The US Postal Service is contemplating increasing postage rates and eliminating Saturday delivery.  Really?  They lost approximately $4 billion last year.  But don’t worry the CEO got a bonus.  It is reported that their labor costs, heavily unionized, exceed 80% of revenues.  Did you know that the only place where unionization is growing is in the public sector?  Union representation in the public sector surpassed the private sector for the first time this year.

But don’t worry, President Obama has a handle on it.  He appointed Andy Stern, president of the Service Employees International Union to the board to figure out how to reduce the deficit.  Do you see a problem between these two news items?  Can you see a problem with the objectives of an Andy Stern and you and me?

As a side note, Rick Perry just won the Republican primary for governor of Texas and in his campaign he used no yard signs, no phone banks, and no direct mail.  As one comentator said “paper is dead.”

I know this is completely anecdotal, but my local post office just completed an expansion project increasing the size of the building.  I have noticed more than one post office being expanded as well.  Again, this is just my limited, personal observation, not a scientific study, but with the drop in mail volume, “paper is dead”, $4 billion in losses, performance bonuses for lackluster performance, heavy unionization, am I being unreasonable in thinking the government couldn’t handle health care even if it was a good idea?

In baseball they call it a brush back pitch, a high hard one.  It lets the batter know that they don’t own home plate, and if they try to get too comfortable there they may be inviting a little “chin music.”  Jim Bunning, Republican Senator from Kentucky and a Hall of Fame baseball pitcher with a perfect game on his resume, just gave the Democrats a brush back and they don’t like it one bit.

Out of Control Spending

You would have to be Rip Van Winkle not to know that spending is out of control  and America is speeding toward bankruptcy.  President Obama and Nancy Pelosi have tried to hoodwink the country by implementing what is called “Paygo” short for Pay As You Go.  The idea is that you cannot spend money without first funding it either through cutting speding somewhere else or raising taxes.  The last element is the real reason Democrats support it, so that they would be “forced” to raise taxes.  Here is how the Wall Street Journal described Paygo back in January.

The truth is that paygo is the kind of budget gimmick that gives gimmickry a bad name. As Mr. Obama knows but won’t tell voters, paygo only applies to new or expanded entitlement programs, not to existing programs such as Medicare, this year growing at a 9.2% annual rate. Nor does paygo apply to discretionary spending, set to hit $1.4 trillion in fiscal 2010, or 40% of the budget.

The Democrats passed Paygo to appear fiscally responsible.  Jim Bunning merely called them on it.  He is not opposed to spending the money.  He has the courage, though, to stand up and say, Mr. President we’re broke, and we are accountable to the American people to be good stewards of the money they give us to run this government.

“If we can’t find $10 billion to pay for something that we all support, we will never pay for anything on the floor of this U.S. Senate,” he said. – Jim Bunning, Floor of the U.S. Senate, 3/1/2010

Immediately was heard much wailing an gnashing of teeth, that the lone Republican, had the temerity to challenge the “flexibility” of the Democrats to apply their rules willy nilly to tighten their grip on their power while trying to appear like the kindly nannies they really are.  Rules are passed to much fanfare in front of the cameras and then ignored with a scoff or a sneer, when they really mean something.

Gimmicks Instead of Guts

Democrats have proved uncapable of controlling their spending.  With the mad push of profligacy that came with winning the Presidency and both houses of Congress with large margins, they now find themselves unable to dial it back without an intervention or a rehabilitation program.  So they pass Paygo, and ignore it; convene a debt reduction commission and name Andy Stern of the SEIU union to it.  If that is not a clue to what’s coming I don’t know what is.  What does a labor union president know about reducing debt?  All they know how to do is take someone else’s money and put it in their own pockets, so you can bet their solution to the debt problem is taxing you to the eyeballs.

Rather than the scorn that is being heaped upon him, Senator Bunning deserves our thanks.  Find the money first, then spend it.  Enough of the IOUs.  We cannot afford this liberal spending binge.

Stand strong, Senator, the Tea Party Patriots hear you and help is on the way.

President Obama has just created a panel to figure out how to get our debt under control.  Even when he makes a decision, such as this one, it is to pass the buck to someone else to do the heavy lifting.  His attempt to overhaul health care turned into the Harry and Nancy Show.  Obama campaigned and gave speeches while Pelosi and Reid shut out the Republicans and created the bill that could not be passed.  Obama is now trying to put lipstick on that pig, by calling for a bipartisan meeting.  But instead of starting over and getting ideas from everyone, they are basically going to pick over the stinking corpse of the bill that the Democrats could not get passed.  It is obvious that the real objective is to either get some Republicans to sign on or to use the meeting as a club to beat the Republicans as the “party of No.”

