Remember Barack Obama's global poverty initiative?
It hasn't received too much coverage since we broke that story last February.
The beginning price tag was set at $845 billion. But, to illustrate how that is just a start, I want you to recall the failed domestic War on Poverty begun by Lyndon Johnson in the 1960s. It ultimately cost U.S. taxpayers in the trillions.
But this was Sen. Barack Obama's hallmark, keystone plan during his short tenure in Congress. It is called the Global Poverty Act, and its initial cost was set at $845 billion. It would redistribute U.S. taxpayer dollars overseas to "solve" the world poverty problem.
This is what we can expect from President Obama – that he will forcibly and coercively take your money and send it overseas, as well as spend it on dozens of worthless domestic wealth-redistribution programs.
I'm reminded of this forgotten plan by the "discovery" of Obama's youngest brother living in Kenya on $1 dollar a month.
It's a sad story, indeed.
But it is a vital illustration of Democratic Party "compassion" at work.
If you were a wealthy man, like Barack Obama, and you had a brother living in this kind of abject poverty in Kenya, wouldn't you take some personal initiative to help?
That's what most truly compassionate people would do.
Barack Obama has the means to help his brother George Hussein Onyango Obama. For one thing, he could exponentially increase his wealth by sending him $10 a day. But Barack Obama doesn't do that, for whatever reason.
Instead, he seeks to confiscate from you and other American taxpayers a minimum of $845 billion to solve the problems of all the world's poor.
Never mind that it can never work.
Never mind that such failed experiments are actually counterproductive.
Never mind that there isn't enough material wealth in the United States to address all the world's poverty problems.
Never mind that we have poverty in the U.S. that remains unaddressed.
Never mind all that.
Just think about how phony Barack Obama is about his concern for the poor.
How much of his own money does Obama willingly give away to help the poor – here, there or anywhere?
How much money has Barack Obama given to his brother?
How does Barack Obama sleep at night knowing his brother – his own flesh and blood – is living in squalor and despair in Kenya?
Maybe Barack Obama would say: "Well, I didn't think just sending money to George would be the best way to solve his problem." That might be a valid thing to say, if you weren't hell-bent on sending other people's money to millions of other nameless, faceless people around the globe because you believed, in their case, material wealth was actually the key to improving their lives.
Do you see my problem here?
I recognize that money may or may not help George Obama.
I recognize that giving people what they think they need is not always the best solution. Sometimes it's the very worst.
I recognize it is better to teach someone to fish than to feed them.
But Barack Obama doesn't recognize any of that. He seeks to redistribute wealth as a solution to poverty. Yet he's not willing to redistribute any of his own to his brother – who lives in the worst kind of poverty imaginable anywhere on the planet.
In fact, he doesn't even check on him to see how he might help.
Is that compassion?
Is that an example of a man you would entrust to solve the global poverty problem?
Is that someone you believe has the moral authority to be president of the United States?