Another Letter to President Obama

March 8, 2009

President Barack H. Obama
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500

Dear President Obama:

I’m really trying to understand who you are as a person, what values you embrace, and what you want to accomplish as our President. I realize the current state of our economy is a big distraction for you and this has further confused my ability to see you for who you really are, assuming that we can ever really know anyone.

My first point of confusion is your position on tax rates as they apply to the most financially successful Americans. I assume you have been told by your economic advisors that somewhere between $8 trillion and $11 trillion U.S. dollars are being sequestered by Americans from the probing eyes of the I.R.S in overseas accounts. (I should add that I’m not one of those Americans and I don’t condone such practices). This begs the question, why isn’t that money working hard for us right here in the U.S.A. and especially right now? You know the answer as well as I do; our income tax policies have driven and are driving wealth out of this country. And who do you think owns most of that overseas wealth? Well, it’s the same people who you plan to assess with higher tax rates. (The fact they can afford higher rates is a silly and irrelevant argument.) And why don’t we both try to guess what their response might be? Yep, more dollars heading into overseas accounts to avoid excessive taxation. And there are an alarming number of U.S. corporations and U.S. citizens moving (permanently) to less burdensome tax environments. Is this un-American or un-patriotic? Not relevant given the current state of our economy. (I won’t even addressed the issue of foreign corporate employers who avoid U.S. tax exposure like a modern plague, and the class warfare created by our taxation policies.)

I do know two of your administration’s major objectives are universal health care and free public education through four years of college, which brings me to my second point of confusion. Both are extremely expensive initiatives in concept but can become downright unaffordable when managed and administered by a government bureaucracy. (Maybe we could pay for these programs by creating another large enforcement bureaucracy to chase down those overseas dollars, punish their owners, and tax these funds to the fullest extent of the law – just kidding). Seriously, and lets be candid; we would be hard pressed to find any examples of sustained bureaucratic effectiveness and efficiency in any political ideology.




President Barack H. Obama
Page Two
March 8, 2009

So there you have it – dramatically increase annual government expenditures while chasing away the people best able to foot the bill. Do you see why I’m confused?

Now, here’s what I really want to know. What motivates your desire to significantly increase the size of government? Is it because you really believe it’s the right thing to do and somehow we will find a way to indefinitely provide the necessary financial resources for generations to come? Are you subtly waging a campaign against capitalism because it favors the most ambitious among us? Or, are you like most intellectual liberals who believe the masses need to be controlled to prevent them from doing harm to themselves? Given that socialism has failed and is failing everywhere around the world and has never set a precedent for producing sustainable growth and prosperity, that most socialist and totalitarian governments have embraced some tools of capitalism to varying degrees, that even the Israelis have abandoned the kibbutzim, and that capitalism has produced the highest standard of living the world has ever known, I guess the answer is obvious -- government knows what’s best for the citizenry better than the people themselves, and it has the added benefit of allowing you and other intellectual elitists to secure for yourselves a lifetime of influence, power and position in a big government society. Does that pretty much sum it up?

Your campaign promised “change we can believe in” and “transparency”. It seems to me in less than sixty days you have succumbed to and embraced the culture of Washington politics. You listen to staff members who live in fear of losing their prestigious jobs and being embarrassed on a national scale, your decisions seem exclusively driven by pollsters, and you rely more on your style than your substance, e.g., blaming the 8,000 earmarks in the stimulus budget on the previous administration. Have we become such a “sound bite” nation that courageous, honest and humble leadership is far too risky for political survival? Had today’s political leaders existed during the late 1700’s, we probably would still be a British colony, or we would have become Mexico’s northern most state or Canada’s southern most province.

I will continue to try to get to know you and understand your motivations. Since we probably won’t become personally acquainted, I’ll have to draw my conclusions from your actions.

All the best,


Bill Monroe