The Bailout Madness Continues

*sigh*

Congress is a bunch of idiots.  Seriously, I wonder about their collective IQ.  The Dems are the worst, but there are still way too many Reps who suck just as badly.  I've mentioned this before, but it needs to be addressed again. 

First, I heard on the radio recently that Democrat leaders are floating the idea of another stimulus check.  I suggest you call your Senators and Rep to tell them preemptively that if they support another useless bailout that increases the national debt, you'll get hacked off and send them home at their next election.

Second, now that the Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac bailout has gone through, let's take a look at some of the biggest beneficiaries of taxpayer gifts:

#1 Chris Dodd

#2 John Kerry

#3 Barack Obama

#4 Hillary Clinton

All are (or were) Democrat presidential candidates, and two of them actually became the nominee.  Hmmm...

Anyway, seeing how the federal government stepped up and bailed out the mortgage industry, the big Detroit car-makers are begging for a $50 billion gift from you and me, the American taxpayer.  Ironically, the problem is not necessarily of their own making.  Holman Jenkins, Jr. writes in the Wall Street Journal about how to save Detroit and our taxpayer money.  Check it out:

The Big Three's problem, to be blunt, is North America. They should have pulled out long ago.

Not only did history saddle them with a UAW labor monopoly that their foreign competitors have managed to avoid. Even that might not have been fatal had Congress not enacted its "corporate average fuel economy" rules in the 1970s.

Look at gallons consumed, miles driven, barrels imported or emissions emitted: CAFE has had no significant impact on energy consumption. Its sole practical effect has been to inflict on Detroit the need to produce, with high-cost U.S. labor, millions of small cars designed to lose money.

CAFE has to be the most perverse exercise in product regulation in industrial history. It confronted the Big Three with the choice only of whether to lose a lot of money, by matching Toyota and Honda on quality and features; or somewhat less money, by scrimping on quality and features and discounting, discounting, discounting. Rationally, they scrimped -- and still live under a reputational cloud in the eyes of sedan buyers. Yet notice that their profitable product lines, in which they invest to be truly competitive -- such as SUVs, pickups and minivans -- hold their own against the Japanese and command real loyalty among U.S. consumers.

Had CAFE not existed, there is no reason the Big Three today could not be competitive. As businesses do, they would have allocated capital to products capable of recovering their costs. Investments in fuel efficiency would still have taken place -- to the extent consumers valued those investments. That is, if they were profitable.

If Washington found this unsatisfactory, it could have done as the Europeans do and raised fuel taxes to coax the public to make different choices. Politically inexpedient? Well, yes, but that doesn't mean CAFE is an effective substitute. It isn't and never was.

"When exposed to the piercing light of economic analysis, the alleged benefits of more stringent CAFE standards burn away," Robert Crandall of the Brookings Institution wrote here last year. "Too bad these proposals will not be subjected to economic scrutiny before they become law."

Having squandered the domestic auto industry's capital on millions and millions of cars that lost money, now Congress will squander the taxpayer's capital. It will lend the auto makers $50 billion to invest in fuel efficiency innovations that, by definition, won't command from car shoppers a price high enough to cover the cost of making them. Which makes it very unlikely we will get the $50 billion back.

Bottom line: Fifty billion won't turn CAFE into effective policy. It will do just fine, though, as an indicator of Washington's willingness to throw good money after bad rather than admit the folly of its own long-running handiwork.

This is great information, and helps illustrate yet again how the more government meddles in private industry, the more problems it creates.  This is a perfect example of it.  We have got to demand fiscal responsibility from our leaders in Washington, starting NOW.  Call your representatives and tell them you're sick of it, remind them that they have historically low approval ratings, and explain that this is one of the reasons why.

And, more importantly, the bottom line is that we need to roll back government wherever possible.  The bigger government gets, the less freedom we actually enjoy.  The more the government controls, the worse off we all are.

Now, who was the ticket that was promising to change Washington again?  Oh yeah, they're both saying they'll do that.  Let me re-phrase the question: who was the ticket who actually has a track record of bucking the status quo?

McCain-Palin.

There's my two cents.