America's Failure is Obama's Success
May 2, 2014
By Don Feder
I keep getting e-mails from clueless conservatives about what a
dumb-bunny our president is. This bromide has been rattling around the
right since 2008: Obama can't walk and chew gum without the aid of a
teleprompter. He'd need a brain transplant to achieve the IQ of dirt.
Last week I received the following: "Barack Obama is an eloquently
tailored empty suit. No resume ... no original ideas, no understanding
of how the economy works, no understanding of how the world works...
nothing but abstract, empty rhetoric devoid of substance."
A posting on American Thinker offers the following as proof of
Obama's blithering incompetence: "The facts reveal that he was stupid
enough to believe ObamaCare would work." But ObamaCare is working
exactly as the president intended.
The empty-suit quote is from a
commentary by the late Dr. Jack Wheeler, written during the 2008 campaign –
before Obama got himself elected president twice (the second time in the midst
of the longest sustained high unemployment since the Great Depression), before
he managed to push through the most radical legislation since the progressive
income tax and thwarted repeal – even though, after 5 years, it's never had
majority support – despite turning the Constitution into a paper airplane and
flying it out a White House window. Can we talk teflon?
In the past 80 years, only two presidents have been this successful – FDR and Ronald Reagan. And still him-so-dumb
thinking dominates the right.
Okay, Obama isn't a bloody genius. Neither was Stalin, Hitler, Al Capone
or Meyer Lansky. But like his ideological soul-mates, Obama is cold,
calculating, ruthless, and diabolically clever at advancing his agenda.
He also keeps a low profile. To quote Al Pacino as the Prince of
Darkness in
"The Devil's Advocate" – "They never see me coming."
Last December, after five years of that old Obama magic and
three-quarters of a trillion in economic stimulus, the unemployment rate
finally dipped below 7%. The media celebrated this as the start of
something big. It was the continuation of something pathetic.
In the last month of 2013, 74,000 jobs were created. In a nation of 310
million, that's less than half the number needed just to keep pace with
population growth.
December marked the 44th straight month in which more people gave up
looking for jobs than found them. The real unemployment rate
(unemployed, underemployed and stopped looking) hit 13.2%
– almost twice the official rate. The American Enterprise Institute
discloses, "Both the number of long-term unemployed workers (who have
been actively looking for work but unable to find jobs for 27 weeks or
longer) and their share of total unemployment are at post-war highs."
The teen unemployment rate is 18.6%. For black teens, it's an ominous
35.8%. The economy is so good that almost a quarter of 26-year-olds are
still living with their parents.
Obama wants to do more – raising the federal minimum wage from $7.25 to
$10.10 an hour. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that will
annihilate another 500,000 jobs. Bill Gates observes: "If you raise the
minimum wage, you're encouraging labor substitution and you're going to
go buy machines and automate things.... It does cause job destruction."
The president is counting on it. High unemployment is a symphony for the
party of plunder. It gets to play lord bountiful with regular
extensions of long-term unemployment benefits
(now up to 99 weeks) which heartless Republicans will be castigated for
opposing. As more Americans slip below the poverty line, the Democrats'
base grows, and the president has another opportunity to demagogue about
the "growing problem of income-inequality" and push new programs from
the playbook of Marx and Engels.
Unlike employment, food stamps has had banner growth in the Obama years,
up from 26 million in 2007 to 47 million this year. According to the
Census Bureau, by 2011, more Americans were receiving one or more
means-tested federal programs than were employed full-time, year round.
These programs, which cost almost $1 trillion annually, cover over 100
million Americans.
Democratic power grows from dependency. The left wants a swelling army
of the dole-addicted looking to Washington for food, housing, health
care and other necessities – a mob which will storm the polls every two
years to vote their perceived interests.
ObamaCare is big government's latest great leap backward. Nationalized
health insurance will drive up costs, ravage the private insurance
market and put the power of life and death in the hands of warm and
caring bureaucrats.
The administration now admits that 93 million will lose their existing
plans (the ones Pinocchi-prez assured the gullible they could keep, if
they liked them) and be forced onto one of the exchanges to buy an
inferior product at a higher price.
From 2005 to 2013, premiums for the average individual plan increased
37%, for a family plan, they rose 31% during that period. Anticipating
the impact of ObamaCare,
the same premiums rose nearly 40% and 56% respectively since February
2013.
The burden of ObamaCare will also be measured in lost jobs. When fully
implemented, the employer-mandate is expected to add $5.51 an hour to
the cost of employing a full-time worker with dependents. It will add
tens of millions of low-income individuals to Medicaid, result in hiring
16,000 new IRS agents, and provide funding for close to 50,000
"navigators " – leftwing activists paid up to $48-an-hour to promote
enrollment.
As the guide "ObamaCare: Before And After," published by Discover the
Networks, explains: "It is a matter of public record that President
Obama and many other leading Democrats view ObamaCare not as the final
solution to the nation's health care problems, but rather as a stepping
stone toward the ultimate goal of a single-payer system administered
entirely by the federal government. Obama has acknowledged this many
times over the years, as have Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi and Kathleen
Sebelius."
The failure of ObamaCare .01 will be used to roll out a full-fledged socialized system.
Along with dependency, federal spending and the National Debt have also
soared. In 2011 Washington's share of Gross Domestic Product climbed to
24%
– the largest share of GDP consumed by the federal establishment since
the end of World War II.
When the messiah ascended on January 20, 2009, the National Debt was
$10.626 trillion. By January 31, 2014, it had reached $17.293 trillion –
an increase of $6.666 trillion
over the Obama years. It took 227 years (from America's founding to
2003) for the National Debt to hit $6.666 trillion. Obama added as much
debt in just five years.
By driving the nation into bankruptcy, Obama impoverishes the middle
class and further undermines the economy. When Republicans protest
raising the debt ceiling, Democrats and their media mutts get to growl
about a looming government shutdown. "It's the end of the world as we
know it...."
Obama has America on an energy-starvation diet.
Last week, the administration again delayed a decision on U.S. participation in the Keystone XL Pipeline.
The 1,700-mile pipeline from the oil fields of Alberta, Canada to the
Gulf Coast would result in thousands of construction jobs. More
importantly, it would lessen our dependence on Obama's friends in the
Middle East. With Keystone XL, by 2030, 4 million barrels of Canadian
crude a day could be reaching us, twice what we currently import from
the Persian Gulf.
This January, the average price for a kilowatt hour of electricity in a
U.S. city hit an all-time high, thanks to Obama's war on coal. While the
U.S. population increased by 14 million since 2007, the production of
electricity in the United States has declined – another sacrifice laid
on the altar of Global Warming.
Obama hates American preeminence. He hates economic growth. He hates
energy production. He hates the private sector and middle-class
prosperity. He hates a system where consumers can shop for health
insurance and have real choices.
He wants to leave America poorer, job growth stagnant, our people more
dependent, and our economy gasping for air. That will be his enduring
legacy to our national decline. America's failure is Obama's success.
Stupid, inept, incompetent, hapless? The president and his supporters hope you'll keep right on underestimating him.
Don Feder is a former Boston
Herald writer who is now a political/communications consultant. He also
maintains his own website, DonFeder.com.
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