Why We Should Pay Attention to the Chrysler Bankruptcy

This makes for interesting, if worrisome reading.


The Chrysler 'bankruptcy' has turned into a giant 'taking' by the Federal government.

First it was the bondholders, who were promised they were first in line to be paid. They were tossed out into the cold, the UAW was handed a majority stake, and Fiat was handed(without investing a penny of cash) managerial control.

Now it's the dealers, joining them on the street. Many of them are profitable firms, doing good business for decades, even in this downturn. Their businesses are being taken away from them, without compensation, and handed to the 'preferred' dealers in the region.

This is in clear defiance of both federal and state law.

Next up, General Motors, then?

The bigger, and more sobering questions are:

Do only the politically favored survive?

Is this the sort of America we have worked for?

Is this the legacy we wish to hand our children?

Does this make you want to run out and buy your next car at a Chrysler dealership?

Well, As A Matter of Fact, We Are...

Himself, The One, The Prez has admitted the obvious:

The US is broke. Do you notice how politicians of both parties choose holiday weekends to drop bombs on the culture? Two years ago, it was the Bush/McCain/Kennedy immigration bill, scheduled to be passed in the dead of night on Memorial Day weekend, before it could be read. Word leaked out, and the Republican party was nearly destroyed in the fallout. This is the true Bush 'legacy'.

The US is broke, mainly due to the entitlement programs His party insisted be put in place, and expanded year by year. Anyone who suggested even a freeze on spending to allow revenues to begin catching up with expenditures was vilified as a heartless beast. Speaker Gingrich was cut by a thousand knives for his efforts during the early 1990's.

California is some $25 billion in the hole, and cities such as Cincinnati have been caught in the general undertow created by years of pledging to spend more than could ever possibly be generated by the economic base of the city. Barney Frank wants the Treasury to guarantee municipal bonds--but with what?

I first realized some tipping point had occurred in October 2007, one chilly evening in Lawrenceburg, Tennessee. My bride and I were there for two events: The semi-annual Lawrenceburg Antique Auction(an experience unto itself, highly recommended), and the kick-off rally for Fred Thompson's presidential bid.

The auction, usually too rich for our blood, was very poorly attended, with anemic bidding. We made out like bandits, to the point I felt embarrassed as I wrote out a paltry check for a magnificent haul of furniture. We could have bought more, but there was no room in the house! We kept asking one another, 'Where are the bidders? So many of the high-rollers aren't even in the room this time!' It's as if they had dropped off the edge of the earth. It was eerie.

We wandered down to the rally, to a square full of enthusiastic, but worried people. The older ones among us were delighted by a speech by Sen. Howard Baker, who had hired Fred in 1973 to help the Watergate Senatorial Committee navigate the crisis visited upon the nation by Nixon.

It was not Fred's best night, sadly. But as he gathered steam, and talked about a government that controlled neither its borders or its spending, he began to connect with his audience, mainly families with kids, dressed in jeans and flannel shirts. They knew things were terribly amiss, that they had been betrayed by the leadership of the party they had sacrificially supported since 1980.

It was not to be for Fred's bid, but he was (and is) one of the few voices willing to say the hard things about the hard choices that must be made.

Not even he predicted how quickly we were to approach the bigger tipping point, less than a year later.

A Good Guy Finishes First

It's a long way from Waverly, Tennessee to Interlochen Arts Academy, especially as a transfer student attending for his senior year.

It took a special kind of moxie for Jake Rychen to achieve this, and this morning marked his graduation from the Academy.

This August, he begins his trumpet studies with the fabulous Michael Tunnel at the University of Louisville.

There is a world full of bad news out there, things that make us cringe, things that make us look to the future with real concern.

Then there are kids like Jake, who (with our support and encouragement) may yet turn the culture back in a good direction.

Kudos to Jake, his family, Interlochen and U of L for this morning's moment of inspiration.

And, a special shout-out to The Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music, who sends an examiner to his part of the world twice a year to hear students. Those exams provide a path to the outside world for kids like Jake, who exercise the ambition to prepare to the rigorous standards of ABRSM exams.

We all have a few bucks to donate, even in a recession.

Interlochen and U of L School of Music belong on the list.

