The Limits of Experience

After Sarah Palin’s dredging-up yesterday of the old Bill Ayers topic (see Reuters video), I decided to do some poking into just who this Ayers guy is. When he was mentioned several months ago as a former 1960s radical who now teaches at the University of Illinois and has ties to Obama, I didn’t think much of it. I figured if Ayers hadn’t mended his ways at least somewhat, he wouldn’t be able to get and hold such a prominent professorship in a major public university. I didn’t see the association as a plus for Obama, but I figured that it — like so many other criticisms we see of presidential candidates in an election year — was probably overblown. I had long since abandoned any notions of voting for Obama (and yes, 2 years ago, I considered it), so I didn’t see the Ayers thing as worth thinking much about.

But today, my interest was piqued. For one thing, I’m starting to give up on the American electorate’s ability to see what Obama really is. (The left-wing media doesn’t help, shielding him more than they’ve shielded any candidate, ever.) Worse still, I’m starting to lose hope that the American electorate can see past McCain’s recent fumbles (like backing the disastrous “bailout” bill and trying to cancel the first presidential debate) to the heroic leader he truly is.

As part of trying to reconcile myself to the inevitability of President Obama, I’m educating myself more about him. Hence, my look into the past of Bill Ayers, and, more importantly, the present-day Bill Ayers. The picture is not pretty.

I thought I would have to dig deep to find the dirt. I did dig deep and wasn’t disappointed by this interview from 2006 featured on the Web site of the Revolutionary Communist Party USA (RCP), in which he offhandedly refers to himself as a communist. But little did I know that deep digging wasn’t really necessary. Wikipedia’s entry on Ayers actually quotes him thusly (from 1995):

“I am a radical, Leftist, small ‘c’ communist … [Laughs] Maybe I’m the last communist who is willing to admit it. [Laughs] We have always been small ‘c’ communists in the sense that we were never in the [Communist] party and never Stalinists. The ethics of Communism still appeal to me. I don’t like Lenin as much as the early Marx. I also like Henry David Thoreau, Mother Jones and Jane Addams [...]“

He seems to want to downplay his communist beliefs and merge them in with more palatable 19th-century socialists like Addams and even quasi-socialists like Thoreau, but the RCP, whose interview with Ayers was nothing short of fawning, proudly announces “Our Ideology is Marxism-Leninism- Maoism” in its Web site sidebar. So much for the ideological gap between Thoreau and Lenin.

For me, the communism — whatever the case of the “C” — is even more damning of Ayers and, by extension, Obama, than the fact that Ayers used to be a terrorist and probably isn’t sorry.

The question then becomes: “Is the Ayers-Obama connection real?”

Answer: Unequivocally, yes.

With someone like Ayers, the required connection needn’t be a strong one. We don’t need pictures of them walking their dogs together or receipts for maximum campaign contributions. When it comes to an avowed communist, $200 and a board membership in common are quite enough to establish at least a fellow traveler relationship. That’s damning enough. Add it to Obama’s other dodgy connections, and you get a frightening picture indeed.

In closing I just have to note the irony of someone who hates America as much as Ayers clearly does, yet who has lived his entire life here — even those years of it he was on the run from law enforcement — and enjoyed an unusually high level of success. A citizen of communist Russia who showed his kind of disregard for his country’s laws and contempt for its government would never have lived to be as old as Ayers, let alone as successful. It’s easy to see why Ayers chose to remain in the country he hates rather than emigrating to the country of his ideals.

When it comes to the proposed bailout of (the remains of) Wall Street, I’ve been feeling a bit like that old Saturday Night Live character played by Phil Hartman, the “Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer.”

I don’t think we should hand over a big pile of taxpayer money to a bunch of Wall Street cavaliers who gambled big and lost. Not even if it means the economy is going to get worse before it gets better. I have faith in this country, and I have faith in market forces, and I know the better will come.

But what do I know? I’m just a cave(wo)man. Your modern Wall Street world confuses me.

