Obama in a Skirt

There is no evidence that the United States is pulling out of this recession. Our nation is hurting. And while the country decays, congress is using the uncertainty to usurp power. The staggering deficit it created serves government well.

The rush of spending is a crushing defeat for private enterprise and personal responsibility. The nationalization of the financial institutions reduced the fluidity of capital that underpins freedom, innovation and prosperity. It empowers the federal government by reducing the economic options of future generations.

Trickle down economics has graduated from being a by-product of capitalism, historically defined as class warfare by liberals, to shared responsibility. Of course, the sharing will be controlled by government to level the income disparities created by the industrious and innovative risk takers.

There is no bright light on the horizon. Housing values continue to fall and the unemployment numbers aren’t hopeful. The stock market is in a dither, inflation is mounting, energy prices are growing and there are tremendous pressures on the fissures in our national and fiscal security.

The US immigration polices are anti-worker and anti-taxpayer, and the solutions being offered to stabilize the escalating cost of healthcare are mired in socialist priorities. The production of energy has been relegated to the realm of environmental doomsayers.

Our right of privacy, self-determination, religious expression, wealth accumulation, and control of the curriculum in our local schools is disappearing. And marriage is being ostracized; labeled as an outmoded artifact of religious intolerance.

Moral authority is treated as the disgraced refuge of old fashion constitutionalists. And the guidelines for freedom of expression are being manipulated by a government obsessed with an unflinching quest for absolute power. The relationship between church and state has evolved into a winner-take-all war for the right to define truth.

The judicial branch of government has adopted all the political trappings of the executive and legislative branches. It is being used to substantiate political objectives and bolster the power and prestige of the federal government’s value system.

There is nothing more self-evident about legislation enacted by judicial activists, which is designed and created to limit or extract our constitutional freedoms, than its dependency on moral equivalency.

Without moral absolutes, the judges are free to replace God given rights with their own subjective, moral interpretations. This is why the US Constitution is being battered like a piñata.

The nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court is not a prelude to change. It’s a confirmation that the liberals in government see the Constitution as a barrier to its power. She represents the forces of moral equivalency, the foundation of socialism.

The left can depend on Sotomayor to chip away at the rights and values engraved in the US Constitution. She doesn’t epitomize justice because her only interest is redefining it. That’s why Obama nominated her. That’s why the liberals will confirm her.

Obama Economics

Fannie Mae needs another infusion of tax dollars to survive. Anyone predicting success for Mr. Obama’s brand of progressive economics should take a look at the results of this socialist adventure.

Seventy percent of the restructured loans are again in default. Despite the monthly payment on the majority of these mortgage contracts being cut nearly in half, the borrowers continue to run away from their legal and moral commitments.

Most of the abandoned properties are gutted and left in shambles. This epidemic is so rampant that companies involved in junk and trash removal are thriving. Of course, the problem stems from the fact that the buyers (and lenders) never had any skin in the game.

The results are unsurprising. There is a long history of government subsidized housing rapidly falling into decay. Despite the evidence, the liberals are in a state of denial. They won’t admit there is a relationship between personal responsibility and success; between pride of ownership and sacrifice; between employment history and sustained income.

The credit policies of Barney Frank and company merely moved welfare housing from the inner cities to the suburbs. This is the same tactic, with the same horrible results, that occurred when liberals mandated “busing” to eliminate the educational inequities found in city and suburban schools.

Busing destroyed the integrity of city neighborhoods and reduced property values. The tax base of cities followed the school buses to the suburbs. And predictably, the upheaval didn’t improve education. Socializing Fannie and Freddie cost the taxpayers a few trillion dollars in cold hard cash, depreciated home values and gutted retirement savings.

The root cause of the problem is that liberals rely on their efforts being judged by their good intentions and not by the results. Of course, this is like Speaker Pelosi relying on her veracity to prove a point.

When Fannie and Freddie crashed head on with reality, congress should have slammed the Treasury’s door on the Equal Lending Opportunity legislation. Nothing has changed other than Obama and company shifted the blame to those mean spirited capitalists who packaged and sold this government endowed garbage to get it off their books.

