George Rebane

When RR suggested that the American Rehabilitation and Recovery Act of 2009 was a misnomer, and it really stood for the American Redistribution and Re-election Act, many liberal readers took their usual exception to this as just another unfounded libertarian screed.  Now the state legislatures that accepted ARRA monies (California among them) are beginning to realize into which end their stimulus was really inserted.

As predicted, it turns out that states accepting ARRA dollars in 2009-11 will find themselves with monies to fund the start or maintenance of multiple spending programs with no provision to continue their funding in out years.  The states with outstretched hands will have to pony up from their own coffers after the monies from the first federal checks run out.  The idiots in state capitols across the land could not think beyond ‘year one’ and realize that the stimulus is a one-off affair.  These guys definitely could not manage a family’s grocery budget, but instead are in charge of their states’ economies.

A similar fate awaits all those market-ignorant ‘green jobs’ that will be launched with short-lived mandated funds.

Meanwhile, the House/Senate conference committee, now secretly strapping together Obamacare, is in similar straits if we look at what was in the separate bills they have to work with.  For example the prescription drug benefits mish-mash will create changes that will cost individual taxpayers more AND in the process lower the government’s revenues intended to help defray the costs of Obamacare.  These idiots (someone find me a better word, please) continue to do this sort of thing in whichever direction they turn their sordid talents – make it cost more, and then deliver less (for example here).

Concurrently, we taxpayers are being fed the same lame line that increasing taxes on big business will provide some sort of ‘fiscal justice’ in the land.  This kind of chicanery remains a workable ruse as long as the overwhelming fraction of voters continue to believe that corporations, instead of their customers, actually pay taxes.  Our state-run schools have welded that notion into the noggins of the sheeple.

Business as usual dictates that every plan and practice from a politician is designed only to keep her sorry butt in office through the next election.  And regiments of unionized government employees work hand-in-glove here, counting on the threat of major public services disruptions to keep the taxpayers docile and compliant.  Since it is working, maybe it is we who are the idiots.

More here and here.