It would appear that Barack Obama’s recently announced plans for the US economy—more stimulus spending and higher taxes—have failed to impress either the markets or the American. The Dow is in free fall, unemployment remains high, fears of a double-dip recession stalk the land and public confidence in the Obama Administration has collapsed.

The President’s supporters insist that it isn’t his fault. Obama inherited this mess from the wicked Bush and his sinister neocon cabal, they cry. That was former New York Times editor Bill Keller’s line in his first outing as an op-ed columnist. And it’s true that Obama got saddled with some big problems. Nobody disputes that. But it’s beside the point. Presidents are expected to deal with big problems—it’s right in the job description. People are looking askance at this president because he gives the impression that he just doesn’t know what to do.

In 2009, Obama assured the nation that his gargantuan stimulus plan (price tag: just shy of $1 trillion) would bolster the economy and tame unemployment. He promised millions of non-exportable green jobs. He also claimed that his health care reform plan would help to jump-start the economy. It didn’t happen. Instead we got a jobless recovery—economic growth too slow and weak to make a dent in the 9% unemployment rate. And instead of green jobs we got Solynrda. Thanks a bunch, Barry!

OK, sure, everybody makes mistakes. But that’s beside the point as well. The problem is this: President Obama gives the impression of a man who has thrown up his hands in frustration and cried “Screw it!”

It’s glaringly obvious that the President’s focus has shifted from the problems of the nation to a problem of his own: how to get himself reelected in politically toxic circumstances. Not being a stupid man, he must know that his phony-baloney American Jobs Act is going nowhere in Congress. If a $1 trillion stimulus didn’t work, what should anyone to the right of Nancy Pelosi vote for a $500 billion stimulus? If it’s crazy to raise taxes during a recession—as the President himself has opined in the past—why do it now?

Why? Because Obama has abandoned serious policymaking. His latest proposals are designed not stimulate economic growth and reduce unemployment, but to generate campaign issues. His shrill and dishonest attacks on “the rich” are intended to stir up class envy—nothing more. His “jobs bill,” which many congressional Democrats regard without enthusiasm and has no chance of passage, is intended to saddle a “do-nothing Republican Congress” with responsibility for the Obama Administration’s own failure.

It’s a desperate ploy, dependant for its success on the supposed gullibility of the voting public. Because, you know, Barack Obama doesn’t think much of his fellow citizens. His absurdly exaggerated self-regard is matched by an equally ill-founded contempt for the American people. OK, sure everybody makes mistakes. And Barry, you’re one of the biggest mistakes we’ve ever made. But we can fix that.

Posted by tmg110 at 9:36 AM EDT

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Just a quick update on PFC Gregg, now back at Fort Drum, NY, with the rest of the 511th Military Police Company. She'd doing fine and looking forward to her month-long leave in October. After a year in the Sandbox, she and her fellow MPs have earned some R&R!

Posted by tmg110 at 9:26 AM EDT

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I’ve argued before that progressivism requires intelligent people to pretend that they’re stupid. This may be called the institutional stupidity of the Left, and examples abound. Take progressives’ oft-repeated charge that conservatives “hate government.” The public is asked to believe that the neocons, the Tea Party, the GOP, etc. seek not to limit the power of the federal government but actually to demolish it. That there exists scarcely a speck of evidence in support of that claim bothers progressives not at all. True to form, they trust that if they repeat the charge loudly and often enough, it will stick. This is a crude, unsophisticated lie. In a word, it’s stupid.

As a matter of fact, the people most interested in demolishing the power of the federal government are not conservatives at all. They’re libertarians, and Ron Paul is their herald. Conservatives, on the other hand, want the federal government to possess all the power it needs to carry out its legitimate duties. This is a distinction that makes a considerable difference.

Too, be sure, it’s difficult to generalize about this issue. Even within the ranks of the conservative movement, there’s disagreement about what are and are not the proper functions of the federal government. Unlike progressives, whose opinions are stamped out for them by the same ideological cookie cutter, conservatives are a fractious lot. On social issues, on foreign policy, on economic policy, the conservative movement exhibits many shades of opinion. For some, social issues such as abortion are most important. Others worry more about America’s global standing, while others point with alarm at the nation’s precarious financial position.

But it’s fair to say that most conservatives believe the federal government has become too expensive, too intrusive and too unmindful of the traditional American commitment to individual liberty. Conservatives are arguing, in effect, that government has become too big for its own good. As it strives to do more and more, the federal government progressively squanders its credibility. The abject failure of Barack Obama’s grand experiment in stimulus, with bankrupt Solyndra as its poster child, is only the most recent example of this dismal trend. People have lost faith in the government’s ability to do anything—including the things that everyone agrees it should do.

