If Only D'Souza Were Right (from the Austrian School)

Ludwig von Mises Institute ^ | September 1, 2012 | Gary North

[Arec Barrwin]

If Only D'Souza Were Right

Mises Daily: Monday, September 03, 2012 by Gary North

by Gary North

2016: Obama's America

I went to see 2016: Obama's America. Dinesh D'Souza wrote, stars in, directed, narrates, and did the original research for it. If we look at this from the point of view of its success as a documentary, I think it is effective. It is making money in theaters. This is amazing for a documentary. It is a campaign-year documentary, and it is a good one.

It is also dead wrong. That is because it misses the fundamental political fact of the last dozen years: the Obama administration is the operational successor of the Bush administration. In Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Guantanamo, on Wall Street, Barack Obama is George W. Bush in blackface. Obama is the star of a 21-century minstrel show.

This fact has been deliberately ignored for almost four years by both the neoconservative Right and the grin-and-bear-it Left. Neither side will admit what I regard as the fundamental fact of this documentary. It is a long whitewash of the policies of George W. Bush. The On-Budget Deficit

If you understand this early, you can see it in what is by far the best section of the movie. It appears at the end. It is an interview with the ever-eloquent David Walker, who resigned in 2008 from his job as comptroller general — senior accountant — of the United States.

This date is crucial: the last year of the Bush administration.

I need to make three observations. First, the deficit is vastly worse than the movie portrays. The movie sticks with the nonissue: the on-budget debt of $15 trillion, which is chump change, while never mentioning the central problem: the $222 trillion present value of the unfunded liabilities of the off-budget deficit, meaning the deficits of politically sacrosanct Social Security and Medicare. This is the heart of the federal government's highly entertaining Punch and Judy show over the deficit, with Paul Ryan as Punch and Obama cross-dressing as Judy.

Second, Walker has spent years warning the public about the unsustainable increase of the on-budget federal debt. He was eloquent on camera. But, central to that presentation is the fact that he blamed George W. Bush as much as he blamed Obama. He says on camera that the turning point on the deficit began with Bush's presidency. He showed that we are headed for a fiscal disaster, and it may overtake us during the presidency of whoever is elected in 2016.

In terms of the on-budget deficit, Obama's administration is an extension of Bush's. Dinesh D'Souza

Miss this, and you miss the whitewash. This documentary is an implicit whitewash. It relies on an assumption, namely, that we are not dealing in 2012 with a single political administration, which began in January 2001. Sadly, we are.

The key to understanding this is Timothy Geithner, who was the president of the New York Federal Reserve Bank (privately owned) in 2008, and is the secretary of the Treasury now. He does not appear in the documentary.

Third, neither Walker nor D'Souza mentions on-screen what should be the obvious constitutional fact — namely, that it is the Congress that legally initiates all spending bills, and it is the House of Representatives that holds the hammer constitutionally. There was not one word in the movie about the Congress of the United States as being constitutionally in authority over the budget of the United States government. How in the world could anyone make a documentary that focuses at the very end on the central problem that the country faces, and then try to pin the tail on Obama as the donkey?

We are living in a bipartisan, congressionally mandated, slow-motion train wreck. The Congress of the United States could stop Obama today as easily as it could have stopped Bush. Congress is not interested in stopping the deficit; it is interested in avoiding all responsibility for the annual $1.2 trillion on-budget disaster that is the federal budgetary process.

The fiscal killer of killers in Bush's administration was never mentioned: the prescription-drug law that Bush signed in 2003. The vote was close in Congress. If he had vetoed it, it would never have passed. Instead, he turned the signing into a pageant. He brought in thousands of seniors to witness it. He announced: "You are here to witness the greatest advance in health care coverage for America's seniors since the founding of Medicare."

This sell-out to Teddy Kennedy (who refused to attend), added at least $8.7 trillion to the unfunded liability of Medicare. Yet it is never mentioned in the documentary. Instead, the documentary focuses on Obamacare, whose burden is mainly on the private sector and actually relieves some of the Medicare payments. In any case, that law was really Pelosicare. She was the ramrod. The documentary has one brief segment on her. It skips the point: bad as that law is, she was far more responsible for it than he was.