I’m not an economist and don’t know much more than the average joe about how Wall Street works. Where do I get off even having an opinion?

Finally, someone a lot smarter than I has spoken out and put it into rhetoric-free words even I can understand. Former House Majority Leader Dick Armey’s piece at the National Review is a must-read for any cave-people trying to make sense of the bailout and why it’s wrong. Unlike most of the talking heads out there, Armey has been on Capitol Hill, he knows the law, and he knows how things work in Washington. But since he’s not on the Hill anymore, he can speak freely, while his former colleagues cannot.

Granting the Treasury broad authority to buy troubled assets from private entities poses a significant threat to taxpayers and fundamentally alters the relationship between the private economy and the federal government. Despite the sweeping breadth of the proposed bailout, there is virtually nothing in the bill that addresses the underlying problems that created the housing bubble and the oversized and over-leveraged financial services sector that grew with it. Taxpayers have become Wall Street’s newest financier, with little more than a promise — and a report to Congress on “regulatory modernization” — that Congress will not let this happen again.

What he said!

National Review Online: My Vote: NO, by Dick Armey

Yesterday, I sent the message below to senators Kay Bailey Hutchison and John Cornyn and Rep. Jeb Hensarling.

As one of your constituents in the Lake Highlands area of Dallas, I’m writing my first-ever letter to a member of Congress to protest the proposed $700B bailout of the country’s financial sector. You’ve probably already seen the letter in which dozens of our top economists plead with the government to rethink this (
http://faculty.chicagogsb.edu/john.cochrane/research/Papers/mortgage_protest.htm). That letter confirmed many of the fears I already had about the bailout but didn’t feel myself qualified to judge.

Such unprecedented interference with the free market frightens me like nothing else this country has ever done. In my very inexpert view, it seems that the $700B proposal gives us either one of two choices:

(a) We simply hand over the money and ask for nothing in return, which basically tells the finance sector to carry on as usual and we’ll bail them out next time their moral bankruptcy gets them into trouble, or

(b) We ask for a substantial quid pro quo in exchange for the money in the form of stock and/or control over how these companies run their businesses in the future. This would place the USA well on the road to socialism.

Neither of these options is acceptable to me. For that matter, I’m also set against a no-questions-asked bailout of fund managers and CEOs who put this quarter’s profit above the long-term health of their companies — and in the process, took home millions in bloated salaries, bonuses and perks.

I’m also disturbed that we would consider not letting the market run its course in the housing sector. As a homeowner, I don’t mind admitting I worry that it might turn out I paid too much for my house and will eventually find myself owing more than it’s worth. But that would be preferable to a massive government bailout of mortgagors who were never credit-worthy in the first place and should be living in apartments. This would do nothing to bring house values into line with reality. It will also set an extremely bad precedent for people who aren’t yet living in a house they can’t afford but would like to.

I hope you will take this letter — and the many others you’re doubtless receiving saying the same thing — to heart as you and your colleagues shepherd our country through this difficult time. Thank you for your service.

An editorial in today’s National Review points out a little-recognized connection between Barack Obama and the subprime meltdown:

One of the reasons so many bad mortgage loans were made in the first place is that Barack Obama’s celebrated community organizers make their careers out of forcing banks to do so. ACORN, for which Obama worked, is one of many left-wing organizations that spent decades pressuring banks and bank regulators to do more to make mortgages available to people without much in the way of income, assets, or credit. These campaigns often were couched in racially inflammatory terms. The result was the Community Reinvestment Act. The CRA empowers the FDIC and other banking regulators to punish those banks which do not lend to the poor and minorities at the level that Obama’s fellow community organizers would like. Among other things, mergers and acquisitions can be blocked if CRA inquisitors are not satisfied that their demands — which are political demands — have been met. There is a name for loans made to people who do not have the credit, assets, income, or down payment to qualify for a normal mortgage: subprime.

Food for thought.

Early voting will begin soon in a state near you.

National Review Online: Villain Phil

Community Reinvestment Act