Posted by
Patrick Henry on Tuesday, February 17, 2009 1:38:39 PM
It has been sagely observed that those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Apparently Barack Obama and his army of Harvard nitwits are unaware of that maxim. The result is that all of us in America will be forced to re-live the shabbiest chapter in our history with them.
In 1996, when Bill Clinton was president, congress passed a massive welfare reform act that stopped government subsidies to women who continually bore illegitimate babies and forced welfare recipients to actively seek work. The indisputable result was more people off welfare rolls and onto payrolls, and a downward trend in illegitmacy, proving the principle that you get more of what you reward, and less of what you don't reward.
By promoting and now signing the Porkulus spending travesty, Obama has essentially rolled back the entire welfare reform act and put serial illegitimate mothers and hardcore unemployed in line to get "tax credits" -- i.e., welfare checks -- even when they have paid no taxes. His plan to combat illegitimacy is apparently to make government funded abortion abundantly available so that we can just kill babies before they're born, and save everyone the trouble (and cost) of caring for them. This, apparently, is one of his ideas for "spreading the wealth around."
When trying to forecast the result of this lunacy, one need only look at the plight of the major American companies that have been run in the ground. Where were their "leaders" (CEOs and CFO's) trained? An interesting study published on Fox News suggests that the two leading "failure factories," by far, are Columbia University and Harvard Law School. Along with the traditional business savvy, their graduates also seem to have mastered the art of falsifying balance sheets, misleading investors and stakeholders, borrowing their firms into bankruptcy and generally turning profit making enterprises into financial disasters capable only of providing them with "Golden Parachutes," while burning to the ground. Do you think it is a coincidence that Harvard and Columbia are two of the most notorious bastions of liberal politics in all of academia? If so, I know a guy named Madoff who has such a deal for you.
This all becomes further interesting when we see those closest to Obama's financial machinations and realize where they come from. Larry Summers, Tim Geithner and Obama himself are directly connected to those same liberal schools that spawned the economic wastrels who burned down Wall Street with an insatiable grab for profit, spent their companies under the table with their private jets, luxury junkets and exhorbitant bonuses, and helped exacerbate the economic crisis caused by the real estate collapse. The latter, by the way, also occurred because liberal Democrats threatened lenders with penalties if they did not provide mortgages to those who could in no way afford them -- what are being euphemistically called today, "toxic assets."
Now we are asked to swallow the Democrats' malarkey that this trillion dollar troglydyte of an economic stimulus bill, loudly touted by these same Harvard-educated mealy-mouths, will save America's bacon (pork allusion absolutely intended). Recent polls show that only 38% of Americans think Porkulus will have a positive impact, while 29% believe it will have a negative impact and 33% believe it will have no impact at all. So why is Obama's personal popularity rating so high? Because the real and sad truth will not be evident for months. More government debt will drive interest rates up, slowing the economy and making major purchases difficult. More welfare will increase illegitimacy and re-create a cadre of hardcore unemployed who have no incentive to seek and hold work. And the lie that the cost of Porkulus is 787 billion (in reality, over time, it exceeds 3 trillion) will doom our children and grandchildren to a mountain of unrepayable debt. The ascendancy of Barack Obama to the presidency has emboldened the most liberal wing of the Democratic party to create the most irresponsible fiscal legislation in America's history. They should be ashamed. And we WILL be sorry!