A Stitch in Haste

Now emphasizing the cradle:

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton said Friday that every child born in the United States should get a $5,000 "baby bond" from the government to help pay for future costs of college or buying a home.
...
The New York senator did not offer any estimate of the total cost of such a program or how she would pay for it. Approximately 4 million babies are born each year in the United States.

As much as I yearn for the expiration of the Bush presidency, I fear, literally fear, the thought of any of the current hopeless gaggle of Democratic moral defectives taking office with a fully Democratic Congress cheering on his, or her, inevitable tax-and-spend fiscal recklessness. Why did the Republicans have to lose the Senate too? (With the odds of them also losing filibuster strength in 2008 increasing with each passing scandal.)

This is the woman who so brazenly lies about how her pervert husband was "fiscally responsible," taking credit for what was wholly attributable to gridlock, the dot.com boom and the (long-ago-squandered) "peace dividend"? This is the woman who lays claim to the legacy of "the era of big government is over"?

Meanwhile, economists might, if they thought it would do any good, point out the pesky fact that when you subsidize something, you get more of it. The solution to "economically disadvantaged children" is not paying people, especially economically disadvantaged people, to have more babies. How is this a difficult concept?

Add in the indoctrination factor: What better way to inculcate a love for, and a dependency on, the state (oops, sorry — the "village") than to point, literally from Day One, to your "baby bond" as proof of just how truly wonderful is Big Government (the era of which is, again, apparently not over). The government has loved you since the day you were born, so you should love it back until the day you die. Huxley would be humbled.

And in case you were wondering: Yes there are politicians even dumber than Senator Clinton:

"I think it's a wonderful idea," said Rep. Stephanie Stubbs Jones, an Ohio Democrat who attended the event and has already endorsed Clinton. "Every child born in the United States today owes $27,000 on the national debt, why not let them come get $5,000 to grow until their 18?"

The best way to offset $27,000 in debt is to go $5,000 deeper in debt? When a subprime mortgage company says that, it's "predatory lending." When a tax-and-spend hyper-liberal Democrat in Congress says it, it's "a wonderful idea."

You don't know whether to laugh or cry.

More thoughts at Catallarchy, no third solution, Greg Mankiw.

"Want a billion dollars? A cool, neat, billion dollars?"
        "Which I'll have to produce, for you to give me?"
--Atlas Shrugged