http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=30747

Obama Signs Spending Plan in Denver
by Jessica Peck Corry

02/18/2009

DENVER, COLORADO — President Barack Obama came back to Denver yesterday and signed the enormous spending legislation that will impose the burden of at least $1 trillion in debt to future American generations. Denver was a fitting site for the ceremony: this is, after all, where he so articulately sold America his socialist mission as a candidate during last summer’s Democratic National Convention.

But Obama’s visit this week came as state legislators in Denver continue a weeks-long heated debate over a proposed $41 increase to Colorado’s vehicle registration fee. How quaint it must feel that after their federal counterparts voted for a measure that will cost the average family of four more than $30,000. And that’s assuming that many of the entitlements doled out as part of Obama’s plan don’t become a permanent part of the American landscape.

While Colorado’s transportation funding debate is part of a larger conversation on how to best address a nearly $1 billion budget shortfall, the state is expected to get nearly $2 billion in federal aid as a result of the stimulus bill. And while this should encourage state leaders, especially in a smaller state like Colorado, to put on the fiscal breaks, Democrats in control of the legislature have shown no indication that they plan to alter state spending plans as a result of a federal cash infusion. Government can never have enough of our money.

Frustrated conservatives didn’t take Obama’s visit sitting down Tuesday. While about 75 people stood outside a city museum to show their support for Obama as he signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act into law, hundreds more turned out on the steps of the state Capitol to take part in a “pork roast,” organized by various free market organizations, including the Independence Institute. Headlining the event was political commentator Michelle Malkin, who referred to the stimulus bill as “generational theft.”

Also speaking was state Senate Minority Leader Josh Penry who, in his early thirties, is already being mentioned as a possible contender to challenge incumbent Gov. Bill Ritter, a Democrat. While Ritter applauded Obama’s selection of Denver for the bill signing and called the decision an honor, Penry sounded a different tune, saying he was proud of all of those who came to the anti-stimulus rally. “This will be the moment when Republicans reclaim the mantle of fiscal responsibility,” he told the crowd.

With so much at stake, it must be. While Obama sells corporate welfare and government subsidies for major industries and irresponsible homeowners as “reinvestment,” we have become incredibly vulnerable to the false notion as Americans that we can’t survive without government stepping in to take care of us.

I saw this ethos first hand last October, as I stood on those same state capitol steps. That time, however, I found myself in a sea of more than 100,000 wildly passionate, madly in love Obama supporters.

As Obama prepared to take the stage that day, there were enough placards to fill a thousand trash cans. The demands focused mostly on universal health care, finding an end to the Iraq conflict, free college tuition, developing renewable energy (but not “clean” coal), mortgage subsidies for those in expensive loans, and tax cuts for the middle class.

And in his remarks that day, Obama pledged to make the dreams of many in the crowd come true. Even then, however, he knew he would need to find a way to fund the promises he made that day. “If people ask how we’re going to pay for this, you tell that if we can spend $10 billion a month in Iraq, we can spend some money to rebuild the United States,” he told the elated crowd.

It becomes truly ironic then that Obama also picked Tuesday to announce that the U.S. will send 12,000 more troops to Afghanistan. “The Taliban is resurgent in Afghanistan, and al Qaeda supports the insurgency and threatens America from its safe-haven along the Pakistani border,” Obama conceded in a news release.

What has been tragically lost in all of the buzz about Obama’s presidency is any concern about the continued decline of personal responsibility in America. As a nation, we no longer believe that after working hard and making sacrifices, we will be rewarded for good market behavior. And why should we if future generations will just continue to buy us out of our bad decisions?

Brandon Garcia, an eight-year-old Colorado boy featured in an October Rocky Mountain News article was asked why he supported Obama’s candidacy over that of Republican John McCain. His response: “I always listen to the speech of Obama in the commercial that he will help pay the rent of (our) house.”

Let’s just hope that one day little Brandon will believe in his own ability to pay his rent. Without that, the American dream has died.

