Barack Obama is being politically crushed in a vise. From above, by elite opinion about his competence. From below, by mass anger and anxiety over unemployment. And it is too late for him to do anything about this predicament until after November's elections.
With the exception of core Obama Administration loyalists, most politically engaged elites have reached the same conclusions: the White House is in over its head, isolated, insular, arrogant and clueless about how to get along with or persuade members of Congress, the media, the business community or working-class voters. This view is held by Fox News pundits, executives and anchors at the major old-media outlets, reporters who cover the White House, Democratic and Republican congressional leaders and governors, many Democratic business people and lawyers who raised big money for Obama in 2008, and even some members of the Administration just beyond the inner circle. (See Obama's troubled first year, issue by issue.)
On Friday, after the release of the latest bleak unemployment data — the last major jobs figures before the midterms — Obama said, "Putting the American people back to work, expanding opportunity, rebuilding the economic security of the middle class is the moral and national challenge of our time." But elites feel the President has failed to meet that challenge and are convinced he will be unable to do so in the remainder of his term. Moreover, there is a growing perception that Obama's decisions are causing harm — that businesses are being hurt by the Administration's legislation and that economic recovery is stalling because of the uncertainty surrounding energy policy, health care, deficits, housing, immigration and spending.
And that sentiment is spreading. Many members of the general public appear deeply skeptical of Obama's capacity to turn things around, especially, but not exclusively, those inclined to dislike him — Tea Partyers and John McCain voters, but also tens of millions of middle-class Americans, including quite a few who turned out for Obama in 2008. (See how some Americans are facing the prospect of long-term unemployment.)
The misery afflicting the country has no political affiliation. Listen to the voices from this striking TV ad for Rob Portman, the Republican former Congressman and Bush budget director who is running for Senate from Ohio. One woman at a Dayton career fair says starkly, "There are no jobs." A man announces plaintively and with obvious frustration, "I've been looking for a job now for 13 months." Events like this job fair are becoming the grim iconic gatherings of our time, the breadlines for the Obama years.
Most of Obama's private (and sometimes public) rebuttals to the voices slamming him on all sides are justified or spot on. He did inherit a lot of problems from the Bush Administration. He did act quickly in the initial weeks of his Administration to stave off a worldwide depression. His efforts at job creation have been obstructed by Republicans (even the proposals based on policies supported by the GOP in the past). His opponents haven't put forth specifics of their own, nor offered genuine compromise, while the media have allowed the right's activists and gabbers to run wild with criticism without furnishing legitimate alternative solutions. (See Barack Obama's top 10 sound bites.)
But Obama has exacerbated his political problems not just by failing to enact policies that would have actually turned the economy around, but also by authorizing a series of tactical moves intended to demonize Republicans and distract from the problems at hand. He has wasted time lambasting his foes when he should have been putting forth his agenda in a clear, optimistic fashion, defending the benefits of his key decisions during the past two years (health care and the Troubled Asset Relief Program, for example) and explaining what he would do with a re-elected Democratic majority to spur growth.
Throughout the year, we have been treated to Obama-led attacks on George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, Rush Limbaugh, Congressman Joe Barton (for his odd apology to BP), John Boehner (for seeking the speakership — or was it something about an ant?) and Fox News (for everything). Suitable Democratic targets in some cases, perhaps, but not worth the time of a busy Commander in Chief. In the past few days, we have witnessed the spectacle of the President himself and his top advisers wading into allegations that Republicans are attempting to buy the election using foreign money laundered through the Chamber of Commerce, combining with Karl Rove and his wealthy backers to fund a flood of negative television commercials. Not only is this issue convoluted and far-fetched, but it also distracts from the issues voters care about, frustrating political insiders and alienating struggling citizens (not that many are following such an offbeat story line). Feinting and gibing can't obscure those job numbers. (See the best viral campaign ads of 2010.)
The President and Democrats have passed many significant measures (the stimulus spending, the auto-company rescue, the health care law and the financial regulation effort) that someday may be seen as brave and bold, the foundation for a better economy. Obama and his closest aides certainly think that will happen. But the President was correct when he said Friday, "the only piece of economic news that folks still looking for work want to hear is, 'You're hired,'" and that's still not occurring for too many Americans.
The politically good news for Obama is that no matter what the outcome of the midterm elections, everything changes in January. Republicans will have a greater obligation, politically and morally, to help govern, rather than thwart and badger. The President will get a chance, in his State of the Union address and in his budget proposal, to show he is turning the page on the political horrors of 2010 for his party and the nation. But before then, Republicans are almost certainly going to demonstrate that you can beat something with nothing, especially when Americans seem to think that the Obama Administration hasn't much to offer either, except more of the same that isn't working.
Pity the poor entrepreneur and small business owner in America now getting socked, with the mother of all taxes, by a government that has become either hostile, or indifferent, to understanding what it takes to build a business, grow a company and hire more workers. I'm not talking about new fees, but about a much greater confiscatory tax, imposed without any real debate or consideration--the confiscation of time.
Nearly every Obama administration initiative demands new, more complicated reporting and compliance filings on small businesses and entrepreneurs that are already overburdened with a mish-mash of reporting requirements that suck away an entrepreneur's time and energy. 2008 compliance costs for a small business, according to a recent SBA Report, was approximately $10,000 per employee. But, the Obama Administration has added new, and far more onerous, reporting demands that are likely to treble those costs to $30,000 per employee. Facing such huge, and hidden, costs of compliance, is there any wonder small businesses are not hiring as they have in the past?
Consider, for example, one of the new reporting requirements contained in Section 9006 of the disastrous Obama healthcare bill which requires all small companies to file 1099s for any purchase over $600, to include anything from office supplies to electricity to independent contractors. As a result, small businesses may need to hire a full-time compliance officer that does nothing but file these new forms and reports.
But that is just the start. For example, Section 1512 of the Recovery Act (ARRA) requires that a report with a minimum of 12 data points be submitted quarterly for each Recovery Act project over $25,000. A separate report has to be submitted if the business worked as a subcontractor on any ARRA project. This report is separate from and in addition to the mandatory, contractual reports submitted monthly to the government contracting officer on each project and, separate from and in addition to, the quarterly program reviews provided for agency leaders. Of course, if the business performs ARRA work at the State level, many of those states have additional reporting requirements for businesses who are working on federally funded stimulus projects within the state.
Small business already struggles because the federal government’s reporting requirements are a moving target. Businesses must track the unusually frequent changes in government-issued guidance regarding reporting requirements. For example, since issuing the first reporting requirements for ARRA in February 2009, these requirements have changed nine times in the past 19 months, in March 2009, April 2009, June 2009, September 2009, November 2009, December 2009, April 2010, May 2010 and most recently in September 2010.
Each “update” to the reporting requirements issued by OMB is followed by an ancillary memo issued within each federal agency by each agency’s Chief Acquisition Officer.
Businesses, especially small businesses, may spend large segments of the workday tracking reporting requirement changes. Businesses must do this because a clerical error, which could be interpreted by the oversight community as fraud, carries severe penalties, and the burden of proof of innocence falls on the business.
Taxes take many forms. More damaging, than canceling the Bush tax cuts, more damaging than the changing definition of who is considered “rich”, more disturbing than Obama Administration's complete lack of understand of what it takes to grow a business and an economy, is the fact that time is money, so the new, burdensome and intrusive reporting requirements demanded by Obama's flawed policies puts a tax burden of time on all businesses.
Under the guise of “accountability” and the lure of “transparency”, the Obama Administration continues to bombard businesses with additional, ill-thought reporting requirements. Few legislators and few members of the Obama Administration have ever experienced first-hand, the struggles of entrepreneurship--what Jerry McGuire calls "an up-at-dawn, pride-swallowing siege," of trying to win a customer's business, be competitive and succeed. The Administration, clearly, does not understand or does not care about the true cost to business of their self-serving actions.
Peter Drucker, the management guru once said: “if you’re meeting, you’re not working”. Perhaps the corollary is that when a business is “reporting”, then they aren’t really working either.
Make no mistake: well-reasoned reports aid in accountability and transparency and are essential to ensure that taxpayer dollars are spent wisely by the government. But this is not happening in the Obama Administration. The President Obama once promised he would not raise taxes on the middle class. Yet, fees, fines and mandatory purchases are “onerous, rigorous demands” which, according to Webster, qualify as taxes.
Obama has demanded the one commodity which is in limited supply, and which can never be reproduced once spent—time. Obama wastes our time--and that tax is the greatest of all.
The most important fact to take from the September unemployment report released last week is that almost three years after the recession began the economy was still losing jobs! Almost 100,000 (95,000) additional jobs were lost last month from the economy overall. That makes 400,000 jobs lost since May. Moreover, in a regular annual benchmark revision to calibrate unemployment rates for updated data, the BLS reported a further 366,000 jobs lost for March. The total number of Americans unemployed stands at almost 15 million (14.8).
In addition, the number employed part time for economic reasons rose to 9.5 million in September. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reports, "These individuals were working part time because their hours had been cut back or because they were unable to find a full time job."
The depression continues for African Americans with 16.1% unemployment, near that level for a year now. Hispanics suffer 12.4% unemployment, and Obamanomics is punishing teenagers the most with 26% unemployment.
The BLS reports the U6 unemployment rate, which includes the unemployed, those marginally attached to the labor force (discouraged), and those working part time for economic reasons, at 17.1%. That is the highest point over the past year, and probably since the Great Depression.
While the National Bureau of Economic Research declared the recession technically over last summer, for this poor performance to continue 33 months after the recession began indicates fundamental economic decline for America. What the numbers are telling us is that there has been no real recovery.
Sean Hannity's Caller
Last week, a young caller to Sean Hannity's radio program identifying herself as a liberal expressed the sentiment that still holds President Obama's job approval in the mid-40s. She said, "President Obama has just had two years to turn the economy around. Didn't the Republicans have 8 years to screw it up? Shouldn't we be giving the President more time?"
President Obama himself is out there on the stump milking this sentiment for all it is worth, still blaming George Bush and the Republicans for the economy. Without this sentiment holding up what support he still has, he would have already been run out of town. Here are the metrics by which the President's economic performance should be judged.
I have been reporting regularly in this column for a year and a half that the average recession since World War II has been 10 months, with the longest previously being 16 months. The recession began in December, 2007, 34 months ago by now. The sentiment expressed by Hannity's caller, reflecting the views of Obama's remaining base of political support, shows why these basic facts are so important.
Based on the long standing history and rhythms of the American economy, we should have had a booming recovery by now. Even more so, since the deeper the recession the stronger the recovery. Real economic growth in the first 4 quarters of Reagan's recovery from the deep 1981-82 recession was a whopping 7.7%. Even the recovery under President Ford from the deep 1973-74 recession sported real economic growth of 6.2%.
But under President Obama we are already in another downward spiral, with real growth falling from 5% in the fourth quarter of 2009, to 3.7% in the first quarter of this year, to 1.7% in the second quarter.
Moreover, as the brilliant economist John Lott explained for FoxNews.com yesterday, the base unemployment rate has been stuck at least at 9.5% for 14 months now, over three full percentage points higher than the average unemployment rate during the recession. Since Obama became President, the U.S. unemployment rate has increased faster than 25 of 30 other major industrialized countries, as reported by the Economist.
As Lott summarizes, "For the last couple of years, President Obama keeps claiming that the recession was the worst economy since the Great Depression. But this is not correct. This is the worst 'recovery' since the Great Depression." The extended stagnation, high unemployment, and the troubling potential for a double dip recession is starting to look more like the Depression itself now.
Stimulus Stupidity and Public Policy Malpractice
But the indictment of Obamanomics goes beyond the actual performance so far. Even worse is that the economic policies have been so illogical, so transparently doomed to failure, and so threatening to America's future.
For almost two years now, I and others have been arguing that the throwback, retro, Keynesian economics from the 1970s, and even the 1930s, so thoroughly embraced by Obamanomics, would not work. That is transparently because the supposed stimulus from increasing government spending by a trillion dollars is offset by borrowing or taxing that trillion dollars out of the economy.
Indeed, because the government inefficiently allocates its spending based on politics, rather than efficiently as in a market, and because taxes discourage economic growth, the net result is a drag on the economy, rather than a stimulus, as the Obama experience shows once again for all the slow learners in that 45% still supporting him. This Keynesian economics failed thoroughly in the Great Depression, failed thoroughly in the 1970s, and failed just as thoroughly in Japan for the last 20 years, for just these reasons. Why it is an inevitable, illogical failure was explained for decades by such all time great economists as Friedrich Hayek, Ludwig Von Mises, and Milton Friedman.
After wasted, failed stimulus packages 1, 2, 3, and more, federal deficits over the first two years of Obamanomics now total a record smashing $2.7 trillion. As the Wall Street Journal explained yesterday:
That's…more than the entire amount during the Reagan Administration when deficits were supposed to be ruinous. Now liberal economists tell us that deficits are the key to restoring prosperity. But all we have to show for spending nearly 25% of GDP for two years running is a growth rate of 1.7% and 9.6% unemployment.
Indeed, under CBO projections, the national debt will have doubled by 2012 in just 4 years to $11.6 trillion, and quadrupled by 2020 to $20.3 trillion. As Brian Riedl of the Heritage Foundation has observed, Obama's budgets will run up more debt over eight years than all other Presidents in American history -- from George Washington to George Bush -- combined.
