“May you live in interesting times.” That’s the old curse. And wow, are we doing just that. These aren’t just interesting times, they’re downright fascinating…and verging on grotesque.
I follow political and cultural trends. These days odd patterns are emerging…heading off the charts, in fact.
For instance, on April 21, 2010 Las Vegas casino zillionaire Steve Wynn sent the political class into a tizzy. He said something baaaad. “It’s just talk,” said a University of Nevada professor. “Symbolically it would…send a really bad message about Las Vegas.” The congresswoman from Las Vegas, a Democrat, called it “A devastating blow to southern Nevada and our economy.” The mayor of Las Vegas said he hopes Wynn “isn’t serious.” Nevada governor Jim Gibbons intends to “reach out” to Wynn, and Senator Harry Reid, the Senate majority liar—errr…leader—said “I’m not going to get into a dispute with Mr. Wynn…but I will say that taxes are at an all-time low.” (LOL! See? Grotesque!)
What exactly did this guy Wynn say? Not much, really. Just that he’s thinking about moving his corporate headquarters from Las Vegas to a more capitalist location, with more economic freedom and dynamism. That is, to Macau, a special administrative zone in China, where he just opened a $600 million expansion of one of his existing casinos.
As Wynn said in a Bloomberg News interview, “The governmental policies in the United States of America are a damper, a wet blanket….They retard investment; they retard job formation; they retard the creation of a better life for the citizens in spite of the rhetoric of the president.” Well gee, Steve, why don’t you tell us what you really think. He did: “The economic outlook in the United States, the policies of this administration, which do not favor job formation, do not encourage investment at all.”
So instead of “Viva Las Vegas,” it may be “Zai jian, Las Vegas” (Goodbye Las Vegas in Chinese)
But that’s not the bad part. The truly weird is that…the UNV professor can’t figure it out; the mayor of Las Vegas can’t figure it out; a member of Congress can’t figure it out; the governor of Nevada can’t figure it out; and the majority leader of the United States Senate can’t figure it out. Only Steve Wynn and everyone else in the…
…U.S. can. It’s, like, the only people who don’t understand are…the people in charge. Our wise political leaders in Washington!
Then there’s…Argentina. Argentina? Yeah, Argentina.
On the same day that Wynn said he’s thinking of moving to China to get more capitalism and economic freedom, big-gun economist Richard Rahn asked a question in the Washington Times: “Could the U.S. become Argentina?”
Oooh, yeah.
Rahn pointed out that in 1910 Argentina was one of the richest countries in the world. Today it’s 76 and dropping. So who cares? Well, there are these…uh…kinda parallels between Argentina then, and America now. Argentina does big-time trade protectionism. Guess what the Obama administration is talking up. Argentina has a VAT tax (and a “wealth tax”). Guess what the Obama people are pushing. Argentina destroyed its currency with inflation. Guess who’s pushing the Federal Reserve to explode our money supply? Argentina’s government owns banks, Argentina coddles unions, Argentina “has a long history of deficit spending.” Guess who’s pushing all of that, right now, in Washington D.C.
“The U.S. is not yet Argentina,” says Rahn, but if the Obama policies aren’t reversed “America will…become a middle-income country, while dozens of other countries will enjoy a higher standard of living.” And that can happen in as little as 30 years.
The response from our wise political leaders? Let’s accelerate the process! They know they’ll have theirs, and be long gone when the time comes to really pay the piper. “That will be their own problem then,” they say. The dumbasses.
Like I said, it’s veering into grotesque.
The day after Wynn’s announcement, and Rahn’s fulminations about the ongoing destruction of our economy, Daniel Henninger weighed in with a piece in The Wall Street Journal called “Democrats at the Edge of the Cliff.” Heh. He too noticed that the weirdness quotient is increasing everywhere. “Something unique happened in the first Obama year. The veil was ripped from the true cost of government. This is the ghastly nightmare Democrats have always needed to keep locked in a crypt. Before the Internet, that was easy. Washington, California, New York, New Jersey—who knew what the pols were spending? The Democrats (and their Republican pilot fish) could get away with this. Not now. Email lists, 24/7 newspapers, blogs, TV and talk radio—the spending beast is running naked.”
Now, I’m all for running naked, but not with a Spending Beast. But if this Beast is out in the open—kind of like Sasquatch without the fake gorilla outfit—how are the American people going to react? I mean, Naked Beasts are, like, major weird. And this one more than any. Well, according to a recent Pew poll, says Henninger, the people in this country aren’t reacting well at all. The mid-term elections are coming up, and it looks like they may be gunning for the Beast. Consider: In 1994 the favorability rating toward Congress was 53%. Toward the Democratic Party it was 62%. And there was no Naked Beast running around (the Dems still had it safely locked away in their creepy crypt).
In the mid-term election in 1994 the Democrats lost 50 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives. It was a blow-out.
Now compare the weirdness quotient today. The approval rating of the Democrat-controlled Congress is 25%. Approval of the Democratic Party is 38%. What’s going to happen in November?
I’ll tell you what: The Democrats are going to lose over 70 seats in the House of Representatives. Remember that you heard it here first. The Naked Beast is out, and he belongs to the Democrats.
Democrat spending-pigs, say xai jian! (And don’t smirk, GOP: Spending-pig Republicans are next.)
