Dems Dissing Democracy

More entries for the Annals of Inanities:

Well, if you people would just stop voting for Republicans we wouldn't have to do this -- 
North Carolina Democrat governor Bev Perdue proposes to "suspend" Congressional elections until Congress improves the economy (link).  She was serious in tone and doesn't appear to have been joking (link).  The prospect of significant Republican gains in those elections has nothing, nothing to do with her thinking.  Meanwhile, "more criminal charges are expected in the investigation of Gov. Beverly Perdue’s campaign finances" (link).  Perhaps she's running a distraction campaign.

Since those damn Republicans won't go along with our plans, this country really needs "less democracy" and lots of "automatic policies" --  
Former Obama budget director Peter Orzag writes (link) that "To solve the serious problems facing our country, we need to minimize the harm from legislative inertia by relying more on automatic policies and depoliticized commissions for certain policy decisions. In other words, radical as it sounds, we need to counter the gridlock of our political institutions by making them a bit less democratic."  That's right, we need to rely more on "depoliticized commissions" and "automatic policies" because those benighted voters keep electing Republican politicians who won't go along with our plans.  I'm betting he's not thinking of George Bush, Dick Cheney, Sarah Palin, or Rush Limbaugh for those "depoliticized commissions".  Just a guess.  Perhaps he's been talking to NY Times columnist Tom Friedman, who on occasion writes longingly of communist China's ability to get things done without all those distasteful disagreements and roadblocks that come with all this voting and democracy stuff.  Actually, no doubt many Democrat elites feel the way Orzag and Friedman do.  Remember "What's the Matter With Kansas?" -- the false consciousness theory is alive and well.

At least that's not how our system works right now, but we're not through yet --
"The idea of doing things on my own is very tempting. I promise you, not just on immigration reform. But that's not how our system works. That's not how our democracy functions. That's not how our Constitution is written," Obama said at the National Council of La Raza's annual conference. (link)

Addendum (10/14/11)
Constitutional limits are for Republicans --
'Illinois Democratic Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr., ... said that congressional opposition to the American Jobs Act is akin to the Confederate “states in rebellion” .... and said that Obama should “declare a national emergency” and take “extra-constitutional” action “administratively” — without the approval of Congress — to tackle unemployment.' (link)

John M Greco

New Look for the Old Colony

Chicago’s Old Colony building is looking better than it has in perhaps almost a century after a cleanup that has washed away layers of build-up soot.  It’s one of my favorites, for its curved corners, interesting design, and appealing height, and I was delighted the other day to see it cleared of scaffolding and looking bright and clean.   

Completed in 1894 by Holabird and Roche, the slender early skyscraper has a classic Chicago tripartite structure, with a distinguishable base, a plain midsection, and a defined top section, which here includes a colonnade and a projecting cornice.  The most striking and unusual feature is its curved corners, and one can also see the “Chicago windows”, characterized by a large fixed pane of glass flanked on either side by narrower windows with sliding sashes that can be raised.  The Old Colony sits at southeast corner of Van Buren and Dearborn streets in the south Loop, and forms with the Fisher, Plymouth, and Manhattan an interesting row of old, preserved classic Chicago skyscrapers running between Dearborn and Plymouth streets.

Judith Paine McBrien, in her Pocket Guide to Chicago Architecture, says that the Old Colony was “built on speculation by Boston lawyer Francis Bartlett” and was “named for the first English colony in America….  The building was a successful venture, offering 600 offices that were occupied by railroad, printing, and lumber interests who sought space here in the thriving printing center of the Midwest.”  

Ira Bach says, in his Chicago’s Famous Buildings, that “the Old Colony is the last remaining Chicago downtown building with rounded projecting corner bays, a device often employed … to create highly desirable corner spaces on the interior and an interesting silhouette on the exterior…. [Also,] It was the first structure to employ a system of portal arches to brace it against wind loads, an innovative solution to a basic problem of tall skeleton-framed buildings.”  In Chicago on Foot, authors Bach and Wolfson tell us that the building has 17 stories, ... the first four [of which] are of light-blue Bedford stone [while] the upper part pressed brick and white terra cotta.”

Finis Farr in Chicago says that “the design as a whole gave an impression of dignity and power.”  Agreed.  Kudos on the rehab. 

The photo is taken from the west side of Dearborn street, northwest of the Old Colony; part of the Fisher Building is visible on the left, and the Chicago El tracks run on Van Buren Street between the two buildings.  The postcard is postmarked November 1907 to a Miss Underwood in Dayton, Ohio.  Click on an image to enlarge.  A brief Wikipedia article is here. 

