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“No, Mr. Reardon, it’s one or the other.”

March 30, 2009

In an increasingly advanced effort to show its total lack of respect for the Constitution and private contracts, and its extreme arrogance and hubris, the U.S. government has forced General Motors head Rick Wagoner to resign as a condition for the company receiving a government LOAN. According to an article on Politico, in all it's unfounded wisdom, knowledge, and experience in running industries, the government has formed a "task force" that will be responsible for dictating to General Motors what changes it should make, how high it should jump, and how exactly it should dance in the street with government bullets flying toward its feet (oh, I almost forgot, bullets aren't available anymore).

"The Obama administration calls its task force “a cabinet-level group that includes the secretaries of Transportation, Commerce, Labor and Energy. It will also include the chairman of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, the EPA administrator, and the director of the White House Office of Energy and Climate Change. The Task Force will be led by Treasury Secretary [Tim] Geithner and [National Economic Council] Director Larry Summers.”

Wow. I feel much better now. Just knowing all those bureaucrats are on the scene now will help me sleep soundly. I'm sure that they will be more effective than the highly admired Rick Wagoner of 30 years experience on the front lines.

AMERICA, have we lost our minds?

WHY are we letting the government take over the direction and leadership of our private industry?

WHY do these bureaucrats think they have the authority? I certainly can't find it in any of our founding documents!

WHY do they think they are qualified? I have never seen such arrogance in my entire life! (and that's saying something, belive me!)

Let me see, the government causes much of what's going on in this bad economy because of their insane economic policies. Then they say they are going to "bail us out" with even more lunatic economic policies. When this makes matters worse, and the very industries that have won us our freedom in past wars and have generated long-term jobs and lifestyle for MILLIONS of Americans, are dying on the vine because of it, then they DARE dictate terms to the struggling companies?

This is like shooting a father and taking over his family because he is unfit to provide for them!

Has anybody read Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand? It's just as she predicted. Only it hurts more when it's not fictitous, and you see freedom being murdered in real life.

As spoken by Rand's government crony purchasing manager to the industrial magnate hero: "No Mr. Reardon, it's one or the other. Either you're good at running the mills, or you're good at running to Washington."

It's one or the other, folks: bigger freedom, or bigger government.

The two cannot co-exist.

Posted in Current Affairs

16 responses to ““No, Mr. Reardon, it’s one or the other.””

dean clouse

March 30, 2009

Can you explain to me again why the bank and AIG CEO’s still have their jobs?

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Alpesh Shah

March 30, 2009

Great post Chris……here’s a great video recorded of Daniel Hannan that has been posted by Robert Dickie. he did some follow up interviews on fox news but this is the original clip that has gained momentum on how london is following our policies and what has happened to them
http://bit.ly/WQ00e

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Derek Taffe

March 30, 2009

Apart from the attack on God, Atlas Shrugged had most things right. In a way it is a sort of prophecy that is being fulfilled right before our eyes.
It looks to me that Team/Monavie is looking more and more like Galt’s Gulch.

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brian berge

March 30, 2009

When in the history of the United States of America has the government had more freedom to do whatever they want and get away with it because “they” say we are in a crisis. I think they may play this crisis card out for as long as they can until they themselves are in a crisis. Does the government honestly think they can run GM. Maybe their plan is to just spend their way out of it. Rediculous!!

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Phyllis Hoff

March 30, 2009

Chris:
This is so sad. What is it going to take for the government to realize they are only making matters worse.
This task force comprised of so many, with no experience in what decisions they are supposed to make will certainly be a disaster.

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g.a.b.

March 31, 2009

“People should not be afraid of their Governments…Governments should be afraid of their people”
–V for Vendetta
Our problems will either be solved with Gospels…or guns.

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Rory Ashker

March 31, 2009

Does this mean that the government people will leave office when they are unable to turn GM around, since they think they are more qualified to run it than Rick Wagoner with all the experience that he has?

