Back to Basics

For those who believed politics was involved in the decisions in the car industry, it appears that Mr. Rattner’s new book will provide a lot of information. So much for Obama’s promise not to let politics interfere with how the companies were run.

-When Obama was told of the plan to pay GM CEO Rick Wagoner a $7.1 million severance package after Obama ordered that he be sacked, Rattner writes: “Suddenly I felt that I was indeed in the presence of a community organizer…”

-Rattner describes presidential political adviser David Axelrod coming to car meetings armed with poll data to support the takeover and Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel identify Congressmen in whose districts large Chrysler facilities were located.

-”[Obama's economic team] veered dangerously close to having the government take control of the two most troubled banks, Bank of America and Citigroup.”

-”If his team had linked arms with the outgoing administration, as President Bush’s advisers had proposed, billions of dollars could well have been saved.”

-Rattner says Chief of Staff Rahm Emanual dictated Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner’s schedule, public appearances and staff selections.

-He says Obama economic advisers Larry Summers and Austan Goolsbee and FDIC Chair Sheila Bair as enemies who slowed down decision making with infighting

-Rattner said Obama was frustrated with the auto companies from the start: “Why can’t they make a Corolla?” he has Obama asking.

I suppose it’s only natural that politicians who wind up on Capitol Hill forget that they are mere mortals. After all, when everyone is vying for your attention and all the Sunday talk shows are eager to have you stop by and spout off, and you have as many flunkies at your beck and call as Marie Antoinette, it must be awfully easy to believe you have achieved royal status. In fact, all that you’ve really done is beat out some other schnook in a popularity contest.

As a result, these pettifoggers must be constantly plagued by the fear that the very next election can turn them back into the very same rodents they were before their Fairy Godmother touched them with her magic wand.

For the run-of-the-mill politician, it must be bad enough, but imagine being Harry Reid, king of the Senate one day, and just another old pickle puss the next.

In a way, it would be even worse for Nancy Pelosi, who, unlike Reid, will easily win re-election, but could still go from being the queen bee on November 2nd to losing her Speaker’s gavel and watching her jumbo jet turn into a pumpkin at midnight. How bleak her life will be if there are no more TV cameras tracking her as she strides down the House corridors in her Hillary Clinton pants suit, a dozen male courtiers trailing in her wake.

For that matter, who would want to be Barack Obama if the November elections go the way they appear headed? How bitter would it be to go from filibuster-proof majorities in the House and Senate to being the lamest of lame ducks? A while back, Obama, when asked his opinion of Kevin Rudd, the ex-prime minister of Australia, said he liked him. One of the qualities he liked best about him was his humility. “I find him smart but humble.” The way he said it suggested he might as well have been describing himself. And to think, some people are convinced Obama doesn’t have a sense of humor. The notion that Obama is a humble human being is so far-fetched that it might even strain Joy Behar’s credulity. As Winston Churchill once observed of his political nemesis, Clement Attlee, “He’s a modest man, and he’s got a lot to be modest about.”

Speaking of the president, I keep wondering why we never hear anything about his mother-in-law. Is Mrs. Robinson still hanging out in the White House and are we still footing the bill for her food and lodging?

And whatever happened to Bo? Is he happy? Is he house-broken and has he been neutered? Judging by the ease with which Obama has turned Benjamin Netanyahu into a lap dog, I assume the answer to both questions is a resounding yes.

“There will be time for them to make profits, and there will be time for them to get bonuses…now is not that time. And that’s a message that I intend to send directly to them…”

Those words were uttered by our President on January 29th of 2009. He was reacting to the news that some American corporations, even some that had received government “bailout” funds, had both posted profits, and had paid bonuses to their executives.

And those were extraordinary words. They implied that, so far as President Obama is concerned, there are times when it is appropriate for American companies to not earn a profit, and times when it is appropriate for workers to not be compensated for their labor.

And now, after twenty months of our government’s policies being driven by Barack Obama’s very counterintuitive economic thinking, and with the national unemployment average approaching ten percent, I’m left wondering: is this what our President intended?

These days, Mr. Obama is saying some very different things. Speaking at the University of Texas at Austin earlier this month, the President stated that “we need an economy that puts Americans back to work, an economy that’s built around three simple words — Made in America…because we are not playing for second place. We are the United States of America, and like the Texas Longhorns, you play for first — we play for first…”

Some twenty months in to his presidency, Barack Obama apparently feels it is necessary to reassure Americans that he still wants a robust U.S. economy, and that he actually wants America to be “first” (we still are “first,” by the way – but that’s beside the point). It’s not surprising that Americans have doubts about our President’s support of America, but again I’m left wondering: is this what President Obama intended?

