John McCain Was Pushing For Reform Of Fannie Mae And Freddie Mac While “Obama Was Notably Silent“:
“In 2006, [McCain] Called For Tighter Regulation Of Fannie Mae And Freddie Mac, The Two Federally Chartered, Privately Run Mortgage Giants That The Government Now Has Taken Over.” (Steve Thomma, “Out Of Bounds! Obama Misstates McCain’s Position On Regulation,” McClatchy Newspapers, 9/20/08)
The Washington Post: McCain Pushed For Fannie and Freddie Regulation While “Obama Was Notably Silent.” “In 2006, he pushed for stronger regulation of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — while Mr. Obama was notably silent. ‘If Congress does not act, American taxpayers will continue to be exposed to the enormous risk that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac pose to the housing market, the overall financial system, and the economy as a whole,’ Mr. McCain warned at the time.” (Editorial, “‘Always For Less Regulation’?” The Washington Post, 9/19/08)
NOTE: In Just Four Years, Barack Obama Has Received More Money From Fannie Mae And Freddie Mac Than Any Other Member Of Congress In The Past Two Decades (Since 1989) Except Senate Banking Committee Chairman Sen. Chris Dodd. (Lindsay Renick Mayer, “Fannie Mae And Freddie Mac Invest In Lawmakers,” Center For Responsive Politics’ “Capital Eye” Blog, www.opensecrets.org, 9/11/08)
EVEN BILL CLINTON ACKNOWLEDGES DEMOCRATS BLOCKED FANNIE AND FREDDIE REFORM
Former President Bill Clinton Acknowledges Democrats Resisted Fannie Mae And Freddie Mac Reform:
Former President Clinton: “I think the responsibility that the Democrats have may rest more in resisting any efforts by Republicans in the Congress, or by me when I was President, to put some standards and tighten up a little on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.”(ABC’s “Good Morning America,” 9/25/08)
It seems that each new crisis is met with a new answer from the government. After Hurricane Katrina, the federal government assumed roles traditionally handled by state and local governments. After the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the government federalized 25,000 workers through the Transportation Security Administration. The example of security-focused countries such as Israel, which elects to have that function handled by the private sector, did not matter. Now, our federal government is likely to commit three-quarters of a trillion dollars — more than last year’s Pentagon budget — to a bailout based on what happened in the credit markets last week.
An ever-expanding scope of federal commitment and power is not what made this country great. Expanded power in one place comes at a cost in other places. American cornerstones such as individual initiative and an entrepreneurial spirit — born in free and open societies with private property rights and the rule of law — have never fit particularly well within the context of an ever-growing federal government.
For 200 years, the “business model” in our country has rested on a simple fact: that while one may reap rewards from taking risks, one should also be prepared to face the consequences of those risks.
As economists, we want to express to Congress our great concern for the plan proposed by Treasury Secretary Paulson to deal with the financial crisis. We are well aware of the difficulty of the current financial situation and we agree with the need for bold action to ensure that the financial system continues to function. We see three fatal pitfalls in the currently proposed plan:
1) Its fairness. The plan is a subsidy to investors at taxpayers’ expense. Investors who took risks to earn profits must also bear the losses. Not every business failure carries systemic risk. The government can ensure a well-functioning financial industry, able to make new loans to creditworthy borrowers, without bailing out particular investors and institutions whose choices proved unwise.
2) Its ambiguity. Neither the mission of the new agency nor its oversight are clear. If taxpayers are to buy illiquid and opaque assets from troubled sellers, the terms, occasions, and methods of such purchases must be crystal clear ahead of time and carefully monitored afterwards.
3) Its long-term effects. If the plan is enacted, its effects will be with us for a generation. For all their recent troubles, America’s dynamic and innovative private capital markets have brought the nation unparalleled prosperity. Fundamentally weakening those markets in order to calm short-run disruptions is desperately short-sighted.
For these reasons we ask Congress not to rush, to hold appropriate hearings, and to carefully consider the right course of action, and to wisely determine the future of the financial industry and the U.S. economy for years to come.
[C]ount me among those few here who want to thank the House Republicans for taking a bold stand against what had been a stampede on a scale I have never before witnessed on matters of huge consequence. Conservatism is more than a quaint belief-system to be embraced and debated over donuts at Starbucks. It is more than a list of talking points. It is the foundation of the civil society. The liberal uses crises, real or manufactured, to expand the power of government at the expense of the individual and private property. He has spent, in earnest, 70 years evading the Constitution’s limits on governmental power. If conservatives don’t stand up to this, who will?
