All Lies Matter

Douglas Wilson: All Lies Matter

Building Statues to Benedict Arnold

Thomas Sowell: Budget Politics

Back in my teaching days, many years ago, one of the things I liked to ask the class to consider was this: Imagine a government agency with only two tasks: (1) building statues of Benedict Arnold and (2) providing life-saving medications to children. If this agency's budget were cut, what would it do?

The answer, of course, is that it would cut back on the medications for children. Why? Because that would be what was most likely to get the budget cuts restored. If they cut back on building statues of Benedict Arnold, people might ask why they were building statues of Benedict Arnold in the first place.

The example was deliberately extreme as an illustration. But, in the real world, the same general pattern can be seen in local, state and national government responses to budget cuts.

At the local level, the first response to budget cuts is often to cut the police department and the fire department. There may be all sorts of wasteful boondoggles that could have been cut instead, but that would not produce the public alarm that reducing police protection and fire protection can produce. And public alarm is what can get budget cuts restored.

The Obama administration is following the same pattern. The Department of Homeland Security, for example, released thousands of illegal aliens from prisons to save money -- and create alarm.

The Federal Aviation Administration says it is planning to cut back on the number of air traffic controllers, which would, at a minimum, create delays for airline passengers, in addition to fears for safety that can create more public alarm.
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President Obama has said that he would veto legislation to let him choose what to cut. That should tell us everything we need to know about the utter cynicism of this glib man.
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A Censored Race War?

Thomas Sowell: A Censored Race War?

The 'Progressive' Legacy

Thomas Sowell: The 'Progressive' Legacy, Part I
Thomas Sowell: The 'Progressive' Legacy, Part II

Thomas Sowell on 'Blacks and Republicans'

Thomas Sowell on 'Blacks and Republicans'

Part of the root-cause of the problem Sowell addresses at the end of the piece [the GOP's continuous failure to make the case to black Americans that "liberal" policies are ultimately harmful to their interests] is due to the fact that most GOP politicians are professional politicians, which makes them fundamentally indistinguishable from Democrats, for professional politicians see the public fisc primarily as the means by which they are enabled to buy the votes of the public, and thus attain or continue in office. GOP professional politicians are "me-too" Democrats; they are the "tax-collectors for the welfare-state," rather than opponents of it -- Democrats are concerned primarily with growing the welfare-state (at the expense of your and my liberty and freedoms), while "me-too" Democrats (as the majority of GOP politicians are) are concerned primarily with the fundamentally impossible task of making the welfare-state fiscally responsible or sound.

Most "liberal" policies are immoral, for they have the entirely forseeable result of destroying the polity, and all for cheap and tawdry (and short-term) personal gain. Politicians -- and voters -- who do not oppose such policies are immoral persons, for they are willing to destroy the Nation, or the State, or the community, in the long-run (which is now not so far off for many States nor for the Nation as a whole) for their own immediate personal gain at the expense of their fellow so-called citizens.

The Quest for Cosmic Justice

Thomas Sowell: The Quest for Cosmic Justice

[Hey, Nicholas, yours isn't the only blog for which Sowell is a "blog fav" ;-) ]