access to the ballot and to the debates to all qualified candidates;
abolish the Electoral College and implement direct election of the President;
restore the vote to ex-offenders who’ve paid their debt to society; and,
enact Statehood for the District of Columbia so that those Americans have representation in Congress and full rights to self rule like the rest of us.
This is a mixed bag of mostly vague thinking. Some things are good. Paper ballots are good. Non-partisan election commissions are good. Making Election Day a national holiday is good as long as it is an unpaid holiday.
Other things are far too vague. “Full public financing” of elections sounds good, but the devil is in the details—who gets the money, and how much? And “free and equal access to the airwaves” … same problem. Does some American Nazi Party candidate with 735 followers get public funding and free access? If not … why not? Do we only fund politicians we approve of? Lots of thorny questions in there.
And some ideas are just horrible. Abolishing the Electoral College is one of them. It’s there for a very good reason. The Founding Fathers knew that if they had direct election of the President, the voters of the most populous state (Virginia at the time) would elect every single President, and the voters in the smaller states would never make any difference at all.
And the same considerations have stayed true through the years right up until today. Without the Electoral College, Abraham Lincoln would never have been President … very, very bad idea.
4. Protect local democracy and democratic rights by commissioning a thorough review of federal preemption law and its impact on the practice of local democracy in the United States. This review will put at its center the “democracy question” – that is, what level of government is most open to democratic participation and most suited to protecting democratic rights.
The “Federal preemption law” says that when Federal and State law conflict, the Federal law prevails. I’m not sure why these folks think that is a problem … always more to learn.
5. Create a Corporation for Economic Democracy, a new federal corporation (like the Corporation for Public Broadcasting) to provide publicity, training, education, and direct financing for cooperative development and for democratic reforms to make government agencies, private associations, and business enterprises more participatory.
“More participatory”? We’re going to spend billions of dollars to make businesses “more participatory”? What does that even mean? What is a “participatory” business? These folks are too much for me. They also want more cooperatives. I’ve been involved with a bunch of co-ops in my time, and my rule of thumb about co-ops is “For cooperatives to work, people have to … you know … cooperate …” Once they solve that, get back in touch, and we’ll discuss co-ops …
6. Strengthen media democracy by expanding federal support for locally-owned broadcast media and local print media.
The Public Broadcasting System in our area acts like a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Democratic Party. But the party’s not the point. It would be just as bad if it were a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Republican Party. Government media have been forces for propaganda as long as they’ve existed, and the PBS is no exception. Sorry, but I do NOT want more taxpayer support of the media. And once again, it’s not “federal support”, it is TAXPAYER SUPPORT! … you remember the taxpayer, the poor schlub that this green dream has already burdened with $40,000 per year in new costs? …
7. Protect our personal liberty and freedoms by:
repealing the Patriot Act and those parts of the National Defense Authorization Act that violate our civil liberties;
I’m OK with that.
prohibiting the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI from conspiring with local police forces to suppress our freedoms of assembly and of speech; and,
Huh? I have no clue what this is talking about. The people suppressing our freedom of assembly and speech these days are the fascists of Antifa …
ending the war on immigrants – including the cruel, so-called “secure communities” program.
There is no “war on immigrants”. This is the usual liberal technique of conflating “immigrants” and “illegal immigrants”.
Nor is there a war on illegal immigrants. They are here illegally, and people are enforcing the laws against that. That’s called “following the law”, not “war”.
8. Rein in the military-industrial complex by
reducing military spending by 50% and closing U.S. military bases around the world;
Mmmm … international diplomacy is never simple. I’m with Teddy—speak softly and carry a big stick.
restoring the National Guard as the centerpiece of our system of national defense; and,
Wait, what? When was the National Guard the “centerpiece” of our national defense?
creating a new round of nuclear disarmament initiatives.
I guess so, although I don’t see this as a huge priority.
Let us not rest until we have pulled our nation back from the brink, and until we have secured the peaceful, just, green future we all deserve.
A “just, green future”? Man, I have had it up to my back teeth with the word “green” being used as the ultimate in virtue signaling. This proposal has nothing to do with “green”. It is a liberal pipe-dream which would bankrupt the country and would do nothing for either the climate, the economy, or the environment.
Man, hacking my way through this colossal pile of bovine waste-material has angrified my blood mightily. Midnight. I gotta go outside and walk around some, see the stars, let the wind blow in my hair. Catch up with y’all later …
Best wishes all around,
w.
