(old found draft post) Hands off my 401k

Oct 25, 2008 @ 8:35

This must have been inspired by some Obama advisers who wanted to get rid of 401ks. Their plan was to force the same contributions and give Americans something like a 2% return off it. This would have effectively decreased the wealth of Americans as more money would need to be saved for retirement (out side of the government plan) and this savings would have no tax favoured status. I haven’t heard anything about this recently though, so that is good news.

—

http://hotair.com/archives/2008/10/23/democrats-to-kill-401ks-for-privatized-social-security/

http://hotair.com/archives/2008/10/23/pethokoukis-on-401k-demolition-socialism/

Karl Rove on Joe Biden: “I think he has an odd combination of longevity and long-windedness that passes for wisdom in Washington”

Heh!

Thanks to PowerLineBlog for catching this!

LOL!

…and the Bad News: Did the delay of USGOV’s TARP reversal cost McCain the Election? [On the Bailout, Part 26]

There is also bad news to go with the good news:

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said Wednesday that original plan to purchase distressed mortgage assets from Wall Street firms is not the best use of the $700 billion financial rescue package, and officials will now focus on direct capital injections into the struggling financial firms.

Me and other like minded people reacted angrily when the USGOV (Dems and Repubs) passed the Bailout aka TARP. I was really pissed off.

I wonder…how many fiscal conservatives chose not vote disgusted with both sides over the disgraceful bailout? Those votes would have mostly gone to McCain. That might have been enough.

This is reminiscent of Bush firing the SecDef after the election after he stating he wouldn’t…which cost the Repubs votes in 2006.

“Obama Leans Toward Asking Gates To Remain at Pentagon for a Year”

This is good news…and a good signal that Obama may not be the governing Leftist I feared he would be.

“Harmless asexual beings not worthy of a single thought of modesty”

I think I connected the dots of who in the McCain staff has been making the cowardly anti-Palin smears.

Follow my logic which began at TDAXP’s blog….

First from Newsweek:

At the GOP convention in St. Paul, Palin was completely unfazed by the boys’ club fraternity she had just joined. One night, Steve Schmidt and Mark Salter went to her hotel room to brief her. After a minute, Palin sailed into the room wearing nothing but a towel, with another on her wet hair. She told them to chat with her laconic husband, Todd. “I’ll be just a minute,” she said.

Then it occurred to me…

One more thing on Steve Schmidt and Mark Salter …how much did it suck to be them when they realized that Gov. Palin considered them harmless asexual beings not worthy of a single thought of modesty?

Then the light bulb went off:

Hey, I just think I just figured out who might be the anonymous McCain staffers that are that are trashing Gov Palin to the media.

My guess: the harmless (and now recently angry) asexual duo of Steve Schmidt and Mark Salter!

Case closed.

America hasn’t seen the last of her

It’s Obama

Dang.

USA is in for some tough times. I hope it all turns out better then I think it will.

I voted around 4:30pm…

…and the line was pretty short.

USA Election 2008: I am voting For John McCain and Sarah Palin

I am voting for Senator McCain and Governor Palin.

Election 2008 will be the 7th presidential general election in which I have voted.

In hindsight, I have only regretted my previous votes twice.

The first time was in 1984 when I voted for Walter Mondale instead of Reagan. I was young and liberal from a democratic family attending a liberal/leftist university. I was with Reagan on National Security, but I couldn’t bring myself to vote for him after seeing him confused and befuddled in the first debate.

The second time was when I voted for Al Gore in 2000. I didn’t really like George W. Bush and besides things had gone okay in the moderate Clinton/Gore eight years (tempered by a Republican congress). In the aftermath of Election Day 2000, the dishonorable and dishonest Gore reaction to the vote and his post-election leftist shift made me regret voting for him. On 9/11/2001, I was glad Bush, not Gore, was president.

I don’t think I will regret my choice of McCain/Palin.

You can read a summary of what I believe here. In short it is something like: Strong on National Security, Pro-Entrepreneurial Capitalism, against big government central planners, for domestic lifestyle tolerance – especially in private, for free trade, against global governance…anyways, you get the idea.

The McCain/Palin ticket is the best fit to my policy views.

The US President must be a leader and be able to react to unexpected events. I believe McCain’s record speaks for itself. His years of service to my country and his leadership role on national issues, including and especially National Security issues like Iraq War policy and the “surge”, give me comfort that when the chips are down and an unexpected crisis emerges that he is the right choice to be President.

