Category Archives: Bill Clinton

Ronald Wilson Reagan Part 95 B (How to get out of recession, Obama should note Reagan’s path)

June 30, 2011 – 6:54 am

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President and Nancy Reagan with Prince Charles and Princess Diana in the Yellow Oval room. 11/9/85.

Ronald Reagan – The Presidential Years Part 1 of 4

Larry Elder makes some excellent points in his article, “Economy: Reagan Gets No Credit, Obama Gets No Blame”:

Ronald Reagan did nothing. Barack Obama saved the nation from total collapse.

How else to explain the absence of jobless pitchfork-wielding Americans storming the White House? How else to explain the contrast between the explosive Reagan Recovery and the dud on our hands right now? Fortunately, the left is up to the task.

“The secret of the long climb after 1982 was the economic plunge that preceded it. By the end of 1982 the U.S. economy was deeply depressed, with the worst unemployment rate since the Great Depression. So there was plenty of room to grow before the economy returned to anything like full employment,” said left-wing economist, Nobel laureate and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman in 2004. Oh.

An economy that is “deeply depressed,” Krugman insists, or at least he did seven years ago, naturally comes back strong. To what principal factor did Krugman point to in calling the 1982 economy “deeply depressed”? Unemployment. It peaked in the early ’80s at 10.8 percent, even higher than during “The Great Recession” (aka the economy “inherited” by President Barack Obama). In 2010, the unemployment rate hit 10.2 percent, which means the early ’80s still holds the record for the “worst unemployment rate since the Great Depression.”

What most people care about are jobs. By that standard, Reagan faced an even tougher economy. Throw in a higher rate of inflation — 1980’s 13.5 percent average vs. 2011’s 2.6 percent — and much higher prime interest rates — 20 percent vs. 3.25 percent — and the early ’80s looked even grimmer than The Great Recession.

Krugman gives no credit to the Reagan policies of lower taxes, deregulation and a slowdown in the rate of government spending. He believes Reagan’s policies (SET ITAL) harmed (END ITAL) the economy. Krugman approvingly quotes Bill Clinton, who, as a presidential candidate, said: “The Reagan-Bush years have exalted private gain over public obligation, special interests over the common good, wealth and fame over work and family. The 1980s ushered in a Gilded Age of greed and selfishness, of irresponsibility and excess, and of neglect.”

Enter President Barack “Hope and Change” Obama, with a Democratic majority in the House and a supermajority filibuster-proof Senate. Out went policies like reductions in income taxes, corporate taxes, capital gains and dividends. In came transfers of money from one pocket to another to “spread the wealth.”

Under ObamaCare, the Democrats placed the entire health care system under the command and control of the federal government. Through a nearly $1 billion “stimulus” package, Democrats spent money on “shovel-ready” projects with a promise to “save or create” 3.5 million jobs. To rein in “greed” and to fight “climate change,” the Obama administration imposed billions of dollars’ worth of new regulations on businesses. Through “quantitative easting,” the Federal Reserve effectively printed money to keep interest rates low, a widely disputed policy designed to encourage banks to lend and businesses to borrow.

So where is it? When do we see the massive bounce-back from this “deeply depressed” economy, at minimum the kind of bounce-back that occurred in the ’80s in spite of the allegedly harmful policies of Reagan?

Krugman’s analysis of the Reagan recovery — a deep recession equals sharp recovery — tells us that the economy should be storming ahead, especially given Obama’s enlightened leadership. But in the seven quarters following the end of this recession, gross domestic product growth has averaged 2.8 percent. In the seven quarters following the Reagan recession, GDP growth averaged 7.1 percent.

Forecasters are now lowering expectations for economic growth. Ominously, “core inflation,” which excludes “volatile” categories of food and fuel, is up. Unemployment, after dipping below 9 percent, is now back to 9.1 percent.

So how does the left explain this?

“This was a (SET ITAL) financial (END ITAL) (emphasis added) crisis,” explains Robert Shapiro, a Clinton administration economist, “and these take longer to recover from.” Does this explain why last spring the Obama administration confidently predicted a “Recovery Summer”? Does this explain why the Obama economic team predicted that the 2009 passage of “stimulus” would prevent unemployment, then at 7 percent, from reaching 8 percent? Krugman, of course, in refusing to credit Reagan policies for the Reagan Recovery, made no distinction between a “financial” and a regular old crisis.

It’s flat-out tough to explain how anti-Reagan policies are supposed to produce Reagan-like growth.

Here’s the real explanation. The top priority of the left isn’t “jobs, jobs, jobs.” Andy Stern, the former head of the Service Employees International Union and hero to the left, makes this clear: “Western Europe, as much as we used to make fun of it, has made different trade-offs which may have ended with a little more unemployment but a lot more equality.”

The goal of the leftist is social justice — using government to close the gap between the have and the have-nots, to secure the “right” to health care. Obama’s policies are therefore an acceptable trade-off even though they kill jobs — as long as it’s somebody else’s job that gets killed.

 

By Everette Hatcher III | Also posted in President Obama, Ronald Reagan | Comments (0)

Who was Milton Friedman and what did he say about Social Security Reform? (Part 7) (Friedman v. Bill Clinton Part B)

June 22, 2011 – 12:01 am
Milton Friedman congratulated by President Ronald Reagan. © 2008 Free To Choose Media, courtesy of the Power of Choice press kit

The government solution to a problem is usually as bad as the problem.
Milton Friedman

The Debt Bomb: A Decade of DC Spending is Driving America Closer to an Economic Apocalypse

Alexis Garcia reports on America’s exploding debt. Experts blame entitlements like Social Security and government spending. But what is the solution? Can we raise taxes without crushing the economy and the middle class? Does Obama really want to lower the debt, or does he support continued deficit spending? See interviews with Douglas Holtz-Eakin, Brian Riedl, Jason Peuquet and former Congressman Ernest Istook (R-OK).

