People say that President Obama has a winsome smile – he does – but his smile isn’t leadership. They say he gives a good speech – and he does – as long as the teleprompter works. But that isn’t leadership either. What cannot be said with the same validity is that he loves America – at least the America that many others and I love.
We believe in an America with limited government and an America in which the rights of the people are protected, not systematically buried under the confetti of what was once our Constitution.
Obama promised change – and in a scant seven months, that is what he has given us. Complicit with Congress, he has changed the way the free market does business – and not for the better. Are Chrysler and General Motors better run companies now that they are either out of business, under government control, or forced into a relationship with foreign companies? Are the stockholders winners or losers? Where does the Constitution provide that the president and Congress have the right to take taxpayer dollars and bail out select industries?
Judge Andrew Napolitano said, “The Troubled Asset Relief Program for the banks is itself inherently and profoundly unconstitutional for several reasons. It promotes only short-term private benefits rather than the general welfare, as the Constitution commands of all federal spending. It evades the constitutional requirement of equal protection by saving some businesses and letting others that are similarly situated simply expire. And it delegates to the secretary of treasury the power to spend taxpayer dollars as he sees fit, in violation of the express constitutional grant of the undelegable spending power to Congress.” (The Wall Street Journal: Opinion Journal; “They Violate Good Sense and the Constitution”; Feb. 6, 2009)
Greater minds than ours, gifted with insight and experience, understood the need for constitutional authority strictly forbidding such actions – having lived under tyranny and crown rules, they understood the need for such restraint.
Under Obama, the government has mandated salary caps. The question that begs answering is, by what authority is this allowed? As Napolitano said in the same article, the federal government meddled with “private contracts already entered into … in order to satisfy the perceived populist instincts of the electorate. Salary caps are unconstitutional because they violate the well-grounded doctrine against unconstitutional conditions. … the government may not condition the acceptance of government benefit on the non-assertion of a constitutional liberty.” Simply put, the government cannot dictate what a person may earn or receive as agreed upon compensation – it violates “freedom of contract.”
His interference with the banking industry can be called anything he and Congress want – but at the end of the day it is nationalization, and the Constitution forbids same.
Another point Napolitano makes is that, “The government can’t run a business. Just look at the post office, which loses $6 billion a year and has salary caps.” That notwithstanding, now, Obama, et al., want us to believe they can run health care, one of the most complex industries in the nation, better than the health care industry itself. And tragically, people believe him. The question not being asked is: “If government is so capable, why is Social Security and Medicare doing so well? When has the government succeeded in running anything, including their personal lives?”
Napolitano asked, “If the government can evade the Constitution and violate the basic laws of economics, what will it do to the free market next?” You may answer, “It came up with cap and trade legislation,” and you would be right. But don’t stop there. The educational system cannot be classified free market as such, but so-called reform of same is next on Obama’s list. One can only imagine what this “reform” will look like. But here again, we need to ask the right questions.
I want to know why he didn’t do more as the vaunted community organizer and senator while he was in Illinois? If he has such a clear vision for change, why didn’t he leave Illinois better off than when he got there? Ask law enforcement, honest educators and small business owners what he did for them.
Obama is a product of today’s college classroom David Horowitz works to expose. His ideas were inseminated into him by corrupt professors preying on fertile young minds and those predisposed to condemn America. And now that he is president, the pregnancy of said inculcation has reached full term and he is giving birth to it at the nation’s expense.
Obama may be a charming, charismatic creation, but his plans for America will be ultimately exposed as the disaster many already know that they are. He promised change, and for those who argue “just give him time,” I say we’ll give him until 2012, and then we’ll “change” his place of domicile.
