What Does the Government Control? More of Almost Everything
Last Tuesday, Dennis Cauchon at USA Today had an insightful take on an economic release from the government’s Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA). Using BEA’s March 2010 Personal Income and Outlays report, he calculated that wages paid by private companies “shrank to their smallest share of personal income in U.S. history during the first quarter of this year.”
Cauchon then unfortunately went to the prevailing media template, the one requiring that the Bush 43 era be dragged into everything, regardless of relevance:
A record-low 41.9% of the nation’s personal income came from private wages and salaries in the first quarter, down from 44.6% when the recession began in December 2007.
Cauchon’s convenient timing ignores the fact that as late as the fourth quarter of 2008, the same calculation using numbers in the same BEA report he cited came in at 44.0%. In other words, over three-quarters of the decline (2.1 percentage points divided by 2.7 points is actually 78%) occurred after everyone knew that Obama would be in charge.
As important as what Cauchon cited is (after the reality-based context yours truly has provided), the shrinkage in private pay only partially unmasks the much more broadly important story of rapidly advancing statism. Federal intrusion into the private sector and federal confiscation from it are accelerating. A tipping point may be near.
For items one could put hard numbers to with sufficient research, let’s start with entities still classified as “private” which Uncle Sam actually or substantively controls.
First, there are the two vehicle-producing wards of the state known as General Motors and Chrysler. These companies emerged from bankruptcy in their current forms largely as a result of extralegal maneuvers that shortchanged disfavored creditors during their respective bankruptcies, followed by excessive infusions of post-bankruptcy cash to ensure their multiyear survival even if they are run poorly or rejected by a nationalization-averse car-buying public.
Though majority-owned by the government, GM characterizes itself as a “private company” in its financial and other reports. While the government only has a minority interest in Chrysler, no one can honestly believe that it isn’t overseeing operational moves there. BEA includes the payroll of both companies in its “private industries” figure. You can knock off at least $5 billion in wages from BEA’s figures for GM and Chrysler alone.
Then there are Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two entities that brought us the housing and mortgage-lending fiascos after 15 years of deliberately misrepresenting the quality of mortgages they controlled and securitized. Fan and Fred are also considered private firms, even though they have thus far siphoned off $145 billion in taxpayer bailout money. With $8.1 trillion in combined outstanding debt and trillions in “assets” that are of questionable value, there is no end in sight.
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation has taken over and is obviously dictating what goes on at more than 70 failed banks just this year, on top of over 130 takeovers in 2009.
The new political divide in the USA is Constitutional Capitalist Ecologists vs. Authoritarian Socialist Environmentalists. We all must choose the side we will be on. Those of us who are Constitutional Capitalist Ecologists must hold our coalition together no matter what. While there are many differences of opinion on our side we can’t divide ourselves in the face of our opposition. Remember in November.
Now our socialists overlords are buying UPS and the Teamsters Union.
http://www.brownbailout.com/videos/#yqqTKQhBsSs
Our Federal Government also ‘owns” 700,000 barrels of crude oil in the salt domes of the south . It has paid oil drilling contractors to fill the “reserve “. It was filled in 2006 and the Us government is selling off some of the reserve to refiners so it can expand the reserve to a million barrels.
I would love to know how much of the Deep Horizon production was going into the Reserve but we’ll never know since government figures are somewhat dubious.
Deepwater Horizon was not a production well yet. The explosion happened as they were getting it ready for production.
The government owns nothing it did not steal from its people.
All the best should be in private hands.
“Stopping and reversing the statist steamroller will take a lot more than voting in November 2010. ”
While this should be obvious to even a fifth-grader (“are you smarter than a fifth grader?”), the author’s suggested remedy is not going to work. I am assuming that by “consistent activism” he means the kind of activism that HAS been tried and failed. Such barking in the wild has had NO effect on the intentions and actions of the ‘steamroller’ that the author mentions. Nor is there ANY reason to believe that the circumstance will change in the future—near or far.
On the other hand, even the emphasis on wasting energy, and more importantly, time, on ‘winning Nov’ is totally out of place. We are not dealing with business-as-usual Democrats of Carter genre.
