Mr. Obama Avoids Conflict.
The experiment for the Obama administration is how it is to govern as a Democratic administration. Not that the Republicans represent a credible opposition, but rather that the Barack Obama style is to avoid conflict, to avoid being one side or another. See the video clip below from the Obama team roll out of the stimulus package, when Mr. Obama responded to a reporter's question that some Democrats think the $750 billion is not big enough. Mr. Obama wants to be both sides, all sides, of a discussion, and then find the conventional wisdom as a resolution. This style is designed for easy decisions and obvious conclusions. It is not useful when dealing with problems on the scale of the present world-wide slowdown and deflation. Turmoil is in train. Reason will retreat. For now, the "show me" style of Mr. Obama is untested. It is not the enemy that will be the first challenge. It is Mr. Obama's own allies. He is POTUS now. You gain power by beating down POTUS. When he says "Show me," he is inviting to be shown up.
You are forgetting that he gets first shot and is getting his agenda of creating permanent government dependance. Only after it has failed will he allow someone to say just show me.
I am struck by how there are minor parallels between the characters of Bush 43 and BHO, as compared to Howard Roark and Peter Keating, to harken back to the Randian context of the prior post. Where GWB has his own internal voice and listens to it in the maelstrom of criticism, Obama is a blank slate on which others write their expectations. His practice of being all things to all people is an unsustainable Ponzi scheme that will destroy himself and damage the nation that selected him. All the while, the Ellsworth Toohey mainstream media continues as Godzilla to America's public spirit.
In the end, I predict that this job, for which BHO is utterly ill equipped, will destroy him. It will begin with his own party. I hear in the voices of the princes and princesses of Congress that they feel they "made" Obama and he is their servant. Barney Frank is insufferable. Ditto Pelosi and Reid. They want to pull the strings on this puppet. If he resists (and he will to some degree in trying to achieve unanimous support), they will come at him with the long knives. I really need to go read the histories of Rome. As they say, history doesn't repeat itself, but it sure does rhyme!
Obama, simply put, is out of his league. He, like the child rulers of deceased kings, will have to depend on his advisers to make decisions. All Obama himself can bring to the table is his naïve ideological bent. This will be largely obscured by the political wrangling and back-stabbing by far more sinister agents who will be competing for Obams’s virgin ear. It will be exhausting for him to give the appearance of order - and he is bound to lose the thread. Lacking the moral compass component resultant of his (lack of) upbringing, his administration will soon begin to show signs of having collapsed into chaos. It is something the MSM will not be able to paper over. America will be left leaderless for a second 4-year presidential term. Outside events too will take their toll.
People will have the government they deserve. For a glimpse of what’s in store, take a look at what transpired in Minnesota in a recent election where the votes counted outnumbered the people who actually came to the polls. Neither would I be surprised to find that some of the pirate bailout money we’ve seen being parachuted from helicopters finds itself into the coffers of Democrat operatives and Presidential Libraries stateside.
Obama will, fortunately, probably be as good a President as anyone.
SIXTEEN TONS
Some people say a man is made outta mud
A poor man's made outta muscle and blood
Muscle and blood and skin and bones
A mind that's a-weak and a back that's strong
You load sixteen tons, what do you get
Another day older and deeper in debt
Saint Peter don't you call me 'cause I can't go
I owe my soul to the company store
I was born one mornin' when the sun didn't shine
I picked up my shovel and I walked to the mine
I loaded sixteen tons of number nine coal
And the straw boss said "Well, a-bless my soul"
You load sixteen tons, what do you get
Another day older and deeper in debt
Saint Peter don't you call me 'cause I can't go
I owe my soul to the company store
I was born one mornin', it was drizzlin' rain
Fightin' and trouble are my middle name
I was raised in the canebrake by an ol' mama lion
Cain't no-a high-toned woman make me walk the line
You load sixteen tons, what do you get
Another day older and deeper in debt
Saint Peter don't you call me 'cause I can't go
I owe my soul to the company store
If you see me comin', better step aside
A lotta men didn't, a lotta men died
One fist of iron, the other of steel
If the right one don't a-get you
Then the left one will
You load sixteen tons, what do you get
Another day older and deeper in debt
Saint Peter don't you call me 'cause I can't go
I owe my soul to the company store
Spencer--
I love that song. I rememgber playing it on my gradfather's crank victorola at 78 rpm over and over. Tennessee Ernie Ford.
