During his candidacy and his first few days in office, Barack Obama has made both public and private comments regarding the use and cost of various forms of energy. He famously whispered that as president he would attempt to bankrupt the coal companies and the utilities dependent on coal for power generation. Quite recently, he said that $5 per gallon gasoline would be good for the country. Because he’s never held a real job,  commuted an hour to work, wrestled with the problems of a small business or assumed personal reponsibility for a profit/loss statement, Mr. Obama knows nothing about the realities of life here in these United States of America. He wasn’t concerned about helping Mother Earth when these comments were made. He was talking about controlling the lives of Americans through the availability, cost and appropriate use of energy. With the dollar nearly valueless, energy is now the new currency. By constricting supply, redirecting its flow or outlawing certain uses, Obama and his puppeteers can now control the entire US economy.

The carbon credit cap-and-trade scheme provides no direct benefit to the environment, the economy or the citizenry. It does, however, give the government dictatorial powers to control industrial output, personal mobility, even the flow of information. All of it requires energy. Starve a certain economic activity of energy, and it disappears. Provide cheap, abundant energy to another sector, and it will flourish. That’s called a planned economy. See Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Castro, Chavez. Even if the carbon credit tax scheme (yes, of course it raises taxes) doesn’t come to be, Mr. Obama and the Democrats in Congress have a dozen other means to achieve nearly identical results. Energy, like money, can be used to reward political allies and punish opponents. Energy, like money, evokes strong emotions of envy, entitlement and greed.

If you’ve ever watched one of those post-apocalyptic movies that hit theaters every now and then, you can’t help but notice that almost every film, energy is highly prized. Everyone fights over the available energy source, be it ancient fuel depot or swine flatulence, to stay alive or to impose their will over others. The leftist wing of the Democratic Party senses this. The private foundations and academic loonies have been touting this as the ultimate means of control for decades. But, how to get Americans to relinquish their standard of living and personal mobility - both possible only with cheap and abundant energy?

Enter the bogeyman - Al Gore, with an alarming vision of an environmental Armaggedon, replete with celebrity endorsements, Bruce Springsteen playing background music and thousands of militant morons flooding into the streets.  And so, Big Al and the environuts have trotted out their shameless scam of global warming to scare gullible Americans into scaling back their energy use and accepting the exhorbitant tax schemes that are being layered into energy costs. The environmental bogeyman frightens Americans into giving up their personal mobility, scaling back their standard of living and limiting their economic freedoms.

The media play along. In recent days, Exxon was again lambasted for its ‘obscene’ 2008 profits of $45 billion - a one time event. No one in the mainstream media bothered to report that over half of this profit was confiscated by the US government in the form of corporate income tax. Nor did they mention that Exxon actually collected nearly $300 billion in federal gasoline taxes for the government and turned it over within a few hours of collecting it. It costs Exxon lots of money to collect those taxes, do the reporting and transfer funds collected from thousands of gasoline stations and credit card issuers. Exxon was not reimbursed. The government expended no effort in collecting those taxes, other than to call the bank to see if they were deposited. And then, moments later, our government spent it. Out the door. Up in smoke. Never to be seen again. At some point, if voters allow it to happen, the government will take control of the oil and coal industries to ‘protect’ us from price gouging, when in fact it’s the hidden taxes in energy prices that are making them unaffordable to working Americans.  Once the means of production are controlled (Hugo Chavez playbook, p. 1), the government can impose its will as it sees fit. Whomsoever controls the levers of power, now controls each and every one of us.

So, when the brownouts start happening on a regular basis, when local radio stations featuring conservative talk show hosts are put on a limited broadcasting schedule to conserve power, and when your monthly electric bill is roughly equal to your mortgage payment, remember who started it all - Obama and his cronies in Congress. Their dreary utopia of equally shared misery is the best that socialists can offer.

Political pundits and TV newsreaders make much of ‘crony capitalism’ - as if all capitalism is based on monopolistic tendencies. The mainstream media will usually characterize this as conspiratorial corporate collusion aimed at hapless consumers. Monopolies or price-fixing never last because they’re inherently inefficient and unmanageable in a dynamic free-market system. One needs only to look at OPEC, an openly conspiratorial and monopolistic bunch. Whenever OPEC oil ministers agree to set market prices at an artificially high benchmark it only takes a couple of weeks before one of their own is exceeding their production quota or lowering their prices. Despite all their machinations, they can’t control the price of oil. It’s market forces and human nature at work - good, bad or indifferent.

