Obama’s off to a bad start

I have found the main troubles with governments are a lack of patience, aptitude and sincerity. We have all seen the memorable rush to action with horrible results. We have all seen the dreadful consequences of ignorance. And, yes, we have all witnessed the outcome of dishonest actions.

The prospect of having root canal surgery would bring me more joy than reading about the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP).

The TARP funds did everything but provide relief for troubled assets; go figure.

Webster’s definition for “impatience” ought to read: “See TARP.” The first $350 billion were let go with almost no strings attached. Banks got billions upon completing a two-page form which failed to even ask the intended purpose of the funds.

Now, we find the crooked Wall Street executives performed the unconscionable act of providing themselves almost $20 billion in 2008 bonuses using TARP. Thank you, President Obama, for calling the pay-outs “shameful.”

President Obama also said, “Part of what we are going to need is for folks on Wall Street, who are asking for help, to show some restraint and show some discipline and show some sense of responsibility.”

What they really need to be shown is the exit door. Indeed, why are most of the CEOs who trashed our economy, our 401Ks and our national debt still employed with the same institutions? Are we really stupid enough to think they will turn their attention to anything beyond themselves?

Now, we have to contend with the latest effort of the Democratic-led House of Representatives to create an “economic stimulus” package totaling $825 billion. According to the Wall Street Journal, Jan. 28, 2009, “... only $90 billion out of $825 billion, or about 12 cents of every dollar, is for something that can plausibly be considered a growth stimulus.”

To add to the misery, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office says about half the new stimulus would not kick in for another year or two.

The problem is we keep allowing government to get away with these hasty acts, only to discover a severe lack of aptitude and sincerity after the damage is done.

Go back to the 1832 battle between President Andrew Jackson and the insincere Henry Clay regarding the bill to further empower the Bank of the United States. It raised the subject of how much power should the government extend to a private corporation.

President Jackson vetoed the bill and offered the following: “It is to be regretted that the rich and powerful too often bend the acts of government to their selfish purposes. Distinctions in society will always exist under every just government. Equality of talents, of education, or of wealth can not be produced by human institutions. In the full enjoyment of the gifts of Heaven and the fruits of superior industry, economy, and virtue, every man is equally entitled to protection by law; but when the laws undertake to add to these natural and just advantages artificial distinctions, to grant titles, gratuities, and exclusive privileges, to make the rich richer and the potent more powerful, the humble members of society, the farmers, mechanics, and laborers who have neither the time nor the means of securing like favors to themselves, have a right to complain of the injustice of their Government.

“There are no necessary evils in government. Its evils exist only in its abuses. If it would confine itself to equal protection, and, as Heaven does its rains, shower its favors alike on the high and the low, the rich and the poor, it would be an unqualified blessing. In the act before me there seems to be a wide and unnecessary departure from these just principles.”

President Jackson continued, “Experience should teach us wisdom. Most of the difficulties our Government now encounters and most of the dangers which impend over our Union have sprung from an abandonment of the legitimate objects of Government by our national legislation ... Many of our rich men have not been content with equal protection and equal benefits, but have besought us to make them richer by act of Congress ... If we cannot at once, in justice to interests vested under improvident legislation, make our Government what it ought to be, we can at least take a stand against all new grants of monopolies and exclusive privileges, against any prostitution of our Government to the advancement of the few at the expense of the many, and in favor of compromise and gradual reform in our code of laws and system of political economy.”

Amazing, truly, how the words of a president so aptly apply 176 years later. Yes, President Jackson was an outsider fighting a powerful political system gone wrong.

I am not sure President Obama has the grit of an Andrew Jackson. Thus far, the Obama cabinet includes one with a husband soliciting money from foreign governments and special interests, one with tax problems, and another with tax reporting problems with a wife employed as a lobbyist. Moreover, President Obama took the get-tough stance of forbidding lobbyists in key posts and then allowed two exceptions soon after.

Instead of change, we might be about to witness a Democratic Congress willing to implode our future.

It takes 15 minutes to email your elected officials, and it could save you billions of dollars. There has never been a better time to get active. Let me know what you think.

[Steve Brown is the former mayor of Peachtree City. He can be reached at stevebrownptc@ureach.com.]

Tax reform proposal in response to Steve Brown

Submitted by mapleleaf on Tue, 02/03/2009 - 5:12pm.

What this country really needs is an income tax rate of 100 percent on incomes above $2 million. This way, all the bonuses and extravagant compensation CEOs and athletes secure for themselves would revert to the benefit of society at large. They would still get the "psychic income" and ego-boost of very high salaries, but it would be harmless and for a good cause.

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