Consuming mainstream media since Obama’s inauguration, one would be inclined to believe that the “great one” has been wildly successful in uniting Americans in a post-partisan era as he leads us gaily down a glorious path to economic prosperity for all and complete freedom from all forms of hardship and suffering. Further, judging by the press’ near complete failure to probe issues or even ask critical questions about the vast multitude of socialist proposals, bailouts, rescues, and the nationalization of the private sector, one could assume that Obama’s plans are so flawless, so well thought out, so pleasingly comprehensive that we have all eagerly embraced the deliverance promised by the President.

Such is not the case. Take out a polishing cloth and give that blinding sheen reflecting off of team Obama a little rub and the ugly truth is quickly exposed. Obama is not particularly special nor is he well-regarded by Americans. Placing his popularity in historical context reveals that Obama is, at best, middle of the pack. Pew Research compared the approval ratings for the last seven presidents at their first term 100-day mark. They found that Obama trails the disgraced and despised Richard Nixon, the horribly incompetent Jimmy Carter, and the solidly conservative Ronald Reagan.

Slicing the data a different way, Obama is not notably more popular among the president’s own party. Republican approval of Reagan and Bush the 2nd is quite comparable to Obama’s popularity among Democrats. This analysis is hardly surprising. At 100 days into a new president’s term, one would expect that his own party (the winners of the recent election) is still happy to have their guy in office. Obama is, however, ahead of Carter and significantly ahead of Clinton among Democrats. The Clinton anomaly is probably what stands out most. By no means, however, is Obama wildly more popular even within his own party.

Closer examination of the data, however, does show a growing partisan trend. When looking at the approval ratings from the opposing party (the party not associated with the president) we see growing dissatisfaction with the opposite party president. This is a consistent trend since Richard Nixon, who enjoyed a 55% approval rating among Democrats at his 100-day mark. Every president since then has had less opposing party support, with the exception of Bush the 1st, who temporarily reversed the trend. Only temporarily though; Clinton, Bush the 2nd, and Obama were each increasingly unpopular with their opposing parties.

Given the Democratic Party’s hard drift to the left, partisanship has grown markedly in this same period. Therefor, the increasing partisan gap in presidential approval ratings is hardly surprising. It does, however, expose the emptiness of Obama’s promise of a new political environment where both parties work collaboratively for the good of the nation. Certainly, his performance in the first 100 days has been more partisan than any of the presidents discussed above and the opposing party approval ratings are consistent with that observation. While the promise of unity is empty, it is a great tool for publicly manipulating the opposing party: “Do things my way and go along with my programs and you will be seen as contributing to the unity the American people are screaming for, or oppose me and expose yourselves as obstructionists who will do everything to prevent political progress.”

Congressional Republicans have allowed themselves to be cowed by Obama’s manipulation and the assumed popularity of the new president when they should have stood solidly for conservatism. Where they failed the most though was when they did take a stand against Obama, where they did appear as obstructionists. In doing so, they betrayed conservatism which has excellent, time-tested alternatives to each of Obama’s socialist solutions. If congressional Republicans are to be seen as a viable alternative to Obama, they must not only oppose, they must successfully articulate strong and viable solutions to the concerns that Americans are focused on.

Democrats are popularly credited with being the party of caring, compassionate people who look out for the little guy and help those in need. I say “popularly” as this is the commonly held belief that is reinforced at every turn by the mainstream media. Surprisingly (or not), actual statistics do not support this stereotype. Studies show that it is the conservative portion of the American people (most of whom tend toward the Republican Party) who give more, whether it is donating blood or contributing money to charitable causes.

In May of 2008,
Gallup conducted a poll that measured the level of giving by political ideology. Gallup found that the more conservative a person is, the more she or he contributes to charity and that the more liberal a person is, the less she or he contributes to charity. The chart below shows just how marked the disparity is.

Also on the chart, you will notice the level of charitable giving reported by Misters
Obama and Biden for the four years prior to Obama’s appearance on the federal payroll. You will notice that their donations are very consistent with Gallup’s findings. Not shown on the chart, as the numbers are less readily available, are the charitable contributions of Bush and Cheney. I was able to find specific information for a couple of years, where it was reported that their donations ranged from 9% to 26% to 35% to 77% of their adjusted gross income.

While Gallup did not investigate why the differences exist, it is easily explainable by principles of the political ideologies surveyed. Conservatives believe in small government, confined narrowly to the functions authorized by the founding fathers in the Constitution and other documents. Conservatives recognize that government is generally incompetent, corrupt, and inefficient. With this in mind, it makes more sense for caring people to donate their hard-earned funds to organizations that are best equipped to provide the help and relief intended. Almost always, these are private organizations.

