US Tax Payers Bailing Out French Unions

As if bailing out the United Auto Workers by giving $billions to GM and preventing them from going through a normal bankruptcy process wasn't bad enough, now we're bailing out French unions and a billionaire French family.

In a move little noticed outside of the business pages, General Motors last week bought more than $400 million in shares of PSA Peugeot Citroen – a 7 percent stake in the company.

Because U.S. taxpayers still own roughly one-quarter of GM, they now own a piece of Peugeot.

Peugeot can undoubtedly use the cash.  Last year, Peugeot’s auto making division lost $123 million.  And on March 1 – just a day after the deal with GM was announced – Moody’s downgraded Peugeot’s credit rating to junk status with a negative outlook, citing “severe deterioration” of its finances.

In other words, General Motors essentially just dumped more than $400 million of taxpayer assets on junk bonds. 

....

An analysis by auto industry consultants IHS said it is “somewhat baffling that GM is willing to get involved in an alliance that it frankly does not need for size or complexity, while still avoiding any public plan to rationalise its European production, cut costs, or deal with labour rates.”

The deal will allow the Peugeot family to reduce its share of the family business.  The family, which Forbes estimated to be worth more than $2 billion, still owns about 30 percent of the company.  The Peugeots declined the opportunity to buy a piece of GM.

GM management is making the same kinds of decisions that got them into trouble in the first place.  Why?  Simple; they're confident that the US Federal Government will bail them out again, and you and I will get stuck with the bill.

It's about a clear a case as possible of what economists call "moral hazard".  If someone is irresponsible with their money and you bail them out, you encourage them to be even more irresponsible in the future. 

It's simple; rewarding bad behavior results in more bad behavior.

But GM's bad behavior is even more irresponsible than before, because now they're not just spending their own money, they're spending yours and mine.  If GM management wanted to risk their own money on junk bonds, I would have no problem with that.  Instead, the Federal government gave GM management your money and mine, and now GM is risking that money on junk bonds without even asking permission.

As Ed Morrissey stated:

This is what government bailouts buy.  Instead of clearing the decks at GM and freeing their assets through normal bankruptcy so that more competent hands could put them to better use, the government intervention maintained the same status quo and funded it with taxpayer assets.  It’s no great surprise, therefore, that the leadership at GM would toss away money owed to taxpayers to buy a stake in another failing enterprise.

Tell your Senator and Representative: no more bailouts, of anyone, ever.

Why We Home School

People often ask us why we home school our kids.  "Aren't you afraid they won't get socialized properly?" they ask.  Curiously, Aimee and I have never felt so incapable of properly socializing our children that we needed government to do it for us.  In fact, I find it odd that so many parents do not consider themselves capable of properly socializing their children without government assistance. 

Besides the academic superiority of the curriculum we use (Bob Jones University), we also avoid exposing our kids to the immoral philosophies and plain stupidity that permeate government schools nowadays.  So, I thought I'd highlight some of that immorality and stupidity whenever examples pop up in the news.

You may have heard of the recent case in which a school took away a child's lunch and replaced it with a school lunch.

A Hoke County preschooler was fed chicken nuggets for lunch because a state worker felt that her homemade lunch did not have enough nutritional value, according to a report by the Carolina Journal. 

The West Hoke Elementary School student was in her More at Four classroom when a state agent who was inspecting lunch boxes decided that her packed lunch — which consisted of a turkey and cheese sandwich, a banana, apple juice and potato chips — “did not meet U.S. Department of Agriculture guidelines,” the Journal reports.

The student’s mother told the Journal she received a note from the school about the incident and was charged $1.25 for the cafeteria tray, from which her daughter only ate three chicken nuggets.
The note explained how students who did not bring “healthy lunches” would be offered the missing portions and that parents could be charged for the cost of the cafeteria food, the Journal reports.

Let's look at a few of the problems with this incident.

1. Government has no right to tell parents what they can and cannot give their kids to eat, no matter how good their intentions.
2. Since when are USDA guidelines a good example of healthy eating?
3. How exactly are chicken nuggets healthier than a turkey sandwich?
4. Note how, after violating the mom's parental rights, the school forced her to pay for the privilege. 

That's the kind of stupidity, blended with a touch of bureaucratic nanny state despotism, that only government can conjure.

But it gets worse.  Check out the crap government schools feed kids.

Pink slime -- that ammonia-treated meat in a bright Pepto-bismol shade -- may have been rejected by fast food joints like McDonald's, Taco Bell and Burger King, but is being brought in by the tons for the nation's school lunch program. 

The U.S. Department of Agriculture is purchasing 7 million pounds of the "slime" for school lunches, The Daily reports. Officially termed "Lean Beef Trimmings," the product is a ground-up combination of beef scraps, cow connective tissues and other beef trimmings that are treated with ammonium hydroxide to kill pathogens like salmonella and E. coli. It's then blended into traditional meat products like ground beef and hamburger patties. 

"We originally called it soylent pink," microbiologist Carl Custer, who worked at the Food Safety Inspection Service for 35 years, told The Daily. "We looked at the product and we objected to it because it used connective tissues instead of muscle. It was simply not nutritionally equivalent [to ground beef]. My main objection was that it was not meat."

