I should have listened to Voltaire

World Currency-- The am of Globalization

2010-02-26T14:04:00.000-08:00

The aim of Globalization is to kill capitalism. Here is an article from the NY Times 2/26/10

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the head of the International Monetary Fund, suggested Friday the organization might one day be called on to provide countries with a global reserve currency that would serve as an alternative to the U.S. dollar.
''That day has not yet come, but I think it is intellectually healthy to explore these kinds of ideas now,'' he said in a speech on the future mandate of the 186-nation Washington-based lending organization.
Strauss-Kahn said such an asset could be similar to but distinctly different from the IMF's special drawing rights, or SDRs, the accounting unit that countries use to hold funds within the IMF. It is based on a basket of major currencies.
He said having other alternatives to the dollar ''would limit the extent to which the international monetary system as a whole depends on the policies and conditions of a single, albeit dominant, country.''
Strauss-Kahn, a former finance minister of France, said that during the recent global financial crisis, the dollar ''played its role as a safe haven'' asset, and the current international monetary system demonstrated resilience.
''The challenge ahead is to find ways to limit the tension arising from the high demand for precautionary reserves on the one hand and the narrow supply of reserves on the other,'' he said.
Several countries, including China and Russia, have called for an alternative to the dollar as a reserve currency and have suggested using the IMF's internal accounting unit.
Strauss-Kahn said the IMF also needs to do a better job of tracing how risk percolates through the global economy.
''Here it will be essential to improve our ability to monitor several dozen large complex financial institutions that make up the `plumbing' through which global capital flows,'' he said, while leaving national regulators the job of monitoring the solvency of individual institutions.

Key to Success

2010-01-13T16:52:00.000-08:00

Mock Town Hall

2009-08-31T20:45:00.000-07:00

Mock Town

How socialism.....eh, works

2009-08-06T20:27:00.000-07:00

An economics professor at a local college made a statement that he had never failed a single student before but had once failed an entire class.

That class had insisted that Obama's socialism worked and that no one would be poor and no one would be rich, a great equalizer.

The professor then said, "OK, we will have an experiment in this class on Obama's plan". All grades would be averaged and everyone would receive the same grade so no one would fail and no one would receive an A.

After the first test, the grades were averaged and everyone got a B.

The students who studied hard were upset and the students who studied little were happy.

As the second test rolled around, the students who studied little had studied even less and the ones who studied hard decided they wanted a free ride too so they studied little.

The second test average was a D! No one was happy.

When the 3rd test rolled around, the average was an F.

The scores never increased as bickering, blame and name-calling all resulted in hard feelings and no one would study for the benefit of anyone else.

All failed, to their great surprise, and the professor told them that socialism would also ultimately fail because when the reward is great, the effort to succeed is great but when government takes all the reward away, no one will try or want to succeed.

Could not be any simpler than that. ANON.

I proved 1 man protesting can make a difference today.

2009-07-29T16:56:00.000-07:00

Don't let me EVER hear anyone say our protesting is not working! Today my own efforts were certainly vindicated. After what happened today, I am more convinced we are making a difference.

I forgot my directions at home so around 10 am I finally arrived from Wilmington where I fianally wandered into the protesters in Raleigh awaiting the President. Luckily, there were police everywhere lined on the streets for miles making it pretty easy to find the protest. Once there, I parked and walked the 1/2 mile where I met up with about 40 others. Soon we were informed the main group was down the block.

Thats where the action was. Moveon.org, women's health, and global warming people (50-60 maximum for the day) were on one side and we were on the other. It was a beautiful sidewalk backed by a 5 foot stone wall encompassed by the branches of some tall oaks. This is one truly beautiful school. Our numbers grew to close to 1000 ( I always underestimate) lining both sides of the corner stretching for blocks each way.

I must say that I scoped out the premier protest spot. It was on the stone wall under a few majstic shade trees. My sign that read " Politicians + Healthcare = Disaster" sat in my lap, yet was over 5 foot in the air and directly facing the Moveon crowd. Honestly, I was in a quiet mood and was content to observe from my excellent vantage point.

