Just as Intended

Just as Intended
Dan Kennedy
Thursday, July 23, 2009

Twice in the past week or so President Obama has insisted that his $780 billion-and-then-some stimulus package is working “as intended” and “as anticipated.”

Apologists and defenders in his administration and in the media scurried to give him cover on this. Were it not for the stimulus, they insisted, things would be even worse. Since no one can point out any way in which it’s made things better, that’s the only argument they have. I can only imagine if an unpopular-with-the-media Republican (pardon the redundancy) was presiding over this mounting mess and claiming he’d intended it.

His words were very carefully chosen, so we should assume he meant them. It seems to me that leaves open only four possible conclusions, and I’m very curious which of the four those who voted for the President are willing to own. So please forward this column to any Obama supporters you know.

Option #1: He’s an ignoramus or a lunatic. Massive and still climbing unemployment, a deepening credit freeze, an impending commercial real estate crash that will bring banks to their knees a second time (CIT is the precursor), small businesses slashing jobs or closing altogether at blinding speed … if any of this was anticipated, he’d have to be a moron or a loon to proceed with his plans.

Option #2: He's a liar. He's back-pedaling now, claiming his was a 2-year plan all along, but that's not how he sold it. He was either lying then or he's lying now. Personally, I wouldn't want to be claiming I intended to create trillions of new deficits and debts, take over entire companies, create a gang of czars to usurp federal agencies' and Congress' power and be well on my way to doubling unemployment. His other choice is to admit he lied like a dog when selling this spending spree and power grab.

Option #3: He's up to something very, very sinister: actually intending all this destruction and devastation and more, as means of grabbing more and more control of more and more of the economy, drying up all private capital and killing as many private sector jobs as possible, in order to make virtually every citizen and every business dependent on the government. If this is his game plan, then he does have the right to sit there and smugly insist everything's going according to plan. And I guess he is to be congratulated by ... somebody.

Option #4: Some combination of some or all of the above.

Whichever option is true, it’s inarguable he’s dangerous.

Now he’s pushing for blinding-speed passage of hilariously labeled health care reform. In its House Bill form, over 1,100 pages of fine print creating a gigantic bureaucracy nobody understands, with an admitted cost of a trillion dollars. (Please don’t tell him there’s a number bigger than trillion.)

His lie is that it will be revenue neutral, a lie so blatant and outrageous no one believes it and no one can defend it. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Rebellious certainly couldn’t, under insistent questioning from the hardly-tough-as-nails David Gregory on “Meet the Press” this past Sunday.

If health care reform winds up working as well as his stimulus plan, he’ll be telling y’all it’s humming along as intended while hospitals close, doctors quit en-masse, insurance companies file bankruptcy and line up for bail-outs, and your access to Band-Aids and cotton balls is rationed. And unemployment tops the projection I’ve been making for a year of 16 percent, and leaps past the Great Depression high of 25 percent.

Why? Because the tax-the-rich schemes that purport to pay a big chunk of this cost are historically proven to freeze job creation, put even more private capital on the sidelines, roll back spending and slash charitable giving. If enacted in any semblance of the House’s package he has pushed, it will be the cement block that breaks the camel’s back. It may be that you’ll have some sort of guaranteed health care, but you’ll be out of a job, you’ll be taxed 67 ways from Sunday, and your dollar’ll be worth bupkus at the store.

Let’s see … Medicare, riddled with fraud, buried in losses, zipping towards bankruptcy. If all this money can be saved by the Amazing Ozbama’s computerization and efficiency, why not prove it there first, before gambling a trillion? Amtrak broke. Post Office, broke. Social Security, a Ponzi scheme worse than Madoff’s. Exactly what is the government running without racking up monster-sized inefficiencies and losses? Answer: nothing. The idea that this will be different is a lie.

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I VOTE FOR OPTION #4 - THERE IS NO DOUBT IN MY MIND!