To think they banned this........
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Monday, June 15, 2009
The Common Good According To Citi
June 15, 2009 11:55AM
Citigroup and the World Bank Illuminati are stealing our money
Citigroup has taken in tens of billions of dollars in direct welfare infusions from TARP in order to make payroll and keep the lights turned on. Vikram Pandit, the CEO who’s also the guy who started a hedge fund using money fronted from giant investment banks like Citigroup and sold the start up hedge fund to Citigroup so that it could risk and lose its depositors money in the stock market, had to come back and beg for more just-for-Citi money from taxpayer largesse since Citigroup did indeed risk and lose every cent their depositors, lenders and shareholders had given them.
And now Citigroup wants to take the money they’ve begged to have confiscated from the private market and funnel it to the most IMF-politically-connected people who “run” companies in developing nations around the world. We don’t have enough welfare money in this country to feed hungry kids in the projects a few blocks away from Citigroup’s headquarters…but apparently, we have enough welfare money in this country for corrupt bureaucracies and politicians in other countries to plunder as they pretend that redistributed money is “Intended to stimulate the growth of trade in the emerging markets over a three-year timeframe, this funding is expected to support estimated trade flows of up to $7.5 billion (through the origination of $1.25 billion six times over during the three-year period)”
The money at Citigroup is supposed to be depositors’ savings lent out to companies and individuals whom Citigroup thinks will pay them back. The government’s supposed to make sure everybody involved in that doesn’t lie, cheat or steal. That’s how money flows where it’s most needed and markets are created and prosperity built.
Instead, the US government has confiscated taxpayer money and given it to fraudulent management at Citigroup and Citigroup’s now taking that confiscated taxpayer money and telling us that it will only lend that money out to those can properly work the World Bank system.
Virtuous cycles create growth and prosperity and can only be created, by definition, on virtuous terms and with profit to fuel them. There’s nothing virtuous about Citigroup’s newfound politically-motivated and politically-CONTROLLED policies and actions.
And the billions of people in the emerging countries who aren’t politically-connected enough to get their hands on all that confiscated money coming into their countries won’t benefit from the endlessly vicious cycle of politically-driven markets either.
Even if these policies at Citigroup were to generate earnings for the company, the company has NO RIGHT to the profiteering they are doing with all this taxpayer largesse they have begged for.
Don’t we want Citigroup to deal with its insolvency and sold off in pieces to private co’s asap once and for all?
And what’s good for Citigroup is NO LONGER what’s good for the United States “public good” and we have to change that.
Citigroup and the World Bank Illuminati are stealing our money
Citigroup has taken in tens of billions of dollars in direct welfare infusions from TARP in order to make payroll and keep the lights turned on. Vikram Pandit, the CEO who’s also the guy who started a hedge fund using money fronted from giant investment banks like Citigroup and sold the start up hedge fund to Citigroup so that it could risk and lose its depositors money in the stock market, had to come back and beg for more just-for-Citi money from taxpayer largesse since Citigroup did indeed risk and lose every cent their depositors, lenders and shareholders had given them.
And now Citigroup wants to take the money they’ve begged to have confiscated from the private market and funnel it to the most IMF-politically-connected people who “run” companies in developing nations around the world. We don’t have enough welfare money in this country to feed hungry kids in the projects a few blocks away from Citigroup’s headquarters…but apparently, we have enough welfare money in this country for corrupt bureaucracies and politicians in other countries to plunder as they pretend that redistributed money is “Intended to stimulate the growth of trade in the emerging markets over a three-year timeframe, this funding is expected to support estimated trade flows of up to $7.5 billion (through the origination of $1.25 billion six times over during the three-year period)”
The money at Citigroup is supposed to be depositors’ savings lent out to companies and individuals whom Citigroup thinks will pay them back. The government’s supposed to make sure everybody involved in that doesn’t lie, cheat or steal. That’s how money flows where it’s most needed and markets are created and prosperity built.
Instead, the US government has confiscated taxpayer money and given it to fraudulent management at Citigroup and Citigroup’s now taking that confiscated taxpayer money and telling us that it will only lend that money out to those can properly work the World Bank system.
Virtuous cycles create growth and prosperity and can only be created, by definition, on virtuous terms and with profit to fuel them. There’s nothing virtuous about Citigroup’s newfound politically-motivated and politically-CONTROLLED policies and actions.
