The political definition of Cronyism is: government policy that favors one or more specific beneficiaries – at the expense of everyone else. To wit: $80 billion of the 2009 “Stimulus” was wasted on “green energy” companies – 80% of whom were Barack Obama donors. Amongst the parade of horribles contained therein: the government took money from energy companies – to fund competitors to their energy companies.
Sadly, a $3.5-trillion-a-year federal government budget is filled to the rafters with nigh-endless Cronyism. There’s so much to undo – one must triage and prioritize. And while we work to reduce and eliminate, we most certainly should not create a whole new Cronyism – that will dwarf all the others combined.
The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) late last week gave us a quintessential example of aiming at the tiny – while they have for years championed the huge. Behold:
Florida Sen. Marco Rubio…has positioned himself as a young, fresh-faced champion of limited-government conservatism.
But those stereotypes won’t hold if some enterprising debate moderator asks the two Floridians about the hoary U.S. sugar program….Mr. Rubio argued in August that it ought to be terminated only when other countries like Brazil “get rid of theirs,” which is to say, never….
What Senator Rubio wants to do – is what the WSJ wants to do in just about every other instance ever: engage in free(r) trade. Rubio wants to sit down with Brazil and other sugar producers – and negotiate away their Cronyism in exchange for our ridding ourselves of ours. In a global marketplace – this makes a whole lot of sense. I’m for freer trade, WSJ – aren’t you?
And the sugar program is such a tiny part of our huge problem. Our ridiculous policy (and it is ridiculous) has since 2002 actually only cost We the Taxpayers money…once – in 2013. Those other eleven years – the program never kicked in, and we never spent a dime.
But Rubio’s perfectly reasonable free trade position – draws the WSJ’s heated scorn. The same WSJ that has for years advocated a whole new, Hugest-Cronyism-of-all policy – open borders-amnesty. An absolutely absurd position – from which Senator Rubio has rightly moved away. But fret not, WSJ, you still have plenty of allies. Unfortunately, they are mostly the most radical Leftists going – including President Obama.
The immigration bottom line: We need more legal avenues.
Ummm, we have 26 legal avenues (plus sub-classifications). That not enough for you, WSJ?
House Republicans walk into Obama’s immigration trap.
In which the WSJ chastises the few Republicans who were trying to do something – anything – about President Obama’s illegal, unilateral amnesty fiat. Way to ends-justify-the-means.
What the WSJ wants – is to allow tens (hundreds) of millions of additional poorly-educated, poorly-skilled people even-more-unfettered-access to the multitudinous government programs that are already killing us with ever increasing speed.
(Thus this is not at all about highly educated, high-skilled immigrants – a computer programmer making six figures is almost certainly not a government money recipient.)
It is currently illegal to come here – legally or illegally – and receive government money. A law to which just about no one adheres. (Our federal government advertises food stamps – in Mexico.) It would be nice if our perfectly reasonable statute were actually enforced. It would be nicer still if the likes of the WSJ didn’t advocate blowing in it an even huger hole.
And the WSJ wants to do all of this damage – so a few Big Business Cronies (Hello, Sheldon Adelson) can have even more access to ever cheaper labor. While offloading their hires’ tremendous life costs onto government – which means We the Taxpayers.
(And we currently have 94.5 million Americans driven completely out of the workforce – almost all of whom are receiving government money. It would be nice to get them into jobs and off of government – so why then are we importing even more people to keep them down and out?)
Still don’t think poorly educated immigrants receive government money? Ok – for but a moment forget immigrants. Poorly educated United States citizens – get lots and lots of government money.
It’s estimated that half of all Americans on public assistance are (high school) dropouts.
That’s the multitudinous welfare programs. And most don’t have health care – that’s on us (Hello, Medicaid and now ObamaCare). If they have children? More government health care and welfare. And in 2012 the average cost of a government K-12 education was $10,608 per-student-per-year – also almost entirely paid for by us.
And on, and on, and…. The cumulative government money tally is simply staggering. And they are born here, know the culture – and in most instances speak the language.
Imagine you are newly arrived to our nation – in a new culture and likely with a language barrier. Even a well-educated, well-skilled person will have major adjustment issues. If that person is poorly educated – they are almost certain to be yet another government money recipient. Just like a poorly educated American.
As of 2013, approximately 11.6 million Mexican immigrants resided in the United States (it’s probably more). And the average Mexican…only completes sixth grade. (Most of the rest of central and South America – finishes even less school than that.) Even if their English is perfect and they seamlessly melt into our pot – they are still almost certainly government money recipients.
Which means – just like for poor Americans – the health care and myriad welfare programs. And immigrants have children at a much higher rate than do Americans – which means even more health care, welfare – and scads more coin for government schools. And in 2009, 11.2 million government school children spoke at home a language other than English. Thus many require an English as a Second Language (ESL) education – which costs even more coin.
The WSJ is just fine with all of this economic destruction. And wants even more of it – “Throw open the borders! Amnesty for everyone!” Which means ostensibly everyone on the planet will have access to every government money program we have – forever. All to assuage a few Big Business types that want cheaper labor – while nearly a hundred million Americans aren’t working. Which is horrendous policy – Huge Cronyism on stilts.
Meanwhile the WSJ is criticizing Senator Rubio for wanting to improve international trade by piecemeal negotiating away a tiny bit of Cronyism – that most of the time actually costs us nothing.
WSJ, we’ll close with the Bible – Matthew 7:3: “(W)hy worry about a speck in your friend’s eye – when you have a log in your own?”
This first appeared in NewsBusters and Red State.