Stop Me Before I Spend

This president can’t seem to control himself and he finds that he painted himself into a corner.  If he tries to raise taxes on those who make less than $250,000 per year he will be breaking a major campaign promise.  If he stops spending on his own, he will lose the left which is about the only support he has remaining.  So he calls in Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles to co-chair a committee charged with making the president a tailor made fig leaf, to allow him to cut spending and raise taxes, while shrugging his shoulders and saying, “I can’t go a gainst the excellent advice of this august commission.”

If he wants to cut spending, he can just cut spending.  He doesn’t need a commission to do so.  How about an across the board spending freeze, except for national defense, until the the economy grows enough to balance the budget and not with gimmicks like increasing discretionary spending now 24% and then saying you will freeze that same spending for the next threee years?  How about freezing government hiring?  How about returning $500 billion in unspent stimulus money and $400 billion in repaid TARP money, plus interest, to the Treasury?  Don’t hold your breath.  That would require someone with executive experience who knows how to make a decision, rather than deliberating, like a legislator.  Sarah Palin comes to mind, as does George Bush (I & II), Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan.  These experienced executives knew how to put together a budget and make decisions.  Chris Christie in New Jersey was just sworn in last month as governor and he immediately identified the problem as too much spending and got to work cutting it back.  All that President Obama seems to know how to do is talk. 

If we start advertising now, we may get enough resumes to review to find a replacement by 2012.

The Joke is on You

Joe Biden just held a press event to reveal how he was going to help the middle class.  The man who has a hard time reaching into his own pocket for more than $1 a day in charity to give to his fellow man, has no problem reaching into your pocket and give the fruit of your labor to someone else.  It’s a win-win.  It doesn’t cost Joe Biden and it helps him keep getting elected and drawing a salary that you pay for.

Here is what he revealed:

1. Nearly Doubling the Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit — in an economy that has over 10% unemployment this administration is focusing on helping those who already have a job and income.  I’m all for tax cuts, but not targeted cuts.  Cut income tax rates and jobs will be created.  I don’t believe this administration knows how to aim anything well enough to hit a target
2. Limiting a student’s federal loan payments to 10 percent of his/her income above a basic living allowance — the administration is concerned about how much debt students leave college with.  Does it have any concern about how much debt they are piling on everyone, not just college graduates?  Biden pointed to the average indebtedness of around $25,000 for college graduates.  The federal debt is about $35,000 for every man, woman and child in America, not just college graduates and this administration shows no signs of stopping it.
3. Creating a system of automatic workplace IRAs — government first got involved in retirement with Social Security.  That system is bankrupt and this administration has no interest in fixing it.  When Republicans floated the idea of taking a portion of the Social Security payroll tax and diverting it to higher return private savings, the Democrats savaged them.  So the Democrat solution is to ignore the bankrupt Social Security system and start telling business what to do.
4. Expanding tax credits to match retirement savings and enacting new safeguards to protect retirement savings — again with Social Security bankrupt, they want to put more tax dollars into retirement.  How different is this than the Republican plan to take what exists and allow it to get better returns than the paltry rate it currently gets within the Social Security system? The difference is that the Republican plan wouldn’t cost anything extra.  The Democrat plan will either increase payroll taxes or increase the deficit.  Surprise!!!
5. Expanding support for families balancing work with caring for elderly relatives –I thought the Democrats had fixed this with “end of life counseling” in their health care plan, coupled with bringing back the Death Tax next year.

Fumbling and Stumbling

The way to create jobs is to let the job creators keep their money to invest in their business and expand.  Small business owners are stuck waiting to learn how much all of Obama’s social re-engineering is going to cost them and until they know that, hiring is the last thing they will do.  The only thing this administration seems to know how to do is bash business and spend money and the more they spend the longer the recover will take.  They are now planning another stimulus plan to follow the last stimulus plan that didn’t work, and the deficit continues to grow and grow and grow.