And the billions of people in the emerging countries who aren’t politically-connected enough to get their hands on all that confiscated money coming into their countries won’t benefit from the endlessly vicious cycle of politically-driven markets either.
Even if these policies at Citigroup were to generate earnings for the company, the company has NO RIGHT to the profiteering they are doing with all this taxpayer largesse they have begged for.
Don’t we want Citigroup to deal with its insolvency and sold off in pieces to private co’s asap once and for all?
And what’s good for Citigroup is NO LONGER what’s good for the United States “public good” and we have to change that.
Our Government Motors
Here at Sound Of Cannons, we've been running the numbers on the General Motors bailout. How likely is it the Treasury will earn back its “investment”?
GM has received $50.7 billion in taxpayer money. When Government Motors comes out of bankruptcy, Uncle Sam will own 60% of it.”
At its all-time high, GM’s market cap was $56 billion, which slid down to ~$7.3 billion prior to Chapter 11.
For the taxpayer to just break even on their investment , the New GM would have to have to reach a market capitalization of $84 billion – almost 150% of its all-time peak. That will be tough, even with the new GM’s better capital structure, employee contracts and much less debt . . .
GM has received $50.7 billion in taxpayer money. When Government Motors comes out of bankruptcy, Uncle Sam will own 60% of it.”
At its all-time high, GM’s market cap was $56 billion, which slid down to ~$7.3 billion prior to Chapter 11.
For the taxpayer to just break even on their investment , the New GM would have to have to reach a market capitalization of $84 billion – almost 150% of its all-time peak. That will be tough, even with the new GM’s better capital structure, employee contracts and much less debt . . .
Mogambo rants, You Listen
Chinese Laughter the Sound of US Stupidity
by The Mogambo Guru
Tampa Bay, Florida
The winner of the Mogambo Award For Most Imbecilic Statement Of The Month (MAFMISOTM) comes from a Financial Times article where we read that Tim Geithner, whom I ungraciously call (with a sneer and a voice dripping with a tone of Pure Mogambo Contempt (PMC)), the "rat-like Treasury Secretary of the United States," tried to convince China that "the US would do what was necessary to bring its budget under control." Hahahaha!Now, there are many ways to define "do what is necessary," and after the fiasco of the United States now being known as a country that tortures people, the sky's the limit on that, I guess, and as it turns out, I was right! Listen to this: Geithner, the rat-like Treasury Secretary of the United States, told the Chinese that after a long period of grotesque, Banana- Republic style fiscal excesses for the next decade or so, we would "do what is necessary" to somehow, some day, at some time in the unforeseeable future, nobody knows how, or when, the government of the USA will bring down "the fiscal deficit to about 3 per cent of gross domestic product"! Hahahahahaha!
"We’re going to bring the fiscal deficit down to the point where (hahahaha!) history says that we have to do something to reduce the fiscal deficit? Hahahahaha!"The long string of the repetitious use of the word "ha" is my clever way of communicating in prose the sheer degree of disrespectful laughter that this ludicrous crap deserves! Hahahahaha!The reason for my scornful laughter is mostly because I have already been drinking heavily to toast my success in getting through another day without screaming my guts out that we are all doomed from the effects of this monetary and fiscal insanity and how much I hate everybody connected with it, and so it somehow strikes me as funny that this federal spending deficit of 3% of GDP is the point where it starts getting bad! Hahaha! And this (hahahaha!) is the goal? Hahaha! We're going to bring the fiscal deficit down to the point where (hahahaha!) history says that we have to do something to reduce the fiscal deficit? Hahahahaha!By this time I am laughing so hard that I am sorry that I ate all that pizza for lunch, and with gasping, rasping breath I am coughing up bits of lung tissue, along with pieces of sausage with tomato sauce, while trying to say, "Stop! Stop! Hahahaha! My stomach is hurting from all this laughter! Hahaha!" Oddly, enough, this is NOT the place in the speech where the Chinese students laughed in the face of the rat-like Treasury Secretary of the United States, although I am sure that there was a of tittering and indecipherable muttering that sounded like "Ho how chang won hong chow?" which is difficult to translate literally, but means, "What in the hell is wrong with this idiot? Did he really say that the long-term goal of these American lowlifes is to bring their fiscal deficit to 'about 3 percent of gross domestic product,' when the goal is actually to have a balanced budget, no debt, and with the government tax rake- off being as small as possible?"I can see where they would not laugh at such insufferable stupidity, considering the consequences. Instead, they laughed, according to Financial Times, when he said that "Chinese assets are very safe," which actually may have been a joke on