Photo by Mike Licht, nationscapital.com

Often overlooked in the class warfare that President Obama is unleashing on America so that he can continue spending, is how business is being strangled by regulations. Every time the government fails to protect our rights and freedoms because it is too busy trying to micromanage our lives, and as a result some calamity descends upon us, the answer is always more regulations. Nowadays, that will typically mean thousands of pages of new laws that turn into tens of thousands of pages of new regulations and those who never met a payroll wonder why we are stuck at 9% unemployment.

Why does this happen? I believe there are two reasons. The first is the expansive view of the Constitution that many progressives hold. There is very little that they believe the federal government is not allowed to do. Most of our law schools are also espousing the concept of a “living, breathing” Constitution, meaning that what the Founding Fathers wrote is quaint but its meaning must change with the times. The graduates of those law schools eventually make it to the bench and even the Supreme Court. The problem is that if you take that view, the Constitution is meaningless.  If you can say the Constitution meant this in 1792, but those same words mean something else today, you no longer have a Constitution.  As Jefferson wrote,

“Our peculiar security is in possession of a written Constitution; Let us not make it blank paper by construction. –Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Wilson Cary Nicholas, Monticello, September 7, 1803.

The progressives are doing exactly what Jefferson said we should not do, turn the Constitution into blank paper, by contriving different meanings from the words than the authors intended.

The second problem is that the function of the Congress is to write laws. They don’t enforce them, that’s the role of the executive branch. So their knee jerk reaction to a problem is to write another law, regardless of whether the previous law is not working simply because it is not enforced.

So what are the checks on this runaway regulation? Congress keeps churning out more and more regulations that are choking the economy, and the Supreme Court has let them wander far afield of the Constitution. There used to be another check on runaway federal power, but that was eliminated with the Seventeenth Amendment to the Constitution.

When the Founders created the concept of the United States, they envisioned a president elected by the people, a judiciary appointed for life, and a Congress split into two chambers. One of those chambers, the House of Representatives would be the branch of government closest to the people. The other chamber was to represent the states. If you recall it was the states that created the federal government, not the other way around, and the states wanted to have a say in that government. To do so, senators were appointed by state legislatures, and as such, if they wanted to remain in that role they were to represent the interests of the states to the federal government.

The Seventeenth Amendment changed it so that senators would be directly elected by the people. Knowing human nature as I am sure you do, would senators continue to care what their state legislatures wanted or would they start to pander to individual blocks of voters? So with the passage of the Seventeenth Amendment the states were shut out of a direct say in the federal government and were reduced to becoming lobbyists.

If you think of some of the more partisan senators, from both sides of the aisle, do you think they would be appointed by their state legislatures? Do you think there would be any such thing as a federal unfunded mandates? Do you think there would be a Department of Education?, Transportation? Housing and Urban Development? EPA? Most states already have similar departments at the state level. What senators, appointed by their state governments, would pass these laws? Very few, I would venture to say.

Regulations in Action

Consider where we are today. Early in the Bush administration, concern was raised about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and their solvency. Christopher Dodd and Barney Frank said they were fine, and Dodd filibustered any attempt to rein them in. The financial industry blew up and what do we now have? The Dodd-Frank Act that layers on massive regulation to the financial services industry and many banks are just sitting on money rather than lend it.

In 2001, Enron went bankrupt taking billions down the drain with it. The principals of that firm ended up with long prison sentences. The accounting firm that audited the books went out of business, but somehow that was not enough. Massive new regulations were needed to make sure it didn’t happen again. In the following video, listen to Bernie Marcus, one of the founders of The Home Depot, which employs 350,000 people today describe what it would be like to start that company today.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MjRIM1LFWRM

In an economy that is in desperate need to create jobs, a company that eventually created 350,000 jobs could not get off the ground today because of regulations. How many more Home Depots are out there? How many companies have said, the hell with it, let’s stay private, even if it means curtailing growth, going public is not worth the cost nor the headaches.

Our government is killing us, economically. It cannot slake its thirst for more tax revenues; it cannot stop spending;  it cannot resist telling us something else we should do for our own good; it cannot help trying to craft the perfect law and regulation that will prevent all harm from befalling even the most naive among us. It cannot be done. But unless and until we unwind the coil of regulation that is choking us to death; unless and until we perform liposuction on the laws that are crushing us under their weight; unless and until we return to Constitutionally limited government and fiscal responsibility and personal responsibility, the terms Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness will be redefined to Subsistence, Subservience, and Preying upon each other. Which America do you want to live in?

That’s my opinion; I’d like to know yours. Please comment below.

Progressives are a funny group when it comes to investing, and I mean real investing, not the phony code word for spending. If they’re the ones controlling the money and especially if the money is not theirs, then investing is fine. If it will compete with one of their sacred social programs and you will directly benefit from it, then bar the door it’s an out of control casino.

