Feb
26
San Francisco Supervisors: Ban Cars!
Filed Under Uncategorized | Leave a Comment
In the city of endless controls, the San Francisco City Supervisors are considering banning cars either outright or at certain times on Market Street, one of the main traffic arteries in the city.
San Francisco officials are considering limits on when and where private cars can drive on Market Street in an effort to make the thoroughfare faster for buses and safer for pedestrians and bicyclists.
City supervisors, acting in their role as commissioners of the San Francisco County Transportation Authority, agreed Tuesday to a comprehensive study of whether to restrict cars on the downtown stretch of Market Street from the Embarcadero to Van Ness Avenue.
“There’s a growing momentum to restrict cars, but it will probably be done in baby steps,” said Supervisor Chris Daly, the chief proponent at City Hall of a car-free Market Street.
The heavily used 2-mile stretch is shared by bikes, buses, streetcars, cars, trucks and pedestrians. It cuts through the Financial District, the downtown shopping district and the seedy strip to the west of Powell Street.
So it appears that the SF liberals will try to implement their social goals of complete government control of transportation, negative effects to local businesses and traffic be damned. But what else could be dragged up as an excuse to let the city make such an intrusive move?
Add to that a growing awareness of how cars aggravate global warming and the effect that rising gasoline prices can have on getting people to rethink driving, and some of the opposition to a car-free Market Street has started to thaw.
“There has been a change in attitude over the last five years,” said Carolyn Diamond, executive director of the Market Street Association, a nonprofit organization that promotes the beautification and economic development of the central corridor.
“This may be a way for the city to become better,” she said.
Global warming! Clearly restricting the use of automobiles on one street in one American city will keep the ice caps from melting!
Rather than a ban, Diamond said restricting private autos during certain times of the day could be more palatable.
That’s right, just “certain times of the day.” Cars will be allowed to drive on Market Street totally unfettered from 3:47 a.m. to 4:19 a.m.
A few local residents that will actually be affected by such moves had their say in the comment section. From “ezekial11″:
Let’s remember that several cities in the East and Midwest tried this already. Businesses died– Street reopened several years later–Cost to taxpayers in the millions. I moved here from Chicago in 1997 and am still amazed at how many old, stale, failed ideas SF trots out each year. Progressive? Really?
Apparently the fears of millions in taxpayer costs were not unfounded. “McCoveyCove” advised that the move would require some “investments.”
That would mean investing in new street furniture, better lighting, new bus stops<< and many additional police foot patrols.
One way for big-government types to try to pass of wasteful spending and intervention is by calling it an “investment.” What a load of bull. Btw, what is “street furniture”? Are they going to be putting out La-Z-Boys or something? “dawg3294″ summed up my ideas on the plan:
Sounds like they’re going to hurt businesses and spend more money that we don’t have right in the middle of the worst economic crisis in decades. And they’re doing it just because these supervisors want the street to look pretty. Get your priorities straight!
Its important to keep an eye on stories like this, especially when it is in Speaker Pelosi’s home district.
Feb
25
Is Libertarianism The Answer For Mexico?
Filed Under Crime | 2 Comments
This Wall Street Journal article chronicled the worsening situation in Mexico where drug-funded gangs are more powerful than the local authorities in 200 counties. Our southern neighbor was listed in a U.S. report as being a possible ‘failed state’ in the coming years (along with nuclear-armed Pakistan).
Much as Pakistan is fighting for survival against Islamic radicals, Mexico is waging a do-or-die battle with the world’s most powerful drug cartels. Last year, some 6,000 people died in drug-related violence here, more than twice the number killed the previous year. The dead included several dozen who were beheaded, a chilling echo of the scare tactics used by Islamic radicals. Mexican drug gangs even have an unofficial religion: They worship La Santa Muerte, a Mexican version of the Grim Reaper.
In growing parts of the country, drug gangs now extort businesses, setting up a parallel tax system that threatens the government monopoly on raising tax money. In Ciudad Juarez, just across the border from El Paso, Texas, handwritten signs pasted on schools warned teachers to hand over their Christmas bonuses or die. A General Motors distributorship at a midsize Mexican city was extorted for months at a time, according to a high-ranking Mexican official. A GM spokeswoman in Mexico had no comment.
“We are at war,” says Aldo Fasci, a good-looking lawyer who is the top police official for Nuevo Leon state, where Monterrey is the capital. “The gangs have taken over the border, our highways and our cops. And now, with these protests, they are trying to take over our cities
The parallels between Pakistan and Mexico are strong enough that the U.S. military singled them out recently as the two countries where there is a risk the government could suffer a swift and catastrophic collapse, becoming a failed state.
The rapidly deteriorating situation has led to the Mexican federal government using the military to supplant local police forces in the war on the drug cartels and gangs, as many local police forces have become either hopelessly corrupt or dangerously out manned. For instance:
A few weeks ago, a recently retired army general hired to help the resort city of Cancun crack down on drug gangs was tortured and killed. His wrists and ankles were broken during the torture. Federal officials’ main suspect: the Cancun police chief, who has been stripped of his duties and put under house arrest during the investigation.
And to highlight the vast disparity of resources:
The drugs trade in Mexico generates at least $10 billion in yearly revenues, Mexican officials say. The government’s annual budget for federal law enforcement, not including the army: roughly $1.2 billion.
Thus the use of the federal military in Mexico’s own territory. Harsh enforcement and confrontation of the drug trafficers increased when the PAN party took control of the government and took a sharp turn from former Mexican president Vicente Fox’s drug policy. What have been the results?
Officials in both Washington and Mexico City also say the rising violence has a silver lining: It means that after decades of complicity or ignoring the problem, the Mexican government is finally cracking down on the drug cartels and forcing them to fight back or fight with one another for turf. One telling statistic: In the first three years of President Felipe Calderon’s six-year term, Mexico’s army has had 153 clashes with drug gangs. In the six years of his predecessor Vicente Fox’s term, there were only 16.
I would submit that the government officials have their causality a bit confused. Is the violence triggering the crackdown, or is the crackdown triggering the violence?
As described above, this crackdown is not only already extremely expensive, but is not even sufficient. Nearly all local control of law enforcement is absent via corruption and usurpation by the military. Violence and unrest are increasing by the day. People are kidnapped, shot, beheaded, and dissolved in “vats of acid”. Even with all of this, the control policy is not working.
What is the answer to this problem? If Mexico wants to avoid failing as a nation as drug gangs assume regional control, or devolving into a police state, the libertarian policy of decriminalization is the way out.
