Senator Mel Martinez clearly believes that the federal government should be in the housing business. On March 8 he released this announcement:

U.S. Senator Mel Martinez (R-FL) today joined Maryland Senator Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) in introducing the reauthorization of HOPE VI -- a program that works to eliminate dilapidated and dangerous public housing, replacing it with new mixed income communities.

The senators should have taken a clue from their own announcement: "dilapidated and dangerous public housing." Do you suppose they gave any thought to why public housing is dilapidated and dangerous? Let me offer a little help. There are two principal reasons. First, it's run by government bureaucrats -- the same kind of bureaucrats that operate the VA hospitals and try to keep illegal drugs and immigrants out of the country. Second, it's inhabited mostly by deadbeats. That's the reason they needed housing assistance in the first place. Putting a deadbeat in a new house is not going to mend his or her ways.

If the senators did take a clue, it seems to be that if we mix in a few non-deadbeats the deadbeats won't be so obvious to the general public. They seem to want to hide the deadbeats among more responsible residents. But where are they going to find responsible residents who want to live on the same street with a bunch of deadbeats? Do they plan to bribe them? Perhaps they intend to integrate the deadbeats into existing neighborhoods. It's not clear from the announcement.

"This reauthorization builds on the current program and makes it better," said Martinez. "This isn't just about funding the creation of public housing, it's about community involvement. This bill requires a greater community commitment so that we're not just rebuilding housing; we're revitalizing neighborhoods and making them sustainable communities."

Alright Mel! You go guy! Actually Mel, you're beginning to look a little bufoonish. Do you really believe that a few assertions from you are going to make this happen? Have you ever seen a public housing area that didn't turn into a ghetto within a few years? It will take more than pipe dreams to make this work.

With 14 HOPE VI grants, Florida ranks 2nd in the number of grants awarded in the nation and 10th in the amount of award dollars. Through grant awards and leveraged dollars, HOPE VI has generated over $736 million for the state of Florida.

Oh, I can see clearly now. This is about pork. You're bringing home the bacon. The program doesn't have to have any real chance of working as intended. It doesn't matter if it's unconstitutional. It has worked for you when it is approved and funded.

Before becoming a senator Martinez was the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. That is, he has previous experience at creating ghettos. I don't know why we even have a Department of Housing and Urban Development. Nothing in the constitution permits the federal government to provide housing to private citizens. Don't bother pointing out the 'provide for the general welfare' thing. The emphasis there is on 'general'; it doesn't say 'provide for the welfare of specific individuals'.

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The Associated Press reports that "Cuba's communist government is trying to shake off the yoke of at least one capitalist empire -- Microsoft Corporation -- by joining with socialist Venezuela in converting its computers to open-source software." They want to phase out their dependence on the Windows operating system and phase in the use of Linux instead.

Open-source roughly means that the software application is ostensibly free of cost and that the user has access to and the right to modify the source code in order to customize the behavior of the software. Linux is an open-source computer operating system originally developed by a Finnish programmer, Linus Torvalds, but extended and improved over the years since by many volunteer programmers. Its use and operation is similar to the Unix operating system but was designed specifically for personal computers. Although Linux can be downloaded and installed at no cost, most users purchase a packaged version from a vendor to avoid the trials and tribulations of trying to install it themselves. The vendors charge for the packaging and the installation software, not the Linux software itself (how convenient).

Using the collective efforts of many unpaid programmers to produce software which is then made available to anyone that wants it is said by some to be a socialistic endeavor. Technically it is but dissenters need to understand that open-source software is developed by private individuals doing what they choose to do with their time -- not by a government bureaucracy. Perhaps the 'collective efforts' thing is why socialist regimes seem to be attracted to open-source software.

I do believe, though, that some of the open-source contributors are a bit misguided. One of the reasons often given for their efforts was to produce an alternative to Microsoft's monopolistic Windows operating system and Office applications. That sounds good but Microsoft has never enjoyed a monopoly. Apple offered an OS before Microsoft did and it is still available as an alternative. There was OS2 and several other less well known alternatives. There have always been alternatives to Microsoft's Office applications. Remember Word Perfect and Lotus123? The reason Microsoft overwhelmed its competition is that they offered products that best suited users in terms of cost, capability and ease of use.

It is good that Linux is out there but I think its development was motivated more by the egos of the contributors than a real desire to do something for the people. There is also the fact that many of the contributors eventually profited handsomely from their efforts.

Besides the packaging and installation charges by the Linux vendors, some experts believe that the operation and management costs are greater for open-source than for commercial software. They believe that commercial software comes with better technical support than does open-source.

