They want us to surrender

That is a direct quote from a mostly non-political observer I met during my recent vacation who confessed confusion with the mostly opposite takes of economic, foreign and other political events found on Fox News Channel vs the Drive-Bys (CNN, NBC, et al).

Yet, this non-ideological victim of the Great Recession reaches a quintessentially conservative conclusion succinctly reduced to layman's terms: The ObamaDems want Americans to surrender their independence for dependence on government.

Stimulants vs. Depressants

What else can we conclude, given their obvious definition of stimulants that makes depressants obsolete?

During this gamecock's respite from announcements of dawns, President Barack Obama and surrogates have floated a "second stimulus" trial balloon."

A second stimulus? Yes, I remember the nomenclature of the first $780B bill accompanied by breathless demands for immediate passage lest unemployment reach as high as 7.9% before Christmas on the way to the eventual collapse of the American economy inherited from the Bush Administration. No mention of a Democratic Party-controlled Congress since 2007 that, with then Senator Obama's votes, passed the budgets and the Fall of 2008 Housing/Credit Crunch bailout bill, but I digress.

The "Recovery Act" aka Stimulus was essential to arrest the "worst recession since the Great Depression" (never mind the worse numbers in 1981-2 about which we have more to say below) and, we were told, would "save or create" two million jobs. Congress passed it with but three Republican votes on a Friday. The President signed in 72 hours later. Guess "immediately" has a different meaning in Obama-tongue?

Weeks after the passage of the first stimulus, in an effort to stop the precipitous tanking of the stock market, the Obama Administration said that the economy wasn't as weak as previously thought. Yet, in recent weeks the President follows Vice-President Joe Biden in blaming the skyrocketing unemployment rate and post-Bernanke printing press mini-rally, fall in the DOW on underestimating the severity of the inherited recession.

Dizzy yet?

Republicans warned at the time that the Stimulus would not live up to its name unless one meant to stimulate government by creating new, permanent federal bureaucrats to regulate what remains of a ravaged private sector and save state government jobs.

Republicans must quit saying the Stimulus has not created nor saved jobs. It has. The problem is that the jobs are those that taxpayers will have to fund in perpetuity and not the kinds that produce taxpayers with real jobs in the private sector.

Second? Obama has sold five bills as stimuli

That was the first stimulus, but we have been scared into accepting a monstrous budget that threatens to destroy the currency with a $1.8 trillion deficit in Obama's first year as compared to Bush's worst deficit of less than $450B. And oh yeah, the few shovel-ready jobs were mostly postponed until the second half of the next election year (curious) when the gardening implement more likely to be needed will be wheel barrows as inflation-adjusted wallets.

We have been told that the budget, the $400 Omnibus Spending bill, Cap and Trade (and tax and tax and tax...food and energy aka necessities that is a direct assault on the poor), and Nationalized Health Care are ALL necessary for recovery. Stimuli by other names stink the same, but do increase in price.

So, what do we conclude about the need for a second stimulus bill?

1980-82 vs. 2008-10: what works and what doesn't

I'm waiting on the first one.

In 1980-1, Ronald Reagan inherited an economy from a filibuster-proof Democratic confess and President with inflation, unemployment and interest rates all worse that the one inherited by Obama from Bush and the Dems in 2008-9. President Reagan was able to get a real stimulus passed by a Democratic Congress. We know it was real because of the unprecedented, historic 25-year recovery that followed.

The private sector was stimulated by tax-rate and regulation cuts. Reagan's party actually suffered Congressional losses in 1982 due to the drastic steps required to rein in inflation via restrictive monetary policy, but won a landslide in 1984 and later took over Congress for the first time in 40 years ushering in a conservative era that even Bill Clinton had to embrace.

It seems that the post-Clinton Democratic Party doesn't prefer that "kind" of stimulus, as they have yet to even try to encourage small business formation. Rather, they demonize entrepreneurial producers and investors and continue policies that have kept them on strike, where they have been since the Democrats took over Congress in 2007 with promises not only of no more tax cuts but, rather, tax increases on those that actually stimulate the economy.

I favored the extension of unemployment benefits and would have loved to see more shovel-ready highway projects funded in 2009 to relieve suffering, but those provisions were a minuscule portion of the trillions in debt we have incurred to save and create jobs for government growthulus.

We need to repeal most of the five stimuli passed or proposed and pass a real stimulus that cuts tax rates and regulations; and which encourages expanded oil exploration and the building of oil refineries and nuclear power plants, all of which have been on hold for 31 years.

But then again, if ObamaDems were to do that, they would be surrendering their Utopian vision of a government-directed economy and populace to the old run of the mill, historically-tested means of stimuli that have come to be known as conservatism's favored Free Market Capitalism.

The only question remaining is will the ObamaDems surrender due to election-prospect realities before too many recession-ravaged Americans surrender to Big Brother.

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer and Minority Report columns

"One man with courage makes a majority." - Andrew Jackson