The Exercise of Vital Powers

Are you really gonna vote for this loser?

The Case for a more agile, mobile libertarian party.

Why VW became the worlds largest company, and how hedge funds took it in the pants.

A very scary presentation on Naked Shorting and the dangers of electronic trading. (about an hour long)

A jury found U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens of Alaska guilty Monday of all seven counts in his federal corruption trial.

The jury found Stevens guilty of “knowingly and willfully” scheming to conceal on Senate disclosure forms more than $250,000 in home renovations and other gifts from an Alaska-based oil industry contractor. (CNN)

I’ve been depressed all day. This has really cheered me up. I want that fucker to spend the rest of his life in pound-him-in-the-ass federal prison.

From Ed Rollins:

Our 43rd president’s goal in life was to surpass his father, 41, whom he admired but felt was weak.

Guided by his political guru, Karl Rove, it was Bush II’s ambition to make the Republican Party the majority party for decades to come. He and Karl wanted to create a political realignment that would marginalize Democrats for at least a generation and maybe more.

Not satisfied to change only American politics, Bush and his neo-con advisers, led by Dick Cheney, wanted to use American military might to spread democracy to places that had been led only by tribal councils and ruthless dictators.

If Bush had accomplished these goals, he truly would have been a historic president much like his newfound hero Harry Truman. But his failures were unimaginable. W will go down in history, all right.

He will leave office with the lowest approval ratings of any president in modern times and will be judged as a catastrophic failure who destroyed his party, left his successor with two unpopular, unfinished wars and left the country in the worst economic condition in nearly eight decades. That’s not even counting the Bush administration’s inadequate response to Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath.

So I have to decide whom I will vote for this year. For state level races it’s easy. Glenn Richardson’s antics aside, I’m pretty happy with the job the Georgia Republicans are doing in the General Assembly. I’ll vote for the McDonald and Everitt for PSC, Senator Shafer for Senate, and Representative Coleman for State House.

Similarly, my decision to vote for the Democrats in the Gwinnett races is easy. The Gwinnett County Commission voted earlier this year to have the county run all trash service. While trash service is hardly the most critical issue facing me and my family the fact that my trash bill went up 40%, not to mention that Republicans are supposed to be for LESS Government means that the elected GOP leadership has lost its credibility with me. I will not be voting for the Democrats as much as against the Komissars on the Gwinnett Commission.

That leaves me with the question of who will receive my vote for President, Senate and US Congress. For those who haven’t yet figured it out from my previous posts, I’m livid at the Republican Party. Christopher Buckley said it best in National Review: “Eight years of “conservative” government has brought us a doubled national debt, ruinous expansion of entitlement programs, bridges to nowhere, poster boy Jack Abramoff and an ill-premised, ill-waged war conducted by politicians of breathtaking arrogance. As a sideshow, it brought us a truly obscene attempt at federal intervention in the Terry Schiavo case.” And let us not forget the hysterical theatrics that has become airport security and the gross incompetence that was the Katrina effort.

Ronald Reagan famously said: “Government is not the solution to our problems, Government is the problem.” George W. Bush said “When people hurt Government has to move.” I guess it’s true, George W. Bush does hate black people (whites, Asians and Hispanics too) if he thinks that when people are hurting that they need more problems. Of course, that is not how Bush, Cheney, and Rove think. They, along with the majority of the GOP leadership in Congress, believe that Government is the solution to all problems, so long as the right Republicans are running things. It is for this reason that I can take some solace in the fact that President Obama will have Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and 59 other Democratic Senators. Together they will use all the expanded powers of Government that Bush and those who supported him created. If Hillary’s FBI files were a concern in the 1990s, image the fun Attorney General Clinton will have with the Patriot Act and warrentless wiretaps.

The GOP had a once in a lifetime chance to actually do something positive for this country. Instead of reform, we got the K-Street Project. Instead of fulfilling the Contract with America they passed No Child Gets Ahead. Instead of Energy Independence, they monkeyed around with Daylight Savings Time.

Finally, let’s not forget the $1 Trillion dollar bailout. I don’t object to bailing out Wall Street. Wall Street is the oil pump of our economy - generating the lubrication that moves money through out the American and Global Economies. Without Wall Street, our economy would be stuck in the 19th Century. Edison, Bell, Ford all were possible because of the capital created by bankers and investors in New York. I don’t object to rich CEOs getting bailed out. I object to anyone who makes bad decisions getting bailed out.

But what I most object to is the fact that Henry Paulson and George Bush screamed “OMG its the end of the world!!!!,” and within a week Congress spent several hundred billion dollars. This is the same George Bush who screamed that Saddam Hussein would be nuking American cities if we didn’t go to war. The same George Bush who said that Al Qaeda would hijhack more airplanes and kill more Americans if we didn’t pass the Patriot Act. Bush’s modus operandi for getting his legislative initiatives passed by Congress was to threaten Armageddon. And by and large, the GOP dominated Congress blindly followed along. Including John Linder and Saxby Chambliss.

Both of those gentlemen have demonstrated that they are not independent thinkers, and that they will blindly expand government whenever the White House screams bloody murder. Neither of them deserves to be sent back to Washington DC. But that doesn’t mean I won’t vote for them. While Linder has been a do-nothing in Congress since he became a cult-leader, he did oppose the bailout bill. While Chambliss blindly followed the President on the War, entitlement expansion, and the nationalization of the banks, he did have the foresight to support immigration reform.

