Nazi Nancy

Democratic Minority Leader Pelosi has advised us that she has some sludge to sling at former House Speaker Newt Gingrich.  Her problem is that she dredged it up from a confidential swamp: a 1990's era ethics probe of the former speaker.

As Noman vaguely recalls, charges were ginned up against Gingrich about the shell of a 501(c)(3) tax exempt entity that he appropriated to accept donations for a politics class he taught--or something like that--and in which he recruited Republican activists.  Democrats from Harvard Law School to the University of Southern California's School of Cinematic Arts were shocked, SHOCKED! to learn that there was political activism occurring on college campuses.  Since it was Republican activism, maybe they really were shocked.

Even more vile were the facts that Gingrich had taken in $10-$20 million in contributions to GOPAC over the course of seven years, some of which he used on himself, and that he got a $4.5 million book advance from Rupert Murdoch.  These offenses were beyond the pale.  By the time that Hillary Clinton's (D-NY) $8 million book advance was approved by the Senate's Ethics committee, and her husband (D-AK) had enriched himself through political campaigning and honoraria, standards had changed.  Or, should Noman say doubled?

The linked Meet the Press interview by Tim Russert (Jan. 5, 1997) of David Bonior (D-MI) and John Boehner (R-OH) gives an indication of how Democrats play rollerball politics.  It is instructive and well worth watching.  Bonior was the hit man, Gingrich the marked man, Pelosi the gun moll and Boehner the morgue attendant whose job it is to preserve the corpse from further desecration at the hands of the trash-talking assassin.

Gingrich's violations were of the run-of-the-mill variety rampant among politicians.  How else would they get rich while sitting in Congress?  Ask Harry Reid, or Nancy Pelosi.  Gingrich's brashness and venality merely made it easy to assail him for greed.  

His real crime in Democrats' eyes was political: engineering the Republican's complete takeover of Congress in 1994, something they hadn't been able to pry away from Democrats' death grip in the prior forty years.  They hated him for beating them.  For that, a determined hit squad of the least principled partisans was loosed on him.  Given time, resources, infinite indulgence by the media, and manic zeal, Bonior, Pelosi et al got their man.  

Tactics used went so far as for Democratic activists to illegally intercept and record Gingrich's cell phone calls, turn the recordings over to a Democratic member of the Ethics Committee, Jim McDermott (D-WA), who passed them along to the New York Times, which printed the illegal transcripts in a front-page hit piece on the Speaker.  Nothing of consequence happened to any of them, except the Republican, Gingrich.

Bypassing her own culpability in the sordid affair, Pelosi recently commented on Gingrich's rise in the polls:

One of these days we’ll have a conversation about Newt Gingrich,” Pelosi told Talking Points Memo. “When the time is right. … I know a lot about him. I served on the investigative committee that investigated him, four of us locked in a room in an undisclosed location for a year. A thousand pages of his stuff.

This reminded Noman of nothing so much as Artie Johnson's Laugh-In Nazi.  "Vee haf infurmashun abou chu!"  Whether Pelosi's intimations are more interesting than stupid, Noman can't decide.  But, it is creepily gestapo-like for a sitting politician to issue extortion threats and make allusions to an opportunistically timed smear.  Such is the high character of politicians on the Left.

For his part, Gingrich fired back: 

"I want to thank Speaker Pelosi for what I regard as an early Christmas gift," Gingrich said at a press conference in Manhattan Monday. 

Gingrich denounced the threat from Pelosi, who is now the minority leader in the House, as "a fundamental violation of the rules of the House," and said that if Pelosi were to disclose details of the investigation, it would expose the "tainted ethics process the House was engaged in." He also called for the House to condemn Pelosi if she were to reveal anything from the ethics probe.

That kind of moxy is why Gingrich has taken the lead in the polls.  Republicans, conservatives and even independents are sick of the unjust double standards by which Democrats survive, and love candidates who don't take guff from unprincipled interlocutors, especially reporters and smarmy politicians.  Had Newt thrown more punches and nuzzled up less to Lefties over the years (e.g., global warming ad with Nancy Pelosi; taking GSE payola), he'd be more credible, and formidable, now.

Nancy Pelosi is a flawed politician herself, though one who doesn't mind living in a glass  house.  She made a twenty-point gain on the VISA IPO in two days, while killing legislation on the floor of the House that would have hurt profits at credit card companies.  (By the way, the practice of allotting hot IPO shares--which regular people cannot get--to VIP's who can reciprocate the largesse by engaging in a quid pro quo is called "spinning," which is what got superstar banker "Frank Quattrone" in trouble with the law).  

