Morning Must Reads: Unsure

Could the world go back to the gold standard?

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In reference to the article which was put forth by our esteemed writers at TIME.com, they again fail to also point out the growing concern about the Feds recent act to print fiat money with absolutely no basis to back it all up with the exception that we are the United States.
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Yes going back to a Gold Standard would be next to impossible, but what the writer, Wolf, fails to explain is that we are in a crisis of sorts at this time. Soon you shall see competing currencies around the world attempting to secure their place in the Global Economy. Each one will devalue their dollars in order to keep the advantage they currently have. Where it all stops, no one, not even the Fed knows at this point. But if we had a gold standard, Governments would not be able to manipulate their currencies as we are witnessing now. There would be no disputes. Our money would be worth exactly what it says on face value.
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If you do not have a gold standard or something as effective then you must have rules agreed to that everyone promises to follow. How you get to that point is nearly and equally as impossible as trying to go back to a gold standard. Most of us do not have the kind of money that makes it “impossible” to return to a gold standard. What the gold standard does afford average folks is stability and security.
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If you are of the mind to create a one world order, then you can side with those who do not want a gold standard. If you want a globalization of the entire world and give up our sovereignty, then you would agree with Wolf.
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But, if you are like most Americans. You want our own country. Our own laws as they are currently written. You want to remain, American.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2010/11/joe-biden-transparency.html
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One of the things which the Obama Administration failed to do as promised is transparency. But, after the “shellacking” they took in the recent election, they are now reconsidering. We may see more transparency going forward. Or, are we?
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Joe Biden update: The VP meets on government transparency today. But that meeting is closed
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Do they really think we are that stupid?

China resisting the recent Fed Stimulus and counter this bad move on the Fed’s part.
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http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-11-09/china-to-tighten-control-on-capital-inflows-with-audits-position-limits.html
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Roll the dice everyone, where it stops, no one knows.

“A judge puts the kibosh on that whole sharia ban thing in Oklahoma”
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Why must the courts put an end to the decisions of people with low mentality (versus raising it)?

Allowing those who do not live in our country dictate or attempt to dictate how we should secure our own country.
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What is the number 1 job of our Commander in Chief again?
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http://cbs13.com/wireapnational/Indian.minister.asks.2.2002135.html

Evidence the progressive method of governing does not work. How soon before California goes completely broke?
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http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/11/09/103399/californias-unemployment-fund.html

How is this “dictating” exactly? Those concerned have asked US to not frisk them for wearing turbans. BO hasn’t said yes to anything. You’re assuming he’s done something he hasn’t — a.k.a. you’re MSU.

Mystery missile over Los Angeles. No one knows anything about it?
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http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/40087187/ns/us_news-security/

Fed plays right into the hand of George Soros.
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““What is most troubling to me about this,” Diamond added, “is that the Fed’s QE2 is in alignment with George Soros’s agenda to destroy global capitalism.” The decline of the dollar “is what George Soros wants and what he has proposed in the past,” he noted.
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Soros, the billionaire hedge fund operator who finances various leftist and Marxist groups, including Media Matters, has made his fortune by betting on the collapse of national economies and currencies. He was convicted of insider trading in France.”

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http://www.theblaze.com/stories/is-soros-betting-on-u-s-financial-collapse/
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Of course we know the liberal billionaire ONLY has our best interests at heart, right?

You’re a paranoid twit. Other countries ask us to do things all the time. It even happened under both Bushes and Reagan, the same way we ask other countries to do things all the time. Asking isn’t dictating anything you nitwit.

Evidence that Conservative form of fiscal management may not be the answer either.

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/1024dntexbudgetmess.274b11d.html

Texas’ GOP leaders, their eyes on the Nov. 2 election, have played down the problem’s size, even as the hole in the next two-year cycle has grown in recent weeks to as much as $24 billion to $25 billion. That’s about 25 percent of current spending.

The gap is now proportionately larger than the deficit California recently closed with cuts and fee increases, its fourth dose of budget misery since September 2008.

I could have sworn I heard Rick Perry swearing Texas was in great shape and a great example of conservative fiscal policies.

You’re on a real tear this morning Rusty. Did you forget to take the meds that turn down the volume on the voices in your head?

Maybe he’s an NFL player and got concussed one too many times.

What did I miss?

A comment.

“First of all, they conflate the federal budget with the nation’s budget. Second, they are locked into “supply-side economics”, which posits that if you cut taxes for the rich then the rich will trickle on you and you’ll have more. Third, they don’t understand the relationship of federal spending to the number of jobs in the economy. I’ve actually heard some of them say that the government doesn’t create jobs, as if the money government spends vanishes into thin air.

Since the vast majority of people have never learned anything about economics it’s hard to get voters to understand how stupid this thinking truly is. But, to the extent that the federal budget is like the home budget, you are entirely right. Taking in less money means a bigger deficit.

We need to change the thinking. Taxes are not too high. Incomes are too low. If you are having problems paying your taxes then you need a raise, not a tax cut. Democrats need to practice this response to anyone talking about tax cuts. The sooner Republicans realize that talking about tax cuts leads people to want and think they deserve a raise, the sooner they will stop talking about them and we can have some sanity in our economic discussions.”

