Two of the most dysfunctional areas of the American economy are healthcare and education, not coincidentally, two of the areas of the economy that the government has the most control and influence.
In healthcare, while there is ostensibly some private elements to it, the reality is that government regulations control almost every aspect of it. From the HIPAA forms about sharing your information you sign at the doctor’s office to what services insurance must cover to how much doctors can charge – or more accurately, get reimbursed for – Medicare patients. As much as one might want to point the finger at Obamacare, the reality is, healthcare was a mess long before Barry gave us the disaster that fittingly bears his name.
Much of that dysfunction stems from the fact that in healthcare there is little correlation between what people pay and the services they get. Why? The main reason is because insurance covers almost all of the cost for healthcare, and most Americans get their insurance through their employer, tax free. And why is that? Why isn’t health insurance like car insurance or homeowner’s insurance? Because of the government, of course. It largely started during WWII when wages and price controls were implemented and in 1943 the IRS made health insurance a tax free benefit to employees… and thus employers could offer insurance benefits to attract employees when they had little control over what they could pay. After the war Congress codified the There are other reasons of course, including government regulations that prohibit insurance companies from offering insurance across state lines, a broken tort system, and the general dysfunction in the Medicaid and Medicare programs.
In education the story is a bit different. Government directly controls in excess of 90% of the education spending in the country. Although most of the dollars are spent at the state and local level, the federal government has been seizing more and more control for the last 40 years, particularly after the establishment of the US Department of Education under Jimmy Carter. Add to that the fact that the Democrat party is almost a wholly owned subsidiary of the teacher’s unions and you understand that most large cities, school systems are not about education, but rather they are a jobs program for Democrat politicians and union donors. And the result is an education system that is more expensive than virtually any in the world on a per capita basis, but one that produces students who trail much of the developed world in testing and keeps the most challenged students in the worst performing schools.
The bottom line is that government does very little well, whether it’s education, healthcare or and we’ve come to see, choosing business outcomes. Just look back at Barack Obama’s green energy boondoggles, from Solyndra to Fisker… they are big versions of the failures states and local governments have been making for decades with their various sports stadium financing failures. Government deciding how businesses should be run and getting choosing winners and losers in business is just as much of a failure of what they’ve done with education and healthcare.
But change is in the air. We have a businessman who will be running the country, who will fix things, starting with business… Um… not so much.
Donald Trump, already known as a fan of big government and eminent domain has, even before he’s been sworn in, taken steps to show that we may be looking at four more years of the same thing… only with different oxen being slayed or spared the ax. Rather than talking about making America a place where companies want to invest, hire and operate, rather than talking about America being a place that all companies can make a profit, Donald Trump has been threatening companies who might have the audacity to try and escape America’s confiscatory tax rates by moving jobs overseas. Indeed last week he “saved 1,000 jobs” by meeting with Carrier and… giving them tax breaks from the state that other businesses can’t get!
So here we have a new president who uses the bully pulpit to threaten companies who don’t do what he wants and he uses tax breaks to get others to do so. That sounds very much like Barack Obama eight years ago… and we know how that turned out with lots of debt, failures and a GDP that has averaged under 2%. With Trump, rather than targeting coal and energy companies the bullseye will be on companies who want to make money for shareholders by escaping an uncompetitive business environment in the heavily regulated United States.
Of course Trump hasn’t even been sworn in yet. Maybe this was just a one off with Trump trying to fulfill a very specific campaign pledge. But then again, maybe not. Either way, it doesn’t say much for Donald Trump’s appreciation for free markets or limited government.
Showing posts with label obamacare. Show all posts
Showing posts with label obamacare. Show all posts
Monday, December 5, 2016
Monday, January 18, 2016
Although I Love Donald Trump, I'll Be Voting For Ted Cruz
I love Donald Trump. For all of his faults, he has done this nation an extraordinary service that it seems no other politician has been able to do for a quarter century. He put the single, most important issue facing our nation at the top of the heap in terms of what voters are concerned with: Immigration. Illegal immigration is literally undermining our nation, and without control of our borders there is simply no way our country will survive as a constitutional republic.
That love, I suppose, is really more appreciation. While I thank Trump to the high heavens for his contribution to this race, I don’t plan on voting for him. I’m voting for Ted Cruz.
Trump has a certain unabashed style, a presence, a reputation and an unrestrained manner that has allowed him to become not only a spectacularly successful businessman, but a media star. As PT Barnum is said to have said: “There's no such thing as bad publicity”. Those things worked to Trump’s advantage getting immigration on the agenda and putting him at the top of the heap right now in the GOP race.
But none of that should suggest that he should be President. Ask a Trumpian what they like about Trump and you'll usually get something like “He gets things done”. That’s true, but like an iceberg, where 90% of what’s important is unseen, it’s how Trump “gets things done” that’s a problem for those who value the Constitution. And that’s exactly where Ted Cruz excels.
There are big differences between Ted and Trump, and once you get past the issue of immigration, where both want to build a wall from San Diego to Brownsville, TX, those differences become crystal clear. Here are a few important ones:
One of the key elements of a limited government is the personal property rights of the nation’s citizens. You can’t have an American dream if the government can simply come along and take your stuff or let someone else do so. The 5th Amendment keeps the government from taking a citizen’s property for anything other than a public use. It reads: No person shall ..., nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation. Or at least it did until Kelo v. New London in 2005. In that case the Supreme Court decided that the government could take property from a group of citizens and give it to a private company, with no public use involved. So, according to Kelo, if a citizen was sufficiently friendly to politicians in a particular area, they could use that friendship to take the property of someone else… and do it legally.
Donald Trump not only agreed with the Kelo decision, but he did so enthusiastically. In addition, and this does not bode well for limited government, Donald Trump had tried on numerous occasions to do the same thing that Pfizer did in Kelo. Ted Cruz vociferously disagreed with Kelo and would appoint Supreme Court justices who actually understand what the 4th Amendment says.
Ted Cruz, on the other hand, has been a staunch opponent of Obamacare in the Senate, even going so far as to shut down the government in 2013 in an attempt to overturn it. And did so very much against the wishes of the spineless GOP leadership. More than that, Cruz wants to harness free markets to solve the problem of healthcare.
Ted Cruz, however, is a staunch defender of the 10th Amendment and an advocate for dramatically cutting government regulations. Indeed, he’s been a strong advocate for state’s rights and for states to be competing “laboratories of democracy” since before he was Senator. And just in case there was any uncertainty on the subject, in November of last year Cruz announced his “Five for Freedom”, five departments he would shutter if he were president, including the IRS and the Department of Education. Ted Cruz is the opposite of a Crony Capitalist... which explains why the big government loving GOP establishment favors Trump in a two man race.
If Donald Trump wins the GOP nomination I will vote for him with no hesitation. I will not however vote for him in the primary. There are fundamentally two cancers that threaten our Republic today. The first is unfettered immigration, because when the voting rolls are packed with new "citizens" who don't share out culture and with no understanding of or appreciation for the Constitution as a restraint on government, then eventually government simply becomes an enforcement and redistribution arm for the majority. The second cancer is a leviathan of a federal government which seems to know no limits and believes it exists to solve every problem imaginable for its preferred citizens, regardless of what the Bill of Rights and the Constitution say. As Jefferson could have said – but didn’t - "A government big enough to give you everything you want, is a government big enough to take away everything you have."
Both Donald Trump and Ted Cruz would cure the first of these two cancers, but only one candidate would cure both. That man is Ted Cruz, and I will be voting for him come primary day.
That love, I suppose, is really more appreciation. While I thank Trump to the high heavens for his contribution to this race, I don’t plan on voting for him. I’m voting for Ted Cruz.
Trump has a certain unabashed style, a presence, a reputation and an unrestrained manner that has allowed him to become not only a spectacularly successful businessman, but a media star. As PT Barnum is said to have said: “There's no such thing as bad publicity”. Those things worked to Trump’s advantage getting immigration on the agenda and putting him at the top of the heap right now in the GOP race.
But none of that should suggest that he should be President. Ask a Trumpian what they like about Trump and you'll usually get something like “He gets things done”. That’s true, but like an iceberg, where 90% of what’s important is unseen, it’s how Trump “gets things done” that’s a problem for those who value the Constitution. And that’s exactly where Ted Cruz excels.
There are big differences between Ted and Trump, and once you get past the issue of immigration, where both want to build a wall from San Diego to Brownsville, TX, those differences become crystal clear. Here are a few important ones:
5th Amendment
Donald Trump not only agreed with the Kelo decision, but he did so enthusiastically. In addition, and this does not bode well for limited government, Donald Trump had tried on numerous occasions to do the same thing that Pfizer did in Kelo. Ted Cruz vociferously disagreed with Kelo and would appoint Supreme Court justices who actually understand what the 4th Amendment says.
ObamacareDonald Trump, while correctly characterizing Obamacare as a disaster, talks glowingly of the dysfunctional single payer systems in Canada and Scotland. Indeed a decade ago he advocated for a single payer system here in the US. In his most recent healthcare proposal, while he advocates repealing Obamacare, it’s not free markets he offers as the solution, but rather the opaque “something terrific” that ensures every American who wants health coverage can get it. He says that government will provide healthcare for those who can’t afford it, and according to Forbes magazine, that “plan” could essentially only function with government cost controls in the first place.
Ted Cruz, on the other hand, has been a staunch opponent of Obamacare in the Senate, even going so far as to shut down the government in 2013 in an attempt to overturn it. And did so very much against the wishes of the spineless GOP leadership. More than that, Cruz wants to harness free markets to solve the problem of healthcare.
10th AmendmentAnd this one may be the single most important difference between the two candidates and the most important determinant as to who to pull the lever for. The 10th Amendment is at the core of America’s limited government and the prosperity it has engendered. It states: The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people. Donald Trump is not today, nor ever has been an advocate for limited government. From getting into bed with local governments for tax breaks to leveraging government gambling licenses against creditors to encouraging local governments to use eminent domain against opponents, Donald Trump has never shied away from using government intimidation to further his interests. A President Trump would likely pay as little attention to the 10th Amendment as President Obama has. There's a reason unions and 20% of Democrats are considering supporting Donald Trump, and it's not because he's a small government guy...