An hour later sirens blared, fire trucks and State Troopers on motorcycles came next, and black SUVs then go racing by. Then....nothing. I guess they were an advance team since the President wouldn't show for another 15-20 minutes.

This is about the time my heart is now crushed because the organizer from FreedomWorks told everyone to move around the block to both sides of the road. "What, leave this wonderful seat? Noooooo! I tell you what, what a great call. Kudos to whomever made this decision. They enabled MANY more of us to be in sight of the presidential motorcade.

Lamenting the loss of the best protest spot I've ever had, we were told to shuffle down even more...all the way to the school entrance and out of sight of the Moveon people. I was getting worried. Were we taking ourselves out of eyeshot? Why did we keep moving? Should I go back, I got a great spot?

Instead, I climbed a small hill at the very entrance of the school. Secret service moved us back , but just as the motorcade finally came within sight, I shuffled a little ways down. I now had THE best protest site I could hope for (what a day!). He looked at my sign and I at him. I would've thought the windows on the Presidential limo would be more tinted, but there he was looking very interested in our signs. I swear I had the feeling he was looking for signs of support, but how much can I read into the President's eyes in a passing car?!

Nonetheless, for more than a full second he was looking at my sign. I was on a hill with no one very near to me. I could be wrong, but I feel fairly certain of it. I could see him clear as day and he was looking straight at my sign.

I came home and googled news and found the Wall Street Journal quoted my sign in the following.....

........."RALEIGH, N.C. -- President Barack Obama, acknowledging the rising protests against his health-care efforts, took some of the sharpest jabs yet at his opponents, accusing them of rallying opposition with scare tactics and hypocrisy.

Meanwhile, House Energy and Commerce Chairman Henry Waxman conceded the House wouldn't vote on a health-care plan before its August recess. But Mr. Waxman said that his committee will resume meetings on health-care legislation Wednesday after reaching an agreement with conservative Democrats on the committee that included a delayed vote.
The president acknowledged opposition is growing. A large and boisterous clutch of protesters greeted him at Raleigh's Needham B. Broughton High School with signs reading, "Obamacare is Socialism," "Stop Lying," and [u][b]"Politicians + Health Care = Disaster."[/b][/u]

"As I was driving in, there were some folks cheering, and there were some folks with signs," he chuckled to knowing laughter in a largely friendly audience."...................

full article at;
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124887385627890129.html

I will post a picture of my sign ASAP. Don't ever tell me protesting is a waste of time again. Never, ever again. Never, ever.

Tom Naramore
Raleigh Health Care Town Hall July 29 protest

The vast, deep-seated global economic imbalances that were the fundamental cause of the present crisis.

2009-07-19T23:16:00.000-07:00

from TheTimesOnline 7/20/09

It is to these “imbalances” that we can trace back the dynamic that spawned the calamitous economic fate now being endured by the United States and the world.

On one side of a relationship that we now know was a Faustian bargain, America spent most of the past decade or more on a runaway consumer binge — fuelled by an unsustainable boom in house prices and a headlong accumulation of debt that was made attractive and accessible by a flood of cheap money.

On the other side of the equation sat China, where vast savings — as excessive in many ways as heedless US consumption — provided the ultimate source of the easy money blown by Americans on cheap Chinese imports.

As Chinese exports to US consumers boomed, Beijing happily recycled the massive proceeds on buying up seemingly limitless quantities of US Treasury bonds. In turn, this drove down China’s exchange rate and kept its products cheap and US citizens eager to buy to buy them. Americans’ access to ever greater borrowing was subsidised as China’s T-bond buying strategy forced down US market interest rates.

This seemingly perfect symbiotic relationship was unsustainable, however. It collapsed as soon as American house prices crashed and unravelled its twisted economic logic.

Yet while this “great game” ought now to be decisively over, both Washington and Beijing still seem intent on simply pressing “restart”. All of US policy to fight the slump is presently geared to shoring up and reviving consumption. At the same time, many market players are being deluded into thinking that the fundamental corrections needed to restore balance to the global economy are already under way. They are not.