R Balsamo

Annals of Inanities - Sept 20, 2011

>  Eric Holder, Obama's disastrous (link), dangerous (e.g., the Fast and Furious/Gunwalker scandal - link), and reverse-racism-obsessed Attorney General, said the other day (link) that the Obama crew still really, really, really does intend to close the Gitmo terrorist detention camp.  That "fierce moral urgency" to closing Gitmo seems to have left him sometime in early November, 2008.
  
>  Obama's rampant sexism in the way he's treated his White House staff (link; link) -- doesn't count since he's a Democrat.

>  Obama blows over half a billion dollars of taxpayer money by giving it to a company, Solyndra, run by a big money man of his, despite a mound of evidence that the company was failing and despite internal warnings by members of his own team (link) -- doesn't count since he's a Democrat.  Meanwhile, former Obama assistant at the time Rahm E's memory has failed on this one (link).

>  Obama's urgent, urgent, urgent jobs plan, that he had announced in August that he would deliver in a September speech whenever he returned from vacation, now won't be put forward by Congressional Democrats for another month at least because they have other things to do (link) -- doesn't count since they're all Democrats.   

>  The Obama stimulus gave almost $800 thousand dollars to the "National Science Foundation" to spend on ....... "interpretive dance" (link).  And now comes Obama to demand those remaining Americans not under his Rasputin-like spell join his acolytes in passing his half-billion dollar Son of Stimulus plan.  Fat chance. 

John M Greco

The Federal Reserve Continues Its Redistributionist War on Savers

Today the United States Federal Reserve, according to the Wall Street Journal (link), "signaled it plans to keep its benchmark short-term interest rate close to zero for at least another two years as it sharply downgraded its view of the U.S. economy."

Who continues to benefit from this ultra-low interest rate environment?  Bankers, big net Obama contributors in 2008, who can continue to borrow at near-zero rates and lend at 5-6% or better.  As Larry Kudlow is wont to say on his CNBC show, "even a banker can make money this way." 

Whom does this hurt?  Savers.  Retirees on fixed income who live off the interest on their lifelong savings.  Their dollars are earning a pittance.  But I don't expect AARP, the American Association of Retired Persons, to protest, since it has long ago betrayed its ostensible constituents and gotten into bed with Obama and the Democrats to protect its real source of income that supports all those AARP administrative jobs -- selling insurance to seniors, now protected if not well-advantaged by its connection with Obama and the Democrats.  That is, at least for now, while Obama is in.  This may change. 

Who also benefits?  The US federal government, which at the present politically means Obama, which pays lower interest rates on its debt.

Continued ultra-low interest rates is a hidden, sneaky redistributionist tax on wealth – a tax on those who saved all their lives who now get little interest, now accompanied by the inflation which is how the federal government will resolve its big debt.  Both benefit not savers but debtors -- Obama's and his acolytes' core constituency.

John M Greco

The Obama/Democrat Spending Binge Comes Home to Roost

Markets are in turmoil in response to Standard & Poor's slight downgrading of American debt.  For over two years now the Democrat Party has gone on a national spending binge, with borrowed money, unprecedented in peacetime American history, most notably in the gargantuan special "stimulus", the bloated annual spending plans, and Obamacare.  Republicans, after going along, begrudgingly and with occasional moderate resistance, with Democrat spending for a generation, finally said enough, voted in vain almost to a person against this Democrat spending, and have refused to agree to raising taxes to feed the bloated government beast.  In response, elected Democrats, Senators representing all the citizens of their states, are throwing a tantrum -- calling those who disagree with them names like "terrorists" (link), and trying to silence them (link).  Typical fascist tactics from not very nice people.

Kurt Schlichter (link):  "The liberal dream of a perpetual social welfare state... is dying. There’s no doubt about that; the only question left is how long and hard the process will be as the hideous leviathan the utopian liberal establishment has created convulses and dies. It’s going to die hard. And ugly."

To paraphrase Margaret Thatcher, American liberalism has just run out of other people's money.

John M Greco 

Not To Miss -- Why We're Headed Back into Recession -- Victor Davis Hanson Explains It All

The inimitable Victor Davis Hanson at The Corner at National Review Online explains it all to us on how Barack Obama is bringing on another recession: How to Turn a Recovery into Another Recession.

