Strassel: Washington Power Grab

"This past year will be remembered for many things," writes WSJ's Kim Strassel, "but let 2013 be hailed mainly for this: It was the year that the genius of George Orwell's Animal Farm became clear in America."

Strassel gives examples of  Washington DC's Orwellian behaviors, including:

• Congress and its staff wrote/passed Obamacare "in the name of equalizing health care. Yet it was Congress and its staffers who got special dispensation to keep a generous health subside—when no other Americans did."
• In April, the IRS was outed for targeting conservative political groups. The Obama administration in December issued new rules that will institutionalize this silencing of conservative free speech under the guise of regulating 501(c)(4) organizations. Unions, which file under a different IRS nonprofit category, will continue unmolested.
• Congressional Democrats advanced measures in 2013 to pile new taxes on fossil fuel companies. This, as the Energy Department continued to absorb the losses of Solyndra, A123 Systems, and other taxpayer-funded green-energy firms, some of which are owned by political donors to Mr. Obama.
• The EPA this summer conducted an armed raid of a mining facility in Alaska, over putative violations of the Clean Water Act. The Federal Trade Commission harassed a nonprofit representing piano teachers, over ginned up antitrust violations. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration began cracking down on small, family farms, operations meant to be exempt from that agency's regulation. By contrast, the administration has yet to announce a single prosecution of a single individual at the IRS. Mr. Obama explained in December that IRS employees were simply victims of a "difficult law to interpret." Maybe like the Clean Water Act, or antitrust laws, or OSHA rules? Maybe not.
• While the federal government exempted crony wind companies from consequences of the many bald eagle deaths they cause, Maryland's government went into "full vice squad mode" over the killing of two bald eagles.

Strassel concludes:

There's plenty more, but you get the picture. In "Animal Farm" George Orwell set out to show how power inevitably corrupts, no matter how noble the intention. A group of animals initially centralize control over the farm to ensure that "All animals are equal." Yet the novel ends with the barnyard commandants—high on their righteousness—reducing the commandments to just one: "All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others."

Indeed, in ObamaWorld, many millionaires, health-care buyers, energy companies, subprime dealers, political groups, and bird killers are more equal than others. Our new elite is ever more defined by who has the best pull with the administration. So long as government grows, so too will this government-created inequality.