Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Death of American Automobile and More

Monday came as a dark day for the American automobile industry as it became public that Chrysler would not be given further federal bailout money. The nation under which the automobile took off and revolutionized life is now only a faint shadow of the past. Industrial production is dismantling at alarming rates, and fastest in the United States. Over the past year and a half, the United States has lost over 2 million manufacturing jobs, and throughout the economy nearly 4 million.

While foreign car factories have thrived in the United States in the past decade, the nation's own manufacturers have been faltering on the brink of penultimate failure. General Motors and Ford also remain in murky waters. While it is likely the President will offer those larger producers further bailout money, the once proud Chrysler will shrivel from the hypocrisy of the corporate-government game.

Even more insulting, GM's CEO Rick Wagoner was ousted today at the strong urging of President Obama who has used the role of the Executive Branch in the newest of all lights. His ability to now make employment decisions for major companies as well as seize non-banking institutions raise the spectre of the beginning of a long process which could destroy the free market and freedom itself. The consequences of such actions could easily become far-reaching and untractable far beyond what may now be intended.

Thomas Jefferson once said that in lawmaking, "Single acts of tyranny may be ascribed to the accidental opinion of the day; but a series of oppressions, begun at a distinguished period, and pursued unalterably through every change of ministers (adminstrators) too plainly proves a deliberate, systematic plan of reducing us to slavery."

The Constitution exemplifies a near perfect framework for the exercise of limited government in the hands of the People. Instead of protecting the People's interests however, the government has long ago chosen the path of creating gains and superficial progress to shelter itself as a power structure serving narrow interests of the elite. Thence, when the next "bailout" or "stimulus" is preached bound to occur and needed at-once with so much urgency, maybe it is then time to ask what it means for both rich and destitute yearning to be free must bow down and pay for waste and financial hedonism to save only a precious few.

While the new admnistration enjoys using its perceived image to congratulate its own redeeming, it is woefully evident that little is considered for the People who they must go through to improve society. Yet professional advice is too strong for the common sense knowledge and the sincerity in a neighbor's voice. Thus, we must be taken off by the fantasies of petty advisors playing out their childhood games with little idea of its consequence of negligence. And recklessness is its bride.

As Thomas Jefferson so well put it "On every question of construction [of the Constitution] let us carry ourselves back to the time when the Constitution was adopted, recollect the spirit manifested in the debates, and instead of trying what meaning may be squeezed out of the text, or intended against it, conform to the probable one in which it was passed."

It is time to rethink how Congress and the new Sun King do business.

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