Some businesses see nothing but profits in the green movement.

Some business leaders are cozying up with politicians and scientists to demand swift, drastic action on global warming. This is a new twist on a very old practice: companies using public policy to line their own pockets.

The tight relationship between the groups echoes the relationship among weapons makers, researchers and the U.S. military during the Cold War. President Dwight Eisenhower famously warned about the might of the “military-industrial complex,” cautioning that “the potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.” He worried that “there is a recurring temptation to feel that some spectacular and costly action could become the miraculous solution to all current difficulties.”

…..read more HERE

OnThursday, May 14, 2009 I was notified that my Dodge franchise, that we purchased, will be taken away from my family on June 9, 2009 without compensation and given to another dealer at no cost to them.

Letter to the American Thinker editor

My name is George C. Joseph.  I am the sole owner of Sunshine Dodge-Isuzu, a family owned and operated business in Melbourne, Florida. My family bought and paid for this automobile franchise 35 years ago in 1974. I am the second generation to manage this business.

We currently employ 50+ people and before the economic slowdown we employed over 70 local people.  We are active in the community and the local chamber of commerce. We deal with several dozen local vendors on a day to day basis and many more during a month.  All depend on our business for part of their livelihood.  We are financially strong with great respect in the market place and community.  We have strong local presence and stability.

I work every day the store is open, nine to ten hours a day. I know most of our customers and all our employees.  Sunshine Dodge is my life.

On Thursday, May 14, 2009 I was notified that my Dodge franchise, that we purchased, will be taken away from my family on June 9, 2009 without compensation and given to another dealer at no cost to them. My new vehicle inventory consists of 125 vehicles with a financed balance of 3 million dollars.  This inventory becomes impossible to sell with no factory incentives beyond June 9, 2009. Without the Dodge franchise we can no longer sell a new Dodge as “new,” nor will we be able to do any warranty service work. Additionally, my Dodge parts inventory, (approximately $300,000.) is virtually worthless without the ability to perform warranty service.  There is no offer from Chrysler to buy back the vehicles or parts inventory.

Our facility was recently totally renovated at Chrysler’s insistence, incurring a multi-million dollar debt in the form of a mortgage at Sun Trust Bank.  

HOW IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA CAN THIS HAPPEN? 

THIS IS A PRIVATE BUSINESS NOT A GOVERNMENT ENTITY

This is beyond imagination!  My business is being stolen from me through NO FAULT OF OUR OWN.  We did NOTHING wrong.

This atrocity will most likely force my family into bankruptcy.  This will also cause our 50+ employees to be unemployed. How will they provide for their families?  This is a total economic disaster.

HOW CAN THIS HAPPEN IN A FREE MARKET ECONOMY IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA?

I beseech your help, and look forward to your reply. Thank you.

Sincerely,

George C. Joseph
President & Owner
Sunshine Dodge-Isuzu

City Councils across Britain are calling upon its citizens to become “citizen snoopers”–people who will report on loud neighbours, litterbugs, and even people who take their garbage out on the wrong day. Children as young as seven are being recruited, and so far over 9000 Britainers have signed up.

After basic training, volunteers are expected to be the ‘eyes and the ears’ of the town hall.

They are given information packs about how to collect evidence, including tips about writing down numberplates, which could later be used in criminal prosecutions.

Luton Borough Council’s Street Seen scheme encourages its 650 volunteers to report ‘environmental concerns’. It is also recruiting ‘Junior Street Champions’, aged between seven and 11.

Primary schools could also be involved within two years.

Similarly, Islington Council in north London has recruited 1,200 ‘Islington Eyes’ to report crime hotspots, fly-tipping and excess noise from DIY.

Volunteers are given a list of things to do when confronted with fly-tippers, including taking photos ‘without being seen’.

Last year the council undertook a recruitment drive for youngsters aged nine and above, called Junior Eyes.

Children are given special books to write down reports on littering or graffiti in their schools, which they then send to the council.

A spokesman for Islington town hall said: ‘It’s not possible for the council to see what’s going on in the borough at all times, so our Eyes for Islington are.

I’m not Kreskin (although I am deep and foreboding), but I can pretty much see what’s going to happen to this program: Since not everyone loves a rat like the good folks on council do, the rat-people might do alright for a spell, maybe two days. After a few days of ratting on neighbours and the fines start to pile in, people are going to start to get angry. Not as angry as the gangs in certain areas though. When the neighbourhood folk start to find out the names of the neighbourhood rats, said neighbourhood rats are going to find the boots of neighbourhood folk crashing down on their rat-like skulls.

Little Simon and all the other snoops are going to become targets of angry people with pitchforks. You see, people who put an egg carton inside a green box instead of a blue box aren’t criminals and shouldn’t be fined, but when they are fined because some little puke pervert with binoculars was spying on them, well, I’m telling you right now, even though the Brits are a mellow folkage, they are going to become unglued.

The neighbourhood snoops are a sign of things to come. Government seems intent on pitting neighbour against neighbour. This way, it takes the pressure and hatred off the government and places it on petty rivals between people that have no business hating each other. Americans take note of this–your President for life, Owebama, has already started a program that *trains* kids to become, I’m not sure what they will become, but there will be hundreds of thousands of them and they pretty much hate you and will do anything their leader tells them to do (like, arrest and detain *terrorists*).

