Scott Bradford: Off on a Tangent

A Proposal for President Obama

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President Obama:

I can save the American automotive industry, and it will only cost the taxpayers 10 billion dollars (which is less than half of what GM and Chrysler are requesting). Please make the check payable to “Scott Bradford”. I will be happy to pick it up at the White House, or we can make arrangements for a direct deposit if that’s easier. This payment is a one-time, non-refundable investment in the creation of a new privately-held company: American Motors, LLC.

I will need two things from you (in addition to the 10 billion dollars). First, I will need legal authority to terminate union contracts that were signed by the current U.S. auto manufacturers under duress (the threat of a United Auto Workers [UAW] strike), which should be legally invalid anyway. Second, I will need your support and Federal Trade Commission (FTC) approval for American Motors, LLC to purchase all three of the ‘big three’ auto manufacturers. I figure if you can get Congress to approve an 800 billion dollars ‘stimulus’ in two weeks, you should be able to get these things approved in that time or less.

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Back to the Trough for $21.6 Billion

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Back in December, General Motors (GM) and Chrysler were unilaterally and unconstitutionally issued a $13.4 billion ‘loan’ by the George W. Bush (R) administration out of the 700 billion dollars that had been intended by Congress for a bailout of the banking and finance industry. This unprecedented intrusion by the federal government into private industry—executed by a Republican president who wanted to top-off an unconstitutional bailout by unconstitutionally ignoring what Congress told him to do with it—came with a requirement that the recipients develop and deliver detailed plans for their future viability.

GM and Chrysler delivered those plans today with an unsurprising revelation that the $13.4 billion they just got wasn’t enough, and they would need at least $21.6 billion more of your and my money in new ‘loans’ to save themselves from their own mismanagement. Let me write the next part of the story for our legislators and our new president: in six months, they’ll have burned through the $21.6 billion and they’ll come back to you asking for $43.2 billion. Six months after that, they’ll come back desperately needing $25.4 billion. Shall I go on?

Enough already. The government can—and should—call in the $13.4 loans for immediate repayment and refuse to provide any more support for an industry that cannot sustain itself. GM and Chrysler can bring themselves back to viability most efficiently by entering Chapter 11 bankruptcy, which will allow them to renegotiate (or, better yet, eliminate) the United Auto Workers (UAW) contracts that are sucking them dry. This is their best chance for success, not another mindless federal handout.

I would tell you to write your congressmen and President Barack Obama (D) asking them to oppose this idiocy, but widespread public opposition to the $700b bailout last year, the auto bailout last year, and the new $800b ‘stimulus’ bailout Obama signed into law today didn’t stop any of those things from happening.

I weep for the republic.

The Greatest President

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Happy Presidents’ Day!

The Federal Holiday celebrated today is technically, under federal law, the celebration of Washington’s Birthday although it has more recently (with most states eliminating the Lincoln’s Birthday holiday) become an all-inclusive day. 43 individuals have held the office of President of the United States. Barack Obama (D) is the 44th president, the numerical discrepancy because of Grover Cleveland’s (D) non-consecutive terms as 22nd and 24th president. All 43, good and bad, successful and unsuccessful, are deserving of our attention today as people who held the highest office in the land.

One of the big Presidents’ Day stories making the media rounds today is the C-SPAN survey of 65 historians ranking the 42 Presidents from George Washington to George W. Bush (R). Perhaps un-surprisingly, Abraham Lincoln (R) ranks as the ‘best’ president for leading us through the Civil War and preserving the union, while his immediate predecessor, James Buchanan (D) ranks as the ‘worst’ for standing by and letting the Civil War happen.

While the 65 historians have generally hit the nail on the head, or at least fairly close to it, I respectfully disagree with some of their conclusions. For example, Franklin D. Roosevelt (D) deserves a much lower ranking than his #3 position, as his well-intentioned but misguided efforts merely prolonged one of the darkest economic times in our history. George W. Bush (R) also gets low-balled at #36, the seventh worst, when he probably deserves something in the twenties for his post-9/11 leadership (and would have deserved better had he not spent his last couple of months in office trying to re-create FDR’s walk to Socialism). His rankings will improve with time.

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The 2010 Census and The Constitution

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I think the founders of this great nation and the writers of the U.S. Constitution did an excellent job, and more-often-than-not we should look to the Constitution and its supporting documents (like the Federalist Papers) to learn how to run a government correctly. Its core values, unfortunately, aren’t at the core of our government anymore. The Constitution was predicated on a very simple, ground-breaking doctrine: The power belongs by default to the people, and only those authorities expressly granted to the government by the people (in the Constitution itself) can be validly exercised by it.

If you can find a sentence in the Constitution that expressly gives the federal government authority to partially nationalize our banking and automotive industries, I’ll give you $500. Hint: it’s not in there. Don’t waste your time looking for it.

It might surprise you to know that I don’t think the U.S. Constitution is necessarily perfect. It might surprise you even more (since our schools don’t usually teach Constitutional history very accurately) that the founders didn’t think it was necessarily perfect either. That’s why there were two explicit procedures laid out in the Constitution itself for amending the document (see Article 5) and changing the rules as we go—the House of Representatives (by 2/3 majority) can propose amendments, or 2/3 of state legislatures can call for a new Constitutional Convention to propose amendments (this second method has never been used).

If we really want to give the government authority to nationalize the automotive industry, we can simply add a new item to the list of government powers clearly enumerated in Article 1, Section 8. We’re not supposed to just ignore the Constitution; we’re supposed to change it when needed.

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The Ugliest Cars of the 2009 Model Year

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This year’s list of the ugliest cars is actually relatively un-changed from last year, since most of the cars on the list remain in production and have not been seriously re-styled. Only one of last year’s ugly cars has been discontinued—the Chrysler PT Cruiser Convertible—but Toyota stepped up to the plate to fill the void will an extremely poor redesign of the Matrix.

All-in-all, most new designs being introduced in the industry are either good looking or, at least, not offensive enough to rank in the top ten ugliest. I’m very glad to see new and redesigned models from Subaru (the Impreza), Chevy (the Traverse), Volkswagen (the CC), and others not looking stupid.

As always, it is important to note that this list is my opinion. I am picky about how cars look, and I tend to be a bit of a minimalist (I’ll take simple shapes and lines over complex and odd angles). You may disagree, and I’m always interested to hear your thoughts!

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Scott Bradford is a writer and technologist who has been putting his opinions online since 1995. He believes in three inviolable human rights: life, liberty, and property. He is a Catholic Christian who worships the trinitarian God described in the Nicene Creed. Scott is a husband, nerd, pet lover, and AMC/Jeep enthusiast with a B.S. degree in public administration from George Mason University.