Michael Goodwin, writing in the Daily News, notes the rhetoric of Barack Obama when speaking of the economy. His conclusion: Obama is conducting class warfare and is building an enemies list.
Less than half-way through what should be a 100-day honeymoon, the Obama administration is on a war footing. Make that a class-war footing.
Sometimes the targets are critics, including two TV commentators singled out by press secretary Robert Gibbs for faulting the President’s bailout plans.
Sometimes the targets are Republicans, like conservative talker Rush Limbaugh, the focus of a plan led by chief of staff Rahm Emanuel to divide the GOP and score points with the Democratic base.
But the tone of the President’s own attacks on industry and his spending and tax policies are increasingly worrying Wall Streetand much of the business world. With the stock market reaching lows not seen in more than a decade, including a 20% drop since Inauguration Day, headlines like “Obama’s bear market” are suddenly routine.
The President dismisses the growing perception he is adding to the economic pain. Asked about the markets, Obama waved them off as like a “tracking poll in politics” that “bobs up and down day to day.”
It was a telling moment, for the markets on his watch have moved almost exclusively down. And the 55 million households that hold mutual funds are watching their savings and retirements vanish in great gobs.
Most are decidedly middle class, making them collateral damage of this war.
That is where real damage is being done at the moment. People close to retirement are in an especially bad position. Yet the tanking stock market just isn’t important to Obama. His class warfare rhetoric is making investors and businesses very, very nervous. They know they are being demonized as a justification for higher taxes and Obama’s grand government expansion plans. If they get scared enough, the markets will be down for a long, long time.
And they are getting scared.
A power-mad psychopath pushing a destructive leftist ideology, corruption of what is left of the election process, growing efforts to use the “Fairness Doctrine” to silence media critics, and attempts to establish a “Truth Commission” to torment and terrorize political opponents with witch hunts and kangaroo courts.
A tanking stock market and shattered economy will soon be the least of our worries. The Zimbabwe-ization of America continues unchecked.
Wonder if those in the middle that voted for BO are now having second thoughts?
I’m wondering what’s happening with the elderly folk in rest homes whose care is being paid for by distributions from their retirement accounts. I have retired friends who suddenly have no income and their capital is decimated. Rents and expenses are still high and you can’t liquidate a house in this market, so how will these people survive?!