When you really need the assistance of others to further a particular goal, does it make sense to first INSULT those people and unfairly cast blame on them?
Of course not. This would be a stupid thing to do unless you’re the belligerent and bellicose Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House and general do-nothing. Today, Speaker Pelosi thought that a rambling, partisan, uninformed speech made prior to a huge vote would be A-OK.
Meanwhile, let’s not forget a huge enabler of this whole mess who deserves alot more attention: bleeding heart Barney Frank (D-gay prostitution ring) whose economic illiteracy and blindness to multiculturalism is bleeding us all.
Barney [Frank] and friends used the regulations of the Community Reinvestment Act to threaten lenders into making these loans. And banks, trying to meet Frank’s demands, expanded riskier lending schemes like subprime mortgages.
[...]
Lenders asked themselves, why should I care how shaky these borrowers are or risky the loans if a government-backed body is going to buy them up anyway?
The loans were made, the housing market bubbled, contributions from F&F flowed to Democrats like Chris Dodd and Barack Obama, and everyone was happy. Until they weren’t.
Without Freddie and Fannie’s reckless expansion, the housing bubble doesn’t happen. Without the implied promise behind F&F’s money, investment banks don’t dive into the derivatives market.
Barney Frank’s talking points notwithstanding, mortgage lenders didn’t wake up one fine day deciding to junk long-held standards of creditworthiness in order to make ill-advised loans to unqualified borrowers. It would be closer to the truth to say they woke up to find the government twisting their arms and demanding that they do so – or else.
The roots of this crisis go back to the Carter administration. That was when government officials, egged on by left-wing activists, began accusing mortgage lenders of racism and “redlining” because urban blacks were being denied mortgages at a higher rate than suburban whites.
The pressure to make more loans to minorities (read: to borrowers with weak credit histories) became relentless. Congress passed the Community Reinvestment Act, empowering regulators to punish banks that failed to “meet the credit needs” of “low-income, minority, and distressed neighborhoods.” Lenders responded by loosening their underwriting standards and making increasingly shoddy loans. The two government-chartered mortgage finance firms, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, encouraged this “subprime” lending by authorizing ever more “flexible” criteria . . .
All this was justified as a means of increasing homeownership among minorities and the poor. Affirmative-action policies trumped sound business practices. A manual issued by the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston advised mortgage lenders to disregard financial common sense. “Lack of credit history should not be seen as a negative factor,” the Fed’s guidelines instructed. Lenders were directed to accept welfare payments and unemployment benefits as “valid income sources” to qualify for a mortgage. Failure to comply could mean a lawsuit.
As long as housing prices kept rising, the illusion that all this was good public policy could be sustained. But it didn’t take a financial whiz to recognize that a day of reckoning would come. [...]
Time and time again, Frank insisted that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were in good shape. Five years ago, for example, when the Bush administration proposed much tighter regulation of the two companies, Frank was adamant that “these two entities, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, are not facing any kind of financial crisis.” When the White House warned of “systemic risk for our financial system” unless the mortgage giants were curbed, Frank complained that the administration was more concerned about financial safety than about housing.
Now that the bubble has burst and the “systemic risk” is apparent to all, Frank blithely declares: “The private sector got us into this mess.” Well, give the congressman points for gall. Wall Street and private lenders have plenty to answer for, but it was Washington and the political class that derailed this train. If Frank is looking for a culprit to blame, he can find one suspect in the nearest mirror.
[T]he House on Monday defeated a $700 billion emergency rescue for the nation’s financial system, ignoring urgent warnings from President Bush and congressional leaders of both parties that the economy could nosedive without it.
Stocks plummeted on Wall Street even before the 228-205 vote to reject the bill was officially announced on the House floor.
Ninety percent of the people on this planet would exchange their economic situation for ours in a minute. The media love hype, and have been dying to use the word “recession” all year but nothing has happened that meets the definition of a recession.
The American economy is growing, not declining. Our unemployment rate is up to 6 percent but there are countries that would be delighted to get their unemployment rate down to 6 percent. Our inflation rate is up a little but many countries would love to get their inflation rate down to where ours is.
Why then is there such a mess in the financial markets? Much of that mess is due to the very people we are now turning to for solutions — members of Congress.
Past Congresses created the hybrid financial institutions known as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, private institutions with government backing and political influence. About half of the mortgages in this country are backed by these two institutions.
