The Smoking Argus

OFFICIAL STATEMENT

President Obama Calls for New Steps to Support America’s Small Businesses

THE WHITE HOUSE/WASHINGTON – In this week’s address, President Barack Obama said that America’s small businesses are key to rebuilding the economy on a new, stronger foundation and creating jobs. He called on Republicans and Democrats in Congress to pass – without delay – a series of proposals that will help American small businesses thrive. These proposals include using $30 billion in TARP funds to create a new Small Business Lending Fund to provide capital to community banks to increase lending to small businesses, offering a new tax credit for over one million small businesses that hire new workers or raise wages, and providing targeted support for the most innovative small businesses with the potential to export new goods and products.

—END OFFICIAL STATEMENT—

Related Material(s)
	President Obama Weekly Address: Opening Small Doors for Business TRANSCRIPT (PDF 32 KB)

Source(s): The White House • The White House Official YouTube Chanel

Wire Report

Jack Hunter

“The Southern Avenger” Jack Hunter has been in radio for over a decade, is currently a personality for 1250 AM WTMA talk radio in Charleston, South Carolina, writes a weekly column for the Charleston City Paper, is a contributing editor for Taki’s Magazine and Young American Revolution and works as a freelance writer who has been featured in numerous publications including The American Conservative, The American Spectator and Lewrockwell.com.

(WIRE/LPN) – It’s hard to imagine a Republican more useless than South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham. Whether spearheading legislation that would grant amnesty to millions of illegal aliens¹, stumping for the $787 billion taxpayer theft² known as “TARP,” being the lone GOP committee vote to confirm liberal Supreme Court justice Sonia Sotomayor³, or his recent joining with John Kerry to promote cap-and-trade⁴—without shame and without fail—conservatives have never had a friend in Graham.

And yet in 2008, Graham was reelected in the deep Red State of South Carolina over a Democratic candidate, Bob Conley, who staunchly opposed amnesty, TARP and was well to the right of Lindsey in almost every respect. Many dubbed Conley a “Ron Paul Democrat,” given his support for the Texas Congressman during the Republican presidential primary and in that senatorial election the conservative “D” lost to the liberal “R” thanks purely to party affiliation. Rest assured, Lindsey Graham would like to keep things this way.

And Ron Paul would not. Comparing the 2008 Paul campaign with every other Republican who ran for president that year is a study in contrasts. Paul remained a Republican out of political necessity, sometimes seemingly regrettably, despite his continuing disappointment with his party’s lack of serious commitment to limited government principles. Every other GOP candidate, from talk radio favorite Mitt Romney to eventual nominee John McCain, would mouth occasional limited government rhetoric despite their lack of a voting record to match, seeming most interested in their ascendancy in the Republican Party and the power it affords.

When confronted by a crowd of tea partiers, town hall protesters and other angry grassroots conservatives at a meeting in Greenville this week, Graham reacted to criticism leveled against him by attacking one man: “We’re not going to be the Ron Paul party … I love this party … I’m not going to let it be hijacked by Ron Paul … Ron Paul’s run for president like 39 times. He keeps losing.”

Graham is right. The limited government philosophy that Paul believes once was, and could be again, the guiding principle of the Republican Party, keeps losing. Despite the Founding Fathers best intentions, the Constitution that has remained the only guideline for every vote Paul has cast during his decades-long career in Congress, has been badly damaged by politicians from both parties. To “hijack” the Republican Party, Paul would have to inspire a genuine revolution, not only in the way our government conducts its business but in what Americans think about how much business their government should be conducting. For Paul, the battle has never been about “Republican” vs. “Democrat” but limited government vs. unlimited government and there’s never been any question about which side Paul stands on.

On the other side, you’ll find Graham. As the quintessential GOP establishment man, the big government Republicanism that defined the Bush era had no greater champion than Graham. Conservatives who now trash Lindsey for siding with the Democrats have short memories, as it was Bush who first promoted amnesty, who “abandoned free-market principles to save the free-market system” with TARP, and grew our government and debt to record heights. At every turn, Graham was Bush’s boy. Now says Graham, “I’m going to grow this party,” which is comical considering his last attempt at Republican resurrection resulted in the sound defeat of his political life-partner, John McCain, who voters rightly saw as a continuation of the unpopular Bush. Today, Graham’s GOP remains wedded to recycling Bush-era, big government policy, always stamped with an elephant insignia and always designed to fool rank-and-file conservatives into voting against their better interests.

