-By John Armor
This is the 666th column in this weekly series. It had to be spent on an overarching subject. So it is.
President Barack Obama is the most accomplished liar I have ever encountered, and that includes several pathological liars I faced in court. The best of those I could not rattle even with a well-prepared and vigorous cross-examination. Only the weight of solid facts from other sources served to expose and defeat those people.
Pathological liars can give the impression that they are telling the truth because they are smooth, accomplished, and effective. But the most important reason is that they have learned to lie to themselves. When they tell a bald-faced lie, right to your face, they actually believe what they are saying.
I’ll use exactly one example. On the campaign trail, Obama repeatedly said that “no one earning less than $250,000 a year will pay any additional taxes.” This was his definition of the middle class, in his universal mantra of no new taxes for the bulk of Americans.
Now, two members of his Cabinet on Sunday talk shows, plus tax cheat Charlie Rangel, who yet remains as Chairman of the House Committee that writes the tax laws, have all made the same remark on television in front of God and everybody. That statement was that “tax iucreases on the middle class might be necessary to pay for the President’s health care plan.”
In between those comments by other Democrats, President Obama trotted out his mouthpiece, Robert Gibbs, to “assure” the press, and through them the people, that Obama was sticking to his “repeated pledge not to raise taxes on the middle class.”
Let’s review for a moment, The Cap and Trade Bill now wandering through Congress is the President’s plan to reduce the use of carbon, by taxing it heavily. Those taxes will be on necessities like gasoline, electricity, cooking gas, and diesel for trains and trucks that deliver almost all the products that almost all Americans rely on. In a brief moment of candor, candidate Obama said that this program would increase the cost of electricity, etc., and “nearly double the cost.”
Well, when you tax necessities that everyone needs to buy, those taxes will be ultimately be paid by the consumers. Most consumers are, by definition, members of the middle class. Obama has made clear that he intends to sign the Cap and Trade Bill if it reaches his desk.
Add to that Obama’s claim that his Health Care “Reform” will be tax neutral. If there was an ounce of truth in that, the Administration would not have buried, repeatedly, proposals to keep American taxpayers from being on the hook to pay for health care for 17 million citizens of other nations.
A line from a justly obscure Joey Bishop movie comes to mind: “Who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?” A line from Alexander Hamilton also comes to mind: people with “talents for low intrigue and the little arts of popularity” do not belong in the White House. Hamilton assumed that the Electoral College would prevent that result. He was wrong.
Throw in a quote from Thomas Jefferson: “It is a wise rule never borrow a dollar without laying a tax in the same instant or paying the interest annually and the principal in a reasonable term.” Jefferson considered it “immoral” to “burden the next generation” with our debts.
Because of the huge and unprecedented deficits now being run up, the issue is not just the taxes on us adults. They are also on our children, and ultimately on our grandchildren.
There is no way to prevent President Obama from lying. He has a natural talent. He leaves all others in the dust. What we can do is keep the pressure on Members of Congress, who either cannot or won’t read the bills. Obama cannot be silenced, but he can, at least, be cut off at the knees if enough of his Congressional enablers are knocked out of office in 2010. That means both Republicans and Democrats who have bought into Obama’s lies about taxes.
That’s not much hope, but that’s all there is.
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John Armor is a graduate of Yale, and Maryland Law School, and has 33 years practice at law in the US Supreme Court. Mr. Armor has authored seven books and over 750 articles. Armor happily lives on a mountaintop in the Blue Ridge. He can be reached at: John_Armor@aya.yale.edu
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