Collected Perls of Wisdom

Following are some collected pearls of wisdom regarding government and politics:

• Spending like a drunken sailor is NOT an economic recovery plan.


• Free markets solve problems. Government creates problems.


• "Universal" healthcare = government bureaucrats telling YOU what healthcare you can receive.


• The "rich" create jobs and wealth for all. The government does not.


• Socialism = slavery.


• You DON'T need government help to be successful.


• Shifting money from one person to another (ie. "redistributing wealth") does not create prosperity or help the economy.


• Sending a government check to people is not a "tax cut", particularly when the people receiving the check aren't paying income taxes in the first place.
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The Obama Governance Plan

Through keen observation, and especially by just listening to Obama speak, here is my understanding of the Obama Governance Plan:

Phase 1: "Chicken Little"

Begin by convincing Americans that they are in imminent economic danger, by throwing out words like "catastrophe", "insecurity", and especially "recession". In spite of the fact that 90% of Americans aren't really feeling any economic insecurity, if the President and prominent Congress people repeat those phrases often enough, the mood in the country will turn sour and the people will be primed for government "help".

Phase 2: "Everything But the Kitchen Sink"

Once a significant portion of the American people have been whipped into a frenzy of concern over the "recession", present a massive "stimulus" bill as the solution that needs to be passed RIGHT NOW. Don't try to understand it, don't debate it, don't even bother reading it. PASS IT RIGHT NOW. Don't worry about the fact that the bill actually contains little or no actual stimulus; its only important that it contains every Liberal wish list item that couldn't possibly pass on its own, or even together in a more rational environment.

Phase 3: "Smash and Grab"

Having created a skyrocketing deficit, printing money like there's no tomorrow, and generally decimating the stock market in only slightly more than 30 days, explain to the American people that the deficits are so high that the government is forced to take more of their money by raising taxes. Don't bother pointing out that the reason the deficits are so high and the stock market is so low is the shockingly high spending from Phase 2, just decry the massive 10% of GDP deficit, the highest since World War II as a percentage of GDP, and explain that "we'll all have to make sacrifices..." (...in order to afford the items on the Liberal wish list. Make sure NOT to say this last part out loud.) This should be sufficient for multiple tax increases on the "rich", with ever expanding definitions of "rich", and in spite of the fact that those people being penalized are the ones CREATING THE JOBS in America.

Phase 4: "Coup de Grace"

Finally, having decimated the economy by cranking up inflation to levels not seen since the Carter Administration, and destroying the American job base by damaging the ability of the private sector to create jobs and be productive, use the real recession that has been created to ram through additional "government help", like socialized medicine, vastly expanded welfare (otherwise known as paying people not to work), and the nationalization of entire industries.

Viola! In less than a year, you've utterly decimated the most vibrant, highest productivity economy in the world, and created the largest dependent class in the history of our nation.

I don't know if we will ever recover from four years of this man...

Obama's Planned Tax Hikes

On February 4th of this year, the Congressional Budget Office submitted an analysis of the Democrats "stimulus" plan, and its expected effects on the economy. As you can read for yourself in the original document, they predicted the Obama Administration's stimulus plan would only deepen the recession:

...in the long run it will lower aggregate output (GDP) by 0.1 percent to 0.3 percent.

The report overall is a very interesting read. How anyone could defend this "stimulus" boondoggle at all is completely baffling to me.

And now it seems, Obama is planning a big tax hike to pay for it. Here's the relevant clip from another Washington Post article:

Obama also seeks to increase tax collections, mainly by making good on his promise to eliminate some of the temporary tax cuts enacted in 2001 and 2003. While the budget would keep the breaks that benefit middle-income families, it would eliminate them for wealthy taxpayers, defined as families earning more than $250,000 a year. Those tax breaks would be permitted to expire on schedule in 2011. That means the top tax rate would rise from 35 percent to 39.6 percent, the tax on capital gains would jump to 20 percent from 15 percent for wealthy filers and the tax on estates worth more than $3.5 million would be maintained at the current rate of 45 percent.

In the teeth of a recession. With unemployment rising. Have these people even opened an economics text book?

Obama and the Democrats Have Mortgaged Our Children's Future

From a Washington Post article dated Saturday, February 21, 2009:

First as a senator and then as president, Obama has presided over the fastest, largest outlay of federal money since World War II. Over the past 12 months, the government has pumped more than $2 trillion into initiatives to ease the nation's financial and economic crisis, driving the federal deficit to historic proportions.

Coupled with slowing tax collections because of the recession, the spending spree is pushing the budget deficit toward $1.4 trillion this year, or nearly 10 percent of the nation's overall economy. Absent dramatic action or an economic miracle, trillion-dollar deficits are projected to persist throughout the coming decade, by some estimates, and the bills are forecast to run headlong into the skyrocketing costs of caring for the retiring baby boom generation.

Need anything more be said about this "stimulus" boondoggle?