When Are Those Poor People Going To Give Up?

An old joke about the war on poverty is that we won't win it until those poor people give up.  Given that this war is 50 years old, the joke is getting old.  So are government programs that never achieve their goals but are never abandoned.  Occasionally, it's good to reflect on the decades of fail.

• War on Poverty - 50 years, no end in sight.
• War on Drugs - 42 years, no end in sight.
• War on Terror - 12 years, no end in sight.  (The enabling legislation is still on the books.)

I didn't object to waging war to dislodge the Taliban from Afghanistan, but waging war on something as nebulous as terrorism was always going to be an excuse for never ending appropriations, not to mention a rapacious approach to violating our civil rights.  When politicians want to launch a "war," we should be very afraid.

So how do we think the battle to ensure every American has health insurance is going to turn out?  How much is our government really going to effect global warming?  Will federal action do anything to reduce income inequality? (In fact, it will increase the inequality by lining the pockets of already wealthy K street lobbyists.)

Epic fail after epic fail and the left continues to cling bitterly to the belief that more government will solve more problems.  How leftism can be seen as hip escapes me, is it hip to be a moron? 

What You Should Be Reading

• Professor Perry helpfully points out that all low wage jobs added in the last year were for less than 30 hours a week.  
• Ilya Somin, blogging at Volokh Conspiracy, has a good take on the situation in the Crimea.  I think that some of the hysteria is overblown, but that some retaliation is in order.
• KTCat has an even more succinct summation of the Ukraine's position.