How Congress Occupied Wall Street

Sarah Palin has penned an Op-ed calling for reform of Congressional privileges, and exemptions from the law, that enable politicians to arrive in DC as people of modest means and leave--assuming they ever do--as millionaires.

Palin is following up on the release of Peter Schweizer's new book, "Throw Them All Out: How Politicians and Their Friends Get Rich Off Insider Stock Tips, Land Deals, and Cronyism That Would Send the Rest of Us to Prison."

If it's anything like his last one, "Architects of Ruin: How Big Government Liberals Wrecked the Global Economy--And How They Will Do It Again If No One Stops Them," it promises to be a very good read.

In her piece, Palin refers to one of many things that Noman liked about her from reading her first biography, "Going Rogue: An American Life."  

Specifically, she was never embraced by Alaska's Republican Party establishment, and protested its cozy arrangements with the big oil companies--the corporations that play the dominant role in Alaska that financial corporations play nationally.  She won the nomination and governorship despite the Party's resistance, and punished it for its corruption when she got the chance.

Not bad for a politician.  Pity that there aren't more like her.

None of this surprises me. I've been fighting this type of corruption and cronyism my entire political career. For years Alaskans suspected that our lawmakers and state administrators were in the pockets of the big oil companies to the detriment of ordinary Alaskans. We knew we were being taken for a ride, but it took FBI wiretaps to finally capture lawmakers in the act of selling their votes. In the wake of politicos being carted off to prison, my administration enacted reforms based on transparency and accountability to prevent this from happening again.

Perhaps Occupy Wall Street has more in common with the Tea Party than it realizes.  That assumes, however, that one can take the movement at its word, and believe its purported raison d'etre--to bring Wall Street to heel.

Naturally, if its true purpose is simply to give Democrats the appearance of popular, grass-roots support for its spend-borrow-and-tax governance, and an antidote to the Tea Parties, we can forget such hopes for common ground, or change towards that which unites rather than separates us.

We were successful because we had the righteous indignation of Alaskan citizens on our side. Our good ol' boy political class in Juneau was definitely not with us. Business was good for them, so why would they want to end "business as usual"?

The moment you threaten to strip politicians of their legal graft, they'll moan that they can't govern effectively without it. Perhaps they'll gravitate toward reform, but often their idea of reform is to limit the right of "We the people" to exercise our freedom of speech in the political process.

I've learned from local, state and national political experience that the only solution to entrenched corruption is sudden and relentless reform. Sudden because our permanent political class is adept at changing the subject to divert the public's attention—and we can no longer afford to be indifferent to this system of graft when our country is going bankrupt. Reform must be relentless because fighting corruption is like a game of whack-a-mole. You knock it down in one area only to see it pop up in another.

To the best of Noman's knowledge, her pejorative reference to reform that limits the right of the people to speak is her first open criticism of the man who brought her to national attention: 2008 Republican presidential candidate, Senator John McCain, co-author of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform bill.

Noman's personal opinion is that she'd be a good person for the incoming Republican Administration to appoint to an investigative committee reviewing the previous six years of government transactions (including the Federal Reserve's) with banks, Wall Street firms, venture capitalists (especially green ones) and Fortune 500 corporations.

With respect to the subject of her piece and Schweizer's book, Noman thinks that there is plenty to be upset about these days, and that ire over government would be better focused on governance than on politicians.

For instance, he'd like a complete accounting of where the first trillion dollars of stimulus was spent by the organizations receiving it; and official actions taken by the President's unofficial Czar's, e.g., Kevin Jennings at Education.

He'd also like a thorough public airing of all the opportunistic legislation and regulation that Democrats unilaterally imposed on the country when its hegemony was unchecked by opposition votes.

In any event, Noman is happy to see that Sarah Palin has not left the public square.  She strikes him as an honorable and decent woman whose convictions are genuine rather than expedient, and whose love for her country is palpable rather than affected.

Bristol Palin 1 - Loud Mouth Boor 0

In case you haven't seen it, Bristol Palin was verbally accosted in a bar by a big mouth she correctly identified as a homosexual.  (The video is embedded in the link.)  He didn't seem gay, happy.  In fact, he was the rudest kind of boor you'd never hope to meet.  

The gist of his magisterial disquisition is that Sarah Palin is evil, will go to hell if there is one and is a woman of easy virtue.  That's funny because Sarah Palin married the first boy she ever kissed, has five children in wedlock--including one she was advised to kill, and for which she will never be forgiven for bringing into the world against that advice--and is a hard-working, honest woman.  

The loud mouth on the other hand sits in bars with his boyfriend and screams obscenities at people he doesn't know.  His words invert reality--he is the whore, not Sarah Palin--which mirrors the social mores in mainstream culture that nurtures his bad manners and--habits.

Bristol kept her cool, questioned him on the reasons for his beliefs and encouraged him to settle upon one for future articulation.  She made him out to be the fool he is by giving him a chance to show that he isn't.  The lout was vacuous, a big zero except for the hatred that fills him, which renders him a net negative.  

