FJM Blog

by Herman Cain

Before the cheers go up for a so-called “Deal reached for Wall Street Bailout” as reported by several sources, here are some sobering reminders.

* The housing market is overbuilt.
* A lot of bad loans were made.
* Consumers have too much debt.
* The United States has too much debt.
* Some banks are operating on the edge.
* Some businesses may not be able to make payroll.
* Some more people will lose their jobs.
* The public deserves a lot of answers.

The ripple effect of the success of the “deal” will not be known for years. Just as the 1989 government bailout of the savings-and loan industry took about five years to help stabilize the markets.

In contrast to the potentially disastrous ripple effect down from Wall Street to Main Street if nothing had been done, the success of the “deal” will depend on the ripple effect up from Main Street back to Wall Street.

When businesses are able to make payroll without any more layoffs, and they are able to borrow money for short-term cash flow needs, and their business is picking up when consumers can afford to spend again, and people are buying houses again, then maybe we can take a deep breath.

We do know that there will be some economic pain at all levels while the entire free market system tries to recalibrate itself. But in order for the economic recovery to last, consumers and the federal government have got to stop spending beyond their means.

Raising taxes and then offering some watered down stimulus checks to people will not help sustain the recovery process. In fact, it would make things worse. Let people keep their money in the first place, and they will decide when and how to spend it.

The biggest issue that must be addressed is failed accountability by Congress, some CEOs and some boards of directors. I am less concerned about CEO compensation than I am about CEO performance and board accountability to its shareholders. And now with the “deal”, those companies and their boards who choose to participate are also accountable to the taxpayers.

An even bigger concern is Congress’s failed accountability with the oversight tools they already have. Before we rush to give them another sledge hammer on businesses, we need to know why they allowed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to implode before the administration had to step in.

After all, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is where the ripple effect started to unravel. Buying pre-packaged bad loans with “lipstick” was not just greed. It was also dishonest on the part of the sellers and the buyers.

The public deserves a lot of answers before we can celebrate.

© 2008 North Star Writers Group. May not be republished without permission.

Tags: Uncategorized by Dr. Eric Wallace
No Comments »

One of the leading economist of our time, Thomas Sowell (a senior fellow at the Hoover Institute and author of Basic Economics: A Citizen’s Guide to the Economy and former student of Milton Friedman) lays the blame of our financial crisis on the “risky financial practices” of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. He rightfully argues that this crisis would not have happened had Freddie and Fannie been run as if it were in a truly free market economy. The implicit thought that the Federal government would bail them out in moments like this allowed these companies to take on greater risks then a free market economy would tolerate.

Here is an excerpt from his article published in today’s TownHall:

Nothing could more painfully demonstrate what is wrong with Congress than the current financial crisis.

Among the Congressional “leaders” invited to the White House to devise a bailout “solution” are the very people who have for years created the risks that have now come home to roost.

Five years ago, Barney Frank vouched for the “soundness” of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and said “I do not see” any “possibility of serious financial losses to the treasury.”

Moreover, he said that the federal government has “probably done too little rather than too much to push them to meet the goals of affordable housing.”

Earlier this year, Senator Christopher Dodd praised Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac for “riding to the rescue” when other financial institutions were cutting back on mortgage loans. He too said that they “need to do more” to help subprime borrowers get better loans.

In other words, Congressman Frank and Senator Dodd wanted the government to push financial institutions to lend to people they would not lend to otherwise, because of the risk of default.

The idea that politicians can assess risks better than people who have spent their whole careers assessing risks should have been so obviously absurd that no one would take it seriously.

To read the article in its entirety click here

Tags: Uncategorized by Dr. Eric Wallace
No Comments »

by Harry R. Jackson, Jr.

Last week was one political roller coaster ride after another. McCain shook up the nation by helping to force communications between the two parties on the economy. Like a policeman stepping into the middle of a domestic squabble, he risked the possibility that he could be attacked by both sides. As the week began, public opinion was drifting back toward the Democratic mantra - a John McCain presidency is the same as a George Bush third term. I am convinced that at gut level, McCain intuitively sensed that he had better shake things up or the race was over.

The financial crisis gave McCain an opportunity to show the nation his heart, his values, and his courage. As a result he proved himself to be a true maverick in three distinct ways - he bucked the power structure of both parties, he threatened not to debate with Obama at all, and he refused to take credit for the negotiations in the debate.

Several of McCain’s detractors have portrayed him as erratic, desperate, or just mean-spirited. These critics want him to just fade away quietly. They cannot understand the “by any means necessary” spirit this 72-year old possesses. As I have already alluded, Senator McCain realizes that if he is seen as a self-serving, traditional “Bush” Republican, he will not only lose the White House, but an entire generation of middle aged and younger voters will see the “conservative revolution” as a failed ideology.

