We put the Mafia out of the loan shark business by putting BankAmerica in. We could now put Organized Crime out of the drug business by putting the IRS in. Prolly cure the deficit, too. An exchange in kind, innit.
Category Archives: Big Thoughts
Eminently Outrageous
We got a chicken
in every pot from FDR.
We’ll get a moped with 110 year payback
in every garage from Obama.
General Motors CEO Rick Wagoner has been told to “resign” by Obama administration. Mr. Wagoner has served in that position for about eight years. The GM Board of Directors appointed him; GM shareholders like me accepted him.
NBC reports that a senior Obama administration official told the network that Wagoner was “asked to step down by the White House.” The Obama administration will announce the automaker’s request for additional government rescue loans, two people familiar with the matter said.
One of my correspondents has shouted that, “This…. is … an…. OUTRAGE!!!”
He’s right.
Apparently Mr. Wagoner is out because he failed to gain the concessions from the UAW that government officials had set as targets to justify further loans. Obviously, the administration has forgotten the UAW strikes that crippled GM just a year ago and the ongoing rancor the union projects.
Mr. Wagoner has a lot of faults — mostly that he is a bean counter, not a car guy — but this drive by the administration to take over GM is a backdoor attempt at eminent domain. They think by sneaking in the backdoor, they can nationalize the company without buying any land.
The legal doctrine of eminent domain allows a government to expropriate property within the law. Without the doctrine, taking property — whether your house or your farm or your business — is either a criminal or a revolutionary act.
Here’s my bottom line; if the Obamanation wants my GM stock, they can indeed buy it. Tanking the business then taking it over from behind is not just plain theft; it is cowardly theft.
Be warned.
If you own a small bank, or a farm, or a restaurant on Main Street, you could very well be next.
Oh, yeah. And rumor has it that the government-run GM new product line-up includes a license to build the Tata.
Entitled?
“There are only two English words that begin with ‘su‘ that have the ‘sh‘ sound,” a fellow commuter on the West Chester local told my grandfather a few decades ago. “Sumac and sugar.”
My grandfather, known as Grandpa to my cousins and Boppa to me, was amused. See, Boppa was a scientist as well as a Presbyterian elder. He knew his fellow commuter believed that vocabularic limit. He also knew the difference between fact and faith.
In what seems like a non sequitur, we might recall that the Miami-Dade school district plans to sue the state of Florida to recoup approximately $25 million in “lost revenue” because the state changed its funding formula to reflect the drop in income.
Meanwhile the structural issue in the Vermont budget is a $200 million shortfall this year and next. That seems small in the overall economy but it looms large in this state of 600,000 peeps. Governor Jim Douglas, R-Vermont, says the state will have to cut programs including $34 million from Human Services and charge higher premiums for people on state health care.
“Our message to the governor is this: Stop,” said Carlen Finn who spoke first for all the advocates for seniors, kids, the differently abled, and others who lashed out at the gov.
Fiscal desparation is why Gov. Douglas was in Washington today. He lobbied fellow Republicans to pass the stimulus bill and was the first governor invited to the White House by President Obama. |
Vermont entitlement groups have offered a different solution to the problem of diminishing handouts: no lawsuits, just new taxes. They expect the state to raise the cigarette tax by a buck a pack and double the income taxes on the 2 percent of Vermonters who earn over half a million dollars annually. Oddly not one group thinks docking the salaries of non-profit executives by 5% is a good idea.
The entitlement group proposals would generate about $20 million. The rest, they say, should come from the federal stimulus package.
Wow. Maybe I can get that new laptop I need and the camera I really really need.
“There’s no question we should give as much money to the states as we can,” Congressman Charles Rangel, D-NY, said “But with so many of our infrastructure problems … we’re going to have to … remove the [governors’] discretion.”
One of my correspondents notes that, “on an economic scale of 1 to 50 Vermont prolly rates below Mississippi.” He doesn’t worry about the Vermont legislature mucking up an economic recovery. “I mean,” he says, “how much damage can they do?”
Hey. A billion here, a billion there, pretty soon we’re talking real money.
I hate to agree, even briefly, with anyone in the Barney Rubble gang in Congress but if Vermont is any indication, state legislatures can do a lot of damage.
Unfortunately, if the bank bailout is any indication, Congress can sink us all.