Turns out -- it's easy.  Here're excerpts on how:

1.      Ensure uncertainty in the private sector so that it continues to cut back and hoard cash….

2.      Take both real and iconic measures that scare business and question the old rules of free enterprise, perhaps by trying to shut down a new Boeing aircraft plant or reversing the order of the Chrysler creditors or absorbing a private company or two.

3.      Create a psychological climate hostile to business that either scares employers or angers them into sitting out any perceived recovery….

4.      Send a message that subsidized companies, especially in so-called green industry, are noble and need help, while profit-making corporations, especially in energy, are suspect…..

5.      Be selective in targeting capitalist enemies of the people….

6.      Run up historical deficits in ‘gorge the beast’ style that will force at some point either massive new taxes or a Greece-like crack-up [JMG: which for Democrats, per Rahm Emanuel, would be a "crisis too good to waste"] ….

 John M Greco

Related Posts:

The Obama Chrysler Confiscation – One Year Later
Economic End of the Road in the West
The Sad and Tragic End of General Motors

The Endless Run of Liberal Anti-Violence Kabuki Theater

Sitting around talking and reading, my wife turns on the TV to catch the local weather; much too early, unfortunately.  A segment comes on featuring the latest installment of the endless Kabuki theater that is the liberal approach to combating street violence in our "inner cities".

Chicago's new mayor, Rahm Emanuel, wants to "take back the streets", yada, yada, yada.  So will he combat the astounding teen pregnancy rate, which will place yet another generation of very-lightly-reared and poorly-educated young black males on the streets, exactly the demographic causing today's violence?  Will he criticize the "gangsta rap" culture, so pervasive in black neighborhoods, that glorifies and romanticizes criminal behavior and is peddled by rich liberal media executives?  Will he arrest more bad guys and pressure liberal local judges to keep them in jail longer?  Will he lay off the legions of useless extra workers at the core of the Chicago Democrat party patronage system and channel the savings to hire more police to better patrol the streets?  Uhhh ....... Nah.

Emanuel did the only thing Democrats know how to do well, their only trick, other than railing against guns, in their intellectually-exhausted playbook -- he held a street demonstration.  Through a dangerous black neighborhood he led yet one more of the innumerable "take back the streets" marches we've seen over and over again for decades.  That's their solution -- hold a demonstration, as if such will have the remotest effect on violent gang-bangers, and rail against guns, as if city kids aren't also killing each other with knives, bats, and fists, and as if white and east Asian kids across the country are also killing each other with remotely the same frequency with the guns, knives, and baseball bats to which they too have access.

Most major northern American cities have been run for a couple of generations by liberals, and they have made quite a mess of it.  They've earned a fat "F" in social policy, but give them credit where credit is due -- they deserve an "A" in street demonstrations, their cynically-hollow and useless gestures that can sure draw TV cameras and whip up a crowd. 

John M Greco

The Debt Ceiling Fight & Viciousness as a Liberal Tactic

The political fight over whether and how to raise the US debt ceiling has become high drama in Washington, and the supposed deadline of August 2 looms.  After a couple of years of an unprecedented, and, to me, reckless, harmful, and, wasteful Democrat spending orgy, the US federal government, we the people, that is, are in a big fiscal hole (link). 

The Democrat plan, such as it is, is to borrow lots and lots of more money to spend much more, supposedly to reduce the debt, but in reality to perpetuate ongoing and recurring fiscal instability that would create political opportunities to hoodwink more Americans into ceding more control over our lives to liberal elites.  The Republican plan, such as it is, after years of complicity as the junior partner to Democrat profligacy, is to spend less, perhaps even much less, to get us out of debt -- eventually.  I'm with them.

Both political parties are apparently taking hits in the popular polls, for whatever they're worth, especially this far out from an election.  But the inexorable decline in Obama's popularity and his eroding stature have been driving some liberals bonkers.  For years, of course, liberals have oft repeated the tired refrain that conservatives and Republicans are ... racist, selfish, stupid, extremists, etc, etc, etc.  So to keep up with the vicious side of their politics, some ultraliberals aren't missing a beat in the current crisis. 

Ultra-liberal New York Times columnist Tom Friedman, winner of the increasingly left-wing Pulitzer Prize, has just referred (link) to Tea Partiers as the “Hezbollah faction” of the Republican Party; Hezbollah is, of course, a murderous terrorist group.  Another ultraliberal NY Times columnist, Nobel Prize-winning Paul Krugman, just referred (link) to conservatives with different views on the debt crisis as "a cult that has really poisoned our political system."  Comedian and Democrat Senator Al Franken, another vicious ultra-liberal apparently of the Stalinist mode, just debased the United States Senate by displaying (link) on its floor a poster shouting "Welcome Terrorists" in reference to those whose views differ from his.  Demonize, isolate, and other moves right out of the socialist Rules for Radicals standard playbook -- for Friedman, Krugman, and Franken, just another day at the office. 

