BuckeyeBlog

Jackson

The government’s take-over of large parts of the American auto industry is a vital Ohio issue. Close to 6.5% of Ohio’s non-government gross state product comes from automotive manufacturing and related industries. While GM and Chrysler have very significant manufacturing investments in Ohio, so does Honda of America Manufacturing.  Ohio auto parts manufacturers supply the Big Three and other “transplants” throughout the country including Toyota, Hyundai and BMW and others. And there are over 10 million motor vehicles of all kinds owned and operated by Ohioans.

So when the federal politicians weigh in on automotive issues, they are directly impacting the wealth and prosperity of Ohio.

And here is what the Obama Administration is thinking in regard to the America’s, and Ohio’s, automotive industry:

What this country needs is a single national road map that tells automakers who are trying to become solvent again what kind of car it is they need to be designing and building for the American people.

Lisa P. Jackson, US EPA Administrator

Remember: Socialism is a centrally plannedeconomy in which the government controls all means of production and economic freedom is severely limited, if not totally abrogated by government. By subjecting Ohioans, both as consumers and producers of cars and trucks, to market choices defined by the governmental elites and where many of those choices permitted us directly involve the interests of government, socialist tendencies grow and economic freedom diminishes in our state.

HT to Manhattan Institute’s Steve Malanga who further offers a good, concise lesson on the teachings of Smith and Hayek.

The Ohio House Committee on Housing and Urban Revitalization held a hearing today on HB 3, a bill to “address the current mortgage foreclosure crisis.”  From what we’ve been able to learn (the bill is still in ‘placeholder’ form), the sponsors would effectively ‘nationalize’ in Ohio the private contract between a home loan borrower and lender, even if the Feds were to pass on this. 

We expect the bill to include a mortgage payment moratorium as well as ’cramdown’ provisions where state judges would be given the power to rewrite mortgage provisions. Together these provisions would change the relative situation of debtor and creditor originally established by contract.  By violating the sanctity of the voluntary private contract that structures the utilization of private property in free market economies, these moratoriums and cramdowns would compel creditors to give up value of their private property for political ends. 

Remember: Socialism is a centrally planned economy in which the government controls all means of production.  By aquiring control over the contracts that utilize private property, goverment is aquiring control of a means of production and subjecting it to the central planning of politics and politicians.  If HB 3 were to become law with these provisions, it would be a step toward socialism in Ohio.

For more on the mortgage foreclosure issue see our new policy brief by Marc Kilmer.  Marc shows how the proposal not only takes a sledgehammer to one of the central tenets of economic freedom in Ohio, is at the same time unconstitutional, redistributes wealth and opportunity from those who pay their mortgages to those who don’t, and is simply the wrong solution for the wrong problem.