No other Republican on the political scene today could have maintained this close a contest with the Obama machine. Democrats have cast this election as being about more than the readiness of their candidate. They say that it is a referendum of the conservative approach to government. Time will not permit me to flesh this argument out in detail. It is sufficient to say, that the anti-conservative rhetoric of Obama and Biden is like throwing red meat to ravenous liberals and those from the far left. In addition, Senator Obama’s money and the nation’s disgust with the current administration gives the Democrats a distinct advantage. Now that Senator McCain has had the epiphany that he has to let the nation see what makes him tick, he has to make up the script as he goes.

For these reasons, I believe that Senator McCain had to show three things in this debate – energy and passion, vision, and experience. All three of these things he accomplished. Why energy and passion? His age has been the premise of endless jokes and a concern of most Americans who do not feel as though Sarah Palin is currently qualified to be president. Therefore, he has had to show everyone that negotiations and pressured activity were not too much for him physically. The Obama line that “McCain would have to do more than one thing at a time” was a subtle slam on McCain’s age.

Although I think McCain gained rank this week, he could have done a little more. McCain’s economic address did not educate those people who are uninformed. For example, he could have explained the difference between the savings and loan bailouts of years ago and how they were different than the problems of today.

Another area of improvement for McCain would be to help the typical citizen understand his philosophy. In the debate, the “professor” in Obama beat the “maverick” in McCain by connecting with the average Joe, even though his explanation of the economics of the day was laced with flawed class-struggle rhetoric, making business the ultimate villain in the drama. It would serve John McCain well to explain how an increase in corporate taxes will take more out of the average person’s pocket than his approach would. We have heard enough of the nuance of the tiers of taxes.

While McCain looked focused and alert, his demeanor could have also been seen as gruff and angry. In the next debate, he must be warm and inviting. Obama’s appearance was perfect to engender confidence. His graying hair gave an air of experience. He was cool and in control vs condescending. McCain also did not look at Obama during the debate. This was as much a sign of disrespect as Obama calling McCain “Jim.”

This week, McCain is making a strong case for his candidacy by his decisive action in the time of economic crisis. He showed that he is an out-of-the-box change agent without bipartisanship. The next debate can act like a recruitment poster for his navy. It is time to stand the rails and be seen as a leader who is ready for engagement.

Tags: Uncategorized by Dr. Eric Wallace
1 Comment »

Tags: Uncategorized by Dr. Eric Wallace
No Comments »

Tags: Uncategorized by Dr. Eric Wallace
1 Comment »

Tags: Uncategorized by Dr. Eric Wallace
No Comments »

by Armstrong Williams

Although the abortion debate has largely been cast in terms of a woman’s right to choose whether or not to give birth to a fetus, based on a set of lifestyle and health-related factors, the alarming number of abortions performed each year suggests a different story altogether.  With well over a million abortions performed annually in the United States alone, more than 50 million abortions performed in America since the Supreme Court’s landmark Roe v. Wade decision 35 years ago, it might appear that abortion has become little more than a routine medical procedure, undertaking little or no real consideration of its true consequences.

Surely, some of the causal factors behind such a choice are understandable within the context of the world we find ourselves facing.  With fatherhood and male role models increasingly absent, and rapidly disintegrating family and community networks, it is no wonder that many women feel they cannot raise a child on their own.  While, in many countries, pregnancy is considered an honorable contribution to society, in our modern Western civilization, childbirth, especially among women of prime child-bearing age, is seen through the lens of constricted lifestyle and career choices.  Women with children are seen as less valuable in the workplace and less likely to succeed in life. Children are viewed, not as our greatest resource leading to a better future for our civilization and the world at large, but as a burden on our individuality and lifestyle.

This choice stems from a prism of values that distort the true nature of God-given equality.  This view is not restricted to the Western world, but is surprising given the strides we have made over the past century in upholding and advancing the rights of women.  The earliest American feminists, Elizabeth Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, equated abortion with slavery as barbaric practices. Stanton was quoted as saying, “When we consider that women are treated as property, it is degrading to women that we should treat our children as property to be disposed of as we see fit.” Anthony went as far as to refer to abortion as “child-murder.” These early pioneers of civil rights and women’s suffrage found it abominable that either unborn or fully formed human beings could be considered property, to be used and discarded like animals.  In fact, when animals are used in a similar manner, PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) goes berserk trying to defend the rights of animals.  The ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union) often boasts about advocating those without a voice, yet they sided with the women, who once upon a time had no voice, but who has less of a voice than a baby inside her mother’s womb?  Somewhere along the way, feminism became distorted and turned on the very values that gave rise to it. Somehow “convenience” and “comfort” became values more important than the right to life, where a woman can exterminate any chance at life on a whim.  Is that where we want to be as a society, where lives can be used as leverage or in some tragic cases, as revenge?

