Obey's Gambit - Raise Taxes To Pay For Afghanistan War

Greeting gentle readers,

Only a guy who feels so secure in his seat in Congress could propose the things Dave Obey proposes. I mean - this is a guy who pitches his own record albums on a campaign website:


Far Left: Dave Obey

1st he passed that $787 billion blunder we now jokingly call the 'Stimulus Package', now while we are in the height of a recession, he decides we need to raise taxes to pay for the war in Afghanistan. There are several good reasons to do this (from his point of view):

1) It silences critics on the right, after all, supporting the troops is patriotic right? Who would not support that?

2) He already passed a $787 billion stimulus bill, voted for national healthcare (TRILLION$) and all that spending is supposed to be "deficit neutral" right? So this is a tax to make sure we don't create a deficit by spending extra on national defense.

Here is the quote that tells it all:

"On the merits I think it's a mistake to deepen our involvement. But if we are going to do that, then at least we ought to pay for it. Because if we don't, if we don't pay for it, then the cost of the Afghan war will wipe out every other initiative that we have to rebuild our economy," he said. "Ain't going to be no money for nothing if we pour it all into Afghanistan."

Taken from:
Lawmakers Propose 'War Surtax' to Pay for Troop Increase in Afghanistan and
Pressure Builds Over Obama’s Afghanistan Plan

But don't take my word for it what Congressman Obey's cheif concerns are, read his own words:

"We have spent the last year in Congress debating how we will pay for health care reform, which is expected to cost nearly a trillion dollars over the next ten years. The Congressional Budget Office is earnestly measuring the cost of each competing health care plan, and has had most of Congress twisting themselves into knots in order to keep the health care bill deficit neutral. Shouldn’t it be asked to do the same thing with respect to money spent on the current wars? We have already spent nearly a trillion dollars on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan - an effort that’s been paid for with borrowed money - and another ten years would cost about a trillion more. If we keep that up, it will devour our nation’s ability to address virtually any other priority." - emphasis mine

Are we talking about the war on terror or healthcare? It's hard to tell going by Dave Obey's favorite newspaper, the San Francisco Chronicle:

"He said the ten-year cost of the war clocks in at $900 billion, about the size of the Democratic health care legislation."

He said?

And that 1st quote came from the 'Health Care Arena' section of Politico. So the image I'm getting is that National Defense (a priority outlined in our Constitution) takes a backseat to healthcare (something not addressed in our Constitution). I got a news flash for congressman Obey - If the Nation is not safe, what we pay the doctor, dentist or our insurance companies won't matter!

That is a 1st principle that goes all the way back to Hobbes, the 1st priority of a nation is the security of it's citizenry. A secure citizenry can enjoy Freedom, a people living in the condition of strife can't.

To put words in Dave Obey's mouth, "If we blow money on a silly war, there will be no money for our newly created and very expensive social programs, especially MY stimulus bill!"

Oh come on now congressman, you are more creative than that, you'll get the money from somewhere right?

Now that's the creativity that made the Democratic party great!

More articles about Dave's Public Policy Blunder:

CBS
David Obey Calls for War Tax on Wealthy

Reuters
The Afghanistan war surtax gambit

Wall Street Journal
Obey's Afghan War Surtax
The real liberal objection to the war on terror is that it takes away from domestic spending priorities like ObamaCare.

TIME Magazine
Obey's War Tax

The Washington Independent
Obey Wants a Deficit-Neutral Afghanistan War

WSJ - The Wealth Report
More Afghanistan Troops: Send the Bill to the Wealthy?

Here's one of my personal faves from Cody Willard at Marketwatch, just in case you think my intimation about congressman Obey's priorities are wrong:

"At any rate, let’s keep the record straight about Representative Obey’s voting on spending priorities, shall we?
David Obey on Budget & Economy

Democratic Representative (WI-7):

Voted YES on $192B additional anti-recession stimulus spending.

Voted YES on $800 Billion TARP Bailout

Voted YES on modifying bankruptcy rules to avoid mortgage foreclosures.

