Barack Obama IS the crisis
By Ken Falkenstein | Monday, August 8th, 2011 | Politics
America has faced crises before, from having to defeat the world’s greatest military power to gain national independence (and then again to keep it), to fighting a bloody civil war over regional differences and the evil of slavery, to facing a Great Depression and fighting two world wars, to facing down a communist empire, to confronting international terrorism from religious radicals.
Each of these crises was an instance where the country had to face and overcome great pain and adversity, but each occasion also gave rise to great leaders: Washington, Madison, Lincoln, Roosevelt, Reagan, and (in the War on Terror) G.W. Bush.
Today we face a new crisis. Our country is mired in a debt so large that the human mind cannot comprehend it. A debt so large that no one anywhere seriously believes it can ever be repaid. A debt so large that it has caused the greatest economy in the history of the human race to begin to crumble under its weight.
But unlike in the times of those previous crises, we don’t have a leader equal to the task of overcoming the current crisis because our current president caused it – on purpose.
Would everything be perfect if we had not elected Barack Obama? No, of course not. But would we be in the worst debt crisis in human history while also being bogged down in the worst economy in over 70 years? The answer is an unequivocal no.
It is true that Obama inherited a bad economy – but he considered himself extraordinarily lucky to have done so.
First, it gave him a bully pulpit from which he could revise history to blame Republicans for an economy that was wrecked primarily by his own party’s policies (forcing lenders to give mortgages to thousands of families who could not afford them and then obstructing every effort by the Republicans to reform Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac).
More importantly, though, it gave him a crisis to exploit in order to impose his statist religion on the country.
And impose he did.
He started by stealing $1.3 trillion (counting interest) from our kids to give as political spoils to public sector unions in the guise of “stimulus.”
Then he spent hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to bribe senators from his own party into casting the deciding votes to impose a government take-over of our health care system on a public that vehemently opposed it – and still does.
But he didn’t stop there. He had the federal government take over banks and car companies, and he nationalized the student loan program. And he used the regulatory process to impose thousands of new government regulations on businesses that will cost them billions of dollars in compliance costs.
And by the end of his second year in office, he took a debt of $9 trillion that had taken 43 previous presidents 232 years to amass and he added $4 trillion in just two years. And worse, he created budget deficits in excess of $1.5 trillion every year – until the economy simply collapses.
This kind of statist fundamentalism was not what the American people signed on for when they elected a dynamic young newcomer who promised “hope and change.”
So, in November 2010, Americans showed up at the polls by the millions to throw Obama’s party out of power in the House and sweep in literally scores of new Republicans who were elected with the mission and mandate of stopping Obama from going any further with his statist agenda.
But Obama remained undaunted, continuing to write and enact new anti-business regulations and obstructing any effort by the Republicans to rein in spending.
And as a result, for the first time in history, American lost its AAA bond rating. And, predictably, the stock market crashed. And, predictably, Obama stepped out and blamed everyone in the world but himself. And, predictably, the stock market crashed again while he was giving his speech.
So who did Obama blame? The tea party. Yeah, that tea party – the movement that developed organically in 2010 with the singular mission of cutting spending and reducing the size and scope of a grossly overbloated federal government.
To say that blaming the tea party for the debt crisis is ridiculous is an insult to every truly ridiculous idea. Barack Obama blaming the tea party for the reduction of America’s bond rating is like parents who smoked around their kids blaming the oncologist for their kids’ lung cancer.
But then, since when has intellectual honesty ever mattered to movement leftists like Obama?
Conservatives love to characterize Barack Obama as incompetent and unqualified. These characterizations charitably assume that Obama would take the actions that would solve the crisis if only he were competent enough to figure them out.
That assumption is wrong.
To understand Barack Obama and his national Democrats, it is vital to understand this fact: The priority and mission of Barack Obama and the movement leftists who currently control the national Democrat Party is not to solve the current crisis. Their priority and mission is to impose their leftist religion on as many Americans as possible to the greatest extent possible. They see this crisis, like every crisis, as an opportunity to advance that mission.
So, let’s explore this assertion: The top factor preventing an economic recovery is the uncertainty in the market as to whether Obama will succeed in raising taxes and, more importantly, imposing even more regulatory burdens on them. Obama is smart enough to know that. He just doesn’t care.