I have no illusions that an US President is demigod or can be a messiah. I do not expect McCain to be flawless or that I will always agree with what directions his administration will take. I believe I know enough about him to have positive comfort in future actions he might take.

In contrast, Senator Obama, the Democrat candidate, gives me no comfort.

Obama is an unknown with no experience. He has never run anything. His past is largely detail-free  (partially thanks to an uninterested national media, partially due to his own careful actions). He has shown no leadership in Congress on any issue. He has spent a majority of his short time in congress just running for President. Obama’s views on important issue are the opposite of mine: He urges a sort of soft surrender in Iraq (even now as victory is at hand) and is suggesting a sort of “hugs for thugs and terrorists” style foreign policy. His supporters suggest a 25% reduction in National Security spending, while at the same time Obama suggests he will build a separate “civilian” security force that will be as strong (and well funded) as the armed forces (whatever that means). His global tax idea sounds nuts. Economically, he holds typical leftists views against profit, entrepreneurial activity and commerce. An Obama administration promises to increase USGOV regulatory interference in the economy, reduce commitments to free trade (and therefore forgo the gains from trade), and reduce incentives for entrepreneurs through higher taxes and possibly other socialist minded redistribution efforts. At a time our economy is having problems, Obama’s prescription will make things worse. I expect budget pork to increase as well.

The above is just what is known. Much of what a president does is in reaction to unexpected circumstances. In this, I am gravely concerned about an Obama presidency. It is not just that he has no leadership or executive experience. It not just that when faced with the unexpected Sarah Palin nomination that his campaign freaked out and went on tilt (BTW, Obama better not expect the global media to go after the US’s adversaries like the MSM did against Palin to buy him time). It is not just the Obama cult stuff. I am very troubled by his past and current associations with Marxists/Leftists like former Weathermen, the New Party, ACORN, Reverend Wright and trinity church, his mother, father, family friends, etc. I don’t believe I know the full extent of Obama’s Marxist associations. He hasn’t been forthcoming about them and the media hasn’t been to interested in finding out. The tendency of his campaign to suggest opponents are racists along with other dissent crushing techniques are another signal to me of its leftists roots. Given the misery and waste caused by Marxism in all it forms over the last 100 years and the continuing assault waged by Marxists against democratic capitalism, I do not want as USA President someone who has absorbed many of those views and beliefs to an extent that can not be explained away.

I am voting for Senator McCain and Governor Palin. I urge you to do so as well.

Election 2008 Blowback on wasted Uranium/Iraq related Influence Warfare opportunity

It occurs to me, that wasted (not-taken) Influence Warfare Opportunity that I just blogged about greatly improved the chances of Senator Obama being elected.

With the facts ignored/hidden, Obama can continue to make his claims on the Iraq war. So, he was wrong on the Surge, and he was wrong about the WMDs-as-fake-justification for the Iraq war.

So not only has USGOV freedom-of-action been reduced, not only has trust among current and potential partners been harmed, this wasted Influence Warfare opportunity may lead a Leftist US President (and all the harm that will come to the US with that).

What a clusterflop.

“He is a unifying force between Democrats, Greens, Socialists and Communists”

The press should be doing this, but since they seem to be in the tank for Obama or more concerned with taking down Joe the Plumber, it has fallen on bloggers to research his past.

Obama claims he has no connection of any substance.

Things like this are red flags: “Ayers, Obama, and Klonsky, the former head of the American Communist Party, all maintained offices on the same floor of the same building in Chicago for three years“

Iraq Now writes:

I have become convinced: Obama’s roots and sympathies are with the far, far left. He’s not a uniter. He’s a manchurian candidate for the radicals. There is no other explanation for his long and close association with the vilest jackals in American politics. He’s not a unifying force between Democrats and Republicans, and is intellectually incapable of being one. He is a unifying force between Democrats, Greens, Socialists and Communists.

I am leaning that way myself:

Ayres and his ilk haven’t given up on a Communist takeover of the USA. They have just switched from a Guerrilla/4GW approach to an Institutional/Infiltration (5GW) approach.

For the election 2008, the questions are: Is Obama an active 5GWer, just a 5GW Prawn, or its this all coincidental?

There are to many connection, to many links. Instead of be forthcoming (something like “I was young and ambitious and I needed to use them in Chicago Politics”). Instead it is deny it. Cover it up (deleting web evidence). Use the leftist tactic of calling those pointing this out Racists.

“William Ayers’ forgotten communist manifesto: Prairie Fire”

Here is the link.

You can buy it on Amazon.com.

