NTKN: Those who ignore history…..

Posted on November 27, 2012 by Admin

27

Good Morning,

Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it is an old but oh so true saying. The times and players may change but the game always remains the same. That is why we still tell stories like the boy who cried wolf and the three little pigs. To teach a lesson. Those who have been there and done that before us have given us a valuable blueprint of human behavior. If we ignore the history behind it and refuse to see and apply the lessons they teach, then we doom ourselves to the same fate that they suffered. Some examples for you….

At the close of business last Wednesday, according to the Treasury, the national debt was $16,283,161,895,179.85. On Thanksgiving, the Treasury took the day off and did no borrowing. But on Friday, the Treasury increased the debt of the United States to $16,307,488,943,564.23. That was a one-day increase of $24,327,048,384.38.

The Census Bureau estimated that as of September there were approximately 114,916,000 households in the United States. So, the $24,327,048,384.38 that the Treasury borrowed on Friday equaled about $211.69 per household.

Friday was also the first time in the history of the United States that the debt has topped $16.3 trillion.

I don’t know about the rest of you but I have had all of the federal rescuing I can handle for one life time. Take the cliff.

If we ignore the history and refuse to see and apply the lessons they teach, then we doom ourselves to the same fate that they suffered.

Dr. Yuri Maltsev concludes if the United States were the first country in history to experience the crisis that debt and deficits are about to bring down on us, government officials might have some excuse for what they’ve done.

One of the most exasperating characteristics of our problem, however, is that our so-called leaders started us down this road knowing exactly where it would lead. Or, if they didn’t know where they were taking us, they should have known, because the historical precedents are legion. Sooner or later, every country that has spent beyond its means has collided with disaster. The crash that we are about to experience has been experienced many times before.

Why, for instance, did Rome fall?

Three successive emperors, Caligula,Claudius and Nero, all emptied their treasuries to pay for lavish ceremonial feasts, luxurious villas, elaborate temples, no show servants and bribes to the army and praetorian guard to ensure their loyalty. When they ran out of cash, these arrogant rulers raised taxes, seized the assets of wealthly citizens, or expanded the money supply by reminting old coins using more base metal and less gold and silver.

What they got for their trouble was severe inflation. In one thirty-year period during the third century A.D., the price of wheat rose 100,000 %.! A loaf of bread that cost the equivalent of $2.00 at the start of the period cost $2.000 at the end. By the time Rome ccollapsed, high taxes had already destroyed Roman commerce. Cities and towns were reduced to ruin by lack of investment in their maintenance, the population was impoverished and dwindling, and riots and rebellion were commonplace.

Thirteen hundred years later, Span, which had been one of the mightiest countries in Europe, began running huge deficits to pay for wars, a bloated civil service, and endemic corruption. By the end of the sixteenth century, revenues covered only half the state’s spending. Sound Familiar? Repeated currency devaluations, growing inflation, and a murderous tax burden killed off Spanish industry and agriculture. Impoverished, Span lost its global influence as its empire contracted to a fraction of former size.

Some economists think that if the U.S. is very, very lucky it can fix its debt/deficit and suffer no more in the process than Great Britain has in the last thirty years. Great Britain’s economy didn’t so much crash as it did run aground. In 1976, the British government had to ask the IMF for help in servicing its debt, an acute embarrassment to the once mighty kingdom. In 1979, with inflation nearing 14%, British elected Margaret Thatcher to lighten ship. Her platform stressed fiscal conservatism, lower taxes, and a reduced public sector. Thatcher’s unpleasant task was to remind Brits that though the public might make unlimited demands on the government for services, the government’s resources were nonetheless finite.

If the United States has its own Margaret Thatcher, We haven’t elected him or her to national office yet.

One thing is certain in these troubling times:  What we do now will determine what happens to us later, both as individuals and as a nation. Little time remains for us to act, and, even then, our actions must be decisive, bold and radical if they are to prove effective. Forestalling the demise of our country requires the commitment and participation of all of us, NOW!

If we ignore the history and refuse to see and apply the lessons they teach, then we doom ourselves to the same fate that they suffered.

The most historical instance of protesting against taxation without representation is now being taught in Texas schools as a terrorist act.

As recently as January of this year, the Texas Education Service Center Curriculum Collaborative included a lesson plan that depicted the Boston Tea Party, an event that helped ignite the American Revolution, as an act of terrorism. TheBlaze reports that in a lesson promoted on the TESCCC site as recently as January, a world history/social studies class plan depicted the Boston Tea Party as being anything but patriotic, causing many people to become upset with the lack of transparency and review for lessons.

“A local militia, believed to be a terrorist organization, attacked the property of private citizens today at our nation’s busiest port,” wrote the teachers in charge of organizing the curriculum about the Boston Tea Party.

If we ignore the history and refuse to see and apply the lessons they teach, then we doom ourselves to the same fate that they suffered.

Unfortunately, if past experience in Iran is any guide, the Obama administration will align itself with the jihadist oppressors, rather than their anti-Islamist opponents.  It will try to thwart any congressional effort to restrict further engagement with the Morsi regime, for example by cutting off or conditioning foreign aid and military sales.  By Frank Gaffney, Jr.

During the so-called “Arab Spring,” the Obama administration insisted thatthe United States risked being on the “wrong side of history” if it remained aligned with secular despots like Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak.  Recent events have made clear that there is a wrong side for freedom in the Mideast all right and, thanks to Team Obama’s embrace of the Muslim Brotherhood, we’re on it.

