Fighting to Preserve Liberty in America
Photo by No Nein
President Obama has a plan to pivot toward jobs, after nearly three years on office. After spending boatloads of our money on a stimulus program that failed, according to his own standard of capping unemployment at 8%, he wants to spend more. He claims that he is also cutting spending, but when you drill down into the details, it is a myth.
The order in the Middle East has been crumbling, but it seems that the only place President Barack Obama knows where to lead is on the dance floor or when ramming through his socialist programs. When it comes to real solutions to fix the economy or on foreign policy he is utterly lost.
By now you are probably getting pretty tired of the comparisons of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama and how Obama is/would/should apply the lessons learned by Bill Clinton and coast to a second term. I, however, have always seen Bill Clinton and Barack Obama as two very different politicians with different goals.
That was the famous “Pottery Barn” analogy that Colin Powell used regarding the war in Iraq. Now that ObamaCare + Reconciliation is done, all the ugly details that come crawling out of the health care bill like cockroaches when you turn the lights on, will all come to you courtesy of the Democrats.
Because they chose to go the reconciliation route, the Senate could not dare change a word in the House bill of “fixes” so they could approve what the House sent them with less than 60 votes. Here’s a sampling of what the genius of government brings you, wrapped in arrogance, with a bow of disdain for the people, as reported by Kimberly Strassel in the Wall Street Journal:
“Tom Coburn (R., Okla.) offered language to bar the government from subsidizing erectile dysfunction drugs for convicted pedophiles and rapists. Democrats voted . . . No! Orrin Hatch (R., Utah) proposed exempting wounded soldiers from the new tax on medical devices. Democrats: No way! Pat Roberts (R., Kan.) wanted to exempt critical access rural hospitals from funding cuts. Senate Democrats: Forget it! This was Republicans’ opportunity to lay out every ugly provision and consequence of ObamaCare, and Democrats—because of the process they’d chosen—had to defend it all.
And so it went, into the wee Thursday hours. All Democrats in favor of taxing pacemakers? Aye! All Democrats in favor of keeping those seedy vote buyoffs? Aye! All Democrats in favor of raising taxes on middle-income families? Aye! All Democrats in favor of exempting themselves from elements of ObamaCare? Aye!”
Now doesn’t that just make you warm and fuzzy inside?
Bill O’Reilly and Congressman Anthony Weiner had a debate on O’Reilly ‘s show that was jaw-dropping to listen to. Weiner said that O’Reilly and others were blatantly misstating the facts about the health care bill. O’Reilly questioned Weiner about the IRS learning details about people such as whether or not they had health insurance. Weiner said that was untrue and that if you wanted to get a tax credit for health care, you had to say on your tax return that you had health insurance. He said it is just like if you claimed a tax credit as a first time homebuyer (I won’t get into all the fraud taking place on the homebuyer credit, even by IRS employees). So according to Weiner it’s all voluntary reporting, just as takes place every year when we file our taxes. How can Weiner stand there and make such a statement? A key requirement is that everyone has to be covered by health insurance according to the law and the law provides for hiring 16,000 more IRS agents! Well what are those agents going to be doing if not following up with you if you don’t say you are covered? Weiner danced and dodged and at one point stood silently pouting when O’Reilly tried to pin him down.
This is ugly and it is going to get uglier as we learn what is in this cancer on our economy. But Nancy Pelosi warned us. “We have to pass the bill to find out what’s in it.” Well, they passed it, now we get all the bad news.
When will our President come to the realization that the government does not have any money save that which is provided by its citizens? If he understood that, he wouldn’t have said this:
“Just as it would be a terrible mistake to borrow against our children’s future to pay our way today, it would be equally wrong to neglect their future by failing to invest in areas that will determine our economic success in this new century,” Mr. Obama said at the White House.
Let me posit a translation: we shouldn’t borrow against our children’s future, so we should borrow against our children’s future. And let me add another pet peeve and that is how the statists have redefined the word “invest”. What they really mean is spend, but invest sounds so much more grown up. However, most intelligent people understand invest to mean when you put your money into something with the belief you will get all your money back plus a premium. You don’t invest in the stock market with the idea you will never see your money again and will subsequently put more money into it next year. You invest in a house with the idea that you will sell it later for more money. You don’t invest in a house if you expect it to go down in value. But our elected representatives would have you believe that pouring money down a rat hole is an investment.