Ted Cruz, however, is a staunch defender of the 10th Amendment and an advocate for dramatically cutting government regulations. Indeed, he’s been a strong advocate for state’s rights and for states to be competing “laboratories of democracy” since before he was Senator. And just in case there was any uncertainty on the subject, in November of last year Cruz announced his “Five for Freedom”, five departments he would shutter if he were president, including the IRS and the Department of Education. Ted Cruz is the opposite of a Crony Capitalist... which explains why the big government loving GOP establishment favors Trump in a two man race.
If Donald Trump wins the GOP nomination I will vote for him with no hesitation. I will not however vote for him in the primary. There are fundamentally two cancers that threaten our Republic today. The first is unfettered immigration, because when the voting rolls are packed with new "citizens" who don't share out culture and with no understanding of or appreciation for the Constitution as a restraint on government, then eventually government simply becomes an enforcement and redistribution arm for the majority. The second cancer is a leviathan of a federal government which seems to know no limits and believes it exists to solve every problem imaginable for its preferred citizens, regardless of what the Bill of Rights and the Constitution say. As Jefferson could have said – but didn’t - "A government big enough to give you everything you want, is a government big enough to take away everything you have."
Both Donald Trump and Ted Cruz would cure the first of these two cancers, but only one candidate would cure both. That man is Ted Cruz, and I will be voting for him come primary day.
Monday, October 12, 2015
The People's House... A Historic Opportunity To Lead Should Not Be Squandered On A Squish
First there was Eric Cantor. Then there was John Boehner. Now there’s Kevin McCarthy. But somehow conservatives are once again being encouraged to grab defeat out of the hands of victory. This time by electing amnesty advocate Paul Ryan as Speaker of the House.
We’ve been told the House is dysfunctional. Nothing could be farther from the truth. This is exactly how the House is supposed to operate. When someone doesn’t have the confidence of his party and they are in the majority, he should be shown the door. But we’re told that a group of right wing Tea Party types are somehow keeping the people’s representatives from governing. If only that were only true! If it were, Obamacare wouldn’t be funded. It is. Barack Obama’s amnesty wouldn’t be funded. It is. The debt ceiling wouldn’t have been raised like a helium balloon. It was. Unfortunately, the conservatives in the House have had little success stopping the big government policies of Barack Obama, the Democrats and the GOP establishment.
So, now, today, after the three highest members of the House GOP establishment are either out the door or on their way out, members are being encouraged to put a guy who is 100% establishment, Paul Ryan, in charge.
Not only should they ignore pleas to put Ryan in charge of the House, they should select a real conservative from the Freedom Caucus like Jim Jordan or Mark Meadows. In addition, they should immediately call for a Motion to Vacate the Chair and stop Boehner from doing… pretty much anything.
Of course we hear the gnashing of the teeth from the usual quarters of the establishment telling us that this is a disaster for the GOP… that a fight over Planned Parenthood, a fight over the debt ceiling, a fight over the Continuing Resolution will be suicidal for the GOP if they end up in a stalemate that ends up “shutting down the government.” Frankly, nothing could be farther from the truth.
Two years ago we heard the same thing when Ted Cruz shut down the Senate as he fought to defund Obamacare. We were told that the GOP would be blamed for the government shutdown – which, sadly, is nothing even close to a shutdown as 83% of the government still operated normally – and would likely lose all chances to take the Senate and would probably lose the House to boot. Then when the election finally came a funny thing happened… the GOP picked up seats in both houses and picked up the Senate in an historic win.
In 2010 the GOP picked up the House telling the country it would stop Obamacare. Led by the establishment, it didn’t. In 2014 the GOP picked up the Senate telling the American people it would stop Obama’s illegal amnesty. Once again the squishes in the middle buckled. The only reason the House is in turmoil today is because enough Americans voted to stop Barack Obama that something called the Freedom Caucus exists to throw it into that turmoil.
As I quoted Jim Dint saying in 2010 when I wrote in support of Christine O’Donnell for the Senate from Delaware over the despicable squish Mike Castle, “I’d rather lose fighting for the right cause than win fighting for the wrong cause.” What’s the point of winning if the guys you elect do exactly the same things the guys you voted against would have done? The voters have had enough of GOP squishes… as was demonstrated by Mitt Romney’s dismal performance at the polls in 2012. They want leadership that is willing to stand up and say they will fight Barack Obama’s leftist agenda, and then actually do so. Fight on the killing of babies in the womb? Bring it on. Fight to stop empowering government largesse via another debt ceiling increase? Absolutely. Fight to stop the drive to turn the country into a third world banana republic via open borders? When do we start?
In 2010 and 2014 Americans showed the GOP they were willing to support a fight to when they sent Representatives and Senators to Washington who had indeed promised to fight the progressive cancer that has taken over Washington. Once again, once in power however, the party demurred from the fight. The GOP establishment types were more interested in the perks of office, their privileges in Washington, making sure big donors were happy than actually accomplishing what voters had sent them to Washington to do. That's the reason the GOP brand is so damaged, not "dysfunction".
We are in a unique moment in American history and for once the GOP has the opportunity to show real leadership when it really counts… i.e. in the run-up to the most important election in a generation. Not only should they not make Paul Ryan or any other amnesty loving establishment squish Speaker, they should find the most vocal, passionate conservative voice they can and proudly follow him as he leads a national debate on whether the future of America is one of prosperity driven by free markets and limited government or malaise and decline driven by government spending and regulation. In the unlikely event they lose, so be it. If a prosperous America is to be replaced by a third world banana republic, let freedom's death come after a full-throated defense of liberty rather than following a faux battle where party leaders put on a show for the little people but share cigars and whiskey in the halls of Congress as they divvy up the spoils of power.
Now is exactly the time for such a full-throated fight, and appropriately enough history has put the People’s House on center stage. The question is, does the GOP have the courage to actually lead in a fight when it counts or would they rather play a paper tiger as Barack Obama sets fire to the United States Constitution?
We’ve been told the House is dysfunctional. Nothing could be farther from the truth. This is exactly how the House is supposed to operate. When someone doesn’t have the confidence of his party and they are in the majority, he should be shown the door. But we’re told that a group of right wing Tea Party types are somehow keeping the people’s representatives from governing. If only that were only true! If it were, Obamacare wouldn’t be funded. It is. Barack Obama’s amnesty wouldn’t be funded. It is. The debt ceiling wouldn’t have been raised like a helium balloon. It was. Unfortunately, the conservatives in the House have had little success stopping the big government policies of Barack Obama, the Democrats and the GOP establishment.
Not only should they ignore pleas to put Ryan in charge of the House, they should select a real conservative from the Freedom Caucus like Jim Jordan or Mark Meadows. In addition, they should immediately call for a Motion to Vacate the Chair and stop Boehner from doing… pretty much anything.
Of course we hear the gnashing of the teeth from the usual quarters of the establishment telling us that this is a disaster for the GOP… that a fight over Planned Parenthood, a fight over the debt ceiling, a fight over the Continuing Resolution will be suicidal for the GOP if they end up in a stalemate that ends up “shutting down the government.” Frankly, nothing could be farther from the truth.
Two years ago we heard the same thing when Ted Cruz shut down the Senate as he fought to defund Obamacare. We were told that the GOP would be blamed for the government shutdown – which, sadly, is nothing even close to a shutdown as 83% of the government still operated normally – and would likely lose all chances to take the Senate and would probably lose the House to boot. Then when the election finally came a funny thing happened… the GOP picked up seats in both houses and picked up the Senate in an historic win.
In 2010 the GOP picked up the House telling the country it would stop Obamacare. Led by the establishment, it didn’t. In 2014 the GOP picked up the Senate telling the American people it would stop Obama’s illegal amnesty. Once again the squishes in the middle buckled. The only reason the House is in turmoil today is because enough Americans voted to stop Barack Obama that something called the Freedom Caucus exists to throw it into that turmoil.
As I quoted Jim Dint saying in 2010 when I wrote in support of Christine O’Donnell for the Senate from Delaware over the despicable squish Mike Castle, “I’d rather lose fighting for the right cause than win fighting for the wrong cause.” What’s the point of winning if the guys you elect do exactly the same things the guys you voted against would have done? The voters have had enough of GOP squishes… as was demonstrated by Mitt Romney’s dismal performance at the polls in 2012. They want leadership that is willing to stand up and say they will fight Barack Obama’s leftist agenda, and then actually do so. Fight on the killing of babies in the womb? Bring it on. Fight to stop empowering government largesse via another debt ceiling increase? Absolutely. Fight to stop the drive to turn the country into a third world banana republic via open borders? When do we start?
In 2010 and 2014 Americans showed the GOP they were willing to support a fight to when they sent Representatives and Senators to Washington who had indeed promised to fight the progressive cancer that has taken over Washington. Once again, once in power however, the party demurred from the fight. The GOP establishment types were more interested in the perks of office, their privileges in Washington, making sure big donors were happy than actually accomplishing what voters had sent them to Washington to do. That's the reason the GOP brand is so damaged, not "dysfunction".
We are in a unique moment in American history and for once the GOP has the opportunity to show real leadership when it really counts… i.e. in the run-up to the most important election in a generation. Not only should they not make Paul Ryan or any other amnesty loving establishment squish Speaker, they should find the most vocal, passionate conservative voice they can and proudly follow him as he leads a national debate on whether the future of America is one of prosperity driven by free markets and limited government or malaise and decline driven by government spending and regulation. In the unlikely event they lose, so be it. If a prosperous America is to be replaced by a third world banana republic, let freedom's death come after a full-throated defense of liberty rather than following a faux battle where party leaders put on a show for the little people but share cigars and whiskey in the halls of Congress as they divvy up the spoils of power.
Now is exactly the time for such a full-throated fight, and appropriately enough history has put the People’s House on center stage. The question is, does the GOP have the courage to actually lead in a fight when it counts or would they rather play a paper tiger as Barack Obama sets fire to the United States Constitution?
Tuesday, June 16, 2015
A Post Obama Top 10 List For American Prosperity...
