President Obama, are you listening?
Okay, these video clips are a little long, but they’re really worth watching if you can spare the time.
CNBC’s Rick Santelli had a “Joe the Plumber” moment this week when he indulged in this rant from the floor of the Chicago Board of Trade:
To which the White House Press Secretary, Robert Gibbs, responded thus (be sure to watch all the way to the end to get your daily dose of snarky):
Which prompted the following counter by Santelli the next day:
Folks, what you’ve just witnessed here was not an episode of “The Young & The Restless.” It’s a new soap opera called “The Media vs. The Messiah.” I can’t speak with any authority about these prior White House attacks on the media that Kudlow is talking about in the third clip, and I think perhaps he’s being a bit theatrical. I don’t really see this as a First Amendment issue; after all, to my knowledge the White House didn’t threaten or try to silence Santelli. Instead, they just trotted out the smug and apparently very bitter Press Secretary Gibbs to counter Santelli’s impassioned plea for reason. It seems that the White House used that time-tested rebuttal strategy that says the best response to a populist revolt is to send out some completely unlikeable and condescending guy to tell the people that actually they’re all just stupid and if they only could “hit print and read” they’d understand. Brilliant!
I subscribe to this free daily email newsletter from a guy named Martin Weiss, who gives investment advice and commentary. I learned about him from my friend M.H., who spends a lot of time reading and learning about economic matters. Anyway, today’s newsletter asserts that President Obama, in 32 days in office, has already spent upwards of $4 trillion to try to save the economy. That’s $3 trillion for bank bailouts, almost $800 billion for the “stimulus” package, and $275 billion for the help to homeowners in danger of foreclosure. Now here’s the part that made an impression on me:
Oh, and also this:
If you could borrow $4 trillion at 6% interest, your interest payments alone would be $240 billion per year, $548 million per day, $761,000 per second.
How about this? I came up with this one myself. If the government decided to give each person their share of this $4 trillion dollars, assuming there are 300 million people in the United States, every man, woman, and child would receive $13,333.34. Wouldn’t you like to be in charge of spending your share, rather than letting the government control it? Yeah, well, too bad for you. If you’d just hit print and read the plan, you’d see that it helps everybody even if it doesn’t help everybody.
