Copenhagen: The "Multitrillion-dollar Shakedown"

Mark Steyn is always quotable, and his observations often are just too good not to repeat. From his latest in the Orange County Register:

Obama's sagging numbers are less a regular presidential "approval rating" than a measure of the ever-widening gulf between the messianic ballyhoo and his actual performance. For Americans interested in not pre-crippling the lives of their as-yet unborn children and grandchildren, his windy leave-'em-wanting-less routine is currently one of their best friends. To return to what's-his-name, the Belgian bloke, van Rumpoy ["the recently appointed 'president' of 'Europe'"], just because he's a nonentity doesn't mean he's not effective. In his acceptance speech the other week, he declared: "2009 is the first year of global governance."

Did you get that memo?

Me, neither. But he has a point. The upgrading of the G20, Gordon Brown's plans for planetary financial regulation, and the Copenhagen climate summit (whose inauguration of a transnational bureaucracy to facilitate the multitrillion-dollar shakedown of functioning economies would be the biggest exercise in punitive liberalism the developed world has ever been subjected to) are all pillars of "global governance." Right now, if you don't like the local grade school, you move to the next town. If you're sick of Massachusetts taxes, you move to New Hampshire. Where do you move to if you don't like "global governance"? What polling station do you go to to vote it out?

America has its Herman van Rumpoys, too. Harry Reid is really the Harry van Reidpoy of Congress. Very few people know who he is or what he does. But, while Obama continues on his stately progress from one 4,000-word dirge to the next, Reid's beavering away, advancing the cause of van Rumpoy-scale statism.

The news this week that the well-connected Democrat pollster, Mark Penn, received $6 million of "stimulus" money to "preserve" three jobs in his public relations firm to work on a promotional campaign for the switch from analog to digital TV is a perfect snapshot of Big Government. In the great sucking maw of the federal treasury, $6 million isn't even a rounding error. But it comes from real people – from you and anybody you know who still makes the mistake of working for a living; and, if it had been left in your pockets, you'd have spent it in the real world, at a local business or in expanding your own, and maybe some way down the road it would have created some genuine jobs. Instead, it got funneled to a Democrat pitchman to preserve three nonjobs on a phony quasi-governmental PR campaign. Big Government does that every minute of the day.

Updated: Just what we need, "a transnational bureaucracy to facilitate the multitrillion-dollar shakedown of functioning economies" to punish the developed world for developing.  

How about this idea: Members of the developed world apologize profusely and pack up the fruits of modern development, starting with private jets and chauffeured limousines. Let's get rid of the electricity production that third-world nations complain they don't have enough of, and the computer systems that electronically pump our hard-earned money into someone else's bank. Let the oil rigs turn to rust, by all means; I can think of a few countries that would look like Afghanistan in a year or two. And by all means we should get rid of cell phones, which would cut way back on terrorism man-caused disasters. Get rid of land lines too. And modern agriculture, while we're at it. That way, most of the population of the world can get their exercise behind a plow pulled by a beast of burden (if they can afford one).

While we're at it, broadcasting will need to go. And out with video cameras with which to record the speeches Barrack Hussein Obama, Gordon Brown, Herman van Rumpoys, Harry Reid, and Osama Bin Laden. Oh, and chuck modern medicine: no more squabbles over health care reform. Just chuck it altogether.

Yes, development has been a real trial for the world. But development takes work, money, and energy. And we're already seeing a lot less of those.
 

We didn't even need John Galt. Just the world-wide pursuit of "environmental and social justice."
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