Such institutions — exempt from laws that apply to other financial institutions and backed by the implicit promise of government support with the taxpayers’ money– are an open invitation to risky behavior. When these risks blew up in their faces, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were taken over by the government, costing the taxpayers billions of dollars.
For years the Wall Street Journal has been warning that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were taking reckless chances but liberal Democrats especially have pooh-poohed the dangers.
Senator Chris Dodd (D-CT), top Fannie Mae beneficiary.
Many people have trouble even forming some notion of what such numbers as billion and trillion mean. One way to get some idea of the magnitude of a trillion is to ask: How long ago was a trillion seconds?
A trillion seconds ago, no one on this planet could read and write. Neither the Roman Empire nor the ancient Chinese dynasties had yet come into existence. None of the founders of the world’s great religions today had yet been born.
That’s what a trillion means. Put a dollar sign in front of it and that’s what the current bailout may cost.
[...]
[B]ailing out people who made ill-advised mortgages makes no more sense that bailing out people who lost their life savings in Las Vegas casinos. It makes political sense only to people like Senator Dodd, who are among the reasons for the financial mess in the first place.
People usually stop making ill-advised decisions when they are forced to face the consequences of those decisions, not when politicians come to their rescue and make the taxpayers pay for decisions that the taxpayers had nothing to do with.
The Wall Street Journal, which has for years been sounding the alarm about the riskiness of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, recently cited Senator Christopher Dodd along with Senator Charles Schumer and Congressman Barney Frank among those on Capitol Hill who have been “shilling” for these financial institutions, downplaying the risks and opposing attempts to restrict their free-wheeling role in the mortgage market.
As recently as July of this year, Senator Dodd declared Fannie Mae and Freddie “fundamentally strong” and said there is no need for “panicking” about them.
[Emphasis added]
At YouTube, “TheMouthPeace” put together a highly informative 10 minute video on this whole mess and who and what caused it.
“[T]here are those in the public debate who have said that we must act now. The last time I heard that, I was on a used-car lot. The truth is, every time somebody tells you that you’ve got to do the deal right now, it usually means they’re going to get the better part of the deal.”
As a scientist and life-long liberal Democrat, I find the constant regurgitation of the anecdotal, fear mongering clap-trap about human-caused global warming [...] to be a disservice to science, to your readers, and to the quality of the political dialogue leading up to the election. The overwhelming weight of scientific evidence shows that the Gore-IPCC theory that human activity is causing global warming is false.
You can take the thug out of Chicago, but you can’t take Chicago out of the thug.
His Messiahness, Barack Obama, has given orders to his servants in Missouri. St. Louis County Circuit Attorney Bob McCulloch and St. Louis City Circuit Attorney Jennifer Joyce appear ready to employ police state tactics that might might have made Stalin feel warm and fuzzy:
They plan to “respond immediately.” Oh really? I’d love to hear that details on that.
McCulloch and Joyce have no legal leg to stand on. Why? For starters, Obama is a public figure. Good luck winning a suit when your client is a public figure.
New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, 376 U.S. 254 (1964), was a United States Supreme Court case which established the actual malice standard which has to be met before press reports about public officials or public figures can be considered to be defamation and libel; and hence allowed free reporting of the civil rights campaigns in the southern United States. It is one of the key decisions supporting the freedom of the press. The actual malice standard requires that the plaintiff in a defamation or libel case prove that the publisher of the statement in question knew that the statement was false or acted in reckless disregard of its truth or falsity. Because of the extremely high burden of proof on the plaintiff, and the difficulty in proving essentially what is inside a person’s head, such cases — when they involve public figures — rarely prevail.
I wonder how the Missouri Bar views this behavior.
Gov. Matt Blunt today issued the following statement on news reports that have exposed plans by U.S. Senator Barack Obama to use Missouri law enforcement to threaten and intimidate his critics.“St. Louis County Circuit Attorney Bob McCulloch, St. Louis City Circuit Attorney Jennifer Joyce, Jefferson County Sheriff Glenn Boyer, and Obama and the leader of his Missouri campaign Senator Claire McCaskill have attached the stench of police state tactics to the Obama-Biden campaign.
“What Senator Obama and his helpers are doing is scandalous beyond words, the party that claims to be the party of Thomas Jefferson is abusing the justice system and offices of public trust to silence political criticism with threats of prosecution and criminal punishment.
