Politics, Government & Public Policy: September 2013 Archives
I like this formulation: just as "you are what you eat", government is what government spends. The government class is always in favor of higher taxes, more spending, and bigger government, in the same way that businessmen are in favor of higher share prices. We are what we spend. Emphasis below is mine.
And the debit side has to include much more than such obvious disasters as Solyndra. The government does support pharmaceutical and medical research in many ways -- but how many potentially useful pharmaceuticals and medical products have been kept off the market by the federal regulatory apparatus and the enormous costs it imposes on effective and defective products alike? (And how much damage has been done by the FDA's incompetent policing of defective products that do reach the market?) How many businesses have not been started, and how much innovation forgone, because of the state's rapacious appetite for capital? For a sense of scale, consider that, as of October 2011, the world's largest hedge-fund company was Bridgewater Associates of Westport, Conn., with $77.6 billion under management. That total is well less than Medicare loses to fraud year in and year out. You'd have to combine the assets of the three largest private-equity firms to match what Medicare loses to fraud in a typical year, whereas the holdings of venture-capital titans such as Andreessen Horowitz are hardly even rounding errors on that amount.Would you invest with a firm with that record?
Government is what government does, and what government does is what government spends. Our government is a corrupt HMO with an underfunded pension plan attached, and a few aircraft carriers in tow. Contra Professor Mazzucato, the confiscatory taxes the federal government wishes to impose upon Apple et al. are not being used to replenish any such "innovation fund" as may exist in her imagination, but to prop up the corrupt, wasteful, and destructive programs that make up the great majority of its spending. Federal support for basic science research is pretty low on the list of things that small-government conservatives are worried about, and George Will is not entirely misguided in his admiration for the National Institutes of Health. But the neo-Nehruvian dream of the state as main entrepreneur cannot intellectually survive even the most modest attempt to balance benefits against costs.
President Obama says that raising the debt limit doesn't increase our debt. He's right, in the same way that raising the limit on your personal credit card doesn't increase your personal debt. Raiding the debt limit is a necessary condition for increasing our national debt, but the debt only actually increases when we spend the money.
What the big spenders in government object to is that the debt limit debate is a second vote on spending that is divorced from the specifics of what the money is spent on. Our politicians like to bribe us with our own money by promising all sorts of great programs every time they write a check. When the debate is on the debt limit itself rather than on those "amazing" government programs they have a harder time convincing us.
"Now, this debt ceiling -- I just want to remind people in case you haven't been keeping up -- raising the debt ceiling, which has been done over a hundred times, does not increase our debt; it does not somehow promote profligacy. All it does is it says you got to pay the bills that you've already racked up, Congress. It's a basic function of making sure that the full faith and credit of the United States is preserved."Obama went on to suggest that "the average person" mistakenly thinks that raising the debt ceiling means the U.S. is racking up more debt:
"It's always a tough vote because the average person thinks raising the debt ceiling must mean that we're running up our debt, so people don't like to vote on it, and, typically, there's some gamesmanship in terms of making the President's party shoulder the burden of raising the -- taking the vote."
The President is right, and rather honest in admitting that he doesn't like the spotlight that the debt limit debates puts on our wasteful spending. Still, I think it's a useful function.
Syrian dictator Assad's brutal campaign of chemical warfare against the Syrian people demands a strong response from America and the rest of the civilized world. Too bad President Obama is incompetent and incapable of effectively wielding global leadership or American power.
Aside from ideological and political differences between myself and Obama, it's becoming increasingly obvious that the President is not able to perform the duties of his office in a credible, competent manner.
The president is a spent force, both domestically and internationally. Congress should help by voting to cut our losses; it should resist opening the door to the uncertain consequences of a military campaign conducted, without conviction or clear purpose, by this commander in chief. If Republicans can limit the president's authority to wander and blunder on the world stage, there is a moral obligation to do so.Of course Syria should be viciously punished for using chemical weapons, but who trusts this president to do so in such a way that also sends a clear message to Iran? No one does. Why would they? Better to leave Iran with a modicum of doubt than let them witness any more of the tepid uncertainty, lack of conviction or absence of moral clarity from President Obama.
The only thing worse than no response from America is a floundering response, so Congress should stop it while they can. We don't need to go through the half-hearted lobbying effort in Congress, which will just underscore the incompetence and incapabilities of this administration. Republicans should vote to end this disaster now. A vote of no confidence is in order.
