Capitalism Being Demonized

AIG behaved outrageously and Democrats are seizing on the unsavory conduct of this company and renegades like Madoff to make the case against free market capitalism. No doubt Goebbels would have been proud. Obama is a new incarnation of Huey Long. His populist rhetoric is aimed not at the particular entity he picks as target of the day but at the very economic system that gave us more than two hundred years of prosperity. There have certainly been recessions, panics, and a Great Depression, but if markets are allowed to work without the ruining hand of government manipulation, economic growth can return and be sustained. AIG or Madoff are easy to villify but they don't represent free enterprise any more tha William Calley represented the US Army. Resist the temptation to lean toward central planning; once we have socialism-we are over as the America the founding fathers envisioned.

Lunatics Run Amok

North Korea has declared her imminent intention to launch a satellite which will actually be the test firing of a North Korean intercontinental ballistic missile. The North Korean leader, the last Stalinist tyrant on earth, is reputed to have suffered a health setback. The cult of personality that drives his nation may see his departure as the start of the Apocalypse and attempt to unleash the end of the earth in his honor. Just as Russians fell in droves in the Great Patriotic War (World War II) with megaphones blaring to advance for Mother Russia and Papa Joe (Stalin), the North Korean military may abandon rational considerations like survival when Dear Leader is fading. The world has abandoned sanity with its rush to rebuild Gaza. America is committing herself to providing nine hundred million dollars to these Palestinians who murdered a US State Department security team during the last Bush administration. Palestinians who routinely denounce and demonize the United States, who trample and burn the American flag side by side with Israel's banner, and who celebrated September 11, 2001 by dancing in the streets, firing off their AKs, and giving out candy, will receive US largess while continuing to launch the rockets at Israel that provoked the Israeli response in the first place. The push for a national heath care rationing system is underway and coming into full force with ABC Obama propagandist doctor Tim Johnson saying Americans must be "shamed" into a socialist medical allocation system. As the country is struggling to survive economically based on how poorly the government has directed so much else, do we want bureaucrats hovering over and directing the life and death decisions about our families' health? Internationally, Gordon Brown and Barack Obama want to institute a world recovery plan. Isn't it enough that they are bankrupting their own nations-now they seek to expand this unaffordable and ultimately self-destructive beneficence to the rest of the world? Finally, the US announced it would provide the American International Group (AIG) with thirty billion more dollars in bailout funds-its fourth government handout-after AIG announced a loss of 61.7 billion dollars in the fourth quarter. This staggering sum is more than the annual gross national product of many countries yet one American company managed to drop it in three(3) months. An ordered world can not survive such madness.

Corporate Jet Crash

ABC's gadfly imp Brian Ross pilloried auto executives for flying to Washington on corporate jets. He tried to question GM's Rick Wagoner as he departed the hearing chamber. GM employs hundreds of thousands in Michigan, Tennessee(Saturn), Kentucky(the Corvette plant), many other US states in fact, and many foreign countries. He could be summoned anywhere on earth at any time and can not be tied to airline schedules. He may use his powers of suasion in person to lobby Angela Merkel and other German leaders as GM, which has sold millions of cars under the Opal label, to extend GM a line of credit (as of now, GM is seeking $1 billion from Germany). A local talk show host joined the bashing bandwagon. This usually reliable conservative does not recognize the mainstream media is on a anti-corporate jihad trying to facilitate Obama's socialism. This is not Steve Gill's first departure from reason. I well remember his defense of Sam Howard who helped bankrupt Tennessee's attempt at universal health care. He knew Howard, a colleague in Republican administrations, was an honorable man despite drawing $50 million while failing to pay providers. I guess it is alright to drain the public trough as long as you are a close personal friend, and it's fine to play the class envy card when it advances your argument. AIG was also criticized by Ross as it has multiple jets still in use but is trying to sell two of them. Part of AIG's business model and a profit center is jet leasing. Just a short-time ago, reporters were doing stories on the good corporate jets have done, transporting needed transplant organs, sick patients, or relatives of injured troops such as a flight of a family to the military burn center in Texas to be with a critically wounded soldier. The free market is our only hope for positive change.