Fighting to Preserve Liberty in America
I still find myself in awe of our Founding Fathers who created our form of government. The competing ideas that they sifted through to come up with our Constitution and the safeguards in it is wondrous. The designs upon it by the progressives is by equal measure disturbing.
First it was that Bush spent all eight years of his presidency (and was reelected after four of those years) destroying the economy and so we need to give Obama, what, eight years to fix it? Then it was blame Boehner. That didn’t work, because not many people know who John Boehner is. Then it was “the Republicans want to go back to the same old ways that got us into this mess.” Tell that to Arlen Specter, Lisa Murkowski, Mike Castle, Bob Bennett, Charlie Crist, Trey Grayson. Same old, same old? I don’t think so.
Now it is time to go negative. No, I don’t mean campaign ads. That was to be expected as the Democrats do not, repeat, do not want to run on their record, lest it get as ugly on November 2 as a town hall meeting. No, they are going negative on their base. The Democrat heavies are coming out and mocking their base to shame them into coming out and voting for them. Consider some of these gems.
I don’t know who Linda McGibney is, so when a friend tweeted a video she was in rebutting Ben Stein on the fast approaching massive tax increase, I first watched the video and then went about Googling her to find out more about her.
The video begins with a clip of Ben Stein saying basically that if you want to consider raising taxes in the future that may be fine, but right now is not the time to do it, it is just punishment. The video then cuts to Ms. McGibney, who like Barack Obama, begins to lecture us about what she knows so little.
“Ben Stein is wrong,” she intones. She continues to describe herself as an American, in the highest tax bracket, and working in the entertainment business, just like Mr. Stein. Wait a minute. From what I could gather, Ms. McGibney is a screenwriter, which hardly makes her an authority on tax matters. Mr. Stein on the other hand is an economist and a lawyer, besides being in the entertainment field. His father was Herbert Stein who served as an economist in the Nixon administration and Ben Stein was a speechwriter for both Nixon and Ford. So when it comes to speaking on matters, economic, I would tend to defer to Mr. Stein.
The imagery in my mind was triggered by an editorial in the Wall Street Journal by John Fund, when he described Obama in a “political tailspin.” Close your eyes and picture the pilot Barack Obama screaming, “I’ve never flown a plane before!!!” as he furiously toggles switches and twists dials. Biden in the co-pilot seat is flipping through a copy of Piloting for Dummies, shouting back, “Neither have I. I always sat in the back!!!” At the same time, Jimmy Carter is trying to calm Obama down and talk him through pulling plane out of its deadly dive while muttering as an aside, “It’s all Fox News fault.” Then together they all scream, “WE’RE ALL GONNA DIE!!!!”
Such is the political landscape this bright Wednesday morning. The sky is clear here in New York, but politically it is anything but that. The news came out yesterday that the recession ended eighteen months after is started in December 2007. That means it was about five months after Obama took office and just three months after the massive stimulus package passed, which means the economy recovered on its own, without the stimulus.
For all the hand wringing by the Republican establishment over Christine O’Donnell’s fitness for office two points must be made. One, who is calling the kettle black? Two, has anyone bothered to look at who she is running against?
In the desperate attempt to throw anything and everything they can find at Christine O’Donnell to try to derail her roaring comeback, her critics have gone all the way back to probe who her friends were in high school. High school. If that is a criteria for being unfit for government office, how about these gems:
Is that enough or should I continue? And these people and their supporters say, Christine O’Donnell is not fit for office? Maybe she should rob a bank so that her resume would be more in line with these icons of the Democrat firmament.
Who would you trust to better invest a million dollars in the economy, Bill Gates or Joe Biden? Do the richest people in America bury their money in a pit in their back yard or do they either spend it or invest it? Are taxes cuts where the American people give less of the wealth they created to the government or is it where the government gives money to the American people?
If you are like the overwhelming majority of Americans you would answer those questions as follows: Bill Gates; spend or invest it; give less to the government. But the Obama administration and their acolytes live in an alternate reality where Joe Biden, who President Obama put in charge of watching carefully how the stimulus money was spent because “nobody messes with Joe,” is in charge of spending $700+ billion; where they think nothing good happens from the most productive people in the economy when they have more resources to work with; where all money belongs to the government and the government gets to decide who and how much we can keep.
