The Dead at New Ruskin College

http://www.newruskincollege.com/



Lecture Notes: 05-18-05


Yes, Buchanan is right, his conservatism is dead. Schroupput! Good riddance. I spit on its corpse. I am glad to see it dead before me. What was it? He started out with Nixon and ended up advocating that we buy $9 a barrel oil from Saddam Husseins Kuwait. What was it? Not exactly a philosophy was it? He was, for example, a huge supporter of Reagan, yet the $8 trillion in National Debt is a mortgage on the future generations. Does he care? He is well off, what does he care? Indeed is this not how it is for you too? The Post Liberal elite is beyond, I mean to say you are beyond political philosophy. You have got yours so f--- the world. RIP Conservatism. (see Buchanan)


What was his conservatism that was not Pat Buchanan, and Pat Buchanans ego? Or take the 20 million illegals for another example of how conservatism means only putting ones head down in the hole a little less far than the liberal. National Review knows that amnesty again is going to happen and they have no alternative to suggest except enforcement of employer sanctions. No discussion of what political effects result from 20 million people being attrited would have on society. Not even any idea of keeping the problem from getting worse: No fence. Nothing so practical as a fence or consideration of how people actually live their lives with 20 million illegals. But what could you expect from prep school conservatives? (see National Review)


And what also could you expect if they can not even admit the true size of the problem, calling it 10 million despite the evidence to the contrary. (see Going Underground: America's Shadow Economy, bottom of the page, The IRS and the Illegals from the North) The conservatives do not want to make them legal. Yet consider that these same conservatives do not want to pay back the $8 trillion debt either. (They leave that for the children.) The Social Security system is looking at $12 trillion, the Medicare program is even larger. Oh, and then there are the pensions. (The left is no better, or actually worse if you can imagine. Al Franken would fix Social Security with the bonds in the filing cabinet in West Virginia. Randi Rhodes says that the insurance will pay the pensions in default.) But consider, the 20 million here illegally. Did they not accumulate the same way the debts have accumulated? Hiding from the truth. The Post Liberal elite is nothing if not accomplished liars. (see America's Shadow Economy at The IRS and the Illegals from the North )


We have about 45,000 miles of highway in the Eisenhower Interstate System. Have you never noticed that for most of those miles there are fences on both sides of the road? How is it that we have 90,000 miles of fences to protect our highways but can not spare a few thousand miles of fences to protect our borders? And can it be that I am the only person capable of making such an observation? Pat Buchanan, the editors of National Review never once glanced out their windows and noticed all that fencing? If you cn not control the border then what are we talking about? What was their conservatism but a different kind of lie to cover the same kind of egotism and self interest? (see Construct My Future)

* * * * * * *


Mr Blair said the end of deference and preference did not mean society did not have any rules.

To what extent did Weimar fail due to a failure of leadership?

Yes the collapse of Weimar was a failure of leadership. However, my definition of leadership is larger than just the politicians in Berlin. Tough I never contradict Doctor Professor Moynihan his ‘Who will be our Bruning?’ is not how I would have described it. (http://www.newruskincollege.com/id20.html ) Clearly the Communist Party leadership and the labor movement leadership failed Weimar. Their radicalism sought to heighten the contradictions. However, the final refutation eventually had to take place at Stalingrad. I would say the entire leadership group of Weimar, the teachers, businessmen, journalists, etc., and even ordinary citizens whose opinions have some influence on their fellows; in this since of leadership, the whole society, the culture, the social ethic, failed Weimar. The people of Weimar stopped working together, and were then vulnerable to predation, and taken out one at a time, by the NAZIs.

www.NewRuskinCollege.com

Rehearsal at New Ruskin College

www.NewRuskinCollege.com

"I recently sold a house in Laguna for $3.5 million. It was on about 2,000 square feet of land, maybe a twentieth of an acre, and the house might cost about $500,000 if you wanted to replace it. So the land sold for something like $60 million an acre." "You have a real asset-price bubble in parts of California and the suburbs of Washington, D.C.," added Charlie Munger.
Link to Human Action by Ludwig von Mises

Rehearsal

Take all comers. Take all comers! It is the American way!

Jacqueline: My husband . . . thought . . . one man could . . . . . . make a . . .

Stop! What in blazes are you doing? There is no -----

Counselor: You are not giving her a chance. Just let her read it.

But she is dragging it out too long. It is just one sentence. There are no commas, no colons, no semi-colons, no periods----

Counselor: What is that supposed to mean?

What? What? . . . Oh, for Pete’s sake----

Counselor: You have issues with women don’t you? We should talk----

For the love of God, woman! Let us focus on the issue at hand, the line is a sentence, one sentence---

Counselor: So? Let her read it.

Please, Jacqueline, from my cue.

Take all comers. Take all comers! It is the American way!

Jacqueline: . . . My . . . husband . . . thought one . . . . . .

Stop! What are----

Counselor: Will you just let her finish, stop interrupting her.

She is dragging it out. What is with all the long pauses?

Counselor: This is just part of the funeral pageant. It is not a professional production.

We must try to maintain some standards. Please Jacqueline, simply read the line as it was meant---

Jacqueline: I . . . wrote the line?

Yes. Yes. Please, there are no . . . eh . . . punctuation marks, just read the line on my cue.

Take all comers. Take all comers! It is the American way!

Jacqueline: My husband thought that one man could make a difference . . . . . . and that . . . everyone should try.

“ It is the American way.”
(Speaker Gingrich, (August 1991), also acknowledged my letter.)

“It is almost a violation of the confessional. The lesson is: be careful who you confess to.” --- (as did Mark Shields (1992))

I was remembering the summer I first went off the high dive. How nervous I was climbing the ladder. Walking to the end of the board . . .

www.NewRuskinCollege.com

Traffic at New Ruskin College

www.NewRuskinCollege.com


Lecture Notes: 5-10-05 Traffic Jams
http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/05/09/traffic.jam.ap/index.html

And do you suppose that traffic jams affect everyone equally?