Immature and Irresponsible
Like a child caught standing over his mother’s prized china lying shattered on the floor, President Obama wants us to believe it’s not his fault, no, we are going to have trillion dollar plus deficits for the next ten years because of Bush and the Republicans. He is one year into his presidency. This is his budget, not Bush’s. If he can’t handle the job he should resign and turn it over to, er, Biden? Check that. Perhaps he can just go watch television in the White House for the next three years and leave the rest of us alone. Doing nothing would cause less damage than what he has planned. He jacked up spending 24% and then “courageously” instituted a freeze on that spending for three years. Think about it. If I gave you a 24% raise on Monday and then came back on Friday and said, “Gee, I’m really sorry to have to do this, but times are really tough. I’m going to have to freeze your new salary for the next three years. Can you ever forgive me?” Could you not burst out laughing?
We’re Going to Make Some Tough Decisions…Next Year
We are in a fiscal crisis, but don’t think for a moment you are going to see any tough decisions in an election year, particularly when so many Democrats are in danger of having to find jobs in the real world. So this year is tough talk. Next year we get busy!
Democrats or Republicans or maybe the Tea Party movement is going to have to act, sooner rather than later. Here is how the federal government breaks down:
The first three items continue to grow with no signs of slowing and interest will really take off when the Fed stops the easy money program. Defense can shrink as Iraq and Afghanistan stabilize, but not a lot as this is still job number one for the federal government. So do you see the problem? You can thank Democratic President Lyndon Baines Johnson for the first ticking time bomb above. You can thank Democratic President Franklin Delano Roosevelt for the second ticking time bomb. You can now thank President Barack Obama for what is becoming the third ticking time bomb and that is without his Health Care, and Cap and Trade.
So how is President Obama going to “solve” this problem? By tinkering with the last item, Non-Defense Discretionary spending. But don’t worry, he will also tax those evil rich and make sure they pay their fair share. But before he goes too far down that path I have a suggestion for him:
High tax states like New York and California are finding that a significant number of their wealthy citizenry are moving to lower tax states, exacerbating those states’ fiscal problems. If you look at the percentage of the population that pays the lion’s share of the taxes you will quickly see that if a relatively small percentage of the population, who can afford to live anywhere, actually decide to leave the United States of Tax the Rich, the resulting fiscal problem will be very, very severe. Obama can only poke his tax stick in that cage so long before he gets a nasty reaction.
We’re All Standing On the Third Rail
Social Security has been called the third rail of politics, but the reality is that we are all standing on the third rail trying to keep our balance and if anyone slips and touches the ground, we’re all fried. We have to suck up the courage to address Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. If we can’t slow the growth of these programs so that they take a smaller amount of the budget pie each year, we are toast. None of those programs is in the Constitution, but the liberals/progressives created them with empty promises of benefits without costs. This should have been the first clue:
“Ida May Fuller worked for three years under the Social Security program. The accumulated taxes on her salary during those three years was a total of $24.75. Her initial monthly check was $22.54. During her lifetime she collected a total of $22,888.92 in Social Security benefits.”
Ida May Fuller was the first recipient of monthly S.S. checks when she retired in 1940. She lived to be 100.
She almost got paid back in full with her first check. She got 926 times more than what she paid in. That’s a 92,600% return on “investment.” Not bad, huh?
She got back almost everything she paid in with her first check. Instead of ringing alarm bells all over the country, politicians patted themselves on the back for the great system they created. We sent Bernie Madoff to jail, why should Congress be exempt? What Bernie Madoff did was child’s play in comparison. Where he fell short was that he couldn’t force people to participate through payroll taxes, and he couldn’t print money. So why is what he did criminal and what Congress is doing not? He had to get his participants to voluntarily turn over their money. He promised returns of 40% per year. Ida may got 92,600% return on her investment.
Burn the Ships
There is the story of a general who landed on a beach to face an formidable enemy. He ordered that the ships that brought them there be burned. By doing so, he knew his men would fight ferociously because there was no escape, either they fought to win or they died. Perhaps we should do the same with Congress and President Obama. Fix Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid or you join Bernie Madoff in Cell Block “C”, for running a massive Ponzi scheme. What has kept Congress from fixing this in the past is the fear of not getting reelected. Let’s raise the stakes so that not getting reelected would pale in comparison to incarceration. It’s time our elected officials started paying attention to the people and not their perks. The disaster train is going downhill and picking up speed, headed for a cliff. It’s time ALL politicians put the country first and fixed this problem that, after all, they created. It’s fun to give out the goodies, but this is a crisis that cannot be shunned. It must be dealt with head on.
