[Painesright]

The free market (Capitalism) did not cause this crisis, the government (Socialism/Communism) did.

The free market did not create Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Ginnie Mae and Sallie Mae, the government did.

The free market did not pass laws that force banks to lend to those who do not qualify for a loan, the government did.

The free market did not take us off the gold standard, the government did.

The free market did not dump trillions of dollars of cheap money into the system causing the largest asset bubble in history, the government did.

The free market did not create multiple multi-trillion-dollar unfunded entitlement programs, the government did.

The free market did not write a 60,000+ page tax code that punishes work, rewards sloth and buys the votes of special interest groups, the government did.

The free market did not destroy our public school system and graduate (or fail to graduate) generations of civically and financially illiterate citizens, the government did.

The free market did not drive our jobs overseas and kill our entrepreneurial spirit with over-taxation, over-regulation and frivolous lawsuits, the government did.

The free market did not ban drilling for oil, vilify coal and block the building of nuclear power plants in the United States, thereby transferring hundred of billions of dollars of American wealth and many thousands of energy-industry jobs to foreign countries, the government did.

This crisis is the result of a giant social engineering experiment and vote-buying scheme gone tragically wrong.

The free market does not try to engineer society or buy votes, the government does.

The government caused this crisis, the free market did not.

The government cannot fix the crisis, the free market can.

[Goldsborough]

The author berates Scott Brown's belief that spending can be reduced by looking for waste, fraud and abuse. I agree with that berating, but only because a former state legislator like Brown isn't looking hard enough at the big picture.

Here in Oregon we have:

A Department of Education, so either the federal or the state version is redundant or wholly unnecessary.
A Department of Agriculture, so ditto.
A Department of Veteran's Affairs. . . .
A Department of Transportation. . . .
An Office of Medical Assistance Programs. . . .
An (Un)Employment Division. . . .
And that's just the tip of the iceberg.

I'm thinking that were I to find myself in the US Senate, that most of these programs, if not totally useless, do not require double administration and bureaucracy to run effectively. So which one should be gutted? The federal one of course. The central government was supposed to have few and limited powers and the states much less restrained as the local voters could more ably hold their own governments to account unlike the distant one in the swamp.

Scott Brown needs to wake up to the possibilities and the liberals can just suck it.