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Dave in FL

March 31, 2009

Obviously, the “little guy”
has finally made it to the office of president. The “little guys” are putting the screws to the FAT CATS. They think they are anyway.
Who smokes cigarettes, drinks beer, and buys lottery tickets? Probably not the rich since they already have money.
See the new federal cigarette tax, who will it be hitting? Possibly the ones who cant pay their mortgage. You put a guy in office and he taxes your vices, but it aint his fault.
Of course, the poor and middle class are probably the biggest smokers, drinkers, drug users and lottery ticket buyers. So now the Pres. taxes the only ways we have to escape reality, and he and congress ruin our place of employment.
The little guy dont know it, cant see it. He see’s going to work, paying bills, no end in sight, some rich dude is getting richer and it just aint right.
That GM dude Wagoner is getting his just reward for making cars that only last for 80,000 miles and then self destruct. The credit card people are getting slammed for sucking the money out of us and then tacking on huge interest payments. At least we think they are or might be.
The congress people and anyone with a job protected by the Federal Gov are laughing at us.
They are shifting the blame to the private sector while they make their 200,000 dollars a year and pass laws giving them limitless benefits.
All you need to do is tell someone things are the best they have ever been.
Just click you ruby slippers together three times and say
“things are the best they have ever been”, “things are the best they have ever been”, “things are the best they have ever been”.

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Chris “I havn’t quite lost my mind” Payne

March 31, 2009

Chris,
Maybe we can further discuss this in our re-education camp. I’m sure the camp instructor will gives us some great insight.

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Tony ten

March 31, 2009

Hi Chris,
Yes, I’ve read Atlas Shrugged and it’s amazing the parallel we are witnessing today, in fact, it’s uncanny! It’s fascinating to see how some large corps are getting in bed with government and vice versa. Really it’s a sad excuse for incompetence and government not wanting to see companies and employees hurt, nobody wants to see or feel the pain. It’s this type of adversity that is the exact thing that will improve their industry. We’ve all gone through it in business, it happens all the time, and we improve because of it!
Have you read “The Entrepreneurial Imperative” by Carl J. Schramm, President of the Kaufman Foundation? He talks about exporting entrepreneurism to other countries as a means of reducing terror and violence. He also talks about that in many other countries there many regulations that limit entrepreneurism so that big corporations will stay in business, who are linked to the regulators. I pray that it won’t get as bad here in US.
He says that entrepreneurism is the only thing that will keep us an economic superpower! And I say “Amen” to that!

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Cathy

March 31, 2009

Chris,
I agree with everything you said. I can’t improve on perfection. Enuf on that.

Dave,
You said, “The congress people and anyone with a job protected by the Federal Gov are laughing at us.”
I’m sorry, I take strong personal exception to that!! I am very offended by your assertion that government employees and those who work for government contractors sit on their duffs soaking up taxpayer dollars and give nothing back!! And we are most certainly NOT laughing at you!! That would be hard, considering we are your “us”, too . . .
My husband is a Federal employee with the National Weather Service. He does his job well, protecting lives and property, and gets paid less than 1/3 of what the TV cute talking heads do. He started his carreer from love, got shoved out of the work he enjoyed, did well and a promotion he earned by the buerocracy, and stays to put food on our table and a roof over our heads while we build our Mona Vie business.
I work for a State and Federal government contractor. My segment of the company works for the State, on Medicaid. We work hard not to waste the State’s money, and I work extra-hard to give my employers an honest day’s work for my paltry salary. I work there to help pay our bills while we build our Mona Vie business.
Our sponsor works for the State directly, as does one of the members of our team. Both of them are hard workers, doing work they could get higher pay for in the private sector, building their Mona Vie businesses in their free time.
It is not fair of you or anyone else to curse those of us who work for the government for the sins it commits. We work there, using the leadership concepts we learn on the Team to be good workers, leaders where we are and to eventually leave our jobs for someone else to fill.
So, the next time you want to pick on the government, would you please kindly remember to not also lump the workers in with it? After all, government workers are capable of being good Team members, too. Those of us who are currently are proof of it even now. We are, believe or not, people with hopes and dreams, just like you . . .

