values - welfare state: The Patriot Post 15Feb10

Government
"Government is taking us a long way down the Road to Serfdom.  That doesn't just mean that more of us must work for the government . It means that we are changing from independent, self-responsible people into a submissive flock.  The welfare state kills the creative spirit.  F.A. Hayek, an Austrian economist living in Britain, wrote 'The Road to Serfdom' in 1944 as a warning that central economic planning would extinguish freedom. ... Hayek meant that governments can't plan economies without planning people's lives.  After all, an economy is just individuals engaging in exchanges.  The scientific-sounding language of President Obama's economic planning hides the fact that people must shelve their own plans in favor of government's single plan.  At the beginning of 'The Road to Serfdom,' Hayek acknowledges that mere material wealth is not all that's at stake when the government controls our lives: 'The most important change ... is a psychological change, an alteration in the character of the people. ' This shouldn't be controversial.  If government relieves us of the responsibility of living by bailing us out, character will atrophy.  The welfare state, however good its intentions of creating material equality, can't help but make us dependent.  That changes the psychology of society.  According to the Tax Foundation, 60 percent of the population now gets more in government benefits than it pays in taxes.  What does it say about a society in which more than half the people live at the expense of the rest?" --columnist John Stossel

The Last Word
"In lecturing us about blowing our money, The Great Ozbama displays breathtaking gall.  Given that he is blowing trillions of our money, not his, and burying us in debt as no president in history, silence on the subject would seem more reasonable.  To be nit-picky about it, since he is in citing trips to Vegas as particularly objectionable, I hold in my casino chip-calloused fingers a list procured from CanadaFreePress.com of Mrs. Obama's staff and their salaries.  She reportedly has a staff of 22 assistants.  Yes, I said twenty-two.  (Previous First Ladies' dedicated staffs were in the single digits.)  Michelle's little army includes a Chief of Staff costing $172,000 a year; a Deputy Chief of Staff at $90,000; a Director of Policy and Projects at $140,000; a Director of Communications at $102,000; a Deputy Director of Scheduling at $62,000; two Social Secretaries -- mysteriously, one at $65,000, one at $64,000; an Associate Director of Correspondence at $45,000, an Assistant to the Social Secretary at $36,000, and more, in total consuming $6.3-million annually thus $25-million during her 4-year term.  Not to mention a make-up artist and hair stylist.  I have one assistant.  Answer my own correspondence.  Keep my own calendar. ... Mr. President, sir, if you are going to lecture me about blowing my money in Vegas or turning down my thermostat or inflating my tires, do you think you could reign in your wife's blowing of my money just a teeny bit?"  --columnist Dan Kennedy

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