Throw Good Money After Bad

Congress critters have the right to free speech. They also have the right to remain silent. There is a message there to those who would listen.

Senator Christopher Dodd (D-CT), is a lawyer and Chairman of the Senate Banking Committee. Representative Barney Frank (D-MA), is a lawyer and Chairman of the House Financial Services Committee.

“With regard to the automobile industry, certainly we should not throw good money after bad,” Senator Dodd said, “nor should we subsidize ineffective performance and inefficient production.”

Thank you, Senator, for that insightful, positive, and critical decree.

I need to analyze the players a bit before I get to the main point of this piece.

Senator Dodd and Representative Frank make the perfect pair. Combined, they are the Barney Rubble of the United States Congress.

I looked at the $700 billion Barney Rubble campaign finance bill and it is indeed an interesting pattern. See, Barney Rubble specifically enabled the formerly illegal activities that lead us into the “mortgage crisis,” then rejected all attempts to get Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac under control. Barney Rubble has blocked expanding domestic oil production because it is bad for us. (As an aside, Saudi oil minister Ali Al-Naimi told 60 Minutes last night that he is bullish on oil’s future and that expanding domestic oil production here is bad for us.) Barney Rubble did plenty more but you can Google it yourself.

I have been noodling about how this perfect storm of a financial crisis hit. Few scientists, fewer engineers, and no forensic guy believes in coincidence. It is almost impossible to believe that sheer happenstance conspired to put crooks in the banks, burst the housing bubble, jack oil prices, and more all in the same few months.

Somebody did it on purpose.

I nominate Barney Rubble.

Has our hero ever held a real job? Made anything with his (collective) hands? Yes, I used collective on purpose. Barney Rubble gave away $700 billion in handouts with scarcely a whimper but when three actual manufacturers who are the end source of more than a third of this country’s jobs asked for just five percent of that in loans, Messrs. Rubble know, absolutely know, that Congress needs to micro-manage the supplicants.

Boy, do I feel better about my tax dollars now. Congress gonna protect me from those evil auto makers.

Why?

My friend “Bob” posited the question, “Anyone know how to find which politician got money from which source?

“My guess is,” he said, “you will find that the car companies haven’t been making their proper political contributions like the lads on Wall Street.”

Christopher Dodd has received $21,202,690 in contributions. His top contributors include security brokers and investment companies, lawyers, the insurance “industry,” banks, investment banks and hedge funds, and, of course, lobbyists.

Barney Frank has received only $4,231,044 in contributions. [Piker.] His top contributors include lawyers, UBS Americas, Brown Brothers Harriman & Co, JPMorgan Chase, Ernst & Young, the Credit Union National Association, and Independent Community Bankers Of America.

“Bob” was right. Not a single car company on the list.

Money doesn’t buy influence, right? Our Congress Critters would never sell their votes, right? Right?

To paraphrase “Bob,” if you pay off Barney Rubble, he treats you right. If you diss him, he burns you. Just like the Mafia. Our Congress.

Main Point: Starting today, certainly we should not throw good money after bad, nor should we subsidize ineffective performance.

Not one single Representative or Senator has offered to work for $1 per year. The car company CEOs are.

Not one single Representative or Senator has offered to give up their aircraft. The car company CEOs are.

BROKEN NEWS

We are doomed. Sell your automobile stock right now. Representatives Nancy Pelosi and Barney Frank held a news conference today.
“Come March 31,” Speaker Pelosi said, “it is our hope that there will be a viable automotive industry in our country with transparency and accountability to the taxpayer.”

Under the plan, automakers will be given $15 Billion in loans.

That’s a win–win for Congress. Barney Rubble can say “We did all we could but they screwed the pooch.” Sure enough. Since $15 billion is less than half what the companies need to weather the crisis, they might as well fold their tents now.

“How could you possibly accept the same management to run restructured companies that have driven us into the ditch we are in?” Senator Dodd asked.

Was he talking about the automakers or the Congress?

Paraphrasing Senator Richard Shelby (R-AL), The model of this Congress is failure. This Congress has already failed and should we rescue them? I say no.

Senator Dodd almost said it. Starting today, with regard to the United States government, certainly we should not throw good money after bad, nor should we subsidize ineffective performance.

Thanks to Senator Dodd, we don’t have to.

