At Volokh, Jim Lindgren reacts to the news that Chrysler isn’t going to pay back any of the pre-bankruptcy money–your money–that it was “loaned” by the government. As you’re aware, that money was converted into shares that now belong in large part to the UAW, who will sell them post-bankruptcy to fund their pension and health benefits plans.
Congratulations, America: you just bailed out the UAW. Equal protection? Don’t make me laugh. That applies to the laws.
*****
Now that I’m back from making lunches and getting Aidan to school, I’d like to point to the fundamental incoherence of Obama’s economics. This is very simplistic, but it’s true that money moves away from where it’s pressured, by taxes or “protectionist” policies or paperwork or uncertainty. Capital has moved south in the US over the past several decades, not so much because of the weather, but because of the regulatory climate and the uncertainties that are created by confiscatory government policies in many of the Northern states. People criticized Bush for not bailing Lehman, because it made a question of what the opaque criteria were: the most egalitarian thing would have been not to bail out anyone. And now Obama wishes to close the loopholes on offshore accounts. Good luck. You’re really going to have to ramp up Echelon, pal.
The incoherence is recognizable in other ways. For example, Obama has stated that he would like to see gas go to about $4 a gallon, so that provides a consumer incentive for producing the kinds of vehicles that he’d like to mandate that the automakers produce. At the same time, he claims that taxing charitable contributions isn’t going to provide a disincentive to make them. One or the other of these principles, it seems, must be true. But because he wants to create a government monopoly on charity, precisely because that breeds dependency, it’s certainly not the latter.
So, we are seeing the law of contracts rewritten by force majeure. There won’t be fewer lobbyists in Washington, though. They’ll just all be government lobbyists.
*******
As outrageous as billions for the UAW is, though, it pales compared to giving $3 billion to ACORN and contracts to conduct the census, to make it a permanent wing of the US Government. Any politician who votes any money to ACORN under any pretext needs to be thrown out of office on a recall vote.
*******
Let me just add, for my UK friends, that I can’t work up any dudgeon over the Michael Savage thing, not because Michael Savage isn’t a dick–I think he is–but because I’m just not sure that there’s anything to try to save anymore. If you’d have told me at the time that the BBC would see that the cost of Blair’s alliance after 9-11 would have been British liberty, I wouldn’t have believed it. I’m sorry. Let me know if there’s anything I can do.
UPDATE: “A pretty nurse is selling poppies from a tray./And though she feels as if she’s in a play,/She is anyway.”
REUPDATE: Goldfish and Clowns spells it out
Fuckity fuck fuck fuck
Even worse, “bama just used OUR tax dollars to buy future UAW votes. fuckity fucking fucker.
Rod Blagojevich has to be thinking he is in the Twilight Zone.
I really want to hear an honest defense of this. I suspect there is not one.
I don’t think there is even a dishonest defense.
not even 8AM yet. is it too early to start drinking now? because this just AAAARGH’s me so badly.
The non-TARP lenders are still first in line, right? So, we bailed them out too. Someone should mention that to the nutroots.
Wait, that sounds like we’re going to be a secured creditor. What’s with this expecting to be paid back business? That’s unpatriotic, what I heard.
The excuse will involve attorney client privilege, Bush and racism in america.
This makes me want to puke, seriously. Fuck the UAW. I’ll never by a car from any of these companies. I can vote with my wallet.
On an unrelated note, Drudge has a story indicating Bank of America needs 14 billion more to bail them out. 14 billion MORE. W.T.F.
I don’t think there is even a dishonest defense.
The day is young. Wait until meya gets issued her talking points.
Barky is all over free market forces when he finds it opportune, isn’t he.
Government in effect lobbying itself has been a fundamental assault on liberty for years, if not decades. See family law for one example, organized feminism for another, then the constellation of social programs, and so on. Once in the private sector, government has great incentive to remain there and remain there it has and shall.
It’s almost like there’s a price for freedom, and it’s in the general vicinity of constant vigilance.
Where is Patrick Fitzgerald now? There is surely a case for the police here, is there not? I realise that those that make the laws usually in build their own immunity from them, but does the same apply to the UAW? The law of conspiracy to steal certainly applies to them.
In fact every political leader in the Western world and all their respective apparatchiks are currently involved in the biggest ever criminal conspiracy in the history of civilised society to steal from current and future generations of their citizens, . Moreover the conspiracy is exacerbated by extortion.
Can someone explain why in such a savvy country as the USA, a majority of the electorate were gullible enough to invite a Trojan horse with a belly full of blagsters through the portals of the White House? Particularly when if they had just glimpsed across the pond they would have seen what happens to a country when our citizens committed a similar folly in 1997. Moreover history is littered with such idiotic events. We can only hope that your lot wake up and deal more expeditiously with the perpetrators of this deceit than our lot: the brigands are still in power here after 12 years. You could start the fight-back in couple of years. Gird your loins guys!
Thanks, Frank.
I do hope it’s not too late.
There’s too many policies to be outraged about that it all gets lost as clutter and noise. Exactly what Rahm wants. Devious dancer bitch.
It would seem that there’s an extortion case to be made here as well.
I’m sorry; what Michael Savage thing?
FTFY.
Michael Savage isn’t being allowed to visit London. Or something. Because he’s a hater, you know.
I linked it, Slart, above.
Can someone explain why in such a savvy country as the USA, a majority of the electorate were gullible enough to invite a Trojan horse with a belly full of blagsters through the portals of the White House? Particularly when if they had just glimpsed across the pond they would have seen what happens to a country when our citizens committed a similar folly in 1997.
