Here’s another Jonah Goldberg. Read the whole thing.

The government effectively owns General Motors and controls Chrysler, and the president is deciding what kind of cars they can make. Uncle Sam owns majority stakes in American International Group, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and controls large chunks of the banking industry. Also, President Obama wants government to take over the business of student loans. And he’s pushing for nationalized health care. Meanwhile, his Environmental Protection Agency has ruled that it reserves the right to regulate any economic activity that has a “carbon footprint.” Just last week, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said climate change requires that “every aspect of our lives must be subjected to an inventory.” Rep. Barney Frank, chair of the Financial Services Committee, has his eye on regulating executive pay.

Of course, nationalization of industry is only one kind of socialism; another approach is to simply redistribute the nation’s income as economic planners see fit. But wait, Obama believes in that, too. That’s why he said during the campaign that he wants to “spread the wealth” and that’s why he did exactly that when he got elected. (He spread the debt, too.)

And yet, for conservatives to suggest in any way, shape or form that there’s something “socialistic” about any of this is the cause of knee-slapping hilarity for liberal pundits and bloggers everywhere.

For instance, last month the Republican National Committee considered a resolution calling on the Democratic Party to rename itself the “Democrat Socialist Party”. The resolution was killed by RNC Chairman Michael Steele in favor of the supposedly milder condemnation of the Democrats’ “march toward socialism.”

The whole spectacle was just too funny for liberal observers. Robert Schlesinger, U.S. News & World Report‘s opinion editor, was a typical giggler. He chortled, “What’s really both funny and scary about all of this is how seriously the fringe-nuts in the GOP take it.”

Putting aside the funny and scary notion that it’s “funny and scary” for political professionals to take weighty political issues seriously, there are some fundamental problems with all of this disdain. For starters, why do liberals routinely suggest, even hope, that Obama and the Democrats are leading us into an age of socialism, or social democracy or democratic socialism? (One source of confusion is that these terms are routinely used interchangeably.)

For instance, in (another) fawning interview with President Obama, Newsweek editor Jon Meacham mocks Obama’s critics for considering Obama to be a “crypto-socialist.” This, of course, would be the same Jon Meacham who last February co-authored a cover story with Newsweek‘s editor at large (and grandson of the six-time presidential candidate for the American Socialist Party) Evan Thomas titled — wait for it — “We Are All Socialists Now,” in which they argued that the growth of government was making us like a “European,” i.e. socialist, country.

Washington Post columnists Jim Hoagland (a centrist),  E.J. Dionne (a liberal) and Harold Meyerson (very, very liberal) have all suggested that Obama intentionally or otherwise is putting us on the path to “social democracy.” Left-wing blogger and Democratic activist Matthew Yglesias last fall hoped that the financial crisis offered a “real opportunity” for “massive socialism.” Polling done by Rasmussen — and touted by Meyerson — shows that while Republicans favor “capitalism” over “socialism” by 11 to 1, Democrats favor capitalism by a mere 39% to 30%. So, again: Is it really crazy to think that there is a constituency for some flavor of socialism in the Democratic Party?

When the question is aimed at them like an accusation, liberals roll their eyes at such “paranoia.” They say Obama is merely reviving “New Deal economics” to “save” or “reform” capitalism. But liberals themselves have long seen this approach as the best way to incrementally bring about a European-style, social democratic welfare state. As Arthur Schlesinger Jr. (Robert’s father) wrote in 1947, “There seems no inherent obstacle to the gradual advance of socialism in the United States through a series of New Deals.”

Part of the problem here is definitional. No mainstream liberal actually wants government to completely seize the means of production, and no mainstream conservative believes that there’s no room for any government regulation or social insurance. Both sides believe in a “mixed economy” but disagree profoundly about where to draw the line. One definition of social democracy is the peaceful, democratic transition to socialism. A second is simply a large European welfare state where the state owns some, and guides the rest, of the economy. Many liberals yearn for the latter and say so often — but fume when conservatives take them at their word.

Personally, I think socialism is the wrong word for all of this. “Corporatism” — the economic doctrine of fascism — fits better. Under corporatism, all the big players in the economy — big business, unions, interest groups — sit around the table with government at the head, hashing out what they think is best for everyone to the detriment of consumers, markets and entrepreneurs. But, take it from me, liberals are far more open to the argument that they’re “crypto-socialists.”