I have also argued in this column for almost two years now that Obama's Rip Van Winkle approach to economics, bringing back the policies of the 1970s while doggedly ignoring everything that has happened since 1980, was going to bring back the economic results of the 1970s. Now the Federal Reserve has confirmed that. The latest word is that it has decided that bringing back inflation is the key to restoring economic growth.
For those paying attention, the Obama Administration is serving as a history lesson, sort of a historical reenactment, of exactly what went wrong in the 1970s, and the 1930s. As the Keynesian stimuli of the 1970s regularly failed, the Fed felt it had to gun the money supply further to pick up the slack. Then when inflation arose, it quickly reversed course to fight that, throwing the economy back into recession. To get out of that, the Fed felt compelled to return to reflation.
This is exactly what is going to happen now. The Fed will regenerate inflation, creating new asset and commodity bubbles in the process. When it turns to fighting the inflation, as it has long assured us it will, those bubbles will again burst, restoring recession. That is how America fell into a continuing cycle of ever worsening recession and inflation in the 1970s, which almost irredeemably trashed our economy then, almost losing the Cold War in the process.
This is all why a growing majority of Americans has decided that President Obama has already had long enough on the economy. But if you just read the New York Times or watch NBC to get your news, then you are willfully ignorant, and manipulated.
The Buck Stops with Bush
But there is still another fallacy of President Obama's obstinate lemmings, which the President also carefully nurtures. That is the fairy tale the President tells about the mess he inherited when he got here, and the budget deficit that was waiting for him "when he walked in the door."
When Obama "got here" was when he was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2004, not when he was elected President in 2008. In 2006, he became part of the Democrat majorities that took control of Congress in the elections that year. As another brilliant economist, Thomas Sowell, recently explained in Investors Business Daily:
No president of the United States can create either a budget deficit or a budget surplus. All spending bills originate in the House of Representatives, and all taxes are voted into law by Congress. Democrats controlled both houses of Congress before Barack Obama became President. The deficit he inherited was created by the Congressional Democrats, including Sen. Barack Obama, who did absolutely nothing to oppose the runaway spending. He was one of the biggest spenders.
The deficit in the last budget adopted by Republican Congressional majorities was $161 billion for fiscal 2007. That is why Rep. Jeb Hensarling was right to say to President Obama that the annual deficits under the Republicans have become the monthly deficits under the Democrats.
Also, the day the Democrat Congressional majorities took office, January 3, 2007, the unemployment rate was 4.6%, less than half the rate today. George Bush's economic policies, what Obama calls "the failed policies of the past," had set a record of 52 straight months of job creation, a record we can only dream about today. GDP in the previous quarter was 3.5%, double today's most recent growth
Also on January 3, 2007, Barney Frank took over as Chairman of the House Financial Services Committee. When President Bush had proposed legislation to rein in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, Frank led the charge to massacre it, saying he wanted to continue throwing the dice some more on housing policy. Frank, joined by Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd, continued to pump up the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac bubble until it burst all over the U.S. and world economy. Sen. Barack Obama was an avid supporter of these policies as well.
The Democrats were the originators of the subprime mortgage, "affordable housing" policies since President Clinton saw them as a brilliantly innovative way to pass out free goodies. Vigorously supporting those policies all the way back to his ACORN days was community organizer Barack Obama. When he is carrying on about the mess he inherited, too bad he doesn't have the integrity to point the finger back at himself.
The Reagan Precedent
The final fallacy nurtured so carefully by President Obama's propagandists is that he is just on the same trajectory as President Reagan. Reagan too suffered through a bad economy in his second year, along with similarly bad poll numbers.
But in his first two years, President Reagan slew the historic inflation of the 1970s, which had seen prices soar by 25% in just two years over 1979-80. Annual inflation was cut in half by 1982 to 6.2%, and in half again by 1983, to 3.2%. Even Keynesians hold that there was no way to stop that inflationary surge without a downturn. In President Obama's case, however, instead of slaying a historic inflation, he is creating another one.
Moreover, after the booming recovery starting in President Reagan's third year noted above, the economy continued to boom for another 24 years, what Art Laffer and Steve Moore rightly called "the greatest period of wealth creation in the history of the planet," and Steve Forbes correctly termed "an economic Golden Age."
I agree with the Obama propagandists that if Obama is on this same trajectory, if this year is followed by 25 years of booming, historic prosperity, President Obama will be added to Mount Rushmore. Indeed, in that case, I will support that.
But as I have outlined elsewhere, including in my most recent major publication President Obama's Tax Piracy, Obama has so thoroughly and assiduously followed the opposite of every one of the economic policies that President Reagan followed to create that historic prosperity. So let's conduct a little thought experiment, following Professor Laffer. Suppose in adopting the opposite of every one of President Reagan's economic policies, President Obama gets just the opposite results.
That would mean that instead of this second year of his presidency being Obama's worst year, it is his best. And instead of the economy taking off next year on a historic, generation-long economic boom, it collapses into an extended double-dip downturn, with even worse consequences following.
Not for another 25 years, because in that case the policies are not going to last that long. In the case of that New Great Depression, it will be the surviving Congressional Democrats who will be desperately trying to impeach him, hoping to save the Democrat party they so happily gave away to the neo-Marxist infiltrator in 2008.
The Carter Precedent
The precedent for President Obama is not President Reagan, but President Carter. Indeed, he is not on the same trajectory as Carter, he is doing far worse. In 1978, the unemployment rate was 6.1%. Real GDP grew by 5.6%.
Moreover, in 1978 the Democrats had bigger Congressional majorities than today. They had 62 seats in the Senate, and 292 seats in the House. In the 1978 elections, the Republicans gained 3 seats in the Senate, and 15 seats in the House. Let's compare that to President Obama's results this November.
Of course, everyone knows what happened by the end of President Carter's term. Can you say President Newt Gingrich?
If your an Alex Jones listener or just want to see what it's about he's doing a 24+hr Free Video broadcast today. It started at 11am due to end at 2PM Friday. It's found on their infowars.com page. If you have adblock running and see a warning saying "It seems you don't have Flash installed" disable adblock for that page and reload.
Stu
[This message has been edited by DIY_Stu (edited 10-14-2010).]
Maybe now we will get the real hope and change that was promised and not the hoper dopey change we got.
Real hope and change will come from the Tea Party principles. Anyone who disagrees with that...I don't give a crap.
The Democratic party is useless until they flush out the far leftists. The GOP is going to change whether they like it or not, even if I have to personally drive around the country in my beat up Fiero and kick them in their asses.
A man gets on his knees next to a car carrying U.S. President Barack Obama as he pulls away from Valois restaurant in Chicago, October 31, 2010. REUTERS/Larry Downing (UNITED STATES - Tags: POLITICS IMAGES OF THE DAY)
WASHINGTON -- The day after his shellacking, the bruised president offered a sober, tripartite analysis of voters' message. First, he said, voters are fed up with Washington partisanship and special-interest politics. Second, they feel insecure and uncertain, about their economic circumstances above all.
Sounds familiar so far, right? Except here's the next part, "The third thing they were saying ... is, 'There are things we expect government to do, but we don't think government can solve all the problems. And we don't want the Democrats telling us from Washington that they know what is right about everything.'"
That last pivot is what distinguishes -- you guessed it -- Bill Clinton 1994 from Barack Obama 2010. It's what worries me about the response of the shellackee in chief to the election results -- and, even more, the response of the soon-to-be-former House speaker, Nancy Pelosi. Their instincts have tended more to blaming the dogs for not understanding how good the food is for them, not accepting that it's time to tweak the recipe.
The president's self-diagnosis in his post-election news conference was dominated by the assessment that voters had simply failed to grasp -- and that his failure lay chiefly in explaining clearly enough -- why the administration took the steps it did.
"What is absolutely true is that with all that stuff coming at folks fast and furious -- a recovery package, what we had to do with respect to the banks, what we had to do with respect to the auto companies -- I think people started looking at all this and it felt as if government was getting much more intrusive into people's lives than they were accustomed to," Obama said. "We thought it was necessary, but I'm sympathetic to folks who looked at it and said this is looking like potential overreach."
If only the poor dears had a better grasp.
I write this from a perspective of sympathy with Obama's aims and overall support for his performance over the last two years. But Obama's dismissive analysis omits the non-emergency choices he made -- primarily to press for, and in the end, muscle through the passage of health care reform -- and the ensuing discomfort of voters.
Discomfort that is entirely understandable, even to those of us who supported health care reform.
Clinton campaigned as a different kind of Democrat for whom reinvented, and smaller, government was always part of the agenda. The health care debate interrupted that narrative, and helped set the stage for his midterm losses, but it was set to the background music of a reinvented, smaller government.
In contrast, Obama campaigned, by his own assessment, as a "Rorschach test" Democrat: People saw in his candidacy what they chose to perceive. This deliberate ambiguity -- traditional big-government liberal or post-partisan pragmatist -- helped Obama finesse Democratic Party divides and attract independents during the campaign.
When he began to sketch in the ideological blanks, with cap-and-trade, health care, the auto bailout, et al., voters had no reason to distrust their own perceptions of intrusive government. The administration offered no counternarrative to suggest that this new era of big government had any limits.
As the Brookings Institution's William Galston observes in a post-election analysis, "Obama's agenda required a significant expansion of the scope, power, and cost of the federal government" at a time of record low trust in government. Despite the risk that this mistrust would limit public "tolerance for bold initiatives, he refused to trim his sails, in effect assuming that his personal credibility would outweigh the public's doubts about the competence and integrity of the government he led."
There are reasons to hope that Obama can adjust and reconnect. By the time of his "60 Minutes" interview, he sounded more accepting of the notion that he needed not only to communicate better but also to govern more modestly. "The American people don't want to see some massive expansion of government," he said.
I have less confidence in Pelosi's adaptability. "No regrets," Pelosi told ABC's Diane Sawyer. "Should we have been talking about it more, and working on it less -- that's a question." But, she said, "Nine and a half percent unemployment is a very eclipsing event."
Hoo boy. Losing 60-plus seats is a very eclipsing event too. It would be nice to see some recognition that what we have here is not only a failure to communicate. Democrats are making a big mistake if they think their problem was as simple as not enough talking.
The good news is that the Democrats and the Washington Establishment have heard the message from the American people on Election Day, 2010. How could they have not? It was an epoch beginning, 1932 style rout, as predicted here first 18 months ago.
The bad news is how much trouble our country is still in. For after all of President Obama's double talking sweet talk right after the vote, the harsh reality, inconsistent with our very democracy, is that the Democrats and the Washington Establishment are rejecting the message the people sent. Their response is the political equivalent of "Shut Up."
How else can we interpret the decision of House Democrats to defy the American people, and reelect ultra-left San Francisco Democrat Nancy Pelosi as Minority Leader? House Democrat candidates will now campaign in 2012 on the theme, "Vote for Us, and Bring Back Pelosi!" I think they have now answered the question, "How stupid do they think we are?"
And how else can we interpret President Obama, who said at his press conference the day after the electoral rout, "Over the last two years we have made progress. But clearly the American people have not felt that yet. And they told us that yesterday." Just what exactly is he saying here? The words say the American people told us on Election Day that the Democrats are not moving to implement their left-wing agenda fast enough. President Obama is now acting as if this is the message he got on Election Day, as we will see below.
And how else can we interpret Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV), who said in a Senate hearing just before Thanksgiving, "I hunger for quality news. There's a little bug inside of me which wants to get the FCC to say to Fox and to MSNBC: 'Out! Off! End! Goodbye!" Funny he should say that. Because there's a little bug inside of me that wants to get the FEC to say to Rockefeller: "Out! Off! End! Goodbye!"
This is your modern Democrat party, run by New Left hippies from the '60s in suits, who don't even believe in the First Amendment, because they are really just Hugo Chavez in waiting.
Obama to Rule by Decree
President Obama is already taking another step in that direction. For now that the American people have terminated his ability to ram his socialism through a thoroughly Left-Wing Congress, he has decided to rule by decree.
President Obama indicated as much again in his November 3 press conference. Regarding the cap and trade carbon tax bill, Obama said, "Cap and trade was just one way of skinning the cat. It was a means to an end. I'm going to be looking for other means to address this problem."
Obama's EPA has now begun the process for regulating carbon dioxide emissions (CO2) under the Clean Air Act. Note that CO2 is not a pollutant, but a natural substance in the environment essential to all human life on the planet. Without CO2, plants would die off, and without plants there would not be oxygen or food for humans and other animals.
This CO2 regulation will be even more burdensome to the economy than cap and trade. Both the Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg News reported last week that major energy, manufacturing, and construction projects will be shut down in an indefinite moratorium as a result. The Journal reports that the regulation will force "mass retirements of the coal plants that provide half of America's electricity." As a result, electricity costs will "necessarily skyrocket" as candidate Obama let out in the 2008 campaign, when he thought he was speaking only to an environmentalist extremist audience that would applaud that.
But there can be no applauding the impact of those higher electricity costs on manufacturing, and the jobs of blue collar workers. The regulations would take time to fully phase in and produce their full economic effects. But the resulting job losses are estimated to be 7 million or more nationwide, which would be a 50% increase in today's persistent, high level of unemployment. That would involve an estimated trillion dollars a year in additional costs to the economy.