Well, of course, you are after all Americans!

All men created equal! Equal before the Law! Everyone has an equal chance! Equal opportunity.

What bull shit. Are you not ashamed of yourselves? Will you live your whole lives in such lies? In any lies bad enough, but such ones as these? Can you not lie better than this?

The answer is: No!

The rich and poor do not suffer equally.

But then this is why the poor would prefer to live in closer to their jobs. But this is not allowed. The Marin Senators Boxer and Feinstein determined that really all our problems resulted from too many small apartments, and they, with a majority of their Boards of Supervisors, outlawed them.

Have you never asked yourselves from where does this sovereign authority come, that the rich and powerful lord over us? The Tenth Amendment. The powers not granted to the Federal Government are left to the States and the People. And this is the power the rich have grabbed. In the Bay Area they are themselves a powerful political force, concentrated in the ocean counties:
( http://www.insidebayarea.com/searchresults/ci_2698836 ).

The rich have taken this sovereign power that was left to the people and they have zoned us out of existence. (By banning small homes they drive up the prices out of the reach of the middle class. (http://www.insidebayarea.com/searchresults/ci_2490454 ))

They run us around, make us dance in giant conga lines of steel running for 50 miles into the Central Valley, and yes, run us into traffic jams which start before dawn and end only long after sunset. ( http://www.insidebayarea.com/searchresults/ci_2724693 )

They want cooks in Marin to serve them, they just do not want those cooks to live in Marin. They want policemen, tellers, nurses, gardeners, etc. etc. they just do not want any of them to live with them. Do not want their children going to the same schools as their own dear darlings. In fact do not want them to have any say in these matters at all. Do not want them to have the vote, which is why the often noted easy relationship between illegals and the rich. The new slave state, the Post Liberal Bay Area.

But what would the Founders have said if they had been told that in the future, two hundred years on, the rich will seize the state and would through decades of exclusionary zoning prohibit the poor and the middle classes from living within the borders of “their” provinces? Could they imagine? Traffic jams? Thirty miles of traffic jams? Everyday?

The power was left to “the people” yet see now how that sovereign power has been taken by the rich for their own purposes. The have taken hold of the state and they squeeze the people. Everyday. So great has been this squeeze that now only the top 15% can afford the median priced home, and the state is now called “the Tulip State.” ( http://www.newruskincollege.com/moynihanmemoriallibrarynewruskincollegecom/id20.html )

And see too that the Marin Senators are “Liberals.” And note that Bernie Ward, the “Lion of the Left” says only glumly that there will always be rich and poor. Rich and poor? Well yes. But we are not here looking at rich and poor. We are here talking about how the rich have seized the state. Have turned the state into their personal instrument. They have used the zoning powers to exclude the people and drive them away, into traffic jams.

(When we pointed out the unfairness that three young workers, possibly with only average I. Q.s, earning only less than median incomes, forced to spend disproportionately more on higher rents, and gas, for example, because they must travel hundreds of miles a week due to these exclusionary zoning rules forced on them by the rich, ---- that these young people should have to pay 12.5% of their income to elderly rich people in Marin, with PhDs on their paneled walls, who have done everything possible to exclude these poor workers, this unfairness was pointed out to the “Lion of the Left”, and he said only, there will always be rich and poor. What dishonesty! He is a human lie.)

We do not care that they are rich! Let them retire to the luxury of their mansions. Yes, please. But their mansions are not enough for them.

They want more. They want to exercise power over their own property, and they want to exercise power over all the other property too! This is the sovereign power.

They not only do not want to build an apartment building on their own property but they do not want anyone else to build an apartment building on their own property either. This is the complaint, that they use the state. (Is this so hard a point to grasp. No. He knows what is being said. The “Lion of the Left” is the Liar of the Left.)

Dr. Dean Edel talks of having to “step over the homeless” on the way to the theater, and says only, “we are a society of haves and have-nots.” Haves and have-nots? Is that what you see? (Recall Bernie Ward also talking about stepping over the homeless. But in his case he was on his way to a donut shop.)

First I see the medical professional who should know that many, half, of those on the streets are suffering from diagnosable mental illness, and should in a just society be given sanctuary. (Recall that the medical doctors promised that “community treatment” would replace the state hospitals which were emptied in the 1960s. (Oh, guess what? Yes, another lie.))

And to understand how terrible it has been, if you think I am exaggerating, just consider that the people of California passed Proposition 63 themselves because the government would do nothing. Have done nothing for these 40 years. Prop. 63 will provide funding for mental health services yet no one familiar with the Post Liberal state can reasonably suppose that this funding will do anything but provide employment for the government “health workers” who will only counsel the men laying on the sidewalks. (http://www.sfgov.org/site/mayor_page.asp?id=28930 ) Why? Because to do more would be so way “un-liberal.”

Then next I see a medical professional who is a political liberal and who has worked to undermine society with his irresponsible liberalism and its antagonism for authority. So therefore he fails to see why the addicted also should be given sanctuary, off the streets. (It is much easier to deal with the addicted in Civil Court rather than Criminal Court. Why? Because in Civil Court, (a civil commitment hearing), one only needs to show with a “preponderance” of the evidence that the addict is a burden on society. In a Criminal case the proof must be “beyond a reasonable doubt.”

(So now, who is it that wants to get tough on crime? Those who demand all cases be in Criminal Court, or those of us who think the Civil Law should be used? It is typical that this issue is always presented as either legalize or criminalize. Why not ad civil commitment as an additional action? In fact most first time offenders are “diverted” into treatment in California. But why must we wait for a criminal case to be taken to court, with all the delays of the criminal process. Why can not a mother, or a wife, or a brother, etc. bring a civil action? Before the bank accounts have been emptied? And again we are blocked by the liberal establishment. Or, for example, a parent must move to Nevada if they seek a “lock down” facility for their minor child. California does not allow even the dangerously deranged to be held. So to all the others on the street now add the psychotic young as well.))

