Nanny State, Squared

IBD Editorials ^ | October 22, 2009 | INVESTORS BUSINESS DAILY Staff

[Kaslin]

Big Government: Hardly a day passes without the unveiling of some new federal intrusion into our lives. At some point Americans must say "enough's enough," or sit silently as all our precious liberties are taken away.

The Democrats in Congress and the White House are pushing through the most sweeping changes toward direct government control of our economy since at least the Great Depression. Consider just a few news items from recent days:

• The Senate moves to give the Food and Drug Administration huge new power over what we eat and drink, and what medicine we take.

• A House panel OKs a new Consumer Finance Protection Agency that will have direct control over consumer credit from banks and businesses — potentially killing a private system of consumer borrowing that, whatever its flaws, has led to unparalleled consumer wealth and access to credit.

• A new "bailout" is proposed for small businesses that will further distort markets, punish successful companies and reward failure. The opposite, in other words, of a free market economy.

• Execs of companies that took government bailouts get their pay slashed — courtesy of U.S. "paymaster" Kenneth Feinberg.

[Kaslin]

[Kaslin]

[loveliberty2]

"To preserve [the] independence [of the people,] we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude. If we run into such debts as that we must be taxed in our meat and in our drink, in our necessaries and our comforts, in our labors and our amusements, for our callings and our creeds, as the people of England are, our people, like them, must come to labor sixteen hours in the twenty-four, give the earnings of fifteen of these to the government for their debts and daily expenses, and the sixteenth being insufficient to afford us bread, we must live, as they now do, on oatmeal and potatoes, have no time to think, no means of calling the mismanagers to account, but be glad to obtain subsistence by hiring ourselves to rivet their chains on the necks of our fellow-sufferers." --Thomas Jefferson to Samuel Kercheval, 1816. ME 15:39

Where to, America?

[Rennes Templar]

Where’s all the “Bush and Homeland Security are taking away all our personal liberties” crowd?

[Kaslin]

Excellent point. Did you ever get an answer from them when you asked them what rights they lost? I did not

[microgood]

Where’s all the “Bush and Homeland Security are taking away all our personal liberties” crowd?

Both parties are guilty of taking away our liberties. The Republicans have no more respect for the Constitution than the Democrats.

Because of the Patriot Act, the Feds no longer need a warrant to look at all you medical and financial records, phone records, email etc and they can come in your house and search it when you are not home without a warrant. All clear violations of the 4th Amendment.

The sad part is that although this was mainly done to fight terrorism, there were only 3 out of 800 cases where that was the reason for doing it during the last Congressional review.

Bush was no friend to the Constitution, and that will forever be part of his legacy.