The problem with progressives …

I always feel people who call themselves “progressives” think they are somehow smarter, more enlightened, and more qualified to guide the rest of us toward the “right” thing. 

They leave me with the impression that if we simply let the most intelligent (them, of course) among us take the reins they would relieve us of the burden of trying to understand the bigger picture – which they can clearly see, and we obviously can’t.  In return, they would create a new and better society based on what’s truly the best for us; something the masses are intellectually and culturally unable to do. 

Now I’ll be honest:  that condescending crap really pisses me off.  Progressives are not really interested in helping the general population – they want to play God.  And they want that power. 

So most progressives are wannabe totalitarians – they have more in common with Pol Pot, Mao, Stalin and other ruthless dictators than they imagine.  They think they can design a better world by making the necessary hard decisions their inferiors don’t have the will to undertake, hampered as we mere mortals are by such silly and old fashioned concepts as ethics and morality.

It’s all about “the greater good” as progressives see it.  The same rationale used by dictators.   

Like us, progressives probably had to read Orwell’s Animal Farm in school.  However, they had a different take.  Most of us saw the hypocrisy of “All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others.”  They probably nodded their heads in agreement, because in theory all people may be equal but some – like them – really are better and more gifted than others. 

And the better and more gifted should always be in charge.  Like Napoleon the pig. 

We – the general population – just aren’t as smart as they are.  Not to worry – they will act in our best interests for us.  They will decide what we can eat or drink and how much.  They will decide where we should live.  They will decide what kind of cars we should drive, and how we should protect ourselves and our children in those cars.  They will decide who we should hire and how much to pay them.  They will decide how much we have and how much we have to share.  They will decide who is worth additional medical treatment and who should be left to die. 

Decisions, decisions, decisions.   Thank God they’ll make them all for us. 

Or maybe we should just thank them – wouldn’t it be the same thing? 

What really bothers progressives is the annoying tendency of the unenlightened to resist what progressives have deemed best for them. 

America should have elected Al Gore.  Failing that, it should have elected John Kerry.  We should have a cap-and-trade program in place by now.  We shouldn’t be allowed to challenge climate change theories.  We should all be driving hybrid cars and living in houses powered by solar energy.  We should have stopped all domestic drilling to push fossil fuel prices higher and make alternative energy viable.   Hell, gasoline should be $5 or $6 a gallon at the pump by now.   

We should be like Europe. 

That would be progress.  But no.  None of that’s happened.   

And the fault for that is … stupid, stupid public. 

What’s a progressive to do when the hoi polloi can’t be trusted to go with the program?  What can you do when the masses persuade politicians to vote against the right path to social and cultural utopia?

Easy.  Change the rules so you can bypass the uninformed and misguided. 

I mean, the public’s not that bright, right?  They won’t notice, especially if your equally enlightened progressive friends in the media do their part. 

Now you still have to go through the motions of conducting elections.  That’s troublesome, but not so much if you play your politics right and if you have the media in your pocket. 

Progressives have no issue with ignoring laws and rules.  So register everyone and everything – citizen or not, human or pets, dead or alive, whatever – and encourage them to vote early and vote often.  (The inner-city dead are traditionally a very reliable progressive voting bloc – something to consider. Also, you’ll find most pets registered to vote tend to be liberal Democrats.) 

With the dead and pet vote in your pocket, you can turn your attention to living humans.   

Get students away at college and people with multiple homes in different states to register at home and away.  That way they can vote multiple times – with an absentee ballot in every state they have a permanent or temporary residence and also in person. 

While you’re at it, don’t forget prisoners, the illiterate, the mentally diminished, and “undocumented” immigrants, too.  Volunteers can “help” them fill in their ballots the right way, with or without them present.  Progressives know how they would vote anyway.  They are omniscient. 

Or you can simply stuff the ballot boxes the old-fashioned way.  That’s big city voting. Just get a lot of people to fill out and submit a bunch of bogus registrations, use these to get absentee ballots, and then also vote in person under assumed names at a variety of polling places.

