Fleeced

Worried about your kids’ welfare, given Obama’s health plans? Relax. No need. Forget the little darlings. BO’s not waiting for your kids.

The health heist is at center stage. This monster will 1) protect trial lawyers, the left’s bankers, 2) raise you health bills and 3) cost your kids plenty. Oh, we forgot; and then finally lead to rationing. But heck, you don’t need to wait for your kids to get screwed. You can enjoy it too.

You’re being fleeced right now. That would be the stimulus fraud and the taxes necessary to pay for it.

Many of us with a background in economics know by instinct that gov’t spending programs do not create economic activity on net. Others have gone a step further to document this reality. Scholars at UCLA have shown that the New Deal created nothing - a wash. Now Robert Barro, a prof of economics at Harvard and a fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institute brings us forward. "Viewed over five years, the stimulus package is a way to get an extra $600 billion of public spending at the cost of $900 billion in private expenditure. This is a bad deal." Oh, that.

For the curious, here is the article http://www.hoover.org/pubaffairs/dailyreport/archive/85033172.html.

An economist or two (exactly two) support this government interference. Paul Krugman is one. Krugman ignores economic history at his followers' peril. The Japanese government tried this foolishness in the 1990's. Didn’t go too well did it Paul? Unless of course you call nearly two decades of economic stagnation a success.

The other would be Robert Frank (rhymes with crank, no just kidding), a Cornell University econ professor and (surprise!) also a columnist for the NYT’s. Here is what he had to say about those of us who opposed the so-called stimulus package: "The fact that stimulus opponents are far less numerous, have less distinguished academic credentials, on average, and are far less ideologically diverse than their counterparts does not guarantee they're wrong. But these factors should make rational consumers and investors less likely to side with them. And since this is really an argument about expectations, that's probably enough." My, my Bob but you’re special.

The reality that 5 Nobel laureates have joined us in declaring stimulus to be nonsense is merely an inconvenience for Bob. (Heck, I don’t need that stinking medal!) The fact is that every time "rational consumers" listen to the likes of Bob they shed the rational part. Bob and his kind never saw a tax or levy or program they didn’t like; they never saw an arm of government that wasn’t soft and furry; they never saw a job that wasn’t secure and privileged. Bob and the rest of the sophisticate elite see the real world - how the unwashed are led, fooled and mesmerized - as their flock, in need of constant herding.

Well, know what? Most of the left understand, at least those in Congress. They know that a dollar spent on a new lawnmower at the hardware store does not generate a single vote but a dollar spent on a new job mowing grass along an interstate highway certainly does.

And unlike most of their flock, they are posted in American history. They read. They’re twisted sure but not stupid. They knew what they were up to - 100%. But in the case of stimulus they also knew that if the masses didn’t do their homework (and economics puts most everyone to sleep) they could slip this one by. This is why this legislation is more than a tragedy; it is an act of deceit.

Robert Craven