The economy is now hovering above an economic fault line being temporarily supported by the phantom dollars Obama, Geithner and Barney are printing. Now that Standard & Poor’s outlook for the US’ AAA credit rating is filling with cautionary notes, they want to change the subject.

That’s why Obama, Barney and the other fiscal ostriches are moving our attention to healthcare, energy and amnesty before the stimulus bubble pops. Only in fairytales can you close your eyes and have the bogeyman disappear. But that seems to be the fiscal methodology that Obama has chosen.

It makes as much sense as pretending the Islamic terrorists will disappear if they aren’t called terrorists; or pretending our national intelligence agencies cause terrorism; or pretending illegal immigration doesn’t impact the employment and wages of Americans; or pretending the Cap and Trade energy initiative isn’t a brutal tax; or pretending that nationalizing healthcare will reduce costs and improve its quality.

The US economy is suspended above a sinkhole and every additional spending program weakens the already badly frayed tethers. Four years of Obama, Pelosi, Reid and Barney’s socialist agenda guarantees Americans will never be free of government bondage.

Obama's Tax Guru

Seventy-five percent of the candidates for elementary teacher positions in Massachusetts failed mathematics in the entrance exam. Now here is a surprise. The academic establishment (read teachers union) blamed the test. The examination probably asked questions that involved numbers.

It’s difficult to conjure up the mental agility of a college graduate unprepared to teach arithmetic to a grade school pupil. It makes one wonder what they learned in four years. Let’s hope they didn’t go into debt for an education that they obviously didn’t receive.

They won’t qualify for one other government job in Massachusetts. Failing arithmetic pretty much disqualifies them from raking in $75,000 a year as a toll taker. Making change is obviously out of their league. But they shouldn’t be discouraged.

There is plenty of room for the arithmetically challenged in the budget offices of the state and towns. The state legislature automatically increases taxes to cover any revenue shortages, which negates the need to understand annual budgets. Besides, budgets are filled with near endless rows of numbers; so who really cares?

No one can remember if the state or any town in Massachusetts ever actually had a surplus, so the budget bureaucrats only need a rudimentary knowledge of subtraction.

Here is the exam question for the state treasurer. If the state collects $10 and spends $13 how much more revenue is needed to balance the budget? The answer would appear to be that $3 in additional taxes would cover the shortfall (For the recent college graduates: $13 - $10 = $3).

But we are talking about Massachusetts.

The calculation necessitates adding a minimum of 30% for graft and corruption, and at least 10% more for friends and family kickbacks. And then the traditional piling-on begins. For the politicians this is the prime season to sweeten the pot.

A couple of rounds of pay raises are always in order. And they never forget to fatten their retirement programs. And pay increases for teachers, police and firemen protect their careers.

This part of the equation makes taxpayers a bit testy, so the final costs are always underestimated for political reasons. They know that they can come back for more next year. This year the Massachusetts state legislature plans to increase the highway tolls, the state sales tax and taxes on gasoline and beer.

Rumor has it that Mr. Obama asked his good friend, Governor Deval Patrick, not to raise the state income tax as Obama wants these potential revenues reserved for the federal government. As a quid pro quo, Obama promised to start the printing presses to bailout Massachusetts’ extravagant welfare schemes.

Governor Patrick had to accept this deal. Every time Massachusetts increases the taxes on alcohol, gas and the state sales tax, more of its citizens head to New Hampshire to do their shopping. Governor Patrick figured it was about time the residents of New Hampshire started supporting Massachusetts. He is a big advocate of shared responsibility.

In addition, Governor Patrick’s lawsuit to force New Hampshire businesses to collect and forward sales taxes on purchases made by Massachusetts citizens is already winding its way through the courts.

And you were wondering from whom Obama, Barney Frank and Geithner got their tax and spend ideas.

