Calculated deception as a central public manipulation strategy practiced by President Obama involves the President taking advantage of what he thinks the average person doesn’t know and won’t be told by a compliant media. Such calculated deception was central to last week’s State of the Union Address. That address is useful only as an outline of the President’s reelection strategy. A powerful practical answer will come at the end of March in the form of House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan’s 2013 budget proposal, which will be passed by the Republican-controlled House. That budget, which all the Republicans will run on, and the President’s State of the Union Address will frame the 2012 election debate. He Thinks You’re Stupid The Obama SOTU exhibited again Obama’s core “progressive” conviction that the average American is hopelessly stupid. Obama bemoans America as “a country where a shrinking number of people do really well, while a growing number of Americans barely get by.” You may identify with that statement, as it correctly applies to Obama’s America today. But not to Reagan’s America, or my America. As Henry R. Nau explained in the January 26 Wall Street Journal , “the U.S. grew by more than 3% per year [in real terms] from 1980 to 2007, and created more than 50 million new jobs, massively expanding a middle class of working women, African-Americans and legal as well as illegal immigrants. Per capita income increased by 65%, and household income went up substantially in all income categories.” But Obama continued last week, “Long before the recession, jobs and manufacturing began leaving our shores.” Mr. Obama, let me introduce you to Mr. Nau, who, unlike you, is a real professor. The 25-year Reagan boom from 1982 to 2007 added 50 million jobs. The recession began in December, 2007 , and it is your policies that have prevented America from recovering from it. Obama recalled, “[T]he basic American promise that if you worked hard, you could do well enough to raise a family, own a home, send your kids to college, and put a little away for retirement.” He said, “The defining issue of our time is how to keep that promise alive. No challenge is more urgent. No debate is more important.”
Last week’s State of the Union address was a sad and pathetic affair, full of transparent rhetoric and demagoguery, brimming with incandescent hypocrisies, variegated with an expansive assortment of half-truths and lies, palled by a mediocrity that almost seemed intentional, detached from reality like an unmoored hot-air balloon that slowly ascends to the heavens, stuffed with dense and infuriating arrogance, and draped over our nation like a several-sizes-too-small coat with promises and ideas rendered diminutive in the shadow of the historical moment. All this was clear last Tuesday night. And yet somehow over the past week, the address actually grew worse. The president’s speech was less a factual information session about the current American condition than it was a mawkish parade of political images and symbols, meant to make us identify with the president’s vision and feel at safe harbor with his leadership. It was less a speech than a play, lavish with props and masquerading actors tasked with immersing the audience in an alternate version of reality. But over the past week, key scenes of the drama have fallen apart. The president now looks less like a seasoned political actor than like Quince at the end of A Midsummer Night’s Dream , farcically fumbling his lines. One of the supporting thespians was the Indiana-based electric car battery-maker Ener1, whose subsidiary EnerDel received a $118.5 million grant under the stimulus bill. EnerDel was also showered with more than $4 million in federal gifts under the Bush Administration. The scrappy little green boutique was meant to symbolize the flowering benefits of the sort of business-government handshaking that the rest of the civilized world calls “crony capitalism.” “In three years, our partnership with the private sector has already positioned America to be the world’s leading manufacturer of high-tech batteries,” Obama declared last Tuesday. Precisely two days later, Ener1 filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The company had been an encore actor in the president’s campaign theatrics. Almost one year ago, Vice President Joe Biden visited the Ener1 facilities, effervescent about the administration’s promise to airlift 1 million electric cars onto the road by 2015. That pledge has since crashed on the shoals of reality and the cardboard prop that is Ener1 has blown over. Watching Ener1 fold, it’s hard not to recall that last great monument to the progress of the green revolution: