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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
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.
I’m no genius, but President Obama’s speech was shallow rhetoric, self aggrandizing bunk, and replete with the indicia of an incapable leader. It came across as a joke, but under the circumstances, it’s not funny. Let’s go through the rhetoric and analyze. Don’t get depressed. The first step in solving a problem is admitting you have a problem. We have a problem, it’s Obama. He’s helping us admit it. Here’s my analysis:
First comment of concern by our President and analysis:
Obama: “That is why just after the rig sank, I assembled a team of our nation’s best scientists and engineers to tackle this challenge – a team led by Dr. Steven Chu, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist and our nation’s Secretary of Energy.”
Reetzality: No you did not assemble a team just after the rig sank. And I don’t care about Nobel prizes. I care about results. After all, our President got one of those Nobel Prizes.
Second comment of concern by our Presidetn and analysis:
Obama: “First, the cleanup. From the very beginning of this crisis, the federal government has been in charge of the largest environmental cleanup effort in our nation’s history – an effort led by Admiral Thad Allen, who has almost forty years of experience responding to disasters.”
Reetzality: Thad Allen was appointed on May 1, 2010, ten days after the oil spill. Today he stated that he reports to the Secretary of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano, not to the president. The federal government has not been in charge of the largest environmental clean up since the very beginning, in fact, it is possible they are not in charge of it now.
Obama: “Tomorrow, I will meet with the chairman of BP and inform him that he is to set aside whatever resources are required to compensate the workers and business owners who have been harmed as a result of his company’s recklessness. And this fund will not be controlled by BP. In order to ensure that all legitimate claims are paid out in a fair and timely manner, the account must and will be administered by an independent, third party.”
Reetzality: Tomorrow? Eight weeks later he’s meeting with the chairman of BP? This is being Johnny on the spot to fix the problem? Not in my book. And where is authority to order a corporation to “set aside” funds? What about due process? What about liability? I know, it looks and most likely is BP’s fault, but we don’t know for sure yet. To announce that he’s ordering them to “set aside” without stating the mechanism which is going to do this reveals his ignorance of the constitution or his reliance on his perceived stupidity of Americans. But he gets right past those tedious constitutional issues and goes right into management, an independent third party, of the fund that we, nor he, has any clue how he’s going to order to be set aside.
Obama: “The oil spill represents just the latest blow to a place that has already suffered multiple economic disasters and decades of environmental degradation that has led to disappearing wetlands and habitats. And the region still hasn’t recovered from Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.”
Reetzality: There’s the blame Bush game. There’s the, “The Gulf is trashed but it’s not my fault entirely. Bush has to take some blame because he screwed up Katrina and Rita.”
Obama: “Already, I have issued a six-month moratorium on deepwater drilling. I know this creates difficulty for the people who work on these rigs, but for the sake of their safety, and for the sake of the entire region, we need to know the facts before we allow deepwater drilling to continue.”
Reetzality: Why six months? Why not a decade? Why not two months? Creates difficulty? Six months was an arbitrary time limit plucked out of the air. It has no basis in any analysis as to how long it would actually take. If you were in a meeting and somebody said, “six months,” you’d ask, “why six months? What’s your basis for needing six months?” For God’s sake, he’s the federal government, does it really take six months to “know the facts?” Maybe it does for the federal government. Me personally, I’d get you the facts in a week for a million dollars with a $200,000.00 operating budget, and I’m nothing special. I do agree that the loss of a job is a difficulty, maybe even a financial crisis for a family person supporting his or her family.
Obama: “. . . the Minerals Management Service. Over the last decade, this agency has become emblematic of a failed philosophy that views all regulation with hostility – a philosophy that says corporations should be allowed to play by their own rules and police themselves. At this agency, industry insiders were put in charge of industry oversight. Oil companies showered regulators with gifts and favors, and were essentially allowed to conduct their own safety inspections and write their own regulations.”
Reetzality: “Over the last decade . . . “ More of the blame game. As to industry insiders, our man, President Obama hired Elizabeth Birnbaum who formerly worked for BP. She resigned, effective May 31st, 2010. Yes, maybe insiders were put in charge, but our President hired the insiders.