Under this plan, Solar would provide some of the power needed for the southern 1/2 of the nation but produce little power for the northern 1/2 of the nation, especially little during winter, and produce virtually no power at night. We would far too dependent on the wind for power at night – no wind and most of the lights go out. These nuts haven’t given any consideration to what powers transportation, industry, and heating – less trucking, less car travel, no freight trains, less industry, and many houses will be cold.
The Socialist agenda would destroy the American economy. Macron’s fuel tax is a walk in the park compared with this destructive plan. The riots in France would also be a walk in the park compared to the riots you would see in the US if this brainless plan by (Weekend at) Bernie Sanders and Ocrazio-Cortex would be put in place. Democrats need to distance themselves from these fools and help shut this ruinous movement down.
Marxist or Communist ideology, as we have seen throughout history, has mostly been practiced with the tools of oppression and totalitarianism. Remember the Soviet Union and its East European satellites. We fought a Cold War to defeat it. China, Cuba, North Korea and other nations today still demonstrate the totalitarian nature of it as it has traditionally been practiced.
From my perspective, what we have here with the “Green New Deal” is an attempt to take Marxist or Communist ideology (with its history of oppression) and Americanize it, to give it a “democratic” appeal and flavor. Ms. Ocasio-Cortez and Mr. Sanders are trying to make a modified version of it palatable in the American mind despite the Cold War still being quite fresh in the memory of the post-WWII Baby Boomer generation (including myself).
Meanwhile, the effort to “sneak Marxism in the back door” of the environmental movement by adding a “green energy” game plan to this “New Deal” only demonstrates to this Baby Boomer how the far left keeps trying to devise ways to sell their ideology to the American people. Blending together Marxism with environmentalism (“What do we want? Climate and environmental justice! When do we want it? Now!”) was an an idea that no doubt easily came to mind among the far leftists in the years after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
On the surface, there is nothing wrong with wanting to work communally to make society a more egalitarian place. However, with free market capitalism showing how it is the only economic system that really works, making that society as egalitarian as Ms. Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Sanders would like is far easier said than done. I suggest here that communal efforts are best done on a voluntary basis, not forced on society by the power of government. Would the Social Security system still be in place today if it were voluntary? The only reason I am accepting benefits from it is because I was forced to pay into in much of my life as were my employers—and I want a return on that money.
If this Green New Deal were analytically and properly subjected to the disciplines of science, engineering, economics, finance and mathematics, it would probably be poked full of enough holes to the point where it would look like a block of Swiss cheese. As such, I seriously doubt that this New Green Deal is going to get anywhere. Even if it does get out of the House and makes its way to the Senate, it will likely die there with the Republicans still in charge.
Ocasio-Cortez, Sanders and Bill McKibben (who is also cheer leading for this “Deal”) will likely never understand just how far off the mark they are with something like this. It is a waste of time and effort trying to get them to understand. This “Deal” represents the illiteracy in science, engineering and the other disciplines that unfortunately infects the voting populace that put Ocasio-Cortez and Sanders in Congress in the first place. The effort that would be required to fix that is beyond my comprehension.
CD, there is no way even a minor part of this manifesto could make it through (even a Democrat Party controlled) U.S. House of Representatives, much less the Senate.
Thanks Willis.
This would be a great post if you told us how you really feel!
I’m too shy and retiring to ever do that …
w.
There is also the Twilight Amendment, which includes rights emanating from a penumbra, or rites discovered at and for the twilight fringe (logic, ethics, and customs), which are notable for violation of civil and human rights, denial of scientific facts (e.g. spontaneous human conception and “wicked solution”), denial of equality in favor of political congruence (the other “PC”), protection of monopolies and practices, and redistributive change for the 0.1%ers, foreign and domestic, and to subsidized high-density population centers.
“Some things are good. Paper ballots are good. Non-partisan election commissions are good”
Paper ballots are not “good”. LBJ stole his first congressional win here in Texas when the Sheriff of Duval County “found” a ballot box with enough votes for LBJ to win. Same with Al Franken’s senatorial race and the recent “vote harvesting” in California.
Non-partisan election commissions are probably impossible to come by, especially in Democrat controlled jurisdictions.