There is no scientific justification for this economic suicide for America's economy, which is why even the current overwhelmingly Democrat Congress refused to pass cap and trade. But this doesn't even take into account the full economic effect of the recession that would inevitably result. Indeed, achieving the CO2 targets would essentially repeal the industrial revolution, which would involve a lot more lost jobs than 7 million. If you don't think anyone would ever attempt that, then you don't understand the extremist threat facing our country.
The effect would be particularly harsh in areas where the industries produce higher than average CO2 levels, such as Republican Texas and Louisiana with their vibrant oil and natural gas industries. Again, those higher CO2 levels are not harmful to anyone. The scientifically proven effect would merely be to increase agricultural production in the region, again because CO2 is like oxygen for plants. But as Dick Morris explained in his column on November 22, "that's what the EPA plans to do, virtually making economic growth illegal in large parts of the United States."
But the EPA is not stopping there. At the very same time, it is moving ahead with new regulations to further reduce the national ambient air quality standard for ground level ozone. In an editorial for the Heartland Institute, William Shugart explains:
[S]etting a more stringent ozone standard will, in fact, cause economic havoc. Hundreds of U.S. cities and counties already don't meet the current standard. If the EPA tightens the rules, these counties will fall permanently into non-compliance, even with costly investments in new pollution controls. Under the Clean Air Act's nondegradation provision, state and local governments are not permitted to take actions that would worsen air quality, even if the area is in compliance with EPA standards. If a county or city is not in compliance, its economy won't be able to grow -- so the EPA's proposal would spell economic stagnation for many communities.
But there is no urgent problem with the current ozone standard that requires imposing this new economic devastation now.
Obama, however, plans still further decrees. Now serving as the Chairman of the National Labor Relations Board without Senate confirmation, as an Obama recess appointee, is Craig Becker, former chief counsel of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). Even the overwhelmingly Democrat Congress refused to pass "card check" legislation to deprive working people of the right to a secret ballot vote in unionization elections. But Becker now has a 3-2 Obama appointed majority on the NLRB to do precisely that, through a new regulatory decree.
As Morris further explains in his November 22 column, the resulting "unionization of the private sector will also drive out our jobs. Since 1990, unionized manufacturing jobs have declined by 75%. But non-union manufacturing jobs have actually risen over the same period by 15%." Such forced unionization would be especially devastating to vulnerable small businesses, all the more because the new rules will likely include as well mandatory binding arbitration after 90 days, which means the government will be specifying the union wages and working conditions imposed on the employer.
Obama's New Recession
While Obama talks the rhetoric of compromise and dialogue, he has not backed off on a single issue. Most troubling is his stubborn, untutored, ideological extremist commitment to across the board increases in tax rates for virtually all major federal taxes for the nation's employers and investors, while the economy has still not strongly emerged from the recession.
The kind of logic supporting this policy is demonstrated on national television by Keith Boykin, who repeatedly tells CNBC audiences that tax rate cuts caused the financial crisis. Recently on that network, Boykin actually cited the 1970s as an era of superior economic performance. That's not even Keynesian economics, as even Keynes recognized that lower tax rates promote the economy, and the stagflation of the 1970s actually disproved Keynesian economics. That is literally Marxist economics, Groucho, not Karl, because only a clown could cite the 1970s as an era of superior economic performance.
Meanwhile, Congressional Democrats from California's Brad Sherman to New York's Chuck Schumer are calling for currency protectionism and trade war with China. They are so anxious in this economically vulnerable time to make the exact same mistakes that caused the Depression.
Add comprehensive tax rate increases and trade protectionism to the EPA's global warming regulatory madness and the NLRB's card check decrees, and you have an alphabet soup that spells double dip recession in 2011. If these openly foolish economic policies do cause another downturn next year, with unemployment going back over 10%, and the deficit soaring further as a result, then the American people should not, and will not, be shy about demanding that Obama resign.
I cringe when I see commentators try to advise Obama on political strategy. They are not getting it. He is not interested in political strategy. He is interested in left-wing ideology, and the New Revolution.
This is the leader of "the Free World," and the most powerful man on the planet. That is why America, and, indeed, the whole world, is still in so much trouble.
Members of Congress on Monday called on President Obama to issue a public correction after he incorrectly labeled E pluribus unum the U.S.'s motto in a speech last month, rather than "In God We Trust."
The lawmakers, members of the Congressional Prayer Caucus, also said the president was making "a pattern" of dropping the word "Creator" when he recites the self-evident truths of the Declaration of Independence.
"By misrepresenting things as foundational as the Declaration of Independence and our national motto, you are not only doing a disservice to the people you represent you are casting aside an integral part of American society," the representatives said in a stern letter asking for him to correct the speech.
Last month, while speaking at the University of Indonesia in Jakarta, Mr. Obama was trying to stress the similarity of the U.S. and Indonesia and said "it is a story written into our national mottos."
"In the United States, our motto is E pluribus unum — out of many, one," he said, then compared it to the Indonesian motto, "Bhennika Tunggal Ika — unity in diversity."
The official motto of the U.S., designated by a 1956 law, is "In God We Trust." E pluribus unum is the motto on the Great Seal of the United States, and appears on the ribbon held in the beak of the eagle that dominates the obverse side of the seal.
What's up with Obama and his aversion to the word "Creator"?
Last week, I detailed seven occasions in the past few months at which President Obama omitted the words "by their Creator" from direct quotes of the Declaration of Independence: "that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness"
Though you can read the actual quotes in detail in Part 1, let me briefly remind readers where and when they occurred:
On Oct. 21, 2010, at a rally for Sen. Murray in Seattle, Wash. On Oct. 18, 2010, at a Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee dinner in Rockville, Md. On Oct. 17, 2010, at a reception for Gov. Ted Strickland in Chagrin Fall, Ohio. On Sept. 22, 2010, at a Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee dinner in New York, N.Y. On Sept. 15, 2010, at the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute's 33rd Annual Awards Gala in Washington, D.C. On Sept. 11, 2010, at the Pentagon Memorial in Arlington, Va. On Sept. 10, 2010, at the president's press conference at the White House. I finished the article asking readers, "To you, is omitting 'endowed by their Creator' from direct quotes of the Declaration in several speeches a permissible benign act of the president of the United States?"
Those words might seem justifiable to some, but it alarms me when omissions are exclusively divine and so easily exit and are excused by the U.S. supreme leader.
Even at Independence Hall in Philadelphia, where both the Declaration of Independence and U.S. Constitution were debated and drafted, divine omissions seem to be en vogue.
Recently, my pastor and the chaplain of my organizations, Todd DuBord, was on a tour of Independence Hall with David Barton, Jim Garlow and dozens of others. When the National Park Service guide leading their group blurted out five unbelievable lies and distortions about our founders' religious beliefs and history, with school-aged children present as well in the room:
"We have no record that George Washington ever attended church."
While the NPS guide physically hunched over, mimicked and mocked one carrying and swinging an oversized Bible in his hand, he said to the crowd: "Even if I said the founders were Christians, how could we really know? Just because people carry a big ol' Bible in their hand, they can still be atheists!"
"Most of these men owned slaves. How could good Christians do that?"
"We know that Benjamin Franklin was a deist."
"We don't really know for sure about their religion. It's open for interpretation. You'll have to do your own study on that."
To add insult to injury, last week my chaplain received an unfortunate response letter about their grievous tour from Mrs. Cynthia MacLeod, the superintendent of the Independence National Historical Park. She dodged culpability and refused to cast blame against the NPS guide, justifying that "Each ranger leads a tour in his or her own way … allowing visitors to draw their own conclusions." Really? Even if the ranger misleads and lies about our founders? (You can read Superintendent MacLeod's letter in entirety at my chaplain's websiteNationalTreasures.org.)
That's no way to teach more than 2 million annual guests who visit Independence Hall, including hundreds of thousands of school children being bused in from all over the nation, ready and anxious to learn about the accurate history of our republic and its founders.
The truth is, if you want an accurate religious history of America, you're no longer going to get it from our president, our progressive society or secular schools, at least not without unbiased trained teachers or the induction of a religious curriculum that hasn't tampered and twisted history.
Remembering the role of religion in our republic is why I included an entire chapter on the subject (titled, "From Here to Eternity") in my New York Times best seller, "Black Belt Patriotism." It is also why my wife, Gena, and I are on the board of the National Council on Bible Curriculum in Public Schools, or NCBCPS, which has a Bible-based curriculum that has been used in the public schools, on campus, during school hours, for credit, for the past 15 years. No joke! It is legal and our constitutional right. In 1963, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled not against the study of the Bible in public schools, but against the devotional, religious use of it in classroom settings. Supreme Court Justice Clark stated,
It might be well said that one's education is not complete without a study of comparative religion or the history of religion and its relationship to the advancement of civilization. It certainly may be said that the Bible is worthy of study for its literacy and historic qualities. Nothing we have said here indicates that such study of the Bible or of religion, when presented objectively as part of a secular program of education, may not be effected consistently with the First Amendment. (School District of Abington Township v. Schempp, 374 U.S. 203,225 –1963) The NCBCPS curriculum has now been implemented in 2,075 public high schools. Over 370,000 students have taken this elective course to date, nationwide. And in addition to Gena and I, other people who have done public service announcements and television commercials for NCBCPS are: Charlie Daniels, Tony Dorsett, Dean Jones, Joyce Meyer, David Barton, Dr. D. James Kennedy and Dr. Bill Bright and Stephen Baldwin.
We are proud to announce that the NCBCPS will also have the electronic version of the curriculum available starting Dec. 15, 2010. It will include movies, videos and slides, in addition to the hardcover text, "The Bible in History and Literature," and also "The Teacher's Companion Guide."
The NCBCPS is not the Bible curriculum in circulation that promotes UNESCO (the United Nations) in its Bible textbook for students. Please make sure your district uses the Bible curriculum textbook titled "The Bible in History and Literature" by the National Council on Bible Curriculum in Public Schools. Don't accept counterfeits, if even under candy-coated biblical titles!
If you would like more information on the NCBCPS's curriculum, or want help getting it into your local school district, go to the website BibleInSchools.net or call today at 336-272-8838. Remember, to date, 94 percent of the school boards approached with this Bible curriculum have voted to implement it.
Abraham Lincoln, our 16th president, was right, "The philosophy of the school room in one generation will be the philosophy of the government in the next."
That is why, for the sake of our posterity and the preservation of truth in each of our own communities, we all need to accept the challenge of Ronald Reagan: "You and I have a rendezvous with destiny. We will preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on earth, or we will sentence them to take the first step into a thousand years of darkness. If we fail, at least let our children and our children's children say of us we justified our brief moment here. We did all that could be done."
[This message has been edited by avengador1 (edited 12-07-2010).]
Last week, President Barack Obama was backpedaling like a circus unicycle rider, after his compromise on extending Bush-era tax cuts for the country’s top 2 percent of income earners. Because he had pledged repeatedly during his presidential campaign to raise those earners’ taxes, he instantly was slammed by his political base. Even pro-Obama comedic commentators Jon Stewart and Bill Maher were left humor-speechless.
Feeling defensive and maybe even a bit insecure, Obama fired back in anger against people across the political spectrum. Wielding his verbal sword, the president poked and prodded: “Take a tally. Look at what I promised during the campaign. There’s not a single thing that I’ve said that I would do that I have not either done or tried to do. And if I haven’t gotten it done yet, I’m still trying to do it.”
“Not a single thing”?
Well, as a fighting champion who takes taunting seriously, I thought I’d take the president up on his challenge for us to take a tally.
What I discovered is that of the more than 500 promises Obama made during his candidacy, even according to the pro-Obama website PolitiFact’s “Obameter,” his scorecard reads: 123 promises kept, 39 compromised, 24 broken, 82 stalled, 232 in the works and three not yet rated. What that coddled language boils down to is this: Even according to those on the political left, Obama has fulfilled 123 promises and left 380 pledges dangling farther than participles.
What PolitiFact overlooks is that what really matters isn’t the count of broken promises; it’s the caliber of those broken promises. If I fail to fulfill a promise to take my dog for a walk, that’s one thing. But it’s quite a different deal if I fail to take my wife on a promised date. The difference is a night in the doghouse!
Let me spare you a long list of substantial pledges and promises. Here’s a short list, a few golden nuggets, or, should I say, fool’s gold flakes. I’ll set to the side presidential promises of transparency, C-SPAN coverage of health care debates and even Guantanamo Bay’s closing. Instead, I’ll go straight for the promise jugular. And so that no one thinks I’m overreaching my punch, here are the vows right out of the president’s mouth:
—”We’ve got a philosophical difference, which we’ve debated repeatedly, and that is that Sen. (Hillary) Clinton believes the only way to achieve universal health care is to force everybody to purchase it.” (Spoken during the Democratic presidential debate on Feb. 21, 2008.)
—”We need tougher border security and a renewed focus on busting up gangs and traffickers crossing our border. … That begins at home, with comprehensive immigration reform. That means securing our border and passing tough employer enforcement laws.” (Spoken in Miami on May 23, 2008.)
—”Based on the conversations we’ve had internally, as well as external reports, we believe that you can get one to two brigades out a month. At that pace, the forces would be out in approximately 16 months from the time that we began. That would be the time frame that I would be setting up.” (Spoken to The New York Times on Oct. 31, 2007, about the withdrawal from Iraq.)
—”We will launch a sweeping effort to root out waste, inefficiency and unnecessary spending in our government, and every American will be able to see how and where we spend taxpayer dollars by going to a new website called Recovery.gov.” (Spoken in a speech on Jan. 28, 2009.)