Her response:

Following the report, Pelosi's office released a statement saying that "Congress has never done more for consumers nor has the Congress passed more critical reforms of the credit card industry than under the Speakership of Nancy Pelosi."

Spokesman Drew Hammill added in the statement that "it is very troubling that 60 Minutes would base their reporting off of an already-discredited conservative author who has made a career of out attacking Democrats."

The "60 Minutes" report used as its starting point Peter Schweizer's book on soft corruption. Schweizer is a fellow at the Hoover Institution, a conservative think tank at Stanford University. But "60 Minutes" independently verified the information and also highlighted transactions of Republicans - Speaker of the House John Boehner and Rep. Spencer Bachus - both of whom deny using non-public information improperly.

We learn more daily about what Speaker Pelosi's House did for consumers as the cost of banking services rises, credit dwindles, and banking activity flees to more hospitable shores.  Her reforms of the credit card industry--after safely pocketing her stock market winnings--served to drive up costs and limit supply.  Yet her response is to say that her profiting through crony connections and by using her power to direct legislation is non-discussable because of good (to her mind) she has done, and because the source of the revelations is partisan.  As Gingrich might say, what's sauce for the goose...

Separately, thirty million dollars of the Democrat's $800 billion stimulus fund went to protect wetlands in Pelosi's district.

House Republicans are challenging Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s claim that the massive stimulus spending bill contains no pet projects after uncovering in the bill more than $30 million for wetlands conservation in her San Francisco Bay area district, including work she previously championed to protect the salt marsh harvest mouse. 

“This sounds like spending projects that have been supported by a certain powerful Democrat in the past,” said Michael Steel, spokesman for House Minority Leader John A. Boehner, Ohio Republican. 

“It certainly doesn’t sound like it will create or save American jobs,” he said. “So can Speaker Pelosi explain exactly how we will improve the American economy by helping the adorable little” critter? 

A spokesman for Mrs. Pelosi, California Democrat, said the claim was “fabricated” by Republicans. 

“The speaker nor her staff have had any involvement in this initiative. This is yet another contrived partisan attack,” Pelosi spokesman Drew Hammill said. “Restoration is key to economic activity including farming, fisheries, recreation, and clean water.” 

The criticism of hidden pet projects, or earmarks, in the economic rescue comes as Capitol Hill leaders rush to finalize a roughly $800 billion package in closed-door negotiations. President Obama boasts the stimulus plan contains no earmarks since Congress technically did not use the earmark process for lawmakers to request and drop in specific spending items. 

However, much the legislation was written behind closed doors and Republicans question how the projects were chosen.

“One of the proudest boasts of Democrats supporting their trillion-dollar spending plan is that it doesn’t contain earmarks,” Mr. Steel said. “But it seems like powerful Democrats will still find a way to bring home the bacon.”

And, how!  Thirty million dollars for the salt marsh harvest mouse.  And, her response is to blame Republican partisans for bringing it to the public's attention.  Does Noman detect a pattern here?

To Pelosi, anyone who questions her is a partisan.  Personally, Noman doesn't care if the claim is contrived by Martians.  He'd like her considered answers to charges that under her leadership her Party larded troughs with nearly a trillion dollars of give aways doled out from behind closed doors while the American public was in a state of shock and the opposition party was effectively hand tied.

Investors Business Daily opines that Minority Leader Pelosi would be wise to drop her attack on former Speaker Gingrich given the back room machinations that it took to pass ObamaCare.

Moreover, Speaker Gingrich was vindicated in the Democrat's witch hunt by a source as unlikely as the IRS.  The vendetta served only to remove him from the helm of the Republican revolution, which, of course, was the main objective all along.  There is something about his combination of speculative and practical intellect that terrifies the Left, despite his obvious character defects.  What amazes Noman is that Newt Gingrich still terrifies Democrats to the point of their sicking their German Shepherd on him.

Pelosi sat on the panel that investigated Gingrich's alleged violation of federal tax law in using tax-exempt monies to fund Gingrich's allegedly political college course, "Renewing American Civilization."

After a 3 1/2-year ordeal, and a $300,000 fine paid to the House Ethics Committee for providing inaccurate information, the IRS finally ruled that the sponsoring organization, the Progress and Freedom Foundation, "did not serve the private interests of Mr. Gingrich" and was both apolitical and completely legal.

Gingrich, who had led the charge against another House speaker, Jim Wright, in 1988 for ethics violations, said the current threat shows just how politically motivated the ethics investigation of him was.

He notes that 83 of 84 ethics charges "were repudiated as false." The 84th was simply dropped in 1998. Gingrich acknowledged that his "one mistake was one letter by a lawyer that I didn't read carefully."

