OpenGov - Open Government Brainstorm

YOU ARE NOT ALONE

Polls: Americans starting to hold Obama responsible for economy

NYT/CBS News poll finds that

fewer than half of Americans saying they approve of how he has handled health care and the effort to save General Motors and Chrysler. A majority of people said his policies have had either no effect yet on improving the economy or had made it worse, underscoring how his political strength still rests on faith in his leadership rather than concrete results.

WSJ/NBC News poll finds:

Nearly seven in 10 survey respondents said they had concerns about federal interventions into the economy, including Mr. Obama's decision to take an ownership stake in General Motors Corp., limits on executive compensation and the prospect of more government involvement in health care. The negative feeling toward the GM rescue was reflected elsewhere in the survey as well.

A solid majority -- 58% -- said that the president and Congress should focus on keeping the budget deficit down, even if takes longer for the economy to recover. [emphasis added]

Those numbers are pretty impressive.

Laura Zamora, 40, of Orange, Calif., voted for Mr. Obama but says she is frustrated by the economy and finds her support for the president waning. She says she's facing a possible layoff as a local government worker in California.

"He's bailing out the private sector. He's putting all kinds of money into the private sector," says Mrs. Zamora. "The money should be going to social programs, not to bailing out banks and GM. It should go to people who are unemployed."

That's interesting. Yesterday a Rush Limbaugh caller who voted for Obama said something very similar:

And to me he's done nothing. Nothing but help the higher-up people in the country [by corporate bailouts]. You know, what about the little people?

Rush almost choked on that and tried to educate Jeremy on how Obama was destroying rather than helping businesses. But the point is that people are feeling the pain of the worsening economy and holding Obama's policies responsible. They may not understand his antagonistic relationship with business or his destruction of the private sector but they know whether or not their own situation is improving or deteriorating. Perhaps some reality-mugging is taking place.

From the WSJ poll, people aren't buying Obama's "health care must be fixed to boost the economy" meme:

When asked what the most important economic issue facing the country is, 24% cited the deficit, vs. just 11% who named health care.

There was also support for the Democratic push to let people sign up for a public health-care plan that would compete with private companies, one of the toughest issues in the health-care debate. Three in four people said a public plan is extremely or quite important. But when told the arguments for and against the plan, a smaller portion, 47%, agreed with arguments in support of the plan, with 42% agreeing with the arguments against it.

At the same time, nearly half the participants said it was very or somewhat likely that their employer would drop private coverage if a public plan were available.

As for how to pay for the package, estimated at more than $1 trillion over 10 years, the public favors proposals to require all Americans to get insurance, to raise taxes on the rich and, to a lesser extent, to require all but the smallest businesses to offer insurance or pay into a fund.

Gak. From the NYT:

“My feeling is that Obama is just throwing money at things, but I don’t see anything being specifically targeted,” Lynn Adams, 62, a Republican from Troy, Mich., said in a follow-up interview. “But I’m giving him the benefit of the doubt because he hasn’t been in office long enough.”

That might be a reasonable approach if he weren't moving so %$@&# fast.

Love this:

As Mr. Obama finishes his fifth month in office and assumes greater ownership of the problems he inherited, Americans are alarmed by the hundreds of billions of dollars that have been doled out to boost the economy. A majority said the government should instead focus on reducing the federal deficit.

They make him sound downright magnanimous, don't they? He sure isn't assuming responsibility voluntarily; has he ever missed a chance to blame Bush?

Linked by Michelle Malkin (buzzworthy)

Put is simply our government is in the business of brainwashing and propaganda. Same as N.Korea, China, Iran, Iraq before we freed it, Venezuela, Cuba, Iraq before we freed it, and every 3rd world country. The American people, does not want a government that lies and deceives. The American people wanted and voted for a government that was transparent not a government that is transparently SOCIALIST. The Democratic Party has been hijacked by the DSA & all three branches of our federal government has been hijacked by SOCIALISM. SOCIALISM CANNOT SURVIVE IN A FREE REPUBLIC & A FREE REPUBLIC CANNOT SURVIVE IN A SOCIALIST GOVERNMENT - THEY ARE DIAMETRICALLY OPPOSED. SO AMERICAN WHICH ONE WILL SURVIVE?

My question to all is this...when you were a child and were growing up...from as far back as you could remember...do you remember ever having a dream that you would grow and have the government support your every need...or did you dream of being a huge success and be independent of everyone.

If you dreamed that this is the way you wanted to live from childhood then your parents failed you and this new way government that wants you to be dependant has won.

Democracy:

A government of the masses.

Authority derived through mass meeting or any other form of "direct" expression.

Results in mobocracy.

Attitude toward property is comunistic-negating property rights.

Attitude toward law is that the will of the majority shall regulate. whether it be based upon deliberation or governed by passion, prejudice, and impulse, without restraint or regard to consequences.

Results in demagogism license, agitation, discontent, anarchy.

Democracy is the "direct" rule of the people and has been repeatedly tried without success.

A certain Professor Alexander Fraser Tytler, nearly two centuries ago, had this to say about Democracy: " A Democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of Government. It can only exist until the voters discover they can vote themselves largess out of public treasury. From that moment on the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that Democracy always collapses over a loose fiscal policy, always to be followed by a Dictatorship."