Bristol Palin has more character in one hair follicle than he does in his dreams, and more class in her pinky than he does in his material being.  She has courage, just like the rest of her family.  He has a Certified Victim's Dispensation from rules of civility, and sufficient chip-on-his-shoulder to avail himself liberally of it.    

Well done, Bristol.  You do your parents proud (aside from taking salacious mechanical bull rides in bars for the camera), which is another reason for everyone to hate them.  

Noman wonders what the lout's parents think or know of him, but doubts that they do.  He seems disconnected from any loving relationships.

The altercation ended when Bristol walked away from it and left the bar.  Noman remembers a saner time when anyone boorish enough to shout obscenities at a woman in public would be taught some manners.  And any boor obtuse enough to keep shouting and escalating tensions, especially when given a gracious chance to redeem himself, would have been shown to the door and left in the gutter where he belonged.   Such a person is not fit for society.

He is in today's world.  In fact, he's privileged.  This disturbance incarnate remained seated on his stool sipping away at his courage.  Nobody said a word to him about civility, manners, diversity, pluralism, toleration, sociability or shutting up.  Dealing with him as his actions deserved might have converted this Danton into a mini-Matthew-Shepard and subjected upholders of public order to federal hate crime laws.

This boor had identified himself as a member of a Certified Victim Class.  He has special rights.  He's entitled.  Because, that's "fair."  It's required by Liberal compassion.  Everyone else must suffer whatever mortification he choses to dispense.  That's Liberal politics, and everything in America is politics these days.

Bristol complied with her duty to accept this boor's guff graciously and left the bar after a dashed attempt at reason.  She acquitted herself with honor.  He covered himself in shame.  She's no damsel in distress, but there is something noble in her.  (As an aside, Levi is an imbecile for letting this gem get away.)

God save our culture from the tyranny of political correctness, and teach our men and women how to behave like human beings rather than boors.

David Mamet has a spot-on observation about the tyranny of run-amok victims, as he does on so many topics.  In discussing the Liberal assault on culture, he writes:

What is the actual human mechanism devoted to the dread of giving offense?  It is called culture.  It, in its entirety, consists of rules worked out through human interactions sufficiently successful to have been relegated to unconscious habit. 

 When all human interactions are brought to conscious consideration, the result is anxiety and fear.  Consider any first meeting or ceremony where the forms are unknown: a dinner party, for example, of such formality that one was unsure which fork to use, and how and when to address one's table mates; a meeting with a head of state, or a celebrity.  Human beings, in such circumstance, may be brought to a literal state of immobility through fear of violating a norm and of behaving in a, thus, shameful fashion.

This is the state of the contemporary Liberal world--the fear of giving offense has been self-inculcated in a group which must, now, consider literally every word and action, for potential violation of the New Norms.  To further compound the dilemma, the norms themselves are inchoate: consider a high school teacher coming upon two students kissing in the hallway, in violation of school rules.  Suppose the two students are gay.  Can you imagine a teacher who would not at the very least hesitate in or mitigate her caution or censure in fear of offending the students?  Consider the Black Power agitation and vandalism of the sixties, and the school administrators who allowed it on campus--not out of fear for their person, but out of fear that to defend the actual university culture of civility would be to give offense. 

It is not the absence of government, but the rejection of culture which leads to anarchy.

There's a ring of truth to that money-line.  Scaling down the government to manageable dimensions will not lead to anarchy.  Not stopping government by Liberal do-gooders and their designated victims will further debase culture and surely lead to anarchy.

Noman awaits to learn of the lout's name and bio.  He is not waiting to hear it from our watchdog media, however.  After all, the lout is a Liberal, not Joe the Plumber.

Addendum: Since publication of this post, Danton has been identified as Stephen Hanks, 47, from Louisiana living in LA.  He is a consultant, of what he couldn't say.  Sensitivity, perhaps; certainly not debate.

Noman suspects he was intelligent before sexual identity subordinated his intellect to his libido--a faculty not noted for its reasonableness.  Unfortunately, his commitments transgress long-standing, deeply-ingrained (not superficial, media-generated) cultural norms, which reduces him to vituperation and smugness.  The nature that ultimately underlies culture will eventually reassert its hegemony.  How could it not?  It fills him with hatred.

For now, Hanks is at war with public figures he identifies as defenders of life and traditional morality.  He is ironically fighting a Satan in his mind with every confrontation while inadvertently serving the actual one below.  He evidently feels justified in taking matters beyond limits of decency, courtesy, tolerance, respect or even enlightened self-interest.  Like all Liberals, he is a law unto himself.

What are the limits to his behavior?  Does he recognize any in principle?  With Michael Moore egging him on, can citizens trust him to discern any?  This man is a dangerously loose canon with no capacity for self control or remorse.  Noman says the public would be better served by Hanks residing behind bars rather than in them?