Obama’s Second Inaugural Address, Translated
Members of Congress—who are about to debate raising the debt ceiling tomorrow—should have paid attention yesterday. The President was very clear that he sees no urgency about reducing the debt and cutting the deficit. In fact, in his second inaugural address, President Barack Obama was honest about his intentions to grow government in order to remake our country along his progressive vision.To sell his agenda, the President borrowed imagery and terminology from America’s first principles. But he twisted the American founding idea of “We the people” into the liberal “It takes a village.”
His rhetoric on the issues only thinly disguised his true meaning. Let’s translate some of his key points.
Obama on “we the people”: “For the American people can no more meet the demands of today’s world by acting alone than American soldiers could have met the forces of fascism or communism with muskets and militias. No single person can train all the math and science teachers we’ll need to equip our children for the future. Or build the roads and networks and research labs that will bring new jobs and businesses to our shores.”
Translation: In case you didn’t hear me the first time, you didn’t build that.
He may have surrounded these words with lip service to the Constitution and America’s promise of freedom, but the President revisited his core message here: It takes a taxpayer-subsidized village to build things. According to his philosophy, entrepreneurs don’t create jobs—the government does.
Obama on the fiscal crisis: “We, the people, understand that our country cannot succeed when a shrinking few do very well and a growing many barely make it….We must make the hard choices to reduce the cost of health care and the size of our deficit. But we reject the belief that America must choose between caring for the generation that built this country and investing in the generation that will build its future.”
Translation: I will continue to push for more tax increases instead of reforming Medicare and Social Security.
On this point, the President followed up his promise that he will not negotiate on the debt ceiling by digging in his heels on taxes and entitlement programs. The “hard choices” he refers to on health care and the deficit are more tax increases—because he “reject[s] the belief” that entitlements must be reformed if they are going to stay around for the next generation.
The debt limit showdown continues this week: The House will vote tomorrow on a plan that would extend the debt ceiling for three months while forcing Congress—specifically, the Senate—to pass a budget. If they do not pass a budget by April 15 under this plan, Members of Congress would stop getting paid. If House Republicans so much as blink, the President and his allies will steamroll them.
Obama on green energy: “We will respond to the threat of climate change, knowing that the failure to do so would betray our children and future generations. Some may still deny the overwhelming judgment of science, but none can avoid the devastating impact of raging fires, and crippling drought, and more powerful storms. The path towards sustainable energy sources will be long and sometimes difficult. But American cannot resist this transition.”
Translation: I will continue to increase regulations on the energy sources we use and throw taxpayer money into “green” energy companies.
Despite the ever-growing Green Graveyard of companies like Solyndra that took taxpayer money only to go bankrupt, the President clings to this unworkable and expensive policy. And his linking of climate change to “more powerful storms” points to a renewed push for policies like a carbon tax to punish people for using energy—a policy that would harm the economy and produce no tangible environmental benefits.
Obama on foreign policy: “We, the people, still believe that enduring security and lasting peace do not require perpetual war….We will show the courage to try and resolve our differences with other nations peacefully. Not because we are naive about the dangers we face, but because engagement can more durably lift suspicion and fear.”
Translation: The terrorists are on the run, and I still think we can negotiate with nuclear bullies like Iran.
Even as Obama pulls troops from Iraq and Afghanistan, the hostage crisis in Algeria shows that al-Qaeda is alive and well. Though Iran continues to rebuff international inspectors and basically do whatever it wants, Obama seems perpetually optimistic that more talks with this hostile regime—and others like it—could make them change their behavior.
The President said yesterday that “fidelity to our founding principles requires new responses to new challenges.” Though the plans he laid out are not new, they definitely require a response if we are to preserve the founding principles we cherish, including our individual right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Congress has been warned, and by the President no less, that he is in no mood to compromise. If they give in, a liberal agenda like we’ve never known before will be implemented, while needed reforms to our entitlement programs will not take place. Holding the line is more important now than ever.
