Has President Obama lost the one skill he has relied upon so heavily?  Has the magic oratory suddenly gone leaden as indicated by his campaign speech for Martha Coakley?

“Here’s my assessment of not just the vote in Massachusetts but the mood around the country — the same thing that swept Scott Brown into office swept me into office,” Mr. Obama said. “People are angry and they are frustrated. Not just because of what’s happened in the last year or two years, but what’s happened over the last eight years.” — New York Times, “Obama Trying to Turn Around his Presidency.” – 1/21/2010

Really?  “…what’s happened over the last eight years.”  Is he kidding me?  Does he not remember that Bush was reelected four years ago.  Is this just one more elitist swipe at the “stupid” American people who are so dumb that they don’t even know things are bad for four years such that they reelect their president? When is he going to get off the campaign trail and start governing?  When, with one-fourth of his term over, is he going  to realize this is his gig now, and stop crying about Bush?  The anti-Bush attacks against Scott Brown by Coakley in the closing days of the campaign fell flat.  That doesn’t work any more.  This isn’t about the last eight years, but about the last twelve months.  The American people are sick of the Democrats trying to spend us into oblivion.

It seems that he may be betting the ranch on the State of the Union address, which runs the risk of Obama fatigue.  President Obama seems to confuse speeches with leadership.  Coming into office with zero executive experience, he let the inmates (Pelosi and Reid) run the asylum.  With the election of Scott Brown, Reid just lost his iron grip and Pelosi may not be far behind.  So what does Obama do?  Give another speech?  He has given more speeches than any president in memory, but there is time for talk and time for action.  But he seems to avoid holding another press conference as the fawning press may be finding its backbone and he doesn’t have an answer for his C-Span promises on the health care debate.

Boxed In

Reid is losing control of the Senate.  He no longer has  a filibuster proof majority and he will probably not get reelected.  He is one very lame duck.  Many of Pelosi’s party in the House see Brown’s stunning victory as a major wake up call.  Any Democrat in the House who is not planning on retiring, will not be eager to sign on to any more far left government takeovers.  So without Reid and Pelosi setting his agenda, and him still stuck in the anti-Bush mode, what can he do?  As charming as he may be, he promised bipartisanship but really wasn’t serious about it, he hasn’t cultivated any  relationships with conservatives.  As Dennis Miller put it on O’Reilly last night, “I hope he’s an ideologue.  If not, it means we have a dolt in the White House.”

President Obama has to realize that the job entails more than him just strutting and fretting his hour upon the stage, and get down to work and that means following Clinton’s lead and working with the Republicans.  There are a lot of ways to improve Health Care without spending  a trillion dollars (e.g., tort reform), stop bashing business when you need business to create jobs, drop cap and trade to fix global warming when oranges are freezing in Florida.

His inexperience continues to glow brightly.  He better figure out what the job entails, quickly, and get busy with it.  The referee just fired the gun signaling the end of the first quarter and Team Obama looks dazed and confused.  Not a good sign, sports fans.

Can liberty be saved?  Is there a chance that we can rescue our country from the federal juggernaut that wants to reach down into the deepest recesses of your life and take control?  They spend your money with reckless abandon and say, “What Me Worry?”  Those in power would have indulged in the trappings of office, sated on money and power, and be long gone with their spoils while the crumpled bill lies on the floor for you and your children and your children’s children to pick up and pay.

They have invited many to the party, to eat, drink, and be merry with promises of “middle class” tax cuts that are the greatest April Fools joke of all time.  Don’t worry we’ll get the rich to pay for it all.  You know, those evil fat cats on Wall Street.  But the Republicans on Wall Street have long be replaced by Democrats.  That’s right, Gordon Gecko is a Democrat.  60% of Wall Street contributions went to Democrats vs. Republicans.  How long will the top 2% of earners keep shouldering the burden before they slow down, stop, or emigrate.  Who will pick up the pieces then?  Who will support the drunken revelers that Obama piled on the public dole?

