where are all the right-wing assholes' comments deriding this article? I would have figured the comment section would be full of P.O.S. justifications for bailing out these corporate bastards. I guess the repugnantcan talking points are a little slow making it out this morning.

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if you haven't got a good hand to play you can always pull that out of your sleeve.

quit foisting your race issues off on us as though the problem were real. it's about class, not race.

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...in my opinion for all people, unless it is implemented in ways that do not force everyone to discard their individual right to not participate or to live and think and be free from coercion to participate at the barrel of some good soldiers gun.

Think communal business operations, communal living, WITHOUT a government steering and authoring the details of the lives of the people and that is socialism that doesn't become a place that executes people for free thought and sends them to gulags.

All of these corporations are government entities (as corporations) by law and are in effect partially nationalized industries. So, socialism is rearing it's head now, it's just socialism for the powerful that expect the government to dance as they are forced to dance, on the backs of the common laborer and worker.

There hasn't been a true capitalism in the bulk of America in a long time arguably there hasn't ever except for before a government acting for the agenda of a power group worked it's way in to screw it up. It does however exist whenever people acting in their own interests act in trade with voluntary people acting in theirs to trade work for services that are freely agreed upon.

A Minarchist free market does not outlaw organic socialist action by any person or group of persons acting as a union. But I'm sure someone may counter that with a hostile argument against who dresses in the socialist apologia/dogma of the day.

This current bailout B.S. is as repugnant to two groups:

1) those that value free markets (genuinely) as well as ...

2) ...those who hate and protest against the thing commonly misnamed as Capitalism-- which is really fascist corporatism that loudly preaches that it is a free-market as a smokescreen.

I stand with the first group in principle, and the second in spirit, but I don't buy that any socialism implemented at a federal level and trickled down upon us all will turn into anything other than a deeply invasive but slightly differing form of the tyranny we currently tolerate.

Forcing an analogy here: Feed a beast that has the power to eliminate you with overreaching force too much and give it control over you and it will eventually decide that YOU serve IT rather than the other way around.

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It isn't socialism everytime the government writes a check. Sometimes (like in this case) its just plain embezzlement and graft.

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I called in to a local talk radio show. The topic was how good it was for big business to get the tax breaks and bailouts necessary for them to continue to rob the rest of us. It was an interesting exchange. I began the call thusly:

"Good morning! I didn't realize that you guys were supporters of welfare. I've heard you rail against poor people for years, so I assumed you were against welfare."

"We are absolutely against welfare! Let people go find better jobs if they can't make enough money to live on. My taxes shouldn't subsidize those who have no ambition!"

"Well, I'm confused, I guess. So, you support corporate welfare, just not help for those who need it most - meaning the poor?"

"Uh... no, I didn't say that! Ummmm... no... that's not the same thing as welfare... Uhhh... that's not the point here!"

Click!

They just don't get it. And they never will.

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If you expect the government to be involved in a bailout of a corporation(which is a government defined entity by the way in our mixed-economy), it is definitely socialism. Its mixed-economy socialism/ reformed socialism/ maybe not revolutionary socialism, but it's socialism.

See the definition and the literature on the subject.

I assert that number three of wiktionary's definition of socialism applies best:
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/socialism

# (Leninism) The intermediate phase of social development between capitalism and full communism. This is a strategy whereby the State has control of all key resource-producing industries and manages most aspects of the market, in contrast to laissez faire capitalism.

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You'd assume that because I'm a businessman and naturally "fiscally conservative," I would defend the feds slashing interest rates and liquidating up to 30 billion of Bear assets.

yeah....

no.

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