The End Of An Era?

Our 535 congress critters just can't resist using their power and our money to do a bit of social engineering. The trouble is, they aren't very good at it, and we get to clean up their messes.

Edgelings.com » The End Of An Era:
". . . the United States government has embarked on two pieces of social engineering in the last few years. One was to make oil expensive as expensive as possible to drive people to greater use of alternative energy sources - because anything less would be irresponsible and destructive to the environment. The other was to enshrine home ownership (i.e., easy-to-obtain mortgages) as a new American right - because anything less would be unequal and racist.

None of us voted on these decisions - indeed, neither was even spoken about directly, much less debated. But nevertheless, both became national policy… and both have sparked national, now international, crises. Then, once they became crises, both were blamed on ‘greedy capitalism’, instead of what they really were: legislative interference into market forces.

Fine. We’ve been through this before, and no doubt we will see similar, government-induced crises again - inevitably accompanied by Administration officials and our elected representatives pointing at everyone but themselves.

But what makes this particular economic crisis so appalling, at least from this vantage point, is the sheer scumminess, corruption, short-sightedness and general incompetence of everyone involved. At least in the business world, especially in the take-no-prisoners world of high-tech that kind of venality and ineptitude either gets you fired or kills the company; by comparison, in Washington, it puts you in charge of the recovery effort.

Nobody in this mess has covered himself or herself in glory. President Bush seems to have had the right instincts on this, but as a lame duck who long-ago burned up all of his public support, he mostly seems dithering and toothless. The Democrats declare that the nation is at risk… then go about as usual turning the bailout bill into another yet another partisan pay-off scheme to fund the next round of crisis-creating social engineering. It is a measure of just how corrupt the Dems have become that Senators Dodd and Frank, who perhaps more than anyone in Washington are responsible for this crisis, not only are allowed to keep their committee seats, but run the press conference on the bail-out.
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The crowning moment of course comes just before the vote on the bail-out package when Speaker Pelosi decided, putting the needs of her country first, to use the podium to attack the Administration and the GOP.

The Republicans, as we all heard, maturely responded to Pelosi by banging their little fists on the floor and refusing to play any more. Wah-wah-wah. Remember when Republicans were the outsiders in D.C.? Now they are such corrupt Washington insiders that, like a group of palace courtiers, they are willing to put the entire U.S. economy at risk over protocol and etiquette.

As for the two Presidential candidates, the less said the better. Senator McCain, sensing a great PR opportunity to show that he is both a leader and a Beltway Pharisee, blasted into Washington, made a lot of noise, accomplished little, and was all-but run back out of town. Senator Obama, who appears to be up to his neck in Fannie Mae ‘contributions’, did as he always does: said a few platitudes, (metaphorically) voted “Present” and took off as quickly as he could.

Meanwhile, while this absurdity is going on, the stock market tanks, and the U.S. economy loses $1 trillion."