I have long been a supporter of legalizing drugs, especially marijuana. Mexico is providing the perfect example of what can happen when a government, especially in a poor country, pursues a policy of criminalization of drugs and harsh enforcement.
The first question you need to ask when dealing with a question is this: Is the purpose of law to protect us from force and fraud, or from our own bad decisions? When government begins focusing on the latter, it inevitably loses focus on the former. If someone tries to inject heroin into my arm against my will, then government has a duty to step in and prevent such an act. But if I make the decision to take my money and buy heroin and inject it in my arm, then it is not the job of the state to intervene.
Many people, especially conservatives who support limited regulation in other areas, object to this reasoning. Drugs are so dangerous and harmful that they are outside of the scope of conventional individual responsibility, they say. The way I see it, the arguments against drug use (from which criminalization logically comes) are:
- Drugs impair your judgement
- Drugs harm your body
- Drugs can, and often do, ruin your life in general
These three arguments are completely correct, but I counter them by saying:
- Alcohol and a developing brain (like that in teenagers) impair your judgement
- Cholestarol, fat, sugar, and sodium harm your body, and contribute to the deaths of millions of Americans each year
- I can ruin my life with credit cards, bad relationships, and payday loans
I have never used illegal drugs in my life, and I never will (hopefully the same goes for payday loans!). They are not in my best interest (or anybody’s in my opinion) to use them. But there is a big difference between thinking people shouldn’t do something and having the state use my earnings and lethal force to stop them from doing it. Using my arguments above, if you support outlawing drugs, shouldn’t you then support outlawing Heineken, McDonald’s, and Mastercard?
The litmus test for authorizing the use of government force should not be whether it is bad for people - it should be whether or not people are being forced to do something. It is no suprise that when government takes responsibility for making the right decisions for us, the people then begin to stop doing so at an individual level. This is the case with providing our own healthcare, assessing credit risk, or putting harmful substances in our body.
Before I get to the practical arguments for decriminalizing drugs, I want to make a note about the effects of drugs. By and large, illegal drugs are extremely harmful, but I must take exception with marijuana. I would venture a guess that a majority of the adult population has smoked cannabis at some point in thier lives, and they are fine. And there is also the case of Michael Phelps, whose marijuana smoking didn’t seem to hamper his becoming the most dominant athlete in the history of mankind. Again, I have never personally smoked marijuana (I don’t even like taking Tylenol), but this business about the evils of chronic just doesn’t hold up.
Those who would still support criminalizing drugs counter that the drug trade is dominated by immoral, violent thugs who kill for their turf. This is only the case because of criminalization! The key point that needs to be understood, is that criminals, by default, do not sell drugs. Criminals are in the business of selling whatever it is the government is banning at a particular time. When freedom for blacks was illegal, Harriet Tubman and her criminal gangs used the Underground Railroad to sell it. When alcohol was illegal during the early 20th century, the criminals sold alcohol. In the Soviet Union, the criminals sold bibles and books by Milton Friedman. Criminalization of a product in high demand gives violent thugs a monopoly over it. Case in point, the WSJ article mentions how a criminal organization named “Zeta” not only sells pirated CD’s, but sells them under their own label and with their originally designed logo.
Another point is the exorbitant price of drugs, such as a relatively easy to produce crop like cannabis, is inherently raised when the production process involves evading authorities. Criminalization of a product that has a very high demand from voluntary consumers will not allow the market to work. Imagine if drugs were legalized and Wal-Mart started selling pot in the produce section. It would be 68 cents a pound! Violent thugs can have their way with an ineffective government like that of Mexico, but when up against the Rollback kings? They wouldn’t stand a chance.
There is another serious issue with the war on drugs, be it north or south of the Rio Grande. When we lock people up in large numbers for engaging in a process where all parties involved were participating voluntarilly, we seriously distort and handicap the justice system. First of all, the war on drugs might as well be called the war on the poor. Human beings love to run away from their problems and get high. The poor use crack, the rich just doctor shop for prescription medicine to abuse, such as painkillers. Think Rush Limbaugh (whose show, for the record, I enjoy a great deal).
More important however, is the strain on the corrections system. Here in central Florida, we had a gruesome story that made national headlines about an evil piece of shit named John Evander Couey who did things to an innocent little girl that I won’t describe. He had been arrested 24 times in his pathetic excuse for a life, for everything from breaking into homes, to whipping his thing out, to fondling children. But the thing about this scumbag is that he behaved exceptionally well once he got into prison, and was able to be paroled and released early many, many times. In 2005, his freedom cost Jessica Lunsford her life.
Why was this moster who isn’t worth the dingles on my berries released into the general public? Was it because the state who gave a name to its electric chair (Old Sparky) was too generous? Or was it because said state could not afford to throw away the key ten years ago because its jails and prisons were full of drug users?
Whether it be running healthcare, funding art, or controlling drugs, any time the government focuses on something besides preventing the use of force, its fundamental duties suffer.
Can Mexico use libertarianism to create a legal drug market and foster a safe and productive nation? It will be needed, I think. However, they can’t do it alone. Without the U.S. in tow, such efforts would probably do more harm than good, as corporate drug producers in Mexico would probably force the American DEA to take action, and Mexico can’t afford to alienate the U.S. in such fashion. But if one thing is certain, it is that criminalization of drugs only leads to empowering violence on behalf of criminals and the state, and letting real monsters go free.
Feb
23
Concepts That Escape Crapperty File Fans: Economics and Grammar
Filed Under Uncategorized | 1 Comment
This afternoon the Crapperty File asked his horde of idiots if today’s economic challenges are “worse than the great depression.” While a mountain of statistics clearly shout “no”, a reader named “Odessa,” chimed in with the usual profundity of Cafferty’s readers:
February 23rd, 2009 1:38 pm ET
it means that all people need a serious wake up call..rich folks in this country has been taken advantage by the poor and middle classes too long..everyone was been hacked by wall street, big banks are getting greedier, subprime loans bamboolzed working people, too much deregulation in businsses and etc..both classes are suffering because no one hasn’t looked out for them and they are tired of being screwed while fat cats continue to get rich..being rich isn’t a crime but i think that everyone needs a morality check once in a while when it comes to investing money and watching the banks too..retail stores aren’t making money because people don’t have money..people are saving money or paying the main bills to survive..things will get better but it will take time to overcome and what our president will make the right decisions thinking about our country so it can get back on track..
Clearly, things began to unravel when “everyone was been hacked by wall street.” The best line, in my opinion.
