Barack Obama is President of the United States. In some ways this is a good thing. The Republicans are certainly not much better, having doubled the national debt in less than a decade and trampled civil liberty. But let’s look at what’s bad about Obama.
He’s no friend of free trade. Despite much prevarication on this and other issues during his campaign (such as corporate campaign donations), Obama’s instincts are protectionist. He wants to “protect” American jobs at the expense of American consumers, for example by “renegotiating” NAFTA, even though this will make most Americans poorer, and he opposes free trade deals with countries like Colombia. Obama told voters in New Hampshire: “I would stop the import of all toys from China”. 80% of toys sold in the US are made in China.
He supports the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which allows the US government to spy on its own citizens.
He supports the “Fairness Doctrine”, which would allow people to force private broadcasters to provide airtime to opposing views.
He wants to legislate to make it easier for union bosses to control their members, for example by abolishing the right to secret ballots, through his chilling “Employee Free Choice Act”.
Bill Clinton and George W. Bush both cut capital gains tax, and both times, revenue from the tax increased. In the 1980s the tax was raised and revenues decreased. Obama is morally vacuous enough to want to raise capital gains tax “for purposes of fairness” even if it would reduce revenue and would affect 100 million Americans who own shares. Obama’s other tax changes will increase marginal tax rates on low-income earners by 13% or more, because he doesn’t understand the poverty trap. This might be deliberate, to increase dependence of the poor on the state, swelling the numbers of Obama voters. He also plans a huge expansion in the public sector payroll, which will create a client state of Obama voters. By the 2012 election, currently illegal immigrants will be legal, and able to vote Obama.
Obama’s love of “fairness” means he appears to have virtually no regard for the rule of law. The recent bank bailout, which Obama supported, is a massive scheme to redistribute wealth from the prudent and responsible to the imprudent and irresponsible. It makes a mockery of his desire to “spread the wealth”. It is, of course, unconstitutional.
A survey of Obama supporters found that only 29% believe that judges should rule on what is in the Constitution, whereas 82% of McCain supporters said they should. 11% of McCain supporters said judges should rule based on their sense of fairness, but 49% of Obama supporters thought they should. This is also called “judging a case on its merits”, or ad hoc justice, and is utterly contrary to the rule of law.
Obama appears to agree. He said: “We need somebody who’s got the heart, the empathy, to recognize what it’s like to be a young teenage mom. The empathy to understand what it’s like to be poor, or African-American, or gay, or disabled, or old. And that’s the criteria by which I’m going to be selecting my judges.” [My emphasis.] And I thought justice was supposed to be blind, and judges were supposed to uphold the law, not empathy.
He has a consistent record of opposing private gun ownership, despite the clear statement in the constitution that this right “shall not be infringed.” If he is really against the Second Amendment, why doesn’t he try to abolish it? Why has he opposed guns through unconstitutional measures, rather than trying to change the constitution? Does he consider the constitution “just words?”
In a 2001 interview, he said that one of the problems with the Supreme Court was that it has “never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth, and of more basic issues such as political and economic justice in society… It didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the founding fathers in the Constitution.”
We have a man leading the free world who does not value freedom.