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baltimoresun.com
Obama's case against the rich rings hollow
Ron Smith says Wall Street controls both Democrats and Republicans
Ron Smith
2:36 PM EDT, June 30, 2011
President Barack Obama's news conference Wednesday — his first in 15 weeks — made clear his strategy for reelection is the same old clarion call for class warfare, pitting the evil rich against the saintly poor.
"I think it's only fair," said the president, "to ask an oil company or a corporate jet owner that's doing so well to give up that tax break. …I don't think that's so radical."
In fact, he mentioned "corporate jet owners" half a dozen times during his appearance.
In Mr. Obama's world, Democrats are for kids, the weak, the powerless, the elderly, the infirm, minorities, the "working family," a clean environment, truth, justice and the American way. Republicans are tools of Wall Street, bent on reckless spending cuts without the decency to back needed tax raises in the current budget fight.
He claims Democrats have made billions of dollars in spending concessions while the GOP stands firmly against raising taxes, and he piously insists the only responsible position regarding federal spending is the one he advocates.
Politically, this is probably the only strategy that could get him reelected in 2012, but in reality the folks who will pay the bill, as they always do, are members of the besieged middle class.
In Obamaland, people making anything more than $250,000 a year are the same as billionaire hedge fund proprietors and corporate CEOs. Eliminating tax breaks for the super-rich has widespread appeal. Not many voters fall into that category. There are millions and millions of "us" and not so many of "them."
When listening to this president, or any Democrat, it's easy for people to ignore the fact that, as MIT economist Simon Johnson so memorably put it, "A financial oligarchy has purchased the government."
It's bought the whole thing, not merely the Republican side of the partnership. Mr. Obama, one should remember, has flown to New York City several times on his private jet, Air Force One, to break bread with Wall Streeters who paid as much as $37,000 a plate for the privilege.
If you think this isn't for services rendered and services to come, you are naïve indeed.
Politicians are as dependent on voter naivete as a fish is dependent on water. An informed electorate would be a dangerous thing to any politician. Fortunately for them, such a thing doesn't really exist, at least not in enough numbers to make them honest.
Mr. Obama chastised Congress for taking off from Washington on its annual summer recess, dismissed the idea that he should be directly involved in the debt ceiling negotiations and didn't mention his own vacation plans. For the third summer in a row, the first family will vacation on Martha's Vineyard, which is not known as a destination for the poor and dispossessed.
The fecklessness and utter irresponsibility of the American leadership class is historically monumental. George Mason University economics professor Walter Williams points out that adjusted for inflation — the euphemism for destruction of the value of the dollar — federal tax revenues are 23 times greater than in 1960. Federal spending, however, is 42 times greater.
When former Comptroller General of the United States David Walker was traveling the land warning of the financial disaster to come, he was pretty much ignored. Sen. Kent Conrad of North Dakota, the chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, was interviewed on CBS's "60 Minutes" a couple years ago and asked about Mr. Walker's warnings.
I'll never forget his response, which was, to paraphrase, that Mr. Walker is right, but there's nothing we can do about it. That's how bad our out-of-control spending has become.
As our Congress Critters scatter for summer vacation — many of them on congressional delegation or "codels," a polite term for taxpayer-funded junkets — and the Obamas ready themselves for hobnobbing with the rich and famous off the Massachusetts coast, we eagerly await the 2012 campaign and the first politician to admit, "We have no idea what to do about the current fiscal disaster."
That is obvious though unstated, but increasingly understood by millions of anxious Americans.
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