The Economy

A related thing that bothers me intensely is the fact that the documentary tries to pin the bad economy on Obama. The bad economy should be pinned on Alan Greenspan, with considerable help from his successor.

To suggest that the president of the United States has the power to make the economy worse to imply that he also has the power to make the economy terrible. He has limited power either way, unless he drags us into a war. Bush dragged us into two wars.

Ron Paul always was right for 36 years in not pointing to the president as the main economic problem, but rather the Federal Reserve System. So, any documentary that does not go after the Federal Reserve when it talks about economic problems but blames the president instead, and also ignores Congress, is doing the general public an enormous disservice. It keeps the Federal Reserve in the background in the thinking of the viewers, when the Federal Reserve ought to be in the foreground, with the presidency in the background. This is basic economics. D'Souza does not know what he is talking about with respect to economics.

[Pontiac]

Get in kill as many as you can, get out. Rinse & Repeat as necessary.

I think one lesson we must learn from the first Iraq war and from Viet Nam is that if one goes to war one must resolve to win.

When I say win I mean in the sense that we won in WW II against Germany and Japan. We totally destroyed the enemy’s ability and desire to wage war.

Another lesson of WW II is the occupation of the conquered countries and the pacification. De-Nazification in particular. We need to de Islamify these countries.

To accomplish this in Iraq and Afghanistan would probably require the US to surrender some of our ideas such as permitting the Muslims in these countries unfettered religious freedom. We need to impose a more liberal form of Islam on the inhabitants of these countries; perhaps forcing a reformation on the Muslims.

What we probably need here is a new era of Colonization in Afghanistan and Iraq.

[Pontiac]

I sit corrected.

[Casie]

Uuggh! I do not care who started it, or if it was in 1944 or 1992 or 2008. FIX IT. Start fixing it now! And if you can't fix it, get the hell out of the way. :p

[donmeaker]

GW Bush deficit wasn’t all that bad until a treason congress was elected in 2006. At that point he had to bribe them to get the Win in Iraq. Reagan had the same problem.

When discussing a 222 trillion dollar debt over some interval of time, you have to also mention some estimate of the US production over the same interval, or you have to discuss the assets. US GDP is about 15 trillion each year, without inflation. US taxation tends to be about 20%, or three trillion a year. If the US is put back onto the path to growth, then we can begin to make progress. If we continue with significant unemployment, then we don’t make progress, and the debts can’t be paid.

The problem is unemployment. If the economy grows, which means that business people have sound money and reasonable expectation that they will make and keep significant profits, then we will grow. Further, so long as we have a stinky economy, the birth rate will slow.

The foolishly high rate of taxation discourages growth, discourages employment, and increases government spending.Further, low birth rates make it more difficult to grow the economy.

The government programs are wasteful and inefficient, and should be reduced. Reducing them will encourage growth, and increase birth rates. Win Win.

[jsanders2001]

The main point now is “where are we headed?” Its obvious Obama is not steering us in the right direction no matter what case you make about it being Bush's fault. Bush was also handed some of the worst situations any President has ever experienced while the U.S. Is in existence. 911 was devastating and the fallout horrendous in every respect. I would dare any president to do any better given the situation.

[StevenFlorida]

Just as FDR just followed and amplified Herbert Hoover’s progressive Republican policies, Obama followed and amplified George W. Bush’s Compassionate Conservatism.

“Barack Obama is George W. Bush in blackface”. , I couldn’t agree more. GWB was so compassionate, not like the rest of us conservatives.

[nathanbedford]

There is a very interesting article published here yesterday of which, unfortunately, I have lost track. A thesis of the article is to the effect that the elites are anti-democratic because they want to protect their status in society and execute power.

