I’ll make major updates in new posts. Tell me if you think that makes no sense. This is a continuation of this other post. If links change along the way, the title should make it clear.
This is the second in a series of posts looking at the President’s speech of February seventh, 2011 to the United States Chamber of Commerce. The last post discussed the President’s dreadfully wrong-headed analysis of our current economic woes. It’s one thing to be wrong because your advisors aren’t very good and you are simply mistaken without hope of correction. It is quite another to be genetically engineered, bred and born in a vat by Soviet researchers struggling to come up with a weapon even more deadly to the United States than Tsar Bomba. That is how wrong this man is. He is a dyed-in-the-wool Marxist, and no amount of scrubbing will remove that stain. He likes himself this way.
So with that said, I’ll point out that I have sorted his argument (such as it is) into four parts, which are scattered throughout the speech. Someday, I shall have to put this at the beginning of this tract, but for now, here they are:
- Analysis
- Approach
- quid pro quo
- Solution
The previous post covers the analysis; this will focus on the approach and the quid pro quo. The Marxism doesn’t leap off the page with the same revolutionary fervor as it did in the last post, as his analysis and solution are the really ideologically driven aspects of the speech. The approach and the quid pro quo are more methods, or a delivery vehicle for all that Marxism.
Come Together, Right Now
Throughout the speech, he makes direct and indirect reference to “coming together”. This goal or principle he states plainly, he alludes to it, he alters his version of history to uplift it, he laments its absence and gushes fulsome praise on its omnipresence at all times throughout the history of America, except during the Bush presidency, at which time the earth apparently passed through the tail of some malevolent comet.
He has come to the United States Chamber of Commerce, hat in hand (Paragraph 2, “I’m here in the interest of being more neighborly…maybe if we had brought over a fruitcake when I first moved in, we would have gotten off to a better start. But I’m going to make up for it.”). He needs something, this much is clear. He ran these guys over when he had both houses of Congress, and reversed to take out any survivors who may have staggered to their feet. He dismissed them as fat cats, swore (through a functionary) to keep his boot on their necks, threatened to take their earnings and nationalize their assets, and in some cases actually did so (he kept GM but gave Chrysler to a friend). Now, after his “shellacking”, he needs help, and has come as a friend in need. Gone from this speech is the gaze down at the peasantry from above a long and disapproving nose. Well, there’s less of it. Because this is the approach he has chosen: “We must come together. I have walked across the street, lowered myself to actually meet with you disgusting fat cats, and now by God there will be cooperation [smile now].”
The coming together continues: paragraph 3, “I’ve sought advice from many of you…”; 4 “…we’ve found common cause… I know that all of us share a deep, abiding belief in this country”; 9 “..we have to do this together: business and government, workers and CEOs; Democrats and Republicans”; 14 “…the responsibilities we all have — the mutual responsibilities we have — to secure the future that we all share,” and so on.
Paragraph 5 has a special place in my heart. While we’re coming together, this rambling spatter of feel-good phrases and clauses is the closes to a content-free paragraph I have ever read, this side of a Noam Chomsky exercise. Go ahead, tell me what “it” refers to. Just try:
“America’s success didn’t happen overnight, and it didn’t happen by accident. It happened because [of] the freedom that has allowed good ideas to flourish, that has allowed capitalism to thrive; it happened because of the conviction that in this country hard work should be rewarded and that opportunity should be there for anybody who’s willing to reach for it. And because it happened at every juncture in our history — not just once, not just twice, but over and over again — we came together to remake ourselves; we came together as one nation and did what was necessary to win the future. That is why I am so confident that we will win the future again.”
Success here begins here as a condition, a great big noun encompassing centuries of effort resulting in our current and continuing state. But it then does double duty as an euphemism for turn of events which his socialist fan club would likely not regard as successes at all. Hence his elliptical use o the term.
He escalates the togetherness about halfway through the speech, and starts talking about how it’s not only a swell idea, but a sacred duty for the Chamber of Commerce to accede to his kinder, gentler demands. By the end, he paints a saccharine, childish understanding of the way that America works, a Communist trying to explain Capitalist mobilization for war as politely as he can.
