Budget Cuts Lead To Attempted Rape

Posted in Gov't Workers & Unions with tags , , , , on February 8, 2010 by angrywoodchuck

The Butterfly Effect is a metaphor that encapsulates the concept of sensitive dependence on initial conditions in chaos theory; namely that small differences in the initial condition of a dynamical system may produce large variations in the long term behavior of the system. ~Wikipedia

Also known as…

For the rest of us, the butterfly effect is known through an analogy. When we see an accident on the freeway, we wonder if we would have been involved in it had we left work only a minute earlier, but we left work late because we took a call from our son who had missed his ride from the mall because he stopped to tie his shoelace. 

So had it not been for that shoelace, we might have been in an accident.

The origin of this rests with Edward Lorenz during a presentation entitled, Does the flap of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil set off a tornado in Texas?

So what does this have to do with attempted rape?

Because of the politicians, we ran out of money.  Because we ran out of money, we had to cut back on critical services. Because we had to cut back on critical services, we have to set 55,000 prisoners free.

One of those prisoners set free attempted to rape a woman in Sacramento. He was out on the street for less than 24 hours.

Politicians ignored the unintended consequences of their pandering to government union workers by giving them every health benefit and pay and pension increase they ever asked for, and buying votes by throwing billions into social welfare programs to create a society of dependants on the state.

They ignored the fact that one day the money would run out and important things like keeping prisoners in prison would no longer be possible, and when it was no longer possible, they might be released and one of them might attempt to rape someone.

Politicians make decisions based on politics. Not on common sense, or research or historical precedent.  All of their decisions are based on what keeps them in office and what gets them votes.

We can only hope this butterfly effect continues on its way and these same politicians are removed from office for endangering the lives of the people that they’re supposed to represent.

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Tea Party 2010 – April 15 – Washington D.C.

Posted in Resist on February 8, 2010 by angrywoodchuck

FreedomWorks is hosting a Tea Party on April 15, 2010.

Click here for more information.

The following pictures are from Tea Parties all over the country in 2009.

Click on picture to enlarge.

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Female Bartender Attacks A 250 Pound Man

Posted in Gov't Workers & Unions with tags , , , , on February 6, 2010 by angrywoodchuck

Please view the video and then read the following post.

Warning: The video may be uncomfortable for some viewers.

To be honest, I don’t know what is more disturbing…the beating, or the other men standing around doing nothing.

So you’ve just seen a 5-foot-3, 115-pound, very sober female bartender savagely attack a very drunk, 6-foot-1 man of 250-pounds.  Or did you? According to the “victim” Anthony Abbate, that’s what you just saw.

In his own words…

“She grabbed me and threw me against the wall,” the 250-pound Abbate said of the 115-pound bartender.  According to Abbate, he only fought back to, “get her off of me.” He also complained that, “he hit his head” and said that in the video, he was simply “trying to get away from her.”

What video was he watching?

This incident occurred in Chicago, on February 19, 2007. His sentence was handed down on June 24, 2009. The judge showed no mercy. Anthony was ordered to attend some anger management classes and two years of probation.

No jail time. Not a single day.

If I had beat the stuffing out of a female bartender I would have been sent to the deepest, darkest hole they could find to put me in. And rightly so. This was an unprovoked attack by a drunk man on a girl half his size.

So how did he not serve a single day in jail?

He’s a cop.

The code of silence among the “brotherhood” is a problem for the rest of us. This subgroup of the new government employee elite class comes with guns.

After the beating, a “brother” was suspected of bribing and threatening the bartender to not report the incident to the police. When Anthony went to court, the “brothers” blocked and threatened reporters and cameramen, ticketed cars and hastily swept Anthony out a back door.

The cops who reported to the scene were uninterested in the incident, as reported here by the blog site Blue Must Be True.

I understand most police officers are not like Anthony Abbate. He is a representative minority. I also believe many police officers believe they would do the right thing, whether it was ticketing a fellow off-duty officer for a DUI or not agreeing to sandbag an investigation into a fellow member of the force.

My fear comes from the peer pressure that waits in the wings, to be applied in full measure then the time comes and the rubber meets the road.  How many officers, under this strain from peer pressure, could stand up to it? I believe that number of officers is much smaller than we would like to think.

