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The Patient Protection & Affordable Care Act, H.R. 3590, also known as Obama Care, has a provision that requires all purchases from corporations over $600.00 to require a 1099 form to be issued by the purchaser, delivered to the seller, and provided to the government. On the most basic level, that’s three forms for every $600.00 transaction with a corporation. Here’s what Neil deMause, writing at CNN Money, said:
“The massive expansion of requirements for businesses to file 1099 tax forms that was hidden in the 2,409-page health reform bill took many by surprise when it came to light last month. But it’s just one piece of a years-long legislative stealth campaign to create ways for the federal government to track down unreported income. The result: A blizzard of new tax forms that the Internal Revenue Service will begin rolling out next year.
Starting in 2012, that changes. All business payments or purchases that exceed $600 in a calendar year will need to be accompanied by a 1099 filing. That means obtaining the taxpayer ID number of the individual or corporation you’re making the payment to, even if it’s a giant retailer like Staples or Best Buy, at the time of the transaction, or else facing IRS penalties.”
Tom Henschke, president of the Pennsylvania-based SMC Business Councils explains the extent of this new burden upon small businesses: “Just with business travel it would include hotels, rental cars. Phone service: 1099. Computer service: 1099. Whoever does your postage meter: 1099. You do a little advertising, Yellow Pages: 1099. Your landlord: 1099. You might as well just keep them in your pocket and hand them out as you go around every day.”
Boy this is great! Good work congress. Good work Mr. President. Just what the economy needs is more burdensome unprofitable paperwork to stimulate it. Of course the one business that will profit from this is government. It will need to grow and that is how government judges its profitability, it’s success, by its size and growth rate.
But it gets worse. Here’s the Reetzality: I predict this is the first step in installing a value added tax. The Obama governmetn wants to get the folks used to reporting transactions whether they be profitable or not, just report the transaction to the government thank you very much. Don’t worry, right? Apparently, generally accepted accounting principles aren’t sufficiently penetrable by Obama’s government to maximize its taking power. Why would the government care, if it’s only taxing profits? Why would the government care what a company purchases if the company isn’t making a taxable profit? One would think the government would not care. Are they going to advise us on our purchases? I think not. Are they going to regulate our purchases? Probably. In fact this provision does begin to regulate our purchases by cloaking purchases with government forms and bureaucracy.
But here’s the big concern: This Obama government is taking the first step to impose the value added tax. They are getting the folks used to viewing each and every transaction over $600.00 as a potentially taxable event by requiring a tax form, a 1099, to be submitted to the Internal Revenue Service. And then, when the time is right, when our government has imputed what it views as the adequate amount of desperation into our economy, when they have the right quantity of folks on the dole thanks to the government’s attack on our economy, it will suggest, “hey, why not impose a sort of value added tax to help pay for the folks our policies have unemployed? I mean, we’ve already got folks filing 1099’s when they make purchases? Let’s have them throw a little cabbage in the envelope when they send it in.”
Of course, they won’t call it a value added tax. That is too unmarketable a title. Maybe they’ll call it the “Deferred Internal Revenue Enhancer.” DIRE for short. Also of course, don’t bet on the $600.00 threshold holding firm.
This is what I’m predicting. This is what I’m betting on. This is why such a ridiculously burdensome provision is in Obama Care. Folks, get smart on the stealth attack on our country from within, because it’s coming on strong. This is more evidence of this fact.
That’s my Reetzality for the day.
Thanks for the read.
Brett Reetz
He either doesn’t get it or he’s lying. Pick. Obama’s comments today revealed one or the other. I’ll go through his comments and give you my read. Here goes:
Obama said: “Well, on Friday, we learned that after 22 straight months of job loss, our economy has now created jobs in the private sector for 6 months in a row. That’s a positive sign.But the truth is, the recession from which we’re emerging has left us in a hole that’s about 8 million jobs deep. And as I’ve said from the day I took office, it’s going to take months, even years, to dig our way out – and it’s going to require an all-hands-on-deck effort.”
Reetzality: I don’t recall him saying it would take “even years, to dig our way out.” Total nonfarm payroll employment declined by 125,000 in June, and the unemployment rate edged down to 9.5 percent. The decline in payroll employment reflected a decrease (-225,000) in the number of temporary employees working on Census 2010. Private sector payroll employment edged up by 83,000. However, there was a big jump (more than 800,000) in the number of people outside the labor force — neither working nor looking for work. That’s the only reason that the unemployment rate fell, to 9.5 percent from 9.7 percent. (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics). This means that the unemployment rate fell last month but actual unemployment did not fall. President Obama is guilty of a false positive.
Obama said: “In the short term, we’re fighting to speed up this recovery and keep the economy growing by all means possible. That means extending unemployment insurance for workers who lost their job. That means getting small businesses the loans they need to keep their doors open and hire new workers. And that means sending relief to states so they don’t have to lay off thousands of teachers and firefighters and police officers. Still, at a time when millions of Americans feel a deep sense of urgency in their own lives, Republican leaders in Washington just don’t get it. While a majority of Senators support taking these steps to help the American people, some are playing the same old Washington games and using their power to hold this relief hostage – a move that only ends up holding back our recovery. It doesn’t make sense. ”
Reetzality: Republicans are not against extending unemployment benefits, they just want to fund it with unspent stimulus money. According to Senator Ben Nelson, 63% of Stimulus money is unspent. Obama wants to create even more debt. Republicans do get it and so do a lot of Democrats. Use the money that’s there. Quit burdening our future.
As to getting small businesses loans, small business is having trouble obtaining financing, however small business has a bigger concern, the cancerous growth of government and the dire condition of the economy that will get worse when the tax increases take effect in 2011. Trust me Mr. President, and I forgive you for not understanding this given your comprehensive lack of business knowledge, Small Business is not expanding because small business is terrified of your policies. Only a fool, or a government, would double down with more debt in this economy with the looming threat of government explosion cloaking their future. (Cancerous government growth takes down governments too. See Greece, U.S.S.R., Spain, Portugal, Ireland, U.K.)