Walking back a recently-held position.

“Take Sen.-elect Rand Paul (R-Ky.), for example, who’s railed against earmark spending. As recently as Sunday, Christiane Amanpour asked the right-wing ophthalmologist, “Would you say no to earmarks?” He replied, “No more earmarks.” She followed up, asking “No more? Not even in your state?” Paul answered, “No.”

He told the Wall Street Journal something different.

He has made other concessions to the mainstream. He now avoids his dad’s talk of shuttering the Federal Reserve and abolishing the income tax. In a bigger shift from his campaign pledge to end earmarks, he tells me that they are a bad “symbol” of easy spending but that he will fight for Kentucky’s share of earmarks and federal pork, as long as it’s doled out transparently at the committee level and not parachuted in in the dead of night. “I will advocate for Kentucky’s interests,” he says.

So you’re not a crazy libertarian? “Not that crazy,” he cracks.

I’ll look forward to the Tea Partiers’ response.”

And walking back…

“It was the first hint of what may be a larger trend. Dave Weigel noted yesterday that some GOP leaders have started to hedge on their once-inflexible positions on this, suggesting a disaster may yet be averted. John Boehner, for example, conceded, ‘Increasing the debt limit allows our government to meet its obligations. And I think that there are multiple options for how you deal with it.’

Granted, my standards for these guys are pretty low, but this doesn’t sound like the kind of thing a House Speaker would say if he intends to deliberately cause a global financial catastrophe.

This is not to say we don’t have a problem here. Sen.-elect Rand Paul (R-Ky.) has said over the weekend that he’ll vote to send the country into default, as a way of sending ‘a message.’ Sen.-elect Mike Lee (R-Utah) has said something similar. RNC Chairman Michael Steele said last week, ‘We are not going to compromise on raising the debt ceiling.’”

Didn’t quite think that through, did he?

“NJ Transit owes the federal government $271 million for the Hudson River rail tunnel that Gov. Chris Christie scrapped last month.

The Federal Transit Administration on Monday sent the railroad the bill, saying interest and penalty charges will be added. [...]

The $8.7 billion project to construct a rail tunnel between New Jersey and New York was 15 years in the making when Christie pulled the plug, citing cost overruns.

Officials aren’t saying where NJ Transit will get the money to pay the bill.”

“Financial Economists, Financial Interests and Dark Corners of the Meltdown: It’s Time to set Ethical Standards for the Economics Profession”.

“They took a group of 19 academic financial economists and looked for possible conflicts of interest — board memberships of financial institutions, consultancies, that kind of thing. They conclude:

In this study, we showed that the great majority of two groups of prominent academic financial economists did not disclose their private financial affiliation even when writing pieces on financial reform. This presents a potential conflict of interest. If this pattern prevailed among academic financial economists more broadly this, in our view, would represent an even greater social problem. Academic economists serve as experts in the media, molding public opinion. They are also important players in government policy. If those that are creating the culture around financial regulation as well as influencing policy at the government level for financial reform also have a significant, if hidden, conflict of interest, our public is not likely to be well-served.

It seems obvious that when you’re regularly making significantly more than the median national annual personal income from giving a single speech, you’re prone to being captured by the people paying you all that money. And the secrecy makes things much worse.”

What happens when you cut spending on social programs.

“Many cash-strapped U.S. states are slashing budgets for tobacco-prevention programs, raising alarms among public-health groups as the nation’s progress toward getting adult smokers to quit has stalled.

The adult smoking rate was 20.6% in 2009, the same as a year earlier and largely unchanged since 2004, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That amounted to 46.6 million adult smokers in 2009.

States have cut their combined funding for smoking prevention in the current fiscal year to the lowest level since 1999, according to data gathered by a coalition of antismoking groups for a report that will be released later this month.[...]

Smoking-rate declines have stalled in several states that have cut prevention dollars. Ohio trimmed its smoking rate by five percentage points between 2001 and 2005, when it was allocating as much as $60 million a year to tobacco prevention. In the next four-year span, when its funding dropped to as low as $6 million a year, its smoking rate fell by two points—to 20.3% in 2009.”

“Sharia is the sacred law of Islam. All Muslims believe Sharia is God’s law”
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As the hypocrites conveniently forget (ignore?) that separation of church and state thingy.

Not that anyone really wants to cut spending.

“The first is that arguably the Senate’s most far-right member is desperate to cut spending, but when pressed, says he wants to leave Social Security and Medicare alone.

The second is that DeMint twice referenced Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-Wis.) ‘roadmap.’ Maybe DeMint’s a little behind on his reading, but there’s a disconnect here — while vowing not to cut seniors’ benefits, he’s also endorsing Ryan’s budget plan, which calls for privatizing Social Security and gutting Medicare. It also fails miserably in the goal DeMint claims to care about — cutting the deficit. As Paul Krugman recently explained, the Ryan plan ‘is a fraud that makes no useful contribution to the debate over America’s fiscal future.’”

