When Cramer said that the Obama administration is destroying wealth in this country, he thought his liberal bona fides would protect him. He also thought that the fact that he was, you know, speaking the truth might have some effect as well.
Cramer may have thought that liberals would defend speaking truth to power; after all, it’s one of their favorite phrases. But it depends what “truth” and it depends what “power.” If the powerful people being criticized just happen to be liberals or the Left, then it can’t really be “truth,” you see, whatever its obvious merits might be. And the person so bold as to utter that truth not only had better shut up, but he/she immediately becomes fair game for attack, ridicule, and/or distortions of what was said.
Now, as Cramer looks around from his perch under that crowded bus, he is surprised. He shouldn’t be. Welcome, Cramer, to the first step on the long road to change.
Not that Cramer will necessarily take any of the next steps. But it can be profoundly disturbing to discover (as Cramer now has) that those whom you thought were interested in actually solving a problem and listening to honest criticism are far more interested in silencing and marginalizing the opposition.
Finally, here’s a bit that has nothing whatsoever to do with Obama. At least, I can’t find a tie-in. Watch it and brighten your day/night/whatever (hat tip Rachel Lucas).
One of the more interesting aspects of this graph is that the convergence of the two lines is caused more by steeply growing “strongly disapprove” rates rather than sharply falling “strongly approve” ones.
That makes a good deal of sense. Those who were weakly for Obama—the ones who thought he’d be a nice moderate guy—are learning the hard way, while the Leftists who adored him before the election probably adore him even more now.
And for those moderates who are having second thoughts because they trusted him, Ace offers this comfort. Enjoy—and, in the immortal words of the great John Belushi, start drinking heavily (but shhh!, don’t say I told you to do that).
Sometimes a seemingly random word or two can be very instructive, if you want to know what a person really thinks. That is the reason I (and so many others) paid quite a bit of attention to a couple of revealing moments leading up to the election.
One was Obama’s “spread the wealth” comment to Joe the Plumber. While some might say it was just a single insignificant phrase uttered during an impromptu give-and-take, I would respond that no one would express such a thought unless it matched his/her internal concept of the world and how it should function.
In other words, it was a moment in which Obama’s carefully constructed mask slipped.
The same was true for the surfacing of a tape in which Obama calmly said that his energy policies were intended to bankrupt coal plants and cause the price of electricity to “skyrocket.” Prior to this, we all know he was an environmentalist. But the radical nature of his “solutions” had not been so nakedly revealed.
I wrote this post in the week before the election, entitled “Will the real Obama please stand up?” In it, I quoted Tony Blankley on the subject of Obama’s true intentions as opposed to his facade.
It made chilling reading then. But it makes prescient reading now:
But of course, throughout history when dangerous, radical men have offered themselves up for leadership, their moderate supporters have rationalized their early support by hoping that the dangerous man is really a sensible man like them and doesn’t believe some of those wild things he has said to his more fervent followers.
But as the campaign clock ticks down to its last days and hours, prudent people have to consider the possibility that beneath that easy manner and calming voice is the pulsating heart of a genuine man of the radical left.
That brings us to a telling remark Obama made during his February 24, 2009 speech to a joint session of Congress. It slipped right by me at the time. But Jacob Sullum, writing in Reason, has kindly underlined it.
In the sentence in question, Obama doesn’t mention Bush by name. But it appears fairly clear that he is speaking of the beginnings of the Bush administration, when Bush inherited a budget surplus from President Clinton (let’s leave aside for the moment the interesting question of whether it was technically a surplus or not; we can certainly agree it was at the very least a greatly reduced deficit). Obama said:
A surplus became an excuse to transfer wealth to the wealthy instead of an opportunity to invest in our future.
Sullum points out:
Whatever you think of the wisdom of Bush’s tax cuts, they amounted to taking less from people, not giving more to them. Obama makes it sound as if there is no meaningful difference between robbing Peter to pay Paul (which is what he has in mind when he talks about “rebalancing the tax code”) and leaving Peter alone (or, more accurately, robbing him less thoroughly)””except that the latter option is, in Obama’s view, morally inferior.
