We Have Seen This Movie Before

(I receive a lot of tips and commentary from other scribes (by e-mail) on a daily basis. Altho, most are very good, occassionally one stands out.

Below is one such article that caught my fancy beecause the comparison between the two countries is absolutely stunning. We hope you enjoy it. There is a link to the site just below the title. We recommend you click on it and sample other articles on the site. ... JDL)

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"A Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored. Liberty, once lost, is lost forever."
John Adams

History records that the moneychangers have used every form of abuse, intrigue, deceit, and violent means
possible to maintain their control over governments by controlling the money and its issuance.
- James Madison

Don't Cry for Me, Argentina / America

Link: (Don't Cry for me Argentina/America)

***************

In the early 20th century, Argentina was one of the richest countries in the world.

While Great Britain's maritime power and its far-flung empire had propelled it to a dominant position among the world's industrialized nations, only the United States challenged Argentina
for the position of the world's second-most powerful economy.

It was blessed with abundant agriculture, vast swaths of rich farmland laced with navigable rivers and an accessible port system. Its level of industrialization was higher than many European countries: railroads, automobiles and telephones were commonplace.

In 1916, a new president was elected. Hipólito Irigoyen had formed a party called The Radicals
under the banner of "fundamental change" with an appeal to the middle class.

Among Irigoyen's changes: mandatory pension insurance, mandatory health insurance,
and support for low-income housing construction to stimulate the economy.

Put simply, the state assumed economic control of a vast swath of the country's operations
and began assessing new payroll taxes to fund its efforts.

With an increasing flow of funds into these entitlement programs, the government's payouts soon became overly generous. Before long its outlays surpassed the value of the taxpayers' contributions.

Put simply, it quickly became under-funded, much like the United States' Social Security and Medicare programs.

The death knell for the Argentine economy, however, came with the election of Juan Perón.

Perón had a fascist and corporatist upbringing; he and his charismatic wife aimed their populist rhetoric at the nation's rich.

This targeted group "swiftly expanded to cover most of the propertied middle classes,
who became an enemy to be defeated and humiliated."

Under Perón, the size of government bureaucracies exploded through massive programs
of social spending and by encouraging the growth of labor unions.

High taxes and economic mismanagement took their inevitable toll even after Perón had
been driven from office. But his populist rhetoric and "contempt for economic realities"
lived on. Argentina's federal government continued to spend far beyond its means.

Hyperinflation exploded in 1989, the final stage of a process characterized by "industrial protectionism, redistribution of income based on increased wages, and growing state intervention in the economy..."

The Argentinean government's practice of printing money to pay off its public debts had crushed the economy. Inflation hit 3000%, reminiscent of the Weimar Republic. Food riots were rampant; stores were looted; the country descended into chaos.

And by 1994, Argentina's public pensions -- the equivalent of Social Security -- had imploded.

The payroll tax had increased from 5% to 26%, but it wasn't enough. In addition, Argentina had implemented a value-added tax (VAT), new income taxes, a personal tax on wealth, and additional revenues based upon the sale of public enterprises. These crushed the private sector, further damaging the economy.

A government-controlled "privatization" effort to rescue seniors' pensions was attempted.
But, by 2001, those funds had also been raided by the government, the monies replaced by Argentina's defaulted government bonds.

By 2002, "...government fiscal irresponsibility... induced a national economic crisis as severe as America's Great Depression."
* * *

In 1902 Argentina was one of the world's richest countries. Little more than a hundred years later, it is poverty-stricken, struggling to meet its debt obligations amidst a drought.

We've seen this movie before.

The Democrats' populist plans can't possibly work, because government bankrupts everything it touches.

History teaches us that ObamaCare and unfunded entitlement programs will be utter, complete disasters.Today's Democrats are guilty of more than stupidity; they are enslaving future generations to poverty and misery. And they will be long gone when it all implodes. They will be as cold and dead as Juan Perón when the piper must ultimately be paid.

-O-

Another Warning, America! Worse Trouble Ahead.

(Received by e-mail.)

ANOTHER WARNING!
*************************



"A Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored. Liberty, once lost, is lost forever."
-John Adams

"History records that the moneychangers have used every form of abuse, intrigue, deceit, and violent means possible to maintain their control over governments by controlling the money and its issuance."
- James Madison
************************

Don't Cry for Me, Argentina / America ... (SOURCE)
***********************


In the early 20th century, Argentina was one of the richest countries in the world.
While Great Britain's maritime power and its far-flung empire had propelled it to a dominant position among the world's industrialized nations, only the United States challenged Argentina
for the position of the world's second-most powerful economy.