the infamously corrupt Chinese government, which routinely takes property from citizens, actually killing millions of them in the recent Cultural Revolution, and continues its thieving ways even now by also creating lots of money and credit so that it is constantly stealing the buying power of the money that people hold! Hahaha! On the other hand, maybe they laughed because Chinese students know that with a fiat currency like the dollar and a spendthrift, redistributionist, commie-think Leftist government like the American Congress causing the over-creation of more money and credit, the dollar is doomed, and so the idea of dollar-denominated assets as being safe is totally ridiculous.The Financial Times came to another conclusion, and said that while the comment of the rat-like Treasury Secretary of the United States "drew loud laugher from his student audience," it was "a reflection of skepticism among many Chinese about the wisdom of building up large foreign reserves." Hahaha!Now I am laughing too, especially since this puts them miles ahead of us Americans, who think nothing of putting all our money, and all our retirement hopes and dreams, into dollar-denominated assets! Hahaha!The Chinese have expressed their skepticism by starting to accumulate some gold and commodities. We should do the same.And while we are at it, accumulate some silver and oil, too, an investing decision made so easy by the astounding fiscal and monetary stupidities of government that it makes you giggle with glee, "Whee! This investing stuff is easy!"
"We’re going to bring the fiscal deficit down to the point where (hahahaha!) history says that we have to do something to reduce the fiscal deficit? Hahahahaha!"The long string of the repetitious use of the word "ha" is my clever way of communicating in prose the sheer degree of disrespectful laughter that this ludicrous crap deserves! Hahahahaha!The reason for my scornful laughter is mostly because I have already been drinking heavily to toast my success in getting through another day without screaming my guts out that we are all doomed from the effects of this monetary and fiscal insanity and how much I hate everybody connected with it, and so it somehow strikes me as funny that this federal spending deficit of 3% of GDP is the point where it starts getting bad! Hahaha! And this (hahahaha!) is the goal? Hahaha! We're going to bring the fiscal deficit down to the point where (hahahaha!) history says that we have to do something to reduce the fiscal deficit? Hahahahaha!By this time I am laughing so hard that I am sorry that I ate all that pizza for lunch, and with gasping, rasping breath I am coughing up bits of lung tissue, along with pieces of sausage with tomato sauce, while trying to say, "Stop! Stop! Hahahaha! My stomach is hurting from all this laughter! Hahaha!" Oddly, enough, this is NOT the place in the speech where the Chinese students laughed in the face of the rat-like Treasury Secretary of the United States, although I am sure that there was a of tittering and indecipherable muttering that sounded like "Ho how chang won hong chow?" which is difficult to translate literally, but means, "What in the hell is wrong with this idiot? Did he really say that the long-term goal of these American lowlifes is to bring their fiscal deficit to 'about 3 percent of gross domestic product,' when the goal is actually to have a balanced budget, no debt, and with the government tax rake- off being as small as possible?"I can see where they would not laugh at such insufferable stupidity, considering the consequences. Instead, they laughed, according to Financial Times, when he said that "Chinese assets are very safe," which actually may have been a joke on the infamously corrupt Chinese government, which routinely takes property from citizens, actually killing millions of them in the recent Cultural Revolution, and continues its thieving ways even now by also creating lots of money and credit so that it is constantly stealing the buying power of the money that people hold! Hahaha! On the other hand, maybe they laughed because Chinese students know that with a fiat currency like the dollar and a spendthrift, redistributionist, commie-think Leftist government like the American Congress causing the over-creation of more money and credit, the dollar is doomed, and so the idea of dollar-denominated assets as being safe is totally ridiculous.The Financial Times came to another conclusion, and said that while the comment of the rat-like Treasury Secretary of the United States "drew loud laugher from his student audience," it was "a reflection of skepticism among many Chinese about the wisdom of building up large foreign reserves." Hahaha!Now I am laughing too, especially since this puts them miles ahead of us Americans, who think nothing of putting all our money, and all our retirement hopes and dreams, into dollar-denominated assets! Hahaha!The Chinese have expressed their skepticism by starting to accumulate some gold and commodities. We should do the same.And while we are at it, accumulate some silver and oil, too, an investing decision made so easy by the astounding fiscal and monetary stupidities of government that it makes you giggle with glee, "Whee! This investing stuff is easy!"
