The Great Prevaricator

By Alan Caruba

Usually we have to wait around for the historians to pinpoint the exact day on which some politician crashed and burned his reputation beyond repair. My educated guess, however, is that President Obama’s first State of the Union speech will be the day when what little is left of his credibility and reputation goes straight into the toilet.

If Ronald Reagan was the Great Communicator, then Barack Hussein Obama will be known as the Great Prevaricator.

Obama is so comfortable telling lies that he no longer knows the difference between the truth, a falsehood, a promise, or a casual slander. Take, for example, his recent claim that he would rather be a great one-term President than “a mediocre two-term” one. If George W. Bush wasn’t around to blame for his own incompetence, Obama would have to invent him.

Before the demands arrive that I list each and every lie that passed Obama’s lips, let me say that this is a brief commentary, not a ten-volume exegesis of his campaign and first year in office.

The State of the Union speech is always hugely boring, listing the many “accomplishments” of the year and then listing the intentions for this one. It is a political act, not a reportorial one.

Obama’s intensions cannot be taken at face value. It is said he wants to put a “freeze” on government spending, but the reason usually given to run for Congress is to be able to spend taxpayer’s money on projects “for the folks back home.” The more you spend, the more times you are reelected, until you secure a committee chairmanship and can spend almost at will.

The alleged freeze covers nothing of significance. The real spending engines of government, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Homeland Security and Defense will go untouched along with just about everything else other than a Department of Agriculture grant for the study of artichoke pollination.

When (if!) you listen to the President, keep in mind that at some point the money he’s talking about is no longer even “real.”

This is particularly true as regards the Federal Reserve, a private bank that isn’t federal in any sense except its name. Congress cannot even audit its books!

On the blog site of Theo Spark, there’s a brief, apt description of the way the Federal Reserve and the government “compliment” one another: “I understand that most folks think the Federal Reserve, the central bank of the U.S., is a governmental entity.” The reason people think this is because whoever is President appoints the Chairman with the approval of Congress.

Congress is debating the reappointment of Ben Bernanke, an acolyte of Alan Greenspan, the previous Chairman. Both are equally to blame for not putting the brakes on the cheap credit that led, in part, to the lending and borrowing spree that got us to this point. They had a lot of help, though, from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

“Those pretty green slips of paper in your wallet commonly known as U.S. dollars are Federal Reserve Notes. Bank scrip. The Fed can print as much of it as it wants or needs to. With this in mind, consider that fully eighty percent (80%) of U.S. Treasuries (U.S. government debt) sold in 2009 were bought by the Fed because there were no other willing buyers.”

Here’s where you need to pay close attention. “Printing money to finance unsellable governmental debt is just like using a credit card to pay off a credit card. It is a scam, a Ponzi scheme. Like all such schemes it cannot go on indefinitely, but has to end. This will end badly.”

The annual Gross Domestic Product, the amount assigned to the value of all the goods and services sold, is about $14 trillion dollars. Congress has just voted to raise the “debt ceiling” to about $14 trillion dollars.

That is why a State of the Union speech promising to “freeze” spending or “cut back” on government waste, is laughable.

Spending is what the present-day government exists to do. It is why millions are spent on races for the White House and seats in Congress. It is why some enter the Capitol with modest means and leave as multi-millionaires.

The job of the President is to convince Americans and everyone else that the U.S. government is being wisely and prudently run.

When people at home and around the world no longer trust Obama’s Tele-Prompter words, the nation will be in big trouble.

If Obama was the CEO of a major corporation, the board of directors could get rid of him. We, the stockholders in America, are stuck with him for three more years.