That’s Right Nate

Much of the AIG bonuses will go towards family expenses like cars for their children to get to school.

The American dream is in jeopardy.   Imagine what it is like to work long days and longer weeks in the hopes of getting a bonus to help get you by in lean economic times.   Now imagine that congress uses the power to tax in order to take all that money away from you simply because they resent your success.  The power to tax is the power to destroy and the Democrats in congress have no trouble wielding this power.  It is enough to make successful people simply “go Galt” and refuse to work.  Afterall, they won’t see the fruits of their own labor.  Such is the plight for dozens of employees of AIG.

American, a country which used to aspire to the success of its elite, now resents it.   Let me tell you about these bonuses.  Companies like AIG have to pay these large bonuses in order to get the top people to work for them.  Without a million dollar bonus or retention payment or whatever you want to call it, many of these guys would just go into social work or teaching.  Companies pay these bonuses because that is the cost of doing business requires it.  Its just unfortunate that since the taxpayers are paying that cost, we have to pay the bonuses.  These bonuses will help stimulate the economy though.  They represent a potential $165,000,000 in sports cars, caviar, private planes, and luxury yachts.

And how does congress react?  Well according to Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY), “My colleagues and I are sending a letter to [AIG CEO Edward] Liddy informing him that he can go right ahead and tell the employees that are scheduled to get bonuses that they should voluntarily return them,” Sen. Charles Schumer said on the Senate floor. “Because if they don’t, we plan to tax virtually all of [the money] … so it is returned to its rightful owners, the taxpayers.”

His fellow Democrat Bill Nelson of Florida chimed in by calling for a 90% excise tax on the bonuses, but it isn’t just the Democrats who seem to have problems with successful hard working men and women.   Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) took an even more extreme position, “But I would suggest the first thing that would make me feel a little bit better toward them if they’d follow the Japanese example and come before the American people and take that deep bow and say, I’m sorry, and then either do one of two things: resign or go commit suicide.”

The AIG executives will get their hard earned bonuses and they will spend them, but I can promise you they won’t enjoy it.  Caviar and champagne just aren’t the same when somebody has killed your appetite.

The Louisiana Purchase cost the United States $15,000,000 and for that money we got 828,000 square miles.  With the amount of money that Obama is spending on his budget we could buy approximately 9,660,000,000,000,000 square miles from the French Government.  However, we’re not getting land.   We’re simply getting a budget that will destroy us all.

George Bush has been getting a lot of blame lately, but I wonder if even he could have foreseen how irresponsible Obama would be.  You can be sure that he wouldn’t have spent the large surplus he inherited from Bill Clinton if he knew that the next President would turn out to be such a big time spender.  Bush was counting on having a reasonable and intelligent successor who would be thrifty.  That’s why his Harvard Business School educated mind decided to bite the bullet and give tax cuts to the wealthiest individuals in our country.  Instead, we now have Obama trying to bungle his way to prosperity.

Let’s talk about those rich folks who are being taxed so unfairly.   There is a horrible misconception that these people are super wealthy, but they’re not.  These are the people you see everyday in your condo, playing tennis at your club, or in your board meeting.  They are lawyers, plastic surgeons, NBA point guards, shipping magnates, self-storage company owners, and hedge fund managers.  A family making $350,000 a year would see their tax bill rise by as much as $4600.  That $4600 would pay for 1/4 of a car.   Maybe not for the parent, but surely for a teenager.  Hedgefund managers would actually see their income tax rate go from 15% to 39.6% as their income would be treated as income instead of capital gains.  This is an outrage.

George Bush worked very hard to raise the standard of living.  The rich saw their incomes increase under Bush and that’s as it should be.  The top 1% of the country pays 40% of the nation’s taxes and that is despite only owning about 48% of the country’s property.  This hardly seems fair to me.  By reversing Bush’s tax cuts Obama is sending us back to the horrible economic times of the Clinton administration.

George Bush was a man of God.  He knew that this country would be spared from all natural disasters if we just prayed hard enough.  Bush knew that with God on our side there was never any reason to set aside money for natural disasters.   Obama has put $20 billion aside for natural disasters.  God has protected us the past 8 years President Obama.  Why isn’t that good enough for you?  I guess that’s what you get when you go to church services about how whitey is keeping you down instead of about how Jesus is lifting you up.

George Bush was always finding ways to stretch a dime.  Do you know how much the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan cost US tax payers?  $50 billion? $100 billion? $500 billion?  Try 0.  George Bush never had to add the wars to the budget because he knew he could just take the money from some other program.  Iraq was probably just fought with waste he trimmed off of the PBS budget.  Obama after crying about the wars Bush had us fighting immediately jacks up the spending on them.  Instead of Bush’s free wars, Obama is spending $50 billion.  I hope they’re using gold plated bullets at that price.  Its time for Republicans to take a stand against this kind of wasteful spending.

