Bent Notes

When was the last time you saw something as pathetic as Ford CEO Alan Mulally’s promise to Congress to work for a one-dollar salary if his company gets a bailout?  This is symbolism born of desperation. 

As Thomas Sowell points out, if every executive-level staff person at a U.S. car company worked for nothing, it wouldn’t reduce the price of its products one cent.

We all know what needs to happen: Congress needs to scrap all this CAFE-standard nonsense and the Big Three need to scrap their UAW contracts and get labor costs in line with those of their non-American competitors.

But, as I asked in the post below with regard to Congress enacting a reprieve on income and investment taxation, anybody wanna bet on the likelihood of the obvious sensible solution becoming reality?

eharmonycom settles a lawsuit by agreeing to post homosexual profiles.

So much for free markets, respect for individuals’ moral codes, the definition of family that served humankind quite well for 10.000 years and still serves all other species well, and sanity generally.

You have to ask yourself why the person bringing the lawsuit didn’t take the entrepreneurial route and set up a matchmaking site for those who see things his way.

Freedom is dying before our eyes without so much as a whimper.

I haven’t had much to say about where I stand regarding benefit of the doubt for the president-elect.  Certainly it’s on my mind a lot.  There’s no shortage of column space in this world devoted to the subject, that’s for sure. 

After much swirling around of my thoughts and feelings on the matter, I’ve landed on something pretty close to what Michael Medved comes up with in his Townhall.com piece today.  Barack Obama remains, in my estimation, a hardcore leftwinger with truly frightening policy proclivities and a majority of personality traits that I find off-putting if not disgusting.  That said, there is no alternative universe to run to.  He will take the oath of office on January 20.  He is assembling his administration in the most precarious time I have personally ever witnessed.  It would be foolish to wish him anything but the best - the most refined judgement he can muster,  and the most favorable circumstances fate can bestow.

The unfortunate quality of Medved’s let’s-hold-off-and-see-what-he-puts-in-place stance is that, given the dizzying pace with which economic and security-related events are unfolding, as well as the aggressiveness with which Obama is pursuing his vision, it becomes more superceded hourly by developments that we must decry as alarming.

Today’s Wall Street Journal is full of articles, columns and editorial comment that make plain the madness of the FHer regime’s approach.  Everything about it is the exact opposite of a real remedy for the ills of the day.  On page A8, for instance, is a story about how the regulatory machine is gearing up.  Top Obama aide Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-IL, crows that the “agenda is going to be bold.”  “Activists” will run the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the EPA and the Department of Labor.

One can see it coming, like the next stage of a cancer:  The very measures that have damaged and possibly killed our domestic auto industry - unsustainable UAW contracts, CAFE standards - are just the beginning of what the new regime wants to impose on the (formerly) Big Three.  The editorial page of today’s WSJ features a required-reading alarm bell entitled “The Environmental Motor Company.”

Let’s continue to extend the benefit of the doubt where we can as much as we can, but let’s also plainly state things that become clear.  One is the fact that the new administration is going to distort the notion of private ownership of business, base policy on a sham scientific concept (climate change), and seize more of citizens’ assets to pay for it.  This, at a time when the economy is screaming for people to be able to keep more of what they are earning.

The American public voted for this to transpire.  That may be the most disorientingly irrational aspect of our current juncture.  These are not times to expect encouragement for proceeding in a sane and rigorously reasoned way.  The kudos in post-modern America go to those who conduct their affairs in the opposite manner.

A Wall Street Journal editorial today makes a point that ought to be obvious but sadly is not in postmodern America - the kind of auto-industry bailout favored by the governor and senator of Michigan would reward the UAW for bloating the budgets of the old-line Big Three carmakers and be unfair to the non-unionized workers at the car plants of Toyota, Honda et al.

It’s early afternoon.  There’s still this resolve to see things optimistically on the part of my people, both personal friends with whom I’m in touch as well as the boggers I’m reading and the talk-radio hosts I’m listening to.

The situation in Philadelphia - Black Panthers blocking a polling place - is getting a lot of attention right now.

Part of me is emotionally exhausted and part of me is on fire.  It’s weird to be host creature to both states simultaneously.

I only knew one person in the line at my polling place, an artist buddy of mine whom I know to be a consistent FHer voter.  It was so weird to make small talk with him about what’s going on around town musically, and then watch him get behind the machine, knowing full well what he was doing, what buttons he was pushing.

At the risk of sounding like some therapist’s patient, I am wondering what I do with this thought I harbor whenever I come in contact with someone who I know full well voted the FHer ticket.  There’s a lot of someones in that category - social friends, professional associates, relatives.  The inescapable fact is that there is some level on which they are the enemy.  These are people who have taken a concrete action which jeopardizes my freedom and my future.  So, as I say, wht do I do?  I can’t jettison the lot of them and re-people my life. Plus, most of them are nice, even wonderful, if horrifyingly misguided, folks.