—”There is no doubt that we’ve been living beyond our means and we’re going to have to make some adjustments. Now, what I’ve done throughout this campaign is to propose a net spending cut.” (Spoken during the presidential debate on Oct. 15, 2008.)
—”We are going to ban all earmarks.” (Spoken at a news conference on Jan. 6, 2009.)
—”Under my plan, no family making less than $250,000 a year will see any form of tax increase — not your income tax, not your payroll tax, not your capital gains taxes, not any of your taxes.” (Spoken at a town hall meeting on Sept. 12, 2008.)
—And oh, yes, then there’s that substantial promise repeated dozens of times in one way, shape or form on the campaign trail: “It’s true that I want to roll back the Bush tax cuts on the wealthiest Americans.” (Spoken in Chester, Pa., on Oct. 28, 2008.)
Now, what were those words the president used last week? “Not a single thing”?
I know some will accuse me of kicking the president while he’s down. But he’s actually roundhouse kicked himself (again), by not only lying about his broken promises but also dissing everyone inside and outside his own political camp.
Up against the political wall last week, Obama compared Republicans to hostage takers willing to harm Americans. Then he compared Democrats to unyielding stalemate causers who hold up political and American progress.
Seems to me the only politician President Obama hasn’t demeaned is himself.
Is that because Obama is so far ahead of the American pack in wisdom or because he finally is walking alone with no one following? Have his arrogance, defiance, charismatic charade and inability to lead in conflict (proved last week by his need of former President Bill Clinton’s presence) finally caught up with him, isolating him from even his most avid followers?
Maybe it’s a good time this Christmas season for President Obama to contemplate a bit of wisdom from the Good Book: Pride comes before the fall.
Last week, President Barack Obama was backpedaling like a circus unicycle rider, after his compromise on extending Bush-era tax cuts for the country’s top 2 percent of income earners. Because he had pledged repeatedly during his presidential campaign to raise those earners’ taxes, he instantly was slammed by his political base. Even pro-Obama comedic commentators Jon Stewart and Bill Maher were left humor-speechless.
Feeling defensive and maybe even a bit insecure, Obama fired back in anger against people across the political spectrum. Wielding his verbal sword, the president poked and prodded: “Take a tally. Look at what I promised during the campaign. There’s not a single thing that I’ve said that I would do that I have not either done or tried to do. And if I haven’t gotten it done yet, I’m still trying to do it.”
“Not a single thing”?
Well, as a fighting champion who takes taunting seriously, I thought I’d take the president up on his challenge for us to take a tally.
What I discovered is that of the more than 500 promises Obama made during his candidacy, even according to the pro-Obama website PolitiFact’s “Obameter,” his scorecard reads: 123 promises kept, 39 compromised, 24 broken, 82 stalled, 232 in the works and three not yet rated. What that coddled language boils down to is this: Even according to those on the political left, Obama has fulfilled 123 promises and left 380 pledges dangling farther than participles.
What PolitiFact overlooks is that what really matters isn’t the count of broken promises; it’s the caliber of those broken promises. If I fail to fulfill a promise to take my dog for a walk, that’s one thing. But it’s quite a different deal if I fail to take my wife on a promised date. The difference is a night in the doghouse!
Let me spare you a long list of substantial pledges and promises. Here’s a short list, a few golden nuggets, or, should I say, fool’s gold flakes. I’ll set to the side presidential promises of transparency, C-SPAN coverage of health care debates and even Guantanamo Bay’s closing. Instead, I’ll go straight for the promise jugular. And so that no one thinks I’m overreaching my punch, here are the vows right out of the president’s mouth:
—”We’ve got a philosophical difference, which we’ve debated repeatedly, and that is that Sen. (Hillary) Clinton believes the only way to achieve universal health care is to force everybody to purchase it.” (Spoken during the Democratic presidential debate on Feb. 21, 2008.)
—”We need tougher border security and a renewed focus on busting up gangs and traffickers crossing our border. … That begins at home, with comprehensive immigration reform. That means securing our border and passing tough employer enforcement laws.” (Spoken in Miami on May 23, 2008.)
—”Based on the conversations we’ve had internally, as well as external reports, we believe that you can get one to two brigades out a month. At that pace, the forces would be out in approximately 16 months from the time that we began. That would be the time frame that I would be setting up.” (Spoken to The New York Times on Oct. 31, 2007, about the withdrawal from Iraq.)
—”We will launch a sweeping effort to root out waste, inefficiency and unnecessary spending in our government, and every American will be able to see how and where we spend taxpayer dollars by going to a new website called Recovery.gov.” (Spoken in a speech on Jan. 28, 2009.)
—”There is no doubt that we’ve been living beyond our means and we’re going to have to make some adjustments. Now, what I’ve done throughout this campaign is to propose a net spending cut.” (Spoken during the presidential debate on Oct. 15, 2008.)
—”We are going to ban all earmarks.” (Spoken at a news conference on Jan. 6, 2009.)
—”Under my plan, no family making less than $250,000 a year will see any form of tax increase — not your income tax, not your payroll tax, not your capital gains taxes, not any of your taxes.” (Spoken at a town hall meeting on Sept. 12, 2008.)
—And oh, yes, then there’s that substantial promise repeated dozens of times in one way, shape or form on the campaign trail: “It’s true that I want to roll back the Bush tax cuts on the wealthiest Americans.” (Spoken in Chester, Pa., on Oct. 28, 2008.)
Now, what were those words the president used last week? “Not a single thing”?
I know some will accuse me of kicking the president while he’s down. But he’s actually roundhouse kicked himself (again), by not only lying about his broken promises but also dissing everyone inside and outside his own political camp.
Up against the political wall last week, Obama compared Republicans to hostage takers willing to harm Americans. Then he compared Democrats to unyielding stalemate causers who hold up political and American progress.
Seems to me the only politician President Obama hasn’t demeaned is himself.
Is that because Obama is so far ahead of the American pack in wisdom or because he finally is walking alone with no one following? Have his arrogance, defiance, charismatic charade and inability to lead in conflict (proved last week by his need of former President Bill Clinton’s presence) finally caught up with him, isolating him from even his most avid followers?
Maybe it’s a good time this Christmas season for President Obama to contemplate a bit of wisdom from the Good Book: Pride comes before the fall.
I stopped by the Toyota Dealership yesterday for a look at the new Tacoma .
Just for fun, I took it out for a test drive. I wanted to sense that new "feel" before they become extinct... The salesman (wearing an Obama "change" lapel pin) sat in the passenger seat describing the truck and... all its "wonderful" options. The seats were of particular interest. He explained that the seats directed warm air to your butt in the winter and cool air to your butt in the summer heat. Feeling like messing with his mind, I mentioned that this must be a Republican truck. Looking a bit angry, he asked why I thought it was a Republican truck. I explained that if it were a Democrat truck, the seats would blow smoke up your ass year-round. I had to walk back to the dealership...Damn guy had no sense of humor
On Tuesday night, we, the American people, were swindled by our own president, not merely out of cash, but out of our most cherished national ideal: independence.
The deception was deliberate. With all the charm he could muster, the president who spent the last two years elongating the tentacles of the leviathan delivered an aria of adoration for the symbol of global prosperity and ingenuity: the American entrepreneur.
"At stake is whether new jobs and industries take root in this country, or somewhere else," he began." It's whether the hard work and industry of our people is rewarded."
He continued, "…the stock market has come roaring back. Corporate profits are up. The economy is growing again."
My god…Barack Obama is delivering Mitt Romney's speech.
"No country has more successful companies, or grants more patents to inventors and entrepreneurs…. What's more, we are the first nation to be founded for the sake of an idea -- the idea that each of us deserves the chance to shape our own destiny… We need to out-innovate, out-educate, and out-build the rest of the world."
The man who bore the law that compels each of us to buy health insurance says the very foundation of our nation is "the idea that each of us deserves the chance to shape our own destiny."
The incompatibility of Obama's signature legislative accomplishment with what he identified on Tuesday night as the founding idea of our country is as plain as the nose on George Washington's face. Obama's goal on Tuesday: blur the line. Make the two seem closer than they really are.
So he spoke with enthusiasm (summoning passion for the topic was beyond even his considerable gifts) of America's independent spirit, the father of our robust innovation culture.
"What we can do -- what America does better than anyone else -- is spark the creativity and imagination of our people. We're the nation that put cars in driveways and computers in offices; the nation of Edison and the Wright brothers; of Google and Facebook."
Yet just when it appears that this is a speech made in tribute to the independent American entrepreneur, Obama reveals the real hero: the state.
"Our free enterprise system is what drives innovation. But [with Obama, there is always a "but"] because it's not always profitable for companies to invest in basic research, throughout our history, our government has provided cutting-edge scientists and inventors with the support that they need. That's what planted the seeds for the Internet. That's what helped make possible things like computer chips and GPS. Just think of all the good jobs -- from manufacturing to retail -- that have come from these breakthroughs."
Bait… and switch.
Save the introductory lines about Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, Obama spent the first 19 percent of his speech praising American entrepreneurship and individualism. The remaining 81 percent? A sales pitch for breaking the individual to the saddle of the state.
In Obama's narrative, the individual is not the source of America's success and prosperity -- the state is. In every sector of the economy -- from health care to energy to technology to transportation -- Obama set this scene: Idea men and financiers are this close to moving us forward; all they need is the nudge, and that nudge can come only from the government.
For instance: "Within the next five years, we'll make it possible for businesses to deploy the next generation of high-speed wireless coverage to 98 percent of all Americans."
We? In Obama's world, without Washington's help not even the great American telecommunications companies can find ways to saturate the market with their most expensive product.
Within the grand swindle of the speech were many smaller swindles, all structured the same way: a statement sounding vaguely conservative, followed by a "but" that transitions into a robust defense of government activism.
If President Obama's trust were in free enterprise, would he have delivered as his one piece of advice to young people, these lines: "If you want to make a difference in the life of our nation; if you want to make a difference in the life of a child -- become a teacher. Your country needs you."
The president's true goal with Tuesday night's speech came in these 16 words: "In the coming year, we'll also work to rebuild people's faith in the institution of government."
One year from now the people of Iowa and New Hampshire will begin the process of selecting Obama's challenger in 2012. He has a year, a year-and-a-half at most, to "rebuild people's faith in the institution of government." Tuesday night's speech was the opening salvo in that long campaign.
The November election sent a clear message to Washington: less government, less debt, less spending. President Obama certainly heard it, but judging from his State of the Union address, he doesn't believe a word of it.
The people say they want cuts? Sure they do - in the abstract. But any party that actually dares carry them out will be punished severely. On that, Obama stakes his re-election.
No other conclusion can be drawn from a speech that didn't even address the debt issue until 35 minutes in. And then what did he offer? A freeze on domestic discretionary spending that he himself admitted would affect a mere one-eighth of the budget.
Obama seemed impressed, however, that it would produce $400 billion in savings over 10 years. That's an average of $40 billion a year. The deficit for last year alone was more than 30 times as much. And total federal spending was more than 85 times that amount. A $40 billion annual savings for a government that just racked up $3 trillion in new debt over the last two years is deeply unserious. It's spillage, a rounding error.
As for entitlements, which are where the real money is, Obama said practically nothing. He is happy to discuss, but if Republicans dare take anything from granny, he shall be Horatius at the bridge.
This entire pantomime about debt reduction came after the first half of a speech devoted to, yes, new spending. One almost has to admire Obama's defiance. His 2009 stimulus and budget-busting health care reform are precisely what stirred the popular revolt that delivered his November shellacking. And yet he's back for more.
It's as if Obama is daring the voters - and the Republicans - to prove they really want smaller government. He's manning the barricades for Obamacare and he's here with yet another spending - excuse me, investment - spree. To face down those overachieving Asians, Obama wants to sink yet more money into yet more road and bridge repair, more federally subsidized teachers - with a bit of high-speed rail tossed in for style. That will show the Chinese.
And of course, once again, there is the magic lure of a green economy created by the brilliance of Washington experts and politicians. This is to be our "Sputnik moment," when the fear of the foreigner spurs us to innovation and greatness of the kind that yielded NASA and the moon landing.
Apart from the irony of this appeal being made by the very President who has just killed NASA's manned space program, there is the fact that for three decades, since Jimmy Carter's synfuel fantasy, Washington has poured billions of taxpayer dollars down a rat hole in vain pursuit of economically competitive renewable energy.
This is nothing but a retread of what used to be called industrial policy, government picking winners and losers. Except that in a field that is not nearly technologically ready to match fossil fuels, we pick one loser after another - from ethanol, a $6 billion boondoggle that even Al Gore admits was a mistake, to the $41,000 Chevy Volt that only the rich can afford (with their extended Bush tax cuts, of course).
Perhaps this is all to be expected from Democrats - the party of government - and from a President who from his very first address to Congress has boldly displayed his zeal to fundamentally transform the American social contract and place it on a "New Foundation" (an Obama slogan that never took). He's been chastened enough by the election of 2010 to make gestures toward the center. But the State of the Union address revealed a man ideologically unbowed and undeterred. He served up an insignificant spending cut, yet another (if more modest) stimulus and a promise to fight any Republican attempt to significantly shrink the size of government.
Indeed, he went beyond this. He tried to cast this more-of-the-same into a call to national greatness, citing two Michigan brothers who produce solar shingles as a stirring example of rising to the Sputnik moment.
