Dinesh D'Souza: How Obama Thinks

Via Forbes.com:

Barack Obama is the most antibusiness president in a generation, perhaps in American history. Thanks to him the era of big government is back. Obama runs up taxpayer debt not in the billions but in the trillions. He has expanded the federal government's control over home mortgages, investment banking, health care, autos and energy. The Weekly Standard summarizes Obama's approach as omnipotence at home, impotence abroad.

The President's actions are so bizarre that they mystify his critics and supporters alike. Consider this headline from the Aug. 18, 2009 issue of the Wall Street Journal: "Obama Underwrites Offshore Drilling." Did you read that correctly? You did. The Administration supports offshore drilling--but drilling off the shores of Brazil. With Obama's backing, the U.S. Export-Import Bank offered $2 billion in loans and guarantees to Brazil's state-owned oil company Petrobras to finance exploration in the Santos Basin near Rio de Janeiro--not so the oil ends up in the U.S. He is funding Brazilian exploration so that the oil can stay in Brazil.

You will find the whole thing at this link.

So far, this is the best article I have seen yet that comes close to explaining what and who this nation voted to send to the White House in November of 2008.

See also the White House response here.

My take is, given the derision displayed by the White House over this, Mr. D'Souza must have hit pretty close to the center of the target.

(h/t: Everybody who emailed this to me)

Time to End Universal Suffrage?

Tom Tancredo makes his case:

---

---

The uncivil debate over civic illiteracy

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Posted: February 13, 2010
1:00 am Eastern

© 2010

After 35 years in politics, I am seldom surprised by the venom that flows from the mouths of liberals when one of their sacred cows is criticized. But the "fan mail" following my speech a week ago to the tea-party convention in Nashville has been truly amazing.

I spoke to the opening session of the event about why it is a good thing that John McCain was not elected president. I expected those remarks to be controversial in some quarters, but the only controversy in the news coverage of my speech was about my suggestion that we need a civics literacy test for voters.

Evidently, you cannot question the value of universal suffrage, and in the liberal lexicon, universal suffrage means not only that there should be no unreasonable or discriminatory bars to voting, but that all adults should be forced to vote, no matter how ignorant or disconnected to the civic affairs of the community.

I did not say in Nashville that all 67 million Obama voters are illiterate rabble who would fail a civics literacy test. What I did suggest and what I believe is that in the 2008 presidential election, the margin of victory for Obama was provided by people who would not be at the polls if we had meaningful civics literacy requirements for voting. Hence my statement that the lack of a civics literacy requirement is one reason we have a committed socialist ideologue in the White House today.

That statement provoked a stream of angry e-mail messages from outraged Obama voters, many of whom proudly proclaimed their advanced degrees in art history, Egyptology and political science. The message was as consistent as it was strident: What an ignoramus I must be to question the educational level of Obama voters!

My tea-party remarks had nothing to do with educational credentials or even IQ. We are all painfully aware that Barack Obama, like Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton before him, got more votes from college professors than his Republican opponent. My remarks were aimed at the electorate's lack of civics literacy, which is quite different. Literacy in civics and American history is not necessarily enhanced by additional years of higher education devoted to increasingly specialized expertise in some field.

I have often suggested that new voters should be required to pass the civics literacy test already given to immigrants who want to become naturalized citizens. Yet, my suggestion was twisted into the idea that I want to see a return to "Jim Crow laws" that were used to keep blacks from voting.

This distortion of my proposal requires two acts of self-deception. First, it requires you to believe that minorities will fail any civics test, an idea that is highly insulting to all minorities. Secondly, it requires a willful disregard of the real history of Jim Crow laws. Blacks were not kept from voting by the laws themselves but the blatant discriminatory way they were administered by local officials. It is absurd to claim that any civics literacy test will be discriminatory, yet that is how my proposal was described by leftist bloggers and liberal journalists like E.J. Dionne.

Predictably, in this age of Internet video messaging

, left-wing blogs and liberal advocacy groups sent the video clip of my remarks to their members and asked them to "send Tancredo a message." The messages generated by this organized temper tantrum ran the gamut from questions about my patriotism to solemn prayers that I would get some horrible disease and die a painful death – and soon.

