Would Gary Palmer shill for sustenance?

In response to Gary Palmer's ALABAMA VOICES: Don't blame system a reader on the Montgomery Advertiser's site listed as LHess wrote, "Having someone such as Gary Palmer talking about morals and ethics is akin to hearing a prostitute talk about virtue." At least Gary will always have RebelMan on his side.

I often don't know where to begin with Gary Palmer of the Alabama Policy Institute. This latest effort rivals Jim "The Tool" Wooten on an effort to win Simultaneous Shilling gold. With the Olympics here I suppose Gary would have to be a favorite. If it were a pair event then he's got a partner down the hall I bet given API's Michael Ciamarra simultaneous shilling of "lawsuit abuse" while defending Bu$hCo past effort.

Then again, maybe this is another illustration of the "blame game"? Gary just recently saw rising gas prices and huge profits for Big Oil as a chance to attack the "socialistic environmental agenda" of politicians who have "sold out to radical environmentalists and liberal social engineers" for instance. In a similar effort, dreadful understanding of civics by our young people was due to insufficient patriotism being taught in favor of "an emphasis on politically correct indoctrination that produces misinformed activists instead of educated citizens."

In his latest rant earning his Wingnut Welfare Gary writes:

We are witnessing the consequences of the loss of values that were the substance of our culture, not the failure of capitalism.

Values? Gary, you really need to read a f'ing book every so often. Or just watch some high end TV. Gary goes on to write:

Capitalism is an economic system that depends on the virtues of the people engaged in the system ... As with any system, capitalism is subject to human fallibility, or what Christians would refer to as fallen human nature.

Huh? "Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under Communism, it's just the opposite." was what John Kenneth Galbraith claimed. I'd stack his brainpower up any day against poor Gary's. Gary next writes:

Therefore, in order for a capitalist -- or free market -- economic system to function properly, the culture must place a high value on personal virtue and undergird it with reasonable laws and regulations that provide additional restraints and protections against inevitable human failings.

Of course Gary has been eager to argue that reasonable laws and regulations that might reduce the number of cancer deaths among our citizenry must be based on only what must be proved. Stoking fears of lost jobs and making the obligatory ""class warfare" attack, Gary is all about dismissing "restraints and protections" as based on "false fears". He has no shame!

Gary then writes:

In a less progressive time, there were certain expectations within American society that were based on our commonly held ideas of what was right and wrong as derived from a Judeo-Christian worldview. In those times, there were social restraints that constrained individuals in what they did and said and how they conducted their public and private lives.

Gary, would going back to those good old days before such a progressive time include times of slavery? When women couldn't vote? The Jim Crow South? Gary continues:

But the progressives saw these social restraints, especially religion, as shackles and thought it would improve society to free it from the old suffocating religious and moral constraints. As it turns out, liberation from the old morals has not brought us more freedom; it has brought more constraint and more uncertainty which has undermined trust in practically all of our nation's institutions.

Huh? So would the "old morals" or the "new morals" apply to the "unfair and immoral death tax"? The estate tax, a Progressive reform in fact, is so immoral that Alabama's own Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III found it necessary after Katrina to look for a victim for an illustration of its evil. I'm sure Gary's smart enough to show us how the Crash of 1929, segregation, and Nixon's Watergate can be blamed on "liberation from the old morals".

Gary suggests:

What is missing today are the presuppositions, or accepted standards of morality and ethics, that are valued individually and in our communities and that establish a solid foundation for functioning in our society. Laws are not enough.

A foundation of moral law? Haven't I read something about such an effort? Gary then writes:

As we are witnessing with the current crisis in our financial institutions, the threat of punishment is often not enough to stop wrongdoing. All too often, punishment consists only of fines that can be viewed as just another cost of doing business. Unfortunately, many decisions are based on a "risk vs. reward" formula that is based solely on self-interests, with little regard for others.

So is Gary deviating from API's stand on "tort reform"? We are learning these white collar prosecutions are surely difficult. And with Alabama's Supreme Court in place they'll just cut the civil verdicts here in Bama won't they Hoss. Corporations Gone Wild? Gary goes on to claim:

In many respects, the breakdown of many of our financial institutions clearly reveals the consequences of rejecting what were once commonly held traditional values. As the "old" traditional values and virtues have been pushed out, they have been replaced with politically correct secular values.

He's kidding isn't he? If a piece begins with "LIKE THE EXHORTATIONS OF JEREMIAH TO THE NATION OF Israel before the first temple's destruction, the warnings of economist Nouriel Roubini fell on deaf ears." would that suit Gary's call for traditional values and virtues? We can only hope this brilliant seeker of truth and decency will seek out such wisdom. Gary continues with:

Consequently, living in a society that has rejected traditional values means that we live in a constant state of uncertainty -- leaving the government to try to impose honesty and integrity through increasingly more stringent laws and regulations.

The predictable result of the abandonment of traditional values, particularly by the boomer generation, is a public and private sector increasingly marked by lies, deception, fraud and malfeasance.

He's loony. Maybe the Taliban would take Gary? He closes with:

... we are now spending millions of dollars trying to instill ethics in current and future leaders whose entire education, from kindergarten through college, has been based on the moral relativism that taught them there are no absolute truths, there are no eternal standards. ...

In that regard, our culture has been stripped of the absolute values that are essential to a healthy free market economy, a trustworthy government and a healthy society.

With so many of our nation's leaders in both the public and private sector disconnected from absolute truths, it should not surprise anyone that our economic and governing systems are floundering and that our laws have done little to prevent it.

As I pointed out earlier, those who claim capitalism has failed are mistaken. What we are witnessing is not the failure of capitalism, but the consequences of moral relativism.

What exactly this rascal is suggesting once again remains a mystery to me. Has anyone of any substance truly claimed capitalism has failed Gary? Many are simply saying that the de-regulation push led by those on the right has consequences. From Enron to this mess, pretty much everybody accepts the fact. And I'd argue the bailout suggest some capitalist want to pocket the profits but socialize the risks. Plenty are figuring crony capitalism has failed us but that's not what Gary has attacked. What would Uncle Milton have to say?

That API's Gary Palmer manages to make his argument based on some type of lament for paradise lost and values vanquished by the Godless Progressives is really precious. John Gunn

UPDATE ~ Morning of August 5, 2008 - I've been thinking of Gary's latest effort all morning. I was reflecting back on a prior post I titled Mobile Press-Register~ Just let the lawyers decide where the P-R wrote an Editorial accepting the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and their Institute for Legal Reform's flawed study to suggest we need to listen more to corporate counsel in formulating public policy. The Failure of Corporate Law: Fundamental Flaws and Progressive Possibilities by Kent Greenfield was also noted in that post. The book's description, and I'll close here, at least for now, contained the following:

Anyone can purchase shares of stock, but public corporations themselves are uninhibited by a sense of societal obligation or strict public oversight. In fact, managers of most large firms are prohibited by law from taking into account the interests of the public in decision making, if doing so hurts shareholders. But this has not always been the case, as until the beginning of the twentieth century, public corporations were deemed to have important civic responsibilities.