AllTheseThings: Be Afraid

With the political momentum moving in the Democrats' direction, Democratic leaders are envisioning life in Congress with huge, liberal majorities, and a liberal President. The result: dusting off FDR's play book. This is compounded by the financial mess, and Washington's response to it: more agencies, more federal control, more tax payer money.

There seems to always be a big-government 'solution' when the country hits a tough stretch. But, the net effect is for historians to declare an end to the age of Reagan, and for Democrats to no longer mention Clinton and avoid FDR, but the other way around. What a change a couple years can make.

This reversion to FDR's massive, government-regulate-everything approach is well chronicled in the following article. You should read the entire thing, it's pretty scary. And these comments are not coming from a bunch of left-wing wackos with MoveOn.org. These are coming from prominent, well-known, elected Democrats, who are looking for a "New Deal 2.0"!

I often wondered what it was like to be a conservative in the 1930's, with the whole country socializing and nationalizing. It must have felt as if Constitutional democracy was ending. Most of my political life has been spent in, or after, the Reagan restoration--where at least people understood the merits of limited government. Well, it looks like I might get to find out what it was like in the 1930's after all.

Here's how it starts:

With visions of a massive liberal majority in the next Congress and the power to remake economic policy for the next generation, Democrats are dusting off their New Deal history books and openly discussing the idea of re-engineering Depression-era agencies for the 21st century.

Several lawmakers want to bring back the Home Ownership Loan Corp., and others have discussed resurrecting the defunct Reconstruction Finance Corp., a federal program that made direct loans to businesses. Others see a lame-duck stimulus bill less as a short-term cash infusion for the economy and more as a long-term, government-driven jobs creator — a kind of modern Works Progress Administration that invests in infrastructure, bridges and roads.

Come next year, the new administration and the new Congress may be able to build an entire new bureaucracy to govern the economy for decades. Essentially, Democrats want to put some institutional permanence behind the sweeping executive actions taking place as the Bush administration moves to shore up banks and other financial institutions with Treasury’s new powers.

Read on here...

With visions of a massive liberal majority, dancing in my head,

Thomas More

[email protected]