The Wizard of Oz, aka The Messiah, The Anointed One, The One You’ve Been Waiting For, etc. known formally as President-Elect Barack Hussein Obama is as of today still clear of any entanglements in the Rod Blagojevich affair. Therefore, His Anointedness is proceeding with his Yellow Brick Road plan to create a socialist nirvana, naming ever more extreme leftists to important government positions. The pace hasn’t slowed, even though the Wicked Witch of the MidWest, Rahm Emmanuel, may be called to testify before a grand jury of hopefully not his peers, but average Americans, instead.

The YBR plan (remember, this is a new kind of President) will incorporate lots of pork, handouts and populist pronouncements without doing anything substantial to solve the underlying problems. In fact, it’s more than likely that a Marxist President and a socialist Congress will create many more problems than they will solve and it will take decades to unwind the mess. Think FDR and LBJ. The first is federal insolvency. With a debt load of $40 trillion already on the books and threatening the US economy, His Bad Self is proposing yet another massive Democratic spending spree dressed up as an economic stimulus/green technology package. There’s no point in discussing the benefits of such a trillion-dollar mistake because there are none, unless you happen to be one of the parasites in line to profit from it. The poor, the working poor and the lower middle class will see none of those benefits, because Obama’s ‘vision’ doesn’t include them. That money is intended for unions, specifically labor and government unions, that will see their membership swell exponentially. Government contractors are basically provided their cut for distributing the money to union employees. Government employees are hired to watch over the government contractors. Nothing actually has to be accomplished for all that money, as long as it’s all used up.

Therefore, the only measurable result will be to add more zeroes to the existing debt load. Based on projected government revenues ( our taxes) and how little the government actually puts toward easing its debt load, that $40-plus trillion will be paid off in 3 or 4 centuries, but only if our government stops spending money it doesn’t have. Not money it doesn’t have today, or next year, but money it arithmetically shouldn’t be able to have until 2400 AD. Unfortunately, the money supply continues to grow, printing presses are running on overtime, and entire forests are disappearing to fuel the government’s need to boost inflation. Oh yeah, in case the mainstream media missed this one:  The government wants inflation to go into hyperdrive. Why? The federal deficit can be paid off with zillions of worthless dollars. Problem solved. Back to the printing presses and make it snappy. Will raging inflation destroy middle class Americans? Absolutely. Not the Anointed One’s problem. Hyperinflation gives him and the loony toons in Congress more spending loot and the resulting misery that will keep Democrats firmly in power. The bonus is that they get to blame the Republicans for it.

Chicago-style politics, aka Democrat-style politics, is an age-old system of patronage and tribute that has infested bureaucracies for centuries. It turns the concept of government on its head: you must bribe your local elected politician, or his/her unelected party boss, to provide government services that your tax dollars already cover. Government services are rationed so that citizens must pay tribute in order to receive what is rightfully theirs in the first place. It could be a streetlight, extra police patrols or even a new exit ramp. It is a purely parasitic notion — those who control the levers of government enriching themselves and their cronies at the public’s expense. Rod Blagojevich, Barack Obama, Jesse Jackson, Jr. and Richard Daley are all products of this system, from which they derive their political power. Obama, likely the smartest of the bunch, has additional dimensions of political power due to his associations with A.C.O.R.N., the ACLU, leftist extremists, etc., that propelled him into the White House, while Gov. Blagojevich is likely headed to prison.

Chicago ward politics aren’t unique to this Midwestern town. It is a microcosm of how the Democratic Party operates on a national scale, how it conducts business in Congress and how our new President will behave once he’s in office. Be prepared for bare-faced lies, obfuscation, power grabs and cronyism on an unparalleled scale. This will make the Clinton years look positively prudish. And oh, by the way, Obama will fire scores of US district attorneys, especially those conducting investigations into Democratic politicians and bureaucrats. And no one will complain. There will be no screeching by the media, no calls for investigations and no grandstanding by members of Congress. It will be business as usual.

His Anointed Self Obama is now pledging to spend $1 trillion to ’stimulate’ the economy in 2009 with additional spending bills heaped on top of an already bulging, pork-laden 2009 budget that quietly passed earlier this year. That would put government spending in 2009 at roughly $5.5 trillion, or 4 times the ‘normal’ bulging, pork-laden budget that sails through Congress. That kind of money could rebuild every road in America, re-string every power and telephone line in the country and even build a few dozen new nuclear power plants. But that won’t happen. There will be a few signature projects, all of them failures, and the rest of the money will disappear down a rathole, leaving only debt service for taxpayers to fund well into the next century or four.

