Opinion Forum

The Real President Obama

December 21st, 2009

There’s no way around this. Democrats in the White House and on Capitol Hill have just perpetrated the most criminal rip-off in the history of this country on the American people. And with its passage now a certainty, the only thing left to do is to start working on getting it repealed.

So writes Dan Calabrese* in an article in The North Star National — and he’s right.

With total disregard for public opinion and with a level of corruption, secrecy and deceit that can only be characterized as blatant and willful, legislation that seems designed to assure the eventual government takeover of health care providers and insurers is all but signed. Fortunately, however, this does not have to be the final chapter in this Orwellian epic.

Mr. Calabrese, in his article, proposes specific actions that he feels will eventually lead first to the destruction of the Democratic majority in the House of Representatives and the leveling of power in the Senate, and then, he writes, the Republicans need to “put unbearable pressure on President Obama (and) create a political environment in which, if he resists popular reforms to his signature act of governance, he sets himself up for an electoral disaster in 2012.”

Calabrese’s proposal suggests that Obama may destroy his own creation just to retain power in 2012. Maybe, but more likely not.

President Obama is, in a way, an enigma. The way I see it, Obama may not be just a stereotypical politician who’s primary interest is reelection. There is a very real possibility that he is a true believer in the tenet that lies beneath statism, i.e., a society functions best and most fairly with economic controls and planning in the hands of a highly centralized government.

The evidence that Obama is a true believer in statism is clear. Who but a true believer would totally ignore the destruction of his country’s currency on the world market and then continue to raise the debt limit; record high unemployment; the obvious devastating effect of the massive illegal alien population on employment and government services; and sensible fixes that would stabilize the health insurance market … and instead concentrate his efforts on the creation of a larger government bureaucracy; the virtual dismantling of the health insurance industry; the potentially disastrous cap-and-trade regulations that will do nothing to curb the earth’s normal cooling and heating cycles but will wreak financial havoc on business, industry and, to a large extent on the entire population; and support of a card check policy that will most likely lead to the eventual unionization of all business and industry.

No, I certainly don’t believe that President Obama is your stereotypical politician. I do, however, believe that he is a visionary, but his vision is of a United States that in no way resembles the United States envisioned by the founders, by his predecessors, or by the majority of the American people.

I have proposed in e-mails, to anyone who will listen, that legislation like health care reform, cap-and-trade, and card check — legislation that will effect every American — should be, by law, put up for an up or down vote in a special national election after it is signed and at least three months before it is scheduled to take effect. A “no” vote by the majority of the American people should be considered a veto — a veto that can only be overturned by another national election. Unfortunately, it appears that no one is listening.

*Dan Calabrese is the Editor in Chief of The North Star National, the publication of the North Star Writers Group syndicate which has been serving newspapers with high-quality opinion pieces since 1985.

(This article was also posted at My View from the Center.)

Articles written by Harvey Grund
Tags: health care, Obama, statism
Categories: Economics, News, Politics | Comments (7) | Home

7 Responses to “The Real President Obama”

Tom | December 22nd, 2009 at 6:37 am

It’s ironic, and somewhat amusing, that the far left called Bush a fascist, and now we have the far right calling Obama a statist. They mean about the same thing, and a president is subject to being called one or the other depending on whose ox got gored in the last election. This over-the-top charge wasn’t accurate then and isn’t now.

Harvey, I hope you’re not wasting a lot of bandwidth on e-mails advocating a national election to approve or disapprove legislation. That’s a non-starter for lots of technical and political reasons. Here are just a few of them:

1. What you’re talking about is either a referendum or an initiative, depending on some technical points, and it’s not possible under the Constitution. A constitutional amendment would be necessary, and the chances of that happening are somewhere between zero and nil.

2. There’s no such thing as a national election in the U.S. The only thing that comes even close is election of the president and vice president, and that’s done state-by-state to chose state electors. Again, a constitutional amendment would be required.

3. Even if the Constitution were amended to provide for referendums and initiatives and national elections, which it won’t be, much more than that would be required because it would destroy that part of the separation of powers concept that empowers Congress to pass legislation and the president to approve it or veto it. How would you replace all of that? Have you considered any of the unintended consequences?

About half the state constitutions allow referendum or initiative elections at the state level, and a lesser number permit recall elections (that’s how California threw out Gov. Gray Davis). A close look at how all this works in the states reveals that trying to do it at the federal level wouldn’t be a great idea.

The answer, as always, is elections. If enough people don’t like what Congress has been doing, they can throw some of the bums out next year. Then they can throw the president out in 2012, along with more of the bums in Congress. If the people don’t do that … well, democracy kind of sucks when you don’t get what you want, right?

Harvey | December 22nd, 2009 at 7:39 am

Tom,

First of all: There is nothing even slightly amusing about the baseless accusations of fascism against Bush by people who don’t understand the concept of fascism or about criticism of our current president’s obvious contempt for America and for the free market.

Secondly: The concepts of fascism and statism may sound similar if you quickly read the definitions in Webster’s but you are missing a key point; they are both tyranny, that’s true, but one is driven by a dictator’s lust for personal power and the other by misguided visionary like Obama who, in this case, believes that he is doing what’s best for America by destroying it and “CHANGING” it.

Finally: You may consider it a “waste of bandwidth” to present a idea and hope that at least the concept may catch on, but I don’t. If everyone thought like that, America would still be a colony.

Tom | December 22nd, 2009 at 7:50 am

I take it your final point isn’t meant to advocate armed revolt culminating in a war, which is what it took for America to stop being a group of colonies. But if it does, who would be revolting against whom and why?

Harvey | December 22nd, 2009 at 10:44 am

Tom,

LOL! You just love to play intellectual games don’t you? You know exactly what my “final point” was referring to.

You obviously think I’m a reactionary and that may be partially true but, more accurately, I am just a pissed-off patriotic, freedom loving American who doesn’t like what he sees being proposed by the current administration and who refuses to ‘shut up’ about it.

The reality is, if all of the crap that the Liberal majority proposes is enacted it will, at my age, have a minimal effect on me personally; this is not a personal vendetta or the ranting of someone who is scared of what the future holds for him. I just hate to think of this beautiful country being converted into another version of a socialist state. You seem to think that that will never happen and I truly hope you’re right but I think that it MAY happen and believe that that possibility must be acknowledged, faced and prepared for.

Better to be a reactionary than a Forrest Gump who happily accepts whatever variety of “chocolate” that’s handed to him.

Lisa | December 22nd, 2009 at 1:41 pm

Harvey, Re “at my age”, do you mean to tell me you won’t be standing behind me as we wait for our colonoscopies and hip replacements? Oh yeah, that’s right, we are too old and not considered valuable enough human beings under the new health care to receive that kind of care. Perhaps we should move to Nebraska?