The Big Ponzi Scheme

Yes, I said it. Social Security is a Ponzi scheme. I wrote about it that way in my book Liberty’s Lifeline, and I was happy to welcome some straight talking from Rick Perry on the same subject. If not run by the government, anyone who ran something like Social Security privately would be in jail, just like Bernie Madoff. The difference between Charles Ponzi or Bernie Madoff and Social Security, is that Ponzi and Madoff had to get people to volunteer their money to the scheme. With Social Security, the government just takes it.

That being said, let’s all agree that we can’t just abandon it. Those who are receiving benefits today and those who are within ten years of receiving benefits, must be protected. We allowed this scam to continue this long and our seniors planned their retirements around it. We cannot allow the rug to be pulled out from under them. But what about the next generation and those after them?

The best plan for going forward is private retirement accounts. The money put into the accounts by the next generations would be their money. They could leave it to their heirs if they don’t live long enough to collect it. If they invest wisely, they could probably live off the income alone and pass the principle to their children which would make saving for their retirement easier. This would have a compounding effect and work toward solving the retirement income problem completely, and privately.

“Invest, did you say,” the progressive asks, “in what? Not the stock market, of course!” Despite the growth through investing in stocks over the long-term is proven as one of the best investments, the progressives will scream, “What about 1929!!! What about 1987!!! Did you forget the dot.com bubble!!! Are you insane!!! It’s a casino, a crap shoot, legalized gambling.” What they are really saying is how will we control the senior vote if they are not fully dependent upon us? If private accounts take hold, the account holders will look for government policies that allow private companies to thrive, which is exactly what progressive policies don’t do.

So progressives don’t believe in investing in stocks, right? Not so fast.

Investing you Can Believe In

If progressives can take your tax dollars, and invest in companies funded by big campaign donors, that push forward their progressive agenda, they think investing is swell. If the investment turns out to be terribly bad, don’t expect to hear many “I told you so’s” from the left. You won’t hear about gambling, casinos, stock market crashes. No, it is about leadership.

That’s what they are saying about squandering $500 million taxpayer dollars on a bad investment called Solyndra, a maker of solar panels that filed for bankruptcy just one year after getting that pile of taxpayer cash. Evidence is leaking out that the green jobs agenda came before stewardship of our tax dollars. There appears to have been White House pressure to push this through before a politically staged photo opportunity for this administration. Oh, they are furiously backpedaling now, working on a timeline to blame it on Bush, naturally, but the stubborn fact that keeps getting in the way is that the Bush administration put a hold on it saying there wasn’t enough information to approve it. Then Obama happened, and it was all systems go.

I noticed that GM stock is trading at around $22.60 per share today. It has to climb to around $53 per share for us to break even on that investment that we positively, absolutely had to make. How’s that Chevy Volt doing? You know, the one that we subsidize to the tune of $7,500 per copy, because you can buy two Toyota hybrids for the cost of one Chevy Volt. Meanwhile, Ford, which turned down a bailout is doing well.

Our government takes our money for the Social Security trust fund and immediately spends it, but progressives tell us how foolhardy it would be to save for our own retirement. If you pay into Social Security all your life but die before you can collect any money, oh, so sorry.  But take more of your money and invest it to protect their union supporters, and campaign bundlers  and that’s okay.

Solyndra’s chief investor, George Kaiser, was also a bundler for Obama’s 2008 campaign, gathering over $50,000 in campaign contributions. Kaiser, together with Solyndra executives and board members, donated $87,050 to Obama’s campaign.

Is your blood boiling yet? There comes a point where you have to ask when does the mere incompetence end and criminal activity begin? While President Obama is jetting around the country trying to sell us on another jobs plan that is all about public sector employees, perhaps we should be looking to do something else.

How about we say goodbye to TurboTax Tim Geithner? He has failed miserably at his job. He should be fired. Next we should start a criminal investigation into the Energy Department people who pushed through this loan to Solyndra and then start a similar investigation over at the Justice Department regarding running guns to Mexico under the Fast and Furious program.

So if you want to invest your own money in some blue chip stocks to reduce your dependency on government programs and build a nest egg that you control and own, that is dangerously reckless. If you want to invest millions in a start-up company making heavily subsidized products, that is on the brink of bankruptcy, to pay back your fundraisers, that’s A-OK. It is time to start getting serious with what is going on in Washington and really clean house.

That’s my opinion; I’d like to know yours; Please comment below.

The news coming out this week are not favorable to the Obama administration.  The National Bureau of Economic Research pegged the end of the recession to have occurred in June of 2009. Considering that Obama’s vaunted “must have” stimulus was only passed toward the end of February and with the necessary ramp up process, it is pretty clear the recession ended without the benefit of the stimulus.  To put it another way, we wasted $1 trillion on the stimulus and handed the bill to our children and grandchildren, a burden that they will have to work off.

Obama is now pushing hard to raise taxes by $700 billion which will further apply the brakes to the economy.  The only way to get out of the mess of unemployment and debt, besides stopping the spending to keep from making it worse, is to grow the economy.  Growing the economy will bring in more tax revenues and create more jobs.  Despite the Obama rhetoric, which has to be either outright incompetence or lying, his policies are not those that will grow the economy.

