Financial Reform: Fiscal Fiasco

 It's clear that financial reform needs to  be done in this country. But not like this.

Our US Senators have voted  to kill debate on the most extreme  manipulation of financial rules since the Great Depression: The Financial Reform Bill. This sets up a final vote which will happen later tonight.

Obama says that the bill is "a sensible framework of rules and regulations, adequate to hold financial institutions accountable." In reality its just a document that legitimizes more government control and bailouts that the American people are sick of!

Conservatives and liberals alike should be furious because this bill does NOT put enough financial "skin in the game" for mortgage lenders, and makes ridiculous patronizing concessions that will have zero positive impact on saving our economy, such as nominally giving shareholders more "decision making rights". In reality nothing is changing at all. To add salt  to the wound, these fools are adding another federal bureacracy to burn money. The Federal Insurance Office (FIO), to be contained within the Treasury Department, is intended to monitor the insurance industry and make "recommendations" about which companies should be treated as systemically important. It's just a bunch of big words for more government bloating.

Why would we trust this Administration to get anything fiscally responsible done in the first place? We shouldn't. Just think about the abject failure of the stimulus package juxtaposed with the administration's recent touting of it as a great success.

The White House's claim that Obama's $826,000,000,000 stimulus has already "saved or created" 3 million jobs is patently false. In actuality he failed to deliver on his stimulus promises by 7.4 million jobs. The American people aren't stupid. Just look at the CBS poll to the left. 74 percent of Americans believe the Obama stimulus either damaged the economy or had no effect.

The White House ruse is risible. 

Surprise, surprise, the Great Tea Party hope Scott Brown was one of three republicans to side with Obama on this one. 

We need an answer, and it's coming in November. If the American people know that the stimulus is a sham, and if the American people know that the Financial Reform Bill is nothing but more of the same spending that threatens to destroy our way of life, then why can't Congress figure it out? Frankly, I don't care why. We just need a new one. I don't want my kids being forced to speak Mandarin if they aren't living in China.

Obama Pays Off His Voters 50 Billion

 Look Familiar?

It's not rocket science folks. We need to stop spending like some 18 year old kid who hopes his credit card will score him some action with the head cheerleader. Unfortunately, the reasons behind our spending aren't so benign.


Obama is paying off his voting base-- with $50 billion of your cash.


Instead of putting the pressure on elected politicians to balance their budgets with their own tax revenues, Obama sees an opportunity to curry favor with the Dem base by calling for a $50 billion dollar bailout of state and city politicians to hand off cash to their government employees. But the truth is: these people aren't in danger of losing their jobs, and are far better off than the average American worker. Wrote Pat Buchanan in an article for realclearpolitics:

Government workers enjoy far greater job security than private-sector workers. At the state and local level, their average pay and benefits, about $40 an hour, far exceed the $27 per hour in the private sector. The federal worker has it even better, receiving $30,000 a year more in pay and benefits than the average worker in the private sector.


Obama's proposal is thus about taking care of his own and the Democratic Party's political base.

Consider. The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, the American Federation of Teachers, the Transport Workers Union of America and other government unions in the AFL-CIO are all powerhouses of the Democratic Party.


Obama is calling for a taxpayer rescue of the political class to which he belongs, to spare it the painful duty tens of thousands of business executives have had to perform. Private employees -- 25 million of whom are out of work, underemployed or have given up looking for jobs -- may be expendable, but government workers are not.

Whatever happened to making local politicians responsible for their own and supporting the private sector? I'll tell you what: the liberal agenda to grow government. Why? Because Democrats = Big Government. The bigger government is, the larger the Democrat base becomes. And currently, government comprises nearly 40% of the American economy.


Many opponents of the Obamanation have worn t-shirts or carried signs depicting him as the Joker from the Dark Knight. Although humorous, I never got the connection. However, in thinking about this payoff, he does remind me of Jack Nicholson's Joker in the 1989 version during a scene in which he parades through the streets on a huge, ostentatious float, tossing out free money to gain popularity with the citizens of Gotham city. Of course,  he soon after poisons them all! Embedding is disabled for the video but check it out here. 