America has a love affair with Top 10 lists. Probably the most well known is David Letterman’s “Top Ten List” that began as a throwaway skit on NBC 30 years ago and soon became a cornerstone of his program, even more so when he later moved to CBS. There’s also ESPN’s Top 10 Plays of the Day… and they even have a Not Top 10 list. And no walk through a grocery checkout would be complete with catching a glimpse of at least one magazine touting a Top 10 list of beauty tips, sexiest men or Hollywood divorces. Then of course there are the Internet’s ubiquitous click bait ads featuring “Top 10 things you didn’t know about…” this celebrity or that food or cute animals.
If nothing else, Top 10 lists are an attempt to focus attention… whether they are seeking to entertain audiences, sell magazines or drive online stats. They can however sometimes be things of consequence. This is one of those times, and this list is about more than just making viewers laugh or readers envious. It’s about the first ten (domestic) things the next president should promise to do immediately upon taking office from Barack Obama. While a complete list would no doubt be exponentially longer, a Top Ten list provides an opportunity to focus the attention of voters and candidates in the months leading up to next year’s election, and provide clarity about what a candidate’s priorities are.
Drum roll please…
Number 10: Refocus NASA on science and space exploration rather than “Muslim outreach”.
Number 9: Eliminate NLRB Ambush Election Rules – This rule is a giveaway to unions and dramatically ties the hands of employers seeking to present a balancing argument against unionization.
Number 8: Eliminate the HUD rule that seeks to “diversify” wealthy neighborhoods… or what I call the Obaminization of your neighborhood.
Number 7: Withdraw all NLRB lawsuits and actions seeking to apply Joint Employer legislation to franchisors. This position threatens the very foundation of the franchise model that has been so extraordinarily successful and has generated a countless choices for consumers, great wealth for entrepreneurs, and tens of millions of jobs across the country.
Number 6: Eliminate the EPA’s job killing and extraordinarily expensive rule requiring a 30% reduction (from 2005 levels) of CO2 emissions by 2030.
Number 5: Announce that the administration will work with Congress to repeal Dodd Frank… the disastrous legislative and regulatory leviathan implemented in the wake of the housing collapse.
Number 4: Repeal every Obama Executive Order pertaining to immigration and amnesty. Simultaneously announce that the administration will not engage in immigration reform until legislation is passed requiring work begin on a wall from Brownsville, Texas to San Diego.
Number 3: Announce that the Department of Commerce will immediately cease all efforts to relinquish control over the Internet and, further, announce that the contract that comes up for renewal in 2017 will be written for 25 years to preclude another attempt to internationalize control over the Internet.
Number 2: Immediately move to have the FCC repeal Net Neutrality and utilize all administration resources to block implementation and enforcement in the interim.
And the Number 1 thing the next president should do upon taking office is to immediately repeal all executive orders and eliminate all waivers pertaining to Obamacare. Simultaneously the president should send a team to work with Congress to repeal Obamacare and replace it, with the goal of passing reforms that allow free markets and entrepreneurship to provide solutions to tackle the American healthcare situation.
Of course this will not be enough, as there would be myriad things remaining to be addressed such as the oppressive tax code and tax rates, a failed federal education bureaucracy and a stultifying energy policy… and of course a catastrophically dysfunctional foreign policy. But by conspicuously unfurling a standard with such a list, a candidate would quickly put voters and the nation on notice that with him, or her, economic freedom, entrepreneurship and the pursuit of widespread prosperity would once again be primary forces driving US domestic policy. One can only hope that after the long national nightmare of Barack Obama’s reign the country still remembers what prosperity looks like and is willing to pull the lever for someone who understands how to achieve it.
If nothing else, Top 10 lists are an attempt to focus attention… whether they are seeking to entertain audiences, sell magazines or drive online stats. They can however sometimes be things of consequence. This is one of those times, and this list is about more than just making viewers laugh or readers envious. It’s about the first ten (domestic) things the next president should promise to do immediately upon taking office from Barack Obama. While a complete list would no doubt be exponentially longer, a Top Ten list provides an opportunity to focus the attention of voters and candidates in the months leading up to next year’s election, and provide clarity about what a candidate’s priorities are.
Drum roll please…
Number 9: Eliminate NLRB Ambush Election Rules – This rule is a giveaway to unions and dramatically ties the hands of employers seeking to present a balancing argument against unionization.
Number 8: Eliminate the HUD rule that seeks to “diversify” wealthy neighborhoods… or what I call the Obaminization of your neighborhood.
Number 7: Withdraw all NLRB lawsuits and actions seeking to apply Joint Employer legislation to franchisors. This position threatens the very foundation of the franchise model that has been so extraordinarily successful and has generated a countless choices for consumers, great wealth for entrepreneurs, and tens of millions of jobs across the country.
Number 6: Eliminate the EPA’s job killing and extraordinarily expensive rule requiring a 30% reduction (from 2005 levels) of CO2 emissions by 2030.
Number 5: Announce that the administration will work with Congress to repeal Dodd Frank… the disastrous legislative and regulatory leviathan implemented in the wake of the housing collapse.
Number 4: Repeal every Obama Executive Order pertaining to immigration and amnesty. Simultaneously announce that the administration will not engage in immigration reform until legislation is passed requiring work begin on a wall from Brownsville, Texas to San Diego.
Number 3: Announce that the Department of Commerce will immediately cease all efforts to relinquish control over the Internet and, further, announce that the contract that comes up for renewal in 2017 will be written for 25 years to preclude another attempt to internationalize control over the Internet.
Number 2: Immediately move to have the FCC repeal Net Neutrality and utilize all administration resources to block implementation and enforcement in the interim.
And the Number 1 thing the next president should do upon taking office is to immediately repeal all executive orders and eliminate all waivers pertaining to Obamacare. Simultaneously the president should send a team to work with Congress to repeal Obamacare and replace it, with the goal of passing reforms that allow free markets and entrepreneurship to provide solutions to tackle the American healthcare situation.
Of course this will not be enough, as there would be myriad things remaining to be addressed such as the oppressive tax code and tax rates, a failed federal education bureaucracy and a stultifying energy policy… and of course a catastrophically dysfunctional foreign policy. But by conspicuously unfurling a standard with such a list, a candidate would quickly put voters and the nation on notice that with him, or her, economic freedom, entrepreneurship and the pursuit of widespread prosperity would once again be primary forces driving US domestic policy. One can only hope that after the long national nightmare of Barack Obama’s reign the country still remembers what prosperity looks like and is willing to pull the lever for someone who understands how to achieve it.
Monday, March 2, 2015
Net Neutrality exposes Barack Obama's not so well hidden inner Vladimir Putin
On Thursday the FCC moved to regulate the Internet via what’s commonly called Net Neutrality – although like Obamacare before it was passed, we don’t know everything that’s included in it! Net Neutrality is beyond a doubt the single most despicable thing Barack Obama has done as president. (The FCC is ostensibly an independent agency, but under Obama it’s been anything but.) The big push for Net Neutrality came from Silicon Valley content companies who were whining that ISPs such as Comcast, Time Warner and AT&T were slowing or threatening to slow content that sucked up massive amounts of bandwidth. They are after all the ones who have to invest to expand that bandwidth. These ISPs were at the same time telling companies like Netflix and Google that they could ensure timely delivery of their content if they paid for the extra bandwidth that was being used. The Silicon Valley companies squealed to Barack Obama and he started leaning on the FCC.
Now this should not be viewed as a defense of Comcast or Time Warner. Both are horrible companies when it comes to service and customer service. Terrible! And you might ask how can they survive if they piss off so many customers? Government, of course. In most places they reign as the result monopolies… imposed by government.
This might sound like it’s just about whether you can have House of Cards running simultaneously in three rooms in your house or in every home in your neighborhood. It’s not. It’s about the government seeking to control the Internet, the single most powerful vehicle for the advancement of the human condition in history. That might sound like hyperbole, but it’s not. Today, because of the Internet more people have access to more information, more quickly than at any point since… well, ever. Not only that, they also have access to more products and services, usually at lower cost than any generation ever enjoyed. And perhaps most importantly, they have a vehicle through which they can express their thoughts and share their ideas and highlight oppression & injustice more freely and to more people more quickly than has ever been possible in human history.
A decade from now much of that will be a mere distant memory. Not that the Internet won’t exist, it will. But it will be a government controlled utility rather than the Wild West platform for the free exchange of ideas that it is today. Don’t believe it? Don’t forget, a year ago this same FCC proposed sending “researchers to grill reporters, editors and station owners about how they decide which stories to run.” Six months before that Democrat Senators Dianne Feinstein and Richard Durbin were debating whether bloggers deserved 1st Amendment protections. And of course this is the administration that used IRS commissioners to stifle the free speech of opponents and the Justice Department to go after reporter James Rosen who just happened to be critical of it.
So now, we have Barack Obama’s FCC telling the country that the government gets to be the arbitrators of what can be said or done on the Internet. Imagine if the government decided that WiFi was a bridge too far when we were all hooked up to the Internet by those static filled phone lines. Imagine if the government put the kibosh on online music sharing when record companies complained about declining CD sales. Imagine if the government supported the status quo when Yahoo was the dominant search provider or MySpace was the dominant social networking site. In what universe would have any of that have been a good thing?
As bad as stifling innovation is, that’s not the worst of it. The worst? The death of free speech. Imagine if Richard Nixon had at his disposal the kind of control the FCC says it has now during Watergate. Ronald Reagan during Iran-Contra. Bill Clinton during the Monica Lewinski affair. George Bush in reference to GTMO or Abu Ghraib.
Barack Obama no doubt wishes he had that kind of power during Fast and Furious, the IRS Tea Party Scandal, Benghazi and countless other times. Now he pretty much will have it through his puppets on the FCC. Unfortunately the spineless obsequious leadership in the GOP will likely do nothing to stop this abuse of power. The result will be something slightly less onerous than being perpetrated by Barack Obama’s hero, Vladimir Putin, in Moscow. Putin can simply kill his opponents with little worry of consequence. Here in the United States, thankfully, that’s unlikely to go over as smoothly, however with the FCC’s unconstitutional overreach such measures wouldn’t be necessary. Why kill someone and make a martyr out of them when it’s much easier to simply muzzle them, or if that doesn’t work, label them a criminal and jail them with arbitrary regulations that you’ve set up specifically to target opponents? When government gets to decide who can be its critics or what its critics can say, it’s not a long march to a dictatorship.
