YOUR AD HERE »

Vail Valley Voices: Did we mean to elect a king?

Dick Gustafson
Vail, CO, Colorado
newsroom@vaildaily.com

The founding fathers are turning in their graves over what is happening to our Constitution today.

The founders had diverse backgrounds but were unanimous about their natural-law beliefs influencing the Constitution. They were all students of Polybius, Cicero, Blackstone, Thomas Hooker, Coke, John Locke, Montesquieu and Adam Smith.

Two fears were major concerns. Thomas Jefferson worried that virtuous and talented men would refuse to run for office, leaving voids filled by the inexperienced and morally corrupt. Benjamin Franklin feared that politically uneducated voters would give away their freedoms to a monarchy. He said, “There is scarce a king in a hundred who would not, if he could, follow the example of Pharaoh – get first all of the people’s money, then all of their lands, and then make them and their children servants forever.”



Obama is the result of both. He has no experience in governing or business, yet he now commands America’s largest industries, i.e., banks and the auto industry. He is ignoring the Constitution in his efforts to socialize the country. He has often said he wishes to redistribute the wealth “to whom it rightfully belongs,” a clear violation of equal protections guaranteed by the Constitution.

Obama changed the rules, now refusing to let the Troubled Asset Relief Program banks pay back bailout money and be free of his control. His compensation controls are also unconstitutional. The tobacco industry is now the next industry pegged for restructuring.

Support Local Journalism



Obama appointed 31-year-old Brian Deese to dismantle the American capitalistic icon General Motors and its national franchise dealer system. This is Deese’s first real job. He is a Clinton campaign leftover, a Yale Law School dropout, with no business experience, and was a White House errand boy become economic adviser. Deese’s closest experience with the auto industry is that he apparently once slept in a General Motors plant parking lot. He’s now responsible for remaking America’s auto industry.

When his mandated cars come off the production line with 36 mpg, OPEC will cut production and raise gas prices, maintaining our dependence on the Middle East and its income. It will still take 10 years to drill for our own oil if we never start.

Obama has made so many spending commitments (though very few stimulus programs) that he needs your money to pay for the extravagances, not including the proposed “socialized” health plan, the most expensive government program of all time. Even China isn’t interested in buying more of our debt, thus reducing our world negotiating power.

Will this require new taxes? Obama said it himself: “We’re out of money now.” Here are just three examples:

• “Cap and trade” legislation, if passed by Congress, will increase energy costs to each household by $3,000 to $5,000 (government estimates).

In the process, Obama enriches Al Gore, the inventor of “global warming,” and Jeffery Immelt, president of General Electric – a close Obama supporter and a senior economic adviser. Immelt controls NBC, a GE subsidiary that supports Obama’s policies with “unbiased reporting” (so they say).

• Congress is considering a tax on soft drinks, wine, beer and liquor. This tax will affect the 95 percent who were promised “no new taxes,” plus the other 5 percent who are expected to pay for everything else.

• A value-added sales tax is being proposed. Who pays that? You do.

After spending trillions of dollars and taxing us to pay for his social programs, he now says we must “all sacrifice for our grandchildren” while he flies to special nights out in New York. He (and his teleprompter) continues to pre-empt profitable prime-time TV networks’ programming, making apology speeches about us to the world (a sign of weakness to Muslims) – all at our expense.

Obama admits that he is “constrained by the Constitution,” which is being symbolically shredded as we speak. One example is a property “taking.” The bankruptcy transfer of GM’s and Chrysler’s bondholders’ first-position contractual right was taken from the bondholders and given to the unions, whose membership voted 99 percent to support Obama’s election.

Obama has publicly stated that America is a Muslim country. Our Christian founders are no longer turning, they’re spinning, and De Tocqueville would be traumatized.

We may not have thought we were electing a “king,” but did anyone tell the voters or Obama?

Dick Gustafson is a former Eagle County commissioner.


Support Local Journalism