Want to avoid another Great Depression? Then understand:

The Great Depression, like most other periods of severe unemployment, was produced by government mismanagement rather than by any inherent instability of the private economy. – Milton Friedman

The story:

The popular “cash-for-clunkers” program is boosting U.S. auto sales and manufacturing but is also slashing donations to charities that rely on gifts of cars to fund social programs, charity officials say.

Volunteers of America and other charities that receive tens of thousands of cars each year said such donations have quickly fallen up to 12 percent — and fear a 25 percent drop eventually, or over $100 million — as owners rush to trade gas guzzlers for new fuel-efficient models while federal rebates last.

“We started seeing it right away in July” when the program began, said Jim Hartman, vice president of vehicle donations at Volunteers of America, a nationwide charity. “It varies by market, but there’s been an 11 to 12 percent drop compared with last year.”

“The cars I’m seeing cashed in as clunkers, like older SUVs, are absolutely the typical donation to us,” he said.

Now, why didn’t Obama and his Democrats not see this coming? Because you can’t run the show from DC – its impossible. What we’ve got here is what happens when government steps in – because no one in government can possibly know all that is going on, any government action, even the most well-intentioned, is almost certain to have a baleful effect somewhere. In this case here, its crushing some charities and, of course, making used cars more scarce for poor Americans.

We can’t pick the winners and losers – the only thing we can do is help the losers to bear their burden. But it is beyond our power to figure out just who should get what from whom…we don’t know who should pay and who should benefit and we’re almost certain to punish and reward the wrong people.

Perhaps now some of you liberals will start thinking about things.

Rather disgusting the way Washington works, but with Obamacare floundering, the Democratic leadership and the kook left will demand their revenge for failure, and Obama’s official news organ, the New York Times, tees up Obama’s Chief of Staff:

… Seven months after moving into his office in the West Wing, Mr. Emanuel is emerging as perhaps the most influential White House chief of staff in a generation. But with his prominence in almost everything important going on in Washington comes a high degree of risk.

As the principal author of Mr. Obama’s do-everything-at-once strategy, he stands to become a figure of consequence in his own right if the administration stabilizes the economy and financial markets, overhauls the health care system and winds down one war while successfully prosecuting another.

If things do not go well — and right now Mr. Obama’s political popularity is declining, his health care legislation is under conservative assault, the budget deficit is at an eye-popping level and Afghanistan remains volatile — it is Mr. Emanuel whose job will be on the line before Mr. Obama’s…

Yeah, no kidding – Emanuel will be out the door by January if Obamacare fails to pass this fall. Watch how fast Emanuel goes from “super genius” to “you moron” around the left blogosphere and MSM talk shops. Truth be told, of course, Emanuel will deserve part of the censure for failure – one doesn’t hire a CoS to lose…but at bottom, it is Obama’s political tin ear which has brought him to this condition. Just a little bit of respect for the right and Obama could have got 90% of what he wanted…now, he’ll be lucky to even get a legislative fig leaf on health care to cover his failure.

The perils of politics – especially when the top dog is the most clueless man in the room.

So much for the “green shoots”:

Halfway through the back-to-school shopping season, retail professionals are predicting the worst performance for stores in more than a decade, yet another sign that consumers are clinging to every dollar.

Fears about the job market have resulted in sluggish customer traffic over the last few weeks, spurring the gloomy sales projections. Parents who do shop are aggressively trading down, informing status-conscious teenagers that notebooks from the dollar store or shirts from Costco will have to do this year.

Stock analysts at Citigroup are predicting a decline in back-to-school sales for the first time since they began tracking the figures in 1995. They estimate August and September sales at stores open for at least a year — known as same-store sales — will fall 3 to 4 percent, compared with an increase of nearly 1 percent in the same period last year.

Its not so much a matter of holding on to every dollar but having far less dollars to spend. I know my income has gone down – not by much, for now, but it is less than it was last year and looks to get worse as time goes on. This shows up in large and small things – from as large as denying myself a new car, to as small as just not buying that shirt I saw at the store. The money just isn’t there for as much as I might have wanted a while ago – and this is getting general around the economy and for 500 points, who can tell me what we call a deflationary spiral combined with a recessed economy?

Yes, kiddies, its called an Economic Depression. The only question is whether it will be a “Great” one, like the last one – and the answer to that will lie in DC. The more we ape Hoover/FDR’s asinine response to the Great Depression, the more like it our Depression will be.

As I keep saying, we have to earn our money – we gambled it for nigh on a century and the house has called in our chips. We’re done. Broke. Wiped out. The sooner we get back to work and start creating wealth the sooner we’ll get out of this. I know I’m getting boring about this – but Make, Mine, Grow is the only ticket out.

He wants us to help people rent, rather than own, their homes:

The Obama administration, in a major shift on housing policy, is abandoning George W. Bush’s vision of creating an “ownership society’’ and instead plans to pump $4.25 billion of economic stimulus money into creating tens of thousands of federally subsidized rental units in American cities.

The idea is to pay for the construction of low-rise rental apartment buildings and town houses, as well as the purchase of foreclosed homes that can be refurbished and rented to low- and moderate-income families at affordable rates.

Analysts say the approach takes a wrecking ball to Bush’s heavy emphasis on encouraging homeownership as a way to create national wealth and provide upward mobility for low- and working-class families, especially minorities. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan’s recalibration of federal housing policy, they said, shows that the Obama White House has acknowledged that not everyone can or should own a home.

