The Lemming Watch

Can You Spell Socialism?

It was tried in Russia and did not work; they called it Communism. It ended in a failed economy and a broken country, not to mention millions killed in its name. Russia’s economy was in ruins well before this experiment in socialism was over.

 It was tried in Germany and did not work; they called it National Socialism (Nazism). That led to a war that ended in Germany’s total defeat and the suicide of it’s leader, not to mention the deaths of 53 million people. Among those were six million Jews murdered, six million eastern Europeans (Poles, Czechs, Serbs, etc.) murdered. It also included over one hundred thousand German young people—children between 15 and 18—who were sent to war and died. Unknown numbers of German citizens who tried to resist Nazism were jailed and many executed. Germany’s economy was a disaster by the time the Nazi catastrophic experiment ended.

It was tried in Italy and it did not work; they called it Fascism. That ended in the death of its leader (Mussolini) and the defeat of the country. Their economy was in shambles at the end of that era. Since there was a less cataclysmic end to the their socialism, remnants of the old leftist ideas are still alive in Italy, and their economy is weak as a result..

They, and others like them, are all essentially the same and differ only in the minor way in which they are implemented.

Now our government—both the administration and the legislature are hell-bent on trying socialism in this country. They call it “Change” and “Hope.” But it is still the same old leftist ideas in a different dress. But the dress can’t hide what’s underneath. One would think we could learn from prior experience with the same ideas.

This American Thinker essay discusses the reality of the issue:

Our socialists will tell us is that there are 57 varieties of socialism, so that dreaded word doesn't really mean anything after all. Well, tell that to 100 million dead people over the 20th century from Stalin to Mao. Tell it to people starving this very day in North Korea. Tell it to the thousands of Cubans who took to rubber rafts to get to this country. Tell it to the UN-ocrats who are enabling Sudanese genocide because Muslims have an alliance with European socialists at the UN.

Read the entire article; it is very enlightening.

UPDATE: March 30, 2009. It begins. Not long after this was posted last night, word came that the administration had fired Rick Wagoner, the CEO of General Motors. They also announced that Chrysler must find a suitable company to merge with—preferably Fiat of Italy. (We’ll see if that goes better than Chrysler’s failed merger with another European company, Daimler AG (Mercedes Benz). And this on top of the rank intimidation of AIG.

This is the essence of socialism—government run companies. Obama makes noises like this is temporary until GM gets back on its feet. Does anyone care to hold his breath until the government gives up control? Does anyone want to bet on what kinds of cars GM will offer while the government controls the company? Given Obama’s commitment to the Greens, they will be cars no one (except die-hard tree huggers) will want to drive. Does anyone want to guess how profitable the company will be?

Abrogating Contracts Can Be Unhealthy for the Economy

The administration and the Congress seem to be just willy-nilly going about trying to destroy the country’s economy and alienate our friends. The administration, almost immediately on taking office, put out an order that restricted Mexican truckers from entering the U.S. The claim is that the trucks (primarily large semis) are not safe.

The Mexican government, immediately retaliated with tariffs.

When the U.S. closed the southern border to Mexican trucking last week -- in violation of the North American Free Trade Agreement -- Mexico promised to retaliate. Yesterday it did, releasing a list of 89 U.S. products that will face new tariffs of 10% to 45%.

California, an important supplier of fresh fruits, dried fruits and nuts to Mexico, will be hit hard. Table grapes will face a 45% duty at the Mexican border; wine, almonds and juices among other agricultural products will pay 20%. Some 90% of Christmas-tree exports from California and 65% from Oregon go to Mexico. It's doubtful volumes will hold up beneath a 20% tariff.

(This is just one example; read the entire article for more. It is interesting to see what can happen when contracts are just unilaterally canceled.)

What does Mr. Obama believe that will do for the employment situation in this country?

In a second, more recent case, the beleaguered AIG has just lost one of it’s top executives because the our president and the Congress decided that AIG’s contracts with its employees should be negated. Wait, we can’t cancel contracts. But we can tax the income benefits from those contracts at some enormous, 90% rate; and that’s what the House tried to do. Fortunately the Senate seems to be reluctant to go along with Nancy and her thieves. But the damage is already done.

This cannot but hamper AIG’s important work.

This is your government at work for you.

Whence Cometh CO2?

It would be interesting to know how much CO2 (and other so-called greenhouse gases) were dumped into the air just this week by the very natural, and non-anthropomorphic, several eruptions of Mount Redoubt in Alaska.

Cap and trade that folks!

Why is it?

Why is it that, as reported here, the California elementary and high schools spend, on average, more than $12,800 per student for such poor results when my wife, who founded and operated a private school, charged no more than half that much? She operated the school for almost 30 years and, on retiring five years ago, left an operation that still functions successfully..

Her school was a Montessori school, and it produced students who excelled in their education and their careers after leaving her school. Many of them went on to the best secondary schools, and most of them got top grades in college and good jobs afterward. The California government schools, on the other hand, turn out huge numbers of students who are mediocre and many who are actually failures.

Why is it? There are probably minor nuances to the answer, but a very great deal of the answer is the fact that the school system is in thrall to a vast bureaucracy and a huge labor union. The bureaucracy is a typical government operation that wastes money with huge amounts of trivial, make-work activities for hundreds of people. The union is interested primarily in higher pay and in more jobs, many of which do little to enhance the learning process. And oh, by the way, they also do some teaching, much of it second rate.