As to sending relief to State’s “so they don’t have to lay off thousands of teachers and firefighters and police officers,” I say let the States fall where they may. They’ve deficit spent their way to the poor house and now Obama wants to enable them in their irresponsibility. It is not fair to further burden the tax payers and their off spring with more debt to pay for lavish government expenditures, work environments and pensions. What is fair is to hold states and those that chose government as their career to suffer the consequences of their choice. Why should the public sector not be treated the same way as a private business? It shouldn’t. Of course, this doesn’t hold true for Wall Street, AIG, and the Auto Industry, but two wrongs don’t make a right. That’s still true isn’t it? State’s should have to live within their means just like everybody else.
Obama said: “. . . we’re going to keep competing aggressively to make sure the jobs and industries of the future are taking root right here in America.”
Reetzality: What single thing has our President pushed that would be consistent with keeping jobs and industries of the future right here in America?” He is in bed with the ultimate job killer, Unions. Don’t think Unions kill jobs? How’s the auto industry, manufacturing, and the Steel Industry doing? Not too well.
Obama answered: “That’s one of the reasons why we’re accelerating the transition to a clean energy economy and doubling our use of renewable energy sources like wind and solar power – steps that have the potential to create whole new industries and hundreds of thousands of new jobs in America.”
Reetzality: Hey Mr. Obama, maybe you should study the “Green Effect” in Spain. While Spain has traditionally suffered from relatively high unemployment, double the 9.8 percent average for the European Union, the sharpest increase has been among young people. It has jumped from 17.5 percent three years ago to the current 42.9 percent. Spain was on the leading edge in the EU to convert to a sustainable life style free from their oil addiction, by adopting wind and solar power. (Russel Steele). For every new position that depends on energy price supports, at least 2.2 jobs in other industries will disappear, according to a study from King Juan Carlos University in Madrid. In Spain, where wind turbines provided 11 percent of power demand last year, generators earn rates as much as 11 times more for renewable energy compared with burning fossil fuels. So Mr. President, although you might actually create hundred of thousands of new jobs, if history repeats itself, and it always does, multiply your jobs created by 2.2 and subtract that from your numbers.
Obama said: “But what this weekend reminds us, more than any other, is that we are a nation that has always risen to the challenges before it.”
Reetzality: I agree with you Mr. President. We just disagree with the particular challenge we are rising to. More and more Americans are rising to a challenge named “You.”
Obama said: “We are a nation that mustered a sense of common purpose to overcome Depression and fear itself.”
Reetzality: No Mr. President, we did not muster a sense of common purpose, we mustered, and employed a common sense of freedom, free from government, free from high taxes, free from over-regulation, free from the redistribution of our productivity by government. The only common purpose our nation has is the Constitution. It’s what made us great.
Obama said: We are a nation that embraced a call to greatness and saved the world from tyranny.
Reetzality: Then why Mr. President did you go on the apology tour? Why do you employ so many folks who not only are not fond of our “greatness,” but embrace tyrannical leaders. Check out the politics of these folks: Ed Montgomery, Dennis Ross, Joshua DuBois, Van Jones (fired), Daniel Fried, Gary Samore, Ashton Carter, Adolf Carrion, Jr., John Brennan, J. Scott Gration, George Mitchell, Dennis Blair. That’s enough proof for now.
We are a great nation based upon the greatest God given principles. And that we should celebrate on this Fourth of July for sure. But let us not be fooled. The challenge we now face is from within, history and the facts tell us so. Our President’s vision of our nation is inconsistent with the very fundamentals of our nation. And I think he gets it, he just can’t be honest about it.
That’s my Reetzality for the Day.
POST QUESTION? Who are the true public servants of today? It would seem that those serving the public are the private sector since they ultimately pay for it all. Thus, I think the term “public servant” needs a new definition.
Is there anything our President likes about America other than leisurely destroying it? I’m searching for an answer, trying to find something that our President not only says he likes, but something he acts like he likes. Let’s run a list. Here goes.
Free Enterprise: No way does our President likes free enterprise. He says he does but his actions betray his words. He bailed out the banks, the auto industry, AIG, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. He wants hyper control over our financial system. He is drooling over the possibility of shutting down the oil industry. He is in favor of the redistribution of wealth. He actually believes the Constitution is flawed because it does not address “redistributive justice,” his words. He is in favor of Cap and Trade which will be a monumental shroud on free enterprise, and freedom itself in that Cap and Trades’ tendrils will reach right down to a persons domicile. Nope, our President is not an advocate of free enterprise.
Border Control and Security: Our President does not want our borders controlled. He says he does but refuses to act until we get “comprehensive” immigration policy. Unfortunately, “comprehensive,” to him, means amnesty for thirteen million illegal aliens and probably a lot more. He still hasn’t made good on his promise to Arizona to send 1200 National Guardsmen to the border, actually breaking his promise of doing so within two weeks after the meeting with the Arizona Governor. Let’s face it folks, our President does not even view the very land we occupy as worthy of protection. As to National Security, he nixed the missile defense system in Eastern Europe. He has done nothing to keep Iran non-nuclear. He’s cutting defense spending. He wants to treat foreign terrorists as common criminals, trying them in criminal courts rather than military tribunals. He won’t even use the phrase “Islamic Extremist.” You know those guys who are willing to die to destroy us.
Self Reliance: Our President does not respect self-reliance. Redistributive Justice does not co-exist with self-reliance. His health care bill does not co-exist with self-reliance. He believes it is the government’s job and duty to provide and not the individual’s responsibility. He believes it’s government’s fault if you don’t own a house, have a job, have health care, can’t afford education, don’t have insurance, not the individual’s fault.