As Obama sinks further in the polls and as he increasingly looks to more and more people like an incompetent, arrogant jerk, Democrat viciousness will only increase.  It's all they have left.

Addendum:  Jonah Goldberg wraps it all up here at National Review Online.

John M Greco

Obamism as Peronism

The inimitable and enthusiastic bard of hard-nosed reality John Derbyshire, a polymath whose somewhat recent book "We Are Doomed" (link) I thoroughly enjoyed, has a great post today, arguing that the model for modern liberal politics is actually Peronism.  Derbyshire writes (link):

The more I look at the history of our national debt and federal spending, the more it seems to me that …. [t]he guiding spirit of fiscal management in the advanced world this past half century has in fact been Juan Perón, who ruled Argentina from 1946 to 1955….  From Paul Johnson’s Modern Times:  “As President, Perón gave a classic demonstration, in the name of socialism and nationalism, of how to wreck an economy….  He created Big Government and a welfare state in one bound….  [Eventually,] He fled on a Paraguayan gunboat. But his successors could never get back to the minimum government which had allowed Argentina to become wealthy. Too many vested interests had been created: a huge, parasitical state, over-powerful unions, a vast army of public employees. It is one of the dismal lessons of the twentieth century that, once a state is allowed to expand, it is almost impossible to contract it.”

Now of course the U.S.A. is not Argentina….  We have, though, followed the same trajectory as Perón’s Argentina, albeit more slowly and gently. He got from “the minimum government which had allowed Argentina to become wealthy” to “a huge, parasitical state” with “a vast army of public employees” in just five years; it has taken us five decades. The end result for our respective peoples will be the same.

JM Greco

Investing Solo – Sweet Spot for Closed End Funds

The recent Fed statement that I interpret to mean that it will not be raising the short term interest rate for the foreseeable future, coupled with the futures market projection that the first significant hike will occur in about 18 months, and a mild one at that, has led me to start raising the portion of my portfolio held in leveraged closed end funds, which can borrow at short term low rates and invest the proceeds.  I’m looking to go as high as about 15%, depending on the opportunities as they arise, from a starting point of about half that.

I’m interested mostly in increasing CEFs on the debt side, with the exception of those that hold MLPs. I am skittish about stocks given the poor intermediate term outlook for the economy particularly in light of the massive federal debt and the uncertain business environment created by the Obama administration, the long term lower spending by consumers as they reduce their own debt in the face of uncertainty, and the 10-year Shiller P/E that suggests that stocks are currently overvalued. There have been long periods of time where the return on stocks has been flat or negative, inflation adjusted (e.g., roughly 1965 to 1982 and the last 10-11 years or so), and there seems to be no reason the current price stagnation can’t last for many years to come. I like investing for total return, to be sure, and I think investing for current yield is generally the best way to accomplish that.

My current CEF portfolio follows. I’ve been adding to these positions as opportunities arise – dips in price and discount, and with certain uncommon special exceptions, I'm particularly attracted to those from large, reputable portfolio managers whose trailing net investment income exceeds distribution with positive undistributed net investment income. The specific funds I have, when there are others in the category and fund family, were/are determined by the various relative metrics plus relative discounts on the day of purchase.

>> Municipal Bonds: The sweetest spot of all given the recent default fear in this market segment. Taxable equivalent yields at the 35% rate are above 10% on a slew of issues. Right now I have significant holdings of only Nuveen funds: NPM; NPF; NXZ; NVG; and NEV. I was out of muni CEFs entirely at the beginning of this year when the price drop on the default scare created bargains too good to pass on, and I now have substantial capital appreciation as well as great yield. The share prices may still have room to go if higher taxes are in the offing.

>> Mixed/go anywhere: I hold three CEFs from Pimco, whose CEFs are almost in a class by themselves given the very active portfolio management, high premiums to NAV, and significant monthly under-distribution coupled with year-end specials (link). I have significant holdings of PFN and PFL, currently distributing 7+%, which hold more corporate debt than anything else, and PKO, now at 8+%, which has more of a focus on asset-backed securities. I’m contemplating paring PFL given the large run-up in premium to NAV since Bill Gross, the port manager, mentioned it in Barron’s in June, and swapping for PKO or PFN, depending on the numbers at the time.

