Those praising Obama on his 100-day mark are trying to have it both ways — both claiming Obama has mastered Washington with his oratory and brilliant political skills and excusing his missteps because he hasn’t been given enough time to succeed. In other words, the only things Obama hasn’t done well are because he’s had too little time to do them.
The Houston Chronicle told its readers that “Measuring the performance of a new president at the first hundred days of his administration is a political parlor game…” but that Obama has “demonstrated his self-assurance and command of complex issues ranging from foreign affairs to the environment to human rights.”
Lincoln Mitchell, a professor at Columbia University, “The jury is still out on a number of other issues,” but also “not only have Obama’s first 100 days been by far the best of any president of my lifetime, but they began not a day too soon.”
In the minds of his supporters, Obama has made immeasurable improvements to the economy but not enough time has passed to really see the results of those improvements. Obama has done great things in Iraq and Afghanistan, but it is unclear how that will really end up because withdrawal isn’t over yet. Obama has improved gun rights, women’s rights, the environment, race relations, and the likeability of Presidential dogs – but the proof will come after 4 years, not 100 days.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Obama has been a “great success,” but that “it is just the prelude for the work that still needs to be done.”
And so it went, in the Philadelphia Inquirer, The American Prospect, The Atlantic, and a host of other liberal publications. The New York Times ran a 100-day editorial by Robert Dallek, claiming that cynics scoffed at the country’s “love affair” with Presidents who made them feel good even when things are rough, but that didn’t matter, because “His program of reforms at home and abroad is not simply an answer to the difficulties of our time but also a call to Americans to believe once again in the greatness of the nation and the promise of American life.”
Evidence as to the progress made by such reforms weren’t included in the column.
Eli Lehrer, senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, summed it up by saying he, too, thought the jury was still out on the progress the President has made, but “The 100 day mark has a lot more to do with the media than any real way of evaluating a president.”
You know what really irritates me about liberals? (Besides the fact that they’re spineless little girls in pretty dresses who can’t play rough because it musses up their hair…)
They always think liberalism fixes the problem — even when it was liberalism that caused the problem in the first place!
Case in point, the Financial Meltdown of 2008 (and counting). To hear liberals tell it, it all goes back to Ronald Reagan — who with his seductive “B-actor” charm fooled America into thinking that by slashing taxes, regulation, and government spending we could unleash free enterprise and create a new wave of prosperity.
Sure, liberals concede, that seemed to work for, oh, the better part of three decades, but now we’re paying the price for all that “greed.” The solution? A return to the pre-Reagan policies of Jimmy Carter, LBJ, FDR… Speaking of which, what will victory look like in the “War on Poverty”? When are they going to produce an “exit strategy” from that quagmire?
FYI: This stupid stunt cost taxpayers over $300,000
By Anne Gearan
The White House plans an inquiry into a low-flying photo shoot by a presidential plane that panicked New Yorkers and cost taxpayers $328,835. President Barack Obama said Tuesday it won’t happen again.
But the origins of the government public relations stunt that went awry remained an engrossing mystery _ and a potential political problem for Obama. The White House military office approved the photo-op, which cost $35,000 in fuel alone for the plane and two jet fighter escorts.
Perhaps they just don’t want to think through the details. Then again – - maybe some of them don’t have the capacity to think through the details.
I’m referring to the apparent plethora of partisan, passionate, “see-no-evil” Obama minions, who become outraged should any of the rest of us ask questions about the forty-fourth President.
I continually encounter the minions both as callers on talk radio, and as mailers responding to my various editorial columns. Whereas last year during the election cycle when I would dare to ask questions of the dear leader Obama, the minions’ first line of attack would be to call me a “racist” (or as one talk show caller put it to me last October, “you just can’t handle the idea of being under the authority of a black man, Austin”), today the line of attack is different. And while each talk show call and each email message are unique, the minions nonetheless typically follow a predictable pattern.
Teatime, anyone? I hope you’ve joined one of the thousands of TEA (Taxed Enough Already) parties or FairTax rallies, which are happening across the country April 15 to protest outrageous government spending, the deepening of our national debt, and the subsequent taxes. This is a nonpartisan time to rally around like-minded citizens and declare that we’re tired of the same old political rhetoric and that we want a better way.
I personally encourage all people to voice to their representatives that we need to return to a taxation system similar to the one established by our Founding Fathers. They did not penalize productivity through taxes the way we do today. They had no Internal Revenue Service. They believed in minimal taxation. They did not pay income taxes, which were prohibited by the Constitution. They did not pay export taxes, which also were prohibited by the Constitution. But they did tax imports. The Founders believed in free trade within our own borders and a system of tariffs on imported goods.