Obama’s mission is not to restore America’s economy. Obama’s mission is to fundamentally change it into a government-controlled economy. His concern for the state of the economy is limited only to how it affects his chance to get reelected and continue to advance his statist religion.
That’s why he is out there blaming a movement that is centered on spending cuts for a reduction in our bond rating that was based specifically on out-of-control spending. Obama knows that his blaming the tea party is nonsensical on its face, but he also knows that the movement leftists in the establishment “news” media will parrot his propaganda.
And Obama knows that raising taxes in the middle of a recession (and yes, we are almost certainly in the middle of negative economic growth) will make the economy worse. But his priority is not to restore the economy; it is to redistribute wealth.
So, in the spirit of never letting a good crisis go to waste (especially when he worked so diligently to create it), Obama is exploiting the current crisis to demand tax increases or, at least, create an environment that gives him political cover to veto any renewal of the Bush tax cuts next year.
To understand Barack Obama one must understand that Obama’s loyalty is not to the economic health of the United States. His loyalty, and that of the leaders of the national Democrat Party, is to their leftist religion.
And that’s why Barack Obama is not only not the answer to the current crisis – Barack Obama IS the crisis.
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About the author
Ken Falkenstein has been a staffer in the United States Senate and the Virginia House of Delegates. He has managed political campaigns. He was a military intelligence analyst in the U.S. Army in West Germany during the Cold War. He is currently the Vice President of the Down Syndrome Association of Hampton Roads and practices as a civil litigation attorney with the law firm of Poole Mahoney PC in Virginia Beach. His concern for his kids' future is what most informs his writing.
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20 Responses to "Barack Obama IS the crisis"
This poll seems to indicate people know how bad off we are and who took us from bad to worst..
https://www.facebook.com/?ref=home#!/home.php?sk=question&id=256280824390320
Just a few thoughts on government from Paul’s letter to the Roman church Chapter 13:
1 Let every person be subject to the governing authorities; for there is no authority except from God, and those authorities that exist have been instituted by God. 2 Therefore whoever resists authority resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgement.
5 Therefore one must be subject, not only because of wrath but also because of conscience. 6 For the same reason you also pay taxes, for the authorities are God’s servants, busy with this very thing. 7 Pay to all what is due to them—taxes to whom taxes are due, revenue to whom revenue is due, respect to whom respect is due, honor to whom honor is due.
Well Christians certainly followed that advice. So why were they persecuted by the Romans up until Constantine? Why was Paul martyred? Only because they gave unto God what was God’s and unto Caesar what was Caesar’s. Caesar thought he was God too.
More recently why didn’t Dems give full obeisance to Bush43? Or to Bush41? Or to Reagan? Why doesn’t Obama acknowledge that the Tea Party members are duly constituted authorities themselves and honor them?
And didn’t Paul mention something about a struggle not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world?
To return to the post I have to semi-disagree or at least say that Obama is just the most prominent exemplar at the moment. As I have noted previously, I have heard nothing from Obama that I haven’t heard over the past 25 years from garden variety leftist Dems. He is a very typical and obviously unimaginative imbiber of various leftist/socialist dogmas. The only thing unusual about him is that he combines the superciliousness of the northeast leftist and the bare knuckles partisanship of lowbrow Dem city machine pols. This is why his support among fellow Dems is still quite high and why it will be difficult to primary him.
In one sense we are lucky that he is so politically tonedeaf since a more agile leftist could have navigated the reefs quite easily in my view. Obama does have a remarkable restorative capacity in one sense. When he was elected, the Republican party was stone cold dead. Yet he manged to restore it to life in less than a year and in two years make it the majority party of the entire country (I believe there are more elected Repubs now nationwide than Dems for the first time since the 1920s.)
Wally- As you well know, we don’t live in a Christian theocracy. We live in a representative democracy in which our founding document declares that “governments are instituted among men deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” But recent polling shows that only 17% of the American people believe the government is acting with their consent.
Obama certainly is not doing so. And that’s by design. His agenda is not to support and defend the United States as founded. His agenda is to advance his leftist agenda and “transform” America into a top-down state-run economy and government.
My principal intellectual criticism of the phony left-right paradigm thing is that the two sides both pray at the altar of government power, and differ only slightly in its application. This article is a perfect illustration of that fact.