Feb
23
Because It Worked So Well Last Time…
Filed Under Economics | 2 Comments
This week President Obama introduced his plan to use the resources of the federal government to attempt to stabilize the housing markets and, hopefully, the economy at large. The plan uses two strategies: allow homeowners who are current but have negative equity to refinance into a lower-rate loan under Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and to use incentives to “encourage” mortgage holders to modify loans where the borrowers are already behind on their payments. Why did I put “encourage” in quotes, you ask?
But the administration is also wielding a big stick. It will work with Congress to amend bankruptcy laws to allow judges to modify mortgages, a step community advocates say is badly needed but that the financial industry abhors.
If lenders don’t do what the government “encourages,” they could be in for some nasty surprises.
In bankruptcy cases, President Obama favors judges having leeway to reduce or “cramdown” the principle of the mortgage or rewrite the terms unilaterally. This blatant disregard for the rule of law will not only void agreements made volutarily by the the lender and borrower, it will greatly discourage banks from wanting to enter the mortgage market if they know that a contract can be voided at the will of a bankruptcy judge. Then again, that may not be a problem when all of the banks are owned by the government.
When Communism Now! covered the plan, they were glad to see that the bankruptcy courts would now be extorting lenders. Said guest Josh Zinner (emphasis mine):
So many people are underwater. They owe more on their mortgage than their house is actually worth. And this plan right now would do little for them. In bankruptcy, what a judge could do is cram down the amount owed down to the value of the property, and then a judge would be able to modify the terms of the mortgage—reduce interest rates, freeze interest rates on adjustable mortgages, adjustable-rate mortgages, extend the terms of loans.
…
The reason it’s critical is that right now there’s really no stick to mortgage servicers. There’s nothing to force them to do these modifications that are in everybody’s best interest, and they’re not doing them. If they’re facing an impending bankruptcy filing, that’s going to change dramatically, and it will cause them to do a lot more modifications within the parameters of the plan. So these changes are really critical for this plan to work.
Those on the left excuse such actions by being in ‘everybody’s best interest’. The CNN article quoted Obama in his speech in Arizona:
“In the end, all of us are paying a price for this home mortgage crisis,” Obama said. “And all of us will pay an even steeper price if we allow this crisis to deepen — a crisis which is unraveling homeownership, the middle class, and the American Dream itself. But if we act boldly and swiftly to arrest this downward spiral, every American will benefit.”
The question I pose is, if such actions really are in “everybody’s best interest,” then why the hell aren’t they doing them in the first place?
First of all, I realize that banks cannot profitably foreclose on every loan that falls behind and that voluntary loan modification is indeed in their best interest. If banks are failing to do so in these cases, its probably because they know they can wait for a plan like the one listed above to pay off their poor lending decisions.
However, in many cases it is not in their best interest. Its important to remember that, save a select minority of cases, these mortgages were agreed to voluntarily by the lender and borrower, and that the lender is the one that paid for the house. Borrowers have no right to demand that the bank or anyone else pay for their decisions. Whether a mortgage modification is in the best interest of the lender is the decision of - the lender! Not a borrower, a judge, or a politician.
The first part of Obama’s plan will have Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac take on even more loans, that, by definition, are significant credit risks because the program targets loans that exceed the actual value of the home. Not only is this taking on a risk in gross dollar terms, but a homeowner will have less incentive to keep up payments on a home that has no or negative equity rather than in a home that they do have equity. As we have seen, over the last decade especially, is that not only are Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae inept at assessing credit worthiness, their sheer size makes any problems they have for the reasons stated above particularly harmful.
In an article entitled How US mortgage debt could cause a global financial crisis, Dan Denning states:
In the US, Fannie Mae (FNMA) and Freddie Mac are Government Sponsored Enterprises (GSEs) which buy residential mortgages and repackage them to sell on as mortgage-backed bonds.
Denning then reviewed statements from former Treasure Secretary Henry Paulson:
The large size of GSE mortgage portfolios (about US$1.5 trillion), coupled with the lack of market discipline at correctly pricing the risk of GSE debt, multiplied by the interconnectivity of the world’s financial institutions has led to a possibility ‘without precedent.’ Henry adds that ‘Financial markets across the board would likely become very illiquid and volatile as firms with significant losses attempted to unwind their positions.’
Paulson is later quoted as saying:
“Has it been so long that we have forgotten Fannie Mae’s significant financial troubles in the late 1970s and early 1980s? During this time period, Fannie Mae’s balance sheet looked a lot like a savings and loan. As interest rates rose, Fannie Mae’s cost of funds rose above the interest rate it was earning on its long-term, fixed-rate mortgages. Like many S&Ls, Fannie Mae became insolvent on a mark-to-market basis. It lost hundreds of millions of dollars.”
So the risks of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac taking on loans that are inherently dangerous could have lare-scale effects throughout the American and global economy. But what is so interesting about the above article?
It was written in July of 2006.
The current conundrum we are in was not only foreseen and preventable, but directly attributable to the overleveraging of government sponsored enterprises (GSE’s) Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. I thought the Obama administration was all about ‘change’ and not repeating the mistakes of the Bush administration. Please. Obama is Bush on steroids. In addition, having the government refinance such loans is just a ‘bailout’ for the ’speculators’ who own the mortgages. Didn’t Obama vow not to protect these evildoers?
The following well-circulated video from 2004 is an example of the kind of big-government, Democrat-Party-style policies that led to this mess.
Obama’s plan would only increase an unsustainable, government-fueled housing bubble.
I’ll close with Dan Denning’s last line, in response to Paulson’s remarking of the hundreds of millions of dollars lost by Fannie Mae in the 1980’s:
If the same thing happens today, you can replace ‘hundreds of millions’ with ‘trillions.’
Feb
22
Agendas In Voucher Politics
Filed Under Education | Leave a Comment
As I wrote in an earlier post, while I support the separation of church of state, it’s clear that organizations like Americans United pervert the cause in the interest of a liberal, big-government agenda. Believe me, I’ll be protesting as loud as anyone when there is a genuine violation of the Establishment Clause. But there is a clear line between not wanting government intervention in a cultural element and wanting to ban the cultural element altogether. Take prayer for instance. Under no circumstances do I sanction a government official, such as a president or teacher, in leading private citizens in a prayer to a particular religion. But the private citizens, be they constituents or students, are well within their rights to pray at any time they want. But there are many on the left that object to this privately-led prayer, and I suspect that their agenda is to curtail the influence of religion itself rather than government sanction of it. The spiritual decisions of private citizens are nobody’s business but their own.