Equality, whether in gender or societal terms, has been falsely equated with sameness. When America ’s founders evoked the principle that people are created equal, they did not mean that all people are the same. Rather, they implied that all are equal in the sight of God; that our diversity of talents and perspectives as individuals should be properly valued as contributions to the growth of a great civilization.  One need not be the same in order to be treated equally under the law. But this view has been distorted in modern feminism: rather than urging a re-valuing of the value of motherhood, modern feminists merely sought to become men in dresses, and some seem intent on doing away with those dresses too. In doing so they overlooked the value of the sacrifice associated with motherhood.  It should be noted that even under the best circumstances childbirth is an arduous ordeal, fraught with danger.  On the other hand, it is perhaps one of the noblest forms of sacrifice that a person can offer to society, and potentially the most rewarding. We ought not to forget that half of society is incapable of undergoing this sacrifice and having the honor of bringing new life into the world. Yes, bearing children is a privilege that half of us are not afforded, and when people who have power use it to oppress others in order to gain more comfort for themselves we usually call them tyrannical. It’s highly dubious that the intent of the feminist movement was to create tyrants out of teenagers and young women or their families who force them to vanquish an unborn baby. Motherhood and fatherhood are not a useless burden: they are the basic building blocks of a great nation. Without the sacrifice of parents, nations could not exist.

“The Armstrong Williams Show” is broadcast on WPGC-AM TALK 1580 in Washington, and XM Satellite Power

Tags: Uncategorized by Dr. Eric Wallace
No Comments »

Does your personal faith influence how you vote?  Stay tuned for the full length video presentation coming soon to www.freedomsjournalmagazine.com

Tags: Uncategorized by Dr. Eric Wallace
3 Comments »

by Harry R. Jackson, Jr.

This week, the presidential campaign will cross the 40-day mark. It is closer than anyone would have imagined. Every vote will count. The question on many minds will be: how does one campaign lock up the race and seize the presidency? From the very beginning, the election has been the Democrats’ to lose

I have been shocked during the last two weeks at the outrageous attempts that the media has made to paint Sara Palin’s faith as extreme. CNN ran a series of special reports in which they interviewed members of Sara Palin’s former church in Wassila, Alaska. They even directly queried members of her former congregation, in which she spent nearly two decades, about the practice of speaking in tongues. In addition, reporters attempted to make her current church sound cult-like. Next Pat Oliphant, political cartoonist of the Washington Post, made fun of both God and Sarah Palin on September 9. He featured a God that cursed about right wing people and a Governor Palin speaking in gibberish that even God did not recognize as speaking in tongues.

Finally, to pour salt into an open wound, there has been an endless barrage of media attacks, yellow journalism for over 10 days. Just last week I was surprised to hear talk show hosts describe “Pentecostalism” as “evangelicalism on steroids – much more dangerous than the normal evangelicals”.

As a result of all of this, Governor Palin’s approval rating has swung south by a remarkable 21 points. She has been fired on from all angles but she has not fired back – defending her faith and values in an aggressive enough manner. Part of the problem is that the McCain campaign has not been able to build on the momentum from her initial debut with the audience that will have the most affinity with her - the conservative and evangelical communities.

It’s crunch time and seeing an excited base actually showing up to vote is the McCain/Palin ticket’s primary hope. The McCain campaign missed an opportunity last weekend to be a part of the Values Voters Summit in Washington, DC, which attracted the grassroots activists of the evangelical movement. These are the foot soldiers that Karl Rove was able to engage in 2004. This army, largely self-directed, literally carried Bush over the threshold in his race. I am convinced that they can do it again if they believe in the candidates.

Surprisingly, the relentless Obama campaign is not giving up on attempting to steal a few percentage points of the highly treasured, evangelical vote. Over two years ago, the Democratic Party in general and Senator Obama in particular, decided that it would make the faith voters an important demographic target. Since that decision candidates have come and gone, several forums on faith have occurred, and the nation has heard sermons from a variety of pulpits that they would never have heard of under normal circumstances.

