Free Republic

Mark Levin spent part of his first hour playing Milton Friedman clips and explaining why Romney’s position on minimum wage is wrong, to educate the man and us. But as you’ll see in his monologue below, it frustrates him very much that he feels he has to do so. He starts by playing a clip of Romney today that he was very much unimpressed with, which then turned into this amazing monologue where he explained why he is frustrated with Romney’s lack of conservatism. This is a MUST LISTEN. Here is a partial quote from his monologue but you should...

Mark Levin: Mark blasts the Republican Establishment and Explains Corporatism vs Capitalism

http://www.kingofbain.com/

Just two weeks after one of the firms benefiting from a $100 million state electric car battery subsidy deal announced layoffs of 125 Michigan workers (A123 Corporation), the state Senate has authorized a $50 million deal for another electric car project (Who Voted "Yes" and Who Voted "No"). The latest combination of cash grants and tax breaks would go to a firm called Townsend Ventures, which wants to use the former Ford Motors Wixom plant to make systems related to electric cars and batteries, including the “development and installation of a cost effective, national, electric vehicle recharging system.” This would...

Capitalism is the greatest socio-economic system in human history, because it’s so moral and so productive – the two features so essential to human survival and flourishing. It’s moral because it enshrines and fosters rationality and self-interest – “enlightened greed,” if you will – the two key virtues we all must consciously adopt and practice if we’re to pursue and attain life and love, health and wealth, adventure and inspiration. It produces not only material-economic abundance but the aesthetic values seen in the arts and entertainment. But what is capitalism, exactly? How do we know it when we see it...

Barney Frank, former chairman of the Financial Services Committee, was very cozy with the financial sector for a very long time. This should serve as indictment of legislative record. For the New York Times' leading Frank sanitizer, David Firestone, however, the Frank-Bank friendship is a sign of Frank's "moderation." Firestone blogs at the NYT, "economically, Mr. Frank is essentially a centrist." Firestone's evidence, point by point:  Frank "talks often of the need for a 'grand bargain' between business and liberals." This has a name. It's called corporatism. Call it corporate socialism, or corporate welfare. It's also not a crazy idea, when you...

<p>Sarah Palin said some amazing and terrific things the other day — and nobody who wasn’t there heard about them. From, believe it or not, The New York Times, in which a columnist points out that we’re so used to goofiness coming from Palin that we missed some really interesting things at the Tea Party meeting last week — something that even liberals would have found compelling. Read past the jump for Anand Giridharadas’s summary of the great things Palin said. A hint, to get you to read further: “Ms. Palin may be hinting at a new political alignment that would pit a vigorous localism against a kind of national-global institutionalism.”</p>

Link only, per FR posting rules

Know the difference between the State and government? Another short segments distilling down the cornerstone books from our conservative heritage Nock inspired Buckley, C.S. Lewis, Hayek, Kirk et al. with his groundbreaking 1935 book 'Our Enemy, The State'. The book launched a full-frontal intellectual assault on the perverted use of the law to advantage some at the expense of others.

Corporatism In the last half of the 19th century people of the working class in Europe were beginning to show interest in the ideas of socialism and syndicalism. Some members of the intelligentsia, particularly the Catholic intelligentsia, decided to formulate an alternative to socialism which would emphasize social justice without the radical solution of the abolition of private property. The result was called Corporatism. The name had nothing to do with the notion of a business corporation except that both words are derived from the Latin word for body, corpus. The basic idea of corporatism is that the society and...

Energy Policy: If we're serious about cutting wasteful spending and reining in government, the abolition of subsidies for ethanol production and the ending of mandates for its use would be a good place to start. The Bush tax cuts aren't the only thing that expires at the end of the year. Also set to expire is the mother of all corporate welfare: ethanol subsidies to Big Agriculture coupled with tariffs protecting domestic ethanol production that benefit farm-state senators and congressmen but few others. Ethanol is the perfect tax-spend-and-elect mechanism. Illinois-based Archer Daniels Midland, the nation's second-largest ethanol producer, has operations...

