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- Written by: Alex Pugliese
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Published on townhall.com
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, or SEC, was set up to combat fraudulent practices. The SEC's website explains that "Ponzi schemes are a type of illegal pyramid scheme named for Charles Ponzi, who duped thousands of New England residents into investing in a postage stamp speculation scheme back in the 1920s." It goes on to say, "Decades later, the Ponzi scheme continues to work on the 'rob-Peter-to-pay-Paul' principle, as money from new investors is used to pay off earlier investors until the whole scheme collapses." That is how the SEC described the recent Bernard Madoff $50 billion Ponzi scheme, "a stunning fraud that appears to be of epic proportions."
A Ponzi scheme does not generate any wealth whatsoever; that is why it ultimately collapses. As Circuit Judge Anderson said in the 1922 Lowell v. Brown case, the Ponzi scheme was "simply the old fraud of paying the earlier comers out of the contributions of the later comers." So long as the number of late comers – you might call them suckers – grows, the fraudulent scheme has life.
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Originally published at http://lp.org
The Wall Street Journal's Daniel Henninger doesn't point out congressional Republican voted against the stimulus, not out of opposition to Big Government, but in spite of it. They simply wanted their pork included.
But Henninger does ask the question no one on Capitol Hill wants offered -- if this $1.2 trillion Frankenstein's monster of wealth transfers and exploding spending is supposed to create jobs and help families, why then does it do more for Pennsylvania Avenue than for Main Street? And he takes Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell to task for playing along with Obama's dreams of exponentially-expanding government.
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Hoping to win favor for adding trillions of dollars in additional bailouts for banks to his already-struggling government expansion plan, President Barack Obama announced yesterday the imposition of salary caps on executives whose banks receive TARP funds.
In other words, if your bank is struggling and its failure could throw the economy deeper into turmoil, Barack Obama wants to make it even harder to hire the managers you need to stay in business.
So if you're keeping score at home, Obama's plan to create jobs is to 1) permanently inflate government spending, 2) impose billions of dollars in additional debt on future workers, 3) eventually repeal tax relief for employers and 4) impose salary caps on bank executives that ensure they will only hire less-qualified managers in a time of economic trouble.
Inciting class warfare and funneling taxpayer money to groups that supported your election doesn't create jobs. Cutting taxes and hiring experienced business managers will.
No wonder independent voters are turning against the Obama plan in hordes.
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- Written by: Chris Wuestefeld
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I recently received a message from the New Jersey Republican Party urging me to lobby my Senators to vote against the so-called "stimulus plan". While I certainly oppose this legislation, I found their position so obviously hypocritical that I was insulted. Here is my reply to them.
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Bretigne Shaffer (www.bretigne.com) is a writer and filmmaker. Her weekly Internet TV show "On the Banks" can be seen at www.breakthematrix.com, channel 2 every Friday at 12:00 Pacific Time. |
Originally published at Campaign For Liberty
Dear pro-Obama friends,
I got a call from one of you the day after the election. You were so happy. You had "not been so proud to be an American for... decades!" You're living overseas, and you told me about watching the results in a bar with other Americans and how you were all hugging and crying you were so happy. As I hung up the phone, I found that I felt happy for you too.
Most of you know that I supported neither McCain nor Obama, that I view them as equally opposed to peace and freedom and equally ignorant of sound economic principles. I wasn't going to be happy with the election results no matter who won, so I can at least be glad that some of my friends are happy, and I am. And after his first few days in office, even I have to admit that Obama has done some very good things for which he is receiving well-deserved praise. It is not my intention to dismiss these accomplishments, nor is it my intent to rain on anyone's parade. But I do want to ask you all a big favor.
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Originally published at http://lp.org
Syndicated columnist Paul Mulshine of the Newark Star-Ledger expresses his surprise today over reports the Republican Party has discovered fiscal conservatism again.
As Mulshine points out, the Libertarian Party and its 2008 presidential nominee, former congressman Bob Barr, opposed taxpayer-funded bailouts and explosive government growth back when the GOP was espousing it as bedrock principle.
More than a little miffed about Republicans suddenly painting themselves as fiscally responsible, Mulshine decided to give Congressman Barr's office a call:
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- Written by: Jay Edgar
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From Donny Ferguson's Blog: 2008 Libertarian vice-presidential candidate Wayne Root discusses job growth, economic recovery and Obama's government expansion plan with Neil Cavuto.
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- Written by: Jay Edgar
- Category: Open Government Advocacy Project
ANDOVER TWP. -- Andover Township is expected to be the latest municipality to make its government records more financially accessible to the public.
The Township Committee unanimously introduced an ordinance Monday night significantly lowering costs of all paper documents and audio recordings of meetings.
Paper copies will cost 7 cents per page, and CD audio recordings of meetings will cost 40 cents each, if the ordinance is approved.
...
Andover Township also added another layer of transparency to its meetings, by explaining the individual topics of their executive session to the public Monday evening. A general rundown of those privileged topics, which often involve personnel issues or litigation, is a goal of many open government advocates such as O'Shea and John Paff, who chairs the New Jersey Libertarian Party's Open Government Advocacy Project.
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"The government is bailing out the banks...but who's going to bail out the government?" asks Texas cotton farmer Ken Gallaway, a vocal critic of agricultural subsidies that cost U.S. taxpayers and consumers billions of dollars a year in direct payments and higher prices for farm goods.
Agricultural subsidies were put in place in the 1930s during the Great Depression, when 25 percent of Americans lived on farms. At the time, Secretary of Agriculture Henry Wallace called them "a temporary solution to deal with an emergency." Those programs are still in place today, even though less than 1 percent of Americans currently live on farms that are larger, more efficient, and more productive than ever before.
