Too big to let fail: The Sequel

Where does it end?


Ford CEO Alan Mulally, Chrysler CEO Bob Nardelli,
GM CEO Rick Wagoner






The "Big Three" American automakers were insisting to Congress yesterday & today that if they don't get an immediate infusion of $25,000,000,000 in taxpayer money, there'd be "severe and debilitating ramifications"; and that "the societal costs would be catastrophic". "It's about saving the U.S. economy from a catastrophic collapse," said GM's CEO, Rick Wagoner. They warned that not forking over the money would "undermine our nation's ability to respond to military challenges", and therefore, it "would threaten our national security." And (most importantly) they'll be out of work. Oh, and the UAW tagged along to add "Yeah, what he said!"




Wagoner explained how the $25,000,000,000 would be used: “We’ll use this bridge to pay for essential operations, new vehicles and powertrains, parts from our suppliers, wages and benefits for our workers and retirees and taxes for state and local governments...". They insisted they need this bailout urgently, just to get thru to the end of this year.







And then what, pray tell? This is November 19th! Six weeks to financial Armageddon, and then what? What will magically change after that? I mean, the Messiah won't take office til the 20th of January, so how will they survive after the $25,000,000,000 is burned thru?





Since they don't recognize the costs of union wages & benefits as a primary cause of their financial ills, do they think the credit-crunch (which they cited as the main cause of their current crisis) will be resolved and the rest of the economy will be back on track by January? That's a little too much optimism to be relying, on as a consideration for loaning $25,000,000,000 to an industry with such an antiquated business model. Or, do they really not naively think the nation's financial troubles will be resolved by then, and this is just the latest installment in public money for them?




Detroit's financial woes began long before the recent nationwide monetary meltdown. And they're due in large part to the manufacturing costs weighing them down as a result of the inordinate income, benefits, and pension plans that the UAW secured for it's members.
Predictably, Democrat Rep. Barney Frank immediately defended the union, contending that it was not any part of the automaker's problems.

When the option of restructuring the various companies' finances under Chapter 11 protection was suggested, Barney Frank responded "We already have too much union busting and too much income inequality for workers". That's alot like the Phillip Morris company insisting that an emphysema patient's smoking habit has nothing to do with his illness.

The research I've done shows a consensus of estimates that the cost to our Big Three is over $2000 (some say $2600) per car for their burdensome union contacts. How can they expect to compete with non-union car companies with those kind of built-in expenses?

Where, indeed, ARE we headed?

Well, the American people have spoken.

An energized and idealistic movement of people were inspired to vote for Barack Obama in great numbers by the eloquent and lofty rhetoric written for this great speechifier, and he delivered those speeches with great skill. He's got one helluva speech writer. Even this 106 year old nun, who hadn't voted since 1952, was captivated by his charisma.



I've read many of his speeches over the course of the last several months, many of them from before he even threw his hat in the ring. (Officially, that is.) Several of them have a poetic grace and rhythm similar to long-famous words attributed to some of our greatest orators. This one, for instance, is filled with several stanzas that truly stir the soul and lift the spirit.


I have no idea which spiels were written by whom, but the author behind his speeches is less important than the principles behind his policies. Hillary was on the right track when she analyzed Obama's initial attraction by saying "We have one speech in 2002 versus a record of accomplishment and a record of action." And that ingredient to his attraction only grew during the primaries and the final campaign, with more great speeches. However, there's more to governing than giving speeches.

That said, even if Obama were to be the steady, thoughtful, listening, intelligent, competent, serious-business president that we all hope he'll be, it doesn't change the fact that his policy initiatives and the political philosophy that guides them, are from the "progressive" leftist wing of the Democratic Party. A brief perusal of some of the issues under the AGENDA tab on his new transition website gives us a glimpse of where we're headed:
***10/10/08 UPDATE: Those sneaky bastards disabled all the topics under the AGENDA tab!! The quoted excerpts below were there a few days ago. Perhaps they're "tweaking" their grand scheme a bit... Will their designs on your life be better, or worse when they reappear? We'll see.....! ***


“Obama and Biden support a system that allows undocumented immigrants who are in good standing to pay a fine, learn English, and go to the back of the line for the opportunity to become citizens.”

Wasn't that the essence of the immigration bill that was previously killed by a massive outpouring of grassroots citizen opposition?

