When Barack Obama played Monopoly as a kid, I can only imagine he did not carefully cultivate a business reputation and earn enough money to buy properties on Boardwalk and Park Place. He probably created a special Democratic version of Monopoly, [intlink id=”236613″ type=”post”]the Hugo Chavez Edition[/intlink], where he would denounce the owners of properties as “greedy and mean” and then simply legislate himself control of those enterprises—for the “greater good,” mind you. The “greater good,” of course, is the perpetuation of his power.
As long as he can conjure up envy from 51 percent of the population, he can take from the more productive 49 percent, thus creating a culture of dependency. The more people need you, the greater your tributary of votes in the next election. It is sad that the rugged individualists who built this country have slowly been replaced by “hitchhikers of virtue,” as Ayn Rand described them in Atlas Shrugged.
Aside from expanding the misguided policies of the Bush administration by taking over automobile companies, firing CEOs and inserting his own operatives, Obama has bullied financial companies and taken control of one-sixth of the economy with a nefarious health care vote he had to buy from his own party (Louisiana Purchase, Cornhusker Kickback, etc.). His government now has quietly taken complete control of the $72 billion student loan lending business, outlawing any private lending in that area.
Obama has been a strange agent of the “change” he promised. He quickly “changed” Washington, D.C., into [intlink id=”669123″ type=”post”]a corrupt, Chicago-style, political strong-arming system[/intlink] of graft, self-dealing, intimidation and payoffs.
Obama found the Bush administration’s wasteful spending on unnecessary wars of choice and prescription drug entitlements to be a good start. He set out to ramp up the pace, enlisting the audacity of dopes to rack up a record $3.2 trillion in national debt in his first six months. In just five years, the Obama-Pelosi-Reid triumvirate will run up another $10.5 trillion in debt, as much as it took every President from George Washington through Dubya Bush to accumulate.
Harry Reid looks like a creepy operator. He reminds me of the only proctologist in town who takes your insurance, and Nancy Pelosi is like his wife who works at the practice keeping two sets of books.
Obama’s Washington has impressed many in the world including Fidel Castro, who applauds his efforts. Even the Somali pirates are so taken by his boldness that they have asked to send some of their pirate trainees to Washington to intern with the Obama administration this summer.
One Obama henchman, Rep. Henry Waxman, (D-Calif. and eye candy),is intimidating AT&T for taking a $1 billion write-off for ObamaCare’s cost—which is interesting since I thought it “saved money.” He is asking AT&T, Caterpillar, Verizon, Deere and others who took the required expense to turn over internal documents, and he has threatened to haul them before Congress. No wonder Toyota just shut its California plant. Toyota really wants out of your state when it will pay a quarter-billion dollars to leave.
What troubles me is not that Obama is doing this. It is that this country is so blind and indifferent to what is going on that it will allow the plundering of the once proud free-market system that provided so much, for so many, for so long. While we look the other way, capitalism is being suffocated by populist rhetoric.
[intlink id=”671527″ type=”post”]John Edwards’ affair is not even a made-for-TV movie yet[/intlink] and our country is more focused on[intlink id=”729480″ type=”post”]Tiger Woods[/intlink] and [intlink id=”720093″ type=”post”]Sandra Bullock[/intlink] than on what just happened with health care. Americans can’t get their minds around a “reconciliation bill” or sneaky key appointments made by Obama when Congress is in recess, but we all get the sex thing.
When we elected Obama, we chose rhetoric over reason. We will pay dearly for it. When he won, I said, “There are two types of people in America: those who remember the failed policies of Jimmy Carter, and those who are about to witness them.” Obama consistently points the finger at others, but this time there is no convenient brother named Billy to blame. It is all on him.
Ron Hart is an “investigative humorist” who writes for 40 papers. He can be reached at Ron@RonaldHart.com or www.RonaldHart.com