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 Milton Friedman (Милтон Фридман)

In this series I want to both look  closely at who Milton Friedman was and what his views were about Social Security reform. Here is the sixth portion of an autobiography from Nobelprize.org:

As Rose wrote in our memoirs, “As we look back at the events chronicled in this chapter, it all seems like something of a fairy tale. Who would have dreamed that after retiring from teaching, Milton would be able to preach the doctrine of human freedom to many millions of people in countries around the globe through television, millions more through our book based on the television program, and countless others through videocassettes” (p. 503).

Monetary Trends in the United States and the United Kingdom, published in 1982, was the final major product of a collaboration with Anna J. Schwartz under the auspices of the National Bureau of Economic Research that lasted more than three decades. Money Mischief (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1992) collects assorted pieces of monetary history, some of which I had published elsewhere, some of which appear first in this book.

I have continued to be active in public policy since 1977. I continued my tri-weekly column in Newsweek until it was terminated in 1983. Since then, I have published numerous op-eds in major newspapers. I served as an unofficial adviser to Ronald Reagan during his candidacy for the presidency in 1980, and as a member of the President’s Economic Policy Advisory Board during his presidency. In 1988, President Reagan awarded me the Presidential Medal of Freedom and in the same year I was awarded the National Medal of Science.

We have traveled extensively since 1977, including a trip through Eastern Europe in 1990, where we filmed a documentary on former Soviet satellites. The documentary was included in a shortened reissue of Free to Choose.

Perhaps the most notable foreign travel consisted of three trips to China: one in 1980 when I gave a series of lectures under the auspices of the Chinese government; one in 1988 when I attended a conference in Shanghai on Chinese economic development and had a fascinating session in Beijing with Zhao Ziyang, at the time, the General Secretary of the Communist Party, deposed a few months later for his unwillingness to approve the use of force on Tiananmen Square; and one in 1993 when I traveled with a group of Chinese friends from Hong Kong throughout the country. The three visits covered a period of revolutionary economic growth and development, the first stage of a shift from an authoritarian, centrally planned economy to a largely free market economy.

Ever since the 1950s, Rose and I have been interested in the promotion of parental choice in schooling through the use of vouchers. Finally, in 1996, when it became clear that our personal involvement would have to be limited, we established a foundation, The Milton and Rose D. Friedman Foundation devoted to promoting parental choice in schooling. We were fortunate in being able to persuade Gordon St. Angelo to serve as president. He has done an outstanding job. Progress toward our objective of universal vouchers has been distressingly slow, but there has been progress. The pace of progress shows every sign of speeding up, and our foundation has made a significant contribution to that progress.

In 1998, the University of Chicago Press published our memoirs, Milton and Rose D. Friedman, Two Lucky People.

Milton Friedman died on November 16, 2006.

Investing Social Security funds in the stock market would be a fine idea, wouldn’t it? President Clinton thinks so. Nobel laureate and Hoover fellow Milton Friedman thinks not.

President Clinton has proposed that a quarter of the funds set aside for Social Security be invested in the stock market—a truly radical plan…

Suppose the president’s proposed policy had been followed in its most extreme form from the outset of Social Security in 1937 (i.e., that the whole excess of Social Security tax receipts over Social Security benefit payments, not just one-quarter, had been invested in the stock market). Offhand, it looks as if the trust fund would own only about 5 percent of all domestic corporations ($656 billion out of $13 trillion).

But that is too simple. Most of the accruing funds would have been invested at far lower stock prices than those that prevailed at the end of 1997. Suppose that stock prices, dividend yields, Social Security tax receipts, and Social Security benefit payments had all been what they were—that is, not affected by the investment of Social Security funds in stocks instead of government bonds. On that assumption, the trust fund at the end of 1997 would have totaled not $656 billion but more than ten times as much, approximately $7 trillion. In that case, the Social Security trust fund would own more than half of all domestic corporations! To return to my socialist fantasy, full funding would long since have brought complete socialism.

That too is too simple. Neither stock prices nor other economic magnitudes could have behaved as they actually did, with so much extra money flowing into the market. But what this calculation demonstrates is (1) the widely recognized fact of how much better equity stocks are as an investment than government bonds and (2) how seriously the government purchase of private securities would threaten our freedom.

Have we not learned from the experience of the past century that private property is the key bulwark of personal freedom? Has that experience not shown how dangerous it is to transfer a larger and larger fraction of the productive assets of the country into the hands of a government bureaucracy?

If the corresponding sums had been accumulated by private individuals and not used to finance government spending, they would have been a real addition to the nation’s capital and not just a bookkeeping entry. Those sums would have been invested in ways citizens or their advisers chose. The end result would have been more productive investment, a larger stream of income, and a freer, more responsible, more productive society.

Milton Friedman, recipient of the 1976 Nobel Memorial Prize for economic science, was a senior research fellow at the Hoover Institution from 1977 to 2006. He passed away on Nov. 16, 2006. He was also the Paul Snowden Russell Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus of Economics at the University of Chicago, where he taught from 1946 to 1976, and a member of the research staff of the National Bureau of Economic Research from 1937 to 1981.

Reprinted with minor editorial changes from the Wall Street Journal, January 26, 1999, from an article entitled “Social Security Socialism.” Reprinted with permission of the Wall Street Journal. © 1999 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All rights reserved.

