"To what purpose are powers limited, and to what purpose is that limitation committed to writing,
if these limits may, at any time, be passed by those intended to be restrained?"
-- Chief Justice John Marshall, Marbury v. Madison, 1803

Change You Can Grow
by Hal_10000

A friend of mine is fond of the following saying, the origin of which I don’t know: “We have a two party system in America: an evil party and a stupid party. Occasionally they get together to do something that is both evil and stupid. This is called ‘bipartisanship’.”

Well, the bloated stupid evil farm bill is a perfect example of this. And who is voting for it? Why, it’s Barack Obama, standing up to special interests:

“We need to stand up to the special interests, bring Republicans and Democrats together, and pass the farm bill immediately,” Barack Obama declared last November. It was a weird thing to say, since the farm bill, which subsidizes an arbitrarily chosen section of the economy at the expense of taxpayers and consumers in general, is special-interest legislation by definition.

The latest version, which President Bush has promised to veto, includes tax breaks for racehorse owners, “marketing aid” for fruit and vegetable growers, research funding for organic farmers, enhanced price supports for domestic sugar producers, increased subsidies for dairy farmers, a $170 million earmark for the salmon industry, and billions of dollars in automatic payments and “permanent disaster assistance” for corn, wheat, cotton, rice, and soybean growers. Take that, special interests!

Obama has also, in his quest to bring transparency and ethics to Washington, violated the PAYGO laws and uttered narry a peep about his party’s illegal refusal to consider to Columbia FTA (I seem to be the only conservative in America worked up about the latter).

The reason I rail against nastiness and stupid partisanship is not because I’m hoping Republicans and Democrats will hold hands, skip under a rainbow and sing “Amazing Grace”. It’s because my interest is in effective opposition. When you scream “terrorists!” or “liberals!” every time a bill is proposed, people stop listening. You have to save your ammo.

The farm bill was a perfect opportunity for effective opposition. The Republicans could have united against it. They would have exposed the Democrats—and in particular Barack Obama—as being completely beholden to special interests. Instead, they got along (McCain, to his credit, voted against it).

But at least they’re calling him out on the flag pin!

Posted by Hal_10000 on 05/18/08 at 06:22 PM (Discuss this in the forums)