Thanks Democrats

“Elections have consequences. President Obama’s new budget represents a huge break, not just with the policies of the past eight years, but with policy trends over the past 30 years. If he can get anything like the plan he announced on Thursday through Congress, he will set America on a fundamentally new course.” — Paul Krugman

“With yesterday’s fiscal 2010 budget proposal, President Obama is attempting not merely to expand the role of the federal government but to put it in such a dominant position that its power can never be rolled back.” — The Wall Street Journal

“Part of this explosive growth in U.S. government spending reflects the emergency private-sector interventions of a Republican administration. But the clear intent was to make the massive intrusion into the private sector temporary and to retreat as quickly as possible. Obama has radically different ambitions. . . . He has laid out boldly the Brussels-bound path he wants to take.” — Charles Krauthammer

“Instead, the economic crisis, as it did for Franklin D. Roosevelt, will serve as a stepping stone to a radical shift in the relationship between the people and their government. It will bind Americans to their government in ways not experienced since the New Deal. This tectonic shift, if successful, will be equal to the forces of public authority set in motion by Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society. The Obama presidency is going to be a radical presidency.” — Daniel Henninger

So, what kind of person believes that this country needs radical, fundamental change? The kind of person who possesses both a religious devotion to equality and an ego that thrives off of the imposition of that liberty-destroying value upon everyone else. The most basic, fundamental right– more basic than any of the “rights” created in the minds of Leftists– is the right to be left the f*** alone, i.e., liberty. And for those of us that want that, this man is a menace.

Thanks Democrats.

“The foremost or indeed the sole condition required in order to succeed in centralizing the supreme power in a democratic community is to love equality, or to get men to believe you love it. Thus the science of despotism, which was once so complex, is simplified, and reduced, as it were, to a single principle.”

— Alexis de Tocqueville

Surprise! Yet more power grabbing.

The Senate has passed a bill giving the District of Columbia a seat in the House of Representatives. This will be a de facto permanently Democratic seat. The House will, of course, pass the bill, and our Wealth-Destroyer in Chief has indicated he will sign it into law.

Update:

The District of Columbia Voting Rights Act of 2009 also gives Utah an additional seat in the House. But being that the District of Columbia is not a state and that the Constitution says that the members of the House shall be “chosen every second year by the people of the several states,” this will most likely be ruled unconstitutional.

A slight tax increase proposed by our Wealth-Destroyer in Chief

From Jonathan Adler at The Corner:

Jake Tapper details the $989 billion in tax increases called for in the Obama Administration’s new budget.  But Tapper’s tabulation understates the increased tax burden of Obama’s proposed budget, as it does not account for the proposed cap-and-trade program, which will require businesses to spend another $646 billion between 2012 and 2019.  So, all told, the budget actually calls for approximately $1.5 trillion in tax increases over the next ten years.

Special Interests . . .

. . . as defined by The One:

Special Interest Group = any pro-Republican group

General Interest Group = any pro-Democrat group

Because Republicans are selfish, and Democrats are on the side of the angels.

The Speech

A friend has mercifully absolved us of the need to watch Dear Leader’s speech tonight by providing the following prescient summation of it.

Summary of his speech – no need to watch:

I need to pull Congress together for a 1 hour sermon on how to right (or in this case left) the wrongs of the past 8 years and ONCE AGAIN tell Americans this is not my fault and I inherited it from the evil one.  I will continue to blame others and NEVER take ownership of the issue because I need to get re-elected in 4 years and I need to keep my party in power through 2010.   So, I will preach to you all about PAYGO rules and then only use that rule when I don’t want to do another pork filled anti-stimulus bill.  I will talk about fiscal restraint a mere 2 weeks after I signed the largest spending bill in history (with Stimulus 2, 3, 4 in the waiting).  I will ignore the fact that Democrats, and myself for that matter, controlled congress since 2006 and approved all Deficit spending, Stimulus bills, TARP, bank bailouts, troop funding, IRAQ war spending and all that other spending stuff Pelosi, Dean and Reid told me to sign that contributed to this massive budget deficit because you, the American People, are too ignorant to figure that out (thanks CNN, MSNBC, NBC, ABC, CBS).  In short, I am the chosen one and I won this election and my mandate is to provide government run health care, nationalization of banks, tax increases, and a complete destruction of capitalism.  In the end I will place my hand on the banks and heal them like I plan on healing the planet.

God Bless Me.

The Enemies of Liberty

“We must never become a nation of sharecroppers for the government.”
— Abel Maldonado, September 3, 2008

Republican-state senator Abel Maldonado has done in Sacramento what Senators Collins, Snowe, and Specter did in Washington D.C.: aided and abetted Democrats in pushing us further down the road to serfdom.

Here he is just five months ago campaigning against what he just voted for:

The enemies of liberty yet again win the day.

H/T Patterico

Who are the big spenders?

From Randall Hoven:

How can any Republican complain of Obama’s spending habits or complain about his stimulus, given the way Republicans spent “the last eight years”?  Well, I’m going to tell you exactly how.

According to the newspapers and TV news, Republicans have no leg to stand on when it comes to spending.  President Bush spent more than President Clinton did.  He waged an imperial, unnecessary war that sent spending out of control.  The Republicans spent more on bailouts than the Democrats did.

President Obama made these sentiments clear, as reported by the Kansas City Star .

“It’s a little hard for me to take criticism from folks about this recovery package after they’ve presided over a doubling of the national debt… What I won’t do is return to the failed theories of the last eight years that got us into this fix in the first place.”

Time for some reality checks.

Entire essay here

The stimulus bill stimulates welfare

More great news in the Land of Hope and Change. Perhaps you recall the Welfare Reform Act of 1996. It wisely– if you have a worldview that sees great good in increasing the number of self-sufficient adults and, by extension, families– changed the incentive structure influencing state governments by making it financially beneficial for them if they decreased their AFDC-welfare rolls. This, not surprisingly, led to, in the words of Robert E. Rector, “a dramatic reduction in welfare dependency and child poverty.”

As of today, this incentive structure has been reversed. It is now, as it was pre-1996, in the best financial interest of the states to increase their AFDC-welfare rolls.

Progress!

Source

“Transparency” in the Land of Hope and Change

From The Wall Street Journal:

In his closing remarks on the stimulus bill yesterday, House Appropriations Chairman David Obey called it “the largest change in domestic policy since the 1930s.” We’d say more like the 1960s, which is bad enough, but his point about the bill’s magnitude is right. The 1,073-page monstrosity includes the biggest spending increase since World War II, but more important is the fine print expanding the role of the federal government across the breadth of American business, health care, energy and welfare policy.

Given those stakes, you might think Congress would get more than a few hours to debate it. But, no, yesterday’s roll call votes came less than 24 hours after House-Senate conferees had agreed to their deal. Democrats rushed the bill to the floor before Members could even read it, much less have time to broadcast the details so the public could offer its verdict.

So much for Democratic promises of a new era of transparency. Only this Tuesday the House unanimously approved a resolution promising 48-hour public notice before holding a roll call. Even better, the bill could have been posted on the Internet, as candidate Barack Obama suggested during the campaign. Let voters see what they’re getting for all this money. Not a chance.

Entire essay here

What a joke

“This is probably the worst bill that has been put forward since the 1930s.”
— Harvard Economist Robert Barro

I wonder how many in Congress stayed up to read the 1,073-page Generational Theft Act– released last night at 11:00 PM– that they will be voting on today?

Hope and Transparency!

H/T: Gateway Pundit