Alexander’s Essay – 30 April 2009
“A republic, if you can keep it.” –Benjamin Franklin
The Peaceful Revolution’s First 100 Days
By Mark Alexander
Last fall, Barack Hussein Obama pledged that his administration would carry out a “fundamental transformation of the United States of America.” Today, as we reflect on the first 100 days of the Obama regime’s occupation of the executive branch, with Party allegiance in the legislative branch, it pains me to report that he has exceeded the wildest expectations of his Socialist constituencies.
In the wake of last year’s “October Surprise” (the catastrophic meltdown of the nation’s largest financial institutions), his chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, said of Obama’s strategy, “Rule 1: Never allow a crisis to go to waste. They are opportunities to do big things.”
Indeed, Obama has done BIG things. In the words of former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, “Obama’s first 100 days have been spectacularly successful. Obama is the strongest domestic Democratic President since Lyndon Johnson. … In just 100 days, Obama has been devastatingly effective in moving forward swiftly the most radical, government-expanding agenda in American history.”
How did that happen?
Some political scientists argue that democracy is a conduit for “peaceful revolutions,” including radical shifts in political ideology, without a shot being fired.
I agree, except that our nation is not a “dumbocracy.” It is a republic, or at least it was before the once proud Democrat Party became infested with Socialists, who masterfully co-opted the education system along with the modern “opiate of the masses” (television and print media), and re-educated those masses.
So successful has this Leftist strategy been that their dumbed-down constituencies now follow their messianic leader like dullard lemmings.
Consequently, here is an account of a few notable events from the first 100 days of “hope and change.”
Under the aegis of “economic stimulus,” Obama promptly raided the Treasury and doled it out to his constituencies — at terrible expense to this and future generations. Asked how one might evaluate the effectiveness of his plan, Obama replied, “I think my initial measure of success is creating or saving four million jobs.” Not even Bill Clinton had the hubris to suggest something as slick as “saving four million jobs.”
Remarkably, Obama managed to ram that one through Congress without a single Democrat claiming to have read it.
As for his cabinet, a long list of Obama nominees agreed to pay back taxes in return for rubber stamp appointments, including Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, who, despite owing more than $40,000 now oversees the IRS.
Poor nominee Tom Daschle, who in a previous life as Demo Senate Majority Leader proclaimed, “Tax cheaters cheat us all, and the IRS should enforce our laws to the letter.” He was all but confirmed as HHS Secretary until we learned that he had cheated us out of $130,000 in back taxes. Apparently even Obama’s hypocrisy knows some limits.
Obama last fall repeatedly promised to end the practice of special interest earmarks. Then, he signed an appropriations bill with more than 8,000 earmarks, including $2 billion for House Appropriations Chairman David Obey’s lobbyist son’s projects, $3.7 billion for contracts to Sen. Diane Feinstein’s husband’s company, and $4.19 billion for Obama’s favorite voter fraud outfit, ACORN.
When the pork-laden bill passed, Obama had the audacity to proclaim, “I’m proud that we passed a recovery plan free of earmarks.”
Obama also converted the Federal Reserve and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation into instruments for nationalizing the banking system.
Under the pretense of responding to “global warming,” Obama has plans to impose almost $2 trillion in cap-and-tax energy taxes — this despite his oft-repeated pledge that 95 percent of Americans wouldn’t see their taxes increased.
Obama’s $3.5 trillion 2010 budget includes projections for more than $9 trillion in near-term increases of national debt. Feigning fiscal integrity, Obama demanded budget cuts of $100 million — which is to say that even while obscenely expanding the size of government, he targeted some spending that was out of line with his ideology. For the record, $100 million represents three one-thousandths of one percent of Obama’s FY 2010 budget, or approximately what the central government redistributes every 13 minutes of every hour of every day of every week of…
Harvard Economist Greg Mankiw also offered some perspective on this $100 million spending cut, noting that it’s the equivalent of a family with a $100,000 income cutting a $3 latte from their budget.
Of Obama’s budget, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi exclaimed, “[F]or the first time in many, many years, we have a president’s budget … that is a statement of our national values. … It’s a very happy day for our country.”
Meanwhile, according to The Wall Street Journal, in February, the price of single-family homes in 20 major metropolitan areas fell 18.6 percent from the previous year, after a record 19 percent drop in January.
In the first quarter of 2009, the U.S. economy contracted at a seasonally adjusted 6.1 percent annual rate, and Americans lost more than two million jobs. No doubt Obama’s bold and swift action saved four million other jobs.