If anyone challenges you in the process, like when you tool up in a van full of drunk homeless people complaining about all the polling places they’ve been that day, don’t worry.  If someone thinks it’s unusual for so many people named Mickey Mouse, M. Mouse, Mike Mouse and other derivatives to be voting at the same time, registered at the same apartment or vacant lot, so what. 

It’s all for the greater good. 

Progressives have fought to make it illegal in a lot of places to ask for ID much less a photo ID to vote, so it’s still open season.  People can vote as many times as they wish, under as many identities they feel comfortable with.   No one will bat an eye. 

The media will see nothing amiss.  Even when more people vote in a district than are registered there.  Or when several precincts in Philly report tallies of 100% for one candidate, and 0% for his opponent, which means that out of all the votes cast there, not one person voted in error – a first, ever.    

Nothing to see here, right?   

As to bypassing legislators and the courts, it’s increasingly easy to use Executive Orders and reams of arcane agency regulations to accomplish whatever means you desire.  The media will back you up.  If anyone pushes back, ignore them; if that doesn’t work, attack them yourself or through “useful idiots,” to use a term Lenin would understand. 

The ends justify the means, after all, and it’s the “big picture” that ultimately matters. 

The whole idea of checks and balances and limits to authority under the Constitution is so – well, passé to a progressive.  The founders who wrote that couldn’t possibly have envisioned the world we live in now and what an obstacle to “progress” the Constitution would become.     

That’s why we need progressives.  They aren’t hindered by ethics, morality and the rule of law.  Certainly not by the Constitution, and especially not by the pesky Bill of Rights.  

They want to do what’s right for all of us.  Even if we’re not smart enough to realize it. 

Progressives truly believe they should be in charge of everything.  To get there, there’s not much they won’t do.  Ignore laws and rules.  Ignore the Constitution, and especially the Bill of Rights.  Diminish individual rights and liberties.  Promote the breakdown of traditional values, and make the state the sole arbiter of right and wrong.  Use the power of government to suppress dissent.

Whoa.  That sounds like a police state. 

That’s where progressives want to take us. 

Just remember ... they want what's best for us.  Whether we want it or not.  

Descendants of slaves

That’s a new category I saw online the other day, in the context of the affirmative-action case now before the SCOTUS and a new poll showing public support for affirmative action at a new low. 

You can read about the poll here:

http://firstread.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/06/11/18885926-nbc-newswsj-poll-affirmative-action-support-at-historic-low?lite

In the same article, Kevin Brown, a law professor at Indiana University, claimed that we shouldn’t consider the ascendency of Barack Obama (President), Colin Powell (retired 4-star general and former Secretary of State) and Eric Holder (Attorney General) as indicative of progress for black Americans. 

He pointed out that these people were “Kenyan, Caribbean, Caribbean” respectively and not “descendants of slaves.”  

Okay.  I guess there’s a new litmus test for who is really black in America.  Or at least, who still needs special consideration in all things because of something that ended almost 150 years ago. 

I’ll admit, I was not aware of this distinction.  Probably, because like many in my generation, I really don’t give that much thought to race or ethnicity on a daily basis.  I took Dr. King’s message to heart at a very early age and naively – it seems – thought most of the rest of us did as well. 

Silly me. 

It’s not that I don’t recognize that there are people in the population who look different from me.  I’m not blind after all.  I can see that some people are various shades of black or brown, some have varying degrees of Asian features, some are various shades of white, and some are a mix of some or all of the above.  Unless I talk to them and they have an accent of sorts, or they make a point of telling me, I can’t really tell where they are from.

I certainly can’t tell if they are descendants of slaves or not.  But then again, I’ve never thought to make that distinction.  Apparently now I have to.  

So it makes a difference now where someone who is one of those shades of black or brown is from originally, and whether they can trace their lineage back to being descended from slaves brought to America from Africa at some point. 

