GM Profits from “Tax-Loss Carry Forward” - WSJ.com

More Chicago-style politics from the White House. President Obama has claimed he has no interest in running a car company. That may or may not be true. There is no question, however, that he has an interest it their money and their votes. The administration has a vested interest in keeping their interest groups happy, including the reliably Democrat-supporting United Auto Workers union.

"As everyone else’s taxes rise, one favored outfit may not have to pay federal taxes for years: General Motors. In another sweet deal from its benefactors on Pennsylvania Avenue, the government-owned car company is set to profit from billions of dollars in tax breaks not available to other businesses in the same predicament.
...[the Obama administration] has handed a $16 billion tax gift to GM that isn’t available to Ford or other auto makers that didn’t take bailout cash. It’s one more example of the way the political class has stacked the deck in favor of Government Motors."

GM Profits from “Tax-Loss Carry Forward” - WSJ.com

'Cash for Clunkers' Runs Out of Gas - WSJ.com

"White House officials and lawmakers were studying late Thursday how to keep alive the government's cash-for-clunkers incentive program because of concerns the program's $1 billion budget may have been exhausted after just one week."
And they want to run health care?!

'Cash for Clunkers' Runs Out of Gas - WSJ.com

Redefining the term "nanny state."

Fortunately for us dimwits in the rest of the country, President Obama, the Democrat leadership and the gentle hands of the federal government intend to save us from that most imminent disaster, that most frightening calamity, possibly even the greatest danger to the very survival of the human race -- raising children.
From the so-called "health care reform" bill in the House for which President Obama is relentlessly campaigning, H.R. 3200, we find a provision that will relieve us all from the fear and loathing and constant ingestion of antacid tablets that we who do not have access to magazine subscriptions, bookstores, a library, the internet, or even parents and friends, experience upon the blessed arrival of a brand new little bundle of doom.
We are all totally freaking out here!
The bill features a provision, Section 440, titled "Home Visitation Programs for Families with Young Children and Families Expecting Children." Its purpose is "to improve the well-being, health, and development of children by enabling the establishment and expansion of high quality programs providing voluntary home visitation."
Sure, every parent wants to improve the well-being, health and development of their children. Yes, the bill stipulates its voluntary nature. Consider, however, what the term "voluntary" could mean in the scope of the entire bill. With the very much increasing involvement of the federal government in the nature of health care in the bill, especially the focus on preventative health and promoting a healthy lifestyle as part and parcel, how long will it be before voluntary becomes mandatory?
Part of the grant application to receive funding for home visitation programs is a report of a statewide needs assessment that details the "number, quality, and capacity of home visitation programs; the number and types of families who are receiving services under the programs; and the sources and amount of funding provided to the programs."
The language is vague. It is hard to tell whether these are state run programs or programs serviced by other charitable organizations as well. The bill stipulates "the State will promote coordination and collaboration with other home visitation programs (including programs funded under title XIX) and with other child and family services, health services, income supports, and other related assistance."
Also as vague are the intended benefactors of these programs, although the bill does indicate a preference for serving underserved communities. According to the bill, "the State shall identify and prioritize serving communities that are in high need of such services, especially communities with a high proportion of low-income families or a high incidence of child maltreatment."
Certainly high-need communities will receive preference, but are these programs intended for everyone? And just how invasive might these "statewide needs assessment[s]" be? Who will perform these assessments? Will these assessments be performed as part of census collection data? There are several unanswered questions throughout this bill.
One question answered in detail, however, is the content of these home visitation programs and their purported benefits to the aforementioned dimwitted parents. These programs intend to:
"provide parents with knowledge of age-appropriate child development in cognitive, language, social, emotional, and motor domains (including knowledge of second language acquisition, in the case of English language learners);
knowledge of realistic expectations of age-appropriate child behaviors;
knowledge of health and wellness issues for children and parents;
modeling, consulting, and coaching on parenting practices;
skills to interact with their child to enhance age-appropriate development;
skills to recognize and seek help for issues related to health, developmental delays, and social, emotional, and behavioral skills;
and, activities designed to help parents become full partners in the education of their children."
I visited my brother and his wife last week, and their brand new baby boy. I found something supremely intriguing there -- a parenting magazine! In fact, they had several of them! And, even more surprising, my sister-in-law has siblings who have many children! I wonder if the thought ever occurred to her to ask them for advice... No, that can't be. Only a behemoth as unwieldy as government is capable of truly advising new parents.
Instead of spending more taxpayer dollars to install immense new government parenting programs, why not save all that money and buy everyone in the country a subscription to a parenting magazine? I ran some numbers. A subscription to "Parents" magazine for three years for every single person in the country, all 300-some million, would cost around $3.6 billion, or a mere .36 percent of the health care bill's estimated $1 trillion price tag.
How incompetent have we become that the "smart" people in government think they need to reach into our homes and help us raise our own children? Is this "Brave New World" and we are so preoccupied with our "soma" that we need a whole fleet of government babysitters to help us do what parents, after thousands and thousands of years, can apparently no longer do?
Not to mention something that parents have been doing without taxpayer assistance. The bill appropriates $50 million for the first year of the program, 2010, and increases funding to $250 million by 2014, an increase of 500% over five years.
No, we are not incompetent. We still raise our children well. Government has become incompetent, arrogant, and highly disrespectful.
Although, given the cost of all those magazine subscriptions, $750 million over five years and a government provided babysitter does sound like a pretty good deal...

