Here are a few programs the Political Class has dumped on Americans, spelled out by Francis Menton in the Manhattan Contrarian:

• “Anti-poverty” programs that cost a trillion dollars a year without ever ameliorating poverty.

• “Affordable housing” programs (“the worst possible public policy”) that trap the “beneficiaries” in poverty for life.

• Healthcare programs that cost hundreds of billions of annual dollars without improving either poverty status or health outcomes.

• “Environmental” regulations that impose hundreds of billions of dollars of annual costs on the economy without any detectable improvements to the environment.

Then there is “the endless stream of fake and doctored government-issued data and statistics all carefully engineered to promote the further growth of the government and the election of the favored candidates who will promote the growth of the government,” writes Mr. Menton, before tackling Hillary Clinton’s recent op-ed in the NYT:

This is just as bad as it gets.  In a bare 600 or so words, the Democratic candidate manages to utter virtually every significant cliché of New York Times conventional ignorance and groupthink on the subject of anti-poverty efforts.  And what is her proposal of what to do?  You guessed it:  double down on failure!

HRC: The true measure of any society is how we take care of our children. With all of our country’s resources, no child should ever have to grow up in poverty. Yet every single night, all across America, kids go to sleep hungry or without a place to call home.  We have to do better.

FM: “Can we have any recognition that the American taxpayers are already spending a trillion dollars a year or so on these “anti-poverty” efforts?  How is it even possible to spend that much money and still have “kids go[ing] to sleep hungry or without a place to call home”?  Hey, Hillary:  you were the First Lady for eight years.  You were a U.S. Senator for eight years.  Then you were a senior member of the current administration.  Isn’t it time to take ownership of the failure?  Who is to blame here, if not you?  Haven’t you known all this time that the government was blowing a trillion a year of taxpayer money without making any dent in poverty?  Where has been your advocacy over the eight years of Obama’s presidency to redirect some (of) the trillion a year of “anti-poverty” money into something that might work?  I sure haven’t heard it.”

Mr Menton notes, “… there isn’t the slightest suggestion here that any of the current spending might be cut as worthless. …  it’s all new and additional government spending and programs!”

An argument against Donald Trump as president is that he is a wild card, perhaps a wrecking ball. We just don’t know what kind of president he would be. But as Holmen Jenkins in the WSJ points out, “But, whatever the case, America has deep problems of bureaucratic corruption, sterility and incompetence that increasingly argue for a wrecking ball.”

Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton prepare to debate