The Funeral Takes a New DirectionThe funeral appeared over. The dirge played. The imperial processions passed. Nero called Caesar a great man. They dragged the old Republican cross-country before, during and into the New Year. Lucky the games were on in the Colosseum. Nothing like a little gladiator football to nurse a hangover. Out with the old and in with the decrepit, the Democrats. Nancy Pelosi, new madam of the House of Ill Repute, has plans. Pelosi — mother, grandmother and tie-died San Francisco brunette — promises a New Direction. She will "drain the swamp" after 12 years of Republican reign. This draining will allow a swamp expansion of sufficient size that Democrats can wallow in their own reign of terror. Somebody call the Sierra Club! The scheme, Democrat or Republican, is to extract as much blood and property as possible from taxpayers. Among the plans of the Democrat gang? The crime: Raise the minimum wage to $7.25 an hour. The motive: To please a public that clamors for it. To pay off unions, big Democrat donors who want to price entry-level labor, their competition, out of the market. The sentence: More poison into what's left of the free-market system. More unemployment among youth, especially the poor. Higher prices for everybody, including those on minimum wage. Higher prices will necessitate still more increases in minimum wage, higher prices, more wage increases, higher prices, etc., etc., etc. The observation: If $7.25 an hour were good, would not $10 an hour be better? Why not $100? Or $1,000? Let's be generous. How about $1 million an hour? Yes! Yes! Are you with me, comrades? We can call this the Patriot Pot in Every Rainbow Act. The crime: Cut interest rates on student loans. The motive: To fleece the public with the usual feel-good con. To increase loan volume and jack the profits of lenders, satisfying the government's Wall Street bankers with another lusty round of Christmas bonuses. The sentence: More debt for hapless youth, who need an education in service to lenders.
The crime: Spend more on stem-cell research. The motive: More grants for government employees in government universities. More R&D dough for subsidized drug companies. The sentence: Top-shelf costs and bargain-basement results. If stem-cell research promises a return on investment, if it is cost-effective, if it is an efficient use of resources, then private companies will do it. This is the Patriot Pharmaceutical Subsidy and Government Tenured Worker Employment Act. The crime: Let the government negotiate prices of Medicare drugs. The motive: To win applause from a public sick of rising health-care costs. To funnel profits to government-controlled drug companies. The sentence: Transfer of Medicare costs to the privately insured through reduced coverage and higher premiums and co-pays. The observation: As government raises health-care costs, the public will demand universal coverage, at which point our lives fall into the good hands of bureaucrats. This is the It's Your Patriot Life and We Own It Act. This is the Democrats' New Direction? Let's boil their plans down. The crime: Bigger government. The motive: To make the ruling gangs, the tax consumers, richer and more powerful. The sentence: Slavery to the state. Tax consumers do the crimes; tax producers serve the sentence. The direction remains unchanged. The funeral is not over after all. The dirge still plays. The death march of freedom continues. Thomas Jefferson once wrote that to check government power the country needed the rebirth of revolution every 20 years. If so, a new direction is 210 years past due. Phil Lucas is executive editor of The News Herald in Panama City, Fla. Contact him at plucas@pcnh.com. To find out more about Lucas and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com. COPYRIGHT 2007 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.
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