“This abuse of the law for intimidation insults the most sacred principles and ideals of Jefferson. I can think of nothing more offensive to Jefferson’s thinking than using the power of the state to deprive Americans of their civil rights. The only conceivable purpose of Messrs. McCulloch, Obama and the others is to frighten people away from expressing themselves, to chill free and open debate, to suppress support and donations to conservative organizations targeted by this anti-civil rights, to strangle criticism of Mr. Obama, to suppress ads about his support of higher taxes, and to choke out criticism on television, radio, the Internet, blogs, e-mail and daily conversation about the election.
“Barack Obama needs to grow up. Leftist blogs and others in the press constantly say false things about me and my family. Usually, we ignore false and scurrilous accusations because the purveyors have no credibility. When necessary, we refute them. Enlisting Missouri law enforcement to intimidate people and kill free debate is reminiscent of the Sedition Acts — not a free society.”
Via ZombieTime, the Code Pinkos are in the business of feeling better about themselves, so little details like drawing the peace sign properly aren’t that important.
ZombieTime wrote:
“I just can’t get enough of these hilarious Code Pink Mercedes Benz logos. To this day I can’t understand how a “peace group” can have trouble making a peace sign. Even more mystifiying: Most of the women in Code Pink have been “peace” protesters for their entire adult lives (even long before they joined Code Pink), and yet after all that time they still can’t consistently get it right”
“Washington Mutual Inc was closed by the U.S. government in by far the largest failure of a U.S. bank, and its banking assets were sold to JPMorgan Chase & Co for $1.9 billion.”
[W]orse than all the unfair and distorted reporting and image projecting, is the shocking gaps in Mr. Obama’s life that are not reported at all. The major media simply has not reported on Mr. Obama’s two years at Columbia University in New York, where, among other things, he lived a mere quarter mile from former terrorist Bill Ayers— after which they both ended up as neighbors and associates in Chicago. Mr. Obama denies more than a passing relationship with Mr. Ayers. Should the media be curious? In only two weeks the media has focused on all the colleges Mrs. Palin has attended, her husband’s driving habits 20 years ago and the close criticism of Mrs. Palin’s mayoral political opponents. But in two years they haven’t bothered to see how close Mr. Obama was with the terrorist Ayers.
Nor have the media paid any serious attention to Mr. Obama’s rise in Chicago politics — how did honest Obama rise in the famously sordid Chicago political machine with the full support of Boss Daley?
Despite the great — and unflattering details on Mr. Obama’s Chicago years presented in David Freddoso’s new book, the mainstream media continues to ignore both the facts and the book. It took a British publication, the Economist, to give Mr. Freddoso’s book a review with fair comment.
The public image of Mr. Obama as an idealistic, post-race, post-partisan, well-spoken and honest young man with the wisdom and courage befitting a great national leader is a confection spun by a willing conspiracy of Mr. Obama, his publicist David Axelrod and most of the senior editors, producers and reporters of the national media.
Perhaps that is why the National Journal’s respected correspondent Stuart Taylor has written that “the media can no longer be trusted to provide accurate and fair campaign reporting and analysis.”
“If Sarah Palin isn’t enough of a reason for you to get over whatever your problem is with Barack Obama, then you damn well had better pay attention,” said [Democrat Alcee] Hastings. “Anybody toting guns and stripping moose don’t [sic] care too much about what they do with Jews and blacks. So, you just think this through.”
Impeached Judge, Alcee Hastings, (D-Flori-duh)
Yes, I certainly see the connection between (1) carrying a gun and (2) hunting with concerns about Jews and blacks. It should be obvious to anyone.
To readers who own guns and hunt, you cannot possibly care about Jews and blacks. According to the authority on the topic, Alcee Hastings. And now you know.
Perhaps Hastings should follow his advice and “think this through.” Then he might want to work on his thick arrogance.
Nine years ago this month, the New York Times proved to be rather prophetic:
Fannie Mae is taking on significantly more risk, which may not pose any difficulties during flush economic times. But the government-subsidized corporation may run into trouble in an economic downturn, prompting a government rescue similar to that of the savings and loan industry in the 1980’s.
”From the perspective of many people, including me, this is another thrift industry growing up around us,” said Peter Wallison a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. ”If they fail, the government will have to step up and bail them out the way it stepped up and bailed out the thrift industry.”
[...]
Home ownership has, in fact, exploded among minorities during the economic boom of the 1990’s. The number of mortgages extended to Hispanic applicants jumped by 87.2 per cent from 1993 to 1998, according to Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies. During that same period thenumber of African Americans who got mortgages to buy a home increased by 71.9 per cent and the number of Asian Americans by 46.3 per cent.
