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I am not sure what is more puzzling: President Obama's speech in Osawatomie, Kan., on Dec. 6, or the enthusiastic reviews in the mainstream media, such as "Obama attacks Republican economic theory: 'It's never worked,'" by Ann Kornblut in the Washington Post.
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Talking about his grandparents and Americans of the past generations the president said:
"They believed in an America where hard work paid off, responsibility was rewarded and anyone could make it if they tried — no matter who you were, where you came from, or how you started out. ... These values gave rise to the largest middle class and the strongest economy the world has ever known."
Past generations were right. When I immigrated to the U.S. in 1980, my family personally experienced the real opportunities that the country provided us.
Obama continued:
"For most Americans, the basic bargain that made this country great has eroded. ... In 2008, the house of cards collapsed. We all know the story by now: Mortgages sold to people who couldn't afford them or sometimes even understand them.
"Banks and investors allowed to keep packaging the risk and selling it off. Huge bets — and huge bonuses — made with other people's money on the line. Regulators who were supposed to warn us about the dangers of all this, but looked the other way or didn't have the authority to look at all."
Why were mortgages sold to people who couldn't afford them? Why had regulators "looked the other way?"
The president explained:
"It combined the breathtaking greed of a few with irresponsibility across the system. ... Now, in the midst of this debate, there are some who seem to be suffering from a kind of collective amnesia."
Today, in the words of the president, "Children might not have a chance to climb out of that situation and back into the middle class, no matter how hard they work."
In her ravishing reaction to the president's speech, Kornblut writes, "Obama deployed the language of right and wrong, fairness and unfairness, in a lengthy address that aides said he largely wrote himself."
Who put obstacles in the way of American children? Who broke the process, which was instrumental in the creation of the most prosperous middle class "where hard work paid off, responsibility was rewarded, and anyone could make it if they tried"?
Maybe progressive elites are suffering from collective amnesia.
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The most prevalent theme in President Barack Obama's Dec. 6 Osawatomie, Kan., speech was the need for greater "fairness." In fact, though the president never defined the term fair(ness), he used it 15 times. Explaining his new hero, Teddy Roosevelt, Obama said: "But Roosevelt also knew that the ...
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Posted By: GMLOGMD(30) on 12/20/2011 | 12:27 AM ET
BROVO! So well said. So brilliantly articulated. Thank you for a wonderful piece to use. The free market is the only system that works. Business are not created to create jobs. Outcomes are not predetermined based on need or anyother criteria. We all have the same opposrtunity to succeed Or Fail. I teach you to fish does not mean you will get as many as me. Simple truth.
Posted By: InCincy(5465) on 12/19/2011 | 9:59 PM ET
Good Readers: Reflect on Ron Paul's positions and not what they are interpretted by the MSM and RINOs to be. He sacrificed a career as a doctor to come to the aid of Our Nation in the finest tradition of service.
Posted By: Brownknows(4770) on 12/19/2011 | 6:42 PM ET
Is it better to be a free man with no property, or a rich man living in tyranny? Obama & Dems can lay no claim to being for the middle class, working man, or the poor. The progressives policies from the Great Society on, the very people the programs were to help have been devastated. The only people who do well under the Obama agenda are the chosen winners. The free market choosing winners & losers would elevate millions more than an ideologue picking. Live free or die.
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