Ken Pruitt: Wall Street (1987) Gordon Gecko: Greed is Good

Source:The New Democrat

Best part of the first Wall Street movie at least and one of my favorite movies of all-time. And whatever you think of the Gordon Gecko character, or even what you think of Michael Douglas who played him, Douglas did a great job. And what made this speech so great was how accurate and real it was. Here are these people trying to make Gordon Gecko look like this greedy bastard when if anything they are just like Gecko. 

Except that Gecko is better and knows what companies are worth buying and how much he should spend on them and how to reform them. So he can make a profit off of them and of course there was some insider-trading involved here. But the facts and points of the Gecko speech are still the same that greed is good and he explains why. That without greed people wouldn’t want things for themselves. 

Without greed people wouldn’t work as hard so they could have things for themselves. So they could be as successful as possible and enjoy the fruits of their labor. And enjoy being successful, that we are all greedy, it’s just that some people are better at it than others. And people are all greedy at least to a certain extent, that it's just a matter of degree. It's not that we aren't greedy, but what level of greed is tolerable in a free society that is really the question.

Oliver Stone: Wall Street (1987) Starring Michael Douglas & Charlie Sheen

Source:The Daily Post

Wall Street from 1987 is a very good movie about what its like to work on Wall Street and what life is like around it. Perhaps not the most accurate movie, but definitely based on reality about a man who has a lot of power on Wall Street in Gordon Gecko played by Michael Douglas. Who basically makes his living buying companies and selling them for profits as well as investing in other companies. His company if you want to call it that, doesn't make or produce anything. He buys and sells stocks as well as companies and sometimes buys companies that are losing a lot of money. Turns them around so they are profitable, even if that means laying off a lot of people and then sells those companies.

That character in this movie is named Gordon Gecko of course played of course by Michael Douglas with the famous line "greed is good" which I'll get to later, which also has to do with today's debate about Wall Street and another main character called Bud Fox played by of course Charlie Sheen, probably his best movie even though its not his funniest, whose a young upincomer on Wall Street, looking for the fast track whose basically a good guy from a good family but discovers Gordon Gecko and decides Gecko is his trip to the top. A

Bud Fox wants to work with Gordon Gecko or for him. But Gecko only wants to work with the young Fox, if Fox has insider knowledge so they can do some insider trading. Which of course is illegal, but Fox is the son of a union leader and someone who works for an independent airline played of course by Martin Sheen. Who's Charlie's real life father and the airline is about to get sold and that's where the inside knowledge comes in. And Bud Fox has what Gordon Gecko needs to buy the independent airline. 

Bud Fox's connection with Gordon Gecko is about how his knowledge of his father's business and how they can use that to buy that airline. And Fox's ability to scout Gecko's competition and get inside knowledge on them sort of like a spy. And they use that to always stay a step ahead and make sure they are always able to bid more than the competition. Because they know what the competition is able to bid and how much capital they have and what their strengths and weakness's are.

My favorite line in the movie is where Gordon Gecko gives that speech at the stockholders meeting at some company. The famous Greed is Good speech. And the funny thing is even though I'm a Democrat and greed can definitely be bad if miss used like the greed we saw in 2008 that led to the Great Recession. And to a certain extent is still going on is obviously bad and I'm not disputing that. Where corporate executives were allowed to make their companies too big, ran them into the ground and then got bailed out by taxpayers and then walked away with huge bonus's. 

But as Gordon Gecko said "greed is good, because greed allows for people to be as productive as possible to make as much money as possible. And grows companies as much as possible to make create as many good jobs as possible". The main reason why Wall Street is so relevant today, because of course of the Occupy Wall Street movement that's going on today because of their bad practices in the past and their abuse of greed as I just laid out. And how unpopular Wall Street has become today, not as unpopular as Congress (but that would be a hell of an accomplishment for anyone to accomplish and is a great movie period as far as I'm concern. But also a great movie if you're interested in OWS. 