Relax and Enjoy ObamaLand

Here’s a new ripple in the Progressive stream. Mr. Obama and his worshipers have decided that the taxpayers in all the states should fund the annual deficits of those states in financial trouble.

Mismanagement and gross dereliction of fiscal responsibility now qualifies spendthrift states for federal handouts. California, Michigan, New Jersey and Massachusetts are lining up for free bailouts. Who knew that out-of-your-mind spending by state governments had no down side?

Evidently, providing cars and AAA service to welfare recipients, pampering illegal aliens in sanctuary cities, bloated bureaucracies, and caving in to outlandish union demands do have a high price. Of course, when you govern a state in ObamaLand cost is not an issue.

Maybe, just maybe, this shared responsibility thing is going a bit too far. Or, maybe the governors and legislatures in states that control spending should be fired. After all, it appears they don’t understand that fiscal responsibility is retro thinking.

It’s obvious that Obama is a religious man. Every night he thanks God for inventing the printing press. With a little paper and ink he can pay everyone’s bills. That’s why he isn’t worried about the $1.8 trillion deficit he rang up in his first one hundred days in office.

The guy is on a roll. By June of this year every American will have the same world class healthcare found in Cuba. And it will be free. How wonderful is that? Rumor has it that his healthcare program will be called Frankie Med in honor of Barney Frank.

Don’t kid yourself. Obama is thinking ahead. Frankie Med is going to stop those greedy pharmaceutical companies from making profits which fund research. New drugs keep people living longer, which put a strain on Social Security and Medicare. Obama is a fiscal genius.

And fewer people will put less strain on the environment. Global warming and Al Gore will be distant memories. Fewer people also mean fewer abortions and the elimination of the need for stem cell research, two thorny political issues. Let’s be honest, the guy is a political genius.

By 2010 Obama’s approval numbers should go right through the roof when people realize that staying home and living on the government dole will pay as well as working and paying taxes.

It will be a glorious morning when the last factory shuts down and everyone can spend their days relaxing. And imagine the reduction in fossil fuels with no one driving to work. The Middle East will once again be a sandbox. There goes the funding for Islamic terrorists. Obama is so brilliant that it’s scary.

The children will love Obama. Education will be obsolete. Why go to school and learn to read and write if it is not required for living and breeding? This will save millions of trees that would have been wasted on textbooks and copy paper and homework.

Best of all, the fragile egos of children won’t be bruised by academic and physical competition. Obama truly believes in absolute equality. Of course, that’s why the economy is on the verge of annihilation. But fear not. Pelosi will certainly tell us the truth, as honesty is her only virtue.

Is GM a Prelude to America's Future?

Mr. Obama, Pelosi and Reid have already outspent the federal government’s ability to fund itself and the national debt without massive tax increases. And this fiscal depravity doesn’t include their pending national healthcare, amnesty and green energy schemes.

The bad news is just beginning. Be prepared for a barrage of defaults in the commercial real estate sector. Naturally Obama will guarantee that the taxpayers backstop the hemorrhaging, which will put the government’s head under the commercial property tent.

Equal Lending Opportunity legislation and the creation of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae sure worked well for home mortgages. So expect the taxpayers to soon be paying the rent for companies whose aspirations were greater than their business plans.

To that, add the new government guarantees for loans approved by bureaucrats in the Small Business Administration. The borrowers and banks no longer have any skin in the game. This scheme has all the merit of putting the leftwing scoundrels running ACORN (or Barney Frank) in charge of the Internal Revenue Service.

Now consider the additional 77 million people who will be enrolled in Medicare and Social Security in the next few years. These programs will collapse under their own weight without an enormous infusion of tax dollars.

The United States is on the edge of an economic cliff and Obama tells us to trust him, things are improving. This is true if the goal of the nation is to reinvent itself as a mediocre socialist state. The overt acts of Obama, Pelosi and Reid have undermined the sovereignty and security of the nation they inherited.

No amount of happy talk is going to delay the fiscal reckoning. These three miscreants have deliberately and with malice toward capitalism deeded the nation’s future to the government monopoly of wealth.

