Me, government behavior, and distrust

Well, today, the US Government helped General Motors roll on into bankruptcy, and, in the process took ownership of somewhere between 60 and 72 percent of the company, depending on which news article you read. AP reports say about 60 percent.

Meanwhile, other reports show that the US Government owns somewhere between 30-40% of Citibank, once one of the largest banks in America.

What do these things mean? Well, you and I, as American citizens, now are owners, collectively of a major industrial corporation and a major bank.

There's a problem here, though. This isn't a free market. I seem to recall, from back my days of glory in the Boy Scouts of America, that a Republic form of government is based on private ownership, and that a communist form of government had everyone owning industry in common. So, we are, apparently, currently in a form of communism, but it's not a complete one. We're not a free state, we're not a totalitarian state. We're more a state of confusion.

However, I don't think that it's the goal of the President to turn our country into a communist one. Despite the articles in Pravda and the lauds of the Communist Party of the US (that actually called President Obama their first friend in the White House, isn't that lovely?), and in spite of my fellow freedom-loving Americans (sometimes called conservatives, or, by the Department of Homeland Security, right-wing extremists) believing that's the goal, I don't think it is.

What do I think is happening?

You may remember President Obama's statement in the campaign about seeking to 'spread the wealth around.' Well, many Americans were a little concerned by the statement, but the campaign efforts persuaded people the idea was simply to tax the wealthy a little more to cover needed social programs. Nobody really believed the government would nationalize industries to take away wealth. In fact, if they had done so overtly, there would have been an absolute uproar, and it would have been stopped.

But, what if, instead, the government had to take over these companies to "help" them out? Think about it. We have been told that AIG, Citibank, GM are all "too big to fail," that the entire economy will fall apart without them, haven't we? So, we sit back, argue against the bailouts, but still cross our fingers that it will work, and the government will get out of private industry soon. Now, though, we're really up to our necks meddling in business.

I think that, though, the President is being honest when he says he doesn't intend the government to hold on to these industries. Why? Because in 2 years Congress could be against him, and in 4, if the economy isn't better, or if people realize what is really going on, he won't even be President any longer. So, government control isn't good enough. What good will it do the liberal branch of American thought to transfer businesses to the government when they can't guarantee a hold on the government? In 1994, the economy was fine, people loved President Clinton, and the Democrats still lost control of Congress. How much more likely that we'll see a shift in Congress in 2010?

I think that, all along, this has been the plan. Notice, the government is not committing to sell GM back to the shareholders that owned it before this. Who's going to own Citibank, GM when the government sells it?

Well, it won't be the people that the government currently classes as 'wealthy.' After all, we're looking at raising taxes on these folks to pay off the bailouts, to pay for a national health insurance plan, to cover our deficits, and more. There won't be many 'wealthy' left. Who will have resources? Well, lots of labor unions, some community organizations, especially ones like ACORN that are getting government grants in this time. It will be the foundations of Obama supporters like Bill Gates and George Soros, the wealth found under the direction of William Ayers, and more.

So, the government is facilitating the transfer of wealth from one set of private hands to a different set of private hands. After all, this is the same federal government that agreed that a city can take private land and resell it to a developer, simply to increase tax revenues.

This has been the plan the whole time. The 2012 election will, possibly, be the least significant Presidential election in American history. Why? Because the power follows the wealth. All sides of this debate acknowledge this. Conservatives realize that the power to sustain the economy comes from private industry, liberals that the abuses of power come from private industry, that control of those industries is necessary to make society in their designs.

This is the power that the President was elected to transfer. It wasn't to undermine the Constitution. It's to facilitate 'spreading the wealth around.'

He told us that in the campaign. We should have believed him.