I know one thing.  Whether Mr. Reasonable Gentleman can squeak through, or whether the Chicago Marxist emerges victorious, there must be a from-the-ground-up reassessment of how to get conservatism to flourish again.

The first principle by which we must be guided is zero tolerance for anything less than total clarity. No McCain-esque distractions and vacuous platitudes about “fighting the status quo in Washington” or “fighting for what’s right for America” or “putting country first.”  Such crap means nothing.  An FHer could utter the same phrases.  Indeed, the Chicago Marxist does employ very similar rhetoric.  No, what we talk about are the specific principles for which we’re willing to fight to the death: the original intent of the Constitution’s framers, free-market economics, American exceptionalism, an America that does not hesitate to respond fiercely and ruthlessly to its enemies’ provocations, and America that demonstrates unwavering loyalty to nations that share these principles, the primacy of family as the basic unit of human organization, and a culture characterized by dignity, depth, decency and real inspiration.

We must expect loud arguments amongst ourselves, finger-pointing and bitterness.  Obviously, the wheels came off our movement and we must find out why.  This is why we’d all be well-advised to enter into this foundational examination with as much prayerfulness and mindfulness of our common aims as possible.  Eventually, the the useless sand of confusion will get sifted out and the nuggets of what we were seeking will be all that remains on the fine-mesh screen.

I look back at this year - my personal successes, some episodes of illness in our household and family, memorable times with friends, the spring’s tornadoes and floods, the spike in gas prices, the financial meltdown, the embrace by a frighteningly large segment of the population of socialism - and ask myself what it all has taught me.  I’d say that the biggest lesson at this point is that, in human life, the visceral and the spiritual are inextricably intertwined.  In fact, I’m sort of considering the possibility that the more one progresses on the spiritual journey, the more reality’s upside-the-head aspect becomes impossible to avoid.

74 percent of CEOs surveyed by Chief Executive magazine think the Chicago Marxist’s economic policies would be a disaster.

1994, Citibank.

1.) This constant use of the term “middle class” by Biden and the Chicago Marxist.  It’s being employed to plant the notion of a zero-sum game in voters’ minds, as if tax “breaks” for corporations or “the wealthy” somehow somehow deprive “ordinary” Americans of income.  Pretty easy to demolish, really.  Point out that some 40 percent of U.S. households don’t pay any taxes, and the top 10 percent of earners pay well over 50 percent of the nation’s taxes.  Then point out that the Chicago Marxist is being disingenuous to the point of intelligence-insulting with his condemnation of “tax breaks” (grrrrr, there’s that term again; I’ll get back to that one shortly) for corporations that “ship jobs overseas.”  They do so PRECISELY BECAUSE THEY FIND A MORE FAVORABLE TAX ENVIRONMENT IN SOME OTHER COUNTRY.  The whole thing can be condensed to a soundbite-sized rebuttal: No one in this country - no individual or business - needs to pay once cent more in taxes.

2.) The Chicago Marxist’s health-care proposal.  As with all FHer schemes, there are two parts to this one: the Santa Claus part, and the how-we’ll-pay-for-it part.  Here’s how you nuke this one: the Santa Claus part involves a narrowing of the individual’s range of choices, and the second part involves naked wealth redistribution.  (See item one and the theft of the money of those with incomes over $250,000.)  That’s really as wonky as you need to get.  Again, this one can be condensed to a soundbite that tells the whole story: SENATOR OBAMA, IT’S NOT YOUR MONEY.

Oh, yeah, and demolish this business about tax “breaks.”  Once again, it’s an attempt to get voters to think that high tax rates for a particular group were some kind of baseline, and that any subsequent lowering of that was some kind of deviation, a momentary respite because the government, benevolent entity that it is, wanted to give them a leg up for a little while, and that now it’s time for such a group to return to “patriotic” levels of coughing up its money.

The American people aren’t idiots.  If this stuff were expalined to them exactly like this, they’d see what was really going on.

As of this writing, congressional leaders of both parties, both presidential candidates, and economic advisors are meeting in Washington to discuss the bailout plan W outlined in last night’s address to the nation.

The idea is that it will restore the financial system’s health quickly enough that the American taxpayer will realize a return on its outlay of $700 billion.  Sounds good, but also quite iffy.

It doesn’t look like a purely free-market solution to this is in the offing, since this catastrophe has its roots in a fuzzy melding of the public and private sectors.  That said, I hope and pray there will be a camp within the assemblage meeting with W that will press for the way forward that comes the very closest possible to such a plan.

