Dan

Calabrese

Read Dan's bio and previous columns here

March 23, 2009

Democrats Sell Loathing of Capitalism, Expansion of Government . . . And You’re Buying

You think it’s crazy for Democrats to spend $1 trillion the federal government doesn’t have under the guise of “stimulus”? Consider:

Democrats want to do two things: 1) Convince the public that free markets are simply a playground in which greedy predators run roughshod over the rest of us; 2) Expand government at all levels.

They’re succeeding, and they’re accomplishing all this by the way they’re spending federal money – including the bailout funds from the Troubled Asset Relief Program and the “stimulus” funds they are foisting on the states with the requirement that they be used to expand government operations.

Companies who accepted TARP funds now find themselves being bludgeoned publicly for every dime they spend – often by the very same congressmen and administration officials who told them to go ahead and do so. Meanwhile, governors who didn’t want the stimulus money in the first place are asking for permission to spend it on debt retirement instead of expanding state bureaucracy – and they’re being told no.

South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford figured out that if he spent the stimulus money as the Obama Administration wanted, he would find himself with a budget crisis in a few short years when the federal money dried up but the operations still needed to be funded. So he asked the administration for a waiver that would allow him to spend the money on debt retirement instead, as South Carolina faces a crushing burden of debt.

The administration refused to grant the waiver, but only after the Democratic National Committee launched ads attacking Sanford for making the request in the first place.

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, one of the most effective governors in the nation in spite of what you think, saw through the gambit as well – and turned down more than half the stimulus money, specifically the parts that would have required her to blow up the size of state government.

But most governors are happy to take the money. It’s helping them to either paper over structural deficits or find new ways to buy votes, and in a few years, when the new funds have created entrenched bureaucracies that have no intention of going anywhere, these governors will be trying to pass massive tax increases so they can keep funding what the Stimulus of 2009 wrought.

That money, of course, will have to come from the productive sector of society – the private sector. You know who that is, right? All those greedy bastards on Wall Street? Most of you don’t have much confidence in the financial markets right now, and that tends to undercut your confidence in the whole notion of free-market economics – or as a Democrat might say, “the unrestrained free market run wild.”

The AIG bonus fiasco is so perfect, you’d almost think Democrats in the administration and in Congress told AIG to pay out the bonuses. Oh wait. They did. Then when it actually happened, Democrats went on a phony rampage of indignation against “Wall Street greed” and the like. How well did it work? Well enough that a lot of Republicans were too scared not to join in. Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa said AIG executives should kill themselves. A House vote to levy a 90 percent tax on the bonuses actually got the support of 85 Republicans – almost half the GOP caucus.

Why are Republicans voting for such a thing? Because the political atmosphere is poisonous for free-market capitalism, and they are cowards. That’s despicable, but it’s useful to have a few cowards around because it helps in gauging where the political winds are blowing.

Otherwise rational people are frothing at the mouth wanting to lynch the greedy fat-cat bastards. The Congress uses the tax code to exact political revenge against a specific group of people who did nothing but satisfy an obligation of their employment – and the public applauds.

The Democrats are succeeding, at least for the moment, at persuading the public to loathe free-market capitalism, and to believe the fiction that some sort of market-run-wild phenomenon led to the current fiscal mess.

They are also succeeding at the use of federal spending to expand government at all levels, creating a permanent capital drain in which the public sector will keep demanding funding from the private sector, consequently causing more people to depend on the public sector to meet their basic needs.

And if this doesn’t trouble you, because you’ve become convinced that the “unrestrained free market” was running the show for the past eight years, and “it didn’t work,” well, you’ve sure bought the storyline. I hope you’re happy with what you’re going to get instead.

© 2009 North Star Writers Group. May not be republished without permission.

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