Obama raising with Missouri stimulus beneficiary
By ALEXANDER BURNS | 9/23/11 12:12 PM EDT Updated: 9/23/11 3:41 PM EDT
President Barack Obama will raise money in early October with a Missouri businessman whose company benefited from a $107 million federal tax credit to develop a wind power facility in his state.
Tom Carnahan, a scion of Missouri’s most prominent Democratic political family, is listed on Obama’s campaign website as a host of a $25,000-per-person fundraiser to be held in St. Louis on October 4.
His energy development firm, Wind Capital Group, was helped by a sizable credit authorized in the stimulus, for an energy project in northwest Missouri.
Republicans argue that it’s inappropriate for the Obama campaign to raise money from a donor who has benefited directly from the Recovery Act.
Missouri Republican Party executive director Lloyd Smith compared the situation to the Solyndra affair, in which the Obama administration reportedly rushed federal support to a green-energy firm that subsequently collapsed.
“At a time when Barack Obama is under fire for steering hundreds of millions of dollars in stimulus funds to a failed company linked to a major campaign donor, it is stunning that he would come to Missouri and raise money with another recipient of stimulus cash,” Smith said in a statement to POLITICO. “Sadly, Missourians have come to expect this kind of pay-to-play from the Obama administration. November 2012 can't come soon enough.”
The Obama campaign did not respond to a request for comment. There’s no evidence that Carnahan’s company received federal help because of political favoritism, and given the size of the stimulus, there are more than a few business executives who can be tied to the Recovery Act.
But Republicans have successfully wielded the Missouri wind power project as a political weapon before.
In 2010, Republicans attacked Tom Carnahan’s siblings, Rep. Russ Carnahan and Senate candidate Robin Carnahan, for the government help their brother’s firm received.
UPDATE: Tony Wyche, a consultant for Wind Capital Group, sends over an editorial memo the company circulated during the 2010 campaign, pushing back on the GOP's attacks on Tom Carnahan and his siblings. The memo notes that the credits Wind Capital Group benefited from are not administered by a political agency.
"The Recovery Act authorized the creation of the 1603 program to jumpstart development of renewable energy projects in America, but its administration rests solely in the hands of the Department of Treasury," the memo says. "No Member of Congress has any say in which projects receive funding. Any project that meets a pre?determined set of criteria qualifies for the 1603 program."
Friday, September 23, 2011
Obama Nanny State....Your Medical Records will Now to Turned Over to the Federal Government....
Obama Nanny State Again running your life....If you are not uncomfortable with this then you do not like your liberty or freedom....we have privacy laws everywhere, but evidently they do NOT apply to the Federal Government....Obamacare just gets worse and worse and worse......I feel like I live in Communist Russia....Obama's Got to Go....start counting the days to the 2012 election...
Comments Obamacare HHS rule would give government everybody’s health records
By: Rep. Tim Huelskamp | 09/23/11 3:29 PM
Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius has proposed that medical records of all Americans be turned over to the federal government by private health insurers.It’s been said a thousand times: Congress had to pass President Obama’s health care law in order to find out what’s in it. But, despite the repetitiveness, the level of shock from each new discovery never seems to recede.
This time, America is learning about the federal government’s plan to collect and aggregate confidential patient records for every one of us.
In a proposed rule from Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the federal government is demanding insurance companies submit detailed health care information about their patients.
(See Proposed Rule: Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act; Standards Related to Reinsurance, Risk Corridors and Risk Adjustment, Volume 76, page 41930. Proposed rule docket ID is HHS-OS-2011-0022 http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-2011-07-15/pdf/2011-17609.pdf)
The HHS has proposed the federal government pursue one of three paths to obtain this sensitive information: A “centralized approach” wherein insurers’ data go directly to Washington; an “intermediate state-level approach” in which insurers give the information to the 50 states; or a “distributed approach” in which health insurance companies crunch the numbers according to federal bureaucrat edict.
It’s par for the course with the federal government, but abstract terms are used to distract from the real objectives of this idea: no matter which “option” is chosen, government bureaucrats would have access to the health records of every American - including you.
There are major problems with any one of these three “options.” First is the obvious breach of patient confidentiality. The federal government does not exactly have a stellar track record when it comes to managing private information about its citizens.
Why should we trust that the federal government would somehow keep all patient records confidential? In one case, a government employee’s laptop containing information about 26.5 million veterans and their spouses was stolen from the employee’s home.
