By Douglas V. Gibbs
I did not watch President Barack Obama's State of the Union Speech last night. I didn't know if I could stomach going through another one of those speeches, especially this year now that the veil has been lifted, and the liberal left democrats are going for broke with their Marxist aims. Even worse than his speech, I also couldn't watch it because it disgusts me when those ruling elitists, acting like they are holier than thou, applaud bigger government, more tyranny, and the destruction of the American System. Who are they to dictate to us what we can and can't do? Besides, where in the Constitution does it give
I did not watch the Republican or TEA Party response, either.
I went to sleep, instead.
This morning I printed, and read, the transcript of Obama's speech, and as I read it I realized I had missed nothing. He said pretty much what I expected. Today, on the various talk shows, I heard sound bites of Obama's speech, as well as Rubio's and Rand Paul's. I never understood why there is a response of the opposition. They are not responding to Obama's speech. Their speeches were pre-written. Just once I want to see the guy giving the response in the crowd during the President's speech, taking notes, and then formulating a real response afterward. Now that, my friends, would be impressive.
After reading the transcript, and listening to what the talking heads had to say about the speech, I spent a fair amount of time considering Political Pistachio's response. To make it easy, I broke Barack Obama's speech into key points.
Jobs and Manufacturing
Barack Obama stated that he has created millions of jobs, and that we are still in a recovery from the horrible recession we had. The problem is, the government can't create jobs. They can get out of the way and let the private sector create jobs, but the command and control nature of liberalism would never allow such a thing.
Last quarter more people dropped off the unemployment rolls, still jobless, because their benefits expired, than the number of jobs that were created. The job creation that has been happening has been in the public sector, or because of some limited business growth despite the recession. Layoffs are increasing, and remember that when small business owners go under those folks don't get counted as unemployed.
Obama stated that he wants higher taxes on the wealthy in order to reignite economic growth for the middle-class. In other words, take more money from the producers and job creators, and then redistribute it to other folks in the form of government programs, so as to continue to increase the number of Americans depending on government money - and increasing the number of voters that won't care about the issues, but will vote for the guy that will keep giving them gifts from the treasury.
Talk about buying votes.
By raising taxes, the democrats are removing money from the private sector, and they are penalizing the producers for their success. These kinds of punitive taxes will slow the economy, increase the feeling of uneasiness, and cause businesses to back off on growth due to an unsure climate. Revenue, in turn, will decrease, which will then get the democrats wanting to raise taxes not only on the rich, but on everybody. When taxes decrease, and regulations decrease, more people take the risk of entrepreneurism and the result is innovation, new products, growth, and more revenue because of the increase in profit.
Also, note, that your larger companies will absorb the increase in taxes and then pass the increase of cost to do business down to the consumer. Inflation, combined with the dropping value of the dollar, will create a scenario where we will go into a deeper recession than the one the democrats claim we are recovering from.
President Obama states he will revive the manufacturing industry, but he really didn't give any specifics, other than raising taxes, and spending more on things like the country's infrastructure (which I thought he promised to fix during his first term). He has no plan for manufacturing. He's a Keynesian, and basically thinks manufacturing will increase by pumping money into the consumers. If they have more money, they will buy more things, and then manufacturing will go up. The problem with that theory is that it fails every time, because it does not take into consideration the various market forces, nor human nature. Extra money in the pockets of consumers will not result in more consumption. They will pay down bills, or put the money into savings. Consumerism increases when the cost of products drops, or new products that are affordable appear due to innovation. A reduction in the price of products, or innovative new products, happens when the manufacturing industry is pumping out a lot of product, and are able to do so at low cost. The way to reduce the cost of manufacturing is to reduce taxes, and reduce regulations against the free market.
Raise federal minimum wage to $9.00 per hour
Currently, the federal minimum wage is $7.25. Some of the States have a higher minimum wage. Obama called for raising the minimum wage to $9.00 so as to move families closer to a "living wage." Aside from the fact that the Constitution never gave the federal government the authority to place wage controls on our system, a forced governmental wage increase raises inflation, and in the long run the folks with the higher minimum wage does not benefit from it.
When wages are forced to increase, companies compensate for the increase in the cost for doing business by raising prices, or finding a way to reduce costs in other places. Sometimes the cost reduction is accomplished with laying off workers, reducing benefits, or using less expensive raw goods. A few years ago mayonnaise companies beveled the bottom of their jars so that the consumer could not tell the jar of mayonnaise held less product. That way, even though the price went up, the consumer did not notice because rather than raise the price, they reduced the amount of product in the jar.