By excluding “the rich” from any tax cuts because we “can’t afford to give the rich a $700 billion tax cut”, this administration is saying that by giving Joe Biden $700 billion he will spend it in such a spectacular way that the economy will be humming before Recovery Summer has ended. We are still waiting.
What happens if Bill Gates has an extra million? I could see three things. One, he spends it. Although he is not known to be an extravagant spender like his competitor Larry Ellison, I understand that Mr. Gates lives in a very nice state of the art house. He may choose to upgrade it. That will probably involve architects, engineers, general contractors, carpenters, plumbers, electricians, laborers, and on and on. In other words, jobs. Isn’t that we need now? How many stimulus projects are there that have sucked up money but created no jobs? (If you are struggling with that question go to www.recovery.gov and sample some of the projects) Two, he could invest it. He might fund a start-up which would again create jobs. If the start up was successful, he might buy it outright which would put money back in the hands of the entrepreneurs who started the company and perhaps they would start another. More jobs, more spending, a growing economy. Three, he may put the money in his charity, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. That is a charity that does good things, but with a difference. Because it is a charity not a government program, there will be people watching how the money is spent with the discretion to modify the program if it gets off track. Government programs are built upon rules. If a crook gets a copy of the rulebook, he can rip off the program until someone gets around to re-writing the rules. In the meantime it is ka-ching for the crook.
The incumbents in government believe that tax revenues are their money and tax cuts are gifts from the government to the people. Taxes are what we the people give to the government. We need to starve the beast and put it back in its cage. Government is trying to run every aspect of our lives. This country was founded because a tone deaf government was taxing America to the eyeballs. It is that time again. We should make the Bush tax cuts permanent now and clean house in November.
Revised GDP numbers suggest that going down is exactly what the economy is doing. The government revised second quarter GDP growth from 2.4% down to 1.6%. Even Paul Krugman is saying the stimulus didn’t work, but his solution is to drive the country into bankruptcy faster. Krugman’s complaint was that the stimulus wasn’t big enough. He also believe we should,” use Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored lenders, to engineer mortgage refinancing that puts money in the hands of American families.” Fannie and Freddie have already sucked $160 billion out of the Treasury and Mr. Krugman wants to back up and re-inflate the housing bubble. Talk about failed policies of the past, sheesh!
The solution to the jobs issue is private industry. The problem is that this is the most anti-business government in memory. Business is the target of the administration’s ire, tax policies, health care policies, cap and trade schemes, repeal of the Bush tax cuts, card check, financial regulation, have I left anything out? So business is sitting on its hands. No matter how much cash it may be accumulating it does not want to take any steps, like expanding, until the full weight of all these choking policies are understood and priced out or until the Democrats are run out of the Congress and the anti-business sentiment is lifted there.
So let the Joe Biden show continue. The man who says he know little about economics and proves it with every speech will go on telling us how the stimulus is working exactly as planned. President Obama will continue to take a new vacation about every 90 days and we will cross our fingers that there is something left to recover when we recover our government from these inexperienced, clueless dolts.
Back on the campaign trail where he feels comfortable that he knows what he is doing, Barack Obama traveled to Las Vegas to stump for Harry Reid. Harry Reid used to be a boxer and when he told Barack Obama this he said, “Barack, I wasn’t the fastest. I wasn’t the hardest-hitting, but I knew how to take a punch.” Based on all the legislation that has been passed since 2008 that an overwhelming majority of the American people have opposed, makes one wonder if Harry Reid took a few punches too many.
Shortly after taking office and settling into his “bash business” mode Obama blasted businesses for their extravagant meetings held in places like Las Vegas. Someone then whispered in the president’s ear that extravagant business meetings in Las Vegas were good for Las Vegas and Harry Reid. Oops. And there you have the crux of the problem.
What, exactly, is government’s role to tell private companies how to spend their money? What is the role of governments to say to a BP, “Give us the $20 billion, or we’ll take it from you,” as was attributed to Joe Biden, without first going to court? What is the role of government to say to its citizens, you must buy this health care product or pay a fine? Well in Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela, it is probably all fine and dandy, but in America?