I have been a polling location supervisor (legally a “judge”) here in Texas since 2007. The county I live in has been fairly conservative and the election mechanism has been run in a non-partisan manner. Yes, there is voter fraud, but it seems to be by gaming the system. Especially since a Democrat federal judge basically gutted our voter ID law. The fraud seems to be mostly in the voter registration process and the absentee ballot process. For instance the recent conviction in Virginia of the college student that was registering dead people. I has also happened in Houston. If you can get a name and Social Security number of the deceased, then you can submit a registration application for that person with a phony address.
Actually, paper ballots are not the problem, the honesty of those running elections is the problem. Swift, severe and loudly public punishment would solve that problem, then we could go back to simple, basic, non-corrupt elections.
Thanks, Jon. I should have been more clear. Paper ballots are better than hackable, unauditable electronic voting machines. However, any system can be gamed …
w.
Wow, theres an opportunity for one of AOC’s gov jobs. Cross checking voter rolls with death registrations. Jon’s happy voter fraud is down, AOC’s happy someone’s got job. Sounds like a win win to me!
Two things:
Socialism is the intersection of the incapable and the incompetent.
Socialism is for everyone but the socialist. Bernie Sanders has spent over $300,000 on private jets in the last year or so. You fly coach, or better yet, walk.
Bernie and his wife also have two houses. They got a 3rd house through inheritance…so they sold one house and put some of the proceeds towards adding-on to the 2nd house they kept.
So student loans get forgiven. If you paid off your loans, even if it meant accruing other debt to do so, you get nothing.
Same thing goes for houses…if you accrued debt to keep paying off your house, you get nothing. But people in trouble now get gov’t relief.
And who pays for it? The people who are getting nothing and who already paid.
And then they call that “social justice” …
Grrr …
w.
She supposedly has a degree in economics. She should sue to get her money back.
I do disagree on paper ballots. The mess in Florida was caused by paper ballots. Not only were there “found” ballots but there were “corrected” ballots.
Oh, and as far as bankers and wall street go. Remember that the Obama and Holder were the ones that didn’t bother to send anyone of the top people to jail when they had dead to right cases for fraud.
Again, still the paper ballots are not the problem, the lack of honesty of those running elections is the problem.
Willis: I agree with you on almost every point. But your sagacity is questionable for a big reason. Why in Hell do you still live in California?
“When was the National Guard the “centerpiece” of our national defense?”
1799. In 1812 the British invaded the United States and burned down the White House. Policies changed after that.
Walter Sobchak December 8, 2018 at 12:55 pm
Aug.24th 1814.
Most of the regulars were with Scott and Brown on the Canadian border. Jackson had another Regiment that he took to New Orleans.
Yes the Militia fled at Bladensburg
https://www.battlefields.org/learn/war-1812/battles/bladensburg
But they did reform and were entrenched at the approaches to Baltimore.
https://www.thoughtco.com/defenders-saved-baltimore-september-1814-1773540
Militia have served the United States well.
michael
A point not touched yet Willis. This idiot idea of cutting the military by 50% and relying on the N.G.
since when have we not?
https://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/08/nyregion/69th-regiment-mourns-death-of-its-fourth-soldier-in-iraq.html
perhaps Occasional Cortex should learn the history of the state of New York’s own N.G.
Also a bit closer to home for you Willis is the 194th California N.G. tank battalion nationalized and and sent to the Philippines in 1941. It was part of the death march.
Perhaps since the military did not answer the progressives call for a coup they think reducing the regulars and relying on the N.G. which is normally under the control of the state governors will get them any army
michael
Here is a list of the units that served in WWII including the 29th that was in the assault at Normandy.
As convenient mathematically as it is to assume that every person’s health care cost can be calculated as a tax equal to the number of recipients times the assumed tax, this properly should be offset by whatever the cost that are being paid in while under the present system. Real costs are those above and beyond what it is costing us at this point. Uh we have government funded education up to college already. Used to and still do have government subsidized college. California had free college education until Reagan came along. I would argue that society gets as much or more out of an educated citizenry as any citizen does himself, so education being paid for by that society is in its own self interest. If this were properly recognized, perhaps society might mandate that some of what it pays for or at least those classes it pays for had some tangible content. These argument are applicable in some degree to several other listed points.
” education being paid for by that society is in its own self interest. ”
The education that we’re paying for now (K-12) is, at least in theory, determined by the people. Not the case with colleges which have proliferated useless courses and majors. The gentry that run them would be screaming “how dare they!” if we actually demanded accountability from them. They want to determine what is taught (indoctrinated) that is counter to the beliefs of the majority of the country but they want the rest of us to pay for it.
