Gangster government

Michael Barone has spoken out on the subject of "gangster" government many times since that description was first used by him at the beginning of the Obama administration.  Here, here, and here are three such discussions by Barone.  "Gangster" government is really simply a euphemism for statism or totalitarianism of the Mussolini/Hitler variety in which the the state controls all aspects of an economy without taking outright ownership of the means of production.  It does this by edicts, by taxation, and of course increasingly complex regulations all of which inhibit and limit innovation and wealth creation.  There's a reason why all socialist states, all fascist dictatorships have failed in the end.  They can make the trains run  on time for a while, but they cannot innovate and create the environment that produces the Bill Gates, and Steve Jobses who literally create brand new industries that end up creating businesses that create millions of high paying jobs.  There are a number of reasons why the Obama gang should be run out of town this November, but at the top of the list of these reasons is their fundamental lack of understanding of how the free enterprise system, i.e. capitalism, works.  Everyone would do well to remember that when Hoover and FDR began the federal central planning programs in the 1930's designed to put the government in control of the economy to prevent any future depressions, there was no real improvement in unemployment conditions for over 10 years.  It took WWII to put people back to work.  The message:  the government does not create jobs, the government does not create wealth therefore the government does not create a growing, expanding, productive economy.  The Obama people simply don't get this.

A sidebar to this gangster government discussion is the tiresome and largely false mantra of leftists columnists and pundits 24/7 that greedy Wall Street caused the 2007/8 sub-prime mortgage driven financial meltdown and that government must step in and take control of these vampires before they suck all of our collective blood dry.  This is not a complicated nor difficult issue to resolve.  A starting point is this article by Joe Pinto in the AEI Journal.  There's plenty more written about this disaster in this blog in the past.  One thing is clear.  Wall Street played a part in the fiasco, however, that role was largely at the behest of the government at many levels.  What needs reforming here is the liberal notion that a private dwelling and every other material consumer good should be considered a civil right.