The Economic Nationalist

This is lovely.

When General Motors went through bankruptcy last year, it suspended its political donations. Now that it’s owned by the U.S. government, it’s donating to lawmakers’ pet projects again.

The carmaker gave $ 41,000 to groups associated with lawmakers, the vast majority of it—$ 36,000—to the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, the company reported on a disclosure form last week….

The U.S. government now has a 60 percent stake in the reformed company.

Not a political analyst, I do not claim to grasp political strategy, but is this political judo on GM’s part? After all, what benefit could the Democratic party derive from so small a Mafia-like “protection” receipt to compensate for the bad press the receipt generates? (Apparently the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation is some slush fund controlled by members of the Caucus, which makes this affair even odder, in which the Caucus gets its name stuck to a corrupt-looking payment without actually putting its corrupt hands directly on the money.)

Maybe Congressional Black Caucusers (Caucasians?) like Charles Rangel and Maxine Waters don’t think that they’re getting enough attention right now. Maybe the Congressional Black Caucus wants to be sure that you and I don’t forget things like the ACORN affair. Maybe the Congressional Black Caucus is just stupid. As for GM, one looks forward to the day when it is a nongovernment-owned company again.

[The Drudge Report is acknowledged for bringing this to attention.]

Let the wheels of industry turn! Confirming this journal’s expectation, the ISM index of change in U.S. manufacturing activity has risen to a robust 55.7 for October.

Except to the (maybe considerable) extent to which Congress might interfere, the Economic Nationalist knows no reason the present U.S. industrial recovery should not prove the strongest since 1973.

What does this CBS News report say to you?

The stock market’s mood darkened after the Institute for Supply Management said its index of [U.S.] manufacturing activity in September slipped to 52.6 from 52.9 in August. The number fell short of analysts’ expectations.

It seems to me to say that U.S. manufacturing had weakened.

CBS’s hourly radio news bulletin reported the development Thursday evening in nearly these words, undoubtedly derived from the same CBS copy quoted above. What CBS did not explain on the air, and indeed what CBS does not explain even in the extended report linked above, is that the index in question of the Institute for Supply Management (ISM) reports not U.S. manufacturing activity but rather change in U.S. manufacturing activity.

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