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Monday, February 16 2009
I was talking to a friend of mine who runs a small bookstore. Like most small business owners recently, he has seen a drop in business and profit and was looking for suggestions. So I gave him one.
 
“Why don’t you just borrow a bunch of money from your personal account and buy your own books? Your sales will go up, your quarterly reports will look better, and you’ll have a renewed confidence.” 
 
Seem ignorant? Tell that to your new president and his Democrat allies in Congress, since that is exactly the plan they have developed for healing our economic woes. Somehow they have concluded that the solution to a problem created by irresponsible government borrowing and spending is more government borrowing and spending.  If they are correct, it will be the first time in history a country has ever borrowed and taxed its way out of a recession. But nevertheless, they will soon be taking nearly a trillion dollars out of the economy to then turn around and reinvest in the same economy. 
 
The incoherence became evident early on when President Obama falsely proclaimed that, “only government can break the vicious cycles that are crippling our economy.” That might be true if it weren’t for the fact that those vicious cycles are government created, government regulated, government subsidized, and government perpetuated.
 
Common sense dictates that the only thing capable of reviving the American economy is the engine of the American economy: the marketplace. Therefore, if our President really wanted to live up to his messianic aspirations and “solve” this problem, he needed to do two things, and he needed to prevent two things.
 
First, he needed to call on Congress to make the Bush tax cuts permanent and propose further, deeper cuts. The more of their own money that people are allowed to keep, the more likely those dollars are going to be spent. That’s a good thing for the economy. But instead, the president has stated his intent to let the tax cuts expire in 2010, dramatically raising the tax burden on every American.
 
Second, he needed to demand the slashing of corporate tax rates. The less it costs someone to start a business here, the more likely they are to do so, thus providing new jobs, wages, and income. That also is a good thing for the economy. But instead, President Obama has signaled his intent to allow Europe to woo entrepreneurs with a 20% corporate tax rate while ours sits near 35%.
 
While taking those proactive steps (neither of which evidently crossed his mind), the President should have also used his power to prevent two growth-stifling realities. One, stop power hungry politicians in Congress from loading up the recovery bill with needless spending. The last thing the country needs in the midst of economic turmoil is wasteful pork projects. 
 
Seemingly President Obama understood this, stating recently in Elkhart, IN, “There aren't individual pork projects that members of Congress are putting into this bill.” Of course that was right before he mentioned that the bill would help residents there build an overpass in their city. An overpass would probably be nice, but is it essential for American economic recovery? And what about the $255 million set aside for a “polar icebreaker?” And while we’re at it, how will giving $50 million to the National Endowment for the Arts (the same group that helped fund the urine-soaked Jesus “art” a few years ago) spare us from economic ruin?
 
And two, he needed to avoid further saturating future generations with this generation’s debt. Just like with pork projects, the president initially seemed to grasp this concept.   In the third presidential debate he said, “We need to eliminate a whole host of programs that don’t work,” and reassured us that his proposals represented “a net spending cut.” But now in the first 100 days of his presidency, Obama is seeking to borrow and spend nearly one trillion dollars.  Keep in mind that with any borrowing of money comes the stipulation that it will be paid back with interest…something our grandchildren will get to enjoy.
 
The truth is I don’t really have a friend in the book business. But if I did, he would have been well advised to mark me off his list of economic advisers. We would be well served to do the same with our new President, and his fellow ‘borrow and spend’ Democrats.
 
Peter W. Heck
Posted by: Peter Heck AT 08:20 pm   |  Permalink   |  0 Comments  |  Email
Monday, February 02 2009
During the 1988 Vice Presidential debate, Democrat Senator Lloyd Bentsen gave one of the most memorable lines in American political history when he stunned Republican Senator Dan Quayle by stating, “Senator, you’re no Jack Kennedy.”
 
Watching the inauguration of President Barack Obama, it was impossible not to think back on those words. To the point of tackiness, Obama attempted to cast himself as the second coming of Abraham Lincoln: from taking the train tour into Washington, lifting a line from the Gettysburg Address for the title of his own speech, swearing in on the frail pages of Lincoln’s personal Bible, to bizarrely dining on the same food as Lincoln’s inaugural feast.
 
Unfortunately for Mr. Obama – and more depressingly for America – the similarities come to a crashing halt right there. In fact, the two men couldn’t be more dissimilar.
 
In Lincoln’s day, the slave owning south was denying thousands of Americans their most basic, fundamental human rights. To justify their immorality, the slave owners relied on a tragic Supreme Court ruling in Dred Scott v. Sanford that declared slaves to be rightful property of their owners, not viable human beings entitled to protection under the law. As a result, countless Americans suffered brutal and inhuman treatment, even losing their lives.
 
When Lincoln rose to power, he did not equivocate on this travesty. In the acceptabce speech he gave in his 1858 Senate race, Lincoln boldly and courageously declared: “A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure half slave and half free. It will become all one thing, or all the other.” In short, Lincoln was willing to go to war to preserve the eternal moral principles America had been founded upon. That’s courage. And without this fortitude, it is highly unlikely we would have seen a man the ethnicity of Barack Obama take the oath of office this year.
 
It is with a sickening irony then, that America is forced to admit that its first black president represents the ideological and moral positions not of Lincoln, but rather the slave-owning south.
 
For in the age of Obama there is a nearly identical moral crisis crying out to be rectified. The similarities are chilling: the pro-abortion movement in this country continues depriving the most defenseless Americans of their basic, fundamental human rights. To justify their immorality, they rely on a tragically flawed Supreme Court ruling in Roe v. Wade that declared small humans in the womb to be the property of their mothers, not viable human beings entitled to protection under the law. As a result, millions of Americans have been and continue to be brutally and inhumanly slaughtered.
 
Yet when given the opportunity to walk in the footsteps of the Great Emancipator, Barack Obama showed how small of a man he really is, embarrassingly stating that the issue was “above his pay grade.” Of course that answer, revealing and pathetic as it is, was merely the deception that is all too common in our politics. Obama knows exactly where he stands on the issue, having never once voted for a measure to protect the most defenseless among us.
 
“Good people can disagree on this issue,” Obama says, and then he directs his new administration to foster more policies expanding abortion. Imagine if Lincoln had said those same words regarding the issue of slavery: “Good people can disagree on this issue…but the freedom of slave owners to do with their slaves as they wish can’t be taken away from them. In fact, it must be expanded.” It is not a stretch to say that if Abe had taken such an approach he would not be regarded as a great man, which is precisely why Barack Obama is not.
 
As a black man who has ascended to the presidency because honorable individuals like Lincoln took a stand defending the unalienable rights of all Americans, it would have been incredibly moving for Obama to have stood on his predecessor’s shoulders and declared that its time we put this revolting chapter of abortion in America behind us. But he didn’t do that, and has instead sought to expand its heinous consequences.
 
What a pity that at a time when our country desperately needs a leader with the moral clarity and ethical backbone of Abraham Lincoln, they have elected the complete opposite. 
 
You may eat the same food, ride the same railways, put your hand on the same Bible, and live in the same mansion…but Mr. Obama, you are no Abe Lincoln.
 
Peter W. Heck
Posted by: Peter Heck AT 08:17 pm   |  Permalink   |  0 Comments  |  Email
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