My wife’s school had a bureaucracy too: she was the school head; she had a secretary who doubled as accountant, and she had an assistant. That was the extent of administration.

Fortunately she had no union to contend with. Each of her teachers was specially trained, and each had an assistant. They were happy in their work and they promoted the school in the community.

The class size averaged about twenty, and this is a basic reason the children excelled in school and after graduation. Here in California they are considering increasing class size, further diluting the learning process.

There are hundreds of these private schools in America. So why don’t all parents of this state, this country, send their children to private schools. Well, the fact is they can’t afford it. The government takes a huge amount of every person’s tax dollar and pours it into the education bureaucracy. You cannot opt to not pay those taxes and use the money for private schooling. Those lucky families that can afford private schooling also pay taxes for the public schools—a great waste of money, but it is worth it to them. This is why home-schooling is becoming so popular. It costs very little and the results are similar to a private school.

It is sad that the government school system is such a huge waste of money; but sadder still, it is a huge waste of minds.

What a Disgrace

What a disgraceful lot they are. Fully 85 Republicans in congress voted for the 90% tax on AIG “bonuses.” These people should hang their heads in shame. In spite of their solid front against the stimulus bill, the Republicans can’t seem to stand success and go do an egregious thing like this.

As this article shows, when the government “bought“ AIG (and they did buy the company, completely and without due diligence), they bought the company’s existing contracts as well as the financial problems. The performance payments (they were NOT bonuses) for work done and time spent were contracted for long before AIG was forced to take the bailout money from the government. From the article (read it in full):

The government bought controlling interest in AIG and the TARP program on the basis of a three-page memo from Hank Paulson.  That is $250 billion per page! No wonder Republican Minority Leader John Boehner referred to it as a crap sandwich. He should have stuck with his opposition. The Democrat Congress and the President compounded that error later by rushing through a “Stimulus Bill” so quickly, that no member of Congress or the Executive Branch read it completely before accepting it. Agreeing to a contract without reading it is the textbook definition of executive negligence.

Then, to add insult to injury the congressional perpetrators vilify those employees who made good faith employment contracts with management well in advance of AIG’s problems.

Do these 85 Republicans in congress not see the lawlessness and hypocrisy they are participating in?

Where’s the Outrage?

Well, the outrage is there, but it’s entirely misplaced. Blogs, editorials, op-eds, letters to the editor, all express outrage at AIG (and other companies) for paying large bonuses. The president and certain members of congress express outrage.

Maybe a certain amount of disgust at the AIG people is in order. But the outrage should be against the Congress. These are the people who caused the whole financial mess. They over-regulated the field and coerced financial institutions into making bad loans; they looked the other way when they knew that Fannie and Freddie were failing and likely to cause a cascading crisis.

As far as the bonuses are concerned, here is a contrary view. The companies should never have been bailed out; there should not have been a financial bailout. But once the government decides a company should be fed billions of dollars, they should allow the company to operate as it sees fit. If the Congress and the president don’t think the company can operate properly, they should not give them a cent of bailout money. The government trying to run a company is like high school dropout performing brain surgery.

So, citizens, bloggers, editors, and the rest of the crybabies should be outraged at the proper entity—the government—for using a probably unnecessary bailout scheme, and for causing the problem in the first place. This article in the Wall Street Journal tells the sordid story. It is worth reading the entire article, but here is an excerpt to the point:

The politicians also prefer to talk about AIG's latest bonus payments because they deflect attention from Washington's failure to supervise AIG. The Beltway crowd has been selling the story that AIG failed because it operated in a shadowy unregulated world and cleverly exploited gaps among Washington overseers. Said President Obama yesterday, "This is a corporation that finds itself in financial distress due to recklessness and greed." That's true, but Washington doesn't want you to know that various arms of government approved, enabled and encouraged AIG's disastrous bet on the U.S. housing market.

The government’s outrage is demagogic, and the lemmings in this country are falling for it--following the politicians to the cliff edge.

UPDATE 5;50: Maybe some liberals are starting to think for themselves. See this entry form The American Thinker; pay special attention to the links.

On Second Thought . . .

Maybe he does have a plan; but he doesn’t want to show his hand just yet for fear of a full scale rebellion. His budget shows some of this, but still doesn’t say much. Those few voices that point this out are ridiculed, marginalized, and threatened.

So what are his plans? Well, for starters, he will completely revamp health care and destroy or seriously compromise private medical practice. To implement universal, controlled health care, he will raise taxes.

He will weaken the energy industry in the name of saving the planet by reducing carbon dioxide. (Heaven help us; we exhale carbon dioxide; and plants “inhale” it to grow and reproduce.) To do this he will introduce and enforce carbon cap and trade rules. This is another tax and one that may break the country’s economic back. It will certainly reduce our standard of living by inhibiting our ability to drive, travel, heat our homes, and use electricity to our best advantage. And it will damage small business by making it very difficult for them to operate.

So, his plans are there; he just doesn’t want to make them too clear to the general population. He glosses over them with high sounding words, and rhetoric that makes people feel good. He did this in the address to congress; ;he did it when he introduced his budget; and he does it to this day.

Bend over America!