The Other 85%

The "other" part of the State of the Union.

I thought I would start this post by saying a few bad words, that’s right, I’m laying them all out on the table.

“big business”
“CEO”
“profit”
“oil”

If you listen to President Obama or any of the Congressional leadership recently, you would think I was some type of charlatan, throwing around words like that.

The question is, when did running a big company become bad? Why is it suddenly equivalent to selling your soul to the devil to become successful in corporate America? Don’t we WANT businesses to be successful? Don’t we want them to have money to pay workers salaries and maybe even a dividend on their stock?

If you listened to the State of the Union, you heard quite a bit of CEO, bank, and business bashing. Isn’t some of this deserved? Absolutely. However, having Democratic law makers (of which our president WAS one recently) bashing banks and CEOs for mismanagement and wasting tax payer dollars is kind of like a drug dealer ratting out one of his customers to the police. President Obama threw out a lot of blame in his State of the Union address, but it wasn’t directed at all of the right people. There seems to be a prevailing opinion among liberals that the ONLY honest people in the world are liberal politicians and really, really poor people.

Of course they must be pretending that we haven’t been paying attention to the President’s cabinet appointments.

President Obama never acknowledged the fact that GOVERNMENT should bare the bulk of the blame for this whole economic disaster, starting with the Clinton administration. He also said that de-regulation is to blame and called for “legislation that will finally reform our outdated regulatory system”. How about law makers that will actually LISTEN to federal regulators? It is absolutely DISHONEST to stand there and point the finger at the banks and say that “everyone is suffering in part from their bad decisions” and not even MENTION the politicians who ignored corruption at Fannie and Freddie and even berated regulators who came and testified to it!

The blame game wasn’t the only subject of the night. Big tax increases came up on multiple occasions. They weren’t introduced that way of course. Obama pressed hard for a cap and trade system to “save our planet from the ravages of climate change”. Not mentioning the fact that a) climate change is not controlled nor can it be managed by human factors and b) this is actually a TRILLION dollar tax increase in disguise. Of course he re-iterated that “if your family earns less than $250,000 a year, you will not see your taxes increased a single dime.” Obviously he means direct taxes. Indirectly your taxes will go up in direct proportion to the cap and trade system, because after all, businesses don’t pay taxes; their customers do. Who is going to pay for the TRILLION dollar cap and trade? You. On every purchase of every product.

But my favorite totally off the wall statement of the night was that Universal Heath Care will help us bring down the deficit. Did you miss it? Here is it in its entirety.

“This budget builds on these reforms. It includes an historic commitment to comprehensive health care reform – a down-payment on the principle that we must have quality, affordable health care for every American. It’s a commitment that’s paid for by efficiencies in our system that are long overdue. And it’s a step we must take if we hope to bring down our deficit in the years to come.”

What? That makes no sense. Ask the UK how much their National Health System has helped their budget? It definitely would affect the deficit, but not in the direction that the President was alluding to.

Last but not least, there were several, shall we say 'disingenuous remarks', but considering he is discussing massive new regulations, a government cap and trade system, and a plan to nationalize healthcare, I would consider the following statement an out right lie:
“Not because I believe in bigger government – I don’t.”

Pa-lease.

The speech would have been a lot shorter if he would have just said, “Big business, big medicine, big oil, and rich people. That is the problem. A massive, all encompassing government is the only solution.”