Quote Of The Day: The State Of The Bailout Bill Edition

Well, the rate on a 10 year note just fell below 3%.

Hah! Good point. The Democrats will certainly rush for their photo ops at auto plants, and on the way out, collect more UAW money for their continued support of the cause.

Fred, you gave yourself away there. What has the Tea Party, not even a real party and not in existence when the bailouts happened got to do with the bailouts? The true slime slithering through the plants will be Democrat politicians chumming for cash and claiming credit until GM fails again.

@MikeAR So what do you think a republican or anyone for that matter will say when they tour these plants? Why do republicans support oil industry subsides but not auto industry? It's all comes down to who pays them. Decomcrats get union support and republicans get oil money. They are both wrong, if that is their reasoning.

@MikeAR You are so wrong that it has got to be malicious on your part. You say something you know to be not true in hopes no one will verify. Guess what, one of the Democrats' and Obama's biggest contributors was BP (an oil company), Exxon Mobil also gave more to Obama than McCain and I could go on but I won't. It's tiresome fact checking people who don't care about truth. And again, those so-called subsidies are companies taking advantage of the tax code. If you don't like that, well complain to your guys, they controlled Congress and wrote the tax code before this January. Be even handed anyway and complain about GE and Google taking advantage of the laws as written. Or for that matter what about GM's tax loss carry forward that has never been allowed before for any other company. Where are your screams of righteous indignation about that? And why would any Republican go into an UAW plant? That would be like a fat guy going into a cannibal village. It's worthless and dangerous.

@MikeAR You're absolutely right, MikeAr, a Republican would never campaign at a UAW plant. Never in a million years! Not that you'd know that if you were reading these lies printed by the liberal media: http://www.salon.com/technology/how_the_world_works/2010/09/20/bob_corker_booed_at_spring_hill I'm awaiting your kind insults in reply.

I'm not able to reply to the comments below that I want to so I have to reply here. 1. Campaign contributions always increase to the leader towards the end of a campaign. Oil companies want Obama's ear so they raised their entrance fee. 2. My point is NOW politicians need to campaign for votes, they want the auto workers support. What are they going to say to them? Will they be like Romney? http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2011/05/25/169464/mitt-romney-auto-flip-flop/ 3. Please do not say I'm not interested in the facts or the truth. This is a politial discussion and the best we can hope for is a compromise.

And the taxpayers wouldn't have gotten anything for that either if it wasn't for the bailout.

The GM bailout rewarded failure. Bankruptcy doesn't allow tax credits to be pulled forward, but with GM's faux 'bankruptcy', they were able to double dip. Pay to play worked wonders for GM and the UAW.

@jkross22 +1

@jkross22 Failure has always been rewarded in capitalist economies, this is no different. Profits are privatized and risks are socialized. It's how the real economy works, there is no example of a truly free market and I would hazard to say it can't exist.

@jkross22 Untermensch, how has failure been rewarded in capitalist economies? Can you name one instance of a bailout or rescue under a pure capitalist system? Keep in mind that there is no real pure capitalist system and never has been anywhere? But since you seem to think that pure capitalsim is everywhere name one bailout for me. If pure capitalism dooesn't exist you just negated the very point that you were trying to make. Not bad, arguing against yourself in the same post, a new record of futility there.

It could be said that the massive government programs instituted by Roosevelt after the Great Depression ensured the survival of the country at a subsistence level, while our great capitalist system languished on the sidelines, too timid to invest in the country that nurtured their growth. The only thing that brought the US out of the Great Depression was WWII, and more massive government investment in industry to support the war effort. After WWII (The defense of Europe and the Pacific was a massive, unpaid "bailout"), these modernized industries were turned over to the "capitalists" for pennies on the dollar (yet another "bailout") which was perceived at the time a very positive thing, as it set the stage for the unprecedented prosperity that the US enjoyed for many years since. So, as recent history shows, government investment (and even takeovers) of private industry may not be spelled out in the Constitution, but have contributed not only to the survival, but to the prosperity of the USA - the times when this country has teetered on the edge of failure have been almost always been precipitated by unbridled capitalism and greed. Capitalism cannot exist in a country without the collective "safety net" provided by the collective wealth of the population, concentrated and directed by the government, elected by the people to protect the country that they love from forces (internal and external) that threaten to destroy it. Without proper oversight, the economic "engines" that power this country would inevitably send it flying off a cliff; we need "brakes" and "steering" as well as "fuel", and that's what proper government should provide.

@shaker The wartime factories were in most cases already owned by those evil capitalists that you hate so much. Guess what, they sacrificed their civilian production to contribute to the war effort. They were paid for it too, as they should have been. So you don't have a valid point at all. Also, most non-partisan economists believe that the Roosevelt Administration prolonged the Depression with their misguided and harmful policies. You're actually trying to give them credit for something that they caused. Sorry, that doesn't work. They were in the process of sliding the country into a new worse depression when WWII saved them. Without WWII, the elected king's legacy would have been that of a total failure and incompetent instead of what it wrongly is now.

@jkross22 MikeAR, I should have been more specific... when I said capitalist economies I mean "state capitalism" which is the form of capitalism that really exists.

@shaker Psar, yeah pretty much because I happen to be right on this.

@shaker "non partisan" = "fair and balanced". In this context, exactly how Fox News uses it.