Mega TEA Party

[MulaMan]

Re: Mega TEA Party

Yes the stupidity index was out in full force.

Ron Paul tea party on Nov 5th 2007 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKZmIzEMUN8

http://mysite.verizon.net/nathanielyao/index.html

The entire tea party thing was started by Ron Paul's people during the election and got ZERO press from the media - Ron Paul had grass roots tea parties across the nation and handed out copies of the constitution as a true libertarian would and the concept was completly different then what the right wing is doing today.

Attend one of these events and count the number of evangelical church buses in the parking lot...then put on your thinking cap. LOL.

The idea was hijacked by the right wing nut-cases and spun into a paid-for infomercial. I'll bet they keep trying it right through the next election.

Ron Paul raised millions and also got thousands of people out with ZERO corporate media coverage and no paid for right wing evangelicals bused in.

[metalman]

Re: Mega TEA Party

Yes the stupidity index was out in full force.

It is the neocon republican's attempt at moveon.org, the entire tea party thing was started by Ron Paul's people during the election and got ZERO press from the media - Ron Paul had grass roots tea parties across the nation and handed out copies of the constitution as a true libertarian would.

It was then hijacked by the right wing nut-cases as a good idea and is now a paid-for infomercial. I'll bet they keep trying it right through the next election.

bingo! tea party = right wing moveon.org.

[MulaMan]

Re: Mega TEA Party

I have a number of Russian friends who grew up in the Soviet Union and emigrated to the US in the early 1990s. They are all horrified at how much like the Soviet Union this country has become in the last 15 years-- the media propaganda, the overwhelming size and scope of the Federal government, the "political correctness" that has infiltrated our educational system at all levels, the Patriot Act, etc. etc.

This is VERY true. My parents escaped the U.S.S.R and I grew up with those lessons and I also feel the USA is more like the U.S.S.A each day and American's just don't get it - especially those that think they are "republican" and somehow voting for "conservative" or "free market" ideas..

...it is very hard to grasp how blind and ignorant people can be. Sad actually.

If you are republican and American then the only person you should be voting for is Ron Paul and if you are democrate then vote for Kucinich or someone like that.

[ThePythonicCow]

Re: Mega TEA Party

This is VERY true. My parents escaped the U.S.S.R and I grew up with those lessons and I also feel the USA is more like the U.S.S.A each day and American's just don't get it - especially those that think they are "republican" and somehow voting for "conservative" or "free market" ideas..

...it is very hard to grasp how blind and ignorant people can be. Sad actually.

If you are republican and American then the only person you should be voting for is Ron Paul and if you are democrate then vote for Kucinich or someone like that.

Right on. .

[Mn_Mark]

Re: Mega TEA Party

that's right. leave it to unregulated financial institutions. free market fundamentalists are slow learners with short memories.

Yes, do leave it to unregulated financial institutions, if you're going to set up a strawman argument. (No one is arguing for no regulation.) But at least with an unregulated financial institution I have the choice of not participating, not buying their product. I can do my due diligence. With the government, there is no escape, no option not to pay for it when they decide to bail out the "regulated financial institutions".

I would take a completely unregulated free market 1,000 times over before I'd take a government-run market.

And please note the irony of suggesting that the massive bailouts of the financial institutions of the last year are somehow the fault of the free market! They are 100% the fault of a government which encouraged their recklessness by eliminating moral hazard (a la Fannie and Freddie) and then stepped in with taxpayer money when they predictably failed. The failure of the last years is not a failure of capitalism, it is the failure of a govenment-guaranteed, private-gains-public-losses system. That's not capitalism!

[doom&gloom]

Re: Mega TEA Party

gotta start somewhere...

[hayekvindicated]

Re: Mega TEA Party

i'm sorry, but you apparently do not watch American television or ever attended an American university.

Communist indoctrination is nearly sole purpose of all major propaganda enterprises of the nation.

The public rejection of government run healthcare is simply due to the obvious ineptitude of nearly all government enterprises. Perhaps, if we had a greater sense of civic duty in this nation, things would be different. But they are not.

It is a fallacy to call it "communist indoctrination". It is actually new left Cultural Marxism - the purpose of which is not so much to undermine capitalism but to attack traditional institutions - the family, the majority (hence the endless hectoring on "racism") etc etc.