But now, too many are tired of being played for fools. The angry crowd that confronted Graham at a town hall meeting in Greenville this week were but the most vocal representatives of an ever-growing group of Americans who are fed up with both the excesses of Bush and the even worse excesses of Obama. For the first time in a long time, many Americans are looking back to the Founding Fathers, holding up their Constitution and seriously reexamining the role of government in their lives. This is fertile ground for an admitted “revolutionary” like Ron Paul. This is dangerous ground for protectors of the status quo like Lindsey Graham. “We’re not going to be the Ron Paul party” Graham will continue to say defiantly, but can no longer say definitely.

And neither can Paul. While any future Republican Party worth having must indeed, finally be “hijacked” by the principles of limited, constitutional government, big government Republicans like Graham would like nothing more than a safe return to the good old Bush days when constituents would just keep their mouths shut, wallets open and their votes-a-comin’.

If this happens—and there’s a good chance it might—conservatives, constitutionalists and patriots of all stripes interested in genuine political revolution must finally go to whichever party, old or new, that best suits their interests. And Lindsey Graham and his retread Republican Party—can go to hell.

Source(s): ¹The Hill “Democrats stymie Republican efforts to pass immigration reform measures” published 10/11/2009 by: Walter Alarkon • ²WSPA News Channel 7 “Sen. Graham Responds To Bailout Vote” published 09/29/2008 • ³CBS News “GOP Sen. Graham to Vote Yes on Sotomayor” 07/22/2009 by: Stephanie Condon • Politico “Sen. Lindsey Graham working with Sen. John Kerry on climate bill” published 10/10/2009 by: Lisa Lerer

Allison Bricker

At an October 12th town hall meeting in Greensboro, South Carolina, Senator Lindsey Graham (R) accused Representative Ron Paul of ‘hijacking’ the Republican Party, stating:

“I’m going to grow this party. I’m not going to let it be hijacked by Ron Paul”,

Senator Lindsey Graham
October 12th, 2009

The Senator’s terse tone a result of hecklers in the meeting chastising the former supporter of John McCain’s abysmal failure of a presidential bid, for voting in support of banker bailouts via the TARP program, as well as his support for extending the PATRIOT Act and President Obama’s troop surge in Afghanistan.

However, my view differs greatly with that of Senator Graham’s. Where he sees a “hijacking”, I see liberation from a party occupied for far too long by insurgent Whigs, perhaps the 2.0 variety, but Whigs nonetheless.

After all, today’s so-called “mainstream republicans” are just are just as backwards with their perpetual warmongering, chicken hawk imperialism, banker bailout, torture-apologist agenda, as were their predecessors; Whigs 1.0 from the 19th century in their support of denying inherent liberties to African-Americans via the promulgation and expansion of slavery.

As such, never failing to parallel their political coverage to a style more befitting of a magazine show like “Extra”, (think Election Day holograms) CNN’s Wolf Blitzer and his merry panel of peanut-gallery talking heads invited Representative Ron Paul into ‘The Situation room” Wednesday evening. Practically salivating for an attempt to degrade the issue into a worthless petty verbal dispute, host Wolf Blitzer sophomorically began by asking Dr. Paul for his “reaction”.

Always the statesman more concerned with principle, Dr. Paul pulled the debate back between working to support the Constitution, or further allowing the status quo to persist with its utter disregard for one of our most cherished founding documents. In consequence to the tone set by Mr. Blitzer, the other commentator/old-media journalists could not seem to structure a question without first displaying a philosophical bias for government to intervene in as many areas of our lives as possible.

The only exception to the vacuous line of dribble was Arianna Huffington of The Huffington Post. So kudos to her for demonstrating some new-media moxy soliciting Representative Ron Paul’s opinion on the true issues at hand like the never-ending war in Afghanistan.

Jeff Lewis

I remember having had discussions with lots of folks about the plight of the American Indians at the time of the release of the Academy Award winning film, Dances with Wolves, back in 1990. The film ignited a new round of reflection regarding the systematic atrocities perpetrated by whites and their governments in both American hemispheres, as they proceeded to destroy entire civilizations of indigenous humans from the landscape of the Americas.

