Buying votes

While we concern ourselves with the really important stuff like Democrat mock outrage at something never said on the radio, Hillary has proposed giving every child born in America $5,000. That’s on top of free health care and if John Edwards has anything to say about it, a free college education.

Now as Lex has noted several times before, if I go out and try to buy a politician, they throw me in jail. But if a politician goes out and tries to buy voters, he is considered a savvy pol and is thrown into the presidential sweepstakes. I don’t much see the difference. We’re both trying to buy someone off and we’re both using my money to do it. It would seem to me, me buying someone off using my own money is a whole lot more honorable than a pol buying someone off using my money.

Some bright guy, Ben Franklin I think, said that our experiment in democracy would end when politicians discovered that they could buy the people’s votes and the people allowed them to do it. It seems to me Democrats have long ago discovered that they could buy votes, but fortunately the people have only intermittently fallen for their scheme.

This election is different. Never has so much been promised to so many to be paid for by so few. Take the SCHIP, a program to help poor children. That sounds good so far. It’s only until you get into the fine print that you discover that poor children includes those 200-400% over the poverty line and the word “children” includes those up to 25 years of age.

Then there’s this, Dems propose paying for the program with a tax on a legal product, cigarettes. Even with the tax, the program is woefully under funded. But wait it gets better. Studies show that every increase in the cost per pack drives a certain percentage of people out of the cigarette market. So as under funded as this program is now, when the cost of cigarettes goes up to pay for it, the program will be further undercut.

So what happens when the program turns out to be unworkable? End the program. No. Cut the program. No. Tax the rich. No. Tax you and me. There you go. Whenever Dems talk about tax increases aimed at the rich, they mean us. And it works every time. And it’ll work this time because after all, it’s for the children.