Warning: This blog is political in nature.

If you are sensitive to political commentary,
please go back to my main Random Thoughts blog.

If you like political discussion, you may also like my Political Positions blog.

Thursday, April 30, 2009

Auto industry bankruptcy

Well, Bush said that the "US auto industry" was too big to fail. (Never mind that Honda, Toyota, Volkswagen, BMW, and others make their stuff here, and frequently with more US-made parts than the "US" manufacturers...) We, meaning the taxpayers, have put billions into them.

Well, now Chrysler is failing anyway. YAY! We've been putting "good money after bad" for far too long, and I don't want the government running businesses anyway. And Fiat will get a good deal, because the tax payers and debtors (mostly small businesses) are covering the rest.

Now we just need to push GM over, so they go bankrupt too and get the government out of their management. And the unions too, while they're at it. Unions can be useful, but they've gotten to just be huge, political, and expensive bureaucracies of their own.

The Federal Governmemnt Is Clueless

OK, the Air Force One flight that served to terrify people in NYC cost closer to $350,000. And the trip to Missouri yesterday was about $20 million. Your tax dollars at work.

Our government over the past year - yes, with both parties and both administrations - are using crisis after crisis to get more power. The government and the unions now control GM and the major banks (and a large portion of Chrysler). They have pushed through cabinet secretaries without proper review, and any objections were overruled in the name of the crisis. We got a tax cheat AS THE HEAD OF THE IRS because we had a crisis. He has since proven worthless; CitiBank and Bank of America are now (based on the "stress test") seen as less stable and more likely to fail AFTER the bailout than before. Now we have someone with a strongly racist beliefs as head of Health and Human Services because of a crisis. It's just a bad flu, at least for now, and all they really need to do is close the border from Mexico to keep sick illegals out.

When I say HHS secretary Sebelius is racist, I mean as in wanting to eliminate all black people. She's scary - check it out, just not with the major news sources since they love everything Obama does. Oh, and as a reminder, Obama's only 1/16 black. With 7/16 Arab and 1/2 white. This is common knowledge, but generally ignored. I don't care what race/heritage someone is, but don't try to convince me of something that's not true. Planned Parenthood was started by Margaret Sanger explicitly to eliminate blacks by aborting all black babies. They try to play that down now, but it's still true.

They just don't get it!

More evidence that politicians, on either side, do not get it.

- Arlin Specter, Senator from PA, switches parties to increase his chances of reelection.
Proof that there is little difference between the two parties to most people in office.

- Air Force One flies at low altitude over NYC for some pictures. Near where 9/1/1 happened. Without even telling NYC officials about it.
Obama says he's outraged? You really expect us to believe somebody can take Air Force One for a flight without his permission? With fighter escort? At a TAX PAYER COST of at least $200,000? Maybe a lot more?

- "Swine Flu", uh, "H1N1".
It's Mexican Flu. That's what other countries call it. There is also a real swine flu, and this is not it. We call other flus based on where they're from. Remember "Asian flu"? "Spanish flu?" This is Mexican flu. But our politician won't call it that, because they don't want to offend Mexico or their illegal aliens who are bringing the disease into this country. If they'd just OFFEND Mexico a bit by ENFORCING THE LAW and CLOSING THE BORDER we wouldn't have to worry about it. Instead, they let people walk across to get free healthcare here. Well, free to them - we pay for it for them through higher costs and higher insurance rates. If the disease was in Canada, they'd close the border in a heartbeat.

- "Cap and Trade" to reduce "Global Warming"
First, the science is NOT "settled". Many scientists say the planet is cooling, not warming. But our government will not allow debate on the issue. When they host conferences, they do not allow those who are known to disagree to attend.

I think it's moderating - getting warmer in the winter and cooler in the summer. In VA, we haven't had much snow in years and no temperatures below 0, but we've also had no summer temperatures over 100 in a while and not much over 90. Which I like, by the way - it saves money on heat and A/C, and just feels better. Maybe we're heading to Hawaii temperatures of 75 year-round? One can hope... (By the way, even if all polar ice completely melts, "real scientists", as opposed to those with an agenda to push, estimate the oceans MAY rise by 1 to 4 inches, and likely not even that much...)

