At the conclusion of the second Presidential debate on Tuesday night, President Obama tried to convince the viewing public that he was as much a supporter of free markets and individualism as Ronald Reagan. As I have observed politics for the last several decades, the thing that has bothered me most is the dishonesty with which most Liberal politicians present themselves. They know if they told the electorate what they really believe and what their plans are for the country, they would never win election. Anyone who has been a casual observer of the political scene for the last four years, knows that Barrack Obama is anything but a supporter of free anything, let alone free markets. I thought, with the election just weeks away, a review of President Obama's record on free market policies was in order.
We begin our journey into the land of Obama free markets with a stop at the auto bailouts, you know, the ones implemented by President Bush and continued by President Obama. As if the use of taxpayer money to support a failing company wasn't anathema enough to the concept of free markets, President Obama took it a step further. He confiscated the equity of the legitimate bondholders and gave that equity to his union buddies. This was all done to prevent bankruptcy, which Mitt Romney so aptly pointed out, happened anyway. There is no Constitutional basis for government at any level to interfere in the financial affairs of private individuals, as was done with the auto bailouts.
Our next stop along the long and winding road of Obama free markets is actually a three-fer. It includes the bonuses for AIG executives, the use of corporate jets and Las Vegas. During the last part of 2008 and the beginning of 2009, when the government was picking winners and losers and handing out taxpayer money to the winners, Barrack Obama was also demonizing everything corporate. He criticized bonuses that insurance giant AIG was paying some of their employees after they had received billions in taxpayer money. The President never bothered to explain that these bonuses were in lieu of any salary, agreed to by the employees for staying for another year and closing out certain business units. They are called retention bonuses and most were not the millions of dollars characterized by the President. But the truth didn't advance the President's agenda of class warfare. The truth also didn't support his administration's tactic of leaking the AIG's employees names and addresses so that thugs from ACORN and the unions could camp out at their houses and harass them. The President also made it official government policy that corporate jets and Las Vegas were strictly off limits and he proceeded to demonize both in several speeches.
Small banks have fared worst of all in the land of Obama free markets. The President's financial reform law, better known as Dodd/Frank, has crushed small community banks while favoring the largest banks. Hundreds of small community banks have had to close their doors, simply because they can't afford the millions of dollars it costs to make sure they are compliant with the law. Meanwhile, the "Too big to fail" aspect of the law insures big banks against bad decision-making using taxpayer money. It's no coincidence that the big banks give millions of dollars in campaign donations to the Democrat party, and small banks do not.
There are a myriad of other examples of Obama policy that are anti-free market, almost too many to even remember. The President talks about making the free market fair, but insuring there is no failure or eliminating risk from the market, is antithetical to capitalism. Just remember that when the President talks about government imposing fairness on free markets, he is not espousing the virtues of free markets, but the morally bankrupt ideas of Marxism.
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