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Matt DeMinico

April 1, 2009

Chris, Atlas Shrugged is downright scary. Reading it, you’re thinking to yourself “what the heck are these idiots thinking?”
But just about everything they say in there, that’s how government operates. And it doesn’t even have to be government, the shutdown of the Phoenix-Durango line is just one example. Someone uses a cleverly disguised “hey, this will be a good idea” proposal that ends up crushing something that could be great (or in some cases, already is great).
The solution, I don’t think is 3rd parties, or a reform at the federal level. The solution is states demanding their sovereignty back. By definition, Article I Section 8 of the Constitution clearly spells out what the federal government’s legislative powers are (plus the dreaded 16th amendment which added to those powers). If the federal government were limited to only those powers, then each state could choose whether or not it was going to have an income tax, a consumption tax, property tax, etc… they could decide if they were going to redistribute wealth, if they were going to restrict businesses, etc…
In short, we’d have 50 free united States each “competing” against eachother in a free market system. So you could decide if you wanted to live in the Socialist state of ________ (not gonna name any names) or the free state of, say, Texas. And before 20 years are over, we’d see the results of each form of government, and people would vote with their feet where they wanted to live.
It goes back to the Reagan quote from his 1964 speech for Barry Goldwater:
“Not too long ago two friends of mine were talking to a Cuban refugee, a businessman who had escaped from Castro, and in the midst of his story one of my friends turned to the other and said, ‘We don’t know how lucky we are.’ And the Cuban stopped and said, ‘How lucky you are! I had someplace to escape to.’ In that sentence he told us the entire story. If we lose freedom here, there is no place to escape to. This is the last stand on Earth.”
Thomas Jefferson warned us, and his warning also holds the solution:
“When all government, domestic and foreign, in little as in great things, shall be drawn to Washington as the center of all power, it will render powerless the checks provided of one government on another and will become as venal and oppressive as the government from which we separated.”
— Thomas Jefferson
State Sovereignty is the answer. State Sovereignty, period.

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Matt Foote

April 1, 2009

It is sad to see more and more people willing to sacrifice freedom for security all because those who are taking away our freedoms say it’s better this way. It is also infuriating to hear people talk about “universal” this and “nationalized” that and not call it what it is. It’s Socialism pure and simple people. I fear that it will take our nation sinking even lower before people wake up to what is going on.

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Steve

April 2, 2009

Chris;
There once was a company called General Motors, then became somewhat comically known as Generous Motors, now we know it as Government Motors. The Pres. political platform was the concept of change, and record numbers of people flocked to the polls to be part of history. They wanted to be part of this change in America. “Well” (as a former pres. used to say) be carefull what you ask for, you just might get it.

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Brent Campau

April 6, 2009

Judging by your verbage and tone, Chris, you seem as flamed as I.
Truthfully and ashamedly I am unable to intelligibly put together a thought on this one. Every time I read this, I immediately return to the same thoughts, which are….
“Are you kidding me? This is ridiculous! I can’t believe the arrogance and stupidity of what’s going on…”
And that’s about as much as I can handle from my own thoughts before I have to change articles.