I say Dr. Edel and his faction are undermining society because those pathetic cases which they allow to be put on public display act to desensitize society not just to human suffering but to human beings, the rights of human beings to a minimum of decency.

For it can be seen that by devaluing the lives of those abandoned on the street, they (our Liberal brethren) devalue all our lives. All men are subject to ridicule because these men are subject to ridicule. And do you not think that that is at the back of the rich man Dr. Edel’s mind? Do you not think that the rich man Bernie Ward ridicules the man he steps over as he climbs into his donut shop? They do not secretly smile to themselves as they tell their stories of their encounters with humanity under their soles? (It is radio, perhaps they are even smiling openly in their studios.)

And consider further, do these homeless not serve as justification for the rich who every year enact some new exclusionary ordinance? Do the rich not smile at the “have-nots”, ready evidence as they are, for why humanity must be excluded? So finally I see this, a society so corrupt that the “Left” works in league with, is in point of fact the same as, the Post Liberal elite. They can even quote the Bible to justify themselves, the “have-nots” will always be with us.

This is why I am a conservative. The hypocrisy of our “Post Liberal” elite makes me sick. I will not live in such a society.

No, we do not all suffer traffic jams equally.

www.NewRuskinCollege.com

Al Franken's Bad Faith at New Ruskin College

www.NewRuskinCollege.com

Lecture Notes: 5-4-05
Franken's Bad Faith

This just in:

Al Franken just said that “progressive indexing” is pernicious. Al “the coward” . . .? No we must now call him Al “the liar” Franken on Friday said he agreed with Mr. Bush that we should protect the poor elderly. He said he agreed with “progressive indexing” and he repeated this again on Monday (5-2-05) but said his only objection was that it should start at the 40k a year bracket.

Now Al “the liar” says it is pernicious: highly injurious or destructive, wicked. On Friday and Monday he supported progressive indexing and today it is “pernicious.”

But he again says he agrees with E. J. Dionne who wrote:

“The real costs of progressive indexing as currently conceived would be paid by middle-income earners -- those with incomes in the range of $35,000 to $60,000 a year.” --- E. J. Dionne

E. J. Dionne says it would begin just where Al “the liar” Franken said 48 hours ago it should start. Now it is pernicious.

He offered no explanation for his about-face. Not even an oi ve.

In just a few hours of initiating coverage Al “the liar” Franken is exposed in a series of lies about Social Security. He started agreeing with progressive indexing and today someone has gotten to him. It is like Stalin’s Russia. One day one political position is acceptable and the next day you are “obnoxious” to suggest such a pernicious point of view.

(Of course if we stopped sending Social Security checks to the top 20% (who have incomes in retirement of over $75,000), then we could use that money to open individual accounts for the bottom 20% of wage earners. Give them back their money in savings accounts. Instead of a $1,800 check to a rich retiree, we could deposit $600 into savings accounts for three workers in the bottom 20%. And that is just the first month. Next month we could deposit $300 into the accounts of six workers in the next to the bottom 20%, and so on.)

How can anyone take The Liar Franken seriously? Franken is acting in bad faith. . . . Developing . . .

Later Franken had Tom Oliphant on. At one point, discussing the “unfunded liabilities” Oliphant started to move the discussion beyond Social Security, . . . he started to say, “Social Security is only the tip of the iceberg---” Then Franken interrupted him.

Franken thought that was funny.

See?

I had pointed out that Social Security was just a symptom of the dishonesty of our political discussion . . . and here was Tom Oliphant picking up the thread of the discussion, and Al Franken thought it was funny to interrupt Oliphant and stop him from pointing out that America had failed to secure its future . . .

What was funny?

And Al Franken wants to run for Senate. And why? To be yet another dishonest politician? Just what the Senate needs. To be one of a hundred liars. And then he will be a success?

He has a radio program. He can discuss any subject. He can have any guest. He chose Tom Oliphant, and Oliphant started to talk about the other examples of “unfunded liabilities” but Franken interrupts him. . .

I just want to die.

Franken and and . . . everyone . . . do not see a problem with asking three average working guys, with families, with average IQs, average wages, that is $16 an hour, asking these working stiffs to pay Social Security payments to retired Harvard professors with 130 IQs, with retirement incomes (non Social Security incomes) twice what the working stiffs earn, (combined!), . . . f--- you.

Franken does not see the problem with asking these same workers to pay the pensions of the airline pilots, who have IQs of 120, who earned $200,000 a year, and who did not give a damn for the workers.

Now they will add health insurance that these same average workers will pay for the middle and upper classes so that they do not lose their homes . . . make people who can not afford a home, make them pay the health bills of the upper classes so they can keep their homes . . .

In other words Franken will do nothing to change the gaping social inequalities, he just wants to add Federally subsidized pensions, national health, oh, yes and pay off those Social Security “bonds” etc. etc. add it all onto the backs of the “unfortunates.”

And because one lie requires the next he justifies this by advocating “progressive taxation.” See? Perhaps there is unfairness in the payments to the rich. Perhaps there is unfairness to the tax exemptions given to the rich, (the Imus ranch or the Gallo Brothers wine institute, for example). But that is ok because it is their money, right?

But what if progressive taxation is another lie? What if taxes, like all other costs, are redistributed by the dynamics of the market place, and passed on in prices?

Then the only way to make public expenditures “progressive” is in the actual payouts.

Who gets the money?

If the money goes to the well off it is regressive.

But what is the point?

No one is out there. Franken interrupts Oliphant and only Franken, and Oliphant, and I know why he was interrupted.

And so this is another reason for my protest. I want to live, but I will protest Al Franken’s Bad Faith. Go to the Senate you bastard with my blood on you.

www.NewRuskinCollege.com

Al Franken, oi ve, at New Ruskin College

www.NewRuskinCollege.com

Lecture Notes: 05-04-05

The Dishonesty of Stewed Tomatoes Part III

“Stewed Tomatoes”, that is what Franken said the other day . . . to be continued . . .

