I’ve changed my mind

BAILOUT ISN'T WORTH IT

I’ve changed my mind. After about three days of wide-eyed faith in the smart boys in Washington, this deal is starting to smell like what it is. Bull crap. The entire Wall Street bailout. It’s nothing but stinking bull crap. It’s the biggest money and power grab in the history of our country. It guts the Constitution, it financially enslaves us and our children, it essentially bankrupts our nation, and it violates every rule of fair play there is.

Economic collapse is preferable to this deal. And I think we ought to call their bluff.

Just because the secretary of this and the chairman of that tell us that a global financial meltdown is just days away, that doesn’t make it so. These same people have been wrong about everything else they’ve predicted since this difficulty began. I personally don’t feel any obligation to believe their sky-is-falling routine.

And even if they’re right, I’d rather take the economic hit and work our way out of it than commit the sins against our Republic that are all through this immoral scheme.

And this is exactly that – immoral.

It is immoral to make working Americans pay for the failings and greed of individuals and companies on Wall Street. It is immoral to make responsible people clean up the mess of irresponsible people. It is immoral to put this vast amount of money and power into the hands of one man or one committee. It is immoral to impose textbook socialism on American finance and business without the consent and cooperation of the people. It is immoral to give to government sweeping powers that cannot in any way be justified by a resort to the Constitution. It is immoral to heap such debt on the government or the taxpayer. It is immoral to expect the American taxpayer to shoulder the cost of “saving” the world economy. It is immoral for such a massive governmental move to be made without extensive and deliberate public input and debate.

Put another way, the Wall Street people crapped the bed – let them sleep in it. Working people didn’t cause the problem and working people shouldn’t be expected to clean up the problem. People who pay their mortgage shouldn’t have to pick up the tab for people who don’t pay their mortgage.

And we shouldn’t abandon principle for expediency. Americans shouldn’t have to abandon their beliefs, the free market or their form of government because some business types got greedy and some government types got stupid.

If the American economy is so mis-structured that the collapse of some alphabet-soup companies puts it over the edge, then maybe it needs to go over the edge. If we’re that weak, maybe we should knock it down and start over.

We’ve gone through recessions before. We’ve gone through collapses before. We’ve been through economic hell in this country several times, but each one of those times – except, possibly, under FDR – we stuck by our Constitution and we stuck by our heritage. There’s no reason we ought to do any different this time.

And there’s no reason we ought to believe that government debt – the root cause of so many of our economic problems – is the solution to this problem. Two wrongs don’t make a right, and this cure is worse than the disease. To saddle our economy with this debt will have a long and terrible impact on American workers, taxpayers and businesses.

Far better to take our medicine now and get it over with. Better to weather the storm than to delay it and ultimately intensify it.

So I’m not going along anymore. The negatives outweigh the positives. I don’t trust these people when they predict dire outcomes, and I don’t believe that those dire outcomes – should they happen – are worse than what the fat cats are trying to shove down our throats.

Don’t sell out your principles for a mess of pottage. Don’t throw out the Constitution and capitalism because we’re in a tight spot. Stand like Americans, don’t capitulate like slaves. Men have fought and died for political and economic freedom, and Washington wants us to hand some of that back because of something we don’t understand on the evening news.

This bailout is a bad thing. It is a first cousin to slavery. And I’ve turned against it. I’m going to call my congressperson and my two senators and I’m going to ask them to vote against it.

by Bob Lonsberry

http://www.lonsberry.com/writings.cfm?story=2471

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Posted September 25, 2008 08:54 AM
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