President-elect Obama formally introduced his national security team this morning. He stressed “a new beginning” and confirmed he would be giving the military a new mission of “ending the war in Iraq.” Yet his comments, in large part, could have been delivered by a Republican. He spoke of the Mumbai attacks and pledged to halt the “advance of hateful extremism.” He confirmed his “relentlessness in defense of our people” and declared that his nominees shared his “pragmatism about the use of power.” He deemed the U.N. an “indespensible and imperfect forum” and reiterated his intention to “reform” that institution.
In the introductory comments, Hillary Clinton’s remarks were noteworthy for her personal sentiments about leaving the Senate. (Those who contend it is always about her won’t be surprised.) The other nominees’ comments were appropriate and to the point. Vice President-elect Joe Biden also was allowed to speak — the first we have heard from him since the election. He stuck to the script (but was in typical Biden fashion was not so brief). He too noted “the challenge to Democratic states from radical ideologies.”
During last night’s speech, Obama praised a banker who gave away $60 million and hailed him for saying “I didn’t feel right keeping the money for myself.”
A beautiful sentiment, but with dark implications. The right thing to do, apparently, is not to work hard and earn your reward; it’s to earn your reward and then give it away to the rest of us.
Our president, our congress, and a large majority of our nation now seem to believe, in the name of fairness, of patriotism, and of goodness, they are owed the money that other people earn. We are living Atlas Shrugged.
This won’t end well. And so few seem to see the danger in it.
Obama’s speech is ying-yang defends what the marketing czar telling him what to say. Fiscal responsibility for conservatives, centrists and promise of never ending entitlement for his cultist followers.
There you have a president for everyone even though it is devoid of hollow promises.
But the notion that you can have it all by government fiat without incurring huge economic cost and wrecking a vibrant economy is the greatest falsehood of them all.
The use of the present progressive tense in the word “wrecking” is a typical deception. The correct tense is the past imperfect,was wrecked. To understand how our economy was wrecked is not beyond the powers of JRUB;however,the historical record of the wreckage isn’t useful to her.
Euro-Canadian socialists have the formula to do what Obama wants to do: ration health care, gut the military, soak the rich, and pay for what you can’t afford on the backs of second-class imported “temporary workers” and immigrants escaping miserable cultures.
1,”We are living Atlas Shrugged”
Great point, but we already tried that. Even Alan Greenrand himself has now admitted that we need to nationalize the banks and that free markets are not self regulating. It took him a while to figure that out. Also,remember that Rand was the hardest of hard core atheists,not a position consistent with the “invisible hand” of Adam Smith.
1
I’m on the opposite side of the political divide, but I found that episode jarring too, and for pretty much the same reason. Particularly given the redistributionist rap against Obama. The message was clearly “good people give their money away.” I think it was badly handled. The message, I think, should have been that all these employees helped build the company, some working there for longer than this owner ran the place, and so they had earned the payout at the end every bit as much — if not as more than– he had. Then his comment “I didn’t feel right keeping the money for myself” is in the proper context. It’s then about fairness and recognition for hard work rather than charity or guilt for being a capitalist, which is how it read.
My favorite line in the speech:
“My administration has also begun to go line by line through the federal budget in order to eliminate wasteful and ineffective programs. As you can imagine, this is a process that will take some time.”
Some time? I’m thinking at least 9 years before we see the first cut. Maybe 5 if we’re lucky in 2012. Of course, for Democrats a “cut” means you were thinking about a 30% increase and you settled for 20%
As a Senator, this man did virtually nothing except write his memoirs and run for office. His total executive experience was being on the board of two small non-profit organizations (Woods Foundation and Chicago Annandale Challenge) where his sole responsibility was to give away hundreds of millions of dollars without accountability. From campaign to Presidency, he has backtracked on virtually every promise he ever made.
This is the man who can rebuild our economy, bring the budget in balance, and lead us back to confidence, all while giving away everything to anyone who wants anything, raising taxes, and letting Congress run rampant through budgets and regulations.
Yes, I believe and trust Obama, I sure do.
And, as they say, “Hope is not a plan.”
The market seems unimpressed, somehow.
Alan Greenspan is 82 years old, he doesn’t know if he’s afoot or horseback. Expecting him to come up with a coherent analysis of what did happen or what will happen is too late by decades. Greenspan himself is proof that overt manipulation of the economic system in defiance of the free market is a detriment to the well-being of society.
RCAR, Smith’s invisible hand is not the hand of God. It is a metaphor for the tendency of people to benefit from each other when they “truckle and trade” with each other. Each person, driving his own bargain, helps to distribute the goods of society where they will do the most good ultimately for the society as a whole as well as for the individual.
Smith himself was famously a skeptic on religion.
Two points:
1. I’ve asked this before but gotten no answer. How does a President “go through a budget line by line and eliminate programs that [he believes] don’t work”? Did we pass a line item veto that I didn’t hear about? Doesn’t Congress get a say in whether a program is eliminated from the budget or not? As many times as I’ve seen or read of him making this claim, I’ve never seen or heard of anyone asking him how he can do this.
2. Do people still listen to what Alan Greenspan has to say? If so, why?
Uberutopian Ruth Marcus’ 3 challenges for the Obama horde, 1. expand health care, this will be more cost effective? For whom? Up until now, if you weren’t sick, health care was free. Oh sure, you had to pay for toothpaste and maybe a band-aid or some cough syrup now and then, but if you were lucky and didn’t play in the traffic, your health expenses were minimal until they put pennies on your eyelids. Now, increasingly, we all gotta pay, even if we’re not sick. Keep in mind that the British National Health Service is the third largest employer in the world. They’ll be moving down when we get it. 2. The cap and trade emissions plan is 100% government graft, an additional tax clothed in Al Gore’s XL sport coat. 3. The expiration of tax cuts is an opportunity to raise taxes more to bring in more revenue. . . . to discourage entrepreneurship, stifle innovation, encourage businesses to move overseas, hamstring manufacturing and indeed, increase unemployment.
Never borrow what you can’t afford to pay back yourself – and not your children.
I fear for our kids.
For even more than the money – they won’t be able to afford to defend themselves.
Thanks Fanny Mea, Bill Clinton (Bush too) and now B. Obama
Russell R. at #1 — the problem in the formulation here is the banker saying “I didn’t feel right keeping the money for myself.”
Giving to others is good. Not feeling right about keeping your own money is NOT good. There is a universe of moral difference between these two propositions. It is NOT an act of charity to “not feel right keeping your money for yourself.” Endorsing — celebrating — that feeling is a slippery political slope, and it ought to scare the bejeebers out of us.
“Not feeling right about keeping money for yourself” works on the trickle-down principle. Once we accept the premise, we will see how quickly the demand of the self-appointed Feelings Police that the rest of us “not feel right” descends from the rich man with $60 million, to you and me.