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

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.

This site is not about conspiracy theories. There are plenty of other sites for that stuff. But, this writer has been compelled to question the motives of Democrats and their environmental allies given their actions over the last few months. When gasoline was surging past the $4 mark, and while natural gas and home heating oil were hitting new highs, the Democrats did everything in their power to make matters worse. Even though George W. Bush issued an executive order to openup offshore drilling, Nancy Pelosi was able to stop it and then respond with an even more restrictive bill that effectively closes off drilling to 95% of America’s coastline.

The Democrats also oppose clean coal initiatives, nuclear power, diesel fuel, new refineries, new pipelines, tar sand and oil shale extraction, new coal-fired or gas-fired power plants and upgrades to the electrical grid. The question is why? What do Democrats have to gain by forcing Americans to starve and shiver in darkness? All kinds of possibilities bubble up: Are Democrats being paid off to do this and by whom? Is this a way to create misery so that Democrats can maintain their stranglehold on America’s poor and working class? Does Bill Clinton, who gets paid tens of millions by OPEC producers, still have clout within the Democratic Party? What possible motives could the Democrats have to deprive America of its own natural resources? Oh, they do support wind power. But even with all their hot air, Democrats know wind power is impractical. So, what’s the real story?

Growth in energy supply and energy infrastructure spurs general economic growth. This country’s economy was built on cheap, abundant energy which is still possible, even if emission controls are applied. What will stop this country cold are the restrictive, reactionary and regressive policies of Democrats and their friends in the environmental left. Responsible energy development is the key to economic growth. Anyone who expends so much effort to stop it must have something else up their sleeve.

The big unions labored mightily to put Obama in the White House and narrowly missed achieving total control in Congress. Better luck next time. The millions of man-hours expended for shuttle services, phone banks, sign placement, rallies, marching and picketing put Democrats in a position to win it all. And now, Big Labor wants its pound of flesh. The Employee Free Choice Act, co-sponsored by Sen. Barack Obama, is nothing like free choice. The traditional secret ballot, protected by state and federal government, would be abolished in favor of a ‘check card’. Union organizers would be allowed to collect signed authorization cards from workers without benefit of confidentiality. Those who don’t sign the check cards would be harassed and intimidated until they did so. Employers wouldn’t be notified that a union organizing drive was underway until union bosses showed up with a contract. And this the unions call ‘modernizing’ the labor movement. The National Right to Work blog of November 2, 2008 has a detailed analysis of what’s really going on.

The Democratic Party is solidly behind the Employee Free Choice Act. Passage in the House is virtually a done deal and 60 votes are a near certainty in the Senate when Congress reconvenes. This is crazy. In those few instances where unions were allowed to get around the secret ballot, union membership skyrocketed to absurdly high numbers. Does anyone think that workers voted in a union of their own free will? Does anyone think those workers’ lives where improved in any significant manner? Certainly, no one believes that the employer suddenly acquired a more professional workforce. No doubt, the union bosses were able to extract some small pay increases almost immediately. But that didn’t make it into the workers’ pockets. No, it paid the newly instituted union dues. So who’s the parasite here? Employers create jobs. Employees fill those jobs. What exactly does a union do?

Eighty years ago, the unions had a valid reason for being. Forty years ago, much of that reason vanished when the cumulative effect of state and federal labor laws provided the same worker protections. There was no reason for unions to exist except for collective bargaining - representing workers as a group to negotiate for pay raises and expanded benefits. Unfortunately, human nature being what it is, it didn’t take long for unions to begin demanding pay increases well beyond what employers could afford to pay. Why would a union do that? Simple: union bosses don’t get a raise unless the workers they represent get a raise. Yes, it’s shortsighted, it’s stupid and in the long run it’s destructive, but then no one has ever accused unions of being business-oriented or entrepreneurial.

But, union leaders are street savvy. They know the traditional manufacturing jobs they once represented are no longer viable. They also know that they’ll have difficulty organizing knowledge workers like engineers or software programmers, and small business employees. Instead, they’ve targeted local, state and federal government. Why? It’s an endless source of money, courtesy of the American taxpayer. No one’s in charge, no one is accountable and the unions can run wild. And, Democrats back their activities 100%. Can it get any better than this? Yes, it can. The Democrats also back the Public Safety Employee-Employer Cooperation Act, which forces local and state governments to negotiate raises through union bosses instead of directly with police officers, firefighters and emergency personnel. Some 22 states would have to change their laws in order to comply and thousand of first responders could no longer simply ask for a raise on an individual basis. 

