Naïf in Chief
[Tho I drafted this post during the State of the Union address, I was unable to upload it because I could not get to the library's wifi for WEEKS due to one snowstorm after another burying my car. I have dated it the date of the address.]
+
Barack Obama's fifth State of the Union Address was filled with idiotic naivete. All we have to do is innovate and educate, and everything will be hunky-dory! No it won't. Every single device invented in the United States can be made in Communist China, Vietnam, India, Bangladesh, Thailand, Taiwan, Mexico, and other foreign countries, then imported into the United States with minimal or no tariff. Almost NONE of these new inventions will be made here, not now, not ever in the future until and unless we end free trade with dirt-poor countries whose people can and will work for a pittance and permanently undercut American labor and steal American jobs.
+
Nor will a highly educated American population magically find work here, because there are no jobs being made here that can instead be created elsewhere. None worth mentioning. Only jobs that cannot be exported will be created here, mostly service jobs at very low rates of pay; and fewer and fewer of them are filled by native-born U.S. citizens, but only by immigrants (many of them here illegally) who are willing to work for almost nothing, and not expect even the most rudimentary of benefits — no paid vacation, no paid sick days, no employer-provided health insurance, no anything.
+
Obama issued another bit of naive rhetoric, concerning women in the workforce, "Equal pay for equal work." Women do NOT provide equal work. "A mother deserves a day off to take care of a sick child, or parent. A man does too." What a load of crap. In general, men do NOT take time off from work to take care of a sick child or parent, unless that man is a single father, whose family has (usually) been ripped apart by our destructive divorce laws. The MOTHER does; the DAUTER does. And it's not "a" day off but day after day all thru the year, that women take off to tend to family responsibilities. That is why women do NOT do equal work, so do NOT deserve equal pay. If there is a parent-teacher conference, it is the MOTHER who takes time off from work to attend. If an employer needs someone to stay late to help with an urgent major project, many female employees will decline, on the basis that they have to get home to take care of their family. Uncounted women have refused promotions or actually turned back promotions that forced them to neglect their families. On and on, women devote much more time to non-work-related matters to benefit their family, because the people near them mean much more to almost ALL women than does The Job.
+
That's good for the family, and society, but not at all good for the job, nor for the co-workers who have to make up for the time that women take off. Many women are absolutely irresponsible when it comes to the job and their co-workers. Every three hours that they take off for a doctor's appointment for their child can turn out to be three hours that their co-workers have to do that woman's job, in addition to their own. Not everything can just wait until a job-irresponsible woman gets back to the office or factory floor. Businesses can't just sit around and wait for their work to be done at some eventual, future time.
+
The President then says aloud that a Social Security check doesn't always cover basic expenses. It doesn't occur to him to ask aloud why that is, and what we should do about it. He doesn't ask "Why do the rich get Social Security and Medicare? Why can't we cut them off — they don't need it — and redirect ALL of the money they now receive to, instead, the people who DO need it?"
+
Nor does he ask why the rich pay proportionally much less of their income into Social Security but draw far more out of it per person than do the poor or middle class. There is still a cap on the income subject to Social Security contributions, presently $117,000 a year. If someone makes $26 million a year,$25,883,000 is not subject to Social Security tax! How many low-income recipients of Social Security could the taxes on $25,883,000 support?
+
By contrast, every single dollar made by everyone who makes less than $117,000 is subject to Social Security taxation. The median income in this country is $26,989; the average income, $40,563. Only some 3% of Americans make more than $117,000, so the entire working population of the United States except a few executives pays Social Security tax on everything they earn.
+
Moreover, the rich RECEIVE Social Security! According to Face the Facts USA, a project of the George Washington University, "47,535 millionaires received Social Security benefits in 2010, totaling $1.438 billion. Median income of all recipients over 65 is $26,000." Median income means that half of all Social Security recipients make less than that, so they can afford even less to pay Social Security taxes that are artificially high for most people in order to let the rich off the hook for everything they make over $117,000. President Obama doesn't see any problem with that. My income is typical of a great many people on Social Security: about $15,800 BEFORE deduction of $105/month for Medicare, which leaves my total actual, spendable income from Social Security as $14,540.
+
Obama had the unmitigated gall — or is it just ignorance — to claim that Medicare premiums have remained flat! No they have NOT. Mine went up from about $99/month to about $105/month about two years ago. That 5% increase in Medicare was taken out of the individual's monthly payment — out of my payment — from Social Security.
+
According to the National Bureau of Economic Research:

"Wealthy enrollees pay more into Medicare than poorer people do (in the form of general federal tax revenues and payroll taxes). However, they reap greater benefits over their lifetimes because they live longer and use more medical services."

Hear the phrase "Medicare beneficiary" and you might picture someone counting pennies in a modest house or apartment. Think again. According to a study recently published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, those who benefit the most from Medicare are the wealthiest older Americans, not the poorest ones.