http://blog.heritage.org/2013/01/22/obama-second-inaugural-address-translated/
Write Your Own Inaugural
Some inaugural speeches consist entirely of such muscular trivialities. They are hard to hear because they are so meaningless that the mind drifts off elsewhere. Most turn into a real political assertion at some point, usually suggesting that the banalities of the first half of the speech will be realized in policies proposed in the second half. This is usually the moment when vapidity turns into outright flimflammery. In today’s Inaugural, this moment came quite early, about four minutes into it, with the following sentences:
For we remember the lessons of our past, when twilight years were spent in poverty and parents of a child with a disability had nowhere to turn. We do not believe that in this country freedom is reserved for the lucky or happiness for the few. We recognize that no matter how responsibly we live our lives, any one of us at any time may face a job loss or a sudden illness or a home swept away in a terrible storm. The commitments we make to each other through Medicare and Medicaid and Social Security, these things do not sap our initiative. They strengthen us. They do not make us a nation of takers. They free us to take the risks that make this country great.Let’s parse that passage for a moment. To begin with, it claims that in the past (the pre–New Deal period is indicated here), parents of a child with a disability could look nowhere for assistance because government programs were unavailable. That is plainly false. Neighbors, churches, local hospitals, and a multitude of mediating institutions all provided assistance. Inadequate assistance? Probably, because we were all — including governments — much poorer and less skilled in treating disabilities in the past. But most people could turn to others for help before they turned to the state.
Obama then went on to proclaim that Americans don’t believe that “freedom is reserved for the lucky or happiness for the few.” True enough, Americans don’t believe those things. Nor do people of other nations. Despite this universal agreement, however, happiness never seems to get distributed equally. And my bet is that Americans don’t believe that government programs can achieve an equal distribution of happiness, either — though they almost certainly do believe (and rightly so) that freedom and power have been maldistributed from ordinary citizens to government officials (perhaps by the very programs intended to redistribute happiness). So the more that government expands its concern from our economic disabilities to our psychological ones, the more likely it is to fail, and to fail expensively.
The president’s third point is that even hard-working and responsible people sometimes lose a job or a home from external causes. That argument is true, indeed platitudinous, and is the traditional justification for social-insurance programs introduced first by Otto von Bismarck in the 1880s. As the initiators of such programs recognized and stated clearly, however, if social insurance was to be worthy of the name, then its benefits would have to be paid for by contributions. Otherwise it wouldn’t be social insurance but a handout — which Bismarck, Lloyd George, William Beveridge, Clement Attlee, and other reformers warned would be both unjust and pauperizing.
This the president stoutly denies in his final argument when he says that entitlement programs do not sap our initiative but instead encourage risk-taking. Really? It was just about possible to believe such things before the big entitlement programs were actually in place. But the existence of an underclass in every welfare state, the spiraling costs of all entitlement programs, and the fierce fight that their beneficiaries mount against any attempt to restrict social benefits all destroy this belief. And, while on the topic, how many entrepreneurs emerge from the social groups most dependent on welfare spending?
Wrong though it is in every particular, however, this passage is valuable as a clear theoretical outline of what Obama believes — and what his future programs will be. Anyone who had heard him only to that point could have predicted almost all the specific proposals that came afterwards. All in all, the Inaugural was like hearing a salesman sell a rocking chair as if it were an exercise bicycle. And as commentators have already pointed out, the president went on to defend every single existing social program and to promise the introduction of various new programs (such as global-warming remedies, aka higher energy costs).
If we ignore the rhetorical falsities and dig for the real meaning underneath them, the speech becomes almost fascinating. Obama is covertly saying:
Look, I raised federal spending to almost a quarter of America’s GDP in my first term. That leaves a gap of 3.5 to 5 percent of GDP between that spending and likely revenue. None of that gap is going to be filled by cuts in entitlement programs or social expenditures. None whatsoever. My veto will see to that. I will force Congress to raise spending — not solely by raising taxes on the rich (I’ve already conceded that the middle class will have to pay higher taxes, too), but by skewing taxes much more significantly than they are skewed today in a redistributive direction. And insofar as I can’t get higher taxes, I will increase borrowing. At the end of my eight years in office, the result will be a European welfare state (even if I agree not to call it that so as to save the face of those Republicans who vote with me). And however costly the welfare state proves, it will be unrepealable once it is in place. Like Reagan (but unlike either Clinton), I will have reversed the trajectory of American politics.This is a bold strategy that has (I would guess) about a 20 percent chance of success. The essential (and crippling) difference between Obama’s trajectory and Reagan’s is that the latter’s strategy succeeded economically. Indeed, it would not have succeeded politically if it had failed economically. But there is very little chance that Obama’s economic policy will work at all, let alone so well that the increased revenue it generates will be sufficient to bridge the fiscal gap outlined above. In those circumstances, Obama will face two sets of spiraling costs: the rising costs of the entitlement programs and the higher interest costs of his increased borrowing. And that combination is a rising tide that swamps all boats.
How will the president cope with such discouraging trends? Well, he might say sternly that he, for one, will never join those nattering nabobs of negativism who count America out. Or he could perhaps venture that where others see gathering storms, he sees beyond them to the sun breaking through the clouds onto the mountain tops. Or, if things look really bleak, maybe he will resort to the Dictionary of Quotations.
