Reality Check
Filed under: National Party Politics, Presidential Watch, Social Commentary, U.S. Economics
For the first time in decades, observing our politicians in Washington dealing with the recent raising of the debt ceiling, Americans received a solid dose of reality. And you know what, they kind of like it.
Americans, unlike Europeans, don’t hide themselves under the covers when faced with a crisis. The problem is our politicians have no faith in the American people and do everything they can to keep them from the truth. The debt ceiling crisis has become a corker and with the introduction of the Tea Party caucus in the House of Representatives there was little our politicians could do, Democrats or Republicans, to keep this one under the hood.
With a 9.2% unemployment rate, a new health care plan passed by Congress and signed by the President which represents 16% of our GDP and now a debt ceiling that has to be lifted by 2.5 trillion dollars to pay America’s ongoing bills, 40% of which is interest on our loans, Americans are stinking mad.
The media tried to make raising the debt ceiling into high drama. But Congress knew from the very beginning that there was little choice in getting the debt ceiling lifted otherwise they wouldn’t be re-elected in 2012. Becoming one of the unemployed at this particular time is certainly enough to focus a congressman’s mind. America is through the woods for the moment. But the next big truth is going to be that the only way we are going to reduce spending is tackling that big bugaboo, entitlements, you know, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. And that’s what the 2012 election for president and Congress is going to be about. And those politicians better be telling the truth because Americans are waiting for them with pitch forks and tar and feather down the road.
Obama Selling NYSE
Filed under: International Reflections, National Party Politics, Presidential Watch, Social Commentary
Yesterday, President Obama sent over to the House of Representatives his 2012 budget. The budget is based on the Socialist belief that as long as you keep providing the American people with benefits, no matter the consequences, they won’t squeal.
This is Roger Madon and this is what I think.
President Obama’s 2012 budget anticipates serious increases in taxes over the next 10 years but does not address the entitlements of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. So according to the Obama budget by year 2020 the American people will for the first time address how we are going to deal with 60% of current spending. Does this bore you? Well that’s exactly what President Obama wants to do. His hope is that after listening to him and the Republicans in the House the American people will finally throw up their hands and turn to more mundane matters, like how to find a job. The trouble is that President Obama’s budget is directly tied to unemployment. As long as his theory of government is to impose more taxes on individuals and companies the chances of reducing unemployment become less.
It wasn’t by coincidence that yesterday it was also announced that a German bank was considering purchasing the NYSE. Yes, the NYSE, the symbol of America’s financial prowess is being purchased by a company whose country we happened to have beaten to a pulp 55 years ago. You would think this is a wake-up call to all Americans that we better start dealing with our fiscal problems. President Obama, the Socialist is betting otherwise.
This is Roger Madon and that’s what I think.
Obama’s Socialism
Last week on my daily live show one of my callers took strong exception to the fact that I referred to President Obama as a Socialist. What the caller failed to appreciate is that by me referring to President Obama as a Socialist I was referring to him as something less sinister.
This is Roger Madon and this is what I think.
As I do not love humanity without knowing its vises, I do not love the truth without fearing it. If I were certain that President Obama was a Socialist I would breathe a lot easier. Allow me the drug of self-delusion. Allow me to believe that President Obama is a Socialist or a Statist; one who believes government is the panacea against alleged corporate greed or corporate villainy. Allow me to dream that President Obama is a Socialist rather than awake and know that behind that soaring rhetoric lay something a lot more menacing.
If the American people did not rise up last November and remove one chamber of Congress from the support of President Obama, namely the House of Representatives, do Americans, Republican or Democrat, actually believe that President Obama in his State of the Union speech would have been as contrite, willing to compromise with Republicans, speak about American exceptionalism with admiration or refer to the beauty of democracy? Would he have inferred in that speech that his craven desire for government control had been satiated? Not on your life.
And it’s not President Obama of whom I am concerned , who in truth may be only nothing more than a benign Socialist, but the groups and institutions with which he has been associated ever since his early days at Columbia University such as the Marxist Midwest Academy, Jeremiah Wright’s Trinity United Church of Christ or the Marxist front group the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, otherwise known as ACORN. These are not benign institutions but rather anti-American, anti-capitalist and yes even perhaps anti-Semitic.
Over the next 2 years leading into the 2012 presidential election, as these associations become more widely known by the American people and known to be linked to President Obama he will have to do more than provide soaring and elegant rhetoric to persuade the American people that he is nothing more than a garden variety, benign, European Socialist.
This is Roger Madon and that’s what I think.
Hard Times Ahead For Socialist Left
Filed under: National Party Politics, Presidential Watch, Social Commentary
As Republicans take over the House of Representatives in Washington and many of the state capitals and legislatures throughout the country the American people will be witnessing fundamental changes in government policy on a scale that they haven’t experienced since the 1930’s. But are the American people prepared to for the resulting pushback of the Socialist/Democrat minority?
This is Roger Madon and this is what I think.
Already there is talk of a government shutdown when the issue of expanding the debt ceiling soon comes before this Congressional session. The last time this threat of a government shutdown occurred was in 1994. But then the American people abandoned the Republicans and blamed them for being unnecessarily obstinate and churlish. President Clinton at the time was thought to be a one term president, especially after a similar Republican takeover of Congress. But the American people blinked, Republicans failed to meet the budget challenge and President Clinton was re-elected in 1996. Will this time be any different? I think it will.
This time Socialist/Democrats will be fighting not only against Republicans but against an American people who believe they have been hoodwinked. In 2008 the American people thought they were voting against the unwillingness of the ruling party, the Republicans, to address some very serious issues facing the country: health care, social security and an ever mounting overpowering debt. To top it off the American people were furious with a government mortgage policy, which they blamed on the incumbent party that literally brought our economy to a standstill. The policies and legislation of the 111th Congress, totally controlled by the Socialist wing of the Democratic Party along and a Socialist and inexperienced president expanded the countries debt trillions of dollars and with no plan to reduce it. Deficits are now predicted as far as the eye can see. This time Republicans will have, as Sarah Palin would say, “Momma Grisly” on their side.