Perhaps the most dangerous of all the Obama policy shifts, however, is his framing of our foreign policy with atonement for America’s past, which he says has been “arrogant,” “dismissive” and “derisive.” In doing so, he lends credibility to the anti-American attitudes and actions of our enemies.
Some of the most telling examples of Obama’s ideology are apparent in the last few of his first hundred days. For example:
Day 97: Obama’s White House Military Office appointee, former Clintonista Louis Caldera, authorized a photo shoot of Air Force One over Manhattan, an event which involved the low flight of a large jet plane with two F-16s in pursuit over Ground Zero and points nearby. Because the public wasn’t told, many feared another 9/11 attack was in progress.
Indeed, an FAA memo prior to the flight warned of “the possibility of public concern regarding DoD aircraft flying at low altitudes.” To which Obama responded, “It, uh, was, uh, a mistake. It, uh, will never, uh, happen again.”
The Air Force reported that the flight of the VC-25 (customized Boeing 747) and its two attendant F-16s cost $328,835. However, the actual cost associated with the operation of VC-25 alone, when considering all support and planning for this photo folly, was closer to $775,000 (and who knows how many Al Gore carbon credits had to be purchased to offset this operation).
On the other hand, the one-time purchase of Adobe Photoshop costs around $600.
In January, Obama chastised private sector executives for using corporate jets to commute, most of which cost $3-$5 thousand per hour to operate. The plane we taxpayers fund for Obama costs $260,000 per hour to operate, and Monday, it was cruising around without him.
Day 98: Obama’s EPA administrator, Lisa Jackson, in an NPR interview about Obama’s Orwellian cap-and-tax policy, remarked, “The president has said, and I couldn’t agree more, that what this country needs is one single national roadmap that tells automakers, who are trying to become solvent again, what kind of car it is that they need to be designing and building for the American people.”
The interviewer asks, “Is that the role of the government? That doesn’t sound like free enterprise.”
Jackson, obviously in need of her ObamaPrompter, replied, “Well, it, it, it is free enterprise in a way. Um, ah, you know, first and foremost, the free enterprise system has us where we are right this second. And so some would argue that the government has a much larger role to play then we might’ve when Henry Ford rolled the first cars off the assembly line.”
Some might argue that “we are where we are” because government has played “a much larger role since Henry Ford rolled the first cars off the assembly line.”
Day 99: After the media fanned the flames about a “swine flu pandemic,” Obama warned, “This is obviously a serious situation, serious enough to take the utmost precautions.” He then promptly applied his “Rule 1″ and asked Congress for $1.5 billion in emergency funding.
Day 100: The Obamaprompter addressed the nation yesterday, and not only did he claim, “We inherited a $1.3 trillion deficit. That wasn’t me,” but once again trotted this one out: “[My recovery act] has already saved or created over 150,000 jobs.”
We checked, and Congress sets budgets, the Democrats have controlled the Senate and House for the last two years (which coincides with the housing and financial market collapses) and Obama was in the Senate for two of those years.
As for jobs, I am sure that Obama has “saved” all our jobs! Hail Obama! Let’s us all bow down to “The One.”
House Minority Leader John Boehner correctly surmises, “The president’s first 100 days can be summed up in three words: spending, taxing, and borrowing.”
Suffice it to say, the list is as long as it is absurd, and you can bask in a litany of examples we’ve compiled for your reading displeasure at “The First Hundred Days.”
As for “peaceful revolutions,” John F. Kennedy declared in 1962, “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.”
I would argue this case: “Those who undermine our republican rule of law make violent revolution inevitable.”
To that end, there is some good news on the “checks and balances” front, though some may find this a bit disconcerting.
There are now more than 65 million gun-owning Patriots across this nation, many of whom have taken sacred oaths “to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.”
We stand ready to honor that oath, understanding that, in the words of John Adams, “A Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored. Liberty, once lost, is lost forever.”
And the ranks of Patriots are growing.
In the last three months of 2008, Americans bought enough guns to arm the national armies of both China and India — a total of 12.7 million guns last year. Gun sales in the first three months of 2009 were 27 percent higher year-over-year than the first three months of 2008 (which also recorded record sales).
Perhaps all these gun purchases are coincidental, not consequential. But I doubt it. As Americans begin to awaken to the reality of Obama’s Socialist agenda, it will be interesting to see how his next 1,361 days unfold.
At the close of the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, Benjamin Franklin was asked if the delegates had formed a republic or a monarchy. “A republic,” he responded, “if you can keep it.”
We will see.
The Patriot Post is a good source of conservative news and analysis available here: http://www.patriotpost.us/