People would often wax, “Imagine what it must have been like to wake up and find that everything you had grown up knowing was undergoing inexorable change from forces beyond your immediate ability to control.” That is how I felt after I read the feature article in the current issue of Rolling Stone Magazine, The Big Takeover, written by Matt Taibbi.

The article reviews the recent history of how this country and the world came to the precipice of the current economic meltdown facing us all. The author, Matt Taibbi, chronicles step by step the key events beginning in 1998 that caused the present financial calamity. It was as though I was reading an account written by an author who is a cross between George Orwell and Lewis Carrol.

Highlights include an explanation of the range of the new acronyms that have sprung up in our banking/securities litany;

• AIGFP–American International Group Financial Products, the most culpable entity in the catastrophe.

• CDO–Collateraled Debt Obligation. “A box full of diced up assets.”

• CDS–Credit Default Swap. Sold as a bet on the outcome, like an insurance policy. In seven years it racked up $500 billion in sales.

• OTS–Office of Thrift Supervision. A small agency set up to regulate “thrifts (formerly S&Ls) that regulated AIG.

• CFMA–Commodity Futures Modernization Act. Created by former Senator Phil Gramm (R-TX) that basically said credit default swaps were not gaming and not a security and therefore were unregulated.

An ongoing dynamic in the financial arena is the constant change of their vernacular that creates a language of its own. A language that is too esoteric for common English speaking folk. The author points out that slaves were not permitted to learn to read. Allowing such skills meant that they could become literate and consequentially more informed and powerful, concepts antithetical to subjugation.

As you read accounts of the machinations of this elite cadre of players, you develop a keener insight into their unworldly mind set. Nothing has brought that notion more to light than the bonus controversy that has erupted, in Richter Scale dimensions, upon the American public learning of the bonus structure of AIG and those targeted to receive bonuses of over $1 million minimum per person. Increments of hundreds of millions and billions of dollars are near impossible for the average citizen to grasp, but one million is a number they can relate to, if for no other reason than the popular TV shows touting million dollar payouts to winners. Deal or no deal, it is plain to see that AIG got a sweet deal.

The outrage is justifiably exacerbated by the fact that the recipients are the very individuals that brought AIG to its knees while their compensation has come from the U.S. taxpayers themselves; easily an example of “insult to injury.” This supposed “Bailout” is nothing more than rich bankers bailing out rich bankers with the taxpayers credit card, according to the author.

The “coup de gras” of the article is the revelation of the seemingly unbridled power of the Federal Reserve. According to Taibbi, the Federal Reserve has already loaned out $3.7 trillion and extended credit for investment guarantees amounting to $5.7 trillion! As of this writing, AIG’s total indebtedness is still not known.

When inquiries were made to the FED from Congressman Alan Grayson (FL), about where the money is going, to whom, and in what amounts, he was stonewalled. The Fed cited an act passed in 1950, “The Accounting Auditing Act”, which states the Fed cannot be audited by Congress or anyone else. In conjunction with the FEDERAL RESERVE, the Department of Treasury has yet to reveal exactly where all the TARP funds have gone, nor have they released any scorecards on the health of the nation’s banks. A widely held view is that people in Hank Paulson’s rolodex were the first to receive payments, but smaller, regional banks have sat on the sidelines, waiting for their phone calls and applications to be responded to that were submitted last fall.

I, for one, am concerned that Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and President Obama’s Chief Financial Advisor, Larry Summers, are being compromised by their prior associations with these financial renegades that seemingly have brought the world to the doorsteps of total economic collapse.

In Bob Dylan’s first major album hit, “Free Wheelin”, he wrote about the murders that took place on the campus of the University of Mississippi in 1962, during the admission of the school’s first black student, James Meredith, in a song titled “Oxford Town.” His last line in the song is, “Somebody better investigate soon.”

Source: RollingStone “The Big Takeover” by Matt Taibi, published March 19th, 2009

Allison Bricker

NOTE: This is the fourth part in a 4 part series. Your questions and commentary are both welcomed and appreciated.

