When the federal government dumps its 61% stake in the company in late 2010, the company’s share price will sink further, and thus opening a take over opportunity. Chinese investors have the needed cash and the desire to acquire Western competition for their booming auto market.

So what is new? Foreigners have for a long time been able to purchase shares of American companies and most of American industry has already fled the country. If a one man owned General Motors, then would the case be the same? Probably it would not be.

A single owner would have been more responsible in business dealings for the long run than would transitory CEOs because the company would be his property. Share holders have property, but they can easily dump their property when they choose and have no special attachment to the company.

To keep American industry alive, the government must first ban manufactured goods from lower income countries. Second, the government must end its legal recognition of the shared ownership of property. A slave cannot have two masters.

With these reforms, Americans could once again think of its businesses as American. Free market capitalism would prevail more efficiently due to the lack of bloated corporate structures. American wealth would stay in America.

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The soviet system had to fail before the affected countries could improve. Obama is inadvertently helping with that process here in the United States. Republicans have failed to peacefully dismantle our current medical system of Medicare, Medicaid, bans on interstate competition among insurance providers, and mandatory employer funded health care.

The reason for this failure is that a large majority of the people of the United States still believes that the government has some role in ensuring that Americans have health care coverage. With this idea is the foolish belief that they are getting something for nothing. Instead, prices will rise for less care because of the government’s inefficiency as a middleman. Everyone, even the poor, pays for the inefficiency through higher taxes and higher costs for goods and services to pay the taxes of the wealthy.

This inefficiency in the market secures the financial position of beneficiaries and explains why Goldman Sachs executives and other ‘capitalists’ would want socialized medicine. The bankers get to collect the interest on the government’s debt while insurance companies and hospitals get more revenue.

Some will financially benefit in the short term, but in the long term, government health care drags everyone down as we can see with the already poor state of health care. The thought that anyone is healthier because of current or future government health care is laughable. Idiots who like watching cable television and drinking beer might not be laughing. Still the only way to improve one’s health is to stop eating junk, stay away from doctors, and be physically active.

Every socialist government needs its Potemkin village.

Other wars in the American experience had ends and were against countries, but the War on Terror has no nationality and is endless. A military trial seems inappropriate to some, even though the Muslims have declared a holy war against the United States. Indefinite detention as a prisoner of war also seems unreasonable to those who say that the War on Terror is over. These people are now sending Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to a civilian trial.

The other consideration is that details on information gathering, such as techniques and sources will become public knowledge in a civilian trial. From the trial of the 1993 World Trade Center bombers, Osama bin Laden was able to get such information.

Essentially, a civilian trial of terrorists or other enemies of the state is not in the interest of the United States. An enemy of the state exists in the classified realm. Where is al-Qaeda member Ali Abdul Saoud Mohamed? He pled guilty to terrorism related charges in May 1999, but has not been sentenced and his location is unknown. Most accounts indicate that he is working for the government. Such an arrangement does not seem like justice, but might be lucrative for information.

Maybe Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is getting a civilian trial because he has no more information to give or his information is out of date now. Either way, he probably will not be released which makes the trouble of his trial a waste. The government assassinates other terrorists in the field without trial or public advertisement, such as with the Predator drone attack on the USS Cole bombing mastermind Qaed Salim Sinan al-Harethi in Yemen and his American citizen associate Ahmed Hijazi. When the government decides that it is done with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed or other captured terrorists, the government should quietly liquidate them.

Many opinions and events can be described in three sections: left, middle, right; beginning, middle, end; and against, indifferent, for. The Democrats and Republicans are sticking to their beliefs while the independents flit from one idea to another. Is democracy a good way to run a country?

In most elections, both candidates try to some extent to gain the vote of the ‘middle of the road’. They assume that their base is secure while competing for the independents. John McCain over reached to the left to lose what should have been an easy victory. His opponent Barack Hussein Obama kept to his far left position, thus exposing McCain’s perceived pandering. McCain’s voting record shows that he was acting naturally, rather than pandering.

Now that Obama’s hard left presidency is more change from the miserable Bush presidency than the independents had hoped, the independents are swerving back toward the Republicans. Republicans should continue to push right to make Obama’s socialism look even more extreme.

Someone who has not a firm resolve must be pushed. Appeasement would only mirror the ugliness of their weakness, from which they are instinctively repulsed. Tempt them or frighten them into action. The hard right strategy would frighten the independents away from making the same regrettable decision.

In the speech she names the interest groups who are pushing for amnesty:

“As labor leaders have made clear to me, immigration reform will be a boon to American workers. Think about it: unions will never achieve the best terms for workers when a large part of the workforce is illegal and operates in a shadow economy.”