There's also the HHS contractor who lost a laptop containing medical information about nearly 50,000 Medicare beneficiaries. And, we cannot forget when the USDA's computer system was compromised and information and photos of 26,000 employees, contractors, and retirees potentially accessed.
The second concern is the government compulsion to seize details about private business practices. Certainly many health insurance companies defended and advocated for the president’s health care law, but they likely did not know this was part of the bargain.
They are being asked to provide proprietary information to governments for purposes that will undermine their competitiveness. Obama and Sebelius made such a big deal about Americans being able to keep the coverage they have under ObamaCare; with these provisions, such private insurance may cease to exist if insurers are required to divulge their business models.
Certainly businesses have lost confidential data like the federal government has, but the power of the market can punish the private sector. A victim can fire a health insurance company; he cannot fire a bureaucrat.
What happens to the federal government if it loses a laptop full of patient data or business information? What recourse do individual citizens have against an inept bureaucrat who leaves the computer unlocked? Imagine a Wikileaks-sized disclosure of every Americans’ health histories. The results could be devastating - embarrassing - even Orwellian.
With its extensive rule-making decrees, ObamaCare has been an exercise in creating authority out of thin air at the expense of individuals’ rights, freedoms, and liberties.
The ability of the federal government to spy on, review, and approve individuals’ private patient-doctor interactions is an excessive power-grab.
Like other discoveries that have occurred since the law’s passage, this one leaves us scratching our heads as to the necessity not just of this provision, but the entire law.
The HHS attempts to justify its proposal on the grounds that it has to be able to compare performance. No matter what the explanation is, however, this type of data collection is an egregious violation of patient-doctor confidentiality and business privacy. It is like J. Edgar Hoover in a lab coat.
And, no matter what assurances Obama, Sebelius and their unelected and unaccountable HHS bureaucrats make about protections and safeguards of data, too many people already know what can result when their confidential information gets into the wrong hands, either intentionally or unintentionally.
Republican Tim Huelskamp represents the first congressional district of Kansas.
Comments Obamacare HHS rule would give government everybody’s health records
By: Rep. Tim Huelskamp | 09/23/11 3:29 PM
Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius has proposed that medical records of all Americans be turned over to the federal government by private health insurers.It’s been said a thousand times: Congress had to pass President Obama’s health care law in order to find out what’s in it. But, despite the repetitiveness, the level of shock from each new discovery never seems to recede.
This time, America is learning about the federal government’s plan to collect and aggregate confidential patient records for every one of us.
In a proposed rule from Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the federal government is demanding insurance companies submit detailed health care information about their patients.
(See Proposed Rule: Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act; Standards Related to Reinsurance, Risk Corridors and Risk Adjustment, Volume 76, page 41930. Proposed rule docket ID is HHS-OS-2011-0022 http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-2011-07-15/pdf/2011-17609.pdf)
The HHS has proposed the federal government pursue one of three paths to obtain this sensitive information: A “centralized approach” wherein insurers’ data go directly to Washington; an “intermediate state-level approach” in which insurers give the information to the 50 states; or a “distributed approach” in which health insurance companies crunch the numbers according to federal bureaucrat edict.
It’s par for the course with the federal government, but abstract terms are used to distract from the real objectives of this idea: no matter which “option” is chosen, government bureaucrats would have access to the health records of every American - including you.
There are major problems with any one of these three “options.” First is the obvious breach of patient confidentiality. The federal government does not exactly have a stellar track record when it comes to managing private information about its citizens.
Why should we trust that the federal government would somehow keep all patient records confidential? In one case, a government employee’s laptop containing information about 26.5 million veterans and their spouses was stolen from the employee’s home.
There's also the HHS contractor who lost a laptop containing medical information about nearly 50,000 Medicare beneficiaries. And, we cannot forget when the USDA's computer system was compromised and information and photos of 26,000 employees, contractors, and retirees potentially accessed.
The second concern is the government compulsion to seize details about private business practices. Certainly many health insurance companies defended and advocated for the president’s health care law, but they likely did not know this was part of the bargain.
They are being asked to provide proprietary information to governments for purposes that will undermine their competitiveness. Obama and Sebelius made such a big deal about Americans being able to keep the coverage they have under ObamaCare; with these provisions, such private insurance may cease to exist if insurers are required to divulge their business models.