Obama: “After all, oil is a finite resource. We consume more than 20% of the world’s oil, but have less than 2% of the world’s oil reserves. And that’s part of the reason oil companies are drilling a mile beneath the surface of the ocean – because we’re running out of places to drill on land and in shallow water.”
Reetzality: That’s not true. Regardless of the percentages, we have oil. How about drilling in ANWAR where we would have plugged the hole already. How about the East and West coast? How about the Dakotas? We’re running out of places to drill because the government is preventing us from drilling.
Obama: “Countries like China are investing in clean energy jobs and industries that should be here in America.”
Reetzality: You’ve got to be kidding. Our President has just called us, implicit in the above comment, retarded. Does anybody recall the air pollution concerns of the last Olympics? Does anybody, I mean anybody, believe that China, China for Heaven’s sake, is going green? They’re not. Shame on you Mr. President.
Obama: “This is not some distant vision for America. The transition away from fossil fuels will take some time, but over the last year and a half, we have already taken unprecedented action to jumpstart the clean energy industry. As we speak, old factories are reopening to produce wind turbines, people are going back to work installing energy-efficient windows, and small businesses are making solar panels. Consumers are buying more efficient cars and trucks, and families are making their homes more energy-efficient. Scientists and researchers are discovering clean energy technologies that will someday lead to entire new industries.”
Reetzality: This is classic liberal argument number one! Change the subject. The issue is the oil spill and plugging the hole and what does our President do? He changes the subject and speaks of Green. Not now Mr. President, you have a leak to plug. Go Green in your nearing retirement. See Al Gore.
Obama: “When I was a candidate for this office, I laid out a set of principles that would move our country towards energy independence. Last year, the House of Representatives acted on these principles by passing a strong and comprehensive energy and climate bill – a bill that finally makes clean energy the profitable kind of energy for America’s businesses.”
Reetzality: What are those “principles that would move our country towards energy independence?” This is classic, “let no crisis go to waste” speak. Bad President, bad.
Obama: “The one answer I will not settle for is the idea that this challenge is too big and too difficult to meet. You see, the same thing was said about our ability to produce enough planes and tanks in World War II. The same thing was said about our ability to harness the science and technology to land a man safely on the surface of the moon.”
Reetzality: First, the challenge is too big for you Mr. President. After all, how did you fare in that lemonade stand? Oops, you never ran a lemonade stand, or anything bigger. And the nerve of you to invoke World War II and the man on the moon. Those were real American challenges and if the truth be told, which I always do, (I’m not smart enough to lie) your rhetoric tonight would have us speaking German or, in the case of a man on the moon, have us still attempting. To the extent you are correct in your reaching analogy, you don’t have the hutzpah to be the guy in charge.
O.K. Now for the Reetzality recap. The president has lied about his efforts, his priority, and his diligence in dealing with the Gulf Oil spill. He has used the Gulf Oil Spill to leverage his bigger agenda, government growth and control. He is not equipped to deal with this crisis. He has absolutely no experience or history that would avail him of the ammunition to deal with this problem. He is flailing. Certainly, his words sound good but the merits of them, the meaning of his words, are troubling for their vacancy of significance. Even more problematic, he has yet to formulate a plan. He has delivered nothing more than shallow rhetoric that works just fine in the south side of Chicago and evidently in a presidential campaign, but when push comes to shove, doesn’t plug the hole.
Folks, I do not fault our President for who he is. He is a product of an enabled rearing where he was indulged. He was indulged as a youth. He was indulged with his admittance into the Universities he attended. He was indulged with his position as a constitutional law professor at the University of Chicago. He was indulged with his state legislative seat. He was indulged with his senate position. He was ultimately indulged with the Presidency. We, as a people, indulged him. We were serenaded by the tempo of his words and now he is President, with no experience in dealing with crisis, accountability or consequence, and our Gulf Coast is suffering as we will all suffer.
This is the revelation. This is the time, the moment, when our leader has revealed himself as a non-leader. This is the moment when the truth is revealed that our President is nothing more than a simple tele-prompter reader with no ability to deal with crisis. This is the time when we realize that our President is incapable, lacking the most important quality we need in a President, the ability to problem solve. He is vacant of the skills and strengths are country needs and demands.
