There are many, many ways in which government interferes with business and the economy. This contributes both to business’s need for lobbying and to distortions and inefficiencies that can cause economic problems and disasters, including the current one.

Wow, Rush must have gotten a new non-prescribed prescription with some kick to it. His bleats are all blurred.

But the exchange at Tuesday’s House Financial Services Committee hearing between Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and Rep. Don Manzullo (R-Ill.) is of a different sort. The most generous interpretation is that Manzullo is hoping to create footage for a future campaign commercial. Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, captive extras in his campaign spot, are at a loss as to how to respond — with Bernanke going so far as to break with the traditional comity that suffocates the hearing structure to tell Manzullo that his question is “poorly posed.”

Check under the “voter fraud.”

To get control over Congressional corruption and influence-buying, we need to outlaw lobbying and require public funding of political campaigns… and again, the free-marketeers and libertardians cry about such a “gross violation of free speech [i.e., influence-buying].”

Gee. I wonder what our major obstacle is to having a legislature and a market that actually serve the public interest?

Could it be hiding with the WMD?

I noticed in today’s print edition that the AJC has done as some in here had suggested (me included) and covered the rash of “Git Yer E-Z Stimulus Money Here!” scams. Worth a look.

Anyway, I learned something–the state of GA has set up its own site “as a public service so Georgia citizens can understand where the federal American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 dollars are allocated and how the funds are utilized to benefit the state.”