Source: http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=323478087277203
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Wednesday, April 01, 2009 4:20 PM PT
April 1: We have to admit, we were surprised when the headline "Obama Orders Chevrolet and Dodge Out of Nascar" turned out to be an April Fools' joke. How can it be a joke when today's reality is far more extreme?
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Car and Driver has nothing on the federal government. If you think we're exaggerating, just look at some of the recent days' events, each at least as outrageous as the April Fools' joke of Obama ordering Chevy and Dodge to leave Nascar, and maybe more so. They include:
• The government's stimulus efforts, as toted up by Bloomberg.com, so far total $13.8 trillion — roughly equal to our entire GDP for one year, or $45,245 for every man, woman and child.
• A U.S. president with virtually no private-sector experience fires GM CEO Rick Wagoner, a 30-year industry veteran, and forces Chrysler into a shotgun wedding with foreign carmaker Fiat.
• Democratic Rep. Barney Frank, who also has never toiled in the private sector, declares "We own AIG," and advocates sweeping government control over corporate pay and bonuses.
• The Service Employees International Union asks the White House to fire the CEO of Bank of America — and, because organized labor spent more than $100 million to get Barack Obama elected in 2008, it just might get its wish.
• The "New GM," or "Government Motors" as some call it, is told it might have to scrap half its profitable models to build what President Obama calls the "next generation of clean cars" — cars that don't yet exist, and have no proven market demand.
• Further afield, a key adviser to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton hangs up a "no vacancy" sign on the Earth, arguing that the world at 6 billion people is "overpopulated" — echoing the nutty Malthusian comments from a top British official last month that the United Kingdom's population needs to shrink by 30 million.
• Congress declares carbon dioxide, a naturally occurring gas necessary for all life, to be a poison and seeks to regulate it through a "cap-and-trade" system — a costly tax on everyone who uses energy, at a time when the global economy is in recession.
Yes, sadly, we could go on. And on.
Each one of these pernicious tidbits has been dropped upon us just within the past week. We wish somebody could tell us they are all April Fools' jokes. But they aren't. So many things emerging from our government these days are so, well, crazy, that it's hard to keep up with them all. And maybe that's the point.
The recession, the market meltdown, huge job losses, and plunging home sales and prices have left Americans reeling and frightened of the future. In such a fraught state, they're vulnerable to those who seem to have simple, pat answers for the questions of the day. And whatever the question is, the answer will always be the same: More government.
Unfortunately, this is the kind of small-ball socialism that will ring the death knell for American capitalism, if it goes unchecked.
Today, we have the least capable, least accomplished people in the country — our 535 national legislators, abetted by a handful of presidential advisers and Cabinet members — seizing control of the private sector in ways that appear to be a violation of the spirit, if not the letter, of the U.S. Constitution.
And we, the people, are letting them do it. Where's the outrage?
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