American Insanity

The President really kicked his re-election campaign into gear with his speech on reducing spending. He played the “Rich American” card on to the table which will ignite the fires and arguments of class envy among the American voters. In making this gesture, he stands to gain on two fronts politically. It is the on-going saga of “never letting a good disaster go to waste” which is the basis for all Obama is politically and in every other manner of speaking. Then, he flew off to Chicago to set up his re-election campaign headquarters. I guess he put the headquarters in Chicago because so many more things are “legal” there in terms of elections that they are in most states.

Obama’s move to appear that he wants to reduce spending and save money offers him the opportunity to move those moderates and independents that got out of the chicken coop in the mid-term elections back inside the liberal wire fence. These are those fence sitters who vote one way or the other on the basis of emotion whims. At the moment, their whims are driven by the concern over the rising national debt and the ignored deficit in the budget process. If Obama can make it appear that he wants to reduce the debt, then his signaled desire may be enough to gain the fence-sitters vote without actually ever doing anything.

The other front Obama gains on is re-affirming his solidarity with that portion of voters in America who pay little or no taxes. Obviously, this is the group we need to get fired up and nothing makes them madder than to find out that someone high up in government does not feel that the so-called “rich” people in America are paying their fair-share of the tax burden. Never mind that this sector is paying any of it at all. You can’t get free cheese from the government if the rich don’t pay…it’s that simple.

As the President stood before the American people and delivered his address, I found myself wondering where this guy has been for the past two years. Suddenly, this is a problem. Really! Then, of course, he clarified the situation and pointed out that it was simply something that he inherited from the previous administration and it just would not go away so it was time for him to fix it. Here we have a President nearing the end of his first and hopefully last full-term in office complaining about what he thinks he inherited coming into office.

Obviously this was not a speech that was intended to show leadership and bring about solidarity with the American people. No, it was a campaign speech, clear and simple. Here again, when America needed its President to pull it together, he was off on the campaign trail herding them doggies that had strayed from the herd.

The President has a new idea that no one has thought of in the past three years. He thinks we can just increase taxes on the “rich” and everything will be fine. You could see the look on everybody else’s face that populates Washington wondering why they didn’t think of that. They didn’t think of it because they are the rich people that the President is referring to for increased taxes. One thing you can count on is that if they have anything to say about it and they will, it won’t happen.

The President also rallied the seniors of America and got their blood flowing. Those mean old Republicans that they elected last November are talking about cuts in Social Security and Medicare. The President is not going to let that happen, not on his watch. The biggest spender of all times with more IOU’s in the Social Security and Medicare lockbox is not about to let anybody take money away from these folks, not while they can vote anyway.

Sincerity and drama were the order of the day for the speech. The President spoke in no uncertain terms that he would cut $ 4 trillion dollars out of the national debt over the next twelve years. He will start by taxing the rich and increasing revenue flow. He will start by using numbers that project a growth in economy over the next five years that even Pinocchio could not have dreamed up. He will wait until two years into his second term in office before he imposes any spending caps and then those will be imposed only if debt reduction is not in line with projected thinking. Sounds like a plan!

Come on, folks! It is obvious what is going on here. The President is running for re-election. He wants to appear presidential. He wants people to realize that he sees the problems although he has ignored them since taking office. He wants people to see that he “feels your pain.” He wants divisions between voters based on class envy and greed. He wants the conservative side of the aisle to look like the bad guys because they are pointing out the fact that this insane spending spree must be brought to an end and some logical approach to debt reduction over the long haul must be put into place. He wants to give all the appearance of knowing, seeing, and doing while accomplishing absolutely nothing more than what he sees fit.

Don’t believe for a moment that the implementation of Obama-Care and all the problems that go with it are not going to cause issues far more enormous than expected of such legislation. Hell, we have a piece of legislation that is just shy of 2,000 pages and we cannot find anyone in America who understands it well enough to lay it all out for us in some orderly fashion. We are essentially launching a ship into dark waters without any navigation aids and expecting it to show up at its destination. How naïve can you be. In its worst day, Medicare could never be that unpredictable. So, you can count on Obama-Care costing far more that anyone can currently project or anticipate. And, you can also count on the fact that once you are halfway into it, no one is going to get the ship turned around and headed the other way.

Don’t get me wrong here, I am all for closing some tax loopholes and bringing things into reasonable proportion. But don’t stand on a podium and tell me that you are going to tax the rich when you just came back off a trip to South America with the CEO of General Electric, a company that logged over $ 5 billion dollars in profits this past year and managed to bury all of it in their off-shore operations. In fact not only did they avoid any tax on the money, GE walked away with over $3 billion dollars in taxpayer money as a subsidy for their work in the “greening of America”. No doubt, the President plans to drop the hammer!

We have some real problems in America today. At the forefront of it all is an economy that just will not start up and run on all cylinders for any length of time. Undermining that process is the uncertainty, and now even greater uncertainty, with regard to taxes, especially those in small businesses who Obama considers among the rich because they have annual sales in excess of $250,000. Add further to that the uncertainty of Obama-Care, the overshadowing effect of downstream Cap & Trade legislation, the growing problem with illegal immigration, the unchecked powers of the EPA, a federal government that has grown at a factor of 25% over the past two years, an all-time record high national debt, out of control spending which is totally unchecked by a national budget process, and a President who wants to wait two more years before endorsing any spending caps. What do you think it adds up to for America?

The reality of our world is that we have to stop the insane spending going on in Washington. That is the primary concern. At the same time, we have to insure those who have paid in their money for Social Security and Medicare who are nearing retirement get their fair shake. We have to start lowering the debt, not two years from now, but now. Those steps must be taken and taken quickly to shore up our eroding financial position as a nation. If not, there will be no rich left to tax in America.

Honestly, I am sick and tired of listening to candidates for office who are dreamers. Those who envision a new America devoid of strife, awash in riches, and a flourishing environmental paradise known only to the scholars of the Bible. I am sick of those people. It’s time to face the music, to find the sanity, and to get in touch with the reality of what America is and where it needs to go to get back to what it once was. Until we can find a candidate with the ability to lead on that level, we are nowhere but at the mercy of the gods.

We still have our ability to vote and to think for ourselves. The first seems rather automatic and the second does not occur to some folks. Bandwagon appeal, emotional outcries, and the like seem to cause far too many of us to forget what should be common sense and rational thinking. Too quickly we get caught up in group think and fail to think for ourselves on issues. Honestly, if we cannot complete that process, we should not be voting in America today because we have lost sight of what is good for America and fail to realize there are plenty of folks out there more than willing to do what is bad for America if it benefits them or their party. We have to regain our ability to think as individuals and to vote as individuals if we are to do what is right for America.

We are beyond the point at which people can bury their head in the sand and refuse to hear what is happening around them in this country. We are past the point that we can trust our future and our assets to those who will seek office and not be accountable for their actions. We are past the time when anyone should expect a free-ride and not carry part of the burden and we are beyond the point at which ignorance can be our excuse for allowing all that we have and can have to be squandered away. It’s our choice as to whether we want to step up and be counted among those who say this must stop and it must stop now.

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