Now that election 2010 is over, let’s go back over to OpenSecrets and look at which evil corporations stole our democracy and bought Congress for the Republicans — the RepubliCorp! First suspect: the military-industrial complex! •Defense Contractors: 55% Democrat, 44% Republican ($18 million) Oh, really? Well, then, it must have been Wall Street! That’s it: Wall Street bought Congress for the GOP! •Securities & Investment: 53% Democrat, 46% Republican ($8.2 million) Oh. Well, even if Wall Street as a whole preferred Democrats, it must have been the real bad guys, those risky Hedge funds and exotic investors… •Hedge Funds: 53%...

Rand Paul Suggests Economic Decline Could Lead To A New Hitler Evan McMorris-Santoro September 22, 2010, 2:02PMKY Sen. candidate Rand Paul (R) More goodness from Jason Zengerle's tasty profile of Rand Paul in GQ: The Republican nominee for Senate in Kentucky just wants you to know that, with the way things are going these days, a new Hitler could be in America's future at any moment. It's probably a good idea to keep an eye out for that, folks. Here's the long quote from Paul that Zengerle snagged on the trail with the candidate: "In 1923, when they destroyed the...

Opponents of President Barack Obama and the Nancy Pelosi Congress will often accuse them of being "socialist." I find that this term is unhelpful, as many folks use direct government takeover of industrial enterprises as the litmus test for socialism, and thus will reject this hypothesis about the president. It is more useful to think of this administration as pursuing a European-style corporate state, a form of political economy that allows the state to exert strong control in the economy while maintaining a nominal façade of private ownership. While the intellectual origins of the corporate state go back much further,...

President Barack Obama on Wednesday signed into law the most historic shake-up of the regulation of U.S. banks since the Great Depression, placing new fees and limits on the nation's biggest banks, imposing new restrictions on the $450-trillion derivatives market, and crafting a major new consumer-protection division for mortgage and credit-card products. "Financial reform is not just good for consumers, it is good for the economy," Obama said at a signing ceremony with dozens of Democratic lawmakers and consumer advocates in attendance. "Passing this bill was no easy task. To get there, we had to overcome the furious lobbying of...

Voters support the idea of "free enterprise" significantly more than they do the concept of "capitalism," according to a poll released Tuesday. The survey, conducted by Republican pollster Steve Lombardo’s consulting group, showed that 78 percent of voters have a very positive or somewhat positive view of “free enterprise” but that only 57 percent have the same thoughts about “capitalism.” Nineteen percent of respondents viewed “capitalism” very negatively or somewhat negatively while only four percent had the same views of “free enterprise.” The poll was commissioned by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, one of the nation’s most influential business groups....

An extension of a special tax favor for Michigan International Speedway was approved by the Michigan House on June 10 and sent to the Senate, but not without a dozen votes of opposition from both Republicans and Democrats. Critics from both parties used the opportunity to make public statements denouncing the policy of state government giving preferential perks to favored businesses. The Michigan Economic Development Corp. is the embattled state agency that runs the program for granting the special tax perks. It is under fire after recently creating a deal for a company run by a convicted embezzler, and has...

ShoreBank, Obama, big labor, community organizers, manufacturers, Canadian socialists, progressive trade organizations, triple bottom-line corporations & the Small Business Administration, on the "High Road" to the controlled society by JeanWTPUSA, www.wethepeopleusa.ning.com Stanley Kurtz, a Senior Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center pointed out in a 09/23/08 Wall Street Journal article that, “Despite having authored two autobiographies, Barack Obama has never written about his most important executive experience.” The experience that Kurtz referred to was Obama’s appointment in 1995 as Chairman of the Board at the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC) a “school reform organization” founded by his longtime friend...

