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The civil right of Americans to bail themselves out
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A conservative republican senator, James Inhofe of Oklahoma (at right), wants to prevent a Republican President’s Secretary of the Treasury from spending $350 billion absent approval of a Democratic Party congressional majority.
Thomas Freidman, a liberal Obama-supporting columnist with the New York Times, opposes Democrats in congress that want to come to the rescue of their UAW union constituents at General Motors:
"Tom [Brokaw on Meet the Press], if I thought with $25 billion we could save this industry, I'd be for it, OK?"
I wouldn’t.
If there were an amount of money that would fix GM, investors would be begging GM to let them buy in.
It was necessary to stabilize the banking system, but a crucial “bailout” distinction must be made. Charles Krauthammer acknowledges that:
The Bush administration sees the $700 billion rescue as an emergency measure to save the financial sector on the grounds that finance is a utility. No government would let the electric companies go under and leave the country without power. By the same token, government must save the financial sector lest credit dry up and strangle the rest of the economy.
Republican Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama (below) observes that: "Once we cross the divide from financial institutions to individual corporations, truly, where would you draw the line?"
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Hopefully, the failure of the first $350B, of the Paulson bailout plan, to unclog the money-lending arteries of a financial system distorted and stunted by bad government policies since the late 1990’s, will disabuse the President-Elect of plans to restrict the Liberty of Americans to bail themselves and the country out, as they did from 1983-2005, by being unleashed from central planning and allowed to spread their economic wings.
The government must stop causing companies to fail, allow failing companies to fail and stop preventing investors from investing. Investors went on strike during the 1930’s. Let’s not precipitate a repeat.
Paulson admitted on November 14 that “the financial markets are stabilized.” Fine, give the remaining half of the taxpayers’ money back and shore up the Greenback. Investors worldwide like a strong U.S. dollar. Despite the stabilization, little money is being lent.
Stop criminalizing business failure through the post-Enron Sarbanes-Oxley bill that has stifled new-business start-ups and made London a rival for New York as the world’s financial capitol.
Reduce America’s non-competitive corporate income tax or eliminate it altogether. Haven’t you heard, corporations don’t pay taxes. They just pass them along to consumers. We haven’t the time for any class warfare.
Speaking of which, why not cut the capital gains tax rate? This nation is capital starved. Wouldn’t it be better if private investors wanted to infuse capital in banks so that Hank didn’t feel the need to?
The deficit you ask? What is government spending doing to the deficit? If Paulson spends the rest of his kitty, it will be over a trillion with a “T” for this fiscal year. Remember the 80’s and late 90’s when we cut tax rates and revenues gushed into the treasury?
Back to GM. We should be concerned about the millions of workers that could lose their jobs, but a native with a vested interest in Michigan, Mitt Romney (below) weighed in on the matter today:
IF General Motors, Ford and Chrysler get the bailout that their chief executives asked for yesterday, you can kiss the American automotive industry goodbye. It won’t go overnight, but its demise will be virtually guaranteed.
Without that bailout, Detroit will need to drastically restructure itself. With it, the automakers will stay the course — the suicidal course of declining market shares, insurmountable labor and retiree burdens, technology atrophy, product inferiority and never-ending job losses. Detroit needs a turnaround, not a check.
The key to an economic turnaround is to let Americans be free. Free to keep more of their money and free from onerous laws that value the swimming pools of snail darters over the ability of homosapiens to feed their young.
There is no greater civil right than the inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. When Jim Crow laws restricted that Liberty, Martin Luther King, Jr., John Lewis and many others engaged in civil disobedience in protest.
During the campaign, President-Elect Obama opposed expanded oil drilling, was caught on tape favoring the bankruptcy of the coal industry, and opposed nuclear power expansion.
Will he stick to those liberty denying positions next year in the midst of a deeper recession?
Maybe Americans should take to the streets again and include the seas this time.
How about in addition to another March on Washington to petition the government, let’s have a Float on North Carolina’s Outer Banks to build an oil rig so we can stay warm? Plenty of water out there for hoses too.
Spreading existing wealth won’t do. Americans must seize their inalienable right to create more.
Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer and Minority Report columns
“One man with courage makes a majority.” - Andrew Jackson
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