Voted YES on additional $825 billion for economic recovery package.

Voted YES on $15B bailout for GM and Chrysler.

Voted YES on $60B stimulus package for jobs, infrastructure, & energy."

Full blog here.

And my true favorite for the day from the Los Angleles Times which basically shows that congressman Obey is an aging hippie, molded by the Viet Nam era politics:

"David Obey came to Congress in 1969, a young Democratic congressman from Wisconsin, opposed to the Vietnam War and mindful of the funding it was draining from Lyndon Johnson's Great Society programs.

Thirty years later, he is chairman of the House Appropriations Committee and adamant that Afghanistan is a similar quagmire that could bankrupt President Obama's domestic agenda."

It's not about fiscal responsibility, it's all about finding cover for Dave Obey's fiscal irresponsibility.

TTFN,

Jim

Obama, The Recovery Act & Fatigue

Greetings,

Watch this video. In it you find some interesting admissions if you pay attention. The president says the 'Recovery Act' helped "stabilize state budgets" and that in turn helped save the jobs of state employees. Not one word about how the Recovery Act created new private sector jobs or grew small businesses, only that stabilized state budgets, saved state employee jobs and created some infrastructure jobs (temporary road construction) which will go away once the work is completed. In other words, Dave Obey's American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 was a $787 billion stopgap bill - and that is allowing for the best possible construction. Since the bill really only helped state employees and unions (those road construction jobs) it could be construed as a special interest porkbarrel pay-off. Detractors will say he also talked about Tax cuts - but notice how unenthusiastic he looks when mentioning it as if talking about it were obligatory and he just wanted to get it out of the way. On the other hand, he seems to think that stabilizing state budgets with federal money (the only time he looks really animated) was a worthwhile accomplishment!

Also, did you notice how tired Obama looks and sounds? This is the same kind of fatigue we saw on Jimmy Carter's face at the end of his presidency.

I smell Victory in 2010 & 2012!

TTFN,

Jim

SNL & Obama's Economy

Greetings gentle readers,

I really have got to watch more SNL:



I really have nothing further to add to that.

TTFN,

Jim

Dave Obey Points The Finger At Himself

Now call me crazy - but if I had written a really bad bill I'd do one of two things:

1) Try to fix it to redeem myself

or

2) Lay low and keep my mouth shut

Since I'm not an adviser to Dave Obey and his staff does not seem to be giving him good advice (or he is so foolish himself he isn't accepting good advice, another sign he needs to go) he is out attacking the results of his own bill. Yes, that is right, he is attacking the outcome of his own legislation. I don't know why because months ago he reassured us that mistakes would be made but, "So what" as he said right?

If Dave Obey's projected response was "So what?" then what are we worried about right?

My favorite Dave Obey fix-my-bill-before-the-people-figure-this-out quote comes from the Wisconsin Rapids Tribune:

"The inaccuracies on recovery.gov that have come to light are outrageous, and the administration owes itself, the Congress and every American a commitment to work night and day to correct the ludicrous mistakes," Obey said in a statement issued late Monday.

Translation: How dare the bureaucracy mess up my bill!

The whole thing reminds me of that passage from Holy Writ that says that a double-minded man is unstable in all his ways. To be sure the only thing that is stable about the economy Dave Obey's stimulus bill created is the rising unemployment figures and rising gold prices that are stimulated by many first-time bullion buyers who think there will be a coming economic crash. A crash caused by the new cap & trade bill, the stimulus bill, the auto bailout and our governments predilection to print money like we are making Lay's potato chips.

TTFN,

Jim

Why Obama Could Not Go To Germany

Greetings,

20 years ago something very momentous happened, on November 9th, 1989, people from both East and West Germany crowded atop the Berlin Wall and brought it down to the ground. At the time I was a young man of 23, I had been married for less than a year to my beautiful wife Kristine and it was for me a year of wonder and euphoria. I had grown up in an America that lived under the constant and imminent fear of global, nuclear destruction. I also had grown up a rather lonely child with as many friends as I could count on my hand and was never known as a ladies man in High School. Now it was 1989 and I was married and the world seemed to be entering a new era of Peace and Freedom.