Solyndra. President Obama lauded that company in his 2010 State of the Union and it promptly imploded last year. One imagines executives at Pepsi placing urgent phone calls to the White House, encouraging the president to mention Coca-Cola in next year’s address. If you’re employed by a business receiving checks from the Department of Energy, you may want to dash off a few copies of your résumé this afternoon. But the star of the State of the Union show, the leading lady, was Warren Buffett’s Secretary. “Right now, Warren Buffett pays a lower tax rate than his secretary,” Obama declared. “Do we want to keep these tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans? Or do we want to keep our investments in everything else — like education and medical research; a strong military and care for our veterans?” So central was Warren Buffett’s Secretary to the performance, she attended as the special guest of the president and belle of the ball, standing in the audience as a quiet testament to the grinding, Dickensian class divide that darkens the backstreets and alleys of modern America. Warren Buffett’s Secretary was played by Debbie Bosanek, who is Warren Buffett’s actual secretary, and who makes between $200,000 and $500,000 per year, according to the calculations of Paul Roderick Gregory over at Forbes . It was a brilliant dramatic portrayal. While Bosanek herself is a creature of the upper classes, she effortlessly slipped into the part of Warren Buffett’s Secretary, a downtrodden proletarian exploited by the tax code, reminiscent of Peggy Olson in Mad Men . This, by the way, presents a knotty conundrum for progressives. If Gregory’s deductions are correct, then Bosanek is likely a member of that charter club known as the “wealthiest 2%,” a coven of blackhearted plunderers and blue-blooded aristocrats that looted the country for all it was worth in 2008. Progressives have demanded higher taxes on the wealthiest 2%, yet hailed Bosanek as an overtaxed hero. They’ve blamed the wealthiest 2% for all the nation’s ills, but hoisted up this secretary as an emblem of justice in the class wars. Well, which is it? Should we add her image to the Two Minutes Hate tape, or no? And should we raise her taxes? Lower them? Maybe we should just raise everyone’s taxes. The overarching themes pervading the president’s State of the Union drama were America’s greatness and stifling inequality. America was great when it allowed for the president’s accomplishments, like killing Osama bin Laden. But when it came to the president’s failures, most notably three years of a doldrums job market, it was all the fault of that yawning canyon of economic class. Wealthy Americans — for whom Debbie Bosanek’s membership application is still pending — were cast as the villains, cackling all the way to their banks with insufficiently punitive Treasury receipts. The only solution was to sock it to them, specifically with a 30% net tax on millionaires. This (along with solar batteries) was the Big Idea, the great glowing light bulb of the president’s address. And according to an analysis by the Fiscal Times , it would raise $30 billion in revenue — and that’s assuming that the sledgehammer of adding yet another tax didn’t further stall the economy. Of course, $30 billion isn’t immaterial, but the Tea Party Caucus could cut that much from the federal budget during a bad hangover. Meanwhile, the national debt is $15.2 trillion . And Democrats have already booby-trapped the tax code for the wealthiest Americans. With current tax rates set to expire at the beginning of 2013, taxes on capital gains will shoot up from 15% to 20%. And thanks to a pernicious little slice of the Obamacare legislation, taxes on capital gains will further increase to almost 24% in 2013. All this will happen unless the federal government takes action to prevent it. It’s piquantly fitting, isn’t it? If the president wants to see tax rates tighten for millionaires, his easiest course is simply to get reelected. But I regret that I’ve disposed of two paragraphs trying to refute the president’s numbers when the numbers are nugatory here. Obama is fully aware that his tax increase would do little to arrest the deficit and less to catalyze the economy. His purpose is to blacken the wealthy into villains and portray himself as the eminently reasonable hero; to siphon all the laws and details of politics and economics into a simple, dramatic dichotomy and cast himself on the side of good. He is, with total self-awareness, jousting with phantoms and trying to bring the rest of us along for the ride. It may make for a spectacular show, but at the end of the day, that’s all it is: cheap lines and theatrics cluttering the stage floor.