The elites arrogantly dismiss the masses and seek to avoid submitting their plans to Democratic processes. By way of illustration he points to the European Union which is a construct designed to favor intellectual and economic elites at the expense of local democracy.

We see much the same thrust here in America. We see the Democrat party professing fealty to the common man, especially the common man of color or the common woman, while it actually diabolically contrives to set one group against another to circumvent democracy.

We see the Republicans in frustration moving away from democracy in many areas. When common sense cries out to close military bases, we junk our democratic system and appoint committees. When we need to manage our credit system, we pass responsibility and power over to an unelected, unaudited, unresponsible, National Bank. When it comes time to halt deficit spending before we are hurled over the cliff, we pass a continuing resolution.

My bias is to the effect for government to work it must ultimately be responsible to the people-it must be some sort of democracy (with the rule of law). In order for a government to be a democracy it must be submitted to the people. In order for democracy to work people must be educated, enlightened, and involved.

Our system is designed to keep the electorate ignorant, uninvolved, and bigoted in the sense that they prejudge. The only responsible course is to go after the root causes of government failure. And that is not only a daunting but a overwhelmingly comprehensive challenge.

[SUSSA]

“Barack Obama is George W. Bush in blackface”.
###

It’s more like he’s Bush on steroids.

[neveralib]

RELATED: An interesting take on Dear Reader and D'Souza's 2016:

"Does Obama really hate America?" (Duh! Does a bear **** in the woods?)

http://www.wnd.com/2012/09/does-obama-really-hate-america/?cat_orig=us

Dinesh D’Souza found in the United States a land of opportunity: Free from India’s repressive caste system, here was a nation where the native of Mumbai could determine his own destiny, a land where a poor boy could actually improve his lot in life through education and hard work. To him, it was like being loosed from the chains of bondage.

Could this anti-colonialist loathing for the wealthy nations of the West explain Obama’s apology tours? His odd choice in the first 40 days of his administration to return to England a bust of Winston Churchill, the man who crushed Kenya’s Mau Mau independence uprising in the 1950s and allegedly was responsible for torturing Obama’s grandfather? His State Department’s policy-reversing urging of negotiations between Argentina and the U.K. over the fate of the Falkland Islands?

And since Barack Obama Sr. was an anti-colonialist in the extreme, whose radical rhetoric made D’Souza’s pop’s pale in comparison, could those same views have penetrated the perspective of Obama Jr., author of “Dreams from My Father”?

These mind-bending questions presented in D’Souza’s surprise hit movie “2016: Obama’s America” suggest Obama’s political opponents may have been looking at him all wrong – rather than a leftwing socialist, the movie suggests, Obama could simply be a closet anti-colonialist.

“I was trying to fit Obama into American history,” the movie explains, “instead of into his own history.”

Oh, but there’s nothing “simple” about having an anti-colonialist in the Oval Office.

If D’Souza is right that Obama has concealed a raging anti-colonialist worldview in a false cloak of Ivy-league liberalism, then many of the Internet’s wildest rumors could prove legitimate: Obama actually would want to see the U.S. economy crumble; his budget cuts and nuclear reduction drive really would be at attempt to undermine the U.S. as a world superpower; his push for global warming initiatives really could be just a way of forcing developed countries to pay undeveloped nations billions in reparations; and … well, really … he would hate America.

As Daniel Pipes, founder of the Middle East Forum said in an interview in the film, “[Obama] doesn’t want the influence of the U.S. to expand, and that’s a strange thing for a U.S. president.”

As the movie points out, anti-colonialism in the White House would dramatically affect a president’s foreign policy: He would show sympathy for the Palestinians, for example, as the poor neighbors to Israeli “occupiers”; he would show animosity toward the British Empire; he would seek to redistribute the wealth and power of Western nations around the world; he would resent any superpower and weaken it militarily.

Economically, he would increase his country’s indebtedness to the rest of the world, stop the U.S. from developing natural resources – like oil, for example – and encourage, say, South American nations to drill instead. He might even demand the U.S. stop leading the world in, say, space exploration, and build up the scientific communities of third world nations instead.