Jessica Peck Corry (Jessica@i2i.org) is a policy analyst with the Independence Institute in Golden, Colo., where she specializes in land use, higher education, and civil rights policy.”

Reader Comments: ( 71)

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Report Abusive PostThere goes the neighborhood.

Feb 18, 2009 @ 03:28 AM
LarOnTheRight, What use to be America
Report Abusive Posthttp://mises.org/story/3344#
Lew Rockwell sums it up best. Visit his article,part of which follows:
“..The Obamaites are different. They are woefully ignorant of economics. They seem to actually believe all that socialist claptrap that has provided an excuse for innumerable foreign dictators: the idea that government is the source of wealth and can make anything happen with the push of a button.

They see no limits to the possibility that government can make society perfect, righting every perceived social injustice, and bringing prosperity to all via stealing from the haves and giving it to the have-nots. Is there inequality? Mandate equality. Is there deprivation? Provide! Recession? Spend hundreds of billions!

What we have here is not just a profound love of the state; it is a profound confidence in the capacity of the unlimited state to create heaven on earth. How does this square with the idea of human liberty, of social cooperation, and of the rights of all? Herein lies the great mystery of leftism. The Left seems oblivious to the relationship between their chosen means and their ends. It’s not that they hate liberty as such; it is that they believe that it must always take a backseat to other social priorities, like equality. In the end, they have a tendency to build the total state and find themselves taken aback when the whole of society ends up in a cage.

Those Obamaites! So compassionate, loving, universally minded, progressive �quot; except that their ideological cousins managed to starve and destroy whole civilizations. Loyalty to their creed means death, because their ideology is the pathway to the gulag �quot; and for one simple reason: their preferred means of social change is the state. The state is always and everywhere a threat to liberty, and liberty is the basic building block of prosperity and civilization.

Despite the slogans about progress, the upshot of the Obama administration is as deeply reactionary as anything that Bush conjured up. Despite all the hype and hope, what Obama offers is nothing new. It amounts to the robber state and the regimentation of society, a plan that will kill off prosperity and the conditions that allow for it.

The Republicans are right to fight this tendency at every turn, for it represents a radical attack on all things truly American. Worse still, by playing with the printing presses, the policy tendency here is also deeply dangerous. It could destroy the dollar internationally and domestically, igniting a hyperinflation that no one will be able to control once it gets going. One only wishes that the Republicans had been so principled when their president was in charge!..”

Feb 18, 2009 @ 05:10 AM
John Birch, Hudson Florida
Report Abusive PostDoes anyone think about, let alone care how much money it costs the president to fly someplace? Why did nobama have to go to Denver to sign that bill, when he could have stayed in DC? NO ONE, is raising this issue. Since nobama became prez, he has been taking his new TOY, EVERYWHERE! His carbon footprint has more CO2 than what algore emitts from the hole in his face.

It’s not only Airforce 1 that flies, but at least 2-3 airforce jets to ferry the support vehicules, secret service personnel, etc.

Feb 18, 2009 @ 06:30 AM
DOUG
Report Abusive PostObama and the socialists don’t give a damn about the working stiff. They only care about those that do not work, are on the welfare dole and anybody they can control to stay in power. This is generational theft and the complete destruction of the American economy. These people are traitors. They have intentionally taken steps to reduce the United States to a socialist nation against the will of the people.

Revolution or revolt, something has to happen fast.

Feb 18, 2009 @ 07:11 AM
LB, DC
Report Abusive Postwhy don’t we just call it a “save the seals” package since nothing in the “stimulus” package is going to stimulate our economy. that is what a lot of the money is going towards after all.

Feb 18, 2009 @ 08:03 AM
caleb, castle rock, co
Report Abusive PostWhen Obambi’s presidency blows up in his purple lipped face and Americans become disenchanted with his BS as it comes to hit them in their homes and pockets, many of us can proudly stand up and say…”I didn’t vote for this chimp!” The Obambi imbeciles will have only themselves to blame.