If police are willing to hinder an investigation into a brutal beating even when it’s caught on tape, you can imagine how easy it is for them to cover up other above-the-law cop crimes like officers driving drunk, speeding, reckless driving, battering a suspect, coercion, illegal searches, etc…

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Government Calligraphers Protected From Recession

Posted in Gov't Workers & Unions with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , on February 5, 2010 by angrywoodchuck

Some of the best comedies are based on characters who have become completely detached from reality. The more detached they are, the funnier it is. Farmers that have never been to the city and don’t know how to use a flush toilet, or a city girl that’s never been on a farm and is shocked to learn where hamburgers come from. Crocodile Dundee was a classic example.

Another good example is L.A. council member Bill Rosendahl, who refuses to lay off his city’s calligraphers during the greatest recession in history.

From Wikipedia, calligraphy “is a type of visual art. It is often called the art of fancy lettering.” If you know how to write fancily, you get to keep your job in the government.

“That’s right, those lovely, hand-scribed proclamations commemorating your service to the community, or perhaps Sea Otter Awareness Week, are a million-dollar-a-year issue at city hall. Elected officials love handing them out to constituents as acknowledgements for volunteerism and other civic contributions.” ~NBC

On Tuesday of this week, L.A. city council members considered laying off 1,000 city workers, including city calligraphers, to close an ever growing budget deficit.  They only needed 8 of their 15 votes. They failed.

Talk about using your tax dollars to subsidize the typewriter repairmen industry, or the horse and buggy whip manufacturers…this makes me wonder if the L.A. government uses photocopy machines or just has a staff of thousands that transcribes documents by hand instead.

Companies have been forced to layoff millions…but the city government of L.A. couldn’t layoff 1,000. It’s so easy to avoid making the tough decisions when it’s not their money that pays for it.

To think of all that time I wasted in college and all the useless experience I have from my lowly private sector existence. If I had only known back then to just study calligraphy for a few weeks, I could have a guaranteed government job with all the perks and benefits and never have to fear a recession.

A mentor of mine once taught me that, “volume hides all sins.” He used a river as a metaphor, and explained that as long as there is lots of water in the river, the flowing surface is smooth and peaceful.  As the river runs dry, and the volume of water drops, it’s forced to run over all of the stones and branches and logs along the bottom and the surface is violent, frothy and agitated. He was referring to fraud and how much easier it is for companies to hide it when they are making  a lot of money, but how quickly their games are revealed when the money starts running out.

Now that we are in the Great Recession, and the money is running out…the games of our government are starting to show on the surface. Not only are we learning about rampant pension and benefit abuse by the unions in collaboration with the politicians, but also how detached from the average American citizen our politicians are. While we lost bonuses, had our pay cut, lost our jobs…government workers were getting increased benefits, more pay and kept all their jobs. While we cut back and started saving more, government grew larger and spent more.

While companies struggle to get lean and efficient, cutting waste and excess, letting go of key employees critical to the business, just to stay alive…the government won’t even lay off their calligraphers.

If it weren’t true, it would be a comedy.

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Government Employees: The Elite Citizen Class

Posted in Gov't Workers & Unions with tags , , , , , , , , , on January 30, 2010 by angrywoodchuck

Did you know that in California, 1 in 22 people can drive in violation of the toll roads without a transponder and never pay the fine?

Or park illegally in handicap spots?

Or be alone and take the carpool lane?

Did you know that a large portion of this elite group can retire at 55 with more than 80% of their highest years salary…for life. And when they die, their salary goes to their spouse…also for life.

Or that when they retire at 50, they can take another job paying the same or more and also get their retirement check from their first job at the same time?

Or that this same group has a guaranteed retirement plan…which means unlike the private sector where our 401k goes up and down in value with the market, these workers are guaranteed a fixed rate of return, no matter how bad the market gets?

Did you know that many in this group will get promoted during their last year on the job so they can spike their retirement benefits since benefits paid are based on the last year(s) of employment?

Or that many in this group claim an injury (over 50% in some police agencies) like knee pain or back pain in their last year on the job so that 50% of their retirement benefits are shielded from taxes?

In fact, even common conditions from getting old such as heart problems or cancer are considered “work related injuries” for this group, thus shielding 50% of their benefits from taxes.

