Bailout Mania

Makin’ offers nobody can refuse…

Isn’t life in Barack Obama’s America grand? Just when we all thought everyone was going to get whacked by a new recession, bringing with it economic distress the likes of which has been unseen since the depths of the Great Depression, along comes the Magic Obama to make it all better. Or, to be more specific, the Federal Government, LED by President Obama, sprinkling gobs of “free money” on the hapless masses hungrily lapping it up in much the same fashion as some newborn babe on the teat…

Like your typical mindless network TV drama, the “Obama Show” opens with some perceived “trouble” on the horizon, followed by a brief interlude of turmoil, only to end happily ever after. Is this not what appears to be happening here in the real world? Not all that long ago, weren’t we told of coming dire straits? Since that time—coincidentally, just prior to the presidential election—has the government, along with its media cheerleaders, not put forth a frenzy of actions and statements in a concerted effort to lead the American people to believe that they are attacking this problem with great vigor? And, aren’t we now being told that things are looking up, that the worst is passed? Is this how it was back in the REAL Great Depression? Gloom. Then doom. Suddenly, all’s well-problem solved? Does it matter? Shouldn’t everybody just cheer for our savior as he steps in and saves the day? Is life imitating art? The school children sing songs of delight:

“Hello Mr. President, We honor you today… For all your great accomplishments, we all do say hooray… Hooray, Mr. President you are No. 1…” 

Ah yes—There is NOTHING so joyful as that sound of gleeful children. Happy days are here again! 

Or are they? Could it be that as the party rages on, trouble knocks on the door, unbeknownst to the revelers? Early in August, the Washington Post reported that

“As states across the country grapple with the worst economy in decades, most have cut services, forced workers to take unpaid days off, shut offices several days a month and scrambled to find new sources of revenue.”

Of course, we all know that New Hampshire, for all the bad news, has suffered little of these sorts of measures up to this point, with question of possible state employee furloughs or layoffs only recently coming to the fore.

The Post story continued, telling of what sounds to be a somewhat familiar circumstance:

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This is my weekly column for the Laconia Daily Sun published in today’s paper (pdf here, pg.4). More details regarding the issues mentioned involving the JAG grant can be found here, here here here here here and here. "All politics" is local.

Exercising the First

by Doug Lambert
Feeding the Beast

As I dig deeper and deeper into the affairs of supposed “self government” and the rule of law, and try to work– as any good citizen would– to right apparent wrongs, I know that there are some out there who see these matters of no great importance, calling serious activism “frivolous” and involving trivial points of “process.” I offer no apologies to those reading who choose not to care about such things. It is unfortunate that this attitude exists, because, like it or not, government, and thus politics, permeates into practically every facet of our lives. One cannot help BUT get involved… unless you remain unconcerned about the consequences of an all-powerful, omnipresent force unanswerable and unaccountable to the individual citizen, who will cease to exist.

Long gone are the days of the nation Alexis De Tocqueville described in his classic Democracy in America:

“Nothing is more striking to a European traveler in the United States, than the absence of what we term the Government, or the Administration.”

In that America, powers were split up and down, keeping it close to the people. The famed Frenchman noted that a

“manner of diminishing the influences of authority does not consist in stripping society of some of its rights” but instead “in distributing the exercise of its powers among various hands, and in multiplying functionaries, to each of whom is given the degree of power necessary for him to perform his duty.”

Coming back to the present you cannot say there is an absence of government. And while there are many entwined bureaucracies and insulated administrative structures that have become more Byzantine than one could ever imagine, you could make a case that they have become entities existing mostly for their own sake, with those at the upper end actually pulling all the strings. How are they able to manage this? It’s simple, really: money.

There is nothing more corrosive to the present body politic here in our time than the corrupting influence of so-called “federal” dollars. Those at the local level are eager to lap it up and redistribute it, partaking in its warm afterglow and the attendant helpful political advantages, while giving up the powers they have been delegated by the people in exchange. Witness the seatbelt law. For a few measly millions of dollars, many of our elected “representatives” were willing to sell one of our state’s basic freedoms that was an important–albeit minor–example of the right of an individual to make a choice.

Combine this eagerness to sell our liberties down the river with a refusal to defend or even exercise delegated powers, and we end up with taxation and representation with no real representation. One day we’ll all wake up broke, or worse, bound in the chains of tyranny. I know that this sounds like an old-fashioned, quaint way of thinking, but it contemplates an outcome that when we experience it firsthand, will not be pleasant, and it will be too late to stop. These are the things the Founders knew, and attempted to warn and defend against.

Tuesday evening, despite the fact that two concerned county residents begged the Belknap County Convention to delay or say no altogether to a proposed federal law enforcement grant—one that is the object of a lawsuit due to questions of who has authority to bind or commit the taxpayers to certain expenditures and whether state laws requiring proper public transparency and oversight were adhered to– that body (comprised of the 18 elected House members of the county) demonstrated an obvious inability to refuse “free” money. Money that partially funds, in this case, a shadowy law enforcement team utilizing an operational and organizational model that some would describe as “paramilitary.”

 

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