The $25 billion in taxpayer dollars granted (not a loan, but a gift) to US carmakers is not actually intended to keep these companies afloat. Rather, this is a payoff to labor unions for their unwavering support of the Democratic Party and its near-total sweep of Congress and the White House. The $25 billion, and the next $25 billion and whatever follows is largely earmarked for union workers, their health benefits and their pensions. And, it keeps union bosses flush with money from dues and ‘management fees’ derived from handling medical benefits and pensions investments. Very little of that taxpayer money will be used to develop new transportation technologies or enhance current vehicle technologies. And no, it won’t be used to develop high-mileage vehicles.

Because nearly everyone in America suffers from long-term memory loss, it’s important to understand what’s going on in Detroit and the impact this is going to have on the rest of the country. Two years ago, GM was able to shift its pension and benefits liabilities to the United Auto Workers, which gladly accepted this enormous responsibility. Ford and Chrysler will follow. Why? Because the UAW knew that if Democrats were in power, it would have no problem shifting these liabilities to the federal government and have all Americans chip in to cover their operating expenses and salaries. They’ve succeeded. Their plan has been executed to perfection. Now, it’s just a matter of cashing the checks from Washington.

In case this doesn’t make any sense to the reader, one must understand the perverted logic behind it all. It’s quite chilling. Union bosses actually don’t give a damn about the carmakers or the workers they claim to represent. They care about themselves and the union organization. They are perfectly willing to put the carmakers out of business and screw their own members out of pensions and benefits as long as the union continues to flourish. They can run the pensions into the ground, knowing that the Obama administration and a Democrat-controlled Congress will continue to bail them out until the cows come home. Sound familiar? It’s similar to what the parasites on Wall Street did — run their businesses irresponsibly, knowing that the government would be forced to make them whole at the taxpayer’s expense. It’s called moral hazard, a term everyone in America should get really familiar with. Look it up on wikipedia.org

As we gather to celebrate this national holiday, parents in New England squabble about the personal degradation and humiliation to which their children are subjected at this time of year. Apparently, these helpless waifs are forced to dress up as Native Americans and re-enact the Thanksgiving feast with other children dressed as Pilgrims. As shoppers fill the aisles of grocery stores, a debate rages over the Thanskgiving day release of an 8 year-old accused of shooting is father and another man. And, as linens are unfolded and silver is polished, animal rights activists are suing Butterball for the inhumane treatment of turkeys.

We have much to be thankful for. As of this week, the Bill of Rights still stands. The Constitution hasn’t been entirely tossed out yet. Al Franken won’t be the incoming senator from Minnesota.  And, unless some Republican senator loses his or her mind, the Democrats won’t be able to ram a socialist manifesto through Congress. It’s not much, but it’s something. Okay, the Obama thing didn’t work out, but we can all pray that he’s totally incompetent and won’t be able to execute his marxist agenda.

As you sit down with your significant others in your soon-to-be-foreclosed home, try to enjoy the Thanksgiving feast that pushed your last working credit card over the limit. Ignore the sounds of a repo man hoisting your SUV onto his flatbed as the pink slip that arrived yesterday rustles gently in your shirt pocket. This is America, after all…

We’ll be taking Thursday off.

The legendary lead singer for supergroup U2 has become a mover and shaker on the world political scene. Here’s a quintessential producer: a rags to riches musical career followed by a life dedicated to philanthropy and social activism. He may be a liberal in many ways, but he’s still a producer. Bono may not realize it, but someday soon the loony left will label him an upper-crust reactionary.

The Producer or Parasite? blog, website and all of its features are aimed at the general public - those who have only a mild interest in politics, society and where this country is headed. The goal is to get these Americans a bit more involved in the political process or to at least be aware of what’s going on. Although political wonks, junkies and insiders are more than welcome, there are plenty of other sources more focused on specific issues and more scholarly in their approach. Producer or Parasite? is not and will never be a think tank or conservative news outlet. That’s not the mission. Rather, this blog and website is here to ask questions that John Q. Public might have and then answer it in a way John Q. Public can grasp. It becomes a question of balance: where to set the bar so that every reader gets something out of the posts and weekly columns. What’s becoming obvious is the huge gap between the politically aware and the average American.

A recent study concluded that most Americans know little about the Constitution, that there are actually three branches of government, or that Presidents can’t declare wars or make treaties. And, too many Americans think the electoral college exists to prepare a citizen for public office. Further, most Americans cannot name the Speaker of the House, the Senate Majority Leader or the House Majority Leader, much less understand what they’re really up to. We’ve voted in a new President based on sound bites and saturation advertising. Europeans are laughing at us. Terrorists are sharpening their knives.

