Posted by
"Happy" Jake Greene on Thursday, July 23, 2009 7:01:02 AM
As expected, the economic downturn has become the opportunity the Left has been waiting for. Earlier this year, presuming you remember back that far, we were told that the recovery from the Bush-the-Younger recession was immediate passage of a 1,000-page, $1,000,000,000,000 “Stimulus package” – the failure of which has been so complete that the people that pushed for it have been heard talking about another stimulus package. Now we are being told that the recovery from the Obama deepening of the recession depends on the immediate passage of the $1,000,000,000,000 ObamaCare package. As we continue to slog through the Obama depression, I expect we’ll hear about how recovery therefrom will depend upon immediate passage of other Leftist agenda items. For example, it’s not too much of a reach to hear: “Recovery from this recession depends upon immediate passage of … the Freedom of Choice Act, or … The Employee Free Choice Act, or … regulations to stop Global Warming at all costs, or … a comprehensive same-sex ‘marriage’ bill, or … random increases in taxes, or …” well, you get the picture.
There are two ways that have been proven to stimulate the economy, and both have the effect of putting more money into your pocket:
- Lower taxes. Reagan lowered taxes across the board (rich, middle-class, and tax-paying poor) and in one fell swoop took us out of the Carter recession and put us into a boom that went almost unabated for nearly 20 years, save the blip caused by Bush-the-Elder’s tax increases after he promised “Read my lips: no new taxes.”
- Start a war. And I don’t mean some foolish “limited war” with terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan. I mean full-on, all-out, 10%-of-the-population-puts-on-a-uniform war against a massive enemy, like Communist Asia or some such. FDR did not get us out of the Great Depression, Showa (aka Hirohito), Hitler, and Mussolini did. World War II caused such a massive increase in heavy manufacturing and military income that people were flush with cash afterward. The late 40s and most of the 50s saw another economic boom because people could afford luxuries and companies were paid a lot by consumers to innovate new products.
Obviously, starting a war with China has some major drawbacks, so I’d recommend choice #1.
We’ve now seen our first real look into the mind of President Obama vis a vis race relations, and it ain’t pretty. Apparently a black man was wrongfully arrested in his home in a case of mistaken identity. Cambridge, MA police responded to an alleged burglary call and when they got to the house they arrested the man inside. The man inside was an older gentleman called in the Associated Press report a “renowned black scholar.” The gentleman is later identified as a professor at Harvard University The arresting officer, who, of course, was white demanded to see the scholar’s ID. The professor, in a fine exhibition of his intelligence and aptitude for polite and reasonable discourse, refused and accused the officer of racism. When the police left his home, apparently satisfied that he was who he said he was, he followed them out, shouting at them over their treatment of him. That’s when he was arrested.
The incident garnered a lot of attention from the press and politicians, apparently with a fair number of people criticizing the professor for berating the police and being generally uncooperative. Of course, the President felt he had to weigh in and had this to say:
I think it's fair to say, number one, any of us would be pretty angry. Number two, that the Cambridge police acted stupidly in arresting somebody when there was already proof that they were in their own home. And number three — what I think we know separate and apart from this incident — is that there is a long history in this country of African-Americans and Latinos being stopped by law enforcement disproportionately, and that's just a fact.
On point number one, I’d say that’s a fair assessment, but that does not excuse someone from producing ID when the cops ask for it. That would have prevented the whole thing. On point number two, I’d say the President acted stupidly for denigrating cops who were just trying to do their job. They didn’t arrest the man for breaking and entering; they arrested him for disorderly conduct. On the third point, police stop minorities because minorities commit more street crimes (drugs, robbery, burglary, assault, muggings, random murders, etc.) than whites in toto, not just as a percentage of the population. And a great many minorities have been brought up to believe that an antagonistic relationship with police is a good thing.
It’s disappointing that the President of the United States would take sides against the police in a situation for which he does not know the details. The professor had the power to defuse the situation by simply producing identification when asked. Jumping immediately into the “cops are racist” mode is not helpful to anyone.