I hope you guys are wrong about BO. but it is only hope. He's not my guy but for four years he's my/our prez and we all have a stake in him succeeding. I think the way to do that is supporting the new conservative voices and pounding the leftiest establishment of Pelosi, Fran, Reid, Dodd, Kerry and Kennedy (?). But going after BO is a loser strategy on all counts--you alienate his supporters. best to divide the Dem party against itself, portray BO as the victim of Dem rats.
Somebody made an excellent point on the show last night. Supply-side arguments work very well when the marginal tax rate is 70%-90%. When it's below 50% as it is now, it's not a foregone conclusion that a lowering of the marginal tax rate will increase the aggregate tax revenues or significantly stimulate the economy. Remember that the Laffer Curve shows a sweet spot at which aggregate revenues are maximized. Below that sweet spot, the Laffer Curve itself predicts lower revenues as a result of a tax cut.
None of this is to say that a tax cut wouldn't have other benefits, such as a stimulation of the economy, a reassurance to people that Obama isn't quite the socialist he's made out to be, etc. I'm just saying that it may very well be true that a tax cut will not help erase the deficit at this point.
This is one of those times that responsible monetary policy (strong dollar) and responsible fiscal policy (don't give away the store with new programs such as TARP) are probably better tools for fixing the deficit, than a tax cut would be.
By the way, I was going to reproduce the lyrics to "Desolation Row" by Bob Dylan, but I didn't want people to have to scroll down 5 pages to get to the next post.
Perhaps someone can explain to me the logic of a stimulus package, it seems the long way around the obstacle.
If our economy is built on the consumer consuming, then we want to use the stimulus to facilitate consumption. We facilitate consumption by increasing the disposable income available to the consumer. Under the current proposal, the fed fund the stimulus through borrowing from overseas or accumulated taxes paid in by the very consumers that need to be stimulated. Neither of these sources of input are lossless - there are costs to borrowing and there are costs associated with collecting taxes. Additionally, there are the costs associated with allocating the stimulus and distributing the stimulus. The funds allocated to spending programs, such as infrastructure will likely pass to state governments first, who will need to peel off some to oversee the projects and ensure that the private companies are in compliance. The private companies will have costs associated with compliance to bear, as well as taxes to pay on the revenues, before they can pay the employees, who also must be taxed, before they can spend the remaining funds. It would seem to me that this whole process generates quite a bit of inefficiency.
On the other hand, a short circuit approach would be - take government out of the loop and let the citizens just keep the taxes that they would be paying the government for one year and let them spend or save. It avoids the inefficiencies of pumping it through the IRS/Treasury/Congress/State/Company/Worker cycle. The impact would be immediate and efficient, instead of this Rube Goldberg contraption that they are proposing.
I was once told that the most dangerous man in the room at any corporate meeting is an engineer with and MBA. Well, here I am! The money is already in the economy, what good does it do for the government to divert it through their hands? Other than make them feel important and give them the power to decide where it should flow? If the problem is that dire, they must be stopped.
As I understand it, total income tax revenues are about $4T/year. If we stopped paying taxes for one quarter, there would be another $1T in circulation immediately. If you save, you bolster your bank's balance sheet. If you spend, you increase demand and stimulate production again. Is this so crazy that it just might work? We'd still have our $1T deficit, but the people would hail Obama for making them feel richer right away. It would boost confidence.
And dare I say, the people may like it enough to make it permanent and take the crack (money) away from the addict (Congress) and on the road to recovery.
novanglus - You said the magic word: "logic". Unfortunately, logic can no longer be found anywhere in Washington. Or perhaps your sense of logic is different from Washington's. Perhaps what Washington aims to do is different from what you would expect; from what it says. Everyone wants to "revitalize the economy". It's a safe mantra. Surely, everyone can agree on that much. Except those who are lying! How do we know they are lying? We know because their proposed solutions can never work!
In fact, their solutions will send the economy into a tailspin. If the concept of "logic" is to hold up, they must be lying (when they say they want to "revitalize the economy"). They're hoping that if the economy should go south, you will still blame Bush. Or that they've made an "honest" mistake. This is no mistake. The left has victory within its grasp. Our "logic" no longer matters.
No, my friend, they're lying. They want the economy to tank; they want to kill it; they want the chaos that is certain to ensue. Once that happens, they will be able to impose the new world order they envision. Don't be naive. Their logic is impeccable. The plan is being implemented as we speak. Nothing will stand in the way of its final execution - except war which is the last wild card that remains outside human control.