American Exceptionalism: Our President does not believe we are exceptional. Actually, we’re just human, but we’ve been blessed with a nation that was founded on freedom and liberty which allowed us to actualize and be exceptional. But does our President praise this truth? No. He apologizes to the world for our behavior. He ignores our principles and wants us to be more like other nations, that Mr. President, in case you haven’t watched the news of late, are failing. He does not like the idea of a nation with our principles dominating the world, or even leading it for that matter. And that says a lot about the man because if you don’t like us leading with our principles, then you don’t understand the magnificence of our principles.
Environment: The Gulf Oil Spill reveals that our President doesn’t care too much about the environment. He views the Gulf Oil Spill as an opportunity to impose his priorities of more regulation, less freedom (pass Cap and Trade) and less free enterprise rather than a dire call to action to save the environment. He views the Gulf Oil Spill as a “fat pitch” to further attack free enterprise, all the while, actually thwarting the efforts to thwart the environmental impact of the spill. He took two weeks to respond to Louisiana’s request to build barrier islands. He turned down offers of help to deal with the oil spill from thirteen nations. Under his rule, the coast guard moth balled skimmers in order to make sure they met government regulations, further delaying remedial measures to save the environment. His only non-urban activity is golf and that’s not saying much. Cap and Trade won’t fix the environment. China and India aren’t signing on and even if they did, Cap and Trade only imposes more government. Scientifically, there is no evidence that it will do anything for the environment.
State’s Rights: He is suing Arizona for exercising their state’s rights. He does not like State’s rights, the very right that is set forth to create a sort of governmental competition. The very right that allows state’s to innovate in their policies in an attempt to improve life. He doesn’t agree with a state’s right to ban abortion.
Free Speech: He doesn’t like it. He attacks free expression regularly, even going so far as to say that free expression gets in the way of progress. He appointed Justice Kagen who is no fan of the First Amendment, who believes that there should be a redistribution of free expression which means government control. He is in favor of the Fairness Doctrine which in classic Ayn Randian style, has nothing to do with fairness but rather equality of points of view which means, government control of speech. He is in favor of net neutrality, meaning more government control, less free speech.
The Right to Bear Arms: He does not believe in the Second Amendment. His votes in the Illinois Legislature prove this.
What’s left? Does it even matter? By having contempt for the principles stated above, does one even need to go further? It’s akin to saying, “I like Nuclear Reactors, I’m just not fond of the nuclear reaction that goes on inside.” You cannot love America and what it stands for if you don’t stand for the American Principles. And our President does not stand for the American Principles. It’s as plain as day. He says it. He acts upon his words. He has contempt for those who disagree. We have enough information to finalize the diagnosis.
Folks, his rhetoric sounded good during the campaign. But now, at this critical time, it is imperative to realize and act upon the truth that it was just rhetoric, nothing more. He doesn’t like our country and if you don’t join him in his effort to destroy that which made us great, he doesn’t like you. And folks, here’s the kicker: He not only doesn’t like America, what he really doesn’t like is our freedom to save it. Freedom is his nemesis. Freedom is the stalking horse that threatens his skewed un-American vision. Freedom is what he really despises.
On a psychological note, a note based upon my observations and education, if a child is raised by an abusive parent, it is likely that the child will be grow up to be an abusive parent as well. This is particularly true with sexual abuse. It is called the Cycle of Sexual Abuse. Here’s the reach. Our President views his history, whether it is the cultural African American history or his history personally, as abusive and unfair. Is there a possibility that he is metaphorically the abused child playing his role in the cycle of abuse? To him, America wasn’t that good to him. (Rather amazing, he became President) He had a broken home. He was raised by a cacophony of anti-American mentors. He was bounced around from place to place, home to home. And now he’s an adult, repeating the anti-American mantra through his words, but more so through his actions. Is this the case? It sure seems like it, but I’m just asking.
So, going back to the premise of this piece, what is it that our President likes about this country? I come up with not a single fundamental American thing. I am not saying that he isn’t enjoying the fruits of our Nation’s labor. He is, but the fruits, the opulence he enjoys is not an American Principle. All dictators live opulent lives by the way. Opulence has nothing to do with American Principles. Opulence is a by-product but not a fundamental of Americanism. So please don’t argue that he loves America because he appreciates the opulence it has bestowed upon him. To love America is to love its principles. And he does not. And that is the dire dilemma that faces us today.
Dmitry Medvedev, the Russian president, said Moscow was bidding to help lead efforts to build a new world economic order after the old system collapsed in the global financial crisis. Mr Medvedev said the renewed interest in Russia this year was a sign of a changing world in which the institutions of the western-dominated world order had had their day amid thousands of corporate defaults and the threat of sovereign defaults. Medvedev said, “What had seemed untouchable has collapsed. The bubbles that created the illusion of flourishing economies have burst. And we should use it to build a modern, flourishing and strong Russia … which will be a co-founder of the new world economic order and a full participant in the collective political leadership of the post-crisis world.” That’s just great. Russia is now vying to lead the world economy. Now, I’m not faulting Dmitry. I don’t fault ambition, ever. But I am going to do some “faulting” here. Here’s what I’m going to fault. Western Government, that’s what.
Two points to consider Dmitry. One, the free market didn’t fail. Two, Western Government failed. Yes, we are in a global recession. Yes, times have been tough.
But mind you Dmitry, the vast, vast, vast majority of failures have been directly tied to government. Let’s check it out. AIG? Credit default swaps unregulated by government, thank you Lindsey Grahm and President Clinton. Financial Crisis on Wall Street? Community Redevelopment Act, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, are the root causes. The auto industry? Government imposed café standards and unions. Steel Industry? Unions and regulation caused its demise. Real estate market crash? Again, Community Redevelopment Act, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Outlandish corporate risks gone bad? Enabled by government bail outs.