I can't afford that. I especially can't afford to lose that money inasmuch as I cannot use Medicare because I can't afford the co-pays. But the rich can. Indeed, the rich can easily afford to pay for their own, private health insurance but get Medicare anyway! That is insane, unfair, and outrageous. The people who created Social Security and then Medicare never intended to transfer wealth from the poor and middle class to the rich, but that has in fact been the effect of recent changes in Social Security and Medicare.
+
Militaristic Claptrap. The longest ovation in the speech to that point came at Obama's disgraceful obeisance to militarism, the claim that no one does more for the Nation than (our diplomats and) military, our "sons and dauters" 'protecting' us thru foreign military interventions. No, sending women out into the Third World to commit violence against, indeed kill men (and also women and children) makes us hugely LESS safe, not more, for enraging the people of Third World countries and recruiting them to Al-Qaeda and other terrorist organizations that work to strike back against the humiliation that our Radical Feminist military inflicts upon Third World cultures.
+
The United States is approaching Junker Germany and Tojo Japan in its glorification of militarism. Americans today don't understand that. Nor do they remember what happened to Germany and Japan because of the militarism that underpinned their wars of aggression against all their neighbors.
+
It's not merely the unjustified wars that the militarism of this culture impels us to embark upon that are ruinous to the Nation, but also the appalling drain on our financial resources, much of it in the form of deficit spending supported by borrowing money — because we must never tax the rich their fair share — money that must be repaid with interest, and some of that to Communist China, which uses a portion of all money it gets from us to prepare for war against us! If we spent $1.29 — that is, a dollar twenty-nine a year, not $612.4 billion — on defense, the Federal Government would be rolling in dough.
+
Radical Zionism. The President's mention then of a staunch defense of "a Jewish state" gets both Vice President Biden and Speaker Boehner to their feet. How disgraceful and insanely disloyal. They are agents of a foreign power, one that has put us at huge risk thru our stupid and unfair behavior in the Middle East, which is never corrected but always compounded. Those wars have been ruinous to us economically, because they were waged on a national credit card, because we surely shouldn't tax the rich to pay our way as we go!
+
Selective Devotions. The President goes on to claim to be deeply concerned about promoting democracy and freedom. But he does nothing about Syria! And of course he does business with the Butchers of Beijing as tho the Communist tyranny that controls mainland China is a normal government, not an insane and dangerous totalitarian regime.
+
Then Obama dares to say "God Bless America". There is no God, and we have all got to stop talking such nonsense. Especially should Government officials stop invoking God and thus violating the basic requirement of our Constitution that Government not impose religion upon the unwilling by even implying that all good citizens believe in God.
+
Faux Nationalism. A mention of the upcoming Sochi Winter Olympics by the President then gets some morons in the crowd chanting "U.S.A., U.S.A.!" Shut up. Athletics, sports get your nationalism going? You sell out Americans economically and put us at risk in war after war for Israel, but the Winter Olympics jazzes up your nationalism? Shut up.
+
Obama points to and speaks of the miserable experience of a U.S. soldier who was nearly killed on his TENTH deployment to Afghanistan. Tenth. Why? At December 31, 2013, we had 1,369,532 men ("and women"!) under arms. Why would we send the same few tens of thousands back to Afghanistan over and over?
+
That soldier is helped to his feet in the audience, and the crowd applauds in yet another paean to militarism. Disgusting — and dangerous. That ovation exceeds even that which followed from the glorification of the country that Congress is actually devoted to, Israel. Because militarism is even greater a devotion than Zionism.
+
This is not the country I was born into at the end of 1944. There was no Israel when I was born, and Americans had no affection for either Zionism or even anti-Christian Judaism. Moreover, we had just fought a war with conscript armies. We knew the horrors of war, and didn't glorify disruption to personal lives and society caused by military actions.
+
Economic Unfairness. At the end of his largely annoying address, Obama speaks glowingly of prosperity widely shared. He ignores the fundamental unfairness of the distribution of wealth and taxation in this evil country. And so this State of the Union Address ended, with none of the basic problems of this deeply divided and profoundly dysfunctional country being "addressed". No mention that some 30% of 'Americans' are actively disloyal neo-Confederates and racists, nor that a very large proportion of the rich are both actively and casually disloyal in ruinously exporting jobs and investment to COMMUNIST China, which supports the military buildup by its "People's Liberation Army" for an eventual war against the United States, or a series of wars, first to force us out of East Asia, then out of all of Asia and Australasia, then to make Communist China the dominant power, if not actual military overlord, of all of this planet.
+
Making Things Worse. Not one, single, fundamental problem of this profoundly troubled society was addressed, except for what will probably be another subversion of the American economy and workers' income and benefits: "immigration reform" — that is, amnesty for 11 million illegals. So a large proportion of the jobs that cannot be exported will be filled by newly-legal foreigners undercutting native-born U.S. citizens!
+
Nothing can ever get better as long as the Government refuses to protect Americans at home. Foreign militarism does NOTHING to make us safe, as long as everything in economic policy subverts the very foundation of American society.
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 11:59 PM