Senator Gregg has decided not to join the Obama administration as U.S. Commerce Secretary after all, and policy differences over the stimulus bill appear to be one of the primary reasons for his change of heart. Sen. Gregg stated:
. . . I have found that on issues such as the stimulus package and the Census there are irresolvable conflicts for me. Prior to accepting this post, we had discussed these and other potential differences, but unfortunately we did not adequately focus on these concerns. We are functioning from a different set of views on many critical items of policy.
So now we have an interesting situation, with Senator Kennedy back in Florida, in which the trillion-dollar phony stimulus bill cannot pass without the vote of turncoat Republicans. Harry Reid is now back to trolling for more Republican votes.
Is there still a chance to stop this madness? For madness it is, as Candace de Russy writes at American Thinker:
With the bill's social consequences no doubt well in mind, the Heritage Foundation's Robert Rector scored the House versionof the bill as a "welfare spendathon," which could cost as much as $787 billion, not the $264 billion that advocates have claimed, and which would fund every conceivable program for low-income people, among others, food stamps, Medicaid, unemployment benefits, child care, energy assistance, homelessness prevention, etc."Both bills [Senate and House versions]," Rector warned, "use the idea of economic stimulus as a Trojan horse to conceal massive, permanent increases in the US welfare system." "None of these programs," he said, "deals with the fundamentals of poverty, which are low levels of work and lower levels of marriage. They just say, ‘Give me more.'". . . . In The Liberal Mind: The Psychological Causes of Political Madness, Rossiter makes the case that neurotic themes dominate radical liberals' view of the world and their political agendas. Their portrayal of citizens as suffering, victimized, helpless children in need of rescue mirrors their "unconscious projections of early childhood dynamics transferred into the political arenas of adult life." Thus -- and circling back to the "stimulus" spend fest -- radical liberals imagine the world peopled by villains (among others, those in Congress whom Obama angrily castigatedfor delaying passage of the bill), victims (such as those in need of the multi-millions of dollars designated, at least in the original versions of the bill, for "smoking cessation activities" and "tribal alcohol and substance abuse reduction"), and heroes (radical liberals themselves, of course). According to Rossiter, these liberals fabricate an idealized world of loving care and absolution from responsibility, and seek in an all-enveloping assistance (think billions of dollars for anti-obesity campaigns) from the "Modern Parental State" what they missed as children.\The destructive social results of such subservient government dependency -- the institution of perverse incentives, debilitated families, disintegrated communities, the preemption of private charitable and altruistic endeavors -- have been, again, acknowledged across the conservative-liberal spectrum.But Rossiter is especially astute in analyzing other aspects of the terrible price that radical liberals may exact from "the competent society." In its trampling of the values essential to ordered, civilized liberty, radical liberalism, among other madness:
- Devalues individual lives by treating citizens as fungible elements of economic, social or political classes;
- Curtails individual freedom of choice and action by substituting regulation and dependency for autonomy and freedom;
- Discourages and even precludes self-reliance and voluntary exchange in favor of government coercion;
- Violates property rights and indentures the citizen's labor;
- Institutionalizes, via its social justice programs, theft, and invites manipulation;
- Promotes hostility, vulgarity, rudeness and defiance as justified rebellion against imaginary oppression, discrimination and exploitation; . . . .
The extent to which the smothering "stimulus" legislation is a neurosis is a matter for debate. But that it will lead in the direction of collectivizing this nation and rendering subservient its free citizens is beyond doubt.
Let us stand warned, for, in Rossiter's words, "Any government with the power to mother its citizens also has the power to dominate them and steal from them."
One thing becomes glaringly obvious at a time like this, with Democrats controlling two branches of the federal government and operating without the usual moderating influences. Liberal Democrats are simply unprincipled when it comes to respect for private property. Their latest proposal is to retroactively nullify bonuses already paid to bank executives -- a populist proposal, but a shocking, barehanded act of communism if you give it two minutes of thought. Hugh at Wizbang writes:
Every private sector employee or self employed individual should take note of what the Democrats are writing into the still yet to be revealed stimulus bill ( BTW, where is the draft of that bill they promised to post on the net?).
Bankers get little sympathy in the crucible of populist debate, but if they are coming for the bankers now no one will be safe later. Democrats are drafting language in the current stimulus legislation that will allow the federal government to claw back bonuses paid to Wall Street bankers in the year 2008.
A claw back provision essentially empowers Congress to unwind and recover from recipients any bonuses paid in excess of $100,000 to employees of banks that received TARP funds in 2008....retroactively. That's right, Congress wants the power to unwind legal agreements between private sector parties after the fact. Let that sink in.
If Congress succeeds in usurping the legal standing between two private parties in what was an otherwise perfectly legal (and very commonplace) contract does anyone believe they will stop there? This legislation, if it passes, will represent the most stunning peace time power grab and set aside of individual rights and liberty since WW II.
Where next? How about a claw back on some of those outrageous union contracts that bankrupted Detroit? The Big Three have received TARP funds. Is Frank,Dodd & Co. go after Big Labor? Don't hold your breath.
An out of control policy of blatant class warfare benefits no party in a capitalist system but the Democrat Congress appears hell bent on testing that principle, oblivious to the fact that once this tiger is out of the cage it is impossible to put it back in.
So there is very little reason to have confidence in Democrat policy prescriptions affecting the economy. And as of late Thursday, Democrats in Congress still had not given Republicans a copy of the final stimulus bill, which was still slated for a vote Friday at 9 a.m. The bill was some 1,434 pages when last seen in its earlier form. Democrats apparently plan to break their promise to post the (mind-bogglingly convoluted and crushingly expensive) stimulus bill online for at least 48 hours before voting on it.
The bill is a train wreck, and it should not escape close scrutiny just because it is a mind-bogglingly huge, expensive train wreck. Nor do Obama and Congress deserve a pass because of a so-called "emergency" or even because Obama is still new to the presidency. The seriousness of America's economic situation cautions greater prudence and deliberation, not helter-skelter patchwork policy-making.
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