Comments on: France willfully setting itself up for failure

By: pacard33

pacard33 — Fri, 06 Jul 2012 12:28:20 +0000

This has been a long time coming for France. Having lived there 25 years ago, I remember when Arabs were being allowed to come in and NOT assimilate. I lived in Bordeaux and every day we would pass by Cabrini-Green style slum buildings where only newly immigrated Muslims lived (the French wouldn’t be caught dead in such squalor). We called them “squatter flats”. The French would subsidize housing for immigrants, if they lost their jobs would give them full salaries (for not working), and not require any nationalization. Bordeaux was Burka-ville. With 20% unemployment. When countries create a welfare state, tax the rich, give lots of state-controlled goodies and are SHOCKED, I say SHOCKED, that the people aren’t grateful enough to produce more, they deserve exactly what they get. For me its not schadenfreude. It’s utter and complete sadness for what was a great and allied nation. I couldn’t have loved the people and culture of France more as I lived there. I couldn’t have hated a freakishly progressive mad statist government as much as I do now.

By: Ed Laskie

Ed Laskie — Fri, 06 Jul 2012 12:22:27 +0000

About going Global- Greece designates paedophiles and pyromaniacs as “disabled”. They have disability payments. They have state provided unemployment benefits, (not insurance). They provide Housing, Income support, Child Maintenance, Education, Pensions, Health care, sick pay, Funeral payments, and other benefits. There are 1.5 Million children living on the street in Philippines. If you get sick and you cannot pay you die. Filipino couldn’t even imagine the benefits of Europeans. People with disabilities in Philippines have to beg for food. Unemployed is rampant and no help from government. For the IMF to ask Philippines to loan 1 billion dollars to bailout the excessive spoiled euro brats is violently obscene. The Philippine government has agreed to it. I’m going to throw up. I guess we could give the paedophiles in Greece the Filipino children. I guess the pyromaniacs will set themselves on fire when they freeze their benefits. Don’t anyone see how disgusting it is to ask a poor country to loan money to Europe’s excesses? Greece and other European countries will default and collapse and US is not far behind, then who will help Filipino street kids? Like anyone did before. Whole families live on top of a cardboard box. Man, Woman, three year old and new born. They eat from dumpsters behind McDonald. Thank God McDonald and USA are doing something about it. For those in Europe complaining of austerity measures, get some prospective.

By: countrygirl

countrygirl — Fri, 06 Jul 2012 09:13:32 +0000

As an italian i know first hand the damage of over taxation can do to the economy. PM Monti instead of making drastic cut to the state spending put new taxes and said that from the next year the VAT will increase by one point (it was increased last year by one point). I have a bookstore and i can assure you that people are spending because of the raised taxes. In the neary Swiss the swiss goverment is atracting business from Italy beacause the offer less taxation and more important less red tape. I reckon the same thing is happening in swiss part newr the france border

By: mdetlh

mdetlh — Fri, 06 Jul 2012 05:36:21 +0000

America’s communists must be envious of the French while the French move to London and Obama is stuck with GWs tax code and Pelosi/Reid spending levels. Obama must be so envious of Hollande’s socialists and MPs, perhaps a beam them over here moment for the Prez.
Mr Hollande’s honeymoon with the bond vigilante’s will soon be over, “knock on wood.” So much distraction there that would keep the vigilante’s from attacking here so far.

By: What’s French for Schadenfreude? « Canadian Rattlesnake

What’s French for Schadenfreude? « Canadian Rattlesnake — Fri, 06 Jul 2012 05:21:08 +0000

[...] parliament (it didn’t learn from the United States, apparently). Erika Johnsen reports at Hot Air: I’m enjoying following the French beat, not because I take any perverse pleasure in watching [...]

By: They aren’t many other things, but they’re persistent… « Finding Ponies…

Fri, 06 Jul 2012 02:26:59 +0000

[...] HotAir: France’s socialists recently gained a sizable majority of their parliament, as well as electing the ultimate champagne socialist to the presidency. [...]

