Lux Lucet

“Obama to propose $10-per-barrell fee on oil,” blared the CNBC headline. Surprise, surprise. Obama wants a new tax. The Obama administration claims the funds generated by this proposed energy tax will be used to fund clean transportation research, high-speed railways, autonomous cars and other such like. (Sigh)… Can Obama just leave office already? The economy is teetering on the brink of a recession, and possibly something much worse, and all the president can think to do is gin up more government spending. I guess Nixon was right, we really are all Keynesians now.

It’s fascinating how statists such as Obama try to portray themselves as of the people, by the people, and for the people, but in reality they are anything but. In truth, he is more like of the statists, by the statists and for the statists. There is nothing that he does that is not all about growing government. And that’s what gives the lie to this and to his other proposals. But government is the problem, not the solution. Growing the state does not make us better off. It’s a drain on our wealth. More power in Washington means less freedom for Americans. And yet, almost like a cuckoo clock, out pops Obama to to announce yet another government spending initiative.

If Obama were really serious about innovation and finding cleaner and more efficient types of transportation, why not do something to lessen the tax burden on the American people? The market is a wonderful innovator, far better than the state. But the average American forks over about 40% of his income to the government at the federal, state and local levels combined, making it hard to have much left over for developing new and better ways of doing things. But of course reducing taxes and regulations would only happen if Obama actually had the best interests of the people in mind. Which he doesn’t. As is the case with others of his ilk, he’s interested in the health of the state, not the people. And this can be seen from the fact that every legislative act the man proposes involves more, not less government.

Christine Lagarde, Managing Director of the IMF since 2011. 

Christine Lagarde, current Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), is cut from the same cloth as Obama. Last year, speaking before the annual meetings of the IMF and World Bank, those twin towers of globalism, Largarde urged her hearers that, “It is just the right moment to introduce carbon taxes.” And why, you might ask, is the world ready for a carbon tax? Two reasons she gives. First, it would help fight global warming. Big surprise there. I bet you didn’t see that one coming. And second? Well according to Lagarde, such a tax would also help raise government revenue at a time when many nations have dipped into their “fiscal buffers” and need to raise a little cash for a rainy day.

This is rich. It was during Lagarde’s tenure as head of the globalist IMF that this organization had the gall to propose countries level a 10% “one-off tax on private wealth – as an exceptional measure to restore debt sustainability.” I can hardly contain my excitement at the thought of paying a one-off – and why do I think one-off is a lie in itself? – tithe to the IMF for the purpose of making the obscene and exploding debt incurred by socialists of Largarde’s ilk “sustainable.” But then again, if our caretakers in Washington don’t get their “fiscal buffers,” Obama won’t be able to get on with the business of providing “new ways for families to get to work and school,” so we can all slave away to pay the taxes to our globalist overlords who can continue their “innovating” without being bothered by the thought of fiscal constraints. Budgets, you see, are for the little people, not the great globalist visionaries.

What makes Largarde’s proposals really hard to stomach is that the salary she earns as IMF managing director is tax fee. That’s right. Tax free. According to the Guardian, “As an official of an international institution, her salary of $467,940 (£298,675) a year plus $83,760 additional allowance a year is not subject to any taxes.” I guess someone has to pay for Lagarde’s free riding, and that would be you and I.  In her world, doubtless all men are equal before the law.  It’s just that some are more equal than others.

Pope Francis I at the White House, September 2015.

All this, and I haven’t even gotten to the grand daddy of all green statists. I speak, of course, of the current occupant of the seat of Antichrist himself, none other than pope Francis I, who, during his tenure in that infamous role, has spent a great deal of time and energy pushing a globalist, socialist save the planet agenda. No wonder he and Obama seemed to get along so well during the pope’s visit to Washington. They’re two peas in a statist pod.

While I do not doubt that there are some badly confused folks who really do think that socialism can save us all from environmental doomsday, the movement has always been first and foremost a tool of the globalists who seek, not the good of the people, but the furthering of their own pelf and power. May God deliver us from such.