Alas, our freedoms aren’t being taken from us by some foreign power with a gun pointed at our collective heads. No, staggeringly, American freedoms are being taken away by the very government a majority of brain-dead voters somehow sent to Washington. What’s worse, the opposition in Congress seems more than willing to capitulate and let the president get away with whatever he does, regardless of what’s in the Constitution, so long as they can stay in power in their little fiefdoms. With Obamacare and what the WSJ dubs the Obamanet, Barack Obama has succeeded in gutting both economic freedom and the freedom of speech in less than six years. Things that largely survived for 220 years... down the drain in six years! The consequences of the mistake that is Barack Obama in the White House will haunt Americans for decades to come, including those who were smart enough not to hand the keys of the greatest kingdom in human history to a petulant man more than willing to lie to get what he wants and a disdain for the very Constitution he swore to uphold.
Now this should not be viewed as a defense of Comcast or Time Warner. Both are horrible companies when it comes to service and customer service. Terrible! And you might ask how can they survive if they piss off so many customers? Government, of course. In most places they reign as the result monopolies… imposed by government.
A decade from now much of that will be a mere distant memory. Not that the Internet won’t exist, it will. But it will be a government controlled utility rather than the Wild West platform for the free exchange of ideas that it is today. Don’t believe it? Don’t forget, a year ago this same FCC proposed sending “researchers to grill reporters, editors and station owners about how they decide which stories to run.” Six months before that Democrat Senators Dianne Feinstein and Richard Durbin were debating whether bloggers deserved 1st Amendment protections. And of course this is the administration that used IRS commissioners to stifle the free speech of opponents and the Justice Department to go after reporter James Rosen who just happened to be critical of it.
So now, we have Barack Obama’s FCC telling the country that the government gets to be the arbitrators of what can be said or done on the Internet. Imagine if the government decided that WiFi was a bridge too far when we were all hooked up to the Internet by those static filled phone lines. Imagine if the government put the kibosh on online music sharing when record companies complained about declining CD sales. Imagine if the government supported the status quo when Yahoo was the dominant search provider or MySpace was the dominant social networking site. In what universe would have any of that have been a good thing?
As bad as stifling innovation is, that’s not the worst of it. The worst? The death of free speech. Imagine if Richard Nixon had at his disposal the kind of control the FCC says it has now during Watergate. Ronald Reagan during Iran-Contra. Bill Clinton during the Monica Lewinski affair. George Bush in reference to GTMO or Abu Ghraib.
Alas, our freedoms aren’t being taken from us by some foreign power with a gun pointed at our collective heads. No, staggeringly, American freedoms are being taken away by the very government a majority of brain-dead voters somehow sent to Washington. What’s worse, the opposition in Congress seems more than willing to capitulate and let the president get away with whatever he does, regardless of what’s in the Constitution, so long as they can stay in power in their little fiefdoms. With Obamacare and what the WSJ dubs the Obamanet, Barack Obama has succeeded in gutting both economic freedom and the freedom of speech in less than six years. Things that largely survived for 220 years... down the drain in six years! The consequences of the mistake that is Barack Obama in the White House will haunt Americans for decades to come, including those who were smart enough not to hand the keys of the greatest kingdom in human history to a petulant man more than willing to lie to get what he wants and a disdain for the very Constitution he swore to uphold.
Monday, February 16, 2015
A dab of Communism and a dash of Fascism, Barack Obama's economic philosophy in practice
The primary reason Communism doesn’t work is that it goes against the very nature of man. In Communism there is simply no motivation for anyone to work hard. When there is a zero correlation between the amount or quality of work you do and the compensation you receive, your motivation to work hard, or maybe work at all, simply evaporates. This is particularly true given that the compensation for the slacker at the next desk is equally without correlation as he continues to get the same salary regardless of whether he actually gets anything done or not. And while Communism as we know it has only been around since 1848, the ideas behind it have been around for much longer… and not surprisingly it was a failed ideology long before Marx and Engels gave it a brand name.
I’m not going to suggest that Barack Obama is exactly a Communist… even if he was, apparently he’s smart enough to lie about it if he knew it would harm his image… I do however think he’s a fan of one of the basic mantras of Communism: “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need,” with him deciding who needs what. At the same time he’s very much a fan of the Fascist economic model where private property exists but government mandates much if not all of its activity. For him everything else is to simply be manipulated in order to achieve those two tenets of his philosophy.
For six years Barack Obama has been doing everything in his considerable power to bring that philosophy into effect in the United States. In all fairness, many of the things he has pursued had their genesis in previous administrations, but under Barack Obama they found an unabashed champion who was willing to turbo charge them as he sought to “fundamentally transformed America”.
The scorecard of Obama’s accomplishments is breathtaking:
If the words Communist or Fascist are too strong for delicate sensibilities, let me paint the picture in a slightly different way. Imagine the United States is a wagon with a combination of passengers and people pulling it. Where the wagon goes to find food and sustenance and to build prosperity is determined by the people pulling it. As long as there are enough people on the ground pulling the wagon, and those people are willing and able to put forth the effort to figure out where they should go and how best to get there, everything works out fine. Over time however if enough people stop pulling and jump into the wagon such that the ratio of passengers to pullers becomes too great, the wagon will eventually stop, as will the pursuit of sustenance, prosperity and everything else and stagnation and collapse will begin. But wait! It gets worse! Not only are there too many passengers in the wagon, but they have put chains on the ankles of those pulling it, have decided they know better how to pull the wagon – despite the fact that they are not pulling anything – and they have decreed that they get to decide how everything is distributed. Welcome to Barack Obama’s world. To put things in explicit terms, in Barack Obama’s America 140 million people are working to support a population of 320 million, which includes a record 100 million adults not working. That is the lowest rate in history.
So, while the Communist Party USA may not be celebrating their party’s ascendance into the White House, they are no doubt cheered by the fact that the country is being “transformed” in their direction. That does not bode well for anybody associated with the American wagon, whether pulling it or passenger…
I’m not going to suggest that Barack Obama is exactly a Communist… even if he was, apparently he’s smart enough to lie about it if he knew it would harm his image… I do however think he’s a fan of one of the basic mantras of Communism: “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need,” with him deciding who needs what. At the same time he’s very much a fan of the Fascist economic model where private property exists but government mandates much if not all of its activity. For him everything else is to simply be manipulated in order to achieve those two tenets of his philosophy.
For six years Barack Obama has been doing everything in his considerable power to bring that philosophy into effect in the United States. In all fairness, many of the things he has pursued had their genesis in previous administrations, but under Barack Obama they found an unabashed champion who was willing to turbo charge them as he sought to “fundamentally transformed America”.
The scorecard of Obama’s accomplishments is breathtaking:
- The percentage of Americans working to support the nation is at a record low. 44%
- The number of Americans on food stamps has exceeded 46 million for an unprecedented 3 years.
- The number and percentage of Americans on "disability" are at record highs: 8.9 million & 6.4%
- The federal income tax is at its most progressive point in modern times with the top 20% paying 94% of all income taxes while the bottom 40% actually get money from the government.
- With Obamacare the government has taken direct control of almost 20% of the American economy, while the EPA has a death grip on a vast expanse of industries from autos to energy to dry cleaning. Regulations are accumulating at an unprecedented rate and their scope seems boundless.
- And finally, as a result of all of this, more businesses are failing than are starting and the country is experiencing the slowest economic recovery in over half a century.
So, while the Communist Party USA may not be celebrating their party’s ascendance into the White House, they are no doubt cheered by the fact that the country is being “transformed” in their direction. That does not bode well for anybody associated with the American wagon, whether pulling it or passenger…
Monday, January 19, 2015
What six years of Barack Obama's economic incompetence has wrought
Now that Barack Obama’s first six years are over it might be nice to see what he has wrought, and compare him to another iconic president, Ronald Reagan.
When Barack Obama took office in 2009 65.7% of Americans were participating in the laborforce. (This is called the Labor Force Participation Rate – LFPR – which includes those working and those looking for work.) Six years later that number was down to 62.8. When Ronald Reagan took office in 1981 63.9% of Americans were participating in the workforce and six years later that number had grown to 65.6%.
Unemployment is the measure of those in the laborforce looking for work but can’t find it. At first blush Obama seems to be doing well using that measure. In February 2009 unemployment sat at 8.3% and by November 2014 it had dropped to 5.8%. In February 1981 Ronald Reagan took office with an unemployment rate of 7.4%, which by November 1986 had only dropped to 6.9%. Using the unemployment measure seems to suggest Obama’s policies trump those of Reagan.
Upon closer inspection however… not so much. The LFPR tells the story – or really its inverse does. That is the number of those not working who must be supported by workers, unless they were independently wealthy. A 65% LFPR indicates that 35% of the population would be supported by workers. In the case of both Obama and Reagan the US population grew by approximately 11 million people over their first six years in office. Under Reagan, because job growth was so strong – 11 million new jobs – the total number of people who needed to be supported by those working (unemployed + those not in the workforce) remained steady at 93 million throughout those six years. Under Obama however, because job growth was so anemic – 3 million total new jobs – the number of people who needed to be supported by those working actually jumped 8 million from 121 million to 129 million. That means that under Reagan the number of workers in the US grew by 11 million while the number of non workers remained steady. Under Obama the number of workers grew by 3 million while the number not working grew by 8 million.
But some might argue that Obama faced a tougher economic situation than did Reagan. Not really.
When Ronald Reagan took office inflation was 10.1% and six years later it was 1.9% while under Barack Obama inflation started out near zero and has remained there throughout his terms. What’s ironic about this tame inflation is that it has much to do with dropping prices for things like big screen TV’s, mobile phones and oil, – the latter despite Obama’s best efforts – while core items that the poor spend most heavily on such as meats, poultry, fish, eggs and electricity, are hitting all time record highs.
