How Ahmadinejad is Like Any US Pork Spending Politician

"You cannot run the country with projects. You have to have plans and policies." Mohammad Khoshchehreh Iranian parliament member and economist.

Tell me if this sounds familiar.

"But Mr. Ahmadinejad has no plans at all," he said, referring to economic and foreign policy. "He wants to run the country with charity projects, like giving out loans."

Can you say, "mortgage bailout." Not skipping the beat, the US House of Representatives passed an election friendly budget on Thursday. Instead of adhering to a one year ban on pork spending, The politicians instead decided to spend themselves into office once again on the backs of our children's future by buying votes with pet projects and bridges to nowhere.

The House defeated a Republican alternative that would have slowed spending on Medicare and other entitlement programs, permanently extended the tax cuts, invested more in military spending and put a one-year freeze on the congressional pet projects known as earmarks.

Republicans could talk fiscal sanity because they knew their policies wouldn't pass. But during the heyday of the Republican Party, in 2004, Bush signed into office one of the biggest entitlements ever with extended Medicare Part D coverage that provides government subsidies to elderly for private insurance to supply prescriptions. He had to buy some Florida votes to shore up Florida which he won by a handful of votes in 2000. Florida has a large retired population and Medicare is one of their primary concerns.

Fiscal sanity comes from less medicare, less social projects, less military waste, less decadence. Once you start to eat steak it is hard to go back to hot dogs but it is a must for congress. America needs to start producing again, either in services or manufacturing, but at some point the government is going to have to stop paying bills by firing up the printing press. Instead of having the people who committed to bad loans pay the consequences (outcomes-see below) the government will devaluate the dollar some more by loaning money to banks to loan to people who couldn't pay off their loans in the first place or so it would seem.

Eliminating poverty is like reaching the speed of light. As an object's velocity increases its mass increases requiring more energy to move the mass. As the object approaches the speed of light mass increases to infinity and energy required increases to infinity. Same can be said about poverty. The more government subsidies, the greater the tax burden. Greater tax burden increases poverty. Somehow Americans must be rewarded for working again. Every American has the right to purchase affordable, market driven, health insurance. No American should be demanded to purchase healthcare, as the Clinton plan demands. Nor does any American have the right to free healthcare. Medicare and Medicaid started this mess, because once you subsidize healthcare, everybody's problems become a matter of the state. If you want to smoke, eat yourself into obesity that is fine, just sign away your right to Medicare and Medicaid and everyone will benefit. You get to live your unhealthy lifestyle and I don't have to pay for you gluttony. But, again, this doesn't buy votes and is entirely too libertarian for the Democratic Socialist Party of America.

"People's hope grows like a bubble when politicians give populist promises," Khoshchehreh said. "But if these hopes are not materialized, the bubble bursts and the consequences are disastrous."

Hope, Change, whatever the political buzzword is today. Tell the people what they want to hear and they'll vote for you. Whether you follow through with it in office is a different story. 

It seems that politicians are incapable of fiscal sanity. The oddity is that Iran is only a shell of a democracy and being popular shouldn't be a necessary requirement. On the other hand China, and outright dictatorship has been implementing capitalist policy as the years go on to their benefit. Does democracy work? Yes, but only if your population is somewhat intelligent and is willing to watch the news or read the newspaper. The US's, American Idol culture is far from a critically thinking society. What should be frightening to every American is that Barack Obama is a rock star, but his supporters rarely know what he's done or plans to do. The younger generation seem intent on texting in their vote for the guy who looks and sounds cool.

[Khoshchehreh] has warned that Ahmadinejad's economic policies have led to inflation and have only made the poor poorer and the rich richer.

Yes, socialist policies only make the poor poorer. I would say that what socialism does is take the thwarts the lower middle class of reaching any better standard of living. Democratic Presidential Candidate, Hillary Clinton's plan for healthcare is that everyone must purchase healthcare or else there will be "outcomes" (newspeak for consequences enforced by the state upon those who choose not to participate).
 
Side note: Khoshchehreh also criticized Ahmadinejad's foreign policy for being too confrontational and Khoshchehreh is a group of Iranian political figures that have become more moderate as the US becomes more aggressive. This is surely to change once the Democrats win the White House in November 2008. Iran will again become more aggressive and the US becomes more moderate in its foreign policy.