Sign on to the White House home page www.whitehouse.gov/infocus/economy, and you'll be treated to a dazzling display of seemingly fabulous economic news. "President Bush's actions are moving our economy forward," trumpets the first in a series of self-congratulatory billboard statements. The bragging goes on: "75,000 jobs created in May ... 5.3 million new jobs created since August 2003 ... Unemployment rate below the average of the 60s, 70s, 80s, and 90s." And all this is juxtaposed against a photo of a mostly beaming group of Republicans -- John Boehner, Bill Frist, Dennis Hastert -- watching last month as George W. Bush signed the cumbersomely named Tax Relief Extension Reconciliation Act of 2005. (The less-than-beaming exception was John Snow. Did then-Secretary Snow know that Hank Paulson would soon occupy both his Treasury office and his spot at the next "tax relief" celebration?)
But what really set me to thinking about the hypocrisy of the administration's economic pronouncements was a picture of Dick Cheney alongside a transcript of the president's remarks: "I'm proud to be up here with Vice President Cheney. I couldn't have picked a better person to be the Vice President of the United States."
Would the president's words have been quite so glowing, I wondered, had the recent news about Cheney's investment portfolio been known a few weeks back? It's one thing when a big majority of Americans don't approve of your handling of the economy, as recent polls show to be the case for President Bush. But when even the number two man on your team discounts your happy talk, I'd say you've got a real problem.
It turns out that the vice president and his wife have sizable positions in tax-free municipal bonds maturing in just over a year, which constitute a hedge against rising interest rates, while other Cheney millions are parked in an inflation-protected securities fund. What struck me as a particularly damaging commentary on the administration's deficit-spending and tax-cutting economic approach, though, was the $10 million to $25 million (precise amounts weren't disclosed) of Cheney money residing in a fund that buys mostly high-quality foreign bonds and has limited exposure to dollar assets. That means the vice president is betting on a further decline in the value of the dollar against other currencies, a sorry situation directly related to our huge trade deficit and our debt-ridden federal budget. We print greenbacks to finance our profligate spending, and we ship boatloads of those dollars overseas to buy foreign goods. All in all, we're in hock to foreigners up to our necks. And the falling dollar and rising interest rates indicate that foreign lenders are becoming disgusted with our fiscal irresponsibility.
The vice president's advisers were quick to point out that Cheney's portfolio is run by outside money managers. And to hear them tell it, he pays "no attention" to his investments. That may or may not be true, but I'd be willing to bet the veep would pay a whole lot of attention if he were losing serious money. (Which, by the way, isn't likely to happen. In my opinion, Cheney's investment managers have chosen wisely. And assuming they are principled people, they've invested their own money exactly the same way they've invested the vice president's. At Batterymarch, the company I founded, I assumed the same risks I chose for my clients. To do otherwise would have been, at least to my mind, immoral and unethical.)
So the Cheneys appear to be profiting from a decline in the United States' economic standing, a situation the vice president has helped to create. It may not be insider trading exactly, but it has an unseemly odor about it. Supporting policies that are detrimental to our country's economic health and then making money off the resultant dollar depreciation brings to mind what Ken Lay did when he sold a sizable chunk of his Enron stock at a profit right before the company imploded. Lay bailed out knowing that the situation he at least oversaw, if not outright encouraged, was threatening the health of his company and the well-being of its other shareholders.
In my opinion, this is no way to lead a company -- or a country. Maybe we really don't expect a captain or his first mate to go down with the ship anymore. But doesn't the first mate have to explain why his steering instructions differ from the whistles blowing from the bridge? At the very least, Cheney's investment choices, even though they are by proxy, call for an elucidating comment by the vice president. But don't hold your breath; Cheney seems to bristle at the mere notion of explaining anything to the public. Remember his energy task force? Five years later, we still don't know who the participants were or what they talked about.
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A distinguished alumnus of the Harvard Business School, Dean LeBaron is founder of Batterymarch Financial Management, one of the inventors of index funds and a pioneer of quantitative and emerging market investing. He is the author of a number of articles and books, including Mao, Marx, and the Market.
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Comments: 28
And then there's Halliburton . . .