All our founders' inspiring, biblical quotes in one place – a must-have for your library: "America's God and Country Encyclopedia of Quotations"

The potential for "elected despots" was well understood by our nation's founders, and they devised mechanisms in the Constitution to reduce that danger. They understood that throughout history, democracies had followed certain patterns and cycles, cycles ending in tyranny. So, instead of a pure democracy, they designed and established a republic organized as a representative democracy, with checks and balances and other innovations to help safeguard our liberties.

Voting your own short-term self-interest over the common good is a problem as old as Rome, but today it has taken on a new urgency. Using the powers of government to expropriate other people's wealth and property enters the pandemic stage when half the voting public pays no taxes

and a third of adults are government employees

or living on government pensions.

Can civics literacy programs in our schools and civics literacy tests for voters hold these forces in check? Maybe it's not the whole answer, but to me, it sure seems like a good start.

-End

Tom Tancredo's commentary was originally posted here.

I agree wholeheartedly with Rep. Tancredo. The votes of the stoopid and the illiterate (civic or otherwise) have pushed this nation right to the very edge of its destruction.

In fact, I would go one step further and restrict voting in national elections to only those who actually pay federal income taxes. Net tax consumers should have no say.

There is, after all, no constitutional right to vote in a national election.

If we continue to allow the non-productive to use the power of the federal government to take from the productive, the fate that Alexis de Tocqueville warned us about all those years ago is going to become a cold, stark reality.

Since the beginning of recorded history all free republics have shared one common trait: They all managed to vote themselves right out of existence.

Perhaps we might be the ones to finally break the chain.

John Stossel Laments Our Trip Down the Road to Serfdom

February 10, 2010

Increasing Government Power Threatens Freedom

By John Stossel

Government is taking us a long way down the Road to Serfdom. That doesn't just mean that more of us must work for the government. It means that we are changing from independent, self-responsible people into a submissive flock. The welfare state kills the creative spirit.

F.A. Hayek, an Austrian economist living in Britain, wrote "The Road to Serfdom" in 1944 as a warning that central economic planning would extinguish freedom. The book was a hit. Reader's Digest produced a condensed version that sold 5 million copies.

Hayek meant that governments can't plan economies without planning people's lives. After all, an economy is just individuals engaging in exchanges. The scientific-sounding language of President Obama's economic planning hides the fact that people must shelve their own plans in favor of government's single plan.

At the beginning of "The Road to Serfdom," Hayek acknowledges that mere material wealth is not all that's at stake when the government controls our lives: "The most important change ... is a psychological change, an alteration in the character of the people."

This shouldn't be controversial. If government relieves us of the responsibility of living by bailing us out, character will atrophy. The welfare state, however good its intentions of creating material equality, can't help but make us dependent. That changes the psychology of society.

I'll explore this tomorrow night on my Fox Business show, 8 p.m. Eastern (rebroadcast Friday at 10 p.m.).

According to the Tax Foundation, 60 percent of the population now gets more in government benefits than it pays in taxes. What does it say about a society in which more than half the people live at the expense of the rest? Worse, the dependent class is growing. The 60 percent will soon be 70 percent.

Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin seems to understand the threat: He worries that "more people have a stake in the welfare state than in free enterprise. This is a road that Hayek perfectly described as 'the road to serfdom.'" (Tomorrow I will ask Ryan why, if he understands this, he voted for TARP and the auto bailouts.)

Kurt Vonnegut understood the threat of government-imposed equality. His short story "Harrison Bergeron" portrays a future in which no one is permitted to have any physical or intellectual advantage over anyone else. A government Handicapper General weighs down the strong and agile, masks the faces of the beautiful and distracts the smart.

So far, the Handicapper General is just fantasy. But Vice President Joe Biden did shout at the Democratic National Convention: "Everyone is your equal, and everyone is equal to you." If he meant that we're all equal in rights and before the law, fine. If he meant government shouldn't put barriers in the way of opportunity, great. But statists like Biden usually have more in mind: They want government to make results more equal.

