There are those who are voicing strong objections.

According to a report just released by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), “the [federal budget] deficit this year will total $1.2 trillion, or 8.3 percent of GDP.” This seems about right for a banana republic. The bad news is that neither commercial banana cultivation nor a republican form of government has proved viable in this country.

Bananas, of course, must be imported into this country from Latin America and other places where their commercial cultivation has proved profitable.

As for the republican form of government, the American people have progressively repudiated it almost from the time they won their independence from the British Empire, and during the past century, they have increasingly favored a form of electoral dictatorship cum empire in which, every four years, the people cast ballots for one of the candidates put forward by the two wings of the one-party political apparatus. This system, vigorously promoted by the imperial running dogs known as the mainstream news media, brings great delight to the masses, who love a good horse race, even if it has been fixed. They are also kept contentedly semi-comatose by the bread and circuses their masters provide in the form of the welfare-nanny-therapeutic state and its Hollywood adjuncts. The few who object strenuously are tased or shot dead by the police, who are ever ready to serve and protect the state that employs them.

The CBO’s projection does not take into account any addition to the federal budget deficit that may arise from enactment of a “stimulus” bill after the Obama administration takes charge of administering the empire. If the magnitudes now being discussed for this so-called stimulus should prove to be in the right range, the deficit for fiscal year 2009 may turn out to be not $1.2 trillion, but something in the neighborhood of $2 trillion, perhaps 15 percent of GDP. If so, the deficit will be as large in amount as the entire federal budget was as recently as 2002. This prospect may be what cranky commentators such as yours truly have in mind when they speak of “out-of-control federal spending.”

One fellow is remembered for baldy stating that government is the problem, not the solution, but he just said what seems pretty obvious to those who are not on the bus. The interesting part wasn't what was said, but that he said it since he was clearly on the bus and always had been.

Update:

Said another way.

Many of us who know Rand's work have noticed that with each passing week, and with each successive bailout plan and economic-stimulus scheme out of Washington, our current politicians are committing the very acts of economic lunacy that "Atlas Shrugged" parodied in 1957, when this 1,000-page novel was first published and became an instant hit.

Rand, who had come to America from Soviet Russia with striking insights into totalitarianism and the destructiveness of socialism, was already a celebrity. The left, naturally, hated her. But as recently as 1991, a survey by the Library of Congress and the Book of the Month Club found that readers rated "Atlas" as the second-most influential book in their lives, behind only the Bible.

For the uninitiated, the moral of the story is simply this: Politicians invariably respond to crises -- that in most cases they themselves created -- by spawning new government programs, laws and regulations. These, in turn, generate more havoc and poverty, which inspires the politicians to create more programs . . . and the downward spiral repeats itself until the productive sectors of the economy collapse under the collective weight of taxes and other burdens imposed in the name of fairness, equality and do-goodism.

I read her stuff when I was an egg and enjoyed it a lot. I read it as fantasy/fiction rather than any sort of coherent political statement - sort of like I read MacLeod in later years. It seems to me that people may understand the morality tale perfectly well but have no clue how to apply it to real life. That's the job of art and literature - a thousand stories and images that supply the stock of anecdotes people need to apply such insights to their lives. Unfortunately, the art and literature establishment was co-opted to serve the state long ago.

Update: Spamageddon

Update 2009-01-01: The volume of spam in my inbox is falling faster than the price of light sweet crude. My December total is down more than 60 percent since the October peak, to 2,774 messages. . .

What drives these tides in the flow of Vi@gra ads and offers of replica \/\/atches? The cycles of boom and bust are even more mysterious than those of the global economy.