Available from the Hoover Press is the videotape “Social Insecurity: Reforming Social Security,” an episode of the weekly television program Uncommon Knowledge, jointly produced by the Hoover Institution and the San Jose PBS affiliate KTEH.

 

By Everette Hatcher III | Also posted in Milton Friedman, Social Security | Comments (0)

Bill Clinton with Ronald Wilson Reagan (Part 92)

June 14, 2011 – 5:46 am

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President Reagan, Nancy Reagan, Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton attending the Dinner Honoring the Nation’s Governors. 2/22/87.

ronald reagan debates walter mondale in 1984 Presidential race second clip

Lee Edwards of the Heritage Foundation wrote an excellent article on Ronald Reagan and the events that transpired during the Reagan administration,  and I wanted to share it with you. Here is the fifth portion:

Though Reagan promised deep cuts in domestic spending, that did not turn out to be the case. Indeed, overall welfare spending increased during the Reagan presidency — primarily because Reagan could not overcome, even with vetoes and the bully pulpit of the White House, the spending impulses of Congress, which, after all, signed the checks. Throughout his two terms, he was confronted by Democrats still enthralled by the New Deal as well as Republicans (particularly in the Senate) still mesmerized by its political appeal.

When the administration proposed to abolish the Department of Education in 1981, Howard Baker, the first Republican Senate majority leader since 1954, actively opposed abolition.[x] Baker wanted to remain majority leader and was worried that getting rid of the department would alienate too many voters.

Reagan was not discouraged. He understood he had to proceed prudently with cuts, one billion dollars at a time — he could not just pull the plug on the federal government. Over the past fifty years, millions of people had grown dependent upon it.

Many people remember Reagan saying in his inaugural address that “government is not the solution to our problems; government is the problem.” But the new president also said:

It is not my intention to do away with government. It is rather to make it work — work with us, not over us; to stand by our side, not ride on our back. Government can and must provide opportunity, not smother it; foster productivity, not stifle it.[xi]

Here was no radical libertarian with a copy of Atlas Shrugged in his back pocket but a traditional conservative guided by the prudential arguments of The Federalist. Reagan was a modern federalist, echoing James Madison’s call for a balance between the authority of the national and state governments. He also shared Madison’s concern about “the abridgement of the freedom of the people” by the “gradual and silent encroachment of those in power.” As he later said in his 1990 autobiography, “We had strayed a great distance from our founding fathers’ vision of America.”[xii]

He was determined to recapture that lost vision. As he stated in his inaugural, he would begin by seeking to “curb the size and influence of the federal establishment.” Revealing his pragmatism, his immediate target was the welfare excesses of Lyndon B. Johnson, not the long-established social programs of Franklin D. Roosevelt. As he wrote in his diary in January 1982, “The press is trying to paint me as trying to undo the New Deal. I’m trying to undo the Great Society.”[xiii]

It was a slow uneven process, always made more difficult by a Democratic House of Representatives. He was obliged to allow federal spending for welfare — work programs, education and training, social services, medicine, food and housing — to rise sharply; expenditures almost doubled from $106.1 billion (in real or nominal dollars) in 1980 to $173 billion in 1988.[xiv] Nor did Reagan’s own cabinet secretaries protest when the increases benefited their agency or department.

Conservative critics like the Heritage Foundation’s Stuart Butler did not try to hide their disappointment and frustration. Six years into the Reagan presidency, Butler wrote that “the basic structure of the Great Society is still firmly intact …. virtually no program has been eliminated.”[xv]

But Reagan reduced federal outlays in some welfare areas — such as regional development, commerce and housing credit — from $63 billion in 1980 to just over $49 billion in 1987, a decrease of about 22 percent. And the size of the federal civilian work force declined by about five percent, much of it traceable to conservatives like Gerald Carmen at GSA, Raymond Donovan at Labor and the OPM’s Donald Devine, described by the Washington Post as “Reagan’s terrible swift sword of the civil service.”[xvi] The agencies that led the personnel downsizing were Education, down twenty-four percent; Housing and Urban Development, down twenty-two percent; Office of Personnel Management, down nineteen percent; and Government Services Administration and Labor, both down fifteen percent.

By Everette Hatcher III | Also posted in Ronald Reagan | Comments (0)

Who was Milton Friedman and what did he say about Social Security Reform? (Part 6) (Friedman v. Bill Clinton Part A)

June 1, 2011 – 10:21 am
Milton Friedman congratulated by President Ronald Reagan. © 2008 Free To Choose Media, courtesy of the Power of Choice press kit

Only government can take perfectly good paper, cover it with perfectly good ink and make the combination worthless.
Milton Friedman

 

Milton Friedman – The Social Security Myth  

Milton Friedman (Милтон Фридман) Photo: Steven N. S. Cheung

In this series I want to both look  closely at who Milton Friedman was and what his views were about Social Security reform. Here is the fifth portion of an autobiography from Nobelprize.org:

In 1977, when I reached the age of 65, I retired from teaching at the University of Chicago. At the invitation of Glenn Campbell, Director of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, I shifted my scholarly work to Hoover where I remain a Senior Research Fellow. We moved to San Francisco, purchasing an apartment in a high-rise apartment building in which we still reside. The transition of my scholarly activities from Chicago to California was greatly eased by the willingness of Gloria Valentine, my assistant at Chicago, to accompany us west. She remains my indispensable assistant.

Hoover has provided excellent facilities for scholarly work. It enabled me to remain productive and an active member of a lively scholarly community.