To achieve this vital rebalancing, what is required is for the United States to spend less and save more, while China must move, albeit gradually, to an economy driven far more by domestic demand and consumption and become much less dependent on exports.

Some economic observers have come to believe that this is already under way. The key reason for this mistaken belief is that the US household savings ratio, the headline gauge of how much once-spendthrift Americans are saving, has soared during the crisis, from a meagre 0.4 per cent in 2005 to a startling 6.9 per cent this May.

But, as Mark Cliffe, chief economist of ING, the Dutch-owned bank, exposes in new research, this trend is very far from being all that it appears. Mr Cliffe shows that because the savings ratio is, in reality, a net measure that tots up changes in what most would regard as savings — the squirrelling away of money in shares, deposits or other assets — with changes in borrowing, it shows just the opposite of what the headline numbers have seemed to indicate.

The reason that the savings gauge has leapt is not that Americans are saving more, but only that they are paying off their past, huge borrowings because of financial distress. Americans actually cut savings in the form of financial assets held by 0.5 per cent of their incomes in the first quarter, while cutting borrowing even more aggressively, by 5 per cent of income. This telling data leads to two important conclusions.

First, it suggests that immediate US recovery prospects may be even more frail than supposed, and than Mr Bernanke is liable to admit. With Americans now battling to pay down debt against a backdrop of still-plunging house prices and soaring unemployment, while shoring up spending power with cuts in their savings, the resurgence of consumer demand on which recovery hopes are pinned may well prove elusive. The position could grow worse still once the boost to US personal incomes from the Obama Administration’s fiscal giveaway also fades, as it soon will.

Second, and critically, it is clear that America has yet to begin to address the real roots of this crisis and embark on the long road to a more sustainable economic future. Until it does so, the future will remain a hostage to fortune.

Defining journalism down

2009-07-14T05:22:00.000-07:00

Media Mangle
Defining journalism down
Outright advocacy by reporters is undermining journalism's credibility

By Jon Ham
April 17, 2009

Any editor, news producer, journalism professor or J-school dean should be appalled at the now-infamous performance of CNN reporter Susan Roesgen “interviewing” a participant at the Chicago Tea Party event on Wednesday. Sadly, that’s not the case.

The level of blatant bias and contempt for the people she was covering would have gotten any reporter fired a generation ago, but not today. I’ve seen not a word of condemnation from CNN in reaction to her outrageous performance earlier this week, but that’s not surprising. They’ll probably reward her with a prime time show for abandoning her journalist’s role for the role of public-relations shill for the Obama administration.

In the YouTube clip of her report she asks a man holding his two-year-old son why he’s there at the Tea Party event.

He begins to talk about liberty when she cuts him off and asks, “What does this have to do with taxes?” He tries to explain to her that keeping the fruits of one’s labor is the essence of liberty when she interrupts again: “Don’t you realize you’re eligible for a $400 credit?” And later she shouts at him: “Did you know that the State of Lincoln gets $50 billion out of the stimulus? That’s $50 billion for this state, sir.”

By this time other Tea Party participants are yelling at her to let the man finish what he wanted to say. As the participants tell her to let the man have his say, she announces to the in-studio CNN anchor: “I think you get the tenor of this. It’s anti-government, anti-CNN, since this is highly promoted by the right-wing conservative network Fox. And since I can’t really hear much more and since this is not family viewing, toss it back to you.”

This is straight out of the street activist’s handbook. Make yourself as obnoxious as possible to provoke a reaction, and then play the victim when your obnoxious behavior is challenged. This is what passes for journalism these days.

I remember a time when a lack of journalistic professionalism was a serious thing. Many years ago a good friend of mine was sent, along with a reporter from our sister paper, to cover a national politician’s appearance at a local university. The two accounts of the speech were so different that our managing editor, executive editor and publisher investigated. It turned out that my friend was the one who let his personal biases get in the way of his news writing. For his transgression he was put on probation and his pay was docked.

