The other day a liberal pundit on the radio accused Republicans of scaring the American people to gain political advantage. I was shocked – wasn’t it a Democrat ad that showed a look-alike of Ryan pushing grandma off a cliff?
This time, however, they may be right. The idea of another four years of Obama, unfettered by need for reelection, certainly scares me. Maybe it should you too.
It scares me how Obamites (the devoted followers of Obama) are so good at protecting the President’s reputation. The buck never seems to stop at the White House.
It scares me that the President never knew about Fast and Furious, the ATF gun smuggling sting that went so miserably bad. And it’s scary that his Attorney General, to whom the ATF reports, didn’t know enough to stop it.
Or how about the still unraveling Benghazi scandal? The official administration position is the White house was never informed it was a terrorist attack until weeks later – even though the media was reporting it as such within days.
It doesn’t matter much whether the White House knew what was going on and lied to protect the President’s reelection bid, or whether they are just incompetent at running the government – either way, it’s scary.
I also find it scary that the President is so willing to break the law and ignore the Constitution when it bumps up against his political agenda.
His granting of amnesty to illegal aliens, in direct defiance of Congress, is simple lawlessness perpetrated to pander to his political base.
And now, the Whitehouse is telling government contractors they can ignore the law requiring them to notify employees of pending layoffs.
The law says that companies with more than 100 employees are required to warn workers of potential layoffs 60 days in advance – giving them a chance to prepare. Here in Virginia, thousands of workers could be fired if sequestration takes effect. However, since those notices would go out right around election time, embarrassing the President, he has decided there is no need to follow the law.
The DNC is right – seniors do need to be afraid – but not of Ryan. Instead they should fear the $716 billion Obama is taking from Medicare to help pay for Obamacare. The official line is that the costs are recouped by reducing overcharges. In plain English, this means hospitals and doctors that accept Medicare will be paid less. How long do you think hospitals and doctors will continue to take Medicare patients when they can no longer afford to do so.
That should scare us all.
But here, perhaps, the scariest thought. According to fact checkers at CNN:
The national debt stood at $10.6 trillion when Barack Obama took office in January 2009. It is currently running at nearly $16 trillion, according to the Treasury Department. The Congressional Budget Office estimates project another $600 billion budget shortfall for the 2013 fiscal year. That would make a $6 trillion increase in a single term.
While some of that that debt was already in the pipeline, and some of it is the result of the recession lowering tax revenues, the fact remains that the total debt has risen faster under Obama than at any other point in U.S. history.
And regardless of why it happened, Obama has failed to correct the problem, and instead is making it worse.
Steven Wynn, the outspoken CEO of Wynn Resorts, recently told CNN that he was, “afraid of the President,” and that he was sitting on his thumbs with over a billion dollars tied up because he was unsure what government program the Obama administration would unveil next.
This all begs the question, what would Romney do different. Obama tells reporters that electing Romney will lead us back to the policies that got us here in the first place. That seems to me to beg a second question the reporters never ask: Mr. President, exactly what are those policies?
Most financial gurus tell us that the bursting of the housing bubble was worsened by liberal government policies that forced lenders like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to accept subprime mortgages. When the bubble burst, these bad loans dragged down the entire real estate market and with it, the lenders now stuck with all the bad debt.
Too little government did not cause the recession. It was a natural adjustment in the economy made worse by politicians more interested in re-election than in supporting solid business practices. These politicians simply didn’t have the nerve to tell a clamoring constituency that before they bought a house, they needed to be able to afford it.
Again, however, what caused the recession is for history to decide. The President’s problem is that having been in office for almost four years, he has done nothing (that worked) to fix it.
Like him or not, Romney knows business. He has turned hundreds of failing companies around and saved the Olympics. Now Obama wants us to double down on his failed policies in fear of a proven business success.
Be afraid my friends, be very afraid.
First published in the News Gazette (Lexington Virginia)
10/17/2012
The Founders Tavern 