Posted by
Patrick Henry on Wednesday, March 18, 2009 2:01:52 PM
Many are familiar with the old experiment where a monkey is presented a jar full of food. Greedily, the monkey reaches into the jar and grabs an entire fistful, only to discover that his fist is now too big to fit back through the jar opening. What the monkey does not know is that if he settled for a smaller amount, over time he could have all he wanted. At length, the monkey learned. Apparently, the President and his Democratic congress have not.
Drunk with their new found power, they are grabbing by the fistful for everything they can take -- and all at the same time. Enormous bailouts for failed businesses, the rollback of welfare reform, a trillion-and-a-half dollar universal healthcare program, a cap-and-trade energy system in which the consumer (who is also the taxpayer) gets stuck with both ends of the bill, the "card check" bill to empower the unions, federally funded abortion on demand, the revival of the "fairness doctrine " meant to quash dissent on the airwaves, amnesty for illegal aliens, and the list goes on. Obama and this congress have not yet been in power for three full months and already they have enacted, or introduced legisiation to enact, all of these liberal hobby horse programs. They have even tried to co-opt the census process.
But if they're watching the polls, reading the blogs and paying attention to the tea parties and other protests, they will note that a storm of outrage is building that may well guarantee that while they can jam their hand into the cookie jar up to the elbow, America may not let them pull it out until they relax the extent of their grab. And the lesson may well be that monkeys are a whole lot smarter than they are.
With the political leverage they have mustered, they might well have enacted any one or two of these program attracting little notice. But their power grab is so egregious that their reach has probably exceeded their grasp. While Nancy Pelosi is babbling about yet another stimulus, and Obama's minions are whispering about more bailouts, recent polls show that 87% of the American people reject ANY additional bailouts and the concomitant federal borrowing necessary to achieve them. Other polls reflect deep resentment of the president's cap-and-trade proposals, amnesty for illegals and the re-imposition of the "fairness doctrine," and regard with deep suspicion the Employee Free Choice Act (card check law) and any political involvement in the census. Most Americans now firmly believe that the current presidential and congressional spending binge must ultimately result in higher taxes for all citizens, not just the top 5% of earners. In other words, they do not believe the president's words or actions to be consistent with reality. The loss of administrative credibility in two months has to be some kind of world record.
The recklessness that has typified the "Spendulus Syndrome" is breathtaking. For example, the government has bought an 80% stake in mega-insurer AIG, only to find out later that the deal contains a poison pill legally requiring obscene bonuses to the very people who ran the once proud company into the ground. Now, congress and the White House claim they "didn't know." Voters are now asking a simple question. WHY NOT? In the business world we call it "due diligence." We take the time and expend the resources to know exactly what we're buying into. And now, a government that has show complete disdain for this simplest of all business protective practices wants the taxpayers to trust them with trillions more tax dollars to spend on unproven entitlement boondoggles.
While they may get away with this charade on the short-term, Abe Lincoln's maxim that "you can't fool all of the people all of the time," will eventually lead to their banishment from power. We can only hope that they haven't spent the country and its taxpayers into bankruptcy by that time. The Democrat spendthrifts in congress are funnier than a barrel of monkeys. And Barack Obama never met one he didn't like!