Charles Krauthammer: "The Age of Obama"

btMOMtoFFBs

Mon, Feb 09 2009, 5:49 pm

link: http://www.jpost.com/servlet/S.....wFull

The Age of Obama
By CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER

"A failure to act, and act now, will turn crisis into a catastrophe." - President Obama, Feb. 4.

Catastrophe, mind you. So much for the president who in his inaugural address two weeks earlier declared "we have chosen hope over fear." Until, that is, you need fear to pass a bill.

And so much for the promise to banish the money changers and influence peddlers from the temple. An ostentatious executive order banning lobbyists was immediately followed by the nomination of at least a dozen current or former lobbyists to high position. Followed by a Treasury secretary who allegedly couldn't understand the payroll tax provisions in his 1040.

Followed by Tom Daschle, who had to fall on his sword according to the new Washington rule that no Cabinet can have more than one tax delinquent.

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The Daschle affair was more serious because his offense involved more than taxes. As Michael Kinsley once observed, in Washington the real scandal isn't what's illegal, but what's legal. Not paying taxes is one thing. But what made this case intolerable was the perfectly legal dealings that amassed Daschle $5.2 million in just two years.

He'd been getting $1 million per year from a law firm. But he's not a lawyer, nor a registered lobbyist. You don't get paid this kind of money to instruct partners on the Senate markup process. You get it for picking up the phone and peddling influence.

At least Tim Geithner, the tax-challenged Treasury secretary, had been working for years as a humble international civil servant earning non-stratospheric wages. Daschle, who had made another cool million a year (plus chauffeur and Caddy) for unspecified services to a pal's private equity firm, represented everything Obama said he'd come to Washington to upend.

AND YET more damaging to Obama's image than all the hypocrisies in the appointment process is his signature bill: the stimulus package. He inexplicably delegated the writing to Nancy Pelosi and the barons of the House. The product, which inevitably carries Obama's name, was not just bad, not just flawed, but a legislative abomination.

It's not just pages and pages of special-interest tax breaks, giveaways and protections, one of which would set off a ruinous Smoot-Hawley trade war. It's not just the waste, such as the $88.6 million for new construction for Milwaukee Public Schools, which, reports the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, have shrinking enrollment, 15 vacant schools and, quite logically, no plans for new construction.

It's the essential fraud of rushing through a bill in which the normal rules (committee hearings, finding revenue to pay for the programs) are suspended on the grounds that a national emergency requires an immediate job-creating stimulus - and then throwing into it hundreds of billions that have nothing to do with stimulus, that Congress' own budget office says won't be spent until 2011 and beyond, and that are little more than the back-scratching, special-interest, lobby-driven parochialism that Obama came to Washington to abolish. He said.

Not just to abolish but to create something new - a new politics where the moneyed pork-barreling and corrupt logrolling of the past would give way to a bottom-up, grass-roots participatory democracy. That is what made Obama so dazzling and new. Turns out the "fierce urgency of now" includes $150 million for livestock insurance.

The Age of Obama begins with perhaps the greatest frenzy of old-politics influence peddling ever seen in Washington. By the time the stimulus bill reached the Senate, reports The Wall Street Journal, pharmaceutical and high-tech companies were lobbying furiously for a new plan to repatriate overseas profits that would yield major tax savings. California wine growers and Florida citrus producers were fighting to change a single phrase in one provision. Substituting "planted" for "ready to market" would mean a windfall garnered from a new "bonus depreciation" incentive.

After Obama's miraculous 2008 presidential campaign, it was clear that at some point the magical mystery tour would have to end. The nation would rub its eyes and begin to emerge from its reverie. The hallucinatory Obama would give way to the mere mortal. The great ethical transformations promised would be seen as a fairy tale that all presidents tell - and that this president told better than anyone.

I thought the awakening would take six months. It took two and a half weeks.

bubby

Mon, Feb 09 2009, 8:31 pm

Obama promised us the world, but in the words of WH Auden:

Has sold us yet another shop-soiled day,
Patently rusty, not even in a gaudy box.

Unfortunately, you're stuck for at least 4 years. I'll be watching the destruction of America from Israel.

mimivan

Mon, Feb 09 2009, 11:07 pm

I've always had great admiration for Charles Krauthamer. Thanks for posting

the outrage: Obama promised $300 billion for infrastructure that would get Americans working again...and Pelosi cut it to $30 billion...so even where spending was required, they chickended out...

btMOMtoFFBs

Tue, Feb 10 2009, 4:05 am

Empty promises. Political Payoffs.

Mah nishtanah haPolitician HaZeh?

Why did all those voters buy the "change" thing?

Yes, Krauthammer is brilliant and oh so articulate. Love his writing.

bubby

Tue, Feb 10 2009, 4:55 am

[quote="btMOMtoFFBs"]

Why did all those voters buy the "change" thing?

Desperation? Sheeple? Obama WAS articulate & charismatic. He sounded fresh & exciting during the campaign & I must confess, I bought into him for about 2 days. Then I realized I was attracted not so much to the content of his speeches but to his delivery & his voice. There was no real content, just rhetoric & slogans. Generally speaking, human beings will believe pretty much anything if they are looking for answers.

He seems to have aged considerably in 3 weeks. He bit off more than he can chew & he's scared. And what do scared boys do? They bully. That's what is happening with the "stimulus" Bill. "As long as I'm President..." Red flag, people!

The only people getting "stimulated" are groups like Acorn. Note how Barney Frank has been remarkably reticent lately; even he recognizes the Democrats have created a maniacal communist monster. The hype surrounding Obama has all but died. If you listen carefully, you can hear Auden again (I love this work!)

