I finally figured this out. Barack Obama is the Community Organizer-in-Chief. He is taking the inequities, the slights, the unfairness, the spread between wealth and poverty, the choices the rich have but which the poor do not … and he wants to fix that. For everyone.
Sounds good, actually. Who doesn't want to take "your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free" and lift them up?
It is not an issue of taking from someone who has a lot and giving it to someone who has less. It is an issue, in Barack Obama's psyche, of taking everything from someone who has a lot and giving to all to people who have nothing.
I'm not talking about a Prada handbag which sells for $1,500. No one needs a Prada handbag which sells for $1,500. If you've got the money and that's what you want to spend it on, that's fine with me but it better not show up on my Amex.
The Obama people don't think that's OK. They believe that no one needs more than whatever's on sale at Filene's Basement and anything more than that should be confiscated for use by people who can't even afford Filene's.
Yesterday there was a health care summit at the White House. It was one of three "summits" which have been held in Washington over the past two weeks - one on the economy (how's that working out?) one on energy and then the health care square dance yesterday.
The issue as it is formulated in Obama's mind is: How can we have a nation with a gazillion dollar GDP and not guarantee health care for every person? I'm not sure I disagree.
The Constitution guarantees a lawyer for every two-bit crook who holds up a neighborhood convenience store, but is silent on the matter of requiring that every person have access to a health care professional when the need exists.
We are not some poor fifth world nation. We are the United States of America and we should be able to do this. The issue is: How?
I pay nearly $600 a month for my health insurance. Just mine. The Mullings Director of Standards & Practices gets hers through her job. I want my money's worth. I don't mind if some of my $600 goes to help someone who is poor get health care; I DO care if the government decides it is unfair for me to buy better health care than the poor guy and makes me pay $600 per month to get the same level of health care as someone who pays zero.
The housing deal. Within seconds of the President announcing the housing bail-out people began reading the fine print to see if they should stop paying their mortgages so they could qualify for the bailout.
Been paying your mortgage for the last 15 months - or 15 years? Stupid. Your taxes are going to go to help pay for the guy who can't, or doesn't want to, pay his. Why should you live in a house free of fear of foreclosure if your neighbor down the block can't?
By the way, as I understand it, nothing I the housing plan deals with second or third or fourth mortgages which are part and parcel of this mess. People used their house as a piggy bank and mortgage brokers kept refinancing to build the new pool, the playroom, or the home theater because the overall value of the house kept going up.
What about leaving the value of your house IN your house? Nah.
If you wanted a new car you redid the second on your house, used that money to buy a new Mercedes and you could drop your kids off at school in style. You wouldn't want to drop them off in, say, an 11-year-old Land Rover Discovery with 125,000 on the clock, would you?
Now the repo guys have come for your car and the bank is coming for your house and Obama wants me to give up what I've earned, to pay for something you haven't, but want to keep.
This is the world view of the Community Organizer: There are poor people in this neighborhood who have less than they want. There are rich people in the next neighborhood who have more than they need.
If you are a Community Organizer you try and even things out.
If you are the Community Organizer-in-Chief you get to do this on a national scale and that is exactly what Barack Obama is planning to do.
Who is John Galt?