The First Anniversary of Hope and Change by Anthony Gregory

Moderate Americans tend to trust Democrats in domestic affairs and Republicans on national security issues. The financial collapse of 2008 played into the hands of Democrats who wanted to use the crisis as an excuse to expand government power and implement the policies they had long wanted – just as 9/11 was the type of foreign-policy crisis that formed the perfect storm for Republican interventionism.

Indeed, in the domestic arena there has been the most actual change, at least superficially. Most of the debates in the last year have concerned domestic policy. The flavor of central planning we could always expect under Obama is a mixture of center-left Keynesianism, corporate socialism with an egalitarian veneer, and the machine-politics pragmatism of Chicago from whence his career was launched.

But libertarians, limited-government conservatives and anti-corporatist liberals should actually agree on one thing: Obama’s economic policy has been a disaster and a betrayal in practically every way.

We could tell there would mostly be continuity when Obama picked Timothy Geithner, who had been intimate in the Bush-Paulson Wall Street bailouts, as his Treasury Secretary. From then to Obama’s nomination of Ben Bernanke to serve another term as Fed Chairman, there has been little for anyone wanting actual "change" to celebrate.

First, a note on Obama’s style of governance. A product of a tech-savvy and youthful political movement, Obama repeatedly promised transparency, transparency, transparency. He said the deliberations with drug and insurance companies would be on C-SPAN. He said all non-emergency legislation would be online for five days for the public to read before it was voted on. He has broken these promises.

The first bill Obama ever signed, the Lilly Ledbetter "Equal Pay for Equal Work" law, was not put online as promised. Neither was the stimulus bill. And neither have all the health care talks been on C-Span, as he repeatedly promised. It is also difficult to find an excuse for why Obama’s website that showed where all the stimulus money was supposed to be creating jobs listed 440 Congressional districts that don’t even exist. This is the kind of mistake that is either the product of such brazen hubris, or such incompetence, that it makes even the most cynical opponent of government corruption scratch his head and laugh.

Now, in the case of the stimulus bill, Obama did claim it was an emergency. The cost of inaction was too great to delay action. "[A]t this particular moment, only government can provide the short term boost necessary to lift us from a recession this deep and severe." He also said, "For every day we wait or point our fingers or drag our feet, more Americans will lose their jobs.  More families will lose their savings."

And how did that work out? As USA Today reported just recently:

Even before Barack Obama took the oath of office, his economic advisers projected that without hundreds of billions of dollars in government spending, the U.S. economy could lose another 3 million to 4 million jobs on top of the 3.1 million lost in 2008.

It turns out they were optimistic. Even with the $787 billion stimulus package that Obama signed in February, more than 4 million jobs have been lost in 2009, the worst year for job losses since World War II. The jobless rate that advisers projected would peak at 8% has topped 10%.

Early on, Obama gave us the auto bailouts that Bush probably would have had he continued serving in office, circumventing bankruptcy law, hurting creditors and essentially nationalizing the car industry. Now the Treasury tells us such "loans" are "highly unlikely to be recovered." Related to this of course was the Keynesian and Rooseveltian "Cash for Clunkers" program, an insane subsidy project whereby cars that could have been sold to people who actually could use them were destroyed wholesale in exchange for a voucher to buy a new car. Many of these new cars were foreign imports, even though the program was supposed to boost America’s auto industry. But all in all, what the program did was encourage Americans to either buy a car a little earlier or later than they would have anyway. The only tangible result is American taxpayers were ripped off and perfectly good cars were destroyed.

As far as old-fashioned spending goes, Obama is king. Last Spring, Obama unveiled an unfathomable $3.6 trillion budget with a $1.2 trillion deficit. The deficit is now nearly as large as the entire budget was when Bill Clinton took office in 1992. In real dollars, you can go back to the height of the Vietnam War, and the U.S. was still not spending as much as the U.S. is borrowing today. Talk about scary.

In terms of the general flavor of Obama’s domestic policy, it is generally the same welfare-state corporatism we have become all too familiar with. Those progressives who think the president is standing up to corporate interests should read Matt Taibbi to learn all about how Obama has only taken the Wall Street–Washington revolving door and widened it.