Take, for example, the cease-fire between Israel and the Brotherhood’s Palestinian franchise – the designated terrorist organization, Hamas.  Mohamed Morsi, the man the Muslim Brotherhood selected to replace Mubarak as president of Egypt, brokered the deal and has been lionized for doing so.

But, far from representing a real contribution to peace, this hudna (truce) is a coup for the Islamists.  It blocked Israel from launching ground operations aimed at cleaning out terrorist strongholds, weapons caches and infrastructure in Gaza.  Pursuant to the cease-fire’s terms, the Jewish State is even supposed to refrain from continuing to target Hamas leadership figures from the air.

Yet, the Morsi-brokered cease-fire imposes no impediment to the jihadists in the Gaza Strip rearming for the next round of attacks on Israel. And the deal creates the expectation that the only practical bar to such rearmament – namely, the Israeli blockade of Gaza – will be eased.

The credit given Mohamed Morsi by the Obama administration and others for engineering so manifestly one-sided an accord ignores a central reality:  The Brotherhood is simply buying time to achieve what the Soviets would call “a more favorable correlation of forces.”  And, once that is accomplished, the mother ship in Egypt and its affiliates in Gaza and elsewhere will be delighted to abandon the latest hudna and renew their decades-long effort to “drive the Jews into the sea.”

The over-the-top endorsements of Brother Morsi may also have encouraged him to announce immediately thereafter sweeping political changes in Egypt that suggest he is not interested in a functioning liberal democracy in his own country any more than he wants a durable peace with Israel.

Team Obama claims to have been “dismayed” by this second Morsi coup – in this case, effectively a coup d’etat – in Cairo. Yet, it should not have been surprised.  Mr. Obama has, after all, been engaging and emboldening the Muslim Brotherhood from early on in his presidency.  This was one purpose of his much-ballyhooed June 2009 visit to Egypt, in which he insisted that its representatives be allowed to attend the first Obama “outreach to the Muslim world” speech.

Moreover, in the months since the Muslim Brotherhood engineered Mubarak’s overthrow with almost-immediate and strong support from the U.S. administration, that jihadist organization has worked assiduously to control all of the reins of government in Egypt and to make shariah the law of the land.

The problem for Team Obama is that Egyptians who did not intend to have a secular tyrant replaced by an Islamist one are beginning to find their voice.

It is far too early to say whether the fractious Egyptian opposition that has just begun to coalesce under the banner of the National Salvation Front will be able to pose a real challenge to the Muslim Brotherhood and other Salafists.  With luck, they will do so, starting with large public demonstrations this week that could make possible a systematic roll-back of the Islamists and their efforts to dictate Egypt’s future.

Unfortunately, if past experience in Iran is any guide, the Obama administration will align itself with the jihadist oppressors, rather than their anti-Islamist opponents.  It will try to thwart any congressional effort to restrict further engagement with the Morsi regime, for example by cutting off or conditioning foreign aid and military sales.  Team Obama will probably also try to protect the Egyptian Brotherhood’s bids for additional financial assistance through billions of dollars worth of international loans and debt-relief.

The question occurs – and must be insistently asked in congressional hearings into the Benghazigate scandal and the larger failed practice of embracing Islamists of which it is a symptom:  To what extent are individuals with ties to the Muslim Brotherhood who are working in or serving as advisors to the Obama administration contributing to these clearly counterproductive national security policies?

Five Members of Congress – Republican Representatives Michele Bachmann, Louie Gohmert, Trent Franks, Lynn Westmoreland and Tom Rooney – presciently raised this concern last June, and were roundly criticized for doing so (including by some in their own party).  They appear to have been vindicated in their warnings that such influence operations are putting us on the wrong side of history.  We cannot afford to remain there, to the benefit of our enemies and their jihadist agenda.

I think its time that we start sending history lessons to our representatives – both local and afar.

In other news:

  • Just when you think Time magazine can’t make any more of a mockery of itself, they nominate Sandra Fluke, contraception advocate extraordinaire, as a candidate in their Person of the Year 2012 poll
  • Black Friday gun sales hit an all time record high last week with demand for new firearms so overwhelming that it caused outages at the FBI background check center on two separate occasions. Fueled by fears that the Obama administration will go after gun rights during a lame duck term, the FBI reported 154,873 background check requests on Friday – a 20 per cent increase on last year’s record total of 129,166 checks.
  • Obama has already sent a bizarre signal about financial reform with his handling of the retirement of Securities and Exchange Commission Mary Schapiro. The SEC yesterday announced Schapiro was stepping down, a move that surprised no one; Schapiro had been expected to leave after nearly four grueling years at the head of the agency. But rather than announce a permanent replacement, Obama said current SEC Commissioner Elisse Walter would step into the role, possibly until the end of 2013. That means Obama won’t have to go through a Senate confirmation fight (Walter has already been confirmed through 2013), but it also means there will be gridlock at this critical agency, the Wall Street Journal writes, at a time when many new financial rules are still undecided.
  • OECD Keeps Lowering The Growth Bar: For all the garment-rending over the fiscal cliff these days, the biggest threat to the global economy is still the European debt crisis, which is now in its fourth year. Citing that crisis and its possible impact on the financial system, the OECD this morning slashed its growth forecast for the global economy, to 2.9 percent in 2012 and 3.4 percent in 2013, from previous estimates of 3.4 percent for 2012 and 4.2 percent for 2013. The think tank cut its forecast for U.S. economic growth in 2013 to 2 percent from 2.6 percent — and that’s only if policy makers can come up with a way to avoid all of the tax hikes and spending cuts due next year.

Enjoy your day,

Lisa

This entry was posted in Lisa Douglas. Bookmark the permalink.

Leave a comment