President has taken a lot of flack about "nationalizing corporations" like GM....

[Doodle]

...Have any other presidents done? the same thing?
Seems liberals are getting blamed. Republican presidents have nationalized companies, too.

1917: All U.S. railroads were nationalized as the Railroad Administration during World War I as a wartime measure, but were returned to their private owners almost immediately after the war.

1939: Organization of the Tennessee Valley Authority entailed the nationalization of the facilities of the former Tennessee Electric Power Company.

1971: The National Railroad Passenger Corporation (Amtrak) is a government-owned corporation created in 1971 for the express purpose of relieving American railroads of their legal obligation to provide inter-city passenger rail service. The (primarily) freight railroads had petitioned to abandon passenger service repeatedly in the decades leading up to Amtrak's formation.

1976: The Consolidated Rail Corporation (Conrail), another government corporation, was created to take over the operations of six bankrupt rail lines operating primarily in the Northeast

[froghead]

Yes and it has never worked out.

The thing that has worked is what has always worked it is called a competitive free market. There are cycles in the market and if time is given they will right themselves.

Even Keynesian's say that priming the pump "Stimulus money" should only be done once. we are going on three stimulus packages already.

If you notice the economy is getting better a little at a time and only 10% or so of the stimulus package from Obama has been spent. interjecting the stimulus money into the economy will stall the economy because it will cause inflation which will halt the housing market which halts the construction which halts the resource suppliers of the construction companies and so on

ADDITION: Obama's promise was to sign legislation to limit the power of the president saying Bush gave too much power to himself, but since taking office he has taken over banks, aouto companies and will soon try to take over healthcare.

If that don't scare you you are not paying attention

IT"S THAT GUY: you fail to mention that it was the Dems in the house that took out the caps and limit on the bonuses awarded to the CEO's and such. they were the ones who pulled the stipulations out of the bills. Obama also let it pass without but added it after the public was outraged with the news or did you forget them having the emergency sesion to put a 90% tax on their bonuses

[Tom]

No, the closest thing is the postal service, but that has always been a quasi-government operation, it wasn't bought by the government with taxpayer money, and didn't have any competition like GM does

[Joe V.]

Good question I looked and looked and mostly in foreign countries. All have been miserable failures. If we adopt health care though watch out because they want to model it after Canada or England. There they are governed to what age certain things can even be done such as heart surgery. At 59 when the odds are most americans are reaching the age to have this surgery and prolong their life it is not done. Flight for life please get serious you will bleed to death. Not a good idea? Say no to government control!

[It's That Guy]

President Bush's plan was just to dump taxpayer dollars on GM, Citibank, AIG, etc. Just give them billions of dollars with no conditions on how they use it, no requirement to pay it back. This was the TARP program--Troubled Assets Recovery Program. AIG decided to give all their top execs a big bonus, and the Bush admin. had no problem with that.

Obama had a different idea. He bailed them out, but put conditions on the money, and extracted some 'ownership' for the taxpayers who'd given them the money. So if they get out of their slump, they owe the taxpayers some money back.

Yes, in a way that's 'nationalizing' the companies. But I think under the circumstances it was the best plan. The real problem is that we shouldn't have allowed them to get 'too big to fail' in the first place.

REAL Capitalism, which conservatives and Republicans say they favor, means that investors RISK their money. If a company fails because of bad management, they LOSE their money. But for many years now, big corporations in the US have had 'capitalism' for success and 'socialism' for failure. They take huge risks, and if they win, they're heros. If they lose, the taxpayers bail them out. We have already seen this several times in the last few decades--the S&L Bailout under GHW Bush being the best example.

[Liberal AssKicker]

Roosevelt was the last person to ever make the attempt, and his policies went down in flames. The only policies we really remember him for are the ones that we still have. We've forgotten his monumental blunders in moving America toward communism.

[Mr. Con]

It's about fugging time someone did. It still is, because it hasn't happened yet, no matter what mor-cons believe.

[Old Reliable]

The bailouts and stock exchanges DO NOT constitute nationalization.
Real nationalization, like the World War I moves, involves commandeering by force, and of course, the businesses in which the government now owns a majority share BEGGED for this intervention.
It's very, very different. Obviously, you failed to check the literature.

Read a book.

I've heard these lies before. They are still lies. Yes, AMTRAK is a federal corporation, but you very carefully avoid the fact that NOTHING was confiscated. The railroads wanted to DUMP passenger service, and they did. Read the literature, don't just assume the b.s. pumped out by the insane, fat pig, drug addict propagandist scumbag, Limbaugh, has something to do with reality.

He is filth, and a liar, and anyone who believes the revolting slob is
as ignorant as the repulsive pig. He has no real education, and he lies constantly. His "right wing/left wing" lies lately have been so far from the truth, it is sickening. And yet his automaton followers parrot out the dork's imbecilic lies like some kind of rote formula.

Try reading something more authoritative than a comic book and listening to someone who has some knowledge, makes sense, and is not a revolting drug addict and child molester. If you can, that is.

[Wanderer]

Look up FDR's New Deal and the Tennessee Valley Authority.

[Ron R]

it'snot the nationalizing that is the real problem...Obama has desiginated himself as america's "boss" in chief......the real question is ...has any other president ever fired a "private" company ceo before?...that is the real question......