It’s been a very long time indeed since we’ve heard words like these from a politician, said by the Chinese Ambassador to the UK in response to suggestions earlier in the week that China should use its own huge cash reserves to produce “a fiscal boost for the world”:
"[China's] reserves are not the money of the government. The Premier cannot write a cheque on it. It's the money of the Chinese people and the Chinese businesses who left it in the safe-keeping of the central bank..."
Like I say, it’s been a long time since we’ve heard words like these from a politician. The last time I can recall was in 1887, when President Grover Cleveland vetoed an appropriation to help drought-stricken counties in Texas, saying:
I feel obliged to withhold my approval of the plan to indulge in benevolent and charitable sentiment through the appropriation of public funds. ... I find no warrant for such an appropriation in the Constitution.
Cleveland was almost certainly echoing James Madison, who in 1792 when Congress appropriated $15,000 to assist some French refugees he wrote disapprovingly:
I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents.
Seems one modern politician at least has some idea of whose money it is that’s being spent.
9 comments:
What really gets me is that this comment came not from anyone in the administration of the USA - the one country founded on principles of freedom - but from China. Nothing illustrates better just how wrong Brown and Obama and company could be, and how wrong Clark and Cullen were to take our money and piss it against the nearest well.
bugger, that should be "wall", not "well". Sigh.
I don't normally swear in public, but you've finally brought me to it, PC.
It's a sad fucking day when a goddamn official of Communist China is more Madisonian than the heads of state of the UK or US.
And the idiot CHARLES BLOWhard of the NYT was whining about right-wingers using 'extreme' language calling for a second revolution. It can't start anytime too soon to suit me.
Yup, the irony. Great to hear them said though.
- Sam P
Like I've said before, China is communist only in the sense that the communist party runs it. It is one party state capitalism, not too dissimilar from Singapore maybe 30 years ago. To be rich is celebrated in China and encouraged - find a Western country where that is publicly endorsed?
Those comments and who they came from have done it for me too. My paradigm is totaly arse over tit. I need an asprin.
Following up from the 'libertarian-ish paradise' post from last week:
However, Mr Tsang said Hong Kong’s well-run financial system meant his government had the firepower to fight the crisis.
“I’ve got HK$400bn (US$51.6bn, €38.3bn, £34.9bn) in the bank, so I’m in a good position to spend more if I want to . . . If necessary we will do something in the middle of the year,” he said.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/09d7fdb0-220a-11de-8380-00144feabdc0.html?nclick_check=1
Bit ironic.
Jeff, the predominantly left wing press are simply blind to irony. Lord knows they'd refuse to recognise it if it jumped up & introduced itself.
Forty odd years ago they were the revolutionaries, as they saw it, against the establishment. A combination of hippies and various radicals intent on changing the status quo by any method, some of which were not at all peaceful.
So isn't it ironic that they now desperately seek to hold on to *their* establishment?
And note how all opponents are lumped in together as collectively "right wing"? Collectivists playing the collectivist card as always.
Yes, the revolutionaries have indeed become the reactionaries -- and they can't bear having that point aired.
All the more reason to keep doing it ...
Heisenburg
Or you could have written, "and piss it down the nearest well."
LGM
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