For nearly eight years we heard the left scream, “Bush Lied!” over the decision to invade Iraq. One decision and the same refrain repeated over and over again. Where is the scrutiny of the truth police where President Obama is concerned?
In his State of the Union address he took the unprecedented step of calling out the Supreme Court and encouraging his minions to give that rebuke a standing ovation. Shameful. This is not to say that Obama cannot criticize other branches of government, but there is a time and a place. When Joe Wilson called out “LIAR!” during a previous speech by President Obama he was roundly criticized and rightly so. Not for the criticism, but for the time and the place. Joe Wilson called the president to apologize. Did Obama do the same?
The timing of the act was bad enough, but the accusation he made was not true, as Samuel Alito could be seen saying, if you can read lips. In the midst of his constitutional duty to report to Congress on the State of the Union, he uses a blatant lie to attack his guests. But that wasn’t all. His speech was sprinkled throughout with falsehoods, not least of which was his statement on jobs.
Counting the Uncountable
To try to put a positive spin on his porkulus bill, he had to make up a statistic that no reputable economist can endorse, “jobs saved”. In his State of the Union speech and on the Sunday morning talk show circuit, Obama and his team talked about 2 million jobs created or saved. But they weren’t all on the same page, some said 1.8 million, but regardless it is blatant dishonesty.
Jobs created is a real statistic. As a small business owner I can tell you that when you hire someone there are a number of government agencies that you have to report it to and you have a deadline in which to do so. There is also some paperwork involved when you eliminate a job. But I have never, never had to report to any agency when I thought about eliminating a job and then changed my mind. After all wouldn’t that be the definition of a job saved?
If I never thought about eliminating the position, then the job is not “saved” it just continues to exist. If I thought about eliminating the position and did so, it would not be a job “saved” it would be a job eliminated, no? So it is this two step process of thinking about the action and then not following through that could reasonably be thought of as a “job saved”. How do you measure that thought process? Hiring someone is an observable action. Eliminating a job is an observable action. Saving a job are two related thought processes not externally observable, they can only be “reported” by the decision maker and it cannot be independently verified. Is that the kind of statistic upon which you want your government to base billions of dollars in spending decision? The only added feature of Obamanomics is that some money changes hands. Money that comes from you, dear taxpayer, and goes to the businessman. Can you see why such a statistic is ridiculous?
Which One Is It Mr. President? Mr. Biden? Anyone?
Let’s pretend for a moment that “jobs saved” is a real statistic. If the president has a figure in his head of 2 million jobs created or saved, and for the aforementioned reasons the number of jobs created is a hard number reported to some agency, then the number of jobs saved should be a matter of simple math. 2 million minus the number of jobs actually created equals the number of jobs saved. So why not report it as such? 100,000 jobs created and 1.9 million jobs saved, for example. Why lump them together? Because when you lump them together its harder to tell how big of a lie the president is telling.
Stimulus recipients previously reported that they had directly “created or saved” 640,329 jobs by Sept. 30, but their filings were criticized after it emerged that some people had reported saving jobs when they had actually spent the money on pay raises or paying employees who were not in danger of being laid off.
In December, the White House Office of Management and Budget changed its guidance, telling recipients they should start counting every worker whose salary was funded with stimulus money, rather than guessing whether the jobs would have existed in the absence of the federal plan. Opponents of the program accused the administration of “moving the goal posts” to make the plan appear more successful. — Wall Street Journal, Latest Stimulus Report Fuels Jobs Pressure, Feb. 1 2010
So companies using stimulus money to give people raises was counted as jobs saved! We have 10%-17% of our workforce idled and taxpayers are being fleeced to give people raises and this administration is calling that successful policy. When do we start firing people in this administration? How about Janet Napolitano? How about Eric Holder? or are we saving their jobs too so that the numbers look good? The other reports are just as galling: $1000 purchase of a lawn mower is credited with saving jobs; using stimulus money to purchase boots with each boot (left and right) being counted as a job saved because someone had to make the boots; stimulus money going to create jobs in Congressional districts that do not exist. Does anyone have any confidence that this administration has a clue about how to run a government? This is beyond embarrassing.