Initially we continued to spend spring and summer quarters at Capitaf, our second home in Vermont. However, we soon came to appreciate the inconvenience of maintaining homes a continent apart and began to look in California for a replacement for Capitaf. In 1979, we purchased a house on the ocean in Sea Ranch, a lovely community 110 miles north of San Francisco. In 1981, we disposed of Capitaf and began to spend about half the year at Sea Ranch at intervals of a week or so, spread throughout the year, rather than in one solid block. It proved a fine locale for scholarly work. The Internet plus an assistant at Hoover more than made up for the absence of a library near at hand.

After more than two wonderful decades at Sea Ranch, we sold our house to simplify our lives. We now have one home, our apartment in San Francisco.

To return to the 1970s, not long after we arrived in California, Bob Chitester persuaded us to join him in producing a major television program presenting my economic and social philosophy. The resulting effort, spread over three years, proved the most exciting adventure of our lives. The end result was Free to Choose, ten one-hour programs, each consisting of a half-hour documentary and a half-hour discussion. The first of the ten programs appeared on PBS (Public Broadcasting System) in January 1980. Since then, the series has been shown in many foreign countries.

When we agreed to undertake the project, little did Rose and I realize what was involved in producing a major TV series. As a first step, I gave a series of fifteen lectures over a period of nine months at a wide variety of locations. The lectures and question-and-answer sessions were all videotaped to provide the producers with a basis for planning the programs.

The filming began in March 1978 and continued for the next eight months at locations in the United States and around the world, including Hong Kong, Japan, India, Greece, Germany, and the United Kingdom – in the process generating more than six miles of video and audiotape.

Three months after the end of filming, we returned to London to view the documentaries that Michael Latham, our wonderful producer, and his associates had created from that tape and to dub the voice-overs. Another six months passed before we gathered again in Chicago where we filmed the discussion sessions – one of the most stressful weeks I have ever experienced.

One distinguishing feature of the series was that there was no written script. I talked extemporaneously from notes. When we returned to Capitaf from London with the transcripts of the final documentaries, we set to work to convert them to a book to appear simultaneously with the TV program. The book, Free to Choose (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1980) was the bestseller nonfiction book of 1980 and continues to sell well. It has been translated into more than fourteen foreign languages.

Investing Social Security funds in the stock market would be a fine idea, wouldn’t it? President Clinton thinks so. Nobel laureate and Hoover fellow Milton Friedman thinks not.

President Clinton has proposed that a quarter of the funds set aside for Social Security be invested in the stock market—a truly radical plan.

Margaret Thatcher reversed Britain’s drift to socialism by selling off government-owned enterprises. President Clinton now proposes that the U.S. government do precisely the opposite: buy private equities, thereby becoming a part owner of U.S. enterprises.

I have often speculated that an ingenious way for a socialist to achieve his objective in the United States would be to persuade Congress, in the name of fiscal responsibility, to (1) fully fund obligations under Social Security and (2) invest the accumulating reserves in the private capital market by purchasing equity interests in domestic corporations.

Congress has never adopted a policy of fully funding Social Security, but neither has it adopted a strict pay-as-you-go policy. As is Congress’s wont, it has chosen the middle of the road, where cars can hit you from both directions. It has collected more in current taxes than were needed to pay current benefits yet not enough more to equal the future liability that it was incurring. The excess revenue has been spent in the ordinary course of government business.

The trust fund was created to preserve the fiction that Social Security is insurance. The so-called trust fund is actually a massive sleight of hand.

To preserve the fiction that Social Security is insurance, however, federal government interest-bearing bonds of a corresponding amount have been deposited in a so-called trust fund. That is, one branch of the government, the Treasury, has given an interest-bearing IOU to another branch, the Social Security Administration. Each year thereafter, the Treasury gives the Social Security Administration additional IOUs to cover the interest due. The only way that the Treasury can redeem its debt to the Social Security Administration is to borrow the money from the public, run a surplus in its other activities, or have the Federal Reserve print the money—the same alternatives that would be open to it to pay Social Security benefits if there were no trust fund. But the accounting sleight of hand of a bogus trust fund is counted on to conceal this fact from a gullible public.

By Everette Hatcher III | Also posted in Milton Friedman, Social Security | Comments (0)

Bill Clinton: Warned against not raising debt ceiling (Part 2)

May 31, 2011 – 6:58 am

Clinton: We Will Have Bipartisan Resolution on Budget

During a fiscal summit sponsored by the Pete Peterson foundation Wednesday, Gwen Ifill talked to former President Bill Clinton about the economy, politics and foreign policy.

CNN Money reported on May 25, 2011:

Ryan, who spoke after Clinton at the summit, wasn’t asked directly about the New York race. But he did accuse Democrats of trying to use Medicare to scare seniors.

“Democrats are shamelessly demagoging and distorting this,” Ryan said. “Trying to scare seniors and (making) these things as political weapons creates political paralysis,” he said.

Clinton also weighed in on the most pressing fiscal issue facing policymakers: the debt ceiling. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has said the ceiling, a cap on total federal government debt, must be raised by Aug. 2 to prevent the country from defaulting on its bonds.

The former president said President Obama should consider giving a national address to educate American voters about the consequences of a failure to raise it in time.

“They never lived through it; nobody knows what will happen,” Clinton said.

Clinton warned that political leaders “can’t be paralyzed,” and that they must find a bipartisan way to raise the debt limit, even if it’s unpopular.

“A lot of the most important things I did were unpopular,” Clinton said. To top of page

Michael Tanner made some great observations in his article “Debt-Ceiling Myths,” National Review Online, May 11, 2011. 