“Obama will call on citizens of all ages to serve America, by developing a
plan to require 50 hours of community service in middle school and high
school and 100 hours of community service in college every year.” (my emphasis)

Did he get this idea from Castro, Chavez, or Mao Tse-tung?

“Obama and Biden believe the disparity between sentencing crack and
powder-based cocaine is wrong and should be completely eliminated.”

Completely eliminated? The tougher sentences for crack were a response to the crime wave of street violence that were destroying urban areas in the '80's, especially gang activity. As Kendall Coffey, a former U.S. attorney in Miami, said: "It is clear that crack cocaine and white powder cocaine had a very different impact in terms of not only the lives of the users but the impact on the community." However, leftists like Obama ignore historical context and insist that the sentencing disparity is only another example of "institutional racism" that was designed to unjustly target African-American drug pushers.

"Obama and Biden will create 20 Promise Neighborhoods in areas that
have high levels of poverty and crime and low levels of student
academic achievement in cities across the nation. The Promise
Neighborhoods will be modeled after the Harlem Children's Zone,
which provides a full network of services, including early childhood
education, youth violence prevention efforts and after-school activities,
to an entire neighborhood from birth to college."

Well, at least it's not cradle-to-grave, only cradle-to-college. Is this really the responsibility of the Federal government, bureaucratically controlling entire neighborhoods across the country, experimenting to see if centralized-service-saturation of a community will produce Utopia? Talk about being a community organizer! The department overseeing this program might be called Central Planning.

Where are we headed?

On the eve of perhaps the most transformational election in our nation’s history, let us hearken to the ominous prediction of Norman Thomas, the Socialist Party USA’s most successful presidential candidate (and founder of the ACLU): "The American people will never knowingly adopt Socialism. But, under the name of 'liberalism,' they will adopt every fragment of the Socialist program, until one day America will be a Socialist nation, without knowing how it happened.”

Most people seem to scoff at the suggestion that Barack Obama is a socialist, or that his “spread the wealth around” and “bring about redistributive change” comments indicate socialist leanings.

I don’t.

I acknowledge that he’s not a member of the Socialist Party USA. He doesn’t have to be. He’s a Democrat, a progressive Democrat, and the most liberal Democrat in the US Senate. Why buy the cow when you’re getting the milk for free? Bernie Sanders, a self-described democratic socialist, is the only senator that may be to the left of Obama, and is an Independent (but caucuses with Dems, of course). At least he’s honest enough to admit his intentions. Barack Obama is not.

I don’t hold out much hope for this election because, sadly, the electorate’s voting trend over several decades may give credence to an observation Norman Thomas made near the end of his life: “The difference between Democrats and Republicans is: Democrats have accepted some ideas of Socialism cheerfully, while Republicans have accepted them reluctantly.” (Recent example: Bipartisan support for the financial bailout.)

Too many Americans have become too comfortable with government providing too many services to too many people. And it may be too late to stop the progressive juggernaut.

The Democrats owned the White House, the Senate, and the Congress in 1933 when FDR’s New Deal legislation flew thru his famous Hundred Days (with Republican support).

The Democrats owned the White House, the Senate, and the Congress in 1964 when LBJ’s Great Society legislation installed another round of progressive programs.

If the Democrats own the White House, the Senate, and the Congress in 2009, will BHO embark on yet another ambitious agenda to create the Amerika that he envisions?

Never mind that many of those programs were intended to be temporary to address problems-of-the-day and retired when things got better; as the brilliant economist Milton Friedman said “There’s nothing so permanent as a temporary government program.”

The one thing we can be thankful to Comrade Obama for, although it hasn’t seemed to matter to so many Americans who just want “a chance to make history”, is that he hasn’t denied the permanence of his Universal Healthcare dream or his return to highly progressive tax rates. (The latter will most likely result in an actual reduction of proceeds to the Treasury, as the reverse of the principle that a significant cut in tax rates usually increases real collections.)

In summation, I fear that an Obama victory portends a bleak future for the formula of free market entrepreneurial capitalism, individual responsibility & autonomy, and voluntary personal charity that have made this country the greatest experiment in human governance of all time.
As P.J. O’Rourke put it, “America wasn't founded so that we could all be better. America was founded so we could all be anything we damned well pleased.”