I believe that this, more than any other statement Obama has made, underlines the deeply radical Leftist underpinnings of Obama’s thoughts about wealth and capital. By labeling the act of allowing people to keep more of the money they have already earned as a “transfer of wealth to the wealthy,” he indicates that he actually doesn’t think that money belongs to them in the first place.
Now, you may think the tax code isn’t progressive enough. You may think that the rich should be paying an even bigger share than their already substantial portion of the tax burden. But the idea that a reduction in a still-high tax rate, that allows the rich to keep more of the money they have earned, represents an actual transfer of wealth to them is a very odd—and hugely telling—notion.
The second part of the quote is interesting, as well. Obama says the wealth transfer has been a substitute for “an opportunity to invest in our future.” But wait—do not the wealthy “invest in our future,” by starting businesses, growing the GNP, and employing people in a myriad of ways? Of course, not all of their money goes to this purpose. They keep quite a bit (are allowed to keep quite a bit?) to furnish their lavish homes, and to buy their yachts and other playthings. But some of that surplus owned by the wealthy (yes, they do own it) is put in the service of driving the engine of our economy for us all.
Does Obama not realize this? Perhaps—but I think he does actually know it. I just think that, when he says “our future,” he’s envisioning a different sort of future.
What is this “future” in which Obama would have us invest? It appears to be one in which government makes the decisions as to who should own wealth, because that wealth actually belongs to the people as a whole. One in which that wealth can be redistributed by the government according to its own ideas of fairness. A government which, under Obama, will come to resemble either a social welfare state of the type popular in Europe, or perhaps even a socialist state approximating Venezuela under the reprehensible Hugo Chavez.
New and expanded refundable tax credits would raise the fraction of taxpayers paying no income taxes to almost 50% from 38%. This is potentially the most pernicious feature of the president’s budget, because it would cement a permanent voting majority with no stake in controlling the cost of general government.
And that, in turn, reminds me of this thought, attributed (perhaps falsely) to Alexander Fraser Tytler:
A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, followed always by a dictatorship. The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations has been 200 years.
Now, I’m not sure about the word “always.” And it also seems there are democracies that have lasted more than 200 years. Also, of course, we can quibble with the word “democracy” because we are a republic.
But it seems true that it would take a very stalwart and unusual group of people to stop voting funds for themselves from the money machine our government has become. I’m not sure we are that people any more. And the quote dovetails nicely with another thought, this one attributed to Ben Franklin:
When the people find they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic.
Far from being naive about money and taxes and their effects on the general public, I see signs that the Democrats and Obama are very sophisticated indeed. It’s not that their goal is to destroy the republic. But I’m not sure that they care all that much if it happens. It may just be an unintended consequence of their drive for power.
…recants from his recent piece criticizing the President’s budget as way too liberal. Now he’s back in the Obama saddle again, and all it took was a little phone call from “four senior officials” of the Obama administration. And a dozen red roses, no doubt.
They mean well, they told Brooks. And they’re not really liberals, after all. And the deficit won’t be that bad. Promise.
On the other hand, is Whoopi Goldberg starting to have second thoughts about supporting The One? She’s been doing the tax math and doesn’t like the way it’s adding up.
I’ve been wanting to write about other things besides Obama. Truly, I have.
But I keep coming back to that topic because it seems vital to get it right—and now, before things slide out of control.
Speaking of sliding out of control, here’s a little musical interlude:
But I digress.
Now back to the main event: so, what’s up with Obama? (certainly not the stock market). Some middle-of-the-roaders who thought he was one of them seem shell-shocked. They need a support group, and maybe a twelve step program as well.
As for me, I’m disappointed but not surprised; I, along with many others, felt there were just too many signs that Obama would be taking a Leftist course despite his soothing centrist words and demeanor—although I’d still be happy if I turned out to be wrong.
I’ve found that it’s always good to believe that people mean what they say, even when they’re politicians. The problem with Obama is that, even more than most, his campaign was a combination of lofty but general rhetoric and contradictory specifics. He truly did try to be all things to all people, and succeeded with enough of them to get elected.
Sorting through all of that was difficult for most voters. What’s more, it required time and attention. But the signs that Obama would be one of the most liberal and even Leftist presidents in history were clear to those who were looking.