Certainly businesses have lost confidential data like the federal government has, but the power of the market can punish the private sector. A victim can fire a health insurance company; he cannot fire a bureaucrat.
What happens to the federal government if it loses a laptop full of patient data or business information? What recourse do individual citizens have against an inept bureaucrat who leaves the computer unlocked? Imagine a Wikileaks-sized disclosure of every Americans’ health histories. The results could be devastating - embarrassing - even Orwellian.
With its extensive rule-making decrees, ObamaCare has been an exercise in creating authority out of thin air at the expense of individuals’ rights, freedoms, and liberties.
The ability of the federal government to spy on, review, and approve individuals’ private patient-doctor interactions is an excessive power-grab.
Like other discoveries that have occurred since the law’s passage, this one leaves us scratching our heads as to the necessity not just of this provision, but the entire law.
The HHS attempts to justify its proposal on the grounds that it has to be able to compare performance. No matter what the explanation is, however, this type of data collection is an egregious violation of patient-doctor confidentiality and business privacy. It is like J. Edgar Hoover in a lab coat.
And, no matter what assurances Obama, Sebelius and their unelected and unaccountable HHS bureaucrats make about protections and safeguards of data, too many people already know what can result when their confidential information gets into the wrong hands, either intentionally or unintentionally.
Republican Tim Huelskamp represents the first congressional district of Kansas.
Obama Nanny State Running our Lives Again...
The Obama Nanny State going NUTS AGAIN...we need to do away with the EPA!!!! Can't you just wait til Obamacare goes into effect that the Federal Government gets to control all your medical decisions???? You would think we live in a totalitarian state...
Obama Administration to Ban Asthma Inhalers Over Environmental Concerns
3:00 PM, Sep 23, 2011 • By MARK HEMINGWAY
Remember how Obama recently waived new ozone regulations at the EPA because they were too costly? Well, it seems that the Obama administration is would rather make people with Asthma cough up money than let them make a surely inconsequential contribution to depleting the ozone layer:
Asthma patients who rely on over-the-counter inhalers will need to switch to prescription-only alternatives as part of the federal government's latest attempt to protect the Earth's atmosphere.
The Food and Drug Administration said Thursday patients who use the epinephrine inhalers to treat mild asthma will need to switch by Dec. 31 to other types that do not contain chlorofluorocarbons, an aerosol substance once found in a variety of spray products.
The action is part of an agreement signed by the U.S. and other nations to stop using substances that deplete the ozone layer, a region in the atmosphere that helps block harmful ultraviolet rays from the Sun.
But the switch to a greener inhaler will cost consumers more. Epinephrine inhalers are available via online retailers for around $20, whereas the alternatives, which contain the drug albuterol, range from $30 to $60.
The Atlantic's Megan McArdle, an asthma sufferer, noted a while back that when consumers are forced to use environmentally friendly products they're are almost always worse:
Er, industry also knew how to make low-flow toilets, which is why every toilet in my recently renovated rental house clogs at least once a week. They knew how to make more energy efficient dryers, which is why even on high, I have to run every load through the dryer in said house twice. And they knew how to make inexpensive compact flourescent bulbs, which is why my head hurts from the glare emitting from my bedroom lamp. They also knew how to make asthma inhalers without CFCs, which is why I am hoarding old albuterol inhalers that, unlike the new ones, a) significantly improve my breathing and b) do not make me gag. Etc.
Well, tough cookies asthma sufferers! You should have written bigger checks to the Democratic party while you had the chance.
Obama Administration to Ban Asthma Inhalers Over Environmental Concerns
3:00 PM, Sep 23, 2011 • By MARK HEMINGWAY
Remember how Obama recently waived new ozone regulations at the EPA because they were too costly? Well, it seems that the Obama administration is would rather make people with Asthma cough up money than let them make a surely inconsequential contribution to depleting the ozone layer:
Asthma patients who rely on over-the-counter inhalers will need to switch to prescription-only alternatives as part of the federal government's latest attempt to protect the Earth's atmosphere.
The Food and Drug Administration said Thursday patients who use the epinephrine inhalers to treat mild asthma will need to switch by Dec. 31 to other types that do not contain chlorofluorocarbons, an aerosol substance once found in a variety of spray products.
The action is part of an agreement signed by the U.S. and other nations to stop using substances that deplete the ozone layer, a region in the atmosphere that helps block harmful ultraviolet rays from the Sun.
