Brilliant!

This is absolutely fantastic.

… But He Doesn’t Like Big Government

“Let me be clear: the United States government has no interest or intention of running GM. What we are interested in is giving GM an opportunity to finally make those much-needed changes that will let them emerge from this crisis a stronger and more competitive company.”

These words are from President Obama’s address about his plans for the auto industry.  We don’t want to run the auto companies… aside from maybe making some staffing decisions, exercising veto power over restructuring plans, providing “guidance” in developing such plans, and being directly involved in negotiations with potential partners. That’s all. Oh, and we’ll back the warranties. But that’s it. Oh yeah, and we’ll fund operations for a while.

This tendency of Obama’s to do one thing and then say the total opposite brings to mind an old Eddie Murphy bit, in which a woman catches her man coming out of another woman’s house, confronts him about it, and he just says, “Wasn’t me.” She keeps after him, but he just keeps saying, “Wasn’t me,” until she comes around: “Well, maybe it wasn’t you.”

But more than the sheer audacity of his double-speak, the real problem is with what Obama’s administration is actually trying to do here.  They are doing nothing short of attempting to take over for the free market and the existing legal system.  The US auto companies are “too big to fail,” so, we can’t let them go bankrupt, so, we’ll loan them money to give them a chance to fix themselves.  But then we’re going to treat them pretty much the same as if they had declared bankruptcy –  force everyone involved to renegotiate contracts, force them to come up with a recovery plan that meets an outside party’s criteria, involving selling off parts of the companies, and consolidating (eliminating) brands — but with the administration running the show, instead of a court.  In the case of Chrysler, at least, the government will even mandate what kinds of cars the company can produce!

What the hell is going on, here!?

This country was conceived around the idea of freedom.  Freedom meant that no authority could tell you how to live, force you to follow a particular religion, keep you from seeking to rise up from the “class” into which you were born.  There were to be no noble lords, here.  Anyone, through hard work, dedication, and luck, would be free to succeed.  That freedom includes — necessarily! — the freedom to fail.  Our history is littered with failures, big and small.  But it is also littered with successes, most of which have come out of the failures.  And, on balance, the successes have vastly outweighed the failures — which is why ours has been the most successful country in human history.

Does the President of the United States not know this?  Can he really believe that bankruptcy at GM and/or Chrysler would mean the “disappearance” of the auto industry from the US?  That entrepreneurs would not find opportunities in the ashes of the old, burnt out, auto companies?  Does he really believe that government agencies and politicians can force businesses to be successful?  (It is pretty obvious that he does.)  Just think about the audacity involved here.  What his actions are saying is that he, with the experience of his 47 years of life, never running any business, can manage not one company to success, but entire industries!  He knows better.  He knows who can do the best job.  He can identify the best course.  It is absolutely insane!

I’ve said this before:  Either you believe in free-market capitalism, or you do not.  So, when the president says he doesn’t “like big government, ” and when he says he doesn’t want government running the auto companies, and when he says that he’s not interested in nationalizing the banks, but then he turns around and explodes the size of government, and tells the auto companies and banks how they’re going to run their business, the truth is pretty obvious.  It doesn’t matter what he says about these measures being temporary –  he simply does not trust free-market capitalism.  Period.  And that means that he doesn’t really trust freedom, because the two are inextricably intertwined.

When Obama was elected, I was more worried about congress running right over him, with spending on all kinds of big-government projects, than I was about him.  Though he had promised everything to everyone, in his nomination acceptance speech, I still thought that maybe he really could be something different — that maybe he would try to exercise some restraint in his application of government power.  But in just a couple of months, he has shattered any illusions I had about him.  He is a man who absolutely believes that the government — better than the mass of the free people, better than the free market — can solve all of our problems.  He truly believes in a very different America than the one in which I believe.

Give Them Enough Power And They *Will* Abuse It

This is just beautiful.  Because they are so outraged at the AIG bonuses, members of the US Congress are seeking ways to “get the money back.”

