Political Class Dismissed

by Sheldon Richman

Government power is growing, and unless President Barack Obama and the majority in Congress have a libertarian epiphany, it will continue to grow for years. If the expansion of intrusive government (a redundancy) gives you the willies — it should; the cost is freedom and prosperity — you may be tempted to direct your anger at Obama and the rest of the Democratic leadership. That would be myopic, however.

Blame the Republicans, beginning with former President George. W. Bush. (We could go back further, but time and space are limited.)

The reason can be illustrated by an extraordinary moment that took place just after Obama unveiled his $3.55 trillion 2010 budget. Contemplating the budget, Republican House leader John Boehner went before the media microphones and declared, “The era of big government is back.”

For Boehner to make such a statement suggests two possibilities, although both could be true: he thinks Americans are morons, or he’s been in a coma since January 20, 2001, when Bush took office.

Note that he didn’t say, “Uh oh, government is going to get even bigger than it is now.” No, he said, “The era of big government is back.” Back — as in: returned after having gone away.

When did it go away? And does Boehner really believe that the American people don’t realize how much government grew under Bush? Click here for more…

So, progressives, please stop blaming it on free-market capitalism and greed. You’re just embarassing yourselves.

From The Independent Institute’s awesome blog, The Beacon:

In an insightful interview, Fannie Mae’s first Chief Credit Officer, Edward Pinto, corroborates our Research Fellow Stan Liebowitz’s Independent Policy Report, Anatomy of a Train Wreck: Causes of the Mortgage Meltdown. Interviewed by Chip Hanlon, President of Delta Global Advisors, Pinto discusses how the affordable housing/lending lobby chipped away at lending standards until there were none, creating a gigantic and nonviable financial bubble that has triggered a global recession. Click here for more…

Is there anything this guy doesn’t suck at?

Under Obama: no child left unmonitored
Obama’s plan to use education as a tool for social engineering exposes the elitist strain in his ‘Change’ campaign.

While schools and teacher education institutions continue to struggle with the meaning and content of education today, Obama and Biden have no original insights on education, let alone a plan for a new direction. Instead, their proposals will accentuate education’s demise in American schools by expanding state regulation, which in practice means reducing learning to banal measurable outcomes, turning the profession of teaching into a technical set of competencies, and focusing on social engineering at the expense of academic goals. A progressive plan for changing American schools for the better would aim to contract, rather than expand, the role of the state in education and families, leaving these jobs to the people who know best: teachers and parents.