Paranoid? Who, me? No. But it doesn’t mean I’m not stacked to the roof with weapons and ammunition, a 6 month survival kit, and a few dozen gold coins.

Contributed by Kate McMillan of Smalldeadanimals.com.

This past weekend  (April 25/26), Finance Minister Jim Flaherty encouraged the G20 countries to rapidly implement their stimulus packages, highlighting that his government provided a greater stimulus budget than the G20 countries agreed was needed. While that may be so, his government’s 2009 budget also turned back the clock on Canada’s 15-year record of sound fiscal management and set the nation back down the path of larger, more interventionalist government. If the Conservative government truly wants a more prosperous Canadian economy, it would do well to return to the austerity policies of the 1990s and put forth a plan to reduce the size of the federal government.

Most Canadians are unfortunately not aware of Canada’s 15-year track record of reducing the size of government (1992-2007). Since peaking in 1992, the size of government in Canada–best measured by total spending at all levels of government as a share of gross domestic product — has decreased from 53% to less than 40%, according to data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. This is a dramatic departure from the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s, when Canada leaned towards ever bigger government.

After years of deficit spending that resulted in a serious debt problem, Canadian governments began scaling back spending beginning in the early 1990s. For example, the federal government led by prime minister Jean Chretien and finance minister Paul Martin reduced program spending by nearly 10% between 1994/95 and 1996/97, from $123-billion to $111-billion.

Several provinces also experienced reduced government spending at the provincial and local levels. Specifically, Alberta reduced inflation-adjusted spending by nearly 20% from 1992/93 to 1996/97 under premier Ralph Klein; Ontario reduced provincial-local government spending by 6% from 1994/95 to 1997/98 under premier Mike Harris; and Saskatchewan reduced spending by 11% from 1993/94 to 1996/97 under premier Roy Romanow.

As a result of the spending reductions, further restraint and strong economic growth since the early 1990s (itself partially the result of a smaller government), the size of government in Canada fell to 39.0% of GDP in 2007 before increasing slightly in 2008.

Equally important is the gap between Canada and the United States. In 1992, Canadian governments consumed 36% more of the economy than their counterparts in the United States. By 2008, the gap had decreased to just 3%. Indeed, given President Obama’s recent budget, Canada will likely have a smaller government than the United States within the next few years.

But if government spending creates jobs and increases economic activity as many politicians, journalists and activists currently believe, wouldn’t the decreases in government spending Canada experienced in the 1990’s have negatively affected Canadians and our economy?

To the contrary, as governments reduced and constrained spending, a greater share of the resources in our economy was controlled by individuals, families and businesses rather than governments. The result was a robust economy with average inflation-adjusted economic growth in Canada exceeding that in the United States and every other G7 country since the mid-1990s.

The experience of Canada’s austerity measures is documented along with a number of other countries in an important and comprehensive study published by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), “Reforming Public Expenditure in Industrialised Countries: Are there Trade-Offs?”

Economists Ludger Schuknecht and Vito Tanzi studied the economic impact of reductions in the size of government in Canada and elsewhere. They found that Canada was not unique in terms of its dramatic increase in government spending from 1960 through the 1980s. Nor was Canada unique in shrinking its government in the 1990s. Indeed, the size of government in most industrialized countries reached a peak sometime between 1982 and 2002 and in many cases, began to decrease quite dramatically.

Schuknecht and Tanzi grouped countries into two groups: ambitious reformers and timid reformers. Countries were considered ambitious reformers if reductions in government spending as a percentage of GDP exceeded five percentage points. Reformers were also split into early reformers (countries that reached their maximum spending levels by the early to mid 1980s) and late reformers (countries that reached their maximum spending levels by the early to mid 1990s). Canada was classified as an ambitious and late reformer with government spending as a percentage of GDP reaching a maximum in 1992 and decreasing by 12 percentage points by 2002.

Sckuknecht and Tanzi then examined the impact of spending reductions on a host of indicators. A critical finding was that the reductions in the size of government were not accompanied by decreases in economic growth. In fact, in most cases economic growth improved after the reforms took place. In addition, economic growth rose twice as fast among ambitious reformers compared to timid reformers. The lesson for countries is to reduce government spending and do it quickly.

Similar results were found for employment; improvements for ambitious reforming countries were greater than that of timid reformers. The authors also found that the effects on income distribution within countries were small and largely mitigated “by faster growth and by better targeting of public spending”.

While this is of course just one study, a comprehensive body of academic work buttresses the IMF study’s conclusion that the size of government matters when it comes to economic growth and social progress.

After years of significant spending increases, the Conservative government would be wise to return to a spending plan aimed at reducing the size of the federal government. Doing so will provide the fiscal room to reduce economically damaging taxes and create better incentives to encourage economic activity.

The list of potential areas where Canadian governments could reduce or even eliminate spending with very little, if any, consequences on economic growth or social progress is long and includes regional development subsidies, corporate welfare, agricultural supports and broadcast subsidies, to name a few.

Reducing rather than increasing the size of government is the key to a brighter economic future. Our own history provides the evidence.

The Fraser Institute HERE.

Please resubmit your email address in the form to the right

If you are having difficulties please email helpdesk@moneytalks.net, and we will help you sign up for our newsletter