“In my meetings, leaders in agriculture, service industries and other fields have told me that current visa policies are hindering the growth of businesses looking to expand.”

“Community and faith leaders have also emphasized to me that we need reform because of how difficult the current laws can be on families, especially families of mixed legal status.”

This tripartite alliance of labor union leaders, selfish business owners, and Reconquistas is now directing the United States’ immigration policy. Their influence has corrupted both Republicans and Democrats in defiance of the will of the vast majority of law abiding United States citizens.

What the politicians and bureaucrats hope to gain is a broader, more dependent constituency. Leaders in both parties are competing to claim credit for the amnesty, yet only the Democratic Party has any chance of getting their vote. John McCain led the Republican effort for amnesty in 2008 while practically apologizing for being a white male and thus alienating his base supporters. The Hispanics rewarded him with only thirty one percent of their vote.

The Republican Party’s white conservative base, over ninety percent of the Republican vote, is naturally opposed to being flooded with non-Western immigrants. The changing ethnic make up of the country represents an irreversible change in the national ethos from an advanced Western nation into a third world nation of wealthy enclaves and impoverished slums much like Brazil.

Legally this change began with the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 and has sped up with the lack of the rule of law. Whether legal or not though, those who are here are here. In past centuries, the standards for admission were much higher than in recent decades. As standards fall, so does our Western civilization.

Amnesty can never be tolerated for crimes, especially immigration crimes. Strengthening of America’s border security includes deporting all illegal immigrants and overturning the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965. If voters achieve those two goals, then American could return to the standards that shaped it into a world superpower.

One would think that in all of that history one could find a solution for winning. Winning what?

The United States invaded Afghanistan to defeat Al-Qaeda. While television viewers all over the world watched NATO troops and Northern Alliance fighters on the ground, and B-52s circle over Osama bin Laden’s cave at Tora Bora, the magician ‘somehow’ escaped. With victory over Al-Qaeda and Kabul in coalition control by December 2001, the war has focused on destroying the Taliban and nation building so that Afghanistan could become a prosperous democracy.

Not much has happened outside of the corrupt capital. Afghanistan is primitive as it has always been, a landscape ruled by warlords. The Taliban are essentially Pashtuns and others who are fighting the foreign presence. Like in Vietnam, other villagers terrorize villagers and the enemy for the NATO soldiers could be anyone. Rules of engagement prevent any breakthroughs. Genghis Khan saw fit to slaughter the entire populations of cities, such as Herat.

Nation building in Afghanistan is like herding cats. Sending more troops will only result in more chaos. The country is a wild land rather than a modern state. Afghanistan’s neighbors define its borders. If anyone wanted to seek terrorists or criminals hiding in the area, then they could send in a team to kill or capture. Hoping for a national police force to develop and to be able to act on an Interpol arrest warrant is ridiculous. Yet, that is to what the last eight years have been devoted.

Al-Qaeda is a global organization, and Osama bin Laden is long gone from Afghanistan. So should we.

These two statements above should seem self evident, yet political correctness protests otherwise in Western nations only.

Before discussing the implications for society, think of the implications of the two statements for an individual. A person with a diversity of skills can use his many skills to complete complex tasks. His breadth of ability is much greater than someone with only one skill. Now image the same skills diverse worker with a diversity of identity. At best, his identity confusion is neutral. At worst, his diversity in skills becomes useless to him.

The same holds true for groups of people. A nation is already diverse in skills from its large number of members. Whatever skills the nation lacks, it could increase the prevalence among its members through teaching or learn from communication with other nations. This explanation is almost silly, because it is painfully obvious and because those who preach diversity have no utilitarian purpose for the nation in mind.

Diversity means diversity in identity, particularly ethnicity, for social engineering purposes. What naive or self-loathing nation could become sold on the idea that it needs to socially engineer itself out of existence? Are the readers of this blog reassured by a company’s ‘commitment to diversity’ when submitting their job application? If they are beneficiaries of such policies, then what does that say about the value of their diversity of skills?

Even Robert David Putnam, a professor from the ivory tower of liberalism Harvard University, has found in his research that diversity in identity leads to conflict and mistrust. The conflict and mistrust not only plagues relations between groups, but also relations within groups. His findings destroy two prominent political theories on diversity of identity: the conflict theory which states that tension only rises between groups and the contact theory which states that tension between groups relaxes after contact. In other words, everyone is worse off socially because of diversity. He, of course, added disclaimers and hopes for the integration in the end, but without using the same scientific rigor as found in the core of his study.