For as long as Barack Obama has been a household name, he has devoted much of his time and energy to maligning American free enterprise. While campaigning for the presidency, Senator Obama traversed the country preaching, among other things, his economic doctrines. And the recurrent themes from these economic messages were quite clear: A) our nation’s greatest enemies were not terrorists or hostile nations, but American corporations; B) American oil companies, pharmaceutical companies, insurance companies, and businesses that “shipped jobs overseas,” were among the worst fenders; and C) victory over these enemies would not be achieved until he, himself, could control these various sectors of our economy.

“We have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work…we have just as much unemployment as when we started…and an enormous debt to boot!” It was a decade of disaster and the man who spoke these words was Henry Morgenthau, Jr., Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Secretary of the Treasury. The date was May 9, 1939.

By then the Roosevelt administration had been in office eight years and Morgenthau was addressing his fellow Democrats on the House Ways and Means Committee. In Congress and in the White House today our nation’s leaders are repeating the same errors as their predecessors in the midst of the Great Depression.

Reflecting on the errors of the 1930s, Chris Edwards, Director of Tax Policy at the Cato Institute, in September 2005 wrote, “Many people think that we need a big government to prevent, or to reverse, recessions. But the 1930s illustrate that activist policies increase, not decrease economic instability.”

What could be more activist than the year and a half that Barack Obama has held the reins of power in Washington, D.C.? From the failed Stimulus Act to the bailout/ownership of General Motors, to the forced imposition of Medicare “reform”, to the financial “reform” legislation, Obama has managed to plunge the nation into a level of debt not seen since the end of World War II.

Before departing, a Democrat controlled Congress just voted to send States $26 billion MORE on top of previous bailouts. This isn’t governance. It’s insanity.

It is not capitalism, nor is it a people capable of great productivity that is responsible for the economic crisis in which Americans find themselves. It is the government and, specifically, it is the growth of government since the 1930s with “entitlement” programs that include Social Security, Medicare, and endless other ways taxpayer money is either wasted or doled out to essentially buy votes.

In January 2004 economist Robert J. Samuelson, a columnist for the Washington Post, wrote that “immense tax increases would be needed” to keep up with the spending mandated by entitlement programs at a time when 77 million Baby Boomers were getting ready for retirement. “If spending—on the elderly or everything else—isn’t cut or taxes raised, deficits will spin out of control. What’s astonishing is that the problem has been known for decades.”

If eighteen months ago someone asked you to write a political plan more likely to rile up the American people and throw them into the arms of the Republican Party, it’s hard to imagine anything that would be more successful than what the Democrats have done over the past year and a half.  Not to mention what they plan to do.

Between ObamaCare, the stimulus, civil rights for terrorists and suing Arizona for trying to control its illegal immigration problem, they have been pushing voters to the GOP with both hands.  But in just a few months comes the coup de grace: a massive tax increase – right in the middle of a recession.

Back at the beginning of the decade when Bush and the Republicans were pushing for tax cuts Democrats instinctively fought the idea, (it’s unnatural to them).  While they couldn’t stop the tax cuts entirely, they did have enough clout to insist upon a sunset provision, and as of right now those cuts will expire on December 31st.

So much for a Happy New Year.

Of course this will occur after the coming elections, (by design), but the increases are likely to have their greatest political impact in 2011 and 2012, which means that they will become an issue for Obama’s re-election campaign.

So, what taxes are going up?  It’s quite a list.

Of course, individual income tax rates will go up.  Ten percent goes to fifteen, (up by fifty percent!); twenty-five goes to twenty-eight; twenty-eight goes to thirty-one; thirty-three goes to thirty-six; and thirty-five percent goes up to almost forty.

This is just their way of saying “thanks for the second chance, American taxpayers”:

General Motors will invest $500 million to produce a new vehicle and eight-cylinder engines in a plant in northeastern Mexico, a company spokesman said on August 4.

The decision was announced at a meeting on August 3 between GM management and Mexican officials, the spokesman said, without giving details of the new vehicle.

Well, the cars that people will actually buy have to be manufactured somewhere, I suppose.

Speaking of that, don’t criticize the Volt — it’s un-American.

For months, virtually each and every day Usurper-and-Dictator-in-Chief Barack Hussein Obama has been removing one or more of We-the-People’s liberties. Whether one wishes to ignore it or not, Obama is now in an all-out war against the American people and their soon to be former way of life. And he has no intention of stopping until American citizens are slaves to The Obama and illegal immigrants (aka “Obama Amnestees”) are his indentured servants. Please note that under the thumb of The Obama illegals already have more “rights” than US citizens.