Correct, CMS.
Education and healthcare are of huge value to any society.
In fact, that is where we can solve the world’s climate change ‘problems’ which, whether they are harmful or not, are primarily a result of overpopulation.
I hereby apply for a position of a Chief Science Advisor for the The Green Climate Deal.
The Deal stresses the need for research. While there is some research in solar and wind technologies, all that research is totally misdirected. What is the main issue with solar and wind? They don’t provide a reliable supply of power. Therefore, under my direction, we will find ways to make wind blow when and where needed, and to make the sun shine all day long.
If this obvious research direction did not occur to you, you have not fully grasped the Deal.
A political system generally requires huge sums of money to maintain itself. Socialism needs the most money to operate since paying everybody regardless of whether they produce anything is their goal. They get the money from taxation or appropriation from “rich” people. They forget that, in the modern world, the rich got “rich” by providing goods and services that improved people’s lives to the point where those people were willing to pay their hard earned money for that improvement. Guess what happens to “improvement” when the rich are no more?
“repealing the Patriot Act and those parts of the National Defense Authorization Act that violate our civil liberties;
I’m OK with that.”
Don’t be. She means to repeal all the parts that protect you from terrorism.
Think of that old saying… “Hire a teenager, while they still know everything.
Well they do have excitement in the streets of Paris and around France again this weekend.
There is one common thread running through all their proposals. And it has to do with basic macroeconomics. All transactions have two parties. A supplier and a recipient of that which is supplied, usually called a consumer. The value that is placed on what is supplied is called demand. Price is the point where suppliers and consumers reach a “point of equilibrium”. If the demand for anything you want forces the price higher, more suppliers want to produce it. If low demand pushes price down, less suppliers want to produce it. If the government mandates it costs less, a shortage will occur. Demand will exceed supply. It is a “self-balancing” system, as long as suppliers are not breaking laws in order to produce at a lower cost, or breaking laws to sabotage the production of their competitors.
Their proposals all concentrate on the consumer, because they want the consumer to get more stuff and pay less or even nothing. All that comes at the expense of the supplier who gets less, or gets nothing, or has his business taken over by the government. All three scenarios are untenable because the first two result in shortages, people like to get paid for their work, and the last one has the “means to production” owned by the least efficient method of production.
We are wealthy as a country, only as long as we “COMPLETELY REJECT” this foolishness. Wealth comes from suppliers competing for customers, and making ever better products in an effort to win over more customers and be able to charge more for products of “higher demand”.
People get wealthy by building successful businesses and hiring capable people. There will always be inequality in a system that produces greater wealth for those that are successful.
These proposals are a prescription to destroy what works, and replace it with what will not work, and can never work. They find fault with the “inequality” of capitalism, but the only way to make things equal is to make everyone equally poor. Except the political class. They will now have the power and the public will become subservient to the owners of the “means to production”. The Bill of Rights was designed to prevent the Federal Government from doing this. The public demanded the Bill of Rights because they knew that power in the hands of some, creates the inevitability of an “inequality” that cannot be overcome except through Revolution. They had just endured that with a remote adversary, and did not want to have the new government using the same policies on them.
The shopping list of freebies for consumers can never actually happen, because more than half the country, must work for less than they are worth, to provide it. Do we really want “your heart surgeon” earning the same as a kindergarten teacher? Do we want a bureaucrat deciding who gets what based on political factors? Because if the market doesn’t decide based on demand for what they “supply”, then politics must decide.
Probably been noted already, but the M in STEM is Mathematics, not Medicine.
Interesting to contemplate that Ms Occassional Cortex has a degree in ECONOMICS! Is there any purpose at all in having universities now?
Her degree is in “international relations”, usually a euphemism for “debating team”, with a minor in economics. So half an economics degree.
And clearly the wrong half!
Willis,
From Australia, a great read.Thanks.
And over at Katowicz Poland, we have another Green Climate Deal not dissimilar to AO-C and Bernie.
That 15 year old sage Greta Thunberg, the face of the world student strike for climate wants-
No private car ownership,
Rationed air travel,
Cessation of eating meat,
Immediate phasing out of fossil fuel usage.
While the MSM treat her more reverentially than Mother Theresa, the truth is that she is a clueless juvenile totalitarian.
She is described by her minders as a “sixth sigma person”meaning she is six standard deviations above average climate science knowledge.