Still, lawmakers are moving quickly to take the initiative in responding to the public outcry. Montana Democrat Max Baucus and Iowa Republican Charles Grassley, the leaders of the Senate Finance Committee, proposed taxes totaling 70 percent on companies and individuals getting bonuses at firms that receive federal aid.

The tax would apply to bonuses over $50,000 paid out beginning on Jan. 1, 2009, and to the full amount of any retention bonuses, the two senators said.

Pelosi directed House committees to draft several alternatives and said her chamber may consider a bill as early as this week. Other lawmakers introduced their own plans.

Using the power it has to manipulate the tax code, and to make changes to tax law retroactive, the government is going after a very small set of citizens for political reasons.  That’s not supposed to happen.  What about “equal protection under the law” (i.e., not targeting specific citizens) and due process (meaningless, in light of retroactive laws)?

This demonstrates exactly why we should be very wary of transferring ever more power to the government.  Once they have it, regardless under what pretense they request and are granted it, it is inevitable that they will use it in ways that were never intended.  In the heat of a political moment, they will twist their power to advance their current agenda.  In this case, they’re not taxing specific citizens by name — a power they do not have — but they are using the power they do have to manipulate the tax code to achieve the same effect — exacting retribution on law-abiding citizens to placate the angry hoard.

UPDATE (3/19): I’m happy to see people with more knowledge of constitutional law than I have, pointing out the issues with this approach:

Two of those difficulties, lawyers say, lie in Article I of the U.S. Constitution — a section stating Congress cannot pass any “Bill of Attainder” or “ex post facto” law.

A Bill of Attainder is an act of the legislature that singles out and punishes a group or individual without trial. An ex post facto law retroactively changes the legal consequences of an act.

But hey, we’re talking about Congress, here. Why would they let a little thing like the US Constitution get in the way of political opportunism?

It’s An OutrAIG!

Ah, the bailout follies continue.  In the past few days, we’ve been hearing about how “insurance giant, AIG,” has supposedly misused the bailout funds given to it by the government (aka, you and me), paying out a ton of money to foreign banks, and millions in executive bonuses.  If you hadn’t heard, President Obama himself called the bonuses an “outrage,” and now members of Congress are following suit.  You know, when the word “outrage” gets thrown around by politicians, that the BS will be coming pretty thick.  I hadn’t posted on this subject before now, because I had a feeling we weren’t hearing the whole story.

First of all, specific language was intentionally added into the bailout bill, by Senator Dodd, to allow the recipients of the funds to pay out bonuses for which they were contractually obligated.  Second of all, the bonuses in question, at least in AIG’s case, are not performance based — they’re something called “retention” bonuses (which I learned from the linked AP article) and are used to keep highly-valued employees from jumping ship.   I know that past employers of mine did offer bonuses that were not wholly based on the performance of the company, and I suspected that might be the case here, too.  Basically, depending on the position, employers often include a guaranteed “bonus” as part of the overall compensation package.  The money is essentially the same as salary, though my guess is that it’s kept separate to allow for some flexibility.   So, going into the year, the employee knows that he will be paid X dollars in salary, plus Y in a guaranteed bonus, plus perhaps a potential extra percentage based on a formula that takes performance into account.  So, all of those politicians screaming that AIG should not have paid these bonuses are basically saying that AIG should not be paying employees their full salaries.

But the government has been giving out these bailouts so that companies such as AIG can meet their financial obligations and not have to file for bankruptcy.  As I understand it, the outrageous AIG bonuses are exactly that — a contractual financial obligation.  I don’t for a second believe that the furious politicians do not understand this (which is probably why they were not outraged when the bonuses were first disclosed, months ago).  What they’re seeing here is an opportunity to deflect some of the anger that has been directed at them for pushing these bailouts though in the first place, toward some convenient bogeymen — the evil corporate execs.

Should the government should have bailed out AIG (or any other company)?  Had AIG been forced to file for bankruptcy protection, they would have been able to modify or eliminate the very bonuses at the center of all the current furor.  Attempting to shift the focus by demonizing them now, for not doing something that violates their contractual obligations to their employees, is what’s really outrageous.