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gregory harris

April 25, 2009

F.A. Hayek warned us about Carl Schramm’s Tyranny: Mises Warned us of Carl Shramm’s/Dane Stangler’s Post Office
April 24, 2009 by entrepreneurshipeconomist
“[Socialists] promise the blessings of the Garden of Eden, but they plan to transform the world into a gigantic post office.”” –Ludwig Von Mises predicting what the Kauffman Foundation would become after seven years of tryannical, corporate-CEO, personal-profiteering, anti-intellectual, anti-entrepreneurial Schrammenomics.
“Those fighting for free enterprise and free competition do not defend the interests of those rich today. They want a free hand left to unknown men who will be the entrepreneurs of tomorrow…” –Ludwig Von Mises talking about why Carm Schramm goes to the $ 3,995.00/head Milken Institute to address his fellow corporate-statists on Kauffman’s dime, instead of funding innovators, true academics, entrepreneurs, entrepreneurship, and inventors who are losing their homes and businesses as the eocnomy withers after seven lonmg years of Schrammenomics and Schramm funnels himself and his growthology buzzword-bloggers millions from the Kauffman endowment (which was meant to go to entrepreneurs, true academics who are not afraid to quote Hayek and Mises, and innovators), while pretending to serve the innovators and entrepreneurs Schramm opposes in his characterless actions and by saying one thing while doing another.
I sit on a man’s back, choking him, and making him carry me, and yet assure myself and others that I am very sorry for him and wish to ease his lot by any means possible, except getting off his back. –Tolstoy Writings on Civil Disobedience and Nonviolence (1886)
F.A. Hayek/Mises warned us about Carl Schramm et al.’s Temporal Tyranny, where he hires thug deputies such as Dane Stangler to backdate research and make it look like Schrammenomics embraces the Austrains, when, in fact, he compeletly ignores them in word, deeed, spirit, and action.
Because Schramm has hijacked the $2.5 billion Kauffman foundation, he runs it as a top-down dictarorial CEO would, with every action motivated by self-preservation as the Nobel in economics slips further and further beyond his intellectually-inept reach. Sycophantic lockstepping lawyers such as Dane Stangler will never call Schramm out, as thier salary depends on supporting Statist Schrammenomics above truth, beauty, and reason, and they will go so far as to backdate Kauffman research to serve their master.
Carl Schramm did not build Kauffman, and it is time for him to step down.
Carl Schramm is not Kauffman, and it is time to step down.
Carl Schramm does not own Kauffman, and it is time to step down.
Kauffman did not will for his vast welath to become a Schrammenomics vanity press, and it is time for Schramm to step down.
Kauffman did not will for Schramm to use a $2.5 billion warchest to pen and promote insipid, self-serving books lauding Schrammenomics while completely ignoring intellectual diants such as L.V. Mises and F.A. Hayek, and it is time for Carl Schramm to setp down.
Nowhere in the foundation’s charter did it stipulate that Carl Schramm was to lord over the Kauffman Foundation for all of entirety as the economy withered, crashed, and died; and the netrprnuerial spirit was replaced with Schrammenomics
The most important elements in entrepreneurship are character and integrity. The most important elements for Statists/Schrammeconomist are the lack of character and integrity and the ability to use words to mislead and deceive while laying claim to a dead entrepreneur’s estate. While Hayek and Mises used words for truth, Schramm uses words for mere personal profit, and then when his lackluster, anti-intellectual, unscholarly works fall short, he has to try and put all better economists out of business by leveraging his $2.5 billion warchest. Imagine if Hayek and Mises had used a $2.5 billion warchest to put their competitors out of business. They would never do this. For they had character and integrity, which Schramm the self-serving tyrant/Statist completely lacks.
“Reason is the main resource of man in his struggle for survival.” –Mises. Again we see why Schramm never quotes Mises, as Reason is the groupthink statists’ prime enemy.
“Whenever lesser men and groupthink, central-planning intellects begin with the idea that they are the best and the brightest, they will advance that notion by any means necessary. All superior competitors will be put out of business by the central planners, and as the groupthinkers congregate to discuss entrepreneurship, they wil inevitably criminalize the individual, innovator, and entrepreneur and seek to persecute and bankrupt him while promoting their own soulless, spirtualless works. They will go so far as to ignore entire bodies of work and Nobel Laureates, replaicing the Greats with a sycophantic corproate groupthink structre which enriches the insiders while preaching the virtues of entrepreneurship, even as the groupthink corporation/buzzword blogfest kills it. They take great pride in their failure to define terms, as their generic “growthology” buzzwords come to mean but one thing–the flow of capital into their own personal pockets.”
Whenever those with a fundamentally socialist, central-planning, bureaucratic mindset approach entrepreneurship, they generally end up creating a groupthink tyranny which kills the spirit of entrepreneurship, while simultaneouly profiting off the fruits of entrepreneurship and free markets, even as such exalted entities wither and die under the Schrammeconomists’ reign of corporate terror, whence a Foundation’s resources are leveraged to put competitors out of business so that the Schrammeconomist’s inferior work might prevail in the dumbed-down market, thusly exlating Schramm as teh eocnomy and academia decline. The study and teaching of entrepreneurship requires a great character and intellect, and an even greater humility. Over the past seven years Carl Schramm has demonstrated that he lacks character, intellect, and humility; and the economy and academy have suffered immensely under is reign.