Back to the point. Cap and Trade is a TAX. A big one. One which non-partisan estimates say will at least double the cost of all energy in this country. Car gas? Doubled. Natural gas? Doubled. Coal? Doubled. (Obama said during the election he was going to put coal companies out of business, so no surprise there.) Electricity? Doubled. When we're in recession? Most costs of business are doubled.
But man-made CO2 is only 3% of the CO2 produced each year. They don't care - they want power.
And they will not allow real progress. Nuclear energy causes ZERO pollution of any kind, including CO2, but they won't allow that. They use fear tactics of forty-year-old technology. Solar and wind power supposedly endanger the environment, so production is extremely limited. We could already be completely off any fossil fuels, if the government would just get out of the way.

Tuesday, April 28, 2009

The Specter Spectacle

So, Senator Arlen Specter just changed parties, from Republican to Democrat. That just exemplifies the problem in politics these days - there's not much difference between the two. Neither one supports the people. Some in the parties do, but not the parties themselves.

Can we start a "Beckian Party" - the party of those who say what they mean and mean what they say? Or is that a 9-12 Party?

Friday, April 24, 2009

Our politicians are getting irritating...

- They go on about how "water boarding" is horrible and abusive. But Nancy Pelosi, current Speaker of the House, KNEW since 2002 that it was permitted and legally not torture. Neither she nor anyone else objected about any of the procedures until now, and in fact, two actually asked if it was going far enough. There are minutes of the meeting as proof.

- Obama blames Bush for his inherited debt. Yes, Bush doubled the national debt during his two terms. I didn't like most of what Bush did. But that doesn't explain Obama quadrupling the debt (based on Federal budget forecasts) during his first term.

- Republicans blame Democrats for poor control of the Mexico border. Bush created a highway through the middle of the country that is considered international territory; any truck from an approved company gets through with little if any inspection, and McCain tried to reduce control of illegal crossing even further.

- Dems blame our banking problems on lack of regulation that allowed them to make unwise loans. Sorry, but Barney Frank's House Financial Services Committee required banks make high-risk loans, and if they refused, they'd lose access to Federal borrowing sources.

- Everybody was up at arms about AIG bonuses. The bonuses were not to those who were part of the problems, but to those who took over from them. Further, these people had agreed to a salary of only $1 a year; the bonus was to be their only pay for the work, and then only if they exceeded the goals that had been set by the regulators. Since they did exceed the goals, they were supposed to get the bonus. Now the bonus, the only pay they get, will be taxed at 90%. Which is illegal, by the way, according to the Constitution, that forbids punitive taxes or taxes that are targeted to specific groups.

- Speaking of bonuses, did you know that members of Chris Dodd's Senate Finance Committee got bonuses from Fannie Mae, which is also getting bailout money? And the Fannie Mae bonuses were not protected by the bailout wording; AIG's bonuses were specifically allowed in the bailout, because they were appropriate, as explained above. And both Chris Dodd and Barack Obama got hundreds of thousands from AIG.

- The government says they want to keep the "auto industry" from failing. So they are now requiring Chrysler and GM to file bankruptcy, when they say they don't need to? (Besides, don't Honda, Toyota, BMW, etc, who make their vehicles here count as auto industry? Honda uses more US-made parts in their cars than Ford does...)

- Obama went to the opening of a wind farm? Fine. I like cheaper energy. But he took Air Force One to get there and used 9000 gallons of jet fuel to do so? And probably (he usually does) took a second one as backup, and a cargo jet with the limos, at least tripling the gas to closer to 30,000 gallons of jet fuel. And the gas used by the processional limos, which are not hybrids.

- Boston requires all taxi companies buy new hybrids by 2015. They can't get used ones; they have to be new ones.

- And by the way, research shows that hybrid cars create a lot more environmental damage when they are made than they can ever offset by being more efficient. (And they aren't usually that much more efficient...)