-British Mainstream Media talks about what ours will not: the weakness of Obama

The writer of the excerpts from the Financial Times article below is one of the far left socialists who seemingly permeate the United Kingdom. Yet even he can see that Obama is not telling the truth about his agenda when it comes to his policies, namely cap and trade and universal health care. It is hard to expect the American people to recognize these things when our own media continues to bask in the glow that is Obama.

via Watching America:

The cap-and-trade bill is a travesty. Its net effect on short- to medium-term carbon emissions will be small to none. This is by design: a law that really made a difference would make energy dearer, hurt consumers and force an economic restructuring that would be painful for many industries and their workers. Congress cannot contemplate those effects. So the Waxman-Markey bill, while going through the complex motions of creating a carbon abatement regime, takes care to neutralise itself.

It proposes safety valves that will ease the cap if it threatens to have a noticeable effect on energy prices. It relies heavily on offsets – theoretical carbon reductions bought from other countries or other industries – so that big US emitters will not need to try so hard. It gives emission permits away, and tells utilities to rebate the windfall to consumers, so their electricity bills do not go up. It creates a vastly complicated apparatus, a playground for special interests and rent-seekers, a minefield of unintended consequences – and the bottom line for all that is business as usual.

On both climate change and healthcare, in other words, the US wills the end but not the means. This is where a president trusted by the electorate and unafraid to explain hard choices would be so valuable. Barack Obama, where are you?

The president has cast himself not as a leader of reform, but as a cheerleader for “reform” – meaning anything, really, that can plausibly be called reform, however flawed. He has defined success down so far that many kinds of failure now qualify. Without hesitating, he has cast aside principles he emphasised during the campaign. On healthcare, for instance, he opposed an individual insurance mandate. On climate change, he was firm on the need to auction all emissions permits. Congress proposes to do the opposite in both cases and Mr Obama’s instant response is: “That will do nicely.”