And that’s my Reetzality for the Day.
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.
Sen. Charles E. Schumer, New York Democrat, said Sunday that American, Delta Air Lines, United Airlines, US Airways and JetBlue Airways each have committed to him that they would not institute fees for carry-on bags. He said he was hopeful other carriers would follow suit. Spirit airlines will charge fees for carry on baggage. Mr. Schumer said he planned to meet with the leadership of Spirit Airlines in the coming week. Mr. Schumer’s intention is to change Spirit’s mind. He will have an uphill battle. Ben Baldanza, Spirit’s president and CEO, told the Associated Press on Sunday that his airline still plans to go forward with its carry-on bag fee.
Good for Mr. Baldanza! The audacity of Senator Chuck Schumer to even think that somehow he as the authority to tell a private enterprise how much to charge is amazing, not to mention un-American. What are these Washingtonians thinking? Do they need a refresher course on free enterprise and liberty? They do. In fact a bunch of them need a refresher course, a “what for” in their faces. For example:
Representative Henry Waxman called upon the CEO’s of Verizon Communications, AT&T, Deere & Co. and Caterpiller to testify as to why they wrote internal memos to their employees describing how President Obama’s takeover of the health care industry will cost millions of dollars – billions in the case of AT&T. The non-political memos stated how their company’s would be affected by ObamaCare. The corporations that are under fire are required by law, the Security and Exchange Commission, to report this information.
President Obama, twelve days after being elected as President of the United States, was quoted to saying in a one-on-one television interview on 60 Minutes with Steve Kroft what he wanted to do for college football’s maligned championship game selection. Kroft asked “As president of the United States, what can you do, or what do you plan to do, about getting a college football playoff for the national championship?”
President Obama answered: “I think any sensible person would say that if you’ve got a bunch of teams who play throughout the season, and many of them have one loss or two losses, there’s no clear decisive winner that we should be creating a playoff system. Eight teams. That would be three rounds, to determine a national champion. It would it would add three extra weeks to the season. You could trim back on the regular season. I don’t know any serious fan of college football who has disagreed with me on this. So, I’m gonna throw my weight around a little bit. I think it’s the right thing to do.”
Senator Orin Hatch: The Obama administration and top Republican Orrin Hatch may become the driving force behind a legal move to force a college football playoff system.The AP says the Obama administration is considering several steps that would review the legality of the controversial Bowl Championship Series, the Justice Department said in a letter Friday to a senator who had asked for an antitrust review. In the letter to Sen. Orrin Hatch, obtained by The Associated Press, Assistant Attorney General Ronald Weich wrote that the Justice Department is reviewing Hatch’s request and other materials to determine whether to open an investigation into whether the BCS violates anti-trust laws.
Of course, there’s AIG, General Motors, Chrylser, Obama-Care, and the new push, financial regulation. How convenient that the Justice Department filed a civil action against Goldman Sachs just days before Obama visists New York City to push financial reform. Obama’s financial reform plan would create a new government body, the Consumer Financial Protection Agency (CFPA), which would “write rules, oversee compliance and address violations by non-bank providers (!), as well as banking institutions.” This agency would have to enforce its rules and would, according to the Obama design, be able to go after any firm that offers credit to consumers. Any firm! Obama’s plan would allow the CEO of the United States, him, to determine which company is “too big to fail.” His plan has a “back stop” for these firms. Government backstopping will allow these firms to be able to borrow at lower interest rates, just as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, have for years. (the biggest failures and by coincidence the most protected by government, with no hope of paying us back) have for years. If a firm gets in trouble, wala! Uncle Sam steps in and controls. Uncle Sam loves to control as of late.
