Where Does Government Stop? -By The Reluctant Republican
According to the AP, the Obama Administration is seeking increased and unprecedented powers to seize control of banking “related” companies. Specifically, Tim “Turbo Tax” Geithner wants his Treasury department granted the new power. With the TARP program passed by the Bush administration and the “Stimulus” package passed by the Obama administration, the U.S. government now has equity stakes in an insurance company, two of the three American auto makers, and several other financial services companies. Where does the government expansion and intrusion stop? The market works when it is allowed to work. The more intervention by the government that we allow, the further off balance the market becomes and the more unstable it becomes in the long term. Plain and simple.
Poorly run companies must be allowed to fail so that better run companies can expand. This allows efficiencies to increase, quality to improve, availability to rise and prices to fall. Propping up inefficient entities rips off the tax payers twice at the same time; firstly by increasing the debt load of the country and the tax burden that they must bear and secondly by increasing the cost of goods by allowing inefficiencies in the market to persist.
More to the point though, WHY does ANYONE want the government in charge of ANYTHING more than what is absolutely required? When is the last time that you had an interaction of ANY kind with a government service of ANY kind and walked away thinking it was well run? Been to the DMV lately? Know anyone that has had to deal with social services? Turned on C-Span?
I am more convinced than ever now though that president Obama fully intends to force as much of our economy into the “public sector” and under government control as he possibly can. he recently proposed reducing the tax benefit for “wealthy” Americans who contribute to charities. I believe this serves two goals for him. Firstly, it increases (in theory) tax revenues by reducing write offs for an unpopular portion of the population and secondly it weakens “private” charitable organizations who provide overlapping services as the government. By weakening the private charities he will increase the need for and dependence on government services.
I’m sure some of you will call me crazy for that one. Nevertheless, if there is one thing I know about liberals, it is that they believe that in the end, the “proletariat” is best served by government calling as many of the shots as possible. I, and my fellow conservatives on the other hand, fall more in line with the great Ronald Reagan who famously said:
The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: “I’m from the government and I’m here to help.”
Conservatism Lives!