But the switch to a greener inhaler will cost consumers more. Epinephrine inhalers are available via online retailers for around $20, whereas the alternatives, which contain the drug albuterol, range from $30 to $60.
The Atlantic's Megan McArdle, an asthma sufferer, noted a while back that when consumers are forced to use environmentally friendly products they're are almost always worse:
Er, industry also knew how to make low-flow toilets, which is why every toilet in my recently renovated rental house clogs at least once a week. They knew how to make more energy efficient dryers, which is why even on high, I have to run every load through the dryer in said house twice. And they knew how to make inexpensive compact flourescent bulbs, which is why my head hurts from the glare emitting from my bedroom lamp. They also knew how to make asthma inhalers without CFCs, which is why I am hoarding old albuterol inhalers that, unlike the new ones, a) significantly improve my breathing and b) do not make me gag. Etc.
Well, tough cookies asthma sufferers! You should have written bigger checks to the Democratic party while you had the chance.
Obama - A Muslim in Charge of America!
If Obama Acts like a Muslim...talks like a Muslim...makes policies to favor Muslims...THEN he's Probably a Muslim....No Matter What He Says....
THIS IS WHAT A TRAITOR LOOKS LIKE TO MOST OF US.
In
1952
President Truman
established one day a year as a
"National Day of Prayer."
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In
1988
President Reagan
designated the
First Thursday in May of each year as
the National Day of Prayer.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In June
2007
(then)
Presidential
Candidate Barack Obama
declared that the USA
"Was no longer a
Christian nation."
---------------------------------------------------------------
This year
President Obama
canceled the
21st annual National Day
of Prayer ceremony
at the White
House under the ruse
Of "not wanting to offend anyone"
------------------------------------------------------------------------
BUT... on September 25, 2009
from 4 AM until 7 PM,
a National Day of Prayer
FOR THE MUSLIM RELIGION
was Held on Capitol Hill,
Beside the White House.
There were over 50,000 Muslims
in D.C. that day.
HE PRAYS WITH THE MUSLIMS!
I guess it Doesn't matter
if "Christians"
Are offended by this event -
We obviously
Don't count as
"anyone" Anymore.
The direction this country is headed
should strike fear in the heart of every Christian,
especially knowing that the
Muslim religion believes that if Christians cannot be
converted, they should be annihilated.
This is not a Rumor -
Go to the website
To confirm this info:
http://www.islamoncapitolhill.com
Send this to ten people
and the person who
sent it to you!...
to let them know that
indeed, it was sent
out to many more.
THIS IS WHAT A TRAITOR LOOKS LIKE TO MOST OF US.
In
1952
President Truman
established one day a year as a
"National Day of Prayer."
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In
1988
President Reagan
designated the
First Thursday in May of each year as
the National Day of Prayer.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In June
2007
(then)
Presidential
Candidate Barack Obama
declared that the USA
"Was no longer a
Christian nation."
---------------------------------------------------------------
This year
President Obama
canceled the
21st annual National Day
of Prayer ceremony
at the White
House under the ruse
Of "not wanting to offend anyone"
------------------------------------------------------------------------
BUT... on September 25, 2009
from 4 AM until 7 PM,
a National Day of Prayer
FOR THE MUSLIM RELIGION
was Held on Capitol Hill,
Beside the White House.
There were over 50,000 Muslims
in D.C. that day.
HE PRAYS WITH THE MUSLIMS!
I guess it Doesn't matter
if "Christians"
Are offended by this event -
We obviously
Don't count as
"anyone" Anymore.
The direction this country is headed
should strike fear in the heart of every Christian,
especially knowing that the
Muslim religion believes that if Christians cannot be
converted, they should be annihilated.
This is not a Rumor -
Go to the website
To confirm this info:
http://www.islamoncapitolhill.com
Send this to ten people
and the person who
sent it to you!...
to let them know that
indeed, it was sent
out to many more.
Got to get Rid of Obama and Obamacare....Can't Happen Too Soon...
Snopes confirms.
The per person Medicare insurance premium will increase from the present
monthly fee of $96.40, rising to: $104.20 in 2012; $120.20 in 2013; And
$247.00 in 2014. These are provisions incorporated in the Obamacare
legislation, purposely delayed so as not to'confuse' the 2012 re-election campaigns.
Please send this to all seniors that you know, so they will know who's
throwing them under the bus.