That seems to be somewhat of a fine point to me.  As important as that must be to some people, I’m not sure how that’s going to come up in a casual conversation. 

I can’t remember any Irish or English descendants of indentured servants – of which there were many in Colonial America – making this type of distinction for their current social standing. 

I’ve always tended to measure people I meet for the first time on their manners, their skills, their intelligence, how articulate and thoughtful they are, and their sense of humor or lack thereof.  Not necessarily in that order.  But I can tell you that race or ethnicity is not one of the criteria. 

Much less if one or more of their forebears were slaves from Africa brought to America. 

I guess the point this professor was trying to make with his “descendants of slaves” carve out was that we should ignore all the positive signs of progress that blacks in America have made – in government, business and industry – and focus instead on those who haven’t done as well. 

Forget the silver lining; focus on the cloud. 

In short, he’s using an old academic trick of skewing the sample – changing the parameters of measurement at the same time – to get the results he wants instead of dealing with the reality he doesn’t want to acknowledge.  It’s intellectual fraud. 

Blacks, African-Americans, or whatever the proper name du jour is, have made enormous progress in America over the past 150 years.  And spectacular progress since the 1960s.  Only an idiot or huckster would ignore the progress that’s been made.     

Much of that resulted from the Civil Rights Act of 1964 which outlawed most major forms of discrimination based on race, ethnicity, religion and gender.  It ended racial segregation of public schools, workplaces and public accommodations, as well as unequal application of voter registration requirements. 

For you political history buffs, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was championed by Republicans and opposed by Southern Democrats like the late Robert Byrd – a former KKK member who filibustered against its passage for 14 hours.  Hubert Humphrey, the Democrat liberal lion from Minnesota, also wrote two amendments to the bill to outlaw school busing to achieve desegregation. 

Just a side note to consider. 

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 which followed outlawed states from setting any "voting qualification or prerequisite to voting, or standard, practice, or procedure ... to deny or abridge the right of any citizen of the United States to vote on account of race or color."  It also created something called “covered jurisdictions” primarily in the South to place a special burden on states and counties with histories of suppressing or restricting voter registrations and voting by minorities in general through literacy tests, poll taxes and the like.  To make changes in practically anything related to registration or voting, these covered jurisdictions had to get Federal approval first. 

Flash forward to today – almost 50 years later.  Those “covered jurisdictions” still exist and the rules governing them still apply to most.  If one of them wants to move a polling place, or change a ballot, or redistrict, they have to get “pre-clearance” from the DOJ or a three-judge panel of the Federal District Court in DC – for every instance. 

So if they want to change the color or paper used for a ballot, or move a polling place two doors down, for example, they probably have to get prior approval.  And every time they need to get approval for something – no matter how minor – they are subjected again to scrutiny by a politicized DOJ which can use it as leverage to get another bite at the apple. 

The net/net of all this is that these areas are still being punished for infractions that may have happened decades ago and haven’t happened since.  They are presumed to be up to something, automatically. 

Because nobody wants to have on their record that they voted against the Act – which would open them to charges of being a racist – Congress has renewed the Act four times, and George W. Bush signed a 25-year extension of the Act in 2006.  

One of the cases before the SCOTUS this session – Shelby County v. Holder – has to do with the need to maintain the pre-clearance provisions of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, especially since many of the covered jurisdictions now have better voting records for minorities than other states and counties who aren’t under the same rules. 

Of course, this is bringing out the old guard of the civil rights movement who see an opportunity to bring up racism – real or imagined – again.  Keeping their political base as perpetual victims in need of special consideration at all times is the source of their power.  If their constituents are no longer the abject victims they claim them to be, they no longer have power to demand concessions by making the rest of us feel guilty about their plight.  If the real reasons a minority group is still poor and at the bottom rung of the economic ladder are proven to have nothing to do with institutional discrimination, then what?  

It’s a scary proposition for them.  It’s like waving the bloody shirt and then learning it’s not blood after all but ketchup.   