The air was charged with an optimism never felt before, even in popular culture with the song Peace In Our Time by Eddie Money. For many people my age, this was the legacy of Ronald Reagan and there was much animated discussion at the time by pundits such as George Will about how it happened on "Bush's watch" as did Gary Wills later - but Ronald Reagan deserved much (not all) of the real credit while others wanted the credit to go to George H.W. Bush. 20 years after the fact, Bush told Greta Van Susteren humbly that, "...we had a great team working on it, and they all deserve credit." The New York Times predictably gave the credit to the communists:

East German Change Owes No Thanks To Us

2 years prior on June 12th, 1987, Ronald Reagan delivered his landmark "Mr. Gorbachev . . . tear down this wall" speech:

Watch here:



Text and audio here

President Obama recently declined to visit Germany even for one day because he is too busy with an upcoming trip to Asia (he claims) but do you suppose it might be because it is not enough about him? Or could it be that the fall of the Berlin Wall was too much of a statement of the triumph of Democracy and Freedom over Statism? After all, the collapse of the Berlin Wall is the most concrete (pun intended) empirical data you could ask for to show that a Command Economy will fail when left to compete with a Market Economy. This is why in philosophy and political science we call Communism and Socialism forms of Idealism - they only work in your head, not in real life where the rubber hits the road. After all, an 'Idealist' is a person who upon observing that a rose smells better than a cabbage concludes that it will also make better soup and an 'Ideologue' is a humorless zealot who finds fulfillment by spouting the ideas of famous humorless zealots - like Karl Marx and Nancy Pelosi.

And that leads us back to our beloved President who may be an idealist but is also savvy enough to know he neither would fit in at a celebration of the fall of the Berlin Wall (because he doesn't really understand Freedom like someone such as Angela Merkel, the daughter of a Lutheran minister who lived under Communism), nor would he want to invite a comparison of his creeping socialist policies to those of the fallen Soviet Union.

Now for those of you without blood pressure issues, watch what Obama did have to say, all 3 minutes and 4 secinds of it:



Not one mention of Reagan, Bush, Thatcher or John Paul II - but he did inject himself and Hillary Clinton into it! What a colossal egomaniac, reminds me of a country song, I'm glad he did not go.

TTFN,

Jim

Dave Obey - "So What?"

Greetings,

Here's an ad to make Dave Obey's 'Just For Men' hair turn gray:



For any who doubt what the ad says:

Don't count on stimulus job tally

Earmark-Free Stimulus Bill Lacks Spending Direction

And to hear him say, "So what?" watch this:



Many ads spin, this ad tells the truth! Dave Obey could care less about us.

Mad yet? There is a solution

GIVE!

Sean Duffy For Congress

TTFN,

Jim

With Friends like these . . .

Democratic civil war update: MoveOn raises $3.6 million to attack party moderates

By: Byron York
Chief Political Correspondent
11/06/09 5:43 AM EST

Favorite quote:

"Our friends at Democracy for America have launched an open letter urging Senate Democrats to strip committee chairmanships from any Democrat who filibusters health care." Ruben says that more than 66,000 MoveOn and Democracy for America members have pledged to contribute."

I might just be inclined to give! ;->

TTFN,

Jim

Things Not Going Well For Dave Obey & Democrats

What's this man frowning about?



Oh yeah, that so-called stimulus flop you authored (or was it Van Jones? I forget) and that Gov Jim Doyle's appointees at the DWD were supposed to implement.

Word is that Wisconsin's unemployment is the highest it has been 26 years (gee, wasn't Dave in Congress back then too?) and that the number of jobs saved or created by the stimulus package is a bloated number. It would be one thing, I suppose if it had been reported only on FOX NEWS but it has been covered even more by the Democrat-friendly Milwaukee Journal-Sentinal, not exactly a journal of right-wing opinion.



I'd frown too.

TTFN,

Jim