Constant Conservative

Is it too much to say that I’m dumbfounded by the government’s proposed approach to GM’s financial woes?  Betsy Newmark takes it from the top:

The deal that is coming out of the government aid and deadline for GM is truly astounding. As the WSJ breaks down the numbers, private bondholders of GM securities would get 5 cents on the dollar for their investment and own 10% of the company; the government will own 50% of the company and a return of 87 cents on the dollar; and the UAW would own 40% of the company and have a return of 76 cents on the dollar. Now we know why Obama and the UAW have been fighting so hard to keep GM out of the bankruptcy court.

In a genuine Chapter 11 bankruptcy, these three groups of creditors would all be similarly situated — because all three are, for the most part, unsecured creditors of GM. And yet according to the formula presented Monday, those with the largest claim — the bondholders — get the smallest piece of the restructured company by a huge margin.

Private capital gets 5 cents on the dollar. Public capital gets 87 cents on the dollar. Funky capital gets 76 cents on the dollar. Please do not tell me that the outcome is not remarkably skewed in a socialist (or, if you please, Fastidious, statist) direction. After all, giving more (40%) to those who have less (UAW) while funding this giving by taking from those who have more (private bondholders) is straight up redistribution of wealth.

In the eyes of those doing it, they are takin’ it from the greedy and givin’ it to the needy.

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I’ve been working on (well, at least organizing in my head) an extensive article or three on the topic of principle and why it is essential today. It is with this context that I bring you a good teaser on the topic from Jay Reding:

But the problem is that if the choice is between the Democrats and the Democrats-Lite, why not vote for the real thing? If Republicans start advocating for more government control, they lose the conservative and libertarian wings of the party and end up losing anyway.

There has to be room for both. The GOP cannot win by turning its back on its principles, but it has to be able to advocate for those principles. Being the best conservative in the world does absolutely nothing unless the GOP cannot get others to understand the importance of that stand.

As you know, I am not a Republican. Nonetheless, there was a time when that party claimed principles with which I find myself largely in agreement. As a conservative, I definetly

I would add that while Mr. Reding’s entire article is worth reading, it is important to note that more than advocacy is needed (if by advocacy one means “speaking out for”). I can advocate for conservative principles all day long–but unless I can also live those principles, I am become as a sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal.

This is part of my concern with the Tea Party movement. Many of us can/do/did speak our minds with a message of dissatisfaction with government spending, taxation, fiscal insanity (whatever one wishes to call it) but how many of us who particpated in the Tea Parties are willing to look at our own lives and live those same principles?

UPDATE

PP from the South Dakota War College is thinking similar thoughts with regards to the GOP’s stated intent to re-brand itself:

At the end of the day, I’m not sure we need to “re-brand.”  The GOP got itself into trouble because we failed to practice what we preach – from the White House on down. If we “re-” anything, we need to “re-commit ourselves to doing what we say we’re going to do”

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Ed Morrissey at HotAir has some very good questions with regards the 150,000 jobs which have been saved/created by the federal government since President Obama got the ball rolling:

It takes a lot of nerve to get up in front of the press and claim job creation or salvation with specific numbers as unemployment skyrockets.  Of course, when Barack Obama does it, the act takes a little less courage, as the everyone knows the national media won’t challenge him on it:

This budget builds on the steps we’ve taken over the last 100 days to move this economy from recession to recovery and ultimately to prosperity.

We began by passing a Recovery Act that has already saved or created over 150,000 jobs and provided a tax cut to 95 percent of all working families.

Really?  Which 150,000 jobs were those?  Does Obama have any supporting data for this claim?  We wouldn’t know from the performance at the press conference, as not one single reporter asked Obama to corroborate that claim.  The only follow-up on jobs came from Andre Showell, who asked a softball about black unemployment and how Obama would address it.

When I throw out a number which doesn’t have any backing, I usually realize it the moment said number passes my lips (and both wish I could back it up as well as understand that someone–if he or she is paying attention–really should call me on it).