(1) First of all, judging from the steamroller’s demeanor, words, AND actions of past 16 months, it is VERY doubful it is anticipating any problems down the road in terms of elections. It is well-known that if elections are held today, Dems will loose big-time. Why is the steamroller not at all worried, then? There are two reasons:
(2)Even if republicans win every seat in NOV, they can’t have a veto-proof majority. That means they can not roll-back any of the actions of the congress of past 16 months. (+ six more months till nov).
(3) Even if by some miracle, republicans manage to pass some corrective measures, and if obama’s vetos get overturned, obama has already prepared a way—he has actually told everyone what he will do if the congress does not go his way—he will use executive orders and/or promulgate ‘rules’ through his mostly runaway feeral agencies—and there are 1300 of those. Example—activities of EPA, FCC, FEC (federal elections commission), FTC (federal trade commission), on and on and on, of past 16 months. Also the fact that most of the ‘takeovers’ would be a fait accompli by the time republicans win anything in Nov.
It seems to me that catastrophies (economic, national security, foreign poli y, and globalist UN-like) are being orchestrated by the steamroller which will converge around the time of Nov elections, ena bling it to actually suspend indefinitely all elections under the guise of “National Emergency”. Besides the obvious electoral stop-gap, it saves the steamroller a lot of proceadural hassels, saving both time AND political energy, to even MORE accelerate the steamroller. If i was the leader of a totalitarian cabal, that is exactly what i would do. Why? Just because i can.
Dear gullible americans, we need to wake up to the reality on the ground and stop wasting our time on ‘activism’ and ‘protests’ and on electing ‘conservative’ candidates (who may or may not immediately jump the ship and aid the enemy destroy this country), writing letters to senators, and keep bickering on the bloggosphere and on twitter (the most useless invention during peace-time). There is only one way to stop the steamroller—blast it with the metaphorical dynamite stick. We must stop wasting and time and energies on futile activities.
We, the Right leaning individuals are in an overwhelming majority in the current population—only 20 some percent identify themselves as ‘liberals’, 60 some indentify themselves as conservatives—and the rest are ‘independants’ who have been running to the Right en masse in past 16 months. Even if we count 70 % of the population, we are talking about some 250 million people. Not sure about how many of them are able-bodied adults (sans children and the very old), but i am guessing at least 150 million. Even if 5% of those warm bodies show up in DC one fine morning, we can take back our country—with peaceful means, to boot. Overwhelming numbers of american citizens just showing up at the doorsteps of barn where they keep the steamrollers will make it pee.
If there is any other REALISTIC way of stoping the beast, i would want to know. Until then, this is the only thing i can come up with. Something that we CAN do. Legally. With the blessings of the Constitution. And without relying on the (nonexistent) compassion and fairness of the enemy.
Mr. Blumer, I think at this point most people know we are in deep sh.t.
“Intrusion” is neo-con code for “black.” You are a racist bigot.
Alice, racist bigot is ad hominem used when you’re such a lazy thinker that you can’t cogitate on an issue sufficient to profer an intelligent, well-reasoned reply. In short, you’re a lazy thinker who happens also to be obnoxious. You did much for your cause: not!
I am so sick of being called a racist. Alice, if you are walking down the street and you see a gang of young black men coming at you, are you afraid? If not you are a fool. If you decide you need to cross the street to maintain your physical safety, is that racist or self-preservation based on statistics? When will you liberals wake up to the absurdity of your ideas? Unions have ruined our industries. Billions transferred to unproductive people for the past 50 years have entrenched, not eliminated poverty. It is wrong to demonize conservative thinking. We genuinely want to help people be prosperous, not keep them down. It is democrats keeping people dow; depending on handouts.
The feds own 50% of the land west of the Mississippi River. Let them sell that to pay their debt instead of taxing us to death. Literally, many wealthy people will die this year if the estate tax is allowed to revert to 55%. They will be murdered by their heirs or commit suicide. The destruction of businesses and farms to pay the taxes will be a crushing blow to the economy.
You forgot to count among the assets under government control anywhere between 25% and 75% of the total land in western states. Imagine how it would be if the federal government owned 75% of the state of New York. People would be going crazy over that.
American Eagle @5 is close, but, sir, you’re deluding yourself if you think this will be peaceful.