There was his voting record, for starters. In addition, his friends and close alliances, as well as many of his statements back when he wasn’t running for president (at least officially; I’m not sure there ever was a time he wasn’t running for president in some sense), indicated the same. Add to that his stint as a student of the Alinsky approach, as well as being a teacher of Alinsky’s methods, ample evidence of far Left leanings and a plan to put Alinsky techniques to work on the American public.
Seizing (and even deepening) a crisis and feelings of panic in the populace, and making use of those emotions to pass a liberal agenda, is pure Alinsky. The heart of that particular Alinsky suggestion is here:
[People] must feel so frustrated, so defeated, so lost, so futureless in the prevailing system that they are willing to let go of the past and change the future.
There’s that word ubiquitous word “change” again. What had seemed so amorphous and featureless an idea (purposely vague) during the campaign, but which had Obamaphiles chanting in spellbound wonder, was most likely a focused and targeted page out of the Alinsky playbook rather than an accident.
What else was a plan, and what accidental?
Powerline’s John Hinderaker doesn’t know, and neither do I. Perhaps no one except Obama and his close associates do. I have never been much of a conspiracy theorist and I’m not one now. But the evidence pointing in the direction of Leftist intent and awareness, and purposeful deception about that fact, is becoming more compelling every day.
Hinderaker quotes those who set out the case that Obama is “deliberately damaging the economy and gutting the stock market…[to] make more people dependent on the government and pave the way for a far-left regime.” But then he draws back from concluding that they are correct. This is his reasoning:
Obama can’t possibly want to be a one-term failure. That’s what happened to Jimmy Carter, and Obama must know that it will happen to him, too, if his policies are perceived as dragging down the economy.
More likely the explanation is that Obama is an economic illiterate, and subscribes to the idea–which I think is rather common among Democrats–that what the government does has little impact on the economy.
John, I hope you’re right. But I think you’re wrong. I’m not sure that his goal is to deliberately damage the economy, but I sense that Obama doesn’t much care if he breaks that particular egg in order to make his welfare state omelet—in fact, it tends to go with the territory, as he must know.
And, if Obama is a true Leftist, as I believe he is, he (a) doesn’t mind if he only serves one term, if he guides America closer to a socialist destination; and/or (b) thinks that his policies will placate enough Americans, who will be grateful for the help and the money and who buy his line that the rich are the enemy, that they will actually give him a second term.
I don’t think Obama is an “economic illiterate,” despite the fact that he lacks business experience. As many people have pointed out, he is a smart man, and the basics aren’t all that hard to master. Also, it’s difficult to believe that, with economic advisers such as Larry Summers (who used to actually be a centrist, a real rather than a rhetorical one), he’s not being told the probable negative consequences of his economic proposals. And anyway, what’s the rush? Why not concentrate on getting the stimulus going first, if he cares about the current economic crisis, rather than just using it as an opportunity to turn America Left before it knows what hit it?
I can only come to the conclusion that Obama doesn’t care about the fallout for entrepreneurship or for productivity. His goal is his version of “economic fairness”—that is, equality of outcome rather than opportunity.
Once again, he warned us—at least those who were listening to the details. I wrote the following back in August of 2008 [emphasis mine]:
Some of Obama’s slightly-less-publicized statements are the ones that concern me most.
Case in point: in this WSJ column by William McGurn, the author points out that for Obama, taxes are not just about collecting revenue. What are they for? Fairness.
Obama was being quizzed on his proposal to raise the capital gains tax. When Charlie Gibson of ABC noted that the empirical evidence indicates that increasing the capital gains tax tends to lead to a decrease in actual revenue collected, Obama’s answer was, “Well, Charlie, what I’ve said is that I would look at raising the capital gains tax for purposes of fairness.”…
Obama’s brand of liberalism seems most interested in the appearance of fairness, and appears to view the economy as a zero-sum game. To help some people, you must take money away from others. The idea of a rising tide floating all boats””or of a capital gains cut stimulating the economy in a way that yes indeed, does benefit the rich but also benefits the entire financial system in a way that ultimately helps the middle class and even the poor””is often considered a nefarious and duplicitous scheme hatched by (who else?) the Republicans. That it often (though not always) conforms to reality is a mere detail, because the rich are by definition bad and need to be taken down a peg.