The chief responsibility for the collapse of public confidence in government lies with progressives like Barack Obama. Though it would be wrong to hold the Republican Party blameless (George W. Bush’s “compassionate conservatism” comes to mind in this connection), the doctrine of big, activist government is specifically the doctrine of the Left. And the Left’s stupid lie about conservatives’ desire to “destroy government” is really nothing more than an attempt to deflect attention from that terrible mess that progressives in their hubris have created.

Posted by tmg110 at 9:25 AM EDT

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Well, this is an interesting analysis (from Dan K. Thomasson in the Detroit News):

The one indispensible ingredient for a successful presidency, particularly when the holder of the job is more than a little inexperienced, is a good staff.

 

More and more it looks like President Barack Obama has been missing that from the start. There have been increasing reports of presidential aides divided over what to do and increasingly frustrated by the president's efforts to court Republicans on the one hand and to abandon some of his more liberal principles on the other.

Oh, so now he tells us that Captain Hope & Change is “more than a little inexperienced.” Somehow I doubt that Mr. Thomasson was pushing that storyline in 2008!

Fairness, however, compels me to concede that Thomasson is not off base with his criticism of Obama’s staff picks. The Chicago cabal that Barry brought with him to the White House certainly hasn’t served him well. But Thomasson’s critique would have been improved if he’d also mentioned the toxic influence of the President’s overweening self-regard, e.g.: “I’m LeBron, baby. I can play on this level. I got some game.”

Sure, his staff deserves a share of the blame. But the Messiah’s zeppelin-sized ego—a thin skin enclosing a large volume of explosive gas—makes Obama his own worst enemy.

Posted by tmg110 at 8:34 AM EDT

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If you still doubt that the President of the United States is a shameless, blatant, bare-faced liar, consider this.

Contrary to Barry’s intimation that “the rich” are dodging taxes while the “middle class” shoulders the nation’s tax burden, the fact is that the top 0.1% of income earners coughs up more federal income tax than the bottom 80%—about $1 of every $6 paid in federal income tax comes from that 0.1% of the taxpaying citizenry. Meanwhile, the 20% of taxpayers who constitute the core of the middle class, with an average income of about $45,000, pay $1 of every $25 of federal income tax.

Overall, America’s top 20%—those earning more than $102,000—pay 89% of all federal income taxes. And even if you factor in the payroll tax, the top 0.1% still pay more than the bottom 40%. In percentage terms, the average tax rate for the top 0.1% is about 31%—compared with a 12.8% rate for the 20% of taxpayers constituting the core of the middle class.

No matter how you look at it, in fact, “Liar, liar, pants on fire!” is pitifully adequate to characterize the scale of Obama’s lies. It’s more as if his trousers have undergone a spontaneous fusion reaction.

Posted by tmg110 at 8:24 AM EDT

Updated: Thursday, 22 September 2011 8:26 AM EDT

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That Barack Obama and his henchmen are lying through their teeth about US tax policy doesn’t bother me very much. It betrays confusion and panic, which is all to the good from the perspective of those of us who believe that the Obama Administration has been an unmitigated disaster for America. Still, a lie this egregious needs to be called out.

The President would have you believe that “the rich” are not paying their “fair share” of taxes. This is not only a lie—it’s a bare-faced lie. Here are the facts, courtesy of the Associated Press:

This year, households making more than $1 million will pay an average of 29.1 percent of their income in federal taxes, including income taxes, payroll taxes and other taxes, according to the Tax Policy Center, a Washington think tank.

 

Households making between $50,000 and $75,000 will pay an average of 15 percent of their income in federal taxes.

 

Lower-income households will pay less. For example, households making between $40,000 and $50,000 will pay an average of 12.5 percent of their income in federal taxes. Households making between $20,000 and $30,000 will pay 5.7 percent.

 

>snip<

 

The Tax Policy Center estimates that 46 percent of households, mostly low- and medium-income households, will pay no federal income taxes this year. Most, however, will pay other taxes, including Social Security payroll taxes.

So, how, precisely, is the tax system not fair? It’s steeply progressive, that’s for sure. But instead of answering the question, Barry blathers about Warren Buffet and his administrative assistant. Why? Because he thinks that you and I are stupid.