>> Preferreds (equity pfds & debt hybrids): Distributions are 7-8%, up to about 9% TEY, and I am holding my positions in JPS and JTP (link). I’m not adding more to this sub-class right now out of concern about the rate of redemptions coupled with the run up in price in the individual securities with which funds must deal.

>> Mortgage-back securities: CEFs vary a lot in the amount of residential agency versus non-agency, and the amount of commercial and other asset-backed debt, and of course in overall credit worthiness. My largest position is FMY, currently distributing over 9%, which is IG and mostly agency. I also hold some HTR (whose management has just also taken over FMY) and a little DMO and JLS, all currently at around 8% or better.

>> Foreign debt: I have modest holdings of GDO (more toward IG) and EHI (more junk), both over 8% right now.

>> Floating rate: This category consists of funds with floating rate senior secured bank loans, plus GFY (link) which I hold as well. I have significant holdings in JFR, BHL, and TLI, distributing now 5.5 to over 6%.

>> MLPs: I like the prospects for this group -- I have a substantial allocation to KMR, the stock version of KMP. I also hold CEFs KYN, KMF, and NTG, all now yielding 6-7%.

>> Stocks: I generally disfavor CEFs as vehicles for stocks, especially since so many follow an options writing or dividend capture strategy. I have one modest holding in this category, one which uses preferred stock for funds for leverage and holds utility stocks – UTG, currently distributing almost 6%.  I also have a nominal starter set in UTF, which holds infrastructure stocks like utilities, pipelines, and toll roads, and currently yields over 8%.

>> Real Estate: I have been out of this asset class for a very long time, but on a recent dip I have just established a small starter position in the CEF IGR, whose holdings are about 45% outside the US and currently distributing about 6.5%.


Mike Parenti

All Investing Solo Posts

I’m an individual investor with no background in finance or securities, writing things down to help organize and clarify my thinking. Of course, nothing I say constitutes investment advice of any kind – merely an account of my personal observations and decisions. My core portfolio is a conservative and diversified mix of equity and debt mutual funds, ETFs, and some closed-end funds (CEFs) across investment styles, management firms, and accounts, and I invest a relatively small amount (about 10%) somewhat more aggressively in the perhaps ultimately futile pursuit of alpha.

Still Stuck in the Obama Recession

After crawling out, barely and only technically, from the Great Recession, the American economy can't seem to straighten up, let alone walk.  Today the news is that the unemployment rate has risen (link), and that's after a bunch of people have left the job market all together who aren't even counted.  Meanwhile, Obama and his allies keep bashing Republicans with references like "gun to the head", "Taliban", and "suicide bombers".  That's what passes for the new Democrat civility. 

We have a horrific spending problem (link) that threatens to bring down our economy, yet the Democrats want even more government.  More taxes, more stimulus, more debt.  Their real aim is to turn America into a version of the socialist European Union, with its entitled ruling class, crushing government regulation, increasingly uncompetitive economies, and chronic high unemployment.  They're well on their way here, and today's unemployment figure is just more proof.  Obama's has been the weakest post-recession recovery, which is still ongoing, since the Great Depression.

Victor Davis Hansen in "Business Replies to Obama" (link):

The United States has tried the largest stimulus in its peacetime history, with record $5 trillion borrowing in Obama’s first three years. Yet unemployment is much higher than when he entered office. The more he talks of stimulating the economy — with subsidies to “green” industries, government take-over of private enterprise, massive annual deficits and federal hiring, cash for clunkers, etc. — the less the private sector seems to hire or invest....  Those who have saved money and in theory could invest are scared off by uncertainty over new federalized health-care costs, by massive government spending that must be paid back and will cause higher interest rates, and by all the talk of new regulation....  When a Van Jones was in charge of encouraging green job growth, the symbolism is not lost on the guy trying to keep a paving company going.  The list could go on but, in short, hundreds of thousands of employers have sized up this quite extraordinary administration and concluded that it does not ... appreciate or even know much about private employers. And thus the business community has collectively decided to sit tight, keep quiet, and store up cash until this bunch in the White House leaves....  And so now the job creating community that makes America work is replying, in its stasis, that it likes Barack Obama about as much as he likes them.