Counselor: . . .

. . .

Counselor: . . . Well?

What?

Counselor: Franken explains why he said we should not have to bribe the upper classes in order to provide an old age pension for the poor and now you don’t care?

So what?

Counselor: For two weeks you have been going on about “the coward” Franken, and now when he responds to you, your questioning him about “bribe” you don’t care? Why have you been going on about it for all this time?

It helps distract me as my time runs out. Anyway he didn’t say anything directly. Nothing directly about me.

Counselor: Well how about his “nightmare” in the opening monolog? You know, “some people are living in a nightmare,” that was pretty direct? . . . No?

Nightmare? This is not an apparition. A fantasy. A dream.

This is my life.

When I first told my sister that I thought Yvonne [deletion] was working with people at the public broadcasting station, KQED, betraying my confidence, playing “mind games” with me, and then a few days later one of the on air radio bitches shouted into the microphone, “Mind games? Well, this is Live! Radio!”, that was no nightmare. My sister betrayed me too.

She was my only contact with my family. The only one I saw regularly. How to explain? Yvonne did after all, years later, try to explain herself. (see Yvonne’s Story in the Stolen Notebook at the Moynihan) But my sister never made any attempt. I can not put into words how . . . empty . . . desolation . . . just this great emptiness in my heart . . . I thought it undignified for two adult children to involve our aged parents in such . . . such . . . what? Disgrace? (Anyway they could have believed their son, who believed the people on the radio were spying on him and sending him coded messages, or their daughter who said, “I don’t know what he is talking about.”)

Ironically after I am dead her paintings will become more valuable. ‘The artist is the one who betrayed her brother, you know, that one who blew his brains out in front of the KQED building.’ And someone in the gallery will overhear and will whisper, ‘Oh, yes, she worked with the marriage counselor and some others, I forget the details, but he killed him self in front of the theater, or at um, someplace, it was a scandal.’ And so it goes.

Yes, helping to drive her brother to his death could be very good for her market.

It is nightmarish, I’ll give him that.

Counselor: So . . . what about the stewed tomatoes?

Oh, it is a small point. He was being dismissive. If you adopt a “Jewish” accent you can avoid having to be serious. That is one of the great advantages of being the proverbial “outsider.” You never have to take responsibility for anything. Everything, Iraq, taxes, smog, is the fault of the goyim.

(You know I don’t think it was Hertzberg who recently said “I believe in progressive taxation.” I think it was E. J. Dionne.

Counselor: See, and Franken quoted E. J. ----

Yvonne.

Counselor: What?

This is my parenthesis. You are in my parenthesis.)

Counselor: Sorry.

Can’t I get any privacy?

Counselor: Go on.

Yes he said that E. J. Dionne helped clarify, I think he said “crystallize” his own views. First he said that he still agrees with progressive indexing, but says it should start at 40k a year not 20k. (But Dionne’s own numbers are 35k to 60k in the very article that Franken claims “crystallized” his views.) Then he says he agrees with Dionne that the Democrats should “get up from the table” and not negotiate because Bush is acting in “bad faith.” (Bad Faith? Franken says progressive indexing should start at 40k, Dionne says it would start at 35k to 60k, but because Posen (a Democrat) apparently once mentioned the 20k bracket as possibly being affected, now Franken concludes Bush is acting in “bad faith.”) And he says that the Democrat should “get up from the table.” As if they have been sitting in long all night conferences on how to ‘save Social Security.’ (He advocates that the Democrats should stop ‘negotiating’ and he claims that Bush is the one acting in bad faith.)

And this is what gives politics and public discourse a bad name. This is what drives good people away, and ---

Counselor: And to kill themselves?

Yes, exactly.

You see it is not Social Security. What we are looking at is the human condition. The lies. The basic dishonesty. The utter alienation of the human being, one from the other.

Franken thinks we are talking about Social Security. Dionne thinks he can “get up from the table.” We are not. He can not.

Counselor: Unless he kills himself.

Yes, exactly. Otherwise you are in the game.

For example, Franken called Social Security an annuity. But this misstatement explains why socialism failed. Because people are fundamentally dishonest. The market keeps them honest. They actually have to part with money to buy something. They can not game it. Bottom line: They have to pay.

But in politics, public policy, you can say one thing while believing something entirely different.

What Franken’s “annuity” discloses to us is that he is dishonest. I now know that he knows the difference between an old age pension program intended to keep the elderly out of abject poverty, which is subject to the control, discretion, of Congress, (this fact has been tested two times before the U. S. Supreme Court and both times the Court has set out that Social Security is not a guaranteed “right”, an annuity, but a government program, like any other,) and a real annuity. And Franken knows this.

We are not examining Social Security, but rather Franken, Dionne, and everyone else in the discussion. We are seeing inside them. Social Security, the discussion, is like an x-ray of their souls, their hearts. His use of annuity shows is heart is damaged.

Social Security is in “trouble.” It has greater obligations than ability to pay. But it really does not matter what we do. Progressive indexing would be more equitable than simply cutting back everyone’s payments. Fairer, if that is important to you. But we do not “have” to do anything.

But fairness may not be important to you. That millions of people rely on Social Security to organize their lives, to reassure themselves, also may not be important to you. You can wait until the last minute, wait to see if the Congress authorizes the transfer of money into the account so the checks can be mailed. The tumult and commotion, the anxiety not just of the pensioners who are waiting on those checks to pay the rent, or buy food, but also of all the other people who are watching the spectacle of the “government” in action, all of the emotions may be useful to you.

Perhaps you have calculated that your party will be advantaged by the political controversy. You may be looking several moves ahead, seeing deeply into the swirling mix of public opinion, fear and loathing, a dozen years into the future. Or perhaps you also are planning to blow your brains out. Is that it?