When Reagan took office interest rates were 19.5% and by his sixth year they were down to 7.5%. When Barack Obama took office interest rates were at 3.25% and have essentially stayed in that area since. That extraordinarily low rate is in large part due to the Fed’s pumping of $4.5 trillion into the American economy since 2008, allowing the federal government to borrow like a drunken sailor.
Of course that pumping also has the impact of juicing the GDP numbers as there is more borrowing and investment going on than the fundamentals would otherwise support. And it’s in this easy money environment that Barack Obama’s biggest failure can be seen. In the six years he’s been president GDP grew by a total of 22%. Compare that to the same period under Reagan, where GDP grew by a whopping 42%. Of course Reagan did add substantially to the national debt, growing it by 6% of GDP during each of his first six years. But Obama borrowed even more, growing the national debt by 8% of GDP each of his first six years. Add to that the 5% the Fed kicked in each year with its Quantative Easing and it’s almost impossible understand how GDP could grow as slowly as it has under Obama.
The key however is hiding right in plain sight. Q4 GDP numbers give it away. The administration crows that the economy grew at a 5% clip in the last quarter of 2014. Not bad. What they don’t tell you is that fully half that uptick came specifically as a result of coerced Obamacare spending. Obamacare is a microcosm of what’s wrong with Obama and his administration. On the one hand it kills jobs, increases prices, eliminates choices and puts private practice doctors out of business. On the other hand, those very same regulations force Americans and companies to spend more on its mandates, which has the result of juicing GDP. So by regulatory fiat the government can remake the economy and claim Americans are better off in the process by juicing GDP numbers. Now imagine the same thing with hundreds of thousands of regulations over the last six years and you understand just how it’s the case that GDP seems to keep growing but Americans seem poorer.
To put the cherry on top of this indictment of Barack Obama’s economic incompetence is a quote from Ronald Reagan: “Welfare’s purpose should be to eliminate, as far as possible, the need for its own existence”. Barack Obama likely disagrees. When he took office there were 32 million Americans on food stamps. Today that number stands at 46 million. In six years Barack Obama’s economic policies have so damaged the country that 5% of Americans have been added to the food stamp rolls while fully one third of the country receives some form of welfare. All of this while the rich are paying more in taxes than ever and half the country pays no income taxes at all and the middle class try to keep their heads above water. That's what happens when your policies bring about the slowest economic recovery in the last half century.
Too bad no one saw this coming…
When Barack Obama took office in 2009 65.7% of Americans were participating in the laborforce. (This is called the Labor Force Participation Rate – LFPR – which includes those working and those looking for work.) Six years later that number was down to 62.8. When Ronald Reagan took office in 1981 63.9% of Americans were participating in the workforce and six years later that number had grown to 65.6%.
Unemployment is the measure of those in the laborforce looking for work but can’t find it. At first blush Obama seems to be doing well using that measure. In February 2009 unemployment sat at 8.3% and by November 2014 it had dropped to 5.8%. In February 1981 Ronald Reagan took office with an unemployment rate of 7.4%, which by November 1986 had only dropped to 6.9%. Using the unemployment measure seems to suggest Obama’s policies trump those of Reagan.
But some might argue that Obama faced a tougher economic situation than did Reagan. Not really.
When Ronald Reagan took office inflation was 10.1% and six years later it was 1.9% while under Barack Obama inflation started out near zero and has remained there throughout his terms. What’s ironic about this tame inflation is that it has much to do with dropping prices for things like big screen TV’s, mobile phones and oil, – the latter despite Obama’s best efforts – while core items that the poor spend most heavily on such as meats, poultry, fish, eggs and electricity, are hitting all time record highs.
When Reagan took office interest rates were 19.5% and by his sixth year they were down to 7.5%. When Barack Obama took office interest rates were at 3.25% and have essentially stayed in that area since. That extraordinarily low rate is in large part due to the Fed’s pumping of $4.5 trillion into the American economy since 2008, allowing the federal government to borrow like a drunken sailor.
Of course that pumping also has the impact of juicing the GDP numbers as there is more borrowing and investment going on than the fundamentals would otherwise support. And it’s in this easy money environment that Barack Obama’s biggest failure can be seen. In the six years he’s been president GDP grew by a total of 22%. Compare that to the same period under Reagan, where GDP grew by a whopping 42%. Of course Reagan did add substantially to the national debt, growing it by 6% of GDP during each of his first six years. But Obama borrowed even more, growing the national debt by 8% of GDP each of his first six years. Add to that the 5% the Fed kicked in each year with its Quantative Easing and it’s almost impossible understand how GDP could grow as slowly as it has under Obama.
The key however is hiding right in plain sight. Q4 GDP numbers give it away. The administration crows that the economy grew at a 5% clip in the last quarter of 2014. Not bad. What they don’t tell you is that fully half that uptick came specifically as a result of coerced Obamacare spending. Obamacare is a microcosm of what’s wrong with Obama and his administration. On the one hand it kills jobs, increases prices, eliminates choices and puts private practice doctors out of business. On the other hand, those very same regulations force Americans and companies to spend more on its mandates, which has the result of juicing GDP. So by regulatory fiat the government can remake the economy and claim Americans are better off in the process by juicing GDP numbers. Now imagine the same thing with hundreds of thousands of regulations over the last six years and you understand just how it’s the case that GDP seems to keep growing but Americans seem poorer.
To put the cherry on top of this indictment of Barack Obama’s economic incompetence is a quote from Ronald Reagan: “Welfare’s purpose should be to eliminate, as far as possible, the need for its own existence”. Barack Obama likely disagrees. When he took office there were 32 million Americans on food stamps. Today that number stands at 46 million. In six years Barack Obama’s economic policies have so damaged the country that 5% of Americans have been added to the food stamp rolls while fully one third of the country receives some form of welfare. All of this while the rich are paying more in taxes than ever and half the country pays no income taxes at all and the middle class try to keep their heads above water. That's what happens when your policies bring about the slowest economic recovery in the last half century.
Too bad no one saw this coming…
Sunday, November 23, 2014
Will the Constitution Survive King Barack the Transformer?
What makes a tyrant? Dictionary.com defines tyrant thus: A sovereign or other ruler who uses power oppressively or unjustly.
In 1776 the 13 American colonies declared independence from just such a tyrant. Eleven years later the same 13 states came together to write a Constitution that was specifically crafted to thwart the emergence of a new tyrant. The laws were to be written in Congress, where discussion, debate and competing factions would keep them from consistently favoring one constituency over another. In turn those laws were to be executed by the President whose constituency was the whole country. That separation of powers and duties has been the key to keeping the United States as a free, democratic republic without a tyrant for over two centuries.
Tyrants rarely adhere to constraints on their power being imposed by anyone or anything, Constitutions included. If they did, they wouldn’t be a tyrant in the first place. At the same time they often don’t brook the slings and arrows of enemies very well either. After all, what self respecting tyrant can allow subjects to feel free to criticize him? Tyrants also often seek to hide what they are doing. Whether it’s a war against someone who has something the tyrant covets or the implementation of a controversial new law, tyrants often choose to obscure the truth of their desires in order to gain the acceptance and acquiescence of their subjects rather than tell them the truth and deal with possible rebellion. Basically tyrants usually do exactly what they want, regardless of what anyone else thinks… but sometimes they feel compelled to lie about it.
Barack Obama seems to have excelled in all of these areas of Tyranny 101. In the first place he sees little constraint on his power. The endless waivers, delays and changes to Obamacare are easily the most impactful example of Obama’s disregard for the Constitution’s direction that Congress writes the laws. Follow that with his “Executive Order” on immigration essentially providing amnesty to millions of illegal aliens and it removes any sheen of Constitutionality. Indeed, Barack Obama is on record 22 times having said he didn’t have the Constitutional authority order amnesty. But he went ahead and did it anyway.
Obama also shines in his treatment of his enemies. This week proof emerged that the administration worked to spike stories by Sharyl Attkisson that were critical of its handling of the Fast and Furious program. Not content with just getting stories spiked, the administration also decided to selectively criminalize the practice of journalism itself when it named Fox News journalist James Rosen as a possible ''co-conspirator'' in a criminal investigation of a news leak. Add to that the IRS’s intimidation of Tea Party groups and anyone who’s just a bit critical of the tyrant president might just want to start checking under their beds and in their closets before they go to sleep at night…
Then there is the lying and obfuscation. The last couple of weeks have been chock full videos popping up of Obamacare architect Jonathan Gruber telling audiences that the lack of transparency in the bill was critical to its passage, because if Americans knew its real costs it would never pass. So rather than tell the American people exactly what Obamacre would do, Barack Obama simply lied to them, reassured by Jonathan Gruber that the citizens were simply too stupid to pick up on it.
Tyrants rarely come to power telling everyone they are planning on ruling as a tyrant, particularly in ostensibly free nations. Instead they usually come to power by making grand promises of reward to a sufficient enough number of voters that they are welcomed through the front door. Once in power however, they begin to scheme and manipulate the levers of power so that they can accomplish their goals, regardless of the rules and regardless of any opposition. Indeed, they transform their perch from that of a servant of the people to a that of a ruler of the people. That is exactly what Barack Obama has done… and it’s only become more blatant the longer he’s been in office. With his amnesty move, coming so close after a decisive vote for the opposition, he’s finally demonstrated with unvarnished clarity exactly what he thinks of American voters and the American Constitution. The Constitution has been strong enough to whether crisis’s before. The paper itself is fragile but the ideas behind it have been extraordinarily resilient. Let’s hope both are strong enough to survive the reign of King Barack the Transformer.
In 1776 the 13 American colonies declared independence from just such a tyrant. Eleven years later the same 13 states came together to write a Constitution that was specifically crafted to thwart the emergence of a new tyrant. The laws were to be written in Congress, where discussion, debate and competing factions would keep them from consistently favoring one constituency over another. In turn those laws were to be executed by the President whose constituency was the whole country. That separation of powers and duties has been the key to keeping the United States as a free, democratic republic without a tyrant for over two centuries.