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All the President’s Props
RedState Morning Briefing For January 31, 2012 Go to www.RedStateMB.com to get the Morning Briefing every morning at no charge. 1. Moving Past Florida 2. House Conservatives Need to Block the Coming Highway Bailout 3. End Refundable Tax Credits for Illegals 4. Is Newt Much Better on the Question of Mandates? 5. Secretary Sebelius Scraps Conscience Exception for Health Plans ———————————————————————- 1. Moving Past Florida More and more polls show two things: (1) tonight Mitt Romney will win Florida and (2) Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum will combined get more votes. In fact, moving forward, the Romney campaign will probably engage in a concerted effort to prop up Rick Santorum because as long as he stays in the race, Gingrich will find it very difficult to stop Romney. More interestingly, if Santorum drops out and Newt Gingrich starts winning, suddenly the establishment will have to take seriously the idea of finding someone to replace Mitt Romney. I get repeated calls asking me to ask Rick Santorum to get out of the race. I doubt he would even listen and, unlike Rick Perry, Rick Santorum actually won a state. Today he is going to get badly, badly beaten. And it’ll probably be downhill from there. But there’s no more reason to ask him to get out of the race than Gingrich. He can decide to stay in and help Romney or get out and help Gingrich. After Florida, the decisions become more crucial. Please click here for the rest of the post. 2. House Conservatives Need to Block the Coming Highway Bailout As part of their ongoing “jobs agenda,” House Republicans will unveil this week and soon consider the American Energy & Infrastructure Act (AEIA) to reauthorize transportation spending for five years. The “highway bill” promises a host of reforms (consolidating programs and streamlining red tape) and includes increased oil and gas exploration. But unfortunately these reforms are meant to distract from the overall size of the program, and the fact that such spending will require a massive bailout from federal taxpayers. [Before getting into the proposal, let’s first reflect on something. What does it say about a Republican Majority when their number one priority heading into an election year is to pass a massive federal infrastructure bill? I know Republicans are split on the issue, and that many burn all of their anti-Keynes stimulus talking points to give transportation spending a special dispensation as a government “job creator.” But really? This is what they want to fight on and draw stark differences with the other party? That is depressing.] Please click here for the rest of the post. 3. End Refundable Tax Credits for Illegals Much ink has been poured over the fact that 51% of tax filers paid no federal income taxes in 2009. There is less attention directed towards the more outrageous statistic; 30% of tax filers had a negative tax liability that year. In other words, they made money off the tax system. Those who won the jackpot on tax day benefited primarily from refundable tax credits; the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), Additional Child Tax Credit (ACTC, the refundable portion of child tax credit), and the now-expired Making Work Pay Credit. In 2011, refundable credits cost the treasury about $94.4 billion. Keep in mind that this is just one small portion of the burgeoning welfare empire, approaching $1 trillion in total federal, state, and local expenditures. While it would be nice to get rid of these redistributive “tax expenditures” for everyone, we could start with illegal aliens. Please click here for the rest of the post. 4. Is Newt Much Better on the Question of Mandates? Yesterday I wrote an article on why I view the inevitability of an Obama defeat at the hands of Romney to be less than inevitable. Mostly I attributed this to weakness on a core issue: Obamacare. From my view, Romney cannot adequately take on this topic so long as he insists on defending the principles put forth in Romneycare. His state’s rights position plays ok with the base, but I believe it will be less than compelling to the general electorate when it comes time to decide what separates Obama & Romney on this issue. In passing, I mentioned that Gingrich, who previously supported the mandate as well, has since determined that he was wrong and will take that to his debates with Obama should he win the nomination. Please click here for the rest of the post. 5. Secretary Sebelius Scraps Conscience Exception for Health Plans As the implementation of Obamacare rolls into high gear, we’ve been given insight into how it will be implemented in general. On January 20, the Department of Health and Human Services announced that it would not exempt health plans provided by non-profit religious employers from the requirement to provide “contraceptive services.” Please click here for the rest of the post.
