Give me an S... o, c, i, a, l, i, s, m...
What’s that Spell? Socialism!
(Written 04/23/09)
Normally I’m the first to get on my soapbox and talk about political problems (I’m sure you’ve seen me rant a lot over the years in these editorials), but I have taken a back seat to thinking about our new President. I don’t know, maybe it’s because Obama is our first African American president. Maybe it’s because he’s worked for my home state and lived in Hyde Park (I know, he was from Hawaii, but he took up residence here, you’ve gotta give him credit for that). Maybe it’s because the liberal media (you know the drive-by 24-hour news stations like MSNBC, CNN, CNBC, HN, and sorry, I actually do watch FoxNews as a last resort, so I must rather get more liberal opinions on the news...) is always the first to put everything President Obama says in a wonderful light.
But my husband pointed something out to me at lunch today, when I asked him for details on why he thought President Obama was incompetent. (Now I can understands that he has not been a part of the Washington White House Presidential Political Machine for that long, and there is learning to do, which could explain some ill-conceived statement he may have made.) And he said to me that only a select few Presidents over his life that he could remember (those Presidents being Obama, Clinton and Carter — the only Democrat Presidents he has seen in his lifetime) made statements, and later had to explain, modify and adjust what they said after getting scrutiny for their comments. Every Republican President (as far as he could remember over the course of his life) has never backtracked on anything they said; if they were questioned about what they said and what they meant, they reiterated plainly what they said, which never faltered from their original statements.
Hmm. Okay, I haven’t really thought about it. And I suppose I don’t want to look over all transcripts of past Presidents to verify the validity of what he said. So whether or not it is true, it is an interesting thought.
So I watched the Daily Show the past two nights, where Wyatt Cenac was sent to Sweden to uncover the injustices of Socialism. What Cenac found was a ton of tall thin good-looking women, and people who liked their “Government-sponsored” jobs (which had a ton of inter-office perks, as well as 10 paid vacation weeks per year and 16 months paid maternity leave). The place Cenac went to even had a free gym membership and access to the company spa. He interviewed one woman at the truck manufacturing plant she worked at, and after she said she liked her job, she then explained that for her it was “something to do with my days.”
(Well, the spa sounds nice, but “something to do with your days” really sounds fun. Let’s try to look for other samples here.)
One woman on the streets in Stockholm said that people in Sweden “don’t pay what you (in America) pay for things,” which is probably making reference to the fact that they have free healthcare in Sweden.
Cenac even interviewed one of the most famous Swedish singers (who opened for Madonna on one of her tours, apparently), and saw that this woman didn’t live in any lap of luxury, but had one 32 inch (maybe) flat-screen television in her home, as well as many bags for recycling most of her trash.
(Hardly the American star’s life...)
So I thought I’d look for news about how high taxes are in Sweden (because believe it or not, I don’t get my news from only the Daily Show...) So I Googled the words “Sweden taxes,” and the first article I found (from a month ago) was “Taxes still too high in Sweden.” So although the Daily Show mentioned that the country has no debt, the country has “excessive public spending and an eroding work ethic.”
But I was looking for percentages for taxes. So reading further, I didn’t need to know the value of a kroner to see that even after taxes have been reduced in Sweden, “the average taxpayer still pays three out of five earned kronor in taxes.”
That’s 60%.
And the article went on to say that “if hidden taxes are also included, the total highest marginal tax rate on labour is a full 74 percent in Sweden.”
So I’m sorry, but if the government is going to take that much of my paycheck away from me, they better give me free healthcare.
And I don’t mean to be a pain in the ass, but when I hear of government leaders from other countries with serious health problems, I hear that they come to the United States for healthcare. (You know, because it’s supposedly better.) So does that 60% of my paycheck taken away in Sweden amount to the kind of healthcare you can get when you’re genuinely sick in the United States? (I know, I know, people pay so much for healthcare insurance as it is in the States, but if you have these same serious problems in countries like Sweden, I would postulate that there may not be the same options to help save your life that may exist in the States).
Granted, if the government took that much of my money away from me, I wouldn’t have that much saved – and lost in the downfall of our economy, I suppose. But that’s probably a bit of a defeatist way of looking at things...
But while listening to a little Hardball with Chris Matthews this afternoon (yes, from the drive-by media on Multiple Sclerosis NBC), I heard stats of how Americans view the President, and how they have changed from President Bush to President Obama, reflected over the past 6 months. People polled didn’t have a good view of President Bush when he was leaving office (probably because everyone was trying to hitch a ride on Obama’s hope wagon), and Obama when he started had a high approval (something like 60%, if I can remember the figures accurately from the show). But as time has worn on, his approval rating has dropped (granted, as I write this, it is only 93 days into his presidency, he hasn’t even been rated on his First 100 days by the drive-by media yet...), and they said that his approval rating was at 51% — which means that still over half of the people polled approve of President Obama.
And what that means is that in light of the sweeping spending that President Obama has done in less than his first 100 days as President, people still approve of his choices. And yes, shows like the Daily Show can show how wonderful it might be to live in Sweden, but the Daily Show is a comedy show, not a news show. And the drive-by media that give me all of these stats in the first place is the liberal media, which is only a few ladder rungs away from socialism in the first place.
The idea of sitting back with legalized drugs and socialized medicine might seem like an easy way to live, but don’t get me started on the taxes you have to pay to have those things “given” to you by the government (which is paying for it with the money they took away from you in taxes). I’ve found how close to failing socialized medicine is in places like Canada or England already (please don’t make me reiterate, just check out my editorials at U. S. Healthcare and Canadian Health Care and Free Health Care and the Poor or the Assumption of Health Care), and I have found that as Americans in this Republic, we appreciate being able to afford the finer things in life — when we can afford it (yes, that means that if you have credit cards, you pay the balance in full with no exceptions, that means only purchasing the things you can afford, but that also means that when you have less money taken away from you by your government in the form of taxes you can afford to live a better life).
So what bothers me in light of these liberal media polling reports on the approval of President Obama is that people yelled endlessly about the deficit of 800 Billion dollars when President Bush left the office, but people don’t seem to mind that President Obama is going to quadruple the deficit (minimum) in the next few years. Every time President Obama is asked about the amount of money he is spending and how in debt the country will be, Obama always stats that he inherited an 8 billion dollar deficit from President Bush (though he never explains how ballooning the deficit after he is President is supposed to help the nation out).
The Democrats are digging us into a deeper hole than we were in before, but no one is objecting (probably because the money we don’t have is no longer going toward a congressional-unapproved war with Iraq we never supported, but to plans that may one day “give” us more things from our own government — that in the end we have to pay for).
And just so you know, our country was pretty much deficit free until the Great Depression, when plans were created to not only help people gain jobs (like creating national parks, interstate highways), but also to fund people who lost jobs (when the Welfare state was created as an “emergency relief measure”). Since government programs started like this, America has remained in debt:
(or check out http://one-simple-idea.com/NationalDebtAndGDPAdjustedForInflation2009.jpg for more details)
It is fascinating that it is when the government started to “assist” people financially (you know, instead of relying on the premise of “People Pursuing Happiness,” people can now ask for assistance) is when our national debt first started — and has now skyrocketed.
Janet Kuypers
Editor In Chief
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