Firing off some thoughts. If you want to respond, feel free, as always!
Democracy for Most: Fear, Big Spending and Small-minded Leadership Collide
Did you know that there are some vocal, far-left liberals in our government who are wishing for MORE AND MORE AND MORE so-called "stimulus spending" ? Isn't 800 billion and something dollars -- crazy piles of tax dollars -- ENOUGH??!! There is no faith in capitalism in these few, influential people. And the failure, quite succinctly, is not in capitalism, but in business morality, government regulation, and in the very people who are now claiming to break us out of this economic mess.
HOWEVER, the fact is, THAT AMOUNT MIGHT NOT be enough spending. Yes, it is true. But it is enough for now, God willing. So, am I agreeing that big government is the solution to our problems? No. Am I agreeing that we ought to bail out banks that failed on their own misdeeds, greed, and merits? HELL, NO!
There are things wrong with this whole mess, from the broad stimulus to the TARP bank bailouts. Sadly, it is not all appropriate. But it is necessary, if for nothing else, to try to maintain order. Is that rational? I think it is, but I have an overactive imagination. I worry about robberies and burglaries going up, and suicides. I worry about house break-ins and murders. These, too, will go up as order goes down. And a bad economy, almost as part of its definition, creates disorder.
Disorder, and the fear of it, is part of the reason why bad economies wind up opening doors to socialist and communist leaders. So, keep in mind that the fear of disorder needs to be tempered, because, mark my words, otherwise we are looking at a Chavez-like, or Nazi-like, or Sweden-like, government.
Those models are all bad for a state as large and influential as ours, one that was built on liberty and freedom, not big government services for all. We would, seriously, become the sad, one-party beast that the USSR was. The U.S. cannot absorb that without being torn apart for one thing, so don't even wish for anything close to that. Capitalism is not to blame: Greed, sloth, power-hungriness among business and government leaders is to blame. Ethics are to blame. Socialism is not the solution, but a furthering of the problem.
What's shocking to me is, it seems certain Democratic leaders are working on closing out the GOP, and short-time leaders, in a manner of ways. That is far more dangerous than the stimulus package.
Nancy Pelosi has
supported bills that blockade the "minority" party from having influence, and ones that hurt new representatives of any party in gaining leadership roles in committees, from holding leadership roles in committees. In other words, Pelosi believes in seniority beats merit or willfulness for leadership roles. Seeing this, Pelosi apparently believes, in essence, that Obama should not have been elected, since he clearly did not have seniority. After all, if one limits the effectiveness of the minority party and newbies, one is obviously in seniority and the majority party -- how much more lame and creepy could a power play be?
I quietly suspect that people such as our new president frighten bureaucrats like Pelosi. That is what is dangerous, not the stimulus package. That is what puts up signals of socialism, one-party leadership, etc. The stimulus, in that sense, would be the least of our problems as taxpayers and citizens.
One thing to keep in mind is that more than $300 billion of this stimulus is in the form of tax cuts, which means more money in the hands of the private sector. But only tax cuts cannot save the unemployed and those who need Food Stamps -- whether they intend to get off of Food Stamp program, I won't comment on my feelings there. Tax cuts cannot create jobs for contractors to do government projects, so that folks can get back to work. As much as it seems ironic that the government getting things done takes precedence over the private sector getting credit and freedom to get things done, at least it is not pure spending with no jobs being created, ever. (They are not the same -- you bring in more than $400 a week as a FAMILY, and you cannot get food stamps. Unless, of course, you have several kids.)
However, while this so-called "stimulus" is avoidable, that is only for those who truly have no fear of losing everything, including a way to get food. Propping up our economy is, I fear, a necessary evil. Why? Because things are that bad. There are millions upon who are struggling, and they ought to be regarded highly for that struggle. Those companies who are doing all they can to retain jobs ought to be regarded highly. However, those who are connecting this stimulus with expansion of government are the ones who ought to be chastised. And they exist. They are running our Congress.
Why do we need stimulus?
Well, I am not sure we "need" it, but I prefer doing something over sitting and letting things fester. Mind you, part of this is still tax cuts! The stimulus is like pumping water into a reservoir, what we are currently doing is sustaining the reservoir. We need to pump in "water" -- MONEY -- until the real economy, the PRIVATE BUSINESS entities, and the banks and financial markets, get back into the swing of things. OK, so it's settled then, huh? Not really.
