At a town hall in Illinois, the president was asked by a local farmer about new regulations he had heard about.
The president, on day three of his Midwest bus tour, replied: “. . . Don’t always believe what you hear.” . . .
Obama’s advice was simple: “Contact USDA.”
“Talk to them directly. Find out what it is that you’re concerned about,” Obama told the man. “My suspicion is, a lot of times, they’re going to be able to answer your questions and it will turn out that some of your fears are unfounded.”
Well, one enterprising reporter did just that. Hilarity ensues, as they say. (Well, if you think getting the run-around from government bureaucrats is hilarious, anyway.)
The point here is how astonishingly out of touch the president is. He actually believes (or perhaps he doesn’t, but we’ll give him the benefit of the doubt) that a citizen can simply call up the government and get a straight answer.
In the end, the USDA defended itself by saying that the regulations under discussion were not the purview of the USDA, so it really wasn’t a fair test. But that’s part of the point! We have literally hundreds of regulatory agencies. How is a citizen supposed to figure out which one is planning to ruin his life? Even the president didn’t know which was the relevant agency.
(Via the Corner.)
UPDATE: Yes, this too:
I love this because you can tell that Obama really believes that criticisms of the government stem from slack-jawed yokels listening to too much Rush Limbaugh and Fox News. The idea that a farmer might understand the business-end of government-agriculture relations better than Barack Obama never occurs to him. The questioner must be ignorant or misinformed because the question is inconvenient. And the solution is just as obvious. Simply call the government and you’ll get all the information you need.
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