Two actual examples of the lunacy:

When colleges innovated by having students use Kindle e-book readers instead of expensive textbooks, the Justice Department sued them, complaining that the Kindle discriminates against blind students. The department also is suing the Massachusetts prison system because it makes prospective prison guards take a physical test. Since women don't do as well as men on that test, Justice claims the test discriminates against women.

Arthur Brooks, who heads the American Enterprise Institute, says statism is becoming the "central organizing power in our economy," and that the battle between free enterprise and statism will shape our futures. He remains optimistic because a recent poll showed that 70 percent of Americans want free enterprise. I'm less sanguine. In that same poll, 54 percent of Americans said government should exert more control over the economy. Brooks discounts that, claiming people forget their "core values" during crises.

But he asks the right question: Do we want a culture of takers or makers? Ryan and Brooks say most people want "the American idea": freedom and self-responsibility. I fear they want a Mommy State to take care of them. What do you think?

The choice is crucial. If we continue down the Road to Serfdom, our destination will be a poorer society, high unemployment, stagnation and complacency.

Copyright 2010, Creators Syndicate Inc.

Note: The above John Stossel article was originally posted here.

Obama is Spending Us Into Well Beyond Mere Oblivion

Let's face it, folks, George W. Bush did not exactly endear himself to we of the fiscal conservative persuasion, but Barack Hussein Obama, with no small amount of help from a slew of like-minded, out-of-control congress-critters, is on a blistering pace to make the Bush administration appear positively miserly in comparison.

I pulled this form Boortz.com a little earlier, and it doesn't paint a pretty picture for future Americans:

THE TRUTH ABOUT GOVERNMENT

By Neal Boortz @ February 8, 2010 8:42 AM

Since we're talking about our wonderful Imperial Federal Government .... Here are some shocking facts to keep in mind:

-The cost of our federal government is 25% of our total economy (GDP).
This is compared with the average of 20.7% of the GDP during 1970-2009

- If you include the cost of state and local government, the total cost of government is almost 40% of our GDP

- Since 2008, the cost of our federal government has increased by one-fourth

- By 2020, Obama will have increased the federal government by one-half on a per family basis

- Before the recession, federal spending totaled $24,000 per household

- By 2020, Obama would raise that to $36,000 per household

Just remember these numbers folks. They have meaning.

-End

Obama and the far-left are very rapidly spending this country right down the financial crapper. Personally, I believe this is being done deliberately.

This idiocy must be stopped now, not in 2013.

The Government Wants Your Retirement Cash

Via Neal Boortz:

I've been telling you about this for a while now. This, to me, is one of the most dangerous schemes currently slithering through the crevices and dark spots of the Imperial Federal Government in Washington. What am I talking about? What I believe to be plans by the Obama administration to, in effect, seize your retirement funds and use them to finance their deficit spending. Remember ... there are more than $3 trillion dollars sitting out there in individual retirement, IRA and 401K plans. Politicians just cant stand the idea of this much money sitting out there in private investments ... out of the grasp of politicians. So .... Something needs to be done. And sure enough, something is going to be done. The Treasury Department and the Department of Labor were going to start taking comments on ways to promote the idea converting 401(k) savings and IRAs into annuities or other steady payment streams. Well you can finally take a look at this document for yourself:

Request for Information Regarding Lifetime Income Options for Participants and

Beneficiaries in Retirement Plans

Here, I'll post a little to get you started:

The Department of Labor and the Department of the Treasury (the "Agencies") are currently reviewing the rules under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) and the plan qualification rules under the Internal Revenue Code (Code) to determine whether, and, if so, how, the Agencies could or should enhance, by regulation or otherwise, the retirement security of participants in employer-sponsored retirement plans and in individual retirement arrangements (IRAs) by facilitating access to, and use of, lifetime income or other arrangements designed to provide a lifetime stream of income after retirement. The purpose of this request for information is to solicit views, suggestions and comments from plan participants, employers and other plan sponsors, plan service providers, and members of the financial community, as well as the general public, on this important issue.

You will find Neal's entire article here.

Wake the hell up, sheeple. You are missing one hell of a coup.