Michael D. Tanner is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and author of Leviathan on the Right: How Big-Government Conservatism Brought Down the Republican Revolution. Here is a portion of this recent article: 

Now that Osama bin Laden has been successfully dispatched to the eternal damnation he so richly deserves, Washington is ready to return to the more mundane question of whether the Obama administration will be allowed to spend this country into oblivion.

The next big fiscal fight will be over when and how to increase the debt limit. The administration has been hard at work trying to shape the message and public opinion. Unsurprisingly, much of that message is less than 100 percent accurate. Here are some myths about the debt ceiling and the upcoming debate about raising it:

1. Failure to pass means defaulting on our debts. If there has been consistent message from the White House, it that the United States can’t afford to “default on our debts.” That is almost certainly true. However, refusing to raise the debt limit does not mean defaulting on our debts. The U.S. Treasury currently takes in more than enough revenue to pay both the interest and the principal on the debts we currently owe. And if the Obama administration is truly worried about whether it will do so, then it should urge Congress to pass the legislation proposed by Sen. Pat Toomey (R., Pa.) requiring the Treasury Department to pay those bills first. It is true that, once we had paid our debt-service bills, there wouldn’t be enough money left over to pay for everything else the Obama administration wants to spend money on. The government would have to prioritize its expenditures — sending out checks for the troops’ pay and Social Security first. Other spending would have to wait. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner says that not spending money Congress has appropriated is “the same as default.” It is not. It is economizing, which is what you do when you are out of money.

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This video below accurately shows how I think the Democrats are acting concerning the debt ceiling:

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I have written about the debt ceiling many times and here are some of the past posts:

 

Senator Pryor’s office is taking spending cuts seriously according to email response

The Debt Bomb: A Decade of DC Spending is Driving America Closer to an Economic Apocalypse Alexis Garcia reports on America’s exploding debt. Experts blame entitlements like Social Security and government spending. But what is the solution? Can we raise taxes without crushing the economy and the middle class? Does Obama really want to lower […]

Republicans may compromise with Democrats in order to get control of debt

The Debt Bomb: A Decade of DC Spending is Driving America Closer to an Economic Apocalypse Alexis Garcia reports on America’s exploding debt. Experts blame entitlements like Social Security and government spending. But what is the solution? Can we raise taxes without crushing the economy and the middle class? Does Obama really want to lower […]

Secretary Tim Geithner says US will default on debt August 2 if debt ceiling not raised, John Brummett agrees (Part 5)

Rick Crawford does a great job of answering these questions from these liberal democrats that attempted the badger the congressman!!!! Picture of Pat Toomey above. Today  Thomas Fitzgerald of the Philadelphia Inquirer reported: As the federal government hit its debt limit of $14.3 trillion Monday, Pennsylvania Sen. Pat Toomey said the Obama administration must accept […]

Brummett:We must increase debt ceiling or disaster will occur (Part 4)

John Brummett in his article “Dear visa, my debt ceiling is capped,” April 25, 2011, Arkansas News Bureau, he observes: The first thing I intend to do is join the tea party. Then I’m going to refuse to raise my debt limit. Then I’m going to call the Visa people. “Y’all have me down here […]

 
Senator Pryor asks for Spending Cut Suggestions! Here are a few!(Part 32)(Brummett: Pryor not interested in getting hands dirty on deficit reduction)(Royal Wedding Part 21)

 Reuters reported today: Before a flawless exchange of vows, a veiled Middleton wearing a laced dress with a long train, the first “commoner” to marry a prince in close proximity to the throne in more than 350 years, walked slowly through the 1,900-strong congregation. As they met at the altar William, second in line to […]

Senator Pryor asks for Spending Cut Suggestions! Here are a few!(Part 31)(Brummett suggests we have wasted our time listening to Pryor’s pledge to cut spending)

Senator Mark Pryor wants our ideas on how to cut federal spending. Take a look at this video clip below: Senator Pryor has asked us to send our ideas to him at cutspending@pryor.senate.gov and I have done so in the past and will continue to do so in the future. Here are a few more […]

 
Brummett:We must increase debt ceiling or disaster will occur (Part 3) (Royal Wedding Part 7)

John Brummett in his article “Pryor’s words drift in gentle breeze,” Arkansas News Bureau, April 24, 2011 asserted: Raising the debt ceiling is essential to paying our debts and keeping the national and world economy functioning. Spending cuts must be made in the future, not by reneging on debt from the past. It is disingenuous […]

 

Will Senator Pryor be re-elected in 2014? (Part 4)(Royal Wedding Part 5)

Dr. Jay Barth with Hendrix College comments on our latest poll results on Arkansas politics (clip from Talkbusiness) Talk Business reported today in the article “Poll Shows Beebe Strength, Pryor Shaky,” the following: A new Talk Business-Hendrix College Poll shows Gov. Mike Beebe (D) maintaining his high job approval rating, while Sen. Mark Pryor (D) […]

 

Brummett:We must increase debt ceiling or disaster will occur (Part 2) (Royal Wedding Part 4)

John Brummett in his article “Dear visa, my debt ceiling is capped,” April 25, 2011, Arkansas News Bureau, he asserted: Nine times in the last decade the federal government has crept near its debt ceiling and Congress has voted to raise it. Tea party types say they intend this time to tie their votes to […]

 

Brummett:We must increase debt ceiling or disaster will occur (Part 1) (Royal Wedding Part 2)