John M Greco  

Jamaicans to Britain: Please Take Us Back

For years and years liberals have argued that the solution to global poverty is more and more free money from Western countries, despite the clear results of the bazillions already spent, rather than better governance, free enterprise, and the rule of law.   More recently, some liberals mugged by reality propose such novel notions as "charter cities" in places like Haiti and Africa, paid for and administered by the "international community" (read: "The West").   Sounds like a grasp back to running colonies in the third world.  Here's a good, realistic overview of the whole mess:  The Global Poverty Paradox by Nicholas N. Eberstadt at Commentary Magazine (October 2010).

Now comes a report that the downtrodden people of Jamaica, largely the descendants of African slaves, see the return of the British colonizers as a solution to their chronic dysfunction (link):

Most Jamaicans believe they would be better off if they were still ruled by Britain, a poll shows.  In a harsh indictment of nearly 50 years of independence, 60 per cent of those surveyed hanker for the days when the country was Britain’s biggest Caribbean colony.  Only 17 per cent said the crime-ridden, poverty-stricken nation would be worse off under British rule.  The depth of feeling is particularly astonishing as generations of Jamaican leaders have portrayed the British as oppressors who subjected the Caribbean to slavery.  The Queen is still Jamaica’s head of state. Under the headline ‘Give Us The Queen!’, the Gleaner – Jamaica’s biggest newspaper – said its poll showed how much people had become ‘disillusioned’ with the violent and corrupt political gangs running the island.

Re-colonization by the Britain of 1897 would certainly benefit the Jamaicans, but that Britain disappeared during WWI, so too late for that.  Today's Britain has neither the will nor the money to run its own island well, let alone any others.  

H/t John Hinderaker at Power Line (link), who notes the wisdom of the Cayman Islanders, who voted to remain under the Brits. 

John M Greco

Related Post:
Writer Jan Morris is 83 Years Old Today, Author of the Masterpiece Pax Britannica Trilogy

Time's Up in Afghanistan; Republicans Oblivious

The continued strong support among Republican politicians and conservative opinion leaders for our now three foreign wars is their rapidly growing Achilles heel in the fight to regain the advantage over the socialistic, anti-anti-Islamist forces that have of late stormed over the domestic barricades.  Kill the Taliban -- fine and good; attempt to build a modern nation in a backward, pre-Medieval Muslim county -- doomed to failure.  Give us more time, more time, they hector and harangue, as if higher volume could convince sensible people that almost ten years of precious blood and treasure isn't time enough to train locals to protect their own people from the lethal radicals in their midst.  Adequate training is the least of their problems. 

After years of intense instruction and support by Americans and other Westerners, many of whom have died for the effort, when attacked by Islamist insurgents at Kabul's Intercontinental Hotel, "one of the capital’s most fortified buildings", machine-gun wielding Afghan police ran away (link).  They ran away.  If "moderate" Muslim Afghans by now will not defend themselves from their radical element, they won't for a long, long time, if ever.  We cannot give them the will and the spine to move Afghanistan to a better place.  Time as well for us to bolt the scene.

John M Greco

Economic End of the Road in the West

The American economy continues to sputter along, and at least one veteran economist and market maven, Gary Shilling, is forecasting another recession next year (link).  Why all this treading water, with waves crashing over our faces?  My thoughts:

1.  The unwinding of the massive governmental and personal debt we recklessly piled on, and the uncertainty as to how we will get it all done and what things will look like at the other end.  We have been consuming too much and saving too little, and how will an economy accustomed to high personal spending adjust?

2.  The fear and uncertainty as we witness the collapse of the post-war Western welfare state.  The Ponzi pyramid scheme at the core is collapsing from insufficient new saps to soak.  The banking system is threatened.  Western socialists have run out of other people's money.  The pictures, literal and figurative, from Greece, where large numbers of citizens who live off the sweat of Northern Europeans, what of that there is, are violently protesting the prospect of having to work just a bit more, are revolting but not surprising.  The recent violent union behavior in Wisconsin is no different -- those who live off government demanding a better life than that of those who pay for it.     

3.  The utter disaster that is Obama and his team on economic policy.  Victor Davis Hanson: "I think … those in business, from the small entrepreneur to the captain of industry, have decided that it is wisest to sit out what is left of this administration, and wait to hire, buy, invest, and expand until someone at the top shows a basic knowledge of finance and economics, and some sympathy concerning what those in the private sector must contend with."

