Fact. vs. Fear Itself >>

“After all there is an element in the readjustment of our financial system more important than currency, more important than gold, and that is the confidence of the people. Confidence and courage are the essentials of success in carrying out our plan. You people must have faith; you must not be stampeded by rumors or guesses. Let us unite in banishing fear. We have provided the machinery to restore our financial system; it is up to you to support and make it work.

It is your problem no less than it is mine. Together we cannot fail.”

-Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Fireside Chat of March 12, 1933.

That is an excerpt from a dead age of politics. One of the keystone themes in the speeches given by Roosevelt to his general public was to laud the resilience, the fundamental strength, education, bravery, and family fortitude underpinning the American Economy. And while his replies to these issues were to instate cumbersome vestiges that still exist today with little change to them, he did not fearmonger on the nation’s domestic health.

Roosevelt’s decade was undoubtedly worse, with a dust bowl, massive breadlines, suicide, epic vagrancy, 29% unemployment compared to today’s 6%, the specter of expanding empires in the Pacific and Atlantic, and a shared spiritual funk that dismissed the Roaring 20s like a forgotten memory. But there is something about being presidential that tells the panicked flock that everything is going to be alright. Gandalf did it for the hobbits, Alexander for the Macedonians, and good leaders do it for all their people in dark times, by soothing their fears and calming their tensions. They recognize the harshness and reality of their surroundings, but see the value of a stiff upper lip. When a general whimpers and waxes cowardly in front of his men, the more likely they are to rout and run from the onslaught. On the other hand, good commanders find their men in impossible situations, refrain from telling them the odds that are already obvious, and tell them the unobvious part that is right, good, and redeeming.

Many fools have compared McCain’s comments to that of President Hoover’s, who appeared to the public as aloof during the crisis. But this is an odd accusation since Barack Obama post-haste jetted off to Beverly Hills, CA to party with Barbara Streisand at a $30,000 a plate dinner. I’m sure Obama’s private Gulfstream, chock-full of hope and mimosa, runs on ethanol. Conversely, McCain and Palin sat down that evening at a local Ohio diner. “No wait a second Drake!” says Youtube Obama cultist on student loan, “It was just $28,500, and you exaggerated the dollar amount!!!”

Sorry. My bad. You can now return to your regularly scheduled reefer. Silly of me to judge a person by the substance of their company.

Here is Obama’s New, New Deal:

• President Bush provided tax cuts to the average family of $40,000 annual household income of about $1,500 – $1,600. He doubled the child tax credit and expanded deductions. Obama wants to roll this back, yet at the same time, replace it with a paltry $1,000 household check. In car sales, they call that “bait and switch.”Obama tells voters to expect a full grand back, but remains vacillating and unspecific on letting the Bush tax cuts expire. In one instance, he suggested waiting to retire the Bush tax cut to let the economy recover. Geez Louise! A revealing admission about what he himself knows about the effects of taxes.

• Increase the capital gains tax…in a currently capital-strapped economy. Brilliant. That will improve investor confidence. I’m sure that about 65% of Americans with interest bearing savings don’t need interest THAT much.

• Pick an arbitrary annual $250,000 income threshold that defines every tax plan of the DNC. Call anyone above it “rich,” and anyone below it “poor.” For a man who brags nuanced positions, this evidences a very class-based and simplistic view of the economic mosaic. Alive/dead, black/white, rich/poor, above/below $250,000. For instance: would a business owner that grosses $253,000 annually before expenses…would that person be classified as “rich” if all they are really netting is $65,000 after operating costs? What kind of work incentives are set in motion here? And how does this highlight hat Senator Joe Biden calls “the dignity of work?” And how, pray tell, does it encourage it?

• Hundreds of billions in new government spending programs in spite of taxpayers having to shoulder AIG.

Hoover took some serious intervention measures that have actually been credited to deepening the depression, such as the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act in 1930. This act raised tariffs on imports and sparked a global trade war that deepened the Great Depression, according to many economists. Similarly, Obama has grilled NAFTA and has threatened to unilaterally renegotiate it. During the Great Depression, a revenue-strapped federal government sought more money to finance itself, and under the Revenue Act of 1932, Hoover and a panicked Congress passed a vast tax hike across the board on corporate and income tax raising the top rates from 25% to 63%. Obama has stutteringly vowed to raise taxes across the board as well. Kicking an economy during hard times is a bad idea, no question about it. Roosevelt did take more action, but at the same time he also expanded the size and scope of government beyond its means, leaving future generations to remain encumbered by Neolithic bureaucracies that were intended as a one-time deal. Comparing histories, Obama congeals the worst ideas of both Hoover and Roosevelt; doing nothing to allay America’s fears and simultaneously expanding the size of government to manifold areas of life. Obama is nothing like the giants to whom he fancies himself akin.

And on a sidenote, Obama, swollen egotist, fancies himself a modern equivalent of Abraham Lincoln, a Republican who presided over vast industrialization, huge military buildup, suspension of habeus corpus, dearth in the South due to dying industries that he allowed to die, and a low public approval rating.

Step back from economic policies for a moment and look at this career senator, Joe Biden, and contrast his shrill panic-sowing to the steady and calming voice of Governor and President Roosevelt. Inasmuch as their campaign is based upon “hope,” Obama/Biden sure hold a grim vision for an America without their micromanaging it. And for a campaign that has prays for defeat in Iraq to make a political point, they pray for the same catastrophe domestically so that they can wheel and attribute it to Bush (despite the fact that Bush warned them about this broken risk oversight in 2003, and Financial Services Committee Ranking Member Barney Frank dismissed the urges as nonsense).

Behold the politics of fear that they once criticized, and think of Roosevelt’s calm to help you recover. >>

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V544QfumwUY