But the biggest failure? Government? Which one? Pick. U.S., Greece, Spain, Portugal, U.K., Ireland, Japan. Every one of them simply spent more than they took in and bankrupted themselves, except they don’t have to go bankrupt, they can tax. The problem is that when they tax they kill the host that their parasitic nature depends on. They kill the private sector which when you look at the portion of the private sector that is not tethered, buoyed or inflated by government, that portion is doing all right, even in these disastrous times. But even the portion of the private sector that isn’t attached to the wet teet of government will be crushed if government takes much more of the productivity.
And that’s the plan, to take more, to redistribute more, to further slash liberty to the bare. Every nation, every leader needs a kick in the head. They need to be forced to objectively review history and admit that they are wrong in their pursuits. They need to accept the fact that government, more often than not, is not the solution, it’s the problem. Government is unaccountable and suffers little consequence, thus they routinely fail as they are now. This isn’t new. This is the same old story.
Come on readers. How’s our government doing on the Gulf Oil Spill? How is our government doing on the illegal alien problem? Our government couldn’t even run Arlington National Cemetery correctly. If you didn’t see the news today, they found a pile of head stones in a creek bed and were recently found to be burying veterans on top of other veterans. It is rather ironic that our government can’t even manage to run a burial appropriately while at the same time, pushing us in a direction where it’s going to need it’s own burial. There’s more. Social Security? Bankrupt. Medicare? Bankrupt. Medicaid? Bankrupt. Our future, bankrupt. (If we don’t act fast). We have 113 trillion dollars in unfunded liabilities crashing down on us. If we don’t change, we are dooming ourselves and our children and our children’s children. Shame on us.
Yet, I’ll give Dmitry this: He’s on the right track. He said this too: “Russia needs a real investment boom”, in order to achieve its modernization goals, he said. To stimulate that, Mr Medvedev announced Moscow would introduce zero taxation on capital gains for companies working on long-term investments starting from January next year and said Russia was improving the legal system to provide better protection for businesses against the long arm of bureaucracy.
Wow, we won the cold war only to be out libertied by the Ruskies! Now that’s down right embarrassing.
Wake up folks. Government is the problem. It’s a cancer, and it’s killing us. We need to get it under control. We need to shrink the tumor or learn to speak Russian or maybe Chinese.
Obama is still playing the metaphorical role of the parent who spoils, enables, and ultimately ruins his children. The metaphor is this; the parent is the President, the children are Americans. On Saturday, Obama urged reluctant lawmakers Saturday to quickly approve nearly $50 billion in emergency aid to state and local governments, saying the money is needed to avoid “massive layoffs of teachers, police and firefighters” and to support the still-fragile economic recovery. Rahm Emanuel said,”While some people say you have to spend and some people say you have to cut, the president wants to talk about both cuts and investing,” There’s some of the old audacity, characterizing “spending” as “investing.” (Government spending has a negative multiplier effect which means the economy shrinks by more than a dollar when the government spends a dollar.)
The federal government needs to stop borrowing money, mostly from China, and start existing within its means. The Federal Government has a monumental cash flow problem meaning the money coming in is less than the money going out. Yet, the current administration could care less. The stimulus did not stop a free fall. It protected government workers who make substantially more than the private sector.
As reported in the USA TODAY by Dennis Cauchon on March 8th, 2010, “Federal employees earn higher average salaries than private-sector workers in more than eight out of 10 occupations, a USA TODAY analysis of federal data finds. Accountants, nurses, chemists, surveyors, cooks, clerks and janitors are among the wide range of jobs that get paid more on average in the federal government than in the private sector. Overall, federal workers earned an average salary of $67,691 in 2008 for occupations that exist both in government and the private sector, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data. The average pay for the same mix of jobs in the private sector was $60,046 in 2008, the most recent data available. These salary figures do not include the value of health, pension and other benefits, which averaged $40,785 per federal employee in 2008 vs. $9,882 per private worker, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis.”
Here’s some Reetzality: According to the USA TODAY analysis, the over-all cost, what “public servants” earn, of a public sector job including benefits is $38,548.00 more than an equivalent private sector job. Well not entirely equivalent. Public sector employees don’t work as hard, aren’t as accountable, and don’t get fired as easily as private sector workers. Glenn Beck is encouraging us to read the Road to Serfdom by Friedrich von Hayek which is an influential exposition of classical liberalism. I looked up the word Serf for the literal definition. It is, according to Webster’s, “1. A person in a condition of feudal servitude, required to render services to a lord, commonly attached to the lord’s land and transferred with it from one owner to another. 2. A slave.” Sadly, I think we’re nearing the end of this particular road. We are required to render. Our burden to render is passed from one political class to another. Do we really own our land? Just stop paying the king, I mean the government and see how long you can call home, home. And the kings’ men, I mean the public sector employees, are getting compensated more than the private sector. They are receiving more wealth than the folks actually producing the wealth. And isn’t being forced to pay near fifty percent of a person’s productivity in taxes, whether state, federal, local, property, sales, fuel, personal property, license fees, etc., effectively a partial violation of the Thirteenth Amendment? Doesn’t that make a person half a slave? Well maybe not. We don’t have to work. We can go Surfing. Maybe it’s only share cropper status government is imposing.
