United Liberty

The failure of the U.S. auto industry has been a dominant news story over the last few months. Today, GM filed for bankruptcyand it appears Chrysler will emerge reorganized soon after Judge Arthur Gonzalez rejected opposing arguments. Over a couple of articles, we will discuss some of the basic nuts and bolts of bankruptcy, a few of the key opponents of the Chrysler reorganization, and some general comments on the entire process.

A study by USA Today shows that each American family now owes $668,321 in unfunded liabilities, a 12 percent increase in the last year, with Medicare taking up half of what taxpayers owe:

Taxpayers are on the hook for an extra $55,000 a household to cover rising federal commitments made just in the past year for retirement benefits, the national debt and other government promises, a USA TODAY analysis shows.

 

The 12% rise in red ink in 2008 stems from an explosion of federal borrowing during the recession, plus an aging population driving up the costs of Medicare and Social Security.

That’s the biggest leap in the long-term burden on taxpayers since a Medicare prescription drug benefit was added in 2003.
[…]
USA TODAY used federal data to compute all government liabilities, from Treasury bonds to Medicare to military pensions.

In an interview I did with Dan Carlin several months ago, Carlin noted that “anytime you get unsettled times (from war, or economic trouble or any combination of stressful societal factors) you provide the opportunity for things to flourish that would otherwise not have a chance to arise.”

In the case of the current economic crisis, the ridiculous that encompass the outer reaches of American thought are making their voices known. Take into account this philosophical piece titled “Equanomics” by Texas writer Damon White:

And what do I mean by
current vacant systems?
The big 3.  
Capitalism, Communism, and Socialism.

In 2008, I joined the loud chorus of Ron Paul supporters who cried that the system is broken and needed a complete dismantling. When Ron Paul won only a handful of delegates, won only 3% in the Alabama primary, and won only three (3) votes at the Maytown Baptist precinct (mine, my daughter’s and my wife’s— my son’s vote was at the absentee box), I began to feel that the Ron Paul effort was a waste of our energy.
When the Paul for President campaign horded $5 million to promote post-election causes, some of us who contributed felt thrown aside and were less-than-happy. But time has proven that the Ron Paul for President campaign had an effect far beyond the 2008 Republican primaries. So far, what is the legacy of the Ron Paul campaign? For starters, let me mention four:

A brand new, government-subsidized shopping center recently opened on Alabama Avenue, providing one of the few full-service grocery stores in the area, along with a new sit-down restaurant and mainstream bank branch. But reformers are finding that such initiatives won’t fix decades of market dysfunction overnight.

There is a lot of rhetoric being bantered about by political partisans from all parties over what to do about detainees at our naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Republicans are outraged that President Barack Obama would dare think about allowing any of them to come to the United States. Let’s face it, right now, the fear is the only card Republicans have against Democrats, who have felt the heat andrejected funding to close the facilities at Gitmo.

Let me tell you something, there are already terrorists imprisoned in the United States who have committed or were planning to commit acts of terrorism, including several al-Qaeda members, both before and after 9/11.

The rhetoric from the right is dishonest and it plays on the short-term memory of the electorate who may not remember what happened to Ramzi Yousef or Richard Reid or any other terrorist responsible for killing or plotting to kill Americans.

Below are the names of more than 20 terrorists currently imprisoned at ADX Florence, a supermax prison in Colorado:

I have been incredibly lazy lately in terms of my writing and researching…honestly I think because my discovery of hulu has virtually eliminated my viewing of streaming videos from C-SPAN. However, today I sort of “ran out” of things to watch on hulu and wandered back over to C-SPAN, where I decided to watch a 1-hour video from Wednesday of House debate on the so-called “Credit Card Holders Bill of Rights.” Admittedly, I haven’t really been following this issue very closely so I don’t know much of what is in the bill.