Crossposted from Flopping Aces

Isn’t it nice to hear just one voice of sanity amongst the insane?

Amid all the political and media hysteria, national output has declined by less than one-half of one percent. In fact, it may not have declined even that much– or at all– when the statistics are revised later, as they very often are.

We are not talking about the Great Depression, when output dropped by one-third and unemployment soared to 25 percent.

What we are talking about is a golden political opportunity for politicians to use the current financial crisis to fundamentally change an economy that has been successful for more than two centuries, so that politicians can henceforth micro-manage all sorts of businesses and play Robin Hood, taking from those who are not likely to vote for them and transferring part of their earnings to those who will vote for them.

For that, the politicians need lots of hype, and that is being generously supplied by the media.

~~~

Much as we may deplore partisanship in Washington, bipartisan disasters are often twice as bad as partisan disasters– and this is a bipartisan disaster in the making.

Too many people who argue that there is a beneficial role for the government to play in the economy glide swiftly from that to the conclusion that the government will in fact confine itself to playing such a role.

In the light of history, this is a faith which passeth all understanding. Even in the case of the Great Depression of the 1930s, increasing numbers of economists and historians who have looked back at that era have concluded that, on net balance, government intervention prolonged the Great Depression.

The politicians are using this “crisis” as not only a means to micro-manage, but to gain more power:

Modern Washington owes its very existence to the 1929 crash, which occasioned a vast expansion of the federal government under President Franklin D. Roosevelt. A legacy of the increase in federal power during that era, largely undiminished during a 28-year electoral backlash against big government, is that Washington became Wall Street’s principal rival when it came to running the world. Which wielded more power—the financial markets or the government? Uncle Sam had the world’s largest military, but Wall Street had all that goddamned money.

