Green Socialism

I've tried a few times in the last couple months to do a political post, but I always get too mad and it comes out all incoherent, and I abandon it. I have to speak out about this, though. With a socialist in the White House, socialists all over are seizing the opportunity to push forward their agenda; and while Barack Hussein Obama may be ignorant of how the economy really works, he plays the political game very well.

People are worried about the spending in this stimulus bill, adding more to our country's debt than all other Presidents combined, ever, and that is troubling. The spending isn't the biggest problem, though; it's business as usual, just much much faster, and may have the good consequence of waking people up to the problem.  The bigger problem is that this spending represents the U.S. government buying up the private sector, and securing their control over it. The AIG deal is a perfect example of this. These bonuses received by AIG people were a bit of sleight of hand contained in the stimulus bill itself. That isn't to say they weren't deserved - bonuses for executives are like tips for waiters, part of the benefit that gets people to actually do the job - but they were taken out of the bill, then quietly put back in just before it passed. Those such as Geithner who are involved in all this knew about it but lied, and Congress says it was tricked. This results in a hilarious yet depressing CBS News headline: "AIG Bonuses Renew Call for Congress to Read Bills". Duh!

So the reason they wanted the bonuses in the bill was so that AIG can become the new scapegoat for the economy, the new whipping boy for Big Business. Congress says "it's immoral for these guys to get a bonus in this bad economy!" so they threaten to tax the bonuses at 90%. Fearing the government's power, many executives simply give up their bonus, instead of calling the bluff. It was a bluff; they've taken that idea off the table, but the damage is done. If we are so willing to just give up when the government threatens, how far will we let them go? Besides, if a company wants to give its executives big bonuses, what right does the government have to interfere? Even worse, the primary objective here was to shift public outrage to the AIG scapegoat, away from the real problem, which is Big Government. Big Government regulated and spent us into this mess, and so obviously the solution is to spend and regulate even more, right?

Plus, don't forget that despite the image people tend to have of "corporate fat cats" as something near Ebeneezer Scrooge, hoarding the money away, is not true. Those big bonuses work for executives a lot like tips do for waiters; they're part of what makes the job worth taking, and someone needs to take on the headaches and paperwork that come with those jobs. That money is spent, and pays the wages of car and boat salesmen all the way down to fast food workers. And punishing corporate executives who dare to take vacations, or business trips, or put on events to thank the high-profile clients they depend on to stay in business is not going to do anything to stimulate this economy, and if these activities stop for fear of criticism from our government, that's one step closer to living under a dictatorship.

A couple weeks ago the CEO of Strategic Hotels and Resorts was asked if his business is suffering because fewer companies are holding conferences or vacations. Here is his response:

"The hyperbole and rhetoric was notched up to gigantic levels during this recent political debate season.  The bookings of our meetings have cut down drastically.  We've lost an awful lot of major businesses, and it's not just those receiving government bailouts that are affected, but there's a general fear of criticism by people not only making the bookings but people attending these conferences so it's really got out of hand because the meetings and conference business is absolutely essential to this nation.  We lost 200,000 jobs last year.  We thought if things went the same way we'd lose 240,000.  This year, since the hyperbole got ratcheted up to these levels, we're on track to lose 350, 400,000 jobs.  The ripple through the economy is gigantic, lodging and tourism is the third largest retail business in the country"

Anything the government does to punish a corporation is only passed on to the consumer and workers, and accomplishes nothing but to slow the economy. The more the government "bails out" the economy, the more say the government has in how money is spent, and even if the government had a good record for responsible spending it is more power in the hands of the government than I feel comfortable with.

Which brings me to the other really scary thing about this spending. Again, the fact that spending is happening is business as usual for the government, but now we have more than three trillion dollars in the hands of a single man: Timothy Geithner. Even worse, this man is either a dishonest tax cheat, in charge of three trillion dollars, or he is a man too stupid to use Turbo Tax, and in charge of THREE TRILLION DOLLARS! Let's say your friend is going to pick up some fast food, and you hand him ten bucks and say "get me a cheeseburger and fries while you're out, will you?" and he comes back having gotten his own food, and he bought himself a new CD with your money. Do you hand him $100 and say "you must have been confused before, I'll trust you with this now."? Our country is in the hands of insane people.