One of the theories we examine at the Army Navy Club is the possibility that the elite knows we are heading into a meteor shower that will destroy the Earth, or that bio-warfare is inevitable and will destroy the biosphere. We theorize that they have simply given up but do not tell us so as not to panic us. (Our recommendation is that the elite should in that case, nonetheless, appear to be working these problems for if they go on carrying on as they are, piling on unbelievable national debt that mortgages the lives of future generations, failure to build nuclear power stations, failure to exploit technology for education, etc. etc. all this may cause a global panic as soon as the people realize that the elite has given up, and then infer the reason why.)

So for Franken to call Social Security an annuity only makes since if he does not care if we know he is not telling the truth. Maybe he does not care because he has his own plans to blow his brains out of his skull, or because he thinks his listeners are too stupid to know what an annuity is, or, or, or, who cares. He is a liar.

Ironic because he regularly angrily shouts this at others: He is a Liar! Oi ve. See you can use oi ve anytime. Repeatedly call Social Security an annuity. Just go, “Oi ve, I am a simple Jewish boy, what can you expect? Oi ve.’

His dishonesty comes up again and again:
1, He complains that the IOUs in the Social Security’s filing cabinet in West Virginia “Are not worthless.” Really? The paper could be recycled but the cost of taking the paper to the recycling location exceeds the value of the paper.

The dishonesty here is that he continues to assert that the paper, the promise to pay, is valuable. But the promise is illusory. For, as the Supreme Court has twice upheld, the payments of Social Security are subject to the will of Congress. It is not an annuity. The IOUs are meaningless because Congress could decide to cut the top 20% of retirees, who with the others in their class, as a class, control 50% of the national income and 60% of the national financial wealth. (Or it could decide to cut everyone’s check by 20%, (which some have actually advocated.))

Those IOUs are a con. But Franken persists in saying they are real assets.

2, So one lie leads to the next. Today he advocated raising the interest on those “bonds”, (IOUs in West Virginia), to 4.75% (note the use of detail, not 5%!), and this added interest payments on the bonds would more than offset the shortfall!

Before I have thought him too uninformed to be a liar. But this lie is so obvious, the scheme so fantastic, that he must know it is a lie.

Interest payments? Why Congress could just issue new “bonds.” Ten trillion more! Back them with rights to real estate on the moon!

Because it is not an annuity all this paperwork is illusory. In the end taxes must be raised to make the payments to the rich so they can take not 4 cruises but 8. Poor workers, with 30k jobs, and 95 IQ points, trying to cope with a society that is . . . . like this . . . will be taxed 13% payroll, and now an increase in their income tax to pay those IOUs, and as we know, the prices they have to pay will be going up, as others who are being taxed raise their prices in response.

3, Franken, a detail man, complained that the commissions were too high in a program of individual accounts, but he felt if the assets in the accounts were held in a common fund, (as was proposed by Billy Clinton), then the fees and risk would be spread out more fairly. I submit for you considerations that Franken is here, as he likes to say, “blowing it out his ass.” He has no idea what the fees or risk would be in either system. (Commonly held or individually held assets.) First he decides he does not like Bush, then that he does not like Bush’s individual accounts, and only then does he focus on the fees and risk. (Dr. Greenspan prefers Bush’s plan to the earlier proposal put forward by Billy Clinton.) And what is blowing it out your ass but another way of saying lie?

4, Earlier we explained Ludwig von Mises’ dictum that there is no such thing as capital there are only capital goods. Franken took this idea up and said that he could therefore agree that the government “bonds” in West Virginia were not real capital. (Note that government bonds that are held by individuals have value as a promise to pay. The IOUs in 2 above are promises by the government to pay itself. As the government can at any time reorganize Social Security the promise is illusory. And the failure of Franken to admit this point is another his lies.) So taking Ludwig von Mises’ advise Franken proposed putting the Social Security trust funds in “stewed tomatoes.”

Now the dishonesty here is manifold. Again recall that we are not really looking at Social Security. We are looking at Franken’s heart, at his dishonesty. See here how he misdirects his audience. If they are to have a “guaranteed” account, an annuity, the money must be put into some productive asset. Here he uses his “good ol’Jewish boy” routine to ridicule the dictum of Ludwig von Mises. As we have seen so many times before he does not try to explain the underlying economics, but rather postures and misleads. His audience is thus mislead and disadvantaged. Later when they repeat these silly ideas in serious discussion they will be shown to be wrong.

(In politics you never know what people are really doing. Possibly Franken and others are calculating that the destruction of Social Security will lead to some “greater good” for their party.)

Now if you have been able to follow the discussion this far you can gain an insight into Economics from here. What would Franken’s best argument have been if he had had the wit to articulate it instead of his “good ol’Jewish boy” routine?

This: Ludwig von Mises says there is no such thing as capital there are only capital goods. Therefore the government IOUs in West Virginia are not “capital” because there is nothing behind them except the government promise to pay itself. (At anytime the government could decide to cut Social Security, therefore to the retirees the IOUs are worthless.)

But what if we say the money has been invested in productive assets? What if we say we invested in ourselves? All those schools, all those roads and airports, harbors! We have built a nation with all those tax dollars! America! This is our ‘productive asset! We, us, America!

Not bad. . . . the money was collected from the people and invested in the people. Good.

Just one question? How would we know if you invested wisely? How would we know if you invested the money or squandered it?

This is the shortfall. If your investment had paid off, America would be generating so much income that you were able to meet your obligations in Social Security, Medicare, pensions, healthcare generally, education, . . . oh, and foreign aid for those children in the picture above.

But that is why we have the problem in Social Security, Medicare, etc. etc.

You did not build those nuclear power stations to power your nation. You did not build the buildings and factories. You failed to provide health care for the children so parents chose not to have the additional child, or three, or four.

