Control Freak

IBD Editorials ^ | 2 Mar 2007 | Staff

[Kitten Festival]

Political Economy: Hillary Clinton says our trade deficit and reliance on foreign investors are big problems, and wants to fix them. But her cure would be far worse than the disease, and should be rejected out of hand.

Can't say we're surprised. Given a choice, Clinton has always opted for government control over market magic.

This was true in the early 1990s, when she and a handful of secretive bureaucrats and leftist advisers tried to nationalize our health care system — 15% of the economy.

It was true last month when, outraged at soaring oil company profits such as Exxon's record $39.2 billion, Clinton said: "I want to take those profits and put them into an alternative energy fund" for "smart" alternatives.

That amounts to nothing less than a seizure of private property without compensation. Clinton would "take" profits and use them as she thinks best — substituting her judgment for that of millions of consumers, shareholders and oil industry workers.

But Clinton remains unrepentant. Faced with what she called "a slow erosion of our own economic sovereignty" from U.S. dependence on foreign debt and trade, she would restrict trade and perhaps limit access to currency for trade and investment.

This is almost unbelievable foolishness.

[Kitten Festival]

Hillary won't stop until she has control over every aspect of our existence. And yet there are people who would vote for her.

[concerned about politics]

When government takes control of private industry, it's called communism. Socialism is simply the prelude, or the preparation, for a communist government.

"The Third Way" referred to by the Clinton's is a government that's half free and half communist. The problem is that the government itself decides what freedoms we have and what freedoms we lose.

[HuntsvilleTxVeteran]

The only important difference between Nazi - ism, Fascism, Communism, Socialism and Liberalism is the spelling, and that the last group hasn't got the brains to figure it out.
- Bill Vance

[ClaireSolt]

Seems to me that we have an imbalance because we have the money to buy things. It is counterintuitive to mercantilism, though.

[Sam Cree]

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