John Brummett in his article “Dear visa, my debt ceiling is capped,” April 25, 2011, Arkansas News Bureau, he observes: The first thing I intend to do is join the tea party. Then I’m going to refuse to raise my debt limit. Then I’m going to call the Visa people. “Y’all have me down here […]

 

Will Senator Pryor be re-elected in 2014? Part 3 (The Conspirator Part 16)

U.S. Sen. Mark Pryor at the 2009 Democratic Party Jefferson Jackson Dinner, Arkansas’s largest annual political event. Mark Pryor is up for re-election to the Senate in 2014. It is my opinion that the only reason he did not have an opponent in 2008 was because the Republicans in Arkansas did not want to go […]

 

Balanced Budget Amendment the answer? Boozman says yes, Pryor no (Part 11)(Conspirator Part 11)

Mark Levin interviews Senator Hatch 1/27/2011 about the balanced budget amendment. Mark is very excited about the balanced budget amendment being proposed by Senator Orin Hatch and John Cornyn and he discusses the amendment with Senator Hatch. Senator Hatch explains the bill it’s ramifications and limitations. Senator Hatch actually worked on this bill with renowned […]

 

Mark Pryor will not vote for debt limit increase unless there are real spending cuts (Conspirator part 9)

In the article “Mark Pryor: I won’t vote to raise debt limit without reforms,” April 20, 2011, Arkansas Business reports: U.S. Sen. Mark Pryor says he won’t vote to raise the federal government’s borrowing limit unless there is a “real and meaningful commitment” to reducing the nation’s debt by cutting spending and overhauling the tax […]

 

Balanced Budget Amendment the Answer? Pryor says no, Boozman says yes (part 8)(Famous Arkansan, Patsy Montana)(The Conspirator, part 2)

 It is 9:35 pm and we have been hiding from Tornadoes all night and I hope they are finished bothering us for the evening.  Ronald Reagan on Balanced Budget Amendment Steve Brawner in his article “Safer roads and balanced budgets,” Arkansas News Bureau, April 13, 2011, noted: The disagreement is over the solutions — on […]

 

Balanced Budget Amendment the Answer? Pryor says no, Boozman says yes (part 6)(Famous Arkansan, Norris Goff)

  On Tuesday, March 29, Senator Marco Rubio appeared on Fox News’ “Hannity” for the first time since becoming a U.S. Senator. Senator Rubio talked about refusing to vote to raise the debt ceiling and the need for serious spending cuts.   Steve Brawner in his article “Safer roads and balanced budgets,” Arkansas News Bureau, […]

 

Mike Pence votes against budget deal. Roll call

  I am still upset with Congressman Mike Pence for saying that he was going to stick to his guns concerning the removal of federal funding of Planned Parenthood before he would vote to increase the debt ceiling on April 8th and then he went and voted yes on that day anyway. David Boaz makes […]

 

Mike Pence and the Republicans should hold the Democrats’ feet to the fire.

I must say that I agree with about everything that Mike Pence says below and I disagree with about everything that Chris Van Hollen has to say. However, I am not pleased that the Republicans do not try to get a balanced budget in 3 years instead of trying to balance it in 10 years. […]

By Everette Hatcher III | Comments (0)

Bill Clinton: Warned Democrats not to shy away from tackling entitlement programs (Part 1)

May 26, 2011 – 2:33 pm

Paul Ryan meets Bill Clinton

Clinton tells Ryan that he’s glad Dems won the New York congressional race this week, but he’s afraid that Dems will never do the right thing on Medicare as a result. Amazing truth telling.

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CNN Money reported yesterday:

 Bill Clinton had a word of warning on Wednesday for fellow Democrats: Don’t get too cocky about voters’ rejection of Paul Ryan’s Medicare plan.

In a special election for a vacant House seat on Tuesday, a Democrat candidate upset a Republican in a GOP-stronghold in upstate New York.

The race was widely seen as a proxy on Ryan’s controversial Republican proposal plan to convert Medicare into a voucher program.

Clinton, speaking at a fiscal summit sponsored by the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, said the race showed that voters don’t like the Republican plan.

But he also told Democrats not to shy away from tackling entitlement programs.

“You shouldn’t look at the New York race and think that nobody can do anything to slow Medicare costs,” Clinton said.

House budget chief Ryan’s proposal would convert Medicare — the health care program for seniors — into a voucher program in 2022. Seniors would choose from a Medicare-approved list of private insurance plans. Wealthier seniors would pay more and poorer seniors would get federal subsidies.

Ryan, who spoke after Clinton at the summit, wasn’t asked directly about the New York race. But he did accuse Democrats of trying to use Medicare to scare seniors.

“Democrats are shamelessly demagoging and distorting this,” Ryan said. “Trying to scare seniors and (making) these things as political weapons creates political paralysis,” he said.

 Fmr President Clinton: Cannot Have Health Care to Devour Economy

Former President Bill Clinton chastised fellow Democrats today for employing scare tactics while on the campaign trail. Clinton also commented on House Budget Committee Chair Paul Ryan’s Medicare plan, saying that although it may not be the best proposal, “you cannot have health care devour the economy.”

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Republicans Voted to End Medicare: How Will You Pay?

By Everette Hatcher III | Comments (2)

May 16-18, 1911 Confederate Veterans Reunion in Little Rock Pictures and story (Part 7)

May 23, 2011 – 1:07 pm

Confederate soldier Julius Howell Interview What The south Fought For

Confederate soldier Julius Howell talking about his capture and imprisonment at the Union prison camp at Point Lookout, Md. Howell was born in 1846 near the Holy Neck section of Suffolk, in the Holland area. He was the youngest of 16 children, the son of a prominent Baptist minister. His daddy wouldn’t allow him to join the army until he was 16½, he says in his account.
He saw action guarding the Blackwater River against Yankees until his regiment was called to help defend Richmond in 1864. By then, he was a corporal and courier for two generals.