The real impetus behind all the bashing of Pelosi-as-minority-leader in the media.

“But all this seems to badly miss what one of the most important roles of the new minority leader will be: to draw a very sharp line against GOP efforts to roll back Obama’s accomplishments.

This task could matter at least as much for the new minority leader as communications or presenting a new face for the party. And while Pelosi clearly has a negative and polarizing image, few would argue that she hasn’t succeeded at building coalitions and maintaining unity at moments of extreme political stress — exactly what she’ll need to do if she’s going to hold the line against repeal efforts.

The key thing to understand is that we’re about to enter a period of bruising procedural wars — precisely the type of thing that Pelosi has already excelled at. Republicans are already discussing ways to starve the new health-care law by, say, limiting funding to agencies that would implement portions of it or using spending bills to block federal insurance regulations they don’t like. The next minority leader will have to be ruthless in her willingness to use procedural tactics to combat this kind of stuff.”

POTUS also needs to bee ruthless and state directly that making financial end-runs around a law that’s already been passed will occur over his dead body.

bee = be

The Other Klein on the difficulty of repealing the ACA.

(with charts!)

Health reformers were the first to experience the pain of getting specific: Their cause was popular, but their bill had its difficult parts, and as the media — and the other side — focused on those parts for months on end, their cause became less popular. Now, however, it looks to be the repealers’ turn. A new poll from the Kaiser Family Foundation asked Americans how they felt about repeal. As other polls have shown, there’s certainly appetite for a partial repeal, if not a full repeal.

But then you start asking about repealing specific provisions and, well, things become less popular in a hurry.

Everything from the subsidies to the increase in the Medicare tax is popular. The individual mandate isn’t, and you might see the GOP focus on that, but tweaking the penalty there is a far cry from full repeal. Eventually, the GOP is going to stop being on the side of health-care repeal and find themselves on the side of allowing insurers to discriminate against the sick and seniors to fall into the doughnut hole, just as Democrats eventually found themselves on the side of the Cornhusker Kickback and $500 billion in Medicare cuts rather than health-care reform.”

“He now avoids his dad’s talk of shuttering the Federal Reserve and abolishing the income tax. In a bigger shift from his campaign pledge to end earmarks, he tells me that they are a bad “symbol” of easy spending but that he will fight for Kentucky’s share of earmarks and federal pork, as long as it’s doled out transparently at the committee level and not parachuted in in the dead of night. “I will advocate for Kentucky’s interests,” he says.

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In words that perhaps imbeciles like you need in order to understand. As long as the practice of earmarks and pork will occur in Washington, Rand will secure what is due Kentucky.
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That is not walking anything back. That is being prudent and protecting your constituents. He has not changed his stand on ending all earmarks, PERIOD.

Hooray for the FTA!

So Rand Paul, the Tea Party prince, isn’t really any different than any other politician looking for handouts. He just sang a tune that the Tea Baggers in Ky wanted to hear to get elected. Yay conservative fiscal responsibility!

I think they do, newfreedom and it will bring about their downfall in 2012. They were 100% in denial after Scott Brown was elected and they remain in denial after getting thumped last Tuesday. The American voters were furious about being ignored and even dismissed by this administration and took that anger to the ballot box. By all means, let them maintain this feeling of superiority they so brazenly flaunt, it will make it that much easier to fire the entire progressive ticket! (and good riddance)

with charts!

Ah, you know my weakness. Thanks for the links grape_crush, always enjoyable.

More unadulterated idiocy from you, rustyblogwhore, eh? This, from Rand Paul’s website:

Rand Paul has made a ban on wasteful earmark spending in Washington D.C. one of the key points of his campaign. He has supported Sen. Jim DeMint’s vocal support for an earmark ban and he supports news that House Democrats are even coming around on the idea of a partial ban.

So, being against earmarks while suggesting that you’ll continue to use them to curry favor with your constituents is, by definition, hypocritical. Given your oft-stated hypocritical and inane commentary, it’s no surprise that you wouldn’t recognize it in one of your teatard heroes. Enjoy the first of many disappointments!

Linky:
http://www.randpaul2010.com/2010/03/earmark-ban-coming/

Thanks…but the credit goes to the targets of those links.

Are you people really that stupid or do you just act like it?

Oh charlieromeo, you are so darling when you go to the 3rd grade playground name calling. Good job!!

That Scott Brown that is on the TP hit list?
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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/social/PolicyWonkette/scott-brown-finds-himself_n_778269_66121054.html

js: Yes, just yesterday on TDS he extolled how great the Texas fiscal status is and how they didn’t need no bossy EPA because the Texas air was so clean. And, only pols in DC are influenced by lobbyists and special interests. Of course, his fight against the EPA is all about lobbyists and special interests.
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http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/chronicle/7039716.html
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But, like W, he has nice hair.

Major credit goes to you, grape_crush.
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Thank you.

Eloquent response moron. As I said previously, you’re too ignorant to see the blatant hypocrisy of Rand Paul’s latest reversal, likely the first of many. Enjoy all of those teatards caving in on all their so-called principles!!11!!!1!!