There’s a lot going on today and none of it really merited a whole article, so I thought I’d make some short and sweet posts on the news today.

There are exactly 27% of the American population that is sane.   I saw a poll this morning that showed that 27% of the American population thought George W. Bush did a good job as President.  Later this evening I saw a poll that said 27% of Americans thought the government should do nothing about the current economic situation.  I believe that they are the same 27% and these people represent the best and brightest of this country.

I wrote about Adolph Hitler Campbell and his family a few weeks back when Walmart had to save the kid’s birthday (I love that store!).  Now it seems that the authorities have removed little Adolph along with his sisters JoyceLynn Aryan Nation and Honszlynn Hinler Jeannie  from the Campbell home.  It’d be really tempting for some children to be resentful of being taken away from the only family they’ve ever known even if it was for their own good, but I do hope the children will use the time productively to meet new people, learn about other cultures, and work on their manifestos.

Today in Illinois I was reminded of Senator Edmund Ross, the Republican who crossed party lines to save Andrew Johnson from impeachment.  Today we saw a similar show of bravery in Illinois when in a 117-1 vote the Illinois House voted ruthlessly to impeach Rob Blagojevich.  The brave dissenter was Blagojevich’s sister-in-law the newly elected Deborah Mell who crossed her own father Chicago Alderman Dick Mell–One of Blago’s most bitter political enemies.

Without George Bush’s veto threat today the tax and spend liberals in the House caved into the sick children lobby and approved funding to expand children’s health insurance.  We had our own insurance plan when I was a kid.  It was called, “Rub some dirt on it and walk it off.”  I don’t want to be working Saturdays because some 8 year old has a case of the sniffles.  Nearly 80% of this country’s children are living out of poverty.  When is enough enough?

Since the election, many of us on the right have been awaiting a new leader to emerge from the Republican party.  I am happy to say we finally have one in Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell.  McConnell made a lot of news during the auto bailout crisis. He didn’t really attract my attention then because it isn’t like turning Detroit into a wasteland of poverty has a very high degree of difficulty.  However, recently McConnell has set his sites much higher by taking on the financial wellbeing special interests.  These special interests have already gotten to Obama.

These financial wellbeing people are willing to turn their back on the sound financial Republican principles that built this economy for things like economic recovery and jobs.  McConnell has steadfastly refused to play this game by leading the charge against any kind of economic initiative or giving into the Unemployment Lobby.  If only we had men like him to stop the New Deal.  McConnell frequently reminds folks Republican senators representing 37% of the nation’s population and that’s half.  What I really like about McConnell is the new bipartisan spirit he has embraced since sometime in Fall of last year.  If Obama wants a successful administration he will work with McConnell to craft the type of legislation that us Republicans will get behind, the type of legislation that President Bush would have gotten behind.

While the rest of the country is dealing with a huge recession, the United Auto Worker members continue to ride high on the gravy train oblivious to the harm that a luxurious lifestyle that includes health care and retirement pay causes others.  Word now is that Toyota is the latest victim of UAW greed posting their worst year since 1938 losing 1.7 billion dollars in the process.

The tough times are hitting us far faster, wider and deeper than expected,” Toyota President Katsuaki Watanabe told a gloomy news conference at the company’s Nagoya headquarters. “This is an unprecedented crisis requiring urgent action.”  With even Toyota struggling to keep up with the union’s escalating demands what hope do Ford, Chrysler, and General Motors have.

The biggest thing killing the car companies are so called legacy costs.  These refer to things like health care and retirement plans.  Henry Ford had a great health care plan–you come into work or you don’t get paid.  You’d be amazed at how rarely his workers let a broken leg or other ailment keep him off the job.  Ford didn’t believe in retirement plans either.  If you were young enough to be out of a nursing home, you’re young enough to weld.  It is only when we return to these great American values that the car companies will have a chance to survive.

I can’t believe this garbage coming out of Washington about bailing out the automobile industry.  This is one grand march towards socialism and for the $15,000,0000,000,000 that they want to give to these auto manufacturers you could fund over nearly 2 percent of the bank bailouts this year.  What do you get for your money?  3,000,000 less unemployed lazy workers.

The reason that our car companies can’t survive is because of ridiculous union contracts.  You see the companies are actually paying their former employees to be retired and they’re paying for their medical costs.  This is especially frivolous when you consider what a hazardous job life on the assembly line is.  Foreign car companies have been quite successful operating in this country by leaving the health care and retirements of their workers to their own devices.  Afterall, if they can’t afford to take care of themselves, the government has social programs that will step up and foot the bill.  If we want to avoid socialism that’s the only way to do it.