So the Shelby case, coupled with the affirmative action case – Fisher v. University of Texas – has their heads spinning.  In Fisher, the Court will decide if a public university violates the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment by considering race in its admissions process.

Consequently, you’ll be seeing a lot of stuff in the media about how far minorities haven’t progressed in this country.  How discrimination by race is still rampant.  How voter suppression by requiring voter IDs is targeted at blacks and Hispanics.  How America remains a hotbed of angry whites, just waiting, as Joe Biden said, for Republicans “to put y’all back in chains.” 

You and I may realize that’s just complete and utter bullshit.  But the media and some minorities eat it up.  It’s easier and more comforting to believe that there’s some big conspiracy holding you back than take a hard look at what you may or may not have done to yourself.     

Look, a significant majority of white voters helped elect a true African-American (Kenyan father) to the highest office in the land.  Twice. 

It’s hard to maintain that widespread racial discrimination by whites still exists when that happens.   Or that remedies from the 1960s that put special burdens on selected states and counties to insure that minority voters aren’t disenfranchised need to be kept in force – especially when minorities in those same “special” areas voted in historically high numbers in the last two elections.    

When Obama was elected, I said that this is both the dream and nightmare of many civil rights leaders in the black community. 

Dr. King would be proud that so many Americans of all colors and backgrounds came together to elect a black President apparently on his merits, not his skin color.  His dream come true. 

Conversely, the Al Sharptons and Jesse Jacksons of the world – who have made playing the race card their only raison d'être – lost an important plank of their platform.

How could they keep a straight face while telling America it was fundamentally racist when it freely elected an African-American to the White House, not once but twice?  And did that with a majority of white voters in both cases? 

Well now we know the plan going forward for race-baiters and advocates of race-based entitlements and privileges.  Those who consider themselves black and have succeeded – like Colin Powell, Eric Holder, and yes, Barack Obama – don’t count.  They aren’t descendants of slaves.

Others who have risen to high positions in government – like Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, as well as Deval Patrick in Massachusetts, Douglas Wilder in Virginia and numerous other elected officials in the North and the South – don’t count either.  They’ll dismiss Thomas and Rice as tokens.  I don’t know how they’ll dismiss the others. 

Maybe they’ll decide those people aren’t really black, or black enough.  Maybe they’ll come up with a new category based on how dark-skinned someone is.  Or something else. 

Folks, only racists see everything though the lens of race.  They think race is a primary determinant of a person’s ability, aptitude, and potential outcome.  No other criteria matters.

I’ll leave you to draw your own conclusions. 

The black helicopter crowd

There’s a big dust-up right now about the government’s increasing efforts to track the habits and practices of seemingly ordinary Americans.   It’s monitoring our phone calls to determine who we’re calling, when and from where.  It’s checking our e-mails and online activities.  It’s even data mining our credit-card transactions and credit reports, among other things. 

All in the name of national security. 

This is upsetting a great number of people.  They think it’s unprecedented.  Some think the fabled black helicopters are coming right behind this.  

Me, not so much.

I’m more offended that the government is squandering so much money and other resources to duplicate what already exists, while ignoring the obvious. 

Those of us in the business know that marketers already have most of this data on ordinary citizens.  So why waste taxpayer money on costly, built-from-scratch Big Brother programs when you could buy the same data a lot cheaper on the open market? 

Sure, market data can’t tell you that so-and-so is planting a bomb at the corner of 12^th and Market this coming Thursday in the name of some obscure cause, but it can certainly narrow down the field of potential terrorists dramatically. 

Perhaps to a more manageable number than – say – 340 million people? 

I’m guessing here, but if the Feds ruled out everybody who couldn’t possibly fit a terrorist profile – like 80-year-old grandmothers who belong to the DAR and subscribe to Cat Fancy magazine, and 50-year-old men who buy suits at Brooks Brothers with their American Express Gold Card – they could get that number down big time. 