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Visit the website of the National Taxpayer's Union to send a message to your representatives to reject the massive stimulus spending spree.
NTU also has a Fight the Stimulus tool box available to you.
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Recently a reporter contacted me to ask what President Obama's top priorities should be. I, being lazy and not having time to answer myself, passed the question on to several NJ Libertarian activists. Below is a sample of the responses I received:
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From NJ Tax Revolution:
The American Recovery and Reinvestment Bill of 2009 is perhaps the most appalling piece of proposed legislation I have ever seen. The stated purpose of the bill is to jumpstart the economy and create jobs. The bill itself claims that there are no earmarks in this bill. That is one of the most comical claims I have seen as this entire bill is an earmark that will be shoved down the throat of taxpayers with little or no debate.
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Not everybody is pumped about Obama's $825 billion stimulus plans, especially the part that includes billions of taxpayer dollars being spent by the government in the hopes of jump-starting the economy. Here's what we've said about it:
- If Obama's Plan Doesn't Seem to Make Sense, it's Because it Doesn't
- We're Not Going to Spend Our Way to Economic Recovery
- Is Cutting Taxes Really Raising Taxes?
- Keynesian Economics Explained
- The LP Goes to Harvard
- Obama's new "Raw Deal"
But don't just take our word for it: There is a growing number of economists speaking out against the logic behind Obama's stimulus package. Harvard economics professor Greg Mankiw (who've we've mentioned on here a few times before) has been recording these economists' statements against the stimulus plan. This is some of what Mankiw has compiled:
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- Written by: John Paff
- Category: Open Government Advocacy Project
The NJ Libertarian Party Open Government task force has been uncovering unadvertised settlements between government entities. The following recently appeared in the Hunterdon County Democrat.
$245K paid to settle police brutality suits
by Veronica Slaght / Hunterdon County Democrat
Wednesday January 14, 2009, 12:29 PMREADINGTON TWP. -- Two police brutality lawsuits were settled for a total of $245,000, according to agreements recently unearthed by open public records advocate John Paff.
Mr. Paff is a Somerset resident who runs the state Libertarian Party's Open Government Advocacy Project. He has also pressed the High Bridge and Franklin Township school boards for more openness. Mr. Paff said he came across the Readington documents during a routine investigation into civil cases involving a government agency, which he posts on his blog: njcivilsettlements.blogspot.com. Mr. Paff said he thought people might be interested in the payouts because that's information municipalities don't like to advertise.
Read the full story. Additional actions of the Open Government Taskforce can be read about HERE.
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NEPTUNE — The one-year ban on the use of eminent domain on most properties in the township approved Monday by the Township Committee may be extended to a permanent ban by spring.
Committeeman Randy Bishop asked that an ordinance banning abuse of the practice be discussed at the next committee meeting, set for Jan. 26. Bishop has tried to get the ordinance approved for the past two years, but could not get the necessary three votes.
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Reason Magazine has many great articles (as usual) in its January edition. Of note are the following:
Is Deregulation to Blame?
The new Washington consensus says "yes." The facts on the ground say something different.
Katherine Mangu-Ward | January 2009 Print Edition
You might not be able to tell by looking at it on the page, but deregulation has become a four-letter word in Washington. In October’s vice presidential debate, Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.) practically spat it out: “If you need any more proof positive of how bad the economic theories have been, this excessive deregulation, the failure to oversee what was going on, letting Wall Street run wild, I don’t think you needed any more evidence than what you see now.” Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) echoed the sentiment in her floor speech before the first vote on the bailout bill: “It’s really an anything-goes mentality. No regulation, no supervision, no discipline.”
See full article on their website.
Bush's Regulatory Kiss-Off
Obama's assertions to the contrary, the 43rd president was the biggest regulator since Nixon.
Veronique de Rugy | January 2009 Print Edition
When Barack Obama was running for president, he made no secret about his plan to "restore common-sense regulation"—read: increase regulation—by closing the regulatory loopholes he thought the Republicans had opened. Deregulation, he argued repeatedly, is the source of evil. Much like Franklin Delano Roosevelt during the Great Depression, Obama offered a sweeping, ambitious agenda: new financial regulations, new labor regulations, new energy regulations, and more.
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EDISON — Public discussion on a controversial ordinance that, if passed, would amend various rules of procedure in Township Council meetings is set for tonight's Jan. 14 meeting. Aimed at increasing the efficiency at which township business is conducted, it has been heavily critiqued by some residents as restricting free speech.
The ordinance, introduced on Dec. 22, contains many provisions that would either change how meetings are conducted or clarify current practices. One part, for example, lays out the specific procedure for how a special meeting can be called and who can call one. Similarly, the ordinance explicitly lays out the process by which the budget is examined, discussed and adopted.
See full story. Includes mention of the NJ Libertarian Party Open Government Taskforce's role in shaping the ordinance.
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In an unpublished trial court decision released today, Bergen County Superior Court Assignment Judge Peter E. Doyne denied Paramus Borough's lawsuit seeking a declaration that the Borough Attorney must review all non-routine OPRA requests submitted to the Borough Clerk.
The decision is available HERE..
John Paff
Somerset, New Jersey
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The Center for Freedom and Prosperity Foundation recently released a video with Cato's Daniel Mitchell explaining the failed logic behind Keynesian economics. It's a great watch, since Keynesian theory is the driving force behind President-Elect Barack Obama's latest stimulus plans: