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Feb. 8, 2013
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Jewish World Review
Oct. 31, 2012/ 15 Mar-Cheshvan, 5773
A dream that wouldn't come true
By
Jay Ambrose
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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
Maybe you didn't really trust Barack Obama's politics when he was elected president, but he was also bursting with positive characteristics, wasn't he? And weren't lots of people reassuring us he would fix the broken economy, abide by the highest principles of governance and move the country in right directions?
The first assurance was utterly wrong. The second was decisively wrong. And the third was laughably wrong, which isn't to say any of us should feel merriment. We should instead feel betrayed, for what Obama embraced was ever-expanding, regulatory-minded, autocratically managed government, and one consequence -- just for starters -- has been a wrecked recovery.
That's no small thing. It has meant increases in poverty, a decline in household income of 5 percent and millions of people with no place to turn for a decent full-time job. As economist Robert Barro of Harvard has pointed out, the way back to a bubbling economy was austerity, the kind of thing that worked for Sweden and Germany, and not a stimulus that turned out to cost as much as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan under George W. Bush.
Even if the stimulus did some quickly evaporating ounce of good, hijinks reduced its chances to accomplish more than that. Besides proffering temporary, voter-pleasing tax reductions that have never worked, it lavished millions on corporate donors to the Obama campaign, was rife with non-stimulating, wasteful pork the president himself OK'd and fed the presidential ego with long-term, mostly dubious, faddish projects such as high-speed rail.
Some on the left would have you know all of this means bliss someday, but what it mainly means is a worsening of a debt that will burden generations to come. It is already slowing down economic growth, threatens calamity just around the corner and is making our president yawn.
Yes, yawn. Although Obama's own debt commission had terrific bipartisan ideas about fixing things -- spending cuts that would make Republicans happy, tax reform that just might please Democrats -- a bored Obama scooted to distant shores. He showed a marked distaste for the kind of negotiations absolutely required for successful leadership in a divided government, reprehensibly castigating some perfectly sound budget-control ideas as an assault on the middle class.
What he wanted was to punch the rich in the nose. He absurdly suggested they were not paying their fair share of taxes, a dishonest act of demagoguery underlined by proposals that would produce a Band-Aid's worth of revenue. And he wasn't through with divisiveness.
In a society in which the resources for education, nourishment, housing, health care, charity, government programs and you name it trace back to business activity, our president has constantly blasted businesses as if they were the enemy. There are some reckless, even bad folks in business as in anything -- in government, for instance -- but our businesses are mostly owned, managed and manned by splendid citizens, and one of the punishments Obama illustratively has in mind, higher taxes for oil companies, would mean higher pump prices. Gee, thanks.
This supposed saint has probably been the most autocratic president since Richard Nixon, bypassing the law on some 40 occasions without the required consent of Congress, according to a recent Republican study. His re-election campaign has been as dirty as any in recent memory. And to this day, he blames his predecessor for a situation he worsened.
For the sake of unions, he cheated bondholders in the General Motors bailout that actually is not working out half as well as pretended or even as well as it might have under a plan put forth by Mitt Romney. He ripped off Medicare to finance Obamacare, a boondoggle that could very well mess up health care and the lives of millions for decades if it is not repealed. He opposed Wisconsin efforts to save itself from budgetary chaos posed by ever-escalating benefits to public employees.
The record is not pretty. It is, in fact, scary.
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Jay Ambrose, formerly Washington director of editorial policy for Scripps Howard newspapers and the editor of dailies in El Paso, Texas, and Denver, is a columnist living in Colorado.
Previously:
• 10/29/12: When the 'kooks' and 'racists' turn out to be your ideological allies
• 10/24/12: The pettiness refuge
• 10/18/12: An interruption that tells a bigger tale
• 10/17/12: A recovery that wasn't
• 10/12/12: Big Bird squabble points to something real
• 10/11/12: The 'war' you don't hear about --- the one on average Americans
• 08/22/12: Obama leadership: Romney's returns trump road to recovery
• 08/15/12: Saving Medicare the Ryan way
• 08/01/12: Combatting free speech
• 07/25/12: Good and bad reactions to Colorado horror
• 07/18/12: Apology time for Obama
• 07/16/12: Free markets solve climate change threats
• 07/11/12: Humans and particles and those who would order them
• 07/06/12: Why we'll miss Andy Griffith
• 07/05/12: All will feel Affordable Care Act's bite
• 07/02/12: A social solution --- homes with dads
• 06/27/12: Being a 'nation of immigrants' is not an excuse
• 06/20/12: Barack Obama the autocrat
• 06/18/12: Bradbury's lessons for today
• 06/13/12: Should this leaking administration sink?
