Hope? Try Dispair

I am fortunate enough to have a libertarian newspaper in my town. This is the lastest op ed from our regional editor, Phil Lucas. I love reading his pieces...i hope he doesn't mind that I share it on my blog. ...musology

Hope? Try Dispair...Phil Lucas

We have done it. A nation of morons has finally elected a president of equal ability. A Zogby survey showed 57 percent of voters for Obama could not say which party controlled Congress. The other 43 percent just made a lucky guess.

I voted for Chuck Baldwin, Constitution Party, who suffered the handicap of belonging to a party that had heard of the Constitution and perhaps read it, too. He got three votes in my county, so I represented a third of his support. If he is ever elected, this clout should land me the job as chairman of the Federal Reserve, at which time I will do my patriotic duty and torch it.

The Yes We Can president will not burn the boys. He extracted his new Treasury secretary from the bowels of the New York Fed. Incest being what it is, his chief economic adviser came from Treasury, having headed that gang in the Clinton regime, which blew up the dot com stock market bubble and laid the foundation of the housing bust.

That Fed and Treasury make a living plundering taxpayers for their friends. The first $125 billion of the Wall Street bailout went to buy preferred stock in Federal Reserve member banks so they can pay themselves bonuses. Banks' bonuses will consume better than 85 percent of that $125 billion.

The President for Change is packing his administration with Wall Street insiders and Clinton retreads. Everything they touch turns to ruin, but he says they offer "sound judgment and fresh thinking." Hahaha. You can't make this stuff up. What a fine job we have done. A reader sent this last week: "Americans got tired of the rest of the world thinking they were dumb, so they went to the polls and removed all doubt."

Time magazine had a cover with Obama in an FDR pose. Perfect. Obama admires Abe Lincoln. So, we have the man himself admiring the worst president in the nation's history and Time has him posing as the second worst. Neck and neck, going for third, are LBJ and George Bush, but Obama, in economic ignorance, is closing fast. He says he will create jobs. That requires money.

Government has two ways to get money. First, take it from the people in taxes. Second, counterfeit loot on the federale printing press. As for the first, taxing one citizen $1,000 to give to another creates nothing. By spending or investing, the plundered citizen could have created as many jobs with his money as the party who stole it. Further, after lobbyists, politicians and bureaucrats take their cut, $1,000 shrinks to $350, meaning the beneficiary of the theft has less money to create jobs than the taxpayer who earned it. Taxation destroys jobs.

As for the second, monetary expansion via the printing press, this debases dollars in circulation, causing prices to rise. Purposeful attacks on the dollar's value is theft of the effort it takes to acquire them. Further, rising prices hurt us all, especially the poor. Inflation forces us to spend disproportionately on necessities, instead of on new cars or homes. Monetary inflation destroys buying power and the jobs that went with it.

The Man of Hope will continue funneling money into the wasteland of failed enterprises, rewarding failure and punishing success. Banks and businesses that did not loan or invest foolishly will pay those that did otherwise. Solid citizens who meet their obligations will be bled for the reckless and ignorant. Hope? Hardly. Try dispair, as producers, the backbone of the nation, are broken.

Obama is right. We can do better. He might start with himself.