Barack Obama seems to have excelled in all of these areas of Tyranny 101. In the first place he sees little constraint on his power. The endless waivers, delays and changes to Obamacare are easily the most impactful example of Obama’s disregard for the Constitution’s direction that Congress writes the laws. Follow that with his “Executive Order” on immigration essentially providing amnesty to millions of illegal aliens and it removes any sheen of Constitutionality. Indeed, Barack Obama is on record 22 times having said he didn’t have the Constitutional authority order amnesty. But he went ahead and did it anyway.
Obama also shines in his treatment of his enemies. This week proof emerged that the administration worked to spike stories by Sharyl Attkisson that were critical of its handling of the Fast and Furious program. Not content with just getting stories spiked, the administration also decided to selectively criminalize the practice of journalism itself when it named Fox News journalist James Rosen as a possible ''co-conspirator'' in a criminal investigation of a news leak. Add to that the IRS’s intimidation of Tea Party groups and anyone who’s just a bit critical of the tyrant president might just want to start checking under their beds and in their closets before they go to sleep at night…
Then there is the lying and obfuscation. The last couple of weeks have been chock full videos popping up of Obamacare architect Jonathan Gruber telling audiences that the lack of transparency in the bill was critical to its passage, because if Americans knew its real costs it would never pass. So rather than tell the American people exactly what Obamacre would do, Barack Obama simply lied to them, reassured by Jonathan Gruber that the citizens were simply too stupid to pick up on it.
Tyrants rarely come to power telling everyone they are planning on ruling as a tyrant, particularly in ostensibly free nations. Instead they usually come to power by making grand promises of reward to a sufficient enough number of voters that they are welcomed through the front door. Once in power however, they begin to scheme and manipulate the levers of power so that they can accomplish their goals, regardless of the rules and regardless of any opposition. Indeed, they transform their perch from that of a servant of the people to a that of a ruler of the people. That is exactly what Barack Obama has done… and it’s only become more blatant the longer he’s been in office. With his amnesty move, coming so close after a decisive vote for the opposition, he’s finally demonstrated with unvarnished clarity exactly what he thinks of American voters and the American Constitution. The Constitution has been strong enough to whether crisis’s before. The paper itself is fragile but the ideas behind it have been extraordinarily resilient. Let’s hope both are strong enough to survive the reign of King Barack the Transformer.
Sunday, November 16, 2014
Barack Obama's Amnesty won't be legal, but it will likely be permanent...
Sometime over the course of the next week Barack Obama is likely going grant amnesty to millions of people who are in the United States illegally.
He’s doing this very much against the will of an overwhelming majority of American people. Not only do polls show that Americans are 3 to 1 against his giving amnesty to illegals, but his party, which very much supports his position, just got shellacked in voting booths across the country, at every level. Nonetheless, Barack Obama plans to do it anyway, because he feels he’s right… and because he can.
Technically he can’t really grant permanent amnesty because that would require the law to be changed. He’ll probably use his prosecutorial discretion to simply tell them that – at least while he’s president – they need not fear deportation. He’ll likely accomplish that by telling the DHS to basically look the other way and not deport those who are here illegally, depending on who they are, when they arrived, whether or not they have kids, etc. While as the chief executive of the government, he does indeed have the Constitutional power to tell agencies how they should act within the law, he does not have the power (legally) to tell them to close their eyes and arbitrarily ignore the law. Which is likely exactly what he’s going to do.
This action presents a variety of dilemmas. The first is the fact that Congress, not the President, writes the laws. (Although as demonstrated dozens of times with Obamacare, Barack Obama either doesn’t understand this or doesn’t care about it.) For Congress, there is only one Constitutional remedy available to them: Impeachment. When Obama grants Amnesty to 5 million people next week, he will almost certainly have committed an impeachable offense. This however is likely to be a bridge too far for most in Congress. The result will be that for the next two years millions of illegals will come out from the shadows, will buy houses, get jobs, get married and begin living their lives as if they were in the United States legally. Which brings up the second dilemma.
In 2017, when a GOP president takes office he won’t be able to simply reverse Barack Obama’s Executive Order, as presidents regularly do when they disagree with the policies of their predecessors. While he’ll have the legal authority to do so, the Democrats and their media lapdogs will ensure that every newscast in America is filled with stories of downtrodden immigrants who have spent the last two years building a life founded on the American dream and how any politician who seeks to send him back home to Mexico or Guatemala is simply a racist. I would doubt there are many in the GOP who have the stones to stand up to such withering attacks and defend the Constitution… although I think Ted Cruz probably does. Such is the spineless GOP... Even now, on the heels of one of the GOP's biggest victories in decades and at a time when Americans 75% against amnesty, soon to be Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has already capitulated on the option of a government shutdown to address the president's overreach.
Theoretically Congress does have one other avenue available through which it can pursue a remedy: the courts. This however is a very iffy proposition. The federal court system is extraordinarily slow, and given that Congress has impeachment as an option, the likelihood of the Supreme Court getting involved is rather thin. In addition, a split decision on the case (unlike US v. Nixon) declaring the Executive Order illegal would simply cause Obama to reword it and issue another.
Most despairingly for those who value the Constitution and the nation, Obama’s amnesty will likely have the impact of opening the floodgates of immigrants from Latin America. Already the presidents of Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras are reported to believe that Joe Biden has laid out the welcome mat for their citizens seeking to emigrate to the United States. In 1986 Ronald Reagan gave amnesty to 2.5 million illegal aliens and the result was 20 million more crossing the border over the next three decades. In 2014, when Latin America is the home of 40 of the 50 most dangerous cities in the world – including the 18 top spots, how many millions will follow after Barack Obama’s amnesty next week?
Finally, the dilemmas are not reserved for the GOP. If Barack Obama is allowed to blatantly ignore the law and simply choose not to enforce it, what will the next president be free to do? What if a GOP president directs the IRS to not collect capital gains taxes or estate taxes? What if a GOP president directs HHS to stop direct deposit of welfare checks, forcing those on welfare to stand in line at a government office to pick up their checks? What if a GOP president decides to stop enforcing civil rights legislation that he thinks is outdated? If Democrats have no problem with Barack Obama rewriting Obamacare or immigration law to suit his own needs, they will be hard pressed to not be seen as hypocrites when a GOP president chooses to do the same when he targets their golden calves. At that point we cease to be a nation of laws and become a nation of men, the exact thing our Constitution was established to prevent.
The United States has survived as a representative democracy for 225 years because presidents understood that they were not kings. Even presidents who might have thought they were, such as Teddy Roosevelt and FDR, in the end demurred to the Constitution when the chips were down. Barack Obama on the other hand has decided that even in the face of a blistering defeat he is going to implement his policies, Constitution be dammed. Let’s hope the next part of the Constitution he decides to ignore isn’t the 22nd Amendment.
He’s doing this very much against the will of an overwhelming majority of American people. Not only do polls show that Americans are 3 to 1 against his giving amnesty to illegals, but his party, which very much supports his position, just got shellacked in voting booths across the country, at every level. Nonetheless, Barack Obama plans to do it anyway, because he feels he’s right… and because he can.
Technically he can’t really grant permanent amnesty because that would require the law to be changed. He’ll probably use his prosecutorial discretion to simply tell them that – at least while he’s president – they need not fear deportation. He’ll likely accomplish that by telling the DHS to basically look the other way and not deport those who are here illegally, depending on who they are, when they arrived, whether or not they have kids, etc. While as the chief executive of the government, he does indeed have the Constitutional power to tell agencies how they should act within the law, he does not have the power (legally) to tell them to close their eyes and arbitrarily ignore the law. Which is likely exactly what he’s going to do.
This action presents a variety of dilemmas. The first is the fact that Congress, not the President, writes the laws. (Although as demonstrated dozens of times with Obamacare, Barack Obama either doesn’t understand this or doesn’t care about it.) For Congress, there is only one Constitutional remedy available to them: Impeachment. When Obama grants Amnesty to 5 million people next week, he will almost certainly have committed an impeachable offense. This however is likely to be a bridge too far for most in Congress. The result will be that for the next two years millions of illegals will come out from the shadows, will buy houses, get jobs, get married and begin living their lives as if they were in the United States legally. Which brings up the second dilemma.
Theoretically Congress does have one other avenue available through which it can pursue a remedy: the courts. This however is a very iffy proposition. The federal court system is extraordinarily slow, and given that Congress has impeachment as an option, the likelihood of the Supreme Court getting involved is rather thin. In addition, a split decision on the case (unlike US v. Nixon) declaring the Executive Order illegal would simply cause Obama to reword it and issue another.
Most despairingly for those who value the Constitution and the nation, Obama’s amnesty will likely have the impact of opening the floodgates of immigrants from Latin America. Already the presidents of Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras are reported to believe that Joe Biden has laid out the welcome mat for their citizens seeking to emigrate to the United States. In 1986 Ronald Reagan gave amnesty to 2.5 million illegal aliens and the result was 20 million more crossing the border over the next three decades. In 2014, when Latin America is the home of 40 of the 50 most dangerous cities in the world – including the 18 top spots, how many millions will follow after Barack Obama’s amnesty next week?
Finally, the dilemmas are not reserved for the GOP. If Barack Obama is allowed to blatantly ignore the law and simply choose not to enforce it, what will the next president be free to do? What if a GOP president directs the IRS to not collect capital gains taxes or estate taxes? What if a GOP president directs HHS to stop direct deposit of welfare checks, forcing those on welfare to stand in line at a government office to pick up their checks? What if a GOP president decides to stop enforcing civil rights legislation that he thinks is outdated? If Democrats have no problem with Barack Obama rewriting Obamacare or immigration law to suit his own needs, they will be hard pressed to not be seen as hypocrites when a GOP president chooses to do the same when he targets their golden calves. At that point we cease to be a nation of laws and become a nation of men, the exact thing our Constitution was established to prevent.
The United States has survived as a representative democracy for 225 years because presidents understood that they were not kings. Even presidents who might have thought they were, such as Teddy Roosevelt and FDR, in the end demurred to the Constitution when the chips were down. Barack Obama on the other hand has decided that even in the face of a blistering defeat he is going to implement his policies, Constitution be dammed. Let’s hope the next part of the Constitution he decides to ignore isn’t the 22nd Amendment.
