NO MORE HANDOUTS

Now cities are asking for federal money.

No. No more handouts for corporations, for cities, for banks.

Steven Malanga in City Journal has a terrific article about why giving Cities federal monies is a bad idea. It has failed in the past, will fail now, and will always fail in the future.

(By the way, City Journal is an amazing publication. It should be required reading for everyone - Liberals and Conservatives. Get yourself a subscription and see for yourself.)

Here's one of Mr. Malanga's outstanding points:

"Nothing could be more misguided than to renew this “tin-cup urbanism,” as some have called it. Starting in the late 1960s, mayors in struggling cities extended their palms for hundreds of billions of federal dollars that accomplished little good and often worsened the problems that they sought to fix. Beginning in the early nineties, however, a small group of reform-minded mayors—with New York’s Rudy Giuliani and Milwaukee’s John Norquist in the vanguard—jettisoned tin-cup urbanism and began developing their own bottom-up solutions to city problems. Their innovations made cities safer, put welfare recipients to work, and offered kids in failing school systems new choices, bringing about an incomplete, but very real, urban revival."

I deeply believe that we can replicate that "bottom-up solutions" idea not just for all struggling cities but also for corporations and industries.

The lesson CEOs, Business Leaders and Urban Politicians would learn would be invaluable - GROW UP. Bailout one company and they all want to be bailed out. It's like giving one child an ice cream and expecting their brothers and sisters to be quiet.

Good luck with that.

But this is one Genie that can be pushed back into the bottle. All we have to do is spank our politicians has hard as possible, repeatedly, until they get the message.

NO MORE HANDOUTS! NO! NO! NO!

Creative solutions that do not involve taxpayers throwing money into a deep black hole, those are okay.

But no more handouts. A history of failure does not create a future of success.