John McCain has been different. John McCain, unlike certain Presidential Candidates, opposed the Bush Administration’s bad policies while still in office, not after he lost reelection and was desperate to stay politically relevant. John McCain opposed No Child Left Behind. He opposed the Prescription Drug Benefit. He called for more troops in Iraq while Rummy was letting soldiers die rather than admit his mistakes. John McCain has been steadfastly opposed to earmarks. Finally, he bucked his own party’s base to try and solve the tough problem of illegal immigration - in a limited government, free trade manner. It’s for these reasons John McCain is one of the few Senators whom I respect. We don’t agree on everything. I think McCain-Feingold was a bad and unconstitutional law. He has not convinced me that government action is needed to combat climate change, although I remain open to being convinced. I find the rhetoric about greed a bit disturbing. It was greed that funded the likes of Edison, Bell and Ford.

The other choices on the ballot are pathetic. A US Senator who hasn’t finished his first term. Who runs on a campaign of “Change” yet selects a running mate who was first elected to the Senate while John McCain was still a POW. A man who promised to clean up politics, who then reneged on his public funding pledge. Who wants to punish hard work and success in order to “spread the wealth around.”

How about a washed up ex-congressman, and a Vegas bookie? Anyone who thinks Sarah Palin is unqualified yet votes for Wayne Allan Root is a hypocrite. Barr might have been credible if he ran against Saxby & Martin. Buckley might have been credible if he ran for the state house. But neither have any interest in elective office. Like all top-ticket LP candidates, they run to gather a database of fan-boys who they can then bleed for whatever scheme they dream up for after the election. Unfortunately, they bleed folks who, if they were really interested in personal financial responsibility, should be saving and investing their money so that they won’t need to be dependent on government largess.

So I think I will vote for John McCain. Despite the horrid campaign he has run, thanks in large part to the same advisers and myrmidons that have made George W. Bush the worst President since FDR, I still respect the man, and find it hard to vote against him. Especially since to vote against John McCain will mean a vote for one of two greatly pathetic tickets.

The dilemma is with regard to Senator Chambliss and Congressman Linder. There is much to be said for giving the Democrats the 60+ votes needed to ruin this country quickly rather than slowly, so that reform, revolution and rebuilding can begin sooner rather than later. I’m not entirely sure I want to jump into that briar patch. I’m not of the financial means to retreat to a villa off the coast of Italy and watch the empire burn. Perhaps it would be better to delay the pain and suffering till I’m in a better position to bug out. And the larger and harder the drubbing the GOP gets, the faster it will attempt to reform itself and present an actual alternative to the big government Democrats.

Sic transit gloria America

These are the same idiots you are trusting with your retirement, and soon will be trusting with your healthcare.

US Treasury secretary puts a gun to the heads of major banks and say “You will take this $25B, and give me preferred equity. We don’t care if you need the money or not.”

Yeah, the imminent death of the Internet has been predicted many time before. However this doesn’t bode well: FCC Clears Free Wireless Web.

A proposal to create a free, national wireless Internet service got a boost as Federal Communications Commission engineers concluded that concerns are overblown about such service interfering with other carriers.

The report clears the way for the FCC to move forward with a plan to auction off airwaves to a bidder who agrees to offer free, national wireless Internet service. The FCC is expected to finalize rules this year and could begin auctioning off airwaves in early-to-mid 2009.

If the Internet is primarly a wireless medium, will all the bogus New Deal Era policies regarding public ownership of the airwaves kick in? Will there be a blogosphere equal time rule proposed? What about material that hypersensitive Christian pansies find offensive? Hypersensitive leftist whiners? Can I say the work ‘Fuck the Congress’ or will that trigger an FCC fine? If the internet is 100% wireless what will the security model be? Will is use strong encryption, or crippled-encryption allowing Law Enforcement access to near-realtime monitoring of everything everyone does.

A free wireless network will drive out competition from Cable and DSL so you’d pretty much be stuck using this government sponsored solution.

Caveat Emptor: This product may be such crap that no one uses it. Still once the Internet is going over what used to be channel 5, the FCC will make a power grab to regulate it the same as they did Channel 5.

What we have seen the past two weeks is not a failure of the market. Its a failure of Government and faith in Government. Congress fails to pass a bailout, Dow drops 700pts. Congress passes a bailout, Dow drops 600pts. After the bailout, Dow drops another 2000pts.

Federal Reserve, US Treasury, and FDIC are buy companies, guaranteeing and making loans, and upping deposit insurance. Credit is still frozen, and financial companies are in panic.

Nothing the Government has done is helping.

First, the business model of Government Sponsored Entities (GSEs) in which profits accrue to the private sector but risks are underwritten by the public has proven unworkable. It would be a grave mistake to preserve the GSEs in anything resembling their current form. –George Soros

Marginal Revolution: Facts about banks

…the total liabilities of Deutsche Bank (leverage ratio over 50!) amount to around 2,000 billion euro, (more than Fannie Mai) or over 80 % of the GDP of Germany. This is simply too much for the Bundesbank or even the German state to contemplate, given that the German budget is bound by the rules of the Stability pact and the German government cannot order (unlike the US Treasury) its central bank to issue more currency. The total liabilities of Barclays of around 1,300 billion pounds (leverage ratio over 60!) surpasses Britain’s GDP. Fortis bank, which has been in the news recently, has a leverage ratio of “only” 33, but its liabilities are several times larger than the GDP of its home country (Belgium).

Bail that out suckas!