John M Greco

Mexifornia Unabated

I was struck by a news item that, at a big soccer game between American and Mexican Teams in Southern California, the largely Hispanic/Latino crown jeered the American team. Just one more incident in the stream of such where some Hispanics denigrate the country in which they wish to live and to prosper, while glorifying the dysfunctional, repressive, and dangerous country they have intentionally left to seek a better life. Some have quickly adopted the loathing of America modeled (e.g., "Missouri, Kansas, the middle places" -- land of "low sloping foreheads") by American ultra-liberals.

Victor Davis Hanson remarks at National Review Online in “Mexifornia, Quite Literally!”:

“I love this country, it has given me everything that I have, and I’m proud to be part of it,” said Victor Sanchez, a 37-year-old Monrovia [CA] resident wearing a Mexico jersey. “But yet, I didn’t have a choice to come here, I was born in Mexico, and that is where my heart will always be.” That’s a quote from an LA Times story on the booing of the U.S. soccer team by an overwhelmingly Latino audience during a U.S.–Mexico match at the Rose Bowl. Examine the odd logic: Mr. Sanchez is booing the country that gave him “everything” while cheering the country that apparently gave him very little…. That schizophrenia is what confuses so many about illegal immigration…. When a foreign nation is treated as the home team, and when the home team is booed in the Rose Bowl, I think we can see why the entire open-borders, non-enforcement, ‘La Raza’ paradigm of tribal chauvinism based on ethnic solidarity has been proven an abject failure….

John M Greco

Illinois Democrats Define Deviancy Down (Some More)

The once great state of Illinois has been run for two generations by Democrats and a few Democrat-All-But-In-Name Republicans (notably former tax-and-spend governors Thompson, Edgar, and Ryan).  It has one of the worst business climates among the states, one of the largest budget deficits and overall debt, and has the largest unfunded public employee pension system in the country.  In a recent ten year period, while the state population grew about 4%, state spending grew over 40%, mostly on government employees and Medicaid recipients -- what amount to the two largest Democrat party constituencies. 

To address their decade-long spending orgy, Democrats, with their huge majorities in both houses of the state legislature and the governor's chair, recently pushed through massive tax hikes -- 67% on individuals and almost 50% on businesses.  And yet, the Republican state comptroller (yes, a Republican, albeit a fiscally liberal one, elected last fall) informed us (link) recently that state Democrats, rather than use that increased revenue to pay down the state debt, are spending it on themselves.

Now comes an assortment of news items that show us that just when we think Illinois Democrats couldn't get any worse, they do:

>> With the big corporate tax hike in place, they now have a real nice squeeze racket going (link), whereby big companies visit state Democrat pols to apply for special tax breaks, which are unavailable to mid- and small-sized business, in exchange for ...?  Well, they don't tell us what the quo is for the quid, but we know it's something.  That's the scam -- the Dems hike corporate taxes and then hand out special exemptions when they feel like it, just like Obama, Reid, and Pelosi are doing with exemptions from Obamacare for Democrat-supporting companies and unions.

>> After all the drama over the state's de facto bankruptcy, upon peeling back the obfuscation and trickery, the Illinois Policy Institute finds (link) Illinois Democrats continue to spend like drunken sailors (link).  I may be going out on a limb here, but I'm thinking that all those dollars, as before, will mostly go to Democrat constituencies.

>> Today, the Chicago Tribune reports (link) that the state Democrats have been holding up distribution of charity dollars donated, some as far back as 2009, by state income tax payers at the time of their tax filing and "borrowing" those dollars for regular state spending.
 
>> And finally, there's a touching personal-interest story (link) in today's Tribune that involves a dedicated public servant, a lifelong Democrat politician and former Democrat candidate for governor, who in his later years has been serving, no doubt tirelessly, as president of one of Illinois' public universities, one of the many lucrative sinecures that are rewarded, like spots at Fannie Mae and Goldman Sachs, to Democrats leaving elected office. This man, the President of Southern Illinois University, is the proud grandfather of a young woman who has just been awarded one of a handful of special, all-expenses paid university "Presidential" scholarships at a school she is excited to attend.  What school would that be, you wonder?  Why, her grandfather's, of course!  After all, this is Illinois, and as the late Democrat Chicago Mayor Richard J Daley said, roughly, when caught in a similar situation, if a man can't help his family, he should help strangers?