Here’s the problem with all of these control tactics. I thought this was the land of the free. Free to succeed, free to fail. I thought if a company charged too much, then the free market would judge. I thought if a group of universities wanted to structure their playoffs in a certain way, go for it, it’s a free country. I thought that if a CEO spoke out, especially if the speaking out was simply complying with the law, go for it Mr. CEO, he wouldn’t get subpoenaed to Congress to explain why he was dissenting. I thought a lot of things, but then the cancer called Washington, led by the ultimate government carcinogenic, Obama, grew malignant. Now I question my thoughts. All of these control tactics are ignorant and contemptuous of American principles, such as liberty, for one. Let’s face it folks, these guys in Washington don’t have a clue about what makes this country tick. They actually believe that it is they who make this country tick. They could not be more wrong. They are parasites and we are the host. They should know that the parasites future does not shine bright when they kill the hosts.
We need to fix this mess. We need to vote the bums out this year, all of them. We need to get to work.
Does Obama despise America? Now there’s a question worth asking. I didn’t vote for the guy but I had hope that he would prove me wrong and be a moderate, like Bill Clinton ended up being. He didn’t. Let’s do a run down on Obama’s policies and see if he likes this country or not.
1. Health Care. He is vigorously pushing health care reform which will embody the government controlling one sixth of our economy, taking away freedom and liberty. It will also embody the taking of one person’s productivity and giving it to another, the redistribution of wealth. It will, by rudimentary economics, impose rationing. It cripples the free market. Thus, health care reform, according to Obama, takes away freedom, liberty, choice, redistributes wealth, limits the freedom to take care of oneself by rationing, and cripples, retards, pick, the free market. The ruling? Obama Health care is un-American.
2. Taxation. Obama wants to raise taxes to further his agenda of redistributing wealth. The ruling? Again, un-American.
3. Immigration. Obama wants to legalize illegal aliens with no agenda to secure our borders. The ruling? Again, un-American.
4. Financial Industry. Obama wants to impose drastic regulatory regulation that will limit credit, impose costs on the industry that will not just trickle down, they will fall down on the regular Joe like a tidal wave, hurting the average American. The ruling? Un-American.
5. Privacy. Obama has continued the Bush doctrine of warrantless searches and is encouraging the government monitoring of the internet. The ruling? Un-American.
6. Foreign Affairs. He has spent more time apologizing for America than praising its excellence. The ruling? Un-American.
7. Economic Policy. Obama has used the “stimulus plan” to reward political allies. He has used the money, debt rather, to give back to those who supported him, meaning government employees, unions, and state bureaucracies (Government Universities). He has burdened our off spring with massive debt that, if they chose to stay and participate, will thwart our offspring’s freedom and prosperity. The ruling? Un-American.
8. Freedom of Speech. Obama favors the Fairness Doctrine which would mandate equal time for all views regardless of market forces and popularity. It would mandate that for every Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck, there was an Al Franken on the air with equal time. The fairness doctrine would do this by taxing media and redistributing the resources to subsidize the contrary and opposite opinions. The ruling? Un-American.
9. Voting privacy. He favors “card check” which means that union votes would no longer be private. If you voted non-union, the union would know. His Attorney General dropped the suit against the Black Panthers for intimidating voters. The ruling? Un-American.
10. Free Market Principles. Obama has bailed out, taken over, GM and Chrysler. He has bailed out and taken over AIG. He is, through bail outs and regulation, attempting to take over the financial industry. He wants to publicize student loans, taking them out of the public sector. He believes that government is the only solution to our economic woes which were caused by government. He has expressed vitriolic contempt for the insurance industry which make less of a profit percentage than the top twenty-five industries. He loves Unions which fix prices and wrench power from the owners of businesses. The ruling? Un-American.
11. The Constitution. He himself said it was flawed in that it didn’t contemplate redistributive justice which, by the way, Mr. Constitutional Law professor, rocket scientist; redistributive justice contradicts the very core, the very fundamentals, of our constitution. The ruling? Un-American.
12. Fiscal Responsibility. Obama is making a drunken sailor look frugal. The ruling? Un-American.
13. The Second Amendment. Obama’s voting record and writings show that he is against the Second Amendment. The Ruling. Obama’s view on the Second Amendment is blatantly un-American. He fails.
Enough already. It took me all of five minutes to list the aforementioned un-American policies of Obama. Well, maybe eight minutes, but I can type as fast as I think which may be an indictment of my thinking rather than an accolade for my typing.