Here is yet more of the reason that Barack Obama is apparently asking you to to stop using interactive technology so much, but if you do, to go read in George Soros backed Huffington Post. But, that only encourages you, right? This is a collection of articles likely shared in forum(s), posted by "Ask Marion" in blog, Daily Thought Pad and by "KNOWLEDGE_IS_POWER" in blog, Knowledge Creates Power, 5/8/2010 A CORNUCOPIA OF CORRUPTION AND TREASON; MULTIPLE ARTICLES WITHIN "THE NEW WORLD ORDER"Please take a few moments to check this out before dismissing it. You can only win if you know...

Lately many have characterized this administration as socialist, or having strong socialist leanings. I differ with this characterization. This is not to say Mr. Obama believes in free-markets by any means. On the contrary, he has done and said much that demonstrates his fundamental misunderstanding and hostility towards the truly free market. But a closer, honest examination of his policies and actions in office reveals that, much like the previous administration, he is very much a corporatist. This in many ways can be more insidious and worse than being an outright socialist. Socialism is a system where the government directly...

Lately many have characterized this administration as socialist, or having strong socialist leanings. I differ with this characterization. This is not to say Mr. Obama believes in free-markets by any means. On the contrary, he has done and said much that demonstrates his fundamental misunderstanding and hostility towards the truly free market. But a closer, honest examination of his policies and actions in office reveals that, much like the previous administration, he is very much a corporatist. This in many ways can be more insidious and worse than being an outright socialist. Socialism is a system where the government directly...

You could call it "socialism for the rich," and, if it keeps going unchecked, will enslave us all. What is corporatism anyway? We'll also talk to Ryan Mauro about the danger posed by an allied Russia and Iran and the threat posed by this week's dirty nuke scare in New Delhi

What is corporatism? In a (somewhat inaccurate) phrase, socialism for the bourgeois. It has the outward form of capitalism in that it preserves private ownership & private management but with a crucial difference: as under socialism, government guarantees the flow of material goods which under true capitalism it does not. In classical capitalism...government's role in the economy is simply to prevent force or fraud from disrupting the autonomous operation of the free market...Under corporatism, it is not, instead being systematically manipulated to deliver goods to political constituencies... Unlike socialism, corporatism understands that direct government ownership of the means of production...

State Leaders Face Pinched Budgets and Threats to Safety NetTo hear Republicans in Congress tell it, the Grand Old Party is pretty much united against the deficit-spending approach to economic recovery. Don’t tell that to local GOP officials. Faced with the most severe budget crises in decades, state and local policymakers from across the country — including a growing list of prominent Republicans — have been only too happy to accept the additional federal funding that accompanied last year’s $787 billion stimulus bill. Not only did that money prop up job markets, many say, but it kept social-service programs running...

WWW.FRONTPAGEMAG.COM Font: What is American Corporatism? By: Robert Locke Friday, September 13, 2002 Neither Left nor Right admit it, but our economy is increasingly not capitalist but corporatist.  Government manipulates free markets to deliver goods to favored political constituencies. We are probably heading into some economic heavy weather which will spur needed debate on what's right and wrong with our economy. This will require our being clear about what kind of economy we really have. I have mentioned before that we increasingly live not in a capitalist society but in a corporatist one, and I would like to flesh...

The primary trailer to Michael Moore's latest hideously unwatchable “documentary” Capitalism: A Love Story features a narration of a series of events surrounding the financial crisis beginning in late 2008 and the federal government's particular method for addressing it with Moore ultimately proclaiming that “By spending just a few million dollars to buy Congress Wall Street was given billions.” No arguing with that proposition. After just 22 seconds time Moore takes us to Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D) of Ohio who laments the fact that “Everything was being handled by the Treasury Secretary from Goldman Sachs...they [influential Wall Street firms] had...

When a hundred men stand together, each of them loses his mind and gets another one. – Friedrich Nietzsche For those of us who work in a corporate environment, it is very clear that we either follow corporate policies or lose our job. At my workplace for example, we are not allowed to display any sort of religious material in or outside our offices. We are also forced to accept our company’s policies in regards to environmentalism or alternative lifestyles. Company policies are not created from the consensus or vote by the employees. Many companies have and are engaged in...