Typically, ‘crony capitalism’ involves government intervention or collusion, because the ‘cronies’ involved are usually government officials, elected or otherwise. Free-market capitalism by its very nature wouldn’t tolerate an unfair advantage, because market forces and competition would undermine the enteprise with an unfair or unethical advantage. This was true when our own government got involved in the corrupt practice of handing out special charters to politically connected individuals who would then form steamboat, railway, subway or trucking lines. These government-sponsored businesses were inherently inefficient and unprofitable not only because of the amount of bribery and graft involved, but because workers and management didn’t apply themselves, confident that their government charter protected their incomes. This is as true today as it was in the 1840s, when crony capitalism first began to appear. Compare Northern Suffolk Railways, a profitable private-sector operator, to Amtrak, a government-controlled operator that costs taxpayers millions each year. Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac, both government-chartered lenders, were subject to corruption and political gamesmanship that triggered the mortgage meltdown.

Pure capitalism has little in common with crony capitalism. In fact, crony capitalism is more closely aligned with socialism, where the government owns businesses outright. When government gets involved in business, those businesses will be run with the vision, energy and efficiency of government itself. In other words, it will be a disaster. Which doesn’t provide us much hope now that government is part-owner of banks, broker-dealers, insurance companies and carmakers.

It’s like opening up your credit card statement and gasping at the amount due. Someone had gotten hold of your credit card number and charged up thousands of dollars at a seamy strip club. You call the credit card company. They refuse to reverse the charges and insult you by implying that you were in fact the strip club patron. And then, they jack up your interest rates to 33% because you exceeded your credit limit, too. You complain to various state and local agencies. No one can help. You’re stuck paying thousands of dollars at exhorbitant interest rates over the next few years. Every month, as you write that check, you’re burning up inside. If you ever find the parasite who did this to you…

Well, it’s about time American taxpayers did the same thing to politicians and bureaucrats. These people have looted us time and again. They’ve lied to us, they’ve cheated us and they’ve defrauded us. They are the ultimate parasites and prostitutes. And given the level of suffering they’ve created, it’s even more infuriating to find that they’re cheap prostitutes to boot. Representative Barney Frank and Senator Chris Dodd stonewalled the Bush administration’s efforts to investigate and regulate both Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae as well as lenders like the now bankrupt Countrywide Mortgage which gave both Frank and Dodd special VIP loans with terms that neither will disclose. In other words, for a few hundred thousand dollars in bribes, they started the ball rolling on the entire credit meltdown mess. It will cost Americans trillions in new taxes.

This is reminiscent of Bill Clinton’s deal with China. Al Gore was sent to San Francisco to pick up a bag of cash from a Buddhist temple, ostensibly from a Chinese general back on the mainland. In short order, China was granted Most Favored Nation trading status, which opened up our financial system to Communist China. The Chinese were able to open up banks in the US, establish foreign currency exchanges and participate fully in the international credits and payments system through the direct efforts of Bill Clinton. Interestingly enough, an Arkansas corporation - WalMart, became China’s largest trading partner. Walmart used the pricing advantage to destroy its competition in the US, most notably KMart and Sears, among thousands of smaller enterprises. All of this for a measly $450,000 in cash.

Barack Obama shamelessly accepted more than $38 million in untraceable, unaccountable prepaid credit card contributions from nameless donors and millions more from unknown oversease donors. All of this is illegal and specifically prohibited by law. It didn’t matter. No one was going to investigate the matter because to do so would imply a ‘racist’ motivation.

There’s plenty of precedent to indicate that most politicians and bureaucrats don’t work in the public’s interest. In fact, they’ll burn billions of dollars in exchange for a relatively modest campaign contribution. It’s anyone’s guess what Barack Obama has promised in private to whoever it was that provided millions in untraceable campaign donations. But, rest assured it will cost the taxpayer many times that figure.

Most Americans think that corruption is just a little bite, a piece of the action, that lubricates the political system. The problem is that corruption creates huge economic impacts that usually mean more taxes or less purchasing power. That’s because bribes and influence peddling is necessary to push something that’s completely illogical, economically suicidal or totally inequitable through the legislature or the executive branch. And that wasteful or economically destructive initiative, be it oversized government programs or special exemptions, must be paid for in some manner. And politicians always make sure it’s the taxpayer picking up the tab.