It was blessed with abundant agriculture, vast swaths of rich farmland laced with navigable rivers and an accessible port system. Its level of industrialization was higher than many European countries: railroads, automobiles and telephones were commonplace.

In 1916, a new president was elected. Hipólito Irigoyen had formed a party called The Radicals
under the banner of "fundamental change" with an appeal to the middle class.

Among Irigoyen's changes: mandatory pension insurance, mandatory health insurance,
and support for low-income housing construction to stimulate the economy.


Put simply, the state assumed economic control of a vast swath of the country's operations
and began assessing new payroll taxes to fund its efforts.

With an increasing flow of funds into these entitlement programs, the government's payouts soon
became overly generous. Before long its outlays surpassed the value of the taxpayers' contributions.


Put simply, it quickly became under-funded, much like the United States' Social Security and Medicare programs.

The death knell for the Argentine economy, however, came with the election of Juan Perón.
Perón had a fascist and corporatist upbringing; he and his charismatic wife aimed their populist rhetoric at the nation's rich.

This targeted group "swiftly expanded to cover most of the propertied middle classes,
who became an enemy to be defeated and humiliated."


Under Perón, the size of government bureaucracies exploded through massive programs
of social spending and by encouraging the growth of labor unions.

High taxes and economic mismanagement took their inevitable toll even after Perón had
been driven from office. But his populist rhetoric and "contempt for economic realities"
lived on. Argentina's federal government continued to spend far beyond its means.

Hyperinflation exploded in 1989, the final stage of a process characterized by "industrial protectionism, redistribution of income based on increased wages, and growing state intervention in the economy..."

The Argentinean government's practice of printing money to pay off its public debts had crushed the economy. Inflation hit 3000%, reminiscent of the Weimar Republic. Food riots were rampant; stores were looted; the country descended into chaos.

And by 1994, Argentina's public pensions -- the equivalent of Social Security -- had imploded.
The payroll tax had increased from 5% to 26%, but it wasn't enough. In addition, Argentina had implemented a value-added tax (VAT), new income taxes, a personal tax on wealth, and additional revenues based upon the sale of public enterprises. These crushed the private sector, further damaging the economy.

A government-controlled "privatization" effort to rescue seniors' pensions was attempted.
But, by 2001, those funds had also been raided by the government, the monies replaced by Argentina's defaulted government bonds.

By 2002, "...government fiscal irresponsibility... induced a national economic crisis as severe as America's Great Depression."
* * *

In 1902 Argentina was one of the world's richest countries. Little more than a hundred years later, it is poverty-stricken, struggling to meet its debt obligations amidst a drought.


We've seen this movie before.


The Democrats' populist plans can't possibly work, because government bankrupts everything it touches.


History teaches us that ObamaCare and unfunded entitlement programs will be utter, complete disasters.Today's Democrats are guilty of more than stupidity; they are enslaving future generations to poverty and misery.


And they will be long gone when it all implodes.


They will be as cold and dead as Juan Perón when the piper must ultimately be paid.



-Author Unknown-

Nobody's Listening! ... Alan Caruba

Nobody's Listening

By Alan Caruba
*********************

”'There is an overall sense of frustration that no one is listening,'" pollster Scott Rasmussen said about a problem that has plagued the political party in power for decades." – Washington Times, April 2, 2010, "Independent voters turn from hopeful to angry."


The article examines the way Obama has lost the support of the great body of “independents”, people who do not identify themselves as either Democrat or Republican.


The polls, of course, all reflect the president’s falling approval rating, but the problem now for Americans is that it is clear the White House and a compliant Congress are not listening. Obama disparaged polls recently. He is not influenced by them. To put it another way, the public be damned.


Despite months of public protests of the healthcare bill and only because of a straight party-line vote (no Republican voted for it) the bill was passed and signed into law. The avalanche of lies told before and since about Obamacare has resulted in a law that only Obama’s core of supporters—Ronald Reagan used to call them Welfare Queens—still believe will benefit the nation.


Within days, Obama’s EPA director announced new regulations regarding auto mileage and the agency’s intent to regulate carbon dioxide, a natural gas essential to all life on Earth. There is now the likelihood that Congress will ram through the disastorous Cap-and-Trade Act, a tax on all energy use.


Despite the exposure of the biggest fraud of the modern era, "global warming", the Obama administration is pressing ahead with legislation based on it!