Okay, I’m being somewhat – and only somewhat – facetious, but there’s a better answer. 

There’s no need to get up in the business of every American – almost all of us are not potential terrorists, and everyone knows this.  The Feds simply need to focus on the much, much smaller number of more likely candidates.

They need to toss political correctness aside and be upfront on who is more likely to be or become a terrorist.  First cut should include people who come from places that grow terrorists.  Non-citizens like students who overstay their visas should be under a magnifying glass.  Folks who send and receive money orders to and from terrorist hotbeds deserve more scrutiny as well.   

Oh, and we might want to listen to advice from foreign intelligence services as well.  Duh. 

This would cut the potential terrorist pool down to size.  Yes, there would be cries of outrage from Muslims now in this country but originally from Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Somalia, Chechnya, Iraq, Iran, Syria and other regions where Al Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah and radical Islamists hold sway.  Muslims from those places trying to visit America or enroll with student visas would be equally offended. 

We’ll be accused of racial profiling.  Which would be true.      

So we should say yes, that’s precisely what we’re doing.  No apologies. 

Maybe if terrorists thought we were profiling effectively they’d back off a bit.  Getting caught at customs or while trying to board a flight doesn’t have the martyr prestige of a suicide bombing.  It’s about as dramatic as getting caught with a 4 oz. shampoo in your carry-on bag.  It’s not making the evening news. 

Look, we all know the underwear bomber, 911 perpetrators and Boston Marathon bombers were not Sephardic Jews.  They weren’t Pentecostal Swedes.  They weren’t Irish Catholics.  They weren’t German Protestants, nor were they Hindus, Buddhists or Mormons.     

They all did have something in common, however.  They were all radicalized Muslims.  And they all came from, or trained in, one of the areas I mentioned earlier for extra scrutiny. 

That’s not to say all Muslims in America and abroad want to kill us.  Yet the propensity to be or become a terrorist is significantly higher among certain Muslims from certain areas.  We all need to recognize the obvious and stop pretending all Muslims everywhere mean us no harm.   

A bunch of them want to see America destroyed.  They want to see our ally and proxy in the Middle East – Israel – destroyed.  They hate us, our culture, our freedoms, and our tolerance, and think we are weak and vulnerable because we turn a blind eye toward them in the name of political correctness. 

In fact, they think we’re stupid.  Candidly, the way we go about trying to find them is stupid. 

We’d rather look at everybody in this country, compile unfathomable quantities of data, and spend billions in the name of national security rather than concentrating on the most obvious suspects.

Just a suggestion to the Feds, mind you.  A teensy more targeting efficiency on the front end could save a lot of time and money.

That’s if all this snooping and spying on our citizens is really about national security and preventing terrorist attacks, and not, as the black-helicopter crowd believes, a massive government plot to gather data on every American for some nefarious purpose.

And what purpose would that be?  Granted, it’s unnerving to think that the government is watching your every move, but so is viewing curtains on Target’s site and then suddenly seeing pop-up ads for Target’s curtains on other sites you visit.  That’s not a coincidence; that’s near instantaneous use of your viewing data by Target to follow you wherever you surf.    

The credit card companies you deal with have been doing intense data mining on all their customers’ transactions for years.  Didn’t you ever wonder how their fraud-protection programs work?  They know the types of things you routinely buy with their card and where already; when something out of the ordinary pops up, an algorithm is triggered resulting in a phone call to you.   

As far as searching your e-mails and what you post online, do you think this isn’t happening already by Google, Facebook, and other social media sites?  Your life online is no secret to them or to big online retailers like Amazon, Staples, Best Buy or Walmart.   Verizon, Comcast and other ISPs have records of all the sites you visit, what you download and view, and how often.  If you have cable at home, they also know what you’re watching.

So in terms of protecting your privacy, that ship has sailed.  Your life is pretty much an open book to marketers. 