President Obama wants to create a bipartisan panel to recommend how to reduce the deficit.  He gives the back of his hand to bipartisanship when it comes to workable solutions to real problems, but he loves bipartisanship when it gives him political cover to make unpopular decisions.  All of his supporters love to say that experience doesn’t matter and that President Obama is the smartest guy in the room.  If that is true, he should not be afraid to propose bold spending cuts and shrinking government and be smart enough to explain it to Congress on his own.  If he does so, I am sure many Republicans would support him and vote for it (and almost all Democrats vote against it).  But he wants it both ways, he wants Republicans to yield to tie spending cuts to tax increases and put the package to an up or down vote.  He will then take that on the campaign trail to tell the world how Republicans voted for tax increases.  If you don’t believe me, look to history.  George Herbert Walker Bush, of the “no new taxes” pledge, got Congress to agree with spending cuts in return for a tax increase.  Bill Clinton clubbed him to death, like a baby seal, with that pledge and then enjoyed Bush’s restraint upon Congress on the spending side to generate budget surpluses.  Let President Obama take the lead.  Wasn’t that why he was elected?  Because he was a different kind of leader?  So, lead away.

The December jobs report was a disappointment for this Administration.  They expected a mere decline of 10,000 jobs and were hit with an 85,000 loss.  They will, of course, downplay the numbers and say how many jobs they “saved” even though that is a statistic no one can measure.  But what are this administration’s priorities?

Upside Down Priorities

Let’s look at the priorities of this administration:

1. Bailouts
2. Health care
3. Cap and Trade
4. Jobs
5. National Security

Leaving aside that the top three are questionable as being within the constitutional authority of the president, what does it mean to job growth? 

The Little Engine That Can’t

The engine of job growth in this country are small businesses.  If you run a small business and you don’t know what your expenses are going to be, you will be very cautious about hiring.  In the list of items above, the first four have this administration on a spending binge that can only result in higher taxes because despite the rhetoric, that’s what statists do.  They will claim they only tax the rich, but many small business owners will fit into that definition of rich without having the cash to pay the taxes because their income is plowed back into their businesses.  So until they know how big the tax bill will be, they cannot afford to commit any cash to increased payroll.  They are more likely to use overtime rather than hiring to tide them over because they can just as quickly turn off that spigot.  While that might mean more economic activity, it doesn’t translate into new jobs.

Health Care is another looming question mark.  Since no one in the administration nor Congress seems to care about reading the bills they are voting on, it carries enormous risks to small businesses when the bureaucrats start crafting regulations based on any approved regulations.  If a small businesswoman doesn’t know what the impact will be on the cost of her existing workforce, she is certainly not going to hire new workers until she knows if the impact on her bottom line will be positive or negative.

Cap and trade is another potential whack to the small business bottom line.  Either through new taxes or carbon credits, who can tell a small businessman what this is going to cost?  When in doubt, stand pat.

Righting the Ship

Until this administration jettison’s the useless cargo that is sinking this administration, their new top priority should be ”man the lifeboats!”  If this administration hopes to avoid being a lame duck for two years, they need to come forward and say health care is dead, cap and trade is dead, bailouts are over.  Don’t even say that they will take them up again when the economy recovers.  Throw them over the side and start the pumps to empty the Treasury of IOUs.  If they don’t do this, any recovery in the jobs area will be slow indeed. 

It’s the Uncertainty, Stupid

Until the uncertainty is lifted, unemployment will remain stubbornly high.  When Reagan came into office and boldly stated his goal to shrink government and cut taxes, small businesses could see immediately that the effect on them would only be positive.  Less government and lower taxes meant more money on the bottom line and with more money on the bottom line they could start hiring and they did.  The result?  Twenty-five years of economic growth.  Obama is following the Franklin Roosevelt model of spend, spend, spend.  It didn’t work then.  It’s not working now.

“The Obama administration’s $75 billion program to protect homeowners from foreclosure has been widely pronounced a disappointment, and some economists and real estate experts now contend it has done more harm than good.” – New York Times, January 2, 2010

“The Treasury Department publicly maintains that its program is on track. “The program is meeting its intended goal of providing immediate relief to homeowners across the country,” a department spokeswoman, Meg Reilly, wrote in an e-mail message.” — same article, NYT

Hot on the heels of Janet Napolitano’s performance at the Department of Homeland Security, that things worked just swell and then, er, no it was a catastrophic failure, we have another example of this administration’s ineptitude.  Let’s not let the marketplace work by flushing out the bad loans, have banks face up to the reality of their bad lending decisions, allow housing prices to reach a market level, all in a reasonably short time, no, let’s get another massive, taxpayer funded program in place to gum up the works and drag this out for years. 