Then again, it is one thing to inaccurately generalize “Well, I believe better than half the people who shop here wouldn’t mind paying for carts” and another matter to say “We did something which saved or created a specific number of jobs and here the number is.”

Indeed it is well and good to be positive about things, but not to the point where one wonders what became of Baghdad Bob.

UPDATE

Speaking of Baghdad Bob, here is one of his jewels of wisdom:

Yes, the American troops have advanced further. This will only make it easier for us to defeat them.

Perhaps this really is the President’s approach to joblessness, and the economy in general. I wonder if we will ever hear Mr. Gibbs saying something like:

Yes, the American economy has declined even further. This will only make it easier for us to turn it around.

Please, don’t think me so far out with this suggestion. This is, after all, the administration which has assured us that the path to  fiscal responsibility lies through the Swamp of Debt.

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Context is critical. Here is some video context for the much ballyhooed $100 million federal budget cut.

The other comparison I’ve heard is that this sum of money is about what the federal government will spend in 13 minutes (assuming an even expenditure of money every minute of every day of the entire budget year). There you have it: an unknown number of government bureaucrats will spend some portion of 90 days figuring out how not to spend 13 minutes.

HT: Fastidious

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You will remember the story of Rip Van Winkle? Somewhere not too far from present day Albany, NY, this Dutchman fell asleep while taking a hunting break and awakened 20 years later to a markedly different culture. Oh, and his “fowling piece” didn’t work anymore. The full story may be found here at Bartleby.

The New York State Assembly is at present engaged in a series of actions which would so curtail the citizen’s rights to posses and use firearms that it boggles the mind–all in the interests, of course, of protecting everyone. I would mention that until the assembly figures out how to change the human heart, no restrictions of the these objects will tend to prevent criminal activities.

Here’s the list of current Second Amendment related issues which are being pushed by the Democrat majority in the New York State Assembly:

One bill requires the re-licensing and recertification of firearms permits after five years (A.801A/Paulin). This will help ensure that licensing authorities have the oversight they need to protect the public while balancing the legitimate constitutional rights of gun owners. Another bill creates the Children’s Weapon Accident Protection Act which requires that there be a weapons-safety program for schoolchildren and creates crimes of failing to safely store firearms (A.5844/Weisenberg).

The legislative package also addresses public safety by requiring all firearms sold in the state to be childproof (A.1326/Englebright) and capable of microstamping ammunition (A.6468/Schimel), and by instituting background checks for firearms sold at pawn shops (A.7574/Hoyt). Another bill requires stringent recordkeeping and reporting of gun sales, liability insurance and employee training for gunsmiths to prevent the sale of guns through so-called “straw purchases” (A.1093/Paulin).

Other measures in the Assembly gun package would:

Protect the safety of law enforcement personnel by prohibiting the sale and ownership of ammunition designed to fragment or explode upon impact and pierce body armor (A.2881/Koon);

Require law enforcement authorities to record projectiles, shell casings and guns in their possession which they suspect were used in a gun crime into an electronic databank (A.2882A/Koon);

Ban the sale, use or possession of 50-caliber or larger weapons, and creates a program to recall those currently legally owned (A.3211A/Eddington);

Define a “disguised gun” to include those weapons designed and intended to appear to be a toy gun and ban their production and sale. (A.5078/Lentol);

Encourage responsible gun ownership by establishing a standard firearms safety course for people applying for a gun license (A.3076B/Kavanagh);

Add to the definition of assault weapon to include additional weapons (A.6157/Titone); and

Empower courts to revoke licenses and seize weapons of certain individuals who could present a threat to the public (A.7733/Lupardo).

The bills which would “recall” (ie, confiscate) current legal weapons and  let the courts (impartial as we know they are) “seize weapons” (ie, confiscate them) from people who “could present a threat to the public” are particularly troublesome. I do not know, but I confess to thinking it probable that HR 45 (from Representative Rush of Illinois) has emboldened his fellow-thinkers in New York to believe that they can push these bills through.