Obama has hit the ground running with his plan to undo the policies of the most “nefarious” Republican of all: Ronald Reagan. This is no accident, either—not that it’s something he overtly campaigned on. But he took advantage of the crisis—and has amplified it, I believe—the better to make good on a promise he made to himself back in the early 80s, when he was a lowly Alinskyesque community organizer (quoted from his 1995 book “Dreams from My Father”; emphasis mine):
Obama said he got into community organizing in Chicago in 1983 to “pronounce on the need for change. Change in the White House, where Reagan and his minions were carrying on their dirty deeds.”
Note that Obama is not voicing a mere disagreement with Reagan’s policies. He is characterizing them as evil. I believe that his entire public career has been an attempt to undo Reagan and establish the “trickle-up” economics of socialism, whatever happens to our economy in general. The fact that this might be the worst of all possible times in economic terms to do this is something he is ignoring, as well, because he feels the American people are emotionally ready for it. He must strike while that iron is hot.
It’s probably no accident, either, that Obama sent that Churchill bust back to England almost as soon as he became president. He doesn’t want the old man’s visage around staring at him and reminding him of quotes such as this
Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery.
[NOTE: Why the weird painting? It’s surrealist Salvador Dali’s “The Persistence of Memory,” his most famous work.
Plus, what we’re going through is starting to seem surreal, don’t you think? And time’s getting short on blocking Obama’s attempt at a radical transformation of American society into a Euro-style welfare state.]
What important military defeats has America ever known? If you don’t count the South in the Civil War, we have a single one: Vietnam.
The consequences of that defeat, in a land so far away, were easy for Americans to ignore or whitewash, or to pin on our conduct during the war itself rather than our decision to abandon the South Vietnamese to their fate.
The Left, for example, has always blamed America’s actions during the Vietnam war—and especially the bombing of Cambodia—for the ascendance of the brutal Pol Pot regime and its later killing fields (see this article, especially pages 6-7, for an argument against that controversial theory, as well as an explanation of its journalistic origins). The Left has also consistently minimized the suffering of the people of South Vietnam when the North took over. To the Left, the Northern Vietnamese Communists weren’t so bad, and the Cambodian Communists (who even they have to admit were pretty nasty folk) would never have succeeded but for the actions of the US in fighting them and their North Vietnamese allies.
Not only does the Left whitewash the consequences of the American defeat in Vietnam. I’ll go even further and say that to the Left, the Vietnam pullout was actually a victory—for them. It’s something they had promoted for a long time, and they finally won. What’s more, except for the rare Vietnam revisionist historian, their version of history won; it has come to dominate the texts and the press. And so the Left neither wanted—nor needed—to look at the negative consequences of the defeat for others.
Vietnam has been the template for the Left in most of our subsequent wars. They tried to repeat the experience in Afghanistan, but it didn’t quite work because that country’s American casualties, and the length of time we were in active fighting there, were insufficient to generate enough revulsion on the part of the American public.
But Iraq was going very well for the Left for quite a while, much in the Vietnam mode. It went on for a long time and was more bloody. And, although casualties were nowhere near those sustained in the Vietnam conflict, American sensibilities had become more delicate in the ensuing years, and tolerance for death in wartime was much lower.
In Bush, as in Nixon, the Left was gifted with a president who was vulnerable to personal attack, and both men played into the Left’s hands in various ways (Bush through his tendency to strut and his relative inarticulateness, Nixon through his paranoia and ultimately Watergate). In both wars the press changed from initial (although somewhat wary) enthusiasm for the war to outright condemnation (see this and this for a discussion of Vietnam and the press).
Vietnam was not just the template for the Left’s approach to war, it was the template for defeat without consequences. But there were negative consequences; just not for the Left. Not only did our withdrawal from Vietnam negatively impact the people of South Vietnam and Cambodia, it offered encouragement to those who would challenge the US, by letting them know that the American people lacked the stamina for a long fight. Thereafter, enemies assumed they might have a good chance of wining against the larger and more powerful US through a three-pronged strategy: (a) wear us out while (b) simultaneously allying with the Left in this country to spread propaganda points, and (c) counting on the US press to ultimately join forces with the Left in that endeavor, either through ignorance or design.