Youth Justice NC: North Carolina's School to Prison Pipeline

Source:The FreeState

If you look at our current prison inmate population, you’ll see a lot of prison inmates who didn’t finish high school before they came to prison, or barely finished high school. If you look at a lot of our juvenile inmate population, kids that should be in school, but because of their bad behavior and committing felony’s while still being juveniles, or have been expelled from high school. You see a lot of juveniles that our education system hasn’t reached yet. 

You see people who are headed down the road of starting criminal careers and entering our criminal justice system as adults. After they’ve committed crimes against society. If you look at our criminal gangs, organized crime families, you see a lot of people who dropped out of high school to become a criminals. And of course end up in jail or prison at some point in their careers.

So I believe the answers to solving the problems of overcrowded prisons and bringing down our prison population in the future are fairly simple. But hard to apply and it gets to public education. Quality public education, graduating more students from high school with good educations, so they can move on to college, vocational school, the military, law Enforcement, foreign service, to use as examples. 

So they can go down the road of becoming productive citizens in society and not becoming criminals by simply preventing crimes in the future by preventing people from becoming criminals. And that gets to a better public education system, including educating our juvenile offenders before they become career criminals. Crime prevention really is about public education. 

I would argue especially for students in low-income high crime areas. Where there may be more opportunities to get involved in organized crime. So the better we educate our students and the more students we reach, the less career criminals we’ll have in the future.

Liza Liz Bethy: Brenda & Dylan: Beverly Hills 90210

Source:The Daily Post

When I was a freshmen in high school, FOX was still a very young TV network at this point. They came out with a high school soap Opera, with the cast all out of high school. Some of them graduating high school 5-7 years before this show came out. Beverly Hills 90210 which definitely had its cheesy aspects about it, like some of the writing and the fact that a pair of twins, one male and female looked nothing alike . But this was the first prime time soap opera for adolescents of any kind and it was a well rated prime time soap opera. 

Beverly Hills was the soap opera of my Generation X and this high school class of 1993 on the show was only a year ahead of me. So I got to watch it for three seasons while they were still in High School on the show. And while I was still in high school in real life. It was about a upper middle class family that moves from Minneapolis to Los Angles actually in Beverly Hills. 

Because the father played by James Eckhouse who plays Jim Walsh on the show, the husband of Cindy Walsh and the father of a set of twins, Brandon and Brenda Walsh, played by Jason Priestly and Shannen Doherty, gets a job in Beverly Hills and moves his family out there. And is about how this family relates to their new friends out in Beverly Hills and life in general in a new city. 

This show had its drawbacks some of it was cheesy. But when I was in High School, I watched this show every week. Because it actually dealt with what adolescents were going through in real life. In an entertaining and a lot of times even funny way. So it was good TV. 

The Tonight Show With Johnny Carson: Ronald Reagan: Talks About Balancing the Budget (1975)

Source: Johnny Carson- Ronald Reagan & Johnny Carson.

Source:The Daily Post

I like and respect Ronald Reagan a lot, I've always had even though I'm a Liberal Democrat. Which might be like hearing how much a Boston Red Sox fan loves a player for the New York Yankees. But in my case my affection for President Reagan is real. Both personally and politically, even though we don't agree on a whole lot. Except as it relates to the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights, individual liberty and limited government. 

But our policies look a lot different, not a difference between big government and small government. But more relating in the role of government, not so much the overall size, but what it should be doing. But to listen to Ron Reagan talk about the need for a balance budget, is like listening to an obese person talk about the need for a healthy diet and exercise. Whatever they know about what they are talking about, is only through bad experiences. 

Its like saying, "we now know what doesn't work, had we known now then, we wouldn't of done a, because now we know a doesn't work. We would've done b or c instead, because we now know that b or c works". Its speaking in hindsight rather than foresight and not very visionary as far as this is what we should do, because we know it works based on this evidence. 

Had President Reagan listened to then candidate Reagan back in 1975, when he was talking about deficit reduction, he probably wouldn't of proposed the Economic Recovery Act of 1981. At least in that form, the economy was awful and needed a lot of stimulus and perhaps he would've proposed the tax cuts he did, the taxes then were way too high on everyone. Ranging somewhere between 20-70%. But since he felt the need for a balanced budget, he would've at least proposed to pay for those tax cuts. He would've proposed the increases in the defense budget, but proposed to pay for them. 