“Obama’s mission is not to restore America’s economy. Obama’s mission is to fundamentally change it into a government-controlled economy.”
Earlier in the article, the OP says this:
“Each of these crises was an instance where the country had to face and overcome great pain and adversity, but each occasion also gave rise to great leaders: Washington, Madison, Lincoln, Roosevelt, Reagan, and (in the War on Terror) G.W. Bush.”
I cannot imagine any historian citing any president who more directly and forcefully reshaped American economy and culture itself than Roosevelt. Roosevelt shoved government control into more areas of the American economy than the rest of U.S. presidents combined. By citing Roosevelt as a great leader, the OP destroys his own argument against Obama.
The author further discredits himself, and proves that the republican establishment merely prays at the altar of power, by citing the two greatest destroyers of Constitutional liberty as Great Leaders. Some people feel powerful themselves when they pray in a big church.
Bush Jr. used the PATRIOT Act to ramp up the war on civil rights begun with the decades-old War on Drugs. Ten years later, any casual observer can see that civil rights are in serious jeopardy here in the U.S. Lincoln stood the concept of federalism on its head when he invaded the seceding states without any Constitutional authority, proclaiming the thing is greater than the parts that voluntarily created it, a concept that is used today to crush individualism. One hundred and fifty years later, the states are irrelevant and the Tenth Amendment meaningless.
It is no coincidence that the rest of the Bill of Rights is also under relentless and usually successful assault. Successive presidents have ignored or destroyed the Constitutional protections against government becoming too powerful. And they are always aided by those like the OP who cheer them on.
Only Washington was such offered power and refused it. Only Washington believed in the American Experiment.
Ken: A theocracy, no; but, it is a nation whose foundation was heavily influenced by Judeo-Christian theological and moral concepts.
What prompted my post was your description of crisis’ and leaders and their leadership that overcame these crisis’. The concept of right and “God is on our side” has been prevalent in crisis saving in our nation. From “Proclaim LIBERTY throughout all the Land ….” on the liberty bell from the Torah, “Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition”, “Battle Hymn of the Republic”, “Under God” added to the Pledge of Allegiance, but more importantly s the following:
“You know, if we look back through history to all those great civilizations, those great nations that rose up to even world dominance and then deteriorated, declined, and fell, we find they all had one thing in common. One of the significant forerunners of their fall was their turning away from their God. … Without God, there is no virtue, because there’s no prompting of the conscience. Without God, we’re mired in the material, that flat world that tells us only what the senses perceive. Without God, there is a coarsening of the society. And without God, democracy will not and cannot long endure. If we ever forget that we’re one nation under God, then we will be a nation gone under.” Ronald Reagan, 1984.
Further, “”Our party must be based on the kind of leadership that grows and takes its strength from the people. Any organization is in actuality only the lengthened shadow of its members. A political party is a mechanical structure created to further a cause. The cause, not the mechanism, brings and holds the members together. And our cause must be to rediscover, reassert and reapply America’s spiritual heritage to our national affairs.”
“Then with God’s help we shall indeed be as a city upon a hill with the eyes of all people upon us.” – Ronald Reagan.
Ken, you opened the door to Leadership and crisis saving, yet you forsake the primary tenets that rallied those forces to effect change.
While Ken at one point on this forum appeared to actually be interested in policy, his recent articles reveal he is simply a political hack, towing the Grover Norquist line, totally divorced from the real crisis facing this nation. Of course, we know this is the officially adopted mantra of the far right; that is, do or say anything to make the President look bad. Regretfully, they had succeeded, until any pretext of concern about the deficit and debt evaporated as they blocked a deal that would have prevented the downgrade. Yet rather than acknowledge the depth of the republican hypocrisy, Ken just ignores the fiscal chaos created by Bush, and starts in again with his ignorant analysis of what he says is the President’s problem. We republicans, as McConnell said, now own the debt and the deficit, and the rating downgrade just proves the point, just as ken has proved that only republican politics are importatn to him.
Jamie- I actually agree with a lot of your libertarian philosophy. My listing of FDR and GWB as great leaders was specific to their performance as commander-in-chief during WWII and the War on Terrorism respectively. I agree with your condemnation of both presidents for their domestic expansion of the size and scope of government.
I differ with you on the Patriot Act, though. Although there are provisions and applications of the Act that cause me concern, in general I think it was a responsible piece of legislation that has done a lot to defend us from international terrorists while not unreasonably curtailing our civil rights.