The Heritage Foundation puts out an annual Index of Economic Freedom, and in their 2010 report the United States slips to eighth place.  Here are the top ten nations in order of most to least free, their freedom score and the change from the prior year:

1. Hong Kong (89.7, -0.3)
2. Singapore (86.1, -1.0)
3. Australia (82.6, 0.0)
4. New Zealand (82.1, 0.1)
5. Ireland (81.3, -0.9)
6. Switzerland (81.1, 1.7)
7. Canada (80.4, -0.1)
8. United States (78.0, -2.7)
9. Denmark (77.9, -1.7)
10. Chile (77.2, -1.1)

The index consists of ten components:

• Business Freedom – A measure of bureaucracy
• Trade Freedom – Free flow of goods and services
• Fiscal Freedom – Taxes
• Government Freedom – Government spending
• Monetary Freedom – Inflation and price controls
• Investment Freedom – Free flow of funds across borders
• Financial Freedom – Independence from government control
• Property Freedom – Protecting private ownership of property
• Freedom from Corruption – Self explanatory
• Labor Freedom – Freedom from restrictions on the right to work

What is interesting to note is the trend in the overall index from 2001 to 2010.  It should be noted that there is about an eighteen month lag in the data, that is, 2010 reflects the period from mid-2008 to mid-2009.  So that would mean that 2003 is the first year entirely within the Bush administration (mid-2001 to mid-2002).  It climbs steadily until 2007 on the chart and then it starts to decline in 2008 (mid-2006 to mid-2007).  In January of 2007, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid led the Democrats to the takeover of Congress.  The recession started in December of 2007.

The Index of Economic Freedom falls off a cliff in 2010 (mid-2008 to mid-2009) which includes Bush’s response to the fiscal crisis and Obama’s first six months, including the stimulus.

The areas that deteriorated most in 2010 over 2009 were the following:

• Government Freedom (spending) decreased 1.6 points
• Monetary Freedom (inflation and price controls) decreased 6.9 points
• Investment Freedom (free flow of funds) decreased 5 points
• Financial Freedom (independence from government controls) decreased 10 points
• Property Rights decreased 5 points

If we want to grow our economy we need to have a free economy.  It should be our goal to become first in the world on the Index of Economic Freedom.  For 2010, of the top ten countries our index fell more than twice as much as any of the other countries in that range.  We are now closer to tenth place than we are to seventh. 

We need to remember November and turn the bums out and once again embrace free markets and capitalism

As we approach the mid-point of his term we, once again, hear President Obama with another scheme to create jobs.  This time he really, really means it.  For a mere $50 billion we can build roads, rails and runways and we can create an “infrastructure bank” to boot.  I guess the government wants to get into the banking business now that they have swallowed up two thirds of the domestic auto companies and passed a law to take over health care.  But, hey, who are you calling a socialist?

The infrastructure bank has supporters: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Ed Rendell the Democratic governor of Pennsylvania and Michal Bloomberg the Democratic, Republican, Independent mayor of New York, but they want it to support more projects such as water and clean energy projects.  But here’s the really good news, according to the New York Times “They say such a bank would spur innovation by allowing a panel of experts to approve projects on merit, rather than having lawmakers simply steer transportation money back home.” We get a brand new panel of experts to tell us morons what is good for us! 

How about this idea, get the Federal government out of the roads, rails and runways business.  Unless the road is part of the Interstate highway system, and that means interstate, the feds should stay away from it.  If a road within a city needs maintenance, that city and its citizens should pay for it, not taxpayers elsewhere in the country.  That’s how the whole process got screwed up.  You build my road, I’ll build your road and nobody will know who pays for what, until we find out we are $13 trillion in debt.

One of the good ideas Jimmy Carter had was to deregulate the airlines.  Airlines became competitive and prices came down.  The problem is that air travel consists of three components: the airlines, the airports and air traffic control.  Complete the process, deregulate the airports and air traffic control.  If you do that, airports can charge different prices for takeoff and landing slots.  No more will we see thirty-two flights all scheduled to take off at 7:30 AM from one airport.  Private investors would also have an incentive to build a state of the art air traffic control system. 

By the way, what happened to all those “shovel ready” projects from the first stimulus plan?  Did we actually finish building all the turtle crossings that this country needs?

On another front, Obama continues to tinker with the mortgage market rather than getting out of the way, letting housing prices find their bottom and then going from there.  George Mason economist Anthony B. Sanders said in the New York Times, ““Housing needs to go back to reasonable levels.  If we keep trying to stimulate the market, that’s the definition of insanity.”  Even Democrats are piling on:

“The administration made a bet that a rising economy would solve the housing problem and now they are out of chips,” said Howard Glaser, a former Clinton administration housing official with close ties to policy makers in the administration. “They are deeply worried and don’t really know what to do.”