Mrs. Feinstein and Barbara Boxer down zoned the Bay Area creating scarcity. (How did it first come up in conversation that we should make small apartments illegal? I mean crime, education, transportation, there were a lot of issues to deal with, how did they even find time to outlaw small apartments?)

Franken’s best argument proves how wrong you have been.

You never created the Open University of the United States. You never shipped those laser disk based courses to Mexico, or Zambia.

Franken will never admit it. But it can be seen that his best argument shows this truth: the failure of Social Security shows the failure of American development policies for the last fifty years.

But you are all very good at cover ups. You have covered up for each other for years so I suppose you can cover up Franken’s dishonesty, and the problems with Social Security, and America.

But tell me, what was Jeb Babbin talking about?

In 2003 I sent the following email when I still thought that there was a chance.
(see email out box archive at the Moynihan (http://www.newruskincollege.com/moynihanmemoriallibrarynewruskincollegecom/id3.html))

Fri, 29 Aug 2003 00:50:09 -0400
pliniodesignori@newruskincollege.com>
Don’t you just love riddles? ‘Some stories are too good not to tell, even if they are stories about our neighbors. It seems that with astronomy, as with politics, all astronomy is local.’ ABC Nightly News. 08-27-03 “Now, tell me (Mrs. Jack Swanson) what does the planet Mars have to do with the recall election?” ---Jed Babbin, former Deputy Undersecretary of Defense and now columnist with National Review and American Prowler. On KSFO 08-28-03

Peter Jennings, I call on you, what was going on at ABC News? You are not alone.

www.NewRuskinCollege.com

Franken & McCain at New Ruskin College

www.NewRuskinCollege.com

“The Church does not have technical solutions to offer for the problem of underdevelopment as such, as Pope Paul Vl already affirmed in his encyclical. For the Church does not propose economic and political systems or programs, nor does she show preference for one or the other, provided that human dignity is properly respected and promoted, and provided she herself is allowed the room she needs to exercise her own ministry in the world ... Its aim is thus to guide Christian behaviour. It therefore belongs to the field, not of ideology, but of theology and particularly of moral theology."

What is possible for the Church is to (a) establish in the minds of its members a "commitment to justice", (b) to offer certain guidelines as to the priorities which they should pursue, and (c) to delineate the special responsibilities of Catholics in seeking to influence the policies of their respective governments.

John Paul II leaves no doubt that, for the Catholic, the central objective of social action is not to be found merely in its political dimension but in "our manner of living", which should reflect the "love of and preference for the poor". --- Reprinted from AD2000 Vol 1 No 2 (May 1988), p. 4 commentary on John Paul II's new social encyclical, Sollicitudo rei socialis (http://www.ad2000.com.au/articles/1988/may1988p4_556.html)

Lecture Notes: 05-02-05 The Dishonesty of Stewed Tomatoes Part II

“Stewed Tomatoes”, that is what Franken said the other day . . . to be continued . . .

Counselor: But Senator McCain, (Arizona 5,580,811, San Diego & Orange Counties 5,771,599), was only making a reference. (see Lecture Notes 04-28-05) He only said “The dog barks the caravan moves on.” It was only a reference right? He did not say anything specifically?

Right.

Counselor: So, the part about “go ahead and blow your f---ing brains out, I don’t care,’ that was only a projection? He didn’t actually say that? You only---

He was on the Imus show.

Counselor: . . . um-hum . . .

Of course, when Mrs. Jack Swanson said that Senator McCain was a media whore my only thought was ‘she should know.’ One professional’s appraisal of another. Whore to whore.

Recall that Senator McCain was one of the geniuses in the Senate, Senator Biden, (Delaware 783,600, San Francisco County 776,773) was another, who were demanding that we send in more troops, (250,000 was their demand) and that we set as our war aim the defeat of the terrorists. Then abruptly as Secretary Rumsfeld stated that it was the Iraqi who must defeat the terrorists Senator McCain turned and actually appeared on every venue claiming that his policy had been to turn the war against the terrorist over to the Iraqi and that more troops were not needed. And of course no one in the media asked McCain about his sudden about face.

More troops, free elections, defeat the terrorists, it was Vietnam all over again. The mindless escalation without any clear strategic goal. The ceding of the war’s resolution to the enemy. According to McCain, as long as the terrorists continue to set off bombs our troops must stay over there, running around in helicopters, winning every battle, but without any strategic aim within our control to bring the war to conclusion. The North Vietnamese only had to carry the war on for one day longer than we were willing to stay. And then 30 years later McCain was doing it all over again, this time in Iraq. (His egotism is such that he was holding up hundreds of promotions because he was feuding with Rumsfeld. Even as he turned around 180 degrees, and adopted Rumsfeld’s position, he never acknowledged the superiority of Rumsfeld’s arguments, and continued to hold up the promotions out of pure egotism.)

I realize McCain was in a prison cell for most of the war but one might have thought the author of “Flags of our Fathers,” would have read up on it, you know just to find out what was going on. Come to think of it his father, Admiral McCain was one of the architects of our Vietnam policy. One of the many architects who did not resign in protest. The Joint Chiefs once had a conference to consider the question if they should resign. Did Admiral McCain ever consider resigning?

His father, also Admiral McCain was part of the decision to invade Okinawa. 12,000 men did not return from that adventure. 12,000 families were missing their sons. 12,000 families had to find other men to be husband and father. But it was felt at the time that we had to show the Japanese that we could invade a Home Island. Had to show them that we could take the casualties. Sound familiar? In Vietnam we were told that we had to show the world, the communist world, that America could take the casualties.

So there son and grandson was on the Imus show making a covert reference to this web site. ---

Counselor: But isn’t that what you want? Don’t you want them to visit? I mean ---

Want? What I want is for him to tell Imus that he knows what Imus has done and that it is wrong.

I have been told that what I have said was done was not done. Then I have been told that ‘well, ok it was done, but it wasn’t really that bad.’ Then I have been told that I brought it on myself; I should not have written all those letters to the Senate; or that I should not have kept that notebook, should not have written all those things down for Michael Weiner to steal and read on the air; etc.