Pelosi helped ram through the nationalization of health care known as ObamaCare behind closed doors, telling us we'd have to pass it to find out what's in it. Perhaps she would like to tell us how ethical the Cornhusker kickbacks and Louisiana purchases necessary to get it passed were.

Noman wouldn't pay much attention to what Minority Leader Pelosi said if he didn't fear for his life, liberty or property whenever she opened her mouth.

But, he is thankful for her recent outburst, which gives him occasion to tinker with the Beatle's song "Sexy Sadie."  The sobriquet, "Nazi Nancy," first suggested itself to Noman as she unilaterally blitzkrieged the crisis-shocked American people with one legislative outrage after another.

Nazi Nancy should be sung to the tune of Sexy Sadie.

Nazi Nancy:

hoNazi Nancy what have you done
You made a fool of everyone
You made a fool of everyone
Nazi Nancy ooh what have you done.

Nazi Nancy you broke the rules

You laid it down for all to see

You laid it down for all to see

Nazi Nancy oooh you broke the rules.

One sunny day the world was waiting for a leader

She came along to scam on everyone 

Nazi Nancy the greatest of them all.

Nazi Nancy how did you know

The world was victim just for you

The world was victim just for you

Nazi Nancy oooh how did you know.

Nazi Nancy you'll get yours yet

However big you think you are

However big you think you are

Nazi Nancy oooh you'll get yours yet.

We gave her everything we owned just to sit at her table

Just a smile would lighten everything

Nazi Nancy she's the latest and the greatest of them all.

She made a fool of everyone

Nazi Nancy.

However big you think you are 

Nazi Nancy.

However big you think you are, Minority Leader Pelosi, it's only an illusion fostered by slavish media devotion.  In the real world, your Liberal self righteousness and utter disregard for contrary opinion gave rise to the tea parties, and the 2010 midterm Waterloo for your Party.  

Perhaps an even worse shellacking in 2012 will at last free the country from your grinning tyranny. 

Princess Nancy

Herman Cain took more grief last night from a media intent on pinning him with the donkey tail of "misogynist-black-man-with-white-women-issues."

After the debate, a CNBC reporter questioned Cain about whether his pejorative reference to former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi as "Princess Nancy" wasn't particularly inapposite given his alleged problems with women.

This was apparently a burning issue among media mavens last night.

"Cain calls Pelosi "Princess Nancy". Maybe not smartest for a guy trying to fight back against harassment allegations?" Tweeted The Washington Post's Chris Cillizza.

The New Yorker's Ryan Lizza added: "Princess Nancy"! That will be really helpful for Cain's reputation as someone who has utmost respect for women."

Meanwhile, the Huffington Post's Sam Stein wrote: "When you're accused of serial sexual harassment, you should probably stay away from calling the top dem official in the house "princess." 

Someone by the Twitter handle of "Princess Pelosi" - who first Tweeted on November 4 - responded to Cain's remark with a sarcastic message: "I love when Herman Cain calls me a #princess it reminds me of my place #cnbcdebate #gopdebate #generalaxelrod". 

According to the Washington Post, Cain said on CNBC later that he regretted the phrase. 

"That was a statement that I probably shouldn't have made, but I was trying to make a point,"he said.

The point--made in reference to a challenging question about the candidates' fall back plans should ObamaCare be repealed--concerned an alternative bill that Speaker Pelosi buried in committee.  Cain's derision was leveled at her imperious exercise of legislative power.

Note the presumptions in the reporters' remarks.  Ryan Lizza thinks it impossible to respect women in general, and not Pelosi in particular.  Does he also think that his media colleagues who disrespected President Bush, for instance, disrespected men generally?  Sam Stein thinks Cain is accused of serial sexual harassment.  Actually, Cain has been serially accused of sexual harassment, a nuance that says more about the smear campaign than it does about the smear victim.

Note also the lack of interest in the questions of whether: Pelosi does indeed act like a princess; or her actions as House Speaker merited the sobriquet; or the actions of a powerful woman should be shielded from derision because she is a woman; or how it came to pass that someone like her could become the top Democratic official in the house?

As always with the press, scrutiny is fixed on the Republican, not the Democrat.

The comments indicate that the reporters' narrative is already settled, as are the rules of engagement.  Once accused of sexual harassment, a man's: (1) every reference to women--even to a public, willful, bossy, tyrannical legislator with a peremptory manner--will be scrutinized for misogyny; (2) your reputation is shot as everyone knows you don't respect women; and (3) snide cracks about top democratic officials are off limits.

Cain's remark recalled to Noman a vignette about Speaker Pelosi in Hank Paulson's financial crisis memoir, "On The Brink."