In April 1865, Howell was taken prisoner at the battle of Sailor’s Creek and was transported to Point Lookout, Md., a notorious Union prison. He was there when he heard about the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln.

“I arose pretty early,” he says. “There were 20,000 of us there. I saw a flag pole, and a flag stopped halfway.”

The youth, a slightly built man with bright red hair, knew what it meant.

“I stuck my head in a tent and said, ‘Boys, there must be some big Yankee dead.’ ”

A guard told the men later that the president had been shot. Howell says he felt no hatred toward Lincoln, only kindness.

“We didn’t fight for the preservation or extension of slavery,” he says. “It was a great curse on this country that we had slavery. We fought for states’ rights, for states’ rights.”

After the war, Howell taught at Reynoldson Institute in Gates County, N.C. He soon left teaching and went to the University of Pennsylvania, graduating with a history degree. From there, he went on to Harvard and got a doctorate in history.

Howell was a history professor at the University of Arkansas. He eventually headed the department. In 1901, he was named president of Virginia Intermont College in Bristol, where he served for 50 years.

Howell was forever loyal to the South. He became state commander of the Tennessee Confederate Veterans and, in 1940, was named commander-in-chief of the national United Confederate Veterans.

In 1942, Life magazine did a spread on Howell. Several photos of the old gentleman show him dressed in his Confederate uniform. Because legislators wanted to hear more from the Confederate veteran, Howell addressed the combined Congress of the United States in Washington in 1944, when he was 98, and that is when it is believed this tape was made.

Four years later, in February 1948, on his 102nd birthday, the city of Bristol threw a party. His old friend, actress Mary Pickford, and her family attended.

Howell, who had never been sick a day in his life, died the following June.

Julius Howell was the great-great-uncle of former ANV Commander Russell Darden.

All credit goes to sons of confederate veterans i dont take any credit for this, http://www.scv.org/JuliusHowell.php

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 Old State Bank Building at Markham and Center streets in Little Rock (Pulaski County), used as headquarters for the Arkansas Division of the United Confederate Veterans Reunion; 1911.
  

 It took 81 years before more people to gather in Little Rock for another event (Bill Clinton’s election to president).

This is an article from the Encyclopedia of Arkansas:

Little Rock (Pulaski County) hosted the twenty-first annual United Confederate Veterans Reunion on May 16–18, 1911. The reunion drew more than 140,000 people, including approximately 12,000 veterans, making it the largest event in Little Rock history until William Jefferson Clinton’s election night in 1992.

The United Confederate Veterans (UCV) formed in 1889 with a goal of keeping alive the memory of the men who fought for the South during the Civil War and to bring national attention to the needs of the aging veterans. The annual reunion was one of the group’s major projects, and towns across the country vied to host the event.

Judge William M. Kavanaugh chaired Little Rock’s planning committee for the event. Subcommittees arranged for lodging, food, special events, and entertainment for the veterans. The committees arranged for set rates at hotels and restaurants, created additional lodging at schools and private homes, and created special barracks and tent camps.

An estimated 6,000 veterans were expected to attend the reunion. The city erected a veterans’ camp at the City Park (now MacArthur Park). The camp was named for Mena (Polk County) native Confederate Colonel Robert Glenn “Fighting Bob” Shaver of the Seventh Arkansas Infantry, and Shaver served as commander of the camp during the reunion. Accommodations at Camp Shaver were arranged by state, division, and corps to expedite the attendees reuniting with old friends.

Events at the reunion included speeches by Little Rock Mayor Charles E. Taylor and Arkansas Governor George W. Donaghey. Various groups in Little Rock provided entertainment and special events, including receptions, arcades, dances, hot air balloon rides, plus the dedication at City Park of a statue honoring the Capital Guards. The high point of the reunion occurred at 10:00 a.m. on May 18 when the official parade began. The parade route ran from the Old State House at Markham and Center Streets to City Park and back again and took two tours to pass by any single point.

The reunion concluded that evening at the end of the Veterans’ Ball, which approximately 5,800 people attended.

Little documentary information is available about the reunion, but it was featured in newspaper articles and recorded in a series of postcards done by local photographers. These postcards, which include scenes of Camp Shaver and of the city decorated with Confederate banners and portraits of Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis, are very popular among collectors.

For additional information:
Polston, Mike. “Little Rock Did Herself Proud: A History of the 1911 United Confederate Veterans Reunion.” Pulaski County Historical Review 29 (Summer 1981): 22–32.

Russell, James D. “The Gray Parade: Little Rock Hosts the Twenty-First National United Confederate Veterans Reunion.” Pulaski County Historical Review 52 (Spring 2004): 2–13.

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May 16-18, 1911 Confederate Veterans Reunion in Little Rock Pictures and story (Part 6)

May 21, 2011 – 12:03 am

The American Civil War Part 1 The Union

I really enjoyed the article “REBEL GRAY’S GOLDEN DAYS: In 1911, LR filled to the brim with Confederate veterans,” by Jake Sandlin that ran in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette on May 15, 2011. It took 81 years before more people to gather in Little Rock for another event (Bill Clinton’s election to president)  I will be sharing portions of it the next few days and here is the sixth part: 

Participants included veterans, dignitaries, bands, and Reunion Queen Kathleen Barkman and her maids of honor in a float drawn by four gray horses. Parade estimates were of 12,000-15,000 participants, with up to 150,000 onlookers. Veterans of Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest’s cavalry were among those in the parade on horseback.