I don’t have his story in front of me, but I would bet there is nothing in it that would raise an editor’s eyebrows in this era of no-standards journalism.

In another instance, this one while I was press secretary to a governor at the time of an impending execution, a reporter came to me and said she wanted to make a statement against the death penalty by holding the hand of the convicted murderer as the current was sent through his body. She then gave interviews to that effect to the national media that had gathered for the event.

She was immediately fired, but today her action would probably be seen as a noble statement of principle, leading to an appearance on “Oprah!”

My first city editor demanded that his reporters lapse into referee mode when interviewing sources. He was fond of saying that a reporter should act no different whether interviewing a member of the Black Panthers or the Ku Klux Klan, a neo-Nazi or a Symbionese Liberation Army member. No arched eyebrow, smirk, giggle or guffaw should alert the interviewee as to the feelings of the reporter, he instructed.

But most of all, that impartiality should characterize any story written by one of his reporters, which explains why my friend was put on probation for what today would probably be seen as colorful reporting.

It was a huge deal back then to break these rules. But not any more.

Jon Ham is vice president of the John Locke Foundation and publisher of its newspaper, Carolina Journal.

Taxes--funny...or maybe not

2009-07-11T07:39:00.000-07:00

Tax his land,
Tax his bed,
Tax the table At which he's fed.
Tax his tractor,
Tax his mule,
Teach him taxes Are the rule.
Tax his cow, Tax his goat,
Tax his pants,
Tax his coat.
Tax his ties,
Tax his shirt,
Tax his work,
Tax his dirt.
Tax his tobacco,
Tax his drink,
Tax him if he Tries to think.
Tax his cigars,
Tax his beers,
If he cries, then Tax his tears.
Tax his car,
Tax his gas,
Find other ways To tax his ass
Tax all he has
Then let him know
That you won't be done Till he has no dough.
When he screams and hollers,
Then tax him some more,
Tax him till He's good and sore.
Then tax his coffin ,
Tax his grave,
Tax the sod in Which he's laid.
Put these words upon his tomb,
" Taxes drove me to my doom..."
When he's gone,
Do not relax,
Its time to apply The inheritance tax.

Accounts Receivable
Tax Building Permit Tax
CDL license Tax
Cigarette Tax
Corporate Income Tax
Dog License Tax
Excise Taxes
Federal Income
Tax Federal Unemployment Tax
(FUTA) Fishing License Tax
Food License Tax
Fuel Permit Tax
Gasoline Tax (42 cents per gallon)
Gross Receipts Tax
Hunting License Tax
Inheritance Tax
Inventory Tax
IRS Interest Charges
IRS Penalties (tax on top of tax)
Liquor Tax
Luxury Taxes
Marriage License Tax
Medicare Tax
Personal Property Tax
Property Tax
Real Estate Tax
Service Charge Tax
Social Security Tax
Road Usage Tax Sales Tax
Recreational Vehicle Tax
School Tax
State Income Tax
State Unemployment Tax
Telephone Federal Excise Tax
Telephone Federal Universal Service Fee Tax
Telephone Federal, State and Local Surcharge Taxes
Telephone Minimum Usage Surcharge Tax
Telephone Recurring and Non-recurring Charges Tax
Telephone State and Local Tax Telephone Usage Charge Tax
Utility Taxes
Vehicle License Registration Tax
Vehicle Sales Tax
Watercraft Registration Tax
Well Permit Tax
Workers Compensation Tax

STILL THINK THIS IS FUNNY?
Not one of these taxes existed 100 years ago,
and our nation was the most prosperous in the world.
We had absolutely no national debt, had the largest middle class in the world What happened?

Can you spell "politicians!"

