The boy king.

All due respect to Tutankhamen & Edward VI ...

35 years ago a president of the United States stood before a joint session of congress and noted: "A government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take from you everything you have."

He wasn't my favorite president, but how prescient those words would seem barely over a generation later.

What we have done, as a nation, is elect a pure 100% ideologue. Worse yet he is a novice statesman and to even further my dismay the ideology he is 100% committed to is beyond simply "leftist." It is beyond "liberal", or even "statist" (although that last one is close). He is by every definition, a CENTRAL PLANNER. He is going about the fundamental dismantlement of federalism which is the source in my estimation of our unprecedented rise as a nation, becoming the most powerful, wealthy, and desired nation to reside in on earth. We are quite simply the greatest expression of the human experience Divine Providence has yet to produce. And to put it as succinctly and clearly as possible, the reason for that is our prizing of INDIVIDUAL LIBERTY as layed out in our Constitution. The championing of the individual over the state or the collective. Private property rights. The right of interstate mobility, and on and on. And central planning is the polar opposite of that spirit.

Let us consider this ... the bailouts and TARP programs are overwhelmingly unpopular with the American people. Yet 2 presidents & just as many congress's start, and then proceed to "quadruple down" on these programs. The American people overwhelmingly want to secure the Southern border, yet the leaders of neither Party insist upon it. The average American rolls his eyes in visceral dissapproval of the federal defecit and higher taxes, yet our President and his cohorts have incurred an unsustainable debt raising it under George Bush from $800 billion to 1.8 trillion the first year, and 3.6 trillion within the first 2, to over $12 trillion by 2019 (numbers from the CBO). The American citizen knows in his gut that the government takeover of domestic car companies and and a defacto nationalization of banks is, in a word, WRONG. We also know that to simply "close" a terror detainment center with no plan as what to do with the detainees is uncommonsensical in the extreme. Yet on his first day in office the president ordered just that. The average citizen wants a comprehensive approach to energy - which INCLUDES domestic drilling, nuclear power, clean coal, more refineries along with the implementation of market viable alternative energy sources. Yet instead of slashing regulation and cumbersome red tape the government gets more "in the way" by insisting that the car companies they now "own" build cars that are on average $1,600 more expensive under the guise that to get better gas mileage is to become energy independent, while there is zero movement on real energy independence such as domestic fossil recovery. Yesterday, just yesterday, the voters of California shot down ALL 6 of the tax increase referendums, EVERY ONE, meant to close the $25 billion short fall in the California budget, under a Republican governor I might add. And Obama praises him for his leadership, insists that we should follow that state's energy policies as "the future"? Believe me when I say it's only a matter of time before the president announcers that CA is "too big to fail", and he uses federal tax dollars to bail out that state - which is in effect reversing the "no new taxes" vote Californians made because it will be their federal taxes as well that fund that bailout.

"Well Ryan", you might say, "that's what the people voted for, that's who they elected." Did they though? REALLY? How could CA vote overwhelmingly for Obama yet also for prop 187 (a crackdown on the $10 billion a year illegals cost that state), and against those 6 propositions? I sincerely believe that the rank and file Obama voter (minus ACORN and other zealots) did so based on the likability of their candidate, the quintessential occult of personality paying no attention of the actual policy behind the rhetoric. They are going to quickly realize that "HOPE" and "CHANGE" has a real world definition: "CENTRAL" and "PLANNING." I can only hope that the conservatives within the GOP, the honest conservatives, first retake their Party, then make this case to their fellow citizens. Make the case that President Obama seeks to duplicate nationally what California has done to herself. That the state is NOT CAPABLE of managing personal affairs. That the founding Fathers actually got it right, and most importantly that personal liberty can NOT coexist with zero risk. That some children WILL BE LEFT BEHIND. That failure, risk, hardships, mistakes are ALL, every one, essential ingredients to liberty and no government can eliminate those ingredients without fundamentally oppressing that liberty.

