Not Enough Money in the World: The Real Monster in the Meltdown Closet
Reproduced: Originally by Chris Floyd
Monday, 13 October 2008
This is the beast in the dark that is haunting the feckless leaders of the developed world: $55 trillion of unaccountable debt, and no way of knowing how much of it is even now being flushed down the toilet, taking the global economy with it.
The myth has quickly taken hold that the global financial crash was caused by bad mortgages. This has allowed rightwing hatemongers to blame the meltdown on the "liberal" programs that encouraged home ownership among a small percentage of lower-income people (a poisonous canard that parts of the mainstream media have actually done a fairly good job of knocking down), while "progressives" of various stripes have denounced banks and other financial institutions for pushing over-easy credit on people who couldn't really afford it.
Unsustainable mortgages are a key factor in the global crash, of course. And many people (most of them white, by the way) did take out mortgages they would not be able to afford if the housing bubble ever burst, which it has, most spectacularly. And yes, it is undeniable that the financial services industry has been tempting people with easy credit like schoolyard pushers flashing reefers.
All of this was bound to end badly, and did. But this alone would not have been enough to threaten the destruction of the entire global financial system, nor cause the blind, screaming panic that has strangulated the financial markets, seized up the vital flow of money between banks, and caused the "free" market-worshipping governments of the Western world to carry out nationalizations and interventions that, in sheer numbers, dwarf anything ever seen following a Communist revolution. (As John Lancaster notes in the London Review of Books, the Bush Administration's takeover of Fannie Mae and Fannie Mac alone was "was, by cash value, the biggest nationalisation in the history of the world." And that was just the beginning.)
What has struck mortal fear in the heart of markets and governments is not bad mortgages, but the almost incomprehensibly huge and complex market for "derivatives," based in part on mortgage debt -- but also on a vast array of other sources that were "securitized," turned into tradable if ghostly commodities then sold off in a bewildering variety of increasingly arcane forms. This was accompanied by the expansion of yet another vast market in insurance mechanisms designed to protect these derivatives -- mechanisms which themselves became "securitized."
At the same time, the financial services industry used its paid bagmen in governments around the world to loosen almost all restrictions not only on securitization and the trading of derivatives, but also on the amount of debt that institutions could take on in order to play around in these vastly expanded and deregulated markets. For example, as Lancaster points out, UK's Barclays Bank had a debt-to-equity ratio of 63 to 1:
Imagine that for a moment translated to your own finances, so that you could stretch what you actually, unequivocally own to borrow more than sixty times the amount. (I’d have an island. What about you?)
The result of all this has been the construction of a gargantuan house of cards, based on next to nothing, and left alone in the shadow of building "perfect storm" of greed, deregulation and political corruption.
That storm has now struck. The house of cards has fallen down, and revealed a hole of derivatives-based debt that could not be filled, literally, by all the money in the world, much less by the mere trillions that national governments are frantically throwing at it today.
Yes, "mere" trillions. As Will Hutton explains in the Observer:
...the dark heart of the global financial system [is] the $55 trillion market in credit derivatives and, in particular, credit default swaps, the mechanisms routinely used to insure banks against losses on risky investments. This is a market more than twice the size of the combined GDP of the US, Japan and the EU. Until it is cleaned up and the toxic threat it poses is removed, the pandemic will continue. Even nationalised banks, and the countries standing behind them, could be overwhelmed by the scale of the losses now emerging.
Try to imagine that: a $55 trillion market now at risk of complete destruction. Even the derivative debt owed by individual institutions stands at nation-wrecking levels. For example, a single bank in Britain, Barclays again, holds more than $2.4 trillion in credit default swaps, the tradable "insurance" mechanism against securities default. This is more than the entire GDP of Great Britain. If all this paper goes bad, there are not enough assets in the entire country to pay it off. And that's just one bank, in one country.
