As the first expert to predict that President Barack Obama would become president, I was not surprised when he was elected to the office. Lately, however, I must admit that he surprises even me. Don’t you believe me? Check out my archives from December 2006 (note that I even predicted the candidate he might face and actually succeed in).
So what surprised your prophetic correspondent?
Being the most aggressively leftist president in history.
As someone who has followed his career through the Illinois state legislature and his career in the U.S. Senate despite not-so-strong primary and general election challenges, it seemed to me that he would snail-paced down to the left, as all liberal candidates have done in the past . This means that after choosing, he will act more consciously and carefully.
But the current administration has surprised even me. They surprise me with their willingness to believe in their own press. For months, we as a nation have been told that this president has more to accomplish because of the enormous challenges he will face once he takes office, and that because of these challenges the American people will have to wait for solutions to their problems, answers. to dilemmas and improving the life of the nation.
If anyone read a long history on taxes and their impact on economic confidence, they would be intimately familiar with the view that Democrat John F. Kennedy and Republican Ronald W. Reagan share. Both believed that if government spending could be curtailed and top marginal tax rates could be lowered, economic recovery and growth would become a reciprocal byproduct of free market habits.
Any observer of tightening markets, rising job losses and the general malaise of a now disillusioned workforce can tell you that President Obama’s response has been exactly the opposite. He provided guidance and direction to the largest government spending bloat in our nation’s history. In fact, he witnessed the amount of money spent in just six months of his term rivaling the entire rest of American history in terms of gross dollars awarded. To tell the unbearable truth, he is also seeking the greatest attempt to undermine, restrict and control the market of any CEO who has preceded him. For example, he appointed more Tsars to supervisory positions (32) than the number of weeks he was in office (22). At the rate he is appointing them, that would mean roughly 256 czars in his presidency if he continues at his current pace.
His desire to implement Cap and Trade amounts to the largest and most punitive tax augment ever designed to be enforced on the poorest and most needy citizens.
Answering critics’ question of where the money will come from to pay for it all, he promises that simply printing more dollars will not only be enough, but will also curb price inflation while causing deflation in the value of our currency.
Moreover, the fact is that the entire rational basis for cap and trade is far from conclusive and far from consensus among the scientific community, much less among the American people.
But none of what I just described was anything more than an attempt to keep the promises he made while running for office.
Even his promise of universal health care was, in some sense, an attempt to keep that promise.
However, there remains the compact problem of how to pay for it. And here President Obama signaled the likelihood that he would now break the biggest campaign promise he ever made.
He didn’t say it once, he said it thousands, hundreds of times every day: “That no one in the Obama administration earning less than (insert amount – it has moved more than once) will raise taxes on Americans earning less than this amount – not one penny.”
He promised it from Des Moines to New York, from New Hampshire to Los Angeles, from Detroit to Houston. If you earned less than $200,000, you wouldn’t be taxed “a penny” more under the Obama administration.
He falsely argues that the largest single tax augment in American history (“Cap and Trade”) would not be felt by a taxpayer paying less than $200,000 a year. It does this by claiming that corporations will foot the bill for the fines they will be forced to pay for imaginary carbon credits. However, it failed to notify the American taxpayer that companies never pay taxes. Companies that receive the novel tax do one of two things. They pass on the costs to the customer or go out of business. Since most corporations do not want to go out of business and thus lay off their entire workforce, they are forced to pass on this tax to the customer every time and without exception.
But beyond “Cap and Trade,” the White House press corps pointedly focused on health care spending two weeks ago, forcing the administration to admit that if it were truly necessary, President Obama would raise taxes on those carrying out the need to make it happen. less than $200,000 per year. Thus the greatest promise repeated over and over in every corner of the country became as meaningless as a batch of cotton candy. It disappeared the moment it touched your tongue.
This is the historical equivalent of President George H. W. Bush speaking out against Governor Clinton. He promised: “Read your lips, no new taxes,” but suffered a historic failure by having to renege on such a promise.
For President Obama, “Not a penny” is the novel standard, given his approval drop in Ohio this week to 49% and his “I definitely support itIf the 8% “strongly disapprove” numbers lag behind his “strongly disapprove” numbers, it seems those making under $200,000 are starting to realize they’ve been taken over.
Of course, he also promised that during his term of office the number of unemployed people would never exceed 8%.
But I’ll let it go…