Who would have thought that a president and vice president with no executive experience prior to taking office would not know what to do once they got there?  After all everyone knew that Obama was a really nice guy with an even temperament, what went wrong?  Now we hear that Fannie Mae wants to back mortgages with nothing down.  But not to worry, this time they are actually going to require the lenders to check to make sure the borrower has income. I feel better already.

Since this administration seems to like experts how about listening to these experts:

“We have had enough artificial support and need to let the free market do its thing,” said the housing analyst Ivy Zelman.

Michael L. Moskowitz, president of Equity Now, a direct mortgage lender that operates in New York and seven other states, also advocates letting the market fall. “Prices are still artificially high,” he said. “The government is discriminating against the renters who are able to buy at $200,000 but can’t at $250,000.”

It’s time for President Obama and his administration to get his boot off of the neck of the economy.  Ours is the strongest most resilient economy in the world, if you set it free.  All of the tinkering and the anti-business threats have pushed employers to the sidelines.  The uncertainty over the economy has led businesses to take a wait and see attitude.

The rhetoric the Democrats have been trying to muster to save their skins is that “eight years of failed policies,” yada, yada, yada.  The reality is that this recession started one year after Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid took over Congress.  This recession started in the last year of the Bush administration, not the first seven.  This recession has lasted nearly twice as long and counting under Obama than it did under Bush, and it shows no sign of changing anytime soon.  A recent poll in Ohio by Public Policy Polling asked respondents who they would prefer to see in the White House right now and the results were George W. Bush 50%, Barack Obama 42%; what does that tell you?

So, Mr. Obama, keeps your hands were we can see them and slowly step away from the economy.

His election was a major milestone in the history of the United States.  Leaving aside his political philosophy which a number of us opposed and more are seeing that philosophy more clearly now, electing the first African American to the presidency with 53% of the popular vote no less, truly shows how far our nation has come from the dark days of slavery.

Having achieved this milestone has proved a two edged sword to the progressives and statists.  By celebrating the election of Barack Obama it also signaled the defusing of the most potent weapon in their arsenal, the race card.  How can you routinely call America a racist country when we just elected an African American President of the United States?  By winning with 53% of the popular vote, more than Bill Clinton in two elections and more than Jimmy Carter, it was clear that the black vote alone could not have elected him.  It required him winning over many white voters as well.  How do you continue to justify Affirmative Action when an African American was chosen by his fellow citizens to the most powerful position on earth?  But the progressives and the statists continue to pull the trigger on this dud, particularly where the Tea Party movement is involved, without proof and without shame.

 A New Dark Chapter?

Ironically, it is the Obama administration that is practicing a new kind of racism that the mainstream media is conspiring with them to hide.

During the 2008 election, several members of the Black Panthers dressed in paramilitary uniforms and brandishing a nightstick, stood outside of a polling place in Philadelphia intimidating voters by their physical presence and through verbal taunts.  The Black Panthers were caught on video tape and as this was a clear violation of the Voting Rights act, charges were filed against them.  J. Christian Adams, one of the attorneys at the Department of Justice handling the case called it the “easiest case I’ve ever had.”  The facts were clear, the video tape provided irrefutable evidence and the defendants didn’t show up in court to dispute the charges.  Because they didn’t show up, the judge issued a default judgment, meaning the Justice Department won the case and only the punishment remained.  That is, until the new leadership of the Justice Department weighed in.

 This case was originally filed in the last days of the Bush administration.  So with the victory in hand, the Justice attorneys handling the case were told to dismiss the charges and drop the case.  The reason given was that the “facts and the law don’t support the case.”  It was further ordered that these kinds of cases were “not going to happen out of the Civil Rights Division” of the DOJ.  In other words, where the plaintiff was white and the defendant was black, the Civil Rights Division of the Department would not pursue the case.  If a regional United States Attorney brought a case, the DOJ would permit it to go forward, but not from within the Civil Rights division.

The individuals who delivered this order were Loretta King and Steve Rosenbaum, political appointees.  Adams went further to say that Assistant Attorney General Thomas Perez of lying under oath to a federal commission about the circumstances surrounding the decision to drop the probe.   The Justice Department denied Adams allegation:

 “It is not uncommon for attorneys within the department to have good faith disagreements about the appropriate course of action in a particular case, although it is regrettable when a former department attorney distorts the facts and makes baseless allegations to promote his or her agenda,” she said in a written statement.

Mere partisan politics?  Sour grapes?  You might think that until you hear from Bartle Bull, a lifelong Democrat and Civil Rights attorney who was an eye witness to the incident.  Here is an interview with Mr. Bull and Megyn Kelly of Fox News.  It is nothing less than stunning.  Interview.   He describes how one of the Black Panthers said to him and a person with him, “Now you will see what it’s like to be ruled by the black man, cracker.”

The first African American president has people in his administration who will not enforce the Voting Rights Act if the person whose rights are being violated is white.  I need not point out that if  the Ku Klux Klan was standing in front of the polling place and the Justice Department dropped the case against them what the outrage would be.  But with the mainstream media merely the propaganda arm of the administration, this news is only being carried by Fox News and on the Internet.

