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"And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." - John 8:32
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Author:  Jim Wrenn
Bio: Jim Wrenn
Date:  February 12, 2009
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The Left, Center and Right Agree on Curbing Compensation/Benefits to Business Executives Serving or Departing Financially Troubled Companies Seeking Bailouts from Taxpayers, but...

Currently, there's one thing on which union members, proprietors, taxpayers, leftists, liberals, centrists, conservatives, rightists and everyone else appear to agree: Compensation/benefits for a business executive serving, or departing, a financially troubled company seeking a bailout/loan from taxpayers (or reorganization protection under bankruptcy laws) ought not be protected from reduction needed to enable the company to recover. In contrast with such unanimity, union members, leftists and liberals disagree with everyone else that union benefits likewise ought not protected from such reduction.

There's another important distinction: Although there are some cases in which the sizes of executive compensation/benefits under the circumstances seem egregious, there's virtually no case in which reduction of same would be necessary for the company to recover, but there are cases in which substantially reducing union benefits would be essential for such recovery. Yet unions, leftists and liberals adamantly demanding rescission or reduction of executive compensation/benefits are equally adamant in opposing reduction of union-benefits legacy costs even when common sense makes the necessity of such reductions obvious. Such is the case regarding the severe competitive disadvantage such legacy costs impose upon General Motors relative to other motor-vehicle manufacturers not burdened with such costs. Not only do unions, leftists and liberals straddle this intellectual chasm, but they do so without shame that ought to accompany the breathtaking hypocrisy of such "heads we win, tails you lose" agenda.  

Adding insult to injury, they also parrot the demonstrably false claim that General Motors' having failed to produce sufficiently environmentally "friendly" vehicles (instead of having produced the kinds of vehicles needed to satisfy demands of its customers) caused its current financial crisis. (Virtually every economist knows that absent such legacy-costs burden, General Motors would have been making, rather than losing, money in its domestic market.) Magnifying such insult and compounding such injury, unions, leftists and liberals wrap their collectivist dogma in the pantheopian liturgy of their Global Warming Religion (for which "scientific" arguments are getting weaker by the year).

Worse still, the current "stimulus" package enacted by Congress (in reference to which the most "bi-partisan" position is Republican and "Blue Dog" Democratic opposition in the House) makes the problem far worse by providing tens of billions of federal subsidies to the Global Warming Religion. Worst of all is the fact that few of the so-called "independent" and "middle-of-the-road" voters are even remotely familiar with the contents of the "stimulus" package (as is the case also with a vast majority of Senators and Representatives who have not even read it).

What chance is there that ordinary voters who are not devout parishioners in the Churches of Unionism, Leftism, Liberalism, and Pantheopianism will become knowledgeable about these issues before it's too late? It's already too late to stop enactment of the current version of the "stimulus" package instead of tax-cut proposals that would have produced twice the number of jobs at half the "cost." Even though it's already too late to stop this significantly farther slide down the slippery slope toward a statist economy, it's not too late to keep us from reaching the bottom of that slope. There is hope for change (in contrast to Hope for Change) if, but only if, proprietors, taxpayers, centrists, conservatives, and rightists mount an effective public-education campaign to expose the contradictory and economically destructive nature of the collectivist liturgy embraced by each of those "Churches." 

To be effective, such campaign must tap the outrage in the minds of the so-called "independents" and "middle-roaders" currently directed almost exclusively at "business executives" (as a result of the limited perspective furnished to them by the dominant media) so that such outrage broadens to include recognition of the role of governmental social-engineering regulation and union-benefits legacy costs as the main causes of the problem. Such public-education campaign must effectively counter the spurious assertions that "greedy wall street executives" caused the mortgage crisis that led to the current financial/economic problems rather than the primary cause having been governmental coercion imposing social-engineering recipes for disaster on the marketplace through the influence of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and federal policy forcing lenders to make millions of worthless loans under the Community Reinvestment Act. Indeed, (and no thanks to McCain's inept campaign), the vast majority of so-called "independents" and "middle-roaders" in the country believe President Obama's false claim that George Bush implemented policies that caused the mortgage crisis even though it's demonstrably a matter of public record that Bush tried to prevent it and that it was political resistance by liberal Democrats who legislatively blocked his efforts to do so. Thus, the voters have unwittingly hired the looters to run the bank and the arsonists to fight the fire.