Another clear case of the big-government agenda is when dealing with school vouchers. School vouchers allow students to take the education funding with them in the form of a government voucher. The student will receive a voucher of, say $5000, that can be used at a private school of their choice (along with having the option of remaining in public school). This creates competition among schools, and, hopefully, will incentivize them to provide the best education for the lowest cost, as opposed to creating the securest jobs at the highest wages for public employees.
Over at AU’s blog, they wrote with great disdain over a Georgia state legislator’s attempts to implement a $5000 school voucher program:
Georgia’s Senate Education and Youth Committee held a hearing yesterday to consider SB 90, which would make tuition vouchers available to virtually any student in the state.
The bill, introduced by State Senator Eric Johnson, would provide parents of each Georgia child about $5,000 in taxpayer money to be used to defray the cost of enrollment at religious and other private schools.
But as Maureen Downey of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution put it, “What he hasn’t provided — what no one has provided — is a convincing argument as to why.”
That’s something Americans United asks about vouchers all the time. Despite knowledge that vouchers violate state constitutions, don’t work, and hurt public schools, 27 state legislatures have introduced voucher bills or tuition tax credits already this year, according to AU’s legislative department.
When states offer voucher programs, they are using taxpayer money to fund religious schools that are free to discriminate in hiring, discriminate in admissions and indoctrinate children in the tenets of one faith.
Lamenting that vouchers “don’t work,” the post went on to say:
What vouchers have done is hurt public schools systems by taking funding they would have received and given it to religious and other private schools.
The most glaring point of this article was the importance it put on the health of the public education bureaucracy. The well-being of the students is only mentioned in passing. This is where AU gives away their pro-government agenda. In the comments section, I wrote a reply:
When you said that vouchers could be “harmful to public schools,” that is very telling. Nothing about the students, just the school. Just because it is education does not make schools any different from any other governmental bureaucracy. Its interests are in preserving itself - not serving the public. Vouchers are in fact “harmful to public schools” and that is the point - to inject choice for the consumers (students). Now don’t get me wrong, I’m a libertarian and I’m as concerned about the ‘religious right’ as the next guy, but I don’t understand how statists don’t see that vouchers would make secular private schools feasible. The reason private schools today are almost entirely religious is because government has a near monopoly on education and the only organizations that can fund alternatives are churches.
In the end, our chief concern regarding education should be the improvement of the students - not the payrolls of the school board. And, as I mentioned above, can you imagine what would happen to the private school market if everybody in Georgia were running around with $5000? Its supply and demand. With such a strong government monopoly on the product of education, its no wonder that the only organizations willing to get into the market are non-profits (churches).
The second main problem with the article is this inane idea that “government money” is being used to fund religious activities. I concluded my comment by saying:
…money spent on vouchers was the taxpayer’s to begin with, not the government’s. This whole business that we’re worried about vouchers using ‘government money’ to fund religious organizations is fallacious because there is no such thing as ‘government money.’ It is taxpayer’s money all along, and if some states want to return a portion of these funds to its rightful owners and they happen to choose a religious school, then that is their choice.
To illustrate my point, envision this scenario: When my child is in first grade, public schools do not exist and therefore school taxes do not exist. I spend $5000 on tuition for my first-grader in a private school that is run by a church. Then, in second grade, the governments opens up public schools and institutes a $5000 a year tax to fund them. No longer able to afford the private school, my kid goes to the public school. When it comes time for Junior to enter the third grade, the legislature introduces a $5000 voucher program - essentially giving me the money back that I earned. Do you support that coming with strings attached as to where I use it (on top of the stipulation that if I accept it I already have to use it for education)? Is it right to call this “government money”? Nonsense. This was my money to begin with.
Please don’t think that the issue of school vouchers are as simple as the posts on this and AU’s blog would suggest. It comes with a lot of considerations politically, educationally, constitutionally, and economically. But I will always come down on the side of allowing taxpayers to use more of the money they earned, and that decentralized decision-making and competition are better for the end user and society as a whole. But most importantly, when ever someone is ranting about something they don’t like, you have to see who they’re looking out for. In this case, Americans United was looking out for big government and public employees rather than the students.
Feb
20
Random Thought…
Filed Under Liberalism | Leave a Comment
The word liberal is very similar to the word football in the fact that both words, while associated throughout the world with one concept, mean something completely different and antithetical in the United States.
Feb
16
Gay Mexicans Should Vote Republican
Filed Under Civil Liberties | 3 Comments
Group identity politics seem to be all the rage now, especially with the Democrat Party in charge in Washington. No longer viewed as individuals, people are now seen as members of large, homogeneous groups, rife with societal grievances and ripe for political exploitation. The American population can be split along any lines imaginable in regards to race, skin color, ethnicity, religion, age, sexual orientation, geographical distribution, income, occupation, etc.
Many affiliated with the Republican Party see the last two elections as the party’s “failure” to “reach out” to groups in this manner. Much has been made about the impact of the Hispanic vote given recent demographic changes. Immigration and social welfare issues are seen as very important to these groups, and those who espouse collectivist ideals want to tailor the conservative movement to accommodate such groups.
Another growing political trend has been the rise of the gay rights debate. Many have likened the movement to legalize gay marriage to the civil rights movement of the 1950’s and 1960’s.
For reasons that are beyond my understanding, the Democrat party has been seen as the allies to immigrant and homosexual rights proponents, while the evil Republicans are seen as the enemies of liberty to these disadvantaged groups.
Regarding the issues of gay rights and immigration, I am a strict libertarian. Regarding the former, I cannot see how being homosexual is harming anyone else, and therefore do not support laws discriminating against it. As for marriage, I don’t believe it is any of the government’s business.
When it comes to immigration, I believe that it is not government’s job to manage demographics over a given geographical area (in other words, immigration quotas), nor is it a function of the state to manage our ‘culture’. As long as you are not a criminal, terrorist, or have an extremely dangerous communicable disease, come on in. Just don’t live off of my dime (which will be the idea of this post). Coyoteblog has a very good piece concerning immigration here.
Arguing my side of these two points would be more than this post is intended for. What this post is meant to do is illustrate that both the Democrat and Republican parties are enemies to the freedoms of gays and immigrants, and that people who already agree with me should vote for the lesser of two evils and for what will realistically bring about the reforms we support. So, if I grouped people into political identities instead of free-thinking individuals, I would, as my (I think rather catchy) title says, urge that gay Mexicans should vote Republican.