In case you are wondering, Rip Van Winkle’s gun was undoubtedly larger than a .50 caliber if it was considered a fowling piece. Of course, that might place it squarely into the shotgun category, but I don’t see the assembly worrying about such a distinction.

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Well, Mark Steyn is not, to my knowledge, on the covers of those magazines (as I realize some might take the headline). Rather, he writes on the topic of demographics and how that relates to the current global financial crisis meltdown apocalypse mess. If you’ve not read him before, try him. If you have read him before, then hang on to enjoy the English language:

Take a “toxic asset”. What would improve its current pitiful value? That’s easy: More demand. Less supply. An asset is only an asset as long as there’s a buyer willing to buy it. If you’ve got 50 houses and 100 would-be homeowners, that’s good for property prices. If you’ve got 100 houses and 50 would-be homeowners, that’s not so good.

Which is the situation much of the developed world is facing. A bank is a kind of demographic shorthand, by which old people with capital lend to young people with ambition and ideas. Unfortunately, the western world is running out of young people. Japan, Germany and Russia are already in net population decline. Fifty per cent of Japanese women born in the Seventies are childless. Between 1990 and 2000, the percentage of Spanish women childless at the age of 30 almost doubled, from just over 30 per cent to just shy of 60 per cent. In Sweden, Finland, Austria, Switzerland, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, 20 per cent of 40-year old women are childless. In Germany, 30 per cent of all women are childless. In a recent poll, invited to state the “ideal” number of children, 16.6 per cent of Germans answered “None.”

30 percent of all German women are without children. Remarkable.

Whenever I write about demography, I usually get a ton of responses from folks saying: What’s so bad about falling population? Japan, Belgium and the like are pretty congested: Wouldn’t it be nice to have a bit more elbow room? Sure. With the rise of mill towns in the south and the opening up of the west, the population of my small municipality in New Hampshire peaked in the 1820 census, declined till 1940 and still hasn’t caught up to where it was 200 years ago. But it didn’t matter. Because we were a self-contained rural economy with no welfare and no public debt. If Japan and Germany were run like 19th century Granite State townships, they’d be okayish. But they’re not, so they won’t be. You can’t hunker down behind national borders when there aren’t enough young people inside the perimeter with a sufficient level of consumption to grow the economy at the rate necessary to cover existing government obligations.

[emphasis added]

I’m reminded of the song whose lyrics include the following:

Let’s forget about tomorrow
Let’s forget about tomorrow
Let’s forget about tomorrow for tomorrow never comes

Domani, forget domani
Let’s live for now and anyhow who needs domani?
The moonlight, let’s share the moonlight
Perhaps together we will never be again

Am I wrong to think that many have done more than sing that song? That they have internalized it and find such a life to be worth living, not realizing that tomorrow is today for the children they were too selfish/busy to have?

I’m grateful that we may have enough future citizens in the United States to, as one of my history professors used to say, “figure out what to do with the mess which has been left for us.”

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In his remarks on how the federal government is running roughshod over current law and policy with regards to Chrysler and GM and bankruptcy, John at PowerLine nails it:

One hallmark of organized crime loan-sharking is that, once you are in debt to the mob, you are never allowed to pay off the principal. No matter how much you pay, you always owe more. The mob squeezes you for everything you have. Until a few months ago, I never expected to see an analogy between the U.S. Department of the Treasury and the Mafia. But is it unreasonable to see a parallel in the government’s refusal to allow banks that have borrowed money under TARP to repay it? Does it not appear that financial institutions that became enmeshed with the government, and are now being dictated to by the government, find it increasingly difficult to extricate themselves?

Read his entire exigesis of the situation. It is worth your time.