AIG Outrage

All of the outrage by Congressional and Administration leadership over the AIG bonuses is the epitome of hubris.  AIG contributed $104,000 to each Barack Obama and Christopher Dodd, during the recent election cycle.  Do you remember the brouhaha over language in the stimulus bill that had a loophole that allowed the AIG bonuses to be paid?  Dodd said he didn’t include the loophole.  Later he said he did include it but at the insistence of the Obama administration.  Now is it just me or does anyone else see a quid pro quo here?  Then they come out red-faced professing that the bonuses are an outrage.  Senator Schumer, who is threatening to unconstitutionally tax the bonuses into oblivion, took $112,000 in contributions from AIG.

Lessons from Hugo Chavez?

More recently President Obama effectively fired the CEO of General Motors and now speaks of bankruptcy.  I, among many others, said they should have filed for bankruptcy long before taxpayers bailed them out.  So now after we have sunk taxpayer money into GM and Chrysler, Obama steps in and effectively runs the company on “our behalf” as owners of 80% of the company and now says bankruptcy is a good idea!  When will the amateur hour come to an end?  But watch carefully, because Obama will assiduously avoid offending the auto workers union, despite the fact that the union contracts put US auto makers at a $2000 per car disadvantage against the competition.  GM (Government Motors) will now be forced to make cars that satisfy Obama’s left wing supporters but that Americans don’t want to buy.  It will be interesting to see how the government forces us to buy them.

What Do the Europeans Think?

For years we have been told by the left that we must listen to what the Europeans are saying.  They say we have to consider foreign laws in weighing Supreme Court cases.  They decried Bush’s policies as alienating our European friends.  So what do the Europeans think of Obama now?

The president of the European Union on Wednesday ripped the Obama administration’s economic policies, calling its deficit spending and bank bailouts “a road to hell.” — Washington Post, March 25

A Very Dangerous Path

In March of 1933 Adolf Hitler, proclaiming a national emergency of a potential communist revolution asked the German legislature, the Reichstag, to grant him emergency powers to deal with the situation.  Such a proposal required two-thirds approval by that body.  The final vote was 441 in favor, 84 opposed.  From that point on, Hitler was dictator. 

 Rahm Emmanuel likes to say, “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste.”  President Obama is taking the current financial crisis to ram through a massive power grab.  The legislation is being rammed through with such force and urgency that no one has a chance to read it.  What ticking time bomb could be tucked in those pages that get voted on and passed without scrutiny?  Just look at the AIG fiasco for the answer.  No one seemed to know or admit it was in there.  If we allow this to continue, we may find some other provision included, in the dead of night, that will destroy our country forever.

Be on your guard.

Something We Can All Look Forward To

President Obama announces His Budget Plan and the Stock Market Craters

President Obama got his $800 billion stimulus package off the launching pad and now we eagerly await the massive stimulus to come when people start seeing their taxes reduced in April by $8-$16 per week.  Stand back, the crowds could be euphoric and out of control.

With the ink barely dry on that package, President Obama rolls out the next attack on future generations of Americans.  His plan calls for the addition of debt so staggering that it may destroy the U.S. economy.  How long before the additional interest on the national debt starts growing so fast that we cannot pay it, let alone the principal?  In his budget he plans to add half a trillion to the national debt every year, and all of this is with some very rosy forecasts of 5% and 6% GDP growth.  Will someone please tell the rookie, that when you slam the most productive earners with more taxes, they tend to react by producing less.

“The budget that President Obama proposed on Thursday is nothing less than an attempt to end a three-decade era of economic policy dominated by the ideas of Ronald Reagan and his supporters.”

The Reagan policies produced 25 years of unprecedented growth.  So the inexperienced President Obama is going to undo this because…?  The Democrats love to point to the economy during the Clinton years, but you have to look a bit more closely.  During the first two years of the Clinton’s time in office the economy was basically flat.  The economy didn’t really start moving until 1995.  What coincided with that?  Oh, yeah, the Republicans took control of Congress.  Taxes were cut and the economy took off like a rocket.

