Press Time

Barack Obama is turning out to be every bit as radical and inexperienced as many of us had feared. If even ABC News is labeling Obama's budget as "radical," you know it's bad. There's no excuse for the ideological obtuseness of this budget. We all know, or should, that tax-and-spend doesn't grow the economy. All it does is punitively take from one group and give to another-and increase government control, which I suspect is the main agenda here.

There's a meanness, a whiff of payback, a grubbiness even, that belies the president's winning smile and soaring rhetoric, exemplified by the purported plan to turn the Census over to Rahm Emmanuel. Billions for ACORN and nothing for disadvantaged D.C. parents who want to send their kids to a decent school?

Those who make $250,000 and more aren't robber barons; they're largely business owners who provide most of the jobs in this country, pay most of the taxes, and give the most to charity-and now the government is poised to tax even charitable giving punitively. This will end up hurting the poor the most (while helping government bureaucrats, who will be forced to create new programs as private giving recedes).

The verbal attacks and investigations of big business are setting a strangely chilling tone in the middle of an economic crisis and stock market freefall. The promises to institute an expensive cap-and-trade carbon scheme will hurt big business, of course, while doing little for the environment we all love. But it is an especially regressive act against (you guessed it) the poor, whom Obama claims to champion.

Then there are rumblings from Democrats like Dick Durbin about broadcasters acting "in the public interest." While they disavow any intention to reinstate the Fairness Doctrine (the removal of which allowed talk radio to flourish and provide the public with alternative political views), if they're not planning to restrict the freedom of those who seek to hold them accountable when the mainstream press won't, why do they keep talking about it? Methinks they doth protest too much.

Of course, Obama supporters can rightly say (and as Obama himself has repeatedly reminded us) that their man won and consequently has earned the right to govern. True, but he's a president, not a king, subject to the same checks and balances as anyone else who occupies the Oval Office.

With the Republican Party in disarray, who will step forward to fill that vital role of loyal opposition? It will be interesting to see if those who fretted about the concentration of too much power in the executive branch during Bush II will manage to clear their throats over Obama's astonishingly bold power grabs.

If the former community organizer and junior senator from Illinois thinks he's another FDR, he's got another thing coming. It's a different world (though many seem just as eager for government handouts as then), and we know a lot more about economics.

It's time for the badly damaged mainstream press, its balance sheet and credibility in tatters, to get out of his lap (leaving that for the presidential dog) and do its job in this republic. It's time for some real media fairness. It's time to give the president and his many plans the scrutiny they demand.