There are reasons that funding for certain things is on the chopping block, while serious cuts are never proposed. Planned Parenthood is visible, vulnerable, controversial, and it serves poor people. Threatening to cut funding arouses the base and hardens its opposition to cuts in, say, funding the Merchants of Death. These kinds of proposals are also designed – BONUS – to divide the electorate to prevent US – the people – uniting against THEM – the Elites. Mission Accomplished, as they say.
Archive for February, 2011
11
Feb
To The People Of Egypt
”Resolve to serve no more, and you are at once freed. I do not ask that you place hands upon the tyrant to topple him over, but simply that you support him no longer; then you will behold him, like a great Colossus whose pedestal has been pulled away, fall of his own weight and break in pieces.” Étienne de La Boétie, “Discourse of Voluntary Servitude”
There is a mortgagor interposed between the ‘owner’ and 70% of houses. Property taxes are interposed between 100% of owners and their property. The chain of ownership is in effect broken, to a greater or lesser extent, in 100% of owners and properties. So all that is left is the legal illusion of control. If they want it that bad, I say, let them have it.
“We see now the folly of our interventionist foreign policy: not only has that stability fallen to pieces with the current unrest, but the years of propping up the corrupt regime in Egypt has led the people to increase their resentment of both America and Israel We are both worse off for decades of intervention into Egypt’s internal affairs. I wish I could say that we have learned our lesson and will no longer attempt to purchase – or rent – friends in the Middle East, but I am afraid that is being too optimistic. Already we see evidence that while the US historically propped up the Egyptian regime, we also provided assistance to groups opposed to the regime.
So we have lost the credibility to claim today that we support the self-determination of the Egyptian people. Our double-dealing has not endeared us to Egyptians who now seek to reclaim their independence and national dignity.
“Diplomacy” via foreign aid transfer payments only makes us less safe at home and less trusted overseas. But the overriding reality is that we simply cannot afford to continue a policy of buying friends. We face an ongoing and potentially deepening recession at home – so how can we justify to the unemployed and underemployed in the United States the incredible cost of maintaining a global empire? Moral arguments aside, we must stop sending hundreds of billions of dollars to foreign governments when our own economy is in shambles.”
“We know these myths by heart. Government acts on behalf of the public good. It keeps us safe. It protects us against monopolies. It provides indispensable services we could not provide for ourselves. Without it, America would be populated by illiterates, half of us would be dead from quack medicine or exploding consumer products, and the other half would lead a feudal existence under the iron fist of private firms that worked them to the bone for a dollar a week.
Thus Americans tolerate much government predation because they have bought into the myth that state intervention may be an irritant, but the alternative of a free society would be far worse. They have been conditioned to believe that despite whatever occasional corruption they may observe in politics, the government by and large has their well-being at heart. Schoolchildren in particular learn a version of history worthy of Pravda. Governments, they are convinced, abolished child labor, gave people good wages and decent working conditions; protect them from bad food, drugs, airplanes, and consumer products; have cleaned their air and water; and have done countless other things to improve their well-being. They truly cannot imagine how anyone who isn’t a stooge for industry could think differently, or how free people acting in the absence of compulsion and threats of violence – which is what government activity amounts to – might have figured out a way to solve these problems. The history of regulation is, in this fact-free version of events, a tale of righteous crusaders winning victories for the public against grasping and selfish private interests who care nothing for the common good.
But let’s suppose that the federal government has in fact been an enemy of the people’s welfare, and that the progress in our living standards has occurred quite in spite of its efforts. It pits individuals, firms, industries, regions, races, and age groups against each other in a zero-sum game of mutual plunder. It takes credit for improvements in material conditions that we in fact owe to the private sector, while refusing to accept responsibility for the countless failures and social ills to which its own programs have given rise. Rather than bringing about the “public good,” whatever that means, it governs us through a series of fiefdoms seeking bigger budgets and more power. Despite the veneer of public-interest rhetoric by which it camouflages its real nature, it is a mere parasite on productive activity and a net minus in the story of human welfare.
Now if this is a more accurate depiction of the federal government, we are likely to have a different view of the consequences of the coming fiscal collapse. So an institution that has seized our wealth, held back the rise in our standard of living, and deceived schoolchildren into honoring it as the source of all progress, will have to be cut back? What’s the catch? This is no calamity to be deplored. It is an opportunity to be seized. The primary purpose of the book, therefore, is to demonstrate that we would not only survive but even flourish in the absence of countless institutions we are routinely told we could not live without.”
via Who’s Afraid of a Free Society? by Thomas E. Woods, Jr..
Buy the book through the Amazon link on the LRC page to benefit LRC of course :o)
The Thing In Wisconsin
Salaries and benefits in the public sector are unsustainable. This much is obvious. The states are broke, deep in debt, and standing on the edge of bonding oblivion.
The ruckus in Wisconsin is being spun by both sides – “Walker is saving the taxpayers from rapacious unions!” Walker is destroying working families!” The pundits on TV and radio are even worse.
Let’s be clear here. Scott Walker, Chris Christie, et al did not descend from heaven to defend the taxpayers against the evil unions. Their opponents (Tom Barrett and Jon Corzine) similarly did not descend from heaven to defend the rights of schoolchildren. All of these men ran on and in the event won on campaign contributions from substantial special interests.
To focus on two examples, Scott Walker received substantial backing by the Koch brothers, who run a gigantic, closely-held oil business, while his opponent, Tom Barrett also received large contributions from his own peculiar collection of special interests.
Last year, Christie and Corzine undoubtedly received cash from similar interests, Corzine being a former CEO of Goldman Sachs, and Christie being a state prosecutor. None of that money was contributed toward closing down New Jersey’s public schools. It would have been in no contributors interest to do so.
So let’s be clear here. What Scott Walker, Chris Christie and others are doing, however desirable from the standpoint of people who are forced to pay for it, is aimed primarily at the preservation of government for the purposes of government – the contracts and pelf that are stripped from the taxpayer. In other words, they are not doing it to benefit you, they are doing it primarily to keep the scheme alive.
I almost want to favor the unions sometimes, just so the implosion occurs quicker :o(