Careful Which Hand You Bite

The anointed are having a great time witnessing the explosive energy as Tea Party folk cross country begin something new. To the media, faculty lounge types, tenured elites, it’s entertainment. To our lefty friends who are small business owners, it had better be something more than that.

Our nursery pals for example (the poor guys, they provide a default, and we beat them up almost daily) better leave the derision to the postal workers; they’ve got something on the line; criticizing this movement is the equivalent of bitting the hand that is about to feed them.

Obama is obviously bad news for the economy. His statist agenda won’t cut it. There is no need to explain, or elaborate; we already have. Tea Party types want to do away will all that BO has placed in front of a meaningful recovery - tax & nationalized energy scheme, the health heist, the stimulus tragedy, GM bailout, the risk of much higher taxes, corp and individual, the threat of even more gov’t control of even more segments of this economy. With this dread ahead, no one will hire.

We have known that the Nov elections held some promise for the economy. With recent results providing a propellant to free market ideals, the elections may provide more than promise, maybe an explosion. From Larry Kudlow’s column today quoting a recent WSJ piece, “Raul Labrador, the tea-party-backed House candidate from Idaho, says he opposes all government programs that help one segment of business over another. ‘I’m against all of them,’ he tells the Journal. ‘I don’t think the government should be picking winners and losers. We should have taxes low for everybody, and not just for a particular industry or segment.’”

Now this is about as close to a reincarnation of F.A.Hayek as we’ll get, for it is not only about prosperity, but the gov’t “picking winners and losers,” as Labrador puts it is a direct road to serfdom.

Let's return to Mar/4/1925 and the first US presidential inaugural to be broadcast. Cal Coolidge had this to say that day; working Americans may find some application: “I want the people of America to be able to work less for the government and more for themselves. I want them to have the rewards of their own industry. That is the chief meaning of freedom. Until we can re-establish a condition under which the earning of the people can be kept by the people, we are bound to suffer a very distinct curtailment of our liberty.”

Through BO the chatterers found for the first time in their lives that notions discussed in the abstract are just plain no fun when experienced in the concrete.

The Tea Party may provide an out for these poor souls.

Robert Craven