Butler On Silver
A PRESIDENTIAL BOMBSHELL
By Theodore Butler
(This essay was written by silver analyst Theodore Butler, an independent consultant. Investment Rarities does not necessarily endorse these views, which may or may not prove to be correct.)
I’ve just learned something about silver that I was vaguely familiar with. It had a big impact on me. When I shared it with my mentor, Izzy Friedman, the person who first got me interested in silver, he called it a bombshell. I was vaguely familiar with the subject because it dates back 44 years, to 1965. I was 18 years old and had just graduated from high school. I was thinking about college, the Vietnam War, cars and girls, though not necessarily in that order. I was definitely not thinking about silver. Izzy hadn’t even come to America yet. Even if you are 80 years old, you were only 36 in 1965.
Thanks to a post on the Internet, I had the opportunity to read the speech that President Lyndon Johnson made on July 23, 1965, in which he announced the US Government’s plan to remove silver from the coinage. I had not read the speech before. The President said this was the first change in our nation’s coinage in 173 years, since the very first Coinage Act of 1792. Here are the pertinent sections.
"Now, all of you know these changes are necessary for a very simple reason--silver is a scarce material. Our uses of silver are growing as our population and our economy grows. The hard fact is that silver consumption is now more than double new silver production each year. So, in the face of this worldwide shortage of silver, and our rapidly growing need for coins, the only really prudent course was to reduce our dependence upon silver for making our coins.
If we had not done so, we would have risked chronic coin shortages in the very near future.
Some have asked whether our silver coins will disappear. The answer is very definitely-no.
Our present silver coins won't disappear and they won't even become rarities. We estimate that there are now 12 billion--I repeat, more than 12 billion silver dimes and quarters and half dollars that are now outstanding. We will make another billion before we halt production. And they will be used side-by-side with our new coins.
Since the life of a silver coin is about 25 years, we expect our traditional silver coins to be with us in large numbers for a long, long time.
If anybody has any idea of hoarding our silver coins, let me say this. Treasury has a lot of silver on hand, and it can be, and it will be used to keep the price of silver in line with its value in our present silver coin. There will be no profit in holding them out of circulation for the value of their silver content."
President Johnson and his economic team at the Treasury Department were eventually proven remarkably correct but also incorrect. They were correct that the demand for silver would soon deplete US inventories. They were dead wrong in their expectation that the US Government could hold down silver prices and prevent investors from making a profit. In just a few years, most silver coins were removed from circulation. In less than 15 years, the price of silver rose from $1.29 (at the time of the President’s speech) to more than $50 in early-1980.
In 1959, six years prior to the speech, the US Treasury Department held approximately 2.1 billion ounces in silver bullion inventories plus 1.3 billion ounces in circulating coinage, for a total of 3.4 billion ounces. By 1971, through a combination of bullion sales and new coinage, the Treasury held only 170 million ounces of silver bullion. Most silver coins were removed by investors from circulation, and eventually melted into bullion. Over this 12-year period, more than 3.2 billion ounces of silver were transferred from the US Government to the private sector. Around 94% of what the government controlled was gone.
1959 would also be the last year that the US Government was a buyer of silver, until 2001, when it began buying silver for its coin programs. In 1959, when the US Government held 3.4 billion ounces of silver, the US population was approximately 180 million. That means the Government held almost 19 ounces of silver, for every man, woman and child in the nation. Today it holds none. This also means that the US Government can never be a physical silver seller again unless it buys silver first.
Here’s a statistic that is stunning and troublesome at the same time. In 1959, there were about 5 billion ounces of silver physically held on US soil. This includes the 3.4 billion of government holdings plus privately held silver. That includes hundreds of millions of ounces of silver objects that would be melted in the early 1980’s. Today there are no more than 300 million ounces held on US soil, including all the 118 million ounces in COMEX-approved warehouses. The 400 million ounces in ETFs are held outside the US. If my numbers are accurate (as I believe them to be), the amount of physical silver held on US soil is down 94% in 50 years.
