Some Democratic and Republican presidential hopefuls are preaching economic doom and gloom, disappearing middle class, and failing health care industry. What?s their solution? The short answer is give them more control over our lives. Baltimore?s political satirist, the late H.L. Mencken, explained this strategy, saying, “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed, and hence clamorous to be led to safety, by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”

The imaginary hobgoblin this time is the threat of an oncoming recession, even though it is by no means clear that the U.S. economy is in a recession. To head off a recession, politicians, including President Bush, are calling for a stimulus package.