Qui Bono?
The Wall Street Journal had an editorial that nailed the real scandal involving Tom Daschle. It isn’t that he didn’t pay his taxes. It’s the power grab engineered by big government types that made his small fortune possible. It isn’t a sleazy exception that happened despite the left’s view of government power. It is a necessary consequence of it. I believe it was George Will who wrote:
When government becomes a trough, Congress becomes a feeding frenzy.
The plain reality is this - as long as government has the power to make or break individual companies and entire industries, people will spend a lot of money to lobby for their cause. This means people like Tom Daschle have an incentive to make government more powerful so they can cash in when they leave office. As they ask in economics, “qui bono”. Who Benefits?
Increasing the power of government benefits the creatures of government, not the free and sovereign people who gradually lose their liberty as government grows. If you want more sleaze, government by the well connected, for the well connected, and government lifers getting rich off of the rules that they write, then big government is for you. If, on the other hand, you prefer liberty and that government keep its hands off your life and your wallet, then you need to speak up now.
Qui bono?