A couple of entries back, I spoke about the distinction made between government subsidies of business and those of individuals. With the former, it’s good policy, while with the latter it’s Socialism or Communism, taking hearty individualists and turning them into helpless kittens capable only of sucking at the government teat. This stuff is nothing new and the old song never changes. Here’s Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes quoted in the New York Times back on April 7, 1936:

Mr. Hoover, while sternly denying Federal relief to starving men and women because he did not want to usurp the functions that local governments could no longer perform, or on the ground that he did not want to weaken the moral fiber of American citizens who, notwithstanding that fiber, were, nevertheless, hungry and cold, did not hesitate to weaken the moral fiber of banks and insurance companies and manufacturing and industrial enterprise by generously handing over to them millions of dollars that you and I have had to pay in taxes and the repayment of which by some of the beneficiaries is being resisted in the courts on the ground that in lending that money the government exceed its constitutional powers.

History always arranges a second showing if you missed the movie the first time around (thanks so much, History).

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