Mar 24 2009

After Failing To Help Banks, Obama Plans To Take Over Other Businesses

Published by at 8:29 am under All General Discussions

The political class has a serious ego problem. To them all other lines of work and business are trivial and anyone can do them. It is their general 3rd grade understanding of things around them that allows them this special insight. If a job or a business took years to understand, a life time to master, and generations to perfect then politicians and their underlings would not assume they can simply jump in and do better.

In the mind of Team Obama all things are so simplistic they think they can control the entire national economy – no problem! While not even fully making the leap from managing a campaign to running the executive branch of the nation, team Obama thinks it can also take control of our nation’s businesses:

The Obama administration is considering asking Congress to give the Treasury secretary unprecedented powers to initiate the seizure of non-bank financial companies, such as large insurers, investment firms and hedge funds, whose collapse would damage the broader economy, according to an administration document.

The government at present has the authority to seize only banks.

Giving the Treasury secretary authority over a broader range of companies would mark a significant shift from the existing model of financial regulation, which relies on independent agencies that are shielded from the political process. The Treasury secretary, a member of the president’s Cabinet, would exercise the new powers in consultation with the White House, the Federal Reserve and other regulators, according to the document.

The administration plans to send legislation to Capitol Hill this week. Sources cautioned that the details, including the Treasury’s role, are still in flux.

This is how dictatorships run. It all seems so simple, but the fact is to control anything like this requires making it simple. If we, as we do now, rely on the intentions and creativity of We The People to drive the economy and our society forward free of control, then the complex interactions of 300 million thriving humans create spontaneous an unforeseen breakthroughs. It is the churn of random innovation at work.

But to go to a command economy where a handful decide salaries, compensation, priorities you have to stifle that mass of human creativity and bring it way, way down. This is why dictatorships always fail next to free markets.

President Obama is a running disaster. He and his liberal friends are going to keep pushing the envelope of socialist control until things break (which they probably already are doing). They have no clue what they are into, or how naive they are to the challenges. And they have no idea how big a backlash can erupt from this nation when its people are pushed too far by too many freedoms being taken away.

DC is heading towards a harsh lesson: they are the servants of the people, not the other way around.

10 responses so far

10 Responses to “After Failing To Help Banks, Obama Plans To Take Over Other Businesses”

  1. Give an inch, and they try to take it all…

    The Washington Post has a disturbing report this morning that talks about a plan under consideration by the Obama administration to give Treasury the unprecendented authority “to initiate the seizure of non-bank financial companies”:
    The Ob…

  2. Aitch748 says:

    Apparently Obama wants to take over a lot more than just financial institutions.

    Gateway Pundit mentions that the House has already passed something known as the GIVE Act:

    The House passed a bill yesterday which includes disturbing language indicating young people will be forced to undertake mandatory national service programs as fears about President Barack Obama’s promised “civilian national security force” intensify.

    The Generations Invigorating Volunteerism and Education Act, known as the GIVE Act, was passed yesterday by a 321-105 margin and now goes to the Senate.

    Under section 6104 of the bill, entitled “Duties,” in subsection B6, the legislation states that a commission will be set up to investigate, “Whether a workable, fair, and reasonable mandatory service requirement for all able young people could be developed, and how such a requirement could be implemented in a manner that would strengthen the social fabric of the Nation and overcome civic challenges by bringing together people from diverse economic, ethnic, and educational backgrounds.”

    Section 120 of the bill also discusses the “Youth Engagement Zone Program” and states that “service learning” will be “a mandatory part of the curriculum in all of the secondary schools served by the local educational agency”.

    “The legislation, slated to cost $6 billion over five years, would create 175,000 “new service opportunities” under AmeriCorps, bringing the number of participants in the national volunteer program to 250,000. It would also create additional “corps” to expand the reach of volunteerism into new sectors, including a Clean Energy Corps, Education Corps, Healthy Futures Corps and Veterans Service Corps, and it expands the National Civilian Community Corps to focus on additional areas like disaster relief and energy conservation,” reports Fox News.

    Sooner or later we might actually have to get up off our duffs and DO something about all this.

