Posted by
Bert Chapman on Tuesday, February 03, 2009 7:32:57 PM
Barely two weeks into Messiah Obama's new order, the tarnish is eroding from his halo fasting than you can say "change we can believe in." First Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, a reputed economic wunderkind, was found to have been deficient in his taxpaying, and his confirmation was opposed by 34 Senators with the wisdom to see that the leader of the department the IRS is part of should, as a minimum job requirement, be able to pay his taxes. Today, the Obama Tax Evaders (the next big hip-hop act) became a trio when his nominee for Chief Productivity Officer couldn't demonstrate sufficient productivity to pay her taxes and was forced to give up her aspirations and when Health and Human Services Secretary designee Thomas Daschle was forced to resign when he forgot to pay various taxes and was found to have received significant financial benefits from the health industry he's supposed to regulate. Daschle, a former Senate Majority leader who was thankfully ousted by South Dakota voters in 2004, has been an especially unctuous liberal populist whose purported prairie "man of the people" rhetoric is as enduring and substantive as the tumbleweeds floating across the Great Plains. His departure from public life alone is glorious news for the future of our Republic and warrants conservative dancing in our ice cold streets and countryside!
You would think that the problems his appointees have had with tax matters would cause Obama's economic "brain trust" to consider drastically simplifying our hopeless convoluted tax system as a means to lessen the occurrence of such embarrassments and increasing economic productivity and revenue collection enhancement. I'm not holding my breath waiting for that to happen but hope does spring eternal.
With the apparent addition of New Hampshire Senator Judd Gregg as Commerce Secretary, Obama now has three Republicans in his Cabinet who will, hopefully, reign in possible penchants for protectionism. Perhaps, they might even force him to scale down his economic stimulus fantasies and look at spending restraint and debt reduction as the best means for restoring national economic vitality instead of nostalgically trying to reprise FDR's New Deal. I'm heartened by the growing opposition to the stimulus package which will further exacerbate the federal deficit and national debt, create limited long-term jobs, and resurrect inflation to levels not seen since the Carter Administration or even, at an extreme, Weimar Germany. Astute students of economic history know the horrific consequences that Weimar Germany's hyperinflation ultimately produced for German national leadership in the 1930s. Hopefully, the Senator from New Hampshire to replace Gregg will have the wisdom and political courage to espouse fiscal thrift against the profligacy of the Obama Administration and represent a true alternative to Obamism despite the Granite State's recent drift to leftist stagnation.