I believe there is a movie out about that.
The Wolf eats cleanly and with an easy conscience, because not only are his pet sheep keeping a defensive girdle around him, but they bleet so happily at everything else he does that he’s convinced himself that he really IS a sheep.
The Sheepdogs, meanwhile, are barking at each other. Some of them say that the sheep no longer want dogs, and they should become wolves if they want to survive.
Fucked up thing is you can’t even take up smoking to get thru this jacked up time without paying over a dollar extra a pack in taxes.
That Drudge story is a red herring. Don’t buy it. It’s based on a poorly written, poorly reported story, fundamentally a misunderstanding of the situation on the part of the reporter, it appears. The $34B isn’t “new” additional capital as such.
Oh, that. I disagree completely with the banning, in part because it makes Savage look a lot more relevant than he actually is.
Thanks for linkage, Dan!
Kinda OT but, given both that Obama’s media image is over-inflated right now and that he is overreaching on the Chrysler jig, too, one stealthy little pin-prick delivered right now could deface O’s towering media-facade, and bring this thug’s Gucci image crashing down to earth.
If an outlaw reporter could get a ketchup squirter, or a ripe tomato, or a rotten onion, into a WH press conference, the vision of it splatting on the One’s lapel, replayed to the nation over and over, would be enough to pop the One’s image-bubble.
The maintenance of a glowing, perfect facade was integral to Xerxes’ fascistic schtick. One nick in this veneer is all it’ll take…
Have you guys seen Cliff Asness’s letter yet?
http://zerohedge.blogspot.com/2009/05/cliff-asness-i-am-ready-for-my.html
“The President’s attempted diktat takes money from bondholders and gives it to a labor union that delivers money and votes for him. Why is he not calling on his party to “sacrifice” some campaign contributions, and votes, for the greater good? Shaking down lenders for the benefit of political donors is recycled corruption and abuse of power.”
Commercial one: Air Force One pulls up alongside Rolls Royce at intersection. Obama leans out of forward door and hollers over engines, “Bitchen ride! Have you got any . . . hey, what kind of mileage does that thing get?”
Commercial two: Air Force One pulls up alongside Popemobile at intersection. Obama leans out of forward door, hollers over engines, “Hey, have you got any . . . .” Benedict flips him the bird.
Mr. Pink, I think that Jeff linked that yesterday evening.
Obama’s set of economic-sounding excuses for policy is incoherent, because he doesn’t (and can’t) connect words and the world (and why bother?), but Obamanomics in practice isn’t even incoherent. It’s pre-economic. Like, caveman-style.
Does pointing to contradictions on the level of abstraction where economic rhetoric and analysis happens change anyone’s position re: the rightness/necessity/etc. of any of this thrilling action? No. It’s not about that. It’s Gang up, take stuff.
My bad you guys are way ahead of me.
So what’s the odds of the NYTimes asking about this at the next press conference vs. asking about how much Obama is enchanted by _____?
Great comment, psycho.
This whole fiasco is even more breath-taking when you think about the fact that the people Barcky and the UAW are cornholing are the same people they will need to capitalize, or re-capitalize, the company.
[…] What an ass. Posted by Dan Collins @ 8:10 am | Trackback SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: “The REAL Scandal of Dijongate [Dan Collins]”, url: “https://proteinwisdom.com/?p=14828” }); […]
JD,
If the suckers refuse to re-capitalize the government’s companies on the government’s terms, the government will simply *take* the suckers’ capital and re-capitalize their companies on their terms.
And if there’s a backlash against such takings, the government will just print magic money to do it, making the suckers’ holding worth that much less.
It’s all very simple, once you understand the rules under which our overlords are playing.
Let me know if there’s anything I can do.
Well Dan, you could try writing to The Rt Hon Jaqui Smith explaining what free speech is all about, but I doubt it would do any good. This country is dead, and not many will show up for the funeral.
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Squid – Sadly, that would not surprise me one bit.
I’d say something about Smith responding by attempting to prosecute Silver Whistle (since Dan’s not in UK jurisdiction) but it wouldn’t be funny.
Somebody here a few days ago said that is why the TARP banks are not being allowed to pay back the money. They will become the lenders, the government money laundries in effect, for every thing where the regular markets balk, want high interest rates, or collateral.
Obama’s black, you know.
HISTORICAL!
Can someone explain why in such a savvy country as the USA…
Musn’t alienate the “moderates” dontcha know or vet a Black Communist. That just might could be racist.
Thug
I’d say something about Smith responding by attempting to prosecute Silver Whistle (since Dan’s not in UK jurisdiction) but it wouldn’t be funny.
It wouldn’t be funny, McGehee, because I can be prosecuted for
All of us haters have got to go, really.
I know. I’ve been watching the UK justify our revolution for the last several years.
Though our own government seems on the verge of undoing every last bit of the justification on this side of the ocean.
You chaps still have some gumption, McGehee, I can’t see you ending up like this eunuch of a country.
Silver – Obama is Blair x50. I said to my dad in 1997 that this man (Blur) is a bare-faced liar with a deity complex. Obama is the same, but with Ken Livingstone’s political outlook. They’re moving VERY quickly to sweep away American exceptionalism, both as an idea and a practical matter. We’re having our community organized for us.
With no lube.
[…] left the following comment at Jeff’s fantastic blog: Silver – Obama is Blair x50. I said to my dad in 1997 that this man […]
[…] Dan brought to our attention below, Jim Lindgren relates the government writing off over $7 billion to Chrysler. A nice little gift in […]
Well, if you’re offering, I’d love a sandwich.