Lobbyists too powerful because government is too powerful

As a member of the Libertarian Party, I frequently get e-mails from national party Chairman Mark Hinkle and Executive Director Wes Benedict. I read them and usually delete them. However, today's message from Mr. Hinkle gets right to the root of the problem with big government. I am quoting it in full:

"President Obama is currently caught in a bit of a scandal over his pledge not to take campaign money from lobbyists.

"According to the New York Times, 'Despite a pledge not to take money from lobbyists, President Obama has relied on prominent supporters who are active in the lobbying industry to raise millions of dollars for his re-election bid.'

"It's unfortunate that the president has added one more to his pile of broken promises. But it's not at all surprising.

"Our government has far too much power and money at its disposal. The inevitable consequence is that businesses, organizations, and individuals will work very hard to guide that power and money in their own favor.

"In fact, it often seems like politicians intentionally create incentives for people to try to bribe them.

"Businesses especially will fight for more corporate welfare, and also for regulations that stifle potential competitors. What choice do they have? If they don't fight for those special government favors, then someone else will, which will put them at an increasing disadvantage, and might drive them out of business.

"A recent Economist article pointed out that over the last ten years, companies that lobbied heavily had a much bigger increase in stock value than those that didn't. Executives might conclude that if you're not lobbying, you're ripping off your shareholders!

"And of course, these entities that stand to benefit from government favors will work hard (and spend hard) to get friendly politicians elected.

"Some people feel that massive campaign finance regulations will stop this unholy bargaining. It won't. When the dust settles, campaign finance restrictions usually just make life easier for incumbents and harder for challengers. We Libertarians know that only too well.

"I have to remind myself, lobbying isn't essentially a bad thing. It's an expression of our right to 'petition the government for a redress of grievances.' It provides information to politicians. But when politicians get in the habit of handing out favors, you can bet everyone is going to run up to the trough.

"The only way to reduce the power of lobbyists is to reduce the power of government. That choice rests with the voters. If voters keep electing Democrats and Republicans, then the power of government and lobbyists will continue to grow. If voters start electing Libertarians, things will change."

Besides voting Libertarian, the only long-term solution to lobbyists is to decentralize government so much that lobbying becomes impractical, except by local citizens and businesses.

Exposing Progressive Capitalism

... is an interesting new page in Facebook. Its purpose, as well expressed by its logo (left), is to inform the American people how the leftist-sounding rhetoric actually serves a few large corporate interests. Republicans will not like the site, but all of us need to think about whom government is meant to serve.

For myself, I would prefer a Jeffersonian nation of farmers, shopkeepers, and artisans to the society we have now -- it would be much more satisfying physically and spiritually, and require far fewer resources to maintain. This graphic from that page neatly summarizes how corporate cronyism works, at both the federal and state level:

Wall Street banks fleece Alabama county government

... and this probably is not an isolated incident, from Rolling Stone (April 15, 2010). The story is intricately detailed, but well worth reading. In fine, it tells the story of how JP Morgan bribed (literally!) and temporarily bankrupted a county government paying interest and other charges for a capital improvement that got dubbed the "Taj Mahal of sewage treatment plants." And in the end, what the county employees and taxpayers got was the, uh, sludge.

I just thought I would throw this in as another example of the Eastern Establishment looting Main Street...

The Regressive Movement

Sticomythia at Vermont Commons returned from a town meeting last night, and the natives are getting restless:

Just came from the Ripton Town Meeting. Folks are uneasy. We have excellent management, excellent intentions, great visions... but we're having the life sucked out of us by the US Empire: its wars, racism, cruelty and waste of human potential.

And there's the rub. How can we achieve a green, peaceful Vermont, within such an Empire? Our State representative gave us some unfortunate numbers from the State budget. I confronted him with the actual numbers, already presented to the legislature, which show a $1.2 billion a year give-away to huge corporations. This puts the entire tax burden squarely on people who work for a living, and small-to-medium size business. Of course there's a crisis, but the crisis is entirely unnecessary. His reply was to plead ignorance of the situation.

A very brave lady then spoke up, declared that 'it is not about numbers, it is about real people'. I bow to her on this essential fact.

Our management are excellent, yet they have failed us. They need to decide whether their loyalty is to the Empire, or to their people in Vermont. Choose the Empire, and they must be confronted and voted out. Most are Democrats, whose opposition to the Bush wars fell silent the moment the Bush wars became Obama's even bigger wars, and our Guard were federalised and sent off to Afghanistan.

