No Hope & Change

Let’s talk about what Barack Obama has gotten right. The downturn in our economy started when George Bush was president. True. But it also started when the Democrats took over the House and Senate in January 2007.

Prior to that, the Republican led Congress had reduced the budget deficit four years in a row down to $167 billion. After almost four years of Democrat prodigious wasteful spending and job destruction policies, the deficit has increased by over 800% and unemployment has officially doubled to almost 10%. When one counts those who have quit looking for work, unemployment is almost 20%, higher than during most of the Great Depression!

The President has sued Arizona for trying to help enforce the law to protect our borders. Also the President refuses to provide the manpower and resources necessary to keep these criminals out.

The Democrats in Congress passed a mandatory health care bill that polls show the majority of the American people do not want. The first real statewide poll, the Missouri ballot initiative last week, showed over 70% were against it!

The Democrat Congress (with one lone RINO) passed a finance reform bill that gives the government total control over lending. Government bureaucrats will decide which companies survive and which ones won’t.

This will force companies to do the bidding of those in power. Free enterprise has been crippled, and investment and the entrepreneurial spirit that have given this country the greatest standard of living in the world have been severely damaged. We now are officially a socialist country.

History has shown that government attempts to insist upon equality of outcomes pleased almost nobody and resulted in reducing motivation to produce good. Heck, William Bradford figured that out after the first summer at Plymouth. He found that sharing equally (redistributing the wealth) motivated the most able to do less than the less able. The result was starvation. The second summer he instituted private property ownership so that people could keep the fruit of their labors. That was the reason for the first Thanksgiving, thanking God for having discovered natural law. As he wrote in his journal, we “may well evince the vanity of that conceit of Plato’s” (Republic) . . . “as if they were wiser than God.” Bureaucrats and most academics have yet to notice this. Most politicians do not care.

We have a Department of Energy that has actively prohibited the production of the cleanest, safest, most efficient form of energy yet discovered—nuclear power. We have a Department of Agriculture that subsidizes inefficient farmers so that the rest of us pay more than we should.

We have a Department of Education that has a record of having dumbed down our educational delivery since its inception. We have a Department of Health and Human Services that rewards self -destructive behavior.

The real problem is not the power-hungry elected officials we have. No, the real problem is that most Americans have been denied the education or cannot be bothered to understand the cause and effect of such destructive government policies and do something about it.

James F. Davis, the president of Accuracy in Academia, graciously shared this column.