If you look at the term of George W. Bush, after 9/11 and the recession he inherited, he again cut taxes and the economy took off.  The stock market didn’t start it’s downward spiral until about six months into 2007.  What coincided with that?  Oh, yeah, the Democrats took control of Congress.  Coincidence?  You decide.

So now we have the new president deciding to trash the policies that have successfully grown the economy under Reagan, Clinton, and Bush.  At the same time he is going to saddle future generations with massive debt on top of a looming Social Security and Medicare bill coming due.

I consider myself an optimist, but for the first time in my life I am actually fearful that one man could destroy the U.S. economy in his first 100 days and rush this in under the guise of an emergency, where there is no debate, no time to read what is getting put into law, just slam it in and trust the the most inexperienced president in the last century that it will be all right.  Do you feel better now?

Can We Dump this Canard Over the Side?

More than anything else, the proposals seek to reverse the rapid increase in economic inequality over the last 30 years.

This economic inequality hogwash is dishonesty at it’s peak.  The so-called economic inequality is a sign of the success of the economy.  Think about it, the economy has a floor but not a ceiling.  That is, your income cannot go below zero, but there is no limit to how high it can grow.  So as incomes rise higher and higher, yes, they are going to move further from zero.  This is like saying that air travel is worse today than when the Wright Brothers flew because planes fly higher now than they did in 1903!  So let’s pass a law that says airplanes can’t fly higher than 2,000 feet so we don’t have a great inequality in altitudes.

There is nothing stopping anyone from having that high income if they work hard, use their talents, and succeed.  America is not about punishing the successful.  Many who start out at the bottom move up.  Many who came here as immigrants start at the bottom.  If the Democrats want to improve the numbers, let them control the illegal immigration that is probably inflating the numbers on the bottom.  Let’s stop turning success into failure.  How many people would like to be like Bill Gates?  How many people think America would be better off if we were all like Willy Loman?

The Big Flameout

The Productive Ones Set Sail to More Favorable Tax Climates

Let’s suppose for a moment that the stimulus works and the economy takes off.  With what President Obama has in the works, and the massive taxes that he plans to impose on the top earners, and the carbon taxes he plans to levy on businesses that weill be passed along to the consumers in higher prices (there goes your $8 tax break), and the masive debt he is loading on future generations, the stimulus will soon flameout, and a bigger recession will follow.  This time we won’t able to borrow and spend our way out of it.  Tax cuts won’t matter because there will be no one earning anything to tax.  The wealthy will have packed up and moved to more favorable tax climates and Barack Obama’s historic presidency will have flamed out as well.

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people — Amendment X, United States Constitution

“I’m Mad as Hell and I’m Not Going To Take It Any More”

That quote from the movie “Network” popped into my head as I read about a legislator in Oklahoma, calling for legislative support for the 10th Amendment to the Constitution.  It passed the state assembly unanimously.  So what does this mean?  The sponsor of the bill, State Senator Randy Brogdan, explains:

The “federal government has been putting the screws on (the states) a little tighter and tighter each year” along with unfunded mandates of varying sorts.

And each time this happens, Brogdon explained, “We lose a little bit of our freedom and liberty.”

The federal government has been growing enormously and taking on more and more things that used to be handled locally, such as education, and welfare.  Other programs have not changed as the economy has, for example, as the percentage of the population that farms has decreased dramatically has the Department of Agriculture shrunk accordingly?

You Must Obey!

The way the federal government works around this is by saying, okay, you don’t have to do what we tell you, but you will get no federal funding if you don’t.  It seems like a Catch-22, no?  Since the 16th Amendment, which authorized the income tax, the federal government can decide how much to tax incomes and there is little that the states can do about it.  They take money from your pocket under threat of imprisonment, and will give it back to you only if you comply with their rules.

How Do We Fix This One?