Healthcare---Dr. Anne Wortham--Nov 2008

2009-07-09T11:12:00.000-07:00

Fellow Americans,
Please know: I am black; I grew up in the segregated South. I did not vote for Barack Obama; I wrote in Ron Paul's name as my choice for president. Most importantly, I am not race conscious. I do not require a black president to know that I am a person of worth, and that life is worth living. I do not require a black president to love the ideal of America.
I cannot join you in your celebration. I feel no elation. There is no smile on my face. I am not jumping with joy. There are no tears of triumph in my eyes. For such emotions and behavior to come from me, I would have to deny all that I know about the requirements of human flourishing and survival - all that I know about the history of the United States of America, all that I know about American race relations, and all that I know about Barack Obama as a politician. I would have to deny the nature of the "change" that Obama asserts has come to America. Most importantly, I would have to abnegate my certain understanding that you have chosen to sprint down the road to serfdom that we have been on for over a century. I would have to pretend that individual liberty has no value for the success of a human life. I would have to evade your rejection of the slender reed of capitalism on which your success and mine depend. I would have to think it somehow rational that 94 percent of the 12 million blacks in this country voted for a man because he looks like them (that blacks are permitted to play the race card), and that they were joined by self-declared "progressive" whites who voted for him because he doesn't look like them. I would have to be wipe my mind clean of all that I know about the kind of people who have advised and taught Barack Obama and will fill posts in his administration - political intellectuals like my former colleagues at the Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government.
I would have to believe that "fairness" is equivalent of justice. I would have to believe that man who asks me to "go forward in a new spirit of service, in a new service of sacrifice" is speaking in my interest. I would have to accept the premise of a man that economic prosperity comes from the "bottom up," and who arrogantly believes that he can will it into existence by the use of government force. I would have to admire a man who thinks the standard of living of the masses can be improved by destroying the most productive and the generators of wealth.
Finally, Americans, I would have to erase from my consciousness the scene of 125,000 screaming, crying, cheering people in Grant Park, Chicago irrationally chanting "Yes We Can!" Finally, I would have to wipe all memory of all the times I have heard politicians, pundits, journalists, editorialists, bloggers and intellectuals declare that capitalism is dead - and no one, including especially Alan Greenspan, objected to their assumption that the particular version of the anti-capitalistic mentality that they want to replace with their own version of anti-capitalism is anything remotely equivalent to capitalism.
So you have made history, Americans. You and your children have elected a black man to the office of the president of the United States, the wounded giant of the world. The battle between John Wayne and Jane Fonda is over - and that Fonda won. Eugene McCarthy and George McGovern must be very happy men. Jimmie Carter, too. And the Kennedys have at last gotten their Kennedy look-a-like. The self-righteous welfare statists in the suburbs can feel warm moments of satisfaction for having elected a black person. So, toast yourselves: 60s countercultural radicals, 80s yuppies and 90s bourgeois bohemians. Toast yourselves, Black America. Shout your glee Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Duke, Stanford, and Berkeley. You have elected not an individual who is qualified to be president, but a black man who, like the pragmatist Franklin Roosevelt, promises to - Do Something! You now have someone who has picked up the baton of Lyndon Johnson's Great Society. But you have also foolishly traded your freedom and mine - what little there is left - for the chance to feel good. There is nothing in me that can share your happy obliviousness.
November 6, 2008

Brain drain takes toll at Citi and BofA

2009-06-23T21:37:00.000-07:00

Many top traders and bankers have left the financial giants for rivals. The trend may continue as long as Citi and BofA remain under the government's thumb.
By David Ellis, CNNMoney.com staff writer
Last Updated: June 23, 2009: 11:50 AM ET

