Is It Within Bounds To Ask: Is Obama a Socialist?

As campaign rhetoric heats up, pundits and talking-point guys and gals debate what is on or off limits. Can or should the Democrats talk about 16-year-old “bully” Romney or about his “weirdness” (a veiled reference I guess to his Mormon faith)? Can or should the Republicans revive Reverend Wright’s black liberation rants, the Bill Ayers connection, or the President’s youthful drug use, which apparently was prolific.

One such pundit on the democrat side (who and where I forget) referred to “crazies” who call Obama a “socialist.” Such statements are beyond the pale, he declared in disgust. They are on a par with the “birther” claims.

Despite such dismissals, there is strong and legitimate interest in whether President Obama is a socialist. My Forbes piece Is President Obama Truly a Socialist continues to attract many readers three months after it was posted. It showed the remarkable overlap between Obama’s electoral platform and the Party of European Socialists, which represents leftist and socialist parties in the European parliament. My French Socialists Test Drive Obama’s Electoral Platform showed that French socialist Francois Hollande’s and Obama’s platforms are virtual carbon copies, and Hollande is quite open about and proud of being a socialist.

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Putin Leaves No Doubt, But What Did We expect?

After Putin’s close calls at the polls, naïve pundits speculated about the “compromises” he must make with democratic forces. They do not know Putin. For him, any compromise is a sign of weakness. He truly hates anyone who dares to oppose him and will do whatever he feels necessary to eliminate them.

Putin’s has made his intentions clear. He has appointed as “Presidential envoy to the Urals” an unknown shop foreman who volunteered to defend stability “with his own boys” if the police cannot handle the protesters themselves. Putin accepted his proposed method of dealing with what he called “good-for-nothing loudmouths.” Putin’s party is in the process of ramming through a reluctant parliament huge fines for protests, some in the range of a year’s salary. In those Moscow districts which elected non-Putin majorities to their city councils, Putin’s thugs prevent quorums in meetings that intend to authorize sit-ins and other forms of protesters.

Putin will not budge an inch. Let’s see what his opponents will do. The internet will not stay quiet. The protesters are developing new ways to engage in protests, such as walking around town in groups or just hanging out in parks that make the police look ridiculous when they try to arrest the “non protesters.”

We are in for an interesting time this summer.

If You Want to Understand Germany Think of Texas and California

As Greece’s exit from the Euro appears more likely, the draconic and heartless Germans are being raked over the coals throughout Europe. Germany’s stingy Merkel refuses to lend a helping hand to a drowning neighbor. Merkel and her austere Germans are not  real “Europeans.” Were it not for the Germans, Greece would have its stimulus, which it would promise to pay back when it is out of danger – sometime far down the road.

If you really want to understand the Germans, think of Texas and California. Texas must constitutionally balance its budget. A state official estimates forthcoming revenue, and the legislature must trim spending accordingly. Texas makes minimal use of gimmicks; it makes real cuts when cuts are necessary. California also must balance its budget, but it does not. It uses extreme gimmicks to overstate anticipated revenue and spending cuts that will not take place.

Compared to Texas, California is a spendthrift, spending fifty percent more per capita than Texas. Despite much lower state spending, Texas seems to do quite well. It attracts the jobs California is losing.

Imagine the reaction if some higher authority told Texas to pay for the shortfall in California’s budget? This is exactly what the Californias of Europe and  European Union bureaucrats are demanding of Germany. Germany’s reaction is exactly that of Texans to bailing out California.

Thanks but no thanks.

Should the New York Times Investigate Wal-Mart or Carlos Slim?

The  New York Times’s Vast Mexico Bribery Case Hushed Up by Wal-Mart After Top-Level Struggle suggests that Wal-Mart violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. The smoking gun: Seven years ago, Wal-Mart de Mexico hired two outside lawyers for $8.5 million to “facilitate” store permits. The lawyers were effective:  “Legal and bureaucratic obstacles melted away after payments were made to minor officials who could thwart Wal-Mart’s growth.” Wal-Mart executives, the  article charges, did not take appropriate action after an internal investigation.

No believer in free enterprise should excuse or make light of violations of laws by Wal-Mart or any other private company. We hope that Wal-Mart moves forcefully to put this business behind it.

In its anti-Wal-Mart fervor, the Times inflates the $8.5 million into an “orchestrated campaign of bribery to win market dominance” that erected Wal-Marts on “virtually every corner of the country.”  No mention of the possibility – if not  probability – that local officials could not pass up a once in a lifetime opportunity to extort Wal-Mart.  A Wal-Mart success story explained by its “everyday low prices”  does not fit the Times’ political agenda. Greasing the palms of local officials with a few dollars is a more convenient explanation.