That’s because marketers are smart and know how to gather and use data with a clear purpose in mind.  They profile all the time with nary a thought to political correctness.  They use all your data to more efficiently predict your behavior and preferences.  They’ve got teams of brilliant people creating programs designed to do that better and better all the time.    

Our government is not nearly as smart.  To be kind, our government is not a repository of the best and the brightest minds our country has to offer.   That’s not because it doesn’t pay well, but because the best and brightest prefer not to work with dunderheads, political hacks, and insular bureaucrats more focused on kissing ass to retain their positions than doing a good job.

Our government doesn’t function very efficiently either – the proverbial left hand usually has no clue what the right hand is doing.  All the alphabet agencies tasked with homeland security, law enforcement, counter terrorism and intelligence might as well be feudal fiefdoms widely separated by culture and language. 

Do you really think our government is competent and coordinated enough to make some practical use of all the data we presume they are gathering?

Personally, I don’t think so. 

After all, it took the Feds 16 years to find Whitey Bulger.  You remember Whitey, the Boston mob guy.  He was finally found, living in Santa Monica, California with his long-time girlfriend, after being on the FBI’s America’s Most Wanted list for all those years.  That’s right, 16 years. 

It wasn’t the crack investigative efforts of the FBI or another government agency that finally caught Whitey, but some neighbors who recognized Whitey and his girlfriend’s pictures.     

That’s how this stuff usually happens.  We get lucky.  Somebody somewhere sees something that seems fishy and reports it.  The trouble is, our government’s usually not smart enough to know what to do with the information.

Like when a bunch of Arabic males sign up for flight lessons and want to practice with a commercial jet simulator.  Nothing suspicious there, right?  Or when a foreign country warns us about a specific individual they suspect of having ties to terrorists.  Obviously, just their opinion.    

So what exactly are the Feds looking for among all our data?  E-mails with “Death to America!” in them?  Jihadist affinity groups on Facebook?  Online purchases of suicide vests?   

Seriously, if the Feds believe terrorists are that stupid, then just use the free Google Street View; the terrorists may have a sign out front advertising their next attack.  

Do I think what the government is doing is invasive and uncalled for?  Why yes I do.  The thought of some dimwit government hack going through your virtual sock and underwear drawer is creepy. 

Do I lose sleep at night wondering what they’re really up to? 

No I don’t.  Because I don’t think they actually know what to do with all that data, much less have a purpose beyond appearing to “be doing something” about national security.

And if they’re doing this to spot terrorists and foil plots against us, as they claim, they’re wasting their time and looking in all the wrong places. 

The overwhelming majority of Americans – I’d hazard to say at least 99.99% of all American citizens– are not the enemy.  The Feds would do better to focus on other more likely prospects.

We know who they are.  So do the Feds. 

Stop annoying us.  

.  

A nation of addicts, by design

There’s a pervasive “bail-out” mentality that no matter how much trouble you get yourself into, it’s never your fault and Uncle Sam will eventually help you out. 

So don’t worry about running up your debts, investing badly, buying a house you can’t afford, dropping out of school, having 5 kids by the time you’re 20, feeding those kids, or borrowing a hundred grand to get a degree in French philosophers of the Middle Ages – no harm no foul. 

Uncle Sam will make it all right.  Someone else will always pick up the tab for your gross irresponsibility. 

This same generosity and absolution of irresponsibility is also applied to favored businesses.  So even if you’re a nit-wit CEO who has flagrantly mismanaged your company and lied to your investors – but you are in a green-energy business, employ a lot of people, or are a big deal on Wall Street – there’s hope for you, too.  Uncle Sam will do practically anything to keep you afloat. 

Yes, it’s a Faustian bargain at times – you’ll have to do whatever the government demands in return, like produce self-immolating cars nobody wants, for example – but the money and support will be there to keep you floundering along. 

