Obama and the Art of Class Warfare

When it first becomes obvious that you bet the farm and lost you had better find someone to blame.

 The best target is someone everybody already hates. First they went after those greedy bankers. It was the Wall Street greed that caused the meltdown despite all the good work the government could do. Never mind the Fed and decades of interest rate manipulation and creating fiat money out of thin air. Never mind Fannie and Freddie and decades of policies designed to buy votes with houses regardless of the cost to the economy. Never mind the risk and uncertainty created by seizing companies, strong-arm bailouts, handouts to unions, further cartelizing health care and threatening to raise taxes (yes – letting the Bush tax cuts expire is RAISING taxes). Never mind an extra $2 trillion in debt . None of those government policies harmed the economy. It was those greedy bankers. Let’s get ‘em.

 After a while even banker bashing loses it’s luster. And besides some of those bankers are really big campaign contributors – really big.

 Who’s next? It’s the rich people. Let’s get the rich people! Oh wait a minute – we are already soaking the rich people. Well who is next after the rich people? The upper middle class –let’s gets the upper middle class. Let’s get the people that earn more than $200,000 ($250,000 for couples).

You see according the President the nation can’t afford to stop plundering the upper middle class because lower taxes on them would – god forbid – raise the deficit. This President assures us he will stand firmly against raising the deficit – any more than he already has. Two trillion is just about right.

 The Democrats didn’t seem to be too concerned about deficits for the last 18 months when they had political cover of stimulus spending for their $2 trillion vote buying operation. But now when it’s the tax payer’s own money in question any alternative to government plunder is just plain irresponsible.

 Here is Peter Orzag, Obama’s OMB director in his recent New York Times blog :

In the face of the dueling deficits, the best approach is a compromise: extend the tax cuts for two years and then end them altogether. Ideally only the middle-class tax cuts would be continued for now. Getting a deal in Congress, though, may require keeping the high-income tax cuts, too. And that would still be worth it. Why does this combination make sense? The answer is that over the medium term, the tax cuts are simply not affordable. Yet no one wants to make an already stagnating jobs market worse over the next year or two, which is exactly what would happen if the cuts expire as planned.

Translation: Plunder the upper and upper middle class now and then in two years plunder the middle class too.

But now listen to President Obama in Ohio 2 days later on Sep 8.

Let me be clear to Boehner and everyone else. We should not hold middle-class tax cuts hostage any longer. We are ready, this week, to give tax cuts to every American making $250,000 or less. “For any income over this amount, the tax rates would go back to what they were under President Clinton. This isn’t to punish folks who are better off — it’s because we can’t afford the $700 billion price tag.

 Translation: Let’s pit middle and upper-middle class taxpayers against each other, dividing them roughly along lines that will yield lots of Democratic votes. If we control the press spin few people will remember that my administration just added $2 trillion to the deficit.

Mr. President – this nation can’t afford you.

Manhattan Libertarian Party