It’s easy to say the Republican party is against gay rights and immigration. Democrats are generally for relaxing immigration standards, while Republicans are generally for strict immigration enforcement and sometimes reducing immigration altogether. Proponents of legalizing gay marriage tend to be Democrats or liberals, whereas Republicans oppose gay marriage and support a constitutional ban.
The first thing I can’t stand is why Democrats seem to have the default support of immigrant and gay-rights groups when they differ very little from Republicans. For instance, as this article points out, all of the major 2008 Democrat presidential candidates opposed gay marriage, although they supported civil unions. Then-candidate Barack Obama:
“When you’re a black guy named Barack Obama, you know what it’s like to be on the outside,” said the Illinois senator at the nationally televised forum in Hollywood. “And so my concern is continually to make sure that the rights that are conferred by the state are equal for all people.”
The love may have been flowing at a forum specifically for gay rights, but political realities bogged down Obama when he actually became president. Homosexual blogger Perez Hilton lamented Obama’s decision to cut out of an HBO broadcast a prayer by a gay bishop and also to invite Rick Warren to attend the inauguration. Over a picture of Obama, the blogger scribbled “He’ll let u down too.”
While such politically-motivated moves may shock gays who are liberals like Perez Hilton, it doesn’t shock conservatives or libertarians like me. We realize that statists like the Democrat party employ a strategy of lumping people into groups, promising them things in order to gain power, and rob freedom from everyone, including the groups they claim they’re helping.
Another dark side of statism is that it gives legitimacy to government control of things like marriage and immigration, because costly social welfare programs give the federal government a vested interest in restricting such things. Case in point, the rise of welfare, Medicare and Medicaid, and Social Security have only strengthened the argument to limit the amount of people eligible for American citizenship and equal recognition under the law.
I understand that xenophobia has always and will always exist. However, as civilization progresses, we begin to become more tolerant and see people as individuals, not as members of stereotypical groups whose needs and qualities are all alike. Then how are issues like immigration and gay marriage still significant in modern political discourse?
Take immigration, for example. In a completely free country with a government as the constitution intended, citizenship would mean little more than where you lived. The only argument against open immigration would be that some ethnic groups are undesirable. As I said, such a xenophobic stance has become less and less popular. But what legitimizes an argument towards limiting immigration? Massive (and massively expensive) government entitlement programs like welfare, Medicare and Medicaid, and Social Security, all programs supported by the statist Democrat party. We cannot expect citizens who have been paying into such programs for decades to accept immigrants taking benefits after being here for a fraction of the time. Not only is it not right morally, it is not fiscally feasible. Libertarians like me cannot accept open immigration, as it would bankrupt taxpayers. The Republicans are completely right when they say that immigration restriction and reform are top priorities. Without governmental largess created by Democrats, there would be no need to restrict these freedoms, and xenophobic policies would begin to politically ring hollow in a nation of immigrants. LBJ and FDR did more to restrict immigration than Tom Tancredo could ever hope to.
The argument that Democrat big-government programs are an enemy to civil rights causes is even more blunt when dealing with gay marriage. The error of gay-marriage proponents, with whom I agree, is that their strategy is to make gay marriage acceptable in society. Unfortunately, not only do we have no right to force our viewpoints on others, such a task is not plausible. A Quinnipiac University poll gave the following three choices:
1. Same-sex couples should be allowed legally to marry
2. Same-sex couples should be allowed legally to form civil unions but not marry
3. Same-sex couples should not be allowed to obtain legal recognition of their relationships
The results of the poll show that 62% opposed legalizing gay marriage. The respondents had varying degrees of support for a either a constitutional ban on gay marriage or allowing some civil rights to gay couples. However, these are all the wrong questions. The question should be why the hell the government has a vested interest in who the hell gets married anyway. That answer is simple - Social Security.
Social security not only pays disability, unemployment, and a contributor’s own retirement benefits, it will also pay spousal benefits. In the event of a spouse’s death, the survivor will receive either their own benefit amount, or half that of their deceased spouse’s, whichever is greater. Because of government control of retirement, the feds have a vested interest in what kinds of relationships are recognized as marriage.
Take the following example: There are two relationships, one homosexual, the other heterosexual. In each, one member makes a very good living at their job, so that the other one has no need to work and devotes their time to a local charity and has no reported earnings. After 30 years of marriage, the high-earning member dies in a car accident. The difference between the two relationships? Well, under the current system that the Democrats favor, while the heterosexual survivor would receive half of their spouse’s benefit to live on, the homosexual survivor would be out of luck and the government would pocket their partner’s sizable contributions. If the government would get out of the business of running people’s retirements and left it to private accounts, similar to what Republican George W. Bush tried to implement, the homosexual earner could have designated their partner as the beneficiary in case of death. In a 401(k), you can designate whomever you wish as a payee if you kick off, including your mother, brother, dog, live-in girlfriend, or even a charity. With Social Security? No dice.
But wait, wail the “progressives,” if we legalized gay marriage, wouldn’t that get rid of the problem? Yes, but as that poll cited earlier, its going to be a bit of a stretch politically. The truth of the matter is that that which you give the government control of will also be under the control of whoever is in power and the political whims of the day. It’s all well and good when your guy is in power, but it won’t always be that way. A much wiser policy is to give others, government included, as little control over your own life and earnings as possible.
In the cases of both immigration and gay rights, Republicans are the party of less government control. The knee jerk reaction of freedom advocates, from libertarians like myself and progressives, may be to try to change the view of the world. But that is not a prudent course. It is best to allow a system where people are allowed control over themselves, and themselves alone. While Republicans may be doing things for reasons we disagree, they may be the right course of action after all.
Postscript: Pajamas Media had a great piece explaining why Dick Cheney was the most pro-gay VP in history. In the article, he is quoted as saying:
We live in a free society, and freedom means freedom for everybody. We shouldn’t be able to choose and say you get to live free and you don’t. That means people should be free to enter into any kind of relationship they want to enter into. It’s no one’s business in terms of regulating behavior in that regard. The next step then, of course, is the question you ask of whether or not there ought to be some kind of official sanction of the relationships or if they should be treated the same as a traditional marriage. … I think different states are likely to come to different conclusions, and that’s appropriate. … We ought to do everything we can to tolerate and accommodate whatever kind of relationships people want to enter into.
I guess those evil Republicans (even Cheney!) aren’t so bad, are they?
