Another War They're Willing to Lose

Forty-nine years have elapsed since President Lyndon Johnson declared War on Poverty. In that time, government at all levels in the United States has spent nearly twenty trillion dollars on means-tested welfare (we'll leave Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid for another time) or, in other terms, roughly three times the cost of all the real wars we've fought in our history. Between Fiscal Years 1989-2008, spending on means-tested welfare increased 292%, more than Social Security, Medicare and education, and more than double what was spent on national defense. In 2010 alone, U.S. outlays for means-tested welfare amounted to $881.2 billion; if simply converted to cash and distributed, it was more than twice what was required to bring every poor person in America out of poverty, so with such gargantuan sums having been spent, why is even one person still collecting welfare? Having denuded the national treasury for the purpose of eliminating poverty, why does poverty still exist? Indeed, why is it getting worse?

It is an article of religious faith among the Left that every human problem can be solved with a sufficient amount of money. Drought, famine, floods, hunger, disease, crime, war and yes, poverty, can all be overcome and thrown into the dumpster of history if we only write a big-enough check, and the fact that we have already spent Brobdingnagian heaps of treasure and failed in our task does not invalidate this article or deter the Left from pursuing it. Usually, we would describe such behavior as irrational but irrationality runs into other Leftist principles like a) The nobility of the goal outweighs failing to achieve it; and b) The inherent intellectual and moral superiority of liberals. They believe in their souls that if they spend just a little bit more, Utopia will descend from the heavens (New Jerusalem is just for Christians so that can't do) and a new Golden Age will ensue. The fact that poverty in America expands as welfare spending rises is blithely ignored as a statistical anomaly, not as an effect, as is the naked fact that after forty-nine years, seventy-nine Federal programs and trillions of dollars, poverty still exists: Welfare spending has increased 50% since Bill Clinton announced that we were "ending welfare as we know it." So why can't we try something else?

- ...because we know it will work. The Republican-led reforms enacted in the Nineties at the state and Federal levels grossly reduced the welfare rolls, boosted employment and the standard of living for those affected, increased home ownership and tax revenues and most importantly, freed hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of people from the grip of government dependency. That makes welfare reform anathema to the Left, that explains why Priest-King arbitrarily weakened the provision in the Welfare Reform Act of 1996 for welfare recipients to work, that is why he plans to increase means-tested welfare spending to 6% of GDP by 2022, or $1.57 trillion per year. Beyond the public displays of compassion, the appeals to our common humanity, the emotional handwringing over the poor and the weak, the Left desires control. The Left will tolerate all manner of vice at a personal level as long as they can control everything else. Medical care, housing, education, transportation, employment, capital, Internet access, the size of your soft drink and when you will die are all legitimate objects of control for the Left. If millions of people depend on government for their very existence, then they will more easily submit to the government yoke and the proof is found in Priest-King's victories in 2008 and 2012. This is the state for which the Left has labored these past eighty years, the exchange of American drive and self-reliance for a breadline, but is this really the best we can expect? With the ascendance of the welfare state, our inner cities and the families who live there have been destroyed. Two generations of children have grown up without fathers or have been shot during gang violence, single mothers have struggled to live on food stamps, public schools have crumbled, illiteracy, drug addiction, alcoholism, teen pregnancy, homelessness, STD's and unemployment have climbed as a mammoth government swallows everything in its path, including hope. Is this really the new American Dream?

Of course not. We're better than this. Self-reliant, independent people don't need big government or the Democrat Party so I would encourage my fellow citizens, now deluded by Leftist propaganda, to throw off their chains, vote the bums out in 2014 and pass a better legacy to their children than a soup spoon.

Barack Obama Goes to the Bank

It is a typical early Spring day in the nation’s capital when President Barack Hussein Obama, Priest-King of the Imperial Temple and Guardian of the Sacred Fire, walks into his neighborhood bank.

Neighborhood Bank Guy: Good morning, Barack! How very nice of you to stop by to see us.  We trust that Michelle and the girls are well?

Priest-King: They’re fine, thanks for asking, and thanks for seeing me, too, but I do have to insist that you not call me Barack.  I’ve won two Presidential elections and the Nobel Peace Prize and I just can’t have ordinary people getting so familiar with me.  I’m sure you understand.