U.S. core consumer prices climbed for a third-straight month in May, suggesting that higher energy prices are seeping into underlying inflation and likely sealing another rate increase from the Federal Reserve. Consumer prices increased by 0.4% in May, after climbing 0.6% in April. The core CPI, which excludes food and energy, grew 0.3%.
It has nothing to do with class envy. It is campaigning of the dirty variety.
Democrats are ruthless campaigners who will do anything, without regard for ethics, to make their opponents appear to be villians.
One has to admit that they have been very successful in making the public think that Bush's roses are really road apple's. The polls show that, and Dean's post is just one more attempt to solidify that opinion and an action which active Democrats know will bring benefits. I only wish that their ethics matched their determination.
Every one of the industrialized countries would gladly trade their economy for ours. Bush turned around the recession he inherited from Clinton inspite of several severe shocks the biggest being 9/11. His first tax cuts were ineffective, but those in 2003 were exactly in line with what Kennedy and Reagan had done before and were extremely effective. In additon, similar to the Kennedy Reagan tax cuts, government tax receipts have risen considerably and never been higher.
To criticize Bush for a bad economy is the height of dishonesty and belies the facts and the truth, by any measure. By measure I mean employment, economic growth, interest rates, home ownership, standard of living, et al. Our balance of payments are in bad shape, but then Americans really want to buy foreign produced goods and will probably continue to do that so long as they can afford it and our economy retains its health.
Democrats particularly don't want anyone to know that across the board tax cuts and reducing taxes on dividends and capital gains do grow both economic activity and government tax receipts. They want us all to believe that tax increases on the rich (here's your class warfare) increase government tax receipts and nothing could be farther from the truth.
Increasing tax rates causes rich people to readjust their investments and spending such that they don't pay more taxes. That is what it means to be rich. If taxes are too high in the U.S., move investments overseas or when Congress imposes a large luxury tax on boats which they did, stop buying boats. The boat builders literally crashed, 80% of workers had to find new jobs and the government's tax receipts from luxury yachts and such crashed. In this case, Congress rescinded the taxes and the industry slowly but surely came back. But the rich didn't pay more taxes. They paid less because rich people have an almost infinite ability to adjust what they do. The middle class has far less and lower income groups have almost no flexibility.
Democrats want to allow those economically stimulating tax cuts to lapse full well knowing that the economy will then stop growing so well. But that is not their worry because they will spin it to their advantage no matter what happens. Their worry is not how well the country is doing because the only thing that concerns them is whether or not they are in control of the White House and the Congress. Democrats are willing to sacrifice anything to win back control, you or me or ethics.
Are there pockets of our national economy that aren't doing so well? You bet. No national actions can overcome all local situations whether they are caused by state laws which depress economic activity or by local conditions such as heavy reliance on GM and Ford sales. Both those comanies are floundering and being beaten by their foreign competitiors. They are losing jobs fast for their local economies while those of other states who welcome new Toyota plants are gaining jobs at a fast clip.
Similarly, states who are heavily reliant on manufacturing have been losing jobs steadily. Manufacturing productivity per person has risen much faster than output although output has been rising steadily and has never been higher. The same is happening to every other country including China and the truth is that our loss of jobs has been proportionately less than that of other countries. What is happening to manufacturing is the same as happened to agriculture where productivity also rose much faster than output causing emloyment to plunge. Mining has undergone a similar change. These changes are very beneficial to the health of our country and to our standard of living.
Note that Dean really had little to say about the economy beyond the fact that his group in concert with our left wing mainstream media have convinced the public that our rose of an economy is actually a road apple. To flesh out his attack and provide more substance, he attacks our Vice President's investment methods. I have some idea of how much time it takes to manage a portfolio of significant size and I also have an sense of how much time Cheney's job requires of him. It would be impossible for Cheney to do both. But don't expect Dean to allow for that even though he does admit to some of it. And hiring an investment manager who will not lose money and possibly even make some is not hard to do in this country inspite of the gyrations of our markets.
But all this does not prevent Dean from painting Cheney as a very unethical man. I submit that the lack of ethics is not Cheney's but Dean's.