John M Greco

The Chicago Cubs Peaked Early

The other day, June 19, was the 165th anniversary of the first baseball game, according to Wikipedia. Then today, the Wall Street Journal informs me that the first season of the National League was played in 1876, 125 years ago, and the winner of that first pennant was ...... the Chicago White Stockings, a team that eventually became the Chicago Cubs.  The Cubs are one of only two remaining charter members of the National League, and the oldest professional sports team still in its original city.  So how about that -- the Cubs won the first pennant of the Senior Circuit, but won their second and last World Series way back in 1908, and now have gone the longest of all teams since their last one, and in fact, again according to Wikipedia, have a longer championship drought than that of any other major North American professional sports team (link).

They peaked early.

John M Greco

ObamaCare Supporters Channel Billy Wilder

In the movie Some Like It Hot, a cinematic gem (with Marilyn Monroe how could it be otherwise) and comedic classic, which unfortunately overshadows another Billy Wilder movie -- his practically unknown masterpiece One, Two, Three (link), a ruling mobster played by Nehemiah Persoff turns down his hearing aid as he responds to the George Raft character, a mobster who at the formal banquet has just had a large cake rolled out in front of him that, unbeknownst to him, contains a machine-gun wielding assassin about to spray bullets his way, and who protested suspiciously, “but it ain’t my birthday for a couple of months”, saying with false affection but malign intent, “so what’s a couple of months ... between friends?”

I was reminded of this line when reading a concise and trenchant account of the various serially flimsily specious rationales the Obama team has advanced to attempt to prove up the Constitutionality of the individual mandate in Obamacare – the ground-breaking part of the law that requires private citizens to purchase a private product from a private firm (in this case, but only as the first step down the slippery slope, health insurance). Vegetables and DVDs about global warming climate change are next up for federal mandates.

David B. Rivkin, Jr., and Lee A. Casey write (link) in today's Wall Street Journal:

Consistent with the fundamental principle that the federal government is one of limited, enumerated powers, more than 220 years of case law requires that exercises of the commerce power be grounded in a meaningful, judicially enforceable, limiting principle. ObamaCare's defenders can't articulate such a principle…. If ObamaCare is to be upheld, then the Supreme Court will have to abandon … precedents, along with the plain meaning of the Constitution…. Thus the administration's position comes to this: What is one unconstitutional law, more or less, among friends?

John M Greco

Headwinds for Republicans

Tonight there will be a Republican presidential debate, reminding us that next year’s election is not far off. The many failures of Obama’s policies and his increasingly unattractive persona and behaviors give Republicans reason to be optimistic, but I fear that the headwinds facing further conservative resurgence are strong, stronger than many think.

Many conservatives take comfort in some polls that show more voters self-identify as conservative than liberal, but it’s hard to know what such results really mean, given my skepticism about polls in general because of the degree to which results can be manipulated by design features such as the phrasing and ordering of questions and the sampling methodology. The economy is sinking, foreign policy is a mess, and our liberties are threatened by the Obama administration (the individual mandate in Obamacare comes first to mind), yet last month in a Republican congressional district in western New York state voters in a special election elected a Democrat to replace a Republican. Yes, the Democrat ran on a scary smear of the effects on Medicare of the Ryan budget plan that the Republican House overwhelmingly endorsed, but, but, but, given the Obama record this vote shouldn’t have been close. Republicans are kidding themselves if they think that the electorate is sizably politically conservative.

Examine the realities. Almost half of federal income tax filers pay no tax, and some of those actually get refunds via the de facto welfare provisions in the tax code; another 10 percent or so pay a tax rate of only a percentage or two. More and more Americans are receiving government aid of one sort or another. And look at the escalating thuggery of government employee unions all across the country when faced with any attempt to rein in their excessive and unsustainable compensation and benefits.

Add up the growing number of voters who work for government, the growing number who live off government, and the growing number who pay no taxes to support it, and that could be a majority of voters in states with a majority of electoral votes. That’s the Democrat business model, enhanced by a systematic plan of vote fraud through encouraging and facilitating ineligible voters (e.g., Acorn; anti-voter ID) and cheating in the gathering and counting of ballots (e.g., Florida, Washington state, Minnesota). That’s some headwind. The Republican message is really aimed at adults who do not live off government but yet pay for it, an unfortunately shrinking base -- a development for which Democrats have well planned.

John M Greco

Spirit Of American Youth Rising From the Waves

"Spirit Of American Youth Rising From the Waves"

By Donald De Lue

At the First Infantry Division Museum at Cantigny Park

Wheaton, Illinois, Outside Chicago

Replica of the Original That Stands In the Normandy Beachhead in France,

Honoring Young Americans Who Gave Their Lives For Their Country