 

We were to meet in Nancy Pelosi's conference room, adjacent to her office in the Capitol.  Always smartly turned out, the Speaker of the House maintained an elegant, almost formal atmosphere, with fresh flowers and bowls of chocolates, that was quite removed from the rough-and-tumble of the floor.  Once, when I walked in with a cup of Diet Coke, she said, "Oh, we don't use plastic cups," and an aide promptly handed me a very nice glass for my drink.

Earlier he recounts that after Lehman Brothers' collapse, with AIG tottering on the brink, the global financial system imploding and panic setting into the public psyche, he had difficulty arranging an urgent meeting with the House Speaker and Democrats:

I next had to make arrangements to go to the Hill.  In the afternoon, I'd run into resistance trying to get something scheduled.  Before the PWG (President's Working Group) meeting I had spoken with Nancy Pelosi more than once, telling her that although the Fed hadn't made a final decision yet on the AIG loan, we probably would need to meet with congressional leaders to discuss it. I told her it was an emergency, but she'd replied: "This is difficult to schedule on short notice.  Do we need to do it tonight?"

Later in the crisis, with the automobile manufacturers on the brink of collapse, Paulson recounts his efforts to release $25 billion of funds that Congress had already approved for them:

Meantime the automakers continued to struggle.  The White House's hopes of redirecting the $25 billion in low-interest fuel efficiency loans to bail out the companies had hit a wall.  It couldn't legally be done unless Congress changed the lanuage of its legislation, but Nancy Pelosi refused.  She was unwilling to change the bill's environmental focus.  Instead, she insisted that I had the authority to use TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Program) funds to rescue the car companies, which had been pleading their case in Washington with some success.

Pelosi forced Paulson into using resources appropriated for saving the financial system to bail out the automobile makers, by conditioning Congress's release of the last tranche of TARP funds on it.  The money was needed to shore up Citigroup, the systemically important financial behemoth.

[I] had to duck out of the room a few times to take calls, including two from Nancy Pelosi, who told me point-blank that it was politically impossible to rescue Citi and not help the automakers... 

I was worried that we didn't have enough resources to take care of the financial system , much less the automakers, which couldn't seem to come up with a plan for their long-term viability.

"We're going to need more money from TARP," I told her.  "Do you realize what we just escaped with Citi?" 

It's going to be very hard," she said.  "The American People don't support it, and I don't have the votes." 

"[I]t was obvious that the politically astute Speaker ... knew that an auto bailout would depend on the Democrats--the Republicans were lined up against it--and she wanted me to fall on my sword by using TARP money for a very politically unpopular act. 

Paulson, and President Bush, did indeed fall on their swords to bail out a key Democratic Party constituency, the United Auto Worker's union (UAW) that destroyed the Big Three US automakers.

Paulson's book contains many such anecdotes, permitting one reasonably to conclude that "princess" is not too harsh a title for Nancy Pelosi, and perhaps even a charitable one.

To underscore the point, Noman posts a revealing montage of Speaker Pelosi that somebody put together last year while she still held power.

Beyond her governance, there is also the issue of how she reveled in her privileges and perquisites, e.g., her travel on a military jet, which was required of the House Speaker after 9/11.

Documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by Judicial Watch, which investigates and prosecutes government corruption, show Pelosi incurred expenses of some $2.1 million for her use of Air Force jets for travel over a recent two-year period. 

"Speaker Pelosi has a history of wasting taxpayer funds with her boorish demands for military travel," Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said at the time his organization's report came out. "And these documents suggest the speaker's congressional delegations are more about partying than anything else." 

Pelosi recently joined President Obama on a Judicial Watch list of Top 10 corrupt politicians because of her "sense of entitlement," the group said.

On substance, she is as regally detached from reality as any princess because she is permitted by a complicit press to say absolutely any- and everything without serious questioning, or consequence.  

A week ago she alleged that without President Obama's initial stimulus, America would be suffering 15% unemployment rather than its now-chronic 9%.  Note that she almost choked when saying it, indicating that she knew she was blowing smoke, and that God has a sense of humor.  It was, after all, up to him to mock her risible pretensions because the media certainly wouldn't.

It is so commonplace for Democrats to be granted free passes on their outlandish statements that Noman thought she might as well allege 25%, or 40%, or any absurdly high number.  She will never be pressed by the media to support her claims with empirical data or plausible theory.  As credulity was already stretched beyond the limit by 15%, she had nothing to lose.

Since this post concerns Herman Cain's alleged problems disrespecting white women as much as it does Nancy Pelosi's illusions of grandeur, Noman would like to draw to a close with the prose of a black man who really did have a white-woman problem, Liberal icon Eldridge Cleaver.

I love you

Because you're white,

Not because you're charming

Or bright.

