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Wednesday, February 25, 2009
On the road to socialism
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
You have to hand it to Barack Obama and to the Democrats who run Congress.
They do have a vision and in short order will have placed this nation so firmly on the road to European-style socialism that three decades of occasional efforts by conservatives to check the power of the central government will be wiped away.
Universal health care provided at taxpayer expense? It’s coming. Heavy regulation of business and commerce? It’s coming. Every kooky idea the left ever wanted to impose on American industry (cap-and-trade) is coming.
Outlining his vision before a joint session of Congress, President Obama could have been the clueless campus radical of the 60s promising revolution without any idea of how a free-market economy works. Somebody — the rich 2 percent of tax filers making more than $250,000 — will pay for it and everybody else will get free pizzas, fine rides and complete relief from worry. He was purposefully vague about how the nation will afford the left’s vision while cutting the deficit in half by the end of his first term. Oh, but no worry. He’s “already identified $2 trillion in savings over the next decade.”
As Georgia’s former Gov. Marvin Griffin used to say: “Everybody who believes that pick up a bale of cotton and follow me.” It’s a pipe dream, on the order of the promised “savings” that come down the road when advocacy groups are clamoring for substantial sums to be “invested” in some program they’re pushing — smoking cessation campaigns, for example.
Obama Democrats are pursuing agendas that will wreck the American economy and drive offshore the manufacturing that’s not owned or subsidized by taxpayers. In the Republican response, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal pointed out the obvious: Irresponsible expansion of government will “increase our taxes down the line and saddle future generations with debt.”
The left was frustrated for eight years, angry that a war on terrorism had side-tracked their ambitions. That pent-up frustration now erupts and before there’s another election that’ll check their power, they’ll get HillaryCare, cap-and-trade and everything else on their agenda. Then they’ll turn their sights, as President Obama declared last night, to public education.
Rest assured, what they can do for the economy and for individual initiative, they can do too for local schools.
