If Bush had done <insert action here>

Just another set of prime examples of "Obama can do no wrong".  Hypocrisy and ignorance, that's this years daily special.

Never in the history of the world has one man wielded as much power, with as little experience, as Barack Obama. scary indeed.

Another big issue here is how so many Americans are either falling for this, or supporting this.  It's a shame.

What I find amusing, or depressing depending on your atitude, is that I have heard some reports that we are being accused of going down the wrong path by folks like France and China.  How sad is that?

You left out Russia, Spain, Germany and the rest of the G-20. All of them have gone down this road before and only the UK PM thinks this is a smart move.

thats not true... every time you read about the fall of a great empire it is because of an inept man weilding great power and ruining everything

holy fuck! thats it, thats the end of america... and no this isn't sarcasm, we are at full blown communism! I never thought I would see the day.

hi draginol, you got a link to that retroactive taxing thing? i showed your statements to my friends and they are asking for links.

'car makers run to government begging for help. Just give us xbillion and we'll be fine, they say. The government concedes, and gives them the money hoping that maybe it will allow the companies to be rescued. A few months later those same companies come running to the government, saying they've wasted all the previous money, now can they please have some more. The government says maybe, but not while you're in charge since you wasted all the previous money we gave you'

The thing I'm struggling with is why the outcry (on these forums) that an incompetent exec who has wasted tons of our (the taxpayer's) money has been forced out due to wasting the initial sum and wanting more. It's the government's money, not the car makers, and so if they need the governments money to survive, the government should be able to dictate conditions like firing the useless execs in return.

we don't give about that CEO, he should have been fired, he shuoldn't have been fired by obama... there is a huge distinction here and... you know what, I am just gonna ignore what you are saying. not worth my time.

We ARE turning into france and the really scarry part about it is that there are some that see no problem with that... I mean it looks all good over in france... but thats just the big picture... take a closer look and all is far from being well

Breathlessly oversimplified, but he has a 'mixed' point.  The 'outcry' is that either occurred, however.  The latter's justifiable homicide in self-defense, in a way, but we should never have bailed them out in the first place.  The same people you're criticizing were advocating bankruptcy as the solution, not a bailout, from the beginning.  Problem is Wagoner could just as easily have been canned for crossing his eyes at the wrong time or pissing off Geithner or any number of reasons having nothing to do with his stewardship of the company.  I agree that stewardship was ineffective, but it was also hamstrung by federal regulatory schemes the print versions of which weigh something like forty pounds, not to mention a union apparently not particularly interested in GM's longterm survival.  That said, it should have been his board that decided whether he stayed or hit the road - after all, he can only act on behalf, and with the approval, of that board.

The outcry is because the government gave them the money with no strings attached just like they did the banks. Then in retrospect they said you wasted the money! You must be punished. It is not the government’s job to bail out any private corporation. It is not the government’s job to hire or fire private corporation employees. Most important, the little thing you fail to notice is, it is not the government’s money. It is the taxpayers money sent to the government to do the things that individuals can not do. That is what is stated in the constitution. The bail out was unconstitutional, the firing of the exec was unconstitutional.

This is why people are screaming.

We have incompetent executives, including the one that occupies the White House. We have incompetent legislators that write laws without thinking them through. When the last president pointed out that the economy was going to crash because of freddi and fannie the legislators stood on television and said the president was a racist and that both government run organizations were on solid financial ground. Two years later they collapsed and those same legislators blamed the president that pointed out the problem.

Now we have those incompetent legislators being led by and even more incompetent president doing the exact opposite of the recommendations of competent financial advisors. The idiot that helped write the first bail out bill is now the Secretary of the Treasury, and he is asking for bail out number two for the banks.

There are ten trillion dollars in home mortgages out there, less than 4% are having trouble making payments, yet we are looking at spending another trillion dollars to bail out home owners that owe one hundred billion dollars. It would have been easier to target the losers that could not meet their obligations than to throw money at the banks. So yes, people are upset because a hundred billion-dollar problem is going to cost the tax payer ten trillion dollars to fix and that will not solve the problem if you use past performance to predict future performance. I have said it before and I will say it again. Mr. Obama is an empty suit. He has no idea how to lead a nation in good times so he will not know how to lead a nation in crisis.

It's not the governments money, it;s mine and every other taxpayers, and I didn't want them to loan my money in the first place. It never should have came to this in the first place. The government can't manage itself. I don't want them making any business decisions period.

Extremely good point! The banks and automakers followed the stupid laws that were written why can’t we fire the law makers because they squandered our money?

See, that's the thing - Bush was not a fascist, he wasn't even close to that. Likewise, I do not feel that Obama is remotely close.

