Murray Sabrin's Blog

Five Democrat governors including New Jersey’s Jon Corzine and New York’s David Paterson have called upon the incoming Obama administration to spend $1 trillion over the next two years on a host of programs such as public education, roads, and social services.  The governors also want a middle-class tax cut as part of their “stimulus proposal.”   The spectacle of these governors literally begging for federal dollars so they can maintain their respective welfare states is another shameful episode in our nation’s history. 

Big government advocates like Corzine and others claim the “people” really want a welfare state to take care of low income families, provide numerous social services for middle income families, and maintain an expensive public school system.  If they are correct, then the people should be willing—unequivocally--to pay higher taxes to support a comprehensive welfare state.  Corzine, Patterson, et. al., should immediately increase taxes on everyone in their states if they believe the people want to maintain the welfare state in New Jersey, New York, Massachusetts, Ohio and Wisconsin. 

Governor Corzine is gearing up for a re-election campaign next year just as the state's economy is contracting rapidly.  In addition, the state budget is facing at least a $1 billion deficit this fiscal year and as much as a $4 billion deficit next year as revenues are plunging because the Great Recession of 2008 is causing more layoffs while profits are shrinking or disappearing in virtually all businesses. 

Although Governor Corzine has stated in the past he didn't want to be governor so he could be a "Scrooge," economic reality has made even the most passionate advocate of big government accept the fact that the state does not have unlimited resources to fund forever the redistribution of income, known as welfarism, statism, or collectivism.  All Corzine can do now is make sure that state spending does not exceed revenue, and that means he will have to cut programs he wants to expand, e.g., providing some form of subsidized healthcare for families who currently are not eligible for FamilyCare.

Bernard Madoff confessed he bilked investors out of as much as $50 billion, creating the largest private Ponzi scheme in world history that may have lasted as long as three decades.   Madoff’s victims include charities, university endowments, banks, foreign firms, and wealthy Americans.  Ironically, the investors who were defrauded by Mr. Madoff’s Ponzi scheme, I suspect, are passionate supporters of the federal government’s Ponzi scheme known as Social Security. 

A Ponzi scheme is in effect a chain letter named after the notorious swindler Charles Ponzi. Initial investors are promised substantial returns, which are achieved by getting more and more individuals in on the scheme whose investments are used to pay off early investors.  Eventually, when there are not enough investors to keep the investment pyramid afloat, or when the whistle is blown on the scheme and investors try to reclaim their money, the Ponzi scheme collapses.   Last week’s confession by Madoff to his two sons unraveled his Ponzi scheme.

Governor Rod Blagojevich was indicted by the federal government this week because he was caught on wiretaps saying he wants to get something of value for appointing Barack Obama’s successor to the U.S. Senate.  What a ****** surprise!  A politician wants to use his official power to “trade” something of value— in this case appointing an individual to the U.S. Senate—for a personal benefit, lots and lots of moolah.  If this standard would be applied throughout the United States, there would be a lot of indictments.

According to one former congressional staffer and observer of America’s political scene, there are members of Congress who have secret offshore accounts.  When I was told this I was incredulous.  We know there are scoundrels in Congress who have been caught taking bribes and/or soliciting bribes, but secret offshore accounts, I asked?  He insisted.  yes, members of Congress stay in office for decades, because the monetary benefits are enormous. 

Former New Jersey attorney general John Farmer Jr. wrote an op-ed in last Sunday’s  Star Ledger (“A culture that doesn’t think values are worth the effort”) that is obtuse and factually incorrect.   In his essay Mr. Farmer states the “In business it [skepticism] it has led us to abandon the idea that anything has intrinsic value in favor of a dogmatic belief in the free market.”  Huh?  There is no “intrinsic value” in society.  As the Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises observed:  Value is not intrinsic, it is not in things. It is within us; it is the way in which man reacts to the conditions of his environment. Neither is value in words and doctrines, it is reflected in human conduct. It is not what a man or groups of men say about value that counts, but how they act. 

Consumers determine the value of a good or service by their actions.  The venerable law of supply and demand sets prices in the marketplace.  In the free market, consumers rule, not business, not labor unions, not politicians, and certainly not lawyers. 

Like a horde of addicts looking for their next fix, 49 of the nation’s governors or governors-elect descended on the City of Brotherly Love last Tuesday to meet the incoming pusher in chief, Barack Obama.  Of course, the governors were not seeking heroin or any other banned substance from the president-elect, but were looking for a more potent “drug,” OPM—other people’s money.

Today the Asinine Watch begins.  With so many illiterate statements made about the economy by elected officials in recent days and weeks, it was tough coming up with the most egregious pronouncement by a member of the political establishment.  Nevertheless, I thought it would be appropriate to give the first AW award to a New Jersey politico. I am pleased to announce that U.S. Senator Robert Menendez is the recipient of the first Asinine Watch award.

As New Jerseyans get ready to celebrate Thanksgiving the nation's economic outlook is indeed bleak, and there doesn't seem much to be thankful for after eight years of the neoconservative Bush administration and seven years of the McGreevey, Codey, and Corzine regimes.