In contrast, the number of non-Hispanic whites who received loans for homes increased by 31.2 per cent.
This whole mess was inspired by rabble-rousing left-wing groups who felt (not thought) that blacks were not getting enough mortgages.
Note, however, that when whites (31%) or Asians (46%) are on the losing end of this equation, it is apparently NOT evidence of any racism. Right, ACORN?
Despite these gains, home ownership rates for minorities continue to lag behind non-Hispanic whites, in part because blacks and Hispanics in particular tend to have on average worse credit ratings.
McCain’s words on May 25, 2006 should sound familiar:
Mr. President, this week Fannie Mae’s regulator reported that the company’s quarterly reports of profit growth over the past few years were “illusions deliberately and systematically created” by the company’s senior management, which resulted in a $10.6 billion accounting scandal.
The Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight’s report goes on to say that Fannie Mae employees deliberately and intentionally manipulated financial reports to hit earnings targets in order to trigger bonuses for senior executives. In the case of Franklin Raines, Fannie Mae’s former chief executive officer, OFHEO’s report shows that over half of Mr. Raines’ compensation for the 6 years through 2003 was directly tied to meeting earnings targets. The report of financial misconduct at Fannie Mae echoes the deeply troubling $5 billion profit restatement at Freddie Mac.
The OFHEO report also states that Fannie Mae used its political power to lobby Congress in an effort to interfere with the regulator’s examination of the company’s accounting problems. This report comes some weeks after Freddie Mac paid a record $3.8 million fine in a settlement with the Federal Election Commission and restated lobbying disclosure reports from 2004 to 2005. These are entities that have demonstrated over and over again that they are deeply in need of reform.
For years I have been concerned about the regulatory structure that governs Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac–known as Government-sponsored entities or GSEs–and the sheer magnitude of these companies and the role they play in the housing market. OFHEO’s report this week does nothing to ease these concerns. In fact, the report does quite the contrary. OFHEO’s report solidifies my view that the GSEs need to be reformed without delay.
I join as a cosponsor of the Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act of 2005, S. 190, to underscore my support for quick passage of GSE regulatory reform legislation. If Congress does not act, American taxpayers will continue to be exposed to the enormous risk that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac pose to the housing market, the overall financial system, and the economy as a whole.
I urge my colleagues to support swift action on this GSE reform legislation.
A criminally lax immigration policy, which permits “sanctuary cities” to exist, appears to be at the center of mortgage crisis.
We can thank George W. Bush and other RINOS on immigration for their visionary leadership.
It’s no coincidence that most of the areas hardest hit by the foreclosure wave – Loudon County, Virginia, California’s Inland Empire, Stockton, San Joaquin Valley, Las Vegas, and Phoenix, for starters — also happen to be some of the nation’s largest illegal alien sanctuaries. Half of the mortgages to Hispanics are subprime (the accursed species of loan to borrowers with the shadiest credit histories). A quarter of all those subprime loans are in default and foreclosure
In his first visit to Southwest Virginia, Democratic vice presidential nominee Joe Biden, speaking at the United Mine Workers’ annual fish fry here on Saturday, was quick to tout his ties to coal.
“I hope you won’t hold it against me, but I am a hard-coal miner, anthracite coal, Scranton, Pa.,” Biden said. “It’s nice to be back in coal country. … It’s a different accent [in Southwest Virginia] … but it’s the same deal. We were taught that our faith and our family was the only really important thing, and our faith and our family informed everything we did.”
Joe Biden is reminding me more and more of John Kerry (D-Vietnam) who had no problem saying anything depending on which crowd was in front of him.
One of the reasons so many bad mortgage loans were made in the first place is that Barack Obama’s celebrated community organizers make their careers out of forcing banks to do so. ACORN, for which Obama worked, is one of many left-wing organizations that spent decades pressuring banks and bank regulators to do more to make mortgages available to people without much in the way of income, assets, or credit. These campaigns often were couched in racially inflammatory terms. The result was the Community Reinvestment Act. The CRA empowers the FDIC and other banking regulators to punish those banks which do not lend to the poor and minorities at the level that Obama’s fellow community organizers would like. Among other things, mergers and acquisitions can be blocked if CRA inquisitors are not satisfied that their demands — which are political demands — have been met. There is a name for loans made to people who do not have the credit, assets, income, or down payment to qualify for a normal mortgage: subprime.