But let’s look at the core of an American and run Obama through this gauntlet. Here’s what I know Americans are: They are for independence. They are brave. They stand on their own. They are creative and innovative. They reject charity as a way of life. They are responsible. They are hard working. They are loyal to the Constitution. They are traditional. They are proud. O.K. Now to the second analysis of Obama:
1. Americans are for independence. Obama is against independence. He supports deference to other nations’ laws. He wants to join the world on cap and trade. He is for world solutions that depreciate our independence. The ruling? He is not independent. He fails.
2. Americans are brave. Obama does not speak from the heart, he speaks from the teleprompter. He’s never been in the military. He endlessly sheds responsibility and blames others. He is afraid to take responsibility for anything that shines poorly on him and his past. The ruling? He is not brave. He fails.
3. Americans stand on their own. Not Obama. Present was his most popular vote in the Illinois legislature. If things are going bad, he blames his predecessor. He defers to others, i.e. congress, to draft bills, i.e. health care. (His bill was nothing more than a collection of ideals with no meaningful merit.) He supports unions which contradict independence in the work place. The ruling. Obama does not stand on his own. He fails.
4. Americans are creative and innovative. Obama’s philosophies have been spoon fed to him by his mentors. His book was ghost written. He has not created a thing. The ruling. Obama is not creative. He fails.
5. Americans reject charity as a way of life. Obama was a community organizer where his passion was to shake down the system for the transfer of wealth. He is for the abject transfer of wealth, taking from a producer and giving to a non-producer. The ruling? Obama is in favor of charity as a way of life. He fails.
6. Americans are responsible. Obama blames his predecessor whenever in a pinch. He dodges questions, i.e. telling John McCain that “election is over.” He abhors any responsibility for the condition of our nation as caused by too much government. He spends like, I’ll use the term again but hype it a bit, a drunken sailor on crack cocaine. He is burdening our off spring with monumental debt, destroying our very fundamentals, and taking no responsibility. The ruling? Obama is not responsible. He fails.
7. Americans are hard working. Obama didn’t break from a golf game when the crotch bomber attempted to take down a jet. Obama hasn’t read a bill, maybe not even his own pseudo bill. Apparently he drinks too much and smokes too much. He has never held a private sector, bill paying job. He doesn’t respect one’s accomplishments for working hard. See redistributive justice opinion. The ruling? Obama is not hard working. He fails.
8. Americans are loyal to the Constitution. Obama says the Constitution is lacking in that it fails to address redistributive justice. Enough said. The ruling. Obama thinks he knows better than our founding fathers. He fails.
9. Americans are traditional. Obama said over and over again that he is going to change the fundamentals of our nations. Fundamental is defined as the origin of existence. Well if you are going to change the origin of one’s existence, you certainly are not traditional. The ruling? Obama is not traditional. He fails.
10. Americans are proud. Obama rejects American exceptionalism and continues to degrade our nation with his apologies. The ruling. Obama is not proud of America. He fails.
So face it folks, regardless of who you voted for, we’ve got us an un-American running the country. He’s not like us, nor does he even like us, assuming his policies are consistent with his likes and dislikes. So get your head out of the sand and speak out. Reject his policies. Call your congressman and let them know that you are independent, brave, that you can stand on your own, that you are creative and innovative, that you reject charity as a way of life, that you’re responsible for your own life, that you are hardworking, loyal to the Constitution, traditional, and damn proud of who you are.
Well unless you are with him in his anti-American Agenda, then I suggest you see a shrink. You need it. For a variety of reasons, to start: Self deprecation (destroying your nation), self loathing (despising your nation), child abuse (burdening your children with your debts), dependency (relying on government), anger management (control your loathe for our nation), sociopathy (ignoring the impact of your views upon others), and ultimately for depression (You won’t like your stated destination. See all socialist nations).
Lindsay Graham and Chuck Shomer want a national ID card with biometric information on it in order to prevent illegal aliens from working in the United States. It is a good goal making sure all workers are legal citizens or carry the proper working papers. Yet, it’s government we’re talking about here. So, as usual the plan is rife with ignorance, costs, suppression of freedom, and all the other bad stuff that comes with government. In my last blog I wrote about the control that would occur with the national I.D. card. Today, let’s study the cost. And then I’ll give you my idea. Read on.