Polls are mostly reflections of what people read and hear. What they read and hear today from the mainstream media is that the economy is bad and Bush lies. Both of those are lies and are repeated and repeated knowing that they will become accepted as truth if repeated enough. After they achieve this indoctrination of the public they can then use polls to justify their own positions. Very, very clever are Democrats and they are very good at being clever today.
Dan Rather tried it with full knowledge that the documents he used had been falsified. Nevertheless he tried it because it had worked before and his belief was just like that of most other Democrats that anything is OK in order to unseat Bush.
Sorry to be so long but this needed to be voiced.
Best regards, Ben
It is easy to paint companies as bad guys as Dean has just done. But in this case it simply is not true.
There are bad guys in business, but the vast majority of company executives are fine upstanding people with reasonably good ethics.
Best regards, Ben
Author "Leading People to be Highly Motivated and Committed"
And right on Dean!
Of course, that is not an isolated case and he did not come to that concern easily. The largest contributors to the Democrats in the last election had no obvious profit agenda but did have deep reservations. By contrast, I have observed corps. reflecting their concerns that have seemed to me to be very specific to a narrow list of sell-interests.
I'm not making a moral or ethical judgement. If sharefholder money is being spent on lobbying expense, a return is a reasonable expectation. But money for power transfers without transparency do not work. The formerly dynamic system gets rigid, perhaps around a set of "values" or preconceptions that may have nothing to do with present conditions.
We've chatted philosophically on another thread about our differences in perspective about US businesses and their leaders. I'd like to raise some similar points here, but first, wanted to address another topic.
You say that "Polls are mostly reflections of what people read and hear. What they read and hear today from the mainstream media is that the economy is bad and Bush lies. Both of those are lies and are repeated and repeated knowing that they will become accepted as truth if repeated enough."
First, polls are reflections of what people think, not what they've heard, and further, many Americans are woefully under-informed about current events. I wouldn't have disagreed with you had you claimed that there are many conflicting stories regarding the economy, and that the average American can't make heads or tails of what's going on. However, you've taken a common tack and blamed the "media" as if there's some vast liberal conspiracy to write the news according to what the DNC or other groups think.
That's absurd in the extreme.
Second, you claim that the "media" is lying about the economy, and that's influencing public opinion. Do what I did. Google (or Yahoo or whatever) "US Economy Bad" or whatever combination of key words you would like. I sifted through a tremendous number of key words and stories and could NOT FIND ONE claiming that the US Economy is heading downwards or is bad. The closest thing I could find was Wall Street Journal articles attempting to explain the actions of the various markets.
I doubt you'll claim that the WSJ is a liberal shill for the DNC...
Going back to what I REALLY wanted to talk about...
The decision not to bid out Halliburton's work based upon the notion that "no one else could do the work" is silly.
The whole point of the bidding process is to 1) qualify potential contractor's for the work and 2) give the American people the best value for their dollars.
NOT competitively bidding the work is highly unusual since it pre-supposes that 1) no one else could do it (as you've suggested) and 2) the American tax payer can't get a better value for their money.
Given how infrequently the US bids out rebuilding countries after a war, I find it highly questionnable that Halliburton is the only company that can handle the various tasks required.
Also, it has been repeatedly demonstrated that Halliburton, at best, has serious financial control problems with its US contracts, and at worst, has exhibited a pattern of fraud against the American people.
I also question whether businesses have the high standards of ethics you allude to. Since the start of Sarbanes Oxley, a very large number of publicly traded companies have gone back and restated earnings, not just for the immediate past FY but for a number of years in the past.
Firings of C-Suite execs for padding, falsifying or mismanaging public finances has also dramatically increased.
Most academics would say that American Business ethics is at an all-time low, lower than some of the shenanigans of the 1980's.
Anyway, my thoughts on this.
As old JP Morgan said, "Millionaires don't use astrology, billionaires do."