How did Americans become so utterly ignorant of their situation? Theories abound, but it’s probably just a result of the extraordinarily poor education received in public schools compounded by a media culture that doesn’t value academics or critical thinking in any form. Actually, it’s rather ironic: the failure of public education actually protects and enriches those most responsible for that failure. Ain’t America great?

GM, Ford and Chrysler spent two days in DC trying to wrangle $25 billion out of Congress. Contrary to what the media outlets may have broadcast, they succeeded. In the world of Big Business and Big Government, where lobbyists and PR flacks lubricate the wheels of commerce, the drubbing taken by the Big 3 CEOs was a perfunctory procedure necessary to throw the public off the scent. The deal was sealed with the announcement that a special December session of Congress was to be convened to vote the measure into law. The transition from a free-market economy to a socialist economic has now formally commenced. And what most conservative pundits and ‘business’ analysts don’t fully appreciate is that it was pushed forward by the automakers, not the politicians.

That would seem counterintuitive, wouldn’t it? Here, these captains of industry were tossing out the welcome mat for Washington to waltz in and dictate how they were to run their businesses. But, these captains of industry aren’t capitalists. They are bureaucrats and politicians, just like the blowhards in Congress. Think about it — what percentage of GM does Rick Wagoner own? 1/100% or maybe 1/50%? How about Nardelli or Mulally? These guys are custodians, not owners. They have no capital invested, they have no skin in the game and they are paid millions of dollars to pretend they’re running these businesses. Unfortunately, American corporate governance laws allow people with miniscule ownership interest to run these companies as if they owned them. And these guys are able to give themselves, their friends and their relatives generous bonuses for doing nothing.

GM, Ford and Chrysler design, engineer and build good quality cars and trucks. But, the dead wood at the very top is holding back all three firms. If they are to receive money from the taxpayer in order to survive, then top management needs to leave. They’ve demonstrated their lack of vision, leadership and ability to manage.

Ann Coulter has had a taste of what liberals will do if you disagree with them, having been assaulted at almost every college campus where she has been invited to speak. What threat could Ms. Coulter pose that college students feel the need to bombard her with vegetables, push her from the stage and hold unruly demonstrations? Apparently dissent and debate is not something liberals can easily tolerate if it’s directed toward them. Karl Rove was similarly accosted by an antiwar activist while onstage during a panel discussion. Funny, no high-profile liberal has ever been pelted with fruit by a group of young conservatives. Al Franken has never had to suffer the humiliation of picking rotten tomatoes out of his hair or trying to outshout some idiot with a bullhorn and yet he encourages, even demands, the very same action be taken against his conservative opponents. 

And then, there are the thugs - the ones that show up to disrupt speeches, meetings and events being held by conservatives. The mainstream media spends little time examining the motives and resources of liberal thugs. When they are mentioned, it’s almost always in the context that the targeted conservative truly deserved to be assaulted, or that the conservative’s viewpoints where somehow dangerously inflammatory, controversial or racist. Therefore, these thugs were fully justified in their actions.

The thugs appear wherever pressure is required. St. Paul, Minnesota is probably not a hotbed of liberal thuggery and so one can assume that they were imported specifically for the 2008 Republican convention. Who paid for their travel, food and lodging? It could be some of the many liberal front organizations that receive money from wealthy donors like George Soros or Peter Lewis through intermediaries. The money could have come indireclty from the campaign coffers of Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama, or possibly the Democratic National Committee. It’s easy to do. If the Obama campaign can accept millions of dollars in untraceable prepaid credit card donations, it’s likely the money can flow out of the campaigns in equally devious ways. The more likely scenario are private foundations that laundered the money through several layers of middlemen. In any case, liberals feel that the ends justify the means. If a little muscle can get us all to the promised land just a little quicker, so much the better. Lenin would agree.

The CEO and Chairman of General Electric knows a thing or two about making business work. Time magazine thinks so too, naming him on their list of 100 most influential people in the world in 2008.

Between crippling tax schemes and calls for socialist expansion, the Speaker of the House speaks more for the looters and parasites than the ‘working’ Americans she claims to represent.

The 2008 presidential election was marked bya decidedly sinister undertone emanating from the Democratic camp. Beyond the usual Tammany Hall-style voter fraud and the mindless media cheer-leading, there was an undercurrent of threat and intimidation. It was in evidence on the nightly news broadcasts, if you were paying attention. Here’s an unnerving example:A Fox News reporter and cameraman were attempting to get a quote out of leftist loony toon Ward Churchill. The substance of the quote was immaterial, as was the reporter’s motivation for being there in the first place. But, the presence of thugs was disconcerting. Churchill was surrounded and ‘protected’ by a group of young men who eagerly pushed aside the young reporter, shoved the cameraman to the group and demanded the tape. They shouted down the reporter as he tried to ask questions and then hustled the flaky professor away from the scene. From the smile on Ward Churchill’s face, he was thoroughly enjoying the confrontation. Fox did not press charges. The local constabulary, who could clearly see the faces of these thugs on TV, didn’t arrest anyone. Ward Churchill did not apologize for the rough treatment of the reporter or the cameraman.