A Talleyrand gem should do it. When a French revolutionary asked him how to win converts to his new-and-improved religion, the wise diplomat replied: “Nothing simpler. Get yourself crucified and rise again on the third day.”
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/338303/write-your-own-inaugural-john-o-sullivan#
Study: "Debt Problem Began Four Decades Ago"
A new report from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis reminds Americans that, contrary to the narrative that huge deficits and debt are merely a recent product of the Great Recession, the problem began over forty years ago.Daniel Thornton, the St. Louis Fed's Vice President and economic adviser, finds what conservatives have been saying all along is true: it's steadily increasing government spending, not a lack of tax revenues, that's causing all of this.
[A]fter 1970, both revenues and expenditures increased on average relative to the previous two decades; however, revenue increased marginally while expenditures increased significantly... on average, the government spent 2.4 percent of GDP more than it received in revenue during the 38-year period.The new study confirms that what's been driving the increases in spending hasn't been that old liberal boogeyman defense spending. It's entitlement programs - Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and other transfer and welfare programs.
Finally, Thornton concludes, the progressive response that all the U.S. has to do is raise taxes is bankrupt.
The long-run perspective offered here shows that there is a deeper and more fundamental issue that must be addressed if the problem is to be resolved solely or primarily by raising taxes. Specifically, the analysis shows that the deficit/debt problem began when the government decided to increase spending significantly without increasing taxes.http://townhall.com/tipsheet/kevinglass/2013/01/21/study-debt-problem-began-four-decades-ago-n1494278
Killing Conservative Talk Radio, One Market at a Time
"First they came for the local radio hosts...." If you want a glimpse into the real, practical mechanisms whereby unprincipled political power diminishes and silences opposing voices, look not to the nationally-publicized attacks on Rush Limbaugh or Glenn Beck. Look to what happens at the local level, to people who do not have a national microphone and millions of defenders. Consider the example of Brainerd, Minnesota's (population 13,613) local conservative radio show.For almost two years, Guy Green and his partner Tony Bauer have hosted The Speakeasy with Guy Green, a two-hour political talk show airing five nights a week on Brainerd's 3Wi Radio. Uncompromising conservatives, they tackle a variety of local, national, and international issues with equal parts well-researched detail, principled intelligence, and charm. Though a local program on a small station, their hard work has allowed them to attract the highest quality guests, and their seriousness has allowed them to bring those guests (Roger Kimball, Michael Ledeen, Andrew McCarthy, and Jack Cashill, for a very small sample) back for repeat appearances.
The show's hosts are not rich men, and they are not paid to appear on the air. On the contrary, Green paid handsomely for the air time the first year, including a hefty down payment to prove good faith for the air time, and seeks to cover his operating expenses with local sponsors and listener donations. (The station's former owner and now manager agreed to waive the air time fee for the second year, due to the show's success.) Green and Bauer, both grandfathers, are doing this because they could not sit by and watch their country being swallowed up by progressive politicians and an enabling media. This radio program is their attempt to contribute something to the fight.
Recently, a new, left-leaning owner purchased the station, with the apparent intention of changing its all-talk (i.e. primarily conservative) format to a music format. Green has heard from a major radio executive that this is a new strategy of the progressives. Having learned the hard way that liberal talk radio cannot compete for listeners with conservative hosts -- the reason is obvious, and explains the "need" for NPR: extended political discussion, in order to be engaging, requires rational arguments and supporting facts, which leftists cannot provide -- the left has hit upon the "slow-burned earth" tactic of gradually buying up local stations and converting them off the talk radio format altogether.
Faced with having their station pulled out from under them, however, Green and Bauer have now encountered a more immediate obstacle. A local city council representative, Alderman Gary Scheeler, is promoting a plan to use a pile of local grant money from the state to tear up neighborhoods, including private property, in order to install sidewalks. Just as with the Obama administration's gun control ambitions, this project is being rationalized as a matter of "protecting the children," since the initial sidewalks would ostensibly prevent children from being hit by cars on the way to Garfield School.
Green pointed out in a letter to Alderman Scheeler, which he read on air, that "there hasn't been a single child hit by a car in the 56 years Garfield School has been there." In other words, the "child safety" mantra is just a typical excuse to justify the wasteful spending of tax dollars on a politician's pet project, for which project said politician will take credit during a future re-election campaign.
Scheeler did not like his big (government) idea being criticized so loudly in a public setting -- it tends to cause others to question the idea's merits. So he went directly to the station's manager and intimated that he would pull his sponsor dollars from the station's morning program if Green did not stop talking about this wasteful spending plan during his evening show. On Friday, January 18, Green and Bauer were warned of this threat by the station manager, five minutes before going on the air, and given an ultimatum: "tone things down," or else.