Hutton gives the details:
This market in credit derivatives has grown explosively over the last decade largely in response to the $10 trillion market in securitised assets - the packaging up of income from a huge variety of sources (office rents, port charges, mortgage payments, sport stadiums) and its subsequent sale as a 'security' to be traded between banks.
Plainly, these securities are risky, so the markets invented a system of insurance. A buyer of a securitised bond can purchase what is in effect an insurance contract that will protect him or her against default - a credit default swap (CDS). But unlike the comprehensive insurance contract on your car which you have with one insurance company, these credit default contracts can be freely bought and sold. Complex mathematical models are continually assessing the risk and comparing it to market prices. If the risk falls, the CDSs are cheap; if the risk rises - because, say, a credit rating agency declares the issuing company is less solid - the price rises. Hedge funds speculate in them wildly.
Their purpose was a market solution to make securitisation less risky; in fact, they make it more risky, as we are now witnessing. The collapse of Lehman Brothers - the refusal to bail it out has had cataclysmic consequences - means that it can no longer honour $110bn of bonds, nor $440bn of CDSs it had written. On Friday, the dud contracts were auctioned, with buyers paying a paltry eight cents for every dollar. Put another way, there is now a $414bn hole which somebody holding these contracts has to honour. And if your head is spinning now, add the three bust Icelandic banks. They can no longer honour more than $50bn of bonds, nor a mind-boggling $200bn of CDSs....
While every bank tries to pass the toxic parcel on to somebody else, the system has to find the money. So will compensation for the near valueless contracts and thus now uninsured debt ultimately be made - and by whom? And because nobody knows - not the regulators, banks or governments - who owns the swaps and whether they are credit-worthy, nobody can answer the question. Maybe holders of insurance policies will get the cash due to them, but will that weaken somebody else? The result - panic.
This is the ultra-dangerous downward vortex in which the system is locked. It is why share prices are plummeting. As recession deepens, there will be defaults on securitised bonds and the potential collapse of more banks outside the G7 ring-fence. Nobody knows what proportion of the $55 trillion of credit default contracts that have actually been written will be honoured and who might bear losses running into trillions of dollars.
This is the beast in the dark that is haunting the feckless leaders of the developed world: $55 trillion of unaccountable debt, and no way of knowing how much of it is even now being flushed down the toilet, taking the global economy with it.
The massive interventions were are seeing might stabilize the markets temporarily, or at least arrest their free fall long enough to come up with some kind of massive restructuring of the global financial system. Or they might not. For it is by no means certain that the wisdom, and the political courage, to come up with a more viable system can be found among the world's political leaders -- all of whom, as we noted here the other day, have risen within the present system and, to one degree or another, owe their own power and privilege to the "malefactors of great wealth" and the extremist cult of market fundamentalism. There is no indication anywhere that the circle of collusion and corruption between governments and Big Money has even lessened, much less been broken, by the economic catastrophe. All of the various bailout plans and "coordinated actions" still have as their chief aim the preservation of the malefactors in their current state of wealth, privilege and domination. As Jonathan Schwarz notes:
Still, U.S. elites will try to impose as much of a structural adjustment as they can get away with, in order to make the bottom 80% of America pay the price for the elites' spectacular screw-ups. The Washington Post has already started writing about how the current crisis demonstrates that we must cut Social Security. Look for much more of this to come.
The only slim hope we have for any genuine reform -- even an imperfect, conflicted, compromised reform, which is the only kind we will ever have in this world, until the lion lies down with the lamb -- is that the sheer scale of the real problem -- the $55 trillion beast, the very real potential for the complete destruction of the global economy, and the state power that depends upon it -- might force some politicians to turn apostate, renounce the market cult, and bite the hands that have fed them for so long.
Absent this near-miraculous possibility, we will be left with yet another rickety house of cards, slapped together on the fly -- largely at the malefactors' direction and for their benefit -- while the beast gapes wide his ponderous jaws, and prepares to swallow us whole.
Monday, March 16, 2009
Friday, February 13, 2009
I think it's about time to talk about this stimulus package.
