Like it’s 1773, that is:
The markets are not reacting very well to Barack Obama’s latest spending plan, which is to spend about seventy five billion dollars to rescue people who can’t pay their mortgages. CNBC host Rick Santelli believes he knows why.
Rick Santelli, who also an experienced investment strategist and trader, put it simply that the government would be promoting bad behavior by subsidizing mortgages given to people who ought not to have had them to start with.“Because we certainly don’t want to put stimulus forth and give people a whopping $8 or $10 in their check, and think that they ought to save it, and in terms of modifications… I’ll tell you what, I have an idea.
“You know, the new administration’s big on computers and technology– How about this, President and new administration? Why don’t you put up a website to have people vote on the Internet as a referendum to see if we really want to subsidize the losers’ mortgages; or would we like to at least buy cars and buy houses in foreclosure and give them to people that might have a chance to actually prosper down the road, and reward people that could carry the water instead of drink the water?”
Rick Santelli went on to compare what is happening to America under Barack Obama to Castro’s Cuba and to suggest a kind of “Boston Tea Party” anti spending revolt. Rick Santelli’s impassionate speech on CNBC brought cheers on the floor of the Chicago Board of Trade, from where he was reporting.
You can watch the video here.
Grassroots tax protests are springing up all over — Mesa, AZ, Hoboken, NJ, Denver, CO, and Seattle, WA. And in Pennsylvania, Sen. Arlen Specter was jeered by angry constituents at a press conference.
Right about now, the Obama White House has got to be eating a lot of Rolaids. They’ve severely “misunderestimated” the American people, so to speak. Maybe you thought you had us at “hope and change,” Mr. President, but when your policies threaten the financial security of our nation, cheap promises aren’t enough. Instead, you have awakened the ghost of Howard Beale:
In that 1976 film, the network’s executives were thrilled by newsman Beale’s populist appeal, because it brought them enormous publicity and a bigger market share. But today, the Obama Administration doesn’t want that kind of publicity. When President Obama visited Mesa, AZ yesterday and attempted to pitch his stimulus and mortgage bailout plans at a local high school, he not only attracted the group of protesters mentioned above, but he also received negative reviews from some of the high school students. Their reactions were reported in a widely-linked article published by the East Valley Tribune. But Instapundit Glenn Reynolds has an update:
So I linked to a story on high school students skeptical about Obama’s stimulus speech. Now the story has the same headline, but the quotes are missing, replaced by a bunch of feelgood talk about how excited everyone was to have Obama in town. But you can find the original story here. And here’s the Google Cache. Some difference, huh? I emailed the reporter, Hayley Ringle, to ask what happened. (Bumped).
UPDATE: The Google Cache now shows the new story. No response to my email yet. I saved screenshots, though, and of course there’s the Drudge capture.
That’s is a lot more Orwellian than the Oklahoma City police officer who wrongfully stopped a man with an anti-Obama sign in his car. The East Valley Tribune incident is the Records Department of the Ministry of Truth at work — today — here in the United States of America.
Here’s the bottom line: the American people aren’t greedy, they are simply over-taxed and over-burdened with government debt. I believe that most people would support a program that helps people who are in foreclosure because of unforeseen circumstances — layoffs, disability, death, or blatant fraud and misrepresentation by a crooked mortgage agent. But the rest of us who honestly obtained a mortgage that we could afford and who have worked to make those payments in full and on time are more than a little peeved at the thought of the government bailing out everyone in foreclosure with our tax dollars, especially those who deliberately tried to game the system and knowingly bought a house they could not afford, or lied about their finances in order to buy a home. And renters should be especially incensed.
Progressives love to describe everyone opposed to wealth redistribution as “greedy,” but the truth is that socialism itself is founded primarily on greed: the idea that one man can get something for free by using the power of the government to take it away from someone else. Socialism becomes totalitarianism when the haves have been sucked dry, and yet the have-nots are still restless. At that point, the state must resort to false propaganda and violence in order to keep the restless masses under control. We have seen the pattern over and over again, and we don’t want it here in America, period.
Our current government leadership seems to have no problem taxing, regulating, and burdening one half of the population, all in the name of “fairness” for the other half. And the recent resurgence of interest in the so-called “Fairness Doctrine” seems to indicate that our leaders also have no problem suppressing free speech in order to see that their agenda is implemented.
No wonder people are protesting.
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ADDED: Instapundit and Anchoress both linked. Thanks!
ALSO: The original East Valley Tribune story has been restored. They’re blaming technical difficulties. (And a heck of a lot of negative publicity, I’m sure)
AND: Dan Gainor is riffing on the same theme over at The Fox Forum.