Feb
13
Something Stimulating This Way Comes
Filed Under Uncategorized | 1 Comment
Today the House passed a $787 billion stimulus bill that could become law if the Senate takes it up today. With the arrogance that comes from being avowed statists, Obama and the Democrats completely ignored a pledge to allow taxpayers to review where their money is being spent. I guess this bill was ‘too important’ for public scrutiny. Oh well.
The speed and fearmongering used to pass this bill would make the PATRIOT Act blush.
Feb
10
Anatomy Of A Collapse
Filed Under Economics | Leave a Comment
From Newsbusters:
CONTRARY TO A VIEW POPULARIZED DURING THE 2008 presidential election season, the current economic crisis was not the result of deregulation.
The Bush administration made many mistakes, but deregulation was not one of them.
…
Our present crisis began in the 1970s, during the Carter administration, with passage of the Community Reinvestment Act to stem bank redlining and liberalize lending in order to extend home ownership in lower-income communities. Then in the 1990s, the Department of Housing and Urban Development took a fateful step by getting the GSEs to accept subprime mortgages. With Fannie and Freddie easing credit requirements on loans they would purchase from lenders, banks could greatly increase lending to borrowers unqualified for conventional loans. In the name of extending affordable housing, this broadened the acceptability of risky loans throughout the financial system.
The risk lurking in the GSE portfolios was acknowledged in the Bush administration’s first fiscal-year budget, released in April 2001. It stated that Fannie and Freddie were “a potential problem” because “financial trouble of a large GSE could cause strong repercussions in the financial markets, affecting federally insured entities and economic activity.”
The above quotes are from an editorial by Scott S. Powell. You should read both pages completely. When Barack Obama is using fearmongering to crush dissent and warning Republicans to not bring “old,” “failed,” or “rejected” free market policies that “got us into this,” he is lying. And he knows it.
Feb
9
This video is from What You Ought To Know, and was posted at Coyoteblog. Watch the whole thing:
In a nutshell, the current financial crisis was caused by Republican cronyism and failure to keep the Democrat social engineering policies in check. A ‘bailout’ only exacerbates the problem by encouraging the behaviors that led to the crisis in the first place.
There are several other videos at the site, so I think I’ll check ‘em out.
Feb
9
‘We Have To Be Willing To Be Led’
Filed Under Liberalism | Leave a Comment
I know this is a little late, but it was too important to go undocumented. The day after the inauguration of The One, Communism Now! covered the blind followers that have sprung up in droves to usher Barack Obama to new and dangerous levels of power.
The socialist radio show had a correspondent on the ground in Washington D.C. to get their take on the election of The One and his upcoming administration. From the transcript:
TAMMY BOUDREAUX: Hi. My name is Tammy Boudreaux. I’m from Houston, Texas. I’m a huge supporter of Obama, like many of us here. And he has a huge fan base in Texas, so don’t let that fool you. Yeah, I’m here to celebrate and participate in our future potential of becoming better.
Fan base? Is Obama a politician or Pearl Jam?
OBAMA SUPPORTER 1: Change has to occur, so something’s going to happen. How much, how much happens, we don’t know. But I think he got a pretty good stamp to do quite a few things, running off a change during his march to the White House. So he’ll be able to do some stuff. Will he be able to do everything he promised? No, and I don’t expect him to, either.
What??? I didn’t get it either.
OBAMA SUPPORTER 2: And we’ve got to realize we’ve got to give him patience, you know? Got to give him patience, make sure everything—these issues that we’re dealing with are all major issues, in and of themselves, and we’ve got like five major issues. And it’s going to take five years, four years to even tackle one of these issues, and the main issue right now being the economy. We’ve got to figure out and give patience to him and not put too much expectations on him.
I wonder if these people gave George W. Bush this kind of leniency after inheriting an economy in recession from Slick Willy and a major homeland terrorist attack in his first year?
Basically the above quote means that the Presidency of the most powerful nation on Earth is Obama’s by birthright and he should not be held to any standards or promises made throughout the campaign. But we shouldn’t be surprised. Liberalism is based on the idea that regular people are totally incapable of running their own lives. These talents are only held by a small elite who will dictate their marching orders from a distant capitol. And inevitable failures by statist liberals are simply the result of obstructionist jerks out there that, for some reason, feel the need to make their own decisions. Think I’m getting a little worked up? “Obama Supporter 1″ illustrated my point:
Oh, and the major thing is, he’s just the general, but we’re the army, so he can lead us, but we also have to be willing to be led and be able to go out there and do the hard work also.
Pardon my French, but Fuck That.
I ask my readers, are you “willing to be led”? Is Obama your “general”? Because I don’t know about you, but I am not some mindless drone who needs a dictator telling me what to do. I exist for my family and myself, not some self-serving politician in Washington. And I vote for candidates who will be careful stewards of my tax dollars, preserve my liberty and freedom, and in general represent and serve me. Not the other way around.
Another Obamunist showed what kind of values The One will bring to the White House:
LYND ROBSON: My first name is Lynd, Robson, and I’m from Montana, but I just moved to Washington. And I was part of the ’60s generation, the baby boomers. And, you know, it’s just wonderful to hear this generation and Barack Obama speaking to what we—the values of that time, which have somehow dissipated into the ozone, and he’s brought them back. And it’s just fabulous
Maybe we’ll soon have government sponsored LSD parties out on the South Lawn!
Drone # 4 gave us a peek at what will happen to those who dare defy the view that we are one conglomeration of humanity whose individual units and desires are secondary to the concept of unity:
OBAMA SUPPORTER 4: What I’m hoping is there’s going to be a change that is going to really reform the country. Right now, I think even at the grassroots level, a lot of people have given up or shifted their thinking. And I’m hoping this is the beginning of a shift of thinking that—where communities are going to come together and stop thinking about themselves as individuals and stop thinking that, hey, we’re going to improve life by making it better for our children, so our children can have more, better than we have, but rather, thinking in terms of things in terms of quality of life for entire communities.
Couldn’t have said it better myself. “Stop thinking about themselves as individuals..”. Same tired old Liberal mantra: we’ve been living too good, and now its time to submit to the State and start sacrificing before it’s too late! I’m so glad we’ve now got Change!
CLIFF FRASIER: My names Cliff Frasier, originally from Massachusetts, live in New York City now. And I’m going to the inauguration, because I worked for SEIU during the election, the labor union Service Employees International Union, and we worked a lot on the Obama election. And so, I want to be there. I want to be part of celebrating his victory and with all the other people who helped make this happen. And I just couldn’t imagine sitting in New York and not being here.
