“We’re the country that built the intercontinental railroad,” the world’s greatest orator, Obama, orated last month, confusing linking two continents (“intercontinental”) with spanning one continent (“transcontinental”) — and as Michelle Malkin has pointed out, that wasn’t the first time with that gaffe.
Noting that “Government is the biggest job killer,” John Stossel compares Obama’s Solyndra scandal to the biggest government-funded scandal of the 19th (perhaps any) century, Credit Mobilier.
I guess Obama doesn’t know that the Transcontinental Railroad was a Solyndra-like Big Government scandal. The railroad didn’t make economic sense at the time, so the government subsidized construction and gave the companies huge quantities of the best land on the continent.
As we should expect, without market discipline — profit and loss — contractors ripped off the taxpayers. After all, if you get paid by the amount of track you lay, you’ll lay more track than necessary.
Credit Mobilier, the first rail construction company, made enormous profits by overcharging for its work. To keep the subsidies flowing, it made big contributions to congressmen.
Where have we heard that recently?
One place where we heard that recently was right here, almost a year ago.