Now I know we have all seen the chain emails that theorize about how if 800 Billion dollars were really distributed out to tax payers (notice I said tax payers), then literally somewhere around 100,000 dollars would go to individuals. Now if we realistically look at the medium income in the United States, one could feasibly say that no matter how large the middle class...the bracket of poverty is still bigger. Last time I checked the national poverty line it was somewhere between 24-35k dollars annually. With a proper distribution of the Stimulus directly back to individuals, families could pay live for at least three years living frugally, pay off their credit cards, refinance their homes or cars, pay off their student loans, or just plain blow the money on a shopping spree. Either way debts are either paid, or money is put directly back into the consumer economy.
Let's do a high level analysis here.
To date, the major headers that brought about nationwide awareness of recession came from where? Well, it seems to me it came in the form of housing market foreclosures, problems in the manufacturing sectors and their suppliers, and certain Bank's going belly up. So in view of the last 700 billion pulled out (exactly 1 third of the cost of the war in Iraq) we are no near being closer to correcting those original mistakes and now we are passing a new bill for 790 billion more to do what exactly? In debt our children, raise our taxes up to 50%?
This is ludicrous.
Let's do a high level analysis here.
To date, the major headers that brought about nationwide awareness of recession came from where? Well, it seems to me it came in the form of housing market foreclosures, problems in the manufacturing sectors and their suppliers, and certain Bank's going belly up. So in view of the last 700 billion pulled out (exactly 1 third of the cost of the war in Iraq) we are no near being closer to correcting those original mistakes and now we are passing a new bill for 790 billion more to do what exactly? In debt our children, raise our taxes up to 50%?
This is ludicrous.
Romania...Preview of what's to come to United States Health Care System? (We hope not)
For those left-wingers who believe that Universal Healthcare will be a viable improvement to the American People here is a real-time article to chew on. In short, socialism fosters negative adaptation. People will find a way to obtain quality-private-healthcare, the only problem is...the variable may end up costing more then the average joe thinks...
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In Romania, Bribery is a Social Health Problem.
Alina Lungu, 30, says she did everything necessary to ensure a healthy pregnancy in Romania: She ate organic food, swam daily and bribed her gynecologist with an extra 200 in cash, paid in monthly increments of 25 handed over discreetly in white envelopes. Another bribe of 25, or about $32, went to a nurse to guarantee an epidural. Even the orderly reaped an extra 10 to make sure he didn't drop her from the stretcher. But on the day of her delivery, she says, her gynecologist never arrived. Twelve hours into labor, she was left alone in her room for an hour. When a doctor appeared, the umbilical cord was wrapped twice around her baby's head and had nearly suffocated him. He was blind and deaf and had suffered severe brain damage. Now, Alina and her husband, Ionut, despair that if they had paid a larger bribe to the doctor, then Sebastian would perhaps be a healthy baby. "Doctors are so used to getting bribes in Romania that you now have to pay more in order to even get their attention," she said.
Romania, a poor Balkan country of 22 million that joined the European Union two years ago, is struggling to shed a culture of corruption honed during decades of communism - and stretching back beyond that. The European Commission, the EU's executive body, published a damning report Thursday criticizing Romania for backtracking on key judicial changes necessary to fight corruption. Sanctions could follow, including losing some of the 32 billion in EU aid it is due to receive between 2007 and 2013. Transparency International, the Berlin-based anti-corruption watchdog, last year ranked Romania as the second most corrupt country in the 27-member bloc behind neighboring Bulgaria. Those who have faced corruption allegations have included a former prime minister, more than 1,100 doctors and teachers, 170 police officers and 3 generals, according to Romanian anti-corruption investigators.