"We do big things," Obama declared at the end of an address that was, on the contrary, the finest example of small-ball Clintonian minimalism since the days of school uniforms and midnight basketball.
From the moon landing to solar shingles. Is there a better example of American decline?
What America was to the world in 1950, General Motors was to the nation.
It was the largest and most successful company with the largest number of employees. It paid the highest wages and contributed more in taxes than any other company. During World War II, no company had contributed more to the Arsenal of Democracy and America's victory.
As one wag said, "For every shell Krupp threw at us, GM threw back four." The cars GM built -- Cadillac, Oldsmobile, Chevrolet, Buick and Pontiac -- were the best in their class. But in the second half of the 20th century, something happened.
General Motors' executives repeatedly caved in to United Autoworkers' demands for wages, health benefits and pensions the company could not afford over the long term. Small and inexpensive foreign cars were allowed into the U.S. market and, as their quality improved, began to flood the U.S. market.
GM executives failed to see what was happening, and if they saw it, to act upon the new reality. Thus, at the end of the last decade, the U.S. government acted.
The company was taken into receivership. Shareholders and bondholders of GM were wiped out. Hundreds of GM dealerships closed. Now, a new GM has come out of bankruptcy to takes its place as one of a dozen major auto companies in the United States and the world.
The failure of GM was a failure of leadership. Executives lacked the vision to see the challenges coming. They lacked the courage to resist the demands of union bosses. They lacked the decisiveness to act, when sacrifices were clearly required.
In his State of the Union address, President Obama called this America's "sputnik moment," like that October day in 1957 when we suddenly awoke to the reality that those backward Russians with their communist system had beaten America into space.
But listening to the president speak Tuesday night, one came away with a distinct impression. Either Obama does not believe this country is careening toward a fiscal and financial crisis, or he refuses to pay the political price of imposing the sacrifices needed to lead the country back from the brink.
The day after the president spoke, the Congressional Budget Office estimated the deficit this fiscal year at $1.5 trillion, largest in peacetime history and 10 percent of the entire U.S. economy. Almost 40 percent of the budget will be financed this year by borrowing from our own citizens and foreign countries, China foremost among them.
Did anyone detect in the president's pleasant demeanor that night any sense of urgency, any sense that this time the wolf is really at the door? Did anyone hear a call for sacrifices, and not just small ones, to pull our country back from the precipice of national default?
The disconnect between the Tea Party Republicans and the president could not be greater. He is talking about bullet trains and infrastructure; they are talking of defunding Amtrak and the Washington, D.C., subway system.
They are talking about raising the retirement age for Social Security, which is now sending out more in monthly checks than it is taking in in payroll taxes. Obama is being congratulated by the liberal wing of his party for refusing even to bow in that direction.
What the White House is about may be smart short-term politics, but it is the antithesis of leadership. They are going to let the Republicans take the lead and take the heat for proposing painful budget cuts, then play "good cop" and battle to restore those cuts and win the gratitude of the beneficiaries of those programs.
But it is late in the day for political games.
For both the welfare state -- the major entitlement programs, Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security -- and the warfare state -- the near $1 trillion we spend yearly on wars, 700 to 1,000 military bases in some 140 countries, foreign aid and the military industrial complex -- have to be downsized.
We cannot make good on all the promises our politicians have made, and we cannot defend in perpetuity all the countries we agreed to defend in the Cold War.
And if this downsizing is not done by our leaders, the decisions will be forced upon us when China and our other creditors come to us to say: We have enough of your dollars. We don't want any more. But if we must take them, we want a higher rate of interest to cover the higher risk of default. For you Americans look to us to be headed for the same place where Greece and Ireland may be found today.
Obama's conscious avoidance of any specific recommendations for deep budget cuts, commensurate with the crisis we face, may be rewarded if we avert that crisis before November 2012. But if the crisis hits sooner, his epitaph will be that he lacked the vision to see what everyone else saw or he lacked the courage to rise to the occasion.
Every good fight needs a good strategy. But, the fiscal fight this country has been battling for the last few years hasn’t got one says David Walker – the so-called “Paul Revere” of fiscal responsibility.
“We have no coherent strategy to be able to improve our competitive posture, to be able to generate job growth [or] to be able to deal with our structural deficit,” says Walker, Founder and CEO of the Comeback America Initiative and also the former U.S. Comptroller General.
If Walker is right, the United States is in serious trouble. This year the U.S. deficit will hit $1.5 trillion and if left without remedy will grow to $18 trillion by the end of 2021. (See: Dangerous Debts: Holtz-Eakin “Infinitely” Concerned U.S. Is Next Japan)
President Obama touched on our dire deficit situation during his second State of the Union last week, but Walker felt he did not go far enough. He believes as the executive of the country President Obama should have laid out specifics on out how to move this country forward. “We heard a lot of talk about it in the State of the Union,” he says. “We hear a lot of talk about it from politicians on both sides of the political aisle. It is time for action. We need results, not rhetoric.”
But, with a newly elected divided Congress, are these results achievable?
Moody’s Investors Services doesn’t think so. Last week the ratings agency expressed concern that even in the face of these dreadful problems, Congress will not be able to find common ground.
Walker does not agree entirely. “There is a growing consensus that we need to do something. There is [just] not a consensus on what needs to be done,” he tells Aaron in the accompanying clip, suggesting we should focus primarily on these actions to fix our long-term structural deficits:
-- Lower discretionary spending – including defense (excluding war costs) - to 2008 levels adjusted for inflation and population growth. -- Set discretionary spending caps. -- Set pay-as-you-go rules for both spending programs and tax cuts. -- Set debt-to-GDP targets with automatic spending cut/tax surcharge enforcement mechanisms to start in 2013 or 2014. “Without a strategic planning framework that is future focused, results oriented, geared towards outcomes where we are trying to achieve specific results,” we aren't going to make any real progress, he says. “We have too many career politicians in office that are focused more on getting re-elected rather than keeping America great and keeping the American dream alive."
Still, Walker is optimistic that the voting public is much smarter than politicians give them credit. “When you tell them the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth and help them understand that this country’s future is at risk…they will support action,” he says.
What the country really needs now, he says, is leadership and that leadership must first come from the President of the United States.
President Obama’s assertion on Sunday that he “didn’t raise taxes once” is “blatantly false,” a taxpayer watchdog group says. Obama made the claim in his pre-Super Bowl interview with Fox News host Bill O’Reilly.
According to Americans for Tax Reform (ATR), President Obama has signed into law at least two dozen tax increases. The first one – a federal tobacco tax hike – came just 16 days into his presidency.
ATR says the $1 trillion health care overhaul alone added numerous taxes, including the individual mandate that requires most Americans to purchase health insurance or else pay a fine.
During the legislative debate, Obama and Democrats in Congress argued that a penalty for not carrying insurance is not a tax. But in recent attempts to defend Obamacare as constitutional, the Obama Justice Department has called the penalty a tax.
The health care law’s employer mandate provision also should be considered a tax, ATR said. That provision requires companies to report all business-to-business sales of goods and services exceeding $600 to the Internal Revenue Service. In a bipartisan vote, the Senate recently voted to repeal the so-called 1099 provision, and Obama says he supports the repeal.
The health care law also includes a tax on medical device manufacturers, as well as a higher tax on withdrawals from health savings accounts and a cap on flexible spending accounts.
Other taxes in the health care law cited by ATR include a surtax on investment income, an excise tax on comprehensive health insurance plans, a hike the in the Medicare payroll tax and a tax on indoor tanning services. (See complete list)
On Feb. 4, 2009, Obama signed a federal tobacco tax hike, raising the excise tax 62 cents per pack. Critics, including ATR, said that tax alone violated Obama’s campaign pledge not to raise taxes on couples earning less than $250,000 and on individuals earning less than $200,000.
During Sunday’s interview, Bill O’Reilly asked Obama if he is “a man who wants to redistribute wealth,” as The Wall Street Journal has described him.
The president denied it, again saying, “I didn't raise taxes once; I lowered taxes over the last two years.”
Responding on Monday, ATR said Obama’s claim of being a net-tax-cutter “rests on the temporary tax relief he has signed into law. “That tax increases Obama has signed into law have invariably been permanent. In fact, Obama signed into law $7 in permanent tax hikes for every $1 in permanent tax cuts,” ATR said.
“Over 90 percent of the dollar value of the tax cuts Obama signed into law are only temporary,” said ATR. “100 percent of the tax increases Obama signed into law are, however, permanent … Permanent changes to tax law signed by Obama amount to a net tax hike of $618.7 billion.”
President Barack Obama is considering seeking aid for state unemployment-insurance programs burdened by debt because of high jobless rates, according to a person familiar with the discussions.
As part of the 2012 fiscal budget, Obama will seek a delay of state tax increases and a suspension of interest payments owed to the federal government, the person said on condition of anonymity before the budget is released next week.
Under existing law, some states would be required to raise taxes next year because of federal rules covering shortfalls in unemployment-insurance funds. Obama is proposing a moratorium on those tax increases and interest payments in 2011 and 2012, the person said.
States, led by California, Michigan and Pennsylvania, have borrowed $42 billion from the federal government as of Feb. 4 because their unemployment trust funds have run out of money, according to the Labor Department. From 2009 until this year, the loans had been interest free under a provision of the economic-stimulus program.
U.S. states face budget deficits of at least $125 billion next fiscal year and have responded with proposals to cut education, healthcare and other programs, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Every state except Vermont is constitutionally required to balance its budget.
Tax Relief
The nation’s unemployment rate was 9 percent last month, down from a high of 10.1 percent in October 2009. The rate has been at 9 percent or higher for almost two years. State and local governments cut 12,000 workers from payrolls last month, according to the Labor Department’s Feb. 4 jobs report.
Obama will also propose raising the federal minimum level at which income is taxed for unemployment insurance to $15,000 in 2014, the official said. The current level is $7,000, although most states exceed the required amount.
Obama will send his multitrillion-dollar budget for fiscal 2012 to Congress on Feb. 14. The document will put into precise language the administration’s priorities for increasing economic growth and creating jobs.
President Barack Obama’s approval rating for his handling of the federal deficit has fallen to a new low — just 27 percent of Americans now approve, down from 32 percent in November, while 68 percent disapprove, a Gallup poll reveals.
Back in April 2009, 49 percent of those polled said they approved of Obama’s handling of the deficit.
The new Gallup poll discloses that Americans feel Obama is doing much better on international issues than on domestic ones.
The poll was conducted Feb. 2-5, as the Obama administration was seeking to deal with the turmoil in Egypt. Nearly half of respondents, 47 percent, said they approve of Obama’s handling of the turmoil in Egypt, while 32 percent disapprove and 21 percent have no opinion.
On Afghanistan, 47 percent approve of his handling of the situation, and 46 percent disapprove.
Regarding Obama’s energy policy, 43 percent approve, and 42 percent disapprove. But 54 percent disapprove of his performance regarding taxes, while 42 percent approve.
Obama also scores poorly on two other domestic issues: healthcare policy (Americans disapprove 56 percent to 40 percent), and the economy (60 percent to 37 percent).
Republicans give Obama particularly low marks for his handling of domestic issues. Just 12 percent approve of the president on healthcare policy, 9 percent approve of Obama on the economy, and 7 percent think he is doing a good job with the deficit.
Among Democrats, they give Obama the highest rating for his handling of foreign affairs (75 percent), and healthcare policy (73 percent). Republicans (34 percent) and Independents (47 percent) both give him their highest approval rating for his handling of the situation in Afghanistan.
“President Obama has failed to build public support in recent months for his handling of major U.S. economic matters,” Gallup observes.
“His approval rating on the economy is no better than it was last fall, and his approval rating on the federal budget deficit — a top issue for Republicans in Congress since the midterm elections — is even worse. His broadest support on the issues comes on foreign policy matters, most notably the situation in Egypt, but even on these, his approval ratings register just below 50 percent.”
In what amounts to the next initiative undertaken by the Obama administration toward its escalating program of government expansion and nationalization of various aspects of the lives of the American people (such as the government takeover of health care, intervention in banks, and the nationalization of various automobile companies such as General Motors), the federal government is now embarking upon a program of government-directed wireless internet (Wi-Fi) delivery.
President Obama outlined his plan for government wireless access and broadband expansion at a February 10 press conference at Northern Michigan University in Marquette, Michigan. The conference revealed yet another well-known truth about the proposal, characteristic of any other initiatives which believe that government is capable of expanding access to any commodities: It is rooted in his Quixotic, insolvent, debunked, and expansionist view of government, and in his failure to realize the proper relation of government to the myriad possibilities made possible by the free market, in a more efficient and capable manner. The Wi-Fi expansion proposal not only reflects an unconstitutional view of government spending and scope, but is also a continuation of Franklin Delano Roosevelt-style economics, which failed the country at the height of the Great Depression and continue to contribute to the national deficit and economic woes.
Obama’s speech was reminiscent of FDR’s numerous addresses given to rural farmers and laborers during the era of the New Deal, relying on flawed Keynesian notions that increased government spending is an effective means of stimulating economic development and reducing budget deficits, despite the fact that such government programs and the implementation of Keynesian economics in the Nixon years have led the United States down a path of valueless, inflated fiat currency and unbalanced budgets for close to 40 years.
The New York Times reports:
“This isn’t just about a faster Internet or being able to find a friend on Facebook,” Mr. Obama said in a speech at Northern Michigan University here, after viewing a demonstration on long-distance learning over the Internet.