Additionally, conservative principles call for a solid work ethic and self-reliance. Yet nearly everyone has required help at one time or another to bridge a gap. By donating to private charities, conservatives are more confident that the recipients who actually need the help will indeed receive temporary gap-bridging assistance and not a permanent subsidy.

Liberals, on the other hand, tend to view the government as the source of solutions and remedies – the government has the responsibility, insight, ability, and resources to fix society’s problems. Additionally, the government has the ability to force or coerce people into giving. By delving a bit deeper into liberal thinking, we find that liberals are also motivated by controlling help and assistance to achieve their political aims. If a liberally inclined government can set up a social program to meet real or imagined needs, the liberals are able to better control the social agenda and reap the political benefits of creating a dependent class of people. This all leads liberals to prefer imposing taxation on everyone, forcing all to support their agenda, rather than willingly giving of their own personal funds.

Following on the heels of massive stimulus and bailout plans, Congress has voted to give the government an 8.7% spending increase. Last fall, the Democratic Leadership in Congress approved a government budget for only half of the year (the government’s fiscal year runs from October through September), hoping that Barack Obama would be elected and that he would be more open to increasing annual government spending. For the Congressional Democrats, this bet paid off.

With only a half-year’s budget approved, the federal government is set to run out of money this month unless a budget for the remainder of the year is passed by Congress (which just happened) and subsequently approved by the president (which he will sign soon). Given the tax and spend history of the Democratic Party, it is no surprise that government spending is increasing much more than inflation and much more than can be justified in an economic environment where everyone else is tightening their belt.

Conservatives, by definition, advocate for less government, because the cost of bureaucracy is a heavy burden on the people and this burden directly limits their prosperity. So, it is no surprise that conservatives find such spending increases both unwarranted and harmful to the people of this country.

By its very nature, taxation is coercive: the government demands money from its constituents under the threat of force – you don’t pay and you are fined and sent to jail. Few would argue that this is an abuse of government power. In fact, it is a necessary evil for any functioning nation. That said, those wielding this power have a moral obligation to be wise and prudent stewards of government revenues (money taken from the pockets of fellow citizens). Unfortunately, too many elected officials have come to believe that all money belongs to the government and that the government should decide how much the citizenry really needs.

To be fair though, not all the blame can be laid at the feet of the Democrats. Under President Bush, spending also increased imprudently. Many pundits gave Congressional Republicans a bye, assuming they had voted for the spending out of a political obligation to support the leader of their party. Theoretically then, the shameful increases in government spending could be blamed on Bush – until this week anyway. Republicans offered little resistance to the spending increases and, more offensively, joined whole hog in pork spending (pun intended).

Included in the Omnibus Spending Bill (the official name for the government budget), were 9,287 pork projects at a cost of nearly $13 billion. As a reminder, pork (also known as earmarks) is a congressional tool used to fund pet programs and projects while protecting funding allocations for serious scrutiny. Most of the time, earmarks are used to reward supporters and improve an official’s odds of reelection. However, knowing how offensive the citizenry finds this practice, both Obama and McCain campaigned on eliminating such practices.

While the nature of earmarks limit scrutiny, reports indicate that 60% of the earmarks in this half-year budget are attributable to democrats and 40% are attributable to republicans. Indeed, 6 of the top 10 pork spenders are Republicans. Given the ratio of Democrats to Republicans in Congress, both parties appear to be equally guilty in fleecing the American People. Once again, Congress demonstrates that preservation of power and privilege trumps their concern for their country.

Following is a very brief sample of this bill’s pork spending:

• $332,500 to build a school sidewalk in Franklin, Texas
• $225,000 for Everybody Wins!
• $200,000 for a tattoo removal program in Mission Hills, California
• $190,000 for the Buffalo Bill Historical Center in Cody, Wyoming
• $237,500 for theater renovation in Merced, California
• $1,049,000 to combat Mormon Crickets in Utah
• $238,000 for the Polynesian Voyaging Society in Hawaii

For a larger sampling, please visit Heritage.org.

For me, the most important lesson is that there are far fewer authentic conservatives among congressional Republicans than many people thought. Increasingly, it seems that the “Republicrats” run Congress. Whether Republican or Democrat, members of Congress are all about what is in it for them and have precious few principles that they both espouse and adhere to. The silver lining, though, is that we have a much better idea about which self-proclaimed conservative Republicans are imposters. For these, their constituencies deserve better and should elect truly conservative candidates during the next round of congressional primaries.

