Right is Wrong and Left is… Wrong

We’ve all known for decades that multi-national corporations are screwing the consumer, the poor, animals, the planet, and just about anything else that should not be screwed in the interest of a few extra bucks. Yes, we’ve all known these things for decades, but what has been done to stop this corporate corn holing of America?
Any blame for corporate shenanigans obviously falls on the Republicans because we all know that the Republican party is for big business and the Democratic party represents the decent honest working people of this country…right?
WRONG!
Bill Clinton a Democrat held the White House for eight years, four of which President Clinton enjoyed the support of a Democratically controlled Congress. During this time President Clinton pushed for and passed:
Major legislation supported and signed into law

• 1993-02-05 - The Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993
• 1993-08-10 - Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1993: Raised income tax rates; income tax, top rate: 39.6%; corporate tax: 35%
• 1993-09-21 - creation of the AmeriCorps volunteer program
• 1993-11-30 - Brady Bill
• 1994-09-13 - Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act: Part of an omnibus crime bill, the federal death penalty was expanded to some 60 different offenses (see Federal assault weapons ban)
• 1996-02-01 - Communications Decency Act
• 1996-02-08 - Telecom Reform Act: Eliminated major ownership restrictions for radio and television groups.

OVERWHELMING BI-PARTISAN SUPPORT In the House of Representatives  414 Ayes, 16 Nays, 4 Present/Not Voting. In the Senate 81 Ayes, 18 Nays, 1 Present/Not Voting. In reality a huge coup for BIG business and a major loss for competition in the marketplace. Remember this is the same government that went out of its’ way to punish Microsoft for being a web browser monopoly, (which it was not) five years later legislating that creating media monopolies is just fine. Hypocrisy anyone?

• 1996-03-14 - Authorized $100 million counter-terrorism agreement with Israel to track down and root out terrorists.
• 1996-04-09 - Line Item Veto Act (Later declared unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court in Clinton v. City of New York).
• 1996-04-24 - Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act
• 1996-08-20 - Minimum wage Increase Act
• 1996-09-21 - Defense of Marriage Act: Allowed states to refuse recognition of certain same-sex marriages, and defined marriage as between a male and female for purposes of federal law
• 1997-08-05 - Balanced Budget Act of 1997
• 1997-08-05 - State Children's Health Insurance Program
• 1997-08-05 - Taxpayer Relief Act of 1997
• 1996-08-26 - Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act: A welfare reform bill
• 1998-10-28 - Digital Millennium Copyright Act
• 1998-10-31 - Iraq Liberation Act
• 1999-11-12 - Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act: Repealed part of the Glass–Steagall Act of 1933, allowing commercial banks, investment banks, securities firms, and insurance companies to consolidate 

This is as close to OVERWHELMING BI-PARTISAN support as a vote can get in the US Senate. By the way, this “deregulation” of the banking industry is purported to be partially a significant factor in the credit crisis and sub-prime mortgage meltdown that would occur 8 years later. While the Republicans defended the legislation claiming it was not a culprit in the debacle, the Democrats failed to mention they supported the act and neglected to own up to Bill Clinton signing it into law without a veto… rather convenient and remarkably cowardly.
For the record, I would also argue that the Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act neither contributed to the crisis, nor would the Glass–Steagall Act of 1933 prevented or even mitigated the fallout of 2007 crisis. If I were looking for a scapegoat that provides the requisite easily identifiable target, yet retaining the aspect of mind boggling complexity that bamboozles the average voter into taking my word for it, I’d have gone a different route… the Steve Bartman incident always plays well in these scenarios when a good measure of smoke and mirrors is needed to hoodwink John Q. Public just long enough (varies between 15 minutes to 3 weeks) for him to forget there was an issue to be hoodwinked over in the first place.

• 2000-12-21 - Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000 : Deregulated the Derivatives Market

Once again we have OVERWHELMING BI-PARTISAN SUPPORT (Yeas: 292 and Nays: 60) for a bill that had  a REAL effect on the credit crisis and sub-prime mortgage meltdown that would occur 8 years later. Neither party seems to remember their support of this Act, and their certainly not going to remind you of their support either.

Now wait, before you go attacking me as a Republican or a Democrat… I’m not! I don’t support either the Democratic or the Republican parties because support of one is support of the other.
It is far past the time when WE THE PEOPLE need to wake up and see the political matrix construct we are living inside and the answer is not one or either of the major political parties. One is not better, or less worse than the other, that is just an illusion meant to keep you engaged in this…

Is Western Civilization a Handicap?

