Dee Perez-Scott: OMG! Obama Must Go!

We can do better with next president

Americans elected Barack Obama president, a man well-spoken and apparently capable of tackling our national crises. However, candidate Obama's "hope and change" rhetoric had concealed his statist agenda. President Obama, with Democrat congressional collaboration, enacted a catastrophic journey into the statist night, replete with teetering economy, 16.1 percent real unemployment, and crushing budget deficits. His leadership deficits are patent; his rhetoric is narcissistic and vociferous; his arguments are specious, polarizing and self-defeating. Worse, he cannot govern; he's functionally incompetent. Exhibits: (A.) his inept response to the Gulf oil spill; (B.) the continuing financial crisis; (C.) the failed $864 billion stimulus; (D.) nuclear Iran; (E.) triumphant Islamic radicals in the Arab spring.

Beneath our native idealism, which makes us vulnerable to casuistry like candidate Obama's, we American electors are inherently empirical and pragmatic. While Democrats frame the economic debate by fomenting class warfare pitting rich vs. middle vs. poor, the real question is, "What serves the people better, socialism or capitalism?"

Informed Americans, who truly care about economic conditions for the poor, the unemployed, retirees and families with children, know that socialism does not work. As an engine to prosperity and opportunity, it has universally failed, lately exemplified by the (European Union) economic disintegration. Based on the economic theory of Fabian socialist, John Maynard Keynes, and objectified through deficit spending, market regulation and confiscatory, progressive tax rates, federal stimulus plans to increase employment have mangled prosperity and strangled recovery, causing massive unemployment -- no bang for the buck. By contrast, Presidents Kennedy, Reagan and G.W. Bush all enacted massive tax cuts, which emancipated the economy, led to prodigious prosperity, elevated the poor and increased federal tax revenue. These are salient facts. After working for two years to enact his economic policies over statist Democrat opposition, in one year, 1983, Reagan's supply-side measures reversed Carter's triple malaise of concurrent minus 8 percent GDP, 21 percent prime rate and 13.5 percent inflation. Employment rose higher than Keynesians believed possible. What a concept. Jobs -- real prosperity for poor families.

Does anyone believe the president's Keynesianism will ever work, given unlimited funds and 10 years, (neither of which we can afford)? His new plan is to increase taxes on families, which earn over $250,000 and individuals earning over $200,000. Do the math. Even a 100 percent tax on the total income of all such people would be insufficient to offset the deficit spending his policies entail. More casuistry and spending will not remedy the plummeting economic and employment crises his stimuli stimulated. There is nothing pragmatic in his plan, unless more social upheaval and ultimate national bankruptcy are intended. Americans have better options, starting with electing a competent president.