Fausta's Blog

American and Latin American Politics, Society, and Culture

March 5, 2009 By Fausta

Incompetence, or purpose?

As a superficial person, I try to figure out what is happening and focus on that instead of trying to figure out the motivation behind things/events/deeds.

For instance, if I find out that a person I’m associated with (particularly in business, but also in social matters) is dishonest, I sever that contact immediately. If the evidence of lies/dishonesty is strong and convincing, I can not afford to stop and wonder why the person is dishonest since my own reputation and integrity would be compromised by keeping that association. I take action, and later on may spend time pondering why that person was dishonest to me.

It is a simple philosophy that has served me well many times in my life.

Clearly, as I write this the markets tank with no forseeable end. Today the Dow closed at 6594.
Dismal.

The markets are voting on the record-high mind-boggling spending: the bailout, the “stimulus”, the omnibus, the budget, and today in particular, the nationalized healthcare proposal. Today the Dow dropped 281 points.

Doug Ross asks,

Is President Obama intentionally attempting to bring the stock market to its knees?

Consider that, in the teeth of a devastating recession, Obama has:

• Raised taxes on small businesses, the engines of entrepreneurship and job growth

• Raised the capital gains tax

• Lied about “tax cuts for 95% of Americans”, offering instead $13 a week, achieved not through tax cuts, but by changing the federal withholding tables!

• Destroyed charitable giving by axing the tax breaks for 26% of all giving (or $81 billion in 2006)

• Proposed a carbon cap-and-trading scheme designed to punish oil companies and further tax consumers

Why would Obama inflict these destructive policies while the economy is collapsing? Simple. Each step strengthens the role of government in people’s lives.

• Squelching the stock market kills its attractiveness as a parking lot for private capital. Combined with an increase in the capital gains tax, investors will swarm to bonds — tax-free vehicles like municipal bonds, which benefit the growth of state and local government. And unions, of course.

• Carbon cap-and-tax will raise taxes on all Americans as the cost of goods and services will increase to address a non-existent threat.

• True tax cuts would grow the economy, which is why, of course, Obama shuns them. The last major recession was Jimmy Carter’s malaise. It consisted of of double-digit inflation and unemployment. It was finally licked by across-the-board tax cuts for everyone (even the despised rich), which touched off a twenty-plus year run of prosperity.

• Charities reduce the role of government assistance for those in need. That, in Obama’s world, can not be tolerated. That is why charities must be choked off and allowed to die. Especially faith-based institutions.

The only plausible explanation is that Obama’s destruction of the economy is intentional.

Roger Kimball also is looking at the question:
Incompetence, malevolence, or both? or Why Obama’s policies are pink, not green (with a coda on my new favorite section of the U.S. Constitution)

Lenin, too, wished to “spread the wealth around.” And Obama, like Lenin, has been perfectly frank in recommending that we need to go beyond the “merely formal” rights enunciated in the Constitution in order to “bring about redistributive change” in society.

Both Doug and Roger lay plausible explanations.

John Hinderaker, however, is more inclined to my philosophy (emphasis added):

It is, I admit, an intriguing theory, but I don’t buy it. Obama can’t possibly want to be a one-term failure. That’s what happened to Jimmy Carter, and Obama must know that it will happen to him, too, if his policies are perceived as dragging down the economy.

More likely the explanation is that Obama is an economic illiterate, and subscribes to the idea–which I think is rather common among Democrats–that what the government does has little impact on the economy. Obama likely believes that the economy will recover on its own, and in the meantime–in Rahm Emanuel’s immortal words–he shouldn’t let the crisis go to waste. So he enacts every left-wing measure that he wanted to do anyway, expecting that when the economy eventually recovers he can take credit for it, even though his policies, if anything, retarded and weakened the recovery.

That’s a cynical strategy, although not quite as cynical as destroying the economy on purpose; the difference is that it may well work.

The short version is, we’re well on the way to ruin.

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Filed Under: Barack Obama, business, Democrats, economics, economy Tagged With: bailout, Fausta's blog, stimulus bill

Comments

  1. steveegg says

    March 5, 2009 at 7:37 pm

    What sways me to the “intentional” camp is the familiarity of the playbook, both on the economic end and the political end. It sure looks like the one Fidel Castro used in Cuba and the one that Hugo Chavez is using in Venezuela.

  2. Pat Patterson says

    March 5, 2009 at 8:28 pm

    Lenin then Stalin made no apologies for destroying the semi-capitalist economy of Russia by justifying the coming Golden Age of Communism. As much as I think Pres Obama is callow and the victim of a second rate education, regardless of the names on the diplomas, I find it hard to believe that he has that much nerve now when he never displayed this determination before. Still…

  3. James says

    March 6, 2009 at 12:27 am

    I think this is much more fundamental that imposing Leninist-style communism. I believe Obama wants to destroy the US in every capacity possible.

    Last year, Spengler at the Asia Times wrote a brilliant analysis profiling Obama entitled, “Obama’s women reveal his secret” in which Spengler argued that to understand Obama the man, you have to look at the women in his life. His left-wing anti-American mother and his wife, an aggrieved African-American woman. I really suggest that readers of this column go back and read it to understand what this nation is truly facing and place against the above commentary.

    These two quotes say everything you need to know…

    “The probable next president of the United States is a mother’s revenge against the America she despised.”

    “Obama’s choice of wife is a failsafe indicator of his own sentiments. Spouses do not necessarily share their likes, but they must have their hatreds in common. Obama imbibed this hatred with his mother’s milk.”

  4. John says

    March 6, 2009 at 7:25 am

    How does he lower the tax on 95% when 40% do not pay taxes to begin with?

  5. Hucklebuck says

    March 6, 2009 at 4:02 pm

    Probably should have highlighted “retarded” in the Hinderaker quote.

  6. steveegg says

    March 6, 2009 at 6:09 pm

    I can give it to you in 3 words or 1 word, John:

    – Refundable tax credits
    – Welfare

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