It might be good for us that the communist dictatorships to the south of us want to rid their countries of commercial software.

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In his closing remarks at last night's debate Barack Obama said, "We need fundamental change in this country, and that's what I'd like to bring." Merriam-Webster defines "fundamental" as "of or relating to essential structure, function, or facts" and says that "radical" is a synonym. The related definition of "radical" is "of or relating to the origin." A usage example is "fundamental change," exactly what Obama wants to bring.

So, if we take Obama at his word, it's clear that he intends to radically change the basic structure and function of our government. He can't do that without amending the Constitution or appointing judges that will ignore the Constitution. The former is too hard and slow, so look for him to concentrate on the latter.

I'm afraid that with a cooperating Congress Obama can achieve at least some of the fundamental change that he wants. Look for more hate speech and hate crime laws. Look for the reinstatement of the Fairness Doctrine. Look for new interpretations of the First and Second Amendments. Look for suppression of criticism of the federal government. Look for the federal takeover of public education and attacks on private schools and home-schooling. Look for a lot of retraining (indoctrination) centers around the country for those past public school age. Look for a lot of things that I can't even imagine.

Look for "community organizers" in every precinct in the country and look for them all to be proponents of the Obamanation.

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These days the Democrats like to refer to themselves as the "progressive party." That is okay with me, but the question is: In which direction are they progressing? Or, what do they consider to be progress? I'm sure that Hitler, Stalin and Mao thought they were making progress when they converted their countries to tyrannies. Do the Democrats want progress for the people or progress for the ruling class (that is, for themselves)? I'm convinced that it's the latter.

When you consider the policies they are advocating it appears that their underlying strategy is to take from the productive sector of the economy and give to the unproductive sector, which is obviously an insane strategy if taken too far. Each time the government chooses to guarantee a basic need to the people, the people's incentive to produce is lessened. Not only are individuals less inclined to work to earn money to purchase that basic need, but businesses are also less likely to be formed to supply the need. This leads to the government having to directly produce and supply the need. Most of us understand how well that will work out.

The prospect of the government supplying our basic needs is scary enough, but the fallout from that process is the scariest. Once the government assumes the responsibility for supplying our needs it soon realizes that it has to take steps to control our needs. This is being illustrated right now in New York City. Yesterday an assemblyman was on TV trying to defend his plan to completely ban the use of salt in city restaurants. His principal justification? The city, state and federal governments are spending so much money on health-care that it has to take drastic steps to improve the health of the city's residents. (I'll bet Obama cringed when he heard that on the eve of the vote on Obamacare. Brutal honesty is not considered a desirable quality in progressives.) In order to control our needs it has to also control our wants.

A typical response to arguments like these is: But what about the poor, the downtrodden and the disadvantaged? I say, good question! What about them? I say this because so-called progressivism has in the past produced more of these, not less. Unrestrained progressivism will indeed level the playing field; it will make us all poor.

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Consider these items from Jeffrey Kacirk's Forgotten English calendar:

Villages in some parts of the country formerly possessed buildings known as "beggar barns." These barns usually belonged to the farm which was situated nearest the church, and wayfaring beggars were always given gratis a night's lodging and a meal in them. It was a popular belief that such homeless wanderers had a legal right to sleep in the church porch, and it was purely a sense of public decency which substituted the beggar barn. --Frederick Hackwood's Good Old Times, 1910

In the Middle Ages, many European communities subscribed to the notion that they had a moral obligation to assist wayfarers. During that time, many wanderers abused such hospitality, seeing that their vagacion (an early form of "vacation," referring to the "occupation" of a tramp and closely related to "vagrant") could be practiced indefinitely. Although over time popular sentiment turned against them, these increasingly resourceful men, women, and children continued sleeping in unlocked barns and gathering meals from orchard, field, and coop.

The English parliament enacted a number of unsuccessful laws to discourage unlimited freeloading, including one in 1572 known as the Act for the Punishment of Vagabonds.

So, over 400 years ago the English government knew it needed to take action to discourage freeloading, even though the excessive freeloading resulted largely from voluntary charitable acts of the citizenry. But now the government of the United States is daily taking actions that will encourage freeloading and force the citizenry to support it. (I should note that the modern English government lost its way long before the US government.)

If I were an intellectual, perhaps I could understand why supposedly smart people want to keep experimenting with socialism. They seem to be thinking that we should abandon capitalism and free markets because they aren't working perfectly. But clearly no other system has ever worked as well. I always come back to the conclusion that it's not about working well or even better, it's about power. The proponents of a bigger, more controlling government are simply using it to become members of the ruling class. They don't necessarily believe in it but they know there are plenty of "useful idiots" out there who do.

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