David Stockman’s venting again

His new book, “The great Deformation” comes out April 2nd and apparently has something in it to offend most people of all political stripes, an approach that certainly appeals to me – I’ve pre-ordered a copy. A friend of mine heard him speak at Greenwich Library this week and the man’s view of what’s in store for our country and our economy makes me sound like Pollyanna.  From the publisher’s description:

Defying right- and left-wing boxes, David Stockman provides a catalogue of corrupters and defenders of sound money, fiscal rectitude, and free markets. The former includes Franklin Roosevelt, who fathered crony capitalism; Richard Nixon, who destroyed national financial discipline and the Bretton Woods gold-backed dollar; Fed chairmen Greenspan and Bernanke, who fostered our present scourge of bubble finance and addiction to debt and speculation; George W. Bush, who repudiated fiscal rectitude and ballooned the warfare state via senseless wars; and Barack Obama, who revived failed Keynesian “borrow and spend” policies that have driven the national debt to perilous heights.

By contrast, the book also traces a parade of statesmen who championed balanced budgets and financial market discipline including Carter Glass, Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, Bill Simon, Paul Volcker, Bill Clinton, and Sheila Bair.Stockman’s analysis skewers Keynesian spenders and GOP tax-cutters alike, showing how they converged to bloat the welfare state, perpetuate the military-industrial complex, and deplete the revenue base—even as the Fed’s massive money printing allowed politicians to enjoy “deficits without tears.” But these policies have also fueled new financial bubbles and favored Wall Street with cheap money and rigged stock and bond markets, while crushing Main Street savers and punishing family budgets with soaring food and energy costs. The Great Deformation explains how we got here and why these warped, crony capitalist policies are an epochal threat to free market prosperity and American political democracy.

I’m paying for his book, but he can have my advice for free: David, your house is overpriced.

Mummy dearest

 

Wakeywake!

Woman keeps news of her aunt’s death a secret for years so she can hang onto rent-controlled apartment.

A Brooklyn scammer spent four years fooling her dead aunt’s co-op board into thinking the woman was still alive, to keep living in the rent-stabilized apartment for $287 a month, a lawsuit charges.

Brenda Williams, 55, gave neighbors regular health updates on Debbie Vaughan long after the woman died at age 93 in 2007 — and pulled out all the stops to keep board members at the Prospect Park building from trying to contact the woman, the lawsuit says.

Williams claimed “her aunt was paranoid and senile and if we knocked on the door, she would have a heart attack,” said the co-op board’s president, Diana Hansen-Young. The suit was filed Phillip Cramer, the apartment’s owner.

Of course, this being America, the lady’s subterfuge was discovered in 2010 and she’s still there, fighting eviction.

Williams, a city Department of Education school-improvement specialist for 25 years, said, “I don’t care what The Post writes. Call my lawyer,” and hung up when reached by phone.

I was curious what a “school-improvement specialist might do to occupy her time during working hours so I looked it up and the answer is, “not much”. Here’s a job opening for one, paying $106,000 to start and restricted, quelle surprise, to current NYC Board of Ed employees only. Duties seem all over the place but basically, a good command of marshmallow roasting, concretization of amelegeous neo-development srcrtshi, and, naturally, a good grasp of the philosophical underpinnings of “Kumbaya” should ensure success.

That’s fair, we didn’t know they were poisoning our minds

Teacher ‘had no idea” that her students were trying to poison her. Turnabout, fair play, all that.

Who knew? Greenwich High School had a genuine Objectivist matriculating as recently as 2008

While searching the internet for references to our town using toxic fly ash from the power plant to use as fill for the high school (no luck – I’ll try the oral histories at Greenwich Library) I came across this 2007 article from student editor Ryan Fazio denouncing a “save the children of Dafur” dance as a useless, feel-good gesture that would make its organizers and attendees feel virtuous while accomplishing nothing. My kind of guy! Intrigued, I poked around to see what Ryan had done with himself after GHS and found an opinion piece written while he was at Northwestern, in which he exposes the “living wage” campaign for the fraud it is.  So far so good. And according to LinkedIn, he’s now a commodities trader trainee at Louis Dreyfus on their shipping desk. Shades of Ragnar Danneskjöld! You go, Ryan and Cliff Asness, if you’re reading this, why don’t you snap this kid up?

Those of you who, like me, despair at what our high school turns out by way of political thinkers these days should find Ryan’s mere existence encouraging. Something similar to Dagny Taggart discovering that there were still people left in the world who thought as she did. It must have been a lonely existence at GHS and Northwestern for Mr. Fazio and I’m glad to see that he obviously both survived and prospered. May he always do so.

Throw Momma on an ice flow

Tens of thousands of Britons freeze to death while global warmists cheer.

The reaction to the 2003 heatwave was extraordinary. It was blamed for 2,000 deaths, and taken as a warning that Britain was horribly unprepared for the coming era of snowless winters and barbecue summers. The government’s chief scientific officer, Sir David King, later declared that climate change was “more serious even than the threat of terrorism” in terms of the number of lives that could be lost. Such language is never used about the cold, which kills at least 10 times as many people every winter. Before long, every political party had signed up to the green agenda.

Since Sir David’s exhortations, some 250,000 Brits have died from the cold, and 10,000 from the heat. It is horribly clear that we have been focusing on the wrong enemy. Instead of making sure energy was affordable, ministers have been trying to make it more expensive, with carbon price floors and emissions trading schemes. Fuel prices have doubled over seven years, forcing millions to choose between heat and food – and government has found itself a major part of the problem.

I have a better idea: forbid the legislature to meet more than three months every two years

“I prefer notes in bottles” William Gaston, Vice Division, Greenwich Democrat Committee

State Representative Steve Walko, (R., Byram) would like to allow legislators to vote from their home districts on some matters, rather than drive 3-hours-round-trip for a 90 second session. Although this would seem a rather obvious thing to do now that there are more effective means of communicating than the telegraph and carrier pigeon, Democrats are against it. Surely most of their opposition stems from where the idea arose: a Republican, but there’s also the entertainment factor.

“I’ve got nothing better to do,” Greenwich Democrat Chairman Francis Fudrucker tells FWIW, “and I need that 51¢ mileage fee. My fellow Democrats are in the same straits: stay home waiting for the unemployment check to land while getting nagged by the Little Woman or head up to the strip joints on Asylum Ave. You tell me which you’d choose.”

Dump it on the anonymous taxpayer

Greenwich’s public golf course has reopened, minus 40 trees that blew over in Sandy’s winds. The town estimates it will cost $500,000 to replace those trees ($12,500 per tree is a mighty big tree, no?) and has filed for reimbursement for that expense from the country’s taxpayers. I realize that when Greenwich gets money back from the taxing authority it’s more aptly termed a “return of stolen property” than, say, “hurricane relief”, but it’s no wonder our federal budget is totally, wildly out of control when one of the richest cities in the country demands that taxpayers in Iowa pay to replace some trees on its golf course.

All across America towns and cities expect others to pay for what used to be local responsibilities, like snow plowing, beach erosion and now, tree maintenance. This is not the path to fiscal restraint. Sequestering $85 billion while spending trillions? A mere drop in the bucket.

(Real footage here of tree huggers wailing over a dead tree – no shit; you can sent $500,000 to ease their pain or turn the page – your choice, and that of Sally Struthers)