President Barack Obama's Administration

President Obama

Pres. Barack Obama's administration will be a time of challenge and change and predictable chaos.

Expect war.
Pres. Obama -- like Roosevelt, Truman, Kennedy and Johnson before him -- will leverage a mass media reaction to perceived attack. Whether that is successful, or whether he fails like Carter or resorts to Wag the Dog like Clinton ... or is the catalyst of something new remains to be seen.

Expect inflation.
No need to explain.

Post 1

Sunday, October 12, 2008 - 5:59am

At this point, the best practical (forget ideological for a moment) plan of action is to vote and promote Bob Barr.

McCain is down in polls for good reasons. The best plan of action is to make it a three-party race -- pulling votes from both sides into Bob Barr. I'm from Minnesota where we recently had a third-party governor. Jesse Ventura won in that 3-man race without ever polling more than about 20% of the vote.

Bob Barr could do that, too.

As David Mamet wrote for the character Charles Morse in the movie The Edge:

What one man can do, another can do.

Post 2

Sunday, October 12, 2008 - 7:05pm

Ed,

The patent argument against a third party has always been that with a viable third party, opinion will be too split, and government will not be able to get anything done. Each party will vote along party lines and no majority will be reached to effectively legislate.

That has always seemed to me to be a potential problem to a three party system...

Now... MAYBE that's a great idea. It seems we'd be much better off if they didn't accomplish anything. They're continually screwing up, and continually whining that it was someone else's fault. Who needs that?

jt

Post 3

Sunday, October 12, 2008 - 8:25pm

JT,

It seems we'd be much better off if they didn't accomplish anything. They're continually screwing up, and continually whining that it was someone else's fault. Who needs that?

Indeed. It's the 4000 year-old dilemma:

(1) rule others (primarily for your short-sighted, narrow-minded interests)
(2) accidentally (or purposefully?) make life worse for your constituents
(3) find a scapegoat (to keep the masses distracted away from the idea of 'better rule')
(4) repeat

In a bipartisan system, where folks have been duped en masse into thinking they always only have two choices -- you run one side as long as you can, and then you switch bookies and bet on the other side (like a Leonard Peikoff or a Christopher Buckley).

Midwest folks in Minnesota broke out of that stale thinking when they elected a libertarian Pro-Wrestler as their governor, but we might be "smarter" than the rest of the country. It might take the progressives on both coasts several decades to catch up to the kind of enlightenment that is relatively common in the Midwest.

Ed

Post 4

Monday, October 13, 2008 - 5:44am

JA: The patent argument against a third party has always been ...

Jay, that is a patently absurd argument against a patently obvious strawman. You were just tossing that out, right? to make the closing point, that it might be better to have nothing get done.

Multiparty parliaments get done what needs to get done -- in their opinion -- by coalition and compromise. There are many, many examples. In Europe, the classical liberals ("Free Democrats") are often the votes needed when the Social Democratic left (Labour) and Christian Democratic right (Conservatives) are deadlocked.

One suggestion (from Heinlein, actually) is that anyone who runs for parliament and gets 1% of the district vote gets a proportional vote in the legislature, in that case .01 votes. Thus, coalitions across the nation can be formed by fractional individuals. That is just one variant on a known way to do things.

Would you say that in America in 1770, 1780 or 1790 in the absence of parties, there was unanimity?

Would you argue that in the absence of political parties, there were 26 or 30 individual parties who were unable to act on anything at all for lack of a majority?

Post 5

Monday, October 13, 2008 - 7:43am

Ed, Michael,

For the record, I was jesting. The fact it could be taken up as other than jest shows how deplorable politics has become.

Michael, your comments were interesting. I'm not personally familiar with the success or failure of other governments which have third party systems, although my impression is that multi-party systems have great difficulties. Your comments suggest that success for any system may depend wholly on the rules set up. Some systems may make more than two parties impractical; some may not.

I wonder what rules might make possible a viable third party in the US. Viability and practicality are, I think, the key issues here, as - technically - there can be (and maybe are) hundreds of parties.

jt

Post 6

Monday, October 13, 2008 - 6:57pm

JA: For the record, I was jesting. The fact it could be taken up as other than jest shows how deplorable politics has become.