For the record, business is slow for us consultants this year and Anne’s hours have been cut as well. Our income is down a few grand compared to last year so WE HAVE TO SPEND LESS MONEY. That few grand seems small in the overall economy but it looms large in this family of two. See, faith in Congress notwithstanding, the simple fact is that I can’t buy the laptop or the camera if I don’t have enough cash for the cable bill.
“Somebody needs to explain to [Governor Douglas] that the word tax is not a four letter word,” said Christopher Curtis of Legal Aid.
“Are you sure?” Boppa asked the commuter all those years ago.
“We must have strong minds,
ready to accept facts as they are.”
–Harry S Truman
President Truman was a Democrat.
Happy New Year!
Curmudgery.
I enjoy my role as a curmudgeon and we all know that Curmudgery sells newspapers better than kitten rescues. After all, we get a warm and fuzzy feeling in our hearts for the firemen who spend thousands of taxpayer dollars digging a bedraggled, mewling, critter out of a storm drain, only to have it procreate more brain-dead, sewer-jumping progeny to add to the gene pool. However, comma, that story doesn’t sell newspapers. It gets buried on page 34. Below the fold.
People want blood.
People want gore.
People want veins in their teeth.
At the race track we regularly repeated this litany that was true-to-life for most spectators:
Was there a crash? I hope there wasn’t a crash!
Was anybody hurt? I hope no one was hurt!
Was there blood? I hope there wasn’t blood!
Did anybody die?
Speaking of car wrecks, Happy New Year!
I most sincerely hope. You know the saying, “It can’t get any worse?” Well, of course it can but I doubt it can get any more surreal. I mean, who could make this stuff up? If I had written that Ken Lay went to jail but AIG CEO Martin Sullivan took $15 million in cash as his company but-for-the-grace-of-thee-and-me sank and that Merrill Lynch CEO Jeff Thain would ask for a $10 million bonus because he “kept the losses to only eleven billion dollars,” nobody would believe it.
It is dispiriting to have to hammer on the same bad behavior by crooks in business, crooks in finance, and congress critters.
So, here’s the deal. I want to smile more in this new year. Send me happy stories. I can’t guarantee I will spin all of them into columns but I can guarantee they will make me smile.
Merry Christmas, Everyone!
In Charlotte, Vermont, a school got hammered to take down its candy cane decorations because a grinch there says they have an overt Christmas message. CANDY CANES! The Menorah probably stayed up, though.
Every radio station has defaulted to Christmas music. I’m surprised we haven’t lost that, too. I don’t particularly like Christmas music but my radio has an off switch. I don’t have to listen to it if I don’t want to.
I was raised in a family that was Quaker on one side, Presbyterian on the other. I may not be as organized now as I was when I reached the age of accountability and joined the Presbyterian church but I am still a Christian. And, of course, a WASP.
You don’t have to be either.
Today is the day Christians celebrate the birth of the Christ child and the meaning of Christianity. It was a pretty big day before the stock exchange took it over.
It doesn’t mean Do unto all the other religions, then cut out.
Here’s the thing. If you offer food to the monks on Vesak, Buddha’s Birthday, I will honor your commitment to the poor. If you celebrate Diwali, the Festival of Lights, I will honor with you the victory of Lord Ram over the demon-king Ravana. If you fast during Ramadan when the Qur’an was revealed to Mohammad, I will honor your patience and humility. If you celebrate the most solemn and important of Jewish holidays, Yom Kippur, I will honor your atonement and repentance. If you light the candles of Kwanzaa, I will help you honor your heritage. And if you are a lib’rul atheist, I will not proselytize.
That maybe the most important message.
You don’t have to be a Buddhist, a Christian, a Hindu, Islamic, a Jew, a Kwanzaan celebrant, or an atheist; I have no expectation that you should. It is time, on this Christian holy day, to let Christians be Christians.
My right to impose my own beliefs stops at my property line (or the end of my nose when I’m out in public). The Charlotte, Vermont, grinch’s right to his own idiocy stops at pretty much the same place. It is time to stop accepting that “politically correct” credo and start honoring the true message of Christmas.
Scythian philosopher Anacharsis wrote in the 6th century BCE, “Wise men argue causes, and fools decide them.”
Peace.