Obama's Performance Thus Far

[awc]

So, I was girding my loins back in late October of 2008, but I had no idea that Obama was going to ram through gargantuan deficit spending, which he previously criticized as a moral and practical failure of the Bush administration, in order to address the country's problems. It's quaint to read the criticisms posted on this forum regarding corporate bailouts last year, only to find a full year later that the only thing that's changed is that welfare payments to big business are now way bigger.

As far as I'm concerned, Obama has broken his pledge to make government more transparent. The rush to pass and sign legislation without any substantive debate is a complete betrayal of the spirit of his campaign. I'm not shocked by it. Obama is an arrogant person and it really shows in the derisive way in which he approached his stimulus plan. He laughed off criticisms that his stimulus plan was built on government spending, as if the only way forward to economic growth is his way, the big government way. Even though every dollar the government spends is an IOU for future taxpayers.

Obama's playing class-warfare with taxation. Instead of addressing the fact that the tax code is corrupt at 67,000 pages, he projected a sanctimonious US vs. THEM attitude that is simply preposterous. People making more than $250,000, apparently, don't have as much of a right to the wealth they earn as people earning less. What an assaholic idea that is.

Obama and the media have been complicit in what can only be called "a big fucking lie"... namely, that we're emerging from an era in which free market capitalism produced terrible failures and therefore righteously entering a period in which government will step in to save the day. Puh-lease. This is just pure, unmitigated bullshit.

Am I glad that Obama lifted the ban on federal funding of stem cell research? On principle, no (though I share the secular impulse behind lifting the ban). For the same reason that I oppose Obama's expansion of funding to faith-based initiatives and the creation of an office within the White House to manage them. There are things it's none of the government's business to be involved with. Justice, yes, the government has a role with law-enforcement and upholding the rule of law. Military, yes, I can see a role for the State in defending a country's borders. Science? Religion? No fucking thank you. Really, appreciate the offer, but we really don't need bureaucrats deciding how these dollars are spent.

Obama talked about torture, but it turns out that torture is still an option that the President can authorize. He's also keeping executive privileges in place that he once criticized, citing that America is still in a state of war. Well, that was quick.

Meanwhile, there are daunting facts facing America. According to Bloomberg, taxpayers have 9.7 TRILLION DOLLARS exposed to risk associated with bailouts of big businesses, as of early February, 2009. For some reason, people complain about the big businesses that are lobbying for bailouts and forget that professional politicians are the only people with the power to implement them. It is our "representatives" who have let us down. But who has been held accountable? Who has been fired ever? Strange times.

Even stranger times lie ahead. Check out this graph:

Notice something strange about the last year?

AMBNS_Max_630_378.png (13.46 KiB) Viewed 369 times

Again, people pretending that all of this government spending is a bonafide free lunch that will never have to be paid for. The bill is coming. Gird your loins.

[essen]

Obama and the media have been complicit in what can only be called "a big fucking lie"... namely, that we're emerging from an era in which free market capitalism produced terrible failures and therefore righteously entering a period in which government will step in to save the day. Puh-lease. This is just pure, unmitigated bullshit.

You might enjoy this. It's from today, right as the Edward Liddy hearing ended: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sjymMNP_hJY
Shep Smith actually has a tendency to make a lot of sense in general.

As for the rest of the media, I think a lot of them have had it with all this also. There's been widespread criticism of the job Obama and his administration are doing. While a lot of writers and journalists might have a tendency to be liberal or hate Republicans, I do believe most of them just want a government that works as opposed to simply being in the tank for the Democratic party.

[essen]

This just in! Fox News accuses the Fed of extortion: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sR12TFI2nJI
Fox is in the unique position of already being hated by the current administration and much of the country, but this accusation actually goes back to the Bush administration and says the problem is just continuing.

[awc]

This just in! Fox News accuses the Fed of extortion: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sR12TFI2nJI

Thanks for the link!

The accusation made in the video is something that's been rumored about and alluded to for many months now. What I would like to see is some kind of proof beyond heresay. I don't doubt that it's possible for any government to resort to extortion (hell, I actually believe that income taxes constitute extortion), however I'm holding out for real proof, an audio recording of the threat or something in writing that confirms it or accounts from officials at multiple banks about the extortion threat that are eerily similar.