A general amnesty is likely, too, as Mexicans begin to stream across the border, fleeing the drug wars in that nation, and seeking asylum.


Dick Morris, the political commentator, notes correctly that a Republican controlled Congress can nullify Obamacare by refusing to fund it, but November looks further and further away at this point.The other element at work is the way the bulk of the nation’s news media have utterly abandoned its most essential function; keeping an eye on government and revealing the truth about elected officials and dubious legislative proposals.


We have arrived at a point in this nation where the only reliable news to be found in the daily newspaper is in the sports section. At least the scores are accurate.


Meanwhile, the headlines everywhere today speak of new jobs added while also noting a stubborn 9.7 rate of unemployment and that is not likely to diminish any time soon. The only bright spot is that Obama can no longer blame this on the Bush administration.


When a nation’s press betrays it, the only remaining hope for any truth is to be found in the many news/opinion Internet sites and yet I am plagued by the same feeling expressed in Rasmussen’s comment that those in power are not listening and that the only option that remains to save the nation from them are the midterm elections.


In the interim, economic stagnation will be the rule.


Not everyone reads the conservative comment on the Internet and liberal websites like the Huffington Post are thriving. While the network news shows continue to lose viewers and Fox News continues to grow, the deliberate destruction of the nation’s economy continues.


One is forced to ask, does it matter when the entire governmental structure of the nation is now controlled by the machine politics of Chicago? By the lies about global warming? By more and more restrictions on real access to the nation’s natural resources?


There is, finally, the harm that results from the combination of a limited general knowledge of American and world history and an attention span that grows shorter week by week.


We are reaching the apogee of a lot of very bad decisions and failed government programs that suggest the worst is yet to come.


Everybody knows this, but what does that avail Americans when neither protests, nor recent elections of Republican governors and a new Republican Senator from Massachusetts leave us vulnerable to the increasingly rapid predation of Marxists?

© Alan Caruba, 2010

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Alan Caruba blogs daily at http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com/. An author, business and science writer, he is the founder of The National Anxiety Center, a clearinghouse for information on “scare campaigns” intended to influence public opinion and policies.

The National Madhouse ... by Alan Caruba

The National Madhouse

By Alan Caruba

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If you think that you are going mad, based on the statements out of the White House and Congress, let me assure you that you are sane, but those in charge of governing the nation appear to have lost their wits.

The Democrat’s third-ranking House leader, Rep. James Clyburn (D-SC), during an appearance on Fox News asserted that “We’ve got to spend our way out of this recession.” It is his view that “We’re not going to save our way out of this recession.” So saving money is bad. Spending money we are borrowing at a rate of a billion dollars a day is good. If that sounds insane, you’re right.

In defending his new budget, President Obama declared that “Already, we have made historic strides…to cut wasteful spending.” The problem with that is that his budget proposal, for a second year in a row, would increase federal spending as a percentage of the Gross National Product at a higher rate than any time in the past 65 years. Fully a quarter of the GNP would be sucked up and spent by the government.

As we all know by now, because the President keeps telling us, that everything that happened last year was the fault of the previous President, George W. Bush, but it turns out that President Obama proposes once again to spend 30% more of the GDP than Bush. President Obama has also given notice to the United Nations that the U.S. would agree to the Copenhagen Climate Change Accord to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. It is reported that this means a reduction of “carbon emissions by 17% from 2005 levels by 2020.” This would be contingent on the passage of the Cap-and-Trade bill lingering in the Senate.

The reduction of greenhouse gas emissions is based on the now widely discredited global warming hoax that blamed carbon dioxide for the non-existent rise in the planet’s temperature.

Thus, the Cap-and-Trade bill is, itself, a hoax and, worse, would increase taxes on all energy use for all Americans. The reduction that President Obama calls for would require a return to the days of horse-drawn vehicles and an end to manufacturing and other activities dependent on oil, natural gas, and coal.

The Environmental Protection Agency has announced its intention to regulate carbon dioxide, the gas other than oxygen on which all life on Earth depends. Its justification for this is, of course, global warming. It requires a lot of gall to ignore the fact that the Earth entered a cooling cycle in 1998 that is likely to last another decade or two.

If the insanity emanating from the White House, Congress and the EPA is not enough, over at the United Nations last Monday the Human Rights Council met in Geneva. It was presided over by Halima Warzasi, a woman whom UN Watch notes “personally shielded the Saddam regime from international censure over the (Kurdish) gas attacks.” She was preceded in the chairmanship by Alfonso Martinez of Cuba. The Council’s principal members include China, Cuba, Russia, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, none of which are famous for their attention to human rights.