“…The relationship between the President and business leaders during the course of the Depression had… grown somewhat fractured by the New Deal. So Roosevelt reached out to businesses and… some, like the head of GM… said to his family, “This country has been good to me, and I want to pay it back.” I want to pay it back. And in the years that followed… a toy company made compasses. A pinball machine maker turned out shells… it led to millions of new jobs and helped produce the great American middle class.”
I heard a great deal of criticism for his glossing over the whole “let’s start a global war to boost our economy” chilling aspect of this all, so I’ll just leave that be. I think it’s clear that this is a giant foot in the mouth to begin with. The point it illustrates for my purposes however, is that beneath his ridiculous misunderstanding of the way things work is a very firm understanding of the way he wants them to work. It is good advice not to ascribe to malice that which can be explained as incompetence, but it’s not malice from his point of view. He doesn’t say, “I’m gonna screw America.” He says “I will fundamentally transform America.” And apparently we need to come together in order to do that.
So it is obvious that he finds himself in a pickle. He is fresh out of the ability to ram anything anywhere, and for the first time in his political career, must A) work with the other side, and B) own the result. Now he may be negotiating from a position of weakness or he may genuinely be trying a nicer tack before resuming old ways. After all, he is still President, and Dingy Harry still holds the Senate in the thrall of his sleepy weasel gaze. Not only that, but the additions of a Wise Latina and a pitcher of softballs hasn’t hurt him on the Court. For whatever reason, he is trying to convince the Chamber to come on over his way, move a little closer, snuggle by the dashboard light, and perhaps even come together. Seeing this President flirting is an unsettling sight. He’s not good at it. He cannot play the coquette in this, and so he must lay it on the line.
The President in a party dress is parked on lover’s lane with Biff Tannen, and he knows, and she knows, and he knows she knows, that there is only one way she’s not walking home tonight.
This For That
“We can create a virtuous circle.”
I’ll come back to this in the next post, as it is the kick off of the President’s Marxist solution. Here, however, at serves as handy formulaton of the quid pro quo.
The President has a deal in mind, because he feels that the government should be part of this “virtuous circle”, which he also feels has not existed. In the first post I described his Marxist analysis of the problem, which is that business had a great day, swallowed up all the profits, rocketed great carts of cash into the sun, and laughed at the ensuing poverty. To the President’s mind, the problem was insufficient government. It does not seem to cross his mind that the devastating effects of federally-mandated “predatory lending” (A ridiculous term, but fine, it describes deliberately writing loans to people whom you know cannot pay the bill, as a set-up to repossession) upon an entire generation of poorly educated Americans are what we are seeing. (You know why rich people didn’t get tanked in the first round? Because they don’t take loans through Freddie Mac or Fannie Mae).
The deal is this:
- Big business will help the President
- push through his wasteful spending plans
- grow the size and scope of government
- foster the addiction of an ever-increasing percentage of the workforce to federal dollars
- defend the satanic ugly baby ObamaCare until its shell hardens in 2014
- The President will
- help with the tax code
- help with the regulatory environment
- kick tax money to quasi-governmental R&D
- provide tax breaks for corporate R&D
- improve the infrastructure upon which business depends
- boost math & science metrics in graduates
- negotiate trade deals overseas
- streamline government
And so on. It really looks like a good deal, right? Gosh, a virtuous circle after all! Well who could object to that?
Now let me be clear™. There is nothing wrong with compromise, or with negotiating to find the least dissatisfying arrangement as judged by both sides together. But that sort of work is predicated upon first, honest actors, and second, things of value. The President is not the former and has not the latter. As Mark Levin says, “There, I said it!” I’m calling him a liar.
He cannot now be willing to do these things, yet previously have been so bitterly opposed to them, while now believing that these things are good for the country. Either he was lying when he expressed his principled opposition (see everywhere) to lowering taxes, reducing regulations, providing breaks and credits for “corporate fat cats”, and combating the self-inflating nature of our government; or he is lying now when he says that these things are good and will help Win The Future© (WTF).
