Dream No More

The American Dream, that to which so many have aspired, that which has beckoned those seeking freedom and opportunity from distant shores, is being extinguished before our eyes. The Dream of course meant different things to different people. But some aspects seem a common thread. Mobility, the freedom and the means to travel, is under attack as the Obama administration hypocritically targets the rest of us as Obama and his family flit over the world on a whim, taking more vacations early on in his administration than any of the previous Presidents during the comparable period of their administrations. Obama serves as a wet blanket and is the national scold as he admonished people not to go to Las Vegas which did not endear Obama to that city's Democratic Mayor Oscar Goodman, who is so outraged at Obama's attack that he has refused to meet with President Obama. President Obama recently flew off to yet another vacation in Maine while having "first dog" Bo delivered on a separate jet. Part of the mobility dream for Americans has been a vehicle of their choice which for many has been a large vehicle, but Obama says no to that. Small fuel efficient cars, hybrids, or electric vehicles (or facing the stricture of being tied to mass transit or a bicycle or one's legs) are the only way to go (unless you need to get your Portuguese water dog to the pristine North). Lobster all around for Obama on vacation in Maine but not for you as Obama has just failed in an attempt to ban lobster fishing from Maine to North Carolina. The American Dream was not necessarily for a lobster in every pot but certainly for food aplenty, and now the national nannies led by Obama will seek to restrict what you consume from trans fat to sodium and even insist on an obesity rating to follow each of us in our medical records starting in 2014 (but worry not- your abortions and HIV-positive status will not be permitted to be tracked). So I could no longer drive my first car, a big gas guzzling 1978 Jeep Wagoneer, to Vegas, and I should be afraid of public opprobrium for taking a cruise in the tail-finned 1968 Cadillac Coupe de Ville that sits idly in my garage, awaiting the era where we can breathe free again. And what of the pride of ownership with the house with the white picket fence or the manse on the green for that matter? In Obama's America, all this is under attack as property tax rates soar as communities are left bereft of Federal assistance but with more and more unfunded Federal mandates which cause the tax burden of ownership to be as high as rent as communities across the nation, facing the Obama economy and the budget shortfalls it engenders, raise property tax rates. With the property tax burden and zoning regulations and the necessity to obtain permits to do anything on your own property, who owns it anyway- you or the government? So, the Dream of owning a home in the good old USA is increasingly turned to nightmare with meddlesome and costly regulation taking away property rights- a liberty as essential as any every propounded by man. And many of those houses are no longer an asset at all but underwater on mortgages or suffering in the shattered (and shuttered) dream of foreclosure. Only turning the tide starting in the November election can restore the dream.