Welcome to the U.S.S.A.

For those of us who value the concept of life, liberty, and property, there doesn’t seem to be much reason to be optimistic for America’s future. Last week we saw one government (taxpayer) bail out after another. The price tag seems to grow a couple of hundred billion dollars each day (depending on which figures one chooses to believe); by some estimates the taxpayers will be on the hook for over $1 trillion. According to the Libertarian Party, $1 trillion could buy the following:

• To buy everybody living in Los Angeles at least one Lamborghini Gallardo.
• To buy 88,052, 394′ custom mega yachts; enough to stretch around ¼ of the world.
• To buy everyone living in Belize and Malta a Manhattan apartment.
• To get half of the Democratic Party into a fundraiser for Barack Obama at the $28,500 admission price.
• To give one out of every two men in the United States a Men’s Presidential Rolex watch.
• To buy every woman in the United States a Tiffany Diamond Starfish Pendant.
• To get two Mitsubishi 73″ HDTVs for every household in America.
• To buy four copies of The Office: Season Four on DVD, to every person on earth.
• To send everybody in America on an all-inclusive vacation to Tahiti (and some people can stay a few extra days).

Anyway you want to look at it, $1 trillion is a lot of money ($3, 278 for every man, woman, and child in America).

And how do our so-called leaders wish to ultimately “solve” this problem which they have created? More government, of course! Joe Biden is calling on “the rich” to do their “patriotic duty” to pay more taxes, not only to pay for the already bloated federal government (which grew by leaps and bounds under the so-called compassionate conservative George W. Bush) but also to pay for the government programs that he and Barack Obama wish to impose on us (programs such as fighting global poverty among others).

But it gets even worse than that. The current Secretary of Treasury Henry Paulson has proposed that he should have the absolute authority to purchase any mortgage-related assets as he sees fit (obviously with our money). Section 8* of the proposal reads as follows:

Sec. 8. Review.

Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.

Section 9 puts a time limit on this absolute power provision but even placing this much power in the hands of one person for a two-year term is a very frightening thought. Perhaps the one good thing about having power hungry politicians in congress in both parties is that they would likely not support this measure as it would take power away from them.

Welcome to the U.S.S.A. What’s left of our free market system is all but dead. While one can make a libertarian case for both John McCain and Barack Obama in certain aspects of their policy proposals, neither are what I would call champions of capitalism (to put it mildly). Personally, I don’t find the arguments for McBama to be persuasive. I will proudly support Bob Barr knowing full well that he will not win this election and knowing full well that whomever wins, we will be in for difficult times.

Is America’s best days behind her? Is there any way that we can restore our Republic to what it once was?

As always, the answer will depend on how “We, the people” will respond.


*Note the irony that this happens to be Section 8 of Paulson’s proposal. If the congress followed Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution, we would not be in this mess to begin with!