One almost has to admire Obama’s defiance. His 2009 stimulus and budget-busting health-care reform are precisely what stirred the popular revolt that delivered his November shellacking. And yet he’s back for more.
It’s as if Obama is daring the voters — and the Republicans — to prove they really want smaller government. He’s manning the barricades for Obamacare and he’s here with yet another spending — excuse me, investment — spree. To face down those overachieving Asians, Obama wants to sink yet more monies into yet more road and bridge repair, more federally subsidized teachers — with a bit of high-speed rail tossed in for style. That will show the Chinese.
And of course, once again, there is the magic lure of a green economy created by the brilliance of Washington experts and politicians. This is to be our “Sputnik moment,” when the fear of the foreigner spurs us to innovation and greatness of the kind that yielded NASA and the moon landing.
Apart from the irony of this appeal being made by the very president who has just killed NASA’s manned space program, there is the fact that for three decades, since Jimmy Carter’s synfuel fantasy, Washington has poured billions of taxpayer dollars down a rat hole in vain pursuit of economically competitive renewable energy.
This is nothing but a retread of what used to be called industrial policy, government picking winners and losers. Except that in a field that is not nearly technologically ready to match fossil fuels, we pick one loser after another . . .
Krauthammer on Obama–Doubling Down on Prodigality
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“His 2009 stimulus and budget-busting health-care reform are precisely what stirred the popular revolt that delivered his November shellacking.”
Most mammals feel it was the lagging economy.
That too.
Hey, I was told that if we didn’t spend 787 billion on a stimulus, unemployment would reach 10%.
Oh, hey, we did and it did.
My favorite line, from the Miracle Worker, delivered by the ordinarily complacent son to his obstinate father:
“Has it not occurred to you that you may be consummately wrong?”
On behalf of Obama, we can say that the answer is no.
The Dow passed 12,000 for the first time in two and a half years.
That made quite a few real Republicans very happy and secretly grateful for Obama.
Poor Krauthammer must have his nest egg in newspaper stock.
Except that it is now the Democrats who are the party of the rich. For the rest of us, the economy still sucks.