OBAMA'S FORWARD EQUALS TWO STEPS BACK
By
Attorney Jonathan Emord
Author of "The
Rise of Tyranny" and
"Global
Censorship of Health Information" and
"Restore
The Republic"
September 10, 2012
NewsWithViews.com
What does a President whose big government economic policies have failed the nation offer when he has no faith in the private sector? He repackages old promises and offers a “new path.” Unveiled at the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, as that state wallows in unemployment topping 9.6%, Obama’s “new path” consists of billions in new federal spending for make-work jobs and public sector employment of teachers and police; hundreds of millions more than previously estimated to keep Obamacare alive; and an unleashing of the regulatory state to propound thousands of new regulations to constrict industry in every sector. Faith in government springs eternal even when the present government’s economic failure is the greatest in world history.
What does President Obama offer to pay for the billions in new federal spending atop a $1.1 trillion annual deficit? He promises to tax the rich but also provide tax relief to the middle class. If he were to tax 100% of the income of all those who earn over $200,000 per year, he would net only $2 trillion for just one year (enough to cover one year of deficit spending at $1.1 trillion plus one year of the billions more in “new path” federal spending), but what about year 2, what about the $16 trillion and climbing national debt, and what about the federal revenues lost due to the tax break he says he will give to the middle class? His numbers do not add up; all point to much higher deficits, less private sector capital accumulation needed to reduce unemployment; and far more dependency on a federal government that is broke.
In addition, the sale to the middle class is an outstanding example of legerdemain. On the one hand, Obama proudly proclaims that he will give the middle class tax relief, but many in the middle class are presently uninsured and on January 1, 2014, federal law will require that they either buy private health insurance at between $5,000 and $15,000 a year (quite a hefty tax; indeed the largest in history) or suffer a tax penalty (which while modest will grow and will in any event subject middle income earners to greater IRS scrutiny).
Truth be told, Obama’s FORWARD drives an enormous bureaucratic tank over a feeble private sector, grinding it into mush, and, thereafter stalls out completely because having destroyed the private sector there is no source left to fuel the machine. Obama would destroy the engine of employment, the wealthy, yielding massive new unemployment. Obama would favor unreliable and expensive green energy over traditional sources of energy, driving up the cost of energy nationwide. Obama would grant drug companies and health insurers government sponsored monopolies, crushing all sources of competition to those licensed and federally protected entities.
In short, Obama’s “new path” is the same old government road down which America has traveled for decades. It is new in only one sense—the rate of speed at which Obama causes government to travel upon it. He has accelerated the amassing of debt, exploding the federal budget beyond predictions made just six months ago. He spends unconstrained by the reality of financial ruin that every reasonable economist predicts to be just around the corner. In short, he believes in government even if his belief kills us.
With the grin of a Cheshire cat, Obama promises the moon but neglects to mention just how expensive the moon really is. Obama’s FORWARD equals two steps back. It’s kind of like Michael Jackson’s Moon Walk. Obama’s FORWARD gives the appearance of moving ahead even when it moves backward. Truth be told, Obama’s FORWARD is an enormous fraud, much like that purveyed by true snake oil salesmen. The elixir Obama invites America to drink may taste as sweet as pineapple but is as poisonous as belladonna.
The lie he propounds is multilayered. Obama knows that his expansionist legislative agenda stands no chance of passing in the House of Representatives. He has no true friends there or in the Senate with the possible exception of the ne’er-do-well Dick Durbin. Consequently, when Obama promises grandiose legislative solutions, he knows he cannot deliver them. He is purveying a political fraud on a vulnerable people, adding more promises he cannot deliver atop his numerous already broken ones. Even if he could deliver the new promises, he knows that the nation could not affordably survive them (will have no way of avoiding financial ruin if they are undertaken).
With 23 million people unemployed, with an unemployment rate that hovers around 8.3%, and with the Gross Domestic Product stagnating at a 1.7% annual rate, the party in power has a lot of explaining to do, but the hubris of Obama does not allow explanations for the failures of the last three and a half years; so none were offered at the Democratic National Convention. Rather, while people struggle across the nation just to find some way to make ends meet and while businesses remain petrified that revenues over the coming year may drop further, the DNC in Charlotte threw one of the biggest parties ever, as if gloom and doom were nonexistent. The DNC did so as North Carolina struggles with an unemployment rate above the national average, at 9.6%. Obama once again looks so much like Nero, a dictator who fiddles while the nation burns all around him.
Imagine had they taken a different tact, a sincere one. Imagine if instead of assembling Hollywood show people, instead of all of the smug revelry, and instead of all the denial of responsibility for adding to America’s doom, they chose to admit error, reflect the misery in America, and commit to a truly “new path.” Conventional political wisdom no doubt dictates that they would lose. The truth, of course, is that honesty so refreshing would catapult Obama to stardom all over again, rekindling his 2008 courtship with Democratic Americans. Once again, he would be taken seriously by many who now understand him to have betrayed his core constituencies. But, alas, his ego will not allow a mea culpa, and every fiber in his body resonates to the propaganda of the Democratic Socialists of America before whom, less than two decades ago, he proudly spoke.
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Obama cannot escape the fact that he dislikes the very things that have made America great. He distrusts free enterprise and economic liberty and so he penalizes the former and violates the latter. He dislikes wealth accumulation unless it is within the government and so he seeks to tax all sources of capital. He abhors individualism (he does not even think it exists: “You didn’t build that”), and so he celebrates the “community” or, as Socialists commonly refer to it, the “collective.” Consequently, he can only move in one direction—toward greater government. He cannot admit that the hundreds of billions spent by the government in stimulus programs has been an utter failure, so he plans to spend hundreds of billions more. He cannot accept that individual ingenuity, free of government control, is the only means by which America’s economic pie will grow again. He is locked into a narrow mindset that necessarily favors the same failed policies of the last three and a half years, regardless of the consequences to the nation. In short, in Obama’s America when Obama wins the rest of us lose.
� 2012 Jonathan W. Emord - All Rights Reserved
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