There is a new emphasis on regulation and welfarism that we did not get from Bush, but the shift has mainly been rhetorical. The corporatist nature of America’s mixed economy can be seen in Obamacare – where the insurance companies will have a captive market, thanks to the "individual mandate" that candidate Obama claimed he opposed – as well as in Cap and Trade, which will create a commodity market in the right to pollute (and that’s assuming you take the administration at its word that carbon dioxide is a pollutant).

Speaking of health care, the interventionist scope of Obama’s bill is deeply unsettling. By forcing people to buy insurance, the government will soon embark on a virtually unprecedented and unconstitutional intrusion into our personal lives. Meanwhile, keeping with the corporatism of the previous president, Obama’s FDA has successfully opposed the reimportation of cheap drugs, which Obama once supported, and his Department of Agriculture represents a continuation of the corporate-welfare subsidies and cartelization in farming we’ve seen over the years.

Overall, there has been a sharp acceleration of intervention at home. There is no doubt. Obama’s health-care plan represents a tax increase, which he claimed he would not impose on the middle class. This administration has banned flavored cigarettes, invaded the corporate boardroom, expanded the budget, buffed up the EPA and regulatory agencies, pushed for an "network neutrality" policy that would hand the internet over to the FCC, and on and on.

Read the entire article at LewRockwell.com.

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The Dismal Year

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Tags: economics, Obama, politicians, politics

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Top 10 disasters of the 2009 Obama administration:

1. Cash for Clunkers
2. War escalation in Afghanistan
3. Giant government health care expansion bill
4. Post office loses money hand over fist
5. Stimulus package
6. Expansion of "state secrets" doctrine
7. Big increase in unemployment
8. "Bailout" Geithner as Treasury Secretary
9. Skyrocketing federal spending
10. Huge federal deficits

Now wait a second, doesn’t this sound familiar? Hmm…

Top 10 disasters of the 2001-2008 Bush administration:

1. Cash for Car Companies
2. War in Iraq
3. Giant Medicare expansion bill
4. Post office loses money hand over fist
5. Stimulus "rebate" checks
6. PATRIOT Act
7. Big increase in unemployment
8. "Bailout" Paulson as Treasury Secretary
9. Skyrocketing federal spending
10. Huge federal deficits

Wes Benedict, Libertarian Party Executive Director, commented:

"Republicans and Democrats keep expanding government and creating more and more problems. We’re encouraging as many Libertarians as possible to run for Congress in 2010. In Texas, the state with the earliest filing deadline, Libertarians have already filed for 31 of 32 Congressional seats."

Another article you might want to check out is by Mary Ruwart, one of my favorite libertarians — How Liberty Makes Health Care Virtually Universal.

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Top 10 Disasters of the Obama Administration in 2009

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Tags: bush, economics, Obama, politics, universal health care, war

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What are we so worried about again?

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Tags: economics, Obama, socialism, video

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I think I may scream. Hold on a second…

…

Ok, I’m done now.

Fine, so Obama talked a little about peace and changing stuff during his campaign. He has upon occasion criticized the war in Iraq. Yet, since he took office, peace has grown ever more distant. There is no other verdict to draw from his actions other than we are under Bush Number 3. As I have noted in various ways here, here, and here, Obama has not come close to acting like a President interested in peace. I even predicted some of the things that he has done (or not done). In fact, his egregious actions against peace are so numerous at this point it hasn’t even been worth cataloguing in blog posts. Just watch the news for a while or read Antiwar.com. Seriously.

But really, REALLY, would you ever expect someone interested in peace to…

• Not even supporting the rescinding of the Patriot Act (much less actually getting rid of it)
• Not stopping illegal wire-tapping
• Say you’re going to close Guantanamo Bay, but then move the prisoners to other secret prison locations?
• Say you’re against torture, yet not stop the practice of it
• Appoint ultimate war hawk Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State
• Send 20,000 more troops to Afghanistan (with room for more), escalating a conflict that cannot end
• Supports intervention in Darfur
• Supporting bills that allow for the President to shut down the internet at his discretion for a “cyber-security emergency,” while at the same time criticizing Iran for censoring Twitter.
• Escalating Federal spending on defense

The only thing Obama has done right for peace – and only thus far has he done it right – is to keep the United States out of Iran. And who knows, even that might come to a close sooner or later.

