Obama is just digging a deeper grave that he wants us to all willingly jump into. No thanks. You and all the other kool-aid drinkers are welcome to jump in of course.

I'm a bit baffled how this (or havng government sponsored R&D) is a raw use unconstitutional power…

What is the point of saying “if ((something that won't happen)), we end up in the lake”? If it won't happen why mention it?

Well, he's trying to persuade us to make sure it doesn't happen. In other words, he believes we don't yet agree with him.

But he is also predicting that we will agree with him. He's figured everything out for us! He understands our perspective better than we do, and knows that once we consider his arguments we will be convinced!

In other words “This is the right thing. I know you'll do the right thing.”

Does this strike anyone else as smarmy and presumptuous?
Not that that's anything new. Bush was significantly worse of course.

We will go to the beach (if [and only if] we do what I think we should do)
We will end up in the lake if we don't do what I think we should do.

Obama removes the antecedent of the first statement. In order for the abridged statement to remain true, the antecedent must be true.

Therefore, Obama is implicitly saying “We will do what I think we should do.”

Maybe that's true, but you have to admit it's kind of an odd thing to say, even implicitly. Unless you're a politician and you want to get credit for being optimistic and still scare people into action!

I was in fact projecting too much of my opinion of the viability of Obama's proposed route, which is why he sounded to me like he was saying that if we keep going this way, we'll end up in the lake, and so we'd better go straight into the lake, which is after all the quickest route to the beach.

Was that, say, Reagan's logic … that one month into his Presidency all work was done, everything was perfect, and for that reason he could express confidence?

Or was it because he was confident in a path, with work to do?

Furthermore, if you think he'll be able to avoid raising the bracket rates below $250,000 and keep his pledge to cut the deficit in half, you'll have to show me where the $700+ billion in spending cuts are going to come from, because he's not going to get all that money by raising rates on the top 2% of earners.

Finally, isn't the purpose of paying anyone anything to entice them to perform some action that you deem beneficial? If Obama is saying that he's not going to be distributing money to people he likes just because he likes them, then ok, well, he's telling us he's not totally corrupt which is good to hear; however, if government money does continue to flow into Wall Street and the President goes on national television to respond to public protest, I doubt many people will be satisfied by the explanation that the bonuses aren't meant to “reward” the bankers, but rather to “help” all of us. If, on the other hand, he is saying what I think most people heard, which is that banking executives are going to be treated like government bureaucrats in which their salary is more of a stipend than payment for a job well done, then I think such actions are again logically incompatible with the goal of “keeping the economy stable.”

As for money being acquired under threat of force, I was referring to taxation in general. There is a box for voluntary donations to the government on your tax return. It doesn't raise much money.

I wouldn't go quite that far, but I do think this post and the column are an unfortunate example of confirmation bias…

Arguably any government subsidies for things like car battery manufacturers are likely to be a zero or negative sum monetarily, but not zero sum in achieving policy goals such as reducing carbon emissions. Whether it's worth it depends on how highly you value those policy goals. Obviously many on the right value carbon emission harm at something close to $0, but a typical lefty like Obama sees things differently, and that difference is not an incoherence on his part.