Real Golf at the Irish Open

For those who seek relief from the likes of Manny Ramirez, what's-his-name-the-swimmer-who-is-so-stupid-as-to-smoke-dope-in-public, and their ilk, I suggest you turn to the Golf Channel on Saturday morning, and watch events like The Irish Open.

They normally play in conditions that American pros won't even leave the hotel suite for. Saturday's play was delayed when the winds were so high they threatened to pull the clubs from the hands of the players.

You haven't heard of most of these guys, like Robert Rock, Graeme MacDowell, and Shane Lowry, and Johan Edfors. You will soon enough, when the Ryder Cup rolls around again.

They are inspiring, with Lowry (the young amateur) finally taking the cup over Rock after four playoff holes played in the chill and the rain. The crowds were cheering their boy Lowry in Tiger-like decibel levels. His poor mother, standing in the gallery, couldn't bear to look. (Rock had to console himself with the 500,000 euro award for highest finish by a professional.)

Home-made swings, ugly rough, pot bunkers full of wet sand, gale-force winds, rain.

Real golf.

Last year, I met a kid at my local club, fresh from four years on his college team, who wouldn't go out to practice because conditions were wet and chilly. He stayed in the clubhouse and discussed his plans to go play the European Tour. He smirked when I suggested that the day's conditions were typical of what he would encounter across the pond. Now that kid has a real future...in some other line of work.

*****

And, what to my wondering eyes did appear, but John Daly, dressed head-to-toe, learning how to work for a living on links courses. If he survives this, we might see him on the senior tour, hopefully sober and with what remains of his brilliant abilities intact.

But he has to make cuts first, which he failed to achieve this weekend. He has to show up to tee times, which he seems unable to do as well.

Ethical Midgets with Ivy League Degrees

It isn't as if these people didn't know better....

Just because someone has an English surname, a long pedigree, Ivy League credentials, and a respectable job in the financial district doesn't mean they aren't actively participating in organized crime. The code of silence certainly has been in place for years.

How many family fortunes have been devastated while these guys were having Monday lunch, trading stock tips on the firms they were hired to regulate?

Last week, I visited a recently widowed family member at her retirement center. It appears her late husband had everything in cash before the crash arrived. One of her friends, in her eighties, also recently widowed, was not so fortunate. I could feel the worry in her heart. She was wondering if a lifetime of work and saving would be enough to allow her to live out her life in the modest dignity of this facility, where she had the basics of safety, food, and company.

This is the true impact of the hustlers on our culture.

Denninger provides one such example from today's odd-looking activities at Wall Street.

Wrestling Midgets

As Jeff Foxworthy regularly reminds his audiences: "I can't make this stuff up!"

Here in bucolic Burns, Tennessee, thirty-five miles west of Nashville (and light years removed from civil society), we have a mayoral campaign underway.

For years, it was never a problem. Ed 'Shot' Grove ran unopposed for years, serving as both mayor and police chief. If someone needed the police, they wouldn't say 'Call the police'; they'd say 'Give Shot a call.' He'd eventually turn up, and everybody would calm down. Think Sheriff Andy and Mayberry.

But Shot was forcibly retired, at age 78, following revelations that he had hired police officers with felony records, and the State of Tennessee revoked accreditation from his police department.

So now we have Mayor Bishop, now up for re-election, opposed by the police chief he fired last month, running as a write-in candidate. (Ya'll keeping track of all this?)

The town is littered with hand-lettered signs. The Mayor did have a big ole' sign sporting the University of Tennessee logo, proclaiming 'Go Vols, Go Bishop!' or words to that effect. UT took a dim view, and two cease-and-desist letters later, that sign disappeared.

So what's an incumbent to do, here in Burns, to endear the voters to himself?

Why, wrasslin' of course!! So, on May 21, Jerry 'The King' Lawler will be bringing his wrasslin' show, complete with MIDGETS(!!) to perform in Burns, featuring as referee the beloved Mayor Bishop.

Remember, OldSouth, mere mortal that he is, can't make this stuff up. He took this picture this afternoon, May 15, 2009.

Somebody call Shot. This could get ugly...

Nonmarital births, and a non-marital culture

The report on 'non-marital births' from the Center for Disease Control has garnered a lot of headlines this morning, but the summary and report itself deserve a bit more thoughtful consideration.

