Posted on 02/11/2009 12:23:32 AM PST by XR7
Will the economic stimulus plan lead to the end of prosperity, individual initiative, personal dreams, and a complete transformation of America, as we have known it? | Cal Thomas
In Charles Dickens’ novel David Copperfield, Wilkins Micawber delivers an economics lesson to young David that has been lost on most congressional Democrats, the president, and many of us. “Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery.”
The so-called “stimulus plan” cooked up mostly by House Democrats is, in reality, a plan to stimulate government and make it an even greater presence (and burden) in our lives. The appeal to speed and urgency by President Obama is an invitation to overlook details of the bill, which would accelerate the transformation of America from a capitalistic system that exalts the individual to a socialistic system that exalts the state.
Notice that in none of the apocalyptic rhetoric from the president and congressional leaders do we hear anything about the power of people to overcome the recession and restore the economy to health. There is no call for us to help ourselves first, with the aid of family and neighbors, and to employ vision, persistence, and risk in climbing out of the recessionary hole. No, only government can save us, when, in fact, it is government (along with our greed) that has caused our predicament.
Robert Rector, a senior research fellow at The Heritage Foundation, has studied the House bill. He finds it to be a resurrection of the welfare state, which many believe died during the Clinton administration with considerable assistance from the then-Republican Congress.
Rector notes that in the first year following enactment of the stimulus bill, “federal welfare spending will explode upward by more than 20 percent, rising from $491 billion in fiscal year 2008 to $601 billion in FY 2009.” That would be the largest expansion of welfare in the nation’s history. But it is only the beginning of Obama’s pledge to “Joe the Plumber” to “spread the wealth around.”
“Once the hidden welfare spending in the bill is counted,” writes Rector, “the total 10-year fiscal burden (added to the national debt) will not be $816 billion, as claimed, but $1.34 trillion. This amounts to $17,400 for each household paying income tax in the U.S.”
Under this legislation, according to Rector, the federal government for the first time “will give significant cash to able-bodied adults without dependent children.” Even though these people may have little apparent need of help, they’ll get a check just because government can send one.
Rector says that the House and Senate bills “use the idea of economic stimulus as a Trojan horse to conceal massive, permanent increases in the U.S. welfare system. The goal of the bills is ‘spreading the wealth,’ not reviving the economy.”
It will add to the growing number of people dependent on government and, thus, politicians, who will never show them the way out of poverty, but give them only enough money to sustain them in poverty and then tell them if they don’t vote for Democrats, those nasty Republicans will take their checks away.
How many have been duped by Obama’s personality and good looks? Don’t they understand that a socialist economy means the end of prosperity, individual initiative, personal dreams, and a complete transformation of America, as we have known it? After the “stimulus bill” will come health care “reform.” Watch Obama declare an emergency in his pursuit of socialized medicine. Then there’s Social Security and Medicare, which must be reformed to alleviate pressure from the retirement of massive numbers of baby boomers. Debt will mount on top of debt.
Part of this is our problem. We have believed the marketers who have convinced us that more is better and still more buys happiness. Politicians promise to help, but in fact hurt by hurtling toward a collectivism in which individuality will be subsumed to the will of the state.
Who will sound the alarm? Who will stand in the gap? This isn’t “change we can believe in.” This is a nightmare from which we’ll never escape. There’s still time, but not much. The choice is clear: happiness or misery.
Tax cuts for the rich would offset the stimulus money hoarding that will occur, the rich would also offer the jobs that poor unskilled laborers could use instead of construction/teacher/firemen/government jobs the poor can’t qualify for
I don't know if he'll succeed... but he will stand before God Almighty to explain himself....
I fear the passage of this ‘stimulus’ bill will give him and his cronies a big victory.
I feel sorry for conservatives that live in large cities. It is the city folk, who depend on city water, sewer, police, transportation, and such for such essentials as food, water, and safety.
I live in a rural area, have my own well, backup power, means of heating in the winter if electricity is cut, and means of getting food, from either hunting or planting. Obama may ask for voluntary gun registrations or ration food or restrict travel, but us rural folks can maintain independance longer then those stuck in cities.
I agree....and have lived in the "sticks" for over 20 yrs. I'm sure it wouldn't be comfortable if there were a crisis.....but I know I'd survive due to the land. (35 wooded acres, 3 creeks and tons of fish)
Unfortunately, it's sounding more and more like it won't matter if you own the land you live on. Commies confiscate anything and everything.
BO blames America for his dysfunctional conception, birth, and upbringing, for the abandonment by his father and mother, and for the inability to identify with any culture or society. BO is the consummate loser/reject - Charlie Brown with a tan, a mean streak, a perpetual grudge, and an obsessive-compulsive need to exact revenge on his perceived enemy. Otherwise he'd have to look within.