“It’s about connecting every corner of America to the digital age,” the president said. “It’s about a rural community in Iowa or Alabama where farmers can monitor weather across the state and markets across the globe. It’s about an entrepreneur on Main Street with a great idea she hopes to sell to the big city. It’s about every young person who no longer has to leave his hometown to seek new opportunity — because opportunity is right there at his or her fingertips.”
Indeed, as noted by Henry Payne in the National Review, and precisely debunking Obama’s view that the federal government is needed to develop wireless Internet infrastructure throughout the country, the successful Marquette wireless Internet program Obama lauds was made possible not with one cent of federal funding, but as a model program through the collaborative effort of the local government (which is constitutionally permitted to provide such programs) and private enterprise (tech giants Intel, Motorola, Cisco, and Lenovo provided the local government with matching funds, and supplied the university with the prototype for its WiMAX broadband technology). The White House’s proposal mirrors FDR’s massive Rural Electrification Administration program of the 1930s, which provided federally-funded loans for the installation of electrical distribution systems to serve rural areas, and was later amended in 1949 to provide federal funding for the expansion of telephone service to rural areas, as part of President Harry Truman’s Fair Deal.
It is even being touted as part of Obama’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, otherwise known as the stimulus, and millions of dollars in funding for Obama’s wireless Internet program has already been appropriated through the provisions of the legislation. As early as September 2010, the government website http://www.recovery.gov, which was created as a resource to highlight where taxpayer funds are being used as part of the stimulus program, touted the supposed economic benefits of government-financed Wi-Fi. Furthermore, U.S. Commerce Secretary Gary Locke praised increased Wi-Fi as an effective means of achieving a more globalized America, in which information access “shrinks the world” by reducing barriers among nations and peoples. Commerce.gov reported:
U.S. Commerce Secretary Gary Locke today announced 14 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act investments to help bridge the technological divide, create jobs, and improve education and public safety in communities across the country. The investments, totaling $206.8 million in grants, are the final awards in a program to increase broadband Internet access and adoption, enhancing the quality of life for Americans and laying the groundwork for sustainable economic growth.
“In a globalized 21st century economy, when you don’t have regular access to high-speed Internet, you don’t have access to all the educational, business and employment opportunities it provides,” Locke said. “These critical Recovery Act investments will create jobs and lay the groundwork for long-term sustainable economic growth in communities across America.”
“In total, we are investing in 233 strong projects that reach every state. Most are ‘middle mile’ networks that expand high-speed Internet availability to communities and connect key institutions, such as schools, libraries, and hospitals. This focus allows us to get the biggest bang for every grant dollar by addressing communities’ broadband problems while creating jobs and facilitating sustainable economic growth,” Assistant Secretary for Communications and Information and NTIA Administrator Lawrence E. Strickling said. “We are also investing in public computer centers and training to help more Americans compete better in today’s workforce.”
According to the Department of Commerce, $7 billion in funds are being used toward the development of rural Wi-Fi, under the administration of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) and the Department of Agriculture’s Rural Utilities Service, the latter the same agency which implemented the New Deal and Fair Deal programs of rural electrification and telephone service expansion. NTIA is utilizing approximately $4 billion of that funding for the Broadband Technology Opportunities Program (BTOP), which provides grants to support the deployment of broadband infrastructure, enhance and expand public computer centers, and encourage sustainable adoption of broadband service.
Stimulus funds are being spent toward 233 BTOP projects, which the Department of Commerce says will:
• Fund the installation or upgrade of approximately 120,000 miles of broadband networks, including fiber-optics, wireless, microwave, and other technologies. Of this amount, approximately 70,000 miles involve construction of new broadband facilities. • Provide broadband access to approximately 24,000 community anchor institutions, including schools, libraries, government offices, health care facilities, and public safety entities • Deploy middle mile infrastructure in areas with nearly 40 million households and 4 million businesses, many of which will benefit from new or improved broadband service provided by last-mile providers that are able to utilize the new, open infrastructure to extend or upgrade their service for consumer and business customers. • Invest in more than 3,500 new or upgraded public computer centers in libraries, schools, community centers and other public locations. • Invest in more than 35,000 new or upgraded public computer workstations. • Make public computer center workstations and training available to more than 1 million new users
As early as May 2009, special interests connected with the wireless internet industry looked at the stimulus as a windfall. According to Stan Schatt, vice president of the market intelligence company ABI Research, the Recovery Act represents a windfall for wireless service providers as well as for satellite service providers, and it will have an enormous impact on Wi-Fi and wireless broadband vendors. In addition to the program empowering tech giants, it will also serve to further inflate big government spending and create new programs, as the Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, Department of Education, and the healthcare industry each are poised to benefit, as reported in The Register:
The healthcare biz will be itching to add or improve Wi-Fi-enabled mobile devices, sensors, and communications systems that will link health networks with the stimulus money, the report claims.
Meanwhile, the education market will want "learning anywhere" equipment that requires purchasing VoIP and WLAN equipment and software to track students' progress for No Child Left Behind record keeping.
But the real money is in selling wireless equipment to the Department of Homeland Security and US Customs and Border Protection, the report asserts. The agencies represent a "potential goldmine" to kit providers, as the government itself will be taking a generous portion of the stimulus money for tactical communications equipment, infrastructure equipment, and security equipment. Even critical infrastructure construction projects such as bridges and tunnels often require wireless video surveillance systems.
In typical Orwellian double-speak, Obama’s proposal was touted as an “investment,” rather than spending that the federal government cannot afford, and according to the White House, the spending will reduce the deficit by $9.6 billion over the next 10 years, as the government will consider auctioning off its portion of the wireless spectrum to private companies, which can result in government gaining as much as $28 billion in revenue from the sales. (This is a direct application of economist John Maynard Keynes’ Theory of Countercyclical Spending — that government should take an active economic role by imposing policies that run counter to market trends by engaging in fiscal stimulus, or deficit spending, as a means of staving off massive unemployment):
The President’s proposals to auction off spectrum freed up from the government and voluntarily relinquished by current commercial users, is estimated to raise $27.8 billion. This total is above-and-beyond the auction proceeds that are used to provide an incentive for private and government users as well as the auction proceeds that are expected even absent the President’s proposal. After the cost of the investments proposed by the President, the initiative would reduce the deficit by $9.6 billion over the next decade.
In fact, many of the industries which Obama hopes will help deflect the cost off of taxpayers have been less than enthusiastic about this proposal. Experts say that the plan is overly ambitious and complicated, relying heavily on the participation of cautious television broadcasters who are loath to easily give up their greatest asset — the wireless broadband spectrum. Government estimates don't include how much money it would return to broadcasters who give up airwaves in voluntary "incentive auctions." Those television broadcasters will get a cut of the proceeds, the administration has promised, though it hasn't offered more details; broadcasters want more guarantees auctions will be voluntary, and they are searching for details on how much they would receive from the auctions. Those details, however, are crucial for broadcasters, said Gordon Smith, president of the National Association of Broadcasters."We aren't against the plan but want to make sure this is truly voluntary, and we want to hold harmless those who don't want to participate," Smith said, as reported in The Washington Post.
In addition, advocates for Internet competitiveness and choice in the digital marketplace fear that Obama’s proposal may adversely affect both the taxpayer and the integrity of the technological free market. Gigi Sohn, president of the public interest group Public Knowledge, said that while federal attention to mobile broadband technology was a positive development in her view, “It is not at all clear that incentive auctions will take place. Even under circumstances of familiar auction procedures, estimates of revenue can vary greatly from what is actually achieved." Sohn and many lawmakers also pointed to a questionable track record for federal programs to expand broadband connections. Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.), chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said that “Before we target any more of our scarce taxpayer dollars for broadband, it is critical to examine whether the money already being spent is having an impact, as well as how we can minimize waste, fraud and abuse.”
While there is no direct benefit anticipated for the taxpayer, manufacturers of consumer electronics such as the iPhone and Netbook are hailing the plan, which was met with approval by the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA), one of the largest technology trade associations in the world.
President Barack Obama’s numbers have plunged in all 50 states, according to a Gallup poll released Wednesday — overall, the president’s average approval rating fell from 58 percent in 2009 to 47 percent in 2010.
The news came as the revolt against public unions started by Gov. Scott Walker in Wisconsin showed signs of moving to more states, according to Time magazine. Time pointed out that while anti-union legislation differs in states across the country, the conflicts in places like Ohio, Indiana and Florida all pit GOP governors or their statehouse allies against entrenched labor movements.
• In Indiana, Democratic legislators, mirroring their Wisconsin counterparts' desperation, fled the state to deny Republican lawmakers the quorum necessary to proceed on a "right to work" bill, legislation that would prevent employers and unions from signing contracts that require non-members to pay fees for representation. That has come with a cost: The political weight of a single bill grounded Gov. Mitch Daniels' ambitious agenda, Time pointed out. • In Michigan, newly elected Republican Gov. Rick Snyder's budget calls for pensions to be taxed, and he backs empowering emergency financial managers, brought in when a school or city is foundering, to cut union contracts. But Snyder says he remains committed to bargaining with labor rather than forcing his position. "It's not confrontational with the unions," he said. "It's about how we do collective bargaining to achieve a mutual outcome where we all benefit." • Florida is already a "right to work state,” but GOP state Sen. John Thrasher has introduced legislation to declaw unions there politically. The bill would bar labor groups from using salary deductions for candidate donations or electioneering. Gov. Rick Scott proposed laying off 6,700 state workers in his first budget proposal but he has backed off a larger standoff with unions. "My belief is as long as people know what they're doing, collective bargaining is fine," he told Tallahassee's WFLA Radio on Tuesday. • In Ohio, Gov. John Kasich says he’s willing to weather confrontation with unions over what’s known as Senate Bill 5. It would abolish collective-bargaining rights for 42,000 state workers and scale back those of roughly 300,000 local government employees in Ohio, including teachers, firefighters and police. Democrats lack the numbers in the statehouse to delay action with a walkout. Republicans have an 8-4 majority on that Insurance, Commerce and Labor Committee, not to mention a 23-10 majority in the senate overall. SB5 is likely to face a full vote next week.
These revolts, which are likely to spread to other states next week, don’t bode well for a president facing sinking polls. His approval rating fell in every state, according to a compilation of Gallup’s daily tracking polls.
Obama’s national approval rating dropped to 47 percent in 2010 from 58 percent in 2009.
The biggest decline came in Vermont, where his approval rating dived 15.2 percentage points to 52.6 percent in 2010. The second-largest plunge came in Arizona – 14.5 percentage points to 40.2 percent. The third-biggest decline came in Kentucky – 14.2 percentage points to 38.6 percent. The fourth-largest decrease came in Missouri – 14.1 percentage points to 41.4 percent.
Obama’s approval rating sank by more than 10 points in more than 30 states. The 10 states with the highest ratings all traditionally lean blue. After D.C. and Hawaii, they are Maryland, New York, Delaware, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, California, Connecticut and Illinois, the Daily Caller pointed out.
The 10 states with the lowest approval ratings are Wyoming, Idaho, West Virginia, Utah, Oklahoma, Alaska, Kentucky, Montana, Arkansas, and Kansas.
As far back as the 2008 presidential campaign, then-candidate Barack Obama let slip a vision for his own personal civilian army. Not to protect you and me from enemies of this country, which is his number one constitutional responsibility.
No, what he seems to have had in mind — demonstrated again just in the last few days — is a special force to push back against what he perceives as his own personal political enemies (i.e., anyone who disagrees with his agenda).
Laying the groundwork for the future?
Witness a report from no less a source than the Washington Post — mouthpiece for the Washington liberal establishment. And we quote:
"The president's political machine worked to [help] thousands of protesters to gather in Madison [Wisconsin] and to plan similar demonstrations in other state capitals."
That of course refers to the thousands demonstrating against Governor Scott Walker. Wisconsin's teachers have problems with the governor's insistence that they pay a small percentage of their health and retirement benefits, though they now indicate they may be willing to give in on that. But the governor also says the state can no longer afford to pay for all the collective bargaining rights the public sector employees demand. Oh, those greedy taxpayers in the private sector who pay far more for their health and retirement benefits than do most public employees.
Mr. Obama will need the organized public employees next year when he seeks re-election. His "machine" is named Organizing for America. He counts on them to be there for him, in terms of money and "political activism." (The latter not necessarily restricted to peaceful petitioning. See Rep. Mike Capuano — D-Mass. — who says, in supporting demands of public employees, that "it's time to get a little bloody." Welcome to the liberal "new civility.")
So the Washington Post delicately describes the force being brought to bear on the side of the Wisconsin teachers as "the president's political machine."
What is Obama's "machine"?
For what must be the third or fourth time, this column harks back to a campaign promise Barack Obama made when he was seeking the highest office in the land:
"We cannot continue to rely only on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives that we've set. We've got to have a civilian national security force that's just as powerful, just as strong, and just as well-funded."
Read that again. Previously in this space, we wondered: Exactly what would that military-style civilian force be asked to enforce? What orders from the White House? Would the local police be displaced? Who would be targeted by a "national security" force that's just as strong and "well-funded?"
We're not alone
As coincidence would have it, we were reading the Washington Post article about the Wisconsin battle just as we were also in the midst of the book The Blueprint. In that tome, authors Ken Klukowski (attorney for the American Civil Rights Union — not to be confused with the ACLU) and Ken Blackwell (former Ohio Secretary of State) cite yet another interesting quote — this one from Rahm Emanuel, Obama's former White House Chief of Staff.