Did you know that even when convicted of crimes, even if sent to prison…this group continues to receive pay and benefits.

Who is this elite group?

Government union employees. Your city, your state, your federal government employees…

The people that are supposed to serve us…are now treated to early retirements, lavish pension plans and copious health benefits.

Who pays for all of this? Us. Who guarantees the healthy rate of return on their retirement funds no matter how much money it loses? Us.

Who exactly is working for who?

“While the average household income in the United States hovers around $50,000 a year,” this group, “often earns more than double that amount in their retirement years.”

Want to know who?  Click here.

“Rank has its privileges and its clear that government workers have a rank above the rest of us.” ~ Steven Greenhut, author of PLUNDER!

“Today, government employees in the vast majority of job classifications earn considerably more than those in the private sector doing similar work.” ~Howard Jarvis Taxpayer Association

Every few pages of this book, I learn about a new way that many government employees including firefighters, teachers and police abuse their pension plans and benefits at our expense.

Buy the book anywhere or click here.

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State of the Union – My Thoughts

Posted in Government Failures with tags , , , , , , , , , on January 28, 2010 by angrywoodchuck

The following are my personal thoughts on President Obama’s State of the Union speech last night. The bulleted lines are from his speech, everything in italics or [brackets] or bolded is mine.

The speech was long, so the post is long.

__________________________________________________________________________________________

  • One in ten Americans still cannot find work…

In previous posts I argued that the real number for unemployment is much higher, closer to 17% or more.  However I recently came across an article by the Cato Institute that explains why that number is misleading.

  • For those who had already known poverty, life has become that much harder.

When I think of poverty, I think of those commercials of belly bloated children in Africa with flies landing on their eyes. In all my trips around the country, I have never seen this. I am not really sure where the “poverty” lives and assuming it is somewhere, I do not think it makes up a significant percentage of the population. I have read that many below the “poverty line” have VCR’s, DVD players, color TV’s, computers, etc… At some point I will do a post on how the government calculates poverty, how many of them there really are, how many people are impoverished due to their own poor decisions, and what role welfare has on encouraging the poor to stay poor.

  • The toughest to read are those written by children – asking why they have to move from their home, or when their mom or dad will be able to go back to work.

I always have a problem with any politician making anything, “about the children.”  Every time a politician, local, state or federal…has his hand out for money, it’s “for the children.”

  • We face a deficit of trust -– deep and corrosive doubts about how Washington works that have been growing for years. To close that credibility gap we have to take action on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue — to end the outsized influence of lobbyists; to do our work openly; to give our people the government they deserve. (Applause.)
  • So I supported the last administration’s efforts to create the financial rescue program. And when we took the program over, we made it more transparent and accountable.

What was transparent? He promised to televise the healthcare reform debate on CSPAN so there would be no closed-door deal making and he never did it.  As a result, many closed-door backroom deals were made.  What about the FED?  Whenever we ask them for the list of banks that received our tax money and how much they got, Ben Bernanke simply says, “No.” The GAO is not permitted to review any of those financial transactions….so, exactly what is transparent and open?

  • To recover the rest, I have proposed a fee on the biggest banks. I know Wall Street isn’t keen on this idea, but if these firms can afford to hand out big bonuses again, they can afford a modest fee to pay back the taxpayers who rescued them in their time of need.

As I stated in a prior post, this is just another tax on banks to drum up badly needed funding (at the time) for the proposed healthcare bill hidden under the guise of how much we hate banks so let’s whack them for some more money.  But then, later in his speech, Obama contradicts himself…

  • Look, I am not interested in punishing banks. I’m interested in protecting our economy.

So…he admits to whacking banks with a fee in the billions of dollars because they “can afford to hand out bonuses” but then says, “I am not interested in punishing banks.” Sounds like punishment for giving out bonuses to me.

  • Now, let me repeat: We cut taxes. We cut taxes for 95 percent of working families. (Applause.) We cut taxes for small businesses. We cut taxes for first-time homebuyers. We cut taxes for parents trying to care for their children. We cut taxes for 8 million Americans paying for college. (Applause.)

