We are not better off

EDITOR: With all respect to my friend George Sabato, listing the ways that he believes he is “better off than four years ago…” Am I, are we, better off? For crying out loud — no!

Gee, what does it take? George’s points were all about his own wallet and family pocketbook issues, so let’s start there: The stock market has been pumped up with borrowed money, retirement funds are as vulnerable if not more vulnerable to a sudden stock market crash than ever, the too-big-to-jail banksters are being propped up with borrowed money; the government has turned itself into the “King of Crony Capitalism” choosing which businesses will win (too-big-to-jail-banks), and which will lose (heavily unionized GM, bankrupt solar business like Solyndra, etc.) by getting propped up with even more borrowed money. This makes a real mess of business and the marketplace, discouraging investment and risk-taking, putting more people out of work.

The current record-low interest rates are a direct result of artificial intervention and manipulation by the Federal Reserve Bank. So-called middle-class tax cuts were fought by this administration, and are up for another renewal fight soon. They are tenuous, temporary, transitory; and more than offset by other taxes, jacked-up fees, ever-stiffer fines, and more penalties. Government is devolving into “ruling by penalty” and “policing for profit” schemes. Nope, not better off.

Road paving and other “shovel-ready” projects have taken nearly four years to get to actually be shovel-ready, and are funded by, you guessed it, more taxes and debt. The Social In-security and Medi-Scare welfare Ponzi-schemes are broke, bankrupt, and rely on accounting tricks (fraud) based on non-existent “trust funds” made up not of savings but of, yep, more government debt. Still not better off.

ObamaCare/PelosiTax has crippled the already dying Medi-Scare scheme by robbing it of $700 billion and has distorted, disrupted and mortally wounded the entire medical insurance industry, on top of the already overwhelming government intervention that got us into this mess in the first place.

Adding insult to injury, ObummerCare uses the raw force of government to compel us all to buy “medical insurance” in its government-dictated form and content, that most of us do not want, under threat of fines and penalties, and then manipulated us into the most convoluted Supreme Court decision since the Dred-Scot Decision said that slaves were not citizens and could not sue for their freedom.

Why on earth is the government even in the medical-care funding and dictating business in the first place? Can you imagine the government creating multi-billion dollar bureaucracies, the endless pages of rules and regulations, more taxes, fines, and penalties to force us to buy food, cars, clothes or anything else the ObummerCare/PelosiTax way? How in the world could this ever be misunderstood to make us better off? The sheer stupidity of such slavery boggles the mind. The inefficiencies and distortions, the involuntary servitude, and the destruction of the Constitution harrows the soul into not being better off.

We have been gutted, neutered, gelded, castrated — and we just take it all lying down, licking the chains they fasten upon us, giving thanks to our government/god for a few freebies given to placate our pathetic claims to being “free” people. And this makes us better off? Further, killing Obama bin Laden did not make us one whit safer as the current disaster of rioting and murdering at our embassies all over the Middle East shows.

Neither has the erection of the monstrous, naked-nuking, porno-groping TSA. Nor has the declaration of war against the American citizen by the U.S. government, via the so-called USA Patriot Act, and worse, the new NDAA. Further, We The People, the creators and masters of all levels of government, are now subjected to warrant-less arrest and disappearance, endless “detainment” and “rendition” without attorney or trial, as suspected “enemy combatants.” Our servant government has nullified the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, and made us its targets, its enemies. Definitely not better off.

Real unemployment is actually about 20 percent when you include those who have been out of work so long that they have given up. The food-stamp welfare rolls are exploding under acting President Obama’s rule — the number of Americans on food stamps is up 45 percent to 46 million people. And we’re the “richest nation in the world.” “QE3″ has just been announced by the Fed for $40 billion each month until forever. QE3 means that Obama’s entire economic “plan” is a massive failure. Massive inflation and destruction of the dollar are around the next corner. These will not make us better off.

The federal government is expanding and concentrating its raw power to tax, penalize, punish, and force its will against We The People at every step and every turn. Meanwhile, acting prez Obummer and his administration violate their oaths of office by circumventing the laws duly passed by Congress to govern immigration, and implement an amnesty by executive order. They just change the intent and effect of the law by “reinterpreting” and enforcing to effect its very opposite. We are not better off.

Neither are the Mexican people who were killed by the administration’s “Fast and Furious” gun-running scheme that supplied machine guns to Mexican drug thugs. The stonewalling and secrecy of this administration, the incompetence and Chicago-style corruption of the Oblamo Gang have become legend. They make their grandpa, Jimmy Carter, look competent, and Richard Nixon look like a saint. Defense of Marriage is the law of the land, but Barry has ordered his Bunch to not enforce nor defend it. The sacred and traditional role and definition of marriage, and so many other things, are under active assault by the Barry Bunch of the Left. Are we better off yet?

Individuals, even favored unions and corporations, may be financially “better off” for the immediate near-term, but even if the corruption, and the assault against the rights of We The People wasn’t harming us, there’s always the debt. Did I mention the debt? Sixteen trillion dollars. Massive, and unpayable. B. Hussein O. has piled on another $6 trillion in only 3 1/2 years. The previously unsustainable $10 trillion was poised to wipe us out, just like it did ancient Greece, Rome, China, modern Germany, and … Greece again. Now it’s $16 trillion and rising. No nation has ever survived the imposition of such massive debt without suffering bankruptcy, inflation, deflation, currency destruction, war, invasion, famine, pestilence and utter ruin. But, not to worry — after four, six, eight years, it will still all be Bush’s fault. Bush did plenty of damage, but anybody but Barry is responsible … That makes us better off, I’m sure.

Does any government, or people, ever learn anything from history? I have zero belief that we are going anywhere near the right direction, and nobody — not George, not me, not all of us together — has enough grandchildren nor coming great-grandchildren to ever pay off that government debt, and the even larger unfunded liabilities hidden under the rug. We are not at all better off — if anything, we are in the lull before the real storm hits us really hard. Should be fun.

GREG POST
Cameron Park