We the people are coming
The per person Medicare insurance premium will increase from the present
monthly fee of $96.40, rising to: $104.20 in 2012; $120.20 in 2013; And
$247.00 in 2014. These are provisions incorporated in the Obamacare
legislation, purposely delayed so as not to'confuse' the 2012 re-election campaigns.
Please send this to all seniors that you know, so they will know who's
throwing them under the bus.
We the people are coming
The Anti-Business, Anti-Capitalism, Redistributioining Socialist Obama is Back....that Should Scare America to Death!
Obama's GOT to go in 2012!!!...and That's not soon Enough!
September 22, 2011 8:00 P.M.
Return of the Real Obama
President Obama shifts from a phony centrism back to his social-democratic core.
In a 2008 debate, Charlie Gibson asked Barack Obama about his support for raising capital-gains taxes, given the historical record of government losing net revenue as a result. Obama persevered: “Well, Charlie, what I’ve said is that I would look at raising the capital-gains tax for purposes of fairness.”
A most revealing window into our president’s political core: To impose a tax that actually impoverishes our communal bank account (the U.S. Treasury) is ridiculous. It is nothing but punitive. It benefits no one — not the rich, not the poor, not the government. For Obama, however, it brings fairness, which is priceless.
Now that he’s president, Obama has actually gone and done it. He’s just proposed a $1.5 trillion tsunami of tax hikes featuring a “Buffett rule” that, although as yet deliberately still fuzzy, clearly includes raising capital-gains taxes.
He also insists again upon raising marginal rates on “millionaire” couples making $250,000 or more. But roughly half the income of small businesses (i.e., those filing individual returns) would be hit by this tax increase. Therefore, if we are to believe Obama’s own logic that his proposed business tax credits would increase hiring, then surely this tax hike will reduce small-business hiring.
But what are jobs when fairness is at stake? Fairness trumps growth. Fairness trumps revenue. Fairness trumps economic logic.
Obama himself has said that “you don’t raise taxes in a recession.” Why then would he risk economic damage when facing reelection? Because these proposals have no chance of being enacted, many of them having been rejected by the Democratic-controlled Congress of Obama’s first two years in office.
Moreover, this is not an economic, or jobs, or debt-reduction plan in the first place. This is a campaign manifesto. This is anti-millionaire populism as premise for his reelection. And as such, it is already working.
Obama’s Democratic base is electrified. On the left, the new message is playing to rave reviews. It has rekindled the enthusiasm of his core constituency — the MoveOn, Hollywood liberal, Upper West Side precincts best described years ago by John Updike: “Like most of her neighborhood, she was a fighting liberal, fighting to have her money taken from her.”
Added Updike: “For all her exertions, it never was.” But now with Obama — it will! Turns out, Obama really was the one they had been waiting for.
That is: the new Obama, today’s soak-the-rich, veto-threatening, self-proclaimed class warrior. Except that the new Obama is really the old Obama — the one who, upon entering office in the middle of a deep economic crisis, and determined not to allow “a serious crisis to go to waste” (to quote his then chief of staff), exploited the (presumed) malleability of a demoralized and therefore passive citizenry to enact the largest Keynesian stimulus in recorded history, followed by the quasi-nationalization of the one-sixth of the economy that is health care.
Considering the political cost — massive electoral rebuke by an infuriated 2010 electorate — these are the works of a conviction politician, one deeply committed to his own social-democratic vision.
That politician now returns. Obama’s new populism surely is a calculation that his halfhearted feints to the center after the midterm “shellacking” were not only unconvincing but would do him no good anyway with a stagnant economy, 9 percent unemployment, and a staggering $4 trillion of new debt.
But this is more than a political calculation. It is more than just a pander to his base. It is a pander to himself: Obama is a member of his base. He believes this stuff. It is an easy and comfortable political shift for him, because it’s a shift from a phony centrism back to his social-democratic core, from positioning to authenticity.
The authentic Obama is a leveler, a committed social democrat, a staunch believer in the redistributionist state, a tribune, above all, of “fairness” — understood as government-imposed and government-enforced equality.
That’s why “soak the rich” is not just a campaign slogan to rally the base. It’s a mission, a vocation. It’s why for all its gratuitous cynicism and demagoguery, Obama’s populist Rose Garden lecture on Monday was delivered with such obvious — and unusual — conviction.
He’s returned to the authenticity of his radical April 2009 “New Foundation” address (at Georgetown University) that openly proclaimed his intent to fundamentally transform America.
