Remember when Michael Moore staked out Roger Moore of General Motors in Roger and Me, claiming that GM’s brutal capitalism earned the company profits while it mistreated workers? Well, where’s Moore when you need him?
Yesterday, the largely Treasury Department-owned GM (32%) announced that it would freeze the pay of all 26,000 of its US employees, and would dump its pension contributions, as well as slashing bonuses. This even as it announced that it had posted an $8 billion profit in 2011.
Charles Sykes is a longtime Milwaukee talk-radio host and the prolific author of a number of books that helped to shape my personal political worldview, including 1988’s eye-opening “Profscam,” and 1993’s “A Nation of Victims,’ two works as timely today as they were decades ago.
“A Nation of Moochers: America’s Addiction to Getting Something for Nothing” (St. Martin’s Press) was just released, and the fact that I’m writing this at the very moment President Barack Obama is announcing yet another government plan (his fourth, I think) to “bail out” those “victims” who bought homes they couldn’t [...]
CHESTER, Pa. – Three thousand students at Pennsylvania’s largest charter school face the imminent risk of having their school year cancelled in the coming days or weeks, and seeing their school “stop operations” entirely due to a lack of funds.
That grim reality is a direct result of decisions by officials in the nearby Chester Upland School District to keep state funds legally owed to the Chester Community Charter School, and to use them instead to bail the district out of its “self-inflicted budgetary crisis.”
I’ve already bragged that the Cato Institute is America’s best think tank, highlighting the fact that we took the lead in battling against Obama’s faux stimulus at a time when many were dispirited and reluctant to fight big government.
I’m biased, of course, so I’ll understand if you discount what I say. But I hope you’ll agree that my colleagues have put together an excellent video response to the President’s state-of-the-union speech.
As part of my contribution to the video, beginning around 6:35, I debunk the President’s class-warfare tax agenda by citing IRS data from the 1980s….
These days a lot of school budgets are being held together by the accounting equivalents of bailing wire and duct tape. But one Pennsylvania school district is so broke that it needs the state to provide the wire and the tape.
The Chester Upland School District began this week with only $100,000 in its savings account, and had no way of meeting its $1 million payroll – that is, until a judge ordered the state to give the district a $3.2 million advance in its allowance, reports the Philadelphia Inquirer.
The United States is at a fork in the road regarding which way we will go as a people. The 2012 election could be the most important in our lifetime, and conservative leaders have reached a consensus on how to channel the energy and concerns of the American people to realize historic change this year.
“3 Reasons We Shouldn’t Bail Out Student Loan Borrowers” is written and narrated by Nick Gillespie and produced by Meredith Bragg.
About 3.33 minutes long. Go to Reason.tv for downloadable versions and subscribe to Reason’s YouTube channel to receive automatic notifications when new material goes live.
As the cumulative total of student loan borrowing approaches $1 trillion dollars, calls to forgive some or all of that debt are mounting. Federally guaranteed student loans make up more than half that total and Barack Obama is pushing to cap the amount any borrower must pay back in a given year and forgive outstanding balances after 20 years.
Among Occupy Wall Street protesters, calls to bail out student loan holders are arguably the single-most voiced demand and sites such as Forgive Student Loan debt beat the drum for immediate and widespread relief.
But forgiving student loan debt is a very bad idea for at least three reasons.
1. These loans are voluntary. All borrowers are excrutiatingly well-informed of how much they’re borrowing and how much they’re going to have to pay back.
One of the reasons Ford can depend on me to be a repeat customer is because they took no bailout, and are a well run company. On the other hand, a snowball has a better chance in the Sahara Desert than Government Motors has of me ever buying a piece of GM junk. It’s never going to happen.
Ford is in hot water with Comrade Obama for refusing to take a bailout. Don’t kid yourself, he very much wants to control Ford like he does GM. But this isn’t the first time Ford has the ire of a tyrannical regime, FDR didn’t like them either and tried to starve them out of business for not playing ball. What? You didn’t know FDR was a douchebag? You actually think he was a great president and human being? Let me guess, you were educated in public school after the US Dept. of Education was created. Am I right? Of course I am.
America is still fighting over President Obama’s costly bailout of Chrysler and General Motors. Especially the owners of Ford, the only member of Detroit’s “Big Three” who rejected the government dole and emerged perfectly healthy.
In its most political ad in the so-called “Drive One” ads where real drivers are thrust before cameras to explain why they picked Ford, a real Ford F-150 pick-up driver is featured…
Sitting and looking sincere and serious, Chris says: “I wasn’t going to buy another car that was bailed out by our government. I was going to buy from a manufacturer that’s standing on their own: win, lose, or draw. That’s what America is about is taking the chance to succeed and understanding when you fail that you gotta’ pick yourself up and go back to work. Ford is that company for me.”
Yup! Exactly how America is supposed to be.
A Ford spokeswoman confirmed that Chris is an actual Ford owner and that those are his real words (the ad series is all unscripted).
Hey! Speaking of bailouts… Did anyone get a check in the mail from GM yet? Oh! Silly me. We aren’t getting any checks in the mail from GM, all that money went to big labor. Here’s some more good news:
According to a government report, taxpayers will lose $14 billion in the bailout.