This is Roger Madon and that’s what I think.
Socialism, NO!
Filed under: National Party Politics, Presidential Watch, Social Commentary, U.S. Economics
There is little evidence that President Barack Hussein Obama was born outside the borders of the United States. But there seems to be no doubt that he is a committed socialist.
This is Roger Madon and this is what I think.
The mid-term campaign is finally over and the American electorate, in its infinite wisdom, cauterized the bleeding of the body politic by placing control of the House of Representatives into the hands of the much maligned Republican Party. But the victory was so overwhelming that the election bean counters attribute it to the utter unqualified dissatisfaction with the President.
If there is anything that has characterized the first two years of the Obama administration it is the promotion and passage of Federal legislation that has placed the government at the center of economic activity in America. The first of these pieces of legislation was the Toxic Asset Relief Program, TARP. Though the final cost to the taxpayer may be upwards of 30 billion dollars, which in the subsequent scheme of things is not extraordinary, the concept of the Federal government controlling the banking system was finalized with the passage of the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act the most sweeping change to financial regulation in the United States since the Great Depression and represents a paradigm shift in the American financial regulatory environment affecting all Federal financial regulatory agencies and affecting almost every aspect of the nation’s financial services industry. Add to this the Health Care Reform Act, student loan lending taken from the banks and placed under the control of the Federal government, the Federal government’s purchase of 2 of the 3 largest car manufacturers in the United States, the extension of unemployment benefits to nearly two full years and the President’s demand that benefits be extended even further and perhaps permanently, a budget deficit of 1.3 trillion dollars and lastly a stimulus package of nearly one trillion dollars.
In commenting on this government takeover Republican Senator Mitch McConnell, minority leader of the Senate, characterized the results of the last election as a “restraining order.” The American people may not appreciate the subtleties of the term Socialism but based upon Senator McConnell’s statement Obama will be doing a “perp walk” right into the 2012 presidential election.
This is Roger Madon and that’s what I think.
What Is In The Water In Washington?
Filed under: Local Party Politics, National Party Politics, Social Commentary, State Politics
Yesterday the American people witnessed the sad ending of the long and impressive political career of 4 decades of Representative Charles Bernard Rangel, former chairman of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee when he walked out of the House ethics panel hoping that this would delay the ultimate reckoning for his improper and perhaps even unlawful behavior.
This is Roger Madon and this is what I think.
By now most of us know the allegations, allegations which yesterday the ethics panel found to be true: that Charles Rangel failed to report assets, failed to pay taxes on rental income from a vacation property, unlawfully occupied 4 rent controlled apartments in New York City and to which he was entitled to occupy none, misused congressional stationery to raise money for a college center named in his honor, and the list goes on.
Charlie Rangel burst upon the political scene in 1971 serving as a U.S. Representative of the 15th Congressional District which included Harlem, where he was born. I remember him well in those halcyon days. He was a handsome, articulate and by all accounts one of the most effective representatives for his district and for the City of New York. He was the ultimate peripatetic politician always being in the right place at the right time. From the very beginning of his career due to his incredible good looks and grace, and serving his Harlem constituents in the communications capital of the world, TV journalists, in particular, always sought him out for his opinion about whatever was the subject that engaged New Yorkers or America at that moment in time.
By dint of his ambition, his intelligence and political acumen he attained perhaps the most powerful position in the House of Representatives, the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, the committee that holds sway over how and to what extent the American people are to be taxed. The ancient Greeks expressed tragedy through fate or a deep flaw in one’s character. Modern tragedy is a lot simpler. It looks to moral weakness.
However the House ethics committee deals with Charlie Rangel, it is another sad day for America since he represents just one more example of a politician having gone bad.
This is Roger Madon and that’s what I think.
God Bless America
Filed under: Elections, Immigration, National Party Politics, Social Commentary
Every American has a story has to how it happened that their family floated up upon these shores and became Americans. It seems after every election winning candidates are impelled to tell their story and last Tuesday, election night, was no different, except that we witnessed two grown men weep in the telling.
This is Roger Madon and this is what I think.
Last election night John Boehner and Marco Rubio, before a group of each of their supporters gave their acceptance speech for their well-earned victory. For John Boehner it was his re-election to the House of Representatives and due to the results of the election nationwide it was his ascension to Speaker of the House. For Marco Rubio it was his election to the U.S. Senate. Each began with the perfunctory “thank you” to their supporters, described the ideology as why they felt compelled to run for public office but then, as is so often the case, began to describe their family history and how that history had such a profound affect upon their ideology and what it meant to being an American to them and their families.
As John Boehner began to recite his family story of his father being a bartender he began to weep and couldn’t continue. He couldn’t tell us why because while in the telling he probably didn’t quite understand it himself. But we did. Here he was, addressing the nation on national television, Speaker of the House, elect, third most powerful person in America and his father was a bartender. It’s just another American story….but it was his.
Marco Rubio’s voice began to crack when he began to tell how his family left Cuba after the Castro takeover. He told the story of how his father’s aspirations were all but destroyed by coming here but that his father resolved to make certain that his children would take full advantage of the opportunities that America offered to those who were willing to work for them.
Each of us have heard these stories so very often at different times and different circumstances but we as Americans never tire of them. In fact we relish their telling and demand to hear them over and over again. And the reason is simple: Each of those stories, no matter how different they are in nationality, or race or religion is related to our own story of how we also became Americans. God bless America.
This is Roger Madon and that’s what I think.
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