Peter- Who is they?
Novanglus said: "Perhaps someone can explain to me the logic of a stimulus package, it seems the long way around the obstacle."
Simply stupid nailed it in one pithy sentence: to create permanent government dependence, in an ever-larger majority. The Democrats, as principal exponents of the nanny state, have discovered the essentially juvenile core of post-WW11 generations. The Democrats rely on programs designed to foster a broad and deep child-like, uncritical docility and dependency, analogous to that of the inner city poor, among a people once proud of their independence and self-reliance because the Democrats see this as their means of re-establishing the permanent majority they enjoyed between 1936 and 1995. The truly pathetic spectacle of the last eight years has been the Republicans trying to imitate them.
Spence - I figured someone would ask. It should be obvious to anyone with a point of view; though I do admit the picture has gotten muddied somewhat during all those years of ceaseless indoctrination. It's gotten muddied further by the amalgam of drones, useful idiots and "don't cares" who don't necessarily see themselves as "the enemy" and present themselves as our family members, neighbors and co-workers. "They", quite simply, is the left (ideology), which includes the Democrat Party, composed of single-issue malcontents and "blame America firsters", and extends internationally across Europe, The Middle East, Asia and Africa. What all have in common is a hatred for our country which up until now, by its very existence, has consistently demonstrated the inadequacies of alternate forms of governance, especially those patterned after a Marxist model.
In sum, "they" is "us"; they who have managed to upset the balance of what was once a great nation, and we who have stood by and let it happen.
As you seek to unravel the strands for yourself and assign blame (if you must), you should also remember that just as every nation on earth stands divided, every human heart stands divided (as well) between the desire for a “nanny state” and the longing for inspired self-expression that only freedom allows.
Peter & Corlyss - if your cynicism is accurate, then we are living in Idiocracy R1.0.
Please don't include me in that "divided heart", Peter. I have no desire at all for a nanny state. Three examples for you of how I feel:
(1) I do not intend to apply for my social security old-age benefits, on the grounds that the hundreds of thousands they've taken from me over the years make them thieves, but to collect even a penny of that money would be to give my tacit approval to their thievery, so I won't. They can steal from me, but they can't tame me or make me dependent on them.
(2) I recently went to a local national forest and found one of the campgrounds closed. I e-mailed the local forest ranger and asked why. He blamed it on Bush's having cut back funding for the Forest Service to the point where they couldn't maintain the campgrounds. I responded that I hoped Bush would cut back even further on the funding, until we got to where we could do away with forest rangers entirely.
(3) If I woke up tomorrow to the news that the government had vanished without a trace, I'd consider that one of the happiest days of my life, on a par with the birth of my two children. Even if I were killed by roving gangs of thugs within a very short time thereafter, at least I would have lived a brief time knowing what true freedom is like. See "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber" by Hemingway for more details.
novanglus - Surely you didn't mean to use the word "cynicism" when describing my views - or those of Corlyss, for that matter. "Cynicism" to me implies something negative. I don't consider myself a cynic. I watch, see, and report - nothing more or less. Do, however, allow me to mourn an old friend. America has been good to me. It is the place where I spent most of my adult life. I've raised my children here. You might accuse me of some degree of patriotism - and I freely admit to it. I also know that things change - and that too I can deal with. Otherwise I wouldn't be able to jump back and forth between India and here this late in my life. What really rankles me, though, is betrayal. I believe that America has been betrayed for nothing more than a few paltry sums of silver. If the narrative holds true to form, we can expect the traitors to at some point hang themselves.
Novanglus said: "Peter & Corlyss - if your cynicism is accurate, then we are living in Idiocracy R1.0."
Not to be distracted by a label, but just for the record, I'm not a cynic; I'm a realist. I see the Democrats, members of an organization that I consider to be a criminal enterprise masquerading as a political party, wedded to policies that time has proven do not work, yet ever ready to pull out the same government palliatives to soothe public distress when maybe distress should be the order of the day.
The Democrats pull the old shell game on successive generations comprised of whiny self-indulgent, self-absorbed people who have never struggled for a single thing in their entire lives yet feel completely entitled to everything they want because they are capable of formulating the desire. These are the progeny of the Greatest Generation, but they have not the moral or self-reliant instincts of that group. It's a terrible irony that what the Greatest Generation wanted for their offspring, i.e., freedom from privation, freedom from crippling failure, freedom from war, has produced generations that demand everything be given to them, especially freedom from the consequences of their own acts and their own choices.
