[Swiftwater Gazette] Dear Peggy

Fri Oct 30 18:07:26 EDT 2009

Brad,

What I don't like to thnk it's REALLY about is getting the bottom 50% income
earners of the voting public so dependent on the gov't that the democrats
are virtually guaranteed re-election for a good long time.

We BETTER get this turned around in 2010 or we're lookin' at the future.

Rik

On Fri, Oct 30, 2009 at 4:33 PM, Brad Haslett <flybrad at gmail.com> wrote:

> Rik,
>
> Well, it's here, the almost 2000 pages of socialism is available for
> the reading.  This isn't about health care, it is about nationalizing
> 1/5 of the economy in addition to autos and banking.  I've said for
> months (if not years) that we're at a tipping point where one half of
> the electorate thinks they can vote themselves a raise from the other
> half (more like top 10%).  We'll see how well that works.  Using
> history as a guide, it hasn't worked anywhere else.
>
> Brad
>
>
> On 10/30/09, Rik Sandberg <sanderico1 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > PS: I doubt he'll start to get it .... he'd have to grow a conscience
> first!
> >
> > Rik
> >
> > On Fri, Oct 30, 2009 at 3:27 PM, Rik Sandberg <sanderico1 at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >
> >> Hope the BOss reads Noonan.
> >>
> >> Too much to hope he'd actually start to get it??
> >>
> >> Rik
> >>
> >>
> >> On Fri, Oct 30, 2009 at 2:48 PM, Brad Haslett <flybrad at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >>
> >>> Ms. Noonan sees the light.  I was going to write something about the
> >>> "good" economic news published yesterday,  Peggy beat me.
> >>>
> >>> Brad
> >>>
> >>> ---------------
> >>>
> >>>    * OCTOBER 29, 2009, 7:20 P.M. ET
> >>>
> >>> We're Governed by Callous Children
> >>> Americans feel increasingly disheartened, and our leaders don't even
> >>> notice.
> >>>
> >>>    *
> >>>      By PEGGY NOONAN
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> The new economic statistics put growth at a healthy 3.5% for the third
> >>> quarter. We should be dancing in the streets. No one is, because no
> >>> one has any faith in these numbers. Waves of money are sloshing
> >>> through the system, creating a false rising tide that lifts all boats
> >>> for the moment. The tide will recede. The boats aren't rising, they're
> >>> bobbing, and will settle. No one believes the bad time is over. No one
> >>> thinks we're entering a new age of abundance. No one thinks it will
> >>> ever be the same as before 2008. Economists, statisticians,
> >>> forecasters and market specialists will argue about what the new
> >>> numbers mean, but no one believes them, either. Among the things swept
> >>> away in 2008 was public confidence in the experts. The experts missed
> >>> the crash. They'll miss the meaning of this moment, too.
> >>>
> >>> The biggest threat to America right now is not government spending,
> >>> huge deficits, foreign ownership of our debt, world terrorism, two
> >>> wars, potential epidemics or nuts with nukes. The biggest long-term
> >>> threat is that people are becoming and have become disheartened, that
> >>> this condition is reaching critical mass, and that it afflicts most
> >>> broadly and deeply those members of the American leadership class who
> >>> are not in Washington, most especially those in business.
> >>>
> >>> It is a story in two parts. The first: "They do not think they can
> >>> make it better."
> >>>
> >>> I talked this week with a guy from Big Pharma, which we used to call
> >>> "the drug companies" until we decided that didn't sound menacing
> >>> enough. He is middle-aged, works in a significant position, and our
> >>> conversation turned to the last great recession, in the late mid- to
> >>> late 1970s and early '80s. We talked about how, in terms of numbers,
> >>> that recession was in some ways worse than the one we're experiencing
> >>> now. Interest rates were over 20%, and inflation and unemployment hit
> >>> double digits. America was in what might be called a functional
> >>> depression, yet there was still a prevalent feeling of hope. Here's
> >>> why. Everyone thought they could figure a way through. We knew we
> >>> could find a path through the mess. In 1982 there were people saying,
> >>> "If only we get rid of this guy Reagan, we can make it better!" Others
> >>> said, "If we follow Reagan, he'll squeeze out inflation and lower
> >>> taxes and we'll be America again, we'll be acting like Americans
> >>> again." Everyone had a path through.
> >>>
> >>> Now they don't. The most sophisticated Americans, experienced in how
> >>> the country works on the ground, can't figure a way out. Have you
> >>> heard, "If only we follow Obama and the Democrats, it will all get
> >>> better"? Or, "If only we follow the Republicans, they'll make it all
> >>> work again"? I bet you haven't, or not much.
> >>>
> >>> This is historic. This is something new in modern political history,
> >>> and I'm not sure we're fully noticing it. Americans are starting to
> >>> think the problems we are facing cannot be solved.
> >>>
> >>> Part of the reason is that the problems—debt, spending, war—seem too
> >>> big. But a larger part is that our federal government, from the White
> >>> House through Congress, and so many state and local governments, seems