The Next Stimulus
But fear not, since the first stimulus was so successful, President Obama is teeing up the next one, but don’t worry this one is only $100 billion. Doesn’t that just make you feel warm all over?
Daniel Henninger wrote in the Wall Street Journal:
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid tells of congratulating freshman Sen. Obama on a phenomenal speech. Without a hint of conceit, Mr. Obama replied, “Harry, I have a gift.”
In the article he also describes this observation:
Harvard Law Prof. Charles Ogletree told how Mr. Obama spoke on one contentious issue at the law school, and each side thought he was endorsing their view. Mr. Ogletree said: “Everyone was nodding, Oh, he agrees with me.”
That’s essentially how he got elected. With a heaping helping hand from the popular media, many people saw Obama as a blank screen upon which they could project their own views and see those as Obama’s own. He’s our man! He listens. He cares deeply. For a politician it is a phenomenal gift. For a legislator it is an extremely valuable gift. For an executive it is poison.
Pulling the Trigger
As a politician or a legislator you are in the role of persuader; somebody else makes the decision to vote for you or vote with you, respectively. As an executive you are in the role of the decider. You must make a decision and every decision, especially the tough ones are going to make a good many people unhappy. Perhaps that explains why, in the Illinois Senate, Obama voted “Present” so many times. Voting “Present” rather than “Yea” or “Nay” allowed him to hold that special place where everyone felt he agreed with them. Too many decisions one way or another would have tarnished “the gift”. So why is “the gift” poison for an executive? If you don’t have “the gift” and you make a decision your opponents may disagree with you, but they are not surprised. If you have “the gift” and you make a decision, those on the short side feel betrayed and angry, because they thought you agreed with them and then “sold out” and decided the other way.
Obama is in a tight spot where he has to make decisions and decisions have consequences. When you make a decision it is very hard to make it seem like everyone got their way. His complete lack of executive experience is telling. If he had some executive experience, such as a mayor or a governor, he might have had enough practice learning how to make his decisions appear to satisfy everyone, as his campaign speeches did. But that’s the thing about decisions. If everyone supports them, they’re not much of a decision, like deciding to pardon a turkey on Thanksgiving. Everyone enjoys the decision, but it’s really not what we elect presidents for.
I’ll Have the Waffles, Please
If you watch closely, you can see that Obama is struggling to preserve “the gift”. He said he is for closing Guantanamo, but not yet. He is for pulling out of Iraq, but no timetable. The general he put in charge of Afghanistan, McChrystal, said he needed 40,000 more troops, but Obama could not bring himself to say yes or no. He had to ponder, think, consult, weigh alternatives, and three months later, he gave McChrystal what he asked for. Those on the left complained that he was not pulling out. Those on the right complained that he wasted precious time while our troops were on the battlefield. His backers tried to give him the fig leaf of showing gravitas. He can’t seem to find the magic formula where everyone applauds him. From “the gift” he has gone to “the anti-gift”. Instead of satisfying everyone, he is finding that he is satisfying no one.
Move On
It’s time for Obama to “Move On”. He should put “the gift” in his trophy case right next to his Nobel Peace Prize. It got him to the White House. How much more can he ask of such a thing? So drop the pretense. We all know he is a hard left guy, so he should just be who he is. He may suddenly face a more hostile press, or they may love him more, although that would be hard to believe. But when he makes a decision he will at least please his base, and then his opponents can fight his statist goals without being branded as racists. As a hard left guy he will probably not get re-elected because America is not a hard left country, on the contrary the majority of Americans describe themselves as conservative. But by choosing he can try to do what he can within one term. It will be a battle. Obama’s poll ratings have dropped steadily since his inauguration and the Democrats are likely to lose seats in Congress this fall. As an old acquaintance once said to me, “It’s like standing in the middle of the road. Choose left or choose right, but choose; otherwise you get hit by traffic coming in both directions.”
On Tuesday night President Obama gave an uncharacteristically bland speech regarding his way forward in Afghanistan. In one sentence he said he was adding 30,000 troops while shortly thereafter he said he would be removing them. It’s enough to make one nostalgic for John Kerry’s “clarification” of how he voted for the war in Iraq before he voted against it. So our Waffler in Chief has given the enemy their battle plan: hunker down; keep a low profile; don’t back me into a corner, and beginning in July 2011, while we’re packing up you can be ramping up. Bush never committed to an end date certain for that very reason. They way you defeat the enemy is by making it clear that you will finish the job, no matter how long it takes.