How much sacrifice can we endure? How long will our representatives ask us to turn our backs on the needy, cutting programs and care to those who can least afford to lose it, before we say 'Enough is Enough'? (Emphasis added)

This is a liberal concern, which should help give the lie to those who think liberty activists are all rightist wingnuts. A more libertarian question would be "How long will our representatives continue to frustrate our efforts to provide personal assistance and opportunities to the needy, before we say 'Enough is Enough'?

The writer concludes:

The Green Mountain State has championed many progressive causes and elected a socialist Senator. But it's still part of an uneasy empire, and some people want out of the "big muddy."

The link includes two related videos.

The Godfather: Life imitates art

To those who argue that the Constitution forbids secession, I often reply that in their logic, ratifying the Constitution is like joining the Mafia -- you can join, but you will never leave it alive.

Dan Weintraub at Vermont Commons carries this analogy further, calling it "Sopranoland". He points out that President Obama has given a great speech about regulating the banking system, while doing nothing about it. The reason? The U.S. economy depends on keeping up the fraud perpetrated by the Wall Street bankers -- literally, a Ponzi scheme:

You see, if our leaders REALLY believed in true reform of the financial industry, they wouldn't create obstacles to the imposition of such reforms. Why aren't banks being forced to put all of their assets on the books? Why are the banks allowed to value their assets NOT to the marketplace but to pure fantasy? Why are OTC products like CDS still being traded when it is those very unregulated OTC products that precipitated, to a great extent, the coming of this economic crisis? Why is there opposition to auditing the Federal Reserve when it is the Federal Reserve who---through its "open market" operations---has dished out trillions of dollars in tax-payer monies in an effort to save the very banks that have brought the nation to its fiscal knees? Why is the FHA helping to originate mortgages that, like their subprime cousins, lack any reasonable expectations with regard to upfront capital requiremements for incipient homeowners??

However, like all Ponzi schemes, this one will eventually (or more likely, very soon) crash. This is yet another reason why Ohio needs to start thinking like an independent nation!

Why America is in trouble

Common sense by Dan Weintraub, via Vermont Commons. His title is "The Low Spark." In his post, he lists ten reasons why our economy cannot sustain itself much longer. The whole post can be summarized in two sentences: Our economy is being propped up by fraud. Frauds inevitably collapse.

It's time to brace ourselves. The rough landing will come soon.

Is the flu pandemic planned?

In an earlier post, I wrote:

"[I]f I didn't know better, I'd say that all this meticulous preparation at state and federal levels suggests that the whole thing is being planned. Otherwise, state and federal governments and pharmaceutical firms are risking a massive waste of money and effort to contain what could prove to be nothing at all; or, because of virus mutations, could prove to be ineffective."

jcbrook at Vermont Commons provides evidence from Department of Defense documents that suggests this just might be the case. It displays a Report on Biological Warfare (Defense Vaccine Research & Development Programs) from July 2001 that describes, among other things, "integration of [Department of Defense] and industry vaccine objectives," on the grounds that "partnering with DoD to produce vaccines is considered a high-risk venture by industry." The "panel of experts" assembling this report were Franklin H. Top, Jr., MD, executive vice president and medical director of MedImmune, Inc.; John J. Dingerdissen, senior director for viral vaccine manufacturing at Merck & Company; and William H. Habig, Ph.D., director for R&D quality assurance and compliance at Centocor, Inc.

Now, I am sure these are all good, pubic-spirited people, who coincidentally would profit from the research...

This Vermont Commons post also includes interesting links (here and here) that proves Donald Rumsfeld's connection (chairman of the board, yet) with Gilead Sciences, co-developer of Tamiflu.

Here is an article from this May that shows that a Defense contract is benefitting MedImmune for a "pre-pandemic influenza stockpile." Who is paying for all this? We are.

If I am jumping to a wrong conclusion, I am willing to be corrected; but I'm picking up a rather strong odor... If a pandemic is being planned by the federal government (secretly, of course), it will be an act of unspeakable evil that will rival those of Hitler and Stalin -- one that should convince even the densest individual that our only hope lies in independence.

More evidence that Goldman Sachs owns the Federal Government

The Feds are now a subsidiary of Goldman-Sachs. Check out this video. Yeah, I know. Glenn Beck again -- but this time it's not about secession. Watch the video and draw your own conclusions. And remember, you saw it here first.

