The observation was repeated often enough before Barack Obama\u2019s 2008 election that few can claim not to have been warned: When Democrats including Mr. Obama promise an open, centrist, \u201cbi-partisan\u201d administration where Republicans, free-marketers, Constitutionalists and their ideas will be \u201cwelcome at the table,\u201d what they really mean is:<\/p>\n
\u201cThose guys are welcome to prove how \u2018moderate\u2019 they are, to win accolades from our chained pets at Newsweek and the Post and the Times, praising how they\u2019ve \u2018grown in office\u2019 by voting for our far-left agenda, so long as they smile and keep their mouths shut. Otherwise they\u2019re the \u2018Irrelevant Party of No.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Denounce Republicans all you want for being half-hearted fans (at best) of lower taxes and limited government. Most of them surely deserve it. (Just try to get one to come out for again making our dollars out of silver, while briskly shutting down Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the Federal Reserve, the ATF, and every other federal agency and program devised since 1910.)<\/p>\n
But if there were any \u201copenness\u201d in the current White House or Democratic congressional majorities, you\u2019d think by now they\u2019d be saying, \u201cOK, we don\u2019t really LIKE Republicans, but if the goal is to create jobs, the truth is all this \u2018stimulus spending\u2019 stuff has sure been a bust. Wonder if the GOP might not be onto something with their idea to slash the very taxes and regulations — yes \u2018on the rich\u2019 — that make it ever more expensive and cumbersome for a private employer to add more workers? Come to think of it, isn\u2019t that what Kennedy did in 1961? And didn\u2019t it work again, back in the 1980s?\u201d<\/p>\n
Instead, declaring America\u2019s middle class is \u2018under assault,\u2019 President Barack Obama Monday unveiled plans to supposedly help hurting families pay their bills, save for retirement and care for their kids and aging parents — by loading on more taxes and government spending.<\/p>\n
Mr. Obama\u2019s budget for the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1 will include \u201cspending expansions and new mandates on employers to encourage retirement savings by workers,\u201d The Associated Press reports.<\/p>\n
You read it right. More government spending — which requires either higher taxes or borrowing, destroying Americans\u2019 savings either way — and more mandates on employers.<\/p>\n
Yes, that\u2019s the dream of every ambitious, hard-working young American: to become an employer so they can be loaded up with an ever-increasing camel-load of government \u201cmandates.\u201d<\/p>\n
Heading the laundry list of increasingly bizarre new federal interventions to be highlighted in the president\u2019s State of the Union address this week: spending more than $100 million \u201cto help people care for their elderly parents and get support for themselves as well.\u201d<\/p>\n
And that money will come from? The same place the planes that bombed Tokyo in 1942 came from: Shangri-La!<\/p>\n
(Yes, there will also be \u201ctargeted tax credits\u201d — attempts to manipulate behavior, not reduce federal revenues. Besides which, many members of the working poor who can\u2019t afford \u201cprofessional tax preparers\u201d don\u2019t take advantage of all the \u201ccredits\u201d that are in the code already, either because they don\u2019t know about them or out of fear of being penalized should they get the math wrong. And now this guy\u2019s going to \u201chelp\u201d us by making the tax code more complicated?)<\/p>\n
Then, on Tuesday, Mr. Obama called for a federal \u201cdiscretionary\u201d spending freeze, whatever that means.<\/p>\n
Starting to feel like a cartoon character whose head has just been rung like a bell?<\/p>\n
The official unemployment rate is at 10 percent — 13.1 percent in Las Vegas, which means 25 percent when \u201cdiscouraged\u201d and underemployed workers are included — and most economists say it could take until at least 2015 for it to return to more normal levels, The AP now reports.<\/p>\n
The Great Depression lasted from 12 to 16 years, depending on how you count. And this one is already scheduled to last eight? Do we hear 10?<\/p>\n
Pouring billions of dollars we don\u2019t have into dead-end, one-size-fits-all \u201cgreen jobs\u201d that train unemployed nuclear physicists and valet parkers alike to staple plastic over the windows of trailer homes or build windmills that would never \u201cpencil out\u201d sans federal subsidies — jobs that will therefore disappear immediately after the subsidies run out — is just plain nuts.<\/p>\n
Even before we consider the experience of the past 12 months, which shows that billions in such federal potlatch are lucky to create a few dozen (yes, \u201cdozen\u201d) jobs per state at a cost of millions of dollars apiece.<\/p>\n
Those in charge in Washington need some fresh ideas. Unfortunately, that sound you hear is an entire party covering its ears, stomping their feet, and droning \u201cWe can\u2019t heeeaaar you!\u201d<\/p>\n
I kind of like it, actually. Hike taxes to cripple the economy; read the underwear bombers their right to remain silent; continue shipping bales of our wealth overseas to fight mythical \u201cman-made global warming\u201d and the mythical \u201cThird World heterosexual AIDS epidemic\u201d; seize American manufacturers like GM (GE next?) and turn them over to the unions to run; print increasingly worthless greenbacks by the zillion till its takes a whellbarrow full to buy a loaf of bread; bail out the kleptocrat bankers with what\u2019s left of the Treasury in secret back-room deals …<\/p>\n
This gang could drive the Democrats out of power for 30 years. Only I think our current president, Mr. Creosote, needs to add just this one, teensy-weensy little after-dinner mint, don\u2019t you?<\/p>\n
Gun control. Come on, Barry, you KNOW you want to do it. Don\u2019t leave the Democratic plate half full: Give us some gun control! Limit us to buying one gun and one round of ammo per month! Oh PLEASE throw us in the briar patch! Think how GOOD you\u2019ll feel.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The observation was repeated often enough before Barack Obama\u2019s 2008 election that few can claim not to have been warned: When Democrats including Mr. Obama promise an open, centrist, \u201cbi-partisan\u201d administration where Republicans, free-marketers, Constitutionalists and their ideas will be \u201cwelcome at the table,\u201d what they really mean is: \u201cThose guys are welcome to prove […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[30,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-429","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2008-election","category-big-brother"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pWqFl-6V","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/429","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=429"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/429\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":434,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/429\/revisions\/434"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=429"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=429"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=429"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}