This holds true for elected officials and bureaucrats in the public sector as well.  Maybe you let pay, perks and benefits for public employees skyrocket.  Maybe you agreed to ridiculous union contracts you can’t afford.  Maybe you issued now-worthless bonds.  Maybe you even robbed your pension funds and then projected fanciful rates of return to paper things over.  So what?  You just have to trot out the usual hostages – firefighters, police, and teachers – and wait for help to come. 

Past experience shows it will. 

When the rest of the economy was on the skids and private sector workers were being pink-slipped by the millions, did the public sector suffer?  Nope.  In fact, it added jobs. Was this because there was a desperate need for more public sector workers?  Nope.  Cities and states got Federal “stimulus” money – you remember, for “shovel-ready” jobs to build infrastructure – which they promptly used to postpone layoffs and even give raises in some cases.  State and local governments got to keep the good times rolling, while politicians took credit for “creating or saving jobs.”  

Now, of course, after squandering those temporary boosts in funding – eating the proverbial seed corn, as it were – and the sequester on future, not current, spending, everyone in the public sector and anyone dependent on government spending is freaking out. 

It’s not like nobody knew this would happen.  They just expected to dodge reality again, either by more rounds of “stimulus” money or higher taxes, neither of which appear to be forthcoming.     

Now they have to suffer withdrawal.   

The problem is that the Federal government increasingly is stepping in to take the pain – and any useful learning lesson – out of the consequences of stupidity and irresponsible behavior, whether that’s personal, institutional, big business, or governmental.  Then the media make it seem like these government actions are acts of compassion to be praised. 

The reality is these bail outs and handouts are more akin to giving an addict another hit off the crack pipe to keep them coming back.  These are only happening out the self-interest of politicians; there’s rarely any higher altruistic purpose at play here.   

It’s obvious that a lot of politicians want the public, businesses, and institutions wholly addicted.  They know that if the dependency on government programs is strong enough, they’ll stay in power until they die.  They know that people won’t vote against their own self-interest, and all politicians need to do is make certain a majority of voters are dependent on handouts.  They also know that business executives and unions contribute to the campaigns of politicians who protect them from real market forces, foreign and domestic competitors, and having to pay their fair share of taxes. 

So don’t buy into the bullshit that all these assistance programs, entitlements, tax credits and subsidies are designed by a caring, compassionate government to be a hand up instead of a handout. 

They may be packaged as generous gifts, but they are intended to be powerful and addictive drugs. Which, in fact, they are.  

People, businesses, and state and local governments have been hooked on these drugs so long, they can’t imagine life without them.  Like true addicts, they’ll do almost anything to get that next fix.  They’ll lie about how much money they make, they’ll lie about how much help they need, they’ll pretend to be destitute when they’re not, all to keep these drugs flowing. 

At every step they’ll have the media helping to make the case for them.  The media will put out slanted stories about how essential all these programs and handouts are.  If these aren’t continued and enhanced children will starve, jobs will be lost, families will be made homeless, women will die, there will be mayhem in the streets, cities will burn down, the sick and elderly will meet nasty ends, and of course grinding poverty will get worse. 

Honestly, the Federal government encourages this view – it feeds its propagandists in the media with half-truths, misleading stats and sob stories out of context to make America feel ashamed that so much remains to be done to take care of the less fortunate among us.  And how much what seems to be a naked political payoff is really an “investment in our future.”      

At the same time it actually advertises to recruit as many future addicts as possible, going the extra step to produce ads in multiple languages so even recent immigrants can learn how to get in on the action.  The drugs are made to appear so attractive, so easy to get, and so much a part of a “normal“ American lifestyle that taking them almost seems like the patriotic and right thing to do.  Only a fool would say no to such beneficence – and that’s part of the pitch.   

This is what’s happened with food stamps, TANF, tax credits, subsidies, extended unemployment comp, and entitlements in general.  Government and politicians are actively promoting these to demonstrate how much they “care” about us.  In reality they are pushers with an agenda that has virtually nothing to do with caring about the public’s well-being; they want more people and businesses dependent on them.    