• 06/11/12: Simpson bashes back on reform
• 06/05/12: Legalize sugary drinks, ban dangerous drugs
• 06/04/12: Keep America from going Greek
• 06/01/12: Don't believe in Obama's fairy tales
• 05/30/12: Writing a book? Beats prison
• 05/23/12: Student loans fail students
• 05/21/12: Europeanizing America into crisis
• 05/16/12: Obama a bully, too
• 05/15/12: Walker recall vote could swing national pension policy
• 05/07/12: Bumbling, fumbling, benighted, old Washington near tipping point where freedom is done for
• 05/02/12: The Communists cannot be happy
• 04/30/12: There's no objective truth, least of all concerning behavior
• 04/25/12: Forgive the extremist?
• 04/23/12: Educational excellence is a game
• 04/18/12: Obama's interventions help a few by the most autocratic, complicated, ineffective means possible, yet hurt many more
• 04/16/12: Overregulation strikes again: The nanny state threatens to turn us into children
• 04/11/12: Obama is not bonkers
• 04/04/12: Will America vote against authoritarianism?
• 04/02/12: 'Tipping point' on federal restraint approaches
• 03/28/12: Obama truth from an open mike
• 03/21/12: The progressive campaign for voter fraud
• 03/19/12: Public pensions will get us if we don't watch out
• 03/14/12: Politics needs reporting, not speculation
• 03/12/12: Home of the free, the brave, the endangered
• 03/07/12: Obama used Limbaugh as scapegoat
• 03/05/12: Campaign substance lost in media melodrama
• 03/01/12: When Big Brother drowns
• 02/24/12: Obama goes gaseous on gas
• 02/22/12: Political tears for trust in personal empowerment --- except in the bedroom
• 02/17/12: Of cut-off ears and silenced mouths
• 02/15/12: Obama is a joke whose antics aren't funny
• 02/10/12: An energy boom looms, despite Obama
• 02/08/12: Obama's assault on faith
• 02/03/12: Can Romney get serious?
• 01/27/12: Obama is like an Italian ship captain
• 01/25/12: Newt Gingrich's first 100 days
• 01/20/12: Obama's Keystone pipeline lies
• 01/18/12: Critics worse than urinating Marines
• 01/13/12: Ron Paul is a cartoonish character
• 01/11/12: Newt Gingrich upset by Mitt Romney's brilliance
• 01/09/12: How about regulating presidents, too?
• 01/04/12: How America smothers itself
• 12/30/11: A tax break that helps break the nation
• 12/28/11: Watch out for the banana peel, Newt
• 12/21/11: A tale of two men
• 12/16/11: Strange happenings in Russia
• 12/14/11: Tim Tebow is a man of character
• 12/09/11: A populist, envy-mongering fraud divisively exacerbating resentment among different groups of Americans
• 12/07/11: Tax games threaten nation
• 12/05/11: Why Wal-Mart serves us better than Barney Frank
• 11/30/11: Not writing off Newt
• 11/28/11: Answers to the Iranian threat
• 11/23/11: Failure of the incumbency investment
• 11/18/11: Occupiers: Chop off their heads!
• 11/16/11: Obama asks jobless to sacrifice
• 11/09/11: Michael Moore's insufferable occupation
• 11/04/11: Political tipping point is coming
• 11/02/11: Idealogues versus 7 billion
• 10/28/11: Obama games on student loans
• 10/26/11: Wit and quick moves v. humanity and thoroughgoing honesty? It's no contest - or at least shouldn't be
• 10/07/11: Baptists, bootleggers and Wall Street protesters
• 10/05/11: Federal law will get you even if you watch out
• 09/28/11: Leftist bugbears on the march
• 09/23/11: Still hope for coal to help us
• 09/21/11: Obama's Madoff ploy
• 09/19/11: U.S. can't afford to wait until it happens
• 09/14/11: Defending -- and strengthening -- gung ho collectivism
• 09/12/11: A pipeline to better times
• 09/08/11: Obama just keeps destroying jobs
• 09/06/11: Ultra-feminists thwarting justice
• 08/31/11: Corporations are people? Yes, Count the ways
• 08/26/11: What an earthquake tells us about debt
• 08/25/11: The tyranny of scientific consensus
• 08/23/11: Fracking hardly a public health threat
• 08/17/11: Why Obamacare won't control births
• 08/15/11: Balanced budget amendment unbalanced idea
• 08/10/11: Kerry's war on citizen speech
• 08/05/11: Upside to the compromise leaving the door open for obnoxious maneuvers
• 08/03/11: The people who may save America
• 07/29/11: On making deals, Obama is no LBJ
• 07/27/11: The threat behind the debt
• 07/23/11: Mean opposition to means-testing
• 07/20/11: Leftist babble makes debt crisis even worse
• 07/18/11: Time to raise demagoguery ceiling
• 07/13/11: Obama treating treaties badly
• 07/08/11: Is decline of U.S. exaggerated?
• 07/05/11: Not math deficiency, but demagoguery
© 2011, SCRIPPS HOWARD NEWS SERVICE
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