In 1959, there were about 9 billion ounces of silver bullion-equivalent in the world (half of that in the US. With a world population of 3 billion, there was a per-capita amount of 3 ounces for each of the world’s citizens. Today, 50 years later, there is a per capita amount of silver of 0.15 of an ounce remaining (1 billion ounces divided by 6.8 billion population). That is not a misprint. The per-capita amount of silver bullion in the world has declined by 95% over the past 50 years.
By way of comparison, the per-capita amount of gold bullion equivalent in the world has remained remarkably stable at around three-quarters of an ounce per person, for more than 100 years. In 1900, there were around 1 billion ounces of gold versus a world population of 1.5 billion. In 1959, there were about 2.3 billion ounces of gold against a world population of 3 billion. Today there are roughly 5 billion gold ounces and 6.8 billion people.
I make these comparisons with gold to provide a legitimate perspective. Gold and silver are the perfect items to compare. I make the comparison to show how undervalued silver is, not that gold is overvalued. In spite of evidence of manipulation, gold has done what it has been expected to do - it has kept pace with inflation, money and population growth. That’s proven by its price increase over the past 50 years. Since 1959, gold has increased in price more than 25-fold ($35 to $900). It’s a much different story in silver. Yes, silver has increased in price by more than 15-fold in 50 years ($.90 to $14), but that’s only half the story. The other half is that 90% of the silver in the world has been vaporized over that time or put into forms that may not be recoverable, no matter what the price. Nevertheless, the price of gold rose from 30 times the price of silver to 60 times today. Only two reasons can account for this - a manipulation in silver and a global unawareness of these facts. I guarantee you that both reasons will be terminated in time.
GOING, GOING, GONE
The US Government and other nations around the world removed silver from coinage because there wasn’t enough silver available. President Johnson’s words are crystal clear. They knew they couldn’t keep issuing coins pegged at an artificially low price (1.29). They were correct. But what no one knew 50 years ago was that even if the world stopped using silver as money, we would still run out of silver because of industrial demand. Even the investors in the 1960’s who took down a portion of the US Government 3 billion + ounces didn’t buy silver with an eye towards the day when silver inventories would be depleted by industrial consumption.
The investors in the 1960’s who bought the silver from the government did so because it was a no-lose proposition. Those who removed silver coins from circulation knew that the face value of the coins provided a floor, making silver coins a no-risk proposition. Intuitively, investors also knew that silver prices were artificially depressed by government sales. They also knew this silver dumping had to end at some point. When it did, prices rose and those early investors did what made sense: they took profits and sold. The silver that was taken out of circulation from the US Government was in turn taken away from early investors. Whereas many billions of ounces of silver existed in the world 50 years ago, maybe 10% remains today.
No longer can the US Government (or any other) dump massive amounts of silver on the market. Let’s face it - back then, the US Government was openly manipulating and controlling the price of silver, by selling at fixed prices. When they ran out of silver to sell, the manipulation and control ended in a flash and prices exploded. Today the manipulation is different. A government-protected entity, most likely JPMorgan, sells paper silver contracts at artificially depressed prices. I contend that this abhorrent paper manipulation will vanish in a flash at some point, just like as the governments’ physical manipulation ended 50 years ago. Only this time the impact on the market and the rewards to investors will be greater because there is so little silver remaining.
Back then, the US Government was the world’s largest silver seller. Today, the Government is a large buyer, perhaps the largest in the world, through the American Eagle and Commemorative silver programs. This year, the US Mint is on pace to produce and sell over 30 million ounces of Silver Eagles and other silver coins. Because the Government holds no silver and must buy on the open market, this makes the Mint a very large consumer. Incredibly, just this buying by the Mint alone uses up 80% of what the US produces in a year, as the world’s eighth largest silver producing country.
It’s not just that the world no longer has billions of silver ounces, or that the world economy and population demand more silver than ever before. It’s not just the fact that most of the new technologies require silver’s unique qualities. It’s not just that the paper manipulation on the COMEX is becoming more apparent and less feared. There is something else that runs through my head when I contemplate President Johnson’s words and look at what took place over the past half-century.