The Obama administration is bent on becoming a major player in — if not taking over entirely — America’s health-care, automobile and banking industries. Before that happens, it might be a good idea to look at the government’s track record in running economic enterprises. It is terrible.

That’s from John Steele Gordon. Problem #1? Private companies spend and invest their own money. Not so with government. Read the rest.

It was just a matter of time, and was predicted by many and unsurprising at that: The Obama administration, via the Environmental Protection Agency, has by fiat declared carbon dioxide a pollutant, dictating (through unelected EPA bureaucrats, mind you) that CO2 “threaten[s] the public health and welfare of current and future generations.”

Wow. Who’s arrogant now? According to reports, “The finding could touch every corner of Americans’ lives, from the types of cars they drive to the homes they build.” No matter. The government determines by decree if you are “rich” or not, and they now say, by decree, that every time you exhale you are “threatening public health of current and future generations.” Move over, George Orwell.

The scaremongers are following their cues, such as House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman, who promised no compromise “on his proposed 20 percent reduction in greenhouse gases over the next decade in the face of criticism from lawmakers who say the economy could suffer.”

Economics? Waxman has a world to save. From what? No matter. He’s too busy saving the world to explain what we’re being saved from.

All this despite the fact that while Europe has in some cases a 15 year or more head start in attempting to cut CO2 emissions they have utterly failed. “Thirteen of the original 15 European signatories” of Kyoto will not come close to meeting their 2010 goals. Despite ramped up action to curb emissions, the EU’s CO2 rate has steadily risen in the last three years. The U.S., through inaction, has nonetheless had a higher rate of CO2 emission cuts than the European average!

[Pete Du Pont] According to the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the Earth’s average rate of warming in the 30 years from 1977 to 2007 was just 0.32 degree Fahrenheit per decade, and the global surface temperature has remained virtually flat since 1998.

Adding to the Waxman insanity, and otherwise proving his bill is about taxation and not the environment, the Waxman bill ignores investment for nuclear power, despite the fact that (to their credit) the Europeans are all about it. France already gets 80 percent of its energy from nuke. The U.K. Italy. Sweden. Finland. All of Eastern Europe, from The Ukraine (where Chernobyl was!) to Poland to Romania. They’re all going nuclear at full throttle. Japan (albeit not Europe) is going to double their nuclear capacity. China — from a current 9,000 MW capacity to eventually 63,000 MWs. The U.S.? We’re still showing reruns of The China Syndrome.

So, don’t dare talk to me about clean and green energy, and other such nonsense, if you’re not willing to split atoms. Cap-and-Trade, whether by Kyoto or some other deal, is nothing more than a tax. And the only reason any corporation will go along (such as General Electric, which is poised to make money of TARPian proportions) is because the smaller competition won’t be able to afford such regulation. Good bye little guy. Hello Corporatists.

Hey it worked for Mattel. And for meat packers in the 1900s. Teddy Roosevelt the trust buster? A myth.

Yep, President Obama’s “Car Czar” is involved in a pay-for-play scheme. Oh, but none dare call it a bribe…

[WSJ] Steven Rattner, the leader of the Obama administration’s auto task force, was one of the executives involved with payments under scrutiny in a probe of an alleged kickback scheme at New York state’s pension fund, according to a person familiar with the matter.

A Securities and Exchange Commission complaint says a “senior executive” of Mr. Rattner’s investment firm met in 2004 with a politically connected consultant about a finder’s fee. Later, the complaint says, the firm received an investment from the state pension fund and paid $1.1 million in fees.

The “senior executive,” not named in the complaint, is Mr. Rattner, according to the person familiar with the matter. He is co-founder of the investment firm, Quadrangle Group, which he left to join the Treasury Department to oversee the auto task force earlier this year. Neither Mr. Rattner nor Quadrangle has been accused of any wrongdoing. Mr. Rattner did not return calls for comment.

What’s the difference between a Republican and a Democrat? When a Democrat is accused of corruption the mainstream media just ignores the story.

We’ve already seen that the Obama administration plans to offset massive domestic spending in the same way Bill Clinton did — by slashing the defense budget. And that’s already been established as understandable for Clinton, given the end of the Cold War, but irresponsible for Obama, given the multitude of post-Cold War threats that abound.