Virtual buckeye to Rob Williams at Vermont Commons

Why it's dangerous to have the best government money can buy

I have been reading Frederick Grimke*, Considerations upon the Nature and Tendency of Free Institutions, when I came across this interesting passage:

"It is a great objection to a high property qualification [or in our day, the necessity for raising large amounts of campaign money] that it confines the competition for office to the rich exclusively. The rich only can afford to practice bribery, and hence the English elections [this was written in 1856] have been corrupt to a degree utterly unknown in the United States... In those countries where the eligibility to office as well as the electoral franchise have been most restricted, the greatest corruption and licentiousness have prevailed; and where both have been thrown open to nearly the whole population the elections are the most orderly and the most free of sinister influence."

* Frederick Grimke (1791-1863), a resident of Chillicothe, was a judge in the Ohio Supreme Court before retiring to write political philosophy. Considerations upon the Nature and Tendency of Free Institutions was his most important work. The 1968 and 2006 editions of his work are available online. The 1968 edition includes editorial notes that help the modern reader to understand references that would otherwise seem obscure.

Who is getting bailed out?

Silly me. I thought the purpose of the Federal bailout funds was to rescue banks and corporations that were "too big to fail." I (and I suggest, most Americans with me) assumed that meant domestic banks and corporations.

Fortunately, U.S. Rep. Alan Grayson is smarter than I am. He asked Federal Reserve Bank Chairman Ben Bernanke how much of the $500 billion bank bailout went to foreign banks? Mr. Bernanke's answer: "I don't know."

Virtual buckeye to Patrick at Ohio Freedom Alliance.

Proud to be an American?

You might want to think about that. This is from Karl Denninger at a business blog known as The Market Ticker.

"We have seen the largest looting operation in history perpetrated against The American People. Over $5 trillion dollars in junk securities were marketed and sold. They had a real value of about $2 trillion dollars; the other $3 trillion, roughly, was pure fiction. The banks created and sold these throughout the world, with the full knowledge and support of Congress, The Fed, and the banks themselves.

"It was pure fraud.

"Granting someone a 'mortgage' based only on whether they can fog a mirror is proof positive of malfeasance, unless you disclose this fact to the buyers of these securities - a fact that was not disclosed until after the securities blew up.

"Lenders, builders and others pressured appraisers to "hit the numbers" to support these fraudulent deals. Proof of that is found in the nearly-10-year-old Appraisers Petition bearing thousands of appraiser signatures.

"That ratings were a "mistake", either real or intentional, is a matter of now-known historical fact."

There is more, much more, but I'll leave it to you to follow the link.

One further note. If the demonstrations in Tehran were conducted on the same scale in Columbus, more than 60,000 people would be taking to the streets!

"Is life so dear, and peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what others may say, but as for me, Give me liberty, or give me death!" -- Patrick Henry

Virtual buckeye to Rebellion.

Chinese: U.S. a poor credit risk

U.S. Rep. Mark Kirk is acknowledging in this report from Agence France-Presse what we have been saying for over a year -- China is getting leery of buying paper from a creditor that has over $60 trillion in unfunded liabilities (and growing).

After paying a visit to the Bureau of Public Debt, which trades bonds, he was "alarmed at how much debt was being bought by the US Federal Reserve due to absence of foreign investors."

In other words, he has just admitted that we're starting to print money.

But the Chinese are smarter than we are -- they're going to bail out before they need a bailout.

Virtual buckeye to JBZ at the Ohio Freedom Alliance.

Sen. Voinovich gets it right

... by voting against what Weapons of Mass Discussion calls the "porkulus" package.

Sen. Voinovich has an established reputation as a deficit hawk, which I am glad he has maintained with his "no" vote here.

"I voted against this bill because it is weighed down by too much spending that is not stimulative and will not provide the jump-start our economy so desperately needs. Instead of funding federal responsibilities that are shovel-ready, like highways, sewers and housing, which would put people back to work quickly and the results of which would contribute to our nation’s economic growth, this bill is filled with items that should be funded through the regular appropriations process and compete with other federal priorities in President Obama’s budget request. Our nation is facing a catastrophic debt and this bill simply adds to that debt without fulfilling the well-accepted stimulus criteria that the funds be timely, targeted and temporary. It is irresponsible for us to attempt to save the present by mortgaging the future. It is my hope that my colleagues on the conference committee will get back to basics and do the work the American people are asking them to do: ensure that each and every dollar in this bill is focused on creating jobs, jump-starting the economy and responding to the human needs brought about by the deep recession our country is
experiencing.”

Amen! Preach on, Senator!

Confused by the bailout?

Maybe this will help. Sarah Grillo at Vermont Commons explains it to us in plain English.