The Weatherman: “they estimated that they’d have to eliminate 25 million people in these re‑education centers…”

Read about it here at Dr. Sanity.

Some “fun” parts:

Most of the people that had no prior experience, let’s say the average Weatherman, if there is such a thing, they were sent to Cuba for training in Cuba.
[…]
Grathwohl: I brought up the subject of what’s going to happen after we take over the government. You know, we become responsible for administrating, you know, 250 million people. And there was no answer. No one had given any thought to economics. How are you going to clothe and feed these people? The only thing that I could get was that they expected that the Cubans, the North Vietnamese, the Chinese and the Russians would all want to occupy different portions of the United States. They also believed that their immediate responsibility would be to protect against what they called the counter-revolution. And they felt that this counter-revolution could best be guarded against by creating and establishing re-education in the Southwest where we would take all of the people who needed to be re‑educated into the new way of thinking and teach them how things were going to be. I asked, “Well, what is going to happen to those people that we can’t re‑educate, that are die-hard capitalists?” And the reply was that they’d have to be eliminated and when I pursued this further, they estimated that they’d have to eliminate 25 million people in these re‑education centers. And when I say eliminate, I mean kill 25 million people. I want you to imagine sitting in a room with 25 people, most of whom have graduate degrees from Columbia and other well-known educational centers and hear them figuring out the logistics for the elimination of 25 million people and they were dead serious.

Ayres and his ilk haven’t given up on a Communist takeover of the USA. They have just switched from a Guerrilla/4GW approach to an Institutional/Infiltration (5GW) approach.

For the election 2008, the questions are: Is Obama an active 5GWer, just a 5GW Prawn, or its this all coincidental?

Notes: Last Week’s Debate

I never got around to posting my notes, but I ended putting them in a comment at ZenPundit:

I didn’t learn anything new about the candidates.

I thought asking the question about their own VP’s was a waste of time?

Questions I would like to have seen:

1) What would be, for your X administration, the US Global Policy Grand Strategy Policy?

2) What would be your process of carrying out national security decision making and operations?

3) Explain what you see as the American dream?

4) What is your immigration policy?

5) Mexico is falling into a Narco-Civil War. What will you administration do?

6) What do see as the role of Government in markets?

7) What will your administration do to increase entrepreneurial activity?

8 ) Should Cartman fight Wendy (I switched channels to South Park for a moment)?

I liked the Al Smith thing from a few nights later better.

On The Bailout aka The Panic of 08 , Part 18: McCain Ideas

Here are some of his new ideas:

In an effort to seize the initiative in tackling the nation’s financial troubles, John McCain on Tuesday outlined a $52.5-billion package of new tax breaks that he said would stimulate the economy and ease the money problems of many Americans.

Details?

…said he would lower the tax rate on their withdrawals from retirement accounts to 10% this year and next.

This is a short term kludge. It does nothing to address short-term credit or long-term growth. It might get him senior citizen votes.

…proposed cutting the capital gains tax in half for two years…

How does this address short-term credit or long-term growth? Lower taxes = good. Lower capital gains tax will help investors long term. But…there is not going to be much in the way to capital gains to tax anyways.

…suspending taxes on unemployment benefits for workers making less than $100,000…

What a joke. If you are unemployed your taxes are small on that. You don’t need to pay until you file that next April.

…ordering the Treasury Department to guarantee 100% of Americans’ savings for six months to calm fears of bank failures.

How about just raising the FDIC limit? No need to involve TreasuryDept.

“If I am elected president, I will help to create jobs for Americans in the most effective way a president can do this — with tax cuts that are directed specifically to create jobs and to protect your life savings,”

At best, these proposals can be characterized as mostly harmless.

The president has limited ability to create jobs (non-USGOV jobs anyways). You can’t focus or aim job creation. It is easier for a President to destroy jobs.

The best the president can do is reduce USGOV interference and distortions, keep the negative-feedback loop of the economy in sync and promote pro-entrepreneurial public policy.

The new slate of proposals is an addendum to the Arizona senator’s already expansive tax-cutting plans and his call to use $300 billion of the $700-billion rescue package to buy up bad mortgages and reset them with more favorable terms.

The above is a terrible idea.

Gov Palin: Love her or hate her – this link is fun!

Have fun exploring! (SFW)

How will Sen. Obama’s “Hugs for Islamofascist” approach to foreign policy work with Iran? Well, he has to meet with them first…

…and while he will meet with them without preconditions, LGF posts on the possible pre-conditions be floated by Iran:

In an exclusive interview with the Islamic Republic News Agency, he said as long as U.S. forces have not left the Middle East region and continues its support for the Zionist regime, talks between Iran and U.S. is off the agenda.