Americans WANT to buy foreign produced goods, or American HAVE to buy foreign produced goods because they have no choice? I was just shopping for a pair of walking shoes and ended up not buying any because the choices were so dramatically awful, since the choices were all from obscure foreign countries. I was not in Wal-Mart, either, but in top stores in New York City. Shoddy goods from foreign countries that get here exclusively on foreign ships that get unloaded at piers in this country that are also owned by foreign countries seems to be all that's available now to the American consumer, even when the goods have American labels. Are we manufacturing anything any more besides gas guzzling vehicles that no longer sell? At least I'm saving a lot of money because I'm not going to buy that crap. I'll order from Canada or Europe, thank you.
Some comments.
A vast conspiracy? I have listened for years to Dems charging a vast right wing conspiracy. Listening to the talking heads on the right, they all sound somewhat different and often take quite different positions on the same issue. If it is a conspiracy, the conspirators aren't talking to each other.
Listening today to the taking heads on the left, you come away thinking that they must have read the same script just before talking. There are very few differences between them and quite often the same words or phrases are used. This was not true of the left 15 years ago, but I understand from an insider that emails have gotten them all on the same page. There are more indications, but it is apparent to me that the left speaks with one voice. Conspiracy? Maybe, but I would prefer "coordinated battle plan". When I say left, I include the mainstream media and the major networks except Fox (a great frustration to the others, even to the UN) and the major newspapers.
You said that
"I wouldn't have disagreed with you had you claimed that there are many conflicting stories regarding the economy, and that the average American can't make heads or tails of what's going on."
I did not think that I had to mention that there are conflicting stories out there regarding the economy and that the public hears and sees these. The polls show that most Americans think that they are doing quite well, but believe that the overall economy is bad. Since they can't have gotten that from an analysis of the facts, they must be getting it from somewhere. I don't need to google anything to find our who. Just listening to the rhetoric of the mainstream media who downplay the economy daily is all one needs. Who else could they be listening to??
By the way, what is your analysis of the health of the economy as compared to other times and other countries?
As concerns Haliburton, you said -
"Given how infrequently the US bids out rebuilding countries after a war, I find it highly questionnable that Halliburton is the only company that can handle the various tasks required."
So tell me, who else was big enough, had enough of the right skills and was willing to blindly undertake a task that was impossible to define?
I know of a couple of companies who were asked and refused. You lamented on Haliburton's financial controls as if operating in Iraq was somehow normal at the start of the war. Nothing was known ahead of time, nothing was normal and everything had to be done right now. They had to buy fuel from Kuwait and the Saudis without knowing how much they would need. And they had to drive their tankers to places they learned about enroute. They had to enter and organize oil fields with no clue as to what would be needed, how many would be on fire or the local conditions. The list of open ended tasks was huge. This kind of operation is a nightmare for managers and accountants and I give Haliburton great credit for having the guts to undertake it. They did not have to do so.
In this country, when gangs of electric utility repairmen from a distant utility show up to help out after a hurricane and drive their trucks from a few hundred miles away, they come with rolls of cash just to be able to operate, feed themselves and replace supplies. I have managed a few quick response efforts and I can tell you that proper prior planning is not possible. Accounting is done after the fact, sometimes well after the fact making the whole thing an easy target for auditors who could care less about the difficulties. Very easy to criticize as you have demonstrated.
Actually, I hope that we won't have need of such services in the future because even Haliburton may not volunteer after the terrible treatment they have endured from you and others. Why should they bother because the profits were certainly not very good. Why not decline as others did and come in later when things are more orderly and defined. Make the government write out an RFP that has sufficient detail to permit a bid and to arrange for adequate financial controls. All this criticism without an understanding of the difficulties of no bid contracts is very destructive. No bid contracts are not put out because of wanting to treat a buddy well. They are issued because there is no other way to do it. I know, for you everyone except you yourself is corrupt.
You also said -
"I also question whether businesses have the high standards of ethics you allude to. Since the start of Sarbanes Oxley, a very large number of publicly traded companies have gone back and restated earnings, not just for the immediate past FY but for a number of years in the past."
I did not contend that all businesses operate only with the highest ethical standards. I do contend that they are better in that regard than government employees, politicians and academics only because they get caught much easier and a serious lack of ethics makes your suppliers and customers want to leave you for your competition. Any assumption that they are bad guys leads to faulty actions detrimental to our economic health and standard of living.
