Obama Preparing For Battle

A magician's best friends are distraction and speed, the first required to allow the success of the second.

Barack Obama, on his weekly radio address, said today that he is ready for a fight against opponents of his plan for a new government agency that he claims will protect consumers from risky loans and practices of financial institutions that may harm them. Forget that we already seem to have abandoned common sense and self reliance...the issue is the federal government and the president attempting to install yet another layer of bureaucracy for our own good, one that will consume taxpayer dollars just as the others already do.

Perhaps the president sincerely believes in his motives and the reasons he offers that make them so, but it is undeniable that many of his supporters do, simply because they believe in him, however blindly. The facts remain for anyone who seeks them out, and even a casual interest often yields results that may prove uncomfortable for the true leftist believer.

Still in campaign mode, the president pitched his plan for a new Consumer Financial Protection Agency while lambasting critics of the plan, saying, "these interests argue against reform even as millions of people are facing the consequences of this crisis in their own lives. These interests defend business-as-usual even though we know that it was business-as-usual that allowed this crisis to take place."

This is where history takes precedence; it was not business as usual that created this problem. It was the demands of the Democrats to provide loans to people who could not remotely hope to make the payments that created this problem, something that even the New York Times reported on in 2005 and 2006 regarding the sub-prime crisis, and something the Bush administration tried desperately to avoid, ultimately in vain.

Some will now look for an explanation as to how this pertains to the auto industry collapsing, but that is probably even an easier leftist correlation to be made. To begin, we'll look at this chart from the Heritage Foundation:At the insistence and machinations of the left and "big labor", auto manufacturers have been buried alive with "legacy costs", something reminiscent of the packages members of Congress enjoy. As the chart points out, most of the private sector works for an average cost to the employer of roughly $25 per hour, and must build their retirement packages out of that number and then, upon retirement, rely heavily on the government for the bulk of their health care through medicare.

Not so for the UAW worker; they get health care for life, just as members of Congress do. According to Heritage:

For instance, General Motors UAW retirement plan paid $4.9 billion to 291,000 retirees and surviving spouses in 2006.[11] That works out to $31.04 an hour when apportioned among active workers.

As the retirees move on, they are replaced by newer workers, while the company still supports those who have moved on and must now pay the new arrival. There are only so many straws that can be heaped on a camel's back.

In his radio address, Obama said, "The American people sent me to Washington to stand up for their interests. And while I'm not spoiling for a fight, I'm ready for one." Regarding the first sentence, even that is a fallacy, as the people sent him to Washington simply to cleanse their guilty consciences. As for the second sentence...let's give him one.

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