There Ain't No Free Lunch

A People Who Worship Their Belly

In the Scriptures, the Apostle Paul characterises Cretans as a people who were "always liars, evil beasts, lazy gluttons." Titus 1:12 Their god was their belly (Philippians 3:19). It is an apt characterisation of our modern age in the West.

By and large, in the West, politicians, government, and people in general are concerned predominantly with one thing, and one thing only--how to get more into our mouths. The pre-occupation with getting more money in the hand (and therefore food in the belly) through the agency of the state is universal in the West. Political opponents and voters debate endlessly the quantum, not the morality of state expropriations and re-distribution. Even those who would argue for less state re-distribution at the same time ardently defend the legality and morality of state expropriation and redistribution in principle.

These days it has become fashionable for state expropriations to extend to future generations as governments run up billions of dollars of debt to pay for food in the belly of today's Cretans. "Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die" is the underlying ethic of both politicians and people as redistribution relentlessly rises.

But now and again we see shock at reality bites. One of the truly liberal newspapers in the United States, the Chicago Tribune has woken up and found that the cupboard is bare. (Remember this is Obama's native political soil; it is the homeland of corrupt crony politics, and sweetheart deals, of under-the-table payoffs. Rich Trzupek tells the grimly ironical story:

The very day that the United States Congress passed sweeping legislation that will undermine the economy, increase debt and send tax rates soaring, a leading liberal media outlet criticized the elected officials who have been in charge of the president’s home state for repeatedly passing legislation that has: undermined Illinois’ economy, increased Illinois’ debt and sent Illinois tax rates soaring, thus poisoning the business environment and employment prospects in the state. It appears that government’s mission isn’t to tax and spend. Who knew?

For decades, Illinois has engaged in spend, spend, spend Cretan politics. Like the corrupt Roman emperors of old, the Caesars of Chicago maintained their political power by showering bread upon the plebians at the circus. But now the system is broke, really broke.

It will be hard to believe, but when Illinois Democrats passed all of the legislation that got Illinois into this cesspool of a fiscal crisis, both they and the MSM assured voters that the there was nothing to worry about. These great new programs, they said, will actually make the state more prosperous and, if you disagreed with that proposition, then you were obviously a crabby conservative trying make political hay at the expense of what was obviously the best thing for the people of the state of Illinois. Sound familiar?

Suddenly the Chicago Tribune as woken up, its bloated belly quivering in righteous indignation.

Still, it’s nice for the Trib to finally notice:

State government’s free-fall into insolvency was designed intentionally and executed methodically. Over the years, legislators devoted more to hoarding power and ensuring their re-election than to smart governance. They repeatedly created employee benefits, entitlement coverage and spending obligations that the people of Illinois cannot pay as costs come due.

That’s a keeper. Substitute “federal government” for “state government” and “the United States” for “Illinois” and you have a paragraph that the Trib can trot out again around 2020. That’s about when the Trib’s editors will figure out that the reason the United States is $100 trillion in debt and unemployment rates are competing with inflation rates to see which can soar the highest is because Congress created – starting on May 21, 2010, “employee benefits, entitlement coverage and spending obligations” that are simply unsustainable.

What we see happening at the state level all over the United States is what is going to happen at a national, federal level. It is inevitable. It is locked and loaded. Eat drink and be merry, for tomorrow you will die. But, not to worry. The Tribune has thought of a way out.

How to solve Illinois’ problems? The Trib hit upon a novel solution:

You can re-elect lawmakers who, for two decades, have grown state obligations at twice the rate of inflation. Or you can mobilize en masse and elect a responsive new legislature.

Gosh, thanks for the advice Tribune editorial-writers. Anyone reading your paper for the last decade would be forgiven for assuming that there’s some sort of state law that requires Illinois residents to vote Democrat. Illinois Democrats have had control of both chambers of the legislature and the Governor’s office for eight years and have spent most of their time spending tax dollars, most of which don’t yet exist, like a drunken sailor on shore leave. It would have been something of a public service for the old media to notice what was happening before now – before Illinois’ economic situation could be described in the following terms:

(Illinois ranks) a pathetic 48th in job creation (and) now suffers an unemployment rate of 12.2 percent, the highest in 27 years. Here’s a damning metric: The January jobless rate in all 12 Illinois metro areas exceeded the previous year’s rate — for the 32nd consecutive month.

Might the Tribune have seen this crisis coming before it reached these epic proportions? It might have, had the paper been listening to conservative Illinois Republicans who predicted this was going to happen as far back as 2002. That was when then Illinois state senator Steve Rauschenberger, a strong fiscal conservative and a Republican, outlined in horrifying detail exactly how the state’s economy was going to crash and burn if Blagojevich and the Democrats went forward with their plans. And, at that point, all Blago and the Dems were doing was robbing state pension funds to pay for other government goodies.

The freight train that has just smashed into Chicago could be heard coming down the line years ago. But then it was still the "eat, drink, and be merry" phase, so the rumbling was drowned out by the noise of revelling.

The Trib was all but blind to what was going on as the crisis was building in Illinois. They gleefully joined in the “Great Bush Bash of 2006,” which saw Democrats swept into office in overwhelming numbers. When Republican state level candidates in Illinois tried to make state finances the focus of their campaigns in 2006, the newspaper’s editorial board was much more interested in a candidate’s views on immigration reform (which isn’t in the purview of state government), abortion (ditto), and – I’m not making this up – whether foie gras should be illegal or not. The economy was going to hell in a hand basket and the Trib wanted to talk about goose liver. Now that it’s clear to everyone this side of Richie Daley that Illinois Democrats have screwed up Illinois so badly that it’s going to take a Herculean effort to fix this state, the Trib is reacting like Claude Raines in Casablanca.
They are “shocked, shocked!” to find that the lawmakers in Springfield have been so irresponsible. And, if Barack Obama’s grand plan to socialize medicine in the United States is not somehow derailed, we can expect to have much the same conversation in about ten years, on a much larger scale.

Meanwhile, let's party on, and enjoy the foie gras.