UPDATE (3/18): What I did not mention is that the press has been complicit in this phony outrage.  Even in a story about the AIG CEO explaining to Congress that the bonuses were required, Reuters neglects (refuses?) to make clear that the bonuses have nothing to do with performance.

Republicans Take My Advice On Stimulus?

In my post about the recent Democrat-led spending spree, I suggested that there were plenty of things the government could do to stimulate the economy without spending a ton of (borrowed) money.  My first example was opening up domestic energy production, by making it easier to build refineries and nuclear plants in the US, thus creating jobs here, and potentially lowering the cost of energy — an effective “tax cut” for every single person and business in the US.  Well it seems like maybe someone was listening.  Representative John Shadegg (R-AZ) and Senator David Vitter (R-LA), are planning to propose a “No Cost Stimulus Act,” which aims to create jobs and stimulate the economy by promoting domestic energy production.  They say they’re sticking to the “all of the above” (I hate that slogan) approach, meaning their bill would be aimed at the promotion of domestic drilling for, and refining of, oil and natural gas, plus nuclear power and alternative energy development and production.  They would do this by getting the government out of the way, not by spending a bunch of money.  Hey!  What a novel idea!

Of course I don’t really think they got the idea from me.  But it’s nice to see that some of our politicians can stumble across the obvious solutions, too, once in a while.

Cheering Experimentation On Embryos

As expected, President Obama has reversed the Bush administration policy limiting federal funding for embryonic stem cell research.  No surprise, as the issue was cast as a right vs. left fight, with the supposedly “anti-science” right standing against “progress” and the “rational” left standing for those who might one day be helped by the results of such research.

Personally, I had a difficult time figuring out what I thought was the right answer.  But when I pose the question to myself in the simplest terms — Am I comfortable with experimentation on human embryos? — the answer I get is “no.”  Sure, I understand the arguments around whether or not an embryo is a “life”  — and I know that reasonable people can disagree about that.  But, after watching the development of my son, from a tiny, pulsating blob on an ultrasound screen, and feeling a connection to him from even that early stage, I cannot see human embryos as anything other than human.  Because that’s the way I see it, I’ve found that it now sickens me to think about embryos being torn apart in order to harvest the stem cells to be used in research.

Again, I understand that others do not see it as I do.  So, that brings us back to the question of what to do about it.  When he announced it, I was not particularly impressed with President Bush’s answer: limit funding to research conducted on existing stem cell lines (already taken from embryos), and otherwise do not allow federal money to be spent on the research.  This seemed like a very uncourageous approach.  It would not stop the research from happening (no outright ban), and, at the same time, would not promote much progress in the field.

But now I understand and appreciate it much more.  Such a policy does not attempt to make a determination as to the humanity of an embryo, thus avoiding the main issue at the core of the abortion debate.  It does not make the research illegal, but, it also doesn’t force someone like me to contribute financial support to something that I have come to find disturbing.  It puts the federal government exactly where it’s supposed to be — out of the picture.

What I don’t understand is, now that President Obama has reversed this policy, why people are cheering.  I mean, yeah, I get it, you didn’t think the government should be trying to stand in the way of science.  But the science was happening anyway.  So, in effect, you are cheering the fact that, now, people who find the idea of destroying embryos for research repugnant are being forced to financially support the practice.  That’s how it comes across.

And another thing, now President Obama is being portrayed as pro-science, as compared to the anti-science Bush.  But, apparently, there are some limits to Obama’s pro-science beliefs:

Obama also said the stem cell policy is designed so that it “never opens the door to the use of cloning for human reproduction.” Such cloning, he said, “is dangerous, profoundly wrong, and has no place in our society or any society.”

So, doesn’t this make Obama “anti-science?”  He set a limit to the type of research that is permitted — because he knows most people wouldn’t want their money spent on something they find morally repugnant.  Is that not pretty much the same thing that Bush did?  Also, “Mr. Obama revoked… the 2007 executive order that encourages the National Institutes of Health to explore non-embryo-destructive sources of stem cells,” (via WSJ).  That’s not anti-science?  Or does the science have to be morally debatable  to be worthy of government support?