As every grown-up knows, the other side of the freedom coin is responsibility.  Underneath the layers of bundled mortgages and deals and cleverly wrought instruments for growing wealth and government guarantees against failure lie actual exchanges of money for for promises to pay it back at a given interest rate.  Someone said, “Yes, I’ll loan you this amount of money on terms involving this amount of time for paying it back at this rate of return,” and someone else saying, “Okay, is this the dotted line where I sign?”  If either of them thought it unlikely that he or his organization could make good on what they were freely obligating themselves to, they’re not particularly wise individuals, are they?

Now, compound that by all the subsequent operators who saw home prices rising and said, “Hey, man, even if a lot of these loans are risky, bundling them together in this favorable market is a cool way to make some cheddar!”  We have to presume that the folks on this level understood the degree of risk in what they were doing as well.  Don’t we?

It looks to me like our culture’s zeal for ever-more slickly designed gizmos, with ever-more bells and whistles - think iphones and Blackberries and voice-activated GPS devices - permeated the financial world.  The main difference, it seems to me, is that microchips and plastic and steel and aluminum aren’t inherently risky substances.  You combine them into this product or that, and you can rely on them to do their thing as what they are.  Mortgages and other loans, in contrast, may, shall we say, decay over time.  They may fall prey to slow payment or even default.  This makes designing super-fancy financial products out of them kind of a shaky proposition.

So what I hope gets trumpeted loudly at the gathering in Washington today is this:  Let’s determine to the best of our ability who is responsible for each of the various aspects of this mess and hold them accountable as much as possible and minimize the burden to the American taxpayer, who needs to see his or her overall burden reduced anyway, as much as possible and as soon as possible.  Free people keeping their own hard-earned money is the real key to moving pst this perilous moment.

The first thing that stood out for me in Joe Biden’s comments about upper-income Americans getting a tax hike was, like it was for most people, his characterization of it being “patriotic.”  As disingenuous Marxist double-speak goes, it wasn’t any too artful.  One needn’t be a genius to see through it.

Since I first heard about it, though, another word from his remarks has been foddr for much of my pondering: “take.”  He said “We’re going to take that money and put it in the pockets of the middle class.”

“Take.”  If ever a word hammered home with zero uncertainty the coercive power of the state, that’s the one. 

Rule of law is perhaps the aspect of our American experiment in liberty that requires the most intellectual refinement to discern clearly.  Yes, we are ruled by laws, not the whims of individuals in particular positions, but by definition law is a construct backed by a monopoly on the legitimate use of force.  That’s why the West’s greatest thinkers on the subject have said that we mut be supremely careful what we etch into law regarding the dos and don’ts of human conduct.  We must not take short-cuts in our consideration of what is just and proper and what maximizes liberty, dignity and individual sovereignty.

The best minds on the case have concluded that a major way in which liberty is maximized is letting people keep nearly all the money they earn or otherwise lawfully acquire.  To receive money in exchange for one’s time / talent / skills and then use that money as one sees fit is at the core of putting an individual in charge of the making of choices and of the right to define well-being as one so chooses.

And, Joe, who is this “we?”  I think we can strip away any grandiose notion of “the American people” and get to the essence of what he’s talking about when we consider this monopoly on power: he means the government.

Biden isn’t the first to use “take” in the context of people and their money this campaign season.  Earlier this year, Hillary Clinton spoke of taking oil company “windfall” profits and establishing a government fund for atlernative-energy development.

The first step in a state moving toward totalitarianism, toward massive restructuring of society, is getting the public used to the idea that taking the most important of a person’s belongings - his capital - is legitimate when used to make circumstances more “equal” and “fair.”

I’m all the time coming ups with topics of speeches or debate remarks that McCain, Palin and GOP congressional candidates ought to use.  A major examination of the implications of this word “take,” it seems to me would be particularly juicy and beneficial at this time.

In Colorado Springs this morning, The Barracuda serves notice that the mentality of “Wheee!  Let’s take some more wacky risks with a bunch of anonymous people’s money!  If it goes sour, Uncle Sam will bail us out!” will get nowhere come January.

This whole thing has at its core our age’s disconnect between choices and responsibility.  Yes, risk is an honorable thing when the possible outcomes have been considered and weighed, but when the name of the game becomes over-the-top-clever repackaging of basic loan and investment transactions in forms ever more remote from the original exchanges of hard-earned money, it gets harder for those doing the repackaging to see how it can all come tumbling down.  It reminds me of the line in the Mose Allison song “Middle Class White Boy”: “I just wanna do everything wrong and still pick up first prize.”

Once again, Madame Vice President tells the people in plain English what’s going on - and what she and President McCain won’t enable.

Fred Thompson, with the clarity you’d expect, explains the Freddie Mac - Fannie Mae bailout.

The Chicago Marxist, in an attempt to look thoughtful and big, says he wouldn’t rescind the tax cuts on the wealthiest Americans if there were a recession.  Dig this, Barry:  the thing to do is not rescind them in any circumstances. 