Wal-Mart, the company the left loves to hate, has crawled in bed with Obama Recent press reports, including a front-page story in the Wall Street Journal, have the news that Wal-Mart has signed a letter to President Obama endorsing the idea of an “employer mandate” – a requirement that employers offer health insurance to their employees.Why would Wal-Mart – the nation’s largest employer – endorse such an idea?Simple: It would cripple many of their competitors. (Source: Heritage Foundation) Back in the 80's and early 90's Wal-Mart and Microsoft prided themselves on staying far away from politics: No lobbyists and no...

A Joke:To thunderous applause and presidential approval, Government Motors announced its new concept car, The 2010 Obama. It runs on hot air and broken promises and has three wheels that speed the vehicle through tight left turns. The car comes complete with two teleprompters programmed to stream Democratic propaganda, and the transparent canopy reveals the smug satisfaction on the faces of the gullible owners. Back to Reality: The Studebaker DictatorYes, an American car company called Studebaker really did name a model "The Dictator." The Studebaker Dictator, according to Wikipedia, was a popular model from 1927 to 1937, right up...

The media have lamented use of the word fascism when it has been used to describe moves by the Bush and Obama administrations and the private sector economy. But when examined from a purely political and economic point-of-view, that is what's going on now according to Thomas Sowell, Stanford University's Hoover Institute Senior Fellow and author of "The Housing Boom and Bust." Sowell appeared on Glenn Beck's May 27 program and was asked if the United States was still a capitalist country. ...more (w/video)... "Oh, heavens, partially," Sowell replied. "We're not a socialist country, because the socialists believe in government...

"Fascism should rightly be called Corporatism, as it is the merger of corporate and government power." Benito Mussolini Some members of the Republican National Committee have recently wondered aloud what others of us wonder privately. What name do we give to the direction in which Democrats and the Obama administration are taking America? In 20th Century Italy and Germany, particularly during 1933-1945, fascism merged the self-interests of despotic, single-party rulers with large corporations for whom big war offered big profits. Mussolini called it Corporatism. In 1937, when thoughtful people were examining the major economic systems queuing up to fight another...

Self-proclaimed "conservatives" love to tout themselves as ardent supporters of the "free enterprise" system. In the name of "capitalism," they support any and every piece of legislation or governmental decision that caters to business — especially Big Business. Favorite policies of these folks include anything and everything that calls itself "free trade." Furthermore, these same "conservatives" will support just about anything and everything that is said to advance the so-called "global economy." Needless to say, in the name of "free trade" millions of American jobs and thousands of American manufacturing plants have been outsourced to foreign countries and interests. And...

Either your brains or your signature will be on this resignation letter. That's what Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner might as well be saying to the next corporate CEOs he intends to muscle out of their posts. Bloomberg reports Treasury's highest-ranking tax evader said he is gearing up to turn senior management and boards of directors at banks that require "exceptional" assistance from the U.S. government into roadkill. "If in the future, banks need exceptional assistance in order to get through this, then we will make sure that assistance comes," while ensuring taxpayers are protected, Geithner said today in an interview...

Phil Tetlock and Barbara Mellers were in a race against time to save their 15-year-old daughter, Jenny. As I reported last summer, Jenny developed a degenerative muscle disease nearly two years ago, soon after being vaccinated against the cervical-cancer-causing HPV. She became nearly completely paralyzed, though her mind was perfectly intact and she could still enjoy her pet parakeet, Hannah Montana, and Twilight. I've been E-mailing Phil regularly over the past year, and up until our last E-mail, one week ago, he had been holding out hope that they would be able to find a cure for his daughter—or to...