Back to serious. The private sector is still collapsing under the present weight of government and the fear of the future increased weight of government and Obama wants to bail out government. Hey President, how about cutting government. How about doing what any private sector enterprise would do when faced with a budget crisis, across the board cuts in wages? Or if your minions in your teachers unions, police and fire fighter unions and the AEIU don’t like it, lay some of them off. Trust me Mr. President, we in the private sector will survive. Further more, these are state entities you are bailing out. Why not allow the States to resolve their own problems? Why continue to enable a failing and likely soon to actually fail top heavy government bloated system that continues to usurp the people’s liberties, principles, perseverance, ingenuity, and optimism? Here’s why. Obama is a bad President, behaving just like a bad parent. He is the parent who keeps saying, “This is the last warning! This is the last time. If you ______________ (fill in the blank with any adolescent transgression) one more time, I will ______________ (fill in the blank with any punishment).” Then, when the bad parent’s child once again commits a transgression, he again enables the child by not imposing consequences. Consider this: Wage cuts in government are almost historically non-existent. Thus, now when we need them, when our future depends on a smaller government (or learning Chinese), government workers will have no part of it. Government workers will behave just like a spoiled child who is facing the imposition of a rarely, if ever, imposed consequence. They will throw a tantrum. And the parent, our President, will come to their aid, blame others, probably George Bush, and do anything he can to commandeer the wet teet into their mouths, further damaging the future.
In fact, this is exactly what he is doing right now. He said so yesterday. I am not making a prognosis here. I am making a diagnosis. Sticking with the parenthood comparison, my experience is that when a parent spoils, enables, and comprehensively fails to raise a child of much merit, eventually, notwithstanding the contempt for the child’s behavior, the parent is held to be responsible. The parent is the bad guy. The children are the ones who suffer. Obama is the parent. Americans are the children. Maybe Obama needs to read some Dr. Spock. It seems like he’s reading Dr. Seuss.
Now this is what I’ve been trying to say! Dorothy Rabinowitz, writing for the Wall Street Journal writes a fantastic piece. Read on with an open mind.
THE ALIEN IN THE WHITEHOUSE
The distance between the president and the people is beginning to be revealed.
By DOROTHY RABINOWITZ
The deepening notes of disenchantment with Barack Obama now issuing from commentators across the political spectrum were predictable. So, too, were the charges from some of the president’s earliest enthusiasts about his failure to reflect a powerful sense of urgency about the oil spill.
There should have been nothing puzzling about his response to anyone who has paid even modest critical attention to Mr. Obama’s pronouncements. For it was clear from the first that this president—single-minded, ever-visible, confident in his program for a reformed America saved from darkness by his arrival—was wanting in certain qualities citizens have until now taken for granted in their presidents. Namely, a tone and presence that said: This is the Americans’ leader, a man of them, for them, the nation’s voice and champion. Mr. Obama wasn’t lacking in concern about the oil spill. What he lacked was that voice—and for good reason.
Those qualities to be expected in a president were never about rhetoric; Mr. Obama had proved himself a dab hand at that on the campaign trail. They were a matter of identification with the nation and to all that binds its people together in pride and allegiance. These are feelings held deep in American hearts, unvoiced mostly, but unmistakably there and not only on the Fourth of July.
A great part of America now understands that this president’s sense of identification lies elsewhere, and is in profound ways unlike theirs. He is hard put to sound convincingly like the leader of the nation, because he is, at heart and by instinct, the voice mainly of his ideological class. He is the alien in the White House, a matter having nothing to do with delusions about his birthplace cherished by the demented fringe.
One of his first reforms was to rid the White House of the bust of Winston Churchill—a gift from Tony Blair—by packing it back off to 10 Downing Street. A cloudlet of mystery has surrounded the subject ever since, but the central fact stands clear. The new administration had apparently found no place in our national house of many rooms for the British leader who lives on so vividly in the American mind. Churchill, face of our shared wartime struggle, dauntless rallier of his nation who continues, so remarkably, to speak to ours. For a president to whom such associations are alien, ridding the White House of Churchill would, of course, have raised no second thoughts.
Far greater strangeness has since flowed steadily from Washington. The president’s appointees, transmitters of policy, go forth with singular passion week after week, delivering the latest inversion of reality. Their work is not easy, focused as it is on a current prime preoccupation of this White House—that is, finding ways to avoid any public mention of the indisputable Islamist identity of the enemy at war with us. No small trick that, but their efforts go forward in public spectacles matchless in their absurdity—unnerving in what they confirm about our current guardians of law and national security.
Consider the hapless Eric Holder, America’s attorney general, confronting the question put to him by Rep. Lamar Smith (R., Texas) of the House Judicary Committee on May 13.
Did Mr. Holder think that in the last three terrorist attempts on this soil, one of them successful (Maj. Nidal Hasan’s murder of 13 soldiers at Fort Hood, preceded by his shout of “Allahu Akbar!”), that radical Islam might have played any role at all? Mr. Holder seemed puzzled by the question. “People have different reasons” he finally answered—a response he repeated three times. He didn’t want “to say anything negative about any religion.”
And who can forget the exhortations on jihad by John Brennan, Mr. Obama’s chief adviser on counterterrorism? Mr. Brennan has in the past charged that Americans lack sensitivity to the Muslim world, and that we have particularly failed to credit its peace-loving disposition. In a May 26 speech at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Mr. Brennan held forth fervently, if not quite comprehensibly, on who our enemy was not: “Our enemy is not terrorism because terrorism is just a tactic. Our enemy is not terror because terror is a state of mind, and as Americans we refuse to live in fear.”
He went on to announce, sternly, that we do not refer to our enemies as Islamists or jihadists because jihad is a holy struggle, a legitimate tenet of Islam. How then might we be permitted to describe our enemies? One hint comes from another of Mr. Brennan’s pronouncements in that speech: That “violent extremists are victims of political, economic and social forces.”
Yes, that would work. Consider the news bulletins we could have read: “Police have arrested Faisal Shahzad, victim of political, economic and social forces living in Connecticut, for efforts to set off a car bomb explosion in Times Square.” Plotters in Afghanistan and Yemen, preparing for their next attempt at mass murder in America, could only have listened in wonderment. They must have marvelled in particular on learning that this was the chief counterterrorism adviser to the president of the United States.
Long after Mr. Obama leaves office, it will be this parade of explicators, laboring mightily to sell each new piece of official reality revisionism—Janet Napolitano and her immortal “man-caused disasters” among them—that will stand most memorably as the face of this administration.