A Habit of Ignoring History

In 1929 Hoover mishandled the economy in a similar way bringing in the leaders of major industries and jawboning them to keep up production even in the face of falling demand so that jobs would not be lost.  The businesses went along until that policy hit their financial statements in the form of plunging profitability.  Stock prices fell sharply and more disasterous policies followed, first by Hoover and more by Roosevelt.

In 1920-21 there was a very steep and serious recession.  However, companies cut wages and government didn’t interfere.

“The annual unemployment rate peaked at 11.7 percent in 1921, but it had fallen to 6.7 percent by the following year, and was down to an incredible 2.4 percent by 1923,” Murphy writes. “That is how a market with flexible wages and prices quickly corrects itself after a Fed-induced inflationary boom.”

Roosevelt’s policies followed Hoovers’ with more and more government interference.  Throughout the Great Depression the programs didn’t work, government grew tremendously leaving us saddled with that legacy.  On the other hand Reagan in the 1980s pursued a policy of cutting taxes and shrinking government.  Roosevelt needed World War II to end the Great Depression, Reagan ushered in 25 years of unprecedented economic growth.  Which one does Obama choose to follow?  That’s right, Roosevelt.  Brilliant!

Inexperience on Full Display

President Obama rides into town with no executive experience, but with wondrous rhetorical skills and a hard left agenda.  He jams through a stimulus package that doesn’t stimulate.  His security policy is to undo everything that worked under Bush to keep us safe.  One of the first things Janet Napolitano does is  release a report saying that the real threat is from our returning military that might become right wing zealots,  Meanwhile Islamic terrorists, correct that, isolated extremists, continue to plot to kill us.  Now the New York Times points out that the Emperor’s mortgage program, Making Home Affordable, has no clothes.

“Whatever the merits of its plans, the administration has clearly failed to reverse the foreclosure crisis.” — NYT

When asked by a Congressional Oversight Panel what the administration was going to do in the face of this lasting not a year or two but for many years into the future, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner said:

“What to do about it,” he said. “That’s a hard thing.” — NYT

Sounds like the seeds of another government program to fix the other government program.  Just like FDR did all through the 1930s.  Trying to stop the market with government programs is like trying to stop the tides.  You may divert it and you may end up with water in places you didn’t want it, but you are not going to stop it.

We have had several bubbles before, but if the Obama administration has their way, “you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.”  Currently the budget for the federal government is $4 trillion dollars.  That’s right, your federal government will spend approximately (which means probably more) $4 trillion in one year.  Of that amount $202 billion is interest on the national debt.  In an article in the New York Times today by 2019, a mere ten years from now, the portion of the budget directed to interest payments will be over $700 billion, or three and a half times what it is today.  Many people have trouble grasping how much a trillion dollars are, and within ten years we will be paying three-quarters of a trillion dollars just to cover the interest without paying off any of the principle.

Family Budget Analogy

We all understand the dramatic effects of too much debt, as the point has been driven home every day throughout this financial crisis.  Bankruptcy filings, home foreclosures, bailouts, all resulting from more debt than we can pay the interest on, let alone pay back the principle.  You see commercials on television every day for companies that will help you renegotiate your credit card debt, your mortgage, intervene on your behalf with the IRS.  None of those programs are available to the federal government as a debtor. 

Obama’s Out of Control Spending

The Obama administration seems oblivious to the problem.  As bad as it is they just keep on spending or want to spend more:

• Stimulus package — $787 billion.  Despite evidence that it is not working and widespread opposition from the American people, the Obama administration is simply declaring that it is working and we need to do it again with a second stimulus
• Cap and Trade — this is a program that will drive energy costs through the roof for no real benefit.  After all if, as is becoming more and more apparent, global warming is not man made then it cannot be stopped by man either.  Higher costs will lead to businesses closing down, laying off people, and generating less tax revenue from both the businesses and the individuals it laid off.  Result — an increase in the deficit.
• Health Care — another $1 trillion of IOUs piled on our children’s back and if Medicare’s history is any guide, these numbers are well below what will really happen.