The cash flow from government employee dues must be gigantic. But no one knows for sure. That cash flow will be used to push for a new organizing effort across the country the likes of which hasn’t been seen since the 1930s. It’s no coincidence this is going to happen on President Obama’s watch. In fact, it’s probably been in the planning stages for years.

The silence is deafening. Other than unproven, unsubstantiated claims that the ‘failed policies of the Bush Administration’ created the current economic crisis, there hasn’t been much new information from either Congress or the Obama campaign. Usually, if an unpopular administration is being blamed for something as earth-shattering as a global financial collapse, there would be at least a dozen investigations and hearings going on. Democratic leaders and back-benchers would be holding press conferences on an hourly basis as administration officials are dragged out of their office to be humiliated in Senate or House committee hearings. TV news anchors would be breathlessly announcing the issuance of subpeonas to various Cabinet members and their aides. Various ‘insiders’ would be grilled in front of TV cameras, while their attorneys worriedly defend their clients’ actions.

But that hasn’t happened. As much as Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid would like to trot out some Bush administration officials to answer for their misdeeds, the Democrats know better. Everyone who is awake and alive in Washington DC knows fully well that most of the blame for this economic Armageddon can be laid at the Democratic Party’s feet, along with a government bureaucracy almost exclusively in the Democratic Party camp. In fact, even a preliminary hearing or investigation would quickly reveal how the Democratic Party frustrated every attempt to corral the subprime mess well before it became a global calamity. It probably won’t take too much digging to find connections between CDOs, Wall Street, loosened banking reserve requirements and mortgage brokers, all of which wash back on the Democrats.

It’s fascinating to watch Democratic candidates, incumbents, party bigwigs and their media lapdogs literally  change the subject when the blame game is played. Once again, there are vague aspersions cast on the outgoing Bush administration and some mention of low favorable ratings, but no concrete answers or proof. Democrats are hoping that the whole mess is forgotten. And it will be, if Obama and Biden are elected. They’ll make sure the truth never sees the light of day.

Voter registration fraud is but the tip of the iceberg. The A.C.O.R.N. flap doesn’t expose the real problem at hand - taxpayer funding of entities whose activities are designed to increases taxes and deliver a predictable voting bloc to Democratic candidates. Unfortunately, A.C.O.R.N. is but one of many organizations that deliver this valuable service to the Democratic Party, most of which operate out of the spotlight. The Republicans have no comparable mechanism for gathering votes and voters, legally or illegally.

Monumentally egregious is that the recent bank bailout bill includes a provision which tacks on a $450 charge at closing for any residential real estate financing transaction - and the money goes directly to A.C.O.R.N. This is insane. The Democrats forced this into the bill after the Republicans beat back an outright $400 million grant to A.C.O.R.N. and its ilk. This isn’t just funding some organization that is ideologically aligned with the Democratic Party. It’s buying votes, plain and simple. The mainstream media is silent on this subject.

This isn’t even stealth funding anymore. The Democrats and A.C.O.R.N. don’t even bother with the pretense of hiding their relationship and what each party gets from it. The Democratic Party pours money into A.C.O.R.N. or its sister organizations. They in turn hire people to go out and ‘register’ voters, fill out absentee ballots for these voters or drive them to the polling station on election day, sometimes in exchange for money, cigarettes and who knows what else, to vote for Democratic candidates. The money passes from the taxpayer, the DNC and private donors through A.C.O.R.N. to the voter in form of money or cigarettes offered by the A.C.O.R.N. organizer. That’s buying a vote. It’s nationwide and it involves millions of votes. This is corruption on a vast scale, selling votes for one political party to ensure that funding for A.C.O.R.N. is provided by the taxpayer in the form of new taxes and fees. This makes Tamany Hall look like a glee club. Where is the outrage? Why is no one protesting this assault on the only fundamental right that makes any difference - the right to vote? The votes of thinking, responsible and productive Americans are being negated by the Democratic Party and its allies. If there was a time for the Republican candidate to say something, it would be now.