~~~

For Wall Street, a way of life may be coming to an end. For Washington, a new era of government activism has already begun. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, after presiding over an unprecedented sequence of receiverships, bailouts, and liquidations, is urging Congress to commit up to $700 billion to unfreeze the credit markets. The CEOs of once-powerful investment banks will be called down to Congress and subjected to humiliating questions. Journalists will sign six-figure contracts to write books about the events of what is already being dubbed “Black September.” Think-tankers will hold conferences to fight over the proper role government should assume in the new financial world. The Washington Post—which, like all big-city dailies, has been experiencing some circulation difficulty—will sell more papers than it would otherwise. Presidential candidates are already demanding, and will probably receive, curbs on CEO pay as a condition of restoring liquidity to Wall Street.

~~~

…On Wall Street, financial crisis destroys jobs. Here in Washington, it creates them. The rest is just details.

And just as Obama said he “will hit the ground running,” so is the next act in this power struggle:

Together, the programs from the Federal Reserve and the New York Fed aim to dump $800 billion in additional funds into the struggling U.S. economy, more than Congress approved in October for a bailout of the nation’s banks and Wall Street firms.

What’s another 800 billion or so right?

Sigh….

Also:

Anti-Prop 8 Mob Gets Another Victim

Looks like we have another victim of the liberal McCarthy machine.

I wrote about the angst, and blackballing going on in the film industry over Prop 8 yesterday and one of the main liberal targets has been hit. Richard Raddon will resign:

Under mounting pressure, LA Film Festival director Richard Raddon has ankled his post.

Raddon and Film Independent (FIND), the festival’s parent org, have faced a barrage of protests over Raddon’s contribution to the successful Yes on Prop 8 campaign that banned same-sex marriage in California.

After bloggers published his name, culled from public records of donors, Raddon tendered his first resignation on Nov. 13 to Film Independent’s board of directors, which was not accepted. Film Independent then released a statement saying, in part, “Our organization does not police the personal, religious, or political choices of any employee, member, or filmmaker.”

Yet Internet message boards and other published reports kept the issue at the center of a growing protest movement that has targeted “Yes on 8″ donors including the Mormon church and Cinemark Theaters, whose CEO was a contributor.

On Monday, Raddon submitted a second resignation. Those close to the org described Monday’s conference call with the board of directors as emotional. While Raddon’s contribution had caused some internal angst, he was well liked within the org.

On Tuesday, Film Independent issued a statement saying “With great reluctance, Film Independent has accepted Richard Raddon’s resignation. Rich’s service to the independent film community and to Film Independent has been nothing less than extraordinary. He has always shown complete commitment to our core principles of equality and diversity during his long tenure.”

Raddon, a devout Mormon who took the reins of the fest in 2000, said, “I have always held the belief that all people, no matter race, religion, or sexual orientation are entitled to equal rights. I prefer to keep the details around my contribution through my church a private matter. But I am profoundly sorry for the negative attention that my actions have drawn to Film Independent and for the hurt and pain that is being experienced in the GLBT community.”

Film Independent has not yet picked a replacement for Raddon.

Love that liberal tolerance and open-mindness of the truths of others.

Finally:

Incoming Attorney General Defended Clemency For Terrorists

What kind of people does the nation get to lead us when Obama brings in virtually every Clinton buddy in the beltway? People who defended the pardon of terrorists who committed this:

It was nearly 10 p.m. on New Year’s Eve, 1982. Two officers on New York Police Department’s elite bomb squad rushed to headquarters at One Police Plaza, where minutes earlier an explosion had destroyed the entrance to the building. Lying amid the carnage was Police Officer Rocco Pascarella, his lower leg blasted off.

“He was ripped up like someone took a box cutter and shredded his face,” remembered Detective Anthony Senft, one of the bomb-squad officers who answered the call 25 years ago. “We really didn’t even know that he was a uniformed man until we found his weapon, that’s how badly he was injured.”

About 20 minutes later, Mr. Senft and his partner, Richard Pastorella, were blown 15 feet in the air as they knelt in protective gear to defuse another bomb. Detective Senft was blinded in one eye, his facial bones shattered, his hip severely fractured. Mr. Pastorella was blinded in both eyes and lost all the fingers of his right hand. A total of four bombs exploded in a single hour on that night, including at FBI headquarters in Manhattan and the federal courthouse in Brooklyn.

The perpetrators were members of Armed Forces of National Liberation, FALN (the Spanish acronym), a clandestine terrorist group devoted to bringing about independence for Puerto Rico through violent means. Its members waged war on America with bombings, arson, kidnappings, prison escapes, threats and intimidation. The most gruesome attack was the 1975 Fraunces Tavern bombing in Lower Manhattan. Timed to go off during the lunch-hour rush, the explosion decapitated one of the four people killed and injured another 60.

FALN bragged about the bloodbath, calling the victims “reactionary corporate executives” and threatening: “You have unleashed a storm from which you comfortable Yankees can’t escape.” By 1996, the FBI had linked FALN to 146 bombings and a string of armed robberies — a reign of terror that resulted in nine deaths and hundreds of injured victims.

August 7th, 1999. President Clinton and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright vow to ensure justice will be done over the bombings of the African embassies:

“Although a year has passed … our mourning for those who died, Americans and Africans, has not diminished,” she said. “We miss them still and rage against their loss.”

U.S. President Bill Clinton, in a statement read by National Security Adviser Samuel Berger, said the United States would not stop in the pursuit of those guilty of the bombings.

“Working with our friends abroad, we have tracked down, arrested and indicted key suspects,” Berger said, “and we will not rest until justice is done.”

And four days later President Clinton granted clemency to 16 imprisoned FALN terrorists:

Mr. Clinton justified the clemencies by asserting that the sentences were disproportionate to the crimes. None of the petitioners, he stated, had been directly involved in crimes that caused bodily harm to anyone. “For me,” the president concluded, “the question, therefore, was whether their continuing incarceration served any meaningful purpose.”

His comments, including the astonishing claim that the FALN prisoners were being unfairly punished because of “guilt by association,” were widely condemned as a concession to terrorists. Further, they were seen as an outrageous slap in the face of the victims and a bitter betrayal of the cops and federal law enforcement officers who had put their lives on the line to protect the public and who had invested years of their careers to put these people behind bars. The U.S. Sentencing Commission affirmed a pre-existing Justice Department assessment that the sentences, ranging from 30 to 90 years, were “in line with sentences imposed in other cases for similar terrorist activity.”

The prisoners were convicted on a variety of charges that included conspiracy, sedition, violation of the Hobbes Act (extortion by force, violence or fear), armed robbery and illegal possession of weapons and explosives — including large quantities of C-4 plastic explosive, dynamite and huge caches of ammunition. Mr. Clinton’s action was opposed by the FBI, the Bureau of Prisons, the U.S. attorney offices that prosecuted the cases and the victims whose lives had been shattered. In contravention of standard procedures, none of these agencies, victims or families of victims were consulted or notified prior to the president’s announcement.

Who else defended the clemency? The incoming Attorney General, Eric Holder:

Holder defended the pardon of Marc Rich also. Pardons of criminals and terrorists, all a-ok to the incoming AG.

Once again, Obama’s judgment is in question.

Hope and change!