To the Editor,
It has been said that a statesman is a politician who is dead, and looking at the fiscal choreography in Washington today, one is almost tempted to wish for a surplus of statesmanship. We are treated to the spectacle of a government running a deficit so colossal it would make a Mississippi riverboat gambler blush, suddenly discovering an eight-billion-dollar purse labeled “Harvest Fuel Relief” for the hardworking American farmer.
Now, a farmer is a man who relies on the rain, the soil, and a reasonable price for his harvest, but he is also a man who can tell the difference between a genuine drop of dew and a well-orchestrated sleight of hand. While the administration pours oil on the troubled waters of domestic discontent—ostensibly to soothe the soaring cost of diesel—one cannot help noticing the companion piece to this grand performance: the quiet relaxation of strictures against foreign fuel from none other than Moscow.
It puts one in mind of the old adage about robbing Peter to pay Paul, except Peter is a taxpayer in Ohio, Paul is an oligarch in St. Petersburg, and the middleman is a treasury leaking like a sieve. We patch the roof with a short-lived bandage, while the foundation is quietly undermined to fund a distant war. It seems the grand financiers of the world have mastered a peculiar alchemy—turning American agricultural anxiety into gold for the Kremlin’s pocketbook, all while handing the bill to posterity.
Yours from the porch,
Mark Twain