Wally and Jaime,
Very thoughtful posts.
De Tocqueville noted the importance of religious faith in the strength and maintenance of democracy. However Wally’s first Reagan quote is one of the few from Reagan that I don’t agree with. It doesn’t really speak to democracy directly but to military or economic power. Religions spread more indiscriminately to small and large countries independent of their worldly power. History does not show in a consistent manner that the degree of religious observance is correlated with national dominance.
Jaime,
You are right that members of the Federal establishment have a vested interest in its powers regardless of their policy differences. But you are a bit one sided in your descriptions of the Presidents you reference (although I do have have major reservations about FDR in the economic sphere.) These leaders (with the possible exception of Wilson) still fundamentally believed in the American system. For example, Lincoln’s martial law strictures were not intended to form a dictatorship. The slavery issue invalidated the justification for secession by the Southern states although Lincoln was slow to address the conflict in those terms. It is also necessary to factor in the loss of widespread farming in the population. When you can grow your own food you have a degree of independence denied the urban and suburban multitudes of today. Government (federal and state) has to be able to perform at least some additional tasks as a result in tougher circumstances. Let’s just say that what was once incipient or potential threats to democracy in these past leaders’ actions is now most overt and unapologetic in the current Dem party.
“Today we face a new crisis. Our country is mired in a debt so large that the human mind cannot comprehend it. A debt so large that no one anywhere seriously believes it can ever be repaid.”
This is just one of the many, many totally erroneous contentions in your Republican propaganda piece. The fact that the market rushed to Treasuries yesterday completely proves your characterization to be false.
In your rush to claim your rightwing fiscal policy goals as being essential, you are taking the wrong message from the markets. Its not rocket science, you know.
Of course, it is now abundantly clear that the real problem is the intrasigence of Boehner/Cantor. Once again, Cantor comes out last night and reveals he has learned absolutely nothing from the self imposed crisis he and Boehner precipitated. They will do all they can to sabotage the super committee of Congress to ensure that closing tax loop holes for international conglomerates and dealing with necessary increased revenues to contribute to debt relief will not be part of the equation. So will we then drop another 1,000 points, for which they will again blame the President? That appears to be the tactic, and I believe the american voter is becoming increasingly aware of the root of the problem. It is the intrasigence of the republican party.
Mike: I couldn’t agree with you more. Although, the true obstructionist is Cantor.
Actually Wally, I agree, although both of these men are indebted to the Republican Study Committee, the 176 fiscal hard liners in the House who make up two thirds of the republican caucus. They have forced this strategy, whether our of true belief or political tactics, I am not really sure which. But clearly, they will not listen to reason from anybody; not the three commissions, not the large majority of economists, not the rating agencies, not the Chairman of the Fed, nor the international pleadings of our allies. But until Americans wake up and realize the damage they continue to cause, I do not know what the best solution is. If they sabotage the super committee, and the cuts in defense and so called discretionary spending go into effect, but no tax loop holes are closed, no entitlements are curtailed, nor no new revenue is raised, we will be worse off, based on their assessment that it will hurt the President more than them. These guys really need to go.
Amazing. We’re facing the greatest overspending crisis in the history of the human race, and Mike and Wally think the problem is that we’re stopping Obama from spending even more. Welcome to Wonderland:
Alice laughed. “There’s no use trying,” she said: “one can’t believe impossible things.”
“I daresay you haven’t had much practice,” said the Queen. “When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”
(Through the Looking Glass, Chapter 5)
Amazing, we are facing a great economic crisis, there are those who, rather than look for honest solutions, leverage public loss of confidence and uncertainty for pure self-serving political reasons. The play to use a routine debt ceiling increase as a legislative bargaining chip was unconscionable. Moreover, the over simplified Republican party generated five-point YOU-TUBE explanations by the “I got my ass in line” Representatives was not only ludicrous, but demeaned them as victims of autocratic leadership. To use a phrase from the “Color of Money” for the Republican party, “It’s just like a nightmare, it gets worse and worse”.
Mike said:
“…they will not listen to reason from anybody; not the three commissions, not the large majority of economists, not the rating agencies, not the Chairman of the Fed, nor the international pleadings of our allies.”
