Thursday, March 19, 2009

Fanning the populist flames


Hopefully anyone who is paying any attention at all can see right through the hypocrisy spewing forth from Washington over AIG. The single most fiscally irresponsible bunch of people in America (aka the United States Congress) being outraged over a couple hundred million in bonuses? Ridiculous. The overheated rhetoric is mostly from Democrats but more than a few Republicans (apparently intent on destroying the Grand Old Party once and for all) have joined the fray. Republican Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa, only half in jest, suggested ritualistic suicide for AIG executives. That is responsible rhetoric and leadership from a United States Senator!

Now amidst the revelations of AIG bonuses, it turns out that Senator Christopher Dodd, champion of the people (never you mind that he got a sweet deal from now defunct Countrywide mortgage. No bias here!) suddenly remembers that he DID stick language in the bailout bill that exempted these very bonuses, a provision that in that fine Washington tradition he forget about and only “remembered” when he got called on it. These are the people safeguarding our financial system. A tax cheat as Treasury Secretary. A Senate banking Committee chairman writing loopholes in bailout deals and getting “favorable” mortgages from mortgage companies he is regulating. The House Ways and Means committee chairman who oversees tax policy neglecting to pay taxes on his vacation home. What is that old saying about the fox in the hen house?

The liberals might just find that in whipping up the flames of populist fury they may have started out with a controlled burn and ended up with a wildfire. The problem with wildfires of course is that you can’t control them and often what gets burned is not what you intended. Populist fury can be a useful tool for politicians, but it can get out of hand in a hurry. Just ask the French aristocracy.

Evan Newmark of the Wall Street Journal made this astute comment:

But the Washington populists ought to tread carefully. It’s one thing to stir up the mob, it’s another to control it. Eventually, the public will tire of the old outrages and look for new ones. And suddenly some of the things down in Washington will start to look pretty outrageous, too.

As I mentioned before, at some point when people start to settle down from this media induced panic about the financial crisis and start to look around, they might just realize that they were sold a bill of goods and saddled with a ton of debt during this whole debacle. The last few months may have been some of the most damaging to our long-term economic stability we have seen in a long time. When that time comes and the Congress runs out of fall guys to demagogue, all eyes will turn to Capitol Hill and maybe Americans will remember the freedoms this country was founded on and that have slowly been eroded by our public “servants” over the last century. When that day comes, there may be a lot of lifelong politicians who find themselves needing real jobs. That may be a false hope because I am not sure how many people actually know what freedoms this country was founded on in the first place. Decades of “education reform” have led to an ignorant population that thinks America was founded on repression and racism, not on freedom and liberty. An ignorant population is the bane of a free society.

God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion. The people cannot be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented, in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions, it is lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. ... What country before ever existed a century and half without a rebellion? And what country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure. Thomas Jefferson, Nov 13, 1787

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