Democrats have redefined what a “tax cut” means.  To all of us, it simply means you get to keep more of your money by not having to pay it to the IRS. That’s not what it means when Obama says it.  The new Democrat definition of a tax cut according to an article in the WSJ is…”in their lexicon, a tax cut includes tens of billions of dollars in government handouts that are disguised by the phrase ‘tax credit.’” In other words, Americans that don’t pay any taxes at all would get checks from the government for these credits. The money for these checks is simply taken from other Americans who do pay taxes and can’t get the credits..which makes his “tax cut” just one huge wealth transfer from taxpaying Americans to non-taxpaying Americans. According to The Tax Foundation, about 44% of Americans will not pay taxes…but they would be elegible to receive these checks…checks that the other 66% of Americans will have to pay for.  That’s not a  tax cut. Not..a…tax…cut.

  • Because of the steps we took [the economic stimulus plan], there are about two million Americans working right now who would otherwise be unemployed.

Big deal.  They spent $787 billion dollars to save 2 million jobs.  Two million jobs is less than half of one percent of the employed…so the unemployment rate would be 10.5% instead of 10%.  And for that half-point we (I mean the next two generations) get to go into $780 billion in debt? We should have just given 2 million unemployed people $390,000 each.

  • Two hundred thousand work in construction and clean energy; 300,000 are teachers and other education workers. Tens of thousands are cops, firefighters, correctional officers, first responders. (Applause.) And we’re on track to add another one and a half million jobs to this total by the end of the year.

So the majority of those that got to keep their jobs are government workers.  Oh, I get it.  Cops, firefighters, correctional officers and first responders.  That’s great. So the same people who make more than the private sector, can retire at 55 with 90% of their highest income and complete medical benefits for life got to keep their jobs. How does a government worker (Obama) telling me he saved millions of other government worker’s jobs make me feel any better?

  • Talk to the window manufacturer in Philadelphia who said he used to be skeptical about the Recovery Act, until he had to add two more work shifts just because of the business it created.

Could it be the same window manufacturer that has a management executive that happens to be married to Cathy Zoi, the Assistant Secretary of Energy who gets to decide which companies receive the Recovery Act funds that we tax payers are providing? Hmmm… Or the fact that she and her husband own 120,000 shares of this company, Serious Materials. Nobody finds it strange that an Obama official gave her own husbands company, that she also owns shares in, a nice slice of the Recovery Act pie?  Read all about it here…

  • Regarding the “lost decade”…where the income of the average American household declined while the cost of health care and tuition reached record highs; where prosperity was built on a housing bubble and financial speculation.

Simply put, education costs would not be so high if the government stopped subsidizing it. If I am selling apples for $1 and  you are buying them for $1, we are in a free market.  If the government wants to encourage apple sales, it will offer you $1 in funding for every $1 in apples you buy.  Knowing this, I will raise the price of my apples to $2. I’d be stupid not to.  The price of an education began climbing quickly the moment government began subsidizing it.

Medical costs…oh, so many posts about this.  You can not control costs, you can only control prices. If it costs you $1 in flour, eggs, apples and milk to make a pie…then it costs $1.  If you want to make a pie for less than that, then you have to leave out one of the ingredients which would then not be enough to make a pie. Cost is cost is cost. 

What you SELL the pie for can change.  The government is only proposing to force you to sell your pie for LESS.  Which means LESS profit. Which means you have less money to expand, hire more pie-makers, work on new pies, improve your pies, use better ingredients in your pies, etc… So pie eaters will suffer in the end because you can not improve your pies as quickly because you have less money to do so.

  • But to create more of these clean energy jobs, we need more production, more efficiency, more incentives. And that means building a new generation of safe, clean nuclear power plants in this country. (Applause.) It means making tough decisions about opening new offshore areas for oil and gas development. (Applause.) It means continued investment in advanced biofuels and clean coal technologies.

This…I actually like.  I’m not big in using tax payer money to fund green technologies but I do agree we need more nuclear power plants and cleaner coal burning technologies.

  • I know that there are those who disagree with the overwhelming scientific evidence on climate change.