You can see how successful this strategy is by the number of people in the general population who are now arranging their lives primarily around getting and keeping government benefits.  You can also see it in the growth of loan guarantees and special programs for businesses. 

That’s the system our government has created.  They’ve made it more attractive for many people to rely on benefits than on a regular job. 

They’ve also created an alternate universe that incents people and businesses to make often questionable decisions based on artificially distorted economics.

For example, realtors and homeowners are hooked on the mortgage interest deduction, which most first-time homebuyers really don’t understand.  Some homebuyers think the government is going to help them pay their mortgage, when the reality is that government is simply going to let them deduct a portion of their mortgage interest from their gross income for tax purposes.  However, I’m pretty sure many people have signed up for more home than they could afford thinking the government would cover a lot of their initial interest costs. 

When Bowles-Simpson recommended ending this costly and market-distorting program, their proposal was automatically DOA because realtors and banks were opposed.  

Then there’s the healthcare industry – which some see as almost 15% of our total economy and where costs seem to be soaring well beyond any reasonable rate of inflation.  Wonder why?

Okay, have you seen the ads for adult scooters?  You know, the ones that imply that Medicaid will pay for all or part of a new scooter?  Or the ads for diabetes testing meters?  Or the virtual wall-to-wall ads for prescription drugs on TV and in magazines? 

Do we really believe that Medicare and Medicaid, and now the coming ObamaCare, haven’t already spawned thousands upon thousands of products and schemes designed almost exclusively to get money out of these programs?   

Every time the government creates some new healthcare benefit or entitlement – or regulation – there’s sure to be some business out there ready to exploit it, from prescription drug companies, to medical supply houses, to physician group practices, to hospitals, to insurance companies, and more.   

Our entire medical system is addicted to government programs.  Which is what the Feds want. 

The general business community is no better.  Businesses that have become addicted to subsidies and credits spend millions in lobbying fees to retain and grow these – rather than investing that money into making and producing things that have real market value and provide jobs here.  They’re more interested in protecting what they have than competing in an open market.

The run up in the stock market is yet another example. 

The Fed is pumping $85-billion into the economy every month buying up worthless debt by printing increasingly worthless U.S. currency.  That means cheap money.  That means Wall Street is happy and pushing stock indices higher and higher.  For now.  Wall Street worries that if the economy improves and employment goes up – which would seem to be a good thing for most of us – the Fed will stop buying those worthless bonds.  And if that happens the market may collapse.  So they hope unemployment stays relatively high and economic recovery remains lackluster. 

Nice.  But it makes sense that from an addict’s viewpoint – it’s all about the drugs. 

So how do we end this? 

That’s hard to say.  The nation clearly isn’t ready to go cold turkey and face the pains of sudden withdrawal.  Maybe the best to hope for is that we can start the process of weaning people, businesses, and institutions off their addiction over time. 

Realistic means testing for benefits and entitlements would be a good place to begin, along with zero tolerance for benefits fraud.  We all know there’s absolutely no reason in the world we should have as many people as we do now on food stamps, or entire generations of people who’ve never known any other lifestyle than being on the public dole. We also know there's incredible waste and outright theft in the Medicare and Medicaid programs; that needs to be stopped and the perpetrators prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.  

Throwing more money after the same problems over and over again and expecting a different result is tantamount to insanity.  So the era of using tax dollars to continually repeat failed social engineering experiments has to end.  These haven't worked; if anything, many of these programs have had the opposite effect, producing institutionalized poverty and a permanent, self-perpetuating underclass.       

Last, but certainly not least, the tax code needs to be overhauled to strip out all the specious credits, subsidies and special tax treatments that rob the U.S. Treasury and reward people and businesses for doing what they should do already, without an extra incentive.  

That’s how I would begin to end our addiction. 

It won’t be easy.  Yet as is often said, the first step in recovery is to admit you have a problem. 

As a nation, we seem unable to do that.  But until we do, our collective addiction will only get worse, and stopping it will inevitably grow more painful.