I don't know if politics has become deplorable, but online communication has always verged on that from the days of BBSes in the mid-1980s. It's hard to tell tone of voice. Here on RoR, we do not use emoticons. such as (;-) winking-smiley or like =(:-{P for the guy with a mohawk and moustache sticking out his tongue. Some boards (MSK's Objectivist Living, for example) have them built-in and of the interface software. You can both click on them from a menu to the left or draw them inline with your text. We don't do that here. Everything you read is pretty flat, unless the brilliant and insightful writer can muster the subtly nuanced adjectives to nudge the obtuse reader into chortling along.

From the point of your last line, as I said, I figured that you were being humorous. On the other hand, the sum total of my impression from your posts is that you are pretty much a mainstream, conservative kind of person, not given to the carefully crafted and yet thinly sliced baloney we all like to see through.

So, I addressed the more subtle point and gave you the benefit of the doubt. I thought Ed did the same thing, spinning off on the interesting node while not holding your feet to the fire.

And, to be completely on-topic here, I am afraid that such niceties are not to be found in the coming Democratic Administration. Be prepared for "the crime of selfishness." (And that's no joke.)

Post 7

Thursday, October 23, 2008 - 12:48pm

The tactic to use in the three party legislature is for one party to play the other two parties off against each other, making the respective votes more or less nullify each other, then use its own party's votes to decide the outcome of the vote. If an Objectivist/Libertarian style party could capture even 5-10% of the legislative seats, leaving the others equally divided between the Republicans and Democrats, then it could be effective in influencing the outcome of any vote the more or less even split along party lines. In the best case scenario, if a bill contained pro-civil liberty and pro-freemarket portions or anti-civil liberty and anti-freemarket portion causing the Republicans and Democrats to evenly split, the Objectivist/Libertarian party could decide the outcome, getting everything it would want in both cases. In those cases where there was pro-civil liberty and anti-freemarket or anti-civil liberty and pro-freemarket portions, the outcome would be less certain, but still possibly favorable. This could happen even if the number of Objectivist/Libertarian legislators was too small to effective influence the content of the bills in committee.

Post 8

Sunday, October 26, 2008 - 8:26am

I watched the Fred Thomson video and the one about the Obama Tax Plan. Nice, but I see an Obama-Biden administration with a Democratic House, at least.

Finding physical gold and silver is not easy right now. Dealers have upped their margins to hold the prices because the nominal "spot" price is unrealistic.

In addition, this week, we bought extra canned foods, soups, etc., and put them in the basement storage room.

Also, while looking at graduate school for Winter 2009, my priority is actually on more work. I'll take fewer classes, if need be, staying enrolled part-time, but working more part-time as well. If you have the time for an extra job now, get it while you can. And I mean "job" even if you are self-employed. I know that the arithmetic of ROI and IROI show that you are better off investing in your own business. However, I am suggesting here that in taking on outside employment you are diversifying your income portfolio as a hedge against a downturn in your main line of business. Make money at a hobby if you can. Then, save the income. You'll need it.

When Franklin Roosevelt was elected, the banks were closed by March. It started here in Michigan. On February 14, Henry Ford's bank asked him for a long-term deposit (loan). He understood fully and asked for all his money right now. The bank president called the governor and the banks here were frozen shut at 2:00 AM on February 15. Roosevelt acted two weeks later. This will not be the same as that. With plastic, there is no shortage of money. The problem is just the opposite: Inflation. Higher interest rates soon. Dislocations. Shortages. During the inflation of the 1970s, bargain brands disappeared as their makers could not buy raw materials for less than the goods were sold for earlier. Imports will cost more, of course. As goes the USA, so goes China.

And then there is the threat of war. We are in for interesting times.

Post 9

Sunday, October 26, 2008 - 8:57am

We are in for interesting times.

It is my Chinese curse...'-)

Post 10

Sunday, October 26, 2008 - 1:03pm

I think that if Obama does do the right thing, whatever that is, he will likely be assassinated, as that will NOT be what the rest of the power structure wants. Biden will then be in power, and he is a classic beltway insider - i.e., more of the same and more disasters, with New Deal style "solutions," while Obama will be the left icon, replacing Jack Kennedy as the champion of a left-utopian dream, probably having little relation to what he - like Kennedy - would have actually accomplished alive.

Post 11

Sunday, October 26, 2008 - 2:05pm

I think that Obama will, himself, resort to "New Deal style solutions." He will be the latter-day FDR, who will exacerbate our economic recession/depression in the same way that Roosevelt exacerbated the Great Depression, causing untold misery.