The 1960’s were a simpler time. Communication and knowledge didn’t travel then, as it does now. It won’t take long for the world to focus on the silver story, once prices begin to reflect its true value. Fifty years ago, we had a small fraction of the investment money in existence today. We didn’t have the concentrated pools of investment money looking for a home (hedge funds and sovereign wealth funds). We didn’t have the surge of stimulative money being created as we do today. It’s likely we will have a great price explosion as these facts become known. Remember, it’s not about the facts turning in silver’s favor. That already exists. It’s about enough investors becoming educated to the facts. Then today’s fabulous buying point will be gone forever.
HYPERINFLATION AND DEPRESSION
By James Cook
Years ago I had a partner. He went to bed one night and never woke up. At age 48 his heart stopped. Bernie and I had started Investment Rarities in 1973. In 1975 we split up, but stayed friends. Bernie was a first class economic thinker. I remember he would often say, "Jimmy, someday bread will be a dollar a loaf." I would giggle at such an outlandish claim. More seriously, he would intone a forecast for the future of the country. "Jimmy, we’re going to hit the gutter."
I have often wrestled with that thought, hoping that it wouldn’t be so. Now I wake in the night and see it clearly. We are going to hit the gutter. The nation is nearly ruined, well on it’s way to bankruptcy and there is no possibility of changing directions. We are going to go broke. Make that a guiding thought for your future. It you suspect your country is going bankrupt, you can at least play some defense. Let me say it again; this nation, the greatest country in the world, the United States of America, is going to go broke. It’s not treason, it’s not heresy, it’s not malevolence or wishful thinking. It’s a sad but inevitable conclusion predicated on the sorry economic events of our time.
Last week the newspaper chronicled further erosion in the financial condition of Social Security and Medicare. Expenditures for the latter are running wild. Free health care is a financial back-breaker. The numbers only worsen, they never improve. Virtually all subsidies, entitlements and social programs are running away. There’s no way to stop these soaring costs, short of national bankruptcy. If a politician had the guts to curb or abolish a single program he’d be lynched. Rather, our current leaders want more entitlements and fatter budgets for existing social programs. Throw in wars and stimulus and you have an unmanageable deficit that must be covered by currency debasement.
Last week I got a check from the government for $250. This handout went to millions of people of retirement age. It basically adds to the government deficit. No country has ever done anything like this before, and there’s much more free money to come. This is the economic school of hocus-pocus and legerdemain. Make up a bunch of checks, send them out and borrow the money to cover them, or just print it up. When your government has to create billions for economic stimulus or to cover out of control spending on open-ended military and social programs you eventually ruin the integrity of your currency.
The dollar is the world’s reserve currency. It gives us special privileges. It’s value has held up no matter how much of it we printed and exchanged for foreign goods. That’s going to change. As we inflate the world with dollars, they are going to lose popularity. There’s too many of them. Eventually, the dollar’s reserve status will end. When it does, we’ll be unable sell our bonds to foreigners to finance the government’s debt and all the dollars out there in in the world will come back to us, either sold off or exchanged. As the dollar sinks, inflation will roar. In a flash hyperinflation will set in and the dollar will be doomed. It could happen now, or it could happen after the next credit-induced boom and bust. Inevitably it will happen. Remember this, no country has ever been privileged to have a paper reserve currency. Reserves were always gold and silver. We’ve abused this privilege. So much of our paper exists outside the U.S., it adds to the certainty of runaway inflation when the dollars reserve status ends and dollar holders dump. As its role as the world’s reserve currency once helped the dollar, so it will reinforce the doom of the dollar.
First comes runaway inflation, then inevitably a depression. There is no defense against depression when your currency fails. A worthless dollar can no longer be used to bail out failing banks and bankrupt businesses. There’s no stimulus left. The government is out of bullets, the treasury broke, and the Federal Reserve impotent. All the economic sins of the past come home to roost. For awhile, it will be far worse than the dirty thirties. In effect we will have hit the gutter. But, life goes on. What happens next is the subject of a book I’m planning to write. Watch a couple of horror films so you can handle it.
