We're spending too little?:

Jamie Peck recalls a moment in September when President Bush vowed to spend "whatever it takes" - as much as $200 billion - to reconstruct the ravaged Gulf Coast after Hurricane Katrina.

But the University of Wisconsin-Madison professor notes that lately it appears Bush is backpedaling on that pledge. Peck says the president's change of heart has the fingerprints of "neoliberal" think tanks.

No, neoliberal and liberal are not the same thing, and it isn't a very new concept. Peck has made it his life's work to examine the effects of the economic theory on the populace.

Peck said conservative think tanks like the Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute guard the philosophy of neoliberalism: low-taxation, low-spending, anti-welfare, anti-union, and minimal government intervention. That "laissez-faire" approach to economic markets began in the 1970s and has grown to become both the Republican and, lately, Democratic governing economic philosophy, he said.

You're kidding me right? We have minimal government intervention? Granted, this guy is a UW Madison professor, so odds are that he's either a socialist, smoking pot, or both, so I'm sure it seems that way to him, but it's quite the opposite.

We live in a country where there are federal regulations that govern the amount of water your toilet is allowed to use with each flush. We live in a country where I can't create a database on a server at work without filling out special forms that are driven by federal laws. Of course, having just paid my taxes, I'm also all to aware of how "little" government intervention costs me at all levels.

The size of government... all government... is at all time highs. They take people's property and give it to other private entities all in the name of "community planning". Don't give me this bullshit about us being too laissez-faire. We're two steps away from socialism already. There are laws and regulations that govern pretty much everything you do in your life, every single day of the week. Don't kid yourself.

H/T to Jenna.