Bachmann Shows Her Economic Ignorance

Michele Bachmann would like for Americans to believe that President Obama is responsible for all of the economic ills that this country is suffering. She completely overlooks the fact that the recession (with its loss of millions of jobs) started under a Republican president -- George Bush. And it was a direct result of the policies Republicans have forced on this country since the administration of Ronald Reagan.

Now she has gone even further and wants to blame President Obama for all of the inflation since 1911 -- a ludicrous suggestion that makes sense only in her own tiny brain. Here is what she told a Town Hall meeting in South Carolina last Wednesday:

The shorthand way of describing to you what quantitative easing is is a license to print money without any value behind it…In the last two years of the Obama administration, if you pull a dollar out of your pocket, you have lost 14 percent of the value of that dollar. That means the federal government has stolen that money from you…They’ve been printing essentially valueless money and flooding it into the money supply. I don’t stand for that. A dollar in 2011 should be the same as a dollar in 1911. A dollar should be worth a dollar.

But she has a solution to cure inflation -- put the United States currency back on the gold standard. In her feeble mind this would make a dollar be able to buy the same amount of things it would buy in 1911 (about 23 times what it will buy today). Obviously she is overlooking a few basic facts.

1. Gold is one of the most volatile of all commodities, and is susceptible to both inflationary and deflationary pressures. Gold is currently at a record high, but that is no guarantee that it won't be worth far less in the future.

2. For a 2011 dollar to be worth the same as a 1911 dollar, there would have had to be 0% inflation for the last 100 years. This is an impossibility in the "free market" so cherished by her Republican cohorts. When shortages occur, there will naturally be an upward pressure on prices (and some shortages, like oil, can affect many kinds of businesses).

3. As the chart above shows, all presidential administrations (including Republican administrations) have experienced at least some inflation. And this happened both before and after this country went off the gold standard in 1971.

All Bachmann has done with this stupid idea is to show that she doesn't understand basic economic facts -- and therefore would not be qualified to be president, especially in such a time of economic disaster as the current recession.

Glenn Beck Is An Unethical Crook

It will surprise none of my readers to learn that I have absolutely no respect for Glenn Beck. In fact, I have always thought he was flirting with, if not completely insane. That's because the filth that pours from his mouth make no sense to anyone capable of rational thought.

He spends all his time on both his radio show and his TV show trying to convince his listeners that their world is falling apart. He would have them believe a socialist Islamist is in the White House, public education is unworkable, public insurance is a government plot to kill them, their religion is under a brutal attack from unbelievers, their guns will soon be registered and then confiscated, immigrants are taking their jobs and their country, they are being taxed into poverty and the Constitution cannot protect them because of "activist" judges.

In other words, he spends all his time trying to scare the hell out of his viewers and listeners. He is trying to convince them the world as they know it is coming to an end. It's easy to see why most rational people think he is either stupid or insane. But it now turns out there may be some method to his madness.

If you thought the country, and the world, was going downhill fast and our monetary system was going to fall apart, what would it make sense to do? Invest in gold? And that is exactly what Beck has been telling his listeners to do -- buy gold. He hasn't just said it once, but it is a continuing theme of his show. The world is falling apart and only those who have bought gold will be able to survive.

Well, guess who works for a company that sells gold -- Goldline? That's right, Glenn Beck does. He even has a major presence on the company's website. Obviously, the more gold he can convince people to buy, the more money the company will pay him to keep pushing their product. And this is not a recent thing. He has been pushing the company and their gold since before he was on television.

One would think that a news organization would not put up with a commentator trying to scare people into buying a product he is paid to sell, but we've known for quite a while that Fox News is not really a news organization. It is a propaganda machine for the Republican Party, and for Republicans, greed is good.

The Republican Party and Fox News see nothing wrong with a person violating the ethics of his profession and betraying the trust of his viewers just to line his pockets. Fox News knew about this when they hired him, but were too blind or uncaring to see the ethical implications.

I suspect Beck is still insane, but I now know he is also a greedy crook.