Let’s look at the new bureaucracy that would be required to issue a national ID card. Let’s assume that there are three hundred million people in the United States. Let’s also assume that the government won’t stop themselves with only “registering” “workers.” Everybody, worker or non-worker, will be required to have one. It wouldn’t work otherwise. A person could claim not to be a worker, not get a card, work for cash like a ton of illegal aliens do, and dodge the system. I know, I know, who would have thunk it? Anyway back to the analysis. No let’s assume that it will take fifteen minutes of government bureaucracy to issue a card. That is probably an estimate lite but I’ll run with it. Fifteen minutes per application will take seventy-five million hours. Assuming a forty hour work week and a fifty week work year, that is two thousand hours per worker per year. Now assuming this, we divide two thousand into seventy five million and we get the number of additional government workers we need. The number is, drum roll, 37,500 new employees. Wait, these are the employees actually signing folks up. They need managers don’t they? Of course, it’s government. You can’t have a government without a good old fashioned inefficient, ineffective bureaucracy now can you? Let’s assume that each twenty five employees needs a manager. So we divide 37,500 by 25 and that will give us the first level of management. Drum roll, 1500 more employees added to 37,500 employees and we’re to 39,000 new employees. But the managers need managers so let’s divide 25 into 1500, again a mid-manager for every 25 low level managers. Answer please, 60. And the sixty mid-levels will need managers so we divide 25 into 60 and we get 2.4, so being government, we’ll round up and say three more. So now we’re up to 39,063 employees just for those who actually do the work. The end right? Nope. These folks are going to need personnel departments, health insurance departments, employee relations, purchasing departments, accounting departments, Information technology departments, payroll departments, public relations, enforcement, and more and more and more. Let’s add another 25,000 employees for support. Now we are up to 64,063 employees to get the national ID thing going.
What about cost? Well, the average federal salary is about $70,000.00. Let’s multiply this number by the number of employees. Here it is: $4,484,410,063. Almost 4.5 billion. Heck, that’s nothing in today’s world. Pocket change right?
So here’s the skinny. Once again we have a government program proposed that will cost billions of dollars and won’t work. Please understand, I didn’t take into consideration the cost of the technology, buildings, costs of bureaucracy imposed upon the private sector through company compliance and the time folks spend getting their national ID card. It will be more than 4.5 billion and again, it won’t work.
I’ve got a better idea. It will cost, let’s see, as they say on the beach in Mexico, “almost nothing.”
Pass the following laws:
1. No state shall issue a driver’s license or a state I.D. card to a non-citizen or somebody who doesn’t have proper working papers.
2. It shall be unlawful to hire anybody without a driver’s license or a valid state I.D. card.
I think that does it. No new bureaucracy. No new billions spent. It would work. But who am I to think I know better than government?
All right, I’m infringing on state’s rights here and I’m not fond of doing that as a matter of principle, but it’s Government we’re analyzing, and Government hates principles. If I had my druthers, there wouldn’t even be driver’s licenses.
They won’t try the Reetzality approach though because they aren’t really into immigration reform or keeping illegals from working. As usual, they’re goal is un-Constitutional control. They want every American to have a zip-strip federal I.D. so that the exploding regulation, control, and destruction of our freedom and liberties is easier for Government.
Email your congressman. Email the President. Don’t let them do it. No national I.D. card. Period! That’s my Reetzality for the Day.
Finally, do I get a fee for saving the government, wait, I meant us, billions? Just asking.
That’s my Reetzality for the Day.
Thanks for the Read.
Note: Think my numbers are wrong? Lets check out the census numbers. The State of Kansas, not the most populous of states, anticipates 4000 census workers will be needed. Let’s say we have fifty states the size of Kansas. (Note Mr. President, there are not fifty-seven states). 50 times 4000 is 200,000. So nationally, if all states were the size of Kansas, we will have 200,000 census workers. Are there more populous states than Kansas? Last time I checked, yes. So to just count the people, not even creating and processing identification cards, just to count the folks once, the federal government needs 200,000 census workers and that’s assuming, in the government defenders’ favor, that all states are the size of Kansas. Oh, here’s another fact. The census is anticipated to cost 14 billion dollars. So maybe I actually underestimated the cost of the national I.D. You think? Final note: Kansas is ranked thirty second in the population ranking. It is number 32 in the ranking of most populated to least populated.
