Obama Masters the Statist Shell Game

The more I learn about the nature of government, the more bizarre politicians get. This four-minute speech by Barack Obama reaches new heights of irony and baldfaced absurdity. It’s doubletalk. It makes no sense. Mr Obama’s pronouncement is an example of the ongoing statist shell game where everything is reversed – good to bad, right to wrong, freedom to slavery – until you’re all mixed up. You’re not sure what is what anymore. Mutual incomprehensibility rules the day and both sides are left shaking their heads in bewilderment.

Big Government is Un-American

For example, Mr Obama claims the “American people” want, not partisan solutions, but American solutions. This, in defense of his plan which goes against basic, traditional American values of independence, thrift and small government. This is a bold deception, wrapping his anti-American plan in images of apple pie, the flag and “non-partisanship” (as if there could be such a thing).

It is Precisely Obama who is Selling “Worn Ideas”

Mr Obama warns his detractors “Don’t come to the table with the same tired arguments and worn ideas that helped to create this crisis.” at the same time that he proposes a plan that is precisely based on the “worn ideas” that “created this crisis”. Mr Obama wants to lift himself out of all sense of history, essentially slapping the label “New and Improved Formula!” on his proposal, an absurd lie that covers for what is just more special interest and pork spending – which will only harm the non-politically-connected people he fancies himself the champion of!

Obama’s Plan is no Different from Bush’s

“We are not going to get relief,” Mr Obama claims, “by turning back to the very same policies that for the last 8 years doubled the national debt and threw our economy into a tailspin.” Yet his proposal is a natural extension of the Bush stimulus and bailouts. And if he’s worried about the national debt, why is he so anxious to add another trillion dollars to the national shortfall of $75.6 trillion we already face today – and just in his first month in office.

Obama’s Now Against Tax “Cuts”

“We can’t embrace the losing formula that says only tax cuts will work for every problem we face”, he says, but wasn’t it Mr Obama himself who proposed tax cuts during the campaign, as a solution to economic problems? Is this some kind of Clinton-esque reinvention?

This isn’t Even Change, Much Less Positive Change

“They didn’t vote for the status quo. they sent us here to bring change.” Given that Mr Obama wants to foist the same-old same-old of big government, a higher national debt and special-interest and pork spending, this last statement is the most laughable.

No Government is the American Solution

If you want a revolutionary, American solution that represents radical change from the policies of George Bush, look no further than the free market. All progress is created or enabled by the free market. Since government has no money of its own, dollars spent on pork and special interests in the name of “stimulating” the economy just take funds out of the free market and achieve the opposite result: less economic growth, more poverty and more misery.

The free market does NOT include big, state-supported business any more than it does the state itself. Free markets happen any time that people voluntarily trade one value for another using resources legitimately earned – and not sourced in any way from coercion (i.e., government).

Reduce the size of government. Remove the government-created obstacles to the inherent market regulation of profit and loss. Allow people to hold on to all their earnings, with no government “incentives” (bias) for either spending or saving, and you will see the economy recover as fast as it possibly can. It’s both the most moral and the most practical course of action. Politicians won’t get behind it though because it means more power for you and less for them. Don’t let them swindle you out of your own liberty!