I have friends who have suffered a LOT in academia. I never understood why they ever went there. I'd never waste one moment of my time in an American or British university. Other than some research in natural sciences, these institutions produce nothing and are a massive financial burden on society and destructive to the country.

[hayekvindicated]

Re: Mega TEA Party

Free market fundamentalists caused this crisis?

Consider the following:

(1)The price of money was controlled by the government and was kept too low for political reasons over long periods of time (this is not controvertible - we all acknowledge the role of easy money in the dotcom and housing bubbles). This is also the iTulip thesis.

(2) the financial institutions at the heart of the crisis were all regulated institutions. If lack of regulation was the problem, then the largest failures would have occured in the unregulated hedge fund world, NOT in the regulated banking world. Actually, the most leveraged institutions were the BANKS! I know of no hedge fund that is leveraged at 85:1 as Deutsche Bank is. So how is more regulation going to solve the problem exactly?

Actually, to all those who want more regulation, have you actually seen the volume of regulation that is currently on the books already? I happen to be a lawyer and am familiar with financial regulation. The total volume of regulation in Britain, for example, has grown exponentially within the last decade. The volume of regulation is now so large that most of the time, in my experience, even the regulators do not know what the regulations are. AND, the result is that this massively increases the cost of compliance with regulations as firms have to hire expensive lawyers to advise them on what they mean. This also has an anti-competitive effect as smaller institutions find the costs of compliance too high relative to their size. Hence, the financial oligopoly reinforces itself. This is what has concentrated power, money and influence in so few hands.

(3) the government through Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, completely distorted the mortgage market - this is an entire subject in itself. Considering the pivotal role these institutions played in the current debacle, I find it amazing that there are still people screaming that the "free market failed". First, there never was a "free market". Fannie and Freddie were massive exercises in social engineering to assuage the consciences of liberals that the lower rates of home ownership among racial minorities (except Asians) could be remedied through these agencies. Hence, lending standards inevitably got relaxed and a disaster ensued. Actually, I am fairly certain that not many on this forum know how large a risk banks started to run in the 1990s for not approving a proportionally equal number of morgage applications for black and hispanic applicants as white applicants. The threat of class action suits was tremendous and was re-inforced by various members of the Clinton Administration.

For generations, America’s bankers have been firmly refusing credit to those they judged unworthy of it. Yet the mountain of toxic subprime debt that has threatened to overwhelm the entire financial system, and the astonishing number of mortgage foreclosures across the United States, is proof that, at some point in the relatively recent past, bankers radically altered their behaviour and began to shower mortgages on borrowers who had no realistic prospect of keeping up their repayments. What could possibly have induced them to act so recklessly, and so out of character? The facile answer to that question is greed, the lure of a fast and easy buck. The correct answer is that banks were bullied, cajoled and coerced into lowering their lending standards by politicians in pursuit of an ideological agenda.


Let’s wind back to 1993 and Roberta Achtenberg’s arrival on the Washington political scene. Achtenberg had made her name in San Francisco as a civil rights lawyer and activist, campaigning to keep open the city’s gay bathhouses, and (I promise I’m not making this up) pressing for an increase in the number of gay Scoutmasters. Bill Clinton offered her a job in his new administration, and Roberta Achtenberg became the first openly lesbian nominee ever to receive a Senate confirmation. She duly took up her post as Assistant Secretary for Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity at the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).


The main thrust of the Clinton housing strategy was to increase home ownership among the poor, and particularly among blacks and Hispanics. White House aides, in familiar West Wing style, could parrot the many social advantages that would accrue: high levels of home ownership correlated with less violent crime, better school performance, a heightened sense of commun-ity. But standing in the way of the realisation of this dream were the conservative lending policies of the banks, which required such inconvenient and old-fashioned things as cash deposits and regular repayments — things the poor and minorities often could not provide. Clinton told the banks to be more creative.

Meanwhile, Ms Achtenberg, a member of the kickass school of public administration, was busy setting up a network of enforcement offices across the country, manned by attorneys and investigators, and primed to spearhead an assault on the mortgage banks, bringing suits against any suspected of practising unlawful discrimination, whether on the basis of race, gender or disability. Achtenberg believed racism was a big factor in keeping minorities from enjoying the same level of home ownership as whites. She doubted if much could be done to change people’s attitudes on racial matters, but she was confident she, in cahoots with Attorney General Janet Reno, could use the law to change the behaviour of banks.

