The Nanny State advances

July 4 2009 may well be remembered as America’s final celebration of Independence Day. That’s because July 4 2010 will have to be recognized as the official surrender of American Independence and will forever be known as Dependence Day.
Consider three ill winds that are changing classic American Independence to slovenly American dependence on the government.
1) The Government Seizing Control of the Economy
2) The landslide erosion of Private Property Rights
3) Taxation beyond control
Let me briefly describe each one.
1) The government in the last 6 months has made an astonishing dash towards socialism. Don’t believe me ? Ask Vladimir Putin, the Russian Prime Minister. He said the US should take a lesson from the pages of Russian history and not exercise “excessive intervention in economic activity and blind faith in the state’s omnipotence”. He then added, “In the 20th century, the Soviet Union made the state’s role absolute. In the long run, this made the Soviet economy totally uncompetitive. This lesson cost us dearly. I am sure nobody wants to see it repeated.”
Putin’s final comments at Davos Switzerland just two months ago were the most disturbing. “Nor should we turn a blind eye to the fact that the spirit of free enterprise, including the principle of personal responsibility of businesspeople, investors, and shareholders for their decisions, is being eroded in the last few months. There is no reason to believe that we can achieve better results by shifting responsibility onto the state.”
Yet - shift radically to the State we merrily go. Our Government has nationalized two of the three US automobile companies, GM and Chrysler. We are on the precipice of nationalizing our entire Health Care system, and with the Cap and Tax (Trade) legislation being rammed through congress unread; we will nationalize our energy sector as well. Add to that the TARP funding with the spider web of strings attached to the financial sector and you have a full one third of our formerly private economy, now owned or controlled by the Government.
2) “Who needs stinking private property rights” shouts our government. Just ask Mike and Michelle Nemee about their alleged Private Property rights. Here is a local family looking to bring a very potentially profitable business, and great employment opportunities to the County. They have met the most unbelievable resistance to their Golf Course and Hotel. There may remain open issues such as balancing underground aquifer tables etc. but the Nemees have met every one of hundreds of demands head on by addressing them one by one, yet they still are in legal limbo. There are scores of other developers and business people who will never set foot in Calaveras County to fund businesses because of this debacle. Private property rights are being steadily eroded by government fiat. The other slice of the knife comes from over-burdensome “environmental studies” that seek to strip property rights away from the individual and award them to governmental entities.
3) Tax the rich – feed the poor, till there are no rich no more! Prophetic words sung by the band Ten Years After in the 60’s rocker “I’d love to change the World” are being played out before our eyes. If you really understood the level of debt all of us have unwillingly signed on to – just to fund the last six months worth of government borrowing you would be shocked. Without realizing it, you now have a second mortgage. To put it in perspective, every time the government spends $90 billion that translates to $1,000 per taxpayer. The TARP funds are about $2 trillion or $22,000 per taxpayer. The Cap and Tax scheme is pegged to cost over $1 trillion and Nationalized Health Care about $2.5 trillion, so add another $38,000 to your family debt, or about $60,000 each and every taxpayer, young or old is soon to be saddled with, not counting interest. Add 30 years of interest we will have to pay to the Chinese Government and you have at least taken on a $100,000 second mortgage on a “property” with no value.
When did you explicitly agree to another $100,000 of your money to be spent ? Was it when you voted for change ?
This is a tipping point in American History, where we have to decide do we slouch our way to socialism where getting ahead in life is impossible, or do we stop the slide to government control of every aspect of our lives? You decide this July 4th, do you want to celebrate Independence Day or Dependence Day ?