By: AH_C

AH_C — Thu, 05 Jul 2012 23:46:55 +0000

I’m guessing all the Hollywood types that moved to France will be hightailing out of there soon, if not already.

By: slickwillie2001

slickwillie2001 — Thu, 05 Jul 2012 21:46:19 +0000

thuja on July 5, 2012 at 2:55 PM

Steve Z on July 5, 2012 at 3:14 PM

jimver on July 5, 2012 at 3:27 PM

Something similar happened in the UK, one party decided to import a bunch of likely voters: The outrageous truth slips out: Labour cynically plotted to transform the entire make-up of Britain without telling us Not that different from what democratics are doing with Mexicans. It really does work.

By: mixplix

mixplix — Thu, 05 Jul 2012 21:35:02 +0000

New York City passed a huge tax increase and a couple of thousand millionaires moved out, the City government laughed until they added up the tax monies that were lost, unbelievable. Socialism has been tried many times and they just can’t get it through their cement heads that killing the golden goose never works.

By: CorporatePiggy

CorporatePiggy — Thu, 05 Jul 2012 20:16:23 +0000

I’m afraid liberals will try an EU here in North America. We too will repeat their failures. Socialists always repeat their mistakes.

Decoski on July 5, 2012 at 3:32 PM

There were actually rumblings about creating an American Union a while ago.

No doubt there are muppets like Juan McCain and whatever criminal is now President of Mexico who still support this secretly.

But Canada? With their economy? They’d never join.

By: Adjoran

Adjoran — Thu, 05 Jul 2012 20:15:41 +0000

The dirty little secret always was that even under Sarkozy, France was not so far from insolvency itself. Hollande seems determined to challenge the modern understanding of arithmetic itself by diving headlong into crisis, daring Europe to let France fail.

He’s adopted Obama’s Million Man Math, and the outcome is decreed.

By: albill

albill — Thu, 05 Jul 2012 20:11:17 +0000

Keep in mind that part of the recent deal that Germany made with other EU members was that France must meet very stringent debt reduction goals as basically laid out by Germany.
(The German press was calling France the big loser in this most recent deal.)
Hollande has to cut, cut, cut costs or raise taxes (a lot more than he said he would do in the elections).
If Hollande lasts one term he will be lucky.

By: MunDane68

MunDane68 — Thu, 05 Jul 2012 19:51:27 +0000

What is hilarious to me, I remember how hard the Germans pushed the Euro with the idea that they would have huge markets for their goods without confiscatory tariffs from Germanophobe governments. I wonder if any of those still alive from the Budestag regret their pro-euro vote.

By: askwhatif

askwhatif — Thu, 05 Jul 2012 19:39:21 +0000

Great. so WHEN France hits the skids, all the ‘American’ Socialists can move to France, and give this country back to those who still love it.

By: Decoski

Decoski — Thu, 05 Jul 2012 19:32:00 +0000

I’m afraid liberals will try an EU here in North America. We too will repeat their failures. Socialists always repeat their mistakes.

By: Decoski

Decoski — Thu, 05 Jul 2012 19:28:53 +0000

Liberal/Socialist/Marxist/Idiot playbook:
1. See problem, blame on Conservatives
2. Offer “solution” of soaking the rich with taxes
3. Promise lots of goodies that the government can give you
4. When inevitable failure occurs, repeat…

By: jimver

jimver — Thu, 05 Jul 2012 19:27:18 +0000

There is some truth to this. During the 1970′s, when the French economy was booming, Giscard thought that France needed a cheap labor force, and allowed many Muslims to enter France from former French colonies, mostly from Algeria. As Jacques Chirac once complained, many of them “brought their four wives and 20 children” and went on welfare, and have turned entire cities into lawless ghettoes where police fear to tread.