That simple idea sounds good until you get into how that will -- or might -- create later inflation, and weakening of the dollar, etc., etc. I won't go into all that, as it will bore people and I am not going to try to do a rational economist's job of guessing what all could or might happen.
Bush failed our country in many ways. Bush did succeed in areas.
Obama is already playing the illogical game of taking specific criticisms and mocking them by alluding that they refer to the broad or general (this is a basic fallacy in the study of logic -- in other words, it is DUMB). He did so at his first news conference regarding at least three statements having to do with the current move to suck $1 trillion into such things as renovating gov't buildings with unproven (in other words, new materials that force renovation AGAIN in as little as five years due to moisture problems and other things) "green" concepts, and some type of homes for polar bears (this is going to create JOBS??!!). What a shame. What a sham. What a professional candidate.
If Obama, for one, truly wants the U.S. to succeed, he will stop lying, first and foremost, about what pulled us out of the Depression.
In short, it was WW II, not the New Deal, that finally took us out of the Depression. FDR was a great leader, an incredibly determined and inspired and inspiring man. He was not the bringer of salvation to the economy, though, as he simply propped it up long enough, and barely, for a bloody world war and sacrifice by millions in everyday life, and at war, to carry us through. We ought to have LEARNED the lessons from the things that went right and the things that went wrong from 1933 to 1941, and after WW II ended (unemployment was still relatively high for some years).
Simplistically, the demand for bombs and things from Europe early in WW II, our eventual involvement in WW II, and the tide of the war, cured the sickness of stock collapse and world and U.S. economic depression. Even noted historian Doris Kearns Goodwin points this out, as well as the Smithsonian Institution, and many other rational sources.
It is only strange, big-government-oriented economists who insist that more and more and more spending is the fix, and that that was what solved the Depression. What those people are, sadly, are ideological fools, not economically logical experts.The quickest way to bigger government is through scaring the populace into giving up all their money nad control of the economy to government. Big mistake. The government ought to be a small, decent WATCH DOG on business. That is all. They have a hard enough time with that!
Here's one reason why FDR was a great leader: he believed in the idea of U.S. government as it was created and in U.S. capitalist economics. Thank goodness he respected them to some degree, or we'd have turned out quite different after WW II. He has been accused of being socialist, just as Obama has been and is being accused.
Though I don't fault the folks who believe -- or, at least, suggest -- and say those things: They are reacting to a trend of behavior that could be wrong-headed, and even drastically wrong, if they ran along certain paths. Debate is what keeps democracy alive. I try not to castigate anyone who seems to be remotely keeping some grasp on reality as I know it. Mind you, that is a day-to-day effort. If not for these folks who suggest that Obama is a socialist, if he were indeed one, or being told this was the way to go, then how easy would socialism become? I think it would be too easy. I am very glad that folks call Obama a socialist, for that reason. I don't believe he is one, but I also don't want to see our state go that way, realistically.
To call the liberal, and big government Obama a socialist, I think that is going too far, realistically. FDR and BHO both have folks who are anti-taxpayer, anti-free enterprise, around them. Big government is what both men were not sheepish of supporting, and they had some like minds around them. But they themselves made it clear they were, and are, not against these things. Obama managed to do this in his first news conference, on Feb. 9, 2009. Sadly, he also failed miserably to inspire confidence in all but the Obama Kool-Aid drinker, for other comments he made.
Big government, my friends, IS SOCIALISM. That's how socialism gets headway, with broad government growth without a reason but for big spending, along with a frightened and poor, desperate and humiliated populace: That was the story of every South American fascist of socialist state, the story of the USSR, of Nazi Germany, of Mussolini's Italy, of Franco's Spain.
I hope Mr. Obama succeeds as president -- there will be failures and low spots, weaknesses and ill-gotten ideas, but every president has had and will have these. I hope the country does, too. But I hope Obama does not succeed in illogical arguments, in misleading, in holding taxpayers and businesses hostage for non-job-creating stimulus, or in socializing the U.S. These things ought not to succeed!!
- jR