Good. There’s something to be said for authenticity. A choice, not an echo, said Barry Goldwater. The country will soon choose, although not soon enough.
— Charles Krauthammer is a national syndicated columnist. © 2011, The Washington Post Writers Group.
September 22, 2011 8:00 P.M.
Return of the Real Obama
President Obama shifts from a phony centrism back to his social-democratic core.
In a 2008 debate, Charlie Gibson asked Barack Obama about his support for raising capital-gains taxes, given the historical record of government losing net revenue as a result. Obama persevered: “Well, Charlie, what I’ve said is that I would look at raising the capital-gains tax for purposes of fairness.”
A most revealing window into our president’s political core: To impose a tax that actually impoverishes our communal bank account (the U.S. Treasury) is ridiculous. It is nothing but punitive. It benefits no one — not the rich, not the poor, not the government. For Obama, however, it brings fairness, which is priceless.
Now that he’s president, Obama has actually gone and done it. He’s just proposed a $1.5 trillion tsunami of tax hikes featuring a “Buffett rule” that, although as yet deliberately still fuzzy, clearly includes raising capital-gains taxes.
He also insists again upon raising marginal rates on “millionaire” couples making $250,000 or more. But roughly half the income of small businesses (i.e., those filing individual returns) would be hit by this tax increase. Therefore, if we are to believe Obama’s own logic that his proposed business tax credits would increase hiring, then surely this tax hike will reduce small-business hiring.
But what are jobs when fairness is at stake? Fairness trumps growth. Fairness trumps revenue. Fairness trumps economic logic.
Obama himself has said that “you don’t raise taxes in a recession.” Why then would he risk economic damage when facing reelection? Because these proposals have no chance of being enacted, many of them having been rejected by the Democratic-controlled Congress of Obama’s first two years in office.
Moreover, this is not an economic, or jobs, or debt-reduction plan in the first place. This is a campaign manifesto. This is anti-millionaire populism as premise for his reelection. And as such, it is already working.
Obama’s Democratic base is electrified. On the left, the new message is playing to rave reviews. It has rekindled the enthusiasm of his core constituency — the MoveOn, Hollywood liberal, Upper West Side precincts best described years ago by John Updike: “Like most of her neighborhood, she was a fighting liberal, fighting to have her money taken from her.”
Added Updike: “For all her exertions, it never was.” But now with Obama — it will! Turns out, Obama really was the one they had been waiting for.
That is: the new Obama, today’s soak-the-rich, veto-threatening, self-proclaimed class warrior. Except that the new Obama is really the old Obama — the one who, upon entering office in the middle of a deep economic crisis, and determined not to allow “a serious crisis to go to waste” (to quote his then chief of staff), exploited the (presumed) malleability of a demoralized and therefore passive citizenry to enact the largest Keynesian stimulus in recorded history, followed by the quasi-nationalization of the one-sixth of the economy that is health care.
Considering the political cost — massive electoral rebuke by an infuriated 2010 electorate — these are the works of a conviction politician, one deeply committed to his own social-democratic vision.
That politician now returns. Obama’s new populism surely is a calculation that his halfhearted feints to the center after the midterm “shellacking” were not only unconvincing but would do him no good anyway with a stagnant economy, 9 percent unemployment, and a staggering $4 trillion of new debt.
But this is more than a political calculation. It is more than just a pander to his base. It is a pander to himself: Obama is a member of his base. He believes this stuff. It is an easy and comfortable political shift for him, because it’s a shift from a phony centrism back to his social-democratic core, from positioning to authenticity.
The authentic Obama is a leveler, a committed social democrat, a staunch believer in the redistributionist state, a tribune, above all, of “fairness” — understood as government-imposed and government-enforced equality.
That’s why “soak the rich” is not just a campaign slogan to rally the base. It’s a mission, a vocation. It’s why for all its gratuitous cynicism and demagoguery, Obama’s populist Rose Garden lecture on Monday was delivered with such obvious — and unusual — conviction.
He’s returned to the authenticity of his radical April 2009 “New Foundation” address (at Georgetown University) that openly proclaimed his intent to fundamentally transform America.
Good. There’s something to be said for authenticity. A choice, not an echo, said Barry Goldwater. The country will soon choose, although not soon enough.
— Charles Krauthammer is a national syndicated columnist. © 2011, The Washington Post Writers Group.
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