February 27, 2009

Barack Obama: A 21st Century Jack Cade
by Bill Levinson

Today’s Wall Street Journal reports that Barack Obama has proposed a $3.6 trillion budget, or more than $10,000 for every American.

The budget blueprint for fiscal year 2010 is one of the most ambitious policy prescriptions in decades, a reordering of the federal government to provide national health care, shift the energy economy away from oil and gas, and boost the federal commitment to education.

The community organizer proclaims that he will slap carbon taxes onto all carbon energy, which will drive energy-intensive businesses offshore while raising costs for American consumers–including the workers and union members who helped elect him. Barack Cade’s cap and trade scheme would in fact cost Americans more than $300 billion a year, or $1000 per person down the sewer to enrich special interests, climate profiteers, and people who write alarmist books and make alarmist movies about the end of the world. Congress must stop this quickly, and Congressional Democrats need to realize that their constituents’ higher utility bills will be laid at their feet in the 2010 election if they go along with this agenda.

But wait! The Anointed One says he will create five million so-called “green” jobs that could not, however, justify their existence in a free economy. While the Jack Cade of Shakespeare’s King Henry VI Part 2 was comic relief even for the poorly-educated groundlings who liked the performance’s vulgar humor, the United States has actually elected his real-world equivalent. The following scene should look uncomfortably familiar:

JACK CADE:
Be brave, then; for your captain is brave, and vows
reformation. There shall be in England seven
halfpenny loaves sold for a penny: the three-hooped
pot; shall have ten hoops and I will make it felony
to drink small beer: all the realm shall be in
common; and in Cheapside shall my palfrey go to
grass: and when I am king, as king I will be,–

ALL

God save your majesty!

JACK CADE

I thank you, good people: there shall be no money;
all shall eat and drink on my score; and I will
apparel them all in one livery, that they may agree
like brothers and worship me their lord.

…JACK CADE
Now is Mortimer lord of this city. And here, sitting
upon London-stone, I charge and command that, of the
city’s cost, the pissing-conduit run nothing but
claret wine this first year of our reign.

Barack Cade’s promise to create five million “green” jobs is every bit as realistic as Jack Cade’s promise that all shall eat and drink at his expense, and that the public urinal will provide claret wine. The difference between the groundlings who laughed their heads off at Jack Cade’s unrealistic promises and the Americans who elected Barack Cade is that the latter really believe that a political figure can create high-wage jobs out of nothing, provide social benefits to everybody, and defer payment on the enormous bill until some distant future, specifically after the 2012 elections if possible.

Conservatives such as Laura Ingraham have already tagged Obama’s stimulus legislation as the “Porkulus,” and rightly so. All that remains is to apply an appropriate name to the legislation’s originator, and “Barack Cade” (it even rhymes with “Jack Cade”) is perfect.