Obama Succeeds in Destroying Property Rights
By mcoppock | May 9, 2009
This is tragic, and frightening: Chrysler Lenders Give Into Restructuring:
A scrappy group of dissident lenders that challenged President Obama’s restructuring of Chrysler LLC fell apart Friday in a development that signals a major political victory for the White House and likely paves the way for a rapid exit from bankruptcy for the beleaguered automaker.
The dissolution of the lender cabal clears away the largest obstacle standing in the way of the White House’s plans to sell the bulk of Chrysler’s assets to Italy’s Fiat Group SpA and start making smaller, more fuel-efficient cars in the United States. The company hopes to emerge from bankruptcy in a record time of less than two months.
The hold-out lenders charged that Mr. Obama, who had called them “speculators” and questioned their patriotism as well as blamed them for the bankruptcy, used undue political pressure, even though they were pursuing their legal rights in bankruptcy court, where the claims of such secured lenders normally prevail.
“After a great deal of soul-searching and quite frankly agony, they concluded they just don’t have critical mass to withstand the enormous pressure and machinery of the U.S. government,” said Thomas Lauria, the group’s lead attorney.
Read the whole thing. It’s chock-full of language that one expects to read in a fascist dictatorship, not a free country. Here’s another quote, and remember that these are private citizens with valid ownership claims:
What started out as a dissident group of a couple dozen hedge funds and other investors led by OppenheimerFunds Inc. dwindled to only six and then fell apart by the end of the week after the group realized there weren’t enough of them to take on the White House and Democrats in Congress, who owe their election in part to labor unions.
Topics: Economics, Poison, Politics | No Comments »
Health Insurance Organization Sells Out Membership to Obama Administration
By mcoppock | May 6, 2009
I can’t imagine a worse quote as this: Health Insurers Try to Scuttle Obama Plan:
In an effort to scuttle a major part of President Obama’s plan to reform the nation’s health-care system, private health insurers are taking the unusual step of asking Congress to increase regulation of their industry.
“We are not asking people to trust us,” Karen Ignagni, the president of America’s Health Insurance Plans, told a key congressional panel on Tuesday. “We are asking people to trust government.”
It’s obvious that Ignagni, and presumably the health insurance industry that she represents, hasn’t read Atlas Shrugged. Asking government to chop off one’s hands and feet in order to save one’s head is the worst sort of compromise. This is just horrible stuff:
“I know you guys are skeptical, I read it on your faces,” Ignagni told reporters following the hearing. “This is truly what it is: It is a transparent call for a full-scale renovation and a complete overhaul of the existing regulatory mechanisms.”
Read the whole thing, if you can stomach it.
Topics: Economics, Poison, Politics, healthcare | No Comments »
Dr. Binswanger on the Glenn Beck Show, Discussing Obama’s Education Plan
By mcoppock | May 5, 2009
“Churning out Barney Franks, Michael Moores, and Al Gores…” Classic! Definitely worth a watch…
Topics: Education, Food, Politics | No Comments »
On the American Use of the Atomic Bomb
By mcoppock | May 3, 2009
Two important pieces on America’s use of the atomic bomb in Japan. The impetus was John Stewart’s position that dropping the bomb was a war crime and Truman a war criminal.
First, there’s Bill Whittle’s discussion on PJTV. Watch it here.
Then, read this John Lewis’s discussion: “Gifts from Heaven”: The Meaning of the American Victory Over Japan in 1945:
Between 1889 and 1931, a cancerous tumor took root in the western Pacific Ocean. A nation of seventy million people systematically implanted, into their minds and their culture, an ideology of sacrifice to an Emperor-god. The cancer soon metastasized into a continental war, launched first against Manchuria in 1931, then against China in 1937. In 1941, a coordinated campaign of attacks was launched against the American fleet at Pearl Harbor, as well as the Philippines, Hong Kong, Malaya, Indonesia, and the islands of Guam, Wake, and Midway. By 1942, the cancer had reached the Aleutian Islands, New Guinea, and Burma—and it threatened Australia, India, and the west coast of America. The seemingly invincible Japanese Empire of the Rising Sun controlled one-seventh of the earth’s surface.
Read the whole thing.
Topics: Food, Philosophy, Politics | No Comments »
The True Nature of Socialism
By mcoppock | April 30, 2009
My wife grew up in the Soviet Union, and this is precisely how she describes it: The Choice Between Capitalism and Socialism. Take note of the part in bold type:
A few days ago, I happened to meet a doctor in our area who has an unusual background. He emigrated to America from Russia, and I heard from one of the nurses in his practice that he had to go back through medical school and earn a new degree in order to get his medical license in the United States. This, I thought, is a man who has uprooted his life to an extraordinary degree, all so that he can live and work in America. So when I had the opportunity to talk to him, I asked him why he did it.