But what’s really amazing is the galling hypocrisy of bailing out the failing automobile industry — and hence the United Auto Workers — while simultaneously slashing orders for the F-22 or C-7 programs. In other words, team Obama has no qualms with thousands or even tens of thousands of defense workers laid off, while ensuring the same can’t be said of the UAW. Artificially stimulating the economy apparently doesn’t apply to national defense. Iranian mullahs, North Korean tinpots, and Somali pirates for that matter, must be sleeping a little better tonight.

Now we have the government picking and choosing winners and losers in a market economy. ‘It’s not the UAW’s fault’ says Obama. So they’re winners.

Who are the losers? That would be the consumers, of course.

Obama’s auto-industry task force identified an overreliance on trucks and vans as a fundamental weakness that must be addressed if Chrysler is to survive, which is why an alliance with Fiat is so appealing.

A curious finding by the Obama administration, considering that 11 of GM’s 20 most-profitable vehicles are in fact trucks and SUVs. Meanwhile, as George Will noted earlier this week, hybrid sales have hit rock bottom.

Michael Franc finds that the so-called fiscally moderate “Blue Dog” Democrats aren’t so fiscally conservative:

To determine whether each Blue Dog had voted in a fiscally conservative manner, I looked at whether they voted against Rep. Barney Frank (D., Mass.), the poster child for the views and policy instincts of today’s House Left. Frank missed the vote on the omnibus appropriations bill, so on that vote, lefty representative Barbara Lee (D., Calif.) took his place.

The extent to which members of the Blue Dog Coalition agree with Frank and Lee is nothing short of astounding. Eleven sided with them 100 percent of the time. Ten others stood with them all but once, eleven more all but twice. Bottom line: Two of every three of these self-proclaimed fiscal hawks voted pretty much in lock-step with the biggest spenders on the Left.

Frank-Lee’s 100 percent clones include Reps. Leonard Boswell (Iowa), Bart Gordon (Tenn.), Dennis Moore (Kan.), Patrick Murphy (Penn.), and Earl Pomeroy (N. Dak.). Those who strayed from the Frank-Lee axis only once include Reps. Jason Altmire (Penn.), Melissa Bean (Ill.), Ben Chandler (Ky.), Lincoln Davis (Tenn.), Mike Ross (Ark.), Stephanie Herseth Sandlin (S. Dak.), and John Tanner (Tenn.). Reps. Jim Costa (Calif.), Gabriella Giffords (Ariz.), Baron Hill (Ind.), and Charles Melancon (La.), were among those who voted the big-government line all but twice.

Some of the most outspoken members of the Blue Dog Coalition also scored points with the big spenders, voting with Frank and Lee six out of nine times. They include Reps. John Barrow (Ga.), Dan Boren (Okla.), Allen Boyd (Fla.), Jim Cooper (Tenn.), Joe Donnelly (Ind.), Brad Ellsworth (Ind.), and Jim Matheson (Utah).

Only six Blue Dogs (four of them freshmen and all representing districts that John McCain carried in the 2008 presidential election) voted against this spending more than half the time. They are Bobby Bright (Ala.), Parker Griffith (Ala.), Frank Kratovil (Md.), Walt Minnick (Idaho), Colin Peterson (Minn.), and Gene Taylor (Miss.).

One wonders how all the liberal members of the business community who donated massive amounts of money to Democrats in the 2006 and 2008 must feel now at the realization of a monster they helped spawn.

Here’s a scary couple of paragraphs from the D.C. Examiner:

But now, in a little-noticed move, the House Financial Services Committee, led by chairman Barney Frank, has approved a measure that would, in some key ways, go beyond the most draconian features of the original AIG bill. The new legislation, the “Pay for Performance Act of 2009,” would impose government controls on the pay of all employees — not just top executives — of companies that have received a capital investment from the U.S. government. It would, like the tax measure, be retroactive, changing the terms of compensation agreements already in place. And it would give Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner extraordinary power to determine the pay of thousands of employees of American companies.

