Kristia Cavere Markarian
America needs industry, Obama needs therapy
By Kristia Cavere Markarian
More so than any other time in our history, Americans are beginning to believe there are no solutions to the many crises that we are experiencing. Even on a local level, which is often cushioned from the national difficulties of excess spending, a drastically increasing deficit and a larger percentage of our debt being own by foreign government, people are discouraged and disarrayed as how best to solve threats to our prosperity and way of life.
In one of her most recent opinion editorials from The Wall Street Journal, Peggy Noonan offers a concise reason why so many of us are feeling disheartened: "...a large part is that our federal government, from the White House through Congress, and so many state and local governments, seems to be demonstrating every day that they cannot make things better. They are not offering a new path, they are only offering old paths — spend more, regulate more, tax more in an attempt to make us more healthy, locally and nationally." Instinctively, Americans know that those schemes won't work, as it is precisely those fallacies that led the path to our current chaos.
The list of industries which have failed is alarming: textiles, automobile, production, agricultural, energy, healthcare, banking, education. This is the logical outcome of the ever-growing Democratic control of American industry, which has, during the course of the past fifty years, accomplished their ideal form of socialism. The government now controls the innovation of business, and while commerce is floundering Washington is giving taxpayer-funded subsidies to their comrades.
The Democrats destroyed our industries, and those that were most controlled by the Democrats are the industries which are the most damaged through unions and left-leaning management. Now there is Wall Street to all to the list of liberal blunders.
It is a façade that Republicans control Wall Street and big business. Most of those who contributed to Obama's campaign were from large businesses in the financial industry. The employees at Goldman Sachs, which is considered a "conservative" company, donated almost $1 million dollars to Obama, more than four times what they donated to the McCain campaign. Of all the companies whose employees donated to Obama, Goldman had the second largest of contributions; Citigroup and J.P.Morgan ranked sixth and seventh, respectively.
Wall Street gave Obama over $9.5 million, yet the Democrats and their allies in the media have successfully labeled our financial sector as a Republican bastion. In reality, the philosophy of those who are in charge is more socialist than capitalist. The Democrats have been running things, and they have been running them into the ground.
Our President has no answers, either, but seems to be faltering between contradictory proclamations on every important issue. Obama has called the conflict in Afghanistan "the necessary war," but after close to one year in office he has yet to offer a consistent military strategy. Obama wants to offer health insurance to every American and claims that the deficit will not increase, but he cannot explain how many more millions of people will be covered through socialized healthcare without increasing the costs involved to do so. Obama approved of the $787 billion dollar "stimulus" as well as the Federal Reserve ensuring liquidity of $2 trillion dollars, but he has proposed no solutions to fixing our economic fundamentals for the long-term.
The only proposals coming from our President involve taking even more control over our financial industry, even though such regulation has a legacy of failure. Last week the Treasury and Federal Reserve publicized new rules to oversee and limit the salaries of executives at thousands of financial institutions. This was already attempted in the 1990s, and the motivation was similar then as now: politicians sought to control the risks taken by top executives in our financial sector.
In 1993, Congress passed the Budget Reconciliation Act (now Section 162(m) of the Internal Revenue Code) due to their belief that financial executives weren't taking enough risks. Instead of allowing salary to reward the performance of directors Congress favored stock options as executive compensation, which they believed would increase risk and which they allowed to qualify for limitless corporate tax deductions. Now Congress is blaming the very risk taking that they forced on the financial industry, as the reason for the current economic crisis.
In addition to more regulations, the liberal doctrine of taxing and spending is how Washington seeks to treat our economic affliction despite the documented history of its failure. As The Wall Street Journal has reported, in 2010 our domestic programs will grow by over 12 percent. Spending on Medicare and Medicaid will increase by 9.8 percent and 24.7 percent, respectively. Thanks in part to stimulus funding, the budgets for federal agencies have increased dramatically; the Environmental Protection Agency increased by 126 percent, the Department of Education rose 209 percent.
Clearly, there is no depression in Washington. Spending is now growing six times faster than inflation, which guarantees immense tax increases in the future.
A common layman definition of insanity is conducting the same action again and again but expecting different outcomes. With his ideas of tax, spend and regulate, Obama needs as much therapy as America needs industry. And Congress needs the most therapy of all.