However, when little or no overt or deliberate racial discrimination was discovered among the mortgage lenders, HUD’s investigators turned to trying to prove ‘disparate treatment’ of minority groups, a notion similar to that of unintentional ‘institutional racism’. If a bank refused loans to proportionally more black applicants than white ones, for instance, the onus would fall on it to prove it had good grounds for doing so or face settlement penalties running into millions of dollars.

A series of highly publicised cases were brought on this basis, starting in 1994. Eventually the investigators would turn somewhat desperately to ‘disparate impact’, a form of discrimination so abstract and rarefied as to be imperceptible to its supposed victims, and indeed often only discernible at all through the application of multivariate regression analysis to information stored on regulators’ databases. In fact, by 1995 Achtenberg was actually having to rein in her zealots, issuing a clarification that the use of the phrase ‘master bedroom’ in a property advertisement was, despite its clear patriarchal and slave-owning resonances, not actually an actionable offence under the anti-discrimination laws.

(4) another myth doing the rounds is that this is a problem centric to "Anglo Saxon" capitalism. But note that Deutsche Bank which is regulated in Germany is more leveraged than any US or British bank! And not only that, The European banks have not even begun to recognise their losses.

When will the left face up to its role in the crisis? Im no defender of Republicans - I actually find them indistinguishable from the Democrats. Actually if Bush had a spine, he would have clamped down on this insanity. He actually made it worse. Also see here.

The insanity of the public debate on the issues clearly indicates that none of the participants who were responsible in causing this crisis will actually acknowledge their role or be brought to book. It is a heck of a lot easier looking for scapegoats. "greedy bankers"???? Since when were bankers known for being altruistic angels? Any system that runs on moral condemnation of actions that were encouraged by the government is decrepit and due for a collapse.

The ideal "solution" would be for the government to get completely out of the housing market. Rather than making housing affordable, government actions had the opposite effect - and they are now predicated towards sustaining higher prices. The irony of ironies here are too many to count.

In a just world, the real perpetrators of this debacle would be brought to book. That's not going to happen in the world that we live in.

[Master Shake]

Re: Mega TEA Party

Free market fundamentalists caused this crisis?

Consider the following:

(1)The price of money was controlled by the government and was kept too low for political reasons over long periods of time (this is not controvertible - we all acknowledge the role of easy money in the dotcom and housing bubbles). This is also the iTulip thesis.

(2) the financial institutions at the heart of the crisis were all regulated institutions. If lack of regulation was the problem, then the largest failures would have occured in the unregulated hedge fund world, NOT in the regulated banking world. Actually, the most leveraged institutions were the BANKS! I know of no hedge fund that is leveraged at 85:1 as Deutsche Bank is. So how is more regulation going to solve the problem exactly?

Actually, to all those who want more regulation, have you actually seen the volume of regulation that is currently on the books already? I happen to be a lawyer and am familiar with financial regulation. The total volume of regulation in Britain, for example, has grown exponentially within the last decade. The volume of regulation is now so large that most of the time, in my experience, even the regulators do not know what the regulations are. AND, the result is that this massively increases the cost of compliance with regulations as firms have to hire expensive lawyers to advise them on what they mean. This also has an anti-competitive effect as smaller institutions find the costs of compliance too high relative to their size. Hence, the financial oligopoly reinforces itself. This is what has concentrated power, money and influence in so few hands.

(3) the government through Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, completely distorted the mortgage market - this is an entire subject in itself. Considering the pivotal role these institutions played in the current debacle, I find it amazing that there are still people screaming that the "free market failed". First, there never was a "free market". Fannie and Freddie were massive exercises in social engineering to assuage the consciences of liberals that the lower rates of home ownership among racial minorities (except Asians) could be remedied through these agencies. Hence, lending standards inevitably got relaxed and a disaster ensued. Actually, I am fairly certain that not many on this forum know how large a risk banks started to run in the 1990s for not approving a proportionally equal number of morgage applications for black and hispanic applicants as white applicants. The threat of class action suits was tremendous and was re-inforced by various members of the Clinton Administration.

