Monday, June 16, 2008

Obama Gives His "Freedom From" Speach

Today Obama pitched his version of economics to a friendly group in Flint, MI. In it we heard about freedom. Freedom from responsibility, freedom from paying your bills, and freedom from making good decisions. What we didn't hear was Freedom to...

The difference in those little prepositions couldn't be larger. The freedom from people see government as a nanny that prevents bad things from happening to you regardless of your actions. The freedom to people see government as an obstacle (more often than not) to a free people achieving their dreams in life.

Freedom from people see private enterprise as source of tax revenue while the freedom to people see private enterprise as a path to personal prosperity.

Here's a short laundry list of Obama's government-centric view of how the economy works.

Obama talked about his $1,000 tax cut for working families

Free tuition for students who pledge to teach in their communities.

A $4,000 scholarship for college students

A foreclosure prevention fund.

A crackdown on deceptive lending.

100's of billions for green energy jobs.

His vision of universal health care.

Let's start at the top. His planned tax cuts really amount to a redistribution of earnings since most of the targeted people don't pay federal taxes today.

Free tuition for teachers. How about ending a union that has kept real wages for teachers below market value for decades. That way, they can pay for their own tuition when they get one of the plentiful jobs. Let's stop subsidizing poverty wages for teachers and give them the opportunity to succeed based on their own talents.

Foreclosure prevention fund is another way of saying, "go ahead and take a loan for too much, we got your back." Subsidizing risky loans only guarantees more risky loans.

Crackdown on deceptive lending probably means that Uncle Sam will have a greater role during your loan closing - meaning you will pay more to close a home loan. Maybe we can get another subsidy for the higher costs of home loans?

Universal health care. Ugh. All I can say is the proper phrase is rationed health care - except of course if you are really famous or rich.

The "green" jobs come about after he takes 7 trillion in new taxes from private enterprise and kills millions of our old jobs via the "Climate Security Act."

When this speech is placed in context with his only piece of legislation - the Millenium Act (S 2433) - I can only call this philosophy a creeping form of Marxism.

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