Recently I was told that I should “forgive” them because I was only giving them power over me. I give them power over me?

See? It is my fault. I should not have taken those jobs at GAB Robins, Farmers, AAA, CENCAL, AIMS, Crawford, etc.

Sure I could have moved, changed my name, tried to hide from them.

But I chose to move to Marin and live right next to my enemies.

They have done their worst. I am defeated. I will kill myself.

But I have not run.

Unlike, Al Franken, who has made repeated references, (he is a pal of Garrison Keillor), but when confronted he has ducked. The coward. For two days now, Al “the coward” Franken has had nothing to say. No references. No witticisms. No ridicule. (see film Ridicule)

Oh, he can snipe, he is good at the sideways, covert, reference, but he dare not state a position and defend it.

For example, his repeated claim that Social Security is an annuity. At first I thought he was just ignorant. He was just repeating the lies he had been told.

But now after listening a few weeks it is clear that he does know the difference, but chooses to continue to call it an annuity. He knows it is not true but he thinks . . . what?

He calculates some sort of advantage. The problem is that his listeners, a small audience, and an audience that is already committed to his party, are not likely to understand the point. They also will continue to refer to Social Security as an annuity and thereby show their ignorance. They will be less able to persuade other voters. So Franken, “the coward,” loses the advantage of having an audience because he lies to them.

But he would rather sabotage his audience than having to take on the task of either defending the Social Security System even though it is not an annuity, or suggesting some change that might make it an annuity or otherwise improve it.

It really does not matter to me. This issue only serves as an example of the dishonesty of my enemies. I have been ruined by people just like Al “the coward” Franken. What characterizes all of them is that they are cowards. They are dishonest.

For example, on Friday Franken agreed with Mr. Bush’s proposal that the poor should be protected and even said that “we should not have to bribe the rich in order to provide a pension for the elderly poor.” Note the use of the word “bribe” and note that the same point was made here at this web site.

(see Requiem http://www.newruskincollege.com/id23.html : “They want the votes, the Democrat and Republicans, they want their money too, but mainly they want to buy the civil peace. The top 20% wouldn’t support the Social Security system if they did not get their end from the paychecks of the bottom 80%.

All through life they ripped off the people manipulating the government, to manipulate the market, squeezing the supply, raising their prices, why should they stop now in retirement and become altruistic? Especially in retirement! Now, when they can no longer raise their prices! No longer on the corporate expense account, no longer sucking the whory tits. Now, in old age, they must squeeze every last drop from the great sow, with their last dying strength. “)

So now if you agree with me and “the coward” Franken, that it is fundamentally unfair, unfair for three young workers, struggling to raise their families, (in an economy which has been constricted by our Post Liberal elite’s anti growth policies), should have to pay 13% of their income to those wealthy individuals making $75,000 a year, in non Social Security retirement income: Then you will agree that the top 20% of Social Security recipients are being bribed. We have to pay them to keep their interest in the Social Security system.

The top 20% control 50% of the national income. The top 20% control 60% of the financial wealth in the country. For these individuals to be loaded on the backs of three, just three, workers, who must carry them in their retirement, a retirement in which they enjoy an income, apart from Social Security, of $75,000 or more, (i.e. starting at $75,000), is obscene. That is why I called it a bribe. We pay this money to our elite so they will allow us to keep the program for the bottom 40% who would have no income except for Social Security.

This is the American system. This is another aspect of my protest. You make me so sick I prefer death.

But the point is not Social Security or the American system, or our Post Liberal society.

The point is that Al “the coward” Franken, today had Hertzberg on his show and when Hertzberg defended the “universality of the Social Security system,” our coward had nothing to say.

But then why did Franken “the coward” say just last Friday that we should not have to “bribe” the rich in order to provide old age security to the poor, and now today not confront Hertzberg? And here Hertzberg success in turning Franken back to the “universality” of Social Security is typical of the American system.

I think it was Hertzberg who recently said, “I believe in progressive taxation.” And why not. If you can believe in the “universality” of Social Security you should find progressive taxation an obvious fact. (It is not. Taxes are another cost passed on to the consumer. The very word capitalist comes to us from the Latin: one who bids for the right to become a tax collector. Without wage and price controls those who are able raise their prices and pass all costs, including taxes, on to their customers. Who pays? You and me, those whose income is not able to keep up with the rising prices.)

Why didn’t Franken confront Hertzberg? Because he is a coward. And this is what has troubled me and disturbed my resolution. To be destroyed, but worse, to be destroyed by such dogs! Such people!

These are the people who have worked to destroy my life. Cowards. Michael Weiner, another coward, who also hides behind his “Jewishness,” when confronted with the theft of my notebook went into a fit and hid for a week.

Mrs. Jack Swanson refused to go on the air and Lee Rogers shouting at her to come down to the station or he would not go on the air either, and still she refused. Coward.

And Imus, at State Farm, using Shotgun Tom Kelly’s brother, and then years later Frank Blaha, at GAB Robins, Michael Weiner, Mrs. Jack Swanson, . . . and Ron Owens, . . . Rick Alber, . . . the Red comedian . . . Scott Bobro . . . Mengus, . . . Sotos . . . Michael Krasney . . . . . . and now Franken, what do all these people have in common?

Cowards.

So no, Social Security is not the real issue. Go ahead call it an annuity. Say we should not have to “bribe” the elite, but then agree that it is the “universality” of the program that makes it great. Who cares what you say one day to another.

You are so dishonest it does not matter.

And the surprising thing is that I no longer even hate you. You have driven me to my death but I no longer see you as evil, or cruel. Your stupidity no longer seems malicious.

You are like fire. Or a terrible storm.

Your ignorance, your vanity and lies, they are like elements of Nature.

Your ill will itself, disappears into the background.