 So, the USDA, the supposed ultimate arbiters of what foods are and are not healthy, the same people whose standards the kid's home-made lunch didn't meet, are buying tons of this garbage to feed kids in government schools.

Like I said; stupidity.

2012 Crossfit Open: WOD 3

This is going to hurt.

WORKOUT 12 . 3
MEN - includes Masters Men up to 54 years oldComplete as many rounds and reps as possible in 18 minutes of:
15 Box jumps, 24" box
115 pound Push press, 12 reps
9 Toes-to-bar

WOMEN - includes Masters Women up to 54 years oldComplete as many rounds and reps as possible in 18 minutes of:
15 Box jumps, 20" box
75 pound Push press, 12 reps
9 Toes-to-bar

 Demo with Annie Thorisdottir, 2011 Crossfit Games champion:

Audi R18 TDI Hybrid (Continued)

As I mentioned before, Audi designed and built two examples of their R18 Diesel-powered endurance race car with a hybrid drive train.  Now we find out that the hybrid system used in the R18 is very similar to the one used in the Porsche GT3 R Hybrid, which is not surprising, since both companies are part of the Volkwagen Group.  Autoblog tells us:

Unveiled yesterday, the R18 e-tron Quattro takes the same form as the conventionally powered R18 Ultra, but with one important difference: its TDI diesel engine is assisted by a regenerative braking system that gives it not only hybrid power but (through-the-road) all-wheel drive.

Schematic of Audi's Diesel-Hybrid racing power train.

In case you haven't noticed, I'm very excited about these new racers and the technological advancements they represent.  Unfortunately, I'll be "off the net" when the 24 Hours of Le Mans runs this June.

Oh, well.  I guess Aimee will just have to get me the highlights DVD as a present.  Hint, hint.

The Audi R18 TDI Ultra (left) and R18 e-tron Quattro endurance race cars.

The best thing about these cars is that the technology Audi developed for them will likely end up in street legal cars ordinary people can buy (okay, ordinary people with lots of money).  After all, Audi first developed "Quattro" (I have no idea why they insist on misspelling it) all-wheel-drive for rally racing, and their Diesel technology is slowly trickling back down to their street legal cars.

Man, I love racing!  Okay, not NASCAR.  NASCAR is crap.  The cars are far more antiquated than anything on the road (they just stopped using leaded gasoline a few years ago and they still use carburetors!) and all they do is drive in circles.  And to demonstrate how tough they are, they cancel a race any time a few drops of rain fall on the track.  Not even the perfumed princes of Formula 1 do that!

Anyway, racing is supposed to improve the breed.  That's its ultimate purpose; to develop technologies that are useful in production vehicles.  NASCAR can't do that because the rules keep the cars in the stone age.  Endurance racing, on the other hand, does.

2012 Crossfit Open: WOD 2

A bunch of us got together at Crossfit Manhattan, KS yesterday and completed WOD 2 of the 2012 Crossfit Open.  Here's the workout.

MEN - includes Masters Men up to 54 years oldProceed through the sequence below completing as many reps as possible in 10 minutes of:
75 pound Snatch, 30 reps
135 pound Snatch, 30 reps
165 pound Snatch, 30 reps
210 pound Snatch, as many reps as possible  

WOMEN - includes Masters Women up to 54 years oldProceed through the sequence below completing as many reps as possible in 10 minutes of:
45 pound Snatch, 30 reps
75 pound Snatch, 30 reps
100 pound Snatch, 30 reps
120 pound Snatch, as many reps as possible 

Here's a video that explains the workout and shows Rich Froning (2011 Crossfit Games champion) and Dan Bailey completing a ridiculous 98 and 95 repetitions (respectively).

Doug snatching 135lb for the first time.

The Snowgoose Chronicles "Most Inspirational" award at Crossfit Manhattan, KS goes to Doug, who snatched 135lb for the first time to complete 37 repetitions.  

I also snatched 135lb for the first time and completed 35 reps.  I seriously need to work on getting underneath the bar.  I generate enough power to lift the weight up to eye level, but I don't drive myself underneath it quickly enough.

As for last week's absolutely horrible 7-minutes-of-burpees WOD (upon completion I said, "I feel like I lost a fight"), Here are some pics from the gym.

Rob reaching for his mark.

Your humble scribe on the way back
up from a burpee.

Jen at the bottom of a burpee.

Rob catching his breath.

Me catching my breath.

Jen catching her breath.

Some dude I don't know catching his breath.

More people looking like they almost died!

Isn't Crossfit great!?  I can't wait for more of yesterday's pictures!

2012 Crossfit Open: WOD 1

After completing 91 burpees in seven minutes, I am 19,673rd in the world!  And I'm only tied with a few hundred other people!  And best of all, I tied Katie Hogan!

Apologizing to Karzai

All the groveling from US officials over the inadvertent burning of some Korans that terrorist detainees in Bagram Air Field used to trade written messages with each other is getting tedious.  I don't recall Karzai or any other Afghan official apologizing for the murders of US troops at the hands of their supposed allies - the Afghan troops and policemen the Americans went there to train.

But, if one must apologize, this lady demonstrates how.