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Nov. 6, 2009
Rabbi Berel Wein: Choosing to hear
JWisdom.com Zero to 1/60th: How to Empower An Hour with Gavriel Aryeh Sande (7 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick The mullahs' big week
Suzanne Fields A Fallen Wall for Fallen Man
Nov. 5, 2009
The Kosher Gourmet: Three scrumptious -- but simple -- butternut squash dishes
JWisdom.com Hidden Hints: Unlocking Faith & Prayer with Rabbi Jay Yaacov Schwartz (10 minutes)
Nov. 4, 2009
Tom Hamburger and Kim Geiger: Should prayers be covered?
JWisdom.com When God played peacemaker With Rabbi Sroy Levitansky (5 minutes)
Nov. 3, 2009
Martin Peretz: Beware, Barack. Beware, Rahm. Beware, Axelrod
JWisdom.com Are you are closet idolater? With Sara Yoheved Rigler (10 minutes)
Nov. 2, 2009
Paul Greenberg: The Holocaust is now on Facebook
JWisdom.com Abraham's Strange Change With Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer (5 minutes)
Oct. 30, 2009
Rabbi David Aaron: Secret to Immortality
Caroline B. Glick Silencing dissent in America
Oct. 29, 2009
Lini S. Kadaba: Do tactics avert flu or reduce humanity?
JWisdom.com We Must Revamp our Religious Vocabulary With Gavriel Aryeh Sanders ( 10 minutes)
Oct. 28, 2009
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: Atheists in Bubbleland
JWisdom.com Why what we wear impacts who we are With Rabbis Mordechai Becher, Menachem Golberger and Aliza Bulow ( 10 minutes)
Oct. 27, 2009
Paul Greenberg: The United Nations Is Outraged Again, Or: Department of Mideast Static
JWisdom.com The Science of Love With Rabbi Jonathan Rietti ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 26, 2009
The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Damaging disclosures with a twist
JWisdom.com Wisdom and Wonks With Rabbi Eytan Feiner ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 23, 2009
Rabbi David Aaron: Are you ready for the ultimate pleasure?
JWisdom.com Watermark and oneness with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 4 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick Stop using limited powers in a way that expands our enemies' advantages over us
Oct. 22, 2009
Steven Emerson: Terror Cases Share Desire to Kill Americans
JWisdom.com No More More Family Fights --- Really? By Sarah Chana Radcliffe ( 5 minutes)
Oct. 21, 2009
Tonya Alanez: Holocaust denier sues survivor, calling Auschwitz memoir 'vicious lies'
JWisdom.com Meditating Jewishly: A Panacea for Success by Sarah Yoheved Rigler ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 20, 2009
Dennis Prager: Obama and Dalai Lama: Why Israel Worries about U.S. President
JWisdom.com Abraham was not religious By Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer ( 6 minutes)
Oct. 19, 2009
JWisdom.comWhy Good People Do Bad Things By Rabbi Eytan Feiner ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 16, 2009
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: The Perfect Number
JWisdom.com Hearing Voices By Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 5 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick How Turkey was lost
Oct. 15, 2009
Jeff Jacoby: Peace vs. the 'peace process'
JWisdom.com: Former MTV producer and stand-up comedian Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff: Taming a Control Freak (A VERY fast 15 minutes)
Oct. 29, 2003
Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)

Jewish World Review March 13, 2009 / 17 Adar 5769

Obama's Messiah complex

By Linda Chavez


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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | President Obama reminds me of the fellow who's off to save the world while he ignores the disaster in his own backyard. Instead of focusing on the urgent problems facing the country — the credit crisis and the collapse of the housing market — he's diverting scarce resources and attention to solving health care, reforming education, and stopping global climate change. Worse, his efforts to tackle these intractable issues involve fiscal policies that exacerbate the current financial crisis. He is not only driving the deficit up to unsustainable heights, his policies will amount to a huge tax on all Americans.


President Obama claims he's only going to raise taxes on the wealthiest Americans. But even if his tax-the-rich scheme didn't depress investment and slow growth — which it will — there are other ways government policies, in effect, tax individuals. Government also imposes tax increases indirectly on individuals through policies that encourage businesses to raise prices paid by everyone.


Most companies operate on relatively thin profit margins; the corporate average has been about 8.5 percent since 1980. Those margins stay relatively constant because capitalism works. If a company's profits get too high, a smart competitor comes in and starts a rival business that makes the same product for less, and the greedy company loses customers.


But what happens when government taxes all businesses — or even a select group of companies? If the company's profits decline, the company might reasonably respond by laying off workers or reducing capital outlays to cut costs. That's not exactly what we'd like to see at a time of skyrocketing unemployment, declining construction, and decreasing manufacturing orders. The alternative for most businesses is simply to pass on the increased costs to the consumer.


That is exactly what will happen if President Obama's cap-and-trade policy on greenhouse emissions is enacted by Congress. The president wants to impose stricter pollution controls on carbon emissions and allow companies that can't meet those regulations to purchase the right to pollute more through a government auction, with the money flowing into the federal budget.


But how will energy companies pay for what is really a new government tax? By passing it on to their consumers, of course. And unlike other businesses, where competition can help control costs, there isn't much competition in the utilities world. Most of us have few choices when it comes to purchasing electricity or natural gas. We're pretty much captives of our geography, so we won't have a choice about choosing a more efficient, less polluting electricity company if President Obama gets his way on cap-and-trade legislation.


The Congressional Budget Office estimates that cutting carbon emissions by 15 percent would result in a huge cost to most Americans. According to CBO's analysis as reported on the Wall Street Journal editorial page March 9, the plan would cost the bottom 20 percent of households 3.3 percent of their entire after-tax incomes every year, or about $680, while those in the next three quintiles would pay between $880 and $1,500 a year in extra energy costs.


This is exactly the wrong thing to do, and the worst time to do it. The president ought to get over his messiah complex. He's not going to slow the rise of the oceans, as he promised in June when he clinched the Democratic presidential nomination. What the country needs now is not grand schemes to redistribute wealth and provide all Americans cradle-to-grave education and health care at government expense. We don't even need someone to find a way to keep all those homeowners facing foreclosure in their homes. Sadly, the housing bubble has burst and everyone is going to suffer, especially those who couldn't afford the homes they bought in the first place.


What we need now is someone who can figure out what actions the government can and should take to unfreeze credit. If President Obama fixes that, he'll be miracle worker enough.

Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.


JWR contributor Linda Chavez is President of the Center for Equal Opportunity. Her latest book is "Betrayal: How Union Bosses Shake Down Their Members and Corrupt American Politics". (Click HERE to purchase. Sales help fund JWR.)

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