The raise in the minimum wage would help working families at first, but once inflation caused by the move catches up to the market, the spending power of their dollar will return to what it was before the increase. They will have more dollars in their pocket, but it will take more dollars to purchase their goods.
Gun control
Right now the call for "common sense" measures to reduce gun violence seems innocent enough. You are not supposed to be upset over the new rules, because they are for a good cause. Doesn't everyone wish to reduce gun violence?
The problem is, what is being reduced is the ability for the law-abiding citizens to defend themselves. The criminal element does not abide by the law, so they will still have the high-capacity magazines, magazines that can be removed without a tool, and the scary looking guns the liberal democrats call assault weapons, when in reality there is no such thing as an assault weapon.
The term "assault weapon" was created by the anti-gun folks of the left. There is no such thing as an assault weapon. There is such thing as an "assault rifle," but those are already illegal. Assault rifles come with a mechanism that allows the possessor to switch from single shot to multiple shot to fully automatic. Though those guns do find their way into the hands of the criminal element, they are illegal for the average citizen to own.
An AR-15 is called an assault weapon by the liberal left democrats. The difference in that firearm, when compared to my hunting rifle, is a cosmetic addition on the AR-15 - a pistol grip, which allows for a more steady shot, and an increased chance for accuracy. Plus, the pistol grip makes the gun look scary to the democrats.
AR-15s normally come in a .223 caliber, though the .556 is also available. The .223 is almost the same as my .22 rifle which, if I shot a bear with it, would probably just piss him off. The .556 is more powerful, but simply puts a hole in you, like my .30-06. To be honest, the lower caliber does the most internal damage, since the bullet does not have enough umph to get through your body, so what it does is ricochet off a bone, or other items in your body, moving around like a pin ball, doing all kinds of internal damage.
The bullet, however, does not do much damage if the shooter misses you. Making him miss usually happens when he is being shot at, and is too afraid to aim his gun very well because he is running away from an armed individual.
The 2nd Amendment, by the way, ends with the words "shall not infringe." That means that the federal government is not supposed to have any gun laws restricting gun possession in any way. Now, before you start screaming that I want felons walking around with guns, understand that though the federal government can have no gun laws, the States can have gun laws individually. However, because the people have allowed their States to get out of control, we are seeing strong anti-gun legislation spring up in Illinois, New York, and California (to name a few). It is time for us to rein in the knuckleheads running our governments.
Bring home the troops
Obama said over the next year, another 34,000 American troops will withdraw from Afghanistan. As the troops come home, the ban being lifted on women on the front lines has been lifted. This move had a two-fold motive. One, to strengthen the Democrat Party's hold on the women vote, and two, to make it less likely we will send troops off into another war - after all, didn't the democrats tell us that one of the horrors of war is the death of women and children?
Nuclear Weapons
While claiming that his administration will do whatever it takes to keep Iran from getting nuclear weapons, and that we must take a "firm action" in response to the nuclear test carried out by North Korea on Tuesday, Barack Obama has also pledged to reduce the nuclear weapons stockpiled by the United States.
How does that make sense? As the enemy increases their arsenal, we are to reduce ours so that we can be a good example? Obviously, Iran and North Korea aren't going to follow any example reducing weapons.
and finally, Immigration
We don't need immigration reform. We need to simply enforce the laws on the books. We don't need to deport people. If we are enforcing the laws, there will be no work for them, and they will return home. If we want to give folks a way to earn the opportunity to come to America as a legal resident alien, a guest worker program with very strict parameters may be an option. Like most conservatives, I am very pro-immigration, but I want the immigrants to come here legally, and because they want to become Americans and assimilate into this society. The typical illegal alien has no interest in assimilating, and sometimes they are of Middle Eastern descent - which makes the border security problem more than an illegal alien problem.
Unfortunately, Obama doesn't care what I think, what you think, or what the GOP thinks. He is not interested in compromising. He wants his policies, full throttle, and he wants to eliminate all opposition. That is the sad truth. Right now, he is still campaigning, because he wants a democrat win at the mid-term election in 2014. If the democrats take back the House of Representatives in 2014, the madness we are facing now is minor. It can get much, much worse.
Tyranny is upon us. The question is, do we have enough sense to recognize if for what it is, and then repel it before it completely destroys the American System?
Time will tell.
-- Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary
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