Monday, November 3, 2014
Obamacare, WW II and how hubris undermines citizen confidence in government
I recently heard a broadcast minute from Neal Boortz. He said the following:
As anyone who has even a minor sense of history knows, it takes more than hubris to actually accomplish anything of consequence. In the case of the Roosevelt administration, in terms of domestic policy they were very much full of hubris. It most clearly showed itself in FDR’s legion of domestic programs which not only didn’t end the depression, but prolonged it and kept unemployment in double digits for years.
On the war front however, it was a different story. Not only was there no hubris, there was a great deal of anxiety and uncertainty as to what the prospects were for success. Nonetheless, while partisan divisions persisted – FDR’s Democrats lost 47 Congressional seats in 1942 – the nation was united in its pursuit of victory. Everyone understood that it was all in. As a result, through a combination of government direction, private sector ingenuity and productivity, individual courage and effort, the United States was not only able to develop everything Boortz talks about, but to employ those materials effectively enough to defeat the combined efforts of Hitler and Tojo.
While not perfect, FDR’s execution of its war strategy was successful for a number of reasons. First, the government was operating in an area where it had a unique skillset, one where it had an unambiguous Constitutional role to play, and one where it could focus the resources the energy of the nation on a common goal. Second, there was a finite clear measure of success everyone understood and agreed upon: the defeat of the Germans and the Japanese.
The competence of the various role players and clarity of the objectives allowed the government to lead the country to achieve what some might call its greatest moment. Such triumphs are rare with government action, and it’s no surprise Obamacare is not among them. Obamacare is the polar opposite of WW II in every way, from start to finish… although in Obamacare’s case it’s never finished. Obamacare did not have a Pearl Harbor to unify a nation… it had dubious statistics manipulated by duplicitous politicians seeking to extend government power. Unlike in WW II, with Obamacare the government had no Constitutional foundation for its actions. And finally, there is hubris. At the beginning of WWII nobody, from FDR down to the greenest private in the Army knew how they were going to defeat the Axis powers, and they knew they didn’t know. But they were confident they would find a way. With Obamacare you had exactly the opposite. You had lying, manipulating politicians, power hungry regulators and their legions of ivory tower lackeys telling the country that they knew exactly how the healthcare market worked, exactly what to do to fix it and precisely what the results would be for the American people. They were extraordinarily wrong on all three, and spectacularly so. As Boortz notes, there was the years in the making website debacle. But then there were the promises of “You can keep your doctor” and a $2,500 reduction in healthcare costs that turned out to be actual lies. And perhaps most ominously, the geniuses in the Obama administration so badly misunderstood how markets work that today, fully a quarter of the country’s doctors have opted out of participating in Obamacare exchanges, and more are opting out every day.
And so it goes with hubris and arrogance, emboldened by police power, the government inflicts the consequences of both on the country’s citizens. From Obamacare to green energy debacles to immigration to the disaster of the VA to… pretty much everything else this administration has tackled has been a textbook demonstration as to why government should not reach beyond its powers laid out in the Constitution. If the citizenry’s view on the Constitutionality of a law is murky, perhaps one should tread lightly and not jam it down their throats. If half of the population is viscerally and vociferously opposed to a law, it might be prudent to move slowly rather than rush through a 2,000 page law no one can read. Finally, if there is no endgame, if there is no clear, objective measure by which government action can be determined to be successful or not, then it might be time to go back to the drawing board and reexamine the goals of the law in the first place. Without such clarity laws are either too broadly written or too ambiguously written and either way adds up to too much power in the hands of bureaucrats and not enough in the hands of citizens. And that's how hubris leads to a collapse of citizen confidence in government...
During the 3 1/2 years of U.S. involvement (in WW II), here’s what we manufactured: 8 battleships, 22 aircraft carriers, 48 cruisers, 349 destroyers, 420 destroyer escorts, 203 submarines, 4 million tons of merchant ships, 100,000 fighters, 98,000 bombers, 24,000 transport aircraft, 58,000 training aircraft, 93,000 tanks, 257,000 artillery pieces, 105,000 mortars, 3,000,000 machine guns, 2.5 mil military trucks, 16.1 million men in uniform, and we developed the atomic bomb. Simply astounding.That contrast is simply amazing. The difference between then and today is much greater than the stark numbers might suggest however. Not only did the government of the early 1940s figure out how to harness the productivity of the American economy to build an unprecedented war machine in record time, but at the same time it was able to employ those resources to defeat enemies entrenched on three different continents, each thousands of miles away from home.
“During this same period of time, three and a half years, it should be noted that Obama couldn’t put together a functioning website,”
As anyone who has even a minor sense of history knows, it takes more than hubris to actually accomplish anything of consequence. In the case of the Roosevelt administration, in terms of domestic policy they were very much full of hubris. It most clearly showed itself in FDR’s legion of domestic programs which not only didn’t end the depression, but prolonged it and kept unemployment in double digits for years.
On the war front however, it was a different story. Not only was there no hubris, there was a great deal of anxiety and uncertainty as to what the prospects were for success. Nonetheless, while partisan divisions persisted – FDR’s Democrats lost 47 Congressional seats in 1942 – the nation was united in its pursuit of victory. Everyone understood that it was all in. As a result, through a combination of government direction, private sector ingenuity and productivity, individual courage and effort, the United States was not only able to develop everything Boortz talks about, but to employ those materials effectively enough to defeat the combined efforts of Hitler and Tojo.
While not perfect, FDR’s execution of its war strategy was successful for a number of reasons. First, the government was operating in an area where it had a unique skillset, one where it had an unambiguous Constitutional role to play, and one where it could focus the resources the energy of the nation on a common goal. Second, there was a finite clear measure of success everyone understood and agreed upon: the defeat of the Germans and the Japanese.
And so it goes with hubris and arrogance, emboldened by police power, the government inflicts the consequences of both on the country’s citizens. From Obamacare to green energy debacles to immigration to the disaster of the VA to… pretty much everything else this administration has tackled has been a textbook demonstration as to why government should not reach beyond its powers laid out in the Constitution. If the citizenry’s view on the Constitutionality of a law is murky, perhaps one should tread lightly and not jam it down their throats. If half of the population is viscerally and vociferously opposed to a law, it might be prudent to move slowly rather than rush through a 2,000 page law no one can read. Finally, if there is no endgame, if there is no clear, objective measure by which government action can be determined to be successful or not, then it might be time to go back to the drawing board and reexamine the goals of the law in the first place. Without such clarity laws are either too broadly written or too ambiguously written and either way adds up to too much power in the hands of bureaucrats and not enough in the hands of citizens. And that's how hubris leads to a collapse of citizen confidence in government...
Sunday, August 3, 2014
The Cult of Barack Obama - Eight Questions to Help Identify Members
I’ve never quite gotten the cult of Che Guevara. Colleges across the country are crisscrossed with students wearing Che tee shirts and dorm rooms are decorated with Che posters. Sometimes if you ask the student wearing a Che shirt about him you’ll get a leftist screed worthy of Matt Damon’s bar scene in Good Will Hunting. They’ll talk about his “affinity for the poor”, that he was a doctor, and the fact that he fought against the American Imperialists and “Capitalist octopuses” who were abusing and exploiting the population of South America. Most of the time however they will simply say nonsensical things like “he fought for the oppressed” or he was a “man of the people”.
What you’ll rarely hear them tell you about, though, is Che the Communist, Che the murderer, Che the narcisist, or Che the sadist. You won’t hear them tell you about the thousands of innocent Cubans who were killed arbitrarily at Che’s direction, or by Che’s own hand. They won’t tell you about the economic morass his revolution brought to Cuba. They won’t tell you about the chaos he left in his wake.
Most people wearing Che shirts or sleeping under Che posters know nothing about Che Guevara but they know that he was larger than life and somehow being associated with him makes them cool.
Such is the nature of a cult. Cherry picking facts and ignoring those that damage the image of their idol. In the case of the cult of Che, it’s a pretty innocuous cult. Other than facilitating a hookup that one might regret in the morning or inciting a fisticuff on the student union, there’s not much of an impact on the wider world.
If only we could say the same about the cult of Barack Obama. His cult shares many of the characteristics of the Che cult: The posters. The tee shirts. The celebrity. Mostly though, the cult of Barack Obama shares the characteristic of its adherents knowing practically nothing about their deity. Ask Obama supporters why they like Obama and you’ll get things like “He is for the people” “He supports women’s rights”, “He fixed the healthcare system” or maybe “He got Bin Laden”. All of those points, like most about Obama, are either meaningless or simply wrong.
Being for the people or supporting women’s rights may make for a good sound bite, but they mean nothing in the debate over public policy. Does lowering taxes so that all citizens can take more of their money home count as being for the people? Does promoting a woman’s right to protect herself with a weapon count as supporting women’s rights? And as for Obama getting Bin Laden, a Facebook post recently summed that up nicely: Crediting Obama with killing Bin Laden is like crediting Nixon with landing on the moon.
And even those things they get right on the surface, they get wrong. They will say that unemployment is lower under Barack Obama, which it is, 6.2% today vs. 7.6%. That is true on the surface, but only because 11 million Americans have given up looking for work since Obama became president. Those people are not counted in the unemployment rate. Had they been counted the unemployment rate would be over 10% rather than 6.2%. They say he implemented Obamacare. This too is true on its face, but it’s a fundamental lie. Obamacare as it was signed into law has never been implemented. Obama has unlawfully given subsidies to tens of millions of people in conflict with the explicit language of the law. He has unconstitutionally given waivers and delays to tens of thousands of employers employing tens of millions of people so that the pain the law imposes won’t be felt until it’s politically expedient… for him. So, in reality, Obamacare as written has not been implemented, but Americans are nonetheless saddled with a dysfunctional system that has cost jobs and caused many people to lose their doctors, face higher costs and in some cases lose their insurance altogether.
And the list goes on… The disconnect between reality and the fantasyland members of the cult live in is stark. But how do you know if a friend or loved one is a member of the Cult of Barack Obama? Well, like a mirror used to uncover a vampire, here are eight questions that might help you find out. (And remember, all of this is after Obama borrowed $5 trillion and the FED pumped almost $4 trillion into the economy.)
