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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
Seen on the net; and I really did not know that idiot McCain was trying to claim he saw this mess coming. What a joke!
From the CFR transcript of the October 9 2007 Republican Presidential Nomination Debate):
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MATTHEWS: OK.
Congressman Paul, I think you have questions and concerns about the bonanza in the hedge fund industry. Do you?
PAUL: Yes. I think this is not a consequence of free markets. What's happening is, there's transfer of wealth from the poor and the middle class to the wealthy.
PAUL: This comes about because of the monetary system that we have. When you inflate a currency or destroy a currency, the middle class gets wiped out.
So the people who get to use the money first which is created by the Federal Reserve system benefit. So the money gravitates to the banks and to Wall Street.
That's why you have more billionaires than ever before. Today, this country is in the middle of a recession for a lot of people. Michigan knows about it. Poor people know about it. The middle class knows about it. Wall Street doesn't know about it. Washington, D.C., doesn't know about it.
But it's because of the monetary system and the excessive spending. As long as we live beyond our means we are destined to live beneath our means.
And we have lived beyond our means because we are financing a foreign policy that is so extravagant and beyond what we can control, as well as the spending here at home.
And we're depending on the creation of money out of thin air, which is nothing more than debasement of the currency. It's counterfeit. And it is a natural, predictable consequence that you're going to have people benefit from it and other people suffer.
PAUL: So, if you want a healthy economy, you have to study monetary theory and figure out why it is that we're suffering. And everybody doesn't suffer equally, or this wouldn't be so bad.
It's always the poor people -- those who are on retired incomes -- that suffer the most. But the politicians and those who get to use the money first, like the military industrial complex, they make a lot of money and they benefit from it.
MATTHEWS: Thank you, Congressman.
(APPLAUSE)
BARTIROMO: Senator McCain, what about that? How are you going to win the middle class back?
Wall Street executives are making millions of dollars every year, paying tax rates of 15 percent, while the average guy out there is paying 30 percent in taxes.
Is this system fair?
MCCAIN: Everybody is paying taxes and wealth creates wealth. And the fact is that I would commend to your reading, Ron, "Wealth of Nations," because that's what this is all about.
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Paul pointed out how rotten the current financial system was, and McCain basically suggested that he didn't know economics very well. He suggested that the hedge funds were doing well because of the free market, and that all of the wealth in the funds was really being created, rather than being a monetary illusion.
And now I am hearing that a recent Fox News special on the current economic problems said that John McCain is the voice in the wilderness because he noticed some problems with Fannie and Freddie. PLEASE!
How Americans love to rewrite history to suit their needs of the moment. ... and the truth was not in them ...
This case is an outrage for all the reasons you outlined. Real sadists and torturers in the employ of our state and federal governments--in the military, prison systems, and among paid contractors--with real victims, are allowed to get away with their crimes with either no punishment or a slap on the wrist, while this man who made porn films with extreme subject matter using paid, consensual models is sent to prison for years, not for abusing his models in any way, but for making "obscenity" and thus violating community standards, whose power lies in their very changeability and ambiguity.
This case is a dangerous example of government overreaching. Is this Mr. Little tasteless and offensive? Most likely, although I've never seen any of his porn. The point is, however, that he wasn't making child porn or snuff films or abducting and forcing real victims to "star" in his films. He ran a studio that used paid adult models who consented to the activities, and his materials were only sold to other adults who consented to view them. What is the crime here? It's a thought crime, and nothing more. The government also felt the need to "shop jurisdictions" in order to find a place where they could get a pliant, conservative jury in order to convict this guy. Surely that's a violation of the spirit, if not the letter of the law. Certainly the government would be able to find conservative jurisdictions where juries might be liable to find just about ANY sexually explicit materials as violating community standards, and thus as obscene.
The government never alleged that this man coerced or forced his models, raped anybody, manipulated and deceived them into consenting to one thing and then making them do another, used any underage models, or anything of the sort. If they had any evidence of such activities rest assured they would have jumped at the chance to prosecute him for them. Anonymous accusations posted online are virtually meaningless. They haven't been corroborated or subject to any skeptical inquiry, and anyone can post similar accusations about anyone else at any time. Barring a detailed investigation that uncovers actual evidence of such wrongdoing, I give them little if any merit.
No, the government just didn't like him, he was on the extreme fringe of mainstream adult porn, wasn't well-liked in the industry, and so they decided he was low-hanging fruit and they could nail him (but only after stacking the deck against him by moving the prosecution to a conservative district.) And they got what they wanted, another person locked in a cage for little more than thought crime.
This is certainly not the first time the government has selectively prosecuted a pornographer to make an example, or shopped jurisdictions to find one amenable to the government's needs, or locked someone up for thought crime. Nadine Strossen provides many illustrative examples in her book Defending Pornography. It is part of a disturbing pattern, however, and it's sad that in 2008 we're still fighting these battles, and that so many feminists rush to the defense of the government in this case (as evidenced by any of the posts on this thread.) People need to learn--if you give the government an inch, it will take a mile. Obscenity laws, if they become more successfully enforced, will almost certainly be used more harshly against sexual minorities (as the Canadian example illustrated all too well.) Today the government goes after the fringe; tomorrow, if successful and emboldened, it'll go after more mainstream fare. Just because a woman appears in a porn film doesn't mean she was abused, exploited, manipulated, coerced, is a drug addict, is a victim of child sex abuse, etc. These are all lessons we need to learn and reinforce.
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Once seen as a lunatic fringe, reactionary anti-women groups are courting respectability
Salon headlines in your mailbox