You cite Sarbanes-Oxley and it is a perfect example. It is a terrible law that attempts to replace accountability and ethics with procedures. The cost of compliance to an individual company is very large in terms of executive time and dollars. Medium sized companies simply can't afford it. We assumed that everyone is a bad guy and should be so closely controlled and regulated that they almost can't move. More and more companies will either base overseas or go private, some already are doing so, to escape this horrible law. It is one more cost that makes American companies less competitive and they are already overtaxed compared to other industrialized countries.
Be well, Eric, and best regards, Ben
I love conversing with you!
Regarding the media conspiracy: If I changed all of what you said from left wing to "right wing" it could have come out of Al Franken's mouth! How funny is that! Seriously, with all of the accusations flying back and forth regarding left wing or right wing bias, I would guess that truth is somewhere in the middle, but leaning a little left. As you know, journalists, like a lot of folks in media, come from a liberal arts background. Not surprisingly, most of them see things from a secular humanistic point of view. It's not a conspiracy unless a bunch of them sit in a room and decide that's how they're going to report.
As someone who's spent a good bit of his career in and around media, I can guarantee that, like the business leaders you defend, most media folks are trying to be fair minded, don't intentionally bias stories and aren't trying to influence the political process with their craft. Most see politics as a "story" and not a thing to influence.
Now, compare that with the surge in the (supposedly) counterbalancing right wing pundit media, i.e., Rush, Fox News, etc. and the difference is pretty clear. Their intent is to present a right wing, conservative perspective. No other mainstream media outlet comes out and says, "Journalistics standards be damned, I'm presenting the liberal, left wing perspective" (Air America doesn't count because it isn't mainstream).
Likely we'll have to agree to disagree on this...
As a marketing researcher, I will tell you that polls tell you exactly what the pollster intends to tell you. Polls are not exploratory surveys, but tools of public policy and pundits. Anytime you see polls conducted by interest groups like the Heritage Foundation, you can be sure that they sat down in advance to decide what they want the poll to say.
The Conference Board and organizations like it are trustworthy sources of information because they are paid by syndicates of companies who really need to know what's REALLY happening. So, the Consumer Confidence Survey would be a believable instrument for assessing this.
Believe it or not, the major media sponsored polls are pretty credible because 1) they are all run by marketing research companies, and these companies can't afford to align themselves with any interest groups, and 2) cries of liberal bias force the methodologists to consult extensively with interest groups to ensure potential wording and phrasings are not overtly biased.
Again, polls tell you what people think, and it's a synthesis of what they've heard, processed with what they FEEL. Republicans will always find cheery news about the President, while Democrats will find fault with his every action.
I'll quickly get over my head arguing about Halliburton, but when the government awards a no-bid contract to a company formerly run by the VP, they must withstand greater scrutiny than if they had gone through the traditional bidding processes for the same award.
There are few companies in the entire world who make nuclear reactors for submarines, but the Navy wouldn't DREAM of not bidding out these contracts. One, it's an incentive for companies to develop better thinking and to enter businesses they otherwise could not. Two, when the American taxpayer is footing the bill, expediency must take a back seat to transparency and ethics. The stakes are too large not to.
"I know, for you everyone except you yourself is corrupt." was a cheap personal, ad hominum attack that I'll ignore because I don't believe you meant to insult me. If you did intend to insult me, please don't respond further because I don't want the angst. So far, this has been a collegial discussion....
Finally, I'm never in favor of huge bureaucratic quagmires like Sarbanes Oxley. Like the Glass Stegall act it replaced, it placed unfair burdens on companies with very little return or incentive for companies that follow the rules. However, the transparency this Act requires has forced many companies to re-examine what they've reported to shareholders. The fact that these companies have been, without the added scrutiny, able to provide false and/or misleading information to shareholders and regulators suggests that some amount of additional oversight is needed.
Are all of these companies making math errors, or did they believe that they wouldn't get caught?
I don't buy the argument that taxes are forcing companies to go private. Our entire textile industry took operations off shore, despite the highest amount of tax credits and incentives in history (other than automotive or airlines). They did this for greed. They wanted lower labor so they could sell the same products for the same price and make MORE money.
