the Centrist

“First Snow with the Only Hope … Old Glory”

Apparently in an about face the Obama people are leaking that, although they have been chanting “yes we can” to everything from the environment to the economy, they are now asking Americans to dampen down their expectations. In a CBS report emanating from Chicago by Mike Flannery, we are told by Robert Reich, Pres. Clinton’s Sec. of Labor and a top advisor to Pres. Elect Obama: “This might be a long haul … 2009 is going to be a very hard year. Some economists say we won’t be out of this for two years, others are saying it may be three, or four, maybe five years … We all have to be very careful about the expectations that we are putting on this man, our president-elect,” Since the election the market has plunged over 20%, the greatest decrease for any president elect in American History. All Pres. Elect Obama needed to do is send the signal that he is a capitalist and understands social programs are secondary to the economy. An example of this was his action last Friday when he leaked that New York Federal Reserve President Timothy Geithner would be his Sec. of the Treasury. The market immediately reacted to this conservative choice and soared over 500 points. If he would but retract some of his socialistic promises and state he will not increase capital gains and in fact leave all of the Bush tax cuts in place, new life would be breathed into our economy. Perhaps somebody should remind him that the only reason any socialist country has succeeded since the 1917 Russian Revolution was because the giant capitalistic engine called America bailed them out.

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Another suggestion would be to either break up the failing mega companies, i.e. anti-trust laws (as my friend JB and Robert Reich advocated earlier this week) or allow Chapter 11 reorganization (as the airlines went through with the result being greater labor ownership in the company). Both these capitalistic remedies would cost the tax payers nothing. Yet these are not the signals he is sending. The socialist agenda seems to be taking precedence over the economy as signaled last week by his Chief of Staff Rohm Emmanuel: “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. And what I mean by that is an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before.” (Newsbusters – Steven Motley)
Compare that to anarchist and socialist Saul Alinsky’s 60’s book “Rules for Radicals”: “They must feel so frustrated, so defeated, so lost, so futureless in the prevailing system that they are willing to let go of the past and change the future. This acceptance is the reformation essential to any revolution” According to Wikipedia: “Obama learned and taught Alinsky’s methods for community organizing”. Now those statements do nothing for either my 401K or stomach.

I can just hear my more liberal readers, “You said you would give him a chance.” And I will, but if one were really concerned about the average Joe (like Joe the Plumber) all one need do to get America’s gigantic capitalistic machine back on line is to stress basic capitalism. Is it not the most important single aspect of capitalism to allow entrepreneurs the opportunity to make their fortunes by hiring others and providing a decent wage for their employees? Will not these opportunistic people take their monies and ideas elsewhere on the globe should the economic environment turn against them? Have we forgotten that the worse economy of the modern era was inherited by President Ronald Reagan, not President Elect Obama, from Jimmy Carter (approximately 20% inflation and 20% unemployment, oil embargo, and hostage situation in Iran) and it was reversed in record time by shrinking the government, lowering taxes, and increasing military spending, in effect, using capitalistic methods. Compare that to the Great Depression, and FDR’s expansion of government. It is generally agreed to that it was World War II, and not the alphabet soup of socialism initiated by FDR that ended the great depression. What could be worse than a repetition of this failed policy? Yet on Saturday’s U-tube address the President elect proposed just that: ‘President-elect Barack Obama promoted an economic plan Saturday he said would create 2.5 million jobs by rebuilding roads and bridges and modernizing schools while developing alternative energy sources and more efficient cars.” (Yahoo Finances 11/22/08). That sounds perilously close to failed leftist socialists policies of yesteryear.

Moreover, after the JFK Assassination how perilous the times when we backed President Lyndon Johnson’s idea to use the funds in the Social Security ‘Lockbox’ to end poverty (“War on Poverty”)? That was a promise to end poverty in America, decades and trillions of dollars later, and now facing a Social Security shortfall crisis, we still have the poor amongst us. FDR promised a new deal, and we were given a new war, Johnson promised the ‘War on Poverty’ and delivered the War in Viet Nam. Can you see the pattern, socialistic programs do not create jobs, they create crisis, while the Kennedy and Reagan tax cuts (both were supply side economists) ended recessions and prevented depressions.

I will still give the President Elect a chance to prove himself, but this is not the time to renege on the ‘can do’ promises of hope and change. It is the time to return to our capitalistic roots and promote change with Washington outsiders and capitalistic solutions for the economy as promised.