Barack Obama's America

When Barack Obama announced that he was running for president he was very clear that, if elected, he planned "not just to hold an office, but to gather with you to transform a nation". Twenty months after that statement in Springfield Illinois, we now have a much clearer view of what he means by "Change We Can Believe In". In a campaign of soaring generalizations on mostly centrist themes, Barack Obama has described the details of the transformation he would bring with almost surgical precision. What he offers may be, in substance and in spirit, a radical departure from the principles of the American Dream that has defined our nation over the last two centuries.

In the guise of a "middle-class tax cut", Senator Obama is actually adding a new tax in order to create a new welfare program that will add to the annual $400 billion that we currently spend on our welfare system. According to the Tax Policy Center, each year Barack Obama will take $70 billion from the 2% of small businesses and individuals who create over 16 million jobs and will send checks for almost $100 billion to over 40%, or approximately 60 million Americans, who pay no taxes at all. Cleverly, Senator Obama has called his transfer a "refundable tax credit" instead of "income redistribution". Indeed, to label as a "refund" a payment which the recipient has never funded is wordsmithing on steroids.

When Bill Clinton turned "welfare" into "workfare" in 1996 and created twenty two million jobs for Americans, he said, "We are taking an historic chance to make welfare what it was meant to be, a second chance, not a way of life". At the time, then State Senator Obama called this highly successful policy "disturbing". No wonder that the Chicago New Party, an affiliate of the Democratic Socialist Party, endorsed State Senator Obama in 1996 after he signed the pledge that was required in order to receive the endorsement. Now, if elected president, he will re-create a failed welfare system while calling it "tax reform". No candidate has ever been cleverer with words than Mr. Obama. But, does America want to "spread the wealth" as Mr. Obama advocates? According to the June Gallup Poll, Americans, by a margin of 84-13%, want our government to fix the economy and create jobs, not to redistribute wealth.

The fundamental problem with Senator Obama's stealth economics is that his dogma will not make America stronger or fairer. Today, the top 1% of earners contributes 40% of the nation's $2.6 trillion tax intake and the bottom 50% pay 2.9% of our nation's total needs. It has been shown that reductions in tax rates increase tax revenues because private enterprise strengthens the economy which in turn creates a larger tax base. For example, in 2003 the richest Americans paid $136 billion in taxes and after the Bush tax cut in 2006 they paid $274 billion.

During our last devastating global economic crisis, Franklin Roosevelt protected this country from the statist dictatorships that were emerging in the rest of the world. He protected capitalism by creating programs and institutions to protect innocent people but did not raise taxes and did not remove incentives for private wealth creation. In another era, with real fiscal deficits larger than we face currently, President Kennedy reduced taxes. The historical evidence is clear that nations that stifle private enterprise have less robust economies with slower growth and less innovation, opportunity and diversity.

In his book, The Audacity of Hope, Mr. Obama stated that "eking out a bare Democratic majority isn't good enough." Indeed, if the pollsters are correct and the Democrats win overwhelming majorities in the House and Senate, Senator Obama, if elected, would easily implement both his promises for $307 billion of new federal spending per year and his punitive tax policies. The truth is that with the level of spending in the Obama plan, either taxpayers between $40,000 and $250,000 per year will have to fund the massive costs for the new programs he is promising, or the promises will be abandoned.

Perhaps more sinister is Obama's reconfiguration of the American Dream. My father made an inflation adjusted income of about $50,000 per year. He never took a handout but he worked two jobs. He taught us that if we worked hard and played by the rules there was no limit to what we could become in America. Now, Barack Obama is changing that compact with America. In Barack Obama's America, there is a ceiling to the American Dream. He decides the level at which our money becomes the government's money.

There is a reason why immigrants fly to America to achieve their dream. Now, in the guise of a "middle class tax cut" Barack Obama is threatening that dream. If he succeeds, Barack Obama will bring the kind of radical transformation that this country does not need and never has. And the country will be in for a shock.