Look In The Mirror Fellow Americans
The Enemy Is Us
By Bob Bauman
The late cartoonist Walt Kelley created Pogo, a sensible, sensitive possum who was the leading character of his long running (1948-75) daily comic strip bearing the same name. Syndicated in hundreds of U.S. newspapers, the strip was set in the Georgia part of the Okefenokee Swamp, and it often engaged in social and political satire through the adventures of its animal characters.
Indeed, Pogo gained such a cult following that in 1956, a boomlet developed when the possum mused about whether to run for president. (I still have my "I Go Pogo" button that bears his furry likeness).
Perhaps the most quoted line ever to originate in a comic strip came from Pogo when the disgusted possum surveyed an environmental mess made in his absence by his fellow swamp denizens. He intoned: "We have met the enemy and he is us."
Blame Yourselves
That pithy saying gained such currency in so many situations that Kelley was asked to explain what he meant in greater detail. He said he had tried "to explain each individual is wholly involved in the democratic process, work at it or no. The results of the process fall on the head of the public and he who is recalcitrant or procrastinates in raising his voice can blame no one but himself."
Kelley was correct. Even if we don't participate in voting, we get the government the majority of those who care enough to register and vote impose on all of us. Will Rogers put it another way: "We're lucky we don't get all the government we do pay for".
In 2004, 60.6% of those eligible voted in the presidential election, casting 122.3 million votes. Despite widespread predictions of a record turnout in the 2008 presidential election, about the same portion of eligible voters cast ballots as in 2004.
But how many American even care enough to register and vote?
In 2008 the eligible voting age population was 212,720,027. But there were just 131,256,905 valid ballots counted, so only 61.7% of eligible voters did vote. That means that 81.4 million Americans who could have voted, either didn't register or if they did, didn't cast their ballot.
The popular vote was split 69,498,215 for Obama (52.9%) to 59,948,240 for McCain (45.7%). Those statistics tell us that Obama was put into office by a minority of eligible voters – but we’ll all suffer the consequences.
It brings to mind a line from a song entitled "The Bum Won" from the Broadway musical "Fiorello" -- "People can do what they wanna, but I got a feeling it ain't democratic."
"Why all these numbers?" you ask.
Because, as often happens, I was inspired by the Cato Institute, after reading an article by Gene Healy, a Cato vice president. The intriguing title: "Voters Are the Cause of America's Fiscal Mess".
Healy writes: "There's plenty of blame to go around for the fiscal mess we're in. By ramming through a prescription drug benefit to Medicare, President George W. Bush launched the biggest expansion of entitlements in four decades. President Obama has added insult to injury by pushing through a $789 billion 'stimulus' package...with a budget that envisions a public sector more like France's or Sweden's. The result is that...we're facing a 2009 deficit of nearly $1.8 trillion -- larger than the entire federal budget in 2000."
If you can believe polls, based on data showing positions embraced by American voters, Healy says "...we're getting the government we deserve."
Sixty percent of Americans say the federal government has too much power and takes too much money, according to a May 2009 Rasmussen poll. OK, but what are Americans willing to do about it?
In 2007, the Harris Poll found the answer to that question was "not much." Very few are willing to support the spending cuts necessary to get our fiscal house in order. Harris reported that "hardly anyone would cut Medicaid (4%)... Social Security (2%) or Medicare (1%)" -- among the biggest chunks of the federal budget.
Cut His…Not Mine
As did California voters recently, the overwhelming majority of respondents to the Harris poll rejected higher taxes to handle the deficit; the only increases they'd support are in "sin" taxes on alcohol and tobacco.
Add up defense, health care, and Social Security, and the public has declared more than two-thirds of the federal budget off limits. Non-defense discretionary spending -- the portion on which most budget fights take place -- now is only a measly 17%. Economist Bruce Bartlett reports that "federal taxes would have to rise by roughly 81% to pay all the benefits promised by these programs under current law.”
Look In The Mirror
But there is one flicker of what may be seen as rudimentary mass logic. The Pew survey reports that "the public is increasingly suspicious of itself," with fewer Americans than ever expressing confidence in "the wisdom of the American people when it comes to making political decisions."
My fellow Marylander, H.L. Mencken, (right) once described democracy as "the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard." As Healy says, we're going to get it "good and hard" and it won't be pleasant.
Look in the mirror. Pogo was right. We have met the enemy -- and he is us.