1) Carl Schramm lacks character: Schramm has beocme famous for syaing one thing while doing another and making promises he never keeps. This has been pointed out elsewhere on the internet, and it is also manifested in that he runs the Kauffman Foundation like a tyrant, pocketing millions of dollars for his inspidid treatises on Capitalism which compeletly ignore the towering giants of the field including Ludwig Von Mises and F.A. Hayek. Not referencing the Greats who have walked before you is a serious sign of unscholarly egomania, ineptitude, and a withered character. Rather than funding true economists and entrepreurs, Schramm actually uses the Kauffman foundation’s funds to oppose them while campaigning for the Nobel in economics, wiring hundreds of millions to Statists and intellectually-indifferent University administrators. Schramm runs the Kauffman Foundation not as a charitable foundation, but as a corrupt corporation which enriches Schramm in a massive manner with millions, while also allowing him to try and put his competitors out of business, funding groupthink growthology bloggers to dumb down the internet. Should a foundation be run by those with lackluster, unscholarly books to promote and a track record for academic irresponsibility? Will they not by and by use the foundation’s resources to try and put their superior competitors out of business in cloaked, obfuscating, unmanly manners, all the while preaching fair markets and free markets? Because Schramm lacks character, integrity, and intellect, he profits not by serving entrepreneurship’s ideals, but by saying one thing while doing another and hiring Dane Stangler to backdate research trying to claim that Schramm was the first to discover/rediscover Austrian economics. Actually the Austrian economists discovered Austrian economics. And Schramm destests them because they call his failed Statist bluff with every word.
http://dealbreaker.com/2007/05/the-unsurprising-failure-of-et.php
Posted by John Bunch, Ph.D., May 03, 2007 8:50AM
It is interesting that Dealbreaker references Carl Shram of the Kauffman Foundation as an authority on ethics. Those of us who live in the Kansas City region know that Carl Schram and been a controversial figure since he was appointed to his post a number of years ago. Board members have resigned in protest of his leadership style and strategic choices. His controversial leadership led to the Missouri Attorney General reviewing the Kauffman Foundation for not staying true to the intent of Ewing Kauffman. The purpose of this review was stated as:
“In light of the public allegations of a departure from Mr. Kauffman’s intent, lack of appropriate oversight by the Board of Directors, and certain instances of conflicts of interest. ” (http://www.ago.mo.gov/newsreleases/2004/kauffmanreport030404.htm#conclusion)
See also this editorial from the Kansas City Business Journal (http://www.bizjournals.com/kansascity/stories/2003/09/15/editorial1.html)
Ewing Kauffman was famous as an ethical leader. Carl Schramm is not.
–http://dealbreaker.com/2007/05/the-unsurprising-failure-of-et.php
2. Carl Schramm lacks Intellect: Suppose you were to write a treatise on philosophy and leave out Aristotle, Plato, and Socrates. Suppose you were to write a treatise on physics and leave out Einstein and Newton. Schramm wrote a treatise on kapitalism and he left out Nobel Laureate F.A. Hayek and his teacher Ludwig Von Mises.
Conduct a search in GOOD CPITALISM: BAD CAPITALISM.
0 results for ‘hayek’
0 results for ‘mises’
Now Schramm has hired Dane Stangler to backdate Kauffman research to show that really Schramm was thinking about the Austrians all along; and again this ties into Schramm’s complete lack of character and corrupt nature.
3) Carl Schramm Lacks Humility: When one has no achievements other than commandeering a foundation for one’s own personal profit and intellectually-indifferent, vapid, Statist vanity press, one has nothing to be humble about. If Schramm had any humility he would apoligize for what he and his Statist, doublespeaking philosophies have done to academia and the economy, and he would step down.
Hayek reminds us that economics is about values, ethics, and character–not about doublespeaking Schrammenomics:
“I have arrived at the conviction that the neglect by economists to discuss seriously what is really the crucial problem of our time is due to a certain timidity about soiling their hands by going from purely scientific questions into value questions. This is a belief deliberately maintained by the other side because if they admitted that the issue is not a scientific question, they would have to admit that their science is antiquated and that, in academic circles, it occupies the position of astrology and not one that has any justification for serious consideration in scientific discussion. It seems to me that socialists today can preserve their position in academic economics merely by the pretense that the differences are entirely moral questions about which science cannot decide.
Conversation at the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, Washington, D.C. (9 February 1978); published in A Conversation with Friedrich A. Von Hayek: Science and Socialism (1979) –Hayek
“If man is not to do more harm than good in his efforts to improve the social order, he will have to learn that in this, as in all other fields where essential complexity of an organized kind prevails, he cannot acquire the full knowledge which would make mastery of the events possible. He will therefore have to use what knowledge he can achieve, not to shape the results as the craftsman shapes his handiwork, but rather to cultivate a growth by providing the appropriate environment, in the manner in which the gardener does this for his plants.” Schramm has done more harm than good by placing his campaign for the Nobel Economics and hiring/funding growthology groupthink bloggers, over supporting entrepreneurs, innovators, and entrepreneurship. After seven years of Schrammenomics, look at the economy where millions ar elosing their jobs an dhomes. Look at the academy and the skyrocketing tuitions at the Kauffman campuses which place studnets in massive, unprecedented debt, with Kauffman campuses such as Oberlin and Keynon oft leading the way.
http://www.newsnet5.com/education/19073605/detail.html
How many more years of Schramenomics will the Kauffman board allow? When Schramm steps down, a thousand flowers will bloom, and the greats such as Ludwig Von Mises and F.A. Hayek will be given theior rightful place in the academy, as opposed to Schramm’s MBA/lawyer groupthink thugs who Schramm handpicked to serve the Schrammenomics tyranny over truth and reason.

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