At the Republican national convention, small groups of men and women were found in safe-houses a short distance from the convention site. They were preparing balloons filled with urine and powders to irritate the eyes and nose, among other such niceties. Outside the convention hall, in what is typically a quiet and well-ordered town, unruly crowds picked fights with convention attendees and destroyed property, all in the name of hope and change. The Republican convention itself was marred with ‘technical’ glitches. Thuggery has entered the political process. These people justify their actions with flowery arguments about equality and fairness at the same time they intimidate, insult and injure those who don’t agree with them. They knowingly and willfully break the law, then justify it as a necessary action to achieve peace and harmony, of all things. The parallels between these ‘liberal’ thugs and Hitler’s infamous brown-shirts or Lenin’s Cheka are too close for comfort.

Somehow, I just can’t see young conservatives holed up in safe-houses manufacturing urine bombs or injuring reporters who merely ask a legitimate question. The mainstream media outlets, both print and electronic, cover this up or dismiss it as well-intentioned exuberance. They’re providing cover for what can and will turn much darker and more violent in the days to come. And maybe, that’s their intention.

There is a group of people out there that all Americans should get to know a lot better. They’re an adventurous bunch, putting up their own hard-earned money to fund the dream of some starry-eyed entrepreneur. They’re the ones who stack their nickels one on top the other as they work 12-14 hours a day running a construction company, a bakery, a car dealership. Yes, these men and women may be small business owners, but they’re much, much more than that — they’re capitalists. Not every small business owner is a capitalist, or even an investor. Most are too busy and too frazzled just trying to make ends meet. No, these capitalists come from a very small, elite group. They are the successful small business owners. The ones who have managed to become financially independent, and have the time and money to help others achieve success.

Help? Since when do capitalists help anyone except themselves? But that’s exactly what this rare breed does. They know what it’s like to start a business and bootstrap yourself to prosperity with hard work and sheer determination. And so, they offer start-up capital, advice and business connections to bring an idea to life. The risks are enormous and the rewards a long way off. And yet, they plunge ahead. This is how real capitalism works. Individual investors, groups of investors or a network put up the seed money for a new business we’ll be reading about five years from now. Are they expecting a return on that investment? Of course, they are. Would they be better off putting that money in a safer place, like a government bond? Yes, but they wouldn’t be happy. You see, they’re risk junkies. After a lifetime of taking risks in their own business and with their own livelihood, they’ve made a little bit of money. And, they can’t help but put that money to work in the most creative, dynamic way they know - by helping start another business.

Some of these new business concepts are incredibly ambitious - early detection of Alzheimer’s, or maybe a low-cost phone system for developing countries; ground-breaking clean energy technology or incredible new personal security devices. Many of these ideas start out small, in the hands of one or two visionaries and the risk junkies who back them. And, many of them fail for reasons too numerous to list, much less analyze. Suffice it to say that the road to mega-success is strewn with roadkill, much of it small investors who bet the farm on a big idea. Curiously, when the risk junkies win, they’re even more generous than they were before. And when they lose, they don’t complain, they don’t whine. They roll up their sleeves and work even harder to rebuild their investment capital.

What does our government do for the people behind the entrepreneur, the people without whom the entrepreneur would be nothing but big talk? Well, actually nothing. Our government makes it ever more difficult to save money. Our government’s progressive tax scheme effectively targets successful small business owners and Congress has made sure to eliminate just about every perk and advantage to owning and operating a small business. The Democrats in particular have made wealth accumulation nearly impossible. And what these socialists don’t understand is that many successful small business owners plow that hard-earned, heavily-taxed capital right back into another business. They invest. They mentor. They get involved. These are people driven to succeed. And what’s appalling is that the parasites hitch their wagons to these incredibly energetic people and go for a free ride.

The risk junkies aren’t stupid. They understand that they’re being unfairly exploited because they have this insatiable desire to succeed. They also know America is the only place on the planet were anyone with drive and ambition can succeed regardless of family connections, political or religious affiliation, tribal or caste distinctions or miles of bureaucratic red tape. And so, this group soldiers on. But at some point, when the odds are overwhelmingly against them, when they are brutalized for just trying to get ahead, this special group of investors - the risk junkies, will disappear. And so will our way of life.