Waaaaaaaaaaaay back on October 22nd of last year in the wake of the “Joe the Plumber” furor I posted this graphic and made the followup comment:

Today, Michael Gerson showcases the fact that my little poster wasn’t all that far off.

After a month of personnel appointments and canine selection, last week was the Obama administration’s week of revelation.

{…}

… His stimulus package and bank bailout proposals were expansive and expensive, but not ideologically radical.

And then came the budget — ideologically ambitious, politically ruthless and radical to its core.

Obama chose a time of recession to propose a massive increase in progressivity — a 10-year, trillion-dollar haul from the rich, already being punished by the stock market collapse and the housing market decline. This does not just involve undoing the Bush tax reductions but capping tax deductions to collect about $30 billion a year. Despite all the rhetoric of “responsibility” and shared sacrifice, the message of the Obama budget is clear: The wealthy are responsible for the economic mess and they will bear the entire sacrifice so that government can “invest” in the people.

But governments do not “invest,” they spend. Such spending can be justified or unjustified. It is wealthy individuals, however, who actually invest their capital in job creation. Most have much less capital than they used to. Under the Obama budget, they would have less still. This does not seem to matter in the economic worldview of the Obama budget. Equality is the goal instead of opportunity or economic mobility. And government, in this approach, is more capable of investing national wealth than America’s discredited plutocrats — meaning successful two-income families, entrepreneurs and professionals.

This is not merely the rejection of “trickle-down economics,” it is a weakening of the theoretical basis for capitalism

The reason that I write so infrequently now is that the short-to-medium term outlook for our country is so very bleak and I’m gettin’ real depressed. Conservatives ARE starting to get organized, and the Tea Parties are expanding — Michelle Malkin has a great wrap-up of some of the best so far — with examples of folks deciding that bustin’ their butts just to give away to the government ever more and ever more isn’t worth it. What’s that saying, “Life’s too short?” Well, if the Chosen One succeeds with his plans for Conservatives, politically it’s a gonna get shorter! Gerson puts the Obama plan into full perspective with his closing ‘graph:

In the meantime, we have learned some important things. On defense policy, the peace candidate is not a radical. On economic policy, the post-partisan could hardly be more partisan. Obama does not want to cultivate conservatives; he wants to crush them. And that is a revelation.

Like the man says . . .

Technorati Tags: Obama, Obama budget, Tea Parties

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 4th, 2009 at 11:14 am and is filed under POTUS Obama, Stimulate This!. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.  |   Print This Post  |   Email This Post

Recently Posted:

• “Young Mattie Fein” Political Ad — Hot Linkage & More . . .
• Just Bloggin’ Around: VJ Day Video, Ground Zero Mosque, Obaminations & More . . .
• We The People — An Open Letter To President Obama
• Remembering Annie & Some Hard-Life Lessons
• Obama’s Nightmare In The Gulf
• Obama’s Exectuive Order Banning Federal Funding of Abortion Proves To Be Just More B.S.
• American Women — Takin’ Names, Kickin’ Butt!
• Now Obama’s F’ing Up NASA!
• Happy 4th of July Y’all!
• VOTE!