President Obama and Attorney General Holder must answer to this outrage.  They have to tell the American people why they refuse to carry out their sworn duty and enforce the law, particularly when the case was already won and they demanded that the charges be dropped and that no new cases would originate from the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice.  A great moment in American history will have a stain upon it unless President Obama immediately reverses course.

Do you remember the scene in the movie “Saving Private Ryan” where after storming a machine gun nest and losing their medic, the Americans have to deal with how to handle a prisoner they captured?  Some say shoot him on the spot others disagree.  They know they can’t take him with them as he will slow them down.  After much vigorous debate Captain Miller (Tom Hanks) decides to untie him, point him toward the American line and tell him to keep walking, with the hope that he will be captured by the advancing American forces. 

Later in the movie as Miller’s unit is in a pitched battle to the last man, the released German prisoner is among those killing Miller’s men.  After reinforcements arrive to turn the battle in the Americans favor and the remaining Germans surrender, the former prisoner smiles and nods to the soldier in Miller’s unit that acted as translator and argued for sparing him as if to say, “Hey, how’s it goin’ pal?”  The soldier lowers his rifle and kills the German.

I am reminded of this by the current situation with Yemen.  Started under President Bush was the insane idea of releasing enemy combatants where they can find their way back to the battlefield.  This stupid policy was, until recently, going to be accelerated under President Obama.  Either we are at war or we are not.  You can’t fight a war with half measures.  Either you fight it to win or let the enemy have their way.  If we are in a war and we capture the enemy they stay captured until the war is over.  We don’t need a bunch of lawyers standing on the sidelines tapping their foot and their watches and saying, “how much longer are you going to hold these people without charging them?”  Answer: until the war ends or hell freezes over, whichever comes first.

 Is It a War Yet Mr. President?

 Backed into a corner, on his fifth (?) try to explain what his administration is doing on the War on Terror (am I allowed to call it that?), he actually called it a war, at least against Al Qaida.  He has spent the better part of his first year in office giving the back of his hand to the Bush administration.  But after seven years of Bush keeping us safe and two terrorist attacks on our soil this year with Obama at the helm and his poll numbers sinking, he has come to the realization that he owns this now.

The tough Harry Truman talk is nice (“The Buck Stops Here”), but it is just words until you actually do something with the buck that just stopped on your desk.  Why is the spectacularly incompetent Janet Napolitano still drawing a salary?  In Obama’s world it seems to be that what he means when he says the buck stops here is that he is the only one subject to firing and since we can’t fire him, everyone under him keeps on keeping on.  But who appointed these people?  It was Obama.  So he should recognize that he blundered and if the underlings don’t have enough sense to fall on their swords and resign, he should flat out fire them.

 Vacations are Important.  Anti-terrorism, Not So Much

 After the terror attack at Fort Hood, you would think that perhaps President Obama would be a little more responsive to another attempted attack, but hey, he was on an Hawaiian vacation.  Nobel Prize?  Chicago trying to win a bid for the Olympics?  President Obama will travel across the sea for that.  But an attempted attack on America?  Chill, baby, chill.  How about his director of National Counterterrorism, Michael Leiter, taking a ski vacation?  Just because stopping such an attack might be considered counterterrorism and just because that organization just failed miserably at stopping such an attack, and just because we didn’t know why it failed or if another attack might be on the way, why interrupt time with the family over that?  Family time is important, so said his boss. Don’t worry, Mike, we’ll wait.

Behind the Curve

It seems that with each attempt the enemy is one step ahead of us.  So discussions heated up about these new body scanners that can find anything, so it is claimed.  Don’t get me wrong, I am a big advocate of technology, but I guess the real problem is best summed up by one pundit comparing our methods to the Israelis:

“The Israelis look for terrorists, we look for tweezers.”

Instead of reading body scanners, perhaps we should be training the TSA agents in reading body language.  That’s what the Israelis do.  If you are a Palestinian, sorry, but you go in a different line and you get more closely screened and questioned.  You may pass, but you are going to be thoroughly checked out. We should do the same.  Where is your passport from?  What visa stamps do you have in your passport indicating where you have been?  Why don’t you have any luggage Mr. Abdulmutallab?  Why did you buy a one way ticket?  Who are you staying with in Detroit?  I see you paid cash for your ticket, how much cash do you have left for your trip after you land in Detroit?  Do you have a credit card?  No?  Hmmm…maybe you should wait over there, while we check further.

 No technology is foolproof.  Having worked in technology for over thirty years I can say that with some degree of confidence.  It only takes one failure of the technology for a disaster to strike.  But if we spend less time trying to find that box cutter, shampoo bottle, tweezers, jar of honey, etc., and spend more time spotting someone who doesn’t look like they are on a nice business trip or a visit to relatives or who otherwise fit the profile of a terrorist, that’s right I said it: profile, we could probably become a lot safer without having to lock the bathrooms for the last hour of the flight.  If we had pulled the young Abdulmutallab aside and questioned him, he probably would have cracked like an egg.  Does anyone think for a minute that this kid would have given off no body language signals if questioned by a trained professional?  The right combination of skilled human observers and questioners along with technology, is what we need to be safer.   Rather than this:  We”re the TSA and You Can Count on Us!

