THE SPIN: "That's why my health care plan includes improving information technology, requires coverage for preventive care and pre-existing conditions and lowers health care costs for the typical family by $2,500 a year."

THE FACTS: His plan does not lower premiums by $2,500, or any set amount. Obama hopes that by spending $50 billion over five years on electronic medical records and by improving access to proven disease management programs, among other steps, consumers will end up saving money. He uses an optimistic analysis to suggest cost reductions in national health care spending could amount to the equivalent of $2,500 for a family of four. Many economists are skeptical those savings can be achieved, but even if they are, it's not a certainty that every dollar would be passed on to consumers in the form of lower premiums.

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THE SPIN: 95% of Americans will see a tax cut.

 

THE FACTS: 40% of American's pay NO TAXES. This is part of his "redistributive economic justice." Go listen to his 2001 Radio interview about the Supreme Court.  That gives a little insight into his real reason for running for the presidency.  Just wait until he appoints judges who will be activist on the courts (not just the SCOTUS) and they set about to remedy the flawed Constitution.

THE SPIN: "Bill Ayers is just a guy in the neighborhood." "Bill Ayers is just an English Professor I know." "Bill Ayers is just a guy I sat on a board with." "Bill Ayers and I worked closely on the Annenberg Challenge, oh, and the Woods Foundation, oh, and I blurbed a book for him..." (Oh, wait I just made up that last line)

 

THE FACTS: Obama has had a long relationship with Bill Ayers that began when he first considered running for office.  Obama and Ayers had a working relationship, a close working relationship that included board meetings.  Ayers was instrumental in gaining the millions of dollars for the Annenberg Challenge. He was the founder of the Woods Foundation, and he wanted Obama in charge. They share a philosophy.  That philosophy, that worldview, is what is important.

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Like Father, Like Son

By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Monday, August 18, 2008 4:20 PM PT

Election '08: Barack Obama's economic blueprint sounds like one his communist father tried to foist on Kenya 40 years ago, with massive taxes and succor shrouded as "investments."

IBD Series: The Audacity Of Socialism  (Subscription only)

 

As a Nairobi bureaucrat, Barack Hussein Obama Sr. advised the pro-Western Kenyan government there to "redistribute" income through higher taxes. He also demonized corporations and called for massive government "investment" in social programs.

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     But decades later, in a new preface, the Nobel Prize winner wrote that "socialism has come to mean chiefly the extensive redistribution of incomes through taxation and the institutions of the welfare state." (Emphasis mine). Yes, that’s Obama’s economic plan.
   He concluded that even this softer socialism means reduced economic liberties, opportunities and living standards for all.

   Almost every modern-day invention, from lifesaving drugs to computer software, was inspired by profit, not public welfare. Yet everyone shares in the greater efficiencies, cost savings, life expectancies and job opportunities created by the inspiration and perspiration of money-hungry individuals.
   No system in history has created more wealth, per capita, over a shorter time than unbridled American capitalism.

   The left wrongly asserts that unregulated capitalism caused the financial crisis; in fact, government overregulation of banks distorted market incentives and corrupted capitalism.
   Wielding a socialist-inspired cudgel called the Community Reinvestment Act, government forced banks to make loans to uncreditworthy minorities who couldn’t repay them.

 "The problems of poverty and racism, the uninsured and the unemployed are . . . rooted in societal indifference and individual callousness — the desire among those at the top of the social ladder to maintain their wealth and status whatever the cost," Obama wrote in his 2006 autobiography. "Solving these problems will require changes in government policy."
   In other words, people get rich on the backs of the poor, even take from the poor. It’s therefore up to the state to take from the rich and give to the poor. In a feudal or colonial society, such a sentiment might be noble. But capitalism is a system in which one person lives well and another person lives better.

     Obama denies having socialist designs. But it’s no coincidence he virtually always votes with socialist pal Bernie Sanders, as the two most liberal members of the Senate.
   Nor is it a coincidence that nearly all of Obama’s mentors and close advisers supported Marxism, including: James Cone, Dwight Hopkins, Jeremiah Wright, Frank Marshall Davis, Jim Wallis, John McKnight, Cornel West and William Ayers.
   It’s also no coincidence that Obama devoted his first memoir to the memory of his late father, a communist, who proposed massive taxes and redistribution of income in Kenya. 
   "What is more important is to find means by which we can redistribute our economic gains to the benefit of all," wrote Barack Hussein Obama Sr., a Harvard-educated economist, in a 1965 policy paper. "This is the government’s obligation." 

If Obama wins, he can claim a national mandate for his socialist agenda. If he gets a filibuster-proof majority of Democrats in the Senate, he might get major planks in that radical agenda passed in the first 100 days. It’s shaping up as a battle between those who create wealth and those who loot it.

No one likes to see people lose their homes when housing prices fall and they can't afford to pay their mortgages; nor does any one of us enjoy watching banks go belly-up for making subprime loans without enough equity. But the taxpayers had nothing to do with either side of the mortgage transaction. If the house's value had appreciated, believe you me the overleveraged homeowner and the overly aggressive bank would never have shared their gain with taxpayers. Housing price declines and their consequences are signals to the market to stop building so many houses, pure and simple.

But here's the rub. Now enter the government and the prospects of a kinder and gentler economy. To alleviate the obvious hardships to both homeowners and banks, the government commits to buy mortgages and inject capital into banks, which on the face of it seems like a very nice thing to do. But unfortunately in this world there is no tooth fairy. And the government doesn't create anything; it just redistributes. Whenever the government bails someone out of trouble, they always put someone into trouble, plus of course a toll for the troll. Every $100 billion in bailout requires at least $130 billion in taxes, where the $30 billion extra is the cost of getting government involved.

Bill Clinton and Alan Greenspan added their efforts to strengthen what had begun under President Reagan. President Clinton signed into law welfare reform, so people actually have to look for a job before being eligible for welfare. He ended the "retirement test" for Social Security benefits (a huge tax cut for elderly workers), pushed the North American Free Trade Agreement through Congress against his union supporters and many of his own party members, signed the largest capital gains tax cut ever (which exempted owner-occupied homes from capital gains taxes), and finally reduced government spending as a share of GDP by an amazing three percentage points (more than the next four best presidents combined). The stock market loved Mr. Clinton as it had loved Reagan, and for good reasons.

The stock market is obviously no fan of second-term George W. Bush, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Ben Bernanke, Barack Obama or John McCain, and again for good reasons. (Emphasis mine)

These issues aren't Republican or Democrat, left or right, liberal or conservative. They are simply economics, and wish as you might, bad economics will sink any economy no matter how much they believe this time things are different. They aren't.

The Patriot Post

Founders' Quote Daily

"A good government implies two things; first, fidelity to the objects of the government; secondly, a knowledge of the means, by which those objects can be best attained."

~~Joseph Story (Commentaries on the Constitution, 1833)

Reference: Story, Commentaries on the Constitution, 206