Letdown

It’s sad to see the national situation today, especially in light of the stature this country has achieved not only in its own estimation but in that of other populations. To think that the only nation to have placed men on the moon and routinely operate flights of people through outer space, whose technicians have accomplished wonders in medicine, food-production and weaponry allowing for benefits throughout the world, has devolved into the governmental/societal mess now operative is to experience profound disappointment, if not disgust. There’s plenty of blame to go around but the major onus is on the hapless Congress directly and on the people indirectly since they put the Congress members in place.

When utter panic overcame the legislative bodies that are supposedly comprised of thoughtful, careful, prudent lawmakers and leaders, they passed a few months ago a bailout of some $700 billion without even conducting hearings in order to determine what to do and how to do it. Result: $350 billion has been expended and no one seems to know where it is precisely and/or how it’s being used. What they do know is that whatever they had in mind – the curing of the ailments of the financial institutions – has not happened. What the citizens know by just paying attention is that the fat cats have figured a way to steal the money. They also know that the Bush administration was complicit in the legislation, and that was shameful.

Apparently the lesson regarding that circumstance is now too late for the learning. The president has indicated how much he wants spent to buy the country out of what former president Carter might have called its malaise, but has left it up to the party hacks to figure out how, namely the likes of House Speaker Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Reid, and the respective finance/banking committee chairmen Franks and Dodd, as well as Senate Assistant Majority Leader Durbin and House Majority Leader Hoyer. Just like the Keystone Kops, they have attacked in all directions at once or simply made a circle and formed a firing squad. Result: gridlock.

Laughable was the remark by Pelosi that 500 million people are losing their jobs, since the there aren’t but 300 million in the country. Besides making one wonder if she knows where she is, this is fear-mongering. Disgusting were the remarks of Rhode Island Senator Reed on the Senate floor (C-Span a blessing) when he chose to use much of his time to castigate the Bush administration as the reason for the whole thing and even mentioned the rise in unemployment. The unemployment rate in January 2007, when his party took over Congress, was 4.6%, while it is now 7.6%, meaning that the Democrat Party has presided over the intolerable increase of 65% in just two years. Reed didn’t mention this. Nor did he mention that the president signed budgets made up in CONGRESS, not in the Oval Office, or that the president has had to deal with an attack on the country and has conducted military operations authorized by...yep...CONGRESS.

Karl Marx is said to have said this: “We are convinced that in no social order will freedom be assured as in a society based upon communal ownership.” As per actions of Congress in the recent past and those involving much larger “investments” to be effected right away, the state has taken part ownership of the nation’s financial establishment, as well as its auto industry. Through its creeping control of the financial institutions, especially as they determine who does and does not get money for whatever purpose, it gains control of the population while establishing a new hierarchy (there will always be the fat cats) that calls the shots. This is different from the entrepreneurial model that has made the nation what it is.

To “put the people back to work,” the president and Congress are mistakenly stuck in the 1930s model in constantly screaming “money for infrastructure” in that a thousand people using picks and shovels then amount to “one man and a machine” now. Just a look at strip-mining proves the point. The manufacturing base that undergirded this country through the 1980s has gone overseas not just through the sheer greed of management and labor but also through the insistence of citizens that they not settle for just a living wage, health-care, and substantive retirement, preferring to live much “higher on the hog.” They priced themselves out of the world market. More than anything else, the two-earner family, besides eviscerating the blue-collar unions (whether one thinks for good or ill), has brought this about.

As the government takes control of everything, especially including manufacturing, it will set wages, price-controls, and eventually place people at the “lowest common denominator” level, stifling incentive and, therefore, the inventiveness that has made inordinate progress possible. A look at the old Soviet system and at Russia and China now is all that’s needed, the state even making birth decisions, in Russia begging women to have children while in China prohibiting the same.

The “blame game” is no good now. Bush, for all his administration’s economic shortcomings (combined with that of republican Congresses) had two wars to fight and warned years ago of the coming housing debacle that precipitated the current crisis. This debacle was fueled by the democrat model that insisted that people who couldn’t afford houses should nevertheless buy them before they could afford them. The greedy crooks managing the mortgage business, especially the quasi-governmental Fannie and Freddy, saw the opening for big bucks and golden parachutes, the devil take the losers and the citizenry.

Now, the most powerful nation on earth, with GIs everywhere trying to stave off the ominous Islamic jihad, is on its financial knees, with millions of workers walking the streets...and all mainly because its elected representatives – driven by special-interests and lobbyists – have been either too dumb, too weak, or too self-serving to watch the store. What a letdown!

And so it goes.

Jim Clark