Strewth!
Maybe you and Anthony could get her to write a few guest posts for WUWT!
Sometimes I am tempted to despair but I am heartened by the fact that Kyoto, Paris and Katowicz are failures. The reason is that ultimately self interest indeed self protection will defeat the Green Blob.
As an Australian PM once noted,
“In the horse race of life, always back the horse called Self Interest.At least you know it is trying.”
When HER Democrats were in power, they didn’t do anything about this?
Regardless, she sure just get a kick out of giving away other people’s money.
Once college education becomes “free”, that number will go up by a huge amount.
Hi Willis, “Nude Eel” indeed.
Let us hope that the fun of Spoonerisms helps offset the dreary task of criticism of idiots.
Sadly, very sadly, we now have school children here in Australia being force-fed junk like this.
Our 7 y.o. grandson is reciting some most offensive ‘challenges’ to his parents and their ideals.
Small examples from last week “Our Arts teacher says we are not to say that pink is a girls’ colour and blue is for boys.””People cannot cut down trees because they make oxygen. They are the lungs of the Earth.”
Leave our youngsters alone. These verbal assaults are as bad a concept as child pornography. Geoff.
The top 10% of income tax payers already pay about 80% of all taxes, while the bottom 50% pay about 1%.
I’d say we’ve already achieved that goal in spades.
If the top 10% earn 80% of all income, and the bottom 50% earn 1% of all income, I’d say the tax is fair.
Top 10% earn about 30% of income. Bottom 50% about the same.
Way off base MarkW, the top 10% earn over 75% of all income (which is why they pay 80% of income taxes)
Not according to government statistics.
Please post a link for proof MarkW
Funny, coming from you.
If the top 10% earn 80% of all income, and the bottom 50% earn 1% of all income, I’d say the tax is fair.
Way off base MarkW, the top 10% earn over 75% of all income (which is why they pay 80% of income taxes)
Sorry, Ron but it is you who is “way off base” assuming it is the USofA you are talking about.
In the US the bottom 10% earn 1.7% of income (which is 0.7% *MORE* that you are claiming for all of the bottom 50%) according to
https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/14-countries-where-the-bottom-10-earn-less-than-2-of-all-income.html
according to
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SI.DST.10TH.10?locations=US
the top 10% earned 30.6% of the income in 2016 not the 75% you are claiming.
Mark is closer to the mark that you are.
It may be fair, or it may not be fair. That is for philosophers to debate. The real question is: is it wise. It is only wise if we think the government spends that money more efficiently than the people who earned it would. And by efficiently I mean does the most good for society. If we look at what the federal government does with the money, it goes to: Defense, Entitlements, Discretionary Spending.
If we look at what the public does it is: Invest, Save, Spend.
A good case can be made that when the public uses the money they make, it promotes more growth in the economy, than when the government takes that money and uses it for its own agenda. There are many ways to look at this, and there is always a debate about which is better.
But “economic incentive” is always the key driver to what the end result of various policies will be. When people do what is in their own best economic interest, it not only benefits themselves, but benefits the wider community. The reason for this is the requirement to produce something that is economically viable. Meaning someone else values it enough to CHOOSE to sacrifice or risk, the money earned in their own labor.
When government policies create a dis-incentive for people to engage in productive work, in favor of receiving entitlements for not working, it creates chaos in the wider community. Being poor has become a “position” that competes with employers for unskilled labor. It has helped drive those productive positions off shore. And those pockets of poverty are a breeding ground for criminal activity that requires more tax money spent on insurance, police, lawyers, judges, and prison facilities.
People that earn their money through work tend to be more careful on how it is spent, than people that get money based on their circumstances. And government is no different. They get tax revenue based on the work done in the private sector and spend it on policies that will result in re-election. Those policies are not always an incentive to be more productive in the private sector, and frequently are based on “need” not performance.
Defense is discretionary spending.
Correct. I should have said “entitlements, defense, and non-defense discretionary spending”. I try to minimize words where I can, and still maintain the meaning of the thought.
Ron Manley December 8, 2018 at 5:01 pm
No.
It is required in the constitution. See how defense spending bills are to be handled, they are very specific unlike anything else.
michael
Any and all spending for defense is done with a appropriation bill. Therefore it is discretionary.
Morlock: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discretionary_spending
Ron Manley December 8, 2018 at 9:06 pm
section 8. is what you are looking for.
