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Stockman on Eric Cantor

June 17, 2014 by Jeff (ILoveCapitalism)

Former Reagan budget director, David Stockman, has been blogging up a storm these last few years. I have mixed feelings about his work. It’s packed with emotion and (let’s say) definite conclusions. Sometimes I’ll cluck my tongue at the run-on sentences, typos, excess of adverbs, wandering, exaggerations, inaccuracies and other signs of ranting that mar Stockman’s work. On the other hand, Stockman is a free-market, balanced-budget guy and often I admire him for saying what needs to be said.

In that spirit I note his recent piece, Good Riddance To Rep. Eric Cantor: Bagman For Wall Street And The War Party. The gist is that Cantor could give a nice free-market speech, but in practice, Cantor stood for venture socialism and Washington business-as-usual. Cantor was a key factor in the GOP supporting the 2008-9 TARP and GM bailouts, the Export-Import Bank (long cited as an example of corporate welfare), unexamined Defense spending, and so forth.

Stockman gives details and he ties Cantor to Paul Ryan, whose wonderful budget plans really mean little change to Washington in practice (Ryan’s plans are merely not as insane as the Democrats’ budget plans). And, however all that might be, Stockman as usual gets near to the heart of what ails us:

…financial repression, ZIRP, QE, wealth effects and the Greenspan/Bernanke/Yellen “put” under the stock market and risk assets generally are not just a major policy mistake; they are a full-throttle assault on the heart and soul of conservative economics.

You can not expect to have fiscal rectitude in a modern democracy, for example, when the central bank since the year 2000 has monetized nearly $4 trillion of public debt…Indeed, financial repression makes the carry cost of the public debt so painless—-that is, probably about $400 billion per year less than it would be under a regime of free market interest rates—that not one in a hundred politicians can see they virtue of fall[ing] on the fiscal sword in the here and now [o]n behalf of unborn generations of taxpayers who will carry the burden of today’s fiscal folly…

So Eric Cantor made a career of milking the Warfare State and pandering to Wall Street. This brought him nearly to the top of the Washington heap. But in the end, it did not fool his constituents. And most certainly it set back the conservative cause immeasurably.

Filed Under: Big Government Follies, Conservative Ideas, Conservative Introspection Tagged With: Big Government Follies, Conservative Ideas, Conservative Introspection, david stockman, Eric Cantor, Paul Ryan, TARP

Report from CPAC

March 16, 2013 by GayPatriot

Good Saturday morning.  I’m having a great week, but man it is exhausting.  I’m doing some reporting for ViralRead so here are the posts I’ve done so far.

Cantor Delivers Heavy Steak Dinner on Friday Afternoon at #CPAC2013

Anyone looking for a quick sugar pick-me-up at the end of a long day at CPAC today would have been disappointed by House Majority Leader Eric Cantor.  He instead delivered a meat-packed meal with mashed potatoes and gravy for those who love School Choice and the economy.

Read the whole thing!

And this….

#CPAC2013: Conservatives ‘Stand With Rand’ With Enthusiasm

Buzz about the 2016 Republican Presidential nomination race heated up this afternoon at CPAC when Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) followed Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) on the main stage.

Paul’s supporters were in full force and handing out “Stand With Rand” lapel stickers as CPAC attendees poured into the main ballroom.  Excitement for Paul is at a peak following his 13-hour filibuster on the U.S. Senate floor last week against the Obama Administration’s drone policy.

Sen. Paul came right out of the gate by joking that he only had ”ten measly minutes” at CPAC, but he brought 13 hours of information, just in case. Paul said he had a message for the President last week and today: “No one person gets to decide the law… No one person gets to decide your guilt or innocence.  My question was about whether Presidential power has limits.”

Again…. read it all!

-Bruce (@GayPatriot)

 

Filed Under: CPAC Tagged With: Barack Obama, CPAC, CPAC 2013, Eric Cantor, Rand Paul

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