Say, hey, IRS. It’s been real but I’m afraid you won’t be getting any more checks this year. Senator Dodd says NO to throwing good money after bad.

And about Barney Rubble? I’ve said it before. It’s time to throw da bums out and start over.

5 thoughts on “Throw Good Money After Bad

  1. Of course people read the blog. But you have to realize that you’re not a freakin’ physicain, and you are free to advertise. You need to go to some of the liberal newsgroups like misc.writing and alt.writing and post a note once in a while that you have a blog. Then you will attract readership from those who have no life and nothing to do but read blogs. It is the American way.

    However, as soon as they detect a hint of patriotism or librarianism they will post snide comments and call you a bigot. But bad readership is like halitosis. —better than no breath at all.

    Me, I enjoy your cogent opinions; and I especially like this one because it shines the light of high-pocracy on lawmakers like Frank and Dodd.

    BTW, last year I declined a $5000 consulting job in Boston because I knew that the group who invited me was enmasse support of Barney Frank. So there!

    (the real reason was that I had the flu, but I used the above as a subterfuge)

    –GR

  2. Well, I posted a nice comment, but when I added 2 and 8 and came up with 10 the error message admonished me for not passing math. Sorry ’bout that. I am a product of public education.

  3. > when I added 2 and 8 and came up
    > with 10 the error message admonished
    > me for not passing math.

    And it was right. Everyone now knows that
    2 + 8 = purple

  4. I realise that I am on the opposite side of the fence with the blogger of record because I oppose the auto industry bailout–for reasons of conservative value and principles.

    Conservatism says: If a capitalistic business cannot sustain itself via sales and/or services because of poor management, poor products or internal thievery, then let it fold and allow another to rise from its ashes. I also favor prosecution of the principals who drove it to its distruction. However, that is not ever going to happen. Public flogging is a good option.

    If I may back up just a bit, let me say that I also oppose such things as municipal symphony orchestras which cannot sustain themselves via the elitist patronage they claim to enthrall with their euphonious terpsichore–and for the same reasons as the first example above.

    What a senseless joke those people are…imagine, them wanting me to pay for their amusement and entertainment. Let them go to a good Country Western bar and listen to music, drink and pay their own way same as me. What givesa band wearing tuxes and shined shoes the right to expect nonpatronizing taxpayers to pay for their horns and give them a paycheck. That is liberalism, and I hate liberalism.

    But the senselessness is the same with the auto bailout. They want us to pay for their frivolity.

    See, the two entities (nonprofit orchestras and for-profit businesses such as auto manufacturing) differ only in the way they are structured by legal vehicle. Both are corporations–one is a nonprofit and the other is ostensibly a capital venture forprofit corp.That’s where the similarity ends because heads of both know they have no moral mandate to earn money for shareholders. (BTW, elitist people who support nonprofits with their contributions and patronage consider themselves shareholders–even though they want and expect non patrons (nonshareholders)to support their entertainment choices.) That is liberalism, and I hate liberalism.

    I think I said that, but it bears repeating.

    So, with no moral mandate to make profit, the fat-cat auto CEOs couch themselves in capitalism while secretely knowing that liberalism/socialism will bail them out if they fail to support the upside-down pyramid that their perfidy has produced. That is an adulteration of capitalism. Remember the adage (Gene Royer): Capitalism can only exist as a viable economic system until it learns that liberalism will bail it out.

    So, they go to Congress and whine *foul* or wotever, not willing to accept the reality of their own mis-management. Congressmen and their skinny, ugly female counterparts assume an aura of sainthood and click their tongues–while all the while knowing that they have found a bird’s nest on the ground. “There’s gold in them thar hills.”

    Bailing the auto industry out will only perpetuate the capitalist/socialist mixed-marriage, and give both Congress and the CEOs an opportunity to beat their chests and proclaim that they have saved the country from disaster.

    Maybe socialism is the only way to save America. I shudder to think so…it seems likely. But, mebbe not.

    —-Mebbe what we need is not another “ism”. Maybe what we need is a system of economics that relies on ethics and prudence. Maybe we should invent one and call it *Honesty*. And “invent” it we must because it is not part of any corporate or governmental economic schematic now in existence.

    So, say NO to the Auto Bailout!

    All of the above is my opinion; but, of course I AM© Right (note upper case).

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