Gasoline prices are out of control. The cost of groceries seems to increase every time you push a shopping cart down the aisles. Dire predictions spew from the talking heads on the evening news broadcasts. Elected officials wipe the sweat from their brows as they attempt to craft and approve legislation to help the average citizen. Our adversaries appear to be gaining in strength despite our nation's attempts to preserve freedom for ourselves and our allies. We cannot afford to wait. Government must take drastic measures and do so with haste.

 

If you think the above paragraph is a description of 2009 as President-elect Barack Obama is set to take office, think again.  Every sentence of the opening paragraph describes the nation and the world as we knew it during former President Jimmy Carter's administration. The comparisons between Obama-speak and Carter-speak are striking. However, the reality behind the speeches could not be much more different. For instance, socialism or communism was still a formidable threat in the 1970s. Today, there is no "superpower" communist nation to contend with at every turn. Also, the economy of 2009, while battered and bruised, is far more robust than the high-interest, high inflation doldrums of the 1970s. Furthermore, the 2009 version of OPEC is not your father's version that existed in the 1970s. Have those of us old enough to remember forgotten how bad those times were? Those who are too young to remember please join in this brief recounting of events:

 

** Lines of automobiles that sometimes stretched to several blocks long while waiting for a rationed number of gallons to put in your gas tank. Need a refill? If you waited in line again you could get another rationed amount, IF the supply at the station had not run dry.

 

**A stock market having diffculty recovering from a nearly fifty percent loss in 1973-74. Daily reports of dismal economic news only adding to the despair in financial markets.

 

**The stinging defeat of Vietnam still fresh in the nation's memory. Pacifist, idealistic world views of Carter and Cyrus Vance, the Secretary of State, further diminish military pride and patriotism. Add to that the bumbling efforts to resolve the Iran hostage crisis.

 

**Instead of a motivated, confident leader there is President Carter, begging and pleading for people to conserve energy, curb consumer spending, and apologizing for our nation's excesses. Taking to the airwaves to proclaim a crisis of confidence and offering solutions that would only make things worse if actually implemented.

 

**ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS, local newspaper(s), local radio stations that squeezed in a newsbreak at the top of the hour. There was no alternative media, no talk radio, no cable television, no internet access, no personal/home computers.

 

**The results of the 1976 election were: A Democrat president, Senate with 61 Democrats-38 Republicans-1 Independent, House of Representatives with 292 Democrats-143 Republicans.

 

As you can see, in many ways things then were much worse than they are now. Let's move on now to an interesting comparision of campaign promises. Who claimed he was the anti-government candidate, the one who would bring hope and restore people's trust in American idealism? In 1976, Elizabeth Drew stated in American Journal that this strategy was responsible for Carter's election victory. (Source: The American Presidents. Copyright 2000, Salem Press, Inc.) Guessed Obama? You're also correct! Hope, change, transparency in governing, sound familiar?

 

In summary, our nation has been "here" before. Barack Obama's claims of utter and total collapse without immediate trillion dollar government spending is the same old grab for power that liberals have always favored. And, like during the Carter years, those same liberal politicians who were responsible for energy and economic woes proclaimed they had the solutions for fixing them.

 

Conservatives in the 21st century find themselves in a much better situation than our colleagues of the 1970s. Our mission now is to remember what Goldwater, Reagan and Gingrich taught us while developing methods for that message in the internet and multimedia world we now live in.

A - A.C.O.R.N. - You know, the advocate corruption of regulators and neighborhoods group, a.k.a. friends of Obama. The organization that bullied banks into making bad loans but looks the other way when its own affiliates have 200+ tax liens.

Shock!  Dismay! Unbelievable!  Really? So the government is not using the 700 billion dollars to buy up toxic mortgages even though they said they would?  This should not come as a surprise. All one has to do is think back to the tobacco settlement.  We were promised it would be used for healthcare and various related issues.  On average, states have spent less than five percent of settlement dispursements on health care issues and expenditures.  The story we were fed by the elite media and liberals in Congress conveniently omitted the fact states were actually free to spend the money on whatever was deemed necessary. Why should we be surprised to find out that the bailout money is going to people and places other than those who were supposedly going to lose their homes and businesses if the federal government did not immediately rescue us?  MrWebsmith thinks that what we really need to be rescued from is the likes of Barney Frank, Christopher Dodd, Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter and others who strong-handed mortgage lenders into making bad loans via the Community Reinvestment Act, Interstate Banking Act, and other policies and laws that paved the way for the mess we are now witnessing.

 

Suggested reading:

 

 

Govt. to banks: You must make bad loans, or else! http://tinyurl.com/5xqyts

In Bill Clinton's book My Life, p.517-18 he brags about CRA and how his administration was able to push through 800bln to Fannie/Freddie