The new Temporary Tenant of the White House would do well to heed this bit of ancient Roman wisdom. Festina lente (make haste slowly) was the motto of the young revolutionary Augustus who soon realized that he needed to build upon Rome’s past, rather than dismantle it.
Despite all the gushing and emoting over the Democrat victory of November 4th, it is by no means a mandate for neither radical “change” (a term that was never clearly defined) nor a ritualistic purging of everything old. There is a real world out there and the new Temporary Tenant must take that into account.
John McCain promised tax cuts for all while the new Temporary Tenant promised to raise them of some (most). But neither plan fully factored in the fact that we are now entombed under a mountain of trillions of dollars of debt. Both plans would have needed more revenue and less spending.
The new Temporary Tenant and his administration, much to their chagrin, will have to come to grips that even they, The Ones, must cede to the laws of physics: America will have to pay down debt while not raising taxes too high at a time of recession.
The promised quick and easy transition to a clean, cool solar, wind and butterflies and unicorns future will be neither quick nor easy. The sugarplum visions of millions of new electric cars will still require old-fashioned natural gas, coal and nuclear power to generate the electricity to charge them. A confluence of economic slowdown, conservation and public support for more drilling have already saved us billions via the collapse of world oil prices. And instead of promising to bankrupt the coal industry, we should thank our lucky stars that America has the world’s most plentiful supply to coal to transition us to alternate sources of energy.
A feral Wall Street and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac all turned on us during both the Clinton and Bush administrations. All will need more regulation, but in moderation. As bad as our situation is, Europe faces far worse financial meltdowns that have nothing to do with American excess or George Bush. Despite the looming recession, Americans are still collectively the most affluent and free citizens in the world due to our unique free-market system; a system that creates enormous wealth and draws in more capital and talent than elsewhere on promises of commensurate individual rewards – not socialist redistribution of those rewards.
For all the campaign charges of ‘unfairness’ and attacks on the ‘evil rich’, America currently has the most progressive tax system in the world, in which the top 5 per cent of wage earners pay over 60 per cent of all federal income taxes. You really do not have to be a mathematician to see the imbalance here! The new Temporary Tenant has promised to raise taxes, and he will. However, he should, as in all things, “make haste slowly”!
GMWinslow
The Tennessee Conservative – in Exile