© Kristia Cavere Markarian
November 9, 2009
More so than any other time in our history, Americans are beginning to believe there are no solutions to the many crises that we are experiencing. Even on a local level, which is often cushioned from the national difficulties of excess spending, a drastically increasing deficit and a larger percentage of our debt being own by foreign government, people are discouraged and disarrayed as how best to solve threats to our prosperity and way of life.
In one of her most recent opinion editorials from The Wall Street Journal, Peggy Noonan offers a concise reason why so many of us are feeling disheartened: "...a large part is that our federal government, from the White House through Congress, and so many state and local governments, seems to be demonstrating every day that they cannot make things better. They are not offering a new path, they are only offering old paths — spend more, regulate more, tax more in an attempt to make us more healthy, locally and nationally." Instinctively, Americans know that those schemes won't work, as it is precisely those fallacies that led the path to our current chaos.
The list of industries which have failed is alarming: textiles, automobile, production, agricultural, energy, healthcare, banking, education. This is the logical outcome of the ever-growing Democratic control of American industry, which has, during the course of the past fifty years, accomplished their ideal form of socialism. The government now controls the innovation of business, and while commerce is floundering Washington is giving taxpayer-funded subsidies to their comrades.
The Democrats destroyed our industries, and those that were most controlled by the Democrats are the industries which are the most damaged through unions and left-leaning management. Now there is Wall Street to all to the list of liberal blunders.
It is a façade that Republicans control Wall Street and big business. Most of those who contributed to Obama's campaign were from large businesses in the financial industry. The employees at Goldman Sachs, which is considered a "conservative" company, donated almost $1 million dollars to Obama, more than four times what they donated to the McCain campaign. Of all the companies whose employees donated to Obama, Goldman had the second largest of contributions; Citigroup and J.P.Morgan ranked sixth and seventh, respectively.
Wall Street gave Obama over $9.5 million, yet the Democrats and their allies in the media have successfully labeled our financial sector as a Republican bastion. In reality, the philosophy of those who are in charge is more socialist than capitalist. The Democrats have been running things, and they have been running them into the ground.
Our President has no answers, either, but seems to be faltering between contradictory proclamations on every important issue. Obama has called the conflict in Afghanistan "the necessary war," but after close to one year in office he has yet to offer a consistent military strategy. Obama wants to offer health insurance to every American and claims that the deficit will not increase, but he cannot explain how many more millions of people will be covered through socialized healthcare without increasing the costs involved to do so. Obama approved of the $787 billion dollar "stimulus" as well as the Federal Reserve ensuring liquidity of $2 trillion dollars, but he has proposed no solutions to fixing our economic fundamentals for the long-term.
The only proposals coming from our President involve taking even more control over our financial industry, even though such regulation has a legacy of failure. Last week the Treasury and Federal Reserve publicized new rules to oversee and limit the salaries of executives at thousands of financial institutions. This was already attempted in the 1990s, and the motivation was similar then as now: politicians sought to control the risks taken by top executives in our financial sector.
In 1993, Congress passed the Budget Reconciliation Act (now Section 162(m) of the Internal Revenue Code) due to their belief that financial executives weren't taking enough risks. Instead of allowing salary to reward the performance of directors Congress favored stock options as executive compensation, which they believed would increase risk and which they allowed to qualify for limitless corporate tax deductions. Now Congress is blaming the very risk taking that they forced on the financial industry, as the reason for the current economic crisis.
In addition to more regulations, the liberal doctrine of taxing and spending is how Washington seeks to treat our economic affliction despite the documented history of its failure. As The Wall Street Journal has reported, in 2010 our domestic programs will grow by over 12 percent. Spending on Medicare and Medicaid will increase by 9.8 percent and 24.7 percent, respectively. Thanks in part to stimulus funding, the budgets for federal agencies have increased dramatically; the Environmental Protection Agency increased by 126 percent, the Department of Education rose 209 percent.
Clearly, there is no depression in Washington. Spending is now growing six times faster than inflation, which guarantees immense tax increases in the future.
A common layman definition of insanity is conducting the same action again and again but expecting different outcomes. With his ideas of tax, spend and regulate, Obama needs as much therapy as America needs industry. And Congress needs the most therapy of all.
© Kristia Cavere Markarian
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