The zombie apocolypse is coming...

Given the Obama administration's apparent nonchalance regarding North Korea and Iran's nuclear aspirations, it's no wonder people are worried. Gun sales are up and people are preparing for survival.
When half the planet is a smoldering pile of radioactive rubble and the zombies are marching en masse with an insatiable hunger for brain, you've got to be ready.
I think I've found the perfect zombie repellent:
The Mossberg Just In Case, 12 gauge, pump-action, six round, complete with pistol grip, survival kit-in-a-can and waterproof carrying tube. Perfect for the rugged individualist on-the-go who needs to kill zombies...

The blueprint for a government takeover of health care.

The public option is simply a step towards a complete government takeover of health care. For evidence we need look no further than student lending.
As part of President Johnson's Great Society, government began guaranteeing student loans offered by private lenders, which became the Federal Family Education Loan Program (FFEL).
In 1993 President Clinton signed into law a provision which would phase in a direct government lending program, the Federal Direct Student Loan Program, which promised to control costs for students and taxpayers and reduce the deficit. A sort of "public option," schools could choose in which program to participate.
In April of this year, President Obama called for the elimination of the FFEL program, and a House committee has recently passed a bill that does just that. The Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act (HR3221) terminates federal loan guarantees under the FFEL program beginning on July 1, 2010.
According to Daniel De Vise in the Washington Post, "The Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2009 would eliminate an entire category of student loans issued by private lenders and subsidized by the federal government, vastly expanding direct lending by the government."
Further enticing students to utilize the Direct Loan program rather than private lending, and entrench themselves in a life of government bureaucracy at the expense of a vibrant private sector workforce in the process, is the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program.
Apparently indentured servitude is an appealing solution. The program "forgives" the balance of the loan for graduates after 120 monthly payments while employed full time by an approved public service organization, AmeriCorps, or the Peace Corps.
Essentially, private lending of student loans would be all but eliminated in favor of direct government loans. What remains is a single payer system for student loans, and a prescription for the future of the health care public option.
President Obama is relentlessly campaigning for his brand of health care reform including the so-called public option, which he promises will control costs and reduce the deficit. Sound familiar?
While campaigning in 2003, however, he admitted he supports a single payer, government run system. Congressman Barney Frank openly admits the public option is "the best way to get single payer."
The blueprint is there. It's time to make the connection.

