Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

December 3, 2009

The much-heralded economic ?stimulus? package is an undisguised boon to what the Washington Post calls ?the government-contractor nexus that is metropolitan Washington [D.C.]?

Thanks to immense ?stimulus? subsidies lavished on government-employed contractors, the suburbs of Washington, D.C. are booming even as the rest of the country plummets into a depression. This amounts to sucking wealth from the private sector for the benefit of the political class.

Much of that pilfered largesse is given to contractors who are paid to help direct subsidies to other government-connected beneficiaries. The District itself has received 10 times the amount of stimulus funding, per capita, that has been sent to Florida, Michigan, Nevada, and Ohio, states suffering severely as a result of the downturn. Unemployment in Washington, D.C. is 6.2 percent, well below the official national average of 10.2 percent and roughly one-third the real unemployment rate. Virginia and Maryland are faring similarly well.

It shouldn?t surprise us that, amid universal economic misery, the tax-feeding class looks to its own interests first.

Let us take back the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free.