GM [Still] Headed for Bankruptcy

Posted April 14, 2009, 12:27 a.m.

The automotive bailout saga continues. According to anonymous sources, General Motors (GM) has been instructed by the Barack Obama (D) administration to prepare itself for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Of course, us free-market guys (apparently a dying breed) were telling GM to do that back in October when they first came begging to mommy government to bail them out . . . and in November . . . and in December . . . and in February . . . and in March. I’m glad that the ‘powers that be’ finally got the message. Through the George W. Bush (R) bailout bonanza, and Obama’s continuance of the same idiotic economic policies, some of us have stood firm against ‘saving’ companies that have brought failure upon themselves.

Well, better six-months-late than never, but how many billions of tax dollars have we wasted keeping GM on life-support and prolonging the inevitable? For how many decades will we and our children and our grandchildren be making payments against this insanity? How much inflation and instability has this period of exorbitant federal spending already lined us up for, and how much more is yet to come?

Bush set us down a road to socialism with his first bailout, and whether Obama brands his nearly-identical economic policies as ‘stimulus’ or ‘recovery’ he’s just continued down the same path so far. Candidate of ‘change’ indeed. Allowing GM to [finally!] go into Chapter 11 instead of sucking billions upon billions of your and my money into a black hole would be a welcome change of pace, even if it’s six months late.

Scott Bradford has been putting his opinions on his website since 1995—before most people knew what a website was. He has been a professional web developer in the public- and private-sector for over twenty years. He is an independent constitutional conservative who believes in human rights and limited government, and a Catholic Christian whose beliefs are summarized in the Nicene Creed. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Public Administration from George Mason University. He loves Pink Floyd and can play the bass guitar . . . sort-of. He’s a husband, pet lover, amateur radio operator, and classic AMC/Jeep enthusiast.

Quotes

Regardless of its hypothetical virtues . . . the implementation of Marxism was a disaster everywhere it was attempted. . . .

There is nothing indulgent about the Moral Law. It is as hard as nails. It tells you to do the straight thing and it does not seem to care how painful, or dangerous, or difficult it is to do.

Upon the whole, I came to the conclusion that the optimist thought everything good except the pessimist, and that the pessimist thought everything bad, except himself.

Once I conquer Finland, I’ll head south through the Baltics and on to Belarus. Soon, all the world will find me mildly amusing.

The more laws and restrictions there are, the poorer people become.

If the battle for civilization comes down to the wimps versus the barbarians, the barbarians are going to win.

The use of force is . . . at the very heart of the welfare state—a bad means that tends to corrupt the good ends.

Flattery corrupts both the receiver and the giver.

There is no dignity quite so impressive, and no one independence quite so important, as living within your means.

Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

When a man is getting better he understands more and more clearly the evil that is still left in him. When a man is getting worse he understands his own badness less and less.

It is both foolish and wicked to teach the average man who is not well off that some wrong or injustice has been done him, and that he should hope for redress elsewhere than in his own industry, honesty and intelligence.

No plan of operations extends with any certainty beyond the first encounter with the main enemy forces.

The problem is that at a lot of big companies, process becomes a substitute for thinking.

At any rate, while I am in public life, however short a time it may be, I am in honor bound to act up to my beliefs and convictions.

In the United States . . . all that [a man] asks of the State is not to be disturbed in his toil, and to be secure of his earnings.

Totalitarian regimes tend to emphasize state education, because they know that indoctrinating the children protects their positions of power.

If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the general welfare, the Government is no longer a limited one possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one subject to particular exceptions.

Truth is so obscure in these times, and falsehood so established, that, unless we love the truth, we cannot know it.

Are we so much better than the people of other ages and of other countries, that the same allurements of power and greatness, which led them aside from their duty, will have no influence upon men in our country?