“Here and there was a veteran with a leg missing, or with an empty coat sleeve pinned to his breast,” the Arkansas Gazette reported. Many veterans carried “tattered Southern flags … worn and shot riddled.”

One of the parade’s famed participants was known only as a Civil War drummer from Georgia. The one-time “drummer boy” marched and beat his drum until almost collapsing from the heat on the parade’s countermarch, the Gazette reported. He insisted on continuing until the end, where he was seen by a physician and was reported to have recovered.

Fourteen bands from across the South played Southern favorites while marching. “There was no telling how many times ‘Dixie’ was played,” one newspaper account said, “but it could have been played a thousand times and still would have been greeted with great enthusiasm.”

From all accounts, the 1911 Confederate reunion earned Little Rock great praise.

“From a tourist perspective, it was a huge success,” McAteer said. “There was to be no one who would not have a place to sleep or not be fed. The community got together and took care of them while they were here.”

Little Rock again hosted the United Confederate Veterans Reunion in 1928 and in 1949, the latter being attended by only four veterans. The oldest among them was 103 years old.

Photographs for these articles were provided by the Butler Center for Arkansas Studies and the MacArthur Museum of Arkansas Military History, both in Little Rock. Other art elements were obtained from the archives of the Arkansas Democrat, the Arkansas Gazette and The News and Courier of Charleston, S.C.

Benjamin H. Crowley, delegate to the 1911 United Confederate Veterans Reunion. Crowley was the grandson of Benjamin Crowley, who helped found Greene County and after whom Crowley’s Ridge is named.

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May 16-18, 1911 Confederate Veterans Reunion in Little Rock Pictures and story (Part 5)

May 18, 2011 – 9:31 am

Ken Burns discusses his Emmy winning series The Civil War – EMMYTVLEGENDS.ORG

I really enjoyed the article “REBEL GRAY’S GOLDEN DAYS: In 1911, LR filled to the brim with Confederate veterans,” by Jake Sandlin that ran in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette on May 15, 2011. It took 81 years before more people to gather in Little Rock for another event (Bill Clinton’s election to president)  I will be sharing portions of it the next few days and here is the fifth part: 

The veterans were well taken care of at what was called Camp Shaver at City Park. The camp was named for its commander, Robert G. “Fighting Bob” Shaver, 81, who led the Confederacy’s 7th Arkansas Infantry.

The camp fed the veterans for free in two large dining tents. Dozens of cooks, waiters and dishwashers were hired. Provisions included 16,000 loaves of bread, 8,000 pounds of steak, 3,000 pounds of roast beef, 110 cases of eggs, 1,700 pounds of coffee for three 60-gallon coffee urns, 350 bushels of Irish potatoes, 400 pounds of rice and 300 pounds of tapioca pudding, according to the museum exhibits. Camp Shaver is said to have served 54,000 meals.

The only blacks reported to be present were “body servants,” who had been Confederate officers’ personal slaves. An Arkansas Gazette article said about 20 of the former servants arrived in Little Rock to hold their own reunion. Among them was 86-year-old Jefferson Shields of Virginia, said by the Arkansas Gazette to have been the servant of Gen. Stonewall Jackson.

The reunion’s highlight was the parade on the final day. “At an early hour,” the Arkansas Democrat reported, “the streets were well lined with spectators along almost the entire line of march” awaiting the 10 a.m. start. People also crowded in windows and along rooftops, or climbed poles.

The parade route covered 20 blocks. It stretched along Markham Street from State Street to Main Street, continuing to 10th Street eastward to Camp Shaver. The parade took 1 hour and 47 minutes, according to the Gazette, then its participants turned around and marched back to where it began.

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May 16-18, 1911 Confederate Veterans Reunion in Little Rock Pictures and story (Part 4)

May 18, 2011 – 12:07 am

Best of Shelby Foote

I really enjoyed the article “REBEL GRAY’S GOLDEN DAYS: In 1911, LR filled to the brim with Confederate veterans,” by Jake Sandlin that ran in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette on May 15, 2011. It took 81 years before more people to gather in Little Rock for another event (Bill Clinton’s election to president)  I will be sharing portions of it the next few days and here is the fourth part: 

A Gazette headline on May 19 proclaimed that Little Rock had hosted 106,800 visitors. That figure was based on the number of train passengers and was often used as a total. Other estimates push the number to 120,000, Gurley said.

“When you include the people who rode horses in or drove in, the more accurate estimate is 140,000,” Gurley said of total reunion attendance.

An “unexpected rush,” the newspaper reported, of about 500 early arrivals came three days before the reunion’s start. Another 8,000 came the next day. The Reunion Committee had preregistered about 1,500 veterans and made arrangements for only 5,500.

“We are literally swamped,” the Arkansas Gazette quoted Judge William M. Kavanaugh, the chairman of the reunion executive committee, and for whom Little Rock’s Kavanaugh Boulevard is named. “We are confronted by a crisis.”

Kavanaugh put out a plea also through the newspapers urging residents “to open your homes.”

“They were quite surprised and quite stunned, really, by the number who came into the city,” Gurley said. “They lived up to the task, you have to give them credit. The city fathers went above and beyond the call of duty to make sure everyone’s experience in Little Rock would be quite memorable.”

Confederate veterans pose for photo with camp commander Robert G. Shaver while attending the United Confederate Veterans Reunion in Little Rock (Pulaski County); May 1911. Shaver stands third from the left in the front row.

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