Presumably the threat was used against more than just the one bank that Napolitano is referring to. But have baseless, highly public audits of banks that refused TARP money commenced? I haven't heard of any. In fact, there are highly publicized efforts by various banks to return TARP money. Would firms be attempting to return money in the face of threats of public audits?

If it's true, it's despicable. If it's not true, perhaps it will be soon. Especially in light of the new authority sought by Geitner/Obama.

Thanks for the post, essen. If it's true (and I'm instinctively drawn to suspect that it is), it is certainly a gut check about the continuity of bad behavior from the previous president to the current one.

***

Did anyone see the internet/town hall event video in which Obama derisively dismissed the idea that marijuana should be legalized? That was a slap in the face to the hundreds of thousands of people rotting away in jail for victimless crimes related to possessing or using this plant. He lost major points with me simply for the casual style of his response to a serious question. The question he was answering, by the way, centered around the idea that marijuana should be legalized so that it can be taxed to raise money to address the country's financial situation. I disagree. It should be decriminalized because (1) a person's right to the use of his/her body is a moral absolute, the very foundation of private property and (2) there is no constitutional basis for punishing people who eat or drink or breathe in the products of plants. If drugs should be legalized to address budget deficits, should they be criminalized again one the government is running surpluses?

Here's more food for thought about Obama regarding the fact that he is increasing spending on, of all things, the military.

Cindy Williams, a defense scholar at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and former assistant director of the Congressional Budget Office, points out that Obama wants to spend 2 percent more in the next fiscal year than President Bush allocated for this year, and 9 percent more than we spent last year.

Bush also planned for the defense budget (apart from Iraq and Afghanistan) to shrink slightly each year starting in 2010. Obama's blueprint calls for the defense budget to remain about the same. "Spending will actually be higher under Obama's plan than under Bush's," says Williams.

But as conservatives have been known to point out, Washington policymakers have funny ways with numbers. Last year, the Defense Department asked for an increase of nearly $60 billion in the 2010 budget over what had been planned. The Obama administration declined but agreed to a smaller increase.

So conservatives should be pleased, right? Wrong. Since the increase the Pentagon got is less than it wanted, they claim Obama is "cutting" defense spending. By that logic, if you ask for a 50 percent raise and get only 10 percent, you've suffered a pay cut.

The real question is not why Obama wants to spend so little on defense but why he wants to spend so much. Since 2001, our military outlays have soared by 40 percent, after adjusting for inflation. And that's not counting the costs of fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Why is Obama increasing our military budget? It is already MASSIVE, without any increases.

[essen]

Well, what I do know is that banks that didn't want the TARP money were made to take it, basically to prevent a run on the weaker banks that did need the money. The terms of this I don't know, what would've happened if they'd refused to take it. None of the biggest banks did refuse. It is possible that these banks agreed to it in good faith, not predicting the public lambasting that would commence afterwards if they continued to conduct business the way they always have. While I don't think Judge Napolitano went on lying about this, I don't know who he was talking to that claims his bank is worth $250 billion and had absolutely nothing to do with any of these subprime mortgages or credit default swaps, or anything bad in any way. That sounds like a stretch to me. CEOs can lie as much as politicians can.

But, now all the major investment banks are in the same position, all being held down by the same government rules that came along with TARP. There are rumors going around that the biggest banks won't be allowed to return TARP, even if they want to, again to prevent a collapse of the weaker banks. Plus, then the government would have to create a whole new set of laws to regulate these un-TARPed banks. This is partially why it's so infuriating that the government is outraged about how the banks are spending their money, if some of them didn't even want it. A few much smaller banks have returned the money, but I will be interested to see if Wells Fargo and JPMorgan are able to. Goldman Sachs has said they want to return the money also, but as the biggest recipients of government money through AIG, it seems interesting to me that they might be able to keep that money free of government restrictions while paying back the TARP money (they received more from AIG's "bailout" than from TARP). As far as I know, no one has talked about making AIG-government money restricted once it's left AIG.