Posted by
Andrews on Wednesday, May 20, 2009 7:25:43 PM
I was reading
an article on the Obama administration's attempts to prevent the federal government form contracting out jobs to private firms when it would save money. Their argument? That somehow it costs money to use lower cost private services. The truth, my disgrace of a senator (Mikulski) wants to pay off the unions that keep her employed, and, just perhaps, someone in the Obama White House realizes the bigger the public sector, the more guaranteed votes the Democrats have come election time.
And as soon as I had all those thoughts I asked myself whether I should even bother commenting. After all, compared to the ticking time bomb inflation has been creating since at least the Clinton administration, with the front loading of a trillion dollar a year or more in new debt, is this even an issue? It seems to be akin to the Obama "budget cuts", small change when compared to the big problems down the road. Sure it will bring a few tens of thousands of new union votes, but concentrated in largely Democrat states, so not exactly relevant to most federal offices, or the electoral college (one more reason to thank the founders!). Adding votes in a blue state really doesn't do them much good.
Nor will the cost really matter much in the long run. With most spending going directly into the bond market, or, more likely, into fed coffers where it will support two or three times as much new credit, the spending is secondary in harm to the inflation. When you are looking at a dollar that will fall 30% or more in the next twelve months, what are a few billion dollars in spending?
And that, honestly, is the problem I have with the Obama administration. It is kind of like writing about space, or the holocaust, or prehistory, the numbers are just so huge they lose all meaning. When we talk about 6 million dead or 1 trillion light years, or the money supply growing by $3 trillion dollars, it makes all more mundane concerns shrink into insignificance. I would normally be up in arms about such a money wasting, poorly justified naked power grab, but, why bother? They will just replace it with six new power grabs, and in the meantime the money supply has grown another quarter trillion dollars while we bickered about these insignificant maters. Which make sit all seem rather futile.
The one bright spot, as much as there is one, is that there are at most three and a half more years left. And at the end of that time, whatever absurd powers they manage to arrogate to the executive will then be in the hands of the other party. Which means, even if we never retake the executive, thanks to naked power grabs by the Obama administration, it may not matter. We can just jigger the census and draw a whole lot of red districts in 2020. Maybe Texas will get 10 new congressmen and the population of Massachusetts and California will be found to be a total of twelve people? It could happen.
POSTSCRIPT
This is the reason that I have harped so much on inflation of late. I really do think it will become the single biggest issue in the near future. While we may fight against single initiatives, or even against spending in general, we have been ignoring inflation, and that has to stop. Part of the reason is that incumbents know they are as guilty as the Democrats in turning a blind eye to the harm inflation has done, but they need to get over it. Conservatives need to force the Republicans to return to their core beliefs, to commit to balanced budgets, restrained spending, and a stable, sound currency. If we can do that, I guarantee people emerging from the economic chaos Obama is about to unleash will support us no matter what the rest of our platform might be.
But this far out, I imagine that sounds a bit hysterical, and people think I am exaggerating the future troubles. But wait and see. I think sooner rather than later more and more voices will be mentioning the dread I-word, and comparisons to Carter will start appearing in more commentaries.