Senator Jim Demit of South Carolina has warned, “We’re going to have riots.  There are already riots because of people rioting because their leaving their job.”  This is an excellent point and I think our need for law and order supercedes any desire to take money that was planned to encourage them to make more fuel efficient cars  and loan that money to the car companies to help them out until the banking industry stabilizes and people can get auto loans again.  I suppose the good news is if we do have riots in the streets, there won’t be a lot of cars inconvenienced by road closings.

Instead of branching off into rap music, many autoworkers demand entertainer sized money from their employers

I think anybody in business knows that there is one thing that usually stands between an employer and profitability–employees.  That’s why I find it unsurprising that the line workers are threatening to bring the Big 3 automakers to their knees.

The blame lands squarely on the union who insists on an unrealistic $28 an hour for every senior autoworker.  Sure the executives get paid in the millions, but executive compensation is one of our country’s greatest sources of pride.  Unlike countries like Japan whose executives only make about 8 times what their line employees make, our executives make 40 or 50 times as much.  Americans would no more give this up than they’d give up the Statue of Liberty or the Corn Palace.

The problem is that unlike CEOs who are paid based on the size of the company, autoworkers are paid based on job performance.  This means that mere competency is rewarded with increased salary and those amazing benefits which we hear so much about.  Granted, through concessions our unionized car workers are making no more than the non-unionized ones working for foreign countries in the US, but for some reason they’re able to sell more cars.

There is hope for the future of the American Car Company thanks to management.  I’m really excited by the new hybrid Escalade which while it admittedly gets less than 20 miles per gallon can fit 2 Ford Priuses (Priusi?) in the back.  Toyota may well be buying Escalades to do Prius deliveries.  I have no doubt that in a few years Detroit could crack the 15 MPG barrier and come up with a hybrid truck capable of getting less than 15 miles to the gallon.  Will this do us any good if the car companies must continue to pay their workers $60,000 or even $20,000 per year or pay retired workers to sit around on their butts?  I wonder.

I just wanted to post this message for my readers alerting them to what is going on in the blog.  As you know, last week John McCain suspended his campaign until the country’s financial crisis was solved.  On Friday of last week McCain declared the crisis solve and resumed his campaign.  With the bailout coming to a crashing failure on Monday, it is quite possible that McCain will resuspend his campaign.  There are also 168 Hindu pilgrims killed today in a stampede, Chinese cookies laced with Melamine were found in the Netherlands, and the White Sox defeated the Twins 1-0 to win the American League Central.  If John McCain suspsends his campaign because of the economy or any other reason we will be suspending this blog in solidarity.

The news today is all about the Wall Street bailout failing and the stockmarket falling nearly 800 points on the news.  Sure that’s important.  You really can’t underestimate the effect of a collapsing economy on our country.  With that said, however, there are things that can never be bailed out.  Those things are called feelings.

Today during a speech, House Speaker and generally mean person Nancy Pelosi crushed the spirits of several Republicans.  According to House Minority Leader John Boehner (R), “I do believe that we could have gotten there today had it not been for this partisan speech the speaker (Pelosi) gave on the floor of the house…it caused a number of members we thought we could get to go South,”

Minority Whip Roy Blunt put the number of Republicans who switched sides after having their feelings hurt at a dozen.  However, Blunt also put the blame for the lack of agreement squarely on the Jews, saying “Clearly needing to respect the Jewish holidays of this week made the job very hard.”

What Nancy Pelosi did is unforgivable.  It would be like a high school girl who was asked to go to a Young Republicans informational meeting, but didn’t want to go so she said that her mom was picking her up right after school, but then at 4:30 when people were leaving the meeting they’d see her hanging out in the parking lot with her friends.  Where is the honor in that Speaker Pelosi?  Where is the honor?

I think that it is too much to ask House Republicans to overcome their hard feelings and put the country first when they feel so wronged.  The economy may be important, but its not as important as the feelings of those Republicans who were wronged by Pelosi.  I call on Pelosi to publicly apologize to each and every Republican whose feelings she hurt so that our country can move beyond this.

John McCain flew in to Washington today and managed to scuttle an apparent bipartisan agreement to bail out Wall Street, but with regulation and caps on executive salary and “golden parachutes”.  The agreement that followed 7 days of debate was praised by Sen. Robert Bennett (R-Utah), the top GOP negotiator in the Senate, said, “We have a plan that will pass the House, pass the Senate and be signed by the president, and bring certainty to the markets.”

The plan which McCain unveiled later at a White House meeting would relax regulation and temporarily get rid of certain taxes in the hope that they could bring more money into Wall Street.  Thank goodness for John McCain and his willingness to go out on a limb in favor of deregulation.  Wall Street should not have to accept this bailout with strings attached and he knows it.