The news overwhelms me of late.
Where does one begin? One must ask because it is not clear where this will end. Bailouts of financial institutions. Bailouts of failing American car manufacturers. Trillion dollar stimulus packages. Budgets that rack of trillions of dollars in new national debt. Hundreds of billions for health care “reform”. Trillion dollar plans for solving the banking crisis. More billions for failing car manufacturers. More billions. More trillions. More billions. More trillions.
And that is just the money.
Never mind the dishonesty hypocisy and demogoguery which are becoming the new normal.
Think I am being too harsh? I think not.
We are becoming no longer a nation of laws or due process. Witness how the AIG retention bonuses were handled and compare to the resignation letter from Executive Vice President of AIG Jake Desantis. That lays out precisely and clearly the true nature of these bonuses and the breathtaking injustice of the faux outrage against AIG employees for taking them.
How would you like to work 10-14 hours per day for a year and for one dollar? And to have a nice chunk of the nation turn against you wthout any apparent understanding of the facts?
The only real motivation that anyone at A.I.G.-F.P. now has is fear. Mr. Cuomo has threatened to “name and shame,” and his counterpart in Connecticut, Richard Blumenthal, has made similar threats — even though attorneys general are supposed to stand for due process, to conduct trials in courts and not the press.
Read the whole thing at New York Times. You do not have to register.
I was horrified when I heard Andrew Cuomo issue his threats. “Do what we tell you or else we will name you and have manufactured mobs descend on your homes and families!”
And the political class – including those most responsible for this mess in the first place – lead the way and go scott free.
Why should foreign companies invest in the American economy if it appears that Congress can nullify contracts at will? Or impose punitive retroactive tax rates?
George Will brought it home with one of his more trenchant and prophetic pieces this week. Let me summarize his “partial list”:
- TARP (which to be fair President Bush started that blunder)
- foreign creditors becoming increasingly concerned we will use inflation to get out from under our growing national debt
- attempts to do away with unionization by secret ballot – which is a right even in Mexico
- violating the terms of NAFTA in order to placate American unions
- violating the United States Constitution by trying to give the District of Columbia voting members of Congress (which would of course be Democrats)
- turning the Federal Reserve into an arm of the executive branch which results in “political manipulation of the money supply”
- imposing “vast and controversial changes on the 17 percent of the economy that is health care”
Will concludes:
This is but a partial list of recent lawlessness, situational constitutionalism and institutional derangement. Such political malfeasance is pertinent to the financial meltdown as the administration, desperately seeking confidence, tries to stabilize the economy by vastly enlarging government’s role in it.
Make sure you read the whole thing at Washington Post. You do not have to register.
What I see is the current ruling majority within the political class basically doing whatever it wants. D@mn the law. D@mn due process. And d@mn the consequences – which we already are beginning to see.
What will be left in 2012? And what steps is the ruling majority taking right now to make it as difficult as possible to reverse the radical changes they are imposing?
