Writing about the president’s State of the Union address last week, Mark Steyn quipped that “the Union’s state — its unprecedented world-record brokeness — was not even mentioned”:
If, as I was, you happened to be stuck at Gate 27 at one of the many U.S. airports laboring under the misapprehension that pumping CNN at you all evening long somehow adds to the gaiety of flight delays, you would have watched an address that gave no indication its speaker was even aware that the parlous state of our finances is an existential threat not only to the nation but to global stability.
Obama, in short, was oblivious to our nation’s most pressing problems. In a similar vein, Michael Barone observed that the speech contained “no serious public policy initiatives to quicken the pace of economic growth and address the long-term entitlement problems that Obama has occasionally noted.”
Although the president did “call for higher taxes on high earners,” Barone reported that the
. . . man who can call on experts at the Treasury Department to draft legislation gave no indication that he has any feasible draft for his “Buffett rule” that would presumably require a second alternative minimum tax for very high earners.
Nor did he indicate that he has made any serious effort to come up with language to penalize corporations that “ship jobs overseas.” Once again a president hailed for his brilliance has handed off the grimy task of writing legislation entirely to the Congress.
What we saw Tuesday night was more like a candidate than an incumbent president.
Wonder why our friends in the media don’t take the incumbent to task for his failure to offer real solutions to our nation’s pressing problems.
Perhaps, Obama would not be running as well as he now is in the polls if, instead of bashing each other, the Republican candidates were reminding voters of the incumbent’s manifest failures, including his paucity of ideas on how to address the nation’s fiscal woes.
No politician wants to really address the deficit/debt problem because the problem has gotten so extreme (Debt at >100% of GDP, Deficit at >40% of the total budget, trillions in liabilities to SS and Medicare/Medicaid) that any solution that would actually work … entitlement reform, massive spending cuts, default… are likewise extreme. And no politician wants to be painted as an extremist.
And the SCOAMF’s ‘Soak the Rich’ scheme barely makes a dent in the deficit. Financing the Obamacrats preferred level of Government spending (>25% of GDP) would require across-the-board tax increases of 80-90% on all income levels. A very extreme solution that few Obamacrats are willing to acknowledge.
Interesting article in The Atlantic re shipping jobs overseas.
According to the article, we are manufacturing a lot of stuff but with fewer people. Companies have been automating like crazy – in part due to (IMO) the investment tax credit which favors capital over labor.
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/01/making-it-in-america/8844/
…and once again I find myself laughing at this sort of statement. The task of writing legislation being handed entirely to the legislators who the people voted into office in order that they should write and pass legislation.
Well by that rationale, Obama’s poll numbers will sink as soon as the Republican primaries are over and the GOP is focused on supporting their candidate and attacking Obama’s record. In that case, to the current Republican candidates, Obama can wait and they should focus their attacks on whoever the need to in order to get nominated.
Then wouldn’t the ‘non-extremist’ route be to find a middle ground of increasing taxes to a degree and cutting spending less harshly than would be necessary with the present level of taxation? In fact, wouldn’t that route end up being the necessary one if spending needs to be cut but the politicians involved don’t want to be painted as extremists? But will there ever be a day that the Republicans caucus would give up their no tax increase pledge if it meant getting essential spending cuts? I think not.
The nation’s most pressing problems are that damn Bush and the eeeeeeeevil rich who won’t spend some of their Googleplex-illions on hiring people or lining the Bamster’s pockets.
No mention of how much Buffett’s secretary gets, under the table, for being a political pawn though.
If the Obamanauts can win, cheat or steal the election then the fundamental transformation machinery already in place will be set into motion and there will be no return ticket from the future.
If all four candidates understand that and are dedicated to redrawing the unfunded and underfunded socialist programs in the Obama blueprints, then we are far better off with any one of the Republican candidates.