The incoming windy city Mayor (who no doubt intends to rule — literally and figuratively — the "Chicago way") picked up where his president left off:
"Citizenship is not an entitlement program. It comes with responsibilities. Everybody between the ages of 18 and 25 will serve three months of basic training and understanding in a kind of defense. That universal service — somewhere between the ages of 18 and 25 — will give Americans, once again, a sense of what they are to be American and their contribution to a country and a common experience. As you look at World War II, now that was a draft — this is not a draft. It is universal service."
"The Blueprint" — co-authored by an attorney who has practiced before the Supreme Court (Klulowski) — cites the Emanuel statement (owning civilians the way the government owns those in the military) as a possible violation of the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution.
Then there is this gem by First Lady Michelle Obama:
"Barack Obama will require you to work. Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual, uninvolved, and uninformed." (Another Thirteenth Amendment challenge — i.e., a Good-bye America moment.)
Wait until next term
For now — as far as we know — Obama's private army in Madison assisting the sixties-style rally of teachers who were carrying signs with blatant misspellings (including "are" for "our") — is funded through private resources. We don't know that for certain, and you never can be sure with this crowd of leeches. Even so, it's the Wisconsin taxpayers who are expected to pay — and pay and pay and pay. Never mind that the reading skills of the states' eighth grade students are among the worst in the nation. That raises the legitimate question as to whether the teachers shouting their slogans on TV are worthy of their current pay, let alone whatever they can get from a fat new contract.
But remember, President Obama has a re-election battle to fight next year. If he wins, he goes into four years without having to worry about voter push-back. Will he then increase the strong-arm of government power against his constituents (in disregard of constitutional restraints)?
ACORN
On paper, it is made to appear that ACORN, the notorious longtime Obama ally, has disbanded. That is so much eyewash. The ACORN coalition groups are still together — under whatever name — ready and willing to do their master's bidding.
And what policies are they willing to "enforce"? Well, they support abortion on demand, the end of the death penalty, amnesty for illegal aliens, government-run health care, more taxpayer-funded housing (a major cause of the 2008 crash). That would be bad enough, but then consider they also favor establishing a completely state-bossed media (under whatever pretense); support for our enemies and neglecting or betraying our allies; and of course ignoring internal threats perpetrated by the Radical-Islam/Hate-America-Left alliance. All that is just for starters. (There are space limitations here.)
Worse than you think?
President Obama wants a civilian force as "well-funded" as the military? Then we're talking about $534 Billion on an annual basis, according to recent military budget figures.
A regime can buy a lot of silence and/or support with that kind of money as its thugs roam the land at will. Flush with resources from the "well-funded piggy bank," the powers that be can also blanket the country with pro-government propaganda once those pesky opposition radio/TV commentators are silenced.
Dare we think?
As Blackwell and Klukowski have noted, "The worst regimes in the world have had such organizations, from the [Nazi] Gestapo to the Soviets' KGB."
The authors have noted that it is difficult even to discuss such matters, because right away, such talk conjures up "'black-helicopter' conspiracy theories."
But when a president gives birth to such thoughts by his own comments, he owes the voters an explanation as to what he means by those words. Isn't that reasonable?
And what happens to those who resist "universal service?" Will it then be "time to get a little bloody?"
Why then are the above quotes by the Obamas and Rahm Emanuel so little known? Have the media — our alleged "watch-dogs" — gone AWOL again? Hello? — Anybody home? Time to wake up!
Evil. It has always been there, pushed back in the United States by American exceptionalism and the Judeo Christian traditions of what Ronald Reagan famously called -- borrowing from the Bible -- a "shining City on a hill." "God bless America," Reagan would say, emphatically and often. But God is not in fashion among our political and media elites and, with the presidency of Barack Obama, the lights of the city are dimming and evil has been drawn from the shadows.
Now we have a leader in the vanguard of a malevolence pushing into the mainstream through a thousand barely perceptible actions and words. It is tiptoeing into our culture, permeating our homes and institutions, shaping lives and expectations and quietly remaking our worldview in the radical, leftist image favored by our educated elites. Such is the evil of Barack Obama, an incredibly soft evil that threatens the future of a nation that, for all of its existence, has led the world in freedom and opportunity.
Take that, Jews. Shut up, Christians. Move over, strivers. Give it up, tradition. Individual choice, responsibility, honor -- simply words in a dictionary. All are relative, says the professor in the White House, as are your rights. We know best how to do your lives, comes the voice from a thousand of his appointees in hundreds of federal agencies. American exceptionalism? Fugedaboutit!
It is a soft evil that comes from quietly abandoning the values and traditions that naturally follow from a nation founded on the fact that God created humanity with "unalienable rights" -- so said our founders. From this flows an exceptionally American and Biblical worldview that understands the need to "act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God." Bible stuff, sure; but also the Judeo-Christian virtues that have guided our national and private lives, lived much in the breach but nevertheless honored as worthy characteristics.
Theologians tell us that it is typical of humanity to create evil by "missing the mark" in daily living. We miss the target of godly or righteous behavior in our relationships in innumerable and often minor ways: snubbing a neighbor, parking illegally, etc. But our saving grace is that we acknowledge that these transgressions, however small, are still wrong. But when we don't, when we miss the mark deliberately and as a matter of policy, then soft sin builds toward hard evil. And that is where we are with our federal government. Obama and his fellow Democrats, for example, push our children into debt, a soft evil that will grow hard when the bill comes due and whole generations are yoked to government. He promotes publically subsidized, racially selective abortions that target African-American women at three times the rate of the rest of the population, a soft evil that becomes hard when, as has happened, babies are born and then murdered, their spines snapped with scissors by a doctor paid by taxpayers.
Ironically, it was the ancient Jews who first warned that the soft evil of "mark-missing" results in the same kind of evil produced by in-your-face sin such as murder or rape. Jews have always been the canary in the coal mine, the first to take it on the chin by assuming the unenviable task of reminding the powerful that there is, indeed, a higher power -- and that evil is the inevitable result of human arrogance. Hitler and his jack-booted hordes pursued power through a hard evil that began with the Jews and continued on to eliminate significant chunks of the human race; in the Arab world, Jews were the first murdered, but recent attacks on Coptic Christians in Egypt remind us that it won't stop there.
Obama and his allies offer a softer version, one easier to ignore but heading in the same direction. The Obama leftists don't wear jackboots; instead, they shuffle in on slippers, using the power of government to softly challenge and redefine right thinking and behavior. This quiet evil is most apparent in his treatment of the Jews. As Jackie Mason put it, in this life "three things are certain: Death, taxes, and anti-Semitism." And so we have the soft anti-Semitism of Barack Obama, who says it is okay to not like the Jews...oh, I mean Israel. "Take the Jews -- please," says the Obama White House, putting a Henny Youngman face on the ugly façade of an ancient hate.
The symbolism is hard to miss. Quietly, surreptitiously, a hundred little acts of soft evil put us on the path to the hard evils of the tyrannies that plague other parts of the world. Palestinian government thugs murder both Jews and Arabs in territories littered with poverty and brutality. But it is Israel -- the prosperous and free Jewish state which welcomes Arabs -- that stands condemned as the administration unleashes what the New York Post called "a vile attack on Israel, using language far worse than anything" the notoriously anti-Semitic United Nations can dream up. At the same time, Obama ignores the vow of the Muslim Brotherhood to "kill the Jews -- to the very last one" and, instead of decrying their murderous intent, pronounces them worthy of friendship. Hard evil hates Jews; soft evil embraces their murderers.
Soft evil inevitably leaches into public life. Harvard Law professor and liberal icon Alan Dershowitz, a frequent speaker on university campuses, traces the growing hate directed at Jewish students and faculty to the willingness of Obama to embrace and thereby legitimize the hard evil of those who hate, "thus blurring the line between legitimate political criticism and illegitimate bigotry."
Such is the nature of soft evil. In international affairs, in abortion, in healthcare, in millions of new regulations and taxes, in a thousand ways and relationships the lines between unalienable rights and illegitimate policy are blurred. Soft evil whispers "power" and Obama smiles.
Take a look around this country. Outside the Beltway, we are all Jews now.
President Barack Obama once promised that negotiations over his health care overhaul would be carried out openly, in front of TV cameras and microphones. Tell that to the White House now.
Republican congressional investigators got the brush-off this past week after pressing for details of meetings between White House officials and interest groups, including drug companies and hospitals that provided critical backing for Obama's health insurance expansion.
Complying with the records request from the House Energy and Commerce Committee "would constitute a vast and expensive undertaking" and could "implicate longstanding executive branch confidentiality interests," White House lawyer Robert Bauer wrote the committee. Translation: Nice try.
It's one more roadblock for Republicans who tapped into widespread anxiety about the scope and costs of the new health care law to regain control of the House in last fall's elections.
So far, they've been unable to repeal the landmark legislation they dismiss as "Obamacare." GOP efforts to deny administration agencies the money to carry out the law are running into unintended consequences, not to mention the sheer difficulty of tracking those dollars. Now it looks like oversight isn't going to be easy either.
"We are both concerned and disappointed by your response," the committee chairman, Rep. Fred Upton, R-Mich., wrote back to Bauer. "The American public deserves the information we have requested. The secret meetings conducted by (White House officials) are a perfect example of why transparency in government is so important."
Upton urged the White House to carefully reconsider, but it's uncertain he'll ever get what he wants. Even if the standoff dramatically escalates to a congressional subpoena, history shows that presidents usually succeed in keeping records away from snooping eyes.
President George W. Bush's administration beat back efforts to reveal the dealings between Vice President Dick Cheney's energy task force and industry. President Bill Clinton's administration successfully resisted demands for records of its failed push to remake the health care system, which was overseen by then-first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton.
The request for records from Obama's health care reform office is broad. The committee asked for a list of every meeting, briefing or telephone call regarding changes to the health care system, as well as notes or summaries of those encounters. It wants a list of every employee of the now-disbanded health reform office, including their salaries. Committee investigators are also seeking any written communications, whether by letter or e-mail, with outside groups.
White House visitor records released at the request of The Associated Press in late 2009 show that Obama's top aides met frequently with lobbyists and health care industry leaders during the marathon congressional debate over health care overhaul.
The list included George Halvorson, chairman and CEO of Kaiser Health Plans; Scott Serota, president and CEO of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association; Kenneth Kies, a Washington lobbyist representing Blue Cross/Blue Shield, among other clients; Billy Tauzin, then head of PhRMA, the drug industry lobby; Richard Umbdenstock, chief of the American Hospital Association; and numerous others.
Nearly every health industry group has complaints about aspects of the final legislation. But they're also working to carry out its provisions, even as challenges to the law's constitutionality advance in federal court. Some sectors got significant concessions from the administration.
The pharmaceutical industry and hospitals agreed early on to tens of billions in savings to help finance new coverage for the uninsured. When an amendment to allow importation of low-cost prescription drugs came up in the Senate, the administration worked successfully to defeat it, although Obama had supported the idea as a presidential candidate. Hospitals won a reprieve of several years from cuts proposed by a new Medicare cost control board.
The White House sent the Energy and Commerce Committee some 100 pages of records that have already been made public, including visitor logs and press releases. That may be all they get for a long time.
Everyone knows that the U.S. budget is being devoured by entitlements. Everyone also knows that of the Big Three -- Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security -- Social Security is the most solvable.
Back-of-an-envelope solvable: Raise the retirement age, tweak the indexing formula (from wage inflation to price inflation) and means-test so that Warren Buffett's check gets redirected to a senior in need.
The relative ease of the fix is what makes the Obama administration's Social Security strategy so shocking. The new line from the White House is: no need to fix it because there is no problem. As Office of Management and Budget Director Jack Lew wrote in USA Today just a few weeks ago, the trust fund is solvent until 2037. Therefore, Social Security is now off the table in debt-reduction talks.
This claim is a breathtaking fraud.
The pretense is that a flush trust fund will pay retirees for the next 26 years. Lovely, except for one thing: The Social Security trust fund is a fiction.
If you don't believe me, listen to the OMB's own explanation (in the Clinton administration budget for fiscal year 2000 under then-Director Jack Lew, the very same). The OMB explained that these trust fund "balances" are nothing more than a "bookkeeping" device. "They do not consist of real economic assets that can be drawn down in the future to fund benefits."
In other words, the Social Security trust fund contains -- nothing.
Here's why. When your FICA tax is taken out of your paycheck, it does not get squirreled away in some lockbox in West Virginia where it's kept until you and your contemporaries retire. Most goes out immediately to pay current retirees, and the rest (say, $100) goes to the U.S. Treasury -- and is spent. On roads, bridges, national defense, public television, whatever -- spent, gone.
In return for that $100, the Treasury sends the Social Security Administration a piece of paper that says: IOU $100. There are countless such pieces of paper in the lockbox. They are called "special issue" bonds.
Special they are: They are worthless. As the OMB explained, they are nothing more than "claims on the Treasury (i.e., promises) that, when redeemed (when you retire and are awaiting your check), will have to be financed by raising taxes, borrowing from the public, or reducing benefits or other expenditures." That's what it means to have a so-called trust fund with no "real economic assets." When you retire, the "trust fund" will have to go to the Treasury for the money for your Social Security check.
Bottom line? The OMB again: "The existence of large trust fund balances, therefore, does not, by itself, have any impact on the government's ability to pay benefits." No impact: The lockbox, the balances, the little pieces of paper, amount to nothing.
