On May 13, 2009, at 7:13 PM, David R. Block wrote:
Actually, the settlement is a condition of financial aid.
I'm
pretty sure you make people agree to almost anything in exchange for
money. I believe it is called capitalism. :-)
Ah, but you see, not all of them had agreed until basically blackmailed
by the administration.
It would help if you could link to some sources, as I'm not sure
what set of facts you are working from.
I guess that you can call
"blackmail" an
agreement if you would like. In fact, I'm not sure that TARP called for
these restrictions in the actual law. "Agree, or we'll break both of
your legs" is a great incentive for agreement.
But that's not what happened. The automakers have *already*
broken their legs -- the government can hardly be blamed for that. The
new agreement is more like, "You must lose 50 pounds of weight before I
agree fix your broken legs". You can call that blackmail if you want,
but I call it accountability.
Best counterexample: Ford, who avoided screwing up their own
business, and thus doesn't need to deal with the strings on government
money. If the Obama was really trying to take over the auto industry,
he wouldn't have let them get away.
And why won't Obama let
banks pay TARP money back?
Um, I believe some of them probably will be allowed to:
Though some taxpayer groups think it is a better deal for us if
they don't:
Also, what is with forcing
banks that did
not need TARP money to take it? So that he has blackmail material, of
course. At least that's how it is working. And please don't tell me
that you think that Bush had such blackmail in mind.
I agree that this part is certainly coercive. Whether it is/was
justified and/or necessary is a whole 'nother discussion. [My personal
take, it was probably necessary, but probably not justified :-].
If
a Republican had done what Obama is doing with Chrysler, AIG, and GM,
there would be such shrieking, wailing and gnashing of teeth that one
could not hear themselves think.
Last I checked, Bush was the one who started bailing out
AIG,
no? The only ones shrieking then was the Right -- who still are,
aren't they? So what's the difference again?
There needs to be a difference? For the life of me, I don't know why.
Evidently our concerns must be totally groundless. We can be and are
being ignored, or simply brushed aside with with the wave of a hand.
I'm glad that my congressman has voted against every piece of this. I
really need to get in the face of my "Republican" Senators, however.
You seem to be arguing two different points, which I'm having a
hard time distinguishing:
a) This is really bad government policy
b) This is all an evil Democratic/Obama/media conspiracy
I'm willing to accept your perspective on (a), though I disagree
with it. It is your arguments on (b) that I find specious. If you want
to just drop that topic, fine with me.
Suppose
that it were Apple instead of Chrysler. The same thing should happen,
right?
Again, not sure I follow you. Say that Apple had a huge network of
suppliers and retirees dependent upon it, would I prefer:
a) total collapse
b) a managed bankruptcy that allows it to restructure its
business, at the price of restrictions on executive compensation
I'd gladly choose (b).
There's more to it than what you have stated in (b). Its not JUST
restrictions on executive compensation. The government can now make you
manufacture what THEY SAY you can manufacture. You write software that
THEY SAY you can write. Say there was a union with 0 stock in the
company and they get oh, 40 % of the stock, screwing the other
stockholders, be they corporate presidents or my 401K. Ahead of the
bond holders which bankruptcy law says should go FIRST. Not
simultaneously, but FIRST. Since the unions are not even stockholders,
they should get nothing according to the letter of bankruptcy law. If
they DO own stock, they should get no more than the percentage that
they already own, which I doubt is 40 %.
So whatever company stock you may have owned before, you now own less
as a percentage of the company. If you even get to keep the same number
of shares
that you had. But that's OK. Right?? At least you have a job. Maybe. If
you're lucky.
Well, yeah, bankruptcy sucks. Everyone ends up with less. Some
end up with nothing, some end up with more than their fair share, and
somebody else gets to make arbitrary decisions.
But the alternative is worse. And let's be brutally honest:
they all brought this on themselves.
When you screw your own life up, and you turn to someone else
for help -- they get to make the rules. You wouldn't be complaining if
a private equity firm had bought GM and imposed similarly draconian
rules, would you?
Obama's word is now law, it
supersedes the bankruptcy law and
bankruptcy court, too, apparently. Didn't Nixon try to make his word
law? And Bill "stroke of the pen, law of the land" Clinton as well? Now
when Obama does it, silence. What Nixon actually DID must not matter,
what really matters is the political stripe of the person doing it.
Republican = Bad, Democratic = Good. Right?? That's the lesson that I
am learning. Of course, I already knew it, and have known it for
decades.
There's two very different kinds of actions. Some actions --
like retroactively taxing bonuses -- is clearly changing the rules of
the game, and deeply unfair.
But the rest -- working on arrangements with creditors, and
pressuring people to agree to something suboptimal -- is just
dealmaking. GM and Chrysler always had the option of going into
traditional bankruptcy and ending up utterly liquidated, but didn't
want to. Instead, they threw themselves on the government's mercy.
Whose fault is that?
You may well wish that the government exercised its mercy in a
more even-handed fashion, but that is the problem with mercy.
Government
is evil when bond holders and executives get death threats over LEGAL
acts, largely because the President has used the Bully Pulpit (emphasis
on BULLY) to rouse the leftist rabble into a nice little rage. Bus
tours and protests at AIG Executives homes, isn't that cute? Obama
doesn't stand between them and the pitchforks as he claims, but rather
Obama ENCOURAGES the pitchforks via ACORN and others. THAT is evil.