The really good news is that the birth rate for unmarried teen mothers has dropped, actually halving since 1970. The somewhat less-than-good news is that the bearing of children outside of marriage has become much more casually accepted, with little social sanction attached.

If, as is to be hoped, fewer abortions are undertaken year-over-year, then children born out of wedlock will have to be welcomed, life being preferred over death.

The biggest 'bump' in the charts appears to be in women 30-35, if I read the summary correctly.

This is more than somewhat less-than-good news. It speaks to our cultural problem with the institution of marriage. If half the kids born in the 70's and 80's grew up in circumstances that included a failed marriage of their parents, we should not be surprised to find that, as young adults, these young people hold a jaundiced view of marriage.

Suspicion abounds: Women wonder if this guy, attractive as he appears, is stable enough and of sufficient character to mate for life. Many, many are not. And with the increased acceptance of homosexuality, the available pool of men shrinks. Add in the closeted homosexual men who emerge from the closet a decade and two children down the road, and marriage looks like a high-risk wager for women. I'm not making this stuff up--I've seen it happen several times in my polite little buttoned-down world.

Men wonder if they are walking into a lifetime trap, given the draconian nature of divorce and child support law, which incentivize the less-than-scrupulous wife to bear a couple of kids, thus having husband and his family on the fiduciary hook for a couple of decades at least. They find out too late that they were really just generic heterosexual males capable of donating sperm and generating cash. I've seen this happen several times as well, and it devastates lives. Why take this risk?

The term 'nonmarital' itself is indicative; a fabricated word, a product of our brave new bureaucracy. It is academically cold, exact, and studiously avoids any emotional baggage attached to the term 'out-of-wedlock'. It is a Latin-derived fabrication, less evocative than the old Anglo-Saxon sound of 'wedlock'.

If we're going to thrive as a culture, and eventually as an economy again, we'll have to find a way to make marriage safe again. We'll have to teach our children the art and craft of living together as trustworthy people.

The Graduation Speech We All Need To Hear

In the flood of platitudes uttered every May to graduates across the country these words actually merit reading and consideration.

Penned by an anonymous community college dean, these few paragraphs are words to embrace.

Remember--culture leads, and the economy is the 'trailing indicator'.

So, What Does One Hundred Million Dollars Really Look Like?

One hundred million dollars is a lot of money to most mere mortals.

President Obama and friends are hoping that you never get past that initial emotional reaction.

One hundred million dollars!

That's like winning the Super Lotto five times in a row!

That's three Manny Ramirez salaries--at least when's he's not imbibing in performance-enhancing drugs...

That's, that's...more Ferrari's than can be driven in a lifetime!

But what is it, in proportion to the US Federal budget?

A clever young man has given us the best demonstration of all.

Gruff old Senator Everett Dirksen once growled during a 1960's budget debate, 'A few billion here, a few billion there, and pretty soon, it adds up to real money!'

Indeed it does.

And Obama plans to exponentially expand spending.

We are looking at 50 Trillion (with a T!--that means 'thousand billion') in unfunded obligations, with Medicare, Social Security, and further entitlements. Spending already promised, already in the pipeline.

So, how much is one hundred million dollars?

Just enough to insult our intelligence.

Some Solutions on the Horizon for Health Care

This rolled out by Jeff Immelt at GE this morning.

I caught the first few minutes of the presentation, and it was enough to cheer the heart, at least a bit.

There are solutions to the health-care mess in this country. They are being created in the Third World, and exported back to us.

Now if the Federal Guv'mint will stay out of the way, and allow innovation to proceed.

Immelt made very clear: 'GE is not a charity. We're here to return profit to our investors.' But he also emphasized that countries with good health care in place, and a healthy citizenry, tend to be more wealthy.

He's right!

But, the national health care proposals proposed by Obama and the Congressional Democrats will overwhelm any creation of wealth resulting from improved health care.

We're already looking at 50-something trillion (that's with a 'T') in unfunded obligations at the Federal level. The 'solution' now traveling through Congress will not even be read, much less debated. No one knows, outside of the authors of the legislation, what mischief is contained within those hundreds of pages of numbing prose.

At least in the UK, they held an open debate on the subject, and the discussion continues to this day.

Do we really, really want our health care in the hands of the people who brought us Amtrak, Fannie and Freddie, the TARP, and the current management of both our banking and auto sectors?

Are these people really trustworthy?