Intelligence Sprawl

We also need to collapse the intelligence arms of our government back into one and shut the others down.  Roll back Homeland Security into the Department of Defense, put the myriad intelligence gathering arms back into the CIA, make people accountable and lessen the need for a coordinating center to gather intelligence from a dozen agencies correlate it and send it back out to the dozen agencies.  All that does is create more fiefdoms that don’t want to talk to the dummies in that other agency who aren’t as smart as we are.  As the old saying goes, “When everyone’s responsible, no one is responsible.”  Government is neither nimble nor overly cooperative.  The fewer handoffs between agencies necessary to connect the dots, the better off we will all be.

I am sure you all recall the video played ad nauseum starring the Reverend Wright railing against America defending itself.  It now seems to accurately describe the results of the new hope and change administration.  After his worldwide apology tour, and banning the term “War on Terror,” replacing it with the limp “Overseas Contingency Operation,” so that, like his presidential campaign, no one would know what he actually meant or stood for, his own chickens are coming home to roost.

Actions Have Consequences

The left used to attack the Bush administration’s approach because being tough on terrorists only served to aid them in their recruiting.  Maybe so, but I am less concerned about lines of recruits in Afghanistan than crazed terrorists in New York.  Obama’s apology tour shows his weakness and as the terrorist mindset abhors weakness, it encourages attacks.  So what would you prefer, attacks on American soil, or an uptick in recruiting on the other side of the world?

War vs. Law and Order

Bush recognized the War on Terror for what it was, a direct attack on the United States and our way of life.  In a war, you go after the enemy, you don’t wait for him to come to you.  You take prisoners and hold them, until the conflict is over.  You dismantle their ability to wage war.  It is aggressive and proactive.  It is the way America has prevailed in wartime.

The Obama approach is Law an Order.  Each act is seen as separate an isolated and as a crime to be investigated and prosecuted after the fact.  First responders are more important than the first wave of Marines.  To quote today’s Wall Street Journal:

Brian Jenkins, who studies terrorism for the Rand Corporation, says there were more terror incidents (12), including thwarted plots, on U.S. soil in 2009 than in any year since 2001. The jihadists don’t seem to like Americans any better because we’re closing down Guantanamo.

But the Obama Administration is currently considering releasing prisoners held in Guantanamo to Yemen.  How long do you think it will be before they are back on the front lines trying to kill us?

Add to the mix the Obama administration’s, or should I say Eric Holder’s, decision to try the 9/11 terrorists in a civilian court.  Holder’s testimony before Congress justifying his decision was painful to watch how he had no credible justification.  Don’t forget to give  Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, his Miranda rights and get him a good lawyer. Let’s pretend his claims to be associated with al Qaeda is just tough talk and braggadocio.

The reality is that whenever America fought a war and politicians pulled punches (e.g., Viet Nam) we lost.

Things are Working Swell

Janet Napolitano, Obama’s head of Homeland Security had this to say, according to the New York Times

“The system has worked really very, very smoothly over the course of the past several days,” Janet Napolitano, the Homeland Security secretary said, in an interview on “This Week” on ABC. Robert Gibbs, the White House spokesman, used nearly the same language on “Face the Nation” on CBS, saying that “in many ways, this system has worked.”

How chilling is that?  What exactly does she mean by the system worked?  She refers to the number of organizations that were alerted after the fact.  How about notifications before the fact?  How about listening to the terrorist’s own father who reported him to the U.S. Embassy in Nigeria.  How about denying him a visa?  Or is Napolitano too busy adding funeral homes to her list of organizations to notify after the fact?

Where’s Obama?

If there’s a chance Chicago might get the Olympics, don’t worry, Obama’s on a plane to give it the old presidential push!  If there’s a Nobel Prize to pick up, Obama is your man!  If there is a terrorist attack on our country, hey, don’t bother me I’m on vacation in Hawaii.

Some pundits on the news pointed out that President Bush didn’t speak out against the shoe bomber, Richard Reid, for several days, so cut Obama some slack.  The problem is that no one doubted for a minute that Bush was engaged in the War on Terror, some even saying he was obsessed.  Well that obsession kept us safe for seven years.  In less than one year we have had Fort Hood and now this airline bombing.

Furthermore, why is Eric Holder making such a monumental decision regarding trying the 9/11 terrorists in New York?  Why isn’t this Obama’s decision?  Just like so much in this administration, Obama campaigns and gives speeches, and Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Eric Holder make policy decisions on their own.

Here’s to the Heroes

The heroes in this case were a Dutch citizen and the flight attendants, who subdued the terrorist and extinguished the fire.  To quote again from the Wall Street Journal:

The lesson here is the same as Flight 93 on 9/11 and shoe-bomber Richard Reid, which is that civilians willing to act in their own self-defense are a crucial part of “homeland security.”