It is a White House that has focused consistently on the sensitivities of the world community—as it is euphemistically known—a body of which the president of the United States frequently appears to view himself as a representative at large.
It is what has caused this president and his counterterrorist brain trust to deem it acceptable to insult Americans with nonsensical evasions concerning the enemy we face. It is this focus that caused Mr. Holder to insist on holding the trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in lower Manhattan, despite the rage this decision induced in New Yorkers, and later to insist if not there, then elsewhere in New York. This was all to be a dazzling exhibition for that world community—proof of Mr. Obama’s moral reclamation program and that America had been delivered from the darkness of the Bush years.
It was why this administration tapped officials like Michael Posner, assistant secretary of state for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor. Among his better known contributions to political discourse was a 2005 address in which he compared the treatment of Muslim-Americans in the United States after 9/11 with the plight of the Japanese-Americans interned in camps after Pearl Harbor. During a human-rights conference held in China this May, Mr. Posner cited the new Arizona immigration law by way of assuring the Chinese, those exemplary guardians of freedom, that the United States too had its problems with discrimination.
So there we were: America and China, in the same boat on human rights, two buddies struggling for reform. For this view of reality, which brought withering criticism in Congress and calls for his resignation, Mr. Posner has been roundly embraced in the State Department as a superbly effective representative.
It is no surprise that Mr. Posner—like numerous of his kind—has found a natural home in this administration. His is a sensibility and political disposition with which Mr. Obama is at home. The beliefs and attitudes that this president has internalized are to be found everywhere—in the salons of the left the world over—and, above all, in the academic establishment, stuffed with tenured radicals and their political progeny. The places where it is held as revealed truth that the United States is now, and has been throughout its history, the chief engine of injustice and oppression in the world.
They are attitudes to be found everywhere, but never before in a president of the United States. Mr. Obama may not hold all, or the more extreme, of these views. But there can be no doubt by now of the influences that have shaped him. They account for his grand apology tour through the capitals of Europe and to the Muslim world, during which he decried America’s moral failures—her arrogance, insensitivity. They were the words of a man to whom reasons for American guilt came naturally. Americans were shocked by this behavior in their newly elected president. But he was telling them something from those lecterns in foreign lands—something about his distant relation to the country he was about to lead.
The truth about that distance is now sinking in, which is all to the good. A country governed by leaders too principled to speak the name of its mortal enemy needs every infusion of reality it can get.
Ms. Rabinowitz is a member of the Journal’s editorial board.
That’s my Reetzality for they day! Thanks for the read and thank you Ms. Rabinowitz.
June 4 (Bloomberg) – President Barack Obama is poised to increase the U.S. debt to a level that exceeds the value of the nation’s annual economic output, a step toward what Bill Gross called a “debt super cycle.” Bill Gross is the co-chief investment officer and manager of the world’s biggest bond fund at Pacific Investment Management Co. said yesterday the unemployment rate may rise to 10 percent within the next several months with job growth “anemic.” “Over the long term, interest rates on government debt will likely have to rise to attract investors,” said Hiroki Shimaru, a market economist in Tokyo at Nikko Cordial Securities Inc., a unit of Japan’s third-largest publicly traded bank. “That will be a big burden on the government and the people.” (U.S.’s $13 Trillion Debt Poised to Overtake GDP: Chart of Day, by Garfield Reynolds and Wes Goodman, Bloomberg)
“The market was assuming that the private sector was coming back, but obviously we’ve seen none of that,” Gross said in a radio interview on Bloomberg Surveillance with Tom Keene. Geithner also singled out Europe as a region needing to push forward with financial regulation reform. “Further progress on financial repair is critical to global economic recovery,” he wrote. “This requires, particularly in parts of Europe, further efforts to restructure and recapitalize the banking system.” In the U.S., where personal savings is increasing and Congress is close to passing legislation overhauling financial rules, “we are meeting our responsibility,” Geithner told reporters in Washington June 2.
The savings rate in the U.S. climbed to 3.6 percent in April, the highest level since January, from 3.1 percent in March as incomes increased and purchases cooled, according to Commerce Department figures released May 29.
June 7 (Bloomberg) — The U.S. economy may be headed for a slowdown reminiscent of the one it suffered in 2002 as the sovereign-debt crisis in Europe, fading government support and persistently high Joblessness weigh on expansion in the second half of the year. Economists have begun to lower their forecasts for the first time since the recovery began in the middle of 2009. Allen Sinai, chief global economist at Decision Economics, and Michael Moran chief economist at Daiwa Capital Markets America in New York, said they now see annualized growth of 2.25 percent to 2.5 percent in July-December, down from around 3 percent previously. “The risks to the recovery are growing,” the New York- based Sinai said. “We’ve raised the odds of a double-dip recession to one in four from one in 20.” “Markets had excessively bought into the possibility of a V-shaped rebound driven by a self-sustaining private-sector recovery,” Mohamed El-Erian chief executive officer of Newport Beach, California-based Pacific Investment Management Co., manager of the world’s largest bond fund, said in an e-mail. That view “is starting to be visibly and increasingly challenged by the multiplying facts and realities on the ground.” The latest came on June 4, when the Labor Department reported that private-sector employers added 41,000 jobs to their payrolls in May, down from 218,000 in April and well below the 180,000 median forecast by 35 economists in a Bloomberg News survey. While the unemployment rate fell to 9.7 percent from 9.9 percent, it’s remained above 9 percent. (U.S. Rebound Seen Slowing Most Since 2002 on Europe Debt Woes by Rich Miller, Bloomberg)
O.K., ON TO REETZALITY. There’s the financial news of the day. The European Union is on the brink of failure, Greece has failed, Hungary is facing default, said Viktor Orban who then changed his tune when Hungary’s currency, the Forint fell 4.8% in two days, destroying his credibility. Portugal, Spain, England, Ireland and the United States are “coming on strong” in the race to fail. Things are not looking good folks no matter what President Obama says about the recent job growth which only included 41,000 private sector jobs which barely keeps up with population growth. (Either an amazing lie or an amazing ignorance on his part. New jobs are compared to increased population; thus true job growth requires an increase in the percentage of employed persons to the actual population to increase.) We are in trouble, big time.