The lunacy of raising taxes is transparent. When there is not enough money to pay off the deficit, the idea that the deficit can be lightened incrementally by greater taxation at the same time social welfare benefits continue to escalate is ludicrous. But when you add the two other major social welfare programs which are underfunded while expanding, it makes depending on squeezing the turnip for more blood beyond nuts.
Half the country is on the dole and pays no income taxes. The socialist plan is to leave that half alone and growing and to wring more money out of the half that does pay income taxes. There might be some marginal utility to doing that in the very short term, but so what? The 800 ton guerrilla in the room is still alive and growing.
The very idea that our mess and the added colossal mess which Obamacare will unleash is the fault of the rich and bankers and big business is stunning. Only demagogues have the soulless temerity to rob the underclass of its spirit and hopes of prosperity, while destroying the engine that struggles to fund the government plantation and feed and house its entitlement slaves.
Lets compromise and raise some taxes and do some cutting and pat each other on the back and call it a day. Shall we? What kind of a taffy pull is that?
Here’s a pretty little plan: let’s set the budget at the 2006 level. Every department and agency will have to dial back and spend at that level. Then the President and Congress can brainstorm on how to reduce the deficit in dramatic ways and to make the entitlement programs solvent.
Perhaps the welfare crowd could contribute something more than their opinions.
A victim is always sore at the perpetrator. Wallowing in self-pity, is another thing entirely. To demand that other people owe you something for just existing is remarkable. That type of poverty of spirit leaves a warped and jaundiced view of personal responsibility. Those who capitalize on manipulating dissatisfaction among the grumbling class are the purveyors of evil.
Occupy Wall Street has yet to issue a coherent manifesto. They can’t. They are an amorphous collection of disparate raw nerve ends who coagulate around their single bond of being losers. To encourage such an aggregation with political hurrahs and empathy is useful only to the extent that Marx and Alinsky promoted. There is no better term than “useful idiots.”
When the liberal promotes the lifeless womb through abortion, how does he turn 180 degrees and insist on “saddling” the “poor mother” with the “unwanted” child that slipped through their “safety” net? Why does the nanny state go full tilt at insisting that every person “deserves” an ever rising standard of state funded support? Why would any weak person strive to leave the security of the nanny state womb? Why be a giver, when the cost of being a taker is so low?
Oh, Obama has a plan: it is to sbut down the powerhouse of the US economy. His plan is to make us all equal so that the rich have no luxuries and the poor have none to acquire. His plan is to make us all dependent. His plan is to steal. His plan is to borrow and inflate. He is an evil man with an evil plan.
Republicans and conservatives are aware of the reality of things — that people are paying enough taxes for their economic situation already.
Oh, dear. Just head out to the street and earn enough more to pay for your standard of living “whilst” contributing even more to the socialist tax-funded charity pot that those below your level of living need redistributed to them to pull even with you.
Do you honestly not know how the merry-go-round you are bolted to works? Can’t you sell matches or scrub hearths or walk dogs or scrape paint or something to drag in a bit more income?
OT: So Virginia has a 3.2 earthquake.
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/recenteqsww/Quakes/se013012b.php
Which Death du Jour will liberals blame? Bush? Global Warmism? Fracking? HAARP? High-fructose corn syrup?
#7: So, in short, your answer is no. Correct?
#8: “sell matches or scrub hearths”? Which century is this exactly?
#9: You’re not kidding, that was off-topic.
Off topic, yet interesting and it came with the added bonus of a dig at one complete moron out of many.
And again, Serenity’s decided she’s ‘sacrificed’ enough at 5% and that everyone else should pay for her. She also finds Helitrope’s idea of *gasp* working horrifying.
Any port in a storm. Those who have a work ethic do not let the “dignity” of the work interfere. Rather, they address the issue as: “This is where I am and this is what I am doing.” Cleaning dirty bottoms as a care-giver is not an enticement for the job. But it goes with the job. The issue is the dignity that comes with self-reliance. Pay your own way. Others will respect you and soon enough you will have some self-esteem, as well.