(4) another myth doing the rounds is that this is a problem centric to "Anglo Saxon" capitalism. But note that Deutsche Bank which is regulated in Germany is more leveraged than any US or British bank! And not only that, The European banks have not even begun to recognise their losses.

When will the left face up to its role in the crisis? Im no defender of Republicans - I actually find them indistinguishable from the Democrats. Actually if Bush had a spine, he would have clamped down on this insanity. He actually made it worse. Also see here.

The insanity of the public debate on the issues clearly indicates that none of the participants who were responsible in causing this crisis will actually acknowledge their role or be brought to book. It is a heck of a lot easier looking for scapegoats. "greedy bankers"???? Since when were bankers known for being altruistic angels? Any system that runs on moral condemnation of actions that were encouraged by the government is decrepit and due for a collapse.

The ideal "solution" would be for the government to get completely out of the housing market. Rather than making housing affordable, government actions had the opposite effect - and they are now predicated towards sustaining higher prices. The irony of ironies here are too many to count.

In a just world, the real perpetrators of this debacle would be brought to book. That's not going to happen in the world that we live in.

[Master Shake]

Re: Mega TEA Party

mega,

the usa right wing is easily well organized & exploited by the oligarchs. they enlist the right to defend the banks' and insurance companies' right to rape them.

'i demand the right to be raped by insurance companies! you cannot take away that right! if you try you are a socialist! or hitler! or something!'

see, mega, that is why we're fucked.

Right, MM. Those stupid phucking rednecks don't know dick. Everyone knows how efficient the government is at running things. How dare those knuckle-dragging morons to suggest otherwise.

[hayekvindicated]

Re: Mega TEA Party

Thanks!

There's more.

Speaking of "Greedy Bankers", what about this guy? Why isn't the left baying for his blood? Oh because he may have committed fraud, cooked the books and awarded himself a massive compensation (despite running the agency into the ground) - but hey, he was one of the "good guys" (i.e. the Left) and pushed the "politically correct agenda". The media and the Left have only one interest: finding the right kind of scapegoats.

Here are some more inconvenient facts.

But at the heart of the problem is Congress and its deeply corrupt relationship with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Congress was equally at the heart of the savings and loan disaster 20 years ago and, obviously, learned nothing from it. (For a history of what led to the savings and loan collapse, see here.)


Fannie and Freddie, two of the largest publicly traded financial institutions on earth, are headquartered in Washington, D.C., where the next-largest non-governmental financial institution is probably a local credit union. Big financial companies are headquartered in New York and other cities where capitalism is practiced. That should tell you a lot about Freddie and Fannie: they were political to their fingertips.


Being “government sponsored entities,” they were able to borrow at lower interest rates than other profit-seeking companies, had less regulation, had lower capital requirements, and had an “implied” guarantee on their huge debts. This was supposed to translate into more money available for mortgages, but was used instead to roll up big profits and, not so incidentally, big bonuses for their top management — which came not from the financial world but from the political one.

Franklin Raines, Fannie C.E.O. from 1999 to 2004, had been budget director in the Clinton White House. He cooked the books at Fannie to increase his compensation (more than $50 million). Jamie Gorelick, vice C.E.O., was number two at the Clinton Justice Department before going to Fannie Mae. She made $26 million. Jim Johnson, a perennial Washington big-foot, was chairman from 1991 to 1998. He too, according to an official government report, cooked the books to increase his compensation and failed to publicly reveal how much he received.

The Wall Street Journal editorial page has been giving chapter and verse for years on why this was a disaster waiting to happen (Pulitzer Prize judges, please note). The Bush administration tried way back in 2003 to change the system. It got nowhere. Alan Greenspan, then the chairman of the Federal Reserve, frequently noted the danger of Fannie and Freddie’s weak capitalization. He was ignored. Congressman Mike Oxley, then chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, introduced a bill in 2005 to correct the situation. Lobbyists from Fannie and Freddie succeeded in gutting it to the point that Rep. Oxley pulled the bill.


Why were Fannie and Freddie so successful at maintaining the status quo? Check it out.


Senator Chris Dodd — formerly ranking member and now chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, with oversight over Freddie and Fannie — recently said on Bloomberg Television: “I have a lot of questions about where was the administration over the last eight years.”