Comments

[Plutonium239]

Like the father of Lynn Forester de Rothschild, I was working two jobs, but I was also a full-time student (returning adult student). I moved in with my mother to aid her in recuperating from a couple of mild strokes. When she developed a serious infection and had to return to the hospital, I stayed with herevery day to care for her after I visited her bedside and found her lying in her own waste. As a consequence, I lost both jobs and had to drop out of school. Without my health insurance, I now have no treatment for a chronic health problem I have had since I was a teenager, yet under McCain's plan, I would have been taxed for the health care that I did havewould then be included on my W2s as income, with only a portion of that covered by his paltry tax credit.
Mrs. de Rothschild's support of McCain based on his economic plan is purely to protect her own stratospheric lifestyle since he will continue the tax cuts of the Bush regime. After all, it was Daddy Bush who said "No new taxes" much to his own detriment. Unless the US government reviews its policy of allowing churches to engage in profit making without paying taxes, the funds to keep this country alive will have to come from somewhere. Obama is the only person offering help to those of us who are going under for a third time.
JLH

[Bischoff]

Ms. Rothschild, I have some time to make a few comments. I don't have time to comment on all your broken pasta pieces. Maybe you should have cooked them first. Obama's America? Who's America do you think it is now, where the middle class has less spendable money worth less than 8 years ago. The have and have-not gap is spreading. CEOs used to make $5 to $6 more per dollar than the average worker, now it's over $450 per dollar. You talk romantically about your father working two jobs in order to better his family and realize his American dream. Nowadays your father AND mother would have to work two jobs each in order to get food on the table, pay for gasoline, buy clothes for the kids and pay for their education. You would never see them. They would always be working. That's their American dream now. Ever since Reagan and supply side and trickle down the republicans amass their wealth and disdain the worker. Have you ever worked for a wage, been paid, and realize that it takes a lot of hours to make money to pay the bills. And what about saving money? No way, it doesn't happen. Do you know this stuff?

Obama is for getting the money into the middle class AND THIS MEANS SMALL BUSINESSES so we can build, once again (per Clinton) the economy where it matters most, from the bottom up.

[SCG]

By the way, the "official" Bush administration inflation rate in 2007 is 2.85%

If you believe the inflation calculations of the a Greedspan years, you're smoking something far more potent than Mc Cain/Palin.

[Badfickle]

What people like rothchild fail to admit is that not only do the top 1% pay higher taxes to the government they also benifit disproprtionately from the government.

Let's take a simple example. Say we build a road to a factory. A worker at that factory benifits because he can get to work and earn his pay. Great.

The owner of the factory can also use that road to get to work BUT...

She also benifits because her workers can get to the factory. Without the workers her capital would be worthless and she couldn't make her billion dollars a year. She recieves far more in monetary terms than the worker.

The same arguement could be made for education. The lowerclass benifit from a good education so they can get a better job but the upperclass recieves more benifit in the form of an educated workforce

[gog5445]

it amazes me the faith that you folks put in Big Government, when at the same time you despise big business.

bad news: a Big Government is more dangerous than all of the big businesses combined.

This will become evident very soon.

[NYCSocialWork]

so government caused the collapse of the credit default swap betting game?

[CatoTheCensor]

Caused it? No. Dismantled enough regulations to enable it? Yes.

[evekendall]

You've got the two parties mixed up with each other. It's George Bush and the Republican Party who have given us the biggest government, the biggest spending spree, and the biggest debt in the history of the United States of America.

You might want to look at this:
Chart: National debt under Dem vs. GOP presidents:
http://www.lafn.org/politics/gvdc/Natl_Debt_Chart.html

[CuriousRepublican]

evekendall, and haven't you heard all of the Republicans who lament about how there "are no real Republicans in government anymore"? You are absolutely right, the Republicans spent an enormous amount of money, completely disregarding the sacred virtue of fiscal conservatism for Republicans (although they spend it on things Democrats usually like, such as education and healthcare (prescription drug benefits from Medicare for example)).

Historically, however, Democrats are who like to spend money moreso, and under a President Obama, I think we will see a "perfect storm" of a very left House, Senate, and Presidency, which will then spend like crazy.