Your whiteness

Is a silky thread

Snaking through my thoughts

In redhot patterns

Of lust and desire.

I hate you

Because you're white.

Your white meat

Is nightmare food.

White is

The skin of Evil.

You're my Moby D*ck,

White Witch,

Symbol of the rope and hanging tree,

Of the burning cross.

Loving you thus

And hating you so,

My heart is torn in two.

Crucified.

Cleaver's best seller, "Soul On Ice," contains many such observations on the theme, which were written while serving time for rape.

Curiously, his writings were embraced by white liberals who campaigned to have him released from prison.

Judging from Cain's much-commented-upon and newly rising negatives, the people behind these accusations have tapped into a rich vein of white fear and mistrust.  Some people apparently wonder if Cain is just a manicured Cleaver.

Cain's negatives doubled to 35% after two weeks of ballyhooed yet unsubstantiated accusations.  That is almost as high as the 40% strong disapproval number that it took our first post-racial President nearly three years of opportunism, failure and demagoguery to earn.

Even in the age of Obama, it does not take long for people to jump to the worst conclusions about a black man's character.  Noman wonders if the President takes any credit for that.

Occupy America's Wallet

There is entirely too much to say about the phenomena of Wall Street protesters springing up across the land claiming to speak for 99% of the population.  Noman imagines that his first reply should be, please don't.

Though belonging to the 99%, he has nothing else in common with Occupy Wall Street.  He pays taxes; they don't.  He works in the private sector; they don't.  He thinks America is just great; they don't.  He bathes...  

Unlike the various students demanding subsidized education, and others insisting on free whatever-they-think-they-are-entitled-to, Noman doesn't believe that anyone owes him anything more than common courtesy, and space within the confines of common decency to be who he is.

The one constant in this metastasizing phenomenon has been the futile search for a causal nexus between the protester's actions, aims and the various injustices they point to in order to explain themselves.

One young woman on the radio was willing to risk her scholarship to medical school in order to protest 1.5 million homeless children living in America.  Granting the number, ad arguendo, Noman scratched his head trying to connect her risking her scholarship, going to New York to protest Wall Street, desire for higher taxes and more spending, and how any of it would address the problem of homeless children--or even had anything to do with it.

It was classic Liberal: clutch onto a tear-jerking problem and cite it righteously to demand the policies you favor.  If the reader, for instance, is against the policies, it is because you want the problem to fester.  You probably profit from it, too.

Add Saul Alinsky to this mix and hopeless polarization ensues.  You are a "Have" trying to keep power away from the "Have-Nots."  Moreover, you are "the enemy."

In any event, and at all costs, ignore the obvious causes of the problem, which would recommend policies that Liberals oppose and spent decades deconstructing.

For example, the primary causes of child poverty in the US are the breakdown of the family, especially in black, single-parent families, and the breakdown of traditional sexual morality.  Policies addressing these root causes would undoubtedly spur Occupy Maternity Ward protests, chants of "get your rosaries off my ovaries," and invocation of child poverty as the raison d'être for their outbreak. 

Noman might focus with justice on the rank hypocrisy angle.  For instance, Nancy Pelosi--The Speaker of the House who shepherded Hank Paulson and Ben Bernnanke's bailout of Wall Street through Congress over the objections of House Republicans (who voted it down the first time, and took a beating from the media and a Republican Administration for torpedoing the stock market)--is magically the scourge of Wall Street.

She called down God's blessings on the protestors saying: “The message of the American people is that no longer . . . will the recklessness of some on Wall Street cause massive joblessness on Main Street.”  Really?  Who will prevent it?  Government?  Her?

Perhaps Nancy forgot her role in the January 24, 2010 deal to increase Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac's loan limits in high-cost areas from $417,000 to $729,750.

Packing in that last trillion-dollars-plus of sub-prime, Alt-A mortgage-backed debt before the system froze up from cascading defaults didn't work out too well for Main Street.  But, Wall Street and the GSE's sub-prime confederates loved it.  [n.b. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are "government sponsored entities," or GSE's.]

She also colluded with Chris Dodd and Barney Frank to omit the GSE's from Dodd-Frank's ambit.  Another big win for big finance at the expense of the 50%-of-the-99% who continue to pick up the tab for the 49%-Party's formerly government-subsidized, now government-owned, cash cows.

Noman supposes that it is Minority Leader Pelosi's theatrical outbursts, not governing actions--what she says, not what she does --that count.  Like her oft-repeated, yet never-substantiated (nor questioned by the mainstream media) accusation that tea party protesters spit on members of Congress, it is her words, not reality, that matter.  (They presumably did so as they picked up garbage leaving Washington, DC cleaner than when they arrived en masse.)