What incentive do companies have to be patriotic or community conscious when they're only motivation is making a bunch of Type A personalities on Wall Street happy with their numbers, THIS QUARTER.
I actually think that business suffers more from short-term, shareholder focused thinking. Private companies and those with cultures of long-term planning do much better than their public counterparts. And, smaller companies with executives not beholden to the shareholder's and Market's interests innovate more and are more successful than their counterparts.
Again, enjoyable conversations with you, Ben. I hope this stays focused on issues instead of on personalities.
Sorry to have made in jest the remark "I know, for you everyone except you yourself is corrupt.". I did not think that you would take it personally. Although I try, I have never been good at adding in humor. Consider it retracted.
As concerns the left and right talking heads and media using the same talking points, we will have to agree to disagree. What I see and hear of the two is as I stated it, the left well coordinated and the right not at all. The right does not communicate by email the points on a given issue as it arises and the left does and is monolithic according to my inside sources. As for the media, a comparison their questions to Clinton versus those to Bush tells all. For the moment, I forget the CBS media liberal media type who wrote a book about media bias, but he certainly was an insider and shares my view not yours.
Thanks for the primer on polls. I needed that, ha ha!
As for Sarbanes-Oxley and restating earnings, I expected same as did the investment community. You apparently do not appreciate how arcane our accounting system has become. I sincerely believe that none on the Enron board including Skilling and Lay were able to actually understand the fraudulent scam which Fastow and his fellow conspirators had fashioned. It was not until a third set of outside auditors examined them that the board even found the scam, that after bankruptcy had been declared. Even the whistleblower accountant, forget her name, Sharon (?), was not able to completely understand it all. That accounting is arcane was evidenced by the government's admission that it took them 2 years just to figure out what had been done.
So accounting is arcane and not something an non-professional can easily understand. Also, there are many ways to skin the cat in accounting so when Sarbanes-Oxley suddenly confronts companies with the possibility of criminal charges and jail time, you bet your bippy that there will be accountants who start saying that we had better change this or that to ensure that the boss doesn't go to jail.
As an ex-naval officer responsible for about $3.5B in spending a year in my last position who retired and became an corporate exec, I was stunned by how little inscrutable and arcane the civilian accounting profession was. Damn hard for me, a nuclear engineer to understand without expending huge amounts of time I did not have.
You state that "I don't buy the argument that taxes are forcing companies to go private." Please re-read my words. I made no such contention. I contended that the onerous rules of Sarbanes-Oxley are causing companies to go private and base overseas. I did not mention it, but some companies are choosing to list on foreign exchanges and not on a U.S. exchange, and not to go public if presently private solely because of Sarbanes-Oxley.
Your remarks concerning Haliburton and contracts confirm that you are way over your head. I have one insider who says he knows that the major reason Haliburton volunteered was that the VP had once been their CEO and without that they would not have done so.
On Haliburton, I am unsure why you chose to ignore my comments to your statements. You had started by saying "Given how infrequently the US bids out rebuilding countries after a war, I find it highly questionnable that Halliburton is the only company that can handle the various tasks required."
I then replied with the question "So tell me, who else was big enough, had enough of the right skills and was willing to blindly undertake a task that was impossible to define?" I challenge you to either provide an answer supportive of your view or to accept mine.
I then added "I know of a couple of companies who were asked and refused. You lamented on Haliburton's financial controls as if operating in Iraq was somehow normal at the start of the war. Nothing was known ahead of time, nothing was normal and everything had to be done right now." You ignored completely the last sentence of that quote and proceeded as if my statement was completely false. Please tell me what it is that you find incorrect about that statement.
This contract was let just before the war started. So, in addition please tell me how the government would write the Request For Proposal defining the job to prospective bidders. I am all ears. I have reviewed a few RFP's in my time and am not aware of any way an RFP could have been written, but I await being enlightened by you.
IMHO, there was no recourse but to issue a no bid contract. In that case, the gov sits down with the intended supplier and together they write out a contract which each side will accept and which each side believes will properly and legally cover what is intended.