Executives on Wall Street will be sharing $1.6 billion in year-end bonuses after a disastrous year that saw trillions of dollars in personal wealth erased. They’re called retention bonuses - money to keep high powered talent from bolting and joining a competitor. But, given that most every firm on Wall Street has partaken of the government’s generosity, where would they run to? Wall Street asks that the taxpayers put this all in perspective. After all, the bonus pool is down considerably from the $45-60 billion handed out last year, when the geniuses on Wall Street thought the world was their oyster. Yes, they must be suffering terribly. No chartered yachts in the Mediterranean at $100,000 a week, no helicopter skiing in Gstadt, and that 5th or 6th home is just not going to happen this year.

Meanwhile, the national debt foisted on the taxpayer has increased by another 3 or 4 trillion when all is said and done. Let’s be clear who the taxpayer is: It’s not any household earning less than $60,000 annually. It’s not any household earning more than $1.5 million annually. It’s the 15% of the population in between those figures which shoulders 75% of all taxes paid. That small group of taxpayers also includes their dependents - the spouses and children who must cut back, economize and delay. Oh, but they have so much! They should pay their ‘fair share’, after all. In this season of giving, exactly what is ‘fair’? Is it ‘fair’ to take away five times as much from someone who’s bothered to complete their education and worked for years to achieve a good-paying job?

The progressive tax scheme is patently unfair. It penalizes personal ambition and achievement. It destroys personal incentive and self-reliance. It rewards parasitic behavior at the top and the bottom of the socioeconomic scale. Wall Street is a perfect example. The pay scales for middle management and executives is so incredibly lucrative that they gladly give away half to the government. At their pay scales it’s like winning the lottery. But, that’s cold comfort for someone who’s putting in 80 hours a week to take down $200,000 in gross compensation. Losing half of that to the tax man is a bitter pill to swallow. But it’s an everday reality for millions of well-educated, dedicated and professional Americans. And yet, they can’t complain, because they’re ‘rich’, they’re ‘privileged’. Well, they’re being looted and there’s nothing they can do about it. 

These are the same folks who paid off their college loans, got a good job and worked hard at it. They saved up their money to put a deposit on a home and this is where they were going to raise their kids. They have good credit scores, some investments and a nice, big mortgage. They’ve seen their house values deteriorate while their property taxes increase. They’ve had the credit card companies punish them with 33% interest rates for being one day late with a payment. And, they’ve had their income taxes raised at the local, state and federal level. Some have even endured the pleasure of the ATM tax scam. At some point, these people are going to stop trying so hard to get ahead. They’re going to put their feet up and lower their expectations, just like the bottom of the socioeconomic scale. Where will government turn to collect their taxes, Santa?

Barack Obama once promised to put George W. Bush and Dick Cheney on trial if he were elected President. A year has passed since that comment, and nothing more has been said, either by Obama or the ever-watchful and unbiased media cabal. The same holds true for any investigations into Freddy Mac, Fanny Mae, the Wall Street CDO pandemic and the resulting global economic crash. That’s strange. By this time, the media could have surely identified, convicted and sentenced somebody responsible for this mess. The media firing squads would be back in their barracks, cleaning their muskets in anticipation of the next round of public executions.

Instead, there is silence. No one other than a few right-wing zealots have called for investigations into the actions of Barney Frank, Chris Dodd or Joe Biden as they related to Fanny Mae or Freddy Mac, much less other Democratic members of Congress, much less Obama adviser Franklin Raines. George W. Bush has not publicly stated his rage and frustration with Democratic maneuvering that blocked investigations into Freddy Mac or Fanny Mae when there was still time to save the economy. The President hasn’t commented publicly on the various bits of short-sighted legislation dating back as far as the early Clinton years which formed the underlying causes of the most current Wall Street debacle. Maybe he has, and the media cabal has effectively ignored him.

Should George W. Bush have made more noise about the impending disaster that engulfs our country and now the entire world? Did in fact he do so, only to be drowned out by American Idol, Brangelina, reality shows, Big Ten football, crime sprees of the rich and famous, etc., etc.? Will ‘historians’ blame George W. Bush for the economic collapse of the United States of America and its subsequent fall into socialism? Yes, they will. Except, it won’t be worded quite that way. Instead, Bush will be characterized as a foolish, impetuous leader who got us involved in a pointless foreign war, while ignoring the looting on Wall Street prompted by Republican-led deregulation. And it was only with great effort and foresight that heroic Democrats, with Obama in his winged chariot, surrounded by a heavenly host and a chorus of socialists, were able to pull the country back from the brink of anarchy and give everyone exactly what they wanted just by taking it away from the rich. That’s how mythologies are started, after all.

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.

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.

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.