The same old arguments keep surfacing. Decades of debate have settled nothing. Why? Because those who want to redistribute your wealth and those who hope to receive that wealth (and many of those who should be aware of them and their nonsense) are too lazy or too stupid to learn from history. They prefer instead to learn from opium-pipe dreams based upon their “virtue” being ultimately rewarded by “a gentler, more just society” (created precisely to reward only those who believe precisely as they do). When the voters stay willfully ignorant of history, they keep electing and re-electing the same monsters who’ve destroyed our nation’s prospects year after year after year over the last century.
The Age Old Questions Still Seek Answers
“What Makes Your Political Self-Interest More
Virtuous than My Economic Self-Interest?”
Because Americans don’t know the history of the financial collapse, they are repeating the same mistakes that got us into it and kept destroying the economy for the last 45 years. Back when the Black Panthers and the hippies were literally setting the world afire in the early 70’s, a Black FBI undercover agent spent some time with the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and the Weather Underground and the Black Panthers. The SDS wanted a revolution. After The Revolution people like them would be in charge everywhere and the kinder, gentler American nation would be in place operating under neo-Marxist principles. When the FBI operative acted like a confused neophyte and asked “what would happen next once their victory had been won?” He was told that a “re-education of everybody in the country opposed to their new system would begin and people would all come to understand and appreciate them and their better ways. When he pressed the question further and further he was told “Yes, sadly it’s true there are some people who will “never get it” and might have to be imprisoned or even killed. “ How many? “Oh, perhaps 10-15%.” That’s a huge price for kinder-gentler wealth distribution.
Thirty-two years ago Milton Friedman was interviewed by a very young Phil Donahue who asked him “When you see around the globe the mal-distribution of wealth; the desperate plight of millions of people in under-developed countries; when you see so few ‘haves’ and so many ‘have nots; when you see the greed and the concentration of power; didn’t you ever have a moment’s doubt about capitalism and whether ‘GREED’s’ a good idea to run (things) on?” Tell me that’s not a question of import!
That took 24 seconds for Phil. With little interruption Friedman took exactly the next 120 seconds to set the record straight and to disarm Donahue’s and his audiences’ predisposition toward that buzzword “Greed” and toward another buzzword Donahue uttered later “VIRTUE” when Donahue added “But it seems to reward not virtue but ability to manipulate the system . . . .” That’s the content of the first video linked above.
If you want to know how the United States of America got into its present god-awful economic situation . . . it’s called street theater. Saul Alinsky author of Rules for Radicals and Reveille for Radicals laid out all the ground rules on how to make a scene; get it aired in the media and then create bogus advances for neo-Marxism. More on how today’s actions tie into the financial mess later. Here’s the second video linked above you NEED to Watch:
He was immaculately dressed and kneeling in the street in front of Chase Bank. “Right there, right there, that’s the bank that took my parents’ homes. Take me, I submit, it’s just not right! I’m going to be arrested, take me!” Wow, it all seemed so incredible and all the network media (MSM) ran the story without investigating. Then when the story was flat-out refuted; surprise the MSM forgot to clue its viewers on to the fact that they had allowed themselves to be shamefully used by this punk born with a silver-spoon in his mouth.
Barack Obama’s willingness to lie to America’s voters in order to get re-elected seems to be catching on. One of the most clear-cut areas where lying is par for the course is on display today during the “Days of Rage”; and “Occupy Wall Street” protests. One of those darling kids kneeling in the street in front of Wall Street firms and large banks really pulled a “Barack” of prodigious grandiosity as part of the left’s so-called “Days of Rage” protests. Shouting out that the bank was “taking my parents’ home” as he was arrested; he made quite a scene for the mainstream media (MSM) cameras. Only problem: it was all theater, a lie! A lie his mother later refuted.
No bank is taking his parents’ home; and the bank in question has nothing to do with his parents. His parents both hold Master’s degrees and their half-a-million home is only $60,000 from being entirely theirs. Oh, and the kid himself? He attends an exclusive law school. All this information came courtesy of his mother refuting the scene the little bugger made on national TV. In other words the protestor’s (Robert Stephens’) story is (surprise!) completely bogus.
County property records reveal that the Stephens’ home has never beenin foreclosure. The taxes on the huge home are paid and amount to almost exactly what a year at his law school costs the family. The family did take a financial hit when the meltdown came and they are selling their home for a bit less than they originally wanted. Oh, and the mother, Marquita Stephens, said they probably wouldn’t stay in their St. Paul Minnesota suburb because the area is “a bit too conservative.”