There is an interesting twist to any contract. If an unknown contingency requiring immediate response arises during the life of a contract, in the nuclear world Rickover would discuss in detail with the contractor what the contractor believed was needed to get over the problem, then tell the contractor to proceed without legal paper or written documents, and advise the contractor that he would be made whole. Since the contractors trusted Rickover, they always marched off so as not to hold up everything and cause great increases in cost or time waiting to negotiate a fixed price contract or whatever. I have lived through situations outside the nuclear world where the contractor did not trust the government and required that all the i's be dotted and the t's crossed before the contractor would spend one penny. The added expense to the government and the lost time was considerable in each case. I doubt that Haliburton would have treated the defense department this way given the previous connection to Cheney and that would have been a big reason to use them inspite of them being the only willing company.
You drew a comparison between the Haliburton contract and one for nuclear reactors. Please explain how these are comparable.
For myself with my 26 years of military service and 15 years of overseeing the operation and maintenance of nuclear reactors, I see these two as being at opposite ends of a spectrum. That you have judged them comparable leads me to question your ability to objectively judge or has your good judgement been overcome by some sort of anti-Bush emotions? Truly, I fear for your stability.
So what say you, Eric?
I too enjoy the discussion. Best regards, Ben
Dean, Thanks for prompting it.
"That you have judged them comparable leads me to question your ability to objectively judge or has your good judgement been overcome by some sort of anti-Bush emotions? Truly, I fear for your stability."
We're done here.
Foreigners come here and get monies from the government! So much for the veteran. On many an employment website, one can easily see the statement "veteran status not considered", while "EOE/Diversity" rules! As job loss and work loss (don not forget the self employed not alligned with franchises and other money gimmicks). Those struggling with unemployment also face new credit regulations devised to ruin them, and home seizures create more "jobs" and increased wealth for those connected to the money programs. There is more to these tricks devised by this government. Ask any small business owner.
Talk about adding insult to injury! It is the real manufacturing economy, and mining and farming, that have being eliminated. I know stuff I cannot say here. Even our deer and other wildlife are having to congregate in the back yards of many an American home, such is the result of the overdevelopment near urban areas and towns, much of that is foreign-owned.
Our nation is being developed so we cannot re-claim what we have lost in the way of production facilities. Does Cheney, and the others, own the shipping also? Think of it, OIL and SHIPPING. Big money there! I have many questions. Even the lumber that we builders buy, as well as finished wood products, is from overseas! Storm drains from India! Capital equipment moved offshore? The cost of sheet rock doubled here where I we live, just in a matter of a few years. Fasteners are through the roof, and now it is hard to insure the quality of items used in jobs! My husband was a quality engineer who was cheated out of his pension, and his livlihood. (But he is just one of many.) We know quality! Life decisions for individuals are made by this government, and those who disagree with them "cannot manage their lives". Business and decency have been re-defined by a government that cannot manage a country!
Job loss even while "resident aliens" are being brought into the factories that are left, and most of those are foreign-owned. I wish that people would just look at the old newsreels of the convoys carrying American goods overseas, made by Americans, during World War II. America came to the aid of the free world then. Now we cannot even defend ourselves! Even military hardware is made overseas, and that again is where Cheney and company must come in. Safety is not even a thought, as quality was killed years ago. The quality of life for the average American has plummeted, especially in the last five years, and that is just about the individuals. Everything connects! We need a nationalist party, not more of this stuff! Even the argument over "illegal aliens" is a diversion, as legal aliens are literally everywhere. What happened to immigration quotas? They protected the new citizen as well as the old. All tricks. Americans have never been more divided, as too many fall for the tricks.
As for the poor military, they are being used and used up. Even the Navy is being transformed into a land force! What happened to our national defense? It is now an international offense! All who know here realize that Americans must look outside of themselves, and quickly. As for sovereign nations, we respected other nations as sovereign. That is how wars are avoided, you respect one another, and avoid entangling alliances and money strings. The globalist regime is not for the good of any nation, or any people. So we do not want to hear the stupid control mechanism words like "isolationist" or "protectionist". I guess the concept of national defense is too protectionist! So much for the founding fathers! The opposite of local government and smaller government has occurred.
Many of us are in fear, while even now life is a struggle.
All of this is connected.
A Veteran