• Part 1 – How to Save the Republic
• Part 2 – Abolish the Income Tax
• Part 3 – Repeal the Direct Election of Senators
• Part 4 – Similarities Between the Great Depression and Our Current Crisis

As the Dow Jones Industrial average continues its most volatile sessions in recent times, up 700 points one day, down 400 the next, the United States government continues its pointless scramble to prop up the debt based house-of-cards it built itself upon. It is most assuredly eerie when one dives down into the annals of history; back to our Republic’s last great economic calamity, the Great Depression. Upon further inspection, we see the same type of centralized planning and grossly negligent monetary policy going on today is exactly what brought Americans to their knees leading up to and throughout the Great Depression.

After the FEDERAL RESERVE Act of 1913, “fractional reserve banking”¹ now became the law of the land. Fractional reserve banking allows that for every $100 Dollars deposited into a bank, $900 Dollars of “new loans” (debt) can be created out of thin air and thus issued by said bank¹. The system accomplishes this by clinging to the principle that no more than a small minority of depositors will ever seek to withdraw their money at one time. Operating under this hedge of the fractional reserve system dictated by the FEDERAL RESERVE, debt soared throughout the 1920’s. This new massive influx of debt was of course on top of the massive debt in the form of bonds borrowed from the FEDERAL RESERVE in order to finance World War I.

With banks lending at a record pace for the new gadgets of the decade and a new need for housing, it was not long before many Americans began plunging themselves into debt. In these exuberant times and with easy access to “credit”, real estate prices began to soar. The apex of this bubble came in 1925, soon there after people began defaulting on their over leveraged loans at an escalating rate². Foreclosures began to rise as the defaults continued to pile up which in turn led to bank failures due to over exposure in the housing market.

Additionally, the new automated technology which once had employed thousands from its initial creation, now began to replace these same workers en mass as the efficiency gains of the new machinery made them obsolete. President Hoover, who as Secretary of Commerce under President Coolidge, birthed unemployment benefits, believing that “depressions were caused by “low wages”, now called for a massive “bailout” of the economy by a gigantic expansion of public works programs, price controls, subsidies, and the creation of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation just to name a few.

Four short years later in October of 1929, over a period of five days, a market built on imaginary wealth felt the full force of a debt based economy and collapsed with the Dow Jones Industrial Average closing 25% down from its high. Thus signaling the beginning of a decade’s long economic depression which would see the market lose 85% of its value and not trade at pre-crash levels again until January of 1951.³

As the depression took hold, the RFC dispersed billions of Dollars to state and local governments, made loans to banks, railroads, farm mortgage associations, and other businesses in an attempt to “fix” the economy. Interestingly, President Herbert Hoover is often blamed for “doing nothing”, however during the 1932 campaign for President, then candidate Franklin Delano Roosevelt said:⁴

Candidate Roosevelt promised Americans throughout the campaign that he would seek immediate and drastic reductions of all public expenditures, abolish useless commissions and offices, consolidate bureaus and eliminate [government] extravagances. He went on to imply specifically targeted tax cuts, and promised to retain a sound currency at all hazards. All of his campaign promises were also approved planks of the Democratic Party Platform of that same year.⁵

However, when Roosevelt took office after defeating Hoover, his promises and the party planks fell by the wayside. Apparently Roosevelt thought of himself as the Godlike man he spoke of during the campaign and instead went on to expand Hoover’s meddling and interventionism into the economy, offering the American people a “New Deal”. Even though the government school history books credit FDR with the New Deal and saving the economy, Rexford Guy Tugwell a Roosevelt aide said years later, “We didn’t admit it at the time, but practically the whole New Deal was extrapolated from programs that Hoover started.”⁸

Even with President Roosevelt’s meddling, the economy never recovered during his Presidency and only exacerbated the situation. Finally after emerging victorious from World War II and after FDR’s death, the American economy was able to drag itself out of the Great Depression.