Barack, the standup comic, used the analogy that he and Harry Reid had mud on their shoes, were pushing hard to get the car back on the road, and were making progress little-by-little and when they finally got one wheel on the pavement the Republicans want to throw the car into reverse. Really? I would compare it more to conservatives telling everyone to get out of the car and help push, instead of waiting for Nancy Pelosi to come back from Dunkin Donuts with free food for all the overweight union bosses jammed in the car squawking that they didn’t do manual labor. Their contract didn’t call for pushing cars out of ditches.
So, while this car should have been out of this ditch and well down the road by now, Harry and Barry will try to convince us that what they’re doing is absolutely brilliant; it’s just that we are too stupid to see it. After all, it took the greatest president in history, FDR, over eight years and a World War to get us out of the Great Depression, so relax we have another 6 ½ years to go.
Imagine what would have happened if the ever resilient American economy was allowed to work on its own without all the government intervention in the 1930s. Perhaps the Depression would have been shorter like the recession of 1920-1921, and perhaps we would not have had World War II, and Fannie Mae, and a bankrupt Social Security, and a couple of generations later all of us swimming in debt. It’s time the tow truck of the most powerful economy on the face of the earth to come along and be allowed to do its job. Tell Harry and Barry to go sit down on that stump over there, and watch how it is really done. “You’re making a mess of yourselves and embarrassing the rest us.”
You don’t have to go too far to find a story about people suffering in these tough economic times, and your heart goes out to them. Some have lost houses, are living in cars, really tough stuff. But there is another story under the surface that reflects common attitudes developed growing up in the nanny state kicked into high gear by Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
In the midst of these tough economic times, instead of getting out of the way by cutting taxes and red tape, the Obama administration is focused on piling on more government programs. Worthless stimulus packages, health care reform, and efforts to push cap and trade have not moved the unemployment needle a whit. They extend unemployment benefits and keep whistling past the graveyard hoping they won’t get swallowed up.
Personal Responsibility
Since the Great Depression and the growth of the nanny state, more and more people have bought into the myth that the government can provide all, and our responsibility is to enjoy the ride. An article in today’s New York Times writes about people benefitting from a government program to keep them in their houses if they face becoming homeless. But there are some subtleties in the hard luck stories that give me pause.
There is the case of Antonio Moore who lost his job as a mortgage consultant that paid him $75,000 per year. He lost his 3-bedroom house with a Jacuzzi and his Lexus sedan. He is now faced with eviction from his apartment. The article doesn’t go into details, but in most cases you don’t lose your house and car if they are all paid for. Again, it doesn’t say if Mr. Moore bought his car new or used, but when I think of a car like a Lexus I usually don’t think that fitting in the budget of someone making $75,000 living in the San Francisco Bay area. Had Mr. Moore purchased a Toyota Corolla instead of the Lexus would he be in better shape? Again, I don’t know the details. I am just wondering.
Then there is the case of Dawn Martin.
Ms. Martin is mortified to be asking for help. She grew up wealthy, with vacations spent on Caribbean cruises. “I had everything I ever wanted,” she says.
She and her husband have a painting business that until 2008 was grossing $100,000 per year, but in this tough economy it dropped to $38,000. That’s hard. But then here is the between the lines story:
Her father has money to help if it really comes down to it, she acknowledges.
“I don’t see him letting his grandkids land on the street,” she says, “but he’d hold it over our heads for a long time. That would lower me to a level that I wouldn’t want to go.”
So she is here, at Samaritan House, filling out the paperwork for the homeless prevention program.
So because of her pride, she turns to your family and mine, through higher taxes to fund a government program, to help her through her rough spot before she will turn to her own family. But don’t worry. When our money is gone, she will turn to Dad. The painting business is picking up so Ms. Martin is confident they will be able to sustain themselves. She is able to take our money to tide her over and still maintain her pride.
But what did Ms. Martin learn about money when “growing up wealthy”? Is Dad responsible for not teaching her or was she a rebellious child who ignored him and perhaps that is why he would hold it over her head for a long time. Will she do something different this time around or hope for another government program?