The Approaching Financial Train Wreck

From Dr. Mark W. Hendrickson at the Center for Vision & Values:

We have a problem. This could be “the big one”—bigger than coping with the Ahmadinejads, Kims, and Chavezes of the world and bigger than our current economic woes. Our republic, our society, may be heading for a crackup. We are bankrupt, both financially and politically.

The source of the problem is democracy. Decades of so-called “progressive” thought have led us to abandon the limited-government, constitutional republic established by our founding fathers. In the name of putting more power into the hands of "the people," the government has arrogated sweeping powers.

[...]

Crude, majoritarian democracy (as in, “there are more of us than there are of you, so we’re going to redistribute your wealth”) inevitably undermines the harmony of society. A free market, as competitive as it is, is based on peaceful, voluntary cooperation. When commerce is free and unfettered by government interference, both sides to a transaction normally gain, thereby promoting social harmony.

Democracy, by contrast, engenders social conflict. Money changes hands by force of the taxman and the threat of imprisonment, not voluntarily. Democracy pits citizens against each other in a sordid squabble whereby many strive to have the state confer benefits seized from their fellow citizens.

[...]

How bad could it get? If the social order breaks down, civil unrest could disrupt markets and shortages of essential goods could occur. The resulting chaos could trigger martial law. A strong leader—a Caesar—could institute some sort of command order. Millions would resent it, but it would be accepted, because the alternative—civil conflict, chronic disorder, and impending starvation—would be intolerable. In such a calamity, Caesar would be the lesser of two evils. The American Republic and Constitution would join earlier democracies in the ashbin of history.

God help us.

God help us, indeed.

You will find the entire article here.

All I can say at this point is buckle up, as I really do not see a way to avoid the approaching train wreck.

(h/t: WorldNetDaily)

Photocredit: The Relationship Economy

Schoolchildren Compelled to Sing the Praises of Dear Leader

I think we have seen this sort of thing before:

Video: Communist News Network Reporter Told By D.C. Crowd To "Tell The Truth"

Sweet!

There May Be Hope For Our Republic Yet

Inhofe Calls a Spade a Spade

As one who believes this nation is currently swirling much closer to the bottom of the loo (that's British for toilet) than most of my fellow citizens appear to realize, it is nice to hear from an elected representative that is actually plugged in to what is really going on in D.C. right now, as it goes far beyond just the attempt on the part of the Obama cabal to pull off a federal government seizure of our nation's health care system.

Myself, along with many others, took the time to study up on Barack Hussein Obama back when he first announced his intention to run for the highest office in the land. Needless to say, we did not like what we found. This man, who few outside the city of Chicago had even heard of  four years ago, had a list of family members, friends and associates that could have been lifted from the pocket of Hugo Chavez or Fidel Castro. Nowhere could we find anybody in his life that had any love for freedom and liberty, two words that have eluded use by our now 44th POTUS since he began campaigning for the office.

Obama ran on a platform of "hope" and "change," while promising to "transform" America. My question was always, "What does a person who has spent his entire life being influenced by Marxists and communists going to transform a nation into?"

Well, it sure as Hell wasn't going to be a bastion of freedom and liberty, now was it?

Today, nearly nine months into what I believe is essentially a Marxist coup (blitzkrieg?) being carried out against our country, a very clear picture of these people's true intentions is becoming crystal clear. Many of my conservative friends appear to still want to believe that the Obama administration is simply trying to turn us into another Canada or France. Wrong! We are being rapidly transformed into Cuba.

America's private sector economy is being dismantled with alarming speed, and its wealth is being systematically destroyed. Companies large and small are hemorrhaging jobs, or closing their doors. The federal government is moving in on many areas of the private sector economy they have no business, nor any constitutional basis for, being involved in.

It pains me to see that, even nine months into this lunacy, there are still members of the Republican Party who seem intent on aiding these hideous people in their efforts to "re-make" America. At least Sen. Jim Inhofe is not among them, who had this to say at a town hall that took place in Grove, Oklahoma on Wednesday:

“I never dreamed I would see an administration try to disavow all the things that have made this country different from all others,” Inhofe told more than 300 people at a town hall meeting in the Grove Community Center.

