Any interesting if eminently predictable piece from Marc Stein this morning [1]. Here’s a taste:
[2]
MArk Steyn
Still, what do I know? Evidently, it’s stimulated the sign-making industry, putting America back to work by putting up “PUTTING AMERICA BACK TO WORK” signs every 200 yards across the land. And at 300 bucks a pop the signage alone should be enough to launch an era of unparalleled prosperity, assuming America’s gilded sign magnates don’t spend their newfound wealth on Bahamian vacations and European imports. Perhaps if the president were to have his All-Seeing O logo lovingly hand-painted onto each sign, it would stimulate the economy even more, if only when they were taken down and auctioned on eBay.
Meanwhile, in Brazil, India, China, Japan and much of Continental Europe the recession has ended. In the second quarter this year, both the French and German economies grew by 0.3 percent, while the U.S. economy shrank by 1 percent. How can that be? Unlike America, France and Germany had no government stimulus worth speaking of, the Germans declining to go the Obama route on the quaint grounds that they couldn’t afford it. They did not invest in the critical signage-in-front-of-holes-in-the-road sector. And yet their recession has gone away. Of the world’s biggest economies, only the U.S., Britain and Italy are still contracting. All three are big stimulators, though Gordon Brown and Silvio Berlusconi can’t compete with Obama’s $800 billion porkapalooza. The president has borrowed more money to spend to less effect than anybody on the planet.
Of course, Steyn isn’t the first on the planet to come to that conclusion. (Though I must say he is among the more eloquent among those doing so. ) The fact is that everything is president, this administration, and for that matter this Congress has touched since last November has become a costly and destructive debacle of proportions that won’t even make it to the status of a legend. Legends, you see, are at least halfway believable.
Steyn points out that Obama is now trying to push through a government takeover of health care, as a distraction from the disaster that is the stimulus.
However there are two problems with that idea. First of all, instead of distracting from the problems invoked by the stimulus, the pushed for its health care suffers badly from the massive aand undeniable failure that is the stimulus. Obama’s minions let leak late Friday, that the budget deficit would be on the order of two trillion dollars for this year. Since such estimates coming from the White House been counters have invariably been extraordinarily low on the range of possible, it’s me that the real deficit will be substantially higher. Once again, this is hardly a unique unto vision . So, along comes health care , which would most certainly lay another two or three trillion dollars of deficit spending on top of that. Obama likes to argue that the current Medicare system is unsustainable , and is running out of money. So, installing another government run system, which promises right off the bat to spend even more money is going to save us money? Explain to me, someone, how this works out to a positive. I doubt there’s many people who can.
Secondly, it may in fact be partially intended as a diversionary tactic, but the fact is that it’s right online with Obama’s socialism. The fact of the matter is, that the push for health care, the huge amount of money being poured into “stimulus” jobs , the whole shooting match, is not about solving the stated problems, but about moving the country toward a more socialist system, and destroying freedom. Because, ….face it…. all any of what the Democrats, Obama included, have done since being sworn in, has done is that. Growing government to totally unsustainable proportions, killing our economy and if left unchecked, our country with it.
Try it this way; If solving the stated problems was on the agenda at all, why not follow the path set by these other countries that Steyn mentions who have had such success?
Think about the irony here… those other countries of been leaning left for years, and the economic crises they found themselves in were largely caused by that leaning. They have learned the lesson that freeing up markets and not spending so much taxpayer money is the solution to their current economic difficulties. Irony truely abounds…. These are lessons that they have a starkly learned from us there in the US, given our successes in the past.
Now since we’ve forgotten the lessons we taught them, under the guise of ‘hope and change’, thanks to the Obama administration, they now have an example of what not to do, as well.
One wonders how long it will be before we repair the mistake of putting the left in charge.
Mind you, my question involves more than simply removing Democrats from power. It’s true, that I have said for many years, that the best thing for Republicans at election time is Democrats in power. But this problem also involves those Republicans in name only. (RINOS) To win the next several elections, and pull this out of the fire, the Republicans need to not only come in with a plan of their own involving said free markets, and drastically reduced government size and scope, but they need to remove from the party those who went along with the current power structure on this lunge to the left.
Alas, I see nothing to suggest the Republican leadership has it in them. That’s a worry, because without it, we’ll never turn this situation around.