It’s All Karzai’s Fault!
With this administration, it’s always somebody else’s fault. But put yourself in Karzai’s shoes. If you have the U.S. on one side, and the Taliban on the other with the U.S. packing up and the Taliban sharpening their knives, who are you going to cut a deal with? They guy who plans to be there for the next 20 years or the guy who plans to be there for the next 20 months? There is one way to deal with the bad guys who plan on being there for the next 20 years and that’s to make sure they spend those next 20 years six feet under.
We had similar challenges in Iraq, but once Bush ordered the surge and the bad guys knew we were going to finish the job, they started cutting deals of their own. Many came over to our side and helped end the violence in a number of provinces. Peace through strength. It works. Weakness fires up the enemy and emboldens him. You decide which is the better strategy.
Reading one of the liberal pundit’s pan of Sarah Palin’s new book and how the reviewer harps on her inexperience, anyone with a room temperature IQ cannot help but ask, what about the guy who won? You can say she had little executive experience, only two years as governor of Alaska and two terms as mayor of 7,000 resident Wasilla. But while one may argue she had little executive experience, he had none. For that matter, neither did McCain or Biden. Legislative experience? Sure. Executive experience? No, and it shows.
Decisions, Decisions
What has he actually made a decision on? The economy? The porkulus package that is “saving” so many jobs, was put together by Pelosi. It was as if she brought it to him and said, “Here, sign,” and he did. Health care? He talked a great deal about it, but five or more proposals sprouted from different committees and like a demolition derby, banged around until there was one left, dented, but still moving.
Guantanamo? Iraq? Afghanistan? A decision, no, no, no, we need to ponder and confer more. Despite putting the commander, McChrystal, in place, Obama can’t seem to agree or disagree with his recommendation. And now, the granddaddy of them all, trying the 9/11 terrorists in New York.
Who’s the Boss?
This is what Barack Obama said:
“‘This is a prosecutorial decision as well as a national security decision.”
Er, no. This is a decision for the Commander in Chief. Don’t slough it off on some underling, no matter how lofty his title, so that at some future date you can put the blame on him. As Harry Truman (D) said, “The buck stops here.” It’s time, Mr. President, to step in, assert your constitutional authority and put a stop to this. The military tribunals were set up and authorized by Congress for just this purpose. It’s time to do the right thing. You took an oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, not to bow to your left wing base.
After 9/11, President Bush kept us safe for seven and half years. Less than a year into your presidency, we have had the worst terrorist attack on our soil since then. This was preventable. But we are already starting down the slippery slope of liberal happy talk and putting all Americans in harm’s way. Consider this, if the jihadists had their way and actually defeated us and took over, the first place they would go to slaughter the devils would be Hollywood. If you don’t want to protect America because it’s what you took an oath to do, then do it to save your Hollywood friends from themselves.
WASHINGTON (AP) – Vice President Joe Biden said the Obama administration “misread how bad the economy was” but stands by its stimulus package and believes the plan will create more jobs as the pace of its spending picks up.
Does that mean Obama lied? Biden lied? Where’s the outrage?
There is none, which is how it should be. But it is instructive to contrast this with what happened with President Bush. Bush relied on intelligence from the CIA, the French, the British and others. It all pointed in the same direction. The information was shared with Congress and there was overwhelming bipartisan support authorizing the use of force in Iraq with 40% of Democrats voting in favor in the House and 58% in the Senate. The senior members of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees, Republicans and Democrats saw the intelligence. When it was later determined that weapons of mass destruction could not be found, the mantra was “Bush lied.” The Democrats hid under their desks rather than refute that remark.
In the case of the stimulus, the projections of unemployment capping out at 8% rather than where it is today, prompting Biden’s mea culpa, was entirely within the control of the administration. It wasn’t corroborated by other nations’ agencies. In addition, every Republican in the House voted against it and all but three in the Senate. So in which situation would there be a more credible charge of lying?
But unlike the Main Stream Media and the statists, I am reluctant accuse them of deliberately lying about their policies. Perhaps, the aforementioned Main Stream Media and the statists will show some restraint in the future and return to the days of a spirited but honest debate on the issues? I’m not holding my breath.
