Daily Archives: 29 September 2011

The Blessings of Government

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Candidate for Senate from Massachusetts, and late of the Consumer Financial Protection BureauAssistant to the President and Special Advisor to Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner, Elizabeth Warren, recently had this to say about our need for big government:

There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody. You built a factory out there—good for you. But I want to be clear. You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for….  You built a factory and it turned into something terrific or a great idea—God bless, keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay it forward for the next kid who comes along.

There are some thoughts on this statement.  I paid for those roads, too, not just “the rest of you.”  And that’s a legitimate tax: fostering the free exchange of goods, as well as fostering their easy production, by free citizens is part of the government’s job: under our social contract—the one actually in existence via our Declaration of Independence and our Constitution—the government’s sole job is to protect those individual liberties.  And nothing more.

On the other hand, “the rest of you” didn’t pay for the education of the workers I hired.  My fellow members of my local community and I paid for that education.  As did, individually, all the local communities surrounding all the other factories pay for the education of those factories’ workers.  Your Federal government had little to do with that, Arne Duncan and his Office for Civil Rights’ “Dear Colleague” letter’s attack on the rights of our students notwithstanding.

Further, “the rest of you” didn’t pay for the police and fire protections of my workers—again, the local community around my factory did, and does, that.  “The rest of you,” and I, do pay for the federal police function that keeps our borders secure, and our citizens along the border area safe.  We’re well aware of how that’s working out.

And if my workers and I were able to keep more of our money, instead of having it confiscated by an overreaching government for current spending (note that: not “paying it forward for the next kid”), I’d be able to improve my factory, develop better products, and hire even more workers (educated by local communities, not “the rest of you,” and kept safe by locally funded and manned police forces, not paid forces for by “the rest of you”).  On top of that, if my workers and I were able to keep more of our money, we would be able to put “a hunk of that” by to “pay forward” to our own kids.  But your kind of government won’t even let us do that.  You’re going to increase the death taxes you seize to 55%—at direct cost to those kids.

Progressives and Democracy

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The ProgressivesDemocrats have long insisted that they Know Better than mere Americans, and so we should just sit down, shut up, and follow their guidance.  “Throughout the nation men and women, forgotten in the political philosophy of the Government, look to us here for guidance,” said Franklin Roosevelt in his 1932 nomination acceptance speech.  “I think at a certain point, you’ve made enough money,” said Candidate Obama.  Even your estate is better off in the hands of the government—and furthermore, as ex-Congressman Anthony Weiner insists, we shouldn’t even care: “You’ll be dead,” he insisted in a national television interview.

We have, now a governor, Bev Perdue (Dem, NC), saying with a straight face,

I think we ought to suspend, perhaps, elections for Congress for two years and just tell them we won’t hold it against them, whatever decisions they make, to just let them help this country recover. I really hope that someone can agree with me on that….  You want people who don’t worry about the next election.

Of course her aides quickly spoke up and said this was just a joke, just hyperbole to make a point.  And perhaps she was only making a point, but what point?

Here’s the larger backdrop in which the Progressives (dang—I keep confusing them) Democrats are operating and against which Gov. Perdue’s statement was made.  The Democrats in the Wisconsin and Indiana State Houses both openly attacked our democratic foundation by going AWOL in mid-session, preventing their respective State governments from doing the job they’d been elected to do—from functioning at all—on the premise that if they couldn’t have their way, the good citizens of these States couldn’t have democracy.  A critical part of Obamacare is the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB)—the death panel—consisting of “experts” who will dictate cuts to Medicare payments to doctors and hospitals, rationing health care in accordance with their own criteria, not the doctor’s or hospital’s decisions in conjunction with the patient in question.  These Democrats’ death panels are almost without oversight: the panel’s decisions must be positively overruled by Congress, our representatives, rather than be positively accepted.  The Obama Congress created an entity known as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau which is totally outside the oversight of Congress, getting its funding from Treasury essentially on demand.  This unaccountable entity has powers to dictate to banks, and to the mom and pop grocery store, the terms under which, for instance, they might offer credit to a customer.  The Democrats in the present United States Senate threatened us all with a Federal government shutdown and proximately with denial of funds to FEMA so thousands of Americans suffering ongoing emergencies from natural disasters like Hurricane Irene and flooding along the Mississippi River would go unaided solely because these Democrats weren’t going to be allowed to continue their profligate spending to which they’re so addicted.  The list goes on, but the backdrop for Gov. Perdue’s “suggestion” is plain.

Perdue’s rationale for this?  It’s in her statement:  “…tell them we won’t hold it against them….  You want people who don’t worry about the next election.”  Umm, Governor, that’s sort of the point of democracy, including—especially—the republican democracy that we have.  These folks work for us; we’re not hanging around just to give them something to do.  They do need to be worrying about the next election; they do need to be worrying about their jobs.  We sent them to Washington (and your constituents sent their representatives—and you—to the NC state house) with specific instructions.  If they don’t, or won’t, do what we told them to do, they need to get gone at the next election.  But a Progressive (dang!) governor doesn’t seem to get this.

Just whose side are these…Democrats…on?  Besides their own?

Update: Here’s Gov Perdue in all her glory, courtesy of The Daily Caller via PowerLine: Gov Perdue  You decide whether she was joking, or hyperbolizing….