Tag Archives: Socialism

News

Can government be as greedy as corporations are supposed to be?

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Very popular editorial from Investors Business Daily.

Excerpt:

Nowhere has liberalism gone further than in San Francisco. And few, if any, other cities can boast such a well-heeled work force. Is this what “spreading the wealth” is all about?

We have seen the future and it works — for certain people. Take San Francisco municipal workers. The San Francisco Chronicle recently detailed just how overpaid the city’s employees are. Their average yearly salary is $93,000 before benefits. A third of them made more than $100,000 in 2009. A newly retired deputy police chief (not even the city’s top cop) made $516,118.

[…]Also in 2009, 28 city employees made more than the mayor, Gavin Newsom, who pulled down a respectable $250,903. Firefighters in San Francisco have a base salary of $102,648, while even lowly payroll clerks start at $54,314.

[…]Unions, particularly public-sector unions, leverage their money and membership to stock legislatures, city councils and county boards with friendly faces. Those faces, in turn, lock governments into contracts (particularly where pensions are concerned) that are extremely difficult to break.

The problem with this is that the private sector is the only part of the economy that actually has to please customers in order to get paid. Government workers don’t have to provide good service in order to get paid. They don’t compete with anyone, and individual workers have no incentive to work harder – their raises are based on union bargaining, not on pleasing customers. So then why are government workers making more money than the productive private sector workers when San Francisco has a $483 million budget deficit? Why isn’t this greed?

Humor

In which I blame the coffee manufacturer for making bad coffee

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This morning, I was contemplating whether to go downstairs and buy a cup of coffee for $1.25 from the coffee shop on the first floor, or whether to take a cup of free coffee from the kitchen on the 4th floor where I work. I like to have things that are free because then I do not have to work for them. Besides, I can spend more time watching TV if I don’t work as hard to buy the pay-coffee.

I was pretty sure that coffee that is sold by the small business on the first floor for profit would taste the same as coffee that is based on a community of coffee drinkers on our floor who just contribute whatever they want to out of the goodness of their hearts. To tell you the truth, it’s not something I really want to put that much thought into, I just expected that the world would conform to my intuitions and emotions.

So I snuck into the kitchen and poured myself a cup of the free coffee and snuck out again. I skulked back to my desk and sat down to drink the free coffee.

Imagine my horror at finding out that free coffee tastes like raw sewage!

Imagine! Free coffee doesn’t taste as good as coffee you have to pay for! How unfair! I hate this coffee! It’s weak! It’s cowardly! It’s lazy! It isn’t meeting my needs and expectations! It isn’t making me happy! It’s to blame for all of my problems! I want to sue this coffee manufacturer in court! I want everyone to condemn them! I demand justice! This coffee is to blame for my tires being underinflated! This coffee is to blame for me not going to the gym! Why is this coffee judging me? Why am I being marginalized and excluded?

Why, oh, why did God make coffee that is so bad? How could a loving God allow me to suffer from this bad coffee that I freely chose instead of pay-coffee? Shouldn’t God give me free coffee that doesn’t taste like sewage? Oh, woe is me! Why doesn’t anyone care about my needs? Why do other rich people have coffee that tastes good, and not me? Why are all my friends drinking good coffee, while I am forced by evil corporations to settle for sewage coffee? We should have a government-run social program to provide me with good coffee for free!

Do you know what I should do? I’ll tell you. I should take control of this coffee corporation. I should force them to give me free coffee for the rest of my life! After all, they are to blame for making the bad coffee. I shouldn’t have to pay for coffee! It’s my right! I have a right to the same coffee as people who go further away and who work hard and who pay for their coffee! I’m being discriminated against! There is no way that I should have to be. There is nothing that I should have to do. I should just get all the goodies in life and never have to give anything back to anyone, if I don’t feel like it.

Do you know what would be really good? A faucet that poured hot coffee with Splenda and cream. I think i’ll go see if we have that in the kitchen. I know we have water, so how hard can it be to get hot coffee with cream and Splenda, too?

Hey, I wonder if I could also get free back rubs? And free candy? I like candy! So I should get candy, too, right?

News

New York Times admits that GM repaid its bailout loans with TARP loan money

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Story here in the radically-leftist New York Times. (H/T Hot Air)

Excerpt:

AS we inch closer to a clearer understanding of the products and practices that unleashed the credit crisis of 2008, it’s becoming apparent that those seeking the whole truth are still outnumbered by those aiming to obscure it. This is the case not only on Wall Street but also in Washington.

Truth seekers the nation over, therefore, are indebted to Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, who in recent days uncovered what he called a government-enabled “TARP money shuffle.” It relates to General Motors, which on April 21 paid the balance of its $6.7 billion loan under the Troubled Asset Relief Program.

G.M. trumpeted its escape from the program as evidence that it had turned the corner in its operations. “G.M. is able to repay the taxpayers in full, with interest, ahead of schedule, because more customers are buying vehicles like the Chevrolet Malibu and Buick LaCrosse,” boasted Edward E. Whitacre Jr., its chief executive.

G.M. also crowed about its loan repayment in a national television ad and the United States Treasury also marked the moment with a press release: “We are encouraged that G.M. has repaid its debt well ahead of schedule and confident that the company is on a strong path to viability,” said Timothy F. Geithner, the Treasury secretary.

Taxpayers are naturally eager for news about bailout repayments. But what neither G.M. nor the Treasury disclosed was that the company simply used other funds held by the Treasury to pay off its original loan.

This is what you get when you appoint a tax-cheat to be the Treasury Secretary.

Here’s what we need to understand about government bailouts. There should never be any such thing as a government bailout. GM and these other bailed-out companies made bad decisions that put them at a competitive disadvantage with respect to their competitors. The Obama administration bailed out these failing companies with money from other hard-working individuals and successful companies, including small businesses. The Obama administration did this for political gain with its favored special interest groups, e.g. – unionized labor,  wall street bankers and GSE executives. Those are the groups that got Obama elected, and he paid them back with “bailouts”. Government has no right to get involved with bailing out their buddies with my money and your money.

I remember when people use to complain about profit margins of 8% in some big corporations when Bush was President. But at least they earned that money by selling things that people needed and freely chose to buy. They did operate on a government-backed expense account. Sometimes I wonder whether all of these problems are caused because we elect spoiled-brat, silver-spoon liberals who spent their entire lives getting into trouble and then begging their parents, (and grandparents, in Obama’s case), for bailout money. Maybe they are just making policy based on their experiences in making irresponsible choices and then being bailed out by their parents?