5 Freedoms You'd Lose in Health Care Reform

There's a great article by Shawn Tully of Fortune magazine on some of the "sacrifices" Americans will be forced to make under Obamacare. I've also linked to it at the bottom of this post, you should read it.
Let's hit the bullet points:
First, you can't choose what's in your plan. The government option requires a level of minimum coverage. The required minimums are also subject to change according to the recommendations of government committees.
Second, costs are equalized regardless of health. The government option bases coverage on a "community rating," which equalizes costs among those with low or high costs. Young people with lower actual costs would pay proportionately more, and sick or older people with higher actual costs would essentially pay discounted rates. The real cost of health care would be skewed by legislative manipulation and subsidies.
Third, you can't choose how to spend your money. Many companies offer Health Savings Accounts, which include matching coverage from employers and allow workers to choose high-deductible coverage. Employees pay for routine care themselves and are more conscious of costs. The government option could eliminate the concept of consumer choice in health care.
Fourth, despite the President's assurances, you can't keep your current plan. Most large companies pay claims themselves and would be exempt from the approved government option. Under the new legislation, however, after five years they must begin to offer only "qualified" plans to employees. For employees of small businesses, or who get their insurance themselves, any change disqualifies you from your current plan and sticks you with the government option.
Finally, you can't choose your doctors. Under the government option, you are assigned a primary care doctor, who chooses your specialists and controls your access to services. Furthermore, your assigned doctor will be "guided" by a government committee's "comparative effectiveness" research (remember this provision in the "stimulus" bill?) which determines the cost-effectiveness of treatments.
Obamacare ought to require a warning label: "Caution, Obamacare may be hazardous to your health and freedom."
Read the article here:
5 Freedoms You'd Lose in Health Care Reform

More on the health care "public option" Trojan Horse...

The so-called "public option" is a debacle, simply a pleasant sounding means to an unpleasant government controlled end.
Proponents, including the President, claim it is intended to lower costs and keep the private sector "honest" through competition. Instead it will achieve neither. The math simply does not add up. How can you increase health care coverage to 50 million more people while simultaneously reducing costs? Without a price-control mechanism, likely rationing, costs will skyrocket.
Regarding keeping the private sector "honest," the only honesty will be in the phone calls tens of millions of people receive from their private sector insurers. "To be honest," they will tell you as they inform you they can no longer cover you or your family, "we cannot compete with the government."
One reason health care costs are increasing is simply because health care costs increase as you age. As the baby boomer generation ages, there are simply more and more older people to take care of. So costs naturally increase.
Furthermore, the high costs of a medical education are contributing to fewer people becoming doctors, especially general practice. The prohibitive costs of malpractice insurance and excessive lawsuit compensations bog down the system in a mire of bureaucratic sludge and misappropriated wealth.
If the so-called "public option" is installed, costs will not go down, they will skyrocket. And instead of just paying your health care costs as you get older, you, the tax payer, will pay for everyone else's as well. Assuming, of course that the governing body deems you worthy of receiving care on an inevitably cold hearted cost versus benefit scale.
Stopping President Obama and the Democrats from radically transforming our health care system, the best in the world, into another entitlement that rewards politically connected interest groups, strengthens the Democrat voting block, further entrenches their political machine and destroys the freedom of the people in the process, is crucial.

Read this article at the Wall Street Journal Online for more --
The Public Option Two-Step - WSJ.com

Just for fun...

(The song is "White Lines" by Duran Duran, a cover of "White Lines (Don't Do It)" by Grandmaster Flash and Melle Mel)

Of NICE and Men - WSJ.com

Or, "How the so-called public option really reduces health care costs."
The short answer? Rationing. From the Wall Street Journal article regarding the U.K.'s version of public-provided health care which Democrats wish to model, "it has by now established the principle that the only way to control health-care costs is for this panel of medical high priests to dictate limits on certain kinds of care to certain classes of patients."
"...The core issue is whether those decisions are going to be dictated by the brute force of politics (NICE) or by prices (a private insurance system)."
And when contemplating the "brute force of politics," recall that President Obama built his political career in Chicago as you ponder this quote from the film The Untouchables:
"They pull a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue. That's the Chicago way."

From the Wall Street Journal, Of NICE and Men

Isn't that why they were elected?

I thought President Obama was elected because he was supposedly more able and better equipped to "fix the economy," as though he was better with a wrench and a leaky faucet than McCain.
Nevertheless, according to Joe Biden, the administration "misread" how dire the economic situation was. Nevermind that all throughout the campaign Obama and Biden crowed that we hadn't seen as severe an economic situation since the Great Depression.
So evidently they are saying the situation was actually worse than the Great Depression, and that even Barack Obama, in his infinite wisdom, does not understand the economy or know how to fix it.
And now there is talk of even more "stimulus" spending.
Of course, I still maintain that Obama and his cohorts are intentionally dismantling the country's economic system in accordance with their radical agenda as acolytes of Saul Alinsky, but that is a discussion for another time.