What’s all that got to do with the price of tea and TEA Party actions in this tumultuous world? The thesis of this blog is the undoubtable fact that the same old arguments keep surfacing. Decades of debate have settled nothing. Why? Because those who want to redistribute your wealth and those who expect to receive that wealth (and many of those who should be aware of them and their nonsense) are too lazy or too stupid to learn from history. They prefer instead to learn from opium pipe dreams based upon their “virtue” being ultimately rewarded by “a gentler, more just society” (created precisely to reward only those who believe precisely as they do). When the voters stay willfully ignorant of history, they keep electing and re-electing the same monsters who’ve destroyed our nation’s prospects year after year after year over the last century.**
But just because they’re too stupid and lazy to learn from history doesn’t mean YOU can’t gain from it. As mentioned Saul Alinsky is the father of today’s problems. If 70% of Americans knew and understood these pieces of history, 95% of the problems are nation now faces could be soon eliminated.
1. Alinsky was a self-described “neo-Marxist” Chicago area community organizer with two infamous books on “effective” radical behavior on his resume`. Based upon Alinsky’s street theater and idea of creating crises to make your point resonate within the mainstream media (MSM) so as to get your story before the public. Even before Alinsky wrote his second book, at Columbia University (NYC) two sociology professors, Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven (married to each other), decided Alinsky’s ideas could be the basis of profound shifts in the American scene based upon their admittedly Communist/Socialist view of life.
Some important background: in 1964 the nation was then undergoing President Lyndon Baines Johnson’s great society program and the much-ballyhooed “War on Poverty.” One good thing was accomplished: the Civil Rights Act was passed. Two good-sounding things were also accomplished Medicare and the state and federal combination called Medicaid were created. These programs would never actually be funded as the law required – their supposed “lockboxes” were raided constantly over the years and today the UNfunded liability from these two programs is roughly $65 TRillion. In addition all then current welfare programs were expanded and the welfare rolls swelled.
2. Cloward and Piven wrote an article in the May, 1966 edition of the leftist magazine The Nation titled The Weight of the Poor: a Strategy to Eliminate Poverty. The article was based upon Alinsky’s ideas and methods and called for creating a welfare crisis. Because of the crisis, the article said, the Democratic Congress (both House and Senate) would feel compelled to create a GNI (guaranteed national income) and POOF-ABRACADABRA! Poverty would be eliminated over-night. This article became the rage everywhere leftist ideas were discussed. Cloward and Piven and a man named George Wiley took the idea further.
3. Wiley, Piven and Cloward created the NWRO (National Welfare Rights Organization) in late 1967 and by 1968 were so well organized that their people were engaging in street theater across the nation. By 1973 the welfare rolls had doubled from eight million to sixteen million recipients. They never got their GNI. What they got was the worst economic down-turn since the Great Depression and a stock market collapse of almost exactly 24 months duration. What they got was the bankruptcy of their hometown New York City. What they got was the near bankruptcy of several other large cities around the nation; the near bankruptcy of New York State and New Jersey and Illinois and financial chaos in many other states and large cities. Wiley, Cloward and Piven in print and otherwise publicly bragged about the great thing they’d accomplished. They advised their followers that their next attacks would come in housing and voter registration.
4. In 1976 progressive Democrat Jimmy Carter and a Democratic House and Congress were put into office. Within weeks of taking office in January, 1977, they created the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA ’77) which for the first time FORCED banks and mortgage companies to knowingly make horrendously bad loans to totally unqualified home loan applicants. The free market was ended for the mortgage industry. At that time only 0.24% were considered “suspect,” that is granted with less than 3% down payment. About the same time, a Cloward-Piven, Wiley Lieutenant from the welfare wars (sent to Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1970)Wade Rathke, was assigned the task of creating a strategic way to exploit this new chink in America’s armor in Alinsky fashion. ACORN was born. Besides destroying capitalism directly, CRA law aimed to massively redistribute wealth. The twisted thinking went something like this: America has (64%) the highest private home ownership in the world, but it’s not enough. Everybody SHOULD own their own home. Besides home prices never go down so if we put poor people into homes, even if they can’t afford them, they can always sell and make a profit that way and thus gain a larger slice of the pie.^^
5. In 1977 ACORN stood for Arkansas Community Organizations for Reform Now. Arkansas was chosen for three reasons: Rathke was GOOD at his work; Bill Clinton was the most up-and-coming young politician in the country and he lived in Arkansas and he was ambitious and his wife Hillary was not only ambitious but she was a Chicago girl and a favorite student of Saul Alinsky who even wrote her college thesis on Alinsky techniques. Cloward and Piven and Wiley had chosen wisely . . . and the nightmare we’re living today attests to it.
6. ACORN gathered voter registration forms in a get-out-the-vote campaign across the state then promptly threw away all those who hadn’t registered as Democrats. Lieutenant Governor Bill Clinton won easily and won the right for he and Hillary to live in the governor’s mansion. They would do so for 12 of the next 14 years; and Bill would become the first ACORN president after the elections of 1992. Meanwhile Rathke’s work with CRA was bearing slow, steady and sure fruit. By 1985 the ACORN street-theater in Arkansas alone (a la Alinsky) had doubled the nation’s suspect home loan rate. Now 0.51% of the nation’s mortgages were granted at 3% or less down payment. ACORN was expanded to all 50 states and became the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now. The nightmare was alive and well.
