Thoughts on Super Primary Tuesday

This is Super Tuesday...twenty-odd states are holding primaries, including big ones like California and New York and most Southeast and Southwest States. But there is no joy in my state of Oregon because we don't have a primary until the first Tuesday in May. By that time of course, the matter of who the Presidential candidates will be long settled. The best we can hope for is some kind of "virtual representation" from voters in other states. In 1960, there were only ten primaries and John Kennedy and Richard Nixon emerged from the field. Now almost all states have primaries. But are the candidates who emerge from the contest really the best leaders or are they the best cheerleaders and have the best organizations for money-raising in the big money states like Florida and California?

But perhaps, I've come to conclude, it doesn't matter if there are only a dozen states holding primaries or four dozen. Given the current almost universal bipartisan support for "stimulating the economy" by digging deeper into debt,I've recently concluded that what people generally want from the federal government is not so much "hope" or "freedom from the Washington DC Beltway" or border security or universal health insurance or military operations in far-off nations against terrorists: what people really want is "economic stimulation"-- money coming from Washington in the form of payouts to citizens.

The only problem is that we are so far in debt at the federal level that all we are doing is essentially borrowing money from our children when they grow up. We appear to be kicking a severe recession or worse, a depression, down the road.

Politicians like to avoid tough solutions like regulation of industy and fiscal frugaliy because they don't want to be thrown out of office for telling people that its time to take off the blinders and see the economy for what it is: overheated by two foreign wars and a raising deficit from domestic programs as well.

As Andrew W. Samwick in a Washington Post editorial summed it up, "Using the incomes of future taxpayers to purchase re-election today is irresponsible but common foreign policy."

Plus it has the added benefit of keeping Congressional incumbents in office, so they will not be subjected to the throes and ups and downs of that free market everybody loves so much. Working Americans may be losing their pensions right and left (or having them frozen) but you can be sure no retired Legislator will fear having to do without in his or her declining years as long as the Treasury boys can print the money.

This latest stimulus package was approved by both Republicans and Democrats in office right now, from Speaker Nancy Pelosi to George W Bush. We are told that the 150 billion dollar package is needed to stop the slide caused by the depressed housing market--which wouldn't have happened if there had been more regulation of the home loan industry. In effect, kids today are paying for the housing bubble of those outfits like Countrywide who give loans to high-risk borrowers. And when the adjustable-rates went up and these same people couldn't afford the monthly housing payment, the loan had often already gone to another loan outfit far, far away.


The President assures us that all he is doing is giving Americans back the money that belongs to them in the first place. That's an old line and it has a folksy ring to it. But it is also a misrepresentation of the realtionship between government and the citizenry. Taxes are collected to defend the nation, and fund the programs that have been signed into law as "promoting the general welfare" of said nation or locality or state, such as funding for roads, education, debt service, entitlementsfor the elderly and the mentally challenged, etc. Can we do all that and then have a President with a straight face tell us, in effect, that we as citizens don't need to give "our" money to any level of government?


Our nation was founded in part on the principle of "No Taxation Without Representation". After 230 years, it has morphed into "all taxation is bad," or at least not necessary if we can find some central banks around the world to buy Treasury Bonds to keep us afloat. Perhaps we should change the name of our President to the "National Stimulator" and the Congress to the "Legislative Enablers" as they continue to run up bills they expect the next generation to pay or default on.