Stimulus Woe

Ok, so I like to talk politics. I have been involved in a debate on bikecommuters.com about whether bike lanes should be in the stimulus bill or not. I am afraid that my main point has been that we shouldn't have a stimulus package of this type at all. Not only is the bill more pork laden than a Taiwanese butcher, but it is the wrong approach.

I am a firm believer in the power of the market. The market is the truest form of democracy in the world. In a free market, we make our own choices and our money goes where we want it to. Under a massive spending bill like what just passed both houses of congress, (I have choice words for the state of Maine) the government confiscates our money and spends it on what they want.

I am very opposed to a large and powerful federal government to begin with. I am opposed to the concept that government should take the money from Idahoans, Utahns, or floridians and spend it on prjects in Vermont, Kansas, or California. I see the current bill as a means of weakening the market, weakening the dollar, and eroding the Constitution.

Yes, I am characterizing the all-important Obama stimulus bill as an attack on the US Constitution. The Constitution established a limited federal government as a secondary to the governments of the several and sovereign states. It also provided for a free-enterprise, market economy, unfettered by federal controls. I won't even begin at this time to discuss indirect taxation and the crime of the sixteenth amendment.

The Obama stimulus, as well as the TARP bailouts attack the constitution through by further subverting the power of the states by making them beholden to the federal government for monies that they cannot obtain from thier citizens because it has been taken in federal taxes. It also destroys the peoples' power of choice by confiscatorially spending massive amounts of money without the citizens discretion. I would argue that the more the government spends, the less the private citizen can or will.

The stimulus bill is bad law. It will further cripple the American economy and will subject US citizens to a more powerful, increasingly totalitarian government. I sound a strong voice of alarm here, "Beware anything that increases the size, power, or scope of the federal government!" I am fearful that this signals the beginning of a Soviet-like era for our once proud nation. Nations that go down this road only return through revolution. It is not too late, but will take a strong effort. I hope that we can get conservatives into congressional office in two years.