Although talk-radio reaches tens of millions, the vast majority of that audience already understands the issues. Talk radio does not reach a large proportion of so-called "independents" and "middle-roaders," whose perceptions are shaped by the limited perspective provided by the dominant media (which overtly supports the economic, social and foreign policies of unions, leftists and liberals) and messages relentlessly reinforcing such perspectives embedded by Hollywood and the entertainment industry into entertainment consumed by the "independents/moderates." There's no "George Soros" on the right (or in the center) ready, willing and able to counter such skewed perspective. Thus, it's not going to be done unless and until hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of proprietors, taxpayers, conservatives and rightists find and fund ways to gain the attention of the "independents/moderates" and counter statist propaganda by educating them on economics, real science and liberty.

Permanent Link: http://wrenncom.com/CommentaryArchives/2009/20y09m02d12-01.asp

Jim Wrenn
Political Satire/Commentary at PoliSat.Com (Editor)

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Biography - Jim Wrenn

Jim is a proud descendant of 18th Century criminal exiles from England who swam to the Outer Banks when the British ship taking them to a Georgia penal colony sank in a storm near Cape Hatteras. Having the prescience to prevent their descendants from becoming "TarHeels," they immediately migrated to Virginia, where, within just a few generations they worked their way up into poverty. Jim's grandfather was the first in the family tree to see the distant horizons, but his career was cut short by severe injuries he sustained when a cousin cut down the tree.

After a brief stint in the Amry (ours) following graduation from law school, he began his legal career in the state bureaucracy but was never able to break into the federal bureaucracy. Several years later, he entered the private practice of law and co-founded a small law publishing company. Later, finding the publishing of small laws unstimulating and finding his private practice too private to be lucrative, he began writing political satire/commentary. His greatest vice is taking himself too seriously.

He wrote the definitive books on the Clinton Era Error: the Clinton Liebrary Book (pre-October, 2000), which he later updated as the Clinton Liebrary Book 2001 Edition to include Election 2000, the post-election shennanigans, and related events through August, 2001. The 2001 edition is the only known literary source that conclusively shows why Bill Clinton pardoned Susan McDougal but not Webster Hubbel. It also presciently contains the Billary/Hillary Dueling Memoirs. At every opportunity he shamelessly promotes his books for orders on-line or by fax at www.ClintonLiebraryBook.Com. He's also the Librarian at the Clinton Liebrary (www.ClintonLiebrary.Com), which owns exclusive rights to Bill Clinton's most famous speech as well as Bill Clinton's comments after revelation of the identity of Deep Throat in 2005.

As an amateur scientist as well as a scientific amateur, he de-bunks the man-is-causing-Global "Warming" theory, and predicts that by the middle of the 21st Century (when he will be safely dead) physicists will discover the obvious flaws in Einstein's Theory of Relativity, which will lead to vastly-faster-than-light travel through polarization of gravity. As a constitutional-law scholar, he's trying to teach those who hold a static, zero-sum-game view of economic and social theories to understand that "property" is not a "thing" but rather is a human right.

Although he regularly teaches Continuing Legal Education courses to lawyers, he's too-often available through he Rubber Chicken Speakers Bureau to speak on politics, satire, etc., at luncheons, dinners, root canals, funerals, etc. His speaking fees are so outrageously high they border on criminal price-gouging, but as a free-market advocate, he defends his fees on the higher moral ground of charging whatever the traffic will bear. For more information (surely more than one would want or need), go to www.PoliSat.Com.


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