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- The so-called brain drain that big banks have worried about ever since the government stepped in to bail out the financial sector appears to be well underway.
And nowhere is that pain being felt more acutely than at Citigroup (C, Fortune 500) and Bank of America (BAC, Fortune 500), the two banks that have received the most aid from the government and are subject to the most onerous restrictions on executive compensation.
Last Friday, Ajay Banga, the CEO of Citigroup's Asia Pacific operations, announced his resignation from the company. Banga, a 13-year firm veteran who quickly rose through the ranks, will take up his new role as chief operating officer at the credit card processor MasterCard (MA, Fortune 500) starting in August.
Banga is perhaps the highest-profile defection from Citi as of late. But several other top bankers, traders and analysts have recently jumped ship for similar jobs at private equity giant Blackstone Group, Germany's Deutsche Bank and the boutique research shop Ladenburg Thalmann.
A day earlier, Bank of America lost one of its top investment bankers and long-time Merrill Lynch veteran William Rifkin to JPMorgan Chase (JPM, Fortune 500), representing the latest high-profile departure from the Charlotte, N.C.-based lender since it completed its purchase of the brokerage giant late last year. Other executives have left for positions at Oppenheimer & Co., Piper Jaffray and British bank Barclays.
Exact figures about the number of departures from Citi and BofA are tough to come by. Calls to both Citigroup and Bank of America requesting comment on the string of recent departures were not immediately returned.
But Citi chairman Dick Parsons conceded at an economic forum last week hosted by CNNMoney.com parent Time Warner that management has had to use terms like "patriotic duty" and the potential of doing "fascinating" work to convince people to work for the embattled firm. (Parsons was formerly the chairman and CEO of Time Warner.)
Jumping off ships still anchored by TARP
Parsons' remarks illustrate how difficult it has become for large, troubled financial institutions to attract and retain top employees -- especially those like Citi and BofA which are still part of the Treasury Department's Troubled Asset Relief Program.
"It is normal but it is exacerbated by the fact that those who are stuck in TARP can't compensate their people as well those who aren't," said Anton Schutz, president of Mendon Capital Advisors, a firm that invests in financial stocks.
For months, financial firms have railed against proposed compensation caps, warning it would prompt an exodus of workers at firms that remain under the government's thumb to smaller rivals, foreign banks and the lightly-regulated worlds of private equity and hedge funds.
But now that ten large financial firms, including JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs (GS, Fortune 500), have been permitted to pay back TARP funds, it could become even tougher for Citi and BofA to hold on to top employees.
0:00 /4:12Feds changed bailout 'rules'
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Last week, the White House proposed to limit bonuses for senior executives and other highly-paid employees at firms that got taxpayer assistance to one third of their total compensation.
And at Citigroup and Bank of America, both of which required "exceptional" government assistance, compensation of the top 100 salaried employees are now set to scrutinized by the newly appointed "pay czar."
Sinking stock prices haven't helped
Retaining talent, even in boom times, has never been easy for top Wall Street firms. Over the years, would-be 'masters-of-the-universe' types have been quick to jump ship if the pay, opportunities or culture of another firm was attractive enough.
"There is pretty much zero loyalty in this industry" said Peter Cappelli, a professor at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and director of its Center for Human Resources. "This would be happening whether or not there were TARP."
Still, fears about the heavy hand of government in a bank's day-to-day operations have been tough to shake for many workers.
According to a poll of more than 2,000 finance pros taken earlier this year by the online job site eFinancialCareers.com, just over half of those polled said they were likely to look for work at another financial services firm given the compensation restrictions placed on companies that received aid from the government.
The plunge in bank stock prices also could be giving some Wall Street veterans reason to seek out new jobs.
Many finance pros have watched the value of restricted stock and options whittle away in recent months. John Rogan, a partner and head of the global banking and markets practice at executive search firm Russell Reynolds Associates, said there is a common view that the value of their equity stake may never recover given how far some firms' stocks have fallen.
Shares of Citigroup and Bank of America are worth just a fraction of what they were this fall. And in the case of Citi, many shareholders are bracing for further dilution once the government officially completes the conversion of its preferred shares stake into common stock later this year as part of a broader program to beef up the bank's ailing capital levels.
Sensing that frustration, major European banks such as Deutsche Bank and Barclays (BCS), as well as boutique investment banks like Moelis & Co. and Greenhill and have successfully poached talent from Citi and BofA as well as other big U.S. banks.
But some rivals appear to be particularly targeting Citi and BofA. Five of the last 16 big hires made by Moelis in the past six months, for example, came from either Citigroup or Bank of America.
"The opportunity to move to someplace smaller where you have more control over your own destiny and therefore your own pay is extremely appealing to people these days," said Rogan.
Fighting back
Experts contend, however, that Citi, BofA and other peers that have suffered the loss of top talent, are not standing idly by while bankers and traders leave.
Even before winning their freedom from TARP, many big banks such as Morgan Stanley raised base salaries to try earlier this year to compensate for potential bonus restrictions. The Financial Times reported earlier this month that Citi and Bank of America are following suit with their bankers.
In addition, experts think both lenders may be employing an approach that has become a common practice lately on Wall Street - dangling retention bonuses in front of top performers, or at the very least pledging that a bonus of some sort will be there at year's end now that some businesses, such as bond trading, are booming.
Still, there's also the issue of replacing those who have already left. Of course, Citi and BofA may look within their own ranks to fill the shoes of a top performer like Banga or Rifkin, said Jess Varughese, managing partner at the New York City-based consultancy Milestone, which focuses on the financial services industry.
In most instances, however, the new executives never quite live up to the star power of their predecessors."The big name leaves are very, very tough to replace," said Varughese. And that is going to make it even more critical for Citi and BofA to do what they can to hold on to their best and brightest employees