> >>> to be demonstrating every day that they cannot make things better.
> >>> They are not offering a new path, they are only offering old
> >>> paths—spend more, regulate more, tax more in an attempt to make us
> >>> more healthy locally and nationally. And in the long term
> >>> everyone—well, not those in government, but most everyone else—seems
> >>> to know that won't work. It's not a way out. It's not a path through.
> >>>
> >>> And so the disheartenedness of the leadership class, of those in
> >>> business, of those who have something. This week the New York Post
> >>> carried a report that 1.5 million people had left high-tax New York
> >>> state between 2000 and 2008, more than a million of them from even
> >>> higher-tax New York City. They took their tax dollars with them—in
> >>> 2006 alone more than $4 billion.
> >>>
> >>> You know what New York, both state and city, will do to make up for
> >>> the lost money. They'll raise taxes.
> >>>
> >>> I talked with an executive this week with what we still call "the
> >>> insurance companies" and will no doubt soon be calling Big Insura.
> >>> (Take it away, Democratic National Committee.) He was thoughtful,
> >>> reflective about the big picture. He talked about all the new proposed
> >>> regulations on the industry. Rep. Barney Frank had just said on some
> >>> cable show that the Democrats of the White House and Congress "are
> >>> trying on every front to increase the role of government in the
> >>> regulatory area." The executive said of Washington: "They don't
> >>> understand that people can just stop, get out. I have friends and
> >>> colleagues who've said to me 'I'm done.' " He spoke of his own
> >>> increasing tax burden and said, "They don't understand that if they
> >>> start to tax me so that I'm paying 60%, 55%, I'll stop."
> >>>
> >>> He felt government doesn't understand that business in America is run
> >>> by people, by human beings. Mr. Frank must believe America is
> >>> populated by high-achieving robots who will obey whatever command he
> >>> and his friends issue. But of course they're human, and they can
> >>> become disheartened. They can pack it in, go elsewhere, quit what used
> >>> to be called the rat race and might as well be called that again since
> >>> the government seems to think they're all rats. (That would be you,
> >>> Chamber of Commerce.)
> >>> ***
> >>>
> >>> And here is the second part of the story. While Americans feel
> >>> increasingly disheartened, their leaders evince a mindless . . . one
> >>> almost calls it optimism, but it is not that.
> >>>
> >>> It is a curious thing that those who feel most mistily affectionate
> >>> toward America, and most protective toward it, are the most aware of
> >>> its vulnerabilities, the most aware that it can be harmed. They don't
> >>> see it as all-powerful, impregnable, unharmable. The loving have a
> >>> sense of its limits.
> >>> More Peggy Noonan
> >>>
> >>> Read Peggy Noonan's previous columns
> >>>
> >>> click here to order her new book, Patriotic Grace
> >>>
> >>> When I see those in government, both locally and in Washington, spend
> >>> and tax and come up each day with new ways to spend and tax—health
> >>> care, cap and trade, etc.—I think: Why aren't they worried about the
> >>> impact of what they're doing? Why do they think America is so strong
> >>> it can take endless abuse?
> >>>
> >>> I think I know part of the answer. It is that they've never seen
> >>> things go dark. They came of age during the great abundance, circa
> >>> 1980-2008 (or 1950-2008, take your pick), and they don't have the
> >>> habit of worry. They talk about their "concerns"—they're big on that
> >>> word. But they're not really concerned. They think America is the
> >>> goose that lays the golden egg. Why not? She laid it in their laps.
> >>> She laid it in grandpa's lap.
> >>>
> >>> They don't feel anxious, because they never had anything to be anxious
> >>> about. They grew up in an America surrounded by phrases—"strongest
> >>> nation in the world," "indispensable nation," "unipolar power,"
> >>> "highest standard of living"—and are not bright enough, or serious
> >>> enough, to imagine that they can damage that, hurt it, even fatally.
> >>>
> >>> We are governed at all levels by America's luckiest children, sons and
> >>> daughters of the abundance, and they call themselves optimists but
> >>> they're not optimists—they're unimaginative. They don't have faith,
> >>> they've just never been foreclosed on. They are stupid and they are
> >>> callous, and they don't mind it when people become disheartened. They
> >>> don't even notice.
> >>>
> >>> _______________________________________________
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> >>>
> >>>
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> >>>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> --
> >> Never argue with idiots, they just drag you down to their level then
> beat
> >> you with experience.
> >>
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > Never argue with idiots, they just drag you down to their level then beat
> > you with experience.
> >
>
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-- 
Never argue with idiots, they just drag you down to their level then beat
you with experience.
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