Our government is on the brink of insolvency. Obama, Pelosi, Reid, Schumer, Frank, Dodd and the rest of the socialist elitists controlling Congress and the White House will bankrupt this country. And, they don’t care. The more misery that exists, the more fodder they have for ratcheting down on those who suffer, blaming the rich and the Republicans for the mess the Democrats alone created. What a perfect setup: Lie to the American people. Make them suffer even more. Blame the uninvolved. Grab more power. It’s the Democratic way.

And what do conservatives and Republicans (not necessarily the same) do about this? Nothing. Instead of rabble-rousing the way liberals and socialists have, they hold back. They discuss. They write letters. No, that just won’t do any more.

The Illinois governor is up to his arse in legal problems, but it’s likely he’ll get away with it. After all, he’s closely tied to ‘businessman’ Antoin ‘Tony’ Rezko, good pal and former neighbor to President Elect Barack Obama, also of Chicago. To think that Obama didn’t know about Blagojevich’s outstretched hand is to believe that the New York Times presents unbiased, factual news.

In 1963, 75 cents of every public education dollar was spent on ’student services’ - teacher salaries, books, classroom materials - and the remaining 25 cents was spent on ’administration, facilities, support services’. Fifty years later, that ratio is reversed. 75 cents of every public education dollar is spent on just about everything else but the education of our kids. Where does the money go? The list is long and full of surprises. The usual suspects are present - unions, government contractors, school board insiders, lobbyists. They have the political and administrative muscle to ram through spending plans that run counter to the students’ best interests. The spending snowball usually begins with “Let’s build a new high school” - a surefire way to load up the gravy train and get the parasites circling like vultures.

Today’s high schools rival college campuses for size, facilities, construction quality and materials, electronic and lighting technologies, operating costs and maintenance. Many have Olympic swimming pools, Broadway-style theaters, collegiate-level athletic facilities and cafeterias that rival those of the Fortune 500. All of these facilities are overpriced, overbuilt and extraordinarily expensive to operate. Everyone involved in the process benefits from this except, of course, the taxpayer. The students are for the most part oblivious to their surroundings. So, who exactly benefits from this state of affairs?

Let’s begin with the school board. It’s usually packed with people predisposed to favor public employee unions, government contractors or public financiers, either through outright ignorance or because they were voted in with their support. There is no real oversight of school boards, and no legal means to compel them to be circumspect with taxpayer money.

School construction is very expensive. In fact, it’s the most expensive type of building in the US except for nuclear power plants. And no one knows why. But, because that local high school is going to cost $100 million (how did they know that going in?), bond underwriters are flying in from all over the country to shock and awe the school board with their financial prowess. Obviously, no school district can afford to build a high school with available cash. So, they will issue bonds, guaranteed by the local taxpayer, to create a 30-year mortgage. The firm that creates those bonds and sells them to investors will pocket nearly $10 million for its efforts. Not bad for 90 days work. And yes, the local taxpayer will be on the hook for it.

Schools take up lots of real estate. Usually, it’s very expensive real estate located on a main thoroughfare. That means brokers, developers, landowners, insurers and yes, teacher pension funds, vie for the opportunity to sell land to the school district, simply because the sale price will be above market, and will have traded hands several times before the sale. It’s an opportunity to play favorites, broker influence and who knows what else.

Then there’s the planning and architectural work. Once again, engineering firms, architects, interior designers, furniture companies, consultants, technologists and a whole gang of specialists buzz around trying to get a piece of the work. There are hearings, planning sessions, bidding, re-bidding and awarding the contracts - all of it an opportunity to waste money and peddle influence.

Moving along, there’s the construction itself. Savvy government contractors are adept at padding the bill, running up change orders and working the price variance in commodities like gypsum and concrete to their advantage. They are committed to using union contractors wherever possible, which also adds to the cost and pads the build schedule. But hey, what’s the problem? It’s free money.

And finally, after all the computers are installed, the refrigerators are humming and the desks have been unpacked and arranged, the students file into their new school. Is the education they’re getting any better? No. Have the teachers gotten any smarter? No. Has the curriculum improved, has the selection of books been carefully vetted? Of course not. So, $100 million later, our kids are as poorly served as they were in the previous facility. The only difference is that lots of people made lots of money off the backs of the taxpayer.