I don’t like non-scientists making claims to know for certain a fact what is wholly unknowable.  Just because the head politician says so doesn’t work for me. We have less than 200 years of climate data for a planet that has been around for billions of years.  If we just go back to the dinosaurs 64 million years ago, we only have climate data for 0.0003% of earth’s history. The gall of anyone to think that we even know for sure what is happening.  Some say we are in a global cooling cycle, others in a warming cycle…either way, with only 0.0003% of the data I’m not impressed with anyone’s strenuous guess, which is all it really is. Should we be responsible humans and try to be green? Yes. Should we force taxpayers to pay for it, or hinder an economy with thousands of taxes, regulations and fees? No.

  • Now, this year, we’ve broken through the stalemate between left and right by launching a national competition to improve our schools. And the idea here is simple: Instead of rewarding failure, we only reward success.

Why can’t we just use merit pay at public schools and get rid of tenure? Or how about providing tax credits for families who choose to home school or send their kids to charter schools?  Those are simple ideas that immediately reward success.  Why doesn’t he just do that? Because the unions would never let it happen, and the politicians know it.

  • And let’s tell another one million students that when they graduate, they will be required to pay only 10 percent of their income on student loans, and all of their debt will be forgiven after 20 years –- and forgiven after 10 years if they choose a career in public service…

I give Obama credit for mentioning that public workers would have their student loan debt forgiven after 10 years while us lowly unworthy private sector shlubs only get it after 20 years.  He conveniently left out though, that the government workers also would not have to pay taxes on the forgiven amount, while us shlubs would.

I didn’t choose to tackle this issue [healthcare] to get some legislative victory under my belt.

Yes you did.

  • And by now it should be fairly obvious that I didn’t take on health care because it was good politics.I took on health care because of the stories I’ve heard from Americans…

Please, no more letters from children. Why are children always registered Democrats?

  • On healthcare reform…Still, this is a complex issue, and the longer it was debated, the more skeptical people became. I take my share of the blame for not explaining it more clearly to the American people. And I know that with all the lobbying and horse-trading, the process left most Americans wondering, “What’s in it for me?”

Americans KNOW what’s in it for them…more taxes and a lower quality of healthcare.  That’s why Massachusetts routed Coakley for Brown, to put the brakes on this nonsense.

All the “lobbying and horse-trading?” You mean the lobbying and horse-trading that you promised us wouldn’t happen because you were going to televise all the negotiations on CSPAN..which you never did? THAT is why there was so much lobbying and horse-trading…that’s what happens when you hide the process from the public…backroom deals and secret handshakes rule the process.

I can’t help but hear some elitism in his statement “that he takes his share of the blame for not explaining it more clearly to the American people.” Like we are stupid? It’s like he’s saying he used too many big words so we lost him and as a result, simply voted healthcare down because we got confused and started running with scissors in frustration.

  • Now, even as health care reform would reduce our deficit…

Only for the next four years when all the big tax increases go into effect, but none of the healthcare benefits  do.  It’s easy to reduce a debt when you increase taxes to pay for the costs of a service, but withhold providing the service.

  • Starting in 2011, we are prepared to freeze government spending for three years. Now, I know that some in my own party will argue that we can’t address the deficit or freeze government spending when so many are still hurting. And I agree — which is why this freeze won’t take effect until next year – (laughter) — when the economy is stronger. That’s how budgeting works. (Laughter and applause.)

In the bolded section above…I did not hear laughter on the TV last night.  I heard boos.  Why? Because he talks the big game (well, now he does since he doesn’t have a supermajority anymore) about freezing spending…but he won’t implement it until NEXT year. Why? Why not do it now? And it’s really not next year, it’s “when the economy is stronger” so if he needs to keep spending next year he can just push the freeze into 2012 and beyond stating the economy isn’t “stronger” yet.  And who knows who gets to interpret what “stronger” really means. And why did the article put (laughter) when it should have been (boos)?

Also…80% of the budget is exempt from the freeze and there is some concern on the definition of “freeze” on the remaining 20%.  Depending on how the White House does it, it could mean next to nothing. We’ll see.

  • That’s what I came to Washington to do. That’s why -– for the first time in history –- my administration posts on our White House visitors online. That’s why we’ve excluded lobbyists from policymaking jobs, or seats on federal boards and commissions. (nothing here)

Inside those brackets, it should have said, (boos). Why? Because that is what I heard on the TV last night.  There are many that know that lobbyists are not excluded from policy making and that he has many former lobbyists in his administration, even though he said during his campaign he would not do that. The White House even had to admit that certain people were “excluded” from the lobbyist ban in his administration just so he could hire them.

