Let's further examine the thoughts of Professor John H. Cochran, University of Chicago, Booth School of Business and a Hoover Institute Senior Fellow:
"America does not need big new economic ideas to get going again. We need to address the hundreds of little common sense economic problems that everyone agrees need to be fixed. Achieving that goal requires the revival of an old political idea: limited government and the rule of law.
Our tax code is a mess - see Paul Ryan. The budget is a mess. Immigration is a mess. Energy policy is a mess. Much law is a mess. The schools are awful. Boondoggles abound. We still pay farmers not to grown crops. Social programs make work unproductive for many. ObamaCare and Dodd-Frank are monstrous messes. These are self-inflicted woulds, not external problems.
Why are we so stuck? To blame "gridlock", "partisanship" or "obstructionism" is as pointless as blaming "greed" for economic problems.
Washington is stuck because that serves its interests. Long laws and vague regulations amount to arbitrary power. The Administration uses this power to buy off allies and to silence opponents. Big businesses, public-employee unions and the well-connected get subsidies and protection, in return for political support. And silence. No insurance company will speak out against ObamaCare or the Department of Health and Human Services. No bank will speak out against Dodd-Frank or the Securities and Exchange Commission. Agencies from the Environmental Protection Agency to the Internal Revenue Serve wait in the wing to punish the unwary.
This is crony capitalism, far worse than bureaucratic socialism in many ways, and far more effective for generating money and political power. But it suffocates innovation and competition, the well springs of growth.
Not just our robust economy, but 250 years of hard-won liberties are at stake. Yes, courts, media and a few brave politicians can fight it. But in the ed, only an outraged electorate will bring change - and growth."
Well, that ought to turn your stomach; it turned mine, but I can remember the day when I opposed the Human Resources experts in Washington when they decided to replace talented employees with computers. I had seen computers take over an accounting department of a Shell Oil Company district office and watched in near horror as it seemed the employees were going to be inundated with paperwork. I left them to join a firm selling business forms and began to realize that my job was not going to teach me how to become a salesman, but how to use a pick and shovel in the gold mines I would be visiting seeking their business.
Washington is a wonderful place to visit our tax dollars at work as we are pleasantly escorted to all of the fascinating scenic places, never realizing that those building we pass by are housing the folks whose main interests involve bankrupting our children and grandchildren.
It's just a job, they say, not seeming to realize that it is their futures as well. I remember the days when we rewarded and often promoted employees for exposing corruption in high places, but listen to Professor Cochrane. What are "boondoggles" if they don't suggest there is corruption in high places?
The answer? It ought to be easy to consider. It is the politicians that we send to Washington to to be OUR REPRESENTATIVES. They are being paid to corrupt the systems for which thousands of our best and brightest have given their lives. That is the bottom line.
Elect more responsible Representatives might be your answer, but the "boondoggles" we have under consideration did not start with the Obama Administration, nor those of the Bush family, not even Bill Clinton's, nor Reagan's, not even Jimmy Carter's, nor the Nixon/Ford contingent's, but the buck could stop with the audacity of a Lyndon Baines Johnson who revealed the dynamics of real persuasive powers in the most powerful office known to mankind.
It must end in the year 2016 or the dreams may die.
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