It's Not My Fault!

In Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand made one of her most important points about economics and the social order. This is that in a statist social order, where everybody owns everything, nobody will be held responsible for anything. "It's not my fault" is the statist's credo.

We should recognize a very important correlation to our current situation as our economy faces down a harsh recession.

Barney Frank and Chris Dodd, both major beneficiaries of the housing crisis driven largely by their own deceptive legislation, bear this credo. Obama emblazons the credo into our minds on a daily basis, reminding us daily that the defecit was here when he got here, that it's the fault of "Wall Street Fat Cats," that we all need to sacrifice.

Now that we stand at the precipice of bankrupting ourselves and our futures, David Obey's most telling words have not been the now infamous, "So what?" that he uttered in response to accusations of wasteful spending. Rather they are the following words:

"The person who spends the money badly will be responsible. We are simply trying to build as many protections in as possible," Obey says. "We have more oversight built into this package than any package in the history of man. If money is spent badly, we want to know about it so we can hold accountable the people who made that choice. And guess what? Regardless of what we do, there will be some stupid decisions made."

Joe Biden echoed these sentiments, uttering the laughable-but-for-its-honesty quote that "even if we get everything right, there's still a 30% chance we're going to get it wrong."

In other words, our highest level decision makers would all like us to know up front that no matter what happens, "It's not my fault!"