The hosts went ahead with their show as planned, including some further discussion of Scheeler's spending project, and the presumptuousness of the politicians and bureaucrats in racing ahead in defiance of the wishes of the local citizens. It remains to be seen whether, or for how long, they will be allowed to continue on the air.
"All politics is local," Tip O'Neill famously claimed. The slogan is thoroughly unprincipled in its origins, intentions, and practical manifestations. It also has a logical corollary, however, which warrants consideration: All tyranny is therefore also local. In other words, if you want to understand what progressives plan to do nationally (and internationally), you should watch closely what the small time big spenders are doing at the more manageable local level.
The essential cynicism and snobbery of O'Neill's remark is often overlooked in this age of sub-Machiavellian pragmatism. What O'Neill was saying -- and backing up with his actions in the campaign during which he said it -- was that most voters are simpleminded dupes. Incapable of thinking of the nation's interests, and focused primarily on their own immediate gratification, they can be won over, not through principled stands and a national vision, but by promising one's way into the morons' hearts with profligate spending projects that appeal to their narrow, short-sighted self-interest.
In other words, O'Neill was making the case for using tax money, including money borrowed against future generations of taxpayers, to pander to the lowest instincts of your constituents, in effect buying their votes. The word "politics" in his slogan refers to the cynical game of the electoral power-broker, and is the antithesis of genuine statesmanship. O'Neill's supposed "wisdom" was merely an earlier iteration of the Santa Claus Principle that politicians of both major parties, to the delight of the bureaucratic busybodies, have used to turn American politics into a fun-filled race to national suicide. Free cell phones, free health care, free sidewalks.
Brainerd's Alderman Scheeler is demonstrating O'Neill's cynical, condescending "politics" with his wasteful, property-violating sidewalk project. And with his efforts to silence the local conservative talk radio hosts, he is demonstrating something else, namely the mind of quotidian authoritarianism, which in its banal, localized form is fondly referred to as "the Chicago way."
Let us be clear about what is at stake here. As a private businessman, Scheeler is perfectly within his rights to pull his sponsorship money from a local station if it is broadcasting ideas with which he disagrees. No one disputes that. The concern arises from his being an elected official using his pull to bully a critic into silence -- and a media outlet succumbing to that bullying and refusing to take a stand for its hosts' and its own integrity. (And remember, Green "paid for this microphone," to quote one of his heroes, Ronald Reagan.) Local conservative radio hosts do not have millionaire sponsors ready to step in on their behalf, or millions of listeners who can threaten to boycott anything.
Are you concerned about the wilful undermining of informed citizenship by the mainstream media behemoth? Do you lament the coordinated dismantling of the West's moral core by the education and entertainment industry "elite"? Then you must not ignore the fact that, in this sense too, "all politics is local."
One of the progressives' most potent weapons of psychological warfare is the sheer omnipresence of their stratagems and their attendant propaganda. The would-be resister begins to feel overwhelmed by the seeming inescapability of the left's infinite tendrils. Finally, the feeling of being so completely overwhelmed causes paralysis in the conservative limbs, and then resignation, and then acquiescence.
The paralysis is caused, in part, by the carefully cultivated sense that the progressive apparatus has become so big that it is now somewhat abstract. The contraption is so multifaceted that it is no longer always clear how the social and intellectual manipulation works in concrete, practical terms. This abstraction makes defending against it, let alone mounting a counterattack, much more difficult.
In truth, however, no real danger is abstract. If you want to view the concrete reality of today's political and media scene more clearly, just look at the case of a little radio show on a little radio station in a little town in the heart of Minnesota. There, in microcosm, is how civilization is dismantled. The big time, national profile thugs -- Obama, Axelrod, Emanuel, Clinton(s), Bloomberg, the New York Times, et al -- are merely trying to stage-manage on a grand scale a process that is actually ongoing in your town, and every town, each and every day.
The Speakeasy's Friday show featured an in-depth interview with Jihad Watch's Robert Spencer in defense of Michele Bachmann's battle to expose Muslim Brotherhood influence in Washington. How fitting, as I noted in a private correspondence with Guy Green, that his possible final show was devoted to a defense of the most slandered and abused elected official in Minnesota history -- a woman who would go to the mat to save freedom of speech for the very people calling her a paranoid idiot, and worse -- while a local big shot who couldn't fluff Mrs. Bachmann's bunny slippers tries to use his influence to silence his critics.
Welcome to the new "progress." All tyranny is local. Ich bin ein Brainerder.
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