This has led to the growth of Jean-Marie Le Pen’s anti-Arab National Front party (now run by his daughter Marine), which tends to divide conservative voters and is frequently accused of racism by Socialists, eager to “play the race card” for electoral gain.

Steve Z on July 5, 2012 at 3:14 PM

i have no sympathy for Marine le pen, she refused to endorse Sarkozy for president…she deserves every single bit of the disgrace that came her way, precisely losing the parliamentary race….Quelle conne…

By: jimver

jimver — Thu, 05 Jul 2012 19:20:30 +0000

The person ultimately responsible for the destruction of France is Valery Giscard D’Estaing, who decided it would be a really excellent idea to flood France with Muslims. And guess what? Though D’Estaing is of the center-right, those Muslims all voted for the Socialist Party and Mr Hollande. It why we can’t afford to have a GOP advocate of amnesty for the illegals as our nominee.

thuja on July 5, 2012 at 2:55 PM

They are already here, already voting fraudulently, coz Holder decided so !

By: Fred 2

Fred 2 — Thu, 05 Jul 2012 19:14:51 +0000

How long can the madness go on? Until the people who pushed these plans retire. After that it becomes someone else problem. Socialist economic plans don’t have to be sustainable, they only have to last long enough for the perpetrators to get out of town.

By: Steve Z

Steve Z — Thu, 05 Jul 2012 19:14:09 +0000

The person ultimately responsible for the destruction of France is Valery Giscard D’Estaing, who decided it would be a really excellent idea to flood France with Muslims. And guess what? Though D’Estaing is of the center-right, those Muslims all voted for the Socialist Party and Mr Hollande. It why we can’t afford to have a GOP advocate of amnesty for the illegals as our nominee.

thuja on July 5, 2012 at 2:55 PM

By: Steve Z

Steve Z — Thu, 05 Jul 2012 19:04:15 +0000

France, for decades, has been held hostage to its public-employee unions, including those who run the nationalized railroad (SNCF), commuter trains, and buses. Charles de Gaulle may have been a great general and a conservative President, but he made the major mistake of writing into the Constitution of the Fifth Republic (1958) the “right to strike” for public employees. Whenever any government tries to limit the pay or bennies for public employees, the unions go on strike, and paralyze the transportation system to bring the government to its knees. There was even one strike in December-January where Frenchmen were doing their Christmas shopping on…bicycles and roller skates.

France doesn’t need a Socialist President like Francois Hollande. France needs Scott Walker on steroids.

By: Midas

Midas — Thu, 05 Jul 2012 19:01:16 +0000

I’m enjoying following the French beat, not because I take any perverse pleasure in watching countries suffer and stagnate beneath the myriad opportunity costs and petulant ineptitudes of socialism — but rather because the way this is all going to play out is just so utterly, laughably, painfully predictable.

Why, it’s almost exactly like watching our fellow HA-ers who naively think Romney and the GOP will repeal Obamacare when we elect them in November.

No, really – they’ll do what they’re supposed to *this* time, for sure!

By: thuja

thuja — Thu, 05 Jul 2012 18:55:11 +0000

By: timberline

timberline — Thu, 05 Jul 2012 18:51:47 +0000

I’m enjoying following the French beat, not because I take any perverse pleasure in watching countries suffer and stagnate beneath the myriad opportunity costs and petulant ineptitudes of socialism — but rather because the way this is all going to play out is just so utterly, laughably, painfully predictable.

Yeah…um….sure. Erika, you know as well as I do that your secret schadenfreude is aroused by these French setbacks given the arrogance of the French. But if you’re drooling now, you’re really going to get a schadenfreude rush come November when Obama gets kicked to the gutter.

By: Lucano

Lucano — Thu, 05 Jul 2012 18:39:40 +0000

Erika ,
If you enjoy reading about the French try this terrific book .
” Au Revoir To All That ” Food , Wine , and the End of France
by Michael Steinberger .