This is exactly where Obama, Pelosi and Reid are driving the country. The government now controls the financial institutions. Obama and friends just announced they will soon issue directives detailing the pay of employees in financial institutions.

They have the power to define credit worthiness and decide loan eligibility. Loans will be based on how they affect the government’s master plan and on the borrowers’ political allegiance. Earmarks pale by comparison to this pork barrel. Corruption Central, here we come.

Their plan even includes banks that required no government bailout. Why? To avoid the mass migration of management from government controlled banks to the private sector.

The liberals see this plan generating the same slobbering support of big government as is found in the rank and file of government bureaucrats. Is there any doubt that pay raises will be determined by political obedience?

If the federal government remains on this current track, private enterprise will be extinguished. Personal initiative and freedom of speech will be outlawed as anti-social. It was once stated that what is good for General Motors is good for the nation. That’s was never true, but now that GM is owned by the government, it’s a prelude to America’s bleak future.

The Demise of State Legislatures

President Eisenhower introduced the Inter-State Highway program in the 1950’s under the guise of national security. It was positioned as a necessary and vital means to move men and arms in the event of war.

There was no other constitutional justification for the federal government to seize and nationalize property within the states.

How things have changed. Today, the right of the federal government to regulate inter-state commerce has been extended and broadened beyond recognition of its initial intent.

This clause in the Constitution was initially intended to prevent states from erecting trade barriers at their borders. The clause guaranteed people and goods could travel from state to state without tariffs and other taxes and regulations hindering the flow.

The concept was revolutionary and brilliant. It eventually guaranteed the free flow of goods and services between fifty, independent states. Arguably, it was the lynchpin that cemented the fiercely independent states into a national economic powerhouse.

For decades the federal government has gnawed away at the states’ independence and their right of self-determination by expanding the original intent of the Commerce clause. Broadening its scope has allowed the federal government to micro-mange our lives by claiming its right to control all goods, services and communications that move between states.

Proponents of expanded federal reach see “protecting the environment” as the ultimate tool for controlling every aspect of our lives. It’s the perfect umbrella to legitimize the federal power to define the boundaries of an acceptable lifestyle.

The power to regulate commerce has also seeped into morality and religious expression. Combined with the power of the Internal Revenue Service, the federal government concocts, manipulates and punishes individuals by prescribing and enforcing acceptable behavior.

Federal law has made it a greater crime to inflict physical and mental harm on a minority or homosexual or transgender person than the identical crime against a six year old white child. Set aside the absurdity of this convoluted thinking and concentrate on where the federal government gets the power to enact such laws.

The US Constitution doesn’t grant the federal government the power to make or enforce such decisions. Yet, it has steadily encroached upon our freedoms because Americans have traditionally trusted the courts to protect us from government overreach.

Of course, the courts are now used to justify and create rights and justify congress’ ambitions. Too many judges are simply legislators who happen to wear black robes. And the mainstream media has forsaken its duty to inform citizens of the government’s power grab.

Until, and unless, the state governments unite to protect the rights granted them in the US Constitution, their existence as lawmakers will soon become moot.

Disappearing Constitutional Rights

It seems that Mr. Obama is serious about reducing the deficit. Well, not exactly! He is not going to cut government spending. He has decided to chase down international companies headquartered in the United States, which avoid corporate taxes on profits gained from offshore business.

His administration figures this will add 20 billion dollars a year to the US treasury, less the cost of the 800 new IRS employees and the legal challenges that are certain to mount.

Mr. Obama thinks it is unfair that companies only pay corporate taxes to the countries in which their foreign offices and manufacturing plants exist. Currently, if the remaining profits stay offshore, the US Treasury can’t confiscate them. Obama believes these companies should be required to pay US and foreign corporate taxes on the same profits.

His argument is simple. If a company is obligated to pay double taxation on profits gained offshore it will shutdown the foreign facilities and return the jobs and revenues to the United States.