Thanks for the input Cliff. Now that Obama is beholden to you and your unionized ilk, maybe he’ll help Blago get that SEIU job he was hoping for.
Idiot #5 offered some intelligent commentary to close the segment:
OBAMA SUPPORTER 5: Obama! Obama! Obama! Obama!
I guess the good folks from How Obama Got Elected, these voters, and Peggy Joseph were not alone. God save the Republic.
Feb
6
Obama Tax Evasion Form Letter
Filed Under Uncategorized | 1 Comment
I asked in an earlier post whether tax evasion under President Obama was becoming an epidemic. The answer is clearly yes. In addition to Timothy Geithner and Tom Daschle, Obama nominees Nancy Killefer and Hilda Solis also have tax issues. Being that I am a patriotic American and want America to succeed, I thought I’d offer President Obama an efficient way to handle these tax situations via the Barack Obama Tax Evasion Form Letter:
President Barack Obama
1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW
Washington, DC 20500
(202) 456-1414(Insert Date)
To Whom It May Concern:
It has recently come to my attention that (insert name here) whom I have nominated for Secretary of (department) had some (small/significant/obvious) unpaid (income/business/witholding/estate) taxes. I can assure you that this was just a simple (oversight/mistake) and was corrected (years ago/while I was filling in this field in Microsoft Access). I stand firmly behind Secretary of (department) nominee (name) and look forward to their continuing service in helping me make more wealthy Republicans pay their fair share and do their Patriotic Duty. There is no need to probe further into this issue, as my team has already done all the investigating necessary, in keeping with our message of (hope/change). Pay no attention to the Cabinet member behind the curtain!
Evasively Yours,
President Barack Obama
Don’t worry, Barry, you are free to use this form letter. I don’t mind!
Feb
4
What They Said
Filed Under Economics | Leave a Comment
Feb
4
Cars for everyone!
Filed Under Economics | 3 Comments
Now it appears that Washington will be subsidizing new cars:
WASHINGTON - The Senate voted Tuesday to give a tax break to new car buyers, setting aside bipartisan concerns over the size of an economic stimulus bill with a price tag edging above $900 billion. The 71-26 vote came as President Barack Obama said he lies awake nights worrying about the economy and signaled he’ll try to knock out “buy American” provisions in the legislation to avoid a possible trade war.
Sen. Barbara Mikulski led the successful effort to allow many car buyers to claim an income tax deduction for sales taxes paid on new autos and interest payments on car loans.
She said the plan would aid the beleaguered automobile industry as well as create jobs at a time the economy is losing them at a rapid rate. “I believe we can help by getting the consumer into the showroom,” she said.
The provision was attached to the economic stimulus bill at the heart of Obama’s economic recovery plan and is subject to change or even elimination as the measure makes its way toward final passage.
But wasn’t it not that long ago that liberals were claiming that tax incentives for specific purchases were fueling unsustainable bubbles?
Couldn’t the mechanism that leftists claim helped fuel the housing bubble also do the same thing to automobiles? Not only that, the argument once again comes up as to what degree the federal government should be subsidizing organizations (GM, Ford, UAW) that have proven incapable of handling basic economics. One Republican voiced concerns:
Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, sought unsuccessfully to derail the proposal, saying it would only increase consumer debt in a time of recession and adding that there were other provisions in the legislation to help the auto industry.
What is so hard about this, folks? The cause of this problem was too much debt and spending by businesses, individuals, and government. So why do we insist on increasing debt and spending by businesses, individuals, and government?
Here’s another conundrum for the liberal logic behind such a proposal: If tax cuts will aid the economy by reducing the burden to purchasing a vehicle, couldn’t that same logic be applied to the economy at large? Couldn’t we reduce burdens on working, saving, producing, hiring, and investing by cutting income, payroll, estate and capital gains taxes across the board?
Also, I think it may be the less-than-adoration that President Obama is getting from the World Community that he so wants to be a part of that is “keeping him up at night”.
For some crazy reason, the EU is not taking kindly to Obama’s open detest for international trade. But I thought that this guy was supposed to bring the entire globe to one big rendition of Kumbaya?! And they said George Bush was the Herbert Hoover of our generation.
As Ed Morrissey points out, Obama is much closer to Hoover than Dubya ever was. For it was the disastrous Smoot-Hawley tariffs that made protectionism official national policy and initiated a global trade war that made a recession into the Great Depression. From the post:
Instead of working cooperatively, the major trading nations had to respond to American penalties with more penalties, and the Buy American provisions of the New Deal entrenched those divisions, making recovery impossible. The rest of the world — Europe, Asia, Latin America — would likely shut out the US and trade amongst themselves, and we would lose decades of work in building American economic strength abroad.
These actions by the President and Congress are only to give the appearance of action on our behalf. The real goals of the Democrat party are to use the recession as an excuse to consolidate power by the state and gain ground on causes they have been harping on for decades. To be honest, I am very, very worried about the next four years.
Feb
2
It is stories like this that made me start this blog:
HOUSTON - Exxon Mobil Corp. on Friday reported a profit of $45.2 billion for 2008, breaking its own record for a U.S. company, even as its fourth-quarter earnings fell 33 percent from a year ago.
The previous record for annual profit was $40.6 billion, which the world’s largest publicly traded oil company set in 2007.
In light of all of the companies laying off employees and seeking corporate welfare from American taxpayers, Exxon Mobil should be earning our praises.
However, plenty of liberals and people that are simply ignorant sought to antagonize Exxon Mobil even though they clearly have very little knowledge about the company, the industry, or economics. The discussion section at Newsvine was rife with ignorant comments such as this gem from “Luu”:
I always say, those making a grand profit NOW - must be screwing some one…US!!or should I say U.S..
Or this from “BLNEWL”:
Unbelievable. The government should buy this company instead of the banks!
Morons who say such dangerous things are lacking three basic principles relating to Exxon Mobil’s profits: perspective, cause, and consequences.
First, the profits of Exxon Mobil need to be put into perspective. Sure, $42.5 billion sounds like a lot. And it is. But put in perspective of the sheer size of a business like Exxon Mobil, the “raping of the consumer” or “price gouging” accusations start to ring hollow. Exxon Mobil’s profit margin, or how much profit they make in relation to gross revenues, is 10.57%.