Posted by tmg110 at 9:19 AM EDT

Updated: Wednesday, 21 September 2011 9:23 AM EDT

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One of the more obnoxious conceits of the Left is its pretense that highly compensated public-sector employees are in fact downtrodden proletarians. Considering the princely salaries and gold-plated benefits that many civil servants enjoy, this trope is frankly contemptuous in its reversal of reality. The truth is the pay, benefits, working conditions and job security of public employees are significantly better than those of many private-sector workers—who, as the crowning insult, are heavily taxed to support this arrangement.

For a long time the public-employee unions were able to get away with this scam by attacking every attempt at reform as an assault on the “rights of working people.” Who knew that public-school teachers in Wisconsin have an inalienable right to collective bargaining?  I sure couldn’t find it anywhere in the Constitution. But that was the claim and unfortunately many people accepted it. But the tide may finally be turning:

New Poll: Voters Prefer Cutting Public Sector Compensation, Against Raising Taxes

Better late than never!

Now this doesn’t mean that people support putting the screws to public employees. But it does mean, I think, that long-running progressive trope equating civil servants with working-class stiffs has run its course.

Posted by tmg110 at 9:01 AM EDT

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There's lots of happy talk about China’s brilliant future from its fans in the West—useful idiots like Tom Friedman. If he and people like him are to be believed, China is destined to displace America as the global hyperpower. It’s simply a matter of time.

We’ve been here before, of course. In the Twenties and Thirties, progressive people swooned over Bolshevik economic planning. In the Thirties and Forties, there were those who admired the fascist model of economic organization. In the late Seventies and early Eighties, it was said that Japanese state capitalism was far superior to the messy, inefficient American version.

In part, this durable love affair with economic planning is symptomatic of progressives’ distaste for America. But mostly, I think, it reflects the authoritarianism of the progressive personality. Al Gore is a prize specimen of the type. For all his bluster about facts and science, the Goricle is nothing more than an ideologue with an agenda (“saving the planet” via government management of the global economy), an enemies list (“climate change deniers”) and the instincts of a bully.

Considering the sheer frivolity of Gore’s climate crusade, the respect paid to him by progressive elites is a comedic masterpiece. Gore’s claim that he and people like them possess sufficient information, expertise and wisdom to green whole economies and fine-tune the global climate is beyond ridiculous. Compared with this fantasy of control, The Wizard of Oz is a sober exercise in realism. But of course, climate control is not really the point. Power is the point—the power to limit people’s choices and control their lives via a panoply of environmental regulations.

No wonder that progressives like Tom Friedman admire and envy the power of the Chinese Communist Party. Solar panels! High-speed rail! One child per family! And all of it accomplished by administrative fiat, with no taint of untidy democratic procedures that hobble American governance. And when Obama muses about “going around Congress,” every progressive heart flutters.

Once, long ago, progressives admired Benito Mussolini—he made the trains run on time. Now they’re in love with the apparatchiks of Communist China—they make the trains run fast. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Posted by tmg110 at 8:45 AM EDT

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Politicians who decide not to run for reelection—or who resign in the wake of some scandal—often explain their decision by saying that they want to spend more time with their families. So does that mean that ambitious politicians, eager to jump into the political wars, are looking for an excuse to spend less time with their families? That might possibly explain Bill Clinton's great hunger for office…

Posted by tmg110 at 8:27 PM EDT

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I agree with Michele Bachmann that the Texas Governor Rick Perry’s HPV vaccination program ought not to have been quasi-mandatory, e.g. requiring parents to opt out rather than asking them to opt in. (The program, which was instituted by executive order, was later overturned by the Texas state legislature.) She may even have been right when she charged that it was an example of “crony capitalism.” (Perry’s chief of staff at the time wa s a former drug company lobbyist.) But that wasn’t all Bachmann said. By intimating that the HPV vaccine can cause brain damage—a claim that has no scientific support whatever—Michele Bachmann crossed the line.

Back when Robert Kennedy Jr.’s name was being mentioned as a candidate to lead the Environmental Protection Agency in the Obama Administration, I was horrified. Among Kennedy’s many outrages against science and common sense is his role in the anti-vaccine movement. By influencing gullible parents to forego vaccinations for their children, these latter-day Luddites are doing incalcuable harm. Now here’s Michele Bachmann, a Republican presidential candidate, for heaven’s sake, spreading the same kind of lie in an attempt to damage an opponent.

With this false and irresponsible charge about the HPV vaccine, and by her refusal to back off from it, Michele Bachmann has shown herself to be unfit for the presidency. She’ll certainly never get the vote of this polio survivor, who contracted the disease at the age of six—just months before the Salk vaccine was introduced.

Posted by tmg110 at 10:51 AM EDT

Updated: Sunday, 18 September 2011 1:10 PM EDT

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