SOWELL

Posted at 10:10 a.m. ET:

Reader James Birdsall alerts us to an excellent column by economist Thomas Sowell, taking apart the Obama stimulus plan, which seems to be falling apart as we speak:

Everyone is talking about how much money the government is spending, but very little attention is being paid to where they are spending it or what they are buying with it.

The government is putting money into banks, even when the banks don't want it, in hopes that the banks will put it into circulation. But the latest statistics shows that banks are lending even less money now than they were before the government dumped all that cash on them.

How hard did you work to pay your taxes last year?  Think about it.

Spending money for infrastructure is another time-consuming way of dealing with what is called an immediate crisis. Infrastructure takes forever to plan, debate, and go through all sorts of hearings and adjudications, before getting approval to build from all the regulatory agencies involved.

Ah, but when those roads are named for congressmen, all the congressional effort is worth it.

Using long, drawn-out processes to put money into circulation to meet an emergency is like mailing a letter to the fire department to tell them that your house is on fire.

Well put.

If all this sound and fury in Washington was about getting an economic crisis behind us, tax cuts could do that a lot faster.

That and defense spending.  The military needs to replace equipment, and it could be ordered tomorrow morning.

If the Beltway politicians aren't really trying to solve this crisis as quickly as they could, what are they trying to do?

One important clue may be a recent statement by President Obama's chief of staff, Rahm Emmanuel, that "A crisis is a terrible thing to waste."

Yup.  The word "crisis" can be used to justify almost anything.  In the 1950s Congress attached the term "national defense" to an education bill because it sold better.

This is the kind of cynical revelation that sometimes slips out, despite all the political pieties and spin. Crises have long been seen as great opportunities to expand the federal government's power while the people are too scared to object and before any opposition can get organized.

And...

What are the Beltway politicians buying with all the hundreds of billions of dollars they are spending? They are buying what politicians are most interested in-- power.

In the name of protecting the taxpayers' investment, they are buying the power to tell General Motors how to make cars, banks how to bank and, before it is all over with, all sorts of other people how to do the work they specialize in, and for which members of Congress have no competence, much less expertise.

Finally...

Who knows what bright ideas this administration will turn into permanent institutions for our children and grandchildren to try to cope with?

All true, all true.

February 1, 2009.