Wikipedia is not the Constitution. don’t waste people’s time and your own with it.
where did you study Constitutional Law? Me, NAU &ASU .
michael
Morlock, defense spending bills are appropriations. If they are not passed, you don’t get to spend the money. Not the same as Social Security which does not require an appropriation bill. There is not a yearly Social Security spending bill passed. Your reading of the Constitution is flawed.
By that logic the entire federal budget is discretionary spending as it is passed via appropriations bills. And the SS too has been appropriated, it was just done so once
https://www.ssa.gov/legislation/testimony_041410.html
“Social Security trust fund benefit payments are permanently appropriated, and therefore not part of our budget requests before this committee.”
and could be undone the same way (if the politicians in Washington were suicidal). What makes SS different than other spending is that a funding stream was set up specifically for it (the payroll tax) when it’s permanent appropriation was made. But even than it requires money in the appropriations bill or those check don’t make it out the door.
(again from the ssa link above)
“On the other hand, our appropriations requests include, among other things, the administrative resources that we need to pay benefits”
so by your logic, paying benefits in discretionary since it requires appropriation bills to pass in order to happen.
Hi, Mark & Ron, the link below may help.
But remember Fed income tax is not the only tax paid. It also varies from state to state.
The real issue is the percentage of income that is paid for all taxes.
My thoughts are that if you are working and at the bottom of the wage percentage and thus pay no Fed tax ,
God bless you are at least working.
michael
https://taxfoundation.org/summary-federal-income-tax-data-2017/
If you want to make sure that troubled banks are run by people who don’t know what they are doing, this is a great policy.
Mark, they already were run by people who didn’t know what they were doing—that’s why they failed.
Should they have gotten bonuses for that?
w.
Willis, once again you are acting on assumptions, not data.
1) Are you actually going to argue that everyone in management is equally responsible for a bank failing?
2) Are you going to argue that all bankruptcies are the result of incompetence management, not changing government regulations, not mistakes, not gambles that didn’t pay off?
3) Should those who have been hired to replace those who made mistakes also be penalized?
All of Donald Trump’s bankruptcies are due to the fact that he is not good at business.
He is not good at telling the truth either.
Jealousy makes you so much smaller and does nothing to anyone who is better, more intelligent and vastly more successful than you are. Guess that is why you are.
A particularly dishonest Democratic Party talking point. Trump is a real estate developer, and set up each project, very nearly every building, as a separate corporation. As he had on the order of 500 separate corporate entities, having five or so go bankrupt is not a bad record.
Each project had differing sets of investors, and the overall company was providing construction management and management of the completed project, but each hotel or condo was separate. The failures were Atlantic City casinos, where most other investors also failed eventually.
Look at Atlantic City today, wowser! DJT got out before the whole thing came apart.
When he went bankrupt, ALL of his endeavors were in the toilet. Additionally Trump University was a fraud.
Ah, you so triggered! Must hurt your pointy little head.
You can have 20,000 separate corporate entities, and when you can’t repay the loans you have, it doesn’t matter.
Paying over $100,000 for a one night stand with a porn star shows that this guy doesn’t have any clue as to the value of a dollar. He could have gotten his dick wet for a heck of a lot less.
Wow, you REALLY are jealous of people who are more successful and intelligent than you. How sad.
Ron Manley December 8, 2018 at 7:56 pm
Hello Ron, is Mr Trump really not good at business; or is he typical.
The bellow link shows some information on bankruptcies.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/small-business-central/2017/05/21/what-percentage-of-businesses-fail-in-their-first-year/101260716/
michael
Morlock……Trump inherited his wealth, he did not earn it, so tell me how you can insist he’s good at “business” when all he does is file for bankruptcy multiple times?
He inherited a small amount of what he currently has. Your jealousy is fun to watch, and ridicule.
Morlock, people that are good at “business” don’t get sued (and lose) for fraud, like Trump did for Trump University.
Ron Manley December 8, 2018 at 8:25 pm
Weak on corporate law too I see.
You can’t co-mingle funds from one corporation with another especially with separate investors.
Bankruptcy law is written this way for a reason. You may want to look into that.
michael
Morlock, Trump went bankrupt, not some corporation.
No bank based in the United States will loan him money.
And that is an outright lie, sweety. Just on his physical assets any bank would happily go a deal with him, and use it in their advertising to expand their business.
His financial situation is so bad, he’s embarrassed to release his tax returns.
