American Aristocracy

they got together and appropriated an obscene amount of capital and gave it to their buddies – the banks and big business. The “bailout” money sold as relief for “the people” was instantly used to pay off bank debt and acquire assets from their weaker competitors. In other words, they used the “bailout” money to strengthen their own financial positions!

 What happened to the ‘benefits’ for working Americans? How much of the “bailout” money reached you? Have you noticed an increased availability of credit? Has it been easier for you to obtain financing? Has your personal financial situation been impacted positively in any way as a result of the “bailouts”? Probably not, but the big campaign contributors got theirs. After all, our feckless politicians had to save their friends in order to be able to keep filling their campaign coffers for the next election.

 After the “bailouts” failed we began to hear about the “Stimulus Package”. We were told if it didn’t pass our future was in danger, the economy would go down in flames without it – It was our only hope (again). The problem was the ‘devil was in the details’. The first “stimulus” attempt died when the details of the Legislative “pork” (selected spending that taxes us all, but benefits only the constituents of specific Legislators) became public knowledge. In our time of economic crisis your intrepid leaders had blatantly taken advantage by rushing to stuff the bill with spending calculated to make them selves look good to the voters in their individual districts. It had been done on such a scale that it had to be scrapped and a new version pitched.

Now we have been presented a new “Stimulus” package as a way to put Americans back to work. We have been sold another pile of rubbish claiming the Government is going to “Create jobs”.  No ‘biggie’. Apparently it does not seem to matter that the Government cannot create jobs – especially by taxing working citizens. In fact, what was actually in the “Stimulus Package” (1075 pages) was irrelevant to our political aristocracy. The finished bill was posted at 11 pm the evening prior to the vote. In other words – Nobody in the Senate or the House had time to read it before the vote, but they passed it anyway! Although both parties purported to represent the ‘people’, the passing of this bill was not for us – it was for their own political expediency. They didn’t even seem to care what was in it. They just wanted the cash.

 Even after passing the new Stimulus Package nobody seems overly optimistic. The stock market responded by taking a dive. Even Vice President Joe Biden only gives it a seventy per cent chance of working. The truth is most financial professionals have low expectations for its success. Now the money is gone and we have to pay it back, but where did it go? Who did it help? How did it impact your life?

 I like the way Walter Williams, the John M. Olin Distinguished Professor of Economics at George Mason University, put it: 

 “In stimulus package language, if Congress taxes to hand out money, one person is stimulated at the expense of another, who pays the tax, who is unstimulated. A visual representation of the stimulus package is: Imagine you see a person at work taking buckets of water from the deep end of a swimming pool and dumping them into the shallow end in an attempt to make it deeper. You would deem him stupid. That scenario is equivalent to what Congress and the new President proposes for the economy”.

 Their newest scam is the “Omnibus” bill as another ‘stimulus’ attempt. This time they aren’t even trying to hide the pork. This time they are defending it as their Congressional prerogative. Chuck “Money” Schumer even had the gall to defend this practice by saying Americans don’t really care about the pork! Your political representatives are so detached from the reality of your life that they call press conferences to tell you how they are going to stick it to you.

 Unfortunately, robbing Peter to pay Paul, encumbering future generations with huge debts, borrowing away our Social Security and living high on our tax dollars have become institutionalized among our political elite. Isn’t it ironic that although they seem pathologically impotent to solve the problems facing their constituents, they always seem to be able to take care of themselves and their friends?

 Fortunately, American politicians have not always behaved this way (at least on this scale). The Founding Fathers all had real jobs. They actually worked for a living. They went to Washington, served their terms and then went back home to their real jobs and let someone else serve. That is how our government is supposed to work – “of the people, by the people, for the people” – real working Americans taking time out of their busy lives to act as public servants. There was never any

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6