Toward A Fairer America
in Economy, Obama Administration Scandals
News reports say that the theme of President Obama’s State of the Union speech tonight will be fairness. I take this as an admission of failure. If his economic policies were working, he would be talking about growth. By focusing on fairness, he is implicitly admitting that things aren’t going to get any better. Not while he is in charge, anyway.
Of course, by “fairness” Obama means raising taxes on those who are already paying them, and spending even more money on those who aren’t. The problem with this approach is that the United States already over-taxes its higher income citizens more than any other developed country. The last thing we need to do is make that disproportion even worse.
Which is not to say that our country is perfectly fair, by any means. There are some things we can and should do. First, let’s have tax fairness: we have tens of millions of Americans who pay little or nothing in federal taxes, or even profit via the earned income tax credit, while consuming vast amounts of government services. That should stop. If you are a citizen, and you earn money, you should contribute something.
Second, our economy is considerably less fair today than it was when Barack Obama took office. This is because of the pervasive cronyism that the Obama administration has introduced. For the first time in our history, the best way to make money is not to work hard, to innovate, and to supply goods and services that consumers want. Rather, the best way to make money is by having political connections with the Obama administration and the Democratic Party. One of the most shocking of the many appalling facts related in Peter Schweizer’s Throw Them All Out is shown in this chart. For every dollar that a member of President Obama’s campaign finance committee contributed to his campaign, that member’s company has received nearly $25,000 from the Obama administration. How’s that for a return on investment?
Another example: General Motors’s bondholders had a contractual right to be paid ahead of union members if the company got into financial trouble and went into bankruptcy. But, as part of his bailout of GM, Obama lawlessly crammed down the bondholders, violating their legal rights in order to compensate his political cronies. That was completely unfair, and it was the episode that caused Michael Barone to label the Obama administration “gangster government.”
Such examples could be multiplied endlessly, but the point is simple: if Obama really wanted a fairer society, he would abjure crony capitalism and return to the basic principles of free enterprise, where competition is fair and whoever works hardest and serves the public best profits the most. Somehow, though, I don’t think that is the sort of fairness we will hear about tonight.
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2012/01/toward-a-fairer-america.php
News reports say that the theme of President Obama’s State of the Union speech tonight will be fairness. I take this as an admission of failure. If his economic policies were working, he would be talking about growth. By focusing on fairness, he is implicitly admitting that things aren’t going to get any better. Not while he is in charge, anyway.
Of course, by “fairness” Obama means raising taxes on those who are already paying them, and spending even more money on those who aren’t. The problem with this approach is that the United States already over-taxes its higher income citizens more than any other developed country. The last thing we need to do is make that disproportion even worse.
Which is not to say that our country is perfectly fair, by any means. There are some things we can and should do. First, let’s have tax fairness: we have tens of millions of Americans who pay little or nothing in federal taxes, or even profit via the earned income tax credit, while consuming vast amounts of government services. That should stop. If you are a citizen, and you earn money, you should contribute something.
Second, our economy is considerably less fair today than it was when Barack Obama took office. This is because of the pervasive cronyism that the Obama administration has introduced. For the first time in our history, the best way to make money is not to work hard, to innovate, and to supply goods and services that consumers want. Rather, the best way to make money is by having political connections with the Obama administration and the Democratic Party. One of the most shocking of the many appalling facts related in Peter Schweizer’s Throw Them All Out is shown in this chart. For every dollar that a member of President Obama’s campaign finance committee contributed to his campaign, that member’s company has received nearly $25,000 from the Obama administration. How’s that for a return on investment?
Another example: General Motors’s bondholders had a contractual right to be paid ahead of union members if the company got into financial trouble and went into bankruptcy. But, as part of his bailout of GM, Obama lawlessly crammed down the bondholders, violating their legal rights in order to compensate his political cronies. That was completely unfair, and it was the episode that caused Michael Barone to label the Obama administration “gangster government.”
Such examples could be multiplied endlessly, but the point is simple: if Obama really wanted a fairer society, he would abjure crony capitalism and return to the basic principles of free enterprise, where competition is fair and whoever works hardest and serves the public best profits the most. Somehow, though, I don’t think that is the sort of fairness we will hear about tonight.
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2012/01/toward-a-fairer-america.php
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