Romanians complain that everyday graft and bribery blight their lives. One patient here recently offered his doctor a free shopping trip to Dubai. The doctor politely declined. Dr. Vasile Astarastoae, a biomedical ethicist who is president of the Romanian College of Physicians, representing 47,000 doctors, blamed the black healthcare economy on a pitifully low average monthly wage of 400 for doctors, which he said was forcing them to rely on supplementary income. "Patients don't want to go to a doctor who is distracted thinking, 'How will I feed my kids or pay the rent?"' Astarastoae said. "So there is a conspiracy between the doctor and the patient to pay a bribe." "If salaries were higher, then the practice would disappear," he said. A study conducted by the World Bank for the Romanian Ministry of Health concluded that so-called informal payments amounted to $360 million annually. When an illness requires hospitalization, the Romanian patient typically pays three or four bribes equivalent to three-quarters of a family's monthly income, the study showed. The Ministry of Health is trying to root out the practice, and recently set up a free phone line for patients to report abuses. Within an hour, it was jammed. Hospital here are plastered with anti-bribery posters. One shows a man hiding a gift behind his back, with the words "You Shouldn't Have" above his head. The issue gained national attention last month when a 63-year-old man, Mihai Constantinescu, died of a massive heart attack in the waiting room of a hospital in Slatina, in southern Romania, after doctors refused to treat him. Mihaela Ionita, the nurse who wheeled him fruitlessly from room to room, said in an interview she believed he had been refused care "because he appeared poor and could not afford a bribe." The hospital said Constantinescu did not appear to have been an emergency case. Victor Alistar, director of Transparency International's Romanian branch, said the culture of bribery was a hangover from communism, when Romanians endured long lines just to get basics like eggs and milk and used bribes to acquire scarce products and services.
Physicians lament that bribery is so endemic in the healthcare system that if a doctor refuses a bribe, patients typically become anxious and distraught, believing this to be a sign that their illness is incurable and death is imminent. Doctors then take the bribe to try to allay their anxiety. Doctors and patients say bribery in the health-care system follows a set of unwritten rules. The cost of bribes depends on the treatment, ranging from 100 for a straightforward appendix-removal operation to up to 5,000 for brain surgery. The suggested bribery prices are passed on by word of mouth, and are publicized on blogs and Internet sites. Alistar said public hospitals routinely exchanged "supplementary payment" lists to ensure they had the same rates. Dr. Adela Salceanu, a psychiatrist and anti-bribery advocate, said doctors used different and sometimes subtle methods to make it clear they expected a money-laden envelope. She recalled that one friend, a 42-year-old lawyer, recently broke two legs in a basketball game and was taken to hospital for surgery. When he did not offer money to the orthopedic surgeon on duty, his procedure was postponed for a week; he was finally operated on, but only after paying the doctor an extra 400. Salceanu lamented that young doctors who refused to accept bribes were routinely chastised or threatened with dismissal by senior colleagues for subverting the black market. Mugur Ciumageanu, a psychiatrist who has practiced in public hospitals in Bucharest, recalled that when he was a young doctor, he was shocked when the senior physician on the ward took him aside and forbade him to talk with patients for three months. Her explanation, he recalled, was that he was spending more time with patients than she was and, by appearing more caring, was denting her bribery earnings. Marilena Tiron, 26, a recent graduate of medical school in Bucharest, said the bribery culture among doctors started early because residents were also poorly paid - about 200 a month. She said the issue of bribery did not come up in her optional medical ethics class at the University of Bucharest's Medical School "since the teachers were taking bribes themselves." Astarastoae, of the Romanian College of Physicians, acknowledged that bribery needed to be rooted out, but he argued that the media exaggerated the practice. While doctors are god-like figures in most Western countries, respected and handsomely rewarded for years of hard study, Astarastoae said that in Romania, the medical profession was denigrated because workers in factories had been made heroes under communism, while doctors and intellectuals were treated as unproductive "parasites."
