The Arrogance of Government: even when they are right, they are wrong

The arrogance of government is apparent in the language they use.

Even when professing to be on the side of the American, when one examines their choice of words it becomes clear that they have a distorted perspective.

Recently Representative Mark Kirk of IL made a statement regarding health care reform that was very telling.  Kirk said that to reduce the cost of health care insurance Americans should be allowed to buy insurance across state lines. 

While Kirk is absolutely correct look carefully at what he said: Americans should be “allowed”.  Allowed.  In other words, we the government will decide what Americans may or may not do in the same way that a parent decides to allow or disallow a child to do something.  If you agree with Kirk and others who see things in this way you have implicitly agreed to their view that the government tells you what you can and can not do rather than Americans telling the government what it can and can not do.  The difference is profound.

The fact is that it is every American’s fundamental right to purchase what they want, when, where and how they want to.  The government has no role to play.  It is not a question of being “allowed”.  What has happened is that the American government has become increasingly socialist and expanded its power well beyond its intended, legitimate purpose.

Every American should recoil and be angered.  Even when government is right about the course of action, they are wrong about their assessment of the situation on a very fundamental and important level.

So although Kirk was absolutely correct about the measures that should be taken to reduce the cost of health insurance and health care (e.g., tort reform and interstate commerce) he is absolutely incorrect in how he sees things on a fundamental level.  It is hoped that Kirk’s constituency will bring his misunderstanding to his attention and correct him because he is otherwise on the right track.

When one looks to the Democrats it is far worse.  The Democrats are unabashedly attempting to oppress every American with outright socialism.  In a sense this is good because it is easier to identify for what it really is despite the pathetic attempts by Nanci Pelosi, Barack Obama and others to misrepresent it as doing the will of the people.  The fact is that the majority oppose what they are trying to do as every reputable poll shows.

Nearly every proposed reform that the Republicans introduced would without any question reduce the cost of health care and health insurance, increase choice and improve quality and none of them would cost even $1 to implement.  Yet Nanci Pelosi and the Democrats rejected every single one of the proposed reforms.

It is clear that the Democrats have no interest in reducing costs as that would harm the organizations that they are conspiring with such as the Trial Lawyers Association, the AARP the AMA.  The Republican proposal included tightening controls within Medicare and Medicaid to reduce the billions of dollars that are stolen annually from those government-run health care programs.  Do you think that Congress doesn’t benefit from this theft?  One need only look at Fannie and Freddie to see the hundreds of millions of dollars that flowed to Democrats such as Barack Obama and Chris Dodd.  It is a rigged game to steal power and money from the American people who work to create their own wealth.   Furthermore, approving the Republican proposals would reduce the powers of government and no socialist is ever going to be in favor or that for any reason.

If the Republican proposal were adopted all Americans would see all costs decrease, availability of services increase and quality improve.  This would be devastating to the Democrats and their socialist agenda because it would demonstrate very quickly and clearly that government is not the solution, it is the problem.  Their entire reason for being, all the promises and lies they campaigned on would instantly come under intense scrutiny and the ever important “Independents” and even the less than hardcore Socialist/Democrats would abandon the Democratic Party and its socialism.

The Democrats have absolutely no interest in doing anything of the kind.  Their livelihood and ideology are inextricably bound to socialism and by extension the failure of America.

US Trade Deficit Widens

The US trade deficit widened more than the expected $31.7B to $36.5B, an 18.2% increase in September.  That is the biggest deficit since January when Barack Obama took office.  It is %15 worse than most economists expected.

Part of the reason is the greater demand for imported energy (i.e., oil) and foreign cars.  What?  People are buying foreign cars after Obama and the Socialist/Democrats made everything all better for the US auto industry by bailing them out with tens of billions of dollars?  Yep

US exports have been rising since May.  Is this good news?  Well, that must mean that there is more productivity and jobs abroad so the rest of the world must be getting better.  The US of course just lost another 502,000 jobs last week to bring the Obama tally to 4 million lost jobs despite his Socialist Stimulus.

Also, Obama’s Socialist Stimulus and monetary policy have destroyed the value of the dollar.  The result is that American goods are cheaper for the rest of the world to buy which also factors into explaining why exports were up.

So the trade deficit is huge and the rest of the world is pulling out of the Chris Dodd – Barney Frank recession and Americans continue to lose millions of jobs and see the value of their money race towards zero.

Great work Barack!

Why Executive Pay Is What It Is

Goldman Sachs has emerged from the government-created financial catastrophe doing quite well.  On the other hand, financial institutions that the government was going to save through its socialist TARP program like AIG and CIT have lost billions and gone bankrupt.

There are three lessons to be learned from this

1. The government cannot run anything efficiently or even effectively.
2. Free markets are always a better choice than government-run socialist programs of wealth redistribution.
3. Running a bank successfully is not easy, not everyone can do it and that is why it is important to share holders to hire good people and good people cost good money.

The reason executive pay is what it is, is becacause that is what the board of directors, the agents of the share holders, say it should be.  And why do they say that?  For the most part, that is what the market requires it to be.  If the share holders did not want to pay it they would either sell their shares or vote in new board members who would cut the compensation packages.  Everyone has their own free choice in what to do. 

That is exactly the opposite of what happened with the government where you had no choice in anything.  You were told you were going to pay and who you were going to pay it to.  You could not sell your shares and then when the government had ridden it all the way to the bottom on your dime they made you give them another dollar.

So if you decide to take the risk of investing your hard-earned money in a company do you want someone who is good or someone who is government?

Consider what was more expensive, the billions that were seized from you and lost lost by the government in their socialist bailout program on companies like AIG and CIT or the compensation to people like those at Goldman Sachs. 

Think about that now in the context of health care because if Obamacare or anything like it goes through, the failures that you see in the banking industry are going to be what you see in health care.

Some people will complain that leading into the meltdown that executive compensation was too high.  First it must be made clear that was not the cause.  The cause was the government regulations in the banking industry.  Keep in mind too that Fannie and Freddie were government-run lenders headded by the Democrats Chris Dodd and Barney Frank.  Obama was on the take from both and Obama’s chief of staff was on the board of directors.  The Democrats had also been in control of Congress for years. 

So the cause was not the banks nor the people running them nor what they were being paid.  The cause was the government.  The executive compensation was not too high, it was what people of their own free will were willing to pay with their own money.  And nobody was complaining when they were all making great gains on their investments as stock prices went higher and higher. 

The bottom line is that people were fine with everything while they were doing well but when they were not it becames sour grapes.  Instead of looking at the entire picture the leftist media chose to focus only on the executive compensation and the socialist government who was the real culprit was only too happy to jump on the bandwagon and make all the noise they could in the hopes of distracting people from really looking into things and seeing that they were responsible.

The best thing that can be done for banking is to let the bad banks go under and the good banks will survive.  New banks may open to fill markets that have been vacated.  A free market will sort everything out in the best possible fashion; free markets always have in the past.

So if you don’t think a corporate executive should be paid what they are being paid the answer is simple: don’t invest in that company and don’t buy the products of that company.  As the stock price suffers from lack of interest and depressed sales the company will either cut costs, hire new people or continue to suffer.  And for all the people that don’t own stock and have put nothing at risk?  Well, they really don’t have anything to say about what those people who took the risk chose to do with their money.

It really is that simple.  What not to do is exactly what has been and is continuing to be done: government interference.