Time for Emergency Freedom
A crisis is a terrible thing to waste: so say politicians who over the past decade have used every actual or imagined one to justify more government control over the economy.
First they created Sarbanes-Oxley. Passed under the Republicans, and justified by a few high profile frauds [1], this law presumes all publicly traded businesses as guilty until proven innocent. Public companies are now forced to divert untold billions from productive efforts to plead their own innocence to various political appointees.
Then it was Bush’s bailouts. Using the Lehman bankruptcy as cover, Republicans and Democrats alike advocated a carte blanche rescue of other financial institutions — but were initially stymied by massive public outcry. Unfortunately, when the stock market dropped almost 9% after the bill initially failed, people accepted it as “proof” that the law was necessary, because — though we might not like bailouts in theory — the government had to respond to the emergency. (Curiously, when the market fell another 38% after the bill passed, nobody saw fit to repeal the bailouts or the mentality behind them.)
Obama carried the logic further during his automaker bailouts, when he used the impending bankruptcies to unlawfully give unionized workers millions of dollars rightfully owed to investors.
Next came Obama’ $787 billion stimulus package. Under guise of a vague economic crisis, the nation indentured its children to fund all sorts of government boondoggles, from Cash for Clunkers to green subsidies for soon-to-be bankrupt firms to spending $7 million per home to provide broadband internet access.
Having had no (positive) effects, the stimulus was then repeated in kind by Bernanke’s trillion-dollar QE1 and QE2.
In every case, when advocates were asked to justify these programs, the response was: “Given the crisis, it’s incumbent that the government do something.”
The actual result of these and countless other government interventions in the economy has been to weaken the real driver of economic growth: creative individuals left free to operate in the private sector.
Consider just some of the impacts: Sarbanes-Oxley treated executives of public companies as latent criminals. Not only did this destroy the morale of the business community, it also steered firms away from America’s public markets. When companies can’t readily access the capital required to grow, investors, consumers, and job-seekers all suffer.
Bailouts embedded a “too big to fail” mentality which increased systemic risk. They also unjustly punished the foresightful individuals and institutions that would have profited absent government intervention. (Those who refrained from entering an over-heated housing market still haven’t been rewarded for their acumen, while deadbeat lenders and homebuyers are being subsidized to keep home prices from falling.) The lesson? Prudence and forecasting don’t pay; it’s much better to plunge in recklessly and then have the government redistribute other people’s wealth to save you.
Similarly, Obama’s disregard for the law taught everyone to be wary of investing unless they happened to have the president or his cronies in their pocket. (A lesson emphasized by Obamacare and its notorious waivers.)
Lots of luck, though. It all boils down to one simple thing:
¡Leave People Alone!
And all shall go well.
Government has the Merdas Touch- everything it handles turns to crap.
Great idea!
I propose the following temporary emergency measures:
Suspend EPA, NLRP. OSHA
Defund the Departments of Agriculture, Labor, Education, Homeland Security, Interior, Commerce
Furlough all staff at Departments of State, Justice, Treasury, HHS, HUD previously classified as ‘Non-Essential’
“Furlough all staff at Departments of State, Justice, Treasury, HHS, HUD previously classified as ‘Non-Essential’”
I’ve just had an idea, instead of furlough, send them to law enforcement school and put them to work for the Border Patrol as junior officers of course. We would get thousands of new agents and save a fortune by reducing their pay to entry level. At the very least it would give the cartels some target practice and at the best would give us the man power needed to secure our borders.
It’s We The People vs. We The Elite People of Washington DC. Simple.
The ‘uber’ class in Washington DC have enslaved Americans into a “huddled mass” of mindless consumers. Add to this, various pages of Tax Codes, Legislative initiatives, and State laws and their inititives, We The People are corraled and held captive to an Unjust minority in Washington DC AND Our state Capitols.
Gee! This is just like a guy called Marx wrote about in Das Kapital. Hummm! Top down political and economic governance…now, who would of thought this possible in America? Hummm? Started out as a Representative form of government, now is the exact opposite.
We The People let it happen. We’re at fault. We let this grand experiment called American Capitalism, and unfettered individualism, fluorish, boom and be snuffed out. 2012 is Our last chance…after that, Katy Bar The Door!
Socialism as never before seen in the US will soon be all around us. Vote massively for massive fraud is all around us. God Bless America.
Sad, but true. Even Our military and the UCMJ is being rewritten as we speak to allow Islamist garb and their “Blasphemy Laws (which lead to Sharia), as every day military garb…can you imagine that? What next, Seikhs?
Folks, We The people are under attack from within and from without. Vote!
“Folks, We The people are under attack from within and from without. Vote!”
That’s the problem, we do vote, just in the wrong places. What would happen if a few million conservatives suddenly decided that “California is the place to be”. Move in, establish residence, and vote. Maybe a few million more decide to move to New York. They would, of course, have to be from the states with the least amount of electoral votes so that it wouldn’t hurt too much but it could be done. While we’re at it, maybe a million or two down here in Florida just to reinforce our votes.
I know it’s a pipe dream but wouldn’t it be wunnerful?
Regarding California: Perhaps it would be easier to:
1. Offer the few remaining conservatives safe haven and relocation assistance to Arizona or Texas.
2. Give California back to Mexico, since that’s what the Mexicans seem to want.
3. Strictly enforce the border. Nothing goes in. Nothing comes out.
Make it an object lesson on what happens when you kill the golden goose.
You are correct about what we should do. But if if and but were candy and nuts, we would all have a merry Christmas.