I would love to see you cite sources on this. Your arguments
seem all based on indirect connections, not documented actions. I
haven't heard such rhetoric directly from Obama -- more recently, it is
quite the opposite:
Oh, I fully agree there is
lots of
ridiculous rage vented at Wall Street -- I just think of it as
populist, not Leftist:
That is my larger point. There are
certainly legitimate criticisms to make -- but all the fault is hardly
on one side.
Name a right side group that has organized bus tours of AIG executive
homes. Just one. The only group I know doing it is ACORN. If they are
on the right, I will eat my shorts.
I'm certainly willing to agree that ACORN is a) slimy, and b)
leftist. However, that does NOT mean that:
i)
everything that do is personally directed and approved of by Obama
ii)
the outrage is purely leftist in nature
I still think -- if only from my *own* reactions -- that the
outrage existed in populist form long before that. I agree, that Left
has capitalized (and reinforced) the populist anger more effectively
than the Right. But that may be as much due to Republican incompetence
as principle; certainly, some Republicans were also very quick to jump
on the bandwagon:
Like it or not, and you must not,
Conservatives and Libertarians are people too. I know that we are
supposed to have sprouted horns and a tail, but damn.
Huh? You of all people should know that I always try to listen to you
respectfully; I apologize if my last terse exaggerated statement
over-simplified things.
I do believe that conservatives and libertarians are right
about
as often (and wrong about as often) as the liberals and socialists on
the left. Both are human, both make mistakes, both are trying to do
the right thing as best as they see it. As am I.
What I am against is the desire to over-simplify the
situation
to put all the horns and tail on the *other* side, without
acknowledging our own.
I see no acknowledgment from the left that they had ANYTHING to do with
this, even though the first hint of a problem was massive losses at
Freddie and Fannie, Barney Frank's favorite campaign contributors.
Nope, it's all Bushes fault. And you are keeping with the narrative, I
see.
Huh? No, I fully agree that the government is equally as
complicit as Wall Street in this failure -- both due to perverse
incentives, and poor regulation. How is that "keeping with the
narrative" that government was in no way responsible?
In fact, I think I already said just that:
The fact of the matter is, both Wall Street *and* the
Government
screwed up big time, in different ways, and are equally causes of the
crises. The painful truth is that while Wall Street may not deserve the
blame it is getting now, but they didn't really deserve all the money
and credit (literal and figurative) they were getting before. Life is
just, just not in the short term.
The flip side is that government intervention -- however
hypocritical, self-serving, and often misguided -- _does_ have a valid
place. Libertarians are so quick to say _nothing_ should or can be
done by the government, it makes it almost impossible to discuss the
actual _evidence about what government can and can't do.
Yes, let us have corrupt government intervention. Hell, they cannot
tell us where all of the TARP money has gone. And you want me to trust
them? ::rolls eyes:: Just what kind of stupid do you take me for?
:-)
The problem is that *both* Wall Street and the Government are
often corrupt and incompetent. I agree, Liberals totally gloss over
the latter, but Libertarians gloss over the former. We live in an
imperfect world.
A
lot of libertarians and conservatives are comparing this administration
with Jimmy Carter. I no longer think that is correct. The correct
comparison would be with Richard Milhous Nixon. You have the unwritten
enemies list (capitalists and non-union members) versus a written one,
and using the tax code (proposed) to limit charitable contributions
(can't have the government competing with private charity, government
has to have a monopoly) versus audits of political enemies (and that is
probably coming).
I'm sorry, as someone who is likely to be
impacted by the charitable contribution limits, I can honestly say that
it won't make a noticeable difference in how much money I give to
charity. I always thought it was the Left that felt rich people were
so mean they primarily only give money away because of the
If you got any agreement with that on my part out of what I said then I
am TOTALLY mystified. (Hence, Adventures in Missing the Point.)
Then could you clarify what you meant by "using
the tax code (proposed) to limit charitable contributions". I am not
aware of any proposals to actually *limit* contributions, just reduce
the *deductibility* of contributions. Again, citing sources would be
most helpful.
That
is what I mean be "selective use of
data." From the way you talk, you make it sound like everything Obama
does is part of a grand conspiracy to subvert and destroy everything
good about America. Which is pretty much _exactly_ how the Left
sounded about Bush during his presidency?
Doesn't that give you even a little
pause, to find yourself treading that same path?
It's not the same path. Nobody's hung Obama in flaming effigy yet,
haven't seen folks at conservative blogs wishing his death yet, haven't
heard him being called a "war criminal" yet (except from the left,
quelle surprise), haven't heard him called a "baby killer" for the
latest bombings in Pakistan/Afghanistan and the civilian casualties
that came with them. I have heard him called a Marxist, because this is
straight out of Alinsky's Rules for Radicals and Karl Marx. THAT is
truth in advertising. Calling Bush Bushhitler is not, because they
would have been jailed for saying so if he really was.
So, you agree you are on the same path, just not nearly as far
along? ;-)
-- Ernie P.
1
_______________________________________________
Centroids mailing list: [email protected]
http://radicalcentrism.com/mailman/listinfo/centroids_radicalcentrism.com
Archives at
http://radicalcentrism.org/pipermail/centroids_radicalcentrism.com/