The worse things get in this economy, or the worse the media can portray them, the more eager we seem to be to give Obama power to fix things. He knows this, and is using this to put more and more power into the hands of incompetent/dishonest Geithner. AIG/Big Business is the scapegoat, and now it's time to give ultimate power to the government to save America:

"US came into this crisis without adequate tools to manage it effectively.  And as I discussed before this committee on Tuesday, US law left regulators without good options for managing the failure of systemically important, large, complex financial institutions.  To address this will require comprehensive reform, not modest repairs at the margin, but new rules of the game.  And the new rules must be simpler and more effectively enforced." - Timothy Geithner

Surrender your freedom and liberty and let the government take care of everything. They're having similar issues in England, but there they have people willing to speak out. I have a new hero:

Time for an American politician to really stand up to Obama.

While socialism is beginning to come out in the open in America, the back door route it had been taking before has also picked up new steam. The environmentalists are on the march more than ever. The environmentalist movement was long ago hijacked by displaced socialists who saw it as an opportunity to play on our fears and our guilt and dictate how we live our lives and spend our money. This has never been more apparent than it is now.

Mr. Obama has a brilliant new idea to save the economy by creating a few temporary jobs for electricians while at the same time taking away your freedom to set your own thermostat:

"We could set up systems so that everybody in each house have their own smart meters that, uhh, will tell you when to turn off the lights, when the peak hours are, can help you sell back energy, uh, that you've generated in your home through a solar panel or through, uh, eh, other mechanisms.  All this can be done, but it also creates jobs right now.  Our biggest problem, we don't have enough electricians to lay all these lines out there."

That was Obama from his virtual town meeting. It's going to happen, too; some of the stimulus money is going to help Google develop a "smart grid" that does essentially that. The idea has been suggested before. California has played around with the idea of a thermostat that can be controlled remotely "in case of emergency", i.e., global warming. Will it save the Earth, or make any difference? No. It will give government more control over our lives, though.

Speaking of California, they are trying to ban black cars. No joke. Apparently black cars get hotter when left sitting on sunny days, meaning when you get in your car you run your air conditioner more, resulting in more carbon emissions. So to save the Earth, buy a white car. That'll do it!

Oh, yeah, England is putting up a spy plane to find out who is wasting energy, so they can send people to investigate. No government should have the right to spy on its own citizens to find out how you're spending your energy. Also, it's ironic that to reduce carbon emissions they'll send up a fuel-burning airplane. Again, it's not about the environment, it's about control over our lives.

The big one is the new version of the Kyoto treaty. It's called the Copenhagen Accord, and just like Kyoto, isn't at all about global warming but about transferring wealth, trillions of dollars in this case. Again with the trillions! Since when did numbers get so big? This is ridiculous. The main force behind the green movement has never been about the environment but about taking down capitalism and securing power, and now that there's someone friendly in the White House all pretenses are off. They even want to reduce the population of the world, since humans are obviously a plague. They are preying on the guilt and fears of those who want to feel good about themselves, like they're really making a difference, and they are kept complacent with insipid symbolic events like Earth Hour, and they use brain-dead actors as spokespeople, because they'll say whatever they're told to (Zoolander didn't have it far wrong, haha).

Earth Hour is something sponsored by the World Wildlife Fund. They're the ones that put untalented actors on TV to perpetuate the polar bear lie. Now they've got Edward Norton and Alanis Morissette on TV urging people to turn off their lights from 8:30pm to 9:30pm local time tonight, March 28th, to save energy. They're saying this is a movement equally symbolic to the civil rights movement. It won't accomplish anything but to make people feel good about themselves while turning them into sheep. Then you're supposed to take pictures or video of yourself observing Earth Hour and upload it to their site. If what they say about using www.blackle.com instead of www.google.com is really true, then this will undo the energy savings as people touch up their photos, edit their videos, upload them to the internet, and view everyone else's. It's pure symbolism without any substance.

I heard a better idea. Tonight I am going to celebrate Human Achievement Hour. Instead of living like it's the stone age, I am going to turn on every light in my hotel room to celebrate the triumph of human ingenuity. I'm going to find something good to watch on TV, and if there's nothing as is likely, I'll watch the latest episode of The Office, or Terminator online. Or maybe play a video game. Instead of turning off my lights to show how evil man is and how much better it would be if we weren't here, I am going to take advantage of all the achievements we've made over the centuries, and I urge you all to do so as well. If you read this after Earth Hour, then take advantage of Human Achievement Hour whenever you feel like it to compensate. I think I might even run the hot water for no reason other than to celebrate that we have such a thing in civilized society.

America, stop giving up your freedom and greatness and grow a spine!

Okay, rant over.

Maybe next time I'll upload some pictures I've taken out here. I keep procrastinating.