"'Never let a serious crisis go to waste. What I mean by that is it's an opportunity to do things you couldn't do before.'
So said White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel in November, and Democrats in Congress are certainly taking his advice to heart. The 647-page, $825 billion House legislation is being sold as an economic 'stimulus,' but now that Democrats have finally released the details we understand Rahm's point much better. This is a political wonder that manages to spend money on just about every pent-up Democratic proposal of the last 40 years.
We've looked it over, and even we can't quite believe it. There's $1 billion for Amtrak, the federal railroad that hasn't turned a profit in 40 years; $2 billion for child-care subsidies; $50 million for that great engine of job creation, the National Endowment for the Arts; $400 million for global-warming research and another $2.4 billion for carbon-capture demonstration projects. There's even $650 million on top of the billions already doled out to pay for digital TV conversion coupons."
". . . for almost a century the basic principles on which this civilization was built have been falling into increasing disregard and oblivion." -- Hayek
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Another View of the Trojan Horse
WSJ EDITORIAL:
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Actually I think arts subsidies probably do more job creation than most everything else on that list...and no I'm not joking. Not that it makes the economy productive or anything, but arts subsidies pretty much put people to work; not too many hang ups in capital spending in the sector.
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