Here are the essential points:

Letting us spend the money ourselves (through tax cuts) makes more sense than providing lump sums, because we are more likely to spend them when they are added to our paycheck, than when we get a larger check to take to the bank.

However, if we take a short term view of economic recovery, we will lose sight of the deeply entrenched issues that led to our current plight:

"The problems with our economy, in actuality," Ms. Grillo writes, "are not limited just to bad decisions by investors, or the collapse of short term bubbles in the housing market or dot-coms. The problems are foundational, and run far deeper than most people can possibly imagine."

Examples:

* More than 50 years of U.S. Government manipulation of statistics to mask the reality. Her example of "hedonic pricing" for the Consumer Price Index is particularly interesting.

* As I have mentioned several times in this space, the Federal Reserve has been creating money out of thin air -- or if you insist, backed by debt, which in essence is the same thing:

"Our debt-based money system must continually expand, as new money must be printed to cover the interest payments on the government's outstanding debt; it is an exponential system by its very design. And exponential systems always reach a point of peaking, which is simply a rule of living on a finite planet that many people seem to think we can avoid... As strong and as popular as it may be, it is manufactured in an unsustainable process, and moreover, with our country in debt in the tens of trillions, and our money losing value exponentially via inflation, it only seems realistic that the dollar may, some day, become worthless."

She urges us to check out Jim Kunstler's take on this phenomena, known as “peak money”: http://jameshowardkunstler.typepad.com/clusterfuck_nation/2007/11/peak-money.html.

* Finally, she says our biggest problem is our "aversion to sustainability." To understand how our monetary system is, in fact, unsustainable, she points us to The Crash Course at http://www.chrismartenson.com/, an online PowerPoint presentation that does an excellent job of breaking down our economic crisis step by step and tying it into other problems like the peaking of our energy resources.

"So will Obama's plan work? It may mean a few extra dollars in my pocket, for sure, but I think it is a band-aid on a dying patient. Realistically, I think the best bet for anyone now is to buy gold, learn a trade, and invest in local resources. Which, as I see it, isn't such a bad alternative at all."

The spiritual benefits of community may well cause us to decide one day that the adjustment was well worth the pain.

The center cannot hold

Most people with whom I discuss secession think the idea is flaky. We fought the War Between the States almost 150 years ago, the North won, and that settles it. Fair enough, for a time when the people had confidence that their Federal government would take into account the interests of all of the people, not just some of them; in a manner consistent with our Constitution and our heritage.

Hardly anyone thinks that way anymore. President Obama and the Congress have been working on an “economic stimulus” package to throw another trillion or so at the problem; about one-third of which is nothing but old-fashioned pork, and the rest of it of unknown validity for addressing the problems we are facing. We are told that if we rely on tax cuts, people will just save the money. While saving helps us as individuals, our failure to spend, we are told, will hurt the economy. This is not true. Even if we all do save any tax breaks or just use them to repay our mortgages, it may slow recovery a bit, but will produce better results on the long run. Savings now will increase the supply of money that banks can use to lend to corporations to build new plants, create new technologies, and enhance their competitiveness. Smaller loans can help entrepreneurs get into business. This is not just some wild-eyed dreaming – it is basic economics – assuming that the banks are operating rationally in their own interest. And just as importantly, it gives us the freedom to manage our own money as we see fit.

The problem is, tax cuts will not ensure that the money will flow to the governmental and corporate interests that have bought out the Congress, and perhaps the Presidency as well. Congress has not asked for, let alone received, an accounting for the first $800 billion. Banks that received the first round of TARP* funds are rebuffing efforts to determine how it was spent.

The system is broken beyond repair. We have centralized our financial system to a point that all of our banks and brokers are dependent upon what goes on in New York and foreign financial centers. We have centralized our government to a point where it is inconceivable that any agency other than the Federal Government can solve a problem; despite 200 years of American experience to the contrary.

The choice in our elections is like one between strawberry and lemon-lime Kool-Aid. If both flavors are laced with cyanide, what difference does it make?

I am uncomfortable with the idea of class warfare – to me it reeks of Communism; but the truth is, we are seeing a war waged against the middle class. Government has bought out the poor, and is funneling money to the rich through defense contracts, bank bailouts, and, too often, favorable regulation. But how is government financed?

By taxes. And who pays those taxes? We do. Our work, our productivity is being sacrificed to support a corrupt system. So why is it still holding? So far, the taxpayers have been in denial. We are so engrossed with our private lives (or with television), that we cannot see the bigger picture.