“I have never seen so many things happening at one time so disheartening to America.” Inhofe found a highly receptive audience. Many wore T-shirts of a local organization called Get America Back. Its Web site promises “a plan to eliminate the socialist government and return Americas (sic) freedoms.”

Neither did I, Senator. But here is the money quote:

“Those of you who think like I do,” Inhofe said, “hope this country can hang on another 16 months.”

Honestly, given the alarming speed at which things have been unfolding in this country over the last nine months, I am truly beginning to wonder if there will be enough of the America I grew up in left to save by November of 2010. What is happening isn't surprising to me in any way, but the pace of it all has shocked me to my core.

You will find the entire TulsaWorld.com article here.

David Brooks Hits One Right Over the Fence

I am not a huge fan of David Brooks, as I consider him to be the editorial version of John McCain, the head RINO of my former political party. However, every so often he gets it right, as he has with this NYT column published yesterday:

It’s not that interesting to watch the Democrats lose touch with America. That’s because the plotline is exactly the same. The party is led by insular liberals from big cities and the coasts, who neither understand nor sympathize with moderates. They have their own cherry-picking pollsters, their own media and activist cocoon, their own plans to lavishly spend borrowed money to buy votes.

This ideological overreach won’t be any more successful than the last one. A Washington Post-ABC News poll released Monday confirms what other polls have found. Most Americans love Barack Obama personally, but support for Democratic policies is already sliding fast.

You will find his entire NYT column here.

It is well worth a read.

A Must Read If There Ever Was One

A friend of mine emailed this Kevin Hassett column to me earlier today. I thought it worth posting here:

‘Manchurian Candidate’ Starts War on Business: Kevin Hassett

Commentary by Kevin Hassett

March 9 (Bloomberg) -- Back in the 1960s, Lyndon Johnson gave us the War on Poverty. In the 1970s, Richard Nixon launched the War on Drugs. Now that we have seen President Barack Obama’s first-year legislative agenda, we know what kind of a war he intends to wage.

It is no wonder that markets are imploding around us. Obama is giving us the War on Business.

Imagine that some hypothetical enemy state spent years preparing a “Manchurian Candidate” to destroy the U.S. economy once elected. What policies might that leader pursue?

He might discourage private capital from entering the financial sector by instructing his Treasury secretary to repeatedly promise a brilliant rescue plan, but never actually have one. Private firms, spooked by the thought of what government might do, would shy away from transactions altogether. If the secretary were smooth and played rope-a-dope long enough, the whole financial sector would be gone before voters could demand action.

Another diabolical idea would be to significantly increase taxes on whatever firms are still standing. That would require subterfuge, since increasing tax rates would be too obvious. Our Manchurian Candidate would have plenty of sophisticated ideas on changing the rules to get more revenue without increasing rates, such as auctioning off “permits.”

These steps would create near-term distress. If our Manchurian Candidate leader really wanted to knock the country down for good, he would have to provide insurance against any long-run recovery.

There are two steps to accomplish that.

Discourage Innovation

First, one way the economy might finally take off is for some entrepreneur to invent an amazing new product that launches something on the scale of the dot-com boom. If you want to destroy an economy, you have to persuade those innovators not even to try.

Second, you need to initiate entitlement programs that are difficult to change once enacted. These programs should transfer assets away from productive areas of the economy as efficiently as possible. Ideally, the government will have no choice but to increase taxes sharply in the future to pay for new entitlements.

A leader who pulled off all that might be able to finish off the country.

Let’s see how Obama’s plan compares with our nightmare scenario.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has been so slow to act that even liberal economist and commentator Paul Krugman is criticizing the administration for “dithering.” It has gotten so bad that the Intrade prediction market now has a future on whether Geithner is gone by year’s end. It currently puts the chance of that at about 20 percent.

No More Deferral

On the tax hike, Obama’s proposed 2010 budget quite ominously signaled that he intends to end or significantly amend the U.S. practice of allowing U.S. multinationals to defer U.S. taxes on income that they earn abroad.