Perhaps this should not come as a surprise, however. The Nobel committee did give the Peace Prize last year to someone who likes to scare people into thinking they’re all going to die from the sun. At least the hawkish conservatives who believe that “war is peace” can be pleased that finally someone is getting recognized right – support war, get a Peace Prize.

We live in a bizarro world, folks, when you can get an Economics Prize for supporting the destruction of an economy (Paul Krugman), a Peace Prize for frightening people (Al Gore), and now a Peace Prize for supporting war (Obama). Of course, Hans Hermann Hoppe once said that to win a Nobel Peace Prize, one should be a mass murderer — or at least that helps. You’re well on your way, Barry…

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A Peace Prize for a War Hawk

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The Climate-Change Bill was just moronic.

Universal Health Care, though, is going to be the new Post Office — and Obama even has admitted it! Face-palm yourselves right now, folks, and then let this video smash every last ounce of faith you have in government-sponsored anything.

There you have it, another priceless moment brought to you by Obama. The Commander in Chief says to his tribe that if the Universal Health Care plan works right, it’ll be just like the Post Office. Doesn’t that make you feel great about the future of modern medicine?

What makes this all the more perfect — ooooh you’re gonna love this! — is that the New York Times published a column in its Business Section (and in the Business Blog) this past Friday that outlines the dire plight of the Post Office, and questions whether it is necessary at all. The truth is, the USPS is seriously in the hole right now — a 7 billion dollar hole to be precise. And why? Because of all the extra regulations and stipulations that come from being a government entity. The Government Accountability Office put the USPS on its list of “high risk” federal agencies mere weeks ago, saying that it needs “to restructure to address its current and long-term financial viability… USPS must align its costs with revenues, generate sufficient earnings to finance capital investments, and manage its debt.” Not that this is possible in the least, not without the tools of being a real business rather than a government organization.

The US Postmaster General John Potter gets this: “If you are asking me to run it like a business, give me the same tools that someone would have in the private sector.” Surprise, surprise… 

The Heritage Foundation acutely notes: “On the one hand, the President remarks how great his public health care plan will be. On the other hand, he notes it won’t be good enough to crowd out your private insurance, i.e. the Post Office comparison. So which is it Mr. President? Will it be so great that private insurance disappears or so awful that it isn’t worth creating in the first place?” My sentiments exactly. Universal Health Care = worthless.

Remember this day, my friends, the day when the Obamessiah said that the best scenario we have is that Universal Health Care runs like the Post Office.

Maybe, someday, America will get a clue that the entire government, at its core, is just like the Post Office. Poor service, and way too expensive… Not to mention immoral.

The irony runs like a raging river, don’t you think? Give your opinion, or just laugh, in the comments below…

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Universal Health Care is the new Post Office

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Tags: economics, Obama, privatization, socialism

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Considering my recent post about the Obamessiah, this is rather timely. Enjoy the vid…

__

He’s Barack Obama, by JibJab.

Hat tip to Nick for sending me this.

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He’s Barack Obama

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Obama’s New Theocracy | The Beacon

The depiction of Barack Obama as the new, secular, American messiah began with his full approval during his presidential campaign and led directly to the spectacle of his coronation/inauguration. In what can only be described as a delusional, self-righteous pronouncement of himself as the new messiah (”the chosen one”), Obama has stated that: “We are the ones we‘ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.” [emphasis added]

The second includes a well-known quote from Lewis about “theocracy”:

C.S. Lewis on the Evil and Corruption of Theocracy

I fully embrace the maxim (which . . . borrows from a Christian) that “all power corrupts.” I would go further. The loftier the pretensions of the power, the more meddlesome, inhuman, and oppressive it will be. Theocracy is the worst of all possible governments. All political power is at best a necessary evil: but it is least evil when its sanctions are most modest and commonplace, when it claims no more than to be useful or convenient and sets itself strictly limited objectives. Anything transcendental or spiritual, or even anything very strongly ethical, in its pretensions is dangerous and encourages it to meddle with our private lives. Let the shoemaker stick to his last. Thus the Renaissance doctrine of Divine Right is for me a corruption of monarchy; Rousseau’s General Will, of democracy; racial mysticisms, of nationality. And Theocracy, I admit and even insist, is the worst corruption of all.