He is a very quiet-spoken and reserved man, so much so that I felt sheepish asking him a personal question, and I did not expect much in return. Instead, I got an answer more thorough and profound than I could have guessed at.
“I came here,” he said, “because of my son.” His son is ten years old, and he moved to the US ten years ago. I thought perhaps this meant that his son had some rare medical condition that could be better treated in America. But that wasn’t it. He came here, he said, because “they won’t change”-by which he meant that Russia’s culture had not fundamentally changed after the collapse of the Soviet system. I asked if he left because of Vladimir Putin, who has spearheaded the effort to re-impose an authoritarian political system in Russia. But he replied, “Putin is nothing. It is the system.”You can get by in the system and have a decent life, he explained, if you know the rules-that is, if you know which wheels to grease and which authorities to please, if you know the right things to say and the things you aren’t allowed to say. “I grew up in the system, so I learned the rules,” he continued. “But you ask yourself whether you want your child to learn the rules.” That is a profound and courageous observation. It is not just the material effect of living under a corrupt, bureaucratic, tyrannical system that he feared; it was the soul-destroying psychological effect of having to learn and internalize the rules of that system. [Emphasis added.]
And, unfortunately, she says that America is feeling more and more familiar.
Topics: Economics, Philosophy, Poison, Politics | No Comments »
Objectivism in Practice
By mcoppock | April 30, 2009
A very nice piece on John Allison and BB&T, in the National Review, of all places: Objectivist Philosophy for Fun and Profit:
John Allison isn’t your typical bank executive. For one thing, when he retired at the end of last year as CEO of BB&T — a North Carolina–based bank with more than 1,500 branches managing $143 billion in assets — he had recently shepherded it through the worst banking crisis since the Great Depression, leaving it in fairly good shape. He’s certainly seen as a success where many others in his field have failed miserably as of late.
But there’s another thing that makes Allison far from typical. When he discusses his profession, he doesn’t talk about numbers; he talks about values and principles. In fact, when you go on BB&T’s website, you will find a section entitled “Our Philosophy”:
In a rapidly changing and unpredictable world, individuals and organizations need a clear set of fundamental principles to guide their actions. At BB&T we know the content of our business will, and should, experience constant change. Change is necessary for progress. However, the context, our vision, mission and values, are unchanging because these principles are based on basic truths.
While a lot of financial companies indulge in such boilerplate because it sounds good in annual reports, Allison can credibly assert that living up to that philosophy is one reason BB&T has been able to ride out the current economic crisis. The company made tough decisions consistent with its philosophy, rather than chasing after the latest — and, it turned out, ephemeral — sources of financial innovation.
Read the whole thing.
Topics: Economics, Food, Philosophy, Politics | No Comments »
American Fascism on Display
By mcoppock | April 26, 2009
Fascism is nominal private ownership of the means of production, with government control. See if you can find it in this piece: Busting Bank of America:
The cavalier use of brute government force has become routine, but the emerging story of how Hank Paulson and Ben Bernanke forced CEO Ken Lewis to blow up Bank of America is still shocking. It’s a case study in the ways that panicky regulators have so often botched the bailout and made the financial crisis worse.
In the name of containing “systemic risk,” our regulators spread it. In order to keep Mr. Lewis quiet, they all but ordered him to deceive his own shareholders. And in the name of restoring financial confidence, they have so mistreated Bank of America that bank executives everywhere have concluded that neither Treasury nor the Federal Reserve can be trusted.
Mr. Lewis has told investigators for New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo that in December Mr. Paulson threatened him not to cancel a deal to buy Merrill Lynch. BofA had discovered billions of dollars in undisclosed Merrill losses, and Mr. Lewis was considering invoking his rights under a material adverse condition clause to kill the merger. But Washington decided that America’s financial system couldn’t withstand a Merrill failure, and that BofA had to risk its own solvency to save it. So then-Treasury Secretary Paulson, who says he was acting at the direction of Federal Reserve Chairman Bernanke, told Mr. Lewis that the feds would fire him and his board if they didn’t complete the deal.
Mr. Paulson told Mr. Lewis that the government would provide cash from the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) to help BofA swallow Merrill. But since the government didn’t want to reveal this new federal investment until after the merger closed, Messrs. Paulson and Bernanke rejected Mr. Lewis’s request to get their commitment in writing.
Read the whole thing. Remember that this started with the Bush Administration.
Topics: Economics, Poison, Politics | No Comments »
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