Out of the approximately 9,000 "earmarks" in the FY2009 Omnibus, one in particular, illustrates perfectly the true nature of this pork - a study to determine why pigs smell.
The government just continues to spend money they don't have, burdening generations of Americans yet born, with higher taxes than any American alive today ... can even imagine. If you don't yet grasp the serious nature of this endless, out-of-control spending, read what Herbert London, president of the Hudson Institute and professor emeritus of New York University has to say:
The national debt last year was 75% of GDP, higher than what it was in 1943. After the stimulus plan the ratio will be 84% and, if one were to anticipate the passage of Secretary Tim Geithner's Financial Stability Plan designed to stabilize bank problems, the U.S. ratio will be over 100%. The only time in our history that occurred was at the end of World War II, 1944 and 1945. At the moment, there are only five nations with debt to GDP ratios in excess of 100%: Zimbabwe, Lebanon, Japan, Jamaica and Italy.
But Washington Politicos could care less. They're more concerned about why pigs smell than they are about bankrupting America. They intend on blowing $1,791,000 of YOUR money proving my assertion correct!
As the fight with Rush Limbaugh illustrates perfectly, the Republican Party is inept and without a clue. They put more energy into an Obama contrived spat, than they bother putting into helping the people they represent.
You would think they'd eliminate their 40% of the 9,000 some earmarks, thereby laying all the pork at the Democrats feet. But then again ... the word "think" keeps getting in the way.
Daniel Henninger's terrific op-ed in last Thursdays Wall Street Journal, Has Obama Buried Reagan, points out he obvious - Republicans need to start talking about growth!
If the Democrats are willing to bet the entire U.S. economy on a 1931 theory known as the Keynesian multiplier, surely Republicans can excavate and relearn the core idea handed down to them by Ronald Reagan. That idea was known as economic growth.
Growth? C'mon now ... that's not "moderate" enough. How can we "transcend" party lines talking about growth? Get with the times ... spending is the new growth!
Arguably at no time in their lives have more Americans been this sharply focused on the economy. They think and talk about nothing else. The Republicans have been handed on a tarnished silver platter the chance to offer the American people an alternative vision of how their economy works -- and grows.
They should take political ownership of the 75% of the U.S. economy that the Democrats have abandoned -- the private economy.
But, but ... what will Katie Cutie say?
Beyond the stock market, there is a reason why, despite much goodwill toward his presidency, the Obama response to the faltering economy has left many feeling undone. There isn't much in his plan to stir the national soul. It's about "sacrifice" now so that we can live for a future of small electric cars and windmills. This may move the Democratic Party's faith communities, but it cannot revive a great nation. If the Democrats want to embrace market failure as a basis for their ideology, let them have it.
Oh, now, we can't say "failure" when talking about Democrats, especially Obama. Don't you know that's not nice? We don't want to ruffle any feathers, so maybe it's better if we just stick to "policy," and make sure those small electric cars are available in a variety of colors instead.
What Ronald Reagan knew and they don't is that what moves a nation is the vital, teeming life of the private economy -- work, ideas, innovation, the excitement of production, getting bigger. Growth.
The Republicans ... must rediscover a way to talk about the living world of the real economy. Their vocabulary now consists mainly of policy-wonk spinach -- "fiscal responsibility," "reduce the debt," and even "tax cuts." True but insufficient.
What Rush Limbaugh was trying to tell that conservative audience in so many words was, Don't be embarrassed. Don't be embarrassed about embracing the world of free markets, competition, entrepreneurship and profit.
The conservative movement is not at a loss for proven ideas, and in the U.S. the most powerful of these -- running in an upward line since the Industrial Revolution -- is the idea of private economic growth.
Anything less (read moderate) ... is a recipe for disaster!
Barry Goldwater, in the beginning of Chapter 1, The Conscience of a Conservative, wrote:
I have been much concerned that so many people today with Conservative instincts feel compelled to apologize for them. Of if not to apologize directly, to qualify their commitment in a way that amounts to breast-beating. "Republican candidates," Vice President Nixon has said, "should be economic conservatives, but conservatives with a heart." President Eisenhower announced during his first term, "I am conservative when it comes to economic problems, but liberal when it comes to human problems." Still other Republican leaders have insisted on calling themselves "progressive" Conservatives. These formulations are tantamount to an admission that Conservatism is a narrow, mechanistic economic theory that may work very well as a bookkeeper's guide, but cannot be relied upon as a comprehensive political philosophy.
The same judgment, though in the form of an attack rather than an admission, is advanced by the radical camp. "We liberals," they say, "are interested in people. Our concern is with human beings, while you Conservatives are preoccupied with the preservation of economic privilege and status." Take them a step further, and the Liberals will turn the accusations into a class argument: it is the little people that concern us, not the "malefactors of great wealth."
Such statements, from friend and foe alike, do great injustice to the Conservative point of view. Conservatism is not an economic theory, though it has economic implications. The shoe is precisely on the other foot: it is Socialism that subordinates all other considerations to man's material well-being. It is Conservatism that puts material things in their proper place - that has a structured view of the human being and of human society, in which economics plays only a subsidiary role.
Same as it ever was ... same as it ever was ... same as it ever was ...
Same as it ever was ... same as it ever was ... same as it ever was ...
Same as it ever was ... same as it ever was ...
[...] Classic Liberal has an excellent post about how this dust-up and why pigs smell are taking the focus off the out-of-control spending coming out of [...]