Stand Tall Patriots,

SP

Obama's Oily Opportunity: Slick, Toxic, Rhetoric.

                                                  


He claimed it was about Cleanup, Restoration and Prevention.

But not so.

Opportunism.  Deception.  Lack of vision.

Each of those words characterizes the President's Gulf Oil Crisis address to the nation last night. Before moving on, I want to be clear about one thing: I am not interested in making this post into a partisan POTUS slam. In fact, I was rooting for Obama last night because I was rooting for Americans. Against all of my rational understanding of what he was likely to deliver, I prayed that he could inspire the nation to rally behind our fellows in the Gulf, and to finally be a leader for all Americans distressed about the worst environmental disaster in American history.

He failed. 

Instead he used the filthy Rahm Emmanuel tactic of turning crisis into political opportunity-- and last night the Oval Office was little more than a platform for Cap and Tax, anti-business Energy Policy.

Instead he was dishonest with the American people.

Instead he exposed his lack of vision for the American future-- the most appalling, and alarming reality of all.

I am certain that there will be a plethora of bloggers attacking sundry particulars of Nobama's speech (e.g., his disingenuous invocation of the military and terrorism, misuse of God and prayer, not suspending the Jones Act, lack of specificity in what we are doing to solve the crisis, and his lies about the reality of the disaster and his administration's late, inadequate response to it).

I will address these issues in future posts, because what I want to focus on today is his lack of vision. Here is an excerpt that should have all Americans outraged, up in arms, and fiercely determined to overthrow this man:

...what has defined us as a nation since our founding is the capacity to shape our destiny – our determination to fight for the America we want for our children.  Even if we’re unsure exactly what that looks like.  Even if we don’t yet know precisely how we’re going to get there.  We know we’ll get there.  

Let me ask you a question: Do YOU know what you want the future to look like? Good God Yes! You're an American! Do YOU know how to get there? Of course you do! It was laid out in our founding documents and upheld by great American leaders, the likes of Ronald Reagan. If we don't know what we want America to look like, or how we want to get there, then how can we get there?

I'm going to start calling this guy Captain Crook, because he's like a blind pirate with two eye patches.

He's got no vision.

Now listen. I'm not interested in just bashing the man, because it is in the best interest of America to proffer solutions, not complaints. As Frank Luntz said last night:

....we’ve now reached the point where we’ve become so divided that we’re not even listening to what our leaders are saying if we disagree with them.

 --and that's un-American. We need reasoned debate, solid conclusions and action. That said, there is a serious, fundamental question that we must ask ourselves and our government:

How can the American President have the audacity to broadcast himself on live television to millions of citizens and profess that he doesn't have the time to contemplate where the nation is headed or how to achieve our national goals of freedom and prosperity?

We need a man of Vision to sit behind his desk and guide our nation like Washington did his boat across the Potomac. Last night Nobama showed precisely the type of criminally lackadaisical leadership that he showed in his response to the oil spill-- and we, like the Louisiana coast, are caught in the sludge while he spews his slick, toxic, rhetoric.

Now don't get me wrong, I believe that the actions of local officials like Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindall exemplify the Federalist approach to small government, which says that we don't need a bloated bureaucracy to bungle matters that States are apt to handle themselves. However, the President of the United States should be there for support immediately. He should inspire confidence. He should have the compass when the ship is buffeted by storm.

But it is we conservatives who truly have the correct vision for the future, and we must sail into 2012 with a capable leader that can work for us to deliver it.

We know what we want out of our future: a return to the values that made us the greatest nation the world has ever seen. 

We know what we want to bequeath to our children: a nation rich with opportunity, liberty, and pride.

It was Ronald Reagan who said the we conservatives are not trying to return America to the past, but simply trying to refocus our vision with "a past way of viewing our future." That is an integral ingredient we are in need of today. And if we don't have all hands on deck to steer our nation out of troubled waters, we'll run aground, capsize, or be lost in a sea of post-American disaster.

Watch Nobama's speech here if you haven't already, and give your own feedback. Let's ignite this important discussion.

Stand Tall Patriots,

SP