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To my dismay, I have increasingly chanced upon not only Americans finding fault with the conventional American way of life, but with Western civilization et al. as being to blame for any of the challenges we face as a nation.  There is nothing wrong with western thinking. We have not been doing a hell of a lot of western thinking. Western thought brought us the likes of Peter Abelard, Augustine, Boccaccio, Byron, Caravaggio, Cicero, Dante, Dostoevsky, Galileo, Hobbes, Gericault, Homer, Luther, Machiavelli, Masaccio, Michelangelo, Hayek, Petrarch, Habermas, Raphael, Locke, Rembrandt, Adam Smith, Rousseau, Sophocles, Stendhal, Vermeer, Virgil, and Nozick to name but a miniscule fraction of the brilliant minds produced, nurtured, and influenced by Western culture. Along with the myriad of unnamed original thinkers who produced, nurtured, and influenced Western civilization. The strength of the Western thought is its relative accessibility, when compared to the far more rigid, autocratic, and often esoteric philosophy of the East.

Had we simply applied the time honored Western school of thought, rather than a forensic review, of facts leading up to the current economic malaise in which we find ourselves firmly ensconced, we would find that …  

1. Western thought would have told us that something is wrong with a housing market that is booming for more than a decade without an apparent natural demographic driving it. 
2. Western thought would have told us that something is wrong with interest rates remaining in the low single digits while the economy is booming. 
3. Western thought would have told us that something is wrong with people who have never qualified for even the most lenient of mortgages are suddenly homeowners in upscale neighborhoods. 
4. Western thought would have told us that something is wrong with cooks, gas station attendants, and homemakers who are suddenly movers and shakers in the residential "flip" market. 
5. Western thought would have told us that something is wrong with government insured deposits (FDIC) financing "Low Doc" or "No Doc" mortgages to nearly anyone with the ability to sign their names on a dotted line. 
6. Western thought would have told us that something is wrong with real estate novices buying homes in lucrative neighborhoods for $500,000.00 and selling the same home a few months later for a $50,000 profit. 
7. Western thought would have told us that something is wrongwith a family being able to refinance their new home twice in the first couple of years of ownership and being able to pull out substantial amounts of cash each time. 
8. Western thought would have told us that something is wrong with and nation having a blazing hot economy while; 

a) expelling its manufacturing base into foreign exile, 
b) producing an annual crop of increasingly uneducated citizens, 
c) drowning in public debt mainly due to unprofitable transfer payment schemes, 
d) stripping the economy of capital to grow an expanding multitude of redundant, inefficient, ineffective, and often counterproductive bureaucracies staffed with highly compensated individuals of mediocre acumen. 
e) steadily decimating its entrepreneurial spirit in the private sector by regulation, licensing, taxation, and employment liability. 
 
Western thought would have told us all these things, but as I stated earlier, "We have not been doing a hell of a lot of western thinking." Instead, we have been PROGRESSIVELY (Hint-Hint) adopting ideologies, principles, and tenants foreign to us in the west. In stark contrast to those in the East who have been doing the exact opposite and growing fabulously wealthy using historically western ideologies, principles, and tenants. Western thought is unique in that it is inherently non-elitist.  Wisdom is recognized, documented, and transmitted regardless of the social standing, rank, or pedigree of the individual from which it emanates. 
  
The ongoing and deteriorating state of crisis we in the west are experiencing is not a failure of Capitalism; it is solely due to our failure to be the Rational, Resourceful, Inventive, Adaptable, Intellectual, Optimistic, Innovative, Capitalists that we are…thanks to our unrivalled Western school of thought.

Our Wasted Wealth

 

In the past few years the Obama administration along with a large cadre within the Federal government have  shoveled nearly Three Trillion Dollars (That is $3,000,000,000,000.00) down a rat hole under the guise of “Fiscal Stimulus” without ever stopping to check their Totem.   While the Keynesian sycophants justify this wanton disregard for current and future generations of Americans by claiming that everything would have been much worse without the effort without a scintilla of proof to back up their claim, I say the economic impact is easy for those who can do the math. Follow along with me…

Number of US Taxpayers:	144,000,0001
Average age of US Taxpayer:	34 Years2
Retirement Age:	68 Years3
Average Years to Retirement:	34 Years
Total “Stimulus” Spending:	$3,270,000,000,000.004
Spending Per Taxpayer:	$22,708.335
Average Equity Investment Return:	12%6
Wasted Wealth of Average Taxpayer:	$1,328,925.94

Now with that being said, I understand that there are those who will find some minute bone to pick with my projected rate of returns, or point out that I did not account for taxes or inflation, and these are valid claims which I am not only willing to discuss, but in the interest of full disclosure, I'm pointing them out myself. However these are at best marginal issues when you consider the big picture:

1. I did not add the interest payments which over the same 34 year period will raise the total cost of the already staggering 3.27 Trillion borrowed today to a devastating total of 9 Trillion Dollars.
2. I did not estimate the degraded economic conditions that every American will suffer throughout their lives due to the addition to our already commerce crushing national debt.

 

 

 

References, Citations, and Sources

1. Internal Revenue Service
2. Ibid.
3. Estimated Minimum Social Security retirement age in 2045
4. Heritage Foundation
5. Smartstockmarket.com
6. Assumes a modest monthly investment of $50.00 per month by the retiree