President Barak Obama faced the nation as a born again Bush Booster as he reversed years of personal commitment and regurgitated rhetoric presenting the extension of the Bush tax cuts as his plan for recovery.
Lurking beneath the über partisan vitriol in President Obama’s announcement and serial defense of his post-partisan compromise with the Republican leadership he admitted that raising taxes is counterproductive when growing the economy is your goal.
Does it make anyone else wonder why when the bubble burst we didn’t cut taxes and get out of the way? For approximately the same cost of the TARP slush fund, which was used to pay for everything except toxic assets or the non-stimulating stimulus slush fund, every working American could have been given a one-year tax holiday. Just think about it, if you were getting the gross instead of the net every week do you think you would have spent any more money? Do you think the economy would still be in the doldrums a year and a half after the Great Recession is “over”? Come to think, of it why don’t the unemployed just go out and get one of those shovel-ready jobs? Oh, that’s right two years after the razzle-dazzle sales pitch the pitchman learned they never existed. Then we learned he knew it all along.
Don’t be fooled as the Democratic Progressives race the Republican Progressives to the microphones complaining they were rolled in Mr. Obama’s Great Compromise. What they’re really arguing about is how much of the money we earn they can afford to let us keep. If either side was really ready for the heady wine of liberty they’d talk about eliminating taxes not just about letting us keep the pittance George II agreed to let us hold for a few years.
Three generations ago, back at the dawn of the 20th century before the Creature from Jekyll Island and its mad creator, the Congress that devoured a nation began their present reign as the Central Bank and the Central Planning Board most of the taxes that Americans presently bear were nonexistent. Was the Federal Government broke? Were millions starving to death because food stamps hadn’t been invented? Were our citizens wallowing in ignorance because the Education Department hadn’t been created? Were the States declaring bankruptcy because they didn’t receive grants, bail-outs, or subsidies?
No. Before the creation of the Federal Reserve, which was supposed to safe guard the value of the dollar and end the boom and bust of the business cycle, America was the most prosperous, innovative, and growing nation on earth. Before the Progressives managed to shackle the capitalist engine of growth, dumb down the best informed public, and make dependent the most independent population the world had ever known America was the can-do capital and the go-to place.
We have witnessed our erstwhile messiah and media darling turn into a whining, complaining prima donna who after spending two years saying Bush’s tax cuts were the cause of the Great Recession now he says if we let them expire it will make the economy worse. This would give smoke and mirrors a bad name. After two years vilifying his predecessor instead of ever once taking responsibility for anything the best President Obama can come up with is, “Let George do it”? We need to impeach his teleprompter for inconsistency and incompetence.
It’s time to ignore the stewards trying to calm the soon-to-expire passengers by convincing them that the configuration of the deck chairs makes a difference. It’s time to tell the captain, the navigator, and the helmsmen we need to turn our ship-of-state before it hits the iceberg of insolvency. It’s time to take our eyes off the riveting debate between the Democrat whiners, and Weiners, the Republican Snow-jobs and Cantors, and realize these people are more interested in perpetuating the current progressive pyramid of power than in resuscitating our Republic.
The American system doesn’t need bureaucrats tinkering with the tax code. We need bold patriots ready to make hard choices. We don’t need gimmicks like cutting the Social Security tax for a short period to make people feel like they’ve received relief from crushing taxation. We need to admit Clinton’s mythical lock-box and every other band aide our federal masters have used for the last two generations doesn’t change the fact that the Social Security scam has always been a ponzi scheme that makes Madoff look like a piker.
If our generation is to step up we’re going to have to turn off the game, put down the adult beverage, and become profiles in courage if we’re to be the conscious of a conservative for a nation lost in the lunacy of liberalism. None dare to call it treason, but the fact of the matter is we’ve been and are being sold a bill of goods. The money is gone: squandered on vote buying social engineering programs that have debilitated our population.
If generations of central planning to safeguard the dollar have turned it into wallpaper, if 100 years of regulating the economy to eliminate the business cycle has produced numerous recessions, a Great Depression, and now the Great Recession what have we gained? What have we lost?
We gained an increasingly intrusive central government which has subdued the States in contravention to the Tenth Amendment and is regimenting the populace in contravention to the Declaration of Independence. We gained a judicial system that thinks it can legislate from the bench, a legislature which has all but abdicated their responsibility to a bureaucratic nomenclature, and an imperial presidency filled by executives who start wars without declarations, issue signing statements that reverse the meaning of laws, and refuse to secure our borders, our markets, or even the communication of our diplomats. We gained a burdensome tax system that even the people who write it can’t understand. We gained a regulated economy unable to compete with communist countries that strangely seem to be more capitalist than we do.
We lost a free society and a limited government based upon a written Constitution and traditions of individual liberty and responsibility. We lost a free economy where each citizen contributed and each citizen had the opportunity to fail forward into all that they could be. We lost ourselves and stand in wonder watching leaders who just don’t get it work feverishly to turn us into someone else.
Don’t buy the hype. This latest compromise isn’t about putting America on track to revival it is a stealth stimulus pouring money into the economy so both sides of the Progressive bandwagon can roll it to the polls one more time. In addition, who knows what other surprises are hidden in the unread pages of this omnibus Frankenstein. Don’t drink the Kool-Aide; instead demand the heady wine of freedom and the re-birth of limited government which is the mother’s milk of liberty!
Dr. Owens teaches History, Political Science, and Religion. Get the latest dispatches from the History of the Future and find books by Dr. Owens @ http://drrobertowens.com View the trailer for Dr. Owens’ latest book @ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ypkoS0gGn8 © 2010 Robert R. Owens dr.owens@comcast.net Follow Dr. Robert Owens on Facebook.
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