Neighborhood Bank Guy (somewhat chagrined): Uh, I don’t think I do.  You’ve been coming here regularly for over four years and we’ve loaned you a colossal amount of money, so I would think that a certain amount of familiarity would be expected, but I don’t want to upset you.  What if I called you ‘Mr. President’ instead?  How would that sound?

Priest-King: Very pedestrian.  You may call me Your Supreme Loftiness, Your Imperial Majesty or, if you must, simply Your Majesty.  Any of those would be fine.

Neighborhood Bank Guy: Well, all right, ahem, Your Majesty, what can we do for you today?

Priest-King: I wanted to come in because there’s something wrong with my credit card again.  I tried to use it last night to buy food stamps for 21 million illegal immigrants and it was declined.  It was very embarrassing.  Michelle was appalled.

Neighborhood Bank Guy (typing on his computer): I can see how awkward that would be.  Let’s have a look at your account and see what the problem is.  Okay, here we are, Barack Hussein Obama, currently residing at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, D.C., married, two children, employed in your current position since 2009, etc.  Oh.  Oh my, there’s our problem.  Oh, goodness.

Priest-King: What is it?  What’s the problem?  Is it a Republican plot?

Neighborhood Bank Guy (turning the computer monitor so Priest-King can see it): You see here, Barack, er, Your Majesty, the problem is that you’ve reached your credit limit.  That’s whay your card was declined.  You’re out of money, basically.

Priest-King: That’s impossible.  I had income of over $2.2 trillion last year and I run the richest country on the face of the earth.  How could I be out of money?  That’s preposterous.

Neighborhood Bank Guy:  I know I’ve explained this to you before but I’m still not sure you understand how banking works.  You keep referring to the Federal government’s income as well as the wealth of the entire nation as if it were your own and it’s not.

Priest-King (blinking his eyes in mild disbelief): Get out!

Neighborhood Bank Guy: No, I’m serious.  Your friends and neighbors work hard, pay their bills and buy groceries and if they have any money left over, they save their money here at the bank and we protect it for them.  We also loan their money at interest to folks who want to buy a house or a car or to go to college or in your case, to buy food stamps for 21 million people who are living here illegally.  You may have had a very high income last year but when you spend it all and you want to spend more, we have to borrow money from your neighbors to give to you, to increase your credit limit and that increases the risk to their money.  That’s why we have to put limits on your card, otherwise you’d spend all your money and theirs, too, and we wouldn’t be doing our job as good, professional bankers, diligently protecting our customers’ interests.

Priest-King: Blah, blah, blah, more pinstriped Wall Street doubletalk.  I’ve heard it all before and it still doesn’t make any sense to me.  Just give me some more money and I’ll be on my way.  I have a golf date with Tiger Woods in Florida this afternoon and I don’t want to keep him waiting.

Neighborhood Bank Guy: Your Majesty, I want to help you but it’s essential that we understand each other.  You may believe that all of your expenses are legitimate but every time you ask for a loan, you are putting your neighbors at very high financial risk.  Your account indicates that you’ve borrowed over $6 trillion in only four years and haven’t paid one penny of that back.  That money represents your neighbors’ life savings, their security for retirement, maybe college education for their grandkids and if they lose it, they could be ruined.  Do you have any plan for repaying the money we’ve loaned you?  We have to know how you’re going to do that before we loan you any more.

Priest-King: This is really beneath me.  You want me to explain how I’m going to pay back the money I’ve so graciously taken off your hands?  Don’t you know already?  I’m using it to grow the economy!  By taking money out of the private sector and channeling it through the government, I’m building an economic juggernaut.  When my policies really kick in, the economy will take off like a blowtorch and then I’ll be able to pay back every dollar.  Paul Krugman says so, and for God’s sake, any college professor in any faculty lounge on any campus in America could tell you the same thing.  I can tell you never went to Harvard.

Neighborhood Bank Guy (shifting in his seat, clearly insulted): Your Majesty, no, I didn’t go to Harvard, I went to a state university after twenty years in the Army because that’s what I could afford, so you’ll have to explain how this whole thing works to a simple guy like me.  Lay it out for me.