President Elect Barack Obama has been tiptoeing around his campaign promises lately, carefully rephrasing his words and restating the problems he once sought to vanquish just by being Obama. There is little doubt that he and his cohorts in Congress will drive the country deeper in to debt with spending programs intended to reward his union supporters (please refer to earlier posts). That means infrastructure and school building projects that involve lots of union members and bureaucrats. This will be packaged up as an economic stimulus package, but that’s eyewash at best. In fact, it’s an outright fraud that our grandchildren and their children will still be paying off in the next century.

The best possible economic stimulus would be to enact a tax holiday - two months where no tax of any kind is collected. All the money is kept, and spent, by those who earned it. It’s an idea that’s been circulated previously and it would most certainly work better than anything coming out of Congress or the Office of the President-Elect. Which is why it will never happen.

The auto industry is a tempting carcass that even the vultures won’t consider. Typically, when a corporation the size of GM founders, corporate raiders of every stripe flock to the scene. They’re after the assets or the cash flow or sometimes the tax losses. Hedge funds and private equity groups would be sniffing around, looking for a great deal. That’s what happened to Chrysler. Cerberus Capital made a lowball offer for the ailing automaker once word got around that Daimler-Benz was willing to give it away. Unfortunately for Cerberus and its management, this was not a flip-and-strip. And even with a capable cost-cutter as CEO, a top-to-bottom reorganization will take many years and many billions of dollars. Throw in a disastrous turn in the economy and you have some real trouble on your hands. Ford and GM are also being pummeled in this recession. Sales are off by billions of dollars.

As of this date, the market value of GM and Ford stock combinedis roughly $9 billion. That means anyone with $9-10 billion can offer existing shareholders cash and effectively own both corporations. The combined annual revenues of both corporations is over $200 billion. One would think that vultures would have been circling for the past two years as both GM and Ford hemorrhaged cash. But they haven’t. In fact, Bill Gates or Paul Allen could easily write a check  out of their household accounts. No Middle East sheik, no Asian billionaire or Russian mobster has even considered a move. Kirk Kerkorian, the Vegas entrepreneur and investor, has taken a beating in his attempts to buy into GM and Ford.

What’s keeping the turnaround artists, the LBO experts and the private equity groups away is the lack of available credit and collapsing vehicle sales. Both combine to create an incredibly difficult and complex financial situation. Anyone considering a play to control either Ford or GM would need billions in low-cost borrowing in order to accomplish a restructuring - something both firms desperately need. And everyone is standing pat, waiting for something to happen. The $36 billion the carmakers are requesting is just a band aid. It will never be repaid because the Big 3 haven’t even earned $36 billion all told in the last 10 years. Consider it a gift from the American taxpayer. Congress should consider simply guaranteeing a $30-50 billion loan to anyone with a plan that shows they can do a better job of running GM or Ford than present management. Let’s ask Warren Buffet.

As liberals in Congress and the media push America into the clutches of a socialist oligarchy, they fail to mention that as part of this utopian fiction we’ll be giving up most of our personal freedoms. In exchange for government handouts and subsidies, Americans will sacrifice prosperity. In exchange for free medical coverage, Americans will sacrifice their personal health. And, in exchange for ‘fairness’, Americans will give up their right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It’s a bad deal all the way around. The few who understand just how bad a deal this is are outnumbered 100 to 1 by the idiots who think they’re getting something for nothing.

When thousands stand in line for a flu shot, are denied a heart bypass because they’re too old, or are turned away for medical treatment because their racial quota has already been filled, it will be too late. America is turning itself into a socialist monster of unparalleled dimensions. Unlike Russia and China, which were largely underdeveloped and ethnically homogeneous when communism was imposed, the US is a huge and diverse society with a titanic, sprawling economy. What inequities exist will now by vastly magnified as the ‘experts’ from Washington try to micromanage our lives and livelihoods. For every stupid and short-sighted fix there will be dozens of unintended consequences, each radiating outward and interacting with other stupid and short-sighted fixes. These socialist dilettantes actually believe that they know what they’re doing. And we are their guinea pigs.

