By John Ransom
5/19/2012
Obama may go down as the first president in the history of the U.S. to run a campaign based, like Jerry Seinfeld’s comedy, on nothing.
It’s gotten so bad that the New York Times is appealing to people to “believe in” Obama, like he’s a children’s character or a Vegas magic act, rather than president of the United States.
Talk about bitter clingers who cling to their religion.
But I know what they mean. There is isn’t any good logical reason to vote for Obama even if you are a liberal.
Let’s take his tax policy.
He wants to raise taxes on millionaires and billionaires in an effort to do what?
Nothing really.
With the feeble “Buffett” tax effort Obama won’t pay down the deficit or launch the Great Society. Far from being revolutionary, Obama’s tax plan looks timid to progressives and stupid to conservatives.
That’s because Obama knows, his economic team knows- and you and I all know- that the proposed Buffett tax won’t raise more money.
In fact, while proponents say that the tax could generate between $30 and $40 billion per year, it’s far more likely to decrease tax revenues as people at the million dollar tax threshold change from investments that produce income to ones that produce capital gains. While named after Warren Buffett, and sold as something that will even up the tax score between a rich man like Buffett and his secretary- who by the way is also rich- guys like Buffett- or is secretary won’t pay increased taxes.
But even if it produced taxes to the government treasury at the most optimistic levels, that’s about enough money every year to cover the interest payments on the national debt for one month.
It certainly won’t be enough to help progressives massively expand government programs like welfare.
So you are left with a tax policy debate that amounts to nothing. No deficit reduction, no economic growth, no budget, no jobs. All Obama has is a vague utopian promise that the government is going to distribute income more fairly.
Same with his energy policy.
At a time when discoveries of new proven reserves promise to make US a fossil fuel powerhouse in oil, coal and natural gas, Obama is pushing technologies that show negligible promise of real energy production. Instead, they will only ensure consumers will pay higher bills and that green energy producers get taxpayer-funded subsidies.
Alternative energy or renewables produce less than 4 percent of all energy making up only a micro-fraction of the electricity generated in the United States. For decades the United States has poured money into advanced energy research with little return.
“Since 1961, the U.S. government has invested nearly $172 billion (in inflation adjusted 2005 US dollars),” said the Department of Energy in a 2008 report, “for the development of advanced energy technologies and for the necessary underlying basic science.”
And for that, we’re getting 4 percent of our energy from advanced technologies that still need to be subsidized by massive infusions of government cash.
And none of that includes the $35 billion in money that was wasted on the DOE’s green investment program- which included losers like Solyndra- and the $27 billion budget for this year.
So we’ve spent more than a quarter of a trillion- and counting- on advanced energy solutions to no good purpose: we’ve got no jobs, no energy and no economic growth.
The purpose of an energy policy, if we are even going to have one, ought to be to make sure that the country enjoys stable and low priced energy supplies. For some reason this administration has broken with that tradition, and by its own admission, has pursued a policy to make sure that energy prices go up.
“Somehow,” said Obama’s Energy secretary Stephen Chu “we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe.”
But this shouldn’t surprise us from an administration that is following a tax policy that will ensure lower tax revenues at the same time they are driving up the deficit.
But if the idea is to drive prices higher and lower tax revenues, there has to be a cheaper way of doing it.
Couldn’t they just try “nothing” and see how that works out?
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To read another article by John Ransom, click here.
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