Obama's Politics of Fear

Forget the message of hope Barack Obama preached during his campaign for the presidency. He's in the White House now, which means he can let his true colors begin to show. So, it was no surprise when he used his first press conference to spread a message of fear.

And what a dismal picture he painted. People can't pay their bills. They aren't spending, and businesses are being forced to lay off workers as a result. He drew attention to the fact that last month we lost 598,000 jobs (or 500 million, according to Nancy Pelosi). Everywhere you look it's doom and gloom.

But wait...there may be hope for the economy after all. Why not let the government kiss it and make it better? The president didn't mince words, saying that "at this particular moment, with the private sector so weakened by this recession, the federal government is the only entity left with the resources to jolt our economy back to life." Oh, yay. We're saved.

Interestingly, no mention was made about what these "resources" are or where the nearly $1 trillion will come from to pay for this pork-filled spending package. That's because the federal government has no resources of its own. It produces nothing. It must borrow the money from foreign sources and increase the national debt, print more money and further devalue the dollar, or simply steal it from productive citizens, which defeats the whole purpose of trying to get people to consume more.

The fact of the matter is that this "stimulus" package is nothing more than a wealth redistribution scheme, the largest in our nation's history. But it will sell because people are gullible when they're afraid.

Just as Dubya frightened people into thinking that it was a good idea to send teenage girls overseas to keep us safe from the Axis of Evil, Obama is scaring people into believing that spending money we don't have (i.e. doing exactly what got us into this mess in the first place) will actually prevent economic collapse. Either our new president is pitifully ignorant, or he thinks we are. But one thing is certain: you can count on him exploiting our fears for as long as he can.