Currently, the U.S. has the second-highest corporate tax on Earth. U.S. firms can compete in Europe by opening a subsidiary in a low-tax country and locating the profits there. Since the high U.S. tax applies only when the money is mailed home, and firms can let the money sit abroad for as long as they want, the big disadvantage of the high rate is muted significantly.

End that deferral opportunity and U.S. firms will no longer be able to compete, given their huge tax disadvantage. With foreign tax rates so low now, it is even possible that the end of deferral could lead to the extinction of the U.S. corporation.

If any firms are to remain, they will be festooned with massive carbon-permit expenses because of Obama’s new cap-and- trade program.

Importing Drugs

Obama’s attack on intellectual property is evident in his aggressive stance against U.S. pharmaceutical companies in the budget. He would force drug companies to pay higher “rebate” fees to Medicaid, and he included wording that suggests Americans will soon be able to import drugs from foreign countries. The stock prices of drug companies, predictably, tanked when his budget plan was released.

Obama will allow cheap and potentially counterfeit substitutes into the country and will set the U.S. price for drugs equal to the lowest price that any foreign government is able to coerce from our drugmakers.

Given this, why would anyone invest money in a risky new cancer trial, or bother inventing some other new thing that the government could expropriate as soon as it decides to?

Finally, Obama has set aside $634 billion to establish a health-reform reserve fund, a major first step in creating a universal health-care system. If you want to have health care for everyone, you have to give it to many people for free. Once we start doing that, we will never stop, at least until the government runs out of money.

It’s clear that President Obama wants the best for our country. That makes it all the more puzzling that he would legislate like a Manchurian Candidate.

(Kevin Hassett, director of economic-policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, is a Bloomberg News columnist. He was an adviser to Republican Senator John McCain of Arizona in the 2008 presidential election. The opinions expressed are his own.)

To contact the writer of this column: Kevin Hassett at khassett@aei.org

Last Updated: March 9, 2009 00:01 EDT

-END

It appears Mr. Hassett is on to something here.

Are We Heading Toward Financial Armageddon?

What if you woke up tomorrow and saw a headline in your local paper that said this: U.S. Government's Financial Obligations Exceed the GDP of the Entire World!

Would you spill your coffee all over yourself? Possibly soil yourself? Choke on your bagel?

Well, it appears our federal government's total financial obligations are now at an eye-popping $65.5 Trillion.

Yes, you read that right. That is Trillion with a T.

Just take a bite and chew on that one for a moment. Feel like reaching for the Tums? Planning to be at your local liquor retailer later, waiting for him to unlock the door for the day's business?

Jerome Corsi at WorldNetDaily has come across some very interesting information regarding the unvarnished truth about the deep financial dog-squeeze we are truly in as a nation, which you can read all about here.

I urge caution here, because you are not going to like what you see. Here is a little blurb:

"The federal government is bankrupt," Williams told WND. "In a post-Enron world, if the federal government were a corporation such as General Motors, the president and senior Treasury officers would be in federal penitentiary."

It appears our government has not been exactly, a'hem, forthcoming about just how deep in the poor-house this nation actually is right now.

Mad yet?

Looks like it is going to be one hell of a train wreck.

The Continuing Bailout Boondoggle

This government bailout nonsense appears to be gaining even more steam, that despite the fact billions of (our) dollars spent so far has shown little or no positive economic results. Banks aren't lending, people aren't buying, and absolutely nobody seems to be hiring.

I am certainly no economist, but it seems to me that massive federal spending programs, along with even more draconian regulations heaped upon an already over-regulated economy, are not the answer to our current economic predicament. I am fully convinced that it was misguided and overbearing government policies that got us here in the first place, some of which can be traced back to the late 1970's.

Government does absolutely nothing well, and I am concerned the massive bailout the new administration is proposing is only going to result in worse problems a few years down the road. By that time, most of the problems we have now will still be around, but we will be facing far larger budget deficits. This is not going to be good for future generations of Americans, who are already facing a less-free and more austere future due to the confiscatory amounts each of us already owes.

I am of the belief that the best thing the federal government could do for this nation's economy is to get out of the way and let the markets, and specifically the private sector, work it out instead. I believe all the government is going to wind up doing is causing the tough times to last longer, and run much deeper than they already are.