There is also President Obama himself, who despite talking protesters onto the streets and winking at them for encouragement is the leading recipient of Wall Street contributions among all politicians in the 1989-2010 period.  That's impressive, especially considering that he's been a candidate for less than a decade.  Nevertheless, he leads the pack of pols with decades more campaign experience, and expenses, reaping $16 million of Wall Street lucre into his coffers.

Then there is a matter that George Soros complained about recently.  The Government--President Obama's government, and before that Senator Obama's government with House Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Reid running it--injected capital into banks, effectively relieving them of their bad assets and allowing them to earn their way out of a hole.  This allowed banks to earn bumper profits, and pay bumper bonuses once they had paid off their TARP loans.

Banks have earned these profits on President Obama's watch in relatively risk-free fashion courtesy of access to Fed money at record low interest rates held down for a record long period, and capturing the generous spread on tight-money loans in the marketplace even while dragging their feet on lending to small businesses and to the middle class.

Noman doesn't want to dwell on any of that, however.  For now, he's happy just to sit back and enjoy the spectacle.

Taking the longer view, some kind of taxonomy would help to put the disparate pieces of this puzzle together, and describe it.  Aristotelian causation provides one; Michael Novak's tripartite components of modern political economy provide another.  A hybrid of the two ordering devices provides us with a map to survey the scene.

Aristotlte's four causes are the material (that out of which a thing is); formal (that into which a thing becomes); efficient (that by which a thing becomes); and final (that for the sake of which a thing exists).  While they apply specifically to physical objects, e.g., tables, they are useful, though less definitive, for analyzing non-physical phenomena.

Novak's three elements of the American political economy are the political system (which is liberal), the economic system (which is market driven), and the cultural-moral system (which is pluralistic).  Putting the two together, one gets the following matrix:

Cause/System	Political (liberal)	Economic (market driven)	Cultural-Moral (pluralistic)
Material (that out of which)
Formal (that into which)
Efficient (that by which)
Final (that for the sake of which)

Political:

Materially, these protests are a legitimate expression of 1st Amendment rights.  This is the way we do things in America, and it is to be welcomed, even if not appreciated.

That said, there is a question about whether conduct is law-abiding.  If not--and, let's be real--then the right is conditioned, curtailed by arrests, etc.

Additionally, the movement has caught on.  We can expect some manifestation of it to be with us throughout the election season.

The interesting, and troubling, prospect is of what will happen when opposing Occupy Wall Street and Tea Party throngs encounter each other in earnest on the streets.

Formally, these political phenomena are being shaped by narrators, talking heads like Barbara Walters who exalted that "it has spread to more than 250 American cities, more than a thousand countries," despite there being only 195 nation states in the world.

It bears mentioning that the mainstream chattering class, people like Barbara Walters, works for big media corporations.

Also worth mentioning is media's importance to Saul Alinsky's first rule of power tactics: "Power is not only what you have but what the enemy thinks you have."  As Walter's cheer-leading indicates, there is no force comparable to media for creating illusions.

Otherwise, there is no unified narrative, as protesters clamor for everything from egalitarian utopia, to gay rights, to the freeing of convicted cop killer Mumia Abu-Jamal.  Occupy Wall Street is decidedly a left-fest.  Its general message is "I want.  Gimme.  I'm entitled.  It's fair.  Tear something down."

Just as the Musllim brotherhood will shape the outcome of the Arab Spring despite the participation of idealistic protesters, Occupy Wall Street is already being shaped by the professional community organizers from SEIU, ACORN's successors, and others operating according to Alinsky's rules.

On this latter point, a look at Chapter 7 of "Rules For Radicals," provides an illuminating glimpse into tactics: e.g., "The real action is the enemy's reaction"; "The enemy properly goaded and guided in his reaction will be your major strength"; "Tactics, like organization, like life, require that you move with the action."

Recall that ACORN received access to $5 billion of community stabilization funds in the first stimulus bill, though its leader disclaimed any intention of availing himself or the organization of it; AmeriCorps received $6 billion; state employees unions received hundreds of billions of dollars in redistributed loot, as did recipients of transfer payments.

Despite high-brow protestations to the contrary, it stretches credulity--all but Liberals'--to maintain that none of this money is finding its way back into organized initiatives supportive of federal redistribution.

The trigger was President Obama's fiery oratory in support of a jobs bill that was legislatively dead on arrival but rhetorically alive with populist bombast to fuel combustable dispositions.

His speeches to the joint session of Congress and the Congressional Black Caucus bear special mention, though his every utterance since his return from Martha's Vineyard has defiantly fanned the flames of class warfare.  He is even proud of it.

