SURREPTITIONS SOCIALISM OF THE STRONG

clipped from: www.washingtonpost.com

Republicans -- whose

• prescription drug entitlement is the largest expansion of the welfare state since President Lyndon Johnson's Great Society gave

• birth to Medicare in 1965; and a majority of whom in Congress supported a

• lavish farm bill at a time of record profits for the less than 2 percent of the American people-cum-corporations who farm --

• and their administration were partially nationalizing the banking system, putting

• Detroit on the dole

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The distribution of a trillion dollars by a political institution -- the federal government -- will be nonpolitical? How could it be? Either markets allocate resources, or government -- meaning politics -- allocates them.

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Sugar import quotas cost the American people approximately $2 billion a year, but that sum is siphoned from 300 million consumers

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government spreading of wealth is economically destructive and morally dubious -- destructive because, by directing capital to suboptimum uses

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It is also because the socialism we do have is the surreptitious socialism of the strong, e.g., sugar producers represented by their Washington hirelings.

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rent-seeking -- bending government for the benefit of private factions.