Dear Donald, Stop Picking Winners and Losers, Please
Cut Taxes, All the Regulations and Energy Costs Possible, Negotiate Good Trade Agreements and Quit the Subsidy Insanity
No one wants to see Pres. Elect DJT succeed more than yours truly. Mr. Trump’s, Carrier Air Conditioning project served as a useful tool to make a statement while saving some jobs, but should not be implemented again going forward because that is what Socialist societies do until they expire after running out of other people’s (taxpayers’) money. Subsidies, including state subsidies, which he was fortunate to have available with convenient help of his partner/Vice President elect Mike Pence’s, as current governor of Indiana, giving $7 million of state taxpayers’ money to prop up Carrier, for a while, was no more than a band-aid fix providing an opportunity to show and glow. The statement was very effective but must not continue as an answer to our competitive problems in the world.
On the Young Conservatives Blog, Sarah Palin actually said Trump is using crony capitalism, “When government steps in arbitrarily with individual subsidies, favoring one business over others, it sets inconsistent, unfair, illogical precedent… Republicans oppose this, remember? We support competition on a level playing field, remember? Because we know special interest crony capitalism is one big fail.”
Government, federal or state, it doesn’t matter, should never subsidize any private sector endeavor. There are always ramifications and offsetting effects including the cost like this subsidy being born from taxpayers’ coffers and the fact that it always unsettles competition. Hard contract loans are another thing. They can turn a tidy interest profit. However since many don’t this endeavor of government financing should really be left to the private sector. See: Bailout Recipients (In this report dated Nov. 16th, 2016 notice GM still has not repaid its debt to the U.S. Government. It still owes us over $11 billion dollars.)
CASE IN POINT: THE GM DEBACLE
Back in 2010, it was interesting to see how Fact Check.org reported on GM’s TV ads announcing GM repaid its bailout loan in full with interest, 5 years ahead of schedule, “Many readers have asked us about the White House-touted news that General Motors, and Chrysler, repaid loan money from the Treasury Department, with interest, ahead of schedule. GM launched an ad boasting of the news, and President Obama talked about it in his weekly address on April 24.
“We wrote about this, too, on April 26 in a review of the Sunday political talk shows. Here’s the deal for those who missed that post:
“Yes, it’s true that GM paid back its loan from the Treasury Department, in full, ahead of schedule.
“But the debt was only part of the automaker bailout package. Through the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), the Treasury gave GM $49.5 billion, most of which was converted into an ownership stake in the form of stock. Through this equity stake, the government still owns 61 percent of GM.
“Some Republicans, including Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa have pointed out that GM used TARP money to pay back its TARP debt. That’s true, but GM simply handed back TARP money it had been lent and hadn’t used. Those funds had been sitting in an escrow account, should the automaker need them. (The company didn’t borrow new money to pay back an older loan.)” – Unquote Fact Check
Actually the government sold its shares of GM stock in 2013 at a $10.5 billion loss as was reported in Automotive News.com.:“The U.S. Treasury on Monday sold its last shares of General Motors stock, ending more than four years of government ownership in the nation’s largest automaker at a loss of about $10.5 billion to U.S. taxpayers.
“The government said in a statement that it recouped $39 billion of its original $49.5 billion investment into GM. Company executives and dealers say that the stigma of federal ownership, which earned GM the derisive nickname “Government Motors,” has hurt sales.” – MY comment, AMAZING!!! And don’t you know, left to its deserved fate, GM would have eventually been picked up or reconfigured by another company like Chrysler was.
THE SUBSIDIES AND BAILOUTS MUST STOP HERE
We can’t stand any more of this nonsensical picking out companies to save with taxpayer funds, and there are many more of them who need help. It not only doesn’t work but it is killing us. For instance, see: Solyndra alone, lost forever, over $500 million in loans, ‘Obama Clean Energy Loans Leave Taxpayers In $2.2 Billion Hole‘ and ‘Where Did the ‘TRILLIONS’ in TARP, TALC and Federal Reserve Bank Bailout Funds Go?‘
The best way to help Carrier and all other American businesses is through savings in tax reductions, eliminating strangulating regulatory and energy costs, insurance reform, and cleaning up the Department of Labor’s unconstitutional rules implemented by Obama through his minion, Labor Secretary Thomas Perez that ran up costs of manufacturing.
Additional help to our businesses would be to kill the incredibly expensive rip-off to businesses by the ObamaCare mess and re-negotiating trade imbalances that we are getting stiffed on from NAFTA and the extremely deceitful act Mr. Trump has promised to kill known as TPP (in which incidentally, there are no good parts, only controlling tentacles on an agreement that is called a living breathing document meaning it can and would be amended. Count on it!)
MUCH TO LEARN ABOUT AND SO LITTLE TIME
It would truly be wonderful if President Elect Donald Trump could search for ways to eradicate as many as possible of the political rats of Washington DC called lobbyists whose special interests’ purpose in being, usually results in counter-productivity to our most competitive free enterprise market system.
A smart way to ‘rid’ a lot of them and their influential money in Washington (only to have them resurface in our state legislatures) is for the overdue repealing of Amendment 17. That would be wonderful and Mr. Trump would be lauded by statehouses and patriotic citizens across the land for a very long time. Having our Senators voted on by the people as the result of Amendment 17 took away a very important aspect of our system as a Republic. State legislators should have control by voting for them so US Senators are truly representing state legislatures’ interests. Eliminating Amendment 17, alone, would help him with much of that important swamp draining.
AND FOR OUR GRANDCHILDREN’S SAKE BE AWARE OF THE CFR
Lastly I wish that someone would get Mr. Trump a clear understanding about what the Council On Foreign Relations (CFR) is really all about so he would be ‘heads-up’ aware of them and all their members. His following picks for appointments or as candidates so far are CFR members: Kathleen Troia (KT) McFarland – selected as deputy national security adviser, Elaine Chao(married to Mitch McConnell) – selected as Secretary of Transportation, David Petraeus and John Bolton – candidates for Sec. of State, Stephen Hadley – candidate for Sec. of Defense and Robert E. Grady – candidate for EPA Administrator.
‘Who the Establishment Really Is’ by yours truly, reveals the CFR in their own words about their actual goals to transform us into a one world government. We would become a member state of that Government which would be run by accountable, unelected global elitists who purport to know what’s best for everyone about everything.
We should pray that President Elect Donald J. Trump learns as much as he can about the Constitution, its authentic roles for our three branches of government and all the revealing truth about CFR’s actual objectives for our country.
“All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.” — Edmund Burke