—From The World’s Last Night: And Other Essays, by C.S. Lewis

Now, be sure to distinguish the difference between “theocracy” as Lewis expounds and the direct rule of God, as in the time of biblical Israel. Of course, Yahweh is the Great King of the Universe and ultimately we Christians believe that God rules all. Lewis, however, is talking about “faith-based statism,” which is an awful, terrible system.

David Theroux is the founder and president of the Independent Institute.

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Obama’s New Theocracy

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Tags: charity, civil liberties, corruption, Media, Obama, socialism, statolatry, The State, theology

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The score thus far: 100 days down, 1361 to go. Then we get another dictator. Greeeeeaaaat. :-/

I’d like to highlight briefly a few articles of note to commemorate history in the making. First, from Antiwar.com, the Madmen have done well:

In his first 100 days, Obama has excused torture, opposed habeas corpus, and demanded more secret government. He has kept Bush’s gulag intact and at least 17,000 prisoners beyond the reach of justice. On April 24, his lawyers won an appeal that ruled Guantanamo prisoners were not “persons” and therefore had no right not to be tortured. His national intelligence director, Adm. Dennis Blair, says he believes torture works. One of his senior officials in Latin America is accused of covering up the torture of an American nun in Guatemala; another is a Pinochet apologist. As Daniel Ellsberg has pointed out, America experienced a military coup under Bush, whose secretary of “defense,” Robert Gates, along with the same warmaking officials, have been retained by Obama.

Fellow blogging buddy Wes at The Humble Libertarian has put together a slighly more humorous (but still somber) list of blunders in the first 100 days:

26. After saying “We can’t drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times… and then just expect that every country is going to say okay,” journalists discovered that Obama cranks the thermostat in the Oval Office.

LOL, thanks Wes!

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Obama’s First 100 Days: Madmen, Blunders, Death Defined

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Tags: economics, environment, Obama, war, war on terror

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Obama’s wartime detention policy takes cynicism to new heights. It is not a new policy; it is the Bush administration’s old policy. There are some crumbs to satisfy those in Obama’s hard-Left base who actually believed the hopey-change campaign rhetoric: Detainees won’t be called “enemy combatants” anymore, and the administration purports not to be relying on the commander-in-chief’s inherent constitutional powers to hold them without trial. But we are still going to hold them. The Justice Department explained to a federal court that under the international law of war and Congress’s post-9/11 authorization of military force, the president has unilateral power to imprison anyone he judges to be providing substantial assistance to our terrorist enemies – with no requirement that such persons be apprehended on a traditional battlefield or have committed an act of terrorism. Of course, when Bush took this position, the Left was in froth-flecked rebellion, but now there’s nothing more than some harmless grumbling from the ACLU. Sighs of relief on the national-security Right may be premature, however. By apparently forswearing his constitutional war powers, Obama is betting he can prosecute war under the direction of courts (including international tribunals) and an anti-war Congress. We have our doubts.

This seems inordinately odd to me. Essentially, you could summarize this, from the National Review’s point of view, as “We told you so, Obama!” The detention policy Bush put in place is being kept with some different sugar-coated words. (Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.) One might think that these oh-so-sincere-people about “national security” would be praising Obama for coming to his senses and making the “Right” decision about giving himself limitless power to wage war. They obviously have no problem with this presidential power, but they do have a problem with who has it. Their smug demeanor and blatant disregard for traditional conservative thinking regarding international relations betrays what they really feel.

Indeed, Obama’s wartime detention policy should take cynicism to “new heights” about the possibility of “change” taking place (no surprise there), I just can’t see how National Review should be anything but overjoyed with this result. But it’s National Review, they despise the Left more than the State apparatus that makes the Left dangerous (and, in fact, just as dangerous as the Right). I’m not sure it’s meant to be rational. The “national-security Right” has never been about rationality, but justifying imperialism.

Christians should know from their history better than anyone about being held against their will without provocation. It still happens throughout the world today – in the Middle East, China, and many other areas of the world. How we think it’s “ok” to do the same in the name of freedom is unfathomable, and the results unconscionable.

Editorial cartoon by Terrence Nowicki of This Is Historic Times.

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Fail or Win? – National Review can’t decide

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Awesome work, Terrence, keep it up!

(This cartoon reminds me of this post from January.)

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One Ring to Rule Them All

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