Get out your check books
Actually, no need to even do that thanks to the scam known as withholding.
Check it out America: Obama is looking at raising your taxes to pay for the “explosion” in the budget deficit. Let’s be honest. To pay for all the bailouts, “Cash for Clunkers” money and health care reform your taxes will have to go up. There is simply no other source of revenue for the government that is as easy to tap and as easy to increase as the income tax. And Obama’s administration is not just taxing the rich. No sir. He’s going to hit middle class America with tax increases. That’s you and that’s me.
The bottom line is that Obama has taken full advantage of a Democratic Congress and spineless Republican leadership to move America even closer to socialism. He’s done it by spending money like a drunken sailor on shore leave in Thailand. The good news is that now middle-class America will finally take its head out of its ass and realize that when Democrats will take only the rich, they are talking about middle-class America. The bad news is that it may be too late to stop what is already in motion. Let this be a lesson to you America. Pay attention to what your government is doing.
(Side note: I think my favorite line in the article is this one “If we want an economy that’s going to grow in the future, people have to understand we have to bring those deficits down. And it’s going to be difficult, hard for us to do. And the path to that is through health care reform,” Geithner said. How does SPENDING BILLIONS on health care reform bring down a deficit? It doesn’t!!!! This is probably the worst attempt at working the party line into an answer in the history of politics. It’s hard to believe that Geithner is the best person to head up the Treasury if he doesn’t understand simple economic concepts. Spending creates deficits; it doesn’t bring them down. I totally agree that deficits need to be eliminated for the economy to achieve robust growth. But I disagree with the idea that spending outrageous amounts of money to make health care worse is the way to do it.)
Auto Bailout Update
Quick update on the auto bailout.
First, I pointed out a while ago that Union’s will do anything to retain their considerable power. They’ve already flexed their muscle regarding the bailout by stating they they would make no wage or benefit concessions with the auto companies and they expect the government to step in to make sure that the American auto industry doesn’t crumble. Now they are showing their true colors. After some Southern Republicans sank an auto bailout bill in the house, UAW leaders accused these Senators of conspiring with the foreign auto makers to drive UAW wages down so that there would be no benefit to joining the union. The UAW knows that their time of controlling the auto industry and having enormous political power is ending, so they will do whatever is necessary to retain that power. Even if it means accusing members of Congress of conspiring with their competitors.
Personally, I think these Senators should be commended for saying enough is enough. I’ve made my thoughts on the bailout of the auto industry quite clear but I’ll reiterate them here. The American auto industry has been completely mismanaged for decades and they are going to die with or without our money. Don’t drag out their death by wasting our money; let them die now.
The truly sad part of this whole story is that the actions of these Senators will be all for naught in the end. The Bush administration has that they will make money available to the auto industry, possibly from the $700 billion bailout kitty.
The second thing I wanted to comment on is this announcement from GM. They are temporarily cutting production and jobs in order to adjust to declining demand for their cars.
I don’t what’s funnier – that it’s taken GM 20+ years to make a sensible business decision or the fact that this is all a temporary move. They are facing extinction and their answer is to temporarily cut production as opposed to permanently cutting capacity and costs.
Do they think that the American public will one day again clamor for poorly made American crap?
Waste of Money
I’m sure you’re already aware that Congress wastes your money. Sometimes it’s wasted on pork spending. Sometimes its wasted saving poorly run auto companies from themselves. But, no matter how bad we think those are, they are no where near as bad as this.
That’s right. Congress will now spend time on legislation designed to scrap the BCS and implement a play-off in college football. Now, I want to make it clear, that as an avid football fan (and a rabid Alabama fan), that I am in favor of some sort of play-off system in college football. But I don’t think that the American public’s time and money should be wasted in an attempt to get a play-off implemented.
Does Congress have nothing better to do right now? We’re in the middle of the worst recession since 1980 and Congress is going to waste our time and money debating the merits of this legislation. And did anyone notice who it was that introduced this garbage legislation? That’s right, Republican Joe Barton from Texas. Anyone care to take a guess as to which team felt they got screwed by the BCS this year? That’s right! The Texas Longhorns. This jackass is TAKING A DUMP ON THE LEGISLATIVE PROCESS so that he can maybe score a few more votes from the Longhorn fans.
I might not be this pissed off, if this wasn’t a persistent problem in all levels of government. Last year, the legislature in my home state of Georgia passed legislation supporting the implementation of a play-off in college football. This was after the Georgia Bulldogs felt they were screwed out of the title game. Last year and earlier this, the US Congress spent an insane amount of time and resources investigating steroids in baseball.