This mistrust manifests by definition in political correctness. The mere questioning of diversity could end a career regardless of the identities involved. In commenting on the Fort Hood Jihad Massacre General George Casey said that “our diversity not only in our army, but in our country is a strength, and as horrific as this tragedy was, if our diversity becomes a casualty, I think that’s worse.” No one should be surprised that colleagues of Major Nidal Malik Hasan were afraid to report his deadly beliefs for fear of being accused of bigotry.

Hatch’s question is rather rich when considering his support of other forced associations. His support of federal tax dollars for stem cell research and his support of the DREAM Act for funding the educations of illegal immigrants show that he has no problem with forcing taxpayers to buy something, which they will not use.

Reflecting briefly on the role of the federal government in American life brings to mind that most of what the federal government does is unconstitutional. All social programs are unconstitutional. All gun laws are unconstitutional. All federal drug laws are unconstitutional. Think of how many government regulatory bodies, government sponsored enterprises, government owned corporations, government chartered corporations, and government acquired corporations exist. The list is endless because it keeps growing.

Power does what power wants. The constitution is irrelevant. Politicians, both Democrats and Republicans, evoke the constitution when convenient. When lobbying groups are passing around money, lawmakers tend to echo their demands by letting them write rent seeking legislation.

Share prices of managed care companies and pharmaceutical companies are rising after the House of Representatives’ passage of HR 3962. You still have the option to buy some of those stocks, if you like.

For those health conscience people who want to opt out of the pending expansion of government health care, read the following two subsections of Title 26 which apply to HR 3962 according to a letter from the Joint Committee on Taxation:

§ 7201 Attempt to evade or defeat tax
Any person who willfully attempts in any manner to evade or defeat any tax imposed by this title or the payment thereof shall, in addition to other penalties provided by law, be guilty of a felony and, upon conviction thereof, shall be fined not more than $100,000 ($500,000 in the case of a corporation), or imprisoned not more than 5 years, or both, together with the costs of prosecution.

§ 7203 Willful failure to file return, supply information, or pay tax
Any person required under this title to pay any estimated tax or tax, or required by this title or by regulations made under authority thereof to make a return, keep any records, or supply any information, who willfully fails to pay such estimated tax or tax, make such return, keep such records, or supply such information, at the time or times required by law or regulations, shall, in addition to other penalties provided by law, be guilty of a misdemeanor and, upon conviction thereof, shall be fined not more than $25,000 ($100,000 in the case of a corporation), or imprisoned not more than 1 year, or both, together with the costs of prosecution. In the case of any person with respect to whom there is a failure to pay any estimated tax, this section shall not apply to such person with respect to such failure if there is no addition to tax under section 6654 or 6655 with respect to such failure. In the case of a willful violation of any provision of section 6050I, the first sentence of this section shall be applied by substituting “felony” for “misdemeanor” and “5 years” for “1 year”.

President of the USSR Mikhail Gorbachev had already shown his lack of will to uphold the failed soviet client state system, thereby setting adrift the Deutsche Demokratische Republik (DDR). The German people were sick of the failures of a state, which promised the prosperity of their western neighbor, yet in the same breath condemned that prosperity as decadence and materialism. Border guards and government officials could see absurdity of their existence more clearly everyday. All of those years of state management of the economy, and therefore daily life and daily thought, were finally undone by the utterance of a single bureaucrat.

While socialism still pervades most governments of the world, what the Germans and other peoples in Eastern Europe later overthrew was the ideological base of socialism. State capitalism ruled in Eastern Europe in its purest form to date. When leftists speak of government bailouts and sensible government oversight, their philosophic justification comes from the same regiment that ran the DDR.

The difference between the systems on the western and eastern sides of the Iron Curtain was that the socialist extent of the eastern system required a totalitarian level of state security by organizations, such as the Stasi, to maintain the network of forced associations and disassociations among people. The result was a massive security force and labor camps, which formed the Gulag Archipelago.

Free markets allow people to freely make their own arrangements as they see fit for themselves. Government intervention tells people to ‘break it up’. Price controls, labor laws, quotas, and subsidies make the same amount of sense for a Trabant factory as they do for a lemonade stand.

A system can work with a few ideological falsehoods, but at a level determined by the people, the system is headed for ruin when what is right can no longer compensate for what is wrong. Think of counting the drops of oil as they fall on a car’s brakes.

The fall of the Berlin Wall offers the theory that socialism can only grow so much. Too much socialism breaks the economy. The people rise up.