printI don’t feel sorry for the many car dealers who opted to take taxpayer funds, via the government, and lure equally greedy and gormless customers into junking perfectly good rides, purchasing new ones instead, and taking on more debt. I’m not in the least sorry for them, now that Uncle Sam has stiffed them, no Sirree.
Ridiculous too is the incredulity the auto dealers are feigning at being stiffed (if you can call it that) by their paymaster. “We just expect the same sort of courtesy and treatment from the federal government,” they whimper. Boohoo.
“Dealers across the state are owed more than $3.6 million, according to a dealers’ group which says that so far Uncle Sam has only written three checks totaling about $14,000.”
And:
“You simply can’t ask businesses to front $200,000, $300,000 for any period of time,’ Rep. Martin Heinrich, D-N.M., told KRQE News 13. ‘These applications are simply not being processed fast enough.'”
You don’t say!
Equally stupid is the only deduction conservatives can muster: If the government can’t manage the CFC scam, how will it run the unconstitutional, confiscatory, immoral healthcare undertaking.
Of course, they omit the key phrases I just used—“scam, unconstitutional, confiscatory, immoral”—these are nowhere apparent in the debate; although Hitler is. A pretty—and pretty dumb—townhaller, taking her cues from Rush, paired health care and Hitler. Good job.)
There’s a lot conservatives can’t find words for: private property, for one. Principles is another. Nothing works in government because there is no private property. If you were given something to manage that you don’t own, have no stake in, on behalf of millions of people you don’t know, and who have no recourse against your mismanagement, except to whine like wimps—how well would you perform? Why are privately owned homes cared for and public housing trashed? Why don’t Republican and conservative bimbos and beaus of the media ever open a book and learn a few concepts.
Okay make it one crucial concept: the “Tragedy of the Commons.”
Update: To the comment below: The “calculation problem” means nothing to the lay reader. Private property means everything—or ought to. It should be understood to those who bandy about the “calculation problem” that the reason there cannot be rational allocation of resources in a state bureaucracy is because there is no private property. In a free market, the institute of private property ensures that we have prices. Prices are like a compass: pegged to supply and demand they ensure the correct allocation of resources. Conversely, in a nationalized system there are no prices because there is no private property. Absent such knowledge, misallocation of capital is inevitable.
Property precedes all else.
While Congress, the President, and the Supreme Court should have stopped “Cash for Clunkers” before it even started, the US should ethically pay off the dealers who incurred expenses. Then the US and the state governments should end all mercantilist legislation which provides de jure monopolies to those same crybaby (parasitic) dealers. Maybe the dealers can become vendors of legalized marijuana instead.
Both leftist-liberals-Democrats and rightist-conservative-Republicans are dominated by politically ambitious hypocrites with no ideological consistency
and a history of favoritism to the highest bidders. Hence, one cannot count on them to argue from (absent) principles. Hence, the easiest argument is to demonize ones opponents into Hitler, Stalin, or Snidely “nya-ha-ha” Whiplash.
It is rather infantile but not unexpected. The sad part is that Obama and Bush, rather than doing wrong because of an evil disposition, are well intentioned ambitious politicians in search of some LEGACY like “solving” health care or “liberating” Iraq. But “Hilterizing” is good for media attention and juices up the booboisie – so both sides use it while the U.S. of Lemmings slide over the cliffs of hyperinflationary bankruptcy.
Ironically, our country would be better off with a debauching President kept occupied by a harem of Lewinskys.
Actually Ilana, you have only touched on one of the reasons why these sorts of government programs do not work. The real reason is a calculation problem – von Mises correctly identified the socialist calculation problem that exists with all government agencies in the 1920’s. I’m sure you know this…
With the calculation problem, as well as the political problem, any government program slowly becomes insolvent. The term ‘efficient’ government’ is literally an oxymoron, along with socialist economy.
~Alex
I used to pray for a “Do nothing Congress” until I learned that was not in God’s job description. I did find a small statement that seemed to fit though. “The road to disaster is ordered by the righteous, planned by the well meaning and paved with their good intentions. (Author unknown)”
Blame it all on Jefferson’s capitulation when he changed “life, liberty and property (T. Hobbs)” to “life liberty and the persuit of happiness”.
Does it make sense to speak of private property under a government that issues a fiat currency? Aren’t we all rather like those Pennsylvania farmers who were compensated for their produce in Confederate money in 1863? Property might precede all else, but property becomes meaningless if your government can compensate you for it with worthless paper.