A democracy is majority rule and is destructive of liberty because there is no law to prevent the majority from trampling on individual rights. Whatever the majority says goes! A lynch mob is an example of pure democracy in action. There is only one dissenting vote, and that is cast by the person at the end of the rope.

Republic:

Authority is derived through the election by the people of public officials best fitted to represent them.

Attitude toward property is respect for laws and individual rights, and a sensible economic procedure.

Attitude toward law is the administration of justice in accord with fixed principles and established evidence, with a strict regard to consequences.

A greater number of citizens and extent of territory may be brought within its compass.

Avoids the dangerous extreme of either tyranny or mobocracy. Results in statesmanship, liberty, reason, justice, contentment, and progress.

Is the "standard form" of government throughout the world.

A republic is a form of government under a constitution which provides for the election of:

an executive and

a legislative body, who working together in a representative capacity, have all the power of appointment, all power of legislation all power to raise revenue and appropriate expenditures, and are required to create

a judiciary to pass upon the justice and legality of their governmental acts and to recognize

certain inherent individual rights.

Take away any one or more of those four elements and you are drifting into autocracy. Add one or more to those four elements and you are drifting into democracy.

Our Constitutional fathers, familiar with the strength and weakness of both autocracy and democracy, with fixed principles definitely in mind, defined a representative republican form of government. They "made a very marked distinction between a republic and a democracy and said repeatedly and emphatically that they had founded a republic."

A republic is a government of law under a Constitution. The Constitution holds the government in check and prevents the majority (acting through their government) from violating the rights of the individual. Under this system of government a lynch mob is illegal. The suspected criminal cannot be denied his right to a fair trial even if a majority of the citizenry demands otherwise.

Difference between Democracy and Republic, in brief:

Democracy:

a: government by the people; especially : rule of the majority.

b: a government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly or indirectly through a system of representation usually involving periodically held free elections.

Attitude toward law is that the will of the majority shall regulate, whether it be based upon deliberation or governed by passion, prejudice, and impulse, without restraint or regard to consequences

Republic

a: a government having a chief of state who is not a monarch and who in modern times is usually a president : a political unit (as a nation) having such a form of government.

b: a government in which supreme power resides in a body of citizens entitled to vote and is exercised by elected officers and representatives responsible to them and governing according to law.

Democracy and Republic are often taken as one of the same thing, but there is a fundamental difference. Whilst in both cases the government is elected by the people, in Democracy the majority rules according to their whims, whilst in the Republic the Government rule according to law. This law is framed in the Constitution to limit the power of Government and ensuring some rights and protection to Minorities and individuals.

The difference between Republic and Righteous Republic is that in the Republic the Government rules according to the law set up by men, in the Righteous Republic the law is the Law of God. Only in the Righteous Republic it can truly be said "One nation under God" for it is governed under commandments of the only One True God and there is no pluralism of religions.

Autocracy declares the divine right of kings; its authority can not be questioned; its powers are arbitrarily or unjustly administered.

Mobocracy: 1. Political control by a mob. 2. The mass of common people as the source of political control.

I agree and I guess we should all just rip off those platinum catolytic converters that they stuck on our cars ....All they do is ruin your radiator anyway.... HEY PLATINUM!I could get lots of jewelry made....

Revolution

I think the fearmongering has been a daily event for over a century. It is far more powerful than the crap Cheney and Bush pulled.

When you are reared to revere science, and trust in science, and the daily reports from those who claim authority and scientific knowledge is so full of alarmist--we'll take care of this for you--crap, you do not realize how vulnerable you are.

I'm ready for the revolution.

I agree sobi - the alarmist crap is "taking advantage of a good crisis" - even if that means creating it in the lst place. THIS IS DECEPTIVE, DIRTY, ROTTEN POLITICS!! AMERICANS DO NOT WANT THE PRESIDENT, ADMINISTRATION NOR CONGRESS LYING TO US. AMERICANS WANT THE PRESIDENT, ADMINISTRATION, CONGRESS & OUR JUDICIAL SYSTEM TO PRESERVE AND PROTECT OUR CONSTITUTION, THE AMERICAN PEOPLE AND THIS GREAT NATION!! NOT ROB US AND DESTROY OUR FREE REPUBLIC!!

NOW AS FOR BO & THE DSA/ACORN DEMOCRAT LEFT WING, ATTACKS & THREATS - THEY ARE SIMPLY FOLLOWING THE SAUL ALINSKY "COMMUNITY ORGANIZING & COMMUNITY ORGANIZER" HANDBOOK & RULES OF WAR, THE ONE THAT BO WAS TRAIN TO USE AND ALSO TRAINED OTHERS AS A COMMUNITY ORGANIZER TRAINER - BELITTLE, MAKE YOUR OPPONENT LOOK RIDICULOUS, JEER, & MARGINALIZE YOUR OPPONENT i.e. janeane garofalo

WE NEED TO USE THEIR RULES OF ENGAGEMENT RIGHT BACK AT THEM BUT WHEN WE DO WE WILL BE USING THE GREATEST WEAPON - THE TRUTH!! THAT IS WERE WE HAVE THE ADVANTAGE - THE LUNITIC DSA DEMO LEFT RELIES ON LIES AND PROPAGANDA TO ACCOMPLISH THEIR GOALS.