May I suggest that the statists drop their efforts to weaken the 2ndAmendment?  As part of  “homeland security” we may need to bear arms like at no time since the Civil War.

Over the past eleven months, have you ever gotten a feeling that you are watching a magician, rather than a president run our country?  As any practitioner of the art of the illusionist will tell you, one of the key things is to keep the audience distracted.  Have them watch the left hand, while the right is slipping the coin into the pocket.  The Obama Administration is about to unleash their greatest trick yet, trying Khalid Sheik Mohammed in civil court in New York for the 9/11 attack on America.  Why?

The Greatest Show On Earth

The trial will become an absolute three ring circus, with all the world watching closely.  The liberal pundits say, “this is our chance to show the world our justice system.  We can demonstrate how civilized we are, and show the Muslim world how fair we are.”  Really?

Remember to the footage in the Muslim world immediately following the collapse of the World Trade Center towers.  They were dancing in the street, laughing and singing, shouting praise to Allah.  What do you think the reaction will be if Khalid Sheik Mohammed, jumps up in court and screams out, “Kill the infidels! This is a fraud meant to disguise these devil’s tricks!”  Do we let him ramble with a global audience?  Do we have the bailiffs wrestle him to the ground?  Do we put him in restraints for the rest of the trial?  Who exactly is going to show the world what?

We Have No Secrets

In a civilian trial there is a process called discovery, where the defense is told everything the prosecution plans on bringing to court, including witnesses, so that the defense has a chance to prepare their rebuttal case.  How much of the CIA’s methods and contacts are we prepared to reveal to the world and to Khalid Sheik Mohammed’s allies?  Or, how much are we not going to use in order to protect that information and at the same time increase the chances that he will be acquitted?

Can Anybody Say O.J.?

Do you remember the O.J. Simpson trial?  A slam-dunk if ever there was one.  There was blood evidence, DNA evidence, means, motive, opportunity, it couldn’t get any easier.  But what happened?  Judge Lance Ito, lost control of his court room in the klieg lights of national television.  One of O.J.’s attorneys or advisors told O.J. to stop taking his arthritis medication  so his hands would swell and then the famous glove trick, abra cadabra, “If the glove doesn’t fit, you must acquit.”  What happened after that trial?  Dancing in the streets of the black community.

The Jury Pool

Are Muslims going to be excluded from the jury pool?  If so, on what grounds and would a judge allow it?  In the O.J. case we had what was called jury nullification, where a jury handed up a verdict not based on the evidence presented, but based on a social determination.  O.J. was a symbol for all black men put on trial and all past injustices.  He was a sports hero to millions and he wasn’t going down, no matter what.  What if a someone with strong beliefs sees disrupting the outcome of the trial as the new jihad?  Don’t use suicide bombers in New York, that’s so Middle East, let’s kill them softly by getting Khalid Sheik Mohammed acquitted or a give them a hung jury.  What better way to humiliate the Great Satan.  It will be like David and Goliath all over again.

The Real Trial

Or is it really the Bush Administration that Obama wants to put on trial?  The Obama administration’s popularity is sinking link a stone.  The stimulus package was a bust.  Cap and Trade is a disaster.  Health care a debacle.  Tea Party’s are breaking out all over.  The Democrats got trounced in Virginia and New Jersey, and even New York’s 23rd is still alive as recounts have dramatically closed the gap. A show trial of the Bush Administration is just what the Obama Administration needs to keep the focus off what they are really doing.

This is a tragedy and a travesty and there should be no end to the shame heaped upon this administration if they follow through on this.

As FDR Tinkered with the Economy, the Depression Dragged On for Years

As pointed out in a previous post, the Department of Labor does not and cannot count the number of jobs that have been saved by any action or policy.  But that doesn’t stop the svengali of spin Barack Obama:

“Now I know that there are some who {THERE’S THE STRAWMAN – notation mine}, despite all evidence to the contrary, still don’t believe in the necessity and promise of the recovery act,” Mr. Obama said, “and I would suggest to them that they talk to the companies who, because of this plan, scrapped the idea of laying off employees and in fact decided to hire employees. Tell that to the Americans who receive that unexpected call saying, ‘Come back to work.’ “ — NY Times June 9, 2009

He knows he is spending an enormous amount of money, it is having little effect, and people are beginning to notice.  Only about 10% of the money has been spent, unemployment continues to rise, interest rates are starting to climb due to the massive borrowing by the federal government, so what’s the President to do?  Go back on the campaign trail and once again convince the American people he is someone he is not.  An inexperienced executive, who wants government to tighten its grip on our lives and squeeze out the last drops of our liberty.