  • We were sent here to serve our citizens, not our ambitions.

No, YOUR ambition. If you were here to serve your citizens you would have listened to the months of angry citizens in the polls, on TV, at townhall meetings, on the Radio, on blogs, at tea parties…all over the country. The citizens were all but showing up on the White House grounds with pitchforks.  It took Massachusetts for you to listen, and only because you have no choice now, otherwise, you would still be following your ambition, not your citizens.

  • But each time a CEO rewards himself for failure, or a banker puts the rest of us at risk for his own selfish gain, people’s doubts grow. Each time lobbyists game the system or politicians tear each other down instead of lifting this country up, we lose faith.

I find it humorous that according to Obama, CEO’s and banks and lobbyists do very evil things like have selfish gain, reward themselves, game the system…but the worst thing a politician does seems to be tearing other politicians down. So, does that mean that politicians don’t do things for selfish gain, to reward themselves or to game the system? I think they do all those things…funny how he made politicians sound like angels, but everyone else is evil incarnate.

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FOOD, Inc.

Posted in Movie Review with tags , , , , on January 27, 2010 by angrywoodchuck

An eye-opening film into the structure of how most of our food is managed, engineered and controlled by a small handful of corporations and the unintended consequences that result. ~A.W. Chuck

In Food, Inc., filmmaker Robert Kenner lifts the veil on our nation’s food industry, exposing the highly mechanized underbelly that has been hidden from the American consumer with the consent of our government’s regulatory agencies, USDA and FDA. Our nation’s food supply is now controlled by a handful of corporations that often put profit ahead of consumer health, the livelihood of the American farmer, the safety of workers and our own environment.

We have bigger-breasted chickens, the perfect pork chop, herbicide-resistant soybean seeds, even tomatoes that won’t go bad, but we also have new strains of E. coli—the harmful bacteria that causes illness for an estimated 73,000 Americans annually. We are riddled with widespread obesity, particularly among children, and an epidemic level of diabetes among adults. ~ Food, Inc.

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Government Workers Are Better Than You

Posted in Gov't Workers & Unions with tags , , , , , , , on January 26, 2010 by angrywoodchuck

The current administration continues to elevate government workers into an elite class of individuals that are above the private sector working class.

The following is for private sector workers, I’ll get to the public employees in a minute. According to this Forbes magazine article, Obama Plans to Cut Student Loan Payments, the president’s plan would cap payments on federal loans at 10% of a borrower’s income above a set minimum…and allow loans to be forgiven after 20 years instead of 25. Any debt not paid off after 25 years is forgiven, although the government regards the forgiven balance as income for tax purposes.

So in summary, for private sector workers, if you are still paying a student loan after 20 years, you can stop paying and the government will forgive the loan…but you are responsible to pay taxes on the amount you didn’t pay because it is considered income.

If you can set aside for a moment the discussion on whether this plan is a good idea, why did Forbes not mention that government workers will have their loans forgiven in 10 years, not 20 and have zero tax liability on the unpaid portion until the very last paragraph of the article?

So I have two concerns to address in today’s post. 

First, why do government workers, yet again, get a special deal from the government so they can stop paying student loans in half the time and without any taxes, compared to private sector workers, which we then have to pay for?

I suppose if your plan was to expand government as much as possible, these are the kinds of incentives you would offer people.

Second, why do I have to keep going to the end of these articles to find this information out?  Why are the articles purposely hiding these details?

Obama is supposed to discuss this in his State of the Union address this Wednesday.  Do you think he will mention the preferential treatment of government workers?  Let’s wait and see…

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GM and Chrysler Employees – Only 0.1% of the Employed

Posted in Government Failures, Unemployment & Labor Law with tags , , , , , , on January 24, 2010 by angrywoodchuck

“Hundreds of thousands of Americans would have been hurt, not just at those companies themselves, but at other auto companies and at their suppliers and dealers, here in Ohio, up in Michigan, and all across this country.”

That is what Obama told a crowd in the suburbs of Cleveland last week.

Why did we spend $64.2 billion dollars to save 0.1% of American workers?  That’s right…these American workers make up less than one-fourth of one percent.  A fraction of a fraction.  The way the news goes on and on about it, it sounds like half of America would get laid off if we let GM and Chrysler go under.