Of course, Obama is an economic idiot. These companies do have a better alternative.

With the stroke of a pen they can headquarter in any country with a more favorable tax climate. And then they can play the same “cost charade game” that Japanese vehicle manufacturers have employed for decades. Namely, inflate the cost of the parts they export to the United States to reduce the profits on goods manufactured in the US.

This in turn reduces the corporate taxes owed the US government. Obama and the majority of the Democrats are too stupid to bring the US corporate tax bite down to an inviting level. Granted, this will not encourage corporations to rush back to a tax friendlier America.

At best, it would slow the corporate flight.

It’s a curse. Corporate managers read the papers. They are aware that Obama wants to double or triple the cost of domestic energy with his cap-and-trade initiative. And they are aware that by government fiat, Tim Geithner, Barney Frank and the United Auto Workers Union will soon be running Chrysler.

They are also aware the US banks have been nationalized and Obama and his gang of socialists fired General Motor’s CEO. All in all, it’s obvious that the United States government is no longer interested in private enterprise staying private.

But this is just the economic side of his plan. He is preparing to change the rights granted private individuals (which includes corporations). In the United States, unlike countries under rigid totalitarian control, the judicial system recognizes that people are innocent until proven guilty.

Obama’s tax proposal reverses this principle. Every individual or corporation that keeps money offshore will be automatically considered a tax evader. These individuals and corporate entities will have to prove their innocence, rather than the government proving their guilt.

The bottom line: Obama is cutting the most basic legal right of every US citizen for a measly $20 billion. What rights and freedoms will Americans lose when his $9 trillion deficit brings the US economy to a standstill in a few years?

Betrayal of America's Spirit

Mr. Obama’s first one hundred days in office will change the landscape of America for generations to come.

He is stacking $9 trillion dollars of debt on top of the one-half trillion that President Bush left on our table. Senator Newt Gingrich put this in perspective. Every twenty year old American has been saddled with an $114,000 IOU just to pay the interest on Obama’s spending.

And that number will triple if blanket amnesty for illegal aliens, cap and trade and universal healthcare are made law. The consequence of his vision will entail the confiscation of 60% to 75% of all earned income to support government and government welfare.

This will absolutely destroy any opportunity the next generations of Americans have to rise above the government’s allowance for success. When the incentive to create a better future for self and family is removed, private enterprise will shrivel and die. And that is the goal of socialists.

That’s why Obama and the Democrats want to reinstate the death tax. It’s the last residual of accumulated wealth which they regard as a dangerous, unfair disparity. Confiscating and redistributing the wealth created by previous generations will eliminate all inequality between classes.

Let no one doubt that diversity, political correctness, multiculturalism and affirmative action are knives that have been honed to cut the heart out of individual initiative and responsibility. This war against individual freedom and opportunity has two fronts.

The economy has over shadowed Obama’s efforts to demean and marginalize the Judeo-Christian principles the nation was founded on. By executive order he has made it a civil crime for a medical person to refuse to perform an abortion.

Think about that. With the stroke of his pen, Obama decreed that the State is the sole arbiter of moral decision making. He has greased the skids for the displacement of religious values with the secular courts. This establishes the State as equal to the Supreme Being.

His decision to open the human gene pool to stem cell research affected more than medical research. He proclaimed that the sanctity of human life is secondary to political judgments. In truth, Mr. Obama placed the human species on the same level as lab rats.

The amalgamation of abortion on demand and unlimited genetic engineering erases every moral standard upon which Western Civilization was built. This philosophy is what justifies the government’s redefinition of the purpose of marriage, and allows it to substitute moral equivalency for absolute truth.

It doesn’t eliminate the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. But it does give the government the right to define these rights, which mean they are subject to change based on the whims of government.

Capitalism, with all its flaws, is the muscle that built America. It opened the door of opportunity to all comers. And Obama? His agenda is disemboweling the American incentive by rewarding failure.

The only question remaining: Can Obama crush the human spirit? That answer will be delivered by the voters in the 2010 mid-term elections.