As you can read from earlier articles, I have been a staunch critic in regards to the nomination of Sarah Palin. She would not have been my first choice, my second, or my third. I am however, willing to live with her provided she can withstand the attack and have the courage to stick to what she said today nearly 10 times in her speech. And that is that Barack Obama is a socialist. He is a socialist. I just finished chapter four of “The Audacity of Hope” where Obama lays out his economic plans for America. He calls that chapter “Opportunity.” I call it socialism. It’s quite transparent. He even acknowledges the capitalist arguments in many situations, but just rolls right over them with the same smooth rhetoric he speaks with on the stump. Obama lays out a vision for education, where he acknowledges everyone’s point of view, and then proceeds to explain how he can dismantle all criticism simply by making the system perfect. “Good teachers should make no less then $100,000 year.” Obama says. I agree by the way. America never had a debate on the ends. It’s the means on which we differ. Obama’s audacity is in his managerial skills. He thinks he can dismantle the entire economic structure with a “scalpel” as he says it; cut out the bad, and reward the good. Sounds nice doesn’t it. HOW? What is he going to do? Is he going to spend all day on the phone yelling at High School principals to get their crap together or else? Good teachers get paid what the public values them at, unless the government pokes its fat nose in and slows down market forces via Teacher's Unions. He calls John McCain’s fiscal policy a hatchet compared to his scalpel. I think we need a shotgun, and some cruise missiles myself. More money has been wasted on "education" in this country then any in history, and with what result? Just look at my poor grammar in this blog. I would have just spelled grammar wrong if not for that stupid red line. Why should we trust the government with even more money? Well, because Obama will manage it properly and funnel it jusssssst the right way this time. Unbelievable. I think good teachers deserve a million dollars a year myself, but unfortunately we are not God in the days of genesis, as Tom Sowell likes to put out while explaining away injustice in the world. Obama is not God either. He thinks he is here to reward the good and punish the bad in his quest for some type of “social” justice. The “audacity” as his book states is his hubris to think he can create a perfect world. If he could do it, I’d vote for him. He attributes the prosperity of the last 50 years not to individuals acting in their own self interest, but of new deal programs like social security and investment projects. He attributes them to government. He ends the chapter in a conversation with Warren Buffet praising the billionaire for understanding the “common good” more so then other billionaires. Obama asks him how many of his friends share his views on issues such as the estate tax, where wealthy families cannot pass down wealth to their families without being taxed. Let me quote Buffet. “It’s like choosing the 2020 Olympic games team by picking the children of all the winners of the 2,000 games. My friends have this idea that it’s “their money” and deserve to keep every penny of it. What they don’t factor in is all the public investment that lets us live the way we do.” Buffet is a genius in capital investment, no doubt. Genius in one area often leaves a blind spot in another. Buffet is worth billions. He invests money in a way that yields returns on investment, creating jobs for millions of Americans by better allocating capital to profitable markets, and extracting it from failing ones. The amount of wealth he creates generates jobs and revenue for all Americans. Why does he then want to give more money to the US government, an organization running a 10 Trillion dollar debt. They can’t even hold onto social security money to simply give it back later. It’s a bad investment any way you slice it. If the US government were just another company, Warren Buffet would come no where near it as an investment. Why then does it serve the “common good” to make a terrible investment in the US Government. I really do admire his sense of community and obligation to give back to his country. Warren Buffet best serves his country by being a greedy businessman. He may be a genius, but he, nor Barack Obama, understands that.

An economics professor once told me you could understand everything there was to know about economics from the production process of a pencil. Somehow I wish HE were sitting there next to Barack Obama last night , as each candidate tried to out communist each other on the current fiscal crisis. We heard the same smooth talking rhetoric from Obama, followed by the not so smooth rhetoric of John McCain, as usual. Let’s just analyze one single sentence that Obama has stated over and over and over again, and apply it to something as seemingly simple as pencil production. “I will end tax cuts for companies shipping jobs overseas.” Obama says. What does that mean? Does he mean companies that buy components overseas, make whole products overseas, companies that just do the shipping, companies that provide services overseas, or hell even drive the boat over the sea? How will you manage this process of deciding whether a company ships jobs overseas? It’s impossible. The world market is so interconnected, it’s impossible for any one person or centralized authority to understand, let alone control. Let’s further look at pencils. I got this off of a US patent site for simply painting pencils.

"A system for automatically applying multiple coats of paint to pencils from a pencil production line comprises a plurality of paint stations arranged for sequentially applying respective coats of paint to the pencils. Each paint station includes a painting device, supply conveyor means for discharging pencils to that device and drying conveyor means for receiving pencils from the device. The first station in sequence receives pencils directly from the production line, and the conveyor means of consecutive stations are arranged so that the pencils are transported from one station to the next, all without manual intervention."

Never mind the lead, the eraser, the wood, and the overall production of the item. Imagine how complex that actually gets once you break it down. So what if a company sets up shops in the US, selling pencils. Let’s say the wood comes from Wisconsin, where it meets up with the lead in Long Beach, which was shipped from Uganda. They spin the pencil, then ship it to Mexico to put the erasers on, then back to Columbus for this new painting process. They sell them to a wholesaler in New York, who sells them in Canada, the US, and England. Does this company meet the requirement of shipping jobs overseas? They employee a lot of Americans, but in the process the rest of the world. And that’s just PENCILS!! Think of all the branches of the economy the pencil production process touches. What’s my point? Even your most egghead economist from Harvard can’t figure out how to control and manipulate this process in a way that benefits American workers, because it’s impossible to calculate the decision making process of millions of people. Let’s just say all Obama had to do was keep pencil production jobs inside the US. He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t do it even if it’s the only thing he had to do for four years. It would take too long.  It doesn’t matter. Left wingers never even consider the process of HOW they are going to do things. The only thing that stands in their way of creating a perfect world, is the will to do so, and the evil republicans that hate children and puppies.

The idea of Politicians meddling in the economy is just stupid. The idea they can positively influence the economy by meddling with the tax code takes just the right combination of hubris and stupidity. It’s obvious that Obama couldn’t even control small portions of the pencil industry. Why are we trusting him, or John McCain for that matter, with purchasing stocks, and bank loans, or trying to manipulate money markets. No one person, or centralized government should ever even try. It’s no doubt the economy is headed for trouble, because of the government’s already over reaching hand into various markets it never had the business of being involved in. Obama made the case last night unbelievably, that it is lack of government intervention that has caused the problem. It’s truly astonishing that anyone of intelligence can come to that conclusion. McCain was no better. McCain doesn’t understand fiscal conservatives, because he isn’t one. His ideas were the same. It sounded like a Primary debate. More government intervention. 300 billion here, 300 billion there. These two clowns have NO idea what the hell they are saying. Playing around with the economy like your GI Joe men is not what the President’s job is. All out civil War is breaking out in Pakistan at the moment. This will be the primary focus of the next President. McCain needs to drive home America’s belief that he is a better choice as commander and chief of the Military, period, end of issue. Everything else is secondary. In today’s dangerous world, with the elusive enemies we face, it’s all the President should even make time for. We can handle the economy ourselves.

Kevin Durkin