Assuming that I'm correct in believing that you're saying Obama is become fascist like - I disagree. This comes across as the same paranoia and statements made by liberals during Bush's term of office.

Umm, try telling that to those who have actually lived in a communist country. I'm sure they will tell you that we're not at full blown communism.

~Alderic

Considering you got several good answers on your struggle, I hope your struggle is over but none the less I would like to give my "easy enough to understand a 5 year old can get it" reply just in case.

Had the Gov't not given the "incompetent exec" the money in the first place, they would have not had money to waste. Considering the Gov't was the real idiot here, firing someone who they have no real power over does not negate the fact that they were idiots for giving them money in the first place.

Tell me, if you go to a bank and get a loan to start a business but your business is failing, does the bank have the right to fire you? Keep in mind I did not say you were not gonna pay the loan.

I have to admit his comments were a bit exagerated, but keep in mind that for a country that's never been communist, anything even remotely close to being communist is as bad to us as actually going full blown communist. It's kinda how a poor person is use to having very little money while a rich person that all of a sudden found themselves in the same situation would go nuts.

you confuse "ruined by years of full blown communism" and "enacted communism".

We enacted communism, it will take some years for everything to collapse like it did in the USSR, and for the minutae of opressive rules to permiate every single aspect of society, but now that the rule of law and capitalism has broken down and we have a socialist banana republic it is only a matter of time. We crossed the line, obviously things are better than those who have been on the other side for years, but we will "catch up" with them.

I have plenty of experience with communism, many of my family or our family friends escaped it over the years.

True, but that still doesn't change the fact that we're still not communist. In fact, I read an article that was pretty interestiing.

No, not really. Either way they can tell you the consequences of so called communism (When in fact there is no legit example of true communism), and enacting it.

In fact, we're not close to it because in a communistic society:

• There is equality across the board. Do we have that? Nope. Will we have it? Unlikely, unfortunately.
  

• There are no classes: America will always have classes, even if you have redistribution of wealth, there are going to be those either in charge, or just higher in the pecking order - that will be better off. (It's like the concept of hypothetically taxing the rich, whereas the rich will lose money and may end up in a lower class. Subesquently, there will be someone to replace them, and so on so forth.)
  

• There is a stateless society: The USSR wasn't close to communism for largely this reason (among others). It is illogical to assume that the United States will head towards communism through a leader, because if he is the power hungry politician, he would lose power. Also, in a stateless society, there's no government. Last time I checked we still have a government. (I'm tempted to add tongue-in-cheek wise, "unfortunately...")

• Common ownership:  This area is where I might concede slighly. From what I've read, Obama is either not going to do this beyond limited necessity, or he will take it all over. It entirely depends on the source and bias.
  

Also, I think a snippet of a quote by Upton Sinclair is apt; he said, "The American People will take Socialism, but they won't take the label..."

~Alderic

There has never been a "communist" country where there was equality across the board. EVER.

Ditto for the other arguments...

If you wanna wax semantic than fine, we are not communist, we are just acting like the USSR and china who called themselves communist despite not being true communism. Whatever you wanna call that. (common name is communism, a corrupt mostly socialistic nation by technical definitions)

I look forward to that philosophy being used on the government. 

• Department of Education
  
• "War on Poverty"
  
• Nancy Pelosi
  

Exactly, they were never were really communistic countries. In my opinion they were part dictatorship, part oligarchy, etc. They were working toward a communistic society, but had not yet achieved it.

I'm just stating the truth. If you're a communist country, then there are certain requirements.

~Alderic

It's certainly an interesting extension on the executive branch's powers. Historically economic decisions on the appropriate distribution of government assets (such as GM, which you recently bought a big slice of through the bailout) have been a matter for the legislature.

I'd say it's attracting less negativity because a) the head of GM is a noted idiot and people really want Obama to do something about the recession and no one has any real idea about what will work.

This is different to wire-tapping because, for example, 1984 and Brave New World are cornerstones of the Western ideas of totalitarianism and state control. We have no real analogues for nasty state control of the economy, particularly where it's because the free market has failed. As a result political radicals, who might value personal freedom, will support government interference to restart the markets despite ostensibly being economically liberal too.

Nope.  Social engineering of the market (manipulation of the market without understanding the consequences) failed.  Markets never 'fail' - they perform/behave/respond in accordance with the rules of the game.  If the rulemakers say 'We want you to fire up your engine, point your vehicle toward that cliff over there and step on the gas.  Don't worry, we guarantee your safety,' one shouldn't be surprised to see a fair number of vehicles at the bottom of that cliff.