The purpose of the legislation is to “prohibit unreasonable and excessive compensation and compensation not based on performance standards,” according to the bill’s language. That includes regular pay, bonuses — everything — paid to employees of companies in whom the government has a capital stake, including those that have received funds through the Troubled Assets Relief Program, or TARP, as well as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

The measure is not limited just to those firms that received the largest sums of money, or just to the top 25 or 50 executives of those companies. It applies to all employees of all companies involved, for as long as the government is invested. And it would not only apply going forward, but also retroactively to existing contracts and pay arrangements of institutions that have already received funds.

In addition, the bill gives [the treasury secretary] Geithner the authority to decide what pay is “unreasonable” or “excessive.” And it directs the Treasury Department to come up with a method to evaluate “the performance of the individual executive or employee to whom the payment relates.”

Yesterday, Congress wanted to control the salaries and decisions of just business executives whose companies received bailout money. Today, they want to expand it to ALL EMPLOYEES at any firm that received bailout money. What of tomorrow?

Might tomorrow it expand beyond bailout recipients? Might it expand to any private sector that receives any public funds or grants? Once Congress is so empowered, why stop at just bailout recipients? After all, how many private sectors receive subsidies and government money? Farming and agriculture. In a big way. What else? The auto industry. Sugar on top, Congress already determines fuel standards and safety standards, they dictate what cars consumers want instead of consumers dictating that. The airlines. Energy? Science? Constuction? You betcha. Even child care. Maybe they’ll determine how you raise your kids too. Secretary Geithner can tell you if your child rearing is “unreasonable” or “excessive.”

Just so we’re all clear. We’ve got a bunch of Congressmen and administration officials who brokered these bailout deals with the financial community, were aware of and approved of retention bonuses, then once the deals came to the public light have the gall to act outraged.

If you haven’t yet read the open resignation letter by AIG executive vice president Jake DeSantis to CEO Edward Liddy, make sure you do. DeSantis is right: The people who need to be punished are long gone from AIG’s ranks. It’s people like DeSantis who were asked to salvage the company, for a salary of just $1 and a retention bonus, which our politicians knew about but now want to tax at 90%. Any outrage should be aimed at Congress, for starters.

• Now guys like our TAX CHEATING Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner want to use this government-made “crisis” to expand their power to heights not seen since the Politburo.
• Senate Banking Committee Chair Chris Dodd, was, to borrow from Michelle Malkin, “For AIG bonuses before he was against them.“
• Worse, Barack Obama’s Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel, “made at least $320,000 for a 14-month stint at Freddie Mac that required little effort.” Where’s the outrage of his bonus for this monstrosity?
• Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae were the first domino to fall in this credit crisis. The fox is running the henhouse. The head of the Senate Finance Committee, Barney Frank, perennially blocked all attempts to reform Fannie/Freddie.

Were these all right-wing names one can bet the conspiracy theorists would no doubt be successfully arguing that government created this crisis to expand its power.

Here’s Mark Levin:

“Now we have a guy that couldn’t remember to pay his social security taxes, couldn’t remember to pay his Medicare taxes, even though he was subsidized to pay them, told to pay them,” Levin said. “He’s smarter than everybody else in all these industries, and now we have another czar.”

The appointing of czars, he said, has been a trend according to that doesn’t comply with the powers set forth in the founding document,

“We have an administration full of czars, full of people who don’t comply with the constitution. The question today is, ‘What is your authority, Mr. Secretary, to do this?’” Levin said. “I would like to know what’s the president’s authority to do this?”

The Obama administration and its proponents say that a lack of government involvement in financial sector is what caused the current woes of the economy, specifically the banking system. Levin insisted it was just the opposite – that the banking system was never a “free market” and that’s how it got to this point.

“The problem is, we didn’t have a free market in the banking system,” he explained. “The banking system is the most regulated system next to the automobile industry. So there is no free market in the banking system. It is heavily regulated. We know about all these toxic loans thanks to Uncle Sam – pushing them as fast as they could, bundling them, encouraging the free market to respond with all kinds of packages and then they pretend it’s something wrong with the free market.”

Levin labeled advocates of the Obama agenda as “statist,” explaining that it is part of their desire to control every aspect of certain segments of the U.S. economy.

“That’s the way the statist operates and that’s what I explain here,” Levin said. “There are no limits on our government today. They’ve close to nationalize the automobile industry. Frankly, they basically nationalized the steel industry. They control the labor unions in giving them the authority that they give them. They control the products that are produced. They control what comes out of the chimney. They control what goes into the chimney. Now they want to control executive pay and they’re not going to limit it to bailed out companies.”