Nor is the President alone.  Today, Vice-president Biden blamed an increase in the number of murders and rapes in Flint, Michigan--the communist city that drove GM away to its own detriment, and nurtured the chip on Michael More's shoulder as well as the scars in his soul--on Republican obstructionism.

Despite the VP's failure to establish causation (as opposed to correlation), and to explain when, how and why local police became the financial responsibility of every US citizen including those in law-abiding communities (as opposed to local citizens who generally pay for local police), the red meat will undoubtedly feed an Occupy Flint movement, and encourage escalating tensions elsewhere.

Finally, Occupy Wall Street is dedicated to greater federal spending and higher taxes.  It is a protest geared towards stimulating Congressional action along Democrats preferred lines, and establishing its fiscal (and social) priorities into law.

Note this contrast with the Tea Party movement.  Occupy Wall Street is dedicated to the use of government power to confiscate wealth from others in order to redistribute it to protesters and their preferred recipients.  The Tea Party is dedicated to the abstention of government power so that those who earn or have wealth can put it to their own preferred uses rather than surrender it to the uses preferred by government-favored third parties.

With respect to those who create wealth, their uses are far more likely to prosper society than the uses of politically connected cronies, e.g., Solyndra.

It takes a peculiar outlook, the Alinsky perspective for instance--i.e., "How can the Have-Nots take power away from the Haves"?--to consider Occupy Wall Street claims sympathetic, or to call a Tea Party leader a nazi for upholding the rule of law.

Economic:

Populist rage is the matter from which this movement springs.  It is easy to despise Wall Streeters (if one lets oneself, which is never advisable) who profited wildly from participating in schemes that nearly bankrupted the global economy.

This particular genie, however, once coaxed out of its bottle, can be devastatingly destructive and well nigh impossible to put back in.  Unstable minds are already at work drawing crude connections and making incendiary remarks.

One problem with Alinsky's tactics is that goading enemies into impolitic reactions can be done by anybody, not just the politically correct, which is already bad enough.

Lost in the protests is the nuance doggedly insisted upon by Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission (FCIC) dissenter Peter Wallison, who writes in today's Wall Street Journal that protestor's rage springs from a false narrative.

It was primarily the government's housing policies, specifically Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac's engineering of the sub-prime bubble that bears the blame for our financial misery.   Wall Street was merely a willing accomplice, not its principle architect.

Research by Edward Pinto, a former chief credit officer of Fannie Mae (now a colleague of mine at the American Enterprise Institute) has shown that 27 million loans—half of all mortgages in the U.S.—were subprime or otherwise weak by 2008. That is, the loans were made to borrowers with blemished credit, or were loans with no or low down payments, no documentation, or required only interest payments. 

Of these, over 70% were held or guaranteed by Fannie and Freddie or some other government agency or government-regulated institution. Thus it is clear where the demand for these deficient mortgages came from. 

The huge government investment in subprime mortgages achieved its purpose. Home ownership in the U.S. increased to 69% from 65% (where it had been for 30 years). But it also led to the biggest housing bubble in American history. This bubble, which lasted from 1997 to 2007, also created a huge private market for mortgage-backed securities (MBS) based on pools of subprime loans.

Naturally, when one is trying to "pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it" ("all issues must be polarized if action is to follow"--a teaching whose classical expression Alinsky finds in Christ's dictum that "He who is not with me is against me"), nuance gets in the way.

Formally, the idea of a planned, targeted and government-directed economy drives this movement.  Command and control is its essence.

Noman finds this curious as the notion has been thoroughly discredited in management and organizational behavior literature, even in the military, for its suppression of private initiative, reduction of personal responsibility and dependence on centralized actors who cannot possess the omniscience required to make the system work efficaciously.

Ironically, protesters favoring government power over private initiative operate under the cloak of speech and assembly freedoms granted by the same constitution that protects commerce, in its body, not in an added amendment.

The economic trigger was the badly sagging fortunes of the command and control idea.   Despite Newsweek's famous 2009 cover declaring that "We Are All Socialists Now," we are not.

And with persistently high unemployment, skyrocketing deficits and debt, an impending double-dip recession and a proliferation of crony corporatism and corruption, there are daily fewer voices that confidently advocate for top-down economic power.

The discrediting of this economic panacea is all the more alarming to the President's Party as it is accompanied by the President's sinking poll numbers, doubts about his re-election, and concomitant fears of losing Congressional power, which was so opposrtunistically deployed against popular majorities, e.g., ObamaCare.  There is fear of payback, and even of merely justifiable roll back

The momentum to cut spending and lower taxes--a trajectory diametrically opposed to the Democrat's thrust--is on the ascent.  Repeated legislative and budgetary confrontations have only served to raise the profiles of smaller-government proponents such as John Boehner, Eric Cantor and Paul Ryan.

