Selling Snake Oil

One last thought on the tax compromise, that being my discomfort regarding the way that Obama is selling it. While there is an element of honest expression of his dislike of the ingredients of the compromise, he is pitching far too hard on what he really cannot believe will be its effect; that it will “create jobs and grow the economy.” Rather than being honest with the people to whom he is responsible, the voters of this nation, in saying that this is a messy piece of legislation that must be accepted, he is selling it like some sort of snake oil pitch man and trying to convince us that it is a gold coin that only looks like a copper slug.

He may actually believe the aforementioned sales pitch, but he has also used some rather blatant dishonesty in attempting to make his point. He said, for instance, that the Social Security program started by covering only widows and orphans and grew from there. That is factually inaccurate, as he himself would say. In fact, the initial Social Security program not only provided retirement for all private workers, it also included unemployment benefits which were later removed from the program. He said that Medicare started small and grew over time, which is also factually inaccurate; Medicare started pretty much in its present form, except for Part D, the prescription drug coverage.

When someone is using falsehoods to sell me a product, I tend to draw the conclusion that the seller himself knows that the product is something I should not be buying.