The Government That Cried “Wolf”

Posted by Larry Miller on August 23, 2009 under Why | 2 Comments to Read

During the waning days of the Bush administration, Henry Paulsen, Ben Bernanke and even President Bush himself came before the American people with furrowed brows to tell us it was absolutely essential to give boatloads of money to stock holder owned financial institutions to prevent the utter collapse of US and worldwide financial markets. These banks were apparently brought to their knees by their own mismanagement and greed, compounded with extensive help from real and quasi-federal agencies like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

For the most part, the executives of these organizations kept their positions and inflated salaries. The American sheeple got the bill for such extravagance along with a song and dance about what was good for the financial institutions was good for the country and for them as well. They got to pay for the money given the banks and for their own debts to these banks… which some still could not pay due to a collapsing economy. They got to pay the mortgage lenders for the full price of their homes, even though many values had dropped significantly to the point where they owed more than the house was worth… while the banks that made the loans were covered by the taxpayers borrowed cash. It was clear that saving the banks was more important than helping the cash strapped American people… yet, housing prices continued to fall and jobs continued to be lost.

Shortly after moving into his new digs at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Barack Hussein Obama and his cohorts came to the citizens of this great country with the news that unless massive additional amounts of money were authorized, unemployment would soar to eight percent. Over the objections of those who actually pay the taxes that will cover the money borrowed, congress went along with the scheme and gave him another trillion dollars, more or less. This was supposed to create jobs and save the economy. But most of the money is not scheduled to be spent until much closer to the 2010 and 2012 elections and the only jobs created were government jobs… and some of them, only temporary.

The plan went into effect and unemployment did not hit eight percent. It hit nine percent and is pushing ten percent. With the number of people who have given up looking for work and not reported, it is likely that we’ve exceeded 10% already. In these two cases, along with too many more to count, we have been told that massive government action was necessary and would spare us from the dire results of our own ineptitude… but the results have been missing in action. Each time, we have been promised that our problems would be fixed, and each time we have witnessed failures and heard excuses… or stories that have been spun to try to make us believe that what we hear instead of what we see.

There is yet another crisis on the horizon. We are being prepped for another intrusion into our lives. To put the drama we are about to witness into perspective we need to remember the words of Rahm Emanuel, “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. And what I mean by that is an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before.”

The crisis is the world wide pandemic of the H1N1 flu. That is the one that used to be called swine flu. It may be that the politicians didn’t like that because too many people may have thought it came from them. We see news reports from around the world… a couple cases hear and a couple more cases there. A few countries have a significant number of cases, but that is the exception rather than the rule, yet we are told the pandemic is at hand, requiring massive government action.

We are told that drug companies are rushing to prepare a vaccine specially made for this flu and it should be ready by October. This is for our good we are told and rumors are flying that inoculations will be mandatory. It is true that the drug companies are spending their dollars preparing this drug. It is also true that there is insufficient time to test this drug as would normally be required. But it is also true that if the people do not take the drug, the companies will not recover their investment in the vaccine.

With an array of unfulfilled promises from inside the beltway, each one requiring more and more from each of us, and taking away more and more of our individual freedoms, it is understandable that we would skeptical of taking an unproven drug to prevent a disease that may or may not be on our doorstep. The danger is that the government may be right on this one… or it may be giving us a drug with side effects worse than the disease it is supposed to prevent. In either case, the wrong decision will not just destroy our finances, but our health as well. For myself, the track record in recent years tells me stay as far away from this thing as possible.

We have seen our government cry “Wolf!” so many times in the recent past, that whether this is true or not, it is difficult to believe them. This is why it is critical that we have people of integrity in positions of authority, not just smooth talking shysters who can spin a good tale. The swine flu vaccine… and the idea of “public option” health care are two areas that can only be effective if the people have confidence in those making decisions. In assessing our confidence, we can only fall back on the old adage “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.” We have been fooled enough times to carry us into the next millennium.

This time the distrust could be deadly, but history shows us it is more like to save our health, perhaps our lives.