Rob from the Rich…
This notion may have originated with Robin Hood, but it was Karl Marx who made the doctrine infamous. The Marxist equivalent, “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs” epitomizes communist principles. Slowly and quietly, the radical left has championed this Marxism in America for eight decades, working slowly, cautiously and mostly through stealth. With the election of the country’s most radical senator to the office of president, the left no longer needs to resort to secrecy.

Much of the Economic Destruction Plan recently passed by Congress shamelessly fosters the transfer of wealth. Due to the magnitude of that legislation, most of the public has no idea what it will do. Hearing very few objections from the electorate, Obama has been emboldened and is marching proudly forward with the Marxist agenda he trumpeted during the presidential race. (Click for a good and thorough backgrounder on Obama’s politics.)

Cap and Trade
Sources close to Obama have said he is moving forward with a proposal to tax carbon emissions. Leaving aside for a moment that our breath has been classified as a pollutant and that human-generated carbon dioxide has no demonstrable impact on the climate, Obama plans to tax businesses and industries emitting the evil gas. His little scheme is called Cap and Trade.

Under Cap and Trade, businesses will be forced to curtail their carbon dioxide emissions or buy permits if they cannot, or choose not, to reduce these emissions. The permits are sold by the government, which can set ridiculously low limits and charge whatever it wants. The European model of Cap and Trade has been operational for 4 years and has resulted in significantly higher costs while doing very little to lower emissions. American Cap and Trade will increase the jobless rate and act as significant tax on every American business and consumer as nearly all segments of the economy will be impacted.

Hey, but there is a bright side to Cap and Trade—the proceeds (after government administration expenses) will be distributed as welfare payments (tax credits) to the poor and to help people deal with higher energy costs. (Now there is some lunacy, tax energy because it is evil and give those tax funds back to the tax-payer to help pay for the more expensive energy they have to consume.)

Punish the Rich
Mr. Obama is also proposing to dramatically increase taxes on high-income earners, specifically those households earning a combined income in excess of $250,000. Their marginal rate will increase to 41.6% when their hidden deductions are phased-out. Additionally, tax rates are set to increase for capital gains (profits from selling items like real estate, stocks, or gold) and stock dividends. By the way, these last two taxes are paid by almost all investors regardless of their income levels. The plunder taken from rich will be used to fund the $634 billion overhaul of the U.S. health-care system. Unfortunately, these additional taxes won’t come remotely close to paying the proposed health-care bill. (see WSJ article)

Obama is confident that most Americans won’t be too offended that he is socking it to those dastardly rich folks. However, most of us are clever enough to realize that it is this group of people who take their money and invest it in the stock market, in businesses, in new jobs, and in the overall economy. If they are punished for making money, they will do what any sane person would do; find the best ways to avoid taxes. History shows that when the rich start conserving their money and avoiding heavy tax burdens, the economy slows, jobs dry up, and the stock market stagnates along with nearly everyone’s retirement funds. So who is really being punished, the rich who are preserving their wealth or you and me trying to scrape together enough to pay our bills and taxes?

The Lessons of Marxism
One hundred and fifty years after Karl Marx, our world can evaluate numerous examples of communism at work. As we all know, not one communist regime has been even nominally effective at building a thriving economy, lowering joblessness, driving innovation, ensuring liberty, or significantly improving lifestyles for its people. Communism and its close cousin, socialism, are however very effective at keeping a tight rein on the populace and preventing people from improving their personal economic situation. In other words, “tax the rich and give to the poor” translates into financially tethering the common guy.

So buckle-up and get ready for a wild ride. If Obama pursues the objectives he has written about and campaigned for, Cap and Trade and Tax the Rich are just the beginning of his unabashed drive to a Marxist America. Next on the agenda are: 1) socialized medicine, 2) disarming the public and/or curbing our right to bear arms, and 3) silencing the opposition through some form of the “fairness doctrine”.

Senator Judd Withdraws as U.S. Commerce Secretary Nominee
Despite the gloom of a recessionary economy, despite the agony of the non-stop skid on Wall Street, despite Congressional refusal to allow a debate or even allow the public to see the Economic Destruction Plan prior to the vote, and despite the President spouting gloom and doom to achieve his socialist agenda, there is one ray of sunlight that pierced the American storm clouds.