No, we will not listen to anyone in your laundry list of connected special interests and insiders who make their livings from the status quo, wishing to forever preserve our debt slavery…to them.
Eric the half troll said:
“The fact that the market rushed to Treasuries yesterday completely proves your characterization to be false.”
Then I urge you to load up on them and hold them to maturity (if you love government so much you are surely willing to let them have your money at 2% for ten years). I will do the same in my various dollar short instruments. At the end of ten years we will get together and compare purchasing power. Deal?
Valentinus said:
“These leaders (with the possible exception of Wilson) still fundamentally believed in the American system.”
If Roosevelt believed in the American system, why did he go so far to rip it apart and reassemble it in his own (progressive) image? Supreme Court packing threat? Stealing from savers by devaluing the U.S. Dollar by 70% in one executive order? Alphabet-soup government make-work programs that we’re still hung over with?
“For example, Lincoln’s martial law strictures were not intended to form a dictatorship.”
It doesn’t matter what their intentions are. A government that is instituted to protect my rights NEVER has the right to suspend them. The government works for me, not the other way around. Ever.
“The slavery issue invalidated the justification for secession by the Southern states although Lincoln was slow to address the conflict in those terms.”
Perhaps emotionally, but not under law. Are we a nation of laws, or of emotions? Is it more moral to follow laws, or emotions? Can we selectively follow laws we like and not others?
Ken,
Successive Congresses have abrogated so much of their power to the executive, and have passed so many laws and enabled or fostered the creation of so many regulations that the power wielded by the executive in this country is alarming. Both parties are complicit in this; the PATRIOT Act was a huge step in this direction.
This nation was attacked by a group of terrorists operating under the eye of the government in Afghanistan. Our response to this is two wars, including a preemptive invasion of Iraq, the justification for which has been soundly refuted (WMDs). Within days of the initial attack, Congress passed a sweeping assault on…civil rights in America. I object.
A great president would be one who actually defended my civil rights, didn’t call me a terrorist for resisting his encroachments on my rights (the ones he is supposed to be defending, not assaulting), and didn’t expect me to pay to keep my political enemies alive so they could continue to use their votes to steal form me. Bush fails on all points.
Jamie- Once again, I agree with most of your points in your very thoughtful post. I disagree with you about the Patriot Act, but since that’s not the focus of my original post, I’ll discuss the issue more substantively some other time. I do want to point out, though, that Bush NEVER called his political opponents terrorists. Bush was a model of civility in his tone and demeanor despite the vicious and hateful attacks that were leveled against him on a daily basis by the Democrats at the highest levels. Those same Democrats are the ones who call their political opponents terrorists, most recently during the recent debt ceiling debate.
Of course you agree with each other. That is expressly the point. Knowing full well that you are wrong, but you benefit politically from the mantra of cut, cut, cut, you can’t stop telling the big lie. None of us dispute the fact that reductions in expenditures are part of the required formula, but a balanced approach, including closing tax loop holes and tax deductions, and reforms of entitlements, are required as well. The issue is not expenditures alone, it is the deficit, and every conceivable group with bi-partisan credentials has realized and proposed that to reduce the deficit and make headway in reducing the debt, revenue has to be in the formula.
Mike,
Big Lie? Here’s my list of big lies
1. I’m from the government and I’m here to help.
2. Government has a legitimate role to play in managing the economy.
3. Government is actually able to manage the economy in a helpful way.
4. The central bank is essential to the managed economic model.
5. The majority has the right to enslave the minority.
6. Tax increases do not negatively impact economic activity.
7. Government can stimulate economic activity in a meaningful and lasting way through temporary deficit spending.
8. Market-Socialism works; wealth redistribution does not destroy incentive to work.
9. Government interventions in the markets do not distort price signals.
10. Congress represents the people.
Mike: I am willing to embrace that time-honoured political strategy known as “Enemy of my enemy” as long as we can agree that the enemy is Wall Street Banks. Carl Levin started the ball rolling. It will be difficult to get any repubs on board for this as they hope to take the reins in 2012 and Wall Street Banks are the largest and deepest pockets. I am willing to try. I’m reaching across the aisle here, Mike. Dylan Ratigan had a great rant yesterday; you can see it on Market-Ticker. The banks own Congress. That is the major barrier to our recovery. I might not agree with Ratigan’s solution but his diagnosis of the problem is correct.
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