The Discerning Texan

From Rich Lowry at The Corner:

In one key respect, it seems an utterly characteristic Obama economic initiative:

Now Congress is moving to limit the penalties on riskier borrowers, who have become a prime source of billions of dollars in fee revenue for the industry. And to make up for lost income, the card companies are going after those people with sterling credit.

Banks are expected to look at reviving annual fees, curtailing cash-back and other rewards programs and charging interest immediately on a purchase instead of allowing a grace period of weeks, according to bank officials and trade groups.

“It will be a different business,” said Edward L. Yingling, the chief executive of the American Bankers Association, which has been lobbying Congress for more lenient legislation on behalf of the nation’s biggest banks. “Those that manage their credit well will in some degree subsidize those that have credit problems.”

Good grief; is this not the same approach the government tried with Housing? To encourage the rest of us to subsidize housing loans to low-income borrowers who did not have the means to pay them back? While in the meantime Barney Frank and Chris Dodd and Chuck Schumer--and their buddies at Fannie and Freddie--were getting rich off of packaging/selling these bad loans? A: Yes. Exactly the same approach.

By their interference with real supply and demand, they are going to manipulate market forces to blow up the credit card market just like they did the housing market. This is not capitalism; it is the opposite of capitalism. It is the "unintended consequences" of runaway statist Marxism. We have seen the damage the government's manipulation of markets does--we've been living it for the past 9 months. And Obama is now prescribing more of the same for credit cards!

At some point, one begins to wonder if this is more than simple ignorance of how markets work, and is instead intended to make things worse; is Obama trying to fix the economy, or is he trying to wreck it so that he can implement a totalitarian takeover before his derelection of duty is discovered by a large majority of the population?

I have never been a wild-eyed conspiracy theorist. But I can see what is happening here. It isn't rocket science. For one thing, Obama is not a stupid man. Power mad and narcissistic? Clearly. But not dumb.

Perhaps I am mistaken in this; perhaps he is so taken in by a backrupt and discredited idology (which has never in history brought prosperity anywhere it has been tried); but I doubt it. I think he knows exactly what he is doing: he is slowly but surely, systematically dismantling and destroying the very foundation of America's powerful economic engine which has given us the highest standard of living in world history. And in so doing, he is (in my opinion) consciously busy enslaving the rest of us--before we have time to wake up to what is going on. Which is of course why he is in such a godawful hurry and that everything he puts forward is an "emergency".

And to hear him talk day after day about a "new era of responsibility"? It sends me to a very dark place where I do not like dwelling; It is enough to make even the hardiest stomach empty its contents.

As I mentioned a week or so ago, I watched 1984 again recently, and what terrified me about Orwell's dark vision were the shocking parallels to what is happening today. Orwell saw it happening in Europeand wrote about it 61 years ago. And now this nightmare scenario is happening here, and men.will.not.see.it. The daily distortion and changing of Obama's previousl positions and pronouncements is dizzying. Within months, weeks, even days you turn around and there he is stating the exact opposite of what he said before--and no one notices! The daily contradictions of previous statements, contortions which make Bush Sr's "no new taxes" pledge pale in comparison. Barack Obama is a pathological liar, and he could care less. That borders on the sociopathic. Am I the only one who sees this?

We are living in a real-life American nightmare, and most of us don't even know how asleep we are. When are we going to wake up?