President-elect Barack Obama's "Blueprint for Change" calls for "affordable, accessible health care for all." After a quote from a speech he gave in Iowa City explaining that we have an "obligation" to "turn the page on the failed politics of yesterday's health care debates," he outlines his plans "at a glance." According to the brief summary, 45.5 million people aren't covered, costs have doubled over the last eight years, and not enough money is spent on preventative care. The legislation Obama plans to sign into law by the end of his first term would somehow reduce the cost of healthcare...

It is sad what has happened to the United States. For years, as editor of Manufacturing & Technology News, I have heard dozens of domestic manufacturing company CEOs talk about an impending "collapse" of the U.S. economy. These were the men who were in the unenviable position of having to close their companies or shut down factories and watch as most all of their competitors did the same thing. These were the men who implemented Six Sigma, lean, ISO 9000, and the Baldrige National Quality and Shingo Prize criteria. They were leaders who agonized over having to move the world's...

Not content with the current (and already massive) statutory damages allowed under copyright law, the RIAA is pushing to expand the provision. The issue is compilations, which now are treated as a single work. In the RIAA's perfect world, each copied track would count as a separate act of infringement, meaning that a copying a ten-song CD even one time could end up costing a defendant $1.5 million if done willfully. Sound fair? Proportional? Necessary? Not really, but that doesn't mean it won't become law. The change to statutory damages is contained in the PRO-IP Act that is currently up...

Lavish Payout, Perks for Failed Mortgage CEO His Severance Package Includes Jet Use, Country Club Dues and a Hefty Payout By DANIEL ARNALL ABC NEWS Business Unit Jan. 11, 2008 — Angelo Mozilo, the co-founder and public face of troubled mortgage giant Countrywide, is eligible for tens if not hundreds of millions in compensation and perks on the sale of the company to Bank of America. During calendar 2006, the latest period available for review in Securities and Exchange Commission filings, Mozilo took home $48.1 million in compensation. An early analysis of SEC filings by the Los Angeles Times suggests...

WASHINGTON, DC, October 5, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption, yesterday released new documents obtained from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) under the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act, detailing a total of as many as eleven deaths related to Merck's HPV vaccine Gardasil.  Those deaths resulted between June 8, 2006 - when the vaccine received approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) - and August 2007 when the latest data was available. The adverse reports coming from the HPV vaccine are increasing daily at...

One of Hillary Clinton's most important courtships began early last year, around a formal dinner table at Georgetown's Four Seasons Hotel. Her targets were Morgan Stanley CEO John Mack and his wife, Christy. Mack was already active politically - but on behalf of Clinton's political opponents. A Bush "Ranger," he had raised at least $200,000 for the President's reelection bid and was one of the most prominent business names on GOP donor lists. At one time his name had circulated as a potential Bush Treasury Secretary. But these are strangely fluid political times, with long-held alliances shifting under the weight...

WASHINGTON, June 24 (UPI) -- U.S. Sen. Diane Feinstein, D-Calif., said Sunday she is "looking at" the possibility of reviving the fairness doctrine for U.S. broadcasters. Feinstein, speaking on "Fox News Sunday" with Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss., said talk radio in particular has presented a one-sided view of immigration reform legislation being considered by the Senate. U.S. talk radio is dominated by conservative voices. "This is a very complicated bill," said Feinstein. "Most people don't know what's in this bill. Therefore, to just have one or two things dramatized and taken out of context, such as the word amnesty --...

A New Deal for Globalization By Kenneth F. Scheve and Matthew J. Slaughter From Foreign Affairs, July/August 2007 WAGES FALLING, PROTECTIONISM RISING Over the last several years, a striking new feature of the U.S. economy has emerged: real income growth has been extremely skewed, with relatively few high earners doing well while incomes for most workers have stagnated or, in many cases, fallen. Just what mix of forces is behind this trend is not yet clear, but regardless, the numbers are stark. Less than four percent of workers were in educational groups that enjoyed increases in mean real money earnings...

