Wednesday, June 3, 2009

If Obama's Right, Everything You Know Is Wrong!

Are you having trouble wrapping your mind around some of the Obama administration's falsisms about the economy, energy, healthcare, national defense/security and immigration? You're not alone. Some personal favorites are highlighted below:

The government bailout of GM will save the company. It is not clear what "save" means in this context. The government has invested and/or committed $50-60 billion to GM for a 60% ownership share that's virtually worthless, so it would appear that "saving" GM doesn't include getting taxpayers their money back. The consensus is that the government will need to spend billions more continuing this charade in the future. The government is also forcing GM to build "green" cars Americans don't want to buy and won't be able to afford, because of the costly new technology and the still bloated labor cost structure of the UAW, the autoworkers union.

America doesn't torture, and, besides, torture doesn't work. I don't approve of torture any more than the next guy, but if the choice is to subject a few alleged scoundrels to minutes of discomfort in an effort to save thousands of innocent people from death, what would you do? The Bush administration claims that the government has documented proof that its methods (torture or otherwise) have worked and have saved many lives. We need to see that evidence to decide for ourselves and should not have to rely on interpretations from Nancy Pelosi and others. Torture may not always work but doing nothing certainly never works. Those who claim torture doesn't work obviously never thought about what it must be like to be subjected to torture themselves.

Healthcare reform will save us money in the long run. Is there excessive waste and corruption in our current healthcare system? Absolutely, and the Obama administration should immediately seek a private industry solution to the problem. Expecting the government to cut out waste and corruption in an enterprise and improve productivity and efficiency is a little like putting the fox in charge of the hen house. Have you been to a post office lately? Do you really want to spend several years and waste trillions of dollars to prove the obvious?

Wind farms and solar energy will help us achieve energy independence. This is pie in the sky nonsense, even if we devise a way to harness the hot air from a perpetually bloviating Congress and place mirrors in space to focus and concentrate solar energy into productive use on earth. Some are considering the latter and we all should consider the former, but while wind power and solar energy is clean, these technologies cannot begin to address our energy needs. Everyone knows nuclear power is the cleanest and most effective medium term alternative to solving our energy needs, although nuclear waste poses a significant environmental concern to some. If energy independence is a serious goal, nuclear energy should certainly be part of the solution. Also, any plan for near term energy self-sufficiency must also include expanding our own oil, natural gas, and coal resources, which are still plentiful .


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Reducing our national defense budget will make us safer. Spending money on defense may not necessarily improve our national defense, but neither does cutting defense spending, especially when the main tenet of the new plan seems to be to apologize to our enemies. Being "mean" to our enemies may anger them, but does anyone really believe that being "nice" to terrorists that think nothing of killing themselves is really going to make them stop terrorizing us? Did you ever confront a schoolyard bully? How did being nice work out for you?

Raising taxes on investments will not discourage investment capital. Really? Do you like paying sales tax when you go shopping? The fact that empirical evidence shows that lowering investment taxes actually raises tax revenue doesn't seem to faze this administration in the least. After the extreme market fallout of the past two years, the government should encourage private investment back into the market by all means possible instead of doing the opposite.

Building a wall between the U.S. and Mexico will not reduce illegal immigration. A wall may not guarantee border security, but common sense suggests that if you make it harder to traverse an area, it's going to be something of a deterrent. Preliminary evidence already suggests that extending the wall is helping keep out drugs and illegal aliens.

Many of the beliefs of the Obama administration seem to fly in the face of simple common sense, which apparently isn't so common anymore. The last time we took leave of our common sense we ended up with (and are still battling) one of the worst global economic calamities mankind has ever seen. Do we really want to repeat the mistake?

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