Government needs to stay the hell out of sports. The American people have their hard earned stolen from them by Congress and in turn, Congress wastes that money on bullshit like this. Write your Senator and your Representative and tell them NOT to waste your time – and it is your time if you elected them to serve you – on crap like this. Make sure they know that there are worse problems in this country than the Texas Longhorns not playing for the national title. The last thing we need is for Congress to ignore the demise of the country in favor of getting their hands into sports.
Besides, government has already screwed up education; they’d probably screw this up too.
Random Stuff
I’m taking a page from my compadre and posting a few random thoughts about the economy and the runoff election in Georgia.
First, there was a report issued by the National Bureau of Economic Research that states the US has been in a recession since December of 2007. That’s right, it’s taken almost a year for the NBER to figure out what the American public has known for quite some time. What was it that clued them in? Was the housing crash? The financial crisis/credit crunch? The drop in the Dow? Hard to believe that these academics are almost a year late in determining that we are in a recession. Further proof that you college folks shouldn’t take everything your professors say as gospel. Do they teach you some good stuff? Yes. Are they the foremost experts on every economical and political issue? No. They spend too much time patting themselves on the back for their perceived intellectual prowess to realize what’s going on in the real world.
Up next: Ford. Ford’s CEO, Alan Mulally, must have giant brass balls. He has stated that he will work for only $1 a year if the government supplies them with bailout dollars to keep the company afloat. That’s a very generous gesture. I’m assuming that it would be modeled after Ed Liddy’s contract at AIG ($1 in salary but loads of company stock). Here’s the problem. If Mulally really wanted to see Ford succeed, he would have cut executive salaries and reduced his own salary long before Ford hit rock bottom. Instead, he has waited until it looks like his company might not get the tax payers money and made one last desperate grab at our money. He sacrificed everything he could before he was willing to cut his own bloated salary. And anything over $0 is bloated for a man who has helped destroy one of the largest companies in the world through poor management. Sadly, I think that Congress will fall for this move and give Ford and the other automakers $25 billion of our money.
Finally, Georgia held its runoff election today between Democrat Jim Martin and incumbent Republican Saxby Chambliss. As of 9PM, Chambliss leads Martin 59% to 41% (50% of precincts reporting). This lead is good for 2 reasons. First, if Saxby retains his seat, then the Democrats will not have a super majority in the Senate. This is good for the long term health of our country. Nothing would be worse than a liberal president and more than enough votes in the Congress to back anything he wants to do (like expand social programs and government run health care). Second, and perhaps most importantly, there will be no more Chambliss and Martin campaign ads on TV. And after enduring 6 months of these ads, I’m sick of seeing them.
More on the Auto Bailout
Here’s a couple of follow-up pieces regarding the proposed bailout of the auto industry.
First, if you paid close attention to my first post regarding the the auto bailout, you will notice that I mentioned that the UAW was lobbying the Democrats to send an obscene amount of money to the auto makers to delay their inevitable demise.
Looks like I was correct. UAW president Ron Gettelfinger has stated the workers will not make any more concessions to help the slumping auto makers. Gettelfinger called for Congress to act quickly on a bailout plan for the auto industry.
Don’t you just love this? The UAW refuses to make concessions and then demands money from the government. Does it matter that a big reason the auto industry is failing is because unionized employees blackmail employers into paying far more in benefits and salary than they are worth? No. What matters is that unions retain their power. If Ford and GM go under, these unions and union leaders suddenly hold no power and they will not stand for that. So, instead of making concessions from their insane salary and benefits demands, they require that government give the industry money to keep it afloat. They trade the votes of the union membership for money in order to retain their power. Democrats are more than willing to play along since they are also seeking to retain power in the government.
Now to address another article I read regarding the auto industry bailout. I stated before that the Democrats were putting on a clinic on how to buy votes by pushing for an auto bailout. As it turns out, the current administration is guilty of this as well.
Bush is suggesting that the money used to bailout the auto industry come from loans that were approved in September (but not dispersed). He is suggesting that Congress accelerate the availability of these loans. Originally, these loans were earmarked for the purpose of helping auto makers build more fuel-efficient vehicles so that they could become more competitive in the global marketplace (even though they have failed to do this for decades spending their own money). Now these loans will be used to simple keep the companies from crapping out financially.
To sum up – Democrats want to send $25 billion from the financial bailout to the auto makers to secure their votes and Bush has upped the ante by allowing money that was originally set aside for the development of fuel efficient vehicles to be used to keep the auto makers from going under. Looks like the Republicans are going to secure a few votes for themselves in the next election.
Its bi-partisan vote-buying like this that has driven me to libertarianism. And the worst part is that they are buying votes with MY money.