Let’s review…

Chrysler, GM and Ford all went to Congress for a bailout. Ford got nothing.

Out of 130,000,000 (130 million) people now working in the United States, only 170,000 of them are GM and Chrysler employees in the United States.  That represents .13%, or less than one-fourth of 1% of working Americans.

Even if you consider their suppliers and dealers, and quadruple that number to 680,000 as potentially unemployed,  that is still only one-half of 1% of working Americans.

So to save less than 0.5% of jobs, the government put us, the American taxpayer on the hook for $64.2 billion.

Worst Case #1: They didn’t get our money

  • They would have had to do what Ford did. 
  • Massive reorganization and streamlining that allowed them to stay in business with $0 from us.
  • They would become a leaner,  more streamlined business.
  • Ford did not even have to declare bankruptcy.

Worst Case #2: They go into bankruptcy

  • Even if they did go into bankruptcy they would have been bought up by other companies or private equity firms or simply reorganized under bankruptcy protection allowing them to renegotiate their ridiculously bloated union contracts and come out the other side a leaner more competitive company.
  • We have seen numerous companies go into and out of bankruptcy, most of the time it is not the end of the company, they simply reorganize and re-emerge a new, better company.

Worst Case #3: Despite bankruptcy protection they dissolve

  • The same demand for vehicles would exist, with two less companies to meet that demand.
  • The moment they vanished, Toyota, Hyundai, Volkswagen, Honda, and Ford…would immediately begin extending their operations in the United States by expanding current manufacturing plants and building new ones to meet demand.
  • They would all be looking around for unemployed auto employees to offer them jobs at their new plants.  So most of the employees that were laid off would simply get scooped up by these other car companies.

In other words, contrary to what Obama claims, the collapse of Chrysler and GM would not have affected as many people as he makes it out to sound.  In fact, bailing out Chrysler and GM made matters worse for them.

Now that they received an infusion of our money, they don’t have to trim as much fat which means when they come out the other end they will still be more inefficient than all the asian car companies…and Ford.

So why did we bailout GM and Chrysler, such an infinitesimal portion of the employed?  I have two theories. 

First, I believe that Obama relies heavily on unions to maintain whatever is left of his support so he must pander to them any opportunity he gets. 

Second, I believe it makes for great news, soundbites and photo-ops to play on the nightly news…a testament to his “doing something” about the failing economy even though in reality, it was as effective in helping the economy as using a postage stamp for an umbrella during a monsoon.

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Sources:
GM has 112,000 employees.
Chrysler has 58,000 employees.
Same sites provided bailout dollar information.
Currently employed figures from government bureau of labor statistics.

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Banks Get to Pay for Government Expansion

Posted in Government Failures, Healthcare Reform with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on January 22, 2010 by angrywoodchuck

The healthcare reform bill may be dead but there is still a need to understand why government expansionism is bad for business and for taxpayers.

The elephant in the room on the healthcare plan was how the heck was the government going to pay for it?

And not just healthcare reform’s costs, but the debt we are already in for Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

Taxing just the top 2% of earners (greater than $250,000 income) in this country to pay for millions of Americans to get free medical care is just not going to cut it.  Nobody needs a degree in calculus to know that math just won’t work.

In addition to the “tax-now-benefits-later” game I mentioned in a previous post, a tax on suntan salons, and the myriad other taxes they’ve built into the bill…the government is scrambling to find new things to tax.

Today’s new tax is called the “Bailout Tax” and will affect mostly the 10 largest financial institutions. The fee (they like to call taxes “fees” so we don’t know it’s a tax) will be in place for 10 years and raise about $90 billion.

The government is taking advantage of the American people not being happy with the banks or their bonuses to create this tax. As upset with the banks as we may be, this “fee” is just a tax the government needed to help pay for their expansion through such things as the healthcare reform bill.

Another problem with taxes is that the banks won’t pay for them, we will.  Why would a bank take a hit like that when they can just past those additional costs onto us through fees, higher interest rates or more restrictive lending standards.  Rest assured, the banks will still be open for business, still make their profit goals, still be handing out bonuses and we will get to pay their new tax.

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