“The president’s top aides spent the weekend trying to tamp down expectations that the unemployment rate would turn around anytime soon. One adviser, Austan Goolsbee, told Fox News the nation was in for “a rough patch,” a phrase often invoked by Mr. Obama’s predecessor, George W. Bush” — NY Times, June 9, 2009

Tamp down expectations?  Wait a minute.  Wasn’t this the stimulus package that had to be past immediately?  Wasn’t this the plan that no one in Congress had time to read before voting on it?  Wasn’t this the plan that Congress had to sign immediately or catastrophe would result, but President Obama could wait four days to sign so that the photo op could be set up and the teleprompters put in place?  Now his aides are telling us it’s not going to work as they told us?  I’m shocked, shocked!

“The Obama administration is continuing to fabricate job creation numbers related to the stimulus,” Tony Fratto, a deputy press secretary in the Bush administration, said in an e-mail message to reporters. He added, “Their so-called models would not stand the light of day.”

The administration maintains that 150,000 jobs were either created or saved in the first 100 days after Mr. Obama signed the stimulus bill on Feb. 17. The 600,000 figure the president discussed Monday is not new; it was made public by Mr. Biden on May 13. It includes 125,000 part-time summer jobs for teenagers, which the administration counts as 62,500 full-time job equivalents.

Created or Saved?

Well which is it, were jobs created or saved?  Created jobs are counted by the Department of Labor.  As a small business owner, I know the paperwork that has to be prepared when you add a new employee: W-4, W-9, state filings,etc.  However, if I am a business owner and I am thinking about laying people off and I change my mind, where is that reported?  If I want to know that, President Obama tells me to go take a private poll of companies and ask them if they changed their minds. ARE WE SUPPOSED TO FALL FOR THIS?

So while the economy sheds hundreds of thousands of jobs, he tells us don’t worry, his plan is adding 125,000 part time summer jobs for teenagers.  Have you gotten the hope and change you voted for?

Don't Anyone Dare Say Government Caused This Mess

You can never solve a problem if you do not face up to the full scope of the problem.  In listening to President Obama, and reading liberal columnists like Maureen Dowd, in the description of what caused the current economic calamity, the government is always given a pass.

We are in an economic morass because of the eight years of failed Bush policies, greed on Wall Street, tax breaks for the rich, etc.  Government’s culpability which, I believe, is really the gravamen of our economic problems is never mentioned at all.  Democrats and Liberals don’t dare point to Democrats and liberal policies as having anything to do with the collapsing economy.  That is why they always say that this is the worst economy since the Great Depression, as they also said when Clinton ran for President.  They don’t dare say it is the worst economy since Jimmy Carter, since that would remind the American people that the Democrats screwed up that one as well.

Unmentionable Causes of the Current Economic Mess

• Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac out of control.  Explosive increases in debt taken on under the leadership of Franklin Raines (Democrat), and Jaime Gorelick (Democrat), remember she also gave us the firewall between the CIA and FBI that hamstrung the investigation of al Qaeda.  Raines made over $90 million while at Fannie Mae and at the same time was accused of overstating earnings by $10.6 billion.  So, where’s the demand for a clawback of Raines’s salary?
• Barney Frank (Democrat) and Chris Dodd (Democrat) — Frank blocked every attempt to put in place greater regulation over Fannie Mae.  The Bush Administration tried to increase regulation over Fannie Mae, but Frank blocked it.  What you hear today is that the reason for the economic problems are a lack of regulation.  Chris Dodd got VIP mortgage treatment from Countrywide mortgage before they went belly-up.  Asked to come clean on the mortgages, Dodd first said sure, we’ll get around to it.  Then he made some papers available for viewing, but not copying, and has since clammed up.
• Community Reinvestment Act — Carter (Democrat) administration program to push home ownership for low income people, by forcing banks to report how much they were offering loans in low income neighborhoods and face the consequences if it wasn’t enough.
• Janet Reno (Democrat) — in the Clinton Administration Reno threatened action against financial institutions if they weren’t lending enough low income individuals.  What bank doesn’t want to be publicly branded a racist institution?

So we have homeowners, who should have never qualified for a mortgage, about to receive bailouts from all the responsible people who took mortgages they could afford, when they could afford them.  Do you ever hear about any of this cast of characters mentioned by President Obama or the main stream media? No.  It wasn’t the government actively pushing social policy on those people least able to handle it.  It was greedy banks and unscrupulous lenders, trying to avoid being branded racists, who took advantage of these poor ignorant people.  Perhaps if the government hadn’t destroyed our education system, these people might have read what they were about to sign.

How Do you Solve Only Half a Problem?

As these characters are never mentioned as having a role in the problem, how can you ever hope to fix the problem if these bad actors are still going about their business doing what caused the crisis and blaming everyone else.  President Obama demonstrates his inexperience more profoundly every day, seemingly making things up as he goes along.  That is not leadership and what we need now in times of crisis is leadership.  Obama has never shown the courage or willingness to take on his own party.  Without rooting out these characters and really fixing the whole problem, it will only happen again down the road.

What we need now is a leader.  Someone who actually has experience running the executive branch of a state.  Someone who is not afraid to take on the entrenched power of their own party and has succeeded in doing so.  Is there anyone out there who fits that bill?  Gee, that sounds like Sarah Palin.