The Truth About Government

The truth is that government doesn’t create anything.  They don’t generate income.  Everything that government has to spend comes from you and me.  The government takes it from us (or throws us in jail for tax evasion) and then spends it.  If they can’t get enough from us, they borrow the difference.  But somewhere down the line, that money has to get paid back.  A news report today said we have the opportunity to just write a check to the Treasury if we are concerned about the deficit and want to help pay it down!  Let’s see how many of Obama’s wealthy supporters sign up for that program.

Runaway Train

Our federal government is a runaway train and if we don’t stop it very soon and pare it back to the functions enumerated in the Constitution, we will get hit with a bubble so big, that there is no Hollywood screenwriter that could even begin to conceive of how to portray it.  $700 billion folks, that’s $2,059 in INTEREST for every man, woman and child in America.  Ask yourself this, if you are a family of four are you prepared to write a check for $8,235 to the federal government for interest alone?  You don’t get anything for your money, it just keeps your government from defaulting on what they already borrowed. This will be on top of your regular tax bill. And the next year you will have to pay it again and probably more.  It’s time to stop the madness.  It’s time to stop the spending.  It’s time to stop the expansion of government and start shutting down departments.  It’s what you would do at home in a financial crisis, it’s what a small business would do in a crisis.  This is a crisis that we can still get under control, but if the debt continues to grow to the point where we can no longer afford to pay even the interest, America will be a footnote in history.

Do I have your attention now?

The New York Times had some, what was to me, shocking news today.  The article said that there was now consensus that the Obama stimulus plan was working.  Is this the same kind of consensus that man-made global warming was settled science, despite the glaring evidence that carbon dioxide emissions continue to grow while the globe stopped warming ten years ago?  This is also close on the heels of breaking stories of extraordinary misinformation if not outright deceit on how the $787 billion is being spent.

Smoke and Mirrors

Early on in the article we have this gem:

“The legislation, a variety of economists say, is helping an economy in free fall a year ago to grow again and shed fewer jobs than it otherwise would. Mr. Obama’s promise to “save or create” about 3.5 million jobs by the end of 2010 is roughly on track, though far more jobs are being saved than created, especially among states and cities using their money to avoid cutting teachers, police officers and other workers.”

There is no mechanism that exists to measure a job saved. None.  So how do they do it?  It goes something like this:

“Here, Mr. Stimulus Funds applicant, I have this check for you for $642,000.  No can you tell me, if I give this to you, how many jobs would you create or save?”

“Create? Er, none.”

“Hmmm,” the bureaucrat mutters, staring down at the check in his hand, “what about jobs you would save?  You know, if I don’t give you this nice, rather large check, how many of your people would you be forced to lay off?”

“Oh, I get it,” the potential recipient says with a wink and a smile, “probably all of them!”

The bureaucrat scribbles down a number, and hands over the check, walking away shaking his head.

That’s about how it’s done.  The government surveys the people getting the money and asks them what would have happened if they didn’t get the stimulus.  And what would you expect them to say?  Keep the check?

Revenue Starved States

What a concept, “Revenue Starved States.”  The article complains that not enough money was provided to “Revenue Starved States.” Does he mean states like California and New York?  I believe the correct term is states where spending is out of control.  It means states where taxes are so high that people are moving out in droves, and among them the “wealthy” people they love to tax to the eyeballs, meaning a dramatically shrinking revenue base.  After all, if one of the wealthiest people in the state, who is part of the group that pays 70% of the taxes, moves out of the state or (out of the country when it gets bad enough), that means a lot of people are going to see their taxes raised to make up for it.  So the statists seem to think a stimulus package that keeps these bloated bureaucracies fat, dumb and happy is the way to go, until when exactly?

The Multiplier Fallacy

The other great fraud being foisted on us is the multiplier effect, where for each dollar of stimulus money spent more than a dollar of economic activity results:

That sort of impact is what makes federal aid to state governments rank high in economists’ reckoning of the stimulus value of various proposals. Every dollar of additional infrastructure spending means $1.57 in economic activity, according to Moody’s, and general aid to states carries a $1.41 “bang” for each federal buck.

Even more effective are increases for food stamps ($1.74) and unemployment checks ($1.61), because recipients quickly spend their benefits on goods and services.

Okay, then how is this for a solution.  Let’s spend $10 trillion on infrastructure, food stamps and unemployment checks, since they will result in $15 trillion or so in economic activity, because of the multiplier, right?  For that matter, let’s have the government spend $100 trillion and we’ll really be rocking.