[jenroca]

big business (wildly unregulated by business-lovin' repubs) has given us enron, environmental disaster, (exxon valdez just one obvious example; others too vast to enumerate), the sub prime mortgage mess, the collapse of wall street causing a global domino effect, lead laced toys, price gouging on meals for our soldiers...i could go on. and most importantly, big business is completely unaccountable. no matter how poorly government might manage things we, as engaged citizens, always can vote a bad administration out. (as i dearly hope we will on tuesday.) and at its very core--though sometimes, admittedly, it may not work perfectly--government is there to help the citizenry do what they cannot do themselves. big business is there to make money. that is all. so if you're looking to big business to solve all your problems by some magical free market wizardry, you are deluded as well. what we should hope for is an active, accountable government overseeing the common good, combined with a vigorous free market that can provide goods and services and create jobs. we need both, tempered by each other.

[beenn15]

by far the only common sense comment on this blog post. You have a clear understanding of Obama's plan to move the country forward. It is as simple as that. I just don't understand why it's so hard for people to see that what we're currently doing isn't working... It's time to come to our senses and combine the best of both extremes and come up with a comprehensive plan to get us out of the ditch we're in.

[citizentm]

True Government is the collective will of the people. In it, the people are the shareholder. These shareholders can be manipulated of course, by politicians. But the politicians are constantly reappraised.

True Business is the collective will of the shareholders. The people are only consumers. The shareholders will counts. Of course, shareholders can be manipulated and ripped off by management, as we have seen. The difference, the shareholders have NO RECOURSE but to accept the losses...

In the last few years, the Repubs have reduced all people to consumers.

What you will see is people wanting more government, but also be more involved in government. Old Slogans will fail and fail and fail. That's true not only on the repub but also on the dems side.

[TheManhattanProject]

Ms. Rothschild, you don't need to look back 200 years.

Reflecting on the last eight would suffice.

In that time, America has been defined by disasterous foreign policy, curtailed civil liberties, a collapsing economy, a president who has brought nothing but shame and failure to the United States, and absurd de-regulation and the death of the concept of the "free market" policing itself.

So, perhaps a "radical departure" from that is exactly what America needs.

[CuriousRepublican]

Many would debate whether we have had "curtailed civil liberties" under this administration. As for "a collapsing economy," I think that is an unfair argument. Under President Clinton, we saw a huge stock market bubble, which then burst in 2000, being one of the largest crashes in history, yet that wasn't Clinton's fault; under President Bush, we saw a huge housing bubble which burst; I do not blame that on him.

It seems both parties are to blame for the lack of oversight of the quasi-government institutions of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, as both Clinton and Bush tried to reign them in, and both Democrats and Republicans prevented them. However, it is very apparent that Democrats played a huge role in keeping these two institutions deregulated (quasi-government institutions need much more oversight than private ones), in particular ones like Chris Dodd, Barney Frank, etc...much of this seems to have started with the Community Reinvestment Act from Carter and the Democratic Congress.

Essentially we embarked on a huge social engineering experiement, which has proven to have failed, also hurting the very poor it was meant to help, because since they could not afford their mortgages, they lost their homes, which hurt their credit rating, thus making them worse off then before.

[CuriousRepublican]

The civil liberties I am afraid would be curtailed under an Obama administration would be through passage of things such as the Employee Free Choice Act (which would take away the right to secret ballot votes), the Fairness Doctrine (which would kill talk radio), etc...

[CuriousRepublican]

"De-regulation" of the financial markets themselves I wouldn't blame at all. It's because of de-regulation that minorities and women were finally able to start working on Wall Street. And if you notice, the most unregulated financial institutions, the hedge funds, seem to be doing okay, the really big ones anyhow. The ones that made mistakes and invested wrong have closed down, or are struggling, and others have closed due to panicked investors withdrawing their money, but we haven't seen any of the huge major hedge funds or private equity firms collapse.