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Notre Dame’s decision to award President Obama an honorary degree has had quite an impact. It has influenced everything from people who have decided they can no longer support the football team (one of my family members who grew up in that neighborhood, two or three friends who have been pulling for the Irish for decades) to someone who was to share the platform with the President–but has decided that she simply cannot do it. From First Things, we have Mary Ann Glendon’s letter:

When you informed me in December 2008 that I had been selected to receive Notre Dame’s Laetare Medal, I was profoundly moved. I treasure the memory of receiving an honorary degree from Notre Dame in 1996, and I have always felt honored that the commencement speech I gave that year was included in the anthology of Notre Dame’s most memorable commencement speeches. So I immediately began working on an acceptance speech that I hoped would be worthy of the occasion, of the honor of the medal, and of your students and faculty.

Last month, when you called to tell me that the commencement speech was to be given by President Obama, I mentioned to you that I would have to rewrite my speech. Over the ensuing weeks, the task that once seemed so delightful has been complicated by a number of factors.

Go and read it all. Then realize that there are some people who still stand on principle–despite the fact that doing so does not appear to be in their immediate best interests.

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USA Today will be interviewing Representative Stephanie Herseth Sandlin at 2:00 Eastern today (27 April). Go to this link and submit your questions in the comments. Who knows, we might all learn a thing or two.

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The legislation known as Card Check (or the Employee Free Choice Act) hasn’t gone away so much as it has been placed on a side rail for later. The Rapid City Journal addresses Senator Johnson (and his probable role) on the legislation when it comes to a vote:

Sen. Tim Johnson is at epicenter of the debate over the legislation that would change the way unions can be organized. Johnson is considered a swing vote on the issue and, because his name is on the bill, a possible vote in favor of it.

It’s a tough spot for the South Dakota senator who is feeling the pressure from both sides.

We would encourage Johnson to vote against any card check legislation, as it is bad for business and bad for an ailing economy and may restrict the freedoms of the American worker.

Kudos to the RCJ for a clear call for action. Here’s hoping the Senator is reading/will read the paper.

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From Massad Ayoob, who recently spent some quality time with a number of police officers:

One of the topics that inevitably cropped up was response to mass murders in schools and other public places. Among us was Ron Borsch, instructor at the Southeast Area Law Enforcement Academy in Ohio, who has been an advocate of “sole response” entry into such situations by the first responding officer. Though controversial in law enforcement, his theory was validated recently by the courageous 25-year-old cop who entered a mass murder scene only a few weeks ago at an old folks home, and stopped the killing with a single bullet from his Glock .40 service pistol coolly and expertly delivered to the gunman’s chest.

Borsch’s impromptu discussion revealed the fact that some 25% of mass murder shooting sprees he has researched were ended by armed private citizens. This led in turn to a discussion of the Israeli Model, in place since the Maalot massacre of schoolchildren decades ago, in which teachers and other school personnel were trained and discreetly armed with handguns, which has proven famously successful ever since in Israel. Across the ten-member panel AND the dozens of police instructors attending the discussion, not a single voice was raised against that concept, and many spoke enthusiastically in favor of it.

Don’t listen to the politically motivated figureheads. Talk to the REAL cops. They’re the ones who best understand the dynamics of violence, and of protection of the innocent from evil.

[emphasis added]

This particular feature of Israel’s homeland defense is new to me (but has apparently been in place for some time, now. I can see where it would definitely serve as a deterrent–and even more importantly, stops those who are undeterred (as was the case in the following situation a little over a year ago (by way of CBN News):

Two Palestinian terrorists disguised in Israel Defense Forces (IDF) uniforms entered the study hall at Makor Haim High School in Kibbutz Kfar Etzion southeast of Jerusalem.

Armed with guns and knives, the terrorists managed to stab several students before armed school counselors arrived and shot them dead.

Now, that’s a school counselor worth listening to.

HT: Of Arms and the Law

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From the folks over at Cato, here’s a piece about possible positive changes to education choices in South Carolina. Similarly, here is another one on good things in the works for Florida. Both well worth reading (including the embedded links) if you believe that education is simply too important to leave to the government.

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