From where do our Rights originate?

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” These words, from the Declaration of Independence, declared and signed July 4, 1776, illustrate precisely from where the Rights of man originate.
Rights are given by God. Or, to put it secularly, these are Natural Rights. These are Rights which are inherent, by virtue of man’s very humanity, an elementary human condition. Rights from the Creator, God, or Natural Rights, are unchangeable, unalterable, and eternal. These rights exist apart from man, yet are a part of man. They cannot be bestowed by man. This is what the writers of the Declaration and the Founders of our country understood: All men are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights. Whether you believe man is created by God, or that man evolved, these rights are natural and inherent. This is what most Americans also understand.
By contrast, the philosophy of many modern liberals, Progressives, Statists, is that rights are bestowed from man, to man. Or, more specifically, from government unto the governed.
Hence, we see President Obama viewing the Constitution is a charter of negative rights allowanced by government. In the controversial 2001 interview with Chicago Public Radio station WBEZ, he speaks about “constraints that were placed by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution.” In this context he is speaking about the concept of redistribution of wealth, when during the civil rights movement the Constitution did not allow the Supreme Court to advance the concept of a right to “economic justice.” This is instructive of a general philosophy regarding the Constitution and the general philosophy of Statists and Progressives that rights are bestowed by government unto the governed.
He continues, “Generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties. Says what the states can't do to you, says what the federal government can't do to you. But it doesn't say what the federal government or the state government must do on your behalf.” He objects to be the limits the governed place on their government. The writers of the Declaration understood that government must be permitted by the governed: “That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”
Obama believes the Constitution restricts what government must do for you, or give to you. Notice the words on your behalf. By emphasizing the responsibility of government over the governed, he shifts responsibility for the endowment of rights from God, or nature, to government, or man. The question then, is what rights can government allow? Or, in other words, what rights can man allow?
To phrase it more instructively, then, these rights are no longer rights, but privileges to be given or to be taken by the will and whim of government. The governed are disempowered, while government is obligated to provide.
Again, this is the philosophical difference; that rights are given from man, to man. Or, by extension, from better man, to lesser man. Government, being the better, bestows rights unto the governed, the lesser.
By this reasoning, the modern liberal concept of “classes” is clearer. Candidates campaign on promises to tax only the rich. Politicians promise to provide free or cheap health care for the uninsured. They implicitly promise to punish the privileged and recompense the underprivileged. The concept of redistribution of wealth is purported as reparative and righteous “economic justice.” Contemplate recent hate crime legislation. Instead of all crimes being criminal, some are categorized according to a “protected class” of person.
Class envy, class warfare, proletariat versus bourgeoisie, these are pretexts to classification, separation and subjugation. A sort of apartheid in the guise of compassion for the weak, underprivileged, underrepresented, or oppressed.
Our God given natural rights are repealed by men under the pretense of empathy.

Some good news from Ford.

While Chrysler and GM continue to hemorrhage blood and lose limbs, Ford is suffering flesh wounds. June auto sales numbers were announced today. Chrysler sales fell 42% and GM sales declined 33%, while Ford sales fared better, falling 11% in June, compared to last year, a smaller decline than expected by analysts. More importantly, Ford increased its market share 3%; second-quarter and first-half market share also increased.
What this means in the long-term is still unclear, given the nearly bottomless government-sponsored pockets into which GM and Chrysler can plunge their graspy hands, looking for loose change. I take it to mean that the general American public is perhaps not so ignorant as many in Washington may believe. Recall Ford did not receive federal assistance and has not been forced into bankruptcy. Perhaps these sales numbers reflect the general distrust of governmental interference in private industry and misgivings regarding the Obama administration's machinations in the private sector.
Another reason for Ford’s better outlook is surely the strength of their current product lineup. I am tremendously intrigued by the new Taurus SHO, and am completely enamored of the 2010 Mustang.
Ford’s outlook seems to be improving. Now that government has a financial interest in the performance of GM and Chrysler, however, that may change, as the potential for new federal regulations that put undue, unfair pressure on Ford is very real.
Regardless, today's positive news gives me another reason to feel optimistic and promote Ford, the Last Great American Car Company.
Read all about The Ford Story.