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If you thought
Obama’s vote-buying
“jobs” scheme was
political bilge when he announced
it last week, the plan sounds even less
appealing now that we know how he plans to pay for it. For
starters, in search of revenues, the president has returned yet again to his cherished notion that anyone making
more than $200,000 is
“rich” – i.e., in the same category as leftist envy-mongers put hedge fund managers and oil and gas companies. Reportedly, tax breaks for all who fall in those categories, and in many others from which
the government is already extracting more than 90% of its revenues, would be eliminated
in order to offset Obamajobs’
supposed $467 billion cost. Is it
possible that when the President went to war with Republicans
earlier this summer over raising the debt limit, he
completely missed the key point of the discussion – i.e., that new taxes were off the
table? Op-ed
supporters will undoubtedly
claim there are no new taxes involved
in the jobs proposal, only
the elimination of existing
tax breaks.
This is an argument we
thought Obama lost when he tried
to roll back tax-breaks to pre-Bush
II levels earlier in his term. Say this for
the man: Like the die-hard disciple of hard-left rabble-rouser Saul Alinsky that he is, Barack Obama never gives up. We should have realized as much when he rammed
health care legislation
down our throats even though most
Americans indicated they strongly opposed – still oppose
– it.
Concerning the jobs scheme, who could
possibly believe that the $467 billion would be well spent. Outside the Keynesian lunatic fringe championed by Paul Krugman, we read
mainly about the epic sums expended on each new job associated with Federal handouts. At best, these jobs routinely seem to cost taxpayers many hundreds of thousands of dollars apiece, especially when the dollars are
thrown at
“green” projects and firms. Thus do we read in a report prepared by the State of Illinois that
the U.S. was eager to throw $8 million at developers for every wind job reported. This particular giveaway falls under Section 1603 of the
stimulus bill, but it is chump change compared to the
$535 million Uncle Sam gave solar-energy
firm Solyndra. The firm recently declared bankruptcy and is under criminal
investigation by the FBI, but the most disturbing part of the story -- more disturbing,
even than that Solyndra’s founders were big Obama campaign supporters
-- is that the Department of Energy had been allowed to sit in on the company’s board meetings as it went broke. Under the circumstances,
in the unlikely event Obamajobs is enacted, taxpayers will probably get far better value for their $467 billion if the recipients’
business cards are drawn from a fish bowl
or selected at random from the Yellow Pages.
Rick Ackerman
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