Announcing an unexpected strategic initiative, officials from the Barack Obama campaign told David Brody of the Christian Broadcasting Network that they are about to conduct a faith tour in “key battleground states.” The Obama team will call the tour: “Barack Obama: Faith Family and Values Tour.” During this tour, a major theme will be – “Voting All Our Values.” The team will consist of Catholic scholar Doug Kmiec and former Indiana Congressman Tim Roemer. They also expect a number of evangelical Democrats to join them on the road.

The Obama team has declared war and will be traveling to “red” states and swing states. The tour should last about 1 month.

How should the McCain camp respond? They should protect their foundations and build on the enthusiasm of the conservative and evangelical base. They should conduct regional rallies, town hall meetings, and tap into the evangelical network of church leaders who faithfully supported Mike Huckabee’s campaign. Local churches can be the ultimate grassroots organization if values are truly put first instead of party doctrines and ideology. The Republican brand is not selling well this year. McCain still has the maverick label to wear. Currently cast by liberals as a liar, he must rebuild momentum in the communities that still see him as a hero.

McCain has gone as far as he can with negative ads and an attack-dog mentality aimed at exposing the weakness of the Obama/Biden ticket. He must now do what Obama did in the beginning. He and Sarah Palin must speak vision, vision, and vision. They must major in hope, based on substance. They have to articulate their own out-of-the-box solutions to the problems of the day. They must find allies who will help them nail down the white Catholic vote, which Obama believes he can win. Further, they must reach conservative black and Hispanic ministers who are resonating with the faith journey of Sarah Palin behind the scenes. They identify with her boldness and courage and are willing to give McCain a hearing.

McCain and company must meet the Obama campaign on the field of battle in states like Colorado, Indiana, North Carolina, Georgia, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Missouri, Florida, New Mexico, Virginia and Wisconsin. Sarah Palin needs to be strategically deployed as the faith community’s interpreter of a new “McCain Doctrine” of governance. Her convention bounce is over and her detractors are starting to sound over confident again. Now is the time for Palin to get on the faith circuit and “work it.”

Tags: Uncategorized by Dr. Eric Wallace
1 Comment »

by Herman Cain

The nation’s financial system has a severe migraine headache. We can take our $700 billion in aspirin now, or wait for a $700 trillion surgery if the economy tanks.

The first option might prevent an economic recession. The second option would put us in a depression due to the ripple effect of doing nothing.

There is plenty of blame to go around for the crisis on Wall Street, starting with the CEOs and directors of the wounded businesses, followed by failed congressional oversight that they have and did not use properly.

Admittedly, these Wall Street bailouts and “special loan arrangements” by the U.S. Treasury and the Federal Reserve seem inappropriate and excessive to the typical citizen, but if the Bush Administration had done nothing, Mike and Mary Mainstreet would have been outraged once the ripple effect knocked on their door.

Last week Russia suspended trading on all of its stock exchanges for several days. If Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch and AIG were all allowed to spiral into their own self-inflicted demise, trading on the U.S. stock exchanges could have been suspended.

Here is one man’s ripple effect scenario if stocks stop trading:

*   Banks would freeze their lending operations until they could figure out the shock waves through the economy of a frozen stock market.

*  Fortune 500 companies would not be able to refinance their scheduled “balloon” loans for some of their debt and seasonal cash-flow needs.

*  New business investment would stop, and large existing projects would stop when businesses could not draw down on their lines of credit.

*  An already depressed housing and construction segment of our economy would become even more depressed.

*  Businesses large and small would begin to lay off workers, which would cause unemployment to go up significantly, and consumer spending to go down significantly.

*  Since business investment and consumer spending drives a combined 85 percent of the economy, Gross Domestic Product (GDP) would tank. The only unknown is how deep.

The mainstream media has done a good job of scaring the public about how serious our economic situation is, and a poor job of reporting the possible ripple effects if nothing is done.

Some people do not believe that such a scenario could happen. Yes it could. Ask Russia. Or study the history of how a series of bad decisions and indecisions led to the Great Depression of 1929. That time was no economic migraine headache with unemployment nearly 25 percent and the stock market losing over 80 percent of its market value.

President Bush and his administration will not get any credit from the mainstream media or the Democrats for their efforts to avoid a do-nothing scenario. But at this point in his administration, I don’t think President Bush cares who gets the credit. That attitude is good for America.

Let’s hope at this point the do-nothing, blame-game, lowest-rated Democratic-led Congress in history stays out of the way to give the billions in aspirin a chance to work.

At least a do-something president with the right attitude gives us a chance to avoid the worse case scenario.

© 2008 North Star Writers Group. May not be republished without permission.

Tags: Uncategorized by Dr. Eric Wallace
No Comments »