Vandals on Campus

I recently posted this blog on the Washington Witness' site, the conservative newspaper on campus:

Sometime during the night of November 3 and the morning of November 4th, Washington University in St. Louis’ campus was vandalized. As of today, a week and a half later, the vandals have not been caught or punished and as far as I am aware, there is no investigation of the incident.

These vandals pasted fliers over every visible portion of campus. They chalked the sidewalk, they wrote on windows and doors, they whitewashed posters to sides of buildings.

All of this hoopla was done to urge the Wash U. community to go and vote for Barack Obama. While I find the call of civic duty itself laudable, the method was questionable at best. A recent survey had shown that 80% of campus was voting for Obama, so this material was nothing more than self-congratulatory.

The propaganda posted ranged from merely bothersome to offensive. Posters stapled to trees. Soviet-style images of Obama’s face affixed to walls. Hundreds of little “Vote for Change!” leaflets littering the ground. Obama stickers attached to microwaves, tables, chairs. Posters with a vampire Sarah Palin face with the word “Frightening” glued to walls.

Was anything done about this? Of course not. One doesn’t have to wonder what the reaction would be if the “Frightening” signs had been replicated to have pictures of Barack Obama; everyone would have been up-in-arms about the “racism” of the posters. But the “sexist” posters get laughs or indifference. The hypocrisy is absurd.

All the papers and posters and writing on windows might have even been okay had the perpetrators cleaned up after themselves. (They definitely should have recycled, as they claim to love the environment.) As far as I have witnessed, they did not clean up their mess. Maintenance was forced to pick up after them as the Obamamaniacs (friends of the “everyman” as they like to be seen) celebrated the victory. The irony is palpable.

Some might say this is a rant of a bitter conservative, and perhaps that is true. But it is over a week later and there are still 12 “Frightening!” Sarah Palin signs whitewashed to the side of a building, and it’s definitely not maintenance’s job to take care of it. And they probably will remain there until a good Samaritan conservative keys them apart.

The sky is falling: The automotive industry

The sky is falling. At least, that's what we are made to believe, with bailouts requests coming from all sides of the economy. The latest one comes from the perpetually ill automotive industry, with Ford, GM and Chrysler asking for a portion of the $700 billion bailout.

Usatoday.com posted an article yesterday about the bailout of the automobile industry that read:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said in a letter to Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson that the Bush administration should consider expanding the $700 billion financial rescue to include car companies.

"A healthy automobile manufacturing sector is essential to the restoration of financial market stability," they wrote.

I think most of us can agree that a healthy automobile manufacturing sector would be beneficial to market stability. But unfortunately we do NOT have a healthy automobile manufacturing sector in the United States.

If I have been alive 28 years ago, I think I would be having deja vu right now. Unfortunately, the people currently in power cannot remember the government bailout of Chrysler in 1980, which only postponed the crisis until now. (Obama was only 19 then, remember.)

Yes, it would be unfortunate for all the people in the three main Detroit companies to lose their jobs, but GM, Ford and Chrysler do not have a profitable business model. A bailout only delays the inevitable fall; in fact, it augments the future impact by taking tax payer dollars to patch a failed business. They are taking money that could be aiding current, profitable businesses that would grow the stagnant economy and instead throwing them at the union-tied auto industries.

The U.S. auto industry has failed because it refused to focus on the future of the industry and instead focused mainly on SUVs and trucks. The auto industry failed because it is locked into an unprofitable relationship with unions. People are paid, under the union regulation, to not work. How can the American people be expected to be the crutch for these companies?

Innovation should be rewarded, and that is what a free market does. Sadly for the current American economy, the continual propping of the auto industry has impeded upon the free market and has in turn created a greater crisis. Had the auto industry been allowed to fail organically twenty odd years ago, it would have been a gradual process that would not have such an impact.

President Obama needs to take a look at history... the current auto industry in the U.S. is going to fail at some point. Throwing money at the auto industry only postpones the problem for future generations to deal with.