By Bob Bauman
The late cartoonist Walt Kelley created Pogo, a sensible, sensitive possum who was the leading character of his long running (1948-75) daily comic strip bearing the same name. Syndicated in hundreds of U.S. newspapers, the strip was set in the Georgia part of the Okefenokee Swamp, and it often engaged in social and political satire through the adventures of its animal characters.
Indeed, Pogo gained such a cult following that in 1956, a boomlet developed when the possum mused about whether to run for president. (I still have my "I Go Pogo" button that bears his furry likeness).
Perhaps the most quoted line ever to originate in a comic strip came from Pogo when the disgusted possum surveyed an environmental mess made in his absence by his fellow swamp denizens. He intoned: "We have met the enemy and he is us."
Blame Yourselves
That pithy saying gained such currency in so many situations that Kelley was asked to explain what he meant in greater detail. He said he had tried "to explain each individual is wholly involved in the democratic process, work at it or no. The results of the process fall on the head of the public and he who is recalcitrant or procrastinates in raising his voice can blame no one but himself."
Kelley was correct. Even if we don't participate in voting, we get the government the majority of those who care enough to register and vote impose on all of us. Will Rogers put it another way: "We're lucky we don't get all the government we do pay for".
In 2004, 60.6% of those eligible voted in the presidential election, casting 122.3 million votes. Despite widespread predictions of a record turnout in the 2008 presidential election, about the same portion of eligible voters cast ballots as in 2004.
But how many American even care enough to register and vote?
In 2008 the eligible voting age population was 212,720,027. But there were just 131,256,905 valid ballots counted, so only 61.7% of eligible voters did vote. That means that 81.4 million Americans who could have voted, either didn't register or if they did, didn't cast their ballot.
The popular vote was split 69,498,215 for Obama (52.9%) to 59,948,240 for McCain (45.7%). Those statistics tell us that Obama was put into office by a minority of eligible voters – but we’ll all suffer the consequences.
It brings to mind a line from a song entitled "The Bum Won" from the Broadway musical "Fiorello" -- "People can do what they wanna, but I got a feeling it ain't democratic."
"Why all these numbers?" you ask.
Because, as often happens, I was inspired by the Cato Institute, after reading an article by Gene Healy, a Cato vice president. The intriguing title: "Voters Are the Cause of America's Fiscal Mess".
Healy writes: "There's plenty of blame to go around for the fiscal mess we're in. By ramming through a prescription drug benefit to Medicare, President George W. Bush launched the biggest expansion of entitlements in four decades. President Obama has added insult to injury by pushing through a $789 billion 'stimulus' package...with a budget that envisions a public sector more like France's or Sweden's. The result is that...we're facing a 2009 deficit of nearly $1.8 trillion -- larger than the entire federal budget in 2000."
If you can believe polls, based on data showing positions embraced by American voters, Healy says "...we're getting the government we deserve."
Sixty percent of Americans say the federal government has too much power and takes too much money, according to a May 2009 Rasmussen poll. OK, but what are Americans willing to do about it?
In 2007, the Harris Poll found the answer to that question was "not much." Very few are willing to support the spending cuts necessary to get our fiscal house in order. Harris reported that "hardly anyone would cut Medicaid (4%)... Social Security (2%) or Medicare (1%)" -- among the biggest chunks of the federal budget.
Cut His…Not Mine
As did California voters recently, the overwhelming majority of respondents to the Harris poll rejected higher taxes to handle the deficit; the only increases they'd support are in "sin" taxes on alcohol and tobacco.
Add up defense, health care, and Social Security, and the public has declared more than two-thirds of the federal budget off limits. Non-defense discretionary spending -- the portion on which most budget fights take place -- now is only a measly 17%. Economist Bruce Bartlett reports that "federal taxes would have to rise by roughly 81% to pay all the benefits promised by these programs under current law.”
Look In The Mirror
But there is one flicker of what may be seen as rudimentary mass logic. The Pew survey reports that "the public is increasingly suspicious of itself," with fewer Americans than ever expressing confidence in "the wisdom of the American people when it comes to making political decisions."
My fellow Marylander, H.L. Mencken, (right) once described democracy as "the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard." As Healy says, we're going to get it "good and hard" and it won't be pleasant.
Look in the mirror. Pogo was right. We have met the enemy -- and he is us.
Friday, June 12, 2009
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