You want his tax returns? All you got to do is submit a request to IRS.
Hahahahahahahahahahahaha!!!!!!!!!! Says the dirt poor groober with no multi-million dollar properties or any successful businesses. Keep the laughs coming!
Your hatred of the man tells us more about you than it does about The Donald.
1) Bankruptcies happen for many reasons. Your assumption that it proves anything about anyone just proves that you care more about feelings than facts.
2) Why bring Trump into this conversation?
And yet, the couple of pages of his tax-returns that MSNBC managed to get a hold of don’t back up your claims. There were actually rather unimpressive and certainly not anything anyone would be “embarrassed” about. Much like Obama’s birth certificate, withholding it makes it look like there’s an “issue” there but when one actually gets to see it (Obama releasing his BC after years of refusing to do so, MSNBC getting a hold of one of Trumps returns) there is no there there.
Thanks, Mark. I must say, whenever someone starts out by saying “once again you”, I tend to discount what they say bay about 50%. If you are going to claim I did something before, at least have the polpette to point out and link to exactly where I did it before.
Next, per your questions:
Nope. But I will argue that when a bank fails it should NOT be rewarding its upper management.
Nope. But I will argue that if a company goes bankrupt for any reason, they should not be patting the upper management on their economic backs …
Don’t think that, never said that, that’s all you.
w.
Once again, you are assuming that the reason the bank failed was because of the upper managment.
Your the one who wanted to punish all of upper management with no regard as to when they were hired.
MarkW December 9, 2018 at 8:01 pm
Never said that. I said that if a business crashes and burns for ANY REASON, you shouldn’t be rewarding the management. They were hired to prevent that, and they didn’t—the reason is immaterial. I don’t care if it was bad actions or bad luck. THEY FAILED.
Again, never said that. How about before you claim something about what I wrote you provide us with the actual words that I wrote? I’m tired of your bogus accusations.
w.
MarkW: 3) Should those who have been hired to replace those who made mistakes also be penalized?
Willis: Don’t think that, never said that, that’s all you.
Actually it’s kind of implied in the following from your article:
Manifesto: 7. Establish a 90% tax on bonuses for bailed out bankers.
Willis: Second reasonable proposal. I didn’t like the CEOs of bailed-out banks getting bonuses.
you response singles out CEOs of bailed-out banks, saying nothing about when those CEOs were put in place. If a new CEO is hired to get the bailed-out bank back on track, your statement implies that they don’t deserve a bonus even if they succeed in getting the bailed-out bank back on track because of the failing of their predecessors. Now that may not be what you meant, but it’s certainly what your blanket statement would include.
Gambles which don’t pay off are mistakes, Mark W.
In your opinion then, no business should ever take chances?
No business should ever go out on a limb on a new product or process unless they have a rock solid guarantee that the process or product will be successful?
I really do love it when people who haven’t even run a lemonade stand consider themselves experts at running multi-national corporations.
MarkW December 9, 2018 at 8:02 pm
Say what? markx said nothing of the sort, nor anything near that. He said “Gambles which don’t pay off are mistakes” … which they absolutely are.
Don’t know about markx, but my last job was Chief Financial Officer for a business with $40 million dollars in annual sales … and you?
w.
Ha ha..yes, a good topic indeed! My last major role (up until 2 years ago) was as GM, then COO of a South East Asian Ag company making the equivalent of about US$76 million/ year in sales.
Mind you, it was not always profitable, or easy. And we made a lot mistakes, and had some great successes, over the 20+ years I was involved in various roles!
The banks failed in 2007 because they were doing what the government told them to do 10-15 years earlier…loan money to people who could not repay it. Responsibility for the real estate recession of 2007 belongs primarily with Democrats like Bernie Frank. It is also the reason few, if any bankers were prosecuted for the debacle. Any trial would have revealed the true criminals, many of whom were still sitting in Congress.
The new Green Deal appears to be orders of magnitude more economically stupid than the Fair Housing Laws of the 1990’s.
Thanks, Willis, for an enlightening, but terrifying journey into the ‘New Green Deal’!
The government did not tell the banks to bundle sub-prime mortgages into the CDO’s that they were selling. When the credit default swaps on the CDO’s went underwater, it wasn’t the fault of the government. Funny thing is it was the LACK of government regulation that let the banks go wild causing the collapse of the credit markets.