Well, I guess Team Obama can still hope the ruling Mullahs and their servants change their mind and accept the embrace of the The One.

A “Community Organizer” Visited my Parent’s House on Saturday

I happened to be over. I did not go to the door. My mom and a PurpleSister did.

First, the “Community Organizer” said she was from a non-partisan group – but I couldn’t make out the name (I was in another room).

Then the “Community Organizer” says she was just taking a poll of two questions: “what’s the number one issue for you in the election” and “who are you going to vote for”.

Then the the non-partisan organizer said that her organization had endorsed Sen. Obama.

I don’t she think she knows what non-partisan means.

Nuts.

Nobody discusses politics at my workplace…but they were talking about Ayers today.

It surprised me.

“Sen. Obama is a classic liberal…”

WTF?

I don’t think they know what “Classical Liberal” means.

That is another signal that the default public discourse PoV has become leftists.

Not A leftist. Not a Marxist. Not a Socialist. Not a Progressive.
Not a member of The New Party.

FYI This is not video of Purpleslog in Wisconsin, but I share the Sentiment

Found via HotAir:

Wow: “Who Wrote Dreams From My Father?”

Jack Cashill writes in the American Thinker on the subject:

In short, Ayers had the means, the motive, the time, the place and the literary ability to jumpstart Obama’s career. And, as Ayers had to know, a lovely memoir under Obama’s belt made for a much better resume than an unfulfilled contract over his head.

Read it all.

This is big-time damaging to Senaor Obama if it can be proven.

So, maybe he is hiding/downplaying his Ayres connection because:

1) He doesn’t want people to realize his autobio was Ghostwritten
1) He doesn’t want people to realize who the Ghost writer is
2) He doesn’t want people to realize who the Ghost writer is and what that means about his views
3) He doesn’t want people to realize who the Ghost writer is who the leftist 5GW PuppetMaster is
4) He doesn’t __________________________________________________

Other related posts:

“What do they know about Obama that we don’t?”

“Bill Ayres, Domestic Terrorist, Leftists 5GWer, Obama Mentor, and…”

“They presented themselves not as socialists, but as left-leaning and progressive”

I like Ann Althouse’s blog It is one of the first blog I read. I liked the connection to Wisconsin and Madison and especially the photos of my old campus.

But this is silly:

In any case, I don’t think it’s right to call the New Party “socialist.” I remember this party. One of the founders was UW lawprof Joel Rogers. They presented themselves not as socialists, but as left-leaning and progressive. I realize that for right wingers that counts as “socialist,” but let’s not be inflammatory.

In Milwaukee, the party was filled with people from various Marxists parties and the Socialist Party USA. Basically, they wanted to have more of an impact then the Marxist and Socialist. Hence the “New”.

Her readers call her out on it in the comments:

Unfair only if one changes what the word socialist means.
[…]
I don’t see what that article does other than confirm that the New Party was, in fact, socialist. They want socialism, but the founder’s defense against being called socialist is that they don’t give the state as much weight as socialists. You can’t enact all of that progressive garbage without the force of the state, so his defense is an empty one.
[…]
“international workers right” come on Ann. Especially you should see through the lingo here.
[…]
What are the policy and social positions that -Socialists- have that Progressives and The New Party don’t?
[…]
A progressive tax system based on the ability to pay. “

From each according to their means.

“A Bill of Rights for America’s Children, guaranteeing true equality of opportunity by providing equal access to comparable education, health care, nutrition, housing, and safety…. Full employment, a shorter work week, and a guaranteed minimum income for all adults; a universal “social wage” to include such basic benefits as health care, child care, vacation time, and lifelong access to education and training; a systematic phase-in of comparable worth and like programs to ensure gender equity.”

To each according to their needs.

“The New Party believes that the social, economic, and political progress of the United States requires a democratic revolution in America — the return of power to the people. Our basic purpose — reflected both in our own governance and in our aspirations for the nation — is to make that revolution happen.”

Viva la revolucion!
[…]
In fact, I think the only way that would be more accurate to describe the New Party than socialist would be to call them Marxist.
[…]
I’ve researched the NP, and I believe it to be entirely fair to describe them as socialist at best. The Chicago chapter, in particular, was a hotbed of outright communists, the type of people for whom “socialist” was a conservative tag.
[…]
At the very least, Obama does not hold capitalist views or ideals.

And so on.