I ran across the following over at Newsmax.com today. Its nice to see that at least some are questioning this apparently out-of-control spending insanity:

Obama's Trojan Horse: Bailout Signals Return of Welfare State

Sunday, January 18, 2009 5:50 PM

By: Newsmax Staff

President-elect Barack Obama’s proposed $775 billion stimulus package, being sold as a cure-all for the ailing economy, is little more than a checklist for funding the pricey social-services agenda that he promised during his campaign.

Some experts say that the Trojan horse of pork and welfare spending will ultimately worsen the recession and drive the nation deeper into debt, according to financial experts.

Most of Obama’s costliest promises have found their way into the so-called American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan, which now includes everything from an expansion of Pell grants for college students, to health care for the unemployed, to an expansion of unemployment benefits, to investment in renewable energy.

“This legislation appears to blanket government programs in spending with little thought toward real economic results, job creation or respect for the taxpayer," said Rep. Jerry Lewis, R-Calif., ranking Republican on the House Appropriations Committee. "I'm scratching my head trying to determine how items like $50 million in funding for the National Endowment for the Arts will create jobs or provide relief for families across the country."

Lewis and other Republicans question the inclusion of items like $850 million for wildfire prevention and $600 million for new cars for the federal government.

Lewis lists others: $200 million to “encourage electric vehicle technologies” in state and local government motor pools, $1.9 billion in funding for high level physics research, $650 million to extend the coupon program to allow analog TV owners to continue to watch TV, and $400 to the Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration for “habitat restoration.”

What do any of these expenditures have to do with creating job? They are a far cry from the traditional tools of stimulating the economy such as road and bridge construction, for which the bill allots $30 billion, some experts say. Their inclusion reflects Democrats' expansive view of how the government can create jobs: helping the auto industry by replacing government cars, for example, and hiring people to restore areas hit by wildfires.

Far from sparking the economy, the package will send the budget deficit soaring, crowd out private investment, and fuel a surge in inflation and interest rates, according to Arthur Laffer, an economic advisor to President Reagan.

The package essentially transfers wealth from those who are working to those who aren’t, Laffer tells Newsmax. “When you give people real resources other than what comes from work effort, those resources have to come from workers and producers.

“Conceptually, the government doesn’t create resources, it redistributes resources,” Laffer says. “Whenever you bail something out, you have to take resources from people doing well. It’s a zero sum game.”

Specifically, Obama is proposing spending $775 billion in government dollars in four key areas:

