Mike Williams Obama Watch - May 5, 2009

It’s no big secret that Obama and the Dems need additional revenues to fund their social agenda and to offset the deficits they’ve helped to create. Here’s one take on the $100M Obama ordered government to save. And here Obama goes after “tax cheats”:

President Obama, today: "The Treasury Department and the IRS, under Secretary Geithner's leadership and Commissioner Shulman's, are already taking far-reaching steps to catch overseas tax cheats — but they need more support."

What, is Geithner telling the IRS, "Look for these signs, because that's how I did it"?

Well, at least the president only praised one tax cheat in his speech denouncing tax cheats

. . . oh, wait:

"These problems have been highlighted by Chairmen Charlie Rangel and Max Baucus, by leaders like Senator Carl Levin and Congressman Lloyd Doggett."

Geithner and Rangel thanked for helping crack down on tax cheats? What's next, a ceremony on the importance of accurate information in public-health communication, thanking Joe Biden?

Ed Morrissey:

…In the middle of a deep recession, Obama has proposed massive new government spending while revenues drop dramatically. The predicted $1.85 trillion budget for this year is a massive fantasy, and the rosy economic predictions for this year and next make the next few years’ deficit predictions seem even more ridiculous.

Obama has to find revenue to counter the bleeding. This attempt will backfire in a couple of ways. First, as ATR noted, companies with the wherewithal will simply move overseas to take advantage of better tax environments, limiting their exposure to Obama’s tax-hiking fever and protecting their revenues. He can try to make this as painful as possible, but in the end businesses will act in their own interest.

Obama seems to either not realize this or not care much whether companies flee the US, nor does he appear to have learned the value of dynamic tax analysis.

For the rest, the high American corporate tax rate will cause them to invest less in their own businesses, killing expansion and development. It will curtail employment, and in the end, the businesses won’t pay most of the tax anyway.

They will do what all businesses do — pass their internal costs to their customers in the form of higher prices. Those higher prices will depress demand, as well as creating inflation on top of stagnation. This will not only cripple the American economy in a similar manner to what we saw in the 1970s, but it will also mean less revenue for the federal and state governments….

A John in Carolina reader agrees.

Moving along, we’ve talked recently about Obama’s declassification of the so-called torture memos. Jack Kelly, writing at Real Clear Politics:

Has Barack Obama made an enemy who can sabotage his presidency?

The presidency of George W. Bush began to unravel when some in high positions at the Central Intelligence Agency began waging a covert campaign against him….

Why would some at the CIA want to sabotage President Bush? One motive might have been to deflect blame for intelligence failures. The CIA confidently had predicted Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction. But none were found.

The tactical intelligence the CIA provided to the U.S. military forces invading Iraq proved nearly worthless. And the CIA was caught flat-footed by the insurgency that developed several months after Saddam's fall.

There may have been a simpler motive. The novelist Charles McCarry was a deep cover CIA operative for ten years. "I never met a stupid person in the agency," he said in a 2004 interview. "Or an assassin. Or a Republican."

The CIA's war against President Bush was motivated by ass covering, or by political partisanship. But with President Obama, it's personal….

This is a very good read if you have some time.

Finally, one thing Obama apparently won’t declassify is the recent pictures of Air Force One in Manhattan. Ed Morrissey, again:

I can understand why the White House would choose not to use the pictures, and remind everyone of the almost-criminal stupidity of the Obama administration in doing flybys of New York City skyscrapers with a big jet plane without warning people.

But keeping them classified? We have plenty of shots in the public domain of Scare Force One buzzing terrified New Yorkers, most of them taken by the people who wondered whether al-Qaeda had launched another attack on the city. The stupidity of this public-relations mission has already leaked to the public….

Mike