Joe Biden’s denunciation of his own campaign’s ad to Katie Couric got so much attention last night that another odd note in the interview slipped by.
He was speaking about the role of the White House in a financial crisis.
“When the stock market crashed, Franklin Roosevelt got on the television and didn’t just talk about the princes of greed,” Biden told Couric. “He said, ‘Look, here’s what happened.’”
As Reason’s Jesse Walker footnotes it: “And if you owned an experimental TV set in 1929, you would have seen him. And you would have said to yourself, ‘Who is that guy? What happened to President Hoover?’ “
[Emphasis added]
These comments came soon after Biden said that paying higher taxes is “patriotic.” (The Left redefines patriotism every few months when convenient.)
Imagine if Palin said these things. She’d be “too inexperienced.”
Imagine if McCain said these things. He’d be “too old.”
The only reliable force in the universe are media double standards. “What liberal media?” — Eric Alterman
Only if you were abused by Catholic priests does the mainstream media care. If it was a teacher in a public school, the unbiased mob of journalists couldn’t care less.
Let’s ask again: Where is the national media? The sex abuse scandals at the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) continue to grow. Just since May of this year:
A high school athletic coach was charged with 12 felony counts of sexually assaulting an underage girl, including “five counts of sexual penetration with a foreign object while the victim was unconscious and one count of possession of child pornography.” “[P]olice said they believe there may be other victims.” The man was also a special education assistant (link).
A former Special Education high school teacher was sentenced to three years in prison after charges of lewd conduct, child molestation, and abuse. The alleged crimes involved four of his “particularly vulnerable” students (additional link).
A high school principal was arrested for child pornography on his home computer. Authorities also discovered that he “had posed as a 12-year-old girl in an online chat room and engaged in sexually explicit talk.”
A high school teacher pleaded guilty and was sentenced to six months in jail for having sex with a minor. County deputies found the teacher and the underage female student in the back of a car in a parking lot.
A band teacher was arrested on charges of possessing child pornography on his laptop computer.
A high school girls’ volleyball coach was fired after a lawsuit surfaced alleging he had a sexual relationship with a female student at his previous school.
Motorists entering the quaint, woodsy town of Olema near the sea in Marin County may notice a subtle change as they enter: it appears the burg’s name has been changed to ”Obama.”
Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama supporter and bed and breakfast owner Kelly Emery created a perfect mirror of the green sign people read as they enter the town’s limits.
Now people unfamiliar with the area may think they are entering the town of Obama, population: 55.
Emery’s sign has created little fuss in this politically liberal area, but the county said there are laws regulating such behavior.
Marin County senior planner Curtis Havel said county code allows for political signs on one’s residence or place of business not more than 45 days prior to an election
"The man who never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who reads them..." -- Thomas Jefferson
"I predict the future happiness of Americans if they can prevent the government wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them. " -- Thomas Jefferson
“Journalists are like dogs. When ever anything moves, they begin to bark.” -- Arthur Schopenhauer
"To say that 'wealth in America is so unfairly distributed in America' . . . is grossly misleading when most wealth in the United States is not distributed at all. People create it, earn it, save it, and spend it." -- Thomas Sowell
"Socialism in general has a record of failure so blatant that only an intellectual could ignore or evade it." -- Thomas Sowell
"The moment you give up your principles, and your values, you are dead, your culture is dead, your civilization is dead. Period." -- Oriana Fallaci
"A government which robs Peter to pay Paul, can always count on the support of Paul." – George Bernard Shaw
"There is no worse tyranny than to force a man to pay for what he does not want merely because you think it would be good for him." – Robert Heinlein
"A government that is big enough to give you all you want is big enough to take it all away." – Barry Goldwater
"America’s abundance was not created by public sacrifices to the common good, but by the productive genius of free men who pursued their own personal interests and the making of their own private fortunes." -- Ayn Rand
"The free market punishes irresponsibility. Government rewards it." – Harry Browne
"No one can read our Constitution without concluding that the people who wrote it wanted their government severely limited; the words “no” and “not” employed in restraint of government power occur 24 times in the first seven articles of the Constitution and 22 more times in the Bill of Rights." – Edmund A. Opitz
"It is sobering to reflect that one of the best ways to get yourself a reputation as a dangerous citizen these days is to go about repeating the very phrases which our founding fathers used in the struggle for independence." – Charles A. Beard
"You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free." -- John 8:32
"Criticizing these reporters is like booing at the Special Olympics." -- Triumph the Insult Comic Dog
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