Priest-King: Do you have a teleprompter handy?

Neighborhood Bank Guy:  No, I don’t.

Priest-King: Damn.  I do better when I have a teleprompter.  Maybe I can buy you one before I have to go meet Tiger.  Anyway, I’ll try to explain what I’m doing so a guy at your level can understand it.

Neighborhood Bank Guy (sarcastically):  How kind of you.

Priest-King: Don’t mention it.  I’m always doing things for other people, even greedy, selfish, poorly-educated bloodsuckers like yourself.  So, my plan is actually elegantly simple:  I pay back the money I’ve borrowed and spent by borrowing and spending more money.  It’s ingenious.

Neighborhood Bank Guy:  Uh, it’s something but it’s not ingenious.  How exactly does your borrowing money from private citizens and spending it grow the economy?  All you’re doing is creating more debt and so far, you’ve been a very poor judge of how you’ve spent the money we’ve given you.

Priest-King (offended):  How dare you insult the imperial dignity!  You question my judgment?  Name one expense that you think was illegitimate, if you can.  Go ahead, name one!

Neighborhood Bank Guy:  Well, for starters, you spent $787 billion on a stimulus plan in 2009 that you said would jump-start the economy, that was for “shovel-ready” infrastructure projects, and that was just money thrown to the winds.

Priest-King (crossing his legs and folding his hands in his lap): You talk about that like it was a bad thing.  I saved hundreds of thousands of blue collar union workers who just happen to donate to my campaign and vote Democrat in every election.  That was a big, big positive.

Neighborhood Bank Guy: It was a disaster.  Then you spent money on so-called “green energy” projects that was wasted, billions of dollars just gone.

Priest-King: Oh, come on!  You’re saying that investing in America’s clean energy future was a waste?  What about a terrific company like Solyndra?  What about them?

Neighborhood Bank Guy: Bankrupt.

Priest-King: Solar Trust?

Neighborhood Bank Guy: Bankrupt.

Priest-King:  What about great electric cars like the Chevy Volt and the Fiskar Tesla?

Neighborhood Bank Guy: Dealers can’t move the Volt off their lots and the Tesla turns into a brick when the battery drains.  They’re junk.

Priest-King:  You continue to insult me.  You make it sound like all I do is blow other people’s money on pet projects and my union buddies and I have no intention of paying it back.

Neighborhood Bank Guy:  It sounds like that because it is like that.  You’ve been borrowing over $100 billion a month for over four years and have made zero progress on repaying any of it.  Your business plan is a crackpot scheme cooked up by Ivy League pinheads and beyond having no intention of paying back the money you’ve borrowed, you haven’t the slightest clue of how to do it.  You’ve placed your neighbors in acute financial jeopardy and your only answer is to keep doing what you’ve been doing.

Priest-King (gathering himself but clearly upset):  I appreciate your concern for your fellow members of the proletariat, er, middle class, but you still have not provided the funds I need to reward the illegal immigrants for undermining our sovereignty and my limousine is waiting outside, so if you could do whatever you underlings do to make that happen, I’ll be on my way and we can continue this discussion at a later date.

Neighborhood Bank Guy:  Very well, then.  Please give me your credit card.

Priest-King:  Thank you.  Finally, we’re getting somewhere.  Here it is.

Neighborhood Bank Guy (takes Priest-King’s credit card and reaches into his desk for a pair of scissors):  Thank you very much.  This will only take a moment.

Priest-King (shocked): Stop! What are you doing?  I need that!  Think about the illegals!

Neighborhood Bank Guy:  I’m doing what should have been done a long time ago.  Barack, my customers don’t have the luxury of burning through other people’s money when they’ve burned through their own.  They have to live within their means and it’s high time that you did, too.  No more raising your credit limit, no more raising taxes, no more borrowing from your neighbors and mortgaging their children’s future so you can pay off your political friends, no more living like there’s no tomorrow.  You’re going to live on what you have and you’re going to pay back every nickel you’ve borrowed starting today.  Any questions?

Priest-King (stunned):  Yes.  Where do I go to apply for a credit card?