Excuse me? Just where the hell were you, Senator? Oh, right. You were standing in line at the bank in order to deposit the political contributions Fannie and Freddie were lavishing upon you. At least they got their money’s worth — until the party ended and the American people got the bill.

Members of Congress — aided and abetted by their many waterbearers in the media — wonder why their collective approval rating is about on par with colon cancer’s. The reason is simple enough: Congress is the sick man of Washington; a textbook example of the truism that institutions tend to evolve in ways that benefit their elites, at the expense of the people they were created to serve.

Why aren't all these people in prison? Jeff Skilling is cooling his heels behind bars for having done a lot less damage!

[WDCRob]

Re: Mega TEA Party

Why aren't all these people in prison? Jeff Skilling is cooling his heels behind bars for having done a lot less damage!

Amen - it's obscene.

[hayekvindicated]

Re: Mega TEA Party

An old story from the 1950s from Nikita Kruschev's visit to America.

The discussion starts with the Russian wanting to enquire how America's political system works.

“In America, We have a two-party system," a Republican congressional staffer is supposed to have told a visiting group of Russian legislators.

"There is the stupid party. And there is the evil party. I am proud to be a member of the stupid party."

He added: "Periodically, the two parties get together and do something that is both stupid and evil. This is called—bipartisanship." :eek:

[Master Shake]

Re: Mega TEA Party

An old story from the 1950s from Nikita Kruschev's visit to America.

The discussion starts with the Russian wanting to enquire how America's political system works.

“In America, We have a two-party system," a Republican congressional staffer is supposed to have told a visiting group of Russian legislators.

"There is the stupid party. And there is the evil party. I am proud to be a member of the stupid party."

He added: "Periodically, the two parties get together and do something that is both stupid and evil. This is called—bipartisanship." :eek:

I believe it was the conservative columnist Sam Francis who bestowed the Stupid Party and Evil Party labels on the Pubs and Dems, respectively, sometime in the early 90's.

[samgold]

Re: Mega TEA Party

Great discussion here.

My humble opinion.

The TEA parties show that there is a lot of frustration among those like me who believe the "majority" will make enough noise to make the right things happen, and that there is a check and balance. It is not happening now. I personally dont want my taxes to keep going up to benefit all kinds of people who refuse to contribute.

Lately I have begun to realize that Democrats love to play with other peoples money (while making sure they themselves are covered and continue making more and more money).

I have seen a pattern where every politician started out poor and humble, and (for eg. Biden) ends up a multi millionaire, with all kinds of people paying for their daily needs and some more. In that area, I have also noticed that the Republican politicians generally have had their own money before they began, and in that sense less less likely to take advantage.

I have seen a pattern of more and more entitlements, with little responsibility. If my company shuts down, I lose my job and have to find another one. If I was part of a big union, then I would get paid regardless, and I would get retraining (now its is being put in the Cap and Trade Bill) and I get taken care of - as long as I vote for the right person.

The insurance reform is another area of contention. Both sides have a point. The real point being - find a way to take care of people with pre existing conditions, find a way to help poor people get health care, especially the ones who are on govt subsidized housing, use food stamps etc. I do believe that if the govt took care of those problem areas (by perhaps offering another subsidy, or outright paying insurance for those that are in trouble or dont want to work) we could continue without too much change. Open up the archaic laws to allow more competition between insurance comapnies and premiums would come down. Limit mal practice liability, and the premiums would come down as doctors start practicing less defensive medicine. If I go to a doctor and say I have no insurance and would like to pay on my own (and I have done that as a test) my fee has been $50. The amount they charged insurance - $150. Why? because the billing company had to be paid, because it takes so long to get reimbursed, because there is risk in getting reimbursed etc. If we "fix" insurance, I believe the whole industry will change, and there will be a lot more private sector unemployment and a lot more govt employment - with the associated perks.

By the way - most of the uninsured who everone is trying to help - the poor who are on food stamps etc. dont even know that this debate is going on. If they have a problem they go to the emergency room and they are fine with that. Truly. I have asked a few random people for their opinions at supermarket checkouts when they flash their food stamp card. They are more concerned about the next baseball game, the next party, and just ordinary things.

I am frustrated at the moment, and considering DOING something to promote what I believe - for the first time.

To me this means that frustration with what is going on has reached an unprecedented level compared to times before.

And that is what you see in the TEA parties, million man marches etc.

Sam