I call my death a protest, but to whom am I protesting? There is no one left.

www.NewRuskinCollege.com

Al Franken visits New Ruskin College

www.NewRuskinCollege.com

Lecture Notes: The Dishonesty of Stewed Tomatoes

Pro-reform movement spreads across Egypt
Kefaya gains more ground as coalition group of dissents stages simultaneous pro-reform rallies across Egypt.
By Hassen Zenati - CAIRO

Egypt's pro-reform movement Kefaya (Enough) gained considerable ground when it staged simultaneous rallies across the country in protest at President Hosni Mubarak's unchallenged 24-year-old rule. (http://195.224.230.11/english/?id=13357)

Oh, no, of course Mr. Franken this also is probably unrelated to Mr. Bush’s policies in the Middle East and the world. Our young people’s sacrifice in Iraq has all just been a waste. Yes, yes of course. What would we do without Mr. Franken’s acute insights?

The Palestinians, the Syrians, the Lebanese, the Saudi, the Egyptians, no, no, they are all quite unaffected by anything we did.

Of course, in any event, I supported Mr. Bush’s Iraq policy because Saddam Hussein signed an armistice agreement and then violated it. Oh, and he attempted to assassinate a former Commander in Chief who lead our forces against him. . . . Oh, and because the World Trade Center attackers came from and returned back to Iraq in 1993 after the attack, and then he denied our request for extradition. . . . Oh, and because he sponsored terror around the world including the planners for Bojinka that lead to the second World Trade Center attack. (We have the copies of his bandked checks that he gave to terrorists. ( http://www.husseinandterror.com/ )) . . . Oh, and because he was an evil vile man, who murdered over a million people, and would have done worse had we let him, Mr. Franken.


“Meanwhile, the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad offered its condolences to the family of Lamia Abed Khadouri al-Sakri, 50, a Shiite Muslim legislator in the National Assembly who was shot and killed Wednesday at her home in Baghdad. She was the first elected official slain since the parliamentary elections.” --- After nearly 3 months, Iraqi Cabinet approved Oil, defense posts still in dispute, however Associated Press

“A friend of Khaddouri said she had been singled out because of her outspokenness. "They chose her as a target because she spoke out and took little care whom she criticized," said Haifa el-Azawi, also a National Assembly member. "She was a brave woman and she was talking a lot about the situation." Azawi said Khaddouri's friends had told her that her bodyguards were too young and that she needed better protection.

“ . . . Earlier in the day Khaddouri was interviewed on television, said her brother, Amar abd al-Khaddouri, a dentist. "She was always afraid to be on TV," he said.

“ . . .According to the bodyguard, after she had finished the interview, she said, "I'm afraid they will kill me because I've been on TV."

“ . . . Khaddouri, who was unmarried and in her 40s, shunned living in the relatively protected Green Zone, where some other legislators live. . . .

“. . . One neighbor, a 17-year-old who would identify himself only as Husam, said, “When she was elected to Parliament, I said, 'Why don't you have better security?' And she said, 'God will protect me.’ ” ”
--- By Richard A. Oppel Jr. The New York Times FRIDAY, APRIL 29, 2005

I do not know how you can read this and not know whose side you should be on, Mr. Franken? Of course, Maureen Dowd can write columns simply stating that there is no connection between Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and al Qaeda, “no connection” with the second attack on the World Trade Center. That is all. The bare unsupported assertion: “no connection.”

Mr. Franken asserted today that because the settlement agreement worked out for Lebanon made provisions for ethnic representation, specified posts, this mere fact completely negates and undoes any possibility that Mr. Bush’s Iraq policy is supporting the peoples of the Middle East as they move towards freedom and democracy.

Some College visitors may have wondered why I stayed in Marin and have refused to leave these fifteen years, if, as I have claimed, many rich powerful people here have targeted me?

I have been protesting them. I moved to Marin immediately as I learned of Yvonne’s betrayal. 1991.

My life has been a protest against these people. I have not made speeches. (I did write a few short notes to Yvonne to try to shame my enemies. (For example, after Michael Weiner staged the break in at the Colonial Motel, (with the help of the San Rafael Police), I wrote a note to Yvonne. And he went into a fit and stayed home for a week. (That was when Barbara Simpson made her comment that “ . . . my career may not have been as meteoric as some others, . . . but at least I have not committed a felony.”)) But when he returned to the air I realized that these people were beyond shame.) I even stopped writing. Mine has been a silent protest.

I only started this web site in 2003 after Imus harassed me at GAB Robins. (But I said nothing when he did the same sorts of things in 1998 when I was working at State Farm with Shotgun Tom Kelly’s brother who supplied Imus with the information he needed to harasse me.)

So when I murder myself in a few weeks, days, it will be the end of 15 years of protests. There are other things I could have done . . . but I am tired . . . 15 years of harassment will do that to you.

I have fought against them and now I am finished. I pray for the courage to murder just one person, myself. I have driven my self to this end because I do not want to live in such a country. It is not just that there is no “legal recourse” but there is nothing at all. Not one human being survives. Left, Right, what is the difference? I pray for my deliverance.

So the dishonesty of Franken and Dowd will have to be left to someone else.

Someone else will have to take on the Dishonesty of Stewed Tomatoes.

“Stewed Tomatoes”, that is what Franken said the other day . . . to be continued . . .

Notes:
Friedman: “You can not make it as a B+ student in Brooklyn anymore.”

“They are mining serious brain power.”

“No one has told the kids. . . . I tell my daughters to do their homework because there is someone in India or China who is starving for their jobs.”

Deliberately obfuscates the reality.

Glenn Beck was on the radio the other day ridiculing fat retarded people who live in apartments of “300 square feet.”

"Over the generations, we have received energetic, ambitious, optimistic people from all over the world ... our country is a welcoming society," Bush said. "America is a stronger and better nation because of the hard work and faith and the entrepreneurial spirit of immigrants."

“We'll all have to trust each other," said Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., the committee chairman.


www.NewRuskinCollege.com