Here’s why we are in trouble: Insane government policies of redistribution of wealth! Governments throughout the world have made endless commitments to take care of people and industries, addicting its masses to the government teet. In doing so, governments have thwarted individuals’ ability to take care of themselves. Governments have reared generations of dependents rather than independents. They have done so through liberal policies of government handouts to individuals, corporations and unions. They have taxed people, either directly or indirectly (see license fees, excessive regulation, hidden taxes, value added taxes, Obama care, etc.) and threaten to tax and regulate more (see EU meetings and listen to President Obama). They have taxed us to the point that we are now partial metaphorical slaves, handing over in some cases more than fifty percent of our productivity to government so they can redistribute it, take our earnings, our wealth, and giving it to somebody else. Now, the true private sector, the corporations not in bed with government, the traditional family, the small business, these entities are doing what they should be doing, and rightfully so; they are preparing for the worst part of the storm. Folks are saving more. Folks are not spending as much. Companies are not hiring. Folks will be leaving the equities market or hedging against the predicted and ominous free fall. The world economy is faultering. It is on the brink of disaster. Let me rephrase the last sentence. We are on the brink of accepting the reality that we are in a disaster. The disaster started a long time ago.
We will begin to see government pensions fail. As reported by David Cho, a Washington Post staff writer, October 11, 2009, “The financial crisis has blown a hole in the rosy forecasts of pension funds that cover teachers, police officers and other government employees, casting into doubt as never before whether these public systems will be able to keep their promises to future generations of retirees.” See also http://www.pensiontsunami.com/. The fact is, financially government pensions have already failed. They are broke because the governments that run them, federal, state and local, have not only taxed the private sector to pay for them, but then, in a way, double dipped and took, they call it borrowed, the pension reserves to again redistribute the wealth, the same actual wealth, a second time.
Government has anesthetized the private sector which is not the best metaphor because although the private sector is hunkering down, hibernating, it is doing so consciously as a defensive measure to governments’ reckless spend and tax policies.
Here’s more Reetzality, a prediction in part and also an observation. The private sector is going to decouple from the public sector. Decoupling is a financial term. Decoupling is a situation in which returns on two assets or asset classes that normally move together move separately. For example, oil and natural gas prices usually move together: when one goes up, so does the other, and vice versa. Likewise, stocks and corporate bonds usually behave the same way. Decoupling in both cases occurs when oil moves in one direction while natural gas moves in the opposite, or when stocks’ and corporate bonds’ returns diverge.
Unfortunately, but it’s the Reetzality for the day, the public and private sector are not asset classes in the literal sense. Therefore, I am opining on a more ominous decoupling. The private sector has lost all faith in the public sector. The true private sector, the portion that is not in bed with government, unlike Wall Street, the auto industry, unions, etc., is decoupling itself from the government. Folks are sheltering their productivity, not spending when the government attempts to get them to spend through faux stimulus plans, saving more, getting out of the market, working for cash, trading goods and services to avoid taxes and generally as stated previously, hunkering down for the worst of the storm. The private sector is decoupling.
Here’s the problem with that: As the governments’ reckless, disastrous and wrongful policies manifest in failure, as government workers (see Greece) protest the bankruptcy of their employers, the governments, governments will come for the private sectors money. Governments will hijack even more of the private sectors’ productivity. I’m not certain that the private sector will tolerate this ominous Reetzality. I am not suggesting that there will be an actual revolution. I am suggesting that the private sector will say that it has had enough and will civilly revolt through the vote, through increased frugality and through government avoidance policies. The private sector will say, “No thank you government, we’ve helped enough. Time for you to accept responsibility for yourself. Be sure to tell your people.”
And let me tell you this, the government will not like this one bit. The government will blame the private sector. The government will refuse to acknowledge the real crisis which is not financial, not health care, not energy, not private debt, not education, not hunger, not anything other than a single crisis that has a redundant history, a Government Crisis. (See Rome, Greece, U.S.S.R.) Until our “leaders” accept responsibility for their policies and turn to the dependents they’ve been spoiling for generations and tell their dependents that they can’t afford it anymore, times they are a changing, things won’t get better. And if they don’t? Well then my readers, history will repeat itself and we will have a comprehensive collapse of the world economy.
God save our Children.
Note: Thank you Bloomberg for your resources. You are an honest news source indeed.
President Obama, during Thursday’s (May 27, 2010) press conference, said that every morning when he’s shaving, his daughter comes in and asks, “Did you plug the hole yet, Daddy?” It is reported that Glenn Beck hit a new low by mocking this asserted inquiry of Malia, President Obama’s daughter. I disagree. Here are my thoughts as to why I do not think Glenn Beck was mocking Malia Obama:
1. I do not believe the question was asked by Malia Obama. In order for her to ask the question, President Obama would have to be posing the problem of the oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico as his responsibility. He would have to have been telling his daughter, literally and only, “I have to plug a hole.” It is inconsistent with President Obama to ever leave any doubt laying around that something might be his fault. He would have tagged his mission to “plug the hole” with some blame gaming.
2. It is inconsistent with President Obama to take responsibility for anything without first blaming somebody else. If you have to bet on the “somebody else,” put your money on George Bush. So, if acting in character, and if actually consulting with his daughter Malia, he would have said, something akin to “I have to plug the hole George Bush caused,” or “I have to plug the hole the Oil industry caused.” Thus, his daughter would have asked, “Did you plug the hole George Bush caused, Daddy?” Or maybe, “Did you plug the hole the oil industry caused, Daddy?” Or “Did you plug the hole Republicans caused, Daddy?” Or even, “Did you plug the hole that unregulated free enterprise caused, Daddy?” Now if these were the question his daughter asked, I’d believe the story.
