A Day In The Life Of America
A recent Wall Street Journal brings us the daily dose of opinions and letters.
The lead editorial tells us 90,000,000 Americans, who could be working, are not working. That is 10,000,000 more than when Obama was first elected.
“To get more private jobs requires faster economic growth, ….two big concerns are regulation and ObamaCare. “But” Consumers and small business owners are pessimistic”.
So five years into Obama’s brave new world, the economic situation remains dismal for many of the people who voted for him.
On the international front we are told Saudi Arabia has distanced itself from the White House, Prince Turki al Faisal saying “The current charade of international control over Bashar’s chemical arsenal would be funny if it were not so blatantly perfidious, and designed not only to give Mr. Obama an opportunity to back down, but also to help Assad butcher his people.” The WSJ continues: “It’s a rare occasion when a Saudi royal has moral standing to lecture an American President.”
In the letters, Ms. Jennifer Marks writes about the difference of policy in the White House as concerns voter ID and racial preferences in colleges. She finishes, “When the Justice Department opposed Voter ID as discriminatory, it argued that a law or rule that has a disparate racial effect is discriminatory, even if race is never specifically mentioned. Doesn’t that same argument apply to school admissions?”
Mr. Russ Greenlaw of California responds to a previous letter by a Ca. state bureaucrat. The bureaucrat had bragged about how Ca. has a good business climate and cited some businesses which operate there. Mr. Greenlaw takes exception, pointing out that Apple, Intel, Caterpillar, Peterbilt, Ford and General Motors no longer maintain manufacturing facilities in his county due to regulation. He lists others businesses throughout the state. Ending he says: “California has a good business climate – if your business is being a state bureaucrat.”
In an essay, Dr. Bradley Allen says about ObamaCare: “When doctors are employed like factory workers by hospitals, …their productivity falls – sometimes by more than 25%. They see fewer patients and perform fewer timely procedures, exacerbating the trouble caused by physician shortages. (Due to various reasons, including reduced pay, increased paperwork and regulatory burdens) ….It is no wonder that three years ago members of Congress got themselves exempted from the Affordable Care Act. They may have passed the law, but they’re not stupid.”
In another essay, Dr. Marc Van Montagu tells the reader about genetically modified food. “Resistance to biotechnology seems all the more unbelievable considering that much of it comes from the same thoughtful people who tend to dismiss climate change skeptics as ‘anti-science’. It seems to me that much of the resistance to GM foods isn’t based on science, but may be ideological and political, based on fears of ‘corporate profiteering’ and ‘Western Colonialism'”. Perhaps Dr. Montagu is too kind in his description of those who follow in lockstep the conventional wisdom of anthropogenic global warming and should, instead, think of that political position based on the same people’s unwarranted fear of GM foods. Theirs seems a position of not wanting any change, neither climate nor technological.
Referring to windmills, but more general in his accusation, is Mr. Peter F. Reilly. “The unnamed scandal is the most dangerous, i.e., government selectively enforcing laws, prosecuting groups it doesn’t like and failing to enforce laws against groups it favors. This crony government undermines the rule of law, nurtures a cynical electorate and is characteristic of corrupt Third World countries that are republics in name only.” What a thing to say, but how many believe it?
In an essay titled “The ObamaCare Con Job” Mr. Holman Jenkins points out the hypocrisy of the advocates of the ObamaCare ponzi scheme. “We come now to the last redoubt of the defenders-the claim that, yes, the young and low-risk are being asked to pay up now, but they will benefit from the generational cross subsidy as they get older. This is a lie. Politicians are in no position to deliver generational equity. …… politicians have repeatedly jacked up the taxes paid by today’s working Americans to supply benefits to those already retired, on terms that absolutely guarantee that similarly generous benefits won’t be available to today’s workers when they retire.”
Ms. Marta Aviles Asman writes about Bill de Blasio, the poll leading mayoral candidate in NYC, and his continued support of the Sandinistas of Nicaragua and thus why she opposes his election. “The Sandinistas had already nationalized the banks and were confiscating property and executing opponents in the streets. I was scared to see what would come next.” Except for executing opponents in the streets, what is the difference?
I end the collage with this from Mr. Michael Harrington. “What we are seeing today are the consequences of a pluralist democracy where the emphasis has shifted from the commonalities of citizenship and the ‘American’ identity to differences between identity groups where ‘hyphenated Americans’ squabble over political spoils. ….but identity politics also makes democratic compromise more difficult, if not impossible. For democratic governance, the primacy of cultural and biological identity is a centrifugal force, and now we are seeing it spin our politics out of control while the media and the parties merely amplify the effect in a vicious feedback cycle. In modern history we refer to this as Balkanization, and we know how it turns out.”
Perhaps you discern the common thread, perhaps not, and so I add an anecdote. I was at a Walmart the other day and stopped by the gun counter to ask whether ammunition sales had dropped off and the suppliers were able to catch up with demand. The answer was no. Why, one should ask, are ammunition sales still so high after so long a time? What are the people thinking who are doing the purchasing?
In reading these excerpts, be reminded they are from a single day. They are only an indicator of what is going on in our country. President Obama presides as the great divider. His actions have been to encourage the people of the country to turn upon each other, to see those who oppose his dictates as the enemy instead of a neighbor who is of different opinion. Similar to the Sandinistas, our government agents berate corporations, take property without due process, place people in jail for opposing the government (see Molly Ivins – may she rest in peace), strong arm financial institutions into paying off the government, ignore the law when it doesn’t suit their wishes (see NLRB, EPA, DOJ, IRS), and threaten and persecute government employees who would talk to the press.
The actions of the White House during the recent paid vacation of federal workers is indicative of this direction. The government spent more on armed guards to keep the people from places the people supposedly own, than they normally spent when things were open.
The point of all this is to point out the excess of government and the leftists who use government for their own benefit. It is a snapshot of where we are today. That being true, then looked at from a historical perspective tomorrow will bring more of the same, and at some point a tipping point will be reached.
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