The Iraqi insurgents and terrorists expected to win in a manner similar to North Vietnam. It was reasonable of them to assume that they would, and in fact they came perilously close. The Democrats, the Left, and the press played their parts to perfection. The 2006 Congress had become controlled by Democrats, and was eager to be part of the production.
The stumbling blocks turned out to be a few Democrats, most of the remaining Republicans, and especially the stubborn Bush. The former managed to block some of the legislation the majority of Democrats wished to pass, and Bush vetoed the rest. Bush remained committed to the surge, and appointed the brilliant General Petraeus to be in charge of its implementation.
And so there remained enough time left for the surge to succeed beyond the Left’s and the Democrats’ wildest dreams. Paradoxically, however, this meant that once again, those who had either advocated or prematurely accepted defeat never had to face the consequences of what such a defeat might mean. Protected by their enemy Bush and his victory (at least so far; nothing is permanent or written in stone in Iraq), they can now bask in the glow of their devotion to peace at any price, and yet not be saddled with the burden of dealing with defeat there.
Thus, President Obama can speak of “ending” the war in his recent speech to Marines at Camp Lejeune while studiously avoiding all mention of victory, the surge, or including a single word of praise for his predecessor. The closest he comes is to say “you got the job done,” after speaking at length of dangers, loneliness, and burdens, as well as “difficult days ahead.”
I’m not sure what message the Marines heard. But I think the message our enemies have heard—loud and clear—is that President Obama and the Democrats may mouth intimidating words about Afghanistan and Pakistan, but when push comes to shove, they’ll be shoving off.
If you ever had any doubt, it’s becoming more and more clear every day that Obama meant every single radical thing he ever said. Including that one about bankrupting the coal companies.
Obama said [in a January 2007 interview] that the environmental policies he proposes would cause builders of new coal plants to go bankrupt. And he didn’t sound the least bit sad about the prospect…
Obama stated that;
…under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket”¦whatever the plants were, whatever the industry was, they would have to retrofit their operations. That will cost money. They will pass that money on to consumers.
I added at the time I wrote my post on the subject, right before the 2008 election, that:
Rather than banning new coal plants de jure, [Obama] plans to drive them out of business de facto, because the environmental requirements of his policies would be so stringent that new plants would be unable to comply and the penalties for noncompliance would be catastrophic. In other words,, any new plants would have to pay penalties so Draconian that they would be bankrupted””and the listener is left to wonder whether even older plants might be required to retrofit in order to comply, and be forced out of business as well.
Obama’s plan is that market forces would dictate that, as new coal production would become impossible, people would be forced to quickly fill in for the lack of power by developing the wonderfully clean alternative sources of energy that he is so sure would be available if only the will were there. We have no way of knowing whether it would work out that way, of course. But in the meantime we could be sure that the economic costs would be very high, as Obama unapologetically states.
Well, you can’t say I—and Obama—didn’t warn you. Although one had to be paying close attention to hear it, and to understand what he actually meant—and still means.
Obama seems to think that green energy can be developed and made reasonable and efficient to use, if only the nasty old capitalists were given the right incentives to develop it. This argument was already suspect two years ago when he made it. But now, in a recession, his policies are a recipe for a deepening of the economic disaster, with no real evidence that such sources of energy are even scientifically possible at this juncture.
Note that Obama is not talking about developing the one alternative source that most definitely is available: nuclear power plants. Nor is he supporting tapping new domestic fossil fuel sources to reduce our dependence on foreign oil.
The President has a worthy if somewhat utopian goal in mind: He is attempting to create a new industrial base that will produce solar panels, windmills, a smart electrical grid and other clean-energy sources and technologies, while simultaneously boosting the economy and reducing U.S. dependence on foreign oil. Leadership in green technologies theoretically would give the U.S. something to sell to the rest of the world that cheap-labor countries like China and India can’t produce readily…Because solar, wind and other forms of clean energy are now much more expensive to generate than energy supplied by coal, gas and oil, Congress would have to pass legislation that in effect forces Americans to use more of it.