"The drums of an enormous and routed army,
Throbbing raggedly, fitfully, scatteredly, madly.
We are lost. We are lost."

btMOMtoFFBs

Tue, Feb 10 2009, 11:00 am

oh yeah Bubby! Plus he's way in over his head, not a shocker, considering his lack of experience.

He's almost having temper tantrums, we're seeing moments of losing self control as we did during the campaign:

"Its not fair! "
"I'm supposed to get my way!"
"Its not fair you bad Republicans listen to Rush Limbaugh and don't listen to me"
"I won, not you."
"Give me my way right now... (or I won't be your friend anymore...) or there will be a "catastrophe"

bubby

Tue, Feb 10 2009, 11:05 am

Newsweek's cover this week:
"We're all socialists now" shock

REALLY scary stuff. 3 weeks & counting....how many days left?

btMOMtoFFBs

Tue, Feb 10 2009, 11:13 am

Bubby, its gonna be a looooong 4 years.

bubby

Tue, Feb 10 2009, 12:22 pm

I'd

, but I'm actually Crying

Raisin

Tue, Feb 10 2009, 12:36 pm

because of course this whole financial crises is all his fault.

Kinneret

Tue, Feb 10 2009, 12:46 pm

Raisin wrote:

because of course this whole financial crises is all his fault.

And he's been in office for a whole 3 weeks. He should have everything all fixed by now.

chavamom

Tue, Feb 10 2009, 6:03 pm

bubby wrote:

Newsweek's cover this week:
"We're all socialists now" shock

REALLY scary stuff. 3 weeks & counting....how many days left?

The irony being that the big "socialist" move was the bank bailout - which occurred under Bush. Ladies, please. Read beyond the rhetoric. Do you know why Republicans and Democrats alike are interested in bailing out the banks? B/c massive bank failure is the difference between recession and DEPRESSION. Ask yourself, do you want to go there? I hate my taxes going to bail out banks too, but it sure beats 1929 redux.

stem

Tue, Feb 10 2009, 6:15 pm

What I want to know is where's the famous tax cuts for 95% of Americans?

bubby

Tue, Feb 10 2009, 7:34 pm

chavamom...and you look so young! You remember 1929? Wink

Stem...fugheddaboudit. It ain't for the likes of us. And by "us" I mean normal, functional, tax-paying, working people.

Bottom line...Obama's omnipotence just isn't there. He doesn't walk on water. He drowned. Problem is, he's dragging us all down with him & the "lifebelt" he's throwing is broken. And all the other lifebelts were made in the same factory.

Dontcha just love metaphors?? LOL

mimivan

Tue, Feb 10 2009, 7:45 pm

bubby wrote:

Newsweek's cover this week:
"We're all socialists now" shock

REALLY scary stuff. 3 weeks & counting....how many days left?

Calm down ladies...he's not effective enough to make the country socialist. Just look at how both houses whittled down his proposal for a Trillion shock

dollar bailout...they took the teeth out of the package and replaced it with pork. And that wasn't his doing...

I don't think that, given our bicameral system and balance of power, we could ever have a Communist "take over" even if he were one.

I was actually for an FDR style second New Deal, even if it meant more spending, because we are in a crisis like the Great Depression and the fallout hasn't been truly felt yet. (they also called FDR a Communist in his time) But given the complete alteration of his stimulus package beyond all recognition, I don't think these ambitions will ever be realized.

A noted economist was asked what he is going to do to ensure his children will be able to make parnassa in future and he responded "I will teach them Mandarin."
The Chinese are not afraid of government spending to stimulate the economy, and some economists have predicted they will be the first ones to survive this morass because they are making the necessary steps. (ironically, the Communist Chinese will be the first to make capitalism work again)

As my dad used to say about FDR "He was not a Communist. He was the ultimate Capitalist. He did everything he could do to save the Capitalist system (which meant dreaded government spending...but when it's necessary, it's necessary)"

mimivan

Tue, Feb 10 2009, 7:59 pm

By the way...why hasn't anyone said anything about the fact that Obama wants to "extend an olive branch" (quoting an AP headline) to that nutcase in Iran who chas v'shalom wants to bomb Israel off the map...?

does that matter to anyone but me?
(sorry to be a bit edgy, but it is about our survival, you know)

btMOMtoFFBs

Wed, Feb 11 2009, 3:31 am

Actually Mimi, many economists say the New Deal stalled the economic recovery, although it did create government jobs and pay people.

WW2 and the growth of war-related industries is actually what kickstarted the economy itself.

Taxing inudstry and wealthy business owners (top 5% of our economy) and "redistributing" the money to the poorest will just sustain people, which is important, of course. But it may not do anything for the economy.

To stimulate the economy, it will take incentivizing business owners and companies to produce more output and hire more workers. Taxing them silly will do the opposite, its a dis-incentive to produce, hire or even stay in business in the US. Reducing their taxes will incentivize them to grow their businesses and hire more people.

But hey, who cares about them, they're rich anyway. If they don't want to pay 40% taxes, they're unpatriotic. (Just like Daschle and friends!).

Heck, there's a 30% chance it won't even work! Let's gamble with a trillion dolllars of everyone's money and see what happens.

Mimi, don't fool yourself. Obama is a master political player. The combo of Obama, Pelosi and Reid is dangerous for a free economy. They have two years to implement as many liberal economic acts as they wish, and they're shootin for the stars.

They're terribly dishonest about their agenda, too. Each of them has claimed there is 'No Pork" in this package, which is just one BIG FAT LIE. Exploding anger