<$BlogRSDUrl$>

My personal musings about anything that gets on my radar screen--heavily dominated by politics.

2008-01-02

Santa Clause, Redux 

So, I'm not the only one who noticed the Santa Clause-esque nature of political campaigning lately. From the one and only Thomas Sowell:

Anyone who believes that the government can give the country presents has fallen for the oldest political illusion of all -- the illusion of something for nothing

Santa Claus may turn out to be the real front-runner in the primaries, judging by the way candidates are vying with one another to give away government goodies to the voters.

Santa Claus is bipartisan. The Bush administration is unveiling its plan to rescue people who gambled and lost in the housing markets when the bubble burst.

Of course, Sowell comes to a smarter--and more pessimistic--conclusion than I came to:

After the departure of Senator Phil Gramm and House Majority Leader Dick Armey, Congress has been an economics-free zone. There is not one economist among the 535 members of Congress.

But, in an election year, that is not a political handicap. Santa Claus has won far more elections than any economist.

Argh.

Reminds me of the old line "There is no problem so difficult, no challenge so intractable, that Congress cannot make it worse by trying to 'fix' it." I suppose it shouldn't surprise me that that gets a lot worse in an election year.
Posted by: Michael / 1/02/2008 08:58:00 AM

Weblog Commenting by HaloScan.com

This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?