Why are they more expensive? Because they are inefficient and are not being produced and used on a large scale. Unfortunately, there are reasons why this is so—and these are mostly physical rather than political, although liberals have great difficulty acknowledging this extremely inconvenient truth.
It’s not just lack of goodwill that stops us from heating our homes with the sun and the wind and the rain, as Steven den Beste pointed out back in 2002 in this post. It’s science:
Small sources of energy are easy. Big sources of energy aren’t, and the small sources of energy can’t be scaled, and there aren’t enough of them so that even when added up they would be enough to matter… Anything which, when fully deployed, generates less than ten gigawatts average (1010 joules per second) is useless for our purposes in terms of actually making a meaningful contribution to the total amount of energy we consume. For scale purposes:
Hoover Dam = 1.5 gigawatts.
Grand Coulee Dam = 6.5 gigawatts
Small coal or nuclear plant = 300 megawatts
Large coal or nuclear plant = 1 gigawatt
Average US electrical power consumption = 400 gigawatts
Peak US electrical power consumption is probably above 1 terawatt
Den Beste went on to describe four large enough sources of energy that might be practical some day, but none of them are even close to being realizable yet (the science is nowhere near there), and they certainly don’t include anything like wind or solar power. The latter have their uses, no doubt. But to drive out coal by making it unaffordable, in the hopes that good alternatives will just spring into action to take its place, is an absurdity.
And very, very expensive. The last thing we need in the current financial climate is added expense.
But Obama has an answer for that, as well—and it’s his answer to almost everything right now: pass the cost on to the rich and give the poor a break.
Obama’s cap and trade scheme will impose a $700-$1400 additional tax on all families as energy producers (and users) pass-through their own higher costs to the public.
Obama plans to devote more taxpayer money to defray these costs for those making $75,000 per year or less.
So the added burden will be borne by those making over $75,000 a year—the bad “rich” guys, who will be footing the bill for almost everything in the Obama administration.
Note, by the way, that with cap and trade it’s not just those making more than $250,000—Obama’s old dividing line between the innocent poor and the guilty rich—who will be in trouble. But he is technically correct that those in the $75,000 to $250,000 bracket would not actually be paying a raised tax. Instead, they (and everyone else) would be paying higher utility bills as a result of the Obama penalties on coal plants. But they also would not be getting the federal monies that the under-75K crowd would be receiving to offset it.
Pretty clever, no? Let’s see: electric bills skyrocket as a result of Obama’s policies. Cheap and efficient wind and solar power cannot possibly fill the gap, as much as we all would wish it. Obama’s green supporters are ecstatic, however, and support him mightily. The rest of the public is unlikely—unless they are paying strict attention—to understand why their utility bills are rising. Obama will no doubt say it’s because of the nasty coal and electric companies trying to stiff the poor working American. This increases that enmity against greedy capitalists that so suits Obama’s electoral purposes.
And then, who comes to the rescue for those making under $75,000? Why, Obama and the Democrats, that’s who. As for the jobs lost in the process—well, who cares, as long as the government is ready with a helping hand?
[ADDENDUM: Read Hanson on Obama, “The Great Divider.” I can’t say I think the President will take his suggestions, though, since they run counter to his own purposes.]
It remains to be seen whether these folks will actually end up blocking some of the worst excesses of Obama’s spending proposals. But I hope so; we could certainly use a few profiles in courage right now.
Candidates for the title: these moderate Democrat Senators who are starting to realize that the Obama’s budget is way out of line. Do we have a new “gang of 14” on the Democrat side?:
Moderate and conservative Democrats in the Senate are starting to choke over the massive spending and tax increases in President Barack Obama’s budget plans and have begun plotting to increase their influence over the agenda of a president who is turning out to be much more liberal than they are.
A group of 14 Senate Democrats and one independent huddled behind closed doors on Tuesday, discussing how centrists in that chamber can assert more leverage on the major policy debates that will dominate this Congress.
Afterward, some in attendance made plain that they are getting jitters over the cost and expansive reach of Obama’s $3.6 trillion budget proposal.
Asked when he’d reach his breaking point, Nebraska Sen. Ben Nelson, one of the most conservative Democrats in the Senate, said: “Right now.