He knows he’s seen the charts showing that the sector of the tax-paying public he’s talking about pays the great preponderance of the nation’s tax burden anyway.  Disingenuous SOB.

I get so tired of hearing his prattling about how his focus is on tax cuts for the middle class.  Of course the middle class needs tax relief, too, but what he’s engaging in is naked pandering. 

Dig this, you Marxist:  no one, poor, middle class or rich, needs to pay one cent more in taxes.

If John McCain would utter the above sentence, his poll numbers would leave the Community Organizer in the dust.

People still think there’s a crummy job market even as the economy grew nicely in the second quarter.

Quite by coincidence, today’s blogosphere offerings bring us two items on the same theme.  Mike S. Adams at Townhall tells the tale of the young woman who, only after being referred by a Christian counselor with religious porblems with the young woman’s lesbianism to a counselor who had no such problems and did a fine job according to the young woman, decided to sic the leviathan state on the Christian counselor.  Bookworm gives us an account of a similar situation involving a San Diego fertility clinic.

Bookworm does an admirably effective job of spelling out the distinction between situations in which market choices prevail and those in which monopolyy conditions set the parameters.

And for heaven’s sake, you didn’t croak because you had to drive to another office for your fertility test, okay?

A Wall Street Journal editorial asking, just what is a “windfall profit,” anyway?

The mixed bag that is our current juncture is very mixed indeed.  Just as Iraq is looking like a stable, unified country ready to take its place as a player in its region and in the struggle against jihadism, the danger from its neighbor to the east, Iran, looks like it’s reaching critical mass.  Domestically, productivity and employment remain high, while bank failures blemish the landscape and inflation, a negligible factor for years, has come roaring back.

America is screaming for clarity and leadership.  Or maybe the problem is that it’s not screaming for clarity and leadership,at least en masse in sufficient numbers.  There is nothing plaguing us that adherence to the time-honored principles that have paved our way out of every similar past situation wouldn’t cure.

You do see little glimpses of it here and there.  Thank God W finally said that we need to drill for oil.  If the man who hopes to succeed him as a GOP president can find a graceful way to put his previous pristine-ANWR statements behind him (I guess I am calling for McCain to flip-flop, which isn’t per se a bad thing, if your previous position was stupid) and point out the stark difference between the corporation-bashing of the Freedom-Haters and the overwhelming obvious good sense of turning loose oil companies anywhere it seems likely that there’s oil, he and the congressional candidates of his pary may have a chance.

There are hopeful signs that the public is likewise beginning to see that the core of the banking and mortgage mess is likewise fairly simple: easy credit and shaky responsibility met head-on and shareholders, depositors and taxpayers were left holding the bag.  A little of that is sufficient to make the vast majority of timely bill-payers say, “Now hold on, here.  Why am I taking a whuppin’ for someone else’s failure to live up to his obligations?”

What I do not understand is this sudden overture the W administration is making to Iran.  Sending Under-Secretary of State William Burns to meet with his theocratic counterpart?  How does that jibe with the recent stories about W giving Israel an “amber light” to take care of business regarding a nuke program?  It may be that there is some highly sensitive factor at play here, some consideration that must be kept tightly under wraps for the time being, but I feel that W owes the American people at least some kind of statement along the lines of “I know this looks like an abrupt turnabout, but if it leads to the favorable changes we anticipate, I will explain it thoroughly in due course.”

Yes, it’s a complicated world.  That’s all the more reason to have a consistent set of bedrock principles that guide us as we encounter all manner of wacky twists and turns and some real threats.  In a sense, it’s like having a chart in front of you when you’re playing music.  If you get lost in the tune, you can’t blame the piece of paper on the stand.

Larry Kudlow interviews Alaska governor Sarah Palin.  This is the stuff that can win elections.  This is the stuff that can rescue America and Western civilization.

The jack-booted totalitarians in charge of the U.S. Senate aren’t even waiting for the Marxist From Chicago to take office.  They’re pushing a bill right now - as in as I type this - on the floor of their utterly degraded chamber - to impose a windfall profits tax on oil companies.  Of course, those companies can avoid the tax if they “invest” the “extra” profit in alternative energies.

Get a clue, America, before we’re all hauled off to the re-education camps.

The Chicago Marxist reiterates his resolve to slap oil companies with a “windfall profits tax.”

Here’s the thing about Freedom-Hating totalitarians like Obama (you read me right; note the relish implicit in his phrase “I’ll make them pay . . . “):  their proposals come across as stupid, of course, but they themselves are not stupid.   They just count on voters being stupid enough to swallow this stuff about “using the tax money to help working families reduce their costs.”  They know oil companies will pass the costs along to consumers as yet higher prices, which leaves consumers as strapped as they are now. And there won’t be one more drop of oil than there is now.  But the Marxists will have power, and that’s all that matters to them.

He must be stopped.