Astarastoae, who helped write Romania's code of medical ethics, said that under the code, it was considered unethical to take money or a gift before treatment; after treatment, however, it was at the discretion of the patient if he or she wanted to show appreciation. He said the college had the power to sanction bribery by revoking the licenses of doctors implicated in a bribe. Few patients, however, are willing to name and shame their doctors for fear they could be shunned by other physicians. Liviu Manaila, Romania's secretary of state for health, said in an interview that the system of informal payments was depriving doctors of their dignity and needed to be stamped out. While the government's budget is too strained to raise doctor's wages, he proposed revamping Romania's socialized medical system so that patients took on a greater burden of the costs, which could then be translated into higher fees for doctors. But such proposals are cold comfort for Alina Lungu and 18-month-old Sebastian, who will probably spend his life in a vegetative state. "The problem is that all this black money absolves doctors of their moral responsibility toward their patients," she said. "It has got to be stopped."
REF: http://www.iht.com/articles/2009/02/13/europe/bribery.php
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In Romania, Bribery is a Social Health Problem.
Alina Lungu, 30, says she did everything necessary to ensure a healthy pregnancy in Romania: She ate organic food, swam daily and bribed her gynecologist with an extra 200 in cash, paid in monthly increments of 25 handed over discreetly in white envelopes. Another bribe of 25, or about $32, went to a nurse to guarantee an epidural. Even the orderly reaped an extra 10 to make sure he didn't drop her from the stretcher. But on the day of her delivery, she says, her gynecologist never arrived. Twelve hours into labor, she was left alone in her room for an hour. When a doctor appeared, the umbilical cord was wrapped twice around her baby's head and had nearly suffocated him. He was blind and deaf and had suffered severe brain damage. Now, Alina and her husband, Ionut, despair that if they had paid a larger bribe to the doctor, then Sebastian would perhaps be a healthy baby. "Doctors are so used to getting bribes in Romania that you now have to pay more in order to even get their attention," she said.
Romania, a poor Balkan country of 22 million that joined the European Union two years ago, is struggling to shed a culture of corruption honed during decades of communism - and stretching back beyond that. The European Commission, the EU's executive body, published a damning report Thursday criticizing Romania for backtracking on key judicial changes necessary to fight corruption. Sanctions could follow, including losing some of the 32 billion in EU aid it is due to receive between 2007 and 2013. Transparency International, the Berlin-based anti-corruption watchdog, last year ranked Romania as the second most corrupt country in the 27-member bloc behind neighboring Bulgaria. Those who have faced corruption allegations have included a former prime minister, more than 1,100 doctors and teachers, 170 police officers and 3 generals, according to Romanian anti-corruption investigators.
Romanians complain that everyday graft and bribery blight their lives. One patient here recently offered his doctor a free shopping trip to Dubai. The doctor politely declined. Dr. Vasile Astarastoae, a biomedical ethicist who is president of the Romanian College of Physicians, representing 47,000 doctors, blamed the black healthcare economy on a pitifully low average monthly wage of 400 for doctors, which he said was forcing them to rely on supplementary income. "Patients don't want to go to a doctor who is distracted thinking, 'How will I feed my kids or pay the rent?"' Astarastoae said. "So there is a conspiracy between the doctor and the patient to pay a bribe." "If salaries were higher, then the practice would disappear," he said. A study conducted by the World Bank for the Romanian Ministry of Health concluded that so-called informal payments amounted to $360 million annually. When an illness requires hospitalization, the Romanian patient typically pays three or four bribes equivalent to three-quarters of a family's monthly income, the study showed. The Ministry of Health is trying to root out the practice, and recently set up a free phone line for patients to report abuses. Within an hour, it was jammed. Hospital here are plastered with anti-bribery posters. One shows a man hiding a gift behind his back, with the words "You Shouldn't Have" above his head. The issue gained national attention last month when a 63-year-old man, Mihai Constantinescu, died of a massive heart attack in the waiting room of a hospital in Slatina, in southern Romania, after doctors refused to treat him. Mihaela Ionita, the nurse who wheeled him fruitlessly from room to room, said in an interview she believed he had been refused care "because he appeared poor and could not afford a bribe." The hospital said Constantinescu did not appear to have been an emergency case. Victor Alistar, director of Transparency International's Romanian branch, said the culture of bribery was a hangover from communism, when Romanians endured long lines just to get basics like eggs and milk and used bribes to acquire scarce products and services.