Perhaps I was a little torqued before reading this story by another in the Wall Street Journal that wrote about the homes underlying the Goldman Sachs fraud case. This article talks about a Ms. Onyeukwu, a 43-year old nursing home assistant with pre-tax income of $9,000 per month. She is having trouble paying her $688,000 mortgage at $5,000 per month which is 56% of her pre-tax income. Her solution? Refinance it with a $786,250 mortgage. But hey, the interest rate is lower so her payments of $5,000 per month will stay the same. What is she thinking? I could be way off base here but I’ll bet she could get a nice apartment for significantly less than $5,000 per month. Sell the house, live within your means.
Government as Savior or Government as Pusher?
This is a tale of two government programs and personal responsibility. We had or still have a massive government program that uses threats, goals, and sleight of hand to help millions achieve the American dream of home ownership. This is not through thrift, like our parents did it, but by the government threatening banks with charges of racism (there’s the race card again) if the banks didn’t lower their lending standards. As the housing market took off, the feeding frenzy intensified and everyone was trying to buy houses or finance them with less and less money down. The Community Reinvestment Act, HUD, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac were all players in this debacle, but don’t expect our elected officials to wade into that swamp to see what happened. No, they will pile the blame on the banks and Wall Street, while they take Wall Street’s massive donations and do nothing but pass meaningless “reform legislation”. Now we need new government programs to keep these people hanging on. How similar is this to the drug pusher who gives you your first hit for free to get you hooked and dependent on them forever.
What About Personal Responsibility?
Unlike the people in the articles, I believe I have responsibility first and foremost for my actions. If I need help beyond myself I turn to my family and then the charity of my church. I believe many conservatives share my views, which is why on average conservatives give 30% more to charities than liberals. It is why I gave the moniker “Buck a Day Biden” to Vice President Joe Biden because in his financial disclosure forms he reported give only about $300 a year to charity. Here is a man who has been drawing six figure salaries from the taxpayers for years, is a millionaire, but will not reach very deep into his own pocket to help his fellow man, but has no problem reaching into your pocket and mine to create some government program to give your tax dollars to someone else.
There is a man named Dave Ramsey, who was a millionaire in his mid-twenties but later lost it all and declared bankruptcy. He now teaches others how to live without debt and take responsibility for their financial lives. It is a lesson all of us should learn and if we do, I’ll have to find something else to write about that sets me off. But in the mean time we have a lot of work to do. First we have to stop the federal government’s runaway train. Next, we have to shrink government. Then we have to go back to being responsible for ourselves and wean ourselves off the government.
President Obama went about doing what he does best, giving another speech, and in doing so demonstrated his true colors. He also demonstrated how far he has come from his empty promises to be a uniter and not a divider. As millions across the country gathered to make their voices heard that we are over taxed and over governed, he smugly wondered to a crowd of supporters why the Tea Party members weren’t thanking him for lowering our taxes.
That claim holds about as much water as his continually proclaimed “jobs saved”, a statistic that he and Joe Biden frequently parrot but no one knows how to measure. The Bush tax cuts are about to expire and Obama has no intention of extending them. Thank you, Mr. President. He took $787 billion of our hard earned tax dollars and squandered them on a stimulus program that actually made things worse. How can I make such an outrageous statement? I am relying on the words of the smartest man ever elected to the presidency of the United States. He told us that if we did not implement his stimulus package, the unemployment rate would rise to 9%. Well, it’s at 9.7% so it is not unreasonable to conclude the package that he passed actually made the situation worse. Thank you, Mr. President
He has rammed through his health care program that will add taxes to drugs and medical devices, will tax citizens if they do not buy the insurance he wants us to have. It will cost $1-2 trillion and where does he think that money is going to come from? The Federal government only has one source of revenues, taxes and fees. So how does he suppose he is going to pay for all of this? Why, thank you, Mr. President
Keep mugging it up, Mr. President, keep sneering at the majority of Americans, and soon you can join Jimmy Carter’s elite club of bitter hope and change one term presidents.