As for the porkulus plan…President Obambi OWNS it. It is entirely his to fail.

Feb 18, 2009 @ 08:19 AM
SavingTheBestForLater, TheGreatSouth
Report Abusive PostWelcome to another day of whining. Gentleman, start your whining. Ah, HumanEvents. The Everlasting GOP Stopper.

Feb 18, 2009 @ 08:30 AM
Another Happy Liberal , Coulterville,USA
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This column is also available at the Denver Post Web site where it originally appeared on Feb. 12, 2009.

The sorry state of campaign finance reform
By Jessica Peck Corry

Posted: 02/12/2009 01:00:00 AM MST

On a recent edition of KBDI-Channel 12’s “Aaron Harbor Show,” newly elected Congressman Jared Polis told viewers that he believes in campaign finance reform. If I were Polis, I’d believe in it, too.

The Boulder Democrat was elected to his first congressional term in November after he prevailed in a heated three-way primary where he broke the state’s record for self-funded campaigns by pumping more than $5 million of his own money into the race.

And this was after Polis broke his pledge to limit his personal investment to $350,000 earlier in his primary race against Joan Fitz-Gerald and Will Shafroth, who each raised less than $2 million by utilizing current federal limits on individual contributions from others, which now stand at $2,400 per election cycle per person. While Shafroth and Fitz-Gerald had to hit the phones and fundraisers to raise much of their cash, Polis was taking to the airwaves in commercial after commercial.

Despite his own heavy investments, Polis has been an ardent supporter of limiting the contributions of others in the political process. As he proclaims on his own website, he “successfully co-chaired a coalition to pass ethics reform in Colorado that banned lobbyists from giving gifts to public officials despite intense opposition from lobbyists and special interests.”

The prohibition, established under 2006’s Amendment 41, is one of the most restrictive in the nation and, after a series of rulings — including one last week by the state’s Independent Ethics Commission — has been interpreted as preventing a lobbyist from even buying a legislator a cup of coffee in the Capitol’s basement cafeteria.

Perhaps predictably, Polis’ definition of “lobbyist” excluded his wealthy friends and their union allies. In 2004, Polis was part of the “Gang of Four,” a coalition of activist millionaires who helped oversee a Democratic takeover of the state legislature for the first time in four decades.

While buying a legislator a cup of coffee is now illegal, pumping millions into Democratic campaign coffers remains acceptable.

The coalition was so successful that its members, including Polis, earned a spot in Robert Frank’s book, “Richistan: A Journey Through the American Wealth Boom and the Lives of the New Rich.” Polis, a shrewd businessman who utilized inherited wealth to help build a successful Internet enterprise, is the focus of the book’s ninth chapter.

Union committees have given large amounts over the last three major election cycles, too. As political strategist Rob Fairbank, a Republican and former state House member, concluded after the 2006 election cycle, union small donor committee contributions — which include anonymous donors — gave $2.6 million in contributions to state and local candidates.

Yet you’ll never hear outrage from Polis about the Colorado Education Association’s 2006 political contributions of more than $800,000. He remained silent when the Service Employees International Union, an out-of-state contributor and the nation’s largest union, dumped $787,000 into 2006 Colorado races through small donor committees.

Voters should be outraged by the current standards. As Mary Alice Mandarich, Fitz-Gerald’s campaign manager, told reporters last summer, “It’s a bad thing because it says that in our country, if you are an extremely wealthy person, you can run for office and get elected. What does it say to the common man — who this country was founded on — about their ability to get elected to office?”

While Polis may prove to be a fantastic congressman, his way of getting to Washington raises a lot of questions about campaign-finance reform.

The next time voters receive a slick, millionaire-funded campaign brochure espousing the benefits of limiting money in politics, they should think twice. The rich guys prosper while the middle-class guys see their political aspirations, and their throats, run dry.

Jessica Peck Corry (jessica@i2i.org) is a policy analyst with the Independence Institute in Golden.