Physicians lament that bribery is so endemic in the healthcare system that if a doctor refuses a bribe, patients typically become anxious and distraught, believing this to be a sign that their illness is incurable and death is imminent. Doctors then take the bribe to try to allay their anxiety. Doctors and patients say bribery in the health-care system follows a set of unwritten rules. The cost of bribes depends on the treatment, ranging from 100 for a straightforward appendix-removal operation to up to 5,000 for brain surgery. The suggested bribery prices are passed on by word of mouth, and are publicized on blogs and Internet sites. Alistar said public hospitals routinely exchanged "supplementary payment" lists to ensure they had the same rates. Dr. Adela Salceanu, a psychiatrist and anti-bribery advocate, said doctors used different and sometimes subtle methods to make it clear they expected a money-laden envelope. She recalled that one friend, a 42-year-old lawyer, recently broke two legs in a basketball game and was taken to hospital for surgery. When he did not offer money to the orthopedic surgeon on duty, his procedure was postponed for a week; he was finally operated on, but only after paying the doctor an extra 400. Salceanu lamented that young doctors who refused to accept bribes were routinely chastised or threatened with dismissal by senior colleagues for subverting the black market. Mugur Ciumageanu, a psychiatrist who has practiced in public hospitals in Bucharest, recalled that when he was a young doctor, he was shocked when the senior physician on the ward took him aside and forbade him to talk with patients for three months. Her explanation, he recalled, was that he was spending more time with patients than she was and, by appearing more caring, was denting her bribery earnings. Marilena Tiron, 26, a recent graduate of medical school in Bucharest, said the bribery culture among doctors started early because residents were also poorly paid - about 200 a month. She said the issue of bribery did not come up in her optional medical ethics class at the University of Bucharest's Medical School "since the teachers were taking bribes themselves." Astarastoae, of the Romanian College of Physicians, acknowledged that bribery needed to be rooted out, but he argued that the media exaggerated the practice. While doctors are god-like figures in most Western countries, respected and handsomely rewarded for years of hard study, Astarastoae said that in Romania, the medical profession was denigrated because workers in factories had been made heroes under communism, while doctors and intellectuals were treated as unproductive "parasites."
Astarastoae, who helped write Romania's code of medical ethics, said that under the code, it was considered unethical to take money or a gift before treatment; after treatment, however, it was at the discretion of the patient if he or she wanted to show appreciation. He said the college had the power to sanction bribery by revoking the licenses of doctors implicated in a bribe. Few patients, however, are willing to name and shame their doctors for fear they could be shunned by other physicians. Liviu Manaila, Romania's secretary of state for health, said in an interview that the system of informal payments was depriving doctors of their dignity and needed to be stamped out. While the government's budget is too strained to raise doctor's wages, he proposed revamping Romania's socialized medical system so that patients took on a greater burden of the costs, which could then be translated into higher fees for doctors. But such proposals are cold comfort for Alina Lungu and 18-month-old Sebastian, who will probably spend his life in a vegetative state. "The problem is that all this black money absolves doctors of their moral responsibility toward their patients," she said. "It has got to be stopped."
REF: http://www.iht.com/articles/2009/02/13/europe/bribery.php
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
"I don’t actually agree with your perception of universal health care being ‘forced’ on anyone."
Decameron:
I would be interested to hear what your rebuttal is if you condone enforcing universal health care on Americans who enjoy the freedom of choosing their care from the private sector.
-D
I don’t actually agree with your perception of universal health care being ‘forced’ on anyone. It would be a service that would be available to anyone, but if you choose to have your own private insurance then there would be nothing stopping you from doing so.