We either cannot, or do not want to see that Peak Oil will put an end to the cheap transportation of goods over long distances. It will increase the cost and decrease the availability of electricity. It will force us to change the way we do everything, from farming to manufacturing to government. We will soon discover the long-hidden truth that all economics is local. We will have to buy food from the local farmer (or grow our own) to survive. We will have to buy from the corner grocer or local haberdashery to survive. The glut of Chinese goods will end, because it will become too costly to send them here.

In the meantime, we are printing trillions of dollars as casually as we only recently printed billions of them. One day, our economy will be flooded with dollars, and hyperinflation will set in. Heaven help the unprepared on that day! We speak now of burdening our children and grandchildren with debt. That will not happen, because at some point the debt will be repudiated; but we will be saddling them with generations of much harder work than we are used to. Making things, growing things, building things, just as our great-grandparents used to do. Social Security, Medicare, and social welfare programs will be memories of the past. The sudden end of these programs will cause suffering for millions of people.

The poor people won’t be hurt at first – they’re on the dole. The rich people won’t be hurt, either. Those that aren’t on the dole have the resources to weather the storm. The middle class (the center of our society) will be devastated. When the middle class collapses, so does the nation. If our Federal policy of throwing trillions of dollars in “bailout” money is not soon reversed, our nation will collapse. My guess is that collapse will occur within the next four years.

When the nation collapses, we will have three choices:
- We can decide that we need control, and accept a totalitarian dictatorship or a world government (which may have the same effect);
- We can allow ourselves to descend into chaos, like Somalia and Afghanistan; or
- We can prepare ourselves, as individuals and as State and local governments, for the inevitable, and apply the “Right of the People to alter or abolish it [the Federal Government] and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to [us] shall seem most likely to effect [our] Safety and Happiness.” **

I am a secessionist because the third option makes the most sense to me. It is the only one that will continue our historic freedoms under the rule of law. I hope and pray that this is the option that makes the most sense to you.

* Troubled Assets Relief Program
** Declaration of Independence.

Common sense about the bailouts

Not everyone has bought in to the idea that printing more and more Federal Reserve Notes is the solution to our economic crisis. Two articles published today are especially good:

Robert Romano at The Daily Grind* calls it “Stimulating Debt, Abandoning Hope.” :

“Never mind that the government has ducked any responsibility for creating the current mess. Or that it has failed to enact—or even propose—reforming and repealing the very policies that caused the financial system to crack in the first place: too much credit, too low interest rates, regulations by government to force banks to give out loans that ultimately could not be repaid... ad infinitum, ad nausea[m].

“Beneath this abdication of accountability is a complete lack of faith by politicians in the very people they represent. And, of course, in the American spirit of free enterprise.”

The “stimulus” package, Mr. Romano writes, is not based on increased revenues, but on “a desire by politicians to exacerbate the self-same economic policies that caused the crisis to begin with.”

“It was not government that invented the steam engine that powered factories and mills, locomotives and steam boats; it was the individual initiative of several engineers over the course of hundreds of years, including James Watt and Richard Trevithick. Nor was it government that forever revolutionized the process of making cars—and just about everything else that is manufactured; it was the initiative of Henry Ford and his assembly line that created millions of jobs and made the 20th Century the era of the automobile. And again it was not government that transformed and made more efficient the use of computers; it was independent innovators like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates.”

Basic truth: Government cannot create wealth -- never has, never will.

The second is Glenn Sheller’s piece in today’s Columbus Dispatch. He applies some good old-fashioned Ohio horse-sense, first by using a medical analogy:

“The economy is sick because its arteries are clogged with bad investments, bad debt, bad financial managers and bad companies. And these things grew to such toxic levels because they got a pass from bad regulators and from bad politicians who short-circuited the market forces that would have punished such foolishness long before it grew big enough to shake the financial underpinnings of the entire planet.

“The economy seeks to purge itself of these toxins, and only after it does can it regain health and resume growth. But all efforts so far seem directed toward preventing that from happening. We don't want to let foreclosure eliminate bad mortgages, we don't want to allow the failure of financial institutions that are built on bad decisions and rotten assets. We don't want to let companies that are ill-managed, overburdened and underperforming go bankrupt.”

“It's like saying that the cure for hangover is to drink more alcohol. A hangover can be postponed by more drinking, but that ‘solution’ leads to fatal alcohol poisoning. Assuming that nobody wants that, then sooner or later the agony of the hangover must be endured in order to return to sobriety and health.”