How to catch a herd of wild pigs

2009-06-11T19:52:00.000-07:00

A chemistry professor in a large college had some exchange students in the class. One day while the class was in the lab the Professor noticed one young man (exchange student) who kept rubbing his back, and stretching as if his back hurt.

The professor asked the young man what was the matter. The student told him he had a bullet lodged in his back. He had been shot while fighting communists in his native country who were trying to overthrow his country's government and install a new communist government.

In the midst of his story he looked at the professor and asked a strange question. He asked, 'Do you know how to catch wild pigs?'

The professor thought it was a joke and asked for the punch line. The young man said this was no joke. 'You catch wild pigs by finding a suitable place in the woods and putting corn on the ground. The pigs find it and begin to come everyday to eat the free corn. When they are used to coming every day, you put a fence down one side of the place where they are used to coming. When they get used to the fence, they begin to eat the corn again and you put up another side of the fence. They get used to that and start to eat again. You continue until you have all four sides of the fence up with a gate in The last side. The pigs, who are used to the free corn, start to come through the gate to eat, you slam the gate on them and catch the whole herd.

Suddenly the wild pigs have lost their freedom. They run around and around inside the fence, but they are caught. Soon they go back to eating the free corn. They are so used to it that they have forgotten how to forage in the woods for themselves, so they accept their captivity.

The young man then told the professor that is exactly what he sees happening to America. The government keeps pushing us toward socialism and keeps spreading the free corn out in the form of programs such as supplemental income, tax credit for unearned income, tobacco subsidies, dairy subsidies, payments not to plant crops (CRP), welfare, medicine, drugs, etc.. While we continually lose our freedoms -- just a little at a time.

One should always remember: There is no such thing as a free lunch! Also, a politician will never provide a service for you cheaper than you can do it yourself.

Here's hoping...from the Tennessean.

2009-05-17T04:28:00.000-07:00

"The social issues that for a generation have mobilized conservatives — abortion, homosexuality, drugs and affirmative action — seem to have been shoved aside in favor of a focus on the deficit, monetary policy and other economic issues that previously had been left to policy wonks."

More proof of left, left, left Universities

2009-05-16T03:27:00.000-07:00

In the same year, UNC- Chapel Hill has booed and spit at former Presidential candidate Tom Tancredo and yet invite and cheer at graduation anti-Semite and professed Marxist Bishop Desmond Tutu. Today I am ashamed to call myself a Tarheel.

Thomas Paine and Principles

2009-05-16T01:08:00.000-07:00

“’Tis the business of little minds to shrink; but he whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his principles unto death.”- Thomas Paine

I see light on the horizon

2009-05-16T00:47:00.000-07:00

Teachers are not the most conservative crowd you will ever meet. In my last teachers meeting I was amazed. In a meeting about current changes in state finance and policy, conversation shifted to national policy and spending. Wow. The resentment at the current administration (Federal and State) for their irresponsible spending plans was VERY loud. If this crowd is starting to wake up, the rest of the country must be stirring too.

Death to Keynesian economics!

Ragnar Danneskjold