Which is just typical liberal, elitist hogwash – they don’t want people to own their homes because home ownership means independence. Obama and Co would rather have people stuck in a modern version of the old, hateful “housing projects” of the past…there to remain mired in poverty and government dependency.

Of all the things Obama has done, this tops then all in cynicism – to use the liberal-created financial crisis as a means of taking over the stock of American housing to rent it out to be people financially wiped out by the very same financial crisis which allows Obama’s Administration to buy the property. And how much would any like to bet that the groups set to manage these properties will be (b) in Obama’s hip pocket and (b) given plush contracts for doing it? This will be a windfall for ACORN and other such corrupt, leftist groups.

This is a program we have to stop – the goal of US policy should be to get us as far as possible towards 100% home ownership for the American people. If we wish to remain free people, then we must have property the government doesn’t control – its be owners, or be owned.

Powerful stuff:

I have in front of me a letter I received from you in response to a letter I wrote to you regarding abortion in the U.S. You thanked me politely for taking the time to share my views on abortion and said, “This is a heart-wrenching issue.”

I just haven’t been able to get one little question out of my mind since reading your letter. Why?

Why is it heart-wrenching? Why would my heart be rent by making a perfectly legal and morally acceptable choice to have an abortion? Why should anyone’s heart be torn by this choice? The highest law of our land says that there is nothing wrong with choosing abortion. If no law is being broken, why should my heart or anyone’s heart be troubled?

In the short time you’ve been President, you have strategically worked to expand abortion access around the country. In fact, you promised in your campaign that your first task upon taking office would be to sign into law the Freedom of Choice Act, which would eliminate virtually every existing restriction on abortion throughout all nine months of pregnancy, and even lift the ban on partial-birth abortion. (You said you considered that one a legitimate medical procedure.)

I’m trying to understand, Mr. Obama, but it just doesn’t make any sense. Why would you work so methodically to increase the occurrence of something so heart-wrenching?

As a woman, I can testify to the fact that when I make decisions to protect my privacy or the autonomy of my body, there’s nothing heart-wrenching about it. I am not the least bit torn or conflicted about defending myself in those ways. Indeed, it is my body – the one God gave me and the one He expects me to care for wisely and honorably. My body – like yours – was made to be holy.

Do read the whole thing – and always understand that there are only two positions: pro-life, or pro-abortion. If you are not pro-life, then you are advancing the cause of abortion, even if you hide behind such phrases as “heart-wrenching” to describe something you’d never in a million years seek to curtail. Just as one cannot be half pregnant, so one cannot be half in favor of the sanctity of human life. Its all or nothing – and Obama is giving us nothing.

Indeed:

The greatest destroyer of peace is abortion because if a mother can kill her own child, what is left for me to kill you and you to kill me? There is nothing between. – Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta

If we can hold to a lie – that abortion is ok – then we are capable of all manner of evil. It is as simple as that.

The end result of liberalism:

If you planned to check out a library book, visit a city clinic or have your garbage picked up on Monday, you’re out of luck.

The City of Chicago will basically be closed for business on Aug. 17, a reduced-service day in which most city employees are off without pay, according to a release from the Office of Budget and Management. City Hall, public libraries, health clinics and most city offices will be closed.

Emergency service providers including police, firefighters and paramedics will be working at full strength, but most services not directly related to public safety, including street sweeping, will not be provided, the release said…

…”Every dollar we save from these measures helps to save jobs, and in the long-term, maintain services for Chicagoans,” Mayor Daley said in the release. “This plan relies on most of our civilian employees to be part of the solution to our very serious budget challenges. I want to thank them again for their sacrifice.”

More of more of this is to come – the economy is far worse than the banks and the federal government is letting on (they are hoping that a course of positive thinking will get things rolling again) and the entire mountain of liberal fiscal mismanagement is crashing down.

So much for the oft-repeated talking point that the American people are demanding we do something:

Thirty-five percent (35%) of American voters say passage of the bill currently working its way through Congress would be better than not passing any health care reform legislation this year. However, a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that most voters (54%) say no health care reform passed by Congress this year would be the better option.

As Rasmussen goes on to note, this doesn’t mean people don’t want reform, but that they don’t want the reform Obama and his Democrats are currently touting. From what I can gather, the majority seem to want:

1. Some sort of mechanism to provide coverage for the un-insured who are unable to pay for insurance (which is not the same as total number of people uninsured).

2. Better protections for expensive procedures/conditions.

3. More control of health care decisions in the hands of doctors and patients.

The trouble with this is that none of these desired aims requires a massive, government-run reorganization of our entire health care system…and thus such things don’t commend themselves to liberal Statists who understand that if they can get us all on the government health care dime, we’ll never get ourselves off of it, and thus we’ll be ripe for the complete Europeanization of the United States. Remember, for the left its all about control – they are sick and darned tired of our unwillingness to bend and so they want a means where they can apply pressure on us to conform to their ideas of what constitutes a good society.

Instinctively, I think the American people are realizing this – that Obama doesn’t give a hoot about whether or not anyone gets any actual care at all, but is determined to impose controls upon us. And thus the growing popular rebellion.

Have at it, boys and girls. Just too tired to write anything worthwhile.