He concludes that we are acting like lemmings. We are trusting the same people who got us into the mess to get us out of it. His conclusion: “That's sounds more than just counterintuitive. That sounds crazy.”

Why does it sound crazy? I don’t know the exact M1 figures, but I do know that the bailout has created at least $2 trillion since last September out of nothing. Continuing along this path will flood our economy with too many dollars chasing too few goods and services – which is the definition of inflation. Flooding it too much will cause the patient to die of congestive heart failure, or hyperinflation.

If you want to know what that’s like, check out this article about Zimbabwe dollar from Agence France-Presse, which uses numbers I have never seen outside of astronomy.

* The photo is also from The Daily Grind.

Change we can believe in? A cautionary note.

If you still think that President-elect Obama's incoming Administration reflects his slogan of "change we can believe in," you might want to read this analysis. We know that most of Mr. Obama's advisors are veterans of the Clinton Administration, and appear to be more concerned with allaying the fears of Wall Street and oh, maybe by the way, Main Street, than in pursuing any kind of bold new direction.

The best economic stimulus, by the way, is the one Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) proposed to give us all a one-year holiday from the Federal income tax. But don't hold your breath -- you won't live long enough to see it.

Consolidation of private enterprise

I have often wondered what would happen if so much enterprise were so efficient and/or so foreign that there would be no one left to buy anything. According to Sherry at Liberty Voice, it looks as though I'm about to find out, and it won't be pretty. In an article by Michel Chussodovsky, the coming depression results from the collapse of consumer demand, coupled with an overproduction that has triggered a string of bankruptcies.

Now, try to persuade me that the global economy is all it's cracked up to be!

Christmas is getting expensive...

When the mainstream media, say, ABC News, says that the bailout is getting expensive, maybe we should sit up and take notice. That "$700 billion" bailout is now expected to cost as much as $7.5 trillion, which is more than twice the inflation-adjusted cost of World War II ($3.6 trillion). This could increase the national debt to some $18 trillion, and the total unfunded liabilities of the U.S. Government to more than $60 trillion. According to Russell Goldman at ABC News:

"Bailout programs also include a Federal Reserve plan to buy as much as $2.4 trillion in short-term notes called commercial paper that began Oct. 27, and an FDIC plan to spend $1.4 trillion to guarantee bank-to-bank loans that commenced Oct. 14, according to Bloomberg News, which first compiled the total cost of the bailout.

"'No one really knows if any of this is going to work," said Barry Ritholtz, CEO of Fusion IQ, an online quantitative research firm and author of Bailout Nation. '"

In addition, the Feds are putting in $600 billion to purchase Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac debt, and $800 billion to shore up consumer credit.


How will we pay for it? Print more money. You know what happens when we print more money? Ask the folks in Zimbabwe.

Virtual buckeye to Rob Williams at Vermont Commons.

Auto industry bailout not the answer

The lead story in today's Columbus Dispatch asks a provocative question: "Automakers now roadkill?" Writer Dan Gearino carefully researches the history of job losses in Ohio's auto industry and the pain that would be caused if the Big Three were to be allowed to collapse.

Mr. Gearino quotes James Rubenstein, a geography professor at Miami University and "an expert on the Ohio auto industry": "The severity is such that the nation as a whole needs to face up to a regional issue." According to Prof. Rubenstein, the bailout should be thought of as disaster relief for the Great Lakes states, "just like the country banded together to help the Gulf Coast after natural disasters" [Mr. Gearino's words].

The rest of the nation does not give a rat's patoot about the Great Lakes States. I know this is not the way to gain popularity in this State, but the Big Three should be allowed to collapse. Yes, I know it will be extremely painful; and at least 40,000 more workers will be out of a job -- but to send taxpayer money to the automakers, even as a loan, will only prolong the agony. Yes, I know that the American public thinks that American automakers make poorer quality cars than they really do -- my wife and I each have a Ford Focus, both over four years old, and we are completely satisfied with them.

The problem is not all the United Auto Workers, and it is not all corporate arrogance in Detroit. The problem is, that the Big Three are structurally incapable of responding quickly to innovation. Instead of bailing out the behemoths, we need to incubate new, smaller automakers that will develop electric and hybrid cars; and invent new forms of transportation that remove our dependence on Oil. We need free enterprise, not government-subsidized enterprise -- that can compete and innovate. This is the playing field on which Ohio is strongest, and the one on which Ohio will win, given the opportunity.

Again, I know I am suggesting an extremely painful transition, but sometimes you have to perform an amputation to save the patient's life. This is one of those times.