A few blocks away from 620 Eighth Avenue, Carlos Slim, the Times’ second largest shareholder behind the Sulzbergers, oversees his sprawling Telmex and Latin American telecommunications empires from atop Rockefeller Center. Slim is a welcome guest at the most exclusive of Manhattan cocktail parties.  Wal-Mart’s hillbilly executives from Bentonville, Arkansas would simply not fit in.

go to forbes.com

Camp David: G-8 Platitudes Don't Solve Anything

As pundits parse words like austerity and growth, it becomes increasingly clear that Camp David platitudes mean nothing and make no difference. Headlines speak of bold agreements: “G-8 Leaders Agree to Mix Growth, Cuts” that closer reading reveals to be hot air. When German chancellor Angela Merkel injects the word “growth” into her remarks, the press breathlessly reports a weakening of her austerity stance. Barack Obama’s insistence on both growth and “fiscal discipline” resembles calls for motherhood and apple pie. The new French President Francois Hollande pushes a financial transactions tax and mutes his election rhetoric for stimulus. His post election briefings probably convinced him that he cannot spook the bond vigilantes more than he already has. British Premier David Cameron nixes Hollande’s transaction tax post haste. Newly-inaugurated President Vladimir Putin boycotts the G-8 in a huff, sending instead his stooge Prime Minister Medvedev.  There is no more idle talk of a Russian bailout contribution. Russia is doing well to manage its own crises.

The EU crisis resembles mountain climbers, tied together by ropes, scaling a rocky cliff.  One (Greece) is balanced on a thin ledge. A few others teeter perilously (Portugal, Spain, and Ireland). They know that if one falls, others could be pulled along. One the climbers (Germany) has a knife either to cut himself free or to sever the rope of climbers about to fall. The knife-wielder fears he could end up alone on the cliff.

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Dr. Gregory's latest book can be found at Amazon.com.

Student With Federal Loans: Uncle Sam Can Take 15%!

The New York Times launched a new distraction in its two and a half page expose of the student loan racket entitled A Generation Hobbled by the Soaring Cost of College. The Times deplores that college students and their parents have been duped into taking on debt like naïve home buyers, that tightfisted Republican legislatures are to blame, and that we could have avoided the problem with another stimulus. The Times does not mention that student loans are not protected by personal bankruptcy and that the federal government can garnish 15% of scofflaw wages. The real villain is Uncle Sam!

 

In typical Times fashion, the story begins with a victim, who has been taken the the cleaners:

Kelsey Griffith graduates on Sunday from Ohio Northern University. To start paying off her $120,000 in student debt, she is already working two restaurant jobs and will soon give up her apartment here to live with her parents. Her mother, who co-signed on the loans, is taking out a life insurance policy on her daughter.  “If anything ever happened, God forbid, that is my debt also,” said Ms. Griffith’s mother, Marlene Griffith. “As an 18-year-old, it sounded like a good fit to me, and the school really sold it,” said Ms. Griffith, a marketing major. “I knew a private school would cost a lot of money. But when I graduate, I’m going to owe like $900 a month. No one told me that.”

Who are the villains who duped the helpless Griffith, her parents, and others like her into taking on this unreasonable debt burden? For-profit schools, private schools with slick brochures promising ready-made financing, anti-tax republicans, and rising tuition in state schools, where Republican legislatures have cut back on higher education funding:

There is an ideological and political tug of war as well. State Representative John Patrick Carney, a Democrat, said if legislators were serious about financing higher education they could find a way, like eliminating tax breaks for corporations. He noted that even as funds for higher education were being reduced, Mr. Kasich and the Republican-controlled Legislature eliminated the state’s estate tax, which will cost the state an estimated $72 million a year.

 The subliminal message: If only Obama had gotten a second stimulus, the states would be awash in money.

The Times let slip that “federal mandates and court orders have compelled lawmakers to spend more money on Medicaid and primary education, too.”

Never one to bad mouth a federal handout program, the Times rushes to assure its readers that a wholesale default “would be unlikely to ripple through the economy with the same devastating impact as the mortgage crash. Though now larger than credit card and other consumer debt, the student loan balance remains smaller than the mortgage market, and most student loans are issued by the federal government, meaning banks wouldn’t be affected as much.”

In other words: If students don’t repay, the taxpayer will, but who worries about the taxpayer?

The Times fails to identify the real Simon Legree of the student loan program – the federal government itself. According to the Debt Collection Improvement Act (passed under Bill Clinton):

The US Department of Education (ED) is authorized to garnish 15 % percent of the erstwhile student's disposable income in lieu of unpaid student loans. The organization, that employs the student after graduating/dropping out of school, is expected to comply with rules regarding garnishment even in the event of filing bankruptcy.

As Congress debates how to pay for continued subsidization of interest rates on college loans, the Feds’ power to take 15 percent goes unnoticed.

Dr. Gregory's latest book can be found at Amazon.com.