Sen. Richard Shelby, LOL*

by Richard Morrison on March 9, 2009 · 1 comment

in Bailout Watch, Economy, Stimulus to Nowhere

We normally don’t spend much time praising elected officials here at OpenMarket, but I have to make an exception (this week, at least) for Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama. Over the weekend he appeared on TV and trashed the seemingly endless series of financial services bailouts, making the case that if these companies are incapable of functioning without billions of taxpayer dollars, the government should simply let them go into bankruptcy:

“Close them down, get them out of business,” Shelby, the senior Republican on the Senate Banking Committee, said on the ABC television program This Week With George Stephanopoulos. “If they’re dead, they ought to be buried.”

Finally, a sensible response. To paraphrase a Fox News commenter from last week, how is it that Treasury officials and banking gurus keep telling us that companies like to AIG are “too big to fail”? If you can’t continue to exist without a continual cash lifeline from the U.S. Treasury, you’ve ALREADY failed. All that’s left is an empty husk being refilled with more and more deficit spending. For his honesty and disregard of the self-interested Wall Street types who simply want more government money, Sen. Shelby wins this week’s coveted *Least Objectionable Legislator award from OpenMarket.org. Keep up the good work, senator!

Thanks to our own Wayne Crews for creating the LOL Award. May it be more often deserved!

Tagged as: award, Bailout Watch, banking, deficit spending, LOL, Richard Shelby, taxpayers

{ 1 comment }

B. Kryst March 9, 2009 at 1:29 pm: I usually am in favor of free-market solutions to the problems of the market, I cannot endorse your call for Senator Richard Shelby in
particular. One only need look at how corrupt this senator is to
understand the reason why we shouldn't promote him to the "least
objectionable legislator award. Shelby has been instrumental in the
corruption involved in offering money to foreign corporations in
exchange for favors, all of which costs the citizens of Alabama and
those of the U.S., money. Just because this drawling southern senator has an "R" in back of his name doesn't mean he favors
conservative principles.