Of course, as “2016: Obama’s America” points out, Obama has already done all these things.

[GeronL]

daunting and demoralizing in scope

Just me against the tsunami.... *gulp*

[Hawthorn]

>> You really have to be stuck on stupid <<

Yes, that’s definitely what it takes to be a Paulbot!

[nikos1121]

Prescripion drug program is paid for and under budget. It’s save alot of money for everyone. That’s a fact. Should they have done that, probably not..but it is a gov’t entitlment in the black.

[Theoria]

' A thesis of the article is to the effect that the elites are anti-democratic because they want to protect their status in society and execute power.'

That tends to be the nature of the beast in many ways. Various industries use regulator capture to gain the upper-hand and attack entrepreneurs or start ups that shake up the system.

Politicians stand by farm subsidies, welfare, tax breaks for certain groups or units, etc. That is just to gain favor and remain in power.

[StevenFlorida]

And don’t forget, we have to establish Jeffersonian Democracies in all of the Muslim countries.

[nathanbedford]

How about biofuels?

[Theoria]

Sure, you could add that to the list. Throw in ethanol, wind farm tax breaks[iowa], etc.

[9YearLurker]

We just had two years of a GOP House. They could have at least put the brakes on the budget, and if we get a GOP Senate, together they could start to address both spending and the Fed.

But Boehner and crew have zero political will.

For that do we blame ourselves, the voters they are so deathly afraid of? The press who would lash them for any steps toward responsibility?

Sure, if we’d had Ron Paul as president (gulp), it would have been easier for our feckless Congress to act, but why they won’t even slow the spigots of spending is a core question.

Romney is a Keynesian himself, talking about how counterproductive it would be to slow spending too quickly. His top economic adviser, Glen Hubbard, has said how he’d like to see Bernanke reappointed.

Sure, a pox on them all, but the unAmerican, Marxist impostor we have in the White House is the first, most important guy to kick to the curb. That’s not nearly enough. Romney is not nearly enough. The entire GOP deserves to get booted too.

But getting rid of Obama and getting the Democrats out of power in the Senate are the two best chances we have to start to turn things around.

(Haven’t seen 2016, so I don’t know if D’Souza is presenting things inaccurately or poorly.)

[vanilla swirl]

2016 was not about economics and why we are in a mess. It was about Obama and how he thinks.

A few years ago (1990’s?) I saw a chart of our debt and the effects of compounding interest. It is about at the point I remember. The problem goes way before Bush, I’m not sure how far back it goes but it started when Congress realized it could ignore debt and print money.

When debt needs to be addressed by somebody else after you are dead and out of office why not pour out bread and circuses upon the masses to buy votes?

We are at the point now that we cannot cut enough to balance the budget, we cannot tax enough to balance the budget. The ones receiving the bread and circuses will keep on voting until the bread is gone.

[Rocky]

He says Obama’s not to blame because the president has little to do with the economy. He gets in a good punch about the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. But then he blames Bush for the Medicare drug benefit. While this is a good point as far as why we are in a problem, it certainly undercuts his argument that Obama can’t be blamed for policies which were put in place during his presidency.

Obama is a petty tyrant. He should be removed from office, and I believe the majority of voters will say so in November. But putting Romney in his place is not necessarily going to solve all of our problems. Someone has to have the courage to stop the merry-go-round, and I don’t see many leaders in Congress who are willing to do that.

[Mister Da]

The author is right, as far as he goes, but he misses the disastrous effects of Obama’s Presidential edicts that are destroying whole sections of the economy, starting with coal.

Too, every word Obama utters is discouraging to businesses & individuals. Obama has generated a “deep malaise” in America just a Carter did. People have NO CONFIDENCE in Obama ON ANYTHING. He is a serial liar & most know it. When you know your leader is taking you in the wrong direction, you are obviously skeptical & resistant. The wrong direction is the wrong direction. Period.

Bottom line. Obama is a bad leader. Bad leaders must be replaced.