You are deliberately neglecting the Community Reinvestment Act, which required the banks to make dubious loans. While it would have been much more honest to defy the government, the banks did not, and tried to hold off on a bad situation they did not cause.
1) The CRA did not require the banks to make dubious loans.
2) The CRA was enacted in 1977. You have to be out of your mind to think that something enacted 30 years before the Great Recession was it’s cause. If you think the CRA was the cause, I have a bridge over the East River near Manhattan that I can get you a great deal on.
….
You really need to study facts instead of parroting right-wing talking points regrading financial history.
The actual enforcement of a law can change over time, and the behavior of the various regulators definitely did change, with fierce resistance by the Democrats to any change during GW Bush’s second term. You do seem to have all the talking points down pat.
And you should actually listen to mortgage/lending professionals and tax professionals who know what happened and who caused it to happen, step by step, beginning with manipulations of Freddie&Fannie and continuing with CRA. The bundling of bad mortgages was created by the regulation and oversight of USG banking regulators and those of the States, severally, New York and California particularly.
Congress enacts laws, such as the CRA. Enforcement of laws is the province of the executive branch of government. Since Bush was in charge of enforcing laws when the Great Recession hit, then according to your logic and argument, the Great Recession was Bush’s fault
If you truly believe that Bush controlled Fannie and Freddie, or had sufficient control over the banking system particularly after the Democrats took the House, you are even more of a partisan than I am.
LOL @ur momisugly Halla
…
Bush had more control over Fannie and Freddie than Congress did.
…
The Federal Reserve controls the banking system, something which you seem to be unaware of.
The Bush Administration could easily have issued banking regulations via the SEC and Treasury department with an executive order. Congress has no such authority.
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!!!!!!!!! You just get more gooder and more gooder. You should take this comedy routine someplace you can get paid for it.
2hotel9 says, “The bundling of bad mortgages was created by the regulation and oversight of USG banking regulators”
….
NOPE, CDO’s based on bundled mortgages were created in 1977 by Salomon Brothers.
Keep telling yourself that, sweetheart. That scheme was knocked down, then Democrats picked it up and forced it on banks/mortgage companies in the ’90s. Never let a good grift be taken out by people finding out! Democrats just submerge for a bit then resurface and push it again, with a slightly changed name and new shysters selling to the rubes. You got burned, otherwise you would not be defending Democrat Party c*nts who f**ked America.
The government told the banks to make bad loans. BUndling them into CDOs and other instruments was an attempt to make those loans less toxic.
While it is true that the first passage of CRA was in 1977, but you are once again ignoring the role Clinton played in dramatically increasing the scope and power of the CRA.
And yes, the government did tell the banks to make bad loans, when it demanded that loan volume had to “racially balanced”.
Ron, are you really as clueless as your posts make you sound?
Yes, the executive branch enforces laws, but there are millions of employees in the executive branch, the vast majority of whom career employees who stay in their jobs regardless of who is president.
Secondly, your desire to blame a crisis that was decades in making on the man who was in office when it finally blew up just indicates how desperate you are to avoid dealing with the true causes of this crisis.
Ron Manley December 8, 2018 at 8:54 pm
The below link should help a bit. The federal (ir)regulates were overseeing all the banks to see they they complied with the regulation. The banks were require to make the loans. Should they have reported the regulates for their poor judgment? Yes. Was it their (the banks) responsibility? Unknown.
https://www.federalreserve.gov/consumerscommunities/cra_about.htm
michael
p.s. stop trying to sell my bridge.
Morlock …… I suggest you read the link you provided. Please note the words “to encourage financial institutions.”
It does not say require
…
Please point me to the exact passage in the CRA where it REQUIRES a bank to make a loan.
…
Thank you in advance.
Ron, you really are cute when you get desperate.
To the beaurocracy, the two phrases are identical in affect.
That was Barney Fwank. Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, destroying communities and ruining lives where banks refused to. Fannie Mae actually worked for a very long time, in the ’70s it became increasingly controlled by Kleptocrats of both parties, Freddie was problematic from its start. The 1980s is when they really went off the rails. During the early ’90s some in Congress tried to rein it all in, they got steamrollered by the senior Democrats who populated the financial committees in both sides at that time. And never forget Frank-Dodd. Oy vey!
Here are some C-SPAN video clips from 2004 that shows who tried to save the world economy and who ignored the warnings. AND THEY ARE STILL IN COMGRESS!
https://youtu.be/8dFJFw_MB2c