The fact is that President Reagan inherited a national debt of around 1T$ or more. Left office with around a 5T$ national debt, inherited a budget deficit from President Carter who had one of the worst economies we've ever seen. But it was 40B$, which thirty years ago wasn't a large deficit. Defenders of President Reagan like to say, "well thats the fault of the Democratic Congress's". The fact is President Reagan only had one Democratic Congress, his last two years. 

He had a Republican Senate for his first six years. President Reagan never sent a balanced budget to Congress or proposed a balance budget plan. What they did was deficit reduction, including tax hikes during his presidency. To say the Reagan Administration spent money like drunken sailors, would be an insult to drunken sailors. To use Senator John McCain's joke, they spent money like drunken Congressmen at a Congressional pork party, who are worried about reelection. Ron Reagan should've trusted his first instincts. 
Source:The Tonight Show With Johnny Carson

Young Americans For Freedom: Governor Ronald Reagan (1975)

Source:YAF- Governor Ronald W. Reagan (Republican, California) addressing YAF in 1975.

"Ronald Reagan gives this address to Young Americans for Freedom (YAF) at a 1975 meeting.  He talks about how to use bold banners, not pale pastels, when activists advance conservative ideas."

Source:Young Americans For Freedom

Back in this time period of 1974-75 just as then Governor Ronald Reagan was leaving the state house in California and looking into running for President in 1976, he described his politics as libertarian. His politics were very similar to Senator Barry Goldwater. These were both "get big government out of our wallets and bedrooms" Republicans and Barry Goldwater would probably be called a Libertarian today. 

Representative Ron Paul comes the closest to Goldwater-Reagan today. Foreign policy would be where they are different and both Goldwater and Reagan believed in at least some forms of taxation as well. And would be probably be (excuse the term, but this is how it is) shitting bricks if they were alive today and saw what had happened to the Republican Party. 

If Barry Goldwater and Ron Reagan were alive today, instead of seeing a party that they built a lot of it on themselves, a party that was around to fight big government. Instead Reagan and Goldwater they would see a party that was promoting big government. Thanks to the Christian-Right and Neoconservatives and all their new big government ideas, with their borrow and spend fiscal policy of the last decade. 

Ronald Reagan was talking about a new Conservative Republican Party that would be dominated by Classical Conservatives, Constitutional Conservatives, Federalists. That wouldn't make race, ethnicity, cultural, or gender, as issues in their party, but instead constitutional conservatism, that could appeal to Constitutional Conservatives of all racial, ethnic, cultural, religious, or economic backgrounds. That would take on the left-wing of the Democratic Party. And he accomplished a lot of what he was talking about in 1980, when the he won the presidency and the Republican Party finally won back the U.S. Senate and picked up 30 seats in the U.S. House.

Max Power: The Kitchen Debate: Richard Nixon vs. Nikita Khrushchev

Source:The FreeState

The friendly TV debate that then United States Vice President Richard Nixon had with then Soviet Union President Nikita Khrushchev, was entertaining and important to the extent, that at least America and Europe could see some of the differences between the superpowers. That America wasn’t just a Superpower when it came to our military and diplomatic power. But we were an economic power as well. And that Russia was basically a third world nation, behind the rest of the Developed World in a lot of areas. 

That Russia's living standards were much lower than Europe, Canada and America. And this had to do with the fact that Russia was a communist state and America is a liberal democracy. The main reason why America, Canada, Europe and Japan were so far ahead of Russia during the Cold War and now, has to do with the fact, that we are free. We are all democracies economically and socially. We all have plenty of freedom to live our own lives. 

And in America especially where Europe tends to be more generous with their safety nets, Americans tend to be held responsible with the decisions that we make in life. Wheres the Soviet Union, most of the power in the country was centralized with the State. They were held with most of the authority to govern the country and responsible for looking after their people. Providing them with jobs, education, healthcare etc.

Vice President Nixon did an effective job in this debate of laying out some of the differences between America and Russia and where we were ahead of them and with space. Where Russia was ahead of us, which we turned around in the 1960s and debates like this are important. Especially if they are done in a respectful way.