We’ve heard of change and hope endlessly from the mouth of Barack Obama.  A few weeks as President-Elect, the Obama team has provided Americans with Clinton administration retreads and Hillary Clinton herself.

Oh right, Robert Gates will remain as Secretary of Defense as a token display of bi-partisanship but this is more about the reality of intelligence reports and not wanting to be accused of losing a war already won.

Morons across the US are holding their collectivist breadth waiting for the “messiah” to fix the economy as if any politician can do anything but what has already been accomplished by mandating for failure.

Big business CEOs shamelessly appear before Congress hat in hand begging for money because the folks in charge of Congress mandated regulations on the auto industry and the Big Three automakers didn’t have the intestinal fortitude to fight the UAW for years over bloated promises that any financial person could explain was bad business policy.

Congressional leaders now want more standards set upon the American automakers as the price for receiving a “loan”, which likely will never be repaid. Politicians have no business meddling in what private business legally manufactures and should not tax consumers for that privilege.

If Barack Obama would like to demonstrate real leadership he would quietly tell the Democrats to keep their hands off and send the Big Three CEOs off to file bankruptcy. That will not happen.

Barack Obama is also going back in history to the days of FDR who mishandled the Great Depression and by many estimates helped prolong it by seven-years with bad policy in the name of regulation and government growth.

Obama said Saturday he wants to revive the economy through a job-creating public works plan on a scale unseen since the building program of the interstate highway system in the 1950s. Obama is really going further back than the 50s when discussing “public works”; he is entertaining the years 1933-39.

Of all New Deal program failures the US National Resources Planning Board estimated tht 42.6 percent of federal relief and public works expenditures were paid for by tax increases, and 57.4 percent were paid for by borrowing money, which was paid out by future taxes.

Each dollar spent meant each person had a dollar less to spend on his or her own. The person who earned a dollar didn’t spend it; someone in government spent it on relief.

Obama offered no price estimate for the grand plan, how the money might be divided or the effect on the country’s financial health; this is Obama with more rhetoric. The president-elect’s address never once used the word “spend,” relying instead on “invest” or “investments,” and pledging wise stewardship of taxpayer money in upgrading roads and schools, and making public buildings more energy-efficient.

“We won’t just throw money at the problem,” Obama said. “We’ll measure progress by the reforms we make and the results we achieve — by the jobs we create, by the energy we save, by whether America is more competitive in the world.”

The fact is Obama is suggesting Federal control over local schools, which means socialization of an already poorly run system with too much union and government influence and not enough performance accountability.

Barack Obama is digging out dinosaurs of failed public policy only to offer more taxes, more government involvement, more regulation, less accountability, no goal setting with a measure for success.

Obama says he “won’t just throw money at the problem” but in economics we call his plan “throwing more good money after bad.” Businesses invest, government taxes and spends. That’s lack of leadership. Indeed!