And the liberal community has the gall to claim that Rush Limbaugh, et. al. right-wing radio hosts, have too much say over the conservative community? Warner Huston wonders, “Since when do reporters ever come out with a more than 700 word piece to explain why they asked the president a question?”

Answer: Ever since the empowerment of the fringe Left, that’s when.

It seems CNN’s Senior White House Correspondent Ed Henry has been under siege ever since he dared ask our Lord and Savior president, Barack Obama, about his administration’s knowledge and reaction to AIG bonuses. You’ll recall the very Democrats now expressing (faux) outrage over these bonuses had full knowledge of them months prior to their full disclosure. Me thinks they doth protest too much.

Huston continues:

If you’ll recall, on Tuesday (March 24) Henry asked Obama why he waited days to react to the outrage over the AIG bonuses that Treasury Secretary Geithner wrote into the bailout plan. Avoiding the question, Obama replied with a surly “Because I like to know what I’m talking about before I speak.” This exchange had the extremists at DailyKos and the profane folks at Wonkette as well as the rest of the left-O-sphere worked up into a frothy lather over Henry’s low down, hornswoggling ways. How DARE he ask the Obammessiah a pointed question! Why it’s sacrilege, surely!

So CNN has dutifully whimpered no mas and tried to smooth the waters with this odd article explaining away why that darned ol’ Ed Henry had the temerity to ask The One a question. It’s an obvious effort to appease the gods of the left-O-sphere and other zealots of the Obamanation. Henry must want a talisman to warn off the lefty heebie-jeebies awfully bad to go this far.

… Since when do reporters ever come out with a more than 700 word piece to explain why they asked the president a question? Did any reporter ever feel it necessary to offer a mea culpa or an “explanation” after having asked George W. Bush a “tough” question? Or did they rather do a few victory laps with the hearty back slapping of colleagues and moonbats alike, defiant in their revelry?

Ah, but not this time. You see, this time we are talking about The One and anyone asking Speaks-with-TelePrompTer a tough question gets the whole tribe up in arms. So, Henry hastened to his word processor to slam out an apologia that is as much asking his pals on the extreme left to stop hitting him as it is trying to get them all to understand that he was just “doing his job.”

Indeed. A pretty sad state of affairs for our modern mainstream media.

Here’s the Wall Street Journal, following on the same theme as my post below:

In its bipartisan rage, the House saw fit last week not merely to punish the employees of AIG’s Financial Products unit that the company still needs to safely unwind credit default swaps. The Members voted, 328-93, to slap a 90% tax on the bonuses of anyone at every bank receiving $5 billion in TARP money who earns more than $250,000 a year. A draft Senate version is even broader. Never mind if the bonus was earned last year or earlier, or under a legally binding employment contract. The confiscatory tax will apply ex post facto.

Never mind, too, that such punitive laws were expressly deplored by America’s Founders. In Federalist 44, James Madison warned that “Bills of attainder, ex post facto laws, and laws impairing the obligation of contracts, are contrary to the first principles of the social compact, and to every principle of sound legislation.”

In 1827 in Ogden v. Saunders, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a similar warning about legislative limits under Article I, Section 10 of the Constitution: “The states are forbidden to pass any bill of attainder or ex post facto law, by which a man shall be punished criminally or penally by loss of life of his liberty, property, or reputation for an act which, at the time of its commission, violated no existing law of the land,” wrote Justice Bushrod Washington.

“Why did the authors of the Constitution turn their attention to this subject, which, at the first blush, would appear to be peculiarly fit to be left to the discretion of those who have the police and good government of the state under their management and control? The only answer to be given is because laws of this character are oppressive, unjust, and tyrannical, and as such are condemned by the universal sentence of civilized man.”

Yes, Article I, Section 10 applies to the states, and this is a federal law. Congress may also figure it avoids the “bill of attainder” objection by applying the law to individuals at several companies receiving TARP money. But Congress’s willingness to wreak such vengeance against a specific class of Americans is still as offensive as a matter of principle as Justice Washington and the Federalist Papers noted. The Founders feared the punitive whim of the legislative mob as much as they did the tyranny of a King.