The final cause of Occupy Wall Street's economic thrust is Statism.  Under present conditions, this requires utilizing corporatist intermediaries such as General Electric, Dow Chemical, Pfizer and Walmart: public-private partners that, unlike Chamber of Commerce members, have grown comfortable in bed with the federal government.

Notably, these companies are not the target of protestors' rage.  That could change quickly should the government decide to dispense with their services.

There is nothing in the rhetoric or actions of Occupy Wall Street to indicate where, to protestors' minds, the limits to collectivism, if any, reside.


Cultural-Moral

Materially, the movement's moral impulse is grievance at perceived unfairness.  Income disparities are unseemly to many, and Wall Street is a haven for the exorbitantly paid and lavishly pampered.

Noman does not share Occupy Wall Street's aversion to economic difference, or think that there is no economically meaningful distinction to be drawn between an investment banker and a shoe-shiner.  So, he is not convinced that both should earn roughly the same pay for their efforts--something sundry protestors have suggested, and that he has heard from undergraduates for years.

This implicates at least a touch of self-interest--convenient moralizing, say, or easy virtue--given that protesters, unlike Warren Buffet, are not clamoring to pay more taxes.  Rather, they are demanding more benefits paid for by other's taxes.

The conflicts of interest inherent in the frustrated sentiments expressed have largely escaped protestors' self-examination, which does not excuse public sympathizers from Fed Chairmen Ben Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner to short seller George Soros for failing to recognize and acknowledge them.

Formally, the tendency is towards an equal distribution of resources.  It is an article of faith for some that equality of outcome will end injustice and suffering, and usher in heaven on earth.  The pedigree for this notion runs from Rousseau through Marx to Lenin.

But, will redistribution ever achieve its lofty aims?  Noman thinks not given the evidence of history, which leads to the opposite conclusion.

No system geared towards equality could ever ensure that everybody had something because it could never guarantee supply under demotivating conditions.  It could only ensure that nobody (besides the rulers) had anything.

Do you remember Liberals waxing eloquent about Cuba? The Soviet Union?  Nicaragua?  How has the equal distribution of resources worked in those worker's paradises?

Naturally, perfect equality proves elusive because those who effectuate the balancing, the Party, always reserves the lion's share for itself and its members.

What would be different should Occupy Wall Street and the Democratic Party have its way with the people's morals, and wallets?

The efficient cause of this movement is opportunity, specifically opportunism provided by our proximity to the financial crisis.  The relevance of occupying Wall Street as opposed to Beverly Hills, where arguably more millionaires and sub-prime/Alt-A mortgages might be found, is the financial capitol's psychological connection to the still-profusing economic wound.

Moreover, Liberals are so close, yet so far from consolidating massive gains.  The Wall Street Journal editorialized in January of 2009 about Democrats' 40 year wish list.  Today, this article serves primarily as a grim testament to Democrat's faulty prognosticative powers, and untrustworthiness to manage the nation's finances and affairs.

The adoption of the 40 year wish list in the first stimulus bill was followed by countless Liberal conquests including most notably, ObamaCare and Dodd-Frank.  All that remains to accomplish--besides establishing a blue state entitlement to red state taxes--is to pay for these spend-and-tax victories before capital markets definitively protest, and credit default swaps on the nation's debt render them Pyrrhic.

To Occupy Wall Street, these legislative triumphs make America more fair.  They redistribute money and power from the Haves to the Have-Nots.  The Have-Nots are entitled.  Consequently, taxes must be raised now, regardless of the consequences, or all will be lost.  Carpe diem.

Resentment, unemployment and malaise also trigger this moral response.  Things are not going well economically.  As it sounds less-and-less credible to blame the mess on the other guys the further they recede from memory, it must be the fault of systemic injustices.

When the going gets tough, the Left capitalizes on its opportunity for big change, even when its policies are the cause of the tough sledding.  Perhaps especially then.

Finally, the cause is the demand for social justice.  Who doesn't want that, you ask?  But, along whose, and what lines are we talking?

Philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre highlighted the problems besetting contemporary moral discourse and suggested means to surmount them in a landmark series of books commencing with "After Virtue" (1981) and ending with "Dependent Rational Animals" (1999).  The second of four books, entitled "Whose Justice? Which Rationality?" highlighted the incommensurability of moral positions predicated on disparate foundations, each rooted in separate and distinct historical epochs.

To the extent that mere words such as "social justice" and "fairness" bind listeners in their spells, it behoove us to discern the roots of their varying articulations.

Noman will attempt to ground those roots in varying conceptions of "Hope" in a subsequent post on the topic.