Giddy Up

America is, in many ways, being put out to pasture by the far-Left contingency currently spending our children's children's inheritances in Washington like their ship was sinking. There is nothing we can't fix with a little tax increase on the "rich", right?

Well Mark Steyn sees things differently, and in his latest equestrian-themed column he takes to task the idea being perpetuated by the likes of VP Biden that we can simply adopt the Euro-Swedish style of Nanny State collectivism and things won't change for the worse for the average American...or any American for that matter. (Even the mean, old "rich" who spoil everything by creating jobs and paying the overwhelming majority of our taxes.)

The Old West has been succeeded by the new California, in which a bloated government bureaucracy rides herd on the ever more emaciated workhorses of the private sector. And as California goes – and it's going, going, gone – so goes the nation.

There aren't enough of us to pay for all this – for government health care, government banks, government mortgages, government automobiles, government horses, government burros, for cap-and-trade, for stimulating phony-baloney nonjobs like Deputy Executive Associated Assistant Stimulus Resources Manager on the Stimulus Co-ordination & Compliance Commission. The wealthiest 1 percent already pay 40 percent of all taxes, the top 10 percent pay 70 percent of taxes – and there simply are too few of them – or, more to the point, of you: You'll be surprised what percentage of you fall into "the top 2 percent" by the time Obama is through with you.

This isn't merely Swedenization. As that insouciant 19-million acre annexation suggests, when America Swedenizes, it does it on supersized scale. The salient point of that 1,200-page cap-and-trade monstrosity was that, in its final form, it was so huge that at the time the House voted it into law there was no written version of the bill, because Congressional typists were unable to type as fast as Congress can spend: They're legislating on such a scale that the poor bleeding typing fingers of the House stenographers can't keep up. Which means you can't keep up the payments on it all.

If you've got a small business, you're wasting your time. You're going to be taxed and regulated into the ground because you're the designated sucker. Tell your kids to forget about the private sector and sign up with the Equine Census Bureau: Jobs for life, early retirement. Government is where it's at. When in ROAM do as the ROAMens do.

In 1971, the United States Congress recognized mustangs as "living symbols of the historic and pioneer spirit of the West." And surely nothing captures the essence of the "pioneer spirit" than living on welfare in a federal care facility while being showered with government contraceptives. Welcome to America in the gelded age.