  3. crosspatch says:

    The Democrat political witch hunts are already having a trickle down impact in the business travel industry while Congress has no problems taking military flights on exotic junkets as if the Air Force is their personal airline.

    Democrats see these rules as applying to everyone but them.

    When are we going to see members of Congress flying coach?

  4. Treasury Seeks Power To Seize Failing Companies…

    Wait a second? You mean to tell everyone that AIG should have been shut down, not fed hundreds of billions, including billions as a conduit to avoid the TARP limitations? If AIG should have been shut down, why did it getting the bailout in the first …..

  5. conman says:

    AJ,

    You are absolutely right. It is much better to keep shoveling billions upon billions of dollars into these failing financial institutions with no ability to control how they spend the money, just like Bush and Obama have done thus far. That way these financial companies can spend all of our hard-earned tax dollars paying off multi-million dollar bonuses to the very people that precipitated this economic disastor, paying foreign companies and hording the cash to ensure they can meet their capitalization requirements (as opposed to lending it, as the money was intended). Then when things continue to get worse, they come begging for more. Or maybe we can just let them all collapse on their own, making the massive credit market freeze that occured when Lehman failed look like a walk in the park.

    I’m beginning to realize something about Republicans and conservatives. They are much more comfortable and effective in the minority role. That way they can complain and criticize about everything without actually having to come up with an alternative. When they are actually required to govern and put their ideas to the test, the bottom falls out and everyone realizes that they have no clue what they are doing. It is really too bad that the GOP is such a mess. Our country would be much better off if we had an effective opposition party to keep the Democrats in Congress, whom scare me as well, in check rather than a bunch of buffons running around with their hair on fire.

  6. OLDPUPPYMAX says:

    The plan of the Soros backed administration–take over the free enterprise system by destroying it first. Create panic, rioting in the streets, hatred and contempt for everyone who is actually succesful and finally, in a serious, reflective moment (all phony, of course) declare martial law. Anyone not currently heavily invested in gold, guns and ammunition had better get to it.

  7. momdear1 says:

    If the way this bunch of clowns are running the country is an indication of their ability to intelligently run anything, then this country is headed down the path to total disintegration. This Obama Clown just makes up “statistics: and “facts” to back up his claim of a need for whtever he is drumming up support for at the moment. Corrections, if there are any, get one time blip and are forgotten. He is woefully ignorant of history, American and otherwise. Just like the Muslims have reinvented the Dark Ages and now claim that period in history was the greatest period of enlightenment in the hisory of the world, (and the ignorant products of our dumbed down education system are too uneducated to know the difference) Obama distorts facts and makes up “historical facts” to suit the situation. Which leads me to the observation that he is not the smartest African American in the world, he is just another affirmative action wonder, who got special treatment and social promotions because he was articulate and good looking, but spent most of his time in school cutting up, flirting with girls and having a good time. He was passed with good grades because he was likeable and could talk his way through anything. He got into prestigous schools because he was a perfect example to prove Affirmative Action was successful and needed. If this assessment is not correct, I challenge someone to give me an example of one intelligent and effective thing he has done since he took office. It looks to me like every action he and his flunkies have taken is nothing more than to get their hands on as much taxpayer money as they can and keep coming back for more and more before the bedraggled and exhausted tax payers realize that the treasury has been looted and there is nothing to show for it except empty promises.

  8. russellshih says:

    This is nothing, but a power grab, for those who think Obama first and foremost goal is to help the struggling economy, I have news for use. At the very top of his list is social change—real and radical social change. This man is not a socialist in the European sense, but rather an extreme socialist who want to bring about great changes in the American way of life. Some people are finally beginning to see the other face of “the one”, I pray its not too late.

  9. […] UPDATE After Failing To Help Banks, Obama Plans To Take Over Other Businesses […]

  10. […] This is what I wrote in March 2009 when Obama and Pelosi were in full liberal madness: President Obama is a running disaster. He and his liberal friends are going to keep pushing the envelope of socialist control until things break (which they probably already are doing). They have no clue what they are into, or how naive they are to the challenges. And they have no idea how big a backlash can erupt from this nation when its people are pushed too far by too many freedoms being taken away. […]