The end game of a government which promises to releive you of all mistakes and problems is by definition promising to relieve you of all decisions; relieve you of all posessions; relieve you of ... all dignity.

May 19, 2009
Letter from a Dodge dealer
letter to the editor
My name is George C. Joseph. I am the sole owner of Sunshine Dodge-Isuzu, a family owned and operated business in Melbourne, Florida. My family bought and paid for this automobile franchise 35 years ago in 1974. I am the second generation to manage this business.

We currently employ 50+ people and before the economic slowdown we employed over 70 local people. We are active in the community and the local chamber of commerce. We deal with several dozen local vendors on a day to day basis and many more during a month. All depend on our business for part of their livelihood. We are financially strong with great respect in the market place and community. We have strong local presence and stability.

I work every day the store is open, nine to ten hours a day. I know most of our customers and all our employees. Sunshine Dodge is my life.

On Thursday, May 14, 2009 I was notified that my Dodge franchise, that we purchased, will be taken away from my family on June 9, 2009 without compensation and given to another dealer at no cost to them. My new vehicle inventory consists of 125 vehicles with a financed balance of 3 million dollars. This inventory becomes impossible to sell with no factory incentives beyond June 9, 2009. Without the Dodge franchise we can no longer sell a new Dodge as "new," nor will we be able to do any warranty service work. Additionally, my Dodge parts inventory, (approximately $300,000.) is virtually worthless without the ability to perform warranty service. There is no offer from Chrysler to buy back the vehicles or parts inventory.

Our facility was recently totally renovated at Chrysler's insistence, incurring a multi-million dollar debt in the form of a mortgage at Sun Trust Bank.

HOW IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA CAN THIS HAPPEN?

THIS IS A PRIVATE BUSINESS NOT A GOVERNMENT ENTITY

This is beyond imagination! My business is being stolen from me through NO FAULT OF OUR OWN. We did NOTHING wrong.

This atrocity will most likely force my family into bankruptcy. This will also cause our 50+ employees to be unemployed. How will they provide for their families? This is a total economic disaster.

HOW CAN THIS HAPPEN IN A FREE MARKET ECONOMY IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA?

I beseech your help, and look forward to your reply. Thank you.

Sincerely,

George C. Joseph
President & Owner
Sunshine Dodge-Isuzu


Now, while the precepts for this end game were set in motion long ago and Obama's intervention is only the final death knell for this man & his family, this all stems from ill advised government forays into the private sector, only for political considerations. The original Chrysler bailout a generation ago simply delayed the inevitable. The unions and the politicians they helped elect that portrayed vampiric, leeching requests on their industry as simply "looking out" for the little guy helped to guarantee the inevitable. Cumbersome government auto regulations, taxes, fees contributed to the inevitable. If Chrysler or any other domestic car company were simply left to their own devices, never bailed out, never muscled by politicians elected by union dues, never propped up and now taken over, if those with solid business models were simply allowed to DO BUSINESS then perhaps, just perhaps Mr. Joseph's father would have bought into a company that outlasted his son, rather then the other way around. What the federal government has done in falsely propping up the US auto industry has been to perpetrate a profits fraud on the American people that makes ENRON look like a high school lunch money scandal.

And what scares the day lights out of me is Obama, as CEO of our nation, wants for America what the CA government has done for its people. He is demonstrating the same government attitude towards ALL private businesses that the feds have had towards US automakers: presuming to pick the winners and losers; prizing government judgements over free market demand; falsely propping up the viability of his budget. And if we continue down this road, of government interventionism to relieve us of ALL pain, then one day we will get our notice ... what we thought was ours, our property, our rights, wont really be ours any more ... because the greater good must be serviced ... because you don't need all those pesky decisions, after all, that's what the government is for.

The difference between the auto company's chapter 11 and the inevitable chapter 11 of America, is our "reorganization" will precipitate the bankruptcy rather then the other way around.