As predictable and repetitive as Obama's economic speeches are, his capacity for audacity shows ever increasing signs of creativity. Do you suppose he has any ability to feel shame for what he's doing to this country and embarrassment for blaming everyone but himself?
His latest deficit plan involves further punishing millionaires and billionaires (which means all those making $200,000 or more), continuing to spend like there's no tomorrow (which there won't be if he continues doing it), phony unspecified reductions in waste, more stonewalling on real entitlement reform, and demonizing anyone who dares to get in his way. You'll be outraged if you look at the mammoth new administrative bureaucracy he wants to create in his latest stimulus monstrosity.
For those gullible or embittered enough to buy into Obama's class warfare agitation, consider that America's total tax burden under Obama is rising to the highest level in history, as per this Heritage Foundation chart: http://bit.ly/pgGd1z. Don't forget that some 47 percent of Americans pay no income tax at all.
Beneath the surface, though, Obama's plan is designed to fail because he knows it can never pass the GOP House. He knows that serious people will not join him in this destructive measure, and so his real motives are to energize his angry leftist base and to construct a plausible scenario whereby he can blame his failures on Republican obstructionism. Not that we need proof, but he hinted at this course of action in his speech before last. (His 10,000th speech I think it was.)
Did you hear the anger in his voice? Did you hear him again blame Bush's "two wars" and "tax cuts for the wealthy" for the economic and debt problems into which he has injected steroids? These would be the two wars he continued after fraudulently promising to end and the tax cuts that did not cost the government appreciable, if any, revenues.
Almost three years into his term, did you hear him accept any ownership of his policies? Did he apologize for nearly doubling the national debt? For pushing (and preserving) unemployment to stratospheric levels? For creating so much business fear and uncertainty that he's given the stock market a multiple personality disorder?
No, no, no and no. Obama is the guy who sucker punches you, kicks you when you fall down, stomps on your head, yells at you, and then summons a crowd of people and publicly castigates you for picking on him.
The current state of the economy has little impact on Obama's economic decision making. This one-trick presidential pony promotes the same statist policies no matter the economic conditions. He has been advocating tax increases on the wealthy and other redistributionist schemes for years. Never mind that no economist would counsel tax increases in recessionary times.
When will it become clear to everyone that Obama's metrics for success are different from those of ordinary Americans? He doesn't want America to fail? Fine. But he sure doesn't define her success the same way most people do.
America is about freedom, equality of opportunity, republican government and encouraging people to be the best they can be. Obama is about equalizing outcomes, command-control economic decisions and punishing achievement. That's why almost every plan he proposes includes a redistributive component ordered and administered by government.
For him, the goal is not economic growth or even keeping the national debt under control, but pursuing the goals of the central planners, the people's will be damned. It's about dumbing down the free market so that no one makes more money than Big Brother thinks they should.
If Obama were interested in getting this economy moving again instead of restructuring it away from free market principles, would he be targeting and smothering small businesses — the primary job creators in this economy — with paralyzing tax increases and the elimination of legitimate business deductions in the name of raising revenues?
If all this weren't alarming enough, the administration's corruption abounds. Many are up in arms about the colossal waste and corruption involved in Obama's hare-brained renewable energy scheme with Solyndra, but it's just business as usual for Obama. This Solyndra scandal, as big as it is, is a microcosm of his near trillion-dollar stimulus bill. We'll never get to the bottom of, nor remotely fathom the depths of, the fraud and corruption in that bill.
Indeed, Obama isn't even breaking a sweat over this $535 million theft of taxpayer money in pursuit of his fantasy ideas. He's in our faces, doubling down on his resolve to move forward on as many as 14 new federal loan guarantees for more renewable energy concerns — nine of which, insultingly, are also for solar projects.
The finger wagger in chief, in too many ways to count, has permanently forfeited his moral authority.
David Limbaugh is a writer, author and attorney. His latest book, "Crimes Against Liberty," was No. 1 on the New York Times best-seller list for nonfiction for its first two weeks. Follow him on Twitter @davidlimbaugh and his website at www.davidlimbaugh.com. To read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.