IMO we are in a struggle for the very soul of America right now and if we lose that struggle, we are doomed to become an extension of post-war Europe. The leaders of the Democratic party think that would be a good thing - if we cared more about guaranteeing equality and eliminating all risk rather than individual capacity and freedom. The elites, wealthy and academic, international and cosmopolitan, that populate the Democratic party have no conception of what it is like to live in a world without US power and authority guiding the international system, but they are perfectly willing to try because their intentions are good, i.e., to liberate the world from the inordinate influence of the US. As Robert Kaplan so eloquently asserts in his wonderful little volume, Warrior Politics, peoples' actions must be judged on results, not intentions. Democrats want to be judged only on what they can claim as their intentions, not on their results. The dependency on them and governments dominated by them which they aim to create is always presented as a manifestation of their ceaseless concern over the inequalities within American society, and now inequalities between America and the non-western world. It's good marketing and disastrous government, disastrous for us and for the world. Their solutions are narcotics designed to keep them in power as the suppliers of the seductive nose candy.
Peter & Corlys - when I said cynical, I meant it as a general distrust of the integrity or professed motives of others. As a New Englander, I mean that in now way as a derogatory characteristic. In fact, as you have each said it is merely a realistic mode of viewing the world.
I agree with your assessments of the left and the boomer generation. I am a post boomer, Gen-X, but just barely by chronology. It may take time, likely decades, to reverse the trend toward Idiocracy. However, I believe in the force of ideas ultimately overcoming the privations of freedom the Progressives have wrought on our nation. We have not drifted so far left that we are a Poland or Czech Republic under Soviet Russian control. Yet both those nations kept the candle burning for generations and emerged. We are starting further up the latter to recovery of our Founders' intent.
I see the core disconnect as an inversion of the power of The People and The Government - which I almost invariably mistype as Givernment, perhaps due to some Freudian imp. Too many of our fellow citizens see themselves as Subjects of the Government, instead of as Shareholders (Owners) of the Government. And who can blame them, when your freedoms are constrained every so much by regulation and taxation? The balance of power has been distorted as never intended. We have turned our Representative Republic into a Leviathan. Our Federal Government exhibits all the principles of Hobbes' Commonwealth. It must be starved of its power base - votes and monies.
We must continue to converse with others and turn their eyes away from Survivor and Dancing with the Stars to see what lies ahead for them. My wife often kicks me under the table at dinner when I try get others to consider where we are headed. While she agrees with me, she says it is impolitic and reminds her of the "crazy uncles" in neighboring families that got all expenses paid educations in Siberia. Yet, I have turned a few people partially and seen hope restored in the eyes of others who wondered if anyone else was concerned. There are many who wonder privately, but are so surrounded by the sheep that they rarely hear anyone else articulate the questions that they have. SO, yes there are enough of us out there to change things. The politicians, media, and educators have done their best to make such discussions verboten, but that has not extinguished them. We need more Crazy Dutch Uncles!
Novanglus, I can relate to and agree with everything in your post - especially about getting people involved. Point of information, not all people born in 1957 are baby boomers. I was born in that year and feel more affinity to our Founding Fathers' generation than I do to my own. I apologize for the rest of my generation, however.
I was born in 1962, and technically, I am a boomer because my parents were born in the early to mid 20's. Heck, all of my grandparents were born in the 19th century. I don't identify with Boomers, or Gen X. What do we call ourselves, Lou?
The point for Peter Keating is that he was a second hander, a fraud. So is obama, and a well liked one. Will he rise to the level of his incompetence? Some might say he already has, but I think we have to wait and see.
JB:
As far as Obama avoiding conflict, This has been well documented from his days as a professor at U of C. John R. Lott taught there at the time and tried to engage Obama many times about his position on gun control and Obama turned his back to him every time. This guy is a combination cacasotto and arrogant bastard. Not the best for leadership. It will be interesting when he meets a very serious challenge he cannot ignore or blame on someone else. The king will be naked. Will anyone say so?
Jim said:
I don't identify with Boomers, or Gen X. What do we call ourselves, Lou?
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How about "Lost"?
Thanks Lou, that's confidence inspiring. :)