Using taxpayer monies, The Obama has already begun his 2012 campaign for POTUS — when he will again NOT have to even remotely prove any natural-born US citizenship. Apparently, Article II of the US Constitution is now no more than a novelty or an historical footnote. Obama’s Campaign of Lies begins anew, as he tells us “his” economy is getting better while all empirical evidence to the contrary tells us it is getting worse — much worse. The Obama smiles crookedly as he tells us that he has “saved” [impossible to calculate] or “created” 3.6 million jobs, while he has actually lost over 8 million. Even Obama’s VP Joe Biden said: “There’s no possibility to restore 8 million jobs lost in the Great Recession.” But, still they blame President George W. Bush; the POTUS who brought us the lowest unemployment in decades. US World and News Report during the Bush Administration showed ‘Productivity growth for 2000-2005 is 3.4%, the highest of ANY five year period in FIFTY years’. This growth occurred, I might add, even though we were brutally attacked by Islamists on September 11, 2001.

In actuality, when the proverbial economic dam burst it was due to the Democrats’ slush funds Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and an extremely suspicious — if not carefully planned by the Left — electronic run on the banks just prior to the 2008 US General Elections. It was for these reasons that T.A.R.P. was enacted. Facts are stubborn things but, Obama & Co has worked tirelessly to delete them. And don’t forget which political party was in control of the Senate and House of Representatives after the 2006 midterm elections — Democrat. As we have leaned with The Obama and his Marxist Dems, elections can have dire consequences. And Marxists and all totalitarians consistently rewrite and mischaracterize factual history.

When The Obama usurped the US Presidency he entered with the expressed agenda of destroying the United States of America and creating a Marxist/Maoist slave-state in his own image. He has been remarkably successful in destroying the US economy and the middle class, as his mentors Saul Alinsky and George Soros instructed him to do. Obama’s media have also worked (and continue to work) tirelessly alongside him and his Marxist Czars and Congressional members to suppress any and all truth about the dictator; as did the respective leftist media during the reigns of Stalin, Hitler and Mao.

What The Obama Hath Wrought

Since he rose to power over We-the-People, Obama has destroyed our economy and most hopes to soon correct it, sent our taxpayer monies overseas, repaid his political supporters and cronies (aka labor unions) again with our monies, taken control of our bodies with his ObamaCare, is in process of destroying Medicare and on his way to eliminating seniors, funded abortion — which he said he wouldn’t do — in the USA and now illegally in Kenya. He also still plans to — one way or another — force some version of Cap & Trade down our throats, so that we will no longer be able to afford electricity.

Obama has seized the US auto industry and is now manufacturing “green” electric cars — which cost more than traditional cars, do not provide the same performance levels and which consumers do not want to buy. But, Obama will force you to buy them if you want to buy a car. Obama also now has several schemes in place to force Illegal Aliens’ Amnesty through, so that he can create a new Democrat voting bloc.

I’m trying to make sense of the moratorium of drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. This cannot be good for the U.S. economy. But it is interesting that it comes along right when Government Motors is about to release the Chevy Volt. You know, the electric car that costs $41,000 which no one wants. They are going to steal around $6,000 from your neighbor to entice you to buy it so the cost does go down in that regard.

I ran the numbers. Let’s say you managed to buy this little vehicle for a discounted price of $35,000 including rebates, incentives and tax credits. Let’s say gasoline is $3 gallon. Let’s also assume given that cost you would spend $2,000 for fuel a year. It’s a decent average. Depending on your car maybe you blow through $200 a month or so on fuel. Let’s also assume you could buy a used Honda for $7,000 which is roughly the same size as the Volt. That is a difference of  $28,000. Think maybe you could buy a lot of gasoline for that money? Yea, about 14 years worth before breaking even on your Volt purchase. It’s just a dumb purchase for all except the elite earth and granola people.

So why are they pushing to sell this thing and stop drilling in the Gulf? The Five Minute Forecast gives us clues:

The Obama administration’s six-month ban on exploratory deep- water drilling has four more months to go. What happens after that, nobody knows. Analysts from Morgan Stanley to our own Byron King say it could easily become a 12-18-month ban.

The result: As existing Gulf of Mexico fields deplete, fewer new ones would come on line to replace them. The resulting shock could see 6% of all the oil the U.S. uses — 1.2 million barrels a day — disappear over time.

New legislation tightening the rules on offshore drilling could come up for a vote in the House as soon as tomorrow (today). Never mind that existing rules were neither followed nor enforced in the Deepwater incident, we need new rules. The new rules would further crimp Gulf production.

In the end, the U.S. could need to import 80% of its oil from foreign producers. That’s up 20% from current needs. At current levels of consumption, the U.S. will need to import 15 million barrels of oil a day.

Where are those imports coming from? From these “iffy, at best” sources: