By Isaac Yetiv, Ph. D.
LA JOLLA, California — In his second inaugural address, President Obama presented his program for the “transformation of America.” It reads
like a “socialist manifesto” enunciated with the tacit assumption that he will rule, unchallenged, to re-create a new US of A in his own image, far different from the legacy of the Founding Fathers and from what we have known for 236 years.
To understand the immensity of the “change,” we need to know what his first term has wrought to the country, and then extrapolate for the next four years. This is not guesswork or speculation; it is all said and practiced and boasted about by Obama and his party leaders. ( We shall limit our study to the essential subjects of economy and national security.)
The Economy:
In all his harangues, Obama never acknowledged the dangers of the national debt, now close to 17 trillion dollars, six of them of his own doing, including close to one trillion for the stimulus and selected bailouts. Imitating the tone and gesticulations of Martin Luther King, he “preached” on social issues, but didn’t seem to worry about the 25 million unemployed, or the 52 million on foodstamps. Nor is he bothered by 10,000 babyboomers a day joining the masses of pensioners, of users of Medicare and Social Security. Nor did he show leadership by promoting essential and indispensable reforms of these entitlements and of the archaic and and inefficient tax code. On the contrary, he continues to preach for more and more clients for the largesse of the federal government. If he had his ways, he would add millions of illegal aliens to the list of “covered” by Obamacare when the resources are being reduced drastically.
Since we have had no budget in four years, incredible and illegal as it is, we continue to spend without any restraint and increase the national debt. As I wrote many times, for every dollar spent by Obama’s administration, 43 cents are borrowed, which causes a deficit of 1.1 trillion a year. The government continues to expend and also to expand: 17,000 functionaries will be added to the IRS (!) to administer Obamacare, and 15,000 will be needed,according to the government, if the gun control law passes.
I wonder if the President knows that in the 50’s, 16 persons worked for 1 retiree and that in the 80’s , only 3.2 worked for 1
(a dangerous drop of 80%). Today it is around 2.5 , and if Obama has his ways , soon it will be 1 for 1. Already, close to 50% of the population do not pay federal income tax, and close to 50% receive government aid of some kind.
I was stunned by two other pairs of official numbers : If you are employed and earn $ 26,634, you will receive $ 32,748 if you become unemployed for any reason. A huge and irresponsible disincentive to work. And: in 1913, when the income tax was established, the Tax Code was 15 pages long and the tax rate was 6%; today it is 73,000 pages long and the tax rate….My question: If both Democrats and Republicans agree that the Tax Code is an “abomination,” why do we still have it? (Same question about deficits, national debt etc…)
Since there will be no change in economic policy, as we were assured by the president himself, and since we can’t count on miracles, we can be sure, almost with mathematical certitude– a simple graph will show it– that more of the same will lead to economic ruin. All popular cultures– I studied eight of them– understand ,and warn against, what the Obama administration refuses to acknowledge, that if you spend more than you earn for a long time, you will go bankrupt.
As an example, the Arabic proverb says, with rhymes, that “if you earn in fives and you spend in sixes, you will end up begging for alms.” The Bible is full of such admonitions. So are European, African, and Asian proverbs. Only the extreme Left does not understand this elementary truth.
Simple math shows that , even without any natural disaster, the national debt will reach 25 trillion at the end of Obama’s second term.The unemployment numbers , the welfare rolls, the foodstamps etc…will shoot up ominously ,which may cause dangerous social unrest.
There will be a need for more taxes, more borrowing, more printing of money, more regulations, that will cause more flight of capital, and less jobs etc…Aggravating the problem is the ideological decision NOT to permit drilling, or the building of the pipeline, or other free enterprises that will offset the spending by creating jobs and revenues and economic growth.
There is also the danger of suppression of the freedom of the press and other freedoms — they are already accusing Rush Limbaugh and Fox News of fomenting trouble and there are calls for “shutting them up. ” They even invented an excuse called “the unfairness doctrine.” This, indeed, will be a “transformation.” A horrible one to contemplate.
Foreign Policy and National Security:
No need to revisit in detail the precarious situation in the world, especially in the Middle-East. What is incomprehensible is Obama’s boasting of “peace in our time” in his second inaugural address. Yes, the same famous, or infamous phrase pronounced by Neville Chamberlain ,in 1938, after his disastrous capitulation to Hitler in the Munich agreement.
One wonders if the president and his armies of advisers didn’t know the meaning of that phrase, or knew and it was a freudian slip, a “subdued conscious wish,” reflecting what he really thinks, or they knew and it was a deliberate allusion to Chamberlain’s policy which he wants to emulate . (We know how much Obama hated Churchill, the real savior of the free world. The first thing Obama did after he occupied the White House in 2009 was to return to the British the bust of Churchill which was a gift to the U.S.)
I believe in the latter theory because Obama said it in the context of “engagement, not war…” with the nations that harbor “suspicions and fear” from America. Not far from Neville’s thinking. But let me remind him here Churchill’s reaction to the then British PM’s capitulation to the Nazis:
“England was offered a choice between shame and war. She chose shame, and she will get war.”
He was right, of course, and he became the PM who saved his country and the world. He is the statesman I admire the most.
Again, we need not speculate or guess. Just consider the president’s actions that immediately followed his re-election:
1) He appointed three persons to key posts in his new cabinet who share his worldview of appeasement:
Sen. Kerry as Secretary of State, Brennan for the CIA, and Chuck Hagel for Defense who faced a brutal confirmation process in which he showed his confusion, ignorance, and sheer incompetence, complicating his past anti-Israel declarations (blaming the “Jewish Lobby” for “intimidating the Senators” and advocating containment , allowing Iran to become a nuclear power , when the official policy of the Obama administration is not containment but preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear capacity), and anti-gay position.
2) He decided to give (not sell) 20 F-16 fighter planes and 200 Abrams tanks to Egypt led by Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood whose election he had welcomed before, whose debt he had forgiven and whose annual stipend he had paid, and who is now killing his own people for demonstrating against his autocratic rule and the imposition of Sharia.
All this, after Morsi called Israel and the Jews “descendants of pigs and monkeys…” and called Obama himself a liar
,a weak American who can do nothing, and mocked America for its stupidity.
And the big question: Why does the new dictator of Egypt need all these expensive modern weapons? Against whom? Only against Israel, America’s only real friend and ally in the Middle-East. So why is Obama so eager to supply these lethal arms– and for free, to boot– to Israel’s enemies, knowing full well that Israel is encircled by well-armed terrorists like Hizballah and Hamas, a chaotic and menacing Egypt, Syria’s chemical weapons, irredentist Palestinians, and above all, a potential nuclear Iran whose declared objective is the annihilation of Israel? How laughable is the recent public call to Iran to come and talk!
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Yetiv is a freelance writer and lecturer based in La Jolla, California. He may be contacted at isaac.yetiv@sdjewishworld.com