I was stationed in England about 10 years ago and it broke down like this. If you were just an average joe (not plumber), you had access to their normal NIH services. That meant that you could go to hospital for whatever ailed you without charge. However, the folks that were a bit more well off wanted better care, private rooms, and all that. They purchased private supplemental insurance that got them that next level of service. This seemed like a reasonable compromise for the people who felt that they deserved a better level of service than the general public.
I think that it’s ridiculous that one of the richest countries in the world (that would be us) doesn’t provide basic health care to its citizens. It doesn’t seem right that somebody working hard and just trying to live their life faces the very real possibility of bankruptcy due to unforeseeable medical problems.
Decameron:In the scenario you describe, whereas public health care is made available to the general public with exceptional circumstances allowing for a higher grade of health care being made available to those who wish to pay, I agree. What I don’t agree with is the mode in which the government wishes to fund the health care system. The situation you described is already present. This is why we have Medicare which is funded by the tax payer. People have actively sought out employment to take advantage of medical and dental benefits; this is one of the inherent incentives with getting a job. Now I realize that on one hand, exceptional circumstances can bankrupt a persons ability to handle their own medical bills-employed or not, but this is the exception not the norm.
Let us be realistic here, the government is not efficient at handling wealth. The private sector has its up and downs, but it’s cyclic rather then a continuous decline. History has widely shown that continuous growth of the government often creates social dependencies, lack of individual accountability, all funded by higher–irreversible tax rates. Case in point, it’s no secret that the country is flooded with illegal immigrants. Each time an ‘unfortunate’ medical circumstance occurs and an illegal goes to the emergency room, or get’s pregnant…who pays the bill? The answer? You and I.
Look at the welfare system. How many families receive welfare checks as registered, unskilled workers with dependents, all the while engaging in silent partners or criminal activity? The answer? Many. The fact is, the government comes up with some excellent ideas but rarely has the vision to follow through to correct the problem. Throwing money at it….tax payer money is not the answer. Deterrence and holding people accountable for their choices in employment, health, and life styles is the key. For exceptional circumstances, Medicare is still in place, the concept of credit allows financing, and if all else fails…families and friends will pull together. There will always be circumstances that cannot be remedied. But I think it’s an atrocity on individual freedom to let the government raise our taxed another 25% in order to create larger more inefficient agencies, encourage poor choice making, and vicariously reduce the standard of living across the board. I agree that the health care system needs to be adjusted to fit the times but it needs to be without giving a blank paycheck to the government. At the end of the day it all boils down to the individual choice. That freedom is worth preserving for better or worse.
11 February 2009, 8:40 pm
Friday, January 30, 2009
"We got the power of Steele behind us."
Reference: http://www.hiphoprepublican.blogspot.com/
We live interesting times. The Former President wears the crown of the President with the lowest approval rating in the history of the country, an ex-Miss America pagent winner receives the Vice Presidential nomination, and our first African American President is placed into office. What's next? Well, the conservative movement is reforming, building new strategy, and while bracing against moral decay, more history is made with the election of Michael Steel as the Chairman of the Republican National Committee.
What does this say about the conservative movement? Is this yet another attempt to even the playing field? Unfortunately, the time for bold new moves has passed. And yet, one still wonders what the GOP is up to? Is the racial card going to be the new shoe-in to the white house? I surely hope not. After all, leadership of the free world is not about affirmative action or pop-culture. It's about best man for the job.
We live interesting times. The Former President wears the crown of the President with the lowest approval rating in the history of the country, an ex-Miss America pagent winner receives the Vice Presidential nomination, and our first African American President is placed into office. What's next? Well, the conservative movement is reforming, building new strategy, and while bracing against moral decay, more history is made with the election of Michael Steel as the Chairman of the Republican National Committee.
What does this say about the conservative movement? Is this yet another attempt to even the playing field? Unfortunately, the time for bold new moves has passed. And yet, one still wonders what the GOP is up to? Is the racial card going to be the new shoe-in to the white house? I surely hope not. After all, leadership of the free world is not about affirmative action or pop-culture. It's about best man for the job.
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