In fact a recent study from 2004 by UCLA economists, Harold L. Cole and Lee E. Ohanian found that:

“Why the Great Depression lasted so long has always been a great mystery, and because we never really knew the reason, we have always worried whether we would have another 10- to 15-year economic slump,” said Ohanian, vice chair of UCLA’s Department of Economics. “We found that a relapse isn’t likely unless lawmakers gum up a recovery with ill-conceived stimulus policies.“⁶

Further, just six short years ago, current Chairman of the FEDERAL RESERVE, Ben Bernake, said during a speech at Milton Freidman’s 90th birthday that Mr. Friedman was right, the government’s intervention caused/prolonged the Great Depression.⁷

Thus, as we sit here today with our Hoover; President Bush, and the 2nd coming of FDR; President-Elect Obama, the same cycle is on track to repeat itself all over again. We have a housing crisis created and fostered by the Federal government via the “Community Reinvestment Act”, which mandated mortgage loans by banks to wholly unqualified loan applicants. A mismanaged monetary policy by the same culprits, ergo the FEDERAL RESERVE, which prevented the recession after the “Tech Bubble” burst. The TARP fund bailout in homage to the RFC, and an incoming President who thinks nationalization of industries, price and wage controls coupled with massive government construction projects will fix what the bankers and plutocrats created in the first place.

In conclusion, there are some notable exceptions which should not be ignored; for one, we no longer have any semblance of a sound currency as we did in 1929 and two, the creditors to all this debt are no longer domestic, as the majority of our government’s financing comes from over seas.

Souce(s): ¹Modern Money Mechanics, FEDERAL RESERVE Bank of CHICAGO • ² Lessons from the Great American Real Estate Bubble:Florida 1926, National Bureau of Economic Research & Rutgers Univ, July 2008 • ³ The Economist, “Economics focus: The Great Depression” September, 17th 1998 • ⁴ Ralph de Toledano, INSIGHT, “Democrats Don’t Recall FDR’s ‘Promises’• ⁵ The American Presidency Project, University of California, Santa Barbara • ⁶ FDR’s policies prolonged Depression by 7 years, UCLA economists calculate, UCLA newsroom • ⁷ Remarks by Governor Ben S. Bernanke At the Conference to Honor Milton Friedman, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, November 8, 2002, FEDERAL RESERVE BOARD • ⁸ Paul Johnson, “A History of the American People” – New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1997, p. 74

Allison Bricker

Secretary Henry Paulson took to the podium this morning to announce that the government has decided not to offer homeowners facing foreclosure any assistance and will instead just use the taxpayer bailout money, via the T.A.R.P (Troubled Asset Relief Program) program exclusively to purchase stocks in ailing banks in order to bolster their cash liquidity.¹ This is in stark contrast to what Secretary of Paulson said was the biggest threat at the time the legislation passed, homes in foreclosure.

Meanwhile,investment banks like Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley are still paying out bonuses to their bankers totaling $6.8 Billion and $6.4 Billion respectively.² Additionally, as Secretary Paulson effectively moved the goal posts regarding T.A.R.P., credit-card giant American Express gained approval from the Federal Reserve to become a “commercial-bank” thus opening the door for the credit giant access to bailout money.³

Fellow readers the snowball effect of moral hazard has indeed begun to gather critical mass. As predicted other struggling industries from a lobbyist group representing Hispanic Plumbers and Heating specialists⁴ desiring to be hired by treasury to maintain the purchased foreclosed homes to the faltering American auto industry, the leeches now have their smarmy hands out begging to be recipients of our hard earned tax dollars.

Finally, while this blogger never supported the bailout; partly due to my philosophy and partly based on my ingrained cynicism, this action by former Goldman Sachs employee, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, is dispicable and wholly indefensible.

How dare this plutocrat testify before Congress begging for speedy Congressional approval of the bailout bill based on the lie of helping down on their luck homeowners, when in fact it was destined for fellow plutocratic investment bankers. Shame on Congress for not seeing through this transparent scheme to secure the fortunes of Paulson’s fellow plutocrats. Shame on Senator McCain and President-Elect Obama for their lack of principles, vision, or judgement which could have wholly halted this hastily arranged scheme.

Fellow readers, we must, for the sake of our Republic, remove the private bankers from their throne of power over the American economy. If we do not, they will continue to wholly plunder and bankrupt our Treasury with their crafty corrupt schemes. The time is now upon us, to take a stand and begin the process to End the FED and break the bailout.

Source(s): ¹ CBS MarketWatch – “Text of Paulson’s Remarks on TARP • ² CBS News – “Hard Times, But Big Wall Street Bonuses • ³ The Press Association – “American Express to become bank” • ⁴ New York TImes “Lobbyists Swarm the Treasury for Piece of Bailout Pie”