Arkady's Thoughts

I have been resisting commenting on this movement hoping secretly that the notion of scapegoating the 1% of America's wealthy would not gather any steam - guess I was wrong.  At first blush the movement and its message appear to be quite appealing, after all, the imbalance in this country is frightening and the widening gap between the wealthy and poor is growing.  However it does not take a genius to figure out that the issue with our growing wealth disparity, mounting debt and increase in poverty has very little to do with the wealthy and everything to do with the political class that enables the injustice in the first place.  On top of that and more importantly, the general animosity and hate of success and the generalization that anyone making more than a million dollars is somehow evil and should be punished is misplaced and wrong - this is like jailing the crack addict in hopes that crack would go away - oh wait...  So the first thing we must do as observers...

Next week will be yet another unveiling of another plan full of promises to shore up Americas ailing financial woes.  Obama is ratcheting up the populist rhetoric sharply by first presenting a false choice during his "jobs bill" by suggesting that either the wealthy get tax breaks or teachers get to work and now by going directly after the richest of the rich.  According to the New York Times who I am sure are devastated by this proposal:  Mr. Obama, in a bit of political salesmanship, will call his proposal the “Buffett Rule,” in a reference to  Warren E. Buffett , the billionaire investor who has complained repeatedly that the richest Americans generally pay a smaller share of their income in federal taxes than do middle-income workers, because investment gains are taxed at a lower rate than wages.  Mr. Obama will not specify a rate or other details, and it is unclear how much revenue his plan would raise. But his idea of a millionaires’ minimum tax w...

Today is September 11th, 2011 - exactly ten years after a terrorist attack changed this country forever.  I am going to republish a piece I wrote two years ago because the exact same subject continues to haunt this country, a group of people convinced that the tragedy perpetrated by this country by enemies of the United States was nothing more than a complex conspiracy of epic proportions.  Using junk science, lies and distorted pieces of information the Truthers have sharply divided this country and continue to soil the memory of 9/11 with their senseless calls for "truth", accusations of wrongdoing and offensive insinuations. My original article also included the mention of Birthers who have largely vanished in the wake of tangible evidence released by the Obama administration, but it is a perfect example of how conspiracies become entrenched belief systems.  For a long time I would get emails from people convinced that the Birther issue was real and that ...

The past two days Americans were treated with a Republican debate and a speech from our President.  Both were snoozers as they said nothing new in reality, but one moment did jump out as notable.  An exchange occurred between Mitt Romney and Rick Perry over "provocative language" regarding Social Security. Why is this notable?  Social Security was once labeled as a sacred cow by Milton Friedman because if any politician dared to touch it they would be burnt toast.  Barry Goldwater serves as a shining example of how the ruthless American public will skewer any politician that goes after their "entitlements".   Seems like Rick Perry did not get the message, he not only called SS a Ponzi Scheme, but doubled down in the debate and reaffirmed his position when challenged by Romney.  Now, Romney being quite shrewd on what to say in order to garner maximum support spoke of saving SS even citing that it is a Republican tradition to do so.  This of cour...

Here ye, here ye, this is addressed to a certain segment of the Ron Paul movement in an effort to explain to you folks that what you are doing, the things you are saying and that your action is having a very negative impact on both the candidate Ron Paul and the entire liberty movement.  I know how passionate and hot headed you people are, so before you rush to the comment section to berate the living hell out of me please keep in mind that I am a Ron Paul supporter myself.  Although I do not agree with all of Paul's positions and in fact have some strong criticism of certain things he does I strongly believe that other than Gary Johnson (due to 8 years of executive experience) there is no other Republican candidate that can help this ailing country. Let me define this particular segment of the base to whom this is addressed. 1. First and foremost you are probably a zealot, while you may think that there is no amount of passion and fervor that can be devoted to a c...

I have had many issues with the way certain mainstream GOP blogs portray libertarian leaning candidates like Ron Paul and Gary Johnson, but sometimes they expose their own lack of understanding to such a point that it becomes impossible to ignore. HotAir's self proclaimed RINO Allahpundit who is generally very "reasonable" decides to poke fun at Ron Paul because Paul found Rick Perry's comments about the Fed to be ridiculous: Via  Politico , the key bit’s at 4:00. Can we now safely agree that Perry went too far? When  Ron Paul  is taking shots at you for being fringe-y, you’ve crossed a line that no man should cross. Except maybe in  libertarian Waterworld . “Now they have this other governor, I can’t remember his name,” Paul joked. “He realizes that talking about the Fed is good, too. But I’ll tell you what, he makes me sound like a moderate. I have never once said Bernanke has committed treason. But I have suggested very strongly...

Americans are waking up to some unpleasant news this Saturday morning, we have been downgraded.  Indeed, for the first time since 1917 Standard & Poor's has lowered our credit rating from AAA to AA+ ( full text ).  Their outlook is negative, meaning that we could be lowered to AA if our situation worsens. The reaction on the Internet seems to be one of shock and fear, but neither reactions are appropriate.  Lets first examine some of the key points of the text to find out what S&P lists as their primary reason for this particular action. The downgrade reflects our opinion that the fiscal consolidation plan that Congress and the Administration recently agreed to falls short of what, in our view, would be necessary to stabilize the government's medium-term debt dynamics. ...and... We lowered our long-term rating on the U.S. because we believe that the prolonged controversy over raising the statutory debt ceiling and the related...