3. Consistent with President Obama’s inability to accept responsibility on steps one and two of crisis management (Step one: What happened and who is at fault? Step two: What is the solution and who’s going to be responsible for the solution?) and President Obama’s narcissistic inability not to take credit for the third step, the actual solution, there is no way he would allow his daughter to surmise that if he didn’t “plug the hole,” it would be his fault. Nothing is his fault according to him. I’ve wracked my brain and I can’t come up with a single example of him taking the blame for anything. On the other hand, and in the opposite, he does have an inclination to take credit for most everything, regardless of two important points of consideration. POINT 1. Did he actually do anything allowing him to take credit? POINT 2. Is there anything for which he can take credit? As an example, see the economy. Notwithstanding the Stimulus Package’s failure to keep unemployment at 8%, President Obama is taking credit for an improved economy that is not improved.
4. Even if his daughter did ask such a question, and if President Obama told the entire story of the routine morning dialogue with Malia, he would have told us of his response, which if the story is to be believed, would have been, “What hole are you referring to Malia?”
Because, and this is a transitional paragraph, President Obama has a lot of holes to plug. He has the economy hole which is going down the drain due primarily to the tangible fear of business of Obama’s policies. He has the national debt hole. It is almost literally off the charts. He has the foreign policy hole. His apology tour didn’t work. North and South Korea are no longer hugging. Iran is going nuclear. Israel is miffed at us. He has the war hole. No end in sight. He has the immigration hole. Huge numbers of illegals are leaking in. And he has the Joe Sestak hole, the primary point of my commentary today. Here goes:
Here’s the news: Former President Bill Clinton was tasked by White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel to make an approach to Rep. Joe Sestak — allegedly offering him an unpaid advisory role on an intelligence board in exchange for getting him to drop his primary bid against Sen. Arlen Specter (Pa.). Rep. Joe Sestak says he declined the offer. This stinks of tripe in so many ways. No way. Here’s why it is nothing more than a cheap charade.
QUESTION NUMBER ONE: Who would go to a candidate in a senatorial race and offer him an unpaid job in exchange for pulling out of a race?
ANSWER NUMBER ONE: Nobody.
QUESTION NUMBER TWO: Why would Joe Sestak state that he was offered a “job” when, if you believe the White House, it was an unpaid position?
ANSWER NUMBER TWO: He wouldn’t.
QUESTION NUMBER THREE: If it was so legal, innocent (and worthless) a proposal, why wouldn’t Joe Sestak reveal its details?
ANSWER NUMBER THREE: Because it wasn’t so legal, innocent and worthless a proposal?
QUESTION NUMBER FOUR: If it was so legal, innocent (and worthless) a proposal, why wouldn’t the White House reveal the details?
ANSWER NUMBER FOUR: Because it wasn’t so legal, innocent and worthless a proposal?
QUESTION NUMBER FIVE: If it was so innocent (and worthless) a proposal, why did the White House employ Bill Clinton as a go between to make the offer?
ANSWER NUMBER FIVE: Because it wasn’t so legal, innocent and worthless a proposal?
QUESTION NUMBER SIX: Given the merits of the alleged proposal, give up your costly senate race and the White House will give you an unpaid position, would Bill Clinton actually go to Joe Sestak and make such a proposal?
ANSWER NUMBER SIX: No way. He would have laughed in their face and said, (think Bill Clinton’s voice after he laughs) “No way in hell he’s going to take that deal! What if we offered him women?” (The second sentence in Bill Clinton’s predicted response is a joke.)
QUESTION NUMBER SEVEN: If it was so legal, innocent (and worthless) a proposal, why did the White House and Joe Sestak employ so much delay in their response to repeated inquiries of the media?
ANSWER NUMBER SEVEN: Because it wasn’t so legal, innocent and worthless a proposal?
Come on folks. These guys are lying. If a five year old answered a poignant and imperative question with so much delay, distraction, ambiguity, and illogical response, you would never believe the child. You would know that something was amiss. And there is something amiss. The White House and President Obama are lying to us. This truth is right there in their false, taunting, demeaning, insulting, arrogant and audacious words and actions. They are betting on Americans being stupid. A bad bet Mr. President, a real bad bet.
Here’s a recap. President Obama is lying about his morning father-daughter dialogue, just like he is lying about “nothing improper occurring” with Joe Sestak and just like he is lying about not knowing the circumstances of the director of the U.S. Minerals Management Service, Elizabeth Birnhaum’s departure, (he had to know or he has to be inept, pick).
It was not Malia Obama that Glenn Beck mocked, it was President Obama. I believe he brought this on himself when he exploited his daughter for political gain and to massage his disturbing and troublesome ego. I also believe it was low brow to use his daughter in the way he did.
Note One: It has been learned that the “Top Kill” attempt to “plug the hole” was stopped and was in a holding strategy well prior to the press conference. Thus, and equally nefarious, President Obama could have been aware of this and, metaphorically, bet on a horse that had already won the race when he held his press conference. Another way put, he could have been demonstrating faux bravado and faux responsibility for the task of “plugging the hole” that had already been plugged by somebody else.
Note Two: I once used reference to my daughter in a closing argument. I was remanded by the District Attorney and the Judge. They were right and my reference to my daughter to make a point was improper in all respects.
Note Three: I looked up the definition of the word “mock.” By definition, if Glenn Beck was imitating Malia, regardless of whether the morning father-daughter conversation occurred, then he was “literally” mocking her. However, his obvious intent was to mock her father. I’m sure Mr. Beck feels bad about this. President Obama should feel worse.