Note: I love the truth of mathematics.
Captain Obonga to the Rescue!
I am so relieved. Thank you, thank you, thank you, Captain Obonga. I had no idea that the government, that failed to prevent a terrorist on the watch list whose father reported him as a radical without a passport from getting on a plane headed to Detroit with a bomb hidden in his underwear, no idea whatsoever that that government could fix everything else. The next thing you know they’ll be joking that the government can’t even keep strangers out of White House dinners? But you set me straight Captain Obonga. Thank you.
O.K., on a more serious note (although the first note was serious, I just utilized humor to demonstrate the seriousness, now I’ll get rid of the humor) was that a speech or what? Shoot, here comes the humor again. Captain Obonga is going to do everything. Pheewww! Say good bye to worries my little friends, I mean you American People. You “they” people.
O.K., O.K. O.K., I took a serious pill, so here goes, firm, fair and frank. The State of the Union address was a rambling cacophony of lies, misrepresentations, false promises, insincerity, rewriting of recent history, bragging, blaming, arrogance, ignorance, condescension, and otherwise consistent with a complete ripper of a marijuana fest. Thus, the “Obonga” nick name. We’ll call it a “BS”-afest instead.
Folks, he’s going to raise our taxes either directly or indirectly and has already done so with his deficit spending. Wait, small correction-maybe. He may have only raised our childrens’ taxes. Folks, he’s not going to endorse nuclear energy or off shore drilling. Folks, he has no desire to assist small business. He doesn’t even respect business for what it does. He said that all student loans would be forgiven in twenty years but in ten years if a graduate goes into public service. That’s right, we need more social workers and bureaucrats in our future than business people because social workers and bureaucrats are just so damn critical. See folks, this is another window into Captain Obonga’s soul. He values government more than the private sector. And he doesn’t understand basic values either; like paying off your debt. What in the world would justify a person to stop paying a debt if it’s not paid off? Shoot, that’s that pesky “keep your word” stuff. God that’s irritating. So what’s the big deal? I cut a deal, borrow some money for a four year degree which I actually spend six getting, drag the payments out for twenty years and then tell the lender that Captain Obonga told me I didn’t have to pay anymore after twenty years. Wait, wait, wait. I thought of something. Why don’t I just grab a public sector job in let’s say year nine, work it for a year, stop paying which is absolutely justified since I’ll be doing something so critical to America, actually serving the public for America, like for example, collecting tolls on a turnpike, and then, when I’m free of my promise to re-pay my student loan, I quit my cherished public sector job and go into the private sector and stick the tax payer with the rest of my debt. So many possibilities.
O.K. Folks, now I’m really going to be serious, actually I have been. I was just using humor to exemplify how much of a joke the State of the Union Address was. Our president has never made a bottom line, hangs out with communists and terrorists, loves Government, big government, is a progressive democrat, wants to socialize medicine, (He said he’s not quitting in his pursuit of his anti-American Agenda (He didn’t say “anti-American” but it is)), has no understanding of the economy, nothing is his fault, and after listening to his speech, wants to run everything.
Prior to his address, it was suggested that the Obama Administration was going to do a “re-set” on its agenda due to the rapidly growing trend against them. The pundits got it half right. Obama did do a reset but not on his agenda. He did a reset on the focus button so that the picture we see is different than before, blurred; but the content, the actual content, is exactly the same.
Beware folks, this guy does not like us “they” people. But he’s afraid of us and that’s why he reached out last night and spun the focus button. He changed the focus to hide. What he didn’t change was the content of his ambitions which are very un-American. Only our ability to see it was changed. But folks, you need not worry. I know this guy and his ambitions will come back into focus sooner than you think, definitely by November.
NOTE: I use the “Captain” title to remind folks of the Titanic, you know that unsinkable ocean liner that sank on its first voyage. Of course, America could never be like the Titanic.
