So, the Wizard is at it again...
The Wizard will be working the Houston Tea Party, to be held at Jones Plaza in downtown Houston. No, the Wizard will not tell gentle readers how it was that I got involved with the Houston Tea Party, as I did not even hear about the original Tea Party until some two weeks after it had occurred. How I got involved came about in a round about way anyway.
More to the point, I have gotten quite concerned about what has happened in Washington over the past 8 or so months, starting with the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac excitement. There has been quite a bit of reporting about President Obama's $3.6 trillion federal budget for fiscal year 2010. What a lot of people don't seem to realize is that this will represent some 26 percent of the U.S. GDP for this upcoming year. Before World War Two, federal expenditures were under 10 percent of overall economic activity. This jumped enormously during the Second World War. After a brief whittling down period between WWII and the Korean War, federal expenditures vascillated between 18-22 percent of economic activity since the start of the Cold War. Even after the Cold War ended, the Clinton Administration pared down the military by one third, but domestic expenditures expanded to fill in the breach. Still, Clinton was - gasp! - the most fiscally responsible president America has had over the past 30 years, largely thanks to facing a hostile Republican led Congress for his last six years in office.
The bottom line is, federal expenditures have now reached 26 percent of GDP, and that represents an enormous jump in overall governmental involvement in the economy.
* Just yesterday, a story came across the wires that the federal deficit for February 2009 was $192 billion! It used to be that people were outraged when that was the federal deficit for an entire year.
* Brian Shelly notes that Social Security is going to go into the red eight years earlier than was previously projected.
* The Bush Administration told the American public just months after invading Iraq that the army would be coming home in a few months. Well, here we are 5 years, and over $500 billion later, and we're still there.
* The Obama Administration wants to push through universal health insurance, at some completely unknown cost.
* The Bush and Obama Administrations have given AIG $180 billion. I have no idea where it went, other than some vague notion that it went to cover AIG's screw ups over credit swaps.
* The Obama Administration is bailing out the car companies and has fired GM CEO Rick Wagoner. Now, a better term for the American auto manufacturers would be to call them Government Motors.
Some years ago here in Houston, we had a big company that completely failed called Enron. Politicians couldn't run away fast enough from that debacle, other than to send in the prosecutors to witch hunt Enron's executives.
One thing to thing about is this. Will Americans not be able to buy cars or insurance if either GM or AIG fail? Were Americans not able to obtain natural gas just because Enron failed?
* State and local governments don't look much better, mostly because of massive pension obligations to workers on the government payrolls.
* Because certain interest groups and the media have whipped up the public into a lather over global climate change, the Obama Administration is contemplating either a carbon tax, or a cap and trade regime for carbon emissions. Notably, there's been no talk of how this is going to affect my pocketbook. But according to Reason magazine, a cap and trade regime could turn out to be nothing more than yet another monster of a corporate welfare program. Some 2,300 lobbyists have besieged Capitol Hill on the matter, a huge sign how much is at stake. It is also a sign that an awful lot of rent seeking is going on.
* Taxes from every level of government now take up about 35 percent of my money. Taxation is now my largest personal expense, far exceeding my second largest expense, which is mortgage and fees for my housing.
The Wizard, as usual, will not get to make any speeches. Others always seem to grab the spotlight, even though I am often able to evoke ovations when I speak and have been told countless times how articulate I am at the microphone, even though I have only 2-3 minutes to get my points across. Instead events like this always need people to do the dirty work, including whipping out the wallet to put up money for the event, which nobody ever seems to want to do. Some people I know are quite good at wanting to pass out stuff and committing others to do the dirty work on their causes, while running away as fast as they can when it comes to actually carrying the load of getting the job done. Others will also be pushing their messages, while I don't know how many times I've had to put up with old fogies who don't get off their rear ends to do a damned thing to organize events, to defend property rights, or liberty, tell me how we are to handle the problems that we will face in putting on this event. Instead, I will likely have to help pick up the trash after this thing is over. That's the dreary reality of working in the trenches of grass roots politics.
And yet, I am going to work this event on Wednesday because I am seriously starting to wonder about the financial stability of my country and because of what I perceive to be an immense grab for power by the Obama Administration to reach ever further into American life. I'll do the mundane things that the Houston Tea Party event will require to be successful because I don't want to live in an America that allows me to only have a little bit of pocket money left over at the end of the week. I'd rather die on my feet than live on my knees.
So, the Wizard will be at the sign in tables, helping to distribute some of the 6,000 adhesive stickers for people's names that I've purchased for the event. I have a feeling that I'll be seeing some of you there.
Wizard
Addendum: To **** with you, Paul Krugman.