Tax Relief: $310 billion. Companies could write off losses for 2008-09, small businesses could write off spending this year up to $250,000, companies would receive a $3,000 credit this year for each employee hired and retained. Individuals would receive $500 tax rebates, couples $1,000. Those who don’t make enough money to pay taxes would benefit from reductions in Social Security and Medicare withholding taxes. Energy. Obama seeks a national energy grid including renewable sources such as wind, solar and hydroelectricity. Funding for the Manufacturing Extension Partnership, which seeks new technology to make U.S. manufacturing more efficient, would be doubled. These are only part of Obama’s excessive $150 billion green-jobs plan. Health Care: $100 billion. This includes more health insurance for laid-off workers and funds for states to finance Medicaid. The program also allocates $20 billion toward Obama’s ultimate goal of $50 billion to modernize medical records. Education. Pell grants for college students and spending on Head Start programs would be increased. Funds also would be raised to help special education students. “I’m skeptical about green jobs. Why do we as a government propose all this green spending? Look at what happened when the government insisted on boosting the housing sector,” Steve Horwitz an economist at St. Lawrence University in Canton, N.Y., tells Newsmax. In fact, all of these pricey programs are likely to last a long time, whether they help the country out of its economic morass or not, experts fear. "If all of the infrastructure and the programs to temporarily help individuals, to temporarily [help] companies, if all of this becomes bureaucratic institutions that are in place from now until forever, we're in trouble," Thomas Donahue, president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which represents more than 3 million businesses told Time magazine recently. "You stop and think of some of these things and you say, 'All right, that's just for two years.' Well, who's going to be in charge two years from now, saying 'We're not doing that anymore'?" Strikingly, things are so bad in the economy that Obama admitted as much in a speech earlier this month and still hasn’t engendered much resistance to his plans. As the economy has worsened, the president-elect has been asked repeatedly which of his campaign initiatives he would be willing to cut. The answer? Not many. "There is no doubt that the cost of this plan will be considerable," Obama said. "It will certainly add to the budget deficit in the short term. But equally certain are the consequences of doing too little or nothing at all, for that will lead to an even greater deficit of jobs, incomes and confidence in our economy." The reality of the Obama spending plan flies in the face of the consensus has emerged among mainstream economists that the recession can’t end without a massive fiscal stimulus program. Everyone from Larry Summers, incoming director of the White House National Economic Council, to Martin Feldstein, chairman of President Reagan’s Council of Economic Advisers, has jumped on board. But sometimes the consensus is wrong, and this, some financial experts maintain, is one of those times. The Congressional Budget Office predicts that the deficit will explode to $1.2 trillion this year, even before the stimulus package, which could another $1 trillion to the gap over the next two years. A $1.2 trillion deficit would amount to about 8 percent of gross domestic product, smashing the post-World War II record of 6 percent, set in 1983 under President Reagan. If the stimulus package pushes the deficit to $1.7 trillion this year, that would total a whopping 10 percent of GDP. Not everyone is comfortable trading deep deficit spending for the promise of recovery, however. “We’re in a situation where the budget deficit will top $2 trillion over the next two years, and they’re talking about adding $700 billion-$800 billion in new spending,” J.D. Foster, a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation, tells Newsmax. “If deficit spending stimulated the economy, with $2 trillion already out there, the economy should be performing like a double shot of espresso.” Instead economists are forecasting a contraction of up to 5 percent for the fourth quarter of last year and the current quarter. “The reason why the package is not stimulative and that the additional deficit spending won’t help is that the federal government has to borrow from the private sector to spend it,” Foster says. “Whoever was going to spend that money in the private sector won’t be able to do so. Deficit spending just rearranges demand in the economy, it doesn’t change incentives to produce.” “The transfer [of wealth] drives a wedge between wages paid and wages received,” adds Laffer. “That larger wedge creates a disincentive to produce.” Laffer asks rhetorically: “If you’re going to give some resources to those who don’t work, why not give 100 percent? GDP would go to zero.” Many critics have said it was deregulation that sparked the financial crisis and recession, but Horwitz says the problem was too much regulation, and that the stimulus package represents just another example. “There was this government focus on the housing market, giving power to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and keeping interest rates low,” he says. “Now we’re repeating the problems that got us into trouble.” And of course, bulging deficits always are accompanied by jumps in inflation and interest rates. “We are taking about issuing an enormous amount of debt at the same time that governments around the world are talking about something very similar,” Foster says. “Globally, additional deficit spending could top $1.5 trillion this year. That’s an enormous number, large enough to have a material effect on real interest rates, driving them up and thereby slowing the economy.” As for the $310 billion of tax cuts in Obama’s program, many of them represent temporary measures, such as a $500 rebate for individuals, $1,000 for couples. And even those who don’t earn enough to pay income taxes would be handed a rebate for automatic Social Security and Medicare deductions from their paychecks. Experts like the idea of increased tax cuts, but fault Obama for seeking only temporary reduction. His tax plan is misdirected. “There will be more money left in families’ pockets, which is good, but that’s not stimulative,” Foster says. “The federal government has to borrow to give you rebates or lower withholding taxes. It’s a reduction in tax barriers that stimulates the economy.” Horwitz favors a reduction in capital gains taxes to spark business investment and Laffer would like to see a decrease in top marginal tax rates. Only one element of Obama’s spending plan makes sense, experts say: infrastructure improvement. “If you’re going to have a stimulus program, you may as well be sure you are spending on things the government can do that others can’t,” says Horwitz. “If you’re going to borrow, do so for the long-term. In that sense, infrastructure makes sense.” But that is about the only part of the boondoggle that is defensible, he and others say.