By Alan Caruba
I came into this world when Franklin D. Roosevelt was President and I have never
been afraid of my government until now.
I am not alone. A consistent and
growing theme of commentaries on the conservative news sites and blogs that I
read every day is the fear of the Obama administration that has been cracking
down on those who criticize it. They get audited by the IRS. They are refused
the same status as non-profit entitles engaging in public education as
Left-leaning organizations. They are accused of being racists, homophobes,
anti-immigration, and anti-women.
This goes beyond the ordinary
disagreements between individuals and groups that express opposition to the
Obama administration. It has the look of a deliberate campaign and we have three
more years of Obama as President in which to endure it.
In a speech to
the leftist nonprofit Center for American Progress, Sen. Chuck Schumer, (D-BY)
recently urged the IRS to "redouble" its intimidation tactics against the Tea
Party. He represents a State whose governor recently said that conservatives
were not welcome to live and do business. Its largest city, New York, just
elected a Marxist as its mayor.
Jim Lakely, the director of
communications of The Heartland Institute, a free market think tank that has led
the effort to debunk the global warming hoax, recently posted a commentary, "The
Unceasing Political Thuggery of Obama's Gangster Government." He noted
Michael Barone's description of the Obama administration as a "gangster
government."
Lakely cited the growing list of actions taken against who
have expressed criticism. It includes Dinesh D'Souza who produced a documentary
about Obama's life, "Obama's America" and who arrested on felony charges for
violating campaign finance law. "This is beyond absurd – especially in light of
what the FBI and IRS have found not worthy of any investigation, let alone
indictment" in the past. A Hollywood group of conservatives, the only one there,
received an IRS demand for its complete donor list; this is a repeat of similar
demands of Tea Party groups seeking non-profit status. James O'Keefe whose
Project Veritas exposed the nonprofit status of the leftist ACORN is being
audited as was Frank VanderSloot, a big Republican donor as was conservative
journalist Wayne Allen Root – twice. The list keeps growing.
The Heartland
Institute was subjected to the stealing of its confidential budget and
planning documents by global warming activist Peter Gleick "for the purpose of
harassing" its donors, but no action has been taken against him by law
enforcement authorities.
"Never in the history of this country have we
seen such a broad and coordinated abuse of the government's power to threaten
criminal prosecution and ruin the lives and livelihoods of people the President
and his party see as political 'enemies,'" says Lakely.
"This should be
the political scandal of the century – if only we had an honorable and competent
MSM (mainstream media) press corps in this country."
Ordinary Americans
have cause to share my fear as they discover the wreckage that Obamacare is
inflicting on our healthcare system, losing their insurance plans, and now we
are hearing that the insurance industry may have to be bailed out as it is
subjected to major losses. The government's website is not only a disaster, but
it subjects anyone using it to the threat of identity theft as experts testify
it can be hacked with ease.
The economy of a nation with enormous energy
reserves, enough to make us energy sufficient for decades, is being undermined
by a deliberate campaign to shut down coal-fired plants and make the
construction of new ones impossible. The Keystone XL pipeline from Canada has
been delayed for five years despite the jobs it represents and access to oil at
the same time the government has slowed the provision of leases to oil companies
seeking to explore and extract our own reserves.
And millions of
Americans are out of work or have ceased looking for work as the result of the
worst economic "recovery" in the history of the nation. This is occurring at a
time when the Obama administration has added $6 trillion to the nation's debt,
causing a leading credit agency to downgrade the nation's credit rating for the
first time in its history.
The scandals attributed to the Obama
administration keep mounting from "Fast and Furious" that transmitted weapons to
Mexican drug cartels, to the failure to provide security to our Libyan consulate
despite many requests, leading to the Benghazi killing of a U.S. ambassador and
three brave security personnel who went to his aid. The list keeps
growing.
There is ample reason for Americans to fear their government
these days and the mood of the nation is growing worse as they realize that they
have a President who lies all the time and pursues "climate change" policies
that have no basis in known science and a campaign of class war based on "income
inequality" as the incomes of Middle Class Americans have suffered a decline.
The solution to income inequality has always been an increase in the national
economy.
The nation's military is being undermined by budget cuts and
policies that encourage open homosexual participation and the introduction of
women into its combat forces. A growing list of generals and admirals have been
forced to retire.
It has taken only five years to bring the nation to
this point and none of the scandals has resulted in anyone in the Obama
administration being held accountable.
They have good reason. When they
can no longer depend on the Department of Justice, the Internal Revenue Service,
and other elements of the government to act lawfully, this nation – a nation of
laws – we are all in jeopardy.
For these and other reasons I and many
Americans are growing fearful. We have good reason.
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