Congress is fundamentally a gathering of horse-traders, and the body always seems to find a way to put pork into its already-lavish spending bills. When recent reports revealed that the supplemental spending bills for Iraq contained funding for peanut storage and spinach growers, Congress finally caved—apparently that was a bridge too far. But that won’t be the last we hear from farm commodity groups this year. The current farm bill, a multi-year spending program for commodity and rural programs, is due for renewal in September, and Secretary of Agriculture Mike Johanns is causing a stir by becoming the first ag...

ON APRIL 2, this newspaper reported that the Los Angeles Police Department had asked Philip Morris USA for a $50,000 donation to help fund its investigation into counterfeit cigarettes. That makes a lot of sense: If TV cop shows have commercials, why shouldn't real police work have corporate sponsors too (you know, aside from the obvious reasons of favoritism, bias and perverse incentives)? For that matter, what's wrong with wealthy families in La Cañada Flintridge, San Marino and other communities holding constant fundraisers to pay for the unfunded needs of their local public schools — drama societies and marching bands...

SACRAMENTO — Abandoning the business lobby's traditional resistance to healthcare reform, a new coalition of 36 major companies plans to launch a political campaign today calling for medical insurance to be expanded to everyone along lines Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is proposing for California. Founded by Steve Burd, chairman of the Safeway grocery chain and an ally of the governor, the coalition could boost efforts in Sacramento and Washington, D.C., to overhaul healthcare laws. It also formalizes a growing division over the issue among businesses. The coalition includes some of the nation's largest companies: PepsiCo, General Mills, Pacific Gas and Electric...

Paul Tudor Jones, the wealthy hedge fund manager, has become the latest in a growing band from his profession to throw their weight behind Barack Obama, the US senator vying for the Democratic presidential nomination. Mr Jones is said to be planning to host a 500-guest fundraiser for Mr Obama on May 19. The event will be held at Mr Jones’s seaside mansion in Greenwich, Connecticut, a big US centre for hedge funds. “The whole of Greenwich is backing Obama,” said one leading US businessman. Hedge fund managers, whose newly found wealth has made them attractive targets for presidential hopefuls,...

Wal-Mart has taken its lumps lately, especially from the Democratic Party over its treatment of employees. So the company has been courting the new majority on Capitol Hill by doing a lot of the standard stuff: hiring Democratic executives and donating more to the campaigns of Democratic candidates. Its political action committee has given 49 percent of its funds to Democrats this year, up from 32 percent in last year's election. But last week Wal-Mart's outreach got personal as well -- it's now doing favors for the families of powerful Democratic senators. Last Tuesday evening, the world's largest retailer sponsored...

I wonder how many people actually believe it when the governor's office says it was just a coincidence that the drug company Merck donated $5,000 to Rick Perry's campaign on the same day Perry's people discussed Merck's HPV vaccine. Hey, it could happen. Coincidences happen all the time, like when an 18-wheeler jackknifes on Interstate 35, and a traffic jam follows. Or, Dick Cheney shows up, and a protest breaks out. Or Christmas is coming comes, and Santa appears at the mall. Coincidence or not, what I can't figure out is why the governor only got $5,000. That's chicken...

Worries about the dark side of free trade are surfacing in the United States in ways that could affect the course of globalization worldwide. Don't expect an outright retreat from global commerce just yet, but it is becoming more likely that the US will act to temper and manage its impact. The reason: Free-trade brush fires have recently erupted on economic and political fronts: • This week, the Commerce Department said America's trade deficit rose to $764 billion in 2006, as imports outstripped exports by a record amount for a fifth straight year. • Democrats are in control of Congress,...

Corporatism and Socialism in America by Anthony Gregory, Posted February 23, 2005 Principled advocacy of the free market requires an understanding of the differences between genuine free enterprise and “state capitalism.” Although the Left frequently exaggerates and overemphasizes the evils of corporate America, proponents of the free market often find themselves in the awkward position of defending the status quo of state capitalism, which is in fact a common adversary of the free marketer and the anti-corporate leftist, even if the latter misdiagnoses the problem and proposes the wrong solutions. Indeed, corporatism, implemented by the state — whether through direct...