Of course he is lying now, and the nature of the lie is not that these things are good for America and good for business. The lie is that he will not execute them the way he says he will. I’ll translate:
“Help with the tax code” is found elsewhere in this speech as a proposal to equalize tax rates on businesses by closing loopholes which will magically fund the whole process. Net result, businesses pay lower taxes and government gets more revenue, all just by evening the tax burden across industries. This is the same vacuous proposal offered up in Defense circles in Britain (sorry, Defence) as “trimming the tail, without blunting the teeth”, or any other system of planning to spend what will surely not be gained. The only effect of President Obama’s help with loopholes in the tax code will be to destroy incentives which some businesses now operate with because A) the government created those incentives, because B) we ant those business functions performed. “Loopholes” are not bizarre oversights; they are differentials in the tax code to spur desired behavior. There are ways to improve this sytem surely, but do not think for a moment that this President has that in mind.
“Help with the regulatory environment is a similar trap, as is “streamline government”. He would use (as he already has) any opportunity to reconfigure the regulatory environment as a chance to install myriad pwoeful and unaccountable mini-czars, each with a personal reign of terror over some aspect of the business world. Same goes for his streamlining government. Yes, there are many agencies which need to be consolidated, eliminated, what have you, but with this President’s demonstrated high priority on handing control of the country to unelected and unaccountable petty bureaucrats, can see little hope for anything other than a consolidation of power in the wrong hands.
The President should have control over the executive branch, and he should be able to direct its efforts. But the profusion of czars operating in shadow are changing the landscape of the Executive in a fashion reminiscent of FDR’s court-packing scheme, but without running up against the obvious Constitutional questions (not that the answers are obvious, but the question was terrifyingly clear). The consolidation already under way into a mechanism which will not answer to the American people is not a net improvement for the business community, or any other, save those few Communists who would wind up running it.
Research and Development collaboarations between government and business would be the corral where American industry is allowed ^X^X^X commanded to innovate, and any new regime of tax breaks for business R&D would be the stick used to drive business into that corral.
Improve the math and science capabilities of our graduating classes? Sounds great, but we have see forty years of proof that our combination of confiscatory teachers unions and the loathsome Department of Education are no way to accomplish that. To the contrary, spending as a percentage of GDP has gone up while test scores and graduation rates have come down. For forty years.
Finally, he says he will improve the infrastructure upon which industry demands. That would really be impressive. The first piece of that is energy, which is typically the largest overhead expense. A comprehensive “all of the above” energy program would pay off quite nicely in energy “too cheap to meter” by the decade’s and. Okay, maybe not (just feeling nostalgic), but it would help a lot more than what this President has in mind.
Paragraphs 18 and 19:
“We also have a reponsibility as a nation to provide our people with — and our businesses — with the fastes, most reliable way to move goods and information. The costs to business from outdated and inadequate infrastructure is enormous. And that’s what we have right now — outdated, inadequate infrastructure
And any of you that have been travelling to other countries, you know it, you see it, and it affects your bottom lines. That’s why I want to put more people to work rebuilding crumbling roads, rebuilding our bridges. That’s why I’ve proposed connecting 80 percent of this country with high-speed rail, and making it possible for companies to put high speed Internet coverage in the reach of virtually all Americans.”
That’s right. He is at this point trying to pass his passenger rail system off as some sort of critical business infrastructure. No wonder so much of his speech was met with cold silence, his feeble jokes laughed at only from a politeness he does not display when the shoe is on the other foot. Businesses want nothing to do with high-speed rail, unless they are to be handed fat subsidies for studying and planning the thing which will never be built.
Oh, and high-speed internet access. There are two reasons for a company to like broadband; internal communications, and external. Call internal comms the business of getting things done, and external comms the actual business to be done. If this administration wants to foster the latter, then it can knock off the talk of placing taxes upon online transactions. They and their patsies in Congress talk about how it is supposedly unfair to brick and mortar businesses to have the internet as some sort of lawless tax-free zone, and tat’s why Borders books went out of business.
Nonsense. But more on that later. Except to say that I spit on the grave of Borders books, and the sniffing, neck-bearded NPR staff at the counter who were forced to endure my purchases of conservative reading material.
I’m just going to puinch this off for now and get to work on the final installment: The Obama Solution
(hint: it’s Marxism!)
To be continued…
