Daily Archives: 9 October 2012

Lies of my President, Part 7

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This is Part 7 of my series on the lies told by Democratic Presidential Candidate Barack Obama in the nearly four years in which he’s been in office.  As I said earlier, I’m not concerned with his broken campaign promises so much as I am with his dishonesty while in office.

Recall Obama’s promise of the most open and transparent administration in history.  This is how he’s carried out that “promise.”

Here’s secret collusion between the (publicly) hated health-care industry and the White House underlying the development of Obamacare.  These emails were sent in early/mid-June of 2009:

From: Jeffrey Kindler [Pfizer CEO]

To: Billy Tauzin [PhRMA lobbyist]

Billy—Sounds like you had very valuable conversations with [REDACTED]. They sound as though they both went quite well and that you established our key deal points that are, to some extent, as important as the total dollars. Thanks so much for doing that.

An ideal end game here would be a joint meeting to confirm any deal that we work out in a meeting with us and the principals ([White House Chief of Staff Rahm] Emanuel, [REDACTED]) early next week. Whether a deal fully sticks or not, we can’t be sure, but I for one would like to look the other side in the eye and shake their hand on whatever deal we work out. Jeff

From: Jeffrey Kindler

To: Billy Tauzin

Billy: As you know, yesterday’s discussion was premised on our understanding, as you informed the Board, that, given our willingness to work within the indicated range, the President would not, in fact, put Part D [the Medicare prescription drug plan] in play or otherwise offer new pharma pay-fors in tomorrow’s radio address. We need to confirm this inasmuch as it will completely undermine what we’re trying to do here if he, in fact, does say those kinds of things.

If this is not clear, I would strongly encourage you to engage personally on this with [REDACTED] and possibly others. Based on Bryant’s report yesterday, it does appear that [REDACTED] could, in fact, be helpful. Jeff

There’s lots more here.

These emails took a trade group’s efforts to expose, as the White House refused to cooperate with the House’s Energy and Commerce Committee attempts to review Obamacare’s development history.  The Wall Street Journal went on:

As a White House staffer put it in May 2009, “Rahm’s calling Nancy-Ann and knows Billy is going to talk to Nancy-Ann tonight. Rahm will make it clear that PhRMA needs a direct line of communication, separate and apart from any coalition.”  Nancy-Ann is Nancy-Ann DeParle, the White House health reform director, and Rahm is, of course, Rahm.

Final development of the bill was done behind the locked-doors of the back offices of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s (D, NV) Senate office suite, and the Senate vote itself occurred after the 2,000 page bill had been on the Congress’ Web site for public perusal for just 72 hours.  The bill itself was so secret that nearly all of the Congressmen voting were utterly ignorant of the bill’s contents.

And the House’s attempts to investigate the Obama DoJ’s Fast and Furious fiasco?  I’ve written about it here, here, and here (which post describes, briefly, other of Obama’s attempts to block transparency), among other posts.  This “openness” has culminated in Obama’s assertion of Executive Privilege to block responses to subpoenas for the information issued by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

The only thing transparent here is Obama’s dishonesty.

Blasts from the Past

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This is what FDR’s Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau wrote in his diary in the depths of the Great Depression after years of explosive spending, rapidly increasing debt, enormously high unemployment, rising taxes and tax rates, and drastic intrusion of government controls into our economy:

We have tried spending money.  We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work.  I want to see this country prosper.  I want to see people get a job.  I want to see people get enough to eat.  We have never made good on our promises.  I say after eight years of this administration, we have just as much unemployment as when we started.  And enormous debt to boot.

Although slow to (re)learn the lesson, Morgenthau wasn’t the first to articulate the failure of government spending to accomplish much of anything good.  Ludwig von Mises had some remarks on the matter, too.

When the government spends more, the public spends less.  Public works are not accomplished by the miraculous power of a magic wand.  They are paid for by funds taken away from the citizens.

And

It is obviously futile to attempt to eliminate unemployment by embarking upon a program of public works that would otherwise not have been undertaken.  The necessary resources for such projects must be withdrawn by taxes or loans from the application they would otherwise have found.  Unemployment in one industry can, in this way, be mitigated only to the extent that it is increased in another.

And

Government spending cannot create additional jobs.  If the government provides the funds required by taxing the citizens or by borrowing from the public, it abolishes on the one hand as many jobs as it creates on the other.

And

A policy of deficit spending saps the very foundation of all interpersonal relations and contracts.  It frustrates all kinds of savings, social security benefits and pensions.

Now contrast that with what the present administration has done, and the wonderful effects that explosive spending, rapidly increasing debt, enormously high unemployment, the constant threat of rising taxes and tax rates, and drastic intrusion of government controls into our economy have had on our economy and on jobs for Americans.