It may require a constitutional amendment to fix as the 16th Amendment says:

The Congress shall have the power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration. — 16th Amendment to the Constitution

I’ll leave the legal mechanics to those better qualified, but I would propose the following.  That the federal budget shall include a breakdown of projected revenues derived from income taxes, broken down by source: individual, corporate, etc.  A state should then be allowed to refuse mandates and programs from, say, the Department of Education, and withhold from the IRS that proportion of tax dollars destined for the Department of Education from that state.

Certain departments should be deemed mandatory, such as Defense, State, Treasure, to name a few as these departments serve all citizens.

The legislation under consideration in Oklahoma will have little effect if the federal government can suck up as much money as it wants to from the states, via their citizens and then just keep the money if the states refuse to participate in the programs.  How do you determine which programs should be subject to the states discretion?  No money should flow from a state, to Washington, and then back to the state.  That is just plain stupid and wasteful, or a distribution of wealth, none of which is a government function. Paying for roads and infrastructure that does not cross state lines should be funded locally.  It is ridiculous that the federal government pays 90% of the cost of a highway that lies entirely within a city.  Look at the scandalous “Big Dig” in Boston.  Billions of dollars spent and parts of it are falling down.  Why should any of this be paid for by the people of Kansas, Oklahoma, Alaska, New York, Florida, et al.?

But the real answer is following the 10th Amendment.  It clearly states that the role of the federal government is spelled out in the Constitution.  If it’s not in the Constitution then that responsibility is left to the states or the people.  Show me where in the Constitution it says that the federal government is responsible for education.  It’s not in there and that department should be shut down tomorrow.

It’s Time to Reign the Monster In

The anger in the country is growing.  Those who acted responsibly are being told they have to bail out the irresponsible.  They are being told by “Buck a Day Biden” that it is their patriotic duty to pay higher taxes to help out.  Meanwhile half a dozen Obama appointees haven’t paid the taxes they owe, let alone paying more.  I give Biden the “Buck a Day Biden” moniker because that is how much this millionaire give to charity.  He doesn’t want to spend his own money on charity, he wants the government to take your money to fund government programs to do that.

If you don’t think the anger is growing take a look at this.  Rick Santelli

We heard President Obama say pretty starkly that the enormous Wall Street bonuses were outrageous.  While I stop short of government dictating compensation to private businesses, I do put the Wall Street clowns in the same category of the Big Three auto CEOs flying to Washington in their private jets looking for handouts.  Very bad form.

The more I pondered the idea of salary caps, whether they were fair or not, whether it was government taking away another liberty, it finally hit me, that this just might work.  So I now propose a salary cap, on the FEDERAL GOVERNMENT. And why not?

Who Got Us Into This Mess?

It was the housing bubble that triggered the financial debacle.  What drove the housing bubble?  Let’s start with Fannie and Freddie.  They were created by Congress.  Next came the Community Reinvestment Act that forced banks to make riskier housing loans.  Next the Clinton Administration under the direction of Janet Reno, drove the banks harder to make more housing loans to people who couldn’t afford them.  Then was the Federal Reserve that kept interest rates too low for too long.  And right up until the end we had Barney Frank and Christopher Dodd saying all was well with Fannie and Freddie.

We have Charlie Rangel, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, the committee responsible for writing the tax laws, cheats on his income taxes.

Bernie Madoff runs a Ponzi scheme that bilks people out of $50 billion while a guy named Markopolis figured the whole thing out in five minutes and spent the last nine years trying to get someone in government to care.

The government imposes CAFE standards on the auto industry and drives them to the brink of bankruptcy and then says we have to bail them out.

Now they are proposing a “stimulus” package that is just a bunch of pork.

Solution

So I propose that we, their employers, cap their salaries at $100,000 (from their current $162,500) until such time as they fix this mess.  I further propose that if a congressman/woman can prove that they didn’t vote for any of the crap that got us into this mess, that they be exempt from the cap.