Update: The Powerline blog has recovered scrubbed early web pages where the New Party claims him from 1996.

Anti-Americans

On “The Bailout”, Part 15: Wisconsin Congressman Ryan – “vote for bailout went against his principles”

So says this Link in the Milwaukee Journal.

I think Representative Ryan doesn’t understand what “principles” means.

He had a chance to signal his what his principles are. He signaled something else:

“This bill offends my principles,” the Janesville Republican said in an impassioned speech Sept. 29, before Congress’ first attempt to pass the measure. “But I am going to vote for this bill in order to preserve my principles, in order to preserve this free-enterprise system.”

What poppycock. What doublespeak. Did Ryan offer any alternatives? No. Did he even see other alternatives? No mention is made in the article.

“Obviously, I don’t like this. What’s disturbing about these bailouts is the moral hazard it produces.”

Not obviously, Congressman. Votes matter, not words. You voted for it.

Ryan says he hasn’t lost his zeal for the free-market system and, despite the losses in the stock market, …

Blah blah blah. You had your chance Rep Ryan. Go fuck your rhetoric. When the chips were down, you voted on the wrong side. You had a chance to express your “zeal”.

Not all congressmen were confused on what to do:

“How can we have capitalism on the way up and socialism on the way down?” said House Republican Study Committee Chairman Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas), who opposed the plan. “If we lose our ability to fail, will we not soon lose our ability to succeed?”

Quite right and good on you.

Note: Ryan is one of the professional congressman. He really hasn’t done anything else in his adult life but be a congressman. The US has enough of those types in congress. Throw him and the others like him out.

Lastly:

Daniel Mitchell, a supply-side tax policy expert at the right-leaning Cato Institute, takes issue with any conservative who voted for the package.

“They can call themselves conservative all they want, but when push came to shove, they grabbed $700 billion from taxpayers and gave it to the fat cats on Wall Street,” he said. “It’s hard to say any of that is fiscally responsible.”

Its not. Ryan’s actions define him, not his words.

Note the ironic words on the background

Debate Notes – 8 Oct 2008

I don’t think the debate will have swayed many people.

What I didn’t hear that I wanted to hear:

– A ringing endorsement of Democratic Capitalism / Entrepreneurial Capitalism

– A scathing denouncement of socialism, regulatory nonsense and political rent-seeking

– Obama, when asked directly, denouncing earmarks (instead of avoiding the question)

– McCain saying “My Friends” only 3 or 4 times

– The word “Entrepreneur”

– The word “Victory“

– A call for radical simplified tax reform

– A denouncement of the bailout and a call for other options.

– A “no” to the Russia question

– A “yes” to the Israel question

– “I denounce, Acorn, Bill Aryes,and my Leftist/Marxists past“

On “The Bailout”, Part 14: Lessons from Great Depression including Amity’s Shales The Forgotten Man

While the elites-politicians bumrushing Americans to socialize more of the financial system using fear of a great financial catastrophe to push aside dissent and common sense, it is a good idea to revisit the lessons of the Great Depression with a clear head (not a leftists romantic memory).

Amity Shales has done a great service to Americans with her book The Forgotten Man. Especially important is the point that at the economic recovery hampered by unpredictable actions by USGOV that signaled uncertainty to investors freezing them somewhat place. Anyways, read the book (and her columns), its worth your time.

Also note from this link:

“Why the Great Depression lasted so long has always been a great mystery, and because we never really knew the reason, we have always worried whether we would have another 10- to 15-year economic slump,” said Ohanian, vice chair of UCLA’s Department of Economics. “We found that a relapse isn’t likely unless lawmakers gum up a recovery with ill-conceived stimulus policies.”

In an article in the August issue of the Journal of Political Economy, Ohanian and Cole blame specific anti-competition and pro-labor measures that Roosevelt promoted and signed into law June 16, 1933.

“President Roosevelt believed that excessive competition was responsible for the Depression by reducing prices and wages, and by extension reducing employment and demand for goods and services,” said Cole, also a UCLA professor of economics. “So he came up with a recovery package that would be unimaginable today, allowing businesses in every industry to collude without the threat of antitrust prosecution and workers to demand salaries about 25 percent above where they ought to have been, given market forces. The economy was poised for a beautiful recovery, but that recovery was stalled by these misguided policies.”

While Roosevelt was the greatest wartime President the USA ever had, the legacy leftist romantic vision of New Deal Socialism still hurts the USA today.

Purpleslog says: “No we don’t. Unless you mean as a model for a War
President. I don’t think that is the FDR the Left is calling for.”