Wrong Politically..Wrong for America

Everyone must see Milton Friedman in this two minute clip. http://pajamasmedia.com/instapundit/69117/

You have to feel sorry for Tom Daschle. He paid $134,000 in back taxes he never would have paid were it not for his job application, and he still wasn't hired. Oh well..he already made 5 million dollars since getting voted out of congress by using all that acute business expertise he developed while championing socialism.

The so called stimulus package is sailing through congress with the support of two imbecilic senators from Maine and Senator Specter from Pennsylvania (a RINO-Republican In Name Only). Senator Specter's ship never had a flag flying, but what he's doing here is almost as bad as when he helped stop the Robert Bork nomination to the supreme court. I predict that a conservative challenger for the nomination will unseat him in the 2010 primary.

It was interesting to hear John McCain complain about the defections in that he did exactly the same thing, repeatedly, on a whole series of issues- global warming, campaign finance reform, tax cuts, drilling offshore, drilling at Anwar etc. Those defections, often with his being the only Republican, allowed the congressional Democrats (and the press Democrats) to claim bipartisan support.

The Republicans have ceded an astounding amount of territory on this so called stimulus package, and it will come back to haunt them. They talk as if the "correct" stimulus would help the economic crisis, and that all we really need to do is change the bill. Instead they should argue against any stimulus other than tax cuts. Spending of any kind won't help us with the economic crisis, but what the Democrats are passing doesn't even qualify as spending under their definition. The bill is no more than a socialist wish list, brought to us under the false banner of a stimulus to save an economic meltdown. Infrastructure etc. is about 10%, whereas pork and entitlement expansion is 90%. Nothing the Republicans can do will deter them, but they should still go on the record opposing all of the spending. Sure, some infrastructure spending might be OK, but expanding government in a permanent way, which this bill is guaranteed to do, will certainly do permanent damage.

Instead of arguing for changes in the bill, the Republicans should be challenging the Democrats to point to one instance where, anywhere in the world, such a policy has worked. It certainly has been tried. Roosevelt tried and failed. We came out of the depression well after he unleashed his massive spending, and that was because of saner monetary policies and the second world war. Even his Treasury Secretary, Henry Morgenthau, said that we tried stimulus and it didn't work. In the 1990s Japan used massive spending trying to stimulate their economy and failed. Their government debt ballooned from 45% of GDP (gross domestic product) to 170% of GDP. In doing so they created an unmanageable bureaucracy and their economy has stagnated ever since.

Tax cuts would help, and Obama is claming the Democratic bill includes tax cuts. He even has the nerve to claim 42% of the bill is tax cuts. No no! Calling a pig a beauty queen will not win any blue ribbons. Here, Obama is renaming welfare payments as tax cuts. He did the same thing during the campaign and the press ignored it. 45% of Americans pay no taxes, even though he promised to cut taxes on "95%" of Americans. What the stimulus bill does is give more money to that 45% who don't pay taxes. They may call it tax cuts, but it sure sounds like welfare to me. The press has concealed this and I expect it, they will lie cheat and steal to support Obama. But why the Republicans are not pointing it out, letting him get away with it, boggles the mind.