The arrogance, absurdity, and hypocrisy of Obama’s editorial in the Washington Post February 5 should stimulate all clear-thinking Americans to advise their politicians to vote against Obama’s mis-named “stimulus” putrid package of pork.
Obama begins by arrogantly stating that we must “begin” the work of turning our economy around, as if the work had not already begun even before the presidential election of a few months ago.
Unfortunately, Obama voted to begin this work with the $700 billion bailout whose effect has been most disappointing so far, as most of the money already spent has been misspent, by most accounts.
Although the Democrats allege that the economic collapse began as a result of inadequate accountability, the bipartisan bailout plan failed to create the type of accountability that most informed Americans – other than people like Obama – knew was necessary.
I respectfully agree with President Obama that action is needed that is “wise enough,” which is precisely why I join most sophisticated objective Americans in opposing the pork-barrel legislation in which President Obama attempts to cynically use the current emergency to ram through in two weeks the pork that would normally harden the arteries and break the blood vessels of the people of America in the course of two full terms.
It should be obvious to most Americans that Obama appears over-stimulated in his attempt to ram through his “stimulus” plan so quickly because he realizes that with every passing day, the more that people find out about the contents of the package, the more examples are pointed out to them of (1) proposals that won’t stimulate jobs, (2) even if they will stimulate jobs, many of those jobs will not be operational until it will be too late to stave off depression; and (3) even the jobs that will not begin too late to have the desired effect will have the undesired effect of adding new layers of government bureaucracy over the long term that will be hard to eliminate after even one term of Obama’s presidency. Again, I agree with the President that his package will stimulate long-term growth, but all too much of such growth will be in a counterproductive government bureaucracy that will burden our descendants for years to come more than it will benefit ourselves in the short term OR the long term.
The President has already lost most of his credibility as a proponent of ethical change, not merely for his failure to vet out tax cheats and conflicts of interest, but much more significantly due to his failure to realize the hypocrisy of making exceptions for his cronies instead of taking exception to their tarnished resumes. In the Washington Post editorial, the President continues to taint his own already diminished credibility by blaming the Republicans for the current crisis instead of recognizing in a bipartisan spirit that there is plenty of blame “to spread around,” to use one of his infamous campaign expressions.
To accuse those who oppose his “stimulus” plan of advocating “tax cuts alone” is to stoop to the same gutter tactics that helped win him the election which the American people are already rapidly coming to regret. Most opponents of his “stimulus” plan do not salivate for cuts of pork but strive for cuts in taxes, but of comparable importance, most opponents of the “stimulus” package simply advocate, in positive terms, virtually any plan that truly stimulates new credit, new jobs, new investment, and new and true hope.
Obama pleads for nonpartisanship out of one side of his mouth, but then ignores the arguments of Republicans not just out of the other side of his mouth, but with a grin like the smirk of the cat that ate the canary, as he reminds the American people that his team won. His unholy alliance actually did win, by capturing a mere 3% above 50% of the vote against the party of a president with an approval rating of closer to 30% (even less, by some polls), rendering that 53% figure (rather than 70% or more) a sign of relative dissatisfaction with the winner, in this context. Obama won not necessarily because the American people wanted change in general or Obama’s type of change in particular, but because, inter alia, he outspent his opponent by a 4-to-1 margin in many key states, and had the majority of the major media outlets campaigning for him and blaming the economic collapse on the Republicans instead of in a bipartisan way, at least also on the Democrats who had set the disastrous chain in motion years ago by coercing the banks to loan money to people who couldn’t even afford a down payment, much less have the ability to pay their mortgages in the event of inevitable downturns of the economy.
Ironically, throughout the campaign, the Obama mantra was one of hope for the future. Now he is raising the specter of the Great Depression and irreversible losses if his package won’t be rammed through promptly. By contrast, FDR got the American people through the Great Depression by reassuring them, inter alia, that the only thing to fear is fear itself. Obama speaks of transparency, but the most transparent aspect of his present rhetoric is that it lowers expectations so that anything less than catastrophy will make him look good personally and politically in the future. The only thing to fear, today, is the notion that the people of America will vote for Obama’s putrid package of pork out of a sense of fraudulent and fictitious fear.
Post Script: Just after this article was originally posted, two more points have come to my attention. I just heard a Congressman note that the bill would cost American taxpayers not just nearly a trillion dollars but untold trillion dollars because most government programs are almost impossible to discontinue, so the “stimulus” bill will automatically stimulate future rapes of the American taxpayer, in perpetuity. I've also just heard that the popularity of the “stimulus” bill has now dipped to 36%, close to the numbers of George W. Bush at its lowest point!