That’s where the true genius in the Constitution lies — it created a simple but rigid framework upon which to build a dynamic society and a robust economy that allowed the people, not the politicians, to direct their common fate. No micromanaging required. Society and markets regulate themselves. It may not be terrifically efficient and it occasionally gets messy, but it beats socialism hands down for one simple reason: the innate human drive for personal betterment trumps mediocrity imposed from above.

Automakers are back in DC begging for money. Multimillionaire CEOs are compelled to grovel before narcissistic martinets filling the seats of both House and Senate hearing rooms. It’s a hoot. Ford CEO Mulally actually drove to DC. What an incredible waste of the man’s time. That noble gesture probably cost Ford Motor Company $10 million in delayed executive decisions and key milestones. The reason a gunslinger like Mulally can ask for a $36 million salary is because he makes billion-dollar business decisions every day. And he can’t be wrong, unlike the fools browbeating him from their bully pulpit in congressional hearing rooms.

Clowns like Barney Frank and Chris Dodd demand that senior management either vacate their positions or take a pay cut. Wagoner, Nardelli and Mulally offer a token pay cut. The automakers present plans for deep cuts in employee salaries and benefits for their non-union workforce. The UAW’s Ron Gettelfinger announces salary and benefit cuts for union employees. But what will remain unasked is what are the labor unions themselves giving up? Will Ron Gettelfinger and his cronies take a pay cut? Will they increase the co-pay on their own health insurance? Will there be any pay cuts or pink slips at Solidarity House? Will they at least stop showing up at labor-related events in stretch limousines? How about putting that posh union resort on Black Lake up for sale?

Democrat politicians don’t have the cajones to ask these questions. The labor unions own them. The labor unions funded them and put them in power. So the charade will continue. The productive part of the automotive industry - executives, managers, white-collar and blue-collar employees will feel the pain. The parasites - unions, politicians and bureaucrats - won’t feel a thing.

Barack and Michelle Obama chose not to send their daughters to Washington DC public schools. Not surprisingly, Barack Obama adamantly opposes choice for children attending DC public schools, characterized as the nation’s worst public school system. This is not an unusual stance for a Democratic politician. The Democratic Party in general doesn’t want any choice in education, reflecting the wishes of its major constituents - teacher unions, public employee unions, socialist activists and the ACLU. For those unfamiliar with the true mission of the ACLU, removing parental choice and parental influence in education is one of its highest priorities. ACLU members are and always have been dedicated to a socialist agenda. The ACLU is and always has been wedded to the Democratic Party.

Therefore, Democrats are unfailingly opposed to any reforms of the public education system or any serious competition. Charter schools have found Democratic politicians to consistently adversarial. Further, a good many Democrats are supporting a nationwide ban on home schooling because it poses a minor threat to the hegemony of the union-controlled public system. As test scores sink, truancy and dropout rates increase, the National Education Association and its rival American Federation of Teachers can only offer a single solution - more money. This despite the fact that the US spends more than twice as much as the next biggest spender, and still ranks 55th in scholastic achievement globally.

Teacher unions, academics and schools of education ignore calls for reform. Study after study has shown that the techniques and fads embraced by public educators and many college professors are flawed, stupid and wildly inappropriate. And still, the education monopoly plows forward, confident in its political heft and gamesmanship.

One need only to watch as DC school chancellor Michelle Rhee attempts to reward good teachers and fire incompetent teachers. The firestorm has now involved not only teacher unions and the ACLU, but Congress itself, simply because the chancellor wants to strip tenure away from truly bad teachers. But, why should elementary and secondary public school teachers get tenure when 60% of college professors don’t have tenure? In fact, tenure doesn’t even belong in public schools in the first place. The concept of tenure was developed in the late 1800s to protect the religious beliefs of a college professor, can you believe it? And here, teacher unions have applied tenure to the protection of incompetent, even dangerous, teachers who are screwing up our kids. And the Democrats back them 100 percent.

Democrats have no problem backing the teacher unions and the ACLU. After all, incompetent teachers create ignorant citizens. Ignorant citizen don’t discriminate between BS and reality when it comes to political discourse. Ignorant citizens can make their way to the voting booth as easily as informed citizens. Unions provide shuttle buses for the ones who can’t find voting booths on their own. For Democrats, a screwed up public education system is all upside and no downside. It perpetuates and grows a solid, consistent voting bloc. Could it be that Democrats are so cynical and self-serving that they are perfectly willing to ruin millions of lives, destroy this country’s future and impair opportunity for the sake of power? You betcha.