What say you?

Frank Schaeffer writes in the Huffington Post, under the headline Republicans: “Go To Hell America”, 100% Partisan Vote”, about the vote on the so-called stimulus package.  As Shakespeare said, “Me thinks he doth protest too much.”  In actuality it was a bi-partisan vote, bi-partisan against the stimulus package.

Stimulus?

As more details about this pork-a-palooza come out the American people grow more concerned and less supportive as evidenced by a recent Rasmussen poll with support slipping from 45% to 42% and opposition growing from 34% to 39% with 19% undecided.  Which means that 3% moved from the support column and 2% from the undecided column into the opposition column.  In other words, more people supported John McCain than support this package, and McCain lost.

So why is Frank Schaeffer on the verge of having a stroke over this?  When you look more closely it’s pretty clear.  By all Republicans voting against the measure, they did not give the Democrats the fig leaf they were looking for.  If this is truly a stimulus package and if the Democrats need no Republican votes to pass it, then pass it and take all the credit when the economy rockets to life.  The dirty little secret is that the Democrats really don’t believe this is a stimulus package at all.

The Big Payoff

The purpose of this package is to help the Democrats to consolidate power.  It begins by paying back those who supported them.  Why else is there money in the package for Hollywood, family planning, teacher’s unions, massive transfers of money from the federal to the state governments?  The “tax stimulus” of about $10 per week, is aimed at those who pay little to no income taxes.  “If I give you a check for nothing today, will you give me your vote in 2010?”  They are pushing to reach that tipping point where the majority of voters pay no income tax and maybe even get checks from the government.  Once that magical 50% line is crossed look out.  By having majority rule, they can then jack up the tax rates on “the rich” to astronomical levels, and there is little that can be done about it short of another revolution.  Remember those famous words, “Taxation without Representation”?  And why should it matter to rich Democrats, since they don’t pay the taxes they owe anyway (Rangel, Daschle, Geithner).

The Republicans could have done a great thing for their party and the country: sent a message to the world — we stand together! Imagine the impact on tomorrow’s stock market, and our enemy’s view of America and our standing in the world if instead of a partisan Republican “NO” vote the backing of the recovery plan had been unanimous approval! — Schaeffer

Sorry, comrade, it’s time for Mr. Schaeffer to get a reality check.  First of all that was a bipartisan NO! Second, the stock market has fallen 1,600 points since Obama was elected.  That’s not exactly a vote of confidence from the financial markets.  Look, the measure passed.  If it is a truly good stimulus package the stock market should rise on that alone.  Does he think Wall Street cares whose vote is in which column?  Please!

The Republicans might have then shared the credit, even won a few elections in the future. Now their fate is sealed. Obama will succeed. America won’t forget who to thank. — Schaeffer

You would think that Mr. Schaeffer was born yesterday.  This package was put together by President, I mean, Speaker Pelosi.  She gave the back of her hand to the Republicans.  They had no role to play in putting this package together, so let’s put the bipartisan rhetoric back in the museum case where it belongs.  President Obama’s dinner with conservative writers, his cocktail parties, his Capital Hill meetings with Republicans were all just PR and window dressing if they have no input on the legislation.  When asked if the package was bipartisan, Speaker Pelosi said that depends on how the Republicans vote.  In other words, if they vote for what we are trying to cram down their throats, its bipartisan, if not, well just call on Frank Schaeffer to scream FOUL!

If he wants a true stimulus package, cut the pork, cut the unnecessary spending, eliminate the capital gains tax and cut tax rates, not give out $10 per week that will barely buy a pizza.  If you want to build a serious stimulus package, I am sure the Republicans would stand ready to work with President Obama, but it’s time for President Obama to realize that he’s the one with the 70% approval rating not Nancy Pelosi, whose Congress has approval ratings in the single digits.  He should take the lead not follow hers.  But for now someone has to watch the American people’s backs and their wallets, and that, my friends, are the conservative Republicans.