Also last Monday, one brief moment of sanity; Ali Hassan al-Majeed, also known as “Chemical Ali” for having ordered the poison gas attacks on the Kurds, was hanged.

To Americans struggling with debt, with mortgages that cost more than the present value of their homes, and, for many, with unemployment, the notion that the nation would end the Bush tax cuts while raising taxes at the same time it is borrowing and spending money at an unsustainable rate is a good definition of madness.

In November, the Obama administration released a report stating that more than $98 billion in taxpayer dollars spent by government agencies was wasted. The main culprit according to the report was Medicare, a program that the same administration via its “healthcare reform” legislation wanted to expand by adding millions more to its rolls.

So you may be forgiven for thinking that something is terribly wrong with the White House and Congress because it is.

Alan Caruba

2010’s Top Anxieties.... National Anxiety Center

2010’s Top Anxieties
National Anxiety Center Lists Top Ten Fears

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Founded in 1990, The National Anxiety Center, a clearinghouse for information about “scare campaigns” designed to influence public opinion and policy, has periodically issued a list of the top anxieties Americans will experience in the coming year.

“The list,” says founder Alan Caruba, “is subjective; based on an analysis of the past year’s headlines and anticipated events. It incorporates on-going, often long term concerns that Americans have expressed.”

1. Out of Control Government Spending. It is evident to everyone except the White House and Congress that America cannot spend its way out of the deepest recession since the Great Depression, but both have embraced programs that will increase the level of taxation facing Americans, while engaging in “stimulus” programs that only stimulate more anxiety. The lack of job creation in the private sector will be the major anxiety Americans encounter in 2010.

2. Iran. It is evident to Americans and the world that Iran is intent on acquiring nuclear weapons that can be used in a missile attack on Israel and which can reach Europe and other nations throughout the Middle East. The only option available is an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities and there is considerable anxiety regarding its timing and outcome.

3. Afghanistan War. Eight years after the initial effort to rid Afghanistan of the Taliban, Americans are war weary and increasingly wondering about the benefit of further involvement, its costs, and the possibility that leaving would embolden Islamist enemies there, in Iraq, and worldwide. The Middle East remains a powder keg of instability.

4. The Economy. There is anxiety concerning how long it will take for the American economy to recover from the housing and credit bubble created by Congressional programs such as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. No steps have been taken to eliminate these programs and, indeed, other federal programs have been introduced to assist imprudent mortgage holders already in default.

5. Inflation. The raising of the nation’s debt limit, the printing of vast amounts of paper currency by the Federal Reserve, and other comparable actions portend an inflation of prices and a possible default. Moody’s Investor Service has warned both the U.S. and British governments they are in peril of losing their triple-A ratings.

6. Medicare. Medicare, like Social Security, will be insolvent within a few years and Americans of all ages are worried, not only about solutions to this prospect, but about proposals to vastly expand Medicare at the most inopportune time.

7. Illegal Immigration and Amnesty. The drain on the nation’s economy and problems associated with illegal immigration, now estimated to number more than 12 million, as well as yet recently proposed amnesty program continue to worry Americans.

8. Education. The continued failure of the nation’s school systems to meet international standards of scholastic achievement has resulted in the decline in the ability of American’s children’s to acquire basic skills and the knowledge required to compete in a global economy.

9. Diet and Health. The growing number of overweight and obese Americans is a personal and national concern for the overall health of everyone struggling with weight problems and their potential for diabetes and other diseases.

10. American Culture. The increasing vulgarity found in films, on television, in music, fashion, and other elements of American culture remains a concern for many, particularly as it affects the younger generation.

“The good news is that more Americans are no longer concerned about ‘global warming’ and carbon dioxide, as they become aware that the claims justifying these fears are based on deliberately falsified computer models and the fact that the nation and the planet are now a decade into a natural cooling cycle,” says Caruba.

“2010, the end of the first decade of the 21st century, is likely to be seen in retrospect as a tipping point that will determine either a return to traditional standards of fiscal prudence,” says Caruba, “or will plunge the nation and the world into a Depression of cataclysmic proportions.”

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Caruba, an author, business and science writer, resides in South Orange, N.J. The National Anxiety Center maintains a website at http://www.anxietycenter.com/. Caruba blogs daily at http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com/.