Motor Voter has been called “a twelve-lane highway to voter fraud” and ACORN has been found guilty repeatedly of voter registration fraud over the years. Clinton also made a dramatic expansion of CRA ’77 law by presidential edict. He would continue that fiat expansion of CRA for eight years. In 1975 Clinton twice fooled the Republicans and passed moderate legislative expansions of CRA ’77. In 1998 he passed a monster steroid expansion of CRA laws.
8. Two brief side notes . . . you may have noticed the term “community organizations” as part of the ACORN name. Alinsky was the most famous community organizer in history until Barack Obama came along. Obama was an ACORN lawyer for roughly two years in Chicago from 1994-96. He shook down and extorted cooperation with ACORN from numerous lenders in Chicago. He was famous for getting the banks to agree to donate a little on the side for ACORN operating costs. While Clinton was steroid-expanding CRA, Texas governor George W. Bush passed a law in 1998 requiring all mortgages in Texas to require 20% down (typically 85% of all loans are granted with 15%-25% down payment). Bush’s decision kept Texas prosperous and the site of an awful large percentage of the nation’s job growth to this day.
9. The rest is history. Fueled by Clinton’s steroid version expansion of CRA ’77 ACORN now found it easier to put actually impoverished home loan applicants into $440,000 homes in the 21st Century than they had been able to put better qualified (but still unqualified) applicants into $110,000 homes a decade earlier. By 2005 the “suspect loans” in this country amounted to 34.2% of all home mortgages.
Many of the new wave of borrowers were granted 0% (zero percent!) down payments. Many of them had no jobs; a horrible credit rating; their only listed “income” (thanks to Clinton’s steroid-expansion) was food stamps; and even illegal aliens were put into $300,000-$350,000 homes. To protect themselves the banks wrapped the mortgages together in a package and tried to sell them. Because the law required government agencies to be involved a lot of “bad paper” was bought up by foolish investors, Wall Street, and even other banks and insurance agencies. It all came crashing down about October, 2008 after a year of financial malaise.
10.President George W. Bush made a speech in January, 2005 warning about the “sub-prime lending” fiasco and seeking to pass a repeal of virtually all the CRA legislation. Eighteen Bush speeches and thirty months later a watered-down bi-partisan repeal of parts of CRA law was passed in July, 2007. It proved too little and too late as far as stopping the financial collapse, but it did enough to keep home prices from plummeting far, far faster and lower.
11. Barack Obama today often talks about the “financial mess” he “inherited” and blames the economy being driven into the ditch upon Conservatives, the G.O.P., Wall Street, and even the free market itself. It took seven years for Cloward and Piven and Wiley to bankrupt New York City by welfare fraud. It took 30 years for the progressives to ruin the free market sufficiently to bring on this collapse and bankrupt the whole nation and they want you to vote for them in 2012 because they say somebody else drove the country into the ditch.
Ya’all live long, strong and ornery,
Rajjpuut
** Our first Progressive president was Teddy Roosevelt. Thankfully, his progressivism was mildly megalomaniacal and not economically-based compared to the control-the-economy progressives to come. Woodrow Wilson, Herbert Hoover, FDR, LBJ, Jimmy Carter, Clinton and Obama are the worst pure progressives we’ve seen in the Oval Office. Progressivism as a doctrine jumped the Atlantic from England where the Fabian Socialists called for things like euthanasia and eugenics.
Progressives are Marxists who do NOT believe in violent revolution until much later in the process but rather expect to make incremental gains in socialism over the decades until the scene is set and they can exploit matters. Rajjpuut’s definition of progressives: Progressives believe in the doctrine that “we must progress beyond the ‘ill-conceived and outdated U.S. Constitution’ to make progress toward an earthly (Marxist) Utopia.”
By the way, a lady named Ayn Rand had lived through creation of the Soviet society in Russia and knew and understood history enough that she wrote a three-part novel called Atlas Shrugged. That book’s prophetic powers are now 85% confirmed with more history unfolding every day. And Part I of that novel was made into a superb movie which this month came out on DVD. Every reasonable and intelligent American who believes in fiscal responsibility and Constitutional-fidelity should own this wonderful movie.
^^ It was also a direct attack on Capitalism as the driving engine of the American Dream. The people who rent homes and apartments tend to be hard-workers who live frugally and save and use that method to move ahead economically. Landlords tend to be such people. Destroying this opportunity is criminal. What is so wrong about renting anyway? It sure beats living with so many of the headaches homeowners now are living through. And the author of the Rich Dad, Poor Dad financial advice books told us a decade ago that a home is a liability and NOT to be considered an investment as most people believe.
