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We're From the Government, and We're Here to Help

Posted: 21 Jul 2009 07:31 PM PDT

The best argument against any new government program, is
government itself. Were the United States government a corporation, its
business model would make Enron, Countrywide and Bernard Madoff look like
models of rock solid corporate responsibility. The kind of corporation
that goes trillions of dollars into debt, buys wrenches at a thousand
dollars a pop and spends much of its budget on kickbacks for the friends
of its boards members.

If at the height of the New Deal, liberals were full of
optimism about what the powers of an expanded Federal government could
accomplish, few liberals today can argue with a straight face that the
Federal government is either competent, efficient or even any better at
managing money than your average unemployed drunken brother in law. The
old rhetoric of the New Deal is there, its proponents have simply learned
to completely detach it from the reality that government is doomed to be
incompetent and ineffective, compared to private citizens.

The
current push for nationalized health care or ObamaCare, ignores the fact
that the government has badly mismanaged much smaller health care systems,
including the VA system and the Indian Health Service, both of which
liberals had been busy denouncing until not too long ago. Meanwhile
Medicaid costs have already been rising out of control with states and the
Federal government trying to pass the bill back and forth to each other. A
problem that is already popping up with ObamaCare as Governors from both
parties condemn any attempt by Congress to create unfunded mandates for
the states to fill.

The conflict between the states and the Federal
government reached a new ugly low, when the Justice Department charged New
York State with "knowingly submitting false claims for reimbursement"
forcing a half a billion dollar payout by the state to the Feds. It's not
quite up there with the shot fired at Fort Sumter, but with some states
like California already on the verge of bankruptcy, ObamaCare may well be
the final flood that sinks it all, overburdening already tightly stretched
state budgets and dumping an impossible system on state governments no
longer able to cope with it.

After Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac
helped bring down the housing market, instead of making it more
affordable; Welfare created dependency and despondency; and even something
as relatively simple as the digital transition that had been preplanned
for over a decade, resulted in a snafu and a six month extension-- why
would anyone assume that the government is our best choice for handling
anything?

The grand socialist experiments elsewhere have not
brought utopia, instead in poor countries they have brought warlordism,
misery and corruption, and among the rich nations, decline, indolence,
shortages, industrial collapse and the erosion of freedom. We have already
been on the latter path for some time now. The more government has grown
in size, the more American industry has withered, manufacturing has
dissipated, small farms have collapsed and small businesses have
struggled, unable to simply leave the country, the way their larger
competitors have done.

Wal-Mart is not America's largest employer,
that would be the Federal government, which has nearly twice as many
employees as Wal-Mart does. The difference of course is that you aren't
forced to pay the salaries of Wal-Mart employees, because Wal-Mart turns a
profit. The Federal government turns a deficit, and does so with glorious
abandon. That is because the Federal government can't go bankrupt so long
as it can continue borrowing money from China against its key collateral,
that being the United States, namely you.

When was the last time a corporation borrowed against its
employees as collateral? That sort of thing was illegal in America since
the end of slavery. But every American citizen is a de facto investor in
the United States and responsible for its debts. While Obama can count on
a golden parachute ride of speaking commitments and jeans commercials, the
average American citizen will be left holding the bag for debts totaling
in the trillions. Debts that would require drastic cuts in programs that
the public has become dependent on.

Imagine a gambler in a casino
who has racked up a fortune in debt he can never possibly repay. So he
borrows some more. What difference does it make when you can't possibly
pay back what you've already taken? Except the gambler still has a shot at
winning something with another roll of the dice. But when the Federal
government spends money, every throw comes up snake eyes.

The big
draw of the expanding Federal government is more and more services, but
how can the government help anyone, when it can't even help itself?