Senator Judd Gregg of New Hampshire has withdrawn his name for consideration as U.S. Commerce Secretary. No dyed-in-the-wool conservative, Judd is roughly as conservative as John McCain–who according to the American Conservative Union, was President Obama’s Republican nomination to his otherwise socialist-leaning cabinet.

In his press release, Senator Judd said, “However, it has become apparent during this process that this will not work for me as I have found that on issues such as the stimulus package and the census there are irresolvable conflicts for me.  Prior to accepting this post, we had discussed these and other potential differences, but unfortunately we did not adequately focus on these concerns.  We are functioning from a different set of views on many critical items of policy.”

Kudos to the Senator. Would that more of our elected officials had the courage and conviction to take a firm stand for the welfare of the country.

Let’s take a look at the character issues of some of Obama’s other nominees.

Obama’s Nominees of Questionable Integrity
Obama-the-candidate said, “…when it comes to hiring people in my administration, the litmus test we’ll apply will not be based on party or ideology, but qualification and experience.” Additionally, Obama pledged to have the most ethical administration in history, and specifically promised that no lobbyists would be employed. Since this is supposed to be change we can count on, let’s do a quick assessment, checking for competence and integrity.

From USA Today: “A USA Today review of Obama hires shows that 21 have registered as federal lobbyists…” (This was reported exactly one week after the inauguration, making for a short-lived promise).

Maybe we should check in on Obama’s promise of “the most ethical administration in history.” Here are the highlights:

Tom Daschle: Withdrew from consideration as head of Health and Human Services when he couldn’t stand the heat for being a tax cheat.

Nancy Killefer: Withdrew from consideration as the country’s Chief Performance Officer when word leaked out she was a tax cheat.

Bill Richardson: Withdrew from consideration as Commerce Secretary when it became apparent his confirmation would be hampered by a grand jury investigation over how state contracts were issued to political donors while he was the governor of New Mexico.

Timothy Geithner: Approved as Secretary of the Treasury despite proof that was presented to the Senate (which he corroborated with his own testimony) that he was a tax cheat.

Hillary Clinton: Approved as Secretary of State despite very significant conflicts of interest stemming from donations to her husband’s foundation by foreign entities and questionable donations from foreigners to her campaigns. Additionally, she has been plagued with scandal after scandal throughout her political life.

Eric Holder: Approved as Attorney General although he: is anti-gun and inclined to restrict the second ammendment, he pressed Clinton for the pardon of the Mark Rich (a fugitive financier), and he worked to force the deportation of a juvenile refugee (Elian Gonzalez) back to Cuba.

Steven Cu: Approved as Secretary of Energy though he advocates very high gasoline prices, is opposed to off-shore drilling, clean coal, and nuclear energy. As a blind follower of debunked global warming theories, he believes his main mission in this office is to vigorously pursue unproven and non-viable energy alternatives.

Arne Duncan: Approved as Secretary of Education despite the very dismal failure of Chicago public schools while he presided over them. He is a strong advocate of significantly increased federal spending (naturally with strings attached) on education and greater federal influence on curriculum.

Janet Napolitano: Approved as head of Homeland Security though she nearly bankrupted Arizona while governor, failed miserably to protect her state from the dangers of illegal immigration, and helped derail the Clarence Thomas Supreme Court nomination with her advice to Anita Hill.

Cecilia Muñoz: Hired as a  White House aide though she was formerly employed as a lobbyist by La Raza (Spanish for “The Race”), a radical Mexican nationalist organization that aggressively seeks to undermine American sovereignty and regularly attempts to thwart national security. La Raza has been called the Mexican version of the Black Panthers.

Hilda Solis: Nominated as Secretary of Labor in spite of (or per perhaps because of) her many connections to organized labor – she is the daughter of a union organizer and a former union demonstrator.  She is also a member of the House Progressive Caucus, a group of the most liberal members of the House of Representatives.

Lisa Jackson: Nominated as Administrator of the EPA despite that both liberals and conservatives find her lacking any compelling qualifications.

Obama-the-candidate suggested the performance scale on which his administration should be measured, which included several factors: diverse ideology, strong qualifications, demonstrated experience, and solid ethics. Assuming all of his other nominees were wonderful, we do see some concerning trends. That Obama would nominate the individuals mentioned above (Judd excepted) and that Congress would approve them makes one wonder if Obama-the-candidate did not really mean “Change you can count on”, but rather is satisfied with “Corruption you can bank on.”

Shame on you, Mister President. Is it really that hard to find people we can respect and have confidence in? For someone who promised integrity, competence, openness, and so much goodness, this is not a promising start.