What is it about the liberal brain that makes it think rewarding failure will produce anything other then more failure? Now granted they don’t reward all failure at least publicly. The AIG executive bonuses are an example where the liberals display “outrage” over tax payer dollars being used to pay AIG executives, most of whom are complete failures. Now forget the fact that Christopher Dodd (D) Connecticut put in the amendment that allowed for the payout of bonuses before February 11th 2009 from federal bailout monies, that’s not important. The important thing is how angry the politicians were over the bonuses, because that shows they care. Should we really be rewarding failure on any level? The answer is obvious to most people, no.

There were hundreds of thousands of mortgages written for people that did not have the means to make their payments so they have been and are going to be going into default. Now the liberals like to blame this on “predatory lending practices” but that makes no sense. What is a predatory lender anyway, have you ever thought about that term? Did Wells Fargo send armed men out in search of people to capture, bring back to the office and force into a mortgage? Did Quicken Loans set up a sting operation that lured in would be home buyers and then forced them at gun point to sign the mortgage papers? Obviously they didn’t because you can’t force anyone into a mortgage they don’t want. I have signed numerous mortgages over the years and every one was signed voluntarily after I read the terms and had a full understanding of what my obligations were to successfully repay the money I was borrowing. So what is the Democrats solution to these mortgages that can’t be repaid by the borrower? They want to allow the borrower to renegotiate the rates with the lender, pay down some of the principle with tax payer dollars and send one thousand tax payer dollars to the “homeowner” every year to help keep them on track. What are the real homeowners getting for being responsible and making their payments on time? They get to pay for the irresponsible, that’s what they get. This is a prime example of rewarding failure and the sad part is a lot of those people will still lose their homes because they won’t be able to meet the obligations of the restructured loans either.

Corporate bailouts are another example of rewarding failure. This is done under the label of “too big to fail.” It sounds really bad doesn’t it? Like the world is going to end if this company or that company goes under. Corporate failures are a natural part of capitalism it weeds out the weak companies and allows the strong ones to grow stronger. Now I’m not saying that if GM or AIG went bankrupt it wouldn’t cause a lot of pain because it would. But they would be forced to reorganize under the direction of a bankruptcy court with the intention of coming out as strong and viable companies on the other side. Instead the government is using tax dollars and borrowed money to either outright give, in the case of AIG, or loan, in the case of GM and Chrysler, money so they can continue down the path to failure. Some will argue the executives at these companies are trying to fix things, that’s fine but sometimes drastic changes are required and to this point it doesn’t appear that any have been made. So what about the companies that don’t require taxpayer dollars to keep operating, what do they get as a reward? They get nothing.

States are the last example we’ll discuss today. There are no lack of states suckling up to the federal government’s teat, California and Michigan just to name a few. These failing states are running astronomical budget deficits because the governors and legislatures are unable to trim the fat even a little. So instead of making budget cuts they go to the federal government to get a bailout disguised as a “stimulus package.”  If these funds weren’t made available the politicians would have to figure out a way to cut costs or bankrupt their states. I’m betting they would figure out a way to cut costs. What are the states that haven’t begged for money getting? You guessed it, nothing.

Imagine if children were given an A every time they failed a test in school, they wouldn’t learn very much would they? The “homeowners,” corporate executives and politicians aren’t learning anything either when the federal government bails out bad behavior. Actually I take that back they are learning something and it’s not good, they are learning that it doesn’t matter how bad they screw up, mommy government will be there to catch them when they fall.