We HAVE seen the heavily-regulated investment banks collapse. And the Europeans, who initially blamed us for our "deregulation," have found that their even more heavily-regulated banks were in worse shape than ours.

So a radical departure is not at all what America needs. What we need is to simply make fiscal conservatism a major principle again to bring the budget back under control.

[weff]

The republicans have always championed a redistribution of wealth, upwards. They're just hoping no one notices. David Stockman, Ronald Reagan's director of the Office of Management and Budget, quit in the middle of the Reagan administration because he was disgusted by the gross transferrence of wealth from the middle class to the wealthy (you're quite wealthy, aren't you Ms. de Rothschilds?).

Reaganomics didn't work under Reagan. It didn't work under Mr. Bush. Its just deficit spending. Duh. Its like living off your credit cards-- you can live a more affluent lifestyle, for a while.

[AndyE1]

In George Bush's America much of the middle class has stopped worrying about whether or not there is a ceiling. They are in a ditch, just trying to reach the floor.

You do realize, My Lady, that the socialism smear would have been trotted out against Hillary with the same zeal, don't you?

[crayola 08]

hehe, your post kinda reminded me of Keith Olberman doing the "special comment" portion of his show.

[Tyger79]

Do we really need to go through the myriad of reasons that no one should ever take ANY advice EVER from a member of the Rothschild family? They have never had the interests of the United States at heart. If you want to take advice on whether or not to riase taxes on the rich, you probably shouldn't start with a member of one of the richest families in the world.

[PeaceOnEarth62]

You are correct!!!!!1

[SophieAmrain]

Funny, how intelligent people get up the gall to completely misrepresent a candidates positions. Obama wants the taxes of rich people to go back up to pre Bush levels (39 instead of 36% in the highest bracket). Oh the horrors! If you are rich, you should consider yourself blessed, and be proud that you can pull a larger share than the poor or middle class people. Barack Obama is all about hard work and responsability, and he both celebrates and lives the American dream. Maybe you should listen to what he says sometimes, it might be educational:-)

[Kane]

It's an exciting moment to be alive to see this kind of desperation. It really is. Because it's the last gasp of the republican revolution.

Dr. Cornell West~

[vjones26]

Perhaps, Ms. Rothschild, you should go back and study American history. Particularly pay attention to the great Republican President Theodore Roosevelt. Here's a link to the speech he gave in 1910. It might give you some insight.

http://www.teachingamericanhistory.org/library/index.asp?document=501

As far as your argument the rich have paid more taxes in 2006, we can concede this to the rigged games of Wall Street and Banking.

[pmag88]

I find it humorous that in your worldview, so many of the people you republicans like to call, 'hard working americans' are really just a bunch of deadbeats who really don't earn our keep or pay our fair share. Oh yeah.. Lets not forget how keep telling us we're the most productive people in the world. Guess thats why we need to be subsidized by the rich and powerful right ?

It comes down to this. Tax and invest democrats vs borrow and spend republicans. With the dems you get infrastructure, education and all of the other things that we all need and depend on to grow the economy and to live a quality life. With republicans you get to bail out various corporate entities, and then you then you end up paying off the debt from the borrowed monies, most of which ended up in the hands of the super wealthy to begin with.

[henrythefifth]

Hey Lady, please please please keep going on TV and supporting McCain. You and Carly Fiorina are the gifts that keep on giving to the Obama camp! Do you really think any Democrat listens to you? Nope. But your elitist "charms" are surely turning off blue collar voters who might have otherwise voted for McCain. So stay out there Lady Lynn...keep helping Obama by trumpteting McCain for two more days! We are counting on you! Thanks!

[OCanadian]

With all due respect, Ms. Rothschild, I do not think you or your family would have any idea what happens with the middle class, and haven't for centuries. The American Dream as it was presented was a line fed to the poor by those who have ensured that capitalism without a social conscience will benefit those who can piggyback off the backs of the serfs who provide the elbow grease it takes to funnel the money back to the top. Now look where they are. Perhaps your tax cuts are threatened. Maybe it's time the American Dream was defined and controlled by someone other than the rich.