So that when Jack Lew tells you that there are trillions in this lockbox that keep the system solvent until 2037, he is perpetrating a fiction certified as such by his own OMB. What happens when you retire? Your Social Security will come out of the taxes and borrowing of that fiscal year.
Why is this a problem? Because as of 2010, the pay-as-you-go Social Security system is in the red. For decades it had been in the black, taking in more in FICA taxes than it sent out in Social Security benefits. The surplus, scooped up by the Treasury, reduced the federal debt by tens of billions. But demography is destiny. The ratio of workers to retirees is shrinking year by year. Instead of Social Security producing annual surpluses that reduce the federal deficit, it is now producing shortfalls that increase the federal deficit -- $37 billion in 2010. It will only get worse as the baby boomers retire.
That's what makes this administration's claim that Social Security is solvent so cynical. The Republicans have said that their April budget will contain real entitlement reform. President Obama is preparing the ground to demagogue Social Security right through the 2012 elections. The ad writes itself: Those heartless Republicans don't just want to throw granny in the snow, they want to throw granny in the snow to solve a problem that doesn't even exist! Vote Obama.
On Tuesday, Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia denounced Obama for lack of leadership on the debt. It's worse than that. Obama is showing leadership. With Lew's preposterous claim that Social Security is solvent for 26 years, Obama is preparing to lead the charge against entitlement reform as his ticket to re-election.
[This message has been edited by avengador1 (edited 03-17-2011).]
Recall the euphoria that surrounded Barack Obama during the 2008 election season and after he was inaugurated as the 44th President of the United States. Life was going to be blue skies and rainbows, or at least we were told, with hope and change on the way. The American people would be better off and so would our nation with Obama in control. After a little more than two years as the President, those blue skies have turned gray with not the slightest hint of a rainbow.
Some professed that with Barack Obama as President, the staples of life would become affordable if not altogether free. Surely you remember Peggy Joseph who said, at a Barack Obama campaign event in August 2008, that she would not have to worry about paying for her gas and mortgage. Consider what has happened to those staples of life during the Obama presidency.
As of March 14, the average price of regular unleaded gasoline was $3.57/gallon. When Obama took office in January 2009, the price was $1.81/gallon. That represents more than a 90% increase in just over two years.
To put that in perspective, assume you have a 40 mile round trip commute to work, your car gets 20 miles per gallon and that prices remain the same going forward. Relative to January 2009, you are paying about $18 more per week and about $72 more per month at the pump.
The pertinent question we might ask is, "What has President Obama done in the past two years to limit the rise of oil and gasoline prices, if anything?" The answer is...nothing. If anything, his policies have contributed towards rising prices. Recall the moratorium he enacted on oil drilling following the BP oil spill that further limited the supply of the commodity from our own waters. His failure to support drilling in ANWR and his overt allegiance to the anti-drilling environmental fringe has also directly contributed to less supply of oil and therefore higher oil prices.
Ms. Joseph also looked forward to Obama paying her mortgage. Well, many Americans don't have to worry about a mortgage anymore, as they've had their houses foreclosed. In 2009, a record 2,824,674 foreclosures took place, while 2,872,892 foreclosures occurred in 2010. In other words, 5.7 million families have lost their homes, but at least they're not up all night wondering how they will pay their mortgage.
It just wasn't supposed to be this way, at least in the eyes of the 53% of voters who cast their ballot for Barack Obama. After all, President Obama's policies were going to reignite the economy and keep the unemployment rate below 8% at least that is what we were told, thereby making those aforementioned mortgages affordable. The opposite has occurred.
In December 2008, President Bush's final full month in office, the nation's unemployment rate stood at 7.3%. From that point until December 2010, a period in which Obama benefited from accommodative Democratic majorities in the House and Senate, the unemployment rate rose to 10.1% at one time and remained at or above 9.5% from July 2009 until November 2010.
This resulted despite unprecedented government spending labeled as "economic stimulus."
What happened? Instead of a surge in America's economic growth, we've seen a surge in America's deficit. Under the direction of President Obama, the United States has seen its deficit increase by more than $3 trillion or by nearly $10,000 for every man, woman, and child in America.
Then there was the promise of "When there's a bill that ends up on my desk, as President, you, the public, will have five days to look online to find out what's in it before I sign it...." Again, the reality has been the complete opposite.
Rewind to March 2010, when then House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, in reference to the ObamaCare bill, said, "We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it." Really? I thought that 2,700 page bill would be posted on the Internet for all to view for five days. Instead, it was rushed through and pushed down our throats, despite most Americans not in favor of it. Again, Obama failed to deliver, as he has time after time.
We are now just after the halfway point of the Obama presidency. Based on the facts, we are no better off as a nation than we were when Obama took office. The average American citizen has failed to see an improvement in his or her lifestyle versus two years ago. This is a presidency, up to this point, that has been an absolute disaster for our nation and our people.
In two short years, Barack Obama has wrested the crown for most self-indulgent president from Monica Lewinsky’s ex-boyfriend, Bill Clinton.
Clinton’s most self-indulgent moment came when when he urged Lewinsky to perform oral sex on him while he took a phone call from a Congressman. However, the November 17, 1995 incident occured in private, the Congressman did not suspect anything was amiss and it was not revealed until years later as part of the Starr investigation.
Obama’s most self-indulgent moment was broadcast on national television this week when, in the midst of numerous crises crying out for American leadership, he took time to film his picks for the NCAA basketball tournament brackets for broadcast by the ESPN sports network.
This follows a two-year string of self-indulgences by Obama since he became president that has demonstrated to the world that nothing comes before Obama’s me-time.
Most famously, Obama did not interrupt his 2009 luxury Christmas vacation in Hawaii when an Islamist terrorist tried to blow a passenger jet out of the sky over Detroit on Christmas Day. Obama could barely be moved to speak to the nation about the attack which came within a failed detonator of succeeding.
Now, with the Middle East in flames and America’s closest Asian ally teetering on collapse from the triple-whammy of a 9.0 earthquake, subsequent apocalytic tsunami and multiple nuclear power plant failures, Obama has spent his time golfing, partying with the press, fundraising, hanging out with athletes, prepping for his NCAA brackets presentation and getting ready for the Obama family taxpayer funded Spring Break trip to Rio de Janeiro this weekend.
The White House Web site proudly displays Obama’s picks for the men’s and women’s tournaments. You, the U.S. taxpayer, paid for the posting and hosting of Obama’s picks in pdf format.
The posting includes Obama’s conscience-cleansing nod to Japan in his ESPN presentation:
As he does every year, the President filled out his brackets predicting the winners of the men’s and women’s NCAA basketball tournaments, but discussing it with Doris Burke of ESPN, he began with a call to stand with the people of Japan:
One of the things I wanted to do on the show was, as people are filling out their brackets — this is obviously a national pastime; we all have a great time, it’s a great diversion. But I know a lot of people are thinking how can they help the Japanese people during this time of need. If you go to usaid.gov — usaid.gov — that will list all the nonprofits, the charities that are helping out there. It would be wonderful for people to maybe offer a little help to the Japanese people at this time — as they’re filling out their brackets. It’s not going to take a lot of time. That’s usaid.gov. It could be really helpful.
How insulting. But that’s Obama. At least he didn’t say, “As you are filling out your brackets, say a quick prayer for the Libyans I betrayed by spending more time working on my brackets than on figuring a way to depose Qaddafi without getting him replaced by radical Islamists.”
Or, “As you are filling out your brackets, try not to think about the skyrocketing price of gasoline and food. Let’s party March Madness style. Woot!”
Even the lapdog White House press corps has complained about the difficulty of providing cover for Obama on his creepy bracket presentation:
Q. And final question: Is it entirely appropriate for the President to be addressing a crisis of this gravity as he’s standing before a white board talking about a basketball tournament?
MR. CARNEY: There are crises all the time and for every President. And again, this one is happening halfway around the world, and it is severe and it is important and it is the focus of a great deal of the President’s attention — as are the events in the Middle East; as are the agenda items that he is pursuing to grow the economy and increase jobs in America, make sure we out-innovate, out-build and out-educate the competition in the 21st century. It’s a hard job that requires a lot.
It is also important — one of the things I would note that the President did in that very brief interview on ESPN and ESPN2 was ask Americans, as they were filling out their own brackets, take the time to go to usaid.gov and make donations to a variety of charitable organizations that are organizing donations to help the Japanese in this very serious situation that they find themselves in. And so, yes, I do think it was appropriate.
The Obamas have told Americans they need to cut back on vacations, business travel and spending to deal with the ongoing economic crisis. Yet the Obamas themselves have shown no sign of sacrificing anything. Michelle Obama wears clothes, shoes and accessories that cost thousands of dollars and lives a jet set lifestyle. Barack Obama has spent over 300 hours–the equivalant of seven-and-a-half 40 hour work weeks–playing 61 rounds of golf since becoming president two years ago.
In just the past few weeks, Barack Obama has hosted parties at the White House for Motown and pro basketball, attended parties with the press and has hosted several Democrat fundraisers in D.C. and around the country. All while allies and critics alike have complained about the lack of leadership by Obama on pressing national and foreign issues.
Never mind all that, Spring Break is here and surf’s up in Rio.
He was speaking of Saddam Hussein's invasion, occupation and annexation of the emirate of Kuwait as his "19th province."
Seven months later, the Iraqi army was fleeing up the "Highway of Death" back into a country devastated by five weeks of U.S. bombing.
When Bush spoke, the world sat up and listened.
Consider the change.
"It's time for Gadhafi to go," said President Barack Obama two weeks ago. "So, let me just be very unambiguous about this. Col. Gadhafi needs to step down from power and leave." And did he go?
Receiving Obama's ultimatum, Gadhafi rallied his troops and took the offensive. His army is now 100 miles from Benghazi.
Obama urged the king of Bahrain not to crush the peaceful protest in Pearl Square and to accommodate the legitimate demands of its Shiite majority.
The Saudis, seeing a threat to their oil-rich and Shiite-populated eastern province should the Bahraini monarchy fall, sent 2,000 troops across the King Fahd Causeway. Bahrain then brutally swept the "outlaws" from the streets of its capital, Manama.
Among the few things that may be said with certainty about the Arab revolution of 2011 is that it has revealed the rising irrelevance of President Obama in that part of the world.
With impunity, Benjamin Netanyahu defied his demand that Israel cease to build on the West Bank. The Palestinian Authority, despite Obama's pleas, then went ahead with a U.N. resolution condemning Israel.
Caught flat-footed by the uprising in Tunisia, the White House could only offer belated congratulations to the demonstrators who had deposed and driven out our longtime ally, President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.
After Tunisia, Vice President Joe Biden insisted the embattled Hosni Mubarak was not a dictator in Egypt. Obama sided with Mubarak and then said he ought to go. Then, when the Saudis and Israelis protested that we were abandoning a friend of 30 years, Obama concluded Mubarak should stay.
When the army suddenly sent Mubarak packing, the White House hailed the revolution as the harbinger of an Arab spring.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton burbled that her 15-minute stroll through Tahrir Square was "a great reminder of the power of the human spirit and universal desire for freedom and human rights and democracy."
Some of the young demonstrators, recalling America's 30-year friendship with Mubarak and ambivalence over his ouster, refused to talk with her.
In denouncing Syria and Iran for crushing peaceful protests, the Obamaites acted consistent with the democratic values they preach. In their muffled response to the brutal treatment of demonstrators in Bahrain and Yemen, they put national interests above national ideals.
Indeed, it is this clash between our professed ideals and our perceived interests that has produced the reigning confusion in Washington and the near paralysis of American policy in the Middle East.
"Nations have no permanent friends or allies; they only have permanent interests," said Lord Palmerston. America lacks that kind of certitude. She is conflicted. She cannot make up her mind. Do our interests come first or our ideals? How can they be in conflict?
From World War I to the Carter era, U.S. national interests drove U.S. foreign policy. In Wilson's war "to make the world safe for democracy," we partnered with five empires. In World War II, we allied with Stalin. In the Cold War, we accepted the friendship of autocrats and dictators and caudillos and generalissimos who shared our fear and loathing of communism.
When John Foster Dulles was the face of U.S. foreign policy in the 1950s, the neutralism of nations such as Nehru's India and Sukarno's Indonesia was seen as immoral.
But with the end of the Cold War, moral clarity vanished.
We are now divided over whether kings, dictators and autocrats who share our interests but regard democracy as lunacy or a luxury they cannot afford can be America's allies and friends.
There is a second cause of conflict roiling the American mind.
Even as Moscow was abandoning communist ideology and China was giving up her dream of world revolution, the United States was converting to an ideology of global democracy. At some point in the past 20 years, it became the historic mission of America to make the whole world democratic.
And should we fail in this mission, George W. Bush reminded us, the end of American freedom would be ensured.
So, having defeated – or rather outlasted – our enemies with a pragmatic policy of accepting the friendship of any and all who would stand with us in that great Cold War struggle, we set out to remake the world in our own image, even as Moscow and Beijing had sought to do.
As they failed, so will we.
As for Obama, with our foremost Asian ally going through the agony of its worst natural disaster and with revolution raging through the Arab world, he has given us his picks for the Final Four in the "March Madness" of college basketball – and set off with Michelle to party in Rio.
How relevant is he? And how relevant are we?
[This message has been edited by avengador1 (edited 03-19-2011).]