Remember how, at the beginning of his campaign, he talked about bringing people together? Now he is fomenting class warfare by his tax "the rich" proposals, thereby dividing people into favored and unfavored economic classes.

He has also railed out against those who want to go and earn money and get "the big house," instead of devoting themselves to "public service." He condemns people for chasing the American dream and lauds them for serving him and his political cronies. He doesn't want people to enrich themselves, unless they do so through government largess. If they earn the money, they have no right to it; if they don't earn it, they do.

- Bill

Post 12

Sunday, October 26, 2008 - 9:01pm

Bill Dwyer, we see pretty much the same events unfolding.

Phil Osborn, we do not. If you read the primary sources on John Kennedy, you will come to understand him as a conservative. The most recent histories indicate that Sen. Biden was chosen specifically to be a counterweight to Sen. Obama. Vice President Biden will have approximately the same role (somewhat less in magnitude) in the Obama Administraton that Vice President Cheney did in the Bush Administration. There is no need to fantasize about assassinations.

Post 13

Saturday, November 8, 2008 - 6:51pm

Earlier Friday, Obama and Biden met with the diverse group of economists, academics and business leaders who advised Obama during his campaign. They include William Donaldson, a Republican who headed the Securities and Exchange Commission during President Bush's first term, and Robert Reich, Labor secretary for President Clinton.

Also in the group were CEOs Richard Parsons of Time Warner and Eric Schmidt of Google, and Lawrence Summers, former president of Harvard. Summers, who was Treasury secretary under Clinton, is a candidate to return to that job in the Obama administration.

"At first news conference, Obama promises stimulus push" USA Today

telegraph.co.uk � The economic brain trust convened by Barack Obama in Chicago includes two former Treasury Secretaries from the Clinton administration, billionaire Warren Buffett and the chairmen of Google, Xerox and Time Warner.

Post 14

Sunday, December 14, 2008 - 5:08pm

Swiss banks under attack

The pressure from Washington is unlikely to let up. As a senator, U.S. president-elect Barack Obama introduced legislation early last year to make it easier to probe and prosecute tax dodging in offshore locations.

As president, he will need to fund an economic stimulus plan that analysts estimate could cost at least $500 billion.

Swiss bank secrecy in toughest test since Nazi gold

Fri Dec 12, 2008 9:01am EST

http://www.reuters.com/article/GCA-CreditCrisis/idUSTRE4BB3Y320081212

This time, the tax collector is leading the charge.
With Washington joining Germany to press for an end to a code they believe helps tax dodgers, many see it as only a matter of time before the Swiss lift the cloak guarding the secrets of the world's wealthy.

Nearly one-third of wealth kept abroad globally is in Swiss banks: the Swiss Bankers Association and consultants estimate this at $2.2 trillion, making the Alpine state the globe's biggest offshore center ahead of Britain and Luxembourg.

Now Switzerland faces its toughest assault since. In an escalation of a U.S. investigation into its biggest bank, Raoul Weil, head of UBS's wealth management business, was recently charged with helping Americans hide billions. "With the UBS case, Switzerland is under huge international pressure and pretty much back in the situation it was then," said Swiss Social Democrat party official and historian Peter Hug.
"Holding onto bank secrecy is not going to work in the long term. Switzerland is small and it cannot afford to help tax evasion in its neighboring countries."

"This is a business based on a criminal activity -- dodging tax in a neighboring country."

The pressure from Washington is unlikely to let up. As a senator, U.S. president-elect Barack Obama introduced legislation early last year to make it easier to probe and prosecute tax dodging in offshore locations.

As president, he will need to fund an economic stimulus plan that analysts estimate could cost at least $500 billion.

(Edited by Michael E. Marotta on 12/14, 5:47pm)

Post 15

Tuesday, December 16, 2008 - 6:24am

No one is going to invade them for banking laws. They should hold tight, they have everything to gain and nothing to lose, especially now.

another thing after reading this article - are they trying to conflate hiding Nazi gold - that is, gold literally stolen from the person and bodies of murder victims, to "tax-dodging" - which in fact, if anything, is simply keeping money you already earned?

There is NO COMPARISON.

Hell, what if the Nazis had Germany now and complained that the Jews were cheating on their "Jew Tax" now would that be ok to force them to comply? What if that tax, as repulsive as it was, was still lower than the US Tax? What then?

(Edited by Kurt Eichert on 12/16, 1:57pm)

Post 16

Tuesday, December 16, 2008 - 4:30pm