How else does one explain his intense desire to rip this country to shreds? There's something verrry personal about his rage, like the murderer who is compelled to stab his victim 500 times.
“Will the stimulus plan lead to the end of prosperity...of America?”
Yep for a while it will. Take a look around in your own town for neighborhoods where there are huge houses built in the 20’s mixed in with little boxy houses built in the 1950’s. The mansions represent the roaring 20’s and boxy post war houses represent the 30 years it took to even get a new house built in the neighborhood.
Very interesting observations. I bet if you looked at any megalomanic dictator, you'd find the same thing. Hitler was from a dysfunctional family and was famous for the many grudges that dominated his life, among which were things like not getting into art school as a teenager. No matter what it was, he always externalized it and found someone else to blame, and finally his grudges coalesced around that convenient scapegoat, the Jews.
I don't know who the anger is going to coalesce around in Obama's case. But he is very rage-filled and I think is far more dangerous than most people want to acknowledge. Like Hitler, he's good at getting other people to focus on their real or imagined grudges and he knows how to use them to build a mob.
Furthermore, I'm not sure where his ideology will come from, since every dictator, while acting out his personal dysfunctions, needs to have a political mega-theory to enlist the participation of others. Communism is a system built on grudges and Communist dictators have always been able to rely on the rhetoric of Communism to build the mob, but Communism has been so discredited that it's going to be hard for him to overtly use it. Hitler had his own political theories, however, and maybe Obama will take this tack, picking up some Marxism from Ayers and Dohrn, some black power stuff from his Chicago past, and some Islamic elements from his foreign past. The only thing we can be sure of is, as you have said, rage.
I take offense to your comparison with Charlie Brown. There is nothing of this man (BHO) in Charlie Brown!
Happiness or misery? Will the stimulus plan lead to the end of prosperity...of America?....
YES-——the stimulus will lead to prosperity.....for the district, northern Virgina and southern Maryland.......and anyone else with a government career.....
In a word, no.
In a word, yes.
It is "the change we've been waiting for."
God help us.
Yes.
A real draft horse confined to a stall, with his share of hay, grain, and water daily is still very strong.
And, he can pull a plow or a loaded wagon well when he is let out for his daily exercise.
My feelings and observation also.
They kept the "pork" in this current stimulus bill and took out the $15,000 tax incentive to buy a home and also tax breaks on new cars.
Housing and cars are being eliminated from this stimulus bill? Are they out of their little minds?!!
sw
And in the USA, nobody really does, thanks to property taxes which we voted for!
The truth is, we all pay "rent" to the government for the "privilege" (notice, the government no longer considers it a right) to occupy a tax parcel.
That's all.
Some just get to occupy nicer tax parcels than others, depending upon their ability to pay.
And, the government may aribtraily decide to raise the rent, and in most cases does so every year, so that people who are under the misguided impression that they actually "own" their homes outright (they say their home is "paid for") are forced off the tax parcel because of a rapid rise in tax "assessment" which the "owner" cannot afford to pay.
Logically speaking Mr. Obama shouldn't be President since he can't/won't show a birth certificate.
Moving on, we are heading toward a socialist/welfare state faster every day that we have a DemoncRATic congress and President.
Our economy IS collapsing around us.
Now what?
No.
They are cunning.
Calculating.
Evil.
No pretense was made during the election.
Change was promised. Change was demanded. Change is here.
And, just over half of the voters in this country went along with it.
What is the "change" that was promised?
It is called the "REDISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH."
Remember Joe the Plumber?
He was incessantly mocked and ridiculed for pointing that out.
Obama and his Congress believe in their redistributionist, government uber alles, nanny-state dream, and they are out to make it happen ASAP.
Watch.
“Notice that in none of the apocalyptic rhetoric from the president and congressional leaders do we hear anything about the power of people to overcome the recession and restore the economy to health. There is no call for us to help ourselves first, with the aid of family and neighbors, and to employ vision, persistence, and risk in climbing out of the recessionary hole. No, only government can save us, when, in fact, it is government (along with our greed) that has caused our predicament.”
Of what use do people who can take care of themselves have for government programs and the unwieldy bureaucracies that go with them?
Self-empowerment is the mortal enemy of socialism and its cousin fascism. Wealth is also. Poverty and dependence are the object of these statist ideologies, which is why their policies precipitate these phenomena.
It is also why they are against anything that would enable people to see to their own needs — such as enabling the private sector to create jobs by reducing the burden of taxes and regulation.
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