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

2009-01-28

How Far Through the Looking Glass? 

Over the course of the last several months I've been alternating between frustrated indifference and genuine distress over the direction of the country. The temptation to completely check out has only barely been overcome by the hope of being a useful voice of dissension from the wilderness (which occasionally dips into howls of outrage). In the end, I think it IS possible to prevent the wholesale flight down the path the Romans took . . . but it's going to be difficult.

So maybe I should avoid reading stuff like this:

We will enter his Administration as the United States, buoyed by an aggressive free market economy. We will exit his first year - and even the first hundred days - as France, burdened with massive government regulation, a vast public sector, and permanent middle class entitlements. And Obama will take care to arrange things so that massive and permanent political change accompanies his and protects his legislative achievements in the future.

Or stuff like this:

The government wouldn't be able to spend at least one-fourth of a proposed $825 billion economic stimulus plan until after 2010, according to a preliminary report by the Congressional Business Office that suggests it may take longer than expected to boost the economy. The government would spend about $26 billion of the money this year and $110 billion more next year, the report said. About $103 billion would be spent in 2011, while $53 billion would be spent in 2012 and $63 billion between 2013 and 2019.

• Less than $5 billion of the $30 billion set aside for highway spending would be spent within the next two years, the CBO said.

• Only $26 billion out of $274 billion in infrastructure spending would be delivered into the economy by the Sept. 30 end of the budget year, just 7 percent.

• Just one in seven dollars of a huge $18.5 billion investment in energy efficiency and renewable energy programs would be spent within a year and a half.

Or, even worse, stuff like this:

But Hoover proceeded, undaunted. He ordered governors to increase their public spending when possible. He also pushed for, and got, Congress to endorse large public spending projects: hospitals, bridges. . . . By April 1930 the secretary of commerce would be able to announce that public works spending was at its highest level in five years. . . .

. . .later analysis suggests that unemployment went from something like 3 percent in the fall of 1929 to 9 percent by the new year.

By September 1931, unemployment was at 17.4 percent


I hate when history repeats itself, and our political "leaders" march blithely into the headwind of inevitability. At least I can take some comfort in the Congressional GOP's seeming unity in opposition to the latest "Stimulus" bill.

It won't stop it, but I can take comfort. The Obama government is going to take the rest.
Posted by: Michael / 1/28/2009 01:22:00 AM

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