Where’s the So Called Consensus

From what I read in the article, there was only one economist that could be called a conservative, Martin Feldstein, that they were willing or able to quote, and this was his take on the stimulus.

While some conservatives remain as skeptical as ever that big increases in government spending give the economy a jolt that is worth the cost, Martin Feldstein, a conservative Harvard economist who served in the Reagan administration, said the problem with the package was that some of its tax cuts and spending programs were of a variety that did little to spur the economy.

“There should have been more direct federal spending that would have added to aggregate demand,” he said. “Temporary tax cuts and one-time transfers to seniors were largely saved and didn’t stimulate spending.”

That’s it?  That’s the consensus?  It seems to me that he is pointing out what was wrong with the package rather than what was right.  He was in the Reagan administration and he knows what works: permanent cuts in marginal tax rates. Those dreaded tax cuts for the “rich.”  The thing is that when the people above the subsistence level get to keep more of what they earn, yes it does belong to them and not to the government, they tend to invest it, which means the provide capital to businesses that grow and create jobs.  Yes, capitalism.  What the stimulus does is take money away from these people, or borrows it and steals it from future generations, and gives that money, as in the example above, to highway projects, food stamps and unemployment checks.  The first of these may create jobs until the road project is completed, but the latter two only increase the dependency of those recipients on the government.  So how exactly does the stimulus plan that puts money into a highway project and unemployment benefits, help a banker who got laid off?  How does it help the unemployed executive from United Technologies?  It doesn’t.  It’s like a drug fix.  You may feel good for a while, but then it wears off and you need another fix.

The Genius of Government

You would think that with all the examples of government planning lying on the waste heap of history, the statists will finally catch on that they can’t successfully pick the winners and losers in an economy.  Government has to get out of the way and let the market work.

Government must be drastically cut down to size.  Think of the popular TV show “The Biggest Loser.” Picture the governments of the United States, California, New York, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Michigan, Nevada, for starters, as contestents.  Let’s see who can lose the most weight.  Ready? Go.

WE SAVED THE ECONOMY!

President Barack Obama announced last night at his press conference that his policies have brought the economy back from the brink of collapse. ( Obama Talks About the Economy).  So I guess it’s Mission Accomplished!  Despite unemployment climbing toward 10% when he promised he could hold it at 8% if we implemented his stimulus package and that it would be 9% if we didn’t.  With only 3/4 of the fiscal year over, we already have a deficit in excess of $1 trillion dollars for the first time in our history.  The House passed a Cap and Trade bill that will, if implemented, add to the cost of everything that uses energy, just don’t call it a tax because only Bill Gates and Warren Buffet will be taxed under the Obama Administration.  On top of that, we absolutely must nationalize health care to cut the cost of health care and increase coverage.  The only problem is that the CBO says it will increase costs and reduce the amount of care.

What’s the Mission

If you are foolish enough to think that Obama’s policies are failing, then you don’t know what the mission is.  The mission is not to fix the economy.  It is not to curb global warming.  It is not to make health care more affordable.  It is to increase the size and scope of government to a point where it can never be rolled back.  Our liberties will be crushed and we will be ruled by a cadre of bureaucrats who will tell us what we can do and when we can do it.  He will form a block of voters that can get him and his fellow Democrats elected in perpetuity, by showering them with government handouts and place punishing taxes on a minority of productive people.  Why do you think he is smiling in the picture?  His mission is proceeding just as planned, thank you very much.  He only hopes that it is too late before you realize what happend to you and your rights.

Our once proud automobile industry

The government institutes regulations such as CAFE that force the automobile companies to build many cars they can’t sell at a profit for each car they can.  The unions negotiate contracts that pay people who have been let go 90% of their salary and give retirees extremely generous packages.  The automobile companies stagger under this load to the brink of bankruptcy and what happens?  The CEO of GM gets booted out and the government and the unions end up owning the car companies.  In the case of Chrysler the UAW will end up owning 55% of the company if the government’s plan is approved.

Had the automobile companies gone into bankruptcy before the bailout, as this author advocated, the union contracts could have been voided and a new workable deal struck.  But the government said bankruptcy was bad. The government said we had to give the car companies billions of our tax dollars.  The government said, if you automobiles companies don’t accept our deal, you will be forced into bankruptcy.  Huh?

So tell us again, Mr. Obama, how this is not socialism.