Maybe it’s because I’m from western New York, but I always like to use apple metaphors to illustrate basic economic principles. Suppose it costs Jack and Jill ten cents to produce an apple, and Jack sells ten apples for fifty cents each and Jill sells eighty apples for twenty cents each. Jack has $5 in revenues and $4 in profit, for a profit margin of 80% (for every dollar Jack takes in, $.80 is profit). Jill has $16 in revenue and $8 in profit, for a profit margin of 50% (for every dollar Jill takes in, $.50 is profit). If we just look at profits without any perspective, we might look at that fat cat Jill and her fortune, double that of poor Jack! But if one of these two is really screwing their customers, which one is it? The one whose profit margin is highest! Jack, you greedy bastard! You’re making an 80% profit! But we usually won’t see MSN or AP writing about Jack because he is easy to miss. Jill, on the other hand, stands out when she reports her “record profits” of $8, double that of Jack, even though she sells each unit at a cheaper price and therefore has a lower margin.
Also, many will say that Exxon Mobil can garner these huge profits because of some oligarchy or price-fixing scheme for which no evidence is ever offered for. In fact (as of 2006) Exxon Mobil is the world’s 17th largest oil company, so the logic behind that argument really doesn’t work with me.
Secondly, we need to examine the cause of Exxon Mobil’s profits. When it comes down to it, Exxon supplies a very useful product that has huge demand. I don’t know about you, but I love oil. Because of oil, I can live in a rural community with lower prices, and commute to the city to earn a wage and occasionally have fun. Yes, I could work at the grocery store in town for $8 an hour, or live in the city where I would fight with traffic every day and never see open green spaces, but it is because of oil that I can have the best of both worlds.
Plus, petroleum is used to manufacture countless other products, including plastics, which not only give me extra perks in life, but are vital in such aspects as medical technology and food preservation. Before the advent of oil, human existence was somewhat destitute. However, since the advent of ‘fossil fuels’ and the industrial revolution, human standards of living have exploded all over the world (with the exception of places where government has weighed down the progress of the free market).
So, we agree that we need oil (for those who don’t agree, the following arguments can be applied to solar, wind, geothermal, and ostrich power as well). Well how are we going to get it? With the capital, technology, and know how of professionals of course. Listen, if you put me in Saudi Arabia and gave me 10,000,000 years, I wouldn’t have a clue how to give you a gallon of gas. It is because of the hard work of thousands of employees, researchers, executives, and investors that human beings can go out to the desert or an ocean, drill a hole, extract some smelly black stuff out of the ground, refine it, turn it into plastics and gasoline, and we can run cars, heat homes, and have plastic heart valves. Or, in my apple analogy, someone has to buy the land, plant the orchards, water the trees, harvest the apples, and man the apple store. Before producers like Jack, Jill, or Exxon Mobil, we had none of these products. Now, because of their hard work and ingenuity, ours are the most cushy and plentiful lives in the whole of human history. It is a bit of a stretch to say that we are being “exploited” or have inherent rights to these products all along.
Also, the central theme of this story and all of free-market economics is that a firm is successful because of the conscious decisions of consumers acting in their own interests. Some people say they are ‘forced’ to buy gas at high prices. Bull shit. As we saw over the summer, consumers can and will curtail their consumption of oil if it is not in their own self interest. Some people may say they have to buy gas to get to work and get around their daily lives. Lord knows I was hurting when oil was $147 a barrel. But I didn’t have to work or live where I did. I cut down on unnecessary trips, turned my car off at stop lights, and drove slower. So did millions of Americans because such behavior was in their own self interest. The purchase of any product at a price is voluntary (unless someone has a gun to your head or they lie to you about the terms). The only reason Exxon Mobil is so big is because consumers repeatedly made the decision that buying their product at the advertised price was better than the alternative, which is either finding another supplier or going without the gas altogether. No one bought it just to be nice to the company. A voluntary, free-market transaction will only go through if the result is a better alternative for both parties involved than if the transaction had never happened at all.
There is nothing wrong with this. In my Jack and Jill example above, an apple consumer was faced with four choices. They could go produce their own apples. In the real world, people do this all the time when they grow their own food, do their own taxes (just don’t pull a Geithner), or change their own oil. But maybe their time is better spent at work or with their family. So then the consumer could go without an apple. However, this would lower the consumer’s standard of living as opposed to having the apple. We are left with the last two choices, buying an apple from Jill at twenty cents, or buying an apple from Jack at fifty. The choice is obvious here - no wonder in my example Jill sold eighty apples! So is it schocking or wrong that Jill and the consumers of apples would simply repeat this decision over and over again, ending up with Jill having profits in the billions? But what about a monopoly, you ask? Couldn’t Jill just be forcing Jack out of the game to (no pun intended) jack up the prices on the consumers? While I disagree with this logic (Coyote has a nice piece on so called “robber barons” here) I don’t think this is the case if Jill is the 17th largest producer of apples.
The cause of such large profits is because Exxon Mobil has provided a product that consumers were willing to exchange money for to raise their standard of living.
Lastly, we need to consider the consequences of “doing something” about Exxon Mobil’s record profits. It seems the “solutions” to this “problem” are:
- Enacting a “windfall profits” tax
- Enacting price controls on oil
- Government takeover by:
- Nationalization
- Force
The first two options simply lower the incentive to produce a product, leaving us with lower supply and higher prices, and also shortages (e.g. the Jimmy Carter days). Of course, we could just force the oil companies to produce the product without compensation, but that is generally referred to as slavery, which was outlawed in 1865.
That leaves us with nationalization, a tactic employed by our buddy Hugo Chavez in Venezuela (if nationalization proponents are uncomfortable with the comparison, too bad). First of all, as Katrina, Social Security, and TARP have shown, government is a grossly incompetent steward of resources and only rarely makes good decisions. Having them in charge of something as important as oil (or health care, or retirement, or anything) is a risky proposition at best. Secondly, I have a problem with the logic behind the government buying up companies as an instrument of stopping “big business crooks” from harming America. If this is supposedly what they do, couldn’t they just take the money they got from the government, go start another business, and do the whole thing all over again? So the only option left would be to take the assets by force, which is generally referred to as stealing.
Also, Exxon Mobil is owned by many mutual funds and government pension plans. In my 401(k), XOM is the largest single stock holding. Sticking it to the owners of this oil company would be sticking it to a lot of regular folks.
To recap, the consequences of not accepting Exxon Mobil’s record profits are:
- Lowering the supply and raising the price of a vital product,
- Enslaving tens of thousands of employees, or
- Robbing the assets of millions of working Americans
If you do not prefer any of those solutions, maybe you should just join me in congratulating Exxon Mobil in their success and hoping they keep right on chugging along.
