by Kerry Thomas
March 29, 2009
There is no such thing as a company that is too big to fail. Very few companies that were in business 100 years ago are still in business today. Very few companies in business today will be here in 100 years.
And the last thing we need is to let those whom we choose to
temporarily govern our Republic decide which businesses should succeed or fail.
We, the People, get to make those choices, based on the laws
of economics, the law of supply and demand.
Businesses that offer goods and services we want and need at prices we
can afford get our business. Those that
don’t don’t.
We, the People, decide which businesses succeed and which
businesses fail, not the government.
At least, that’s how it used to work in America.
Today we have people in our government telling us some
failing businesses are too big to let fail.
These government officials have decided to reward such failing
businesses, using our money to try to break the law of supply and demand the
way they break other laws they enact.
The American
Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (the “stimulus bill”), which was
signed into law February 17, 2009, contained
a provision, inserted by Democrat Senator Christopher
Dodd of Connecticut, that placed limits on executive pay for bailed-out companies. But this same provision contained a specific
exception for "contractually obligated bonuses agreed on or before Feb.
11, 2009."
Of course, since no
one in Congress actually bothered to read the bill before they voted on it,
they all had to feign surprise and outrage when the public discovered
executives at AIG were being paid these bonuses. (No such outrage was reported about similar bonuses paid to
executives of Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac, or to the pay raises Congress gave
itself this year.)
(We’re just now beginning
to learn of new campaign contributions being made to Members of Congress by companies
who’ve received bailout money from the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). Developing…)
So on March 19, the House
of Representatives introduced H.R. 1586, seeking “to impose an additional
tax on bonuses received from certain TARP recipients.” That additional tax rate is 90%, and would
be imposed retroactively to December 31, 2008.
(Yes, Congress wants top tax rates back to the same high rates they were
during the Depression.)
It doesn’t seem to matter to Congress that Article I, Section 9 of the U.S. Constitution specifically says “No bill of attainder or
ex post facto law shall be passed.”
How did We, the People, ever let such
incompetent people govern our Republic?
Throughout our history, there have been other
industries and companies that were vital to our economy. Horse-drawn wagons were a critical part of
America’s economy at one point. So were
muskets, sailing ships, saddles, pickaxes, spinning wheels, vacuum tubes, record
players, typewriters, and analog televisions.
How big are these industries today?
We have one hand of government bailing out
automobile makers, while time the other hand of government is putting them out
of business with increased regulations on emissions standards, crash standards,
mileage requirements, and a hundred other regulations seemingly designed to
eliminate the internal combustion engine.
We still use a lot of coal. Yet the cleaner-burning coal in Utah was
placed off-limits by the Clinton administration. Many states have laws that prevent construction of nuclear power
plants.
We have government officials advocating “green”
technology. Meanwhile, sales of the new
hybrid and alternative fuel vehicles are near zero. We, the People, aren’t buying the vehicles our government is
telling us they want us to buy.
Our government has decreed
that the incandescent light bulb shall be no more after 2014. They’re being replaced by compact
fluorescent bulbs, which are only made in China because they contain dangerous levels
of mercury. I guess the incandescent
light bulb is no longer vital to the U.S. economy.
Which businesses and industries will our
government decide for us are the critically vital companies that are too big to
let fail? Are Microsoft’s products
vital to our economy? What about
Google? Maybe the Drudge Report is more
vital as a news source than the New York Times.
The liberal Democrats (Oops, my mistake. They don’t like to be called liberals. They call themselves progressives, I guess because liberal isn’t liberal enough for them.) currently in charge of governing our Republic have anointed themselves our masters. They’re in the process of seizing more and more power (and Liberty) from We, the People, as they implement the fundamental changes they promised voters last year, changes that are turning our Republic into another failed Socialist Republic.
Countries such as Sweden and France are warning
America not to go down this road.
Imagine – Sweden and France are worried that America is becoming too
socialist.
Our Founders had those same concerns. They wrote a Constitution designed to limit
the scope and power of America’s government, from the perspective that whatever
powers our government was to have should come through the consent of the
governed. Our government has no legitimate
power that hasn’t first come from We, the People.
America is an experiment in
self-governance. Our Founders created
for us a Republic, whereby We, the People, are in charge of our own
self-governance. A Republic, where
we’re free, free to say and do whatever we want as long as our actions don’t
infringe on our neighbor’s same freedoms.
Free to dream big and to pursue those big dreams to the best of our
abilities.
We’ve now elected people who don’t see America
in this same light. They seem to think
most of us aren’t capable of handling such freedoms. They say they can manage our freedoms for us. Kind of like they manage our economy, I
guess.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe once said “None are
more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.”
America is at a crossroads. Will we choose to continue down the path
toward becoming another Socialist Republic, or will we return to a true
Republic, pursuing the course charted for us by our Founders?
The grumblings of a new American Revolution are
nearing critical mass.
Our Declaration
of Independence tells us that governments instituted
among men derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. Whenever any form of government becomes
destructive of Life, Liberty, and our pursuit of happiness, it is the Right of
We, the People, to alter or to abolish such a government.
When a long train of
abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same objective evinces a design
to rule We, the People, under absolute despotism, it is our Right, it is our
duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for our future
security.
That’s just as true today as it was in 1776.