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Morning Briefing for January 31, 2012
As part of their ongoing “jobs agenda,” House Republicans will unveil this week and soon consider the American Energy & Infrastructure Act (AEIA) to reauthorize transportation spending for five years. The “highway bill” promises a host of reforms (consolidating programs and streamlining red tape) and includes increased oil and gas exploration. But unfortunately these reforms are meant to distract from the overall size of the program, and the fact that such spending will require a massive bailout from federal taxpayers. [Before getting into the proposal, let’s first reflect on something. What does it say about a Republican Majority when their number one priority heading into an election year is to pass a massive federal infrastructure bill? I know Republicans are split on the issue, and that many burn all of their anti-Keynes stimulus talking points to give transportation spending a special dispensation as a government “job creator.” But really? This is what they want to fight on and draw stark differences with the other party? That is depressing.] Proponents of federal infrastructure spending have long maintained its legitimacy based on the fact that it is user financed by drivers who pay gas taxes. Good driving years generate enough revenue for generous spending on roads and bridges, and bad driving years require such spending to be ratcheted back. The problem is that the last highway bill—the Safe, Accountable, Flexible, Efficient Transportation Act (SAFETEA)—increased spending levels far above what the trust fund could support ( and 31% over previous levels ). Of course, Congress refused to scale back the spending and instead infused the programs with money from general taxpayers. These bailouts of the highway trust fund occurred in 2008 ($8 billion), 2009 ($7 billion), and 2010 ($19.5 billion). This is confirmed by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service : Historically, the trust fund-based revenue collection system was a reliably growing source of funding for surface transportation, as the trust funds collected more than was expended to implement the program defined by Congress. This situation has changed under SAFETEA, as spending on highways and transit has exceeded both highway and mass transit account revenues on a regular basis. And under current law, if Congress does not reduce the spending, another billion dollar bailout will likely be needed right before the election. According to numerous press reports and the marketing material released already , the GOP bill will set the “long term reauthorization at current funding levels” and “revenues from additional oil and gas production will help fund programs” (emphasis added). Obviously, increased energy exploration is a good thing, but using the revenues generated to pay for existing unaffordable transportation obligations when we are running trillion-dollar deficits each year is insanity. Furthermore, it is unlikely that the energy revenues will come anywhere close to being able to cover a $59 billion shortfall over five years. That means other offsets and gimmicks will be needed or a massive straight-up bailout from taxpayers. All of us want better roads and bridges, but conservatives have long championed devolving the highway program to the states to collect and spend gas tax revenues as they see fit without heavy federal micromanaging. Both regularizing the recent taxpayer bailouts and relying on offsets elsewhere in the federal government will ensure that conservatives will never be able to devolve these programs and that the federal government will never get out of the federal highway business. It is great that Republicans are proposing to consolidate programs, but rationalizing transportation policy while growing government at an unaffordable pace harms the country. In short, it may be the difference between Chinese communism and Soviet communism, but it’s still communism. Furthermore, the claims that federal highway spending creates millions of jobs are dubious. These claims are typically based on economic models that ignore that a billion spent on highway projects is a billion that needs to be borrowed or taxed from the private sector, thereby destroying jobs somewhere else. During the last reauthorization of the highway bill, Heritage’s Ron Utt looked at the available research on the subject and concluded that, “such claims…are highly questionable given the mixed findings of decades of independent academic studies on the relationship between federal spending programs and job creation.” One last point. The GOP highway bill, which will violate the House-passed Ryan budget, is arguably another violation of the Republican Pledge to America, that specifically pledged to “end the practice of packaging unpopular bills with ‘must pass’ legislation to circumvent the will of the American people. Instead, we will advance major legislation one issue at a time.” Now Republicans will argue that “must pass” meant only appropriations bills, but the sentiment behind that component in the Pledge was to guard Congressmen from being pressured to support overwhelmingly bad policy (a highway bailout) that includes some long-sought conservative victories (increased energy drilling). Remember, the old Republican majority had a habit of packaging items like a minimum wage increase and ANWR together or health savings account reforms with a prescription drug expansion, and thus the Pledge included the line of advancing major issues one at a time. I fear a bums rush in the next few weeks. Republicans love them some highway spending. The last highway bill, with the 31% increase in spending, passed by a vote of 412-8 and 91-4 . Speaker Boehner has made this “jobs bill” a priority of his Speakership, and many conservatives are tired of fighting their Leadership. Who wants to oppose a bill that fixes potholes and increases energy drilling? But not fighting bills like this is exactly how our country got in its current fiscal situation. Conservatives in the House need to rise up and fight this legislation, and they need to fight hard.
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House Conservatives Need to Block the Coming Highway Bailout
For all intents and purposes Stephanopoulos is a DNC operative so this had to sting. JAKE TAPPER: What’s interesting, George, is the conundrum in which President Obama finds himself. He really can’t run on so many of his major legislative accomplishments — regardless of the merits of health care reform, financial reform, the stimulus —
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ABC’s Jake Tapper Breaks The Bad News To George Stephanopoulos: Obama “Can’t Run” On His Achievements Because “They’re Not Popular”…