Unfortunately, while today Che’s cult is largely harmless, Barack’s has wrought a disaster on the American people and the world beyond. Like the objects in the mirror that are larger than they appear, we can only hope that the cult of Obama fizzles soon after he leaves office as the magnitude of his ineptness and his failures becomes clear.
Most people wearing Che shirts or sleeping under Che posters know nothing about Che Guevara but they know that he was larger than life and somehow being associated with him makes them cool.
Such is the nature of a cult. Cherry picking facts and ignoring those that damage the image of their idol. In the case of the cult of Che, it’s a pretty innocuous cult. Other than facilitating a hookup that one might regret in the morning or inciting a fisticuff on the student union, there’s not much of an impact on the wider world.
If only we could say the same about the cult of Barack Obama. His cult shares many of the characteristics of the Che cult: The posters. The tee shirts. The celebrity. Mostly though, the cult of Barack Obama shares the characteristic of its adherents knowing practically nothing about their deity. Ask Obama supporters why they like Obama and you’ll get things like “He is for the people” “He supports women’s rights”, “He fixed the healthcare system” or maybe “He got Bin Laden”. All of those points, like most about Obama, are either meaningless or simply wrong.
Being for the people or supporting women’s rights may make for a good sound bite, but they mean nothing in the debate over public policy. Does lowering taxes so that all citizens can take more of their money home count as being for the people? Does promoting a woman’s right to protect herself with a weapon count as supporting women’s rights? And as for Obama getting Bin Laden, a Facebook post recently summed that up nicely: Crediting Obama with killing Bin Laden is like crediting Nixon with landing on the moon.
And even those things they get right on the surface, they get wrong. They will say that unemployment is lower under Barack Obama, which it is, 6.2% today vs. 7.6%. That is true on the surface, but only because 11 million Americans have given up looking for work since Obama became president. Those people are not counted in the unemployment rate. Had they been counted the unemployment rate would be over 10% rather than 6.2%. They say he implemented Obamacare. This too is true on its face, but it’s a fundamental lie. Obamacare as it was signed into law has never been implemented. Obama has unlawfully given subsidies to tens of millions of people in conflict with the explicit language of the law. He has unconstitutionally given waivers and delays to tens of thousands of employers employing tens of millions of people so that the pain the law imposes won’t be felt until it’s politically expedient… for him. So, in reality, Obamacare as written has not been implemented, but Americans are nonetheless saddled with a dysfunctional system that has cost jobs and caused many people to lose their doctors, face higher costs and in some cases lose their insurance altogether.
1) Is American household income higher today than it was when Barack Obama took office? No. Lower, by $2,500.If, after going through these questions and answers your friend still supports Barack Obama, they are likely part of the cult. Just to be sure however, ask them why they still support him. If they give you logical, cogent reasons for doing so then maybe they’re just confused and there may be some hope for recovery after all. For the rest it might be time Google "intervention".
2) Are more Americans working today than there were when Barack Obama took office? Nominally yes. 146 million vs. 142 million, but as the population has grown by 13 million, a lower percentage of the population is actually working, 45.6% vs. 46.3%
3) Are there fewer Americans living in poverty today than there were when Barack Obama took office? No. More are. 44 million in 2009 – 14.3% of the population vs. 48 million today, 15% of the population.
4) Are there more or fewer Americans on food stamps today than there were when Barack Obama took office? More. 47 million vs. 34 million.
5) Has the percentage of Americans with health insurance increased since Obamacare passed? No. 83.4% vs. 84.0%.
6) How does Barack Obama’s progressive recovery compare to Ronald Reagan’s free market recovery? Not well: 5.8% total growth over his first 5 years vs. 17.7% for Reagan’s.
7) Is Iraq better off or worse off today than it was when Barack Obama took office? Far worse.
8) Is the world a more stable or friendly place today than it was when Barack Obama took office? Iraq, Syria, Egypt, Libya, Ukraine, Russia, China, Japan, South Korea, North Korea, Venezuela, Honduras… Not so much.
Unfortunately, while today Che’s cult is largely harmless, Barack’s has wrought a disaster on the American people and the world beyond. Like the objects in the mirror that are larger than they appear, we can only hope that the cult of Obama fizzles soon after he leaves office as the magnitude of his ineptness and his failures becomes clear.
Monday, May 26, 2014
Barack Obama - the ESPN President
I’m a big fan of Matt Damon movies. I’m not however a big fan of Matt Damon’s politics. But that’s OK with me. It’s a relationship that works well for both of us. He gets my money when I’m watching Bourne Identity or Ocean’s 11 and he uses that money and fame to find a bigger soapbox from which to spout comments that I usually ignore.
In the same respect, if you’re a fan of sports there are probably a couple players in the NFL or the NBA who you enjoy watching and are glad they are on your team, but you wouldn’t let them within a mile of your daughter. That’s OK too. Owners don’t pay them to be great sons in law. They’re paid to perform on the field of play. They can then take that money and fame and do whatever they want without involving you at all. You get entertained and they get multimillion dollar contracts and date women who are not your daughters. Everyone wins.
Not all arrangements work out that well. Sometimes what people get paid to do and what they spend their time doing are two different things. I was reminded of something about Barack Obama this week. When he wants to be, he can be very, very good. The president had a press conference with the Super Bowl champion Seattle Seahawks. That ten minute conference was outstanding. Although he did have prepared remarks, there was not a teleprompter in sight. While the notes were in front of him, it was obvious he was familiar with the goings on of both the game itself and the team, including Richard Sherman’s post game “conversation”, Russell Wilson’s new hair (or lack thereof) and the lengths to which Paul Allen might go to help his team win. I almost expected him to ask some of the players to come out to the south lawn to play a pickup game. Without a doubt, Barack Obama was very much in his element.
The thing that I was reminded about was the fact that Barack Obama is an incredible sports fan. ESPN even has the annual “Barack-etology” where the president fills out his bracket. The thing that one can’t escape is that Barack knows his basketball. He knows the players, he knows the coaches, the records and the streaks and all of it is done without notes.
Barack Obama was born to be an ESPN host. Unfortunately, however, that’s not what he gets paid for. He gets paid to be the President of the United States. And unlike Matt Damon and lots of players in the NFL and the NBA, he’s not very good at his job.
How does one know that Barack Obama is not very good at his job? Because he never knows what’s going on in the organization he’s paid to lead. Fast and Furious? The president heard about it on the news. The IRS Tea Party targeting scandal? The president heard about it on the news. The DOJ AP snooping scandal? The president heard about it on the news. The VA scandal resulting in the deaths of dozens of veterans? The president heard about it on the news. He must have forgotten about this one as he campaigned on it in 2007 and was formally informed about it by the Bush Administration in 2008.
Then of course there is Benghazi where no one has a clue where the president was while the whole thing was going on... but we know he wasn't in the Situation Room. And Obamacare where the president either lied or didn’t have a clue about the program when he promised Americans they would get lower healthcare costs, they could keep their doctors and they could keep their insurance.
So my question is, is anyone besides me upset that Barack Obama, the guy who is paid to be President of the United States seems to know practically nothing about anything that goes on in his administration until he reads about it on the news, but he could fill in for Colin Coward at the drop of a hat if the ESPN host got hit by a truck? Does it bother anyone else that Barack Obama, the most powerful man in the world seems far more engaged in discussing the potential outcomes of a basketball tournament than he does discussing the outcomes of his disastrous policies? Is it a problem for anyone else that Barack Obama seems more comfortable on a golf course than he does actually running the affairs of the nation?
Sports is a very much an honorable business to be in. As a matter of fact, as a conservative I love the sports business because it is one of the few places left in the economy where hard work, achievement and success are rewarded largely based on merit and without the cancerous concerns of political correctness. As such, I’d like to suggest that Barack Obama leave the White House and begin a new career at ESPN. Americans would be better off as the Biden would fumble the implementation of Obama’s crippling policies and sports fans would have the benefit of a great communicator who knows sports like the back of his hand. That sounds like a win-win for everyone involved…
In the same respect, if you’re a fan of sports there are probably a couple players in the NFL or the NBA who you enjoy watching and are glad they are on your team, but you wouldn’t let them within a mile of your daughter. That’s OK too. Owners don’t pay them to be great sons in law. They’re paid to perform on the field of play. They can then take that money and fame and do whatever they want without involving you at all. You get entertained and they get multimillion dollar contracts and date women who are not your daughters. Everyone wins.
The thing that I was reminded about was the fact that Barack Obama is an incredible sports fan. ESPN even has the annual “Barack-etology” where the president fills out his bracket. The thing that one can’t escape is that Barack knows his basketball. He knows the players, he knows the coaches, the records and the streaks and all of it is done without notes.
Barack Obama was born to be an ESPN host. Unfortunately, however, that’s not what he gets paid for. He gets paid to be the President of the United States. And unlike Matt Damon and lots of players in the NFL and the NBA, he’s not very good at his job.
How does one know that Barack Obama is not very good at his job? Because he never knows what’s going on in the organization he’s paid to lead. Fast and Furious? The president heard about it on the news. The IRS Tea Party targeting scandal? The president heard about it on the news. The DOJ AP snooping scandal? The president heard about it on the news. The VA scandal resulting in the deaths of dozens of veterans? The president heard about it on the news. He must have forgotten about this one as he campaigned on it in 2007 and was formally informed about it by the Bush Administration in 2008.
Then of course there is Benghazi where no one has a clue where the president was while the whole thing was going on... but we know he wasn't in the Situation Room. And Obamacare where the president either lied or didn’t have a clue about the program when he promised Americans they would get lower healthcare costs, they could keep their doctors and they could keep their insurance.
Sports is a very much an honorable business to be in. As a matter of fact, as a conservative I love the sports business because it is one of the few places left in the economy where hard work, achievement and success are rewarded largely based on merit and without the cancerous concerns of political correctness. As such, I’d like to suggest that Barack Obama leave the White House and begin a new career at ESPN. Americans would be better off as the Biden would fumble the implementation of Obama’s crippling policies and sports fans would have the benefit of a great communicator who