That’s a system that makes sense to me. It is a system designed to preserve individual liberty and encourage productivity (through no income taxes and no discouragement of domestic production through export taxes) while choosing to keep taxes as painless as possible (through taxes on foreign imports). And it doesn’t require an IRS to run it.
The Founders would have been horrified at the bloated federal bureaucracy we have now and the maze of taxes we have to navigate: income taxes, employment taxes, capital gains taxes, estate taxes, corporate taxes, property taxes, Social Security taxes, gas taxes, etc. It was excessive taxation like this that drove the Founders to rebel in the first place.
All of the Founders were opposed to domestic taxes. They regarded high taxes and aggressive tax collectors as tyrannical and always to be guarded against. Patrick Henry warned: “Excisemen may come in multitudes, for the limitation of their numbers no man knows. They may, unless the general government be restrained by a bill of rights or some similar restriction, go into your cellars and rooms and search, ransack and measure everything you eat, drink and wear.” (A prophetic statement?)
The IRS wasn’t started until nearly 100 years after the Revolutionary War, in 1862 as the Bureau of Internal Revenue. Its creation coincided with the creation of the income tax, which it was designed to collect. Both were the work of President Abraham Lincoln and Congress, who saw them as necessary to pay for Civil War expenses.
It is interesting to note, however, that the income tax law expired 10 years later, was revived in 1894, and then was ruled by the Supreme Court as unconstitutional in 1895. Yet in 1913, it became law through the 16th Amendment. Ever since then, the income tax has deprived families of their rightful earnings, restricted our liberties, and deprived our economy of money that could have been invested in productive enterprises.
Today the IRS is the No. 1 enemy of your pocketbook. Who doesn’t fear an IRS audit? It’s the only federal agency that considers you guilty until proven innocent. It can’t be overhauled or even reformed (Congress’ attempts have failed).
The best answer is to abolish the IRS, sweep away the present tax code, and implement FairTax’s plan, which lives up to its name. As Mike Huckabee says, “Wouldn’t it be nice if April 15 were just another sunny spring day?” (Mike himself will be hosting a FairTax rally in Columbia, S.C.)
FairTax’s plan would do away with all taxes and would put in their place a single consumptive (fair) tax, which right now is the closest practical proposal to the taxation system favored by the Founders. With the fair tax, the harder you worked and the more money you made the better off you and our economy would be. You would pay taxes only when you bought something, which means that you could control how much you’d be taxed and that you never would be penalized for working hard.
It’s time we had a system through which people didn’t have to figure out ways to cheat in order to save their money. Again, as Huckabee says: “The fair tax is a completely transparent tax system. It doesn’t increase taxes. It’s revenue-neutral. But here’s what it will do: It will bring business back to the United States that is leaving our shores because our tax laws make it impossible for an American-based business to compete. … The fair tax was designed by economists from Harvard and Stanford and some of the leading think tanks across the country.”
There are also trillions of dollars hiding in offshore accounts. With the fair tax, the people with their money offshore could bring it back to invest here, which would give a huge boost to our economy. It’s the biggest stimulation package there is. As the FairTax Web site says, “Think of it as the World’s Biggest Economic Jumper Cables.”
If the Founding Fathers were here today, I believe they would support the fair tax. As James Madison said, “Taxes on consumption are always least burdensome because they are least felt and are borne, too, by those who are both willing and able to pay them; that of all taxes on consumption, those on foreign commerce are most compatible with the genius and policy of free states.”
We don’t need more tax reform. We need a tax revolution! And FairTax’s plan would provide it. If we all jumped on the bandwagon and demanded our representatives implement such a taxation system, we could restore our nation economically and make the financially impossible become possible again.
Friends, we must keep fighting. Join your nearest TEA party or FairTax rally, and bring your cell phone, too, so that you can call Congress and the president to share why you’ve gathered together. (The phone number for representatives and senators is 202-224-3121, and the president’s is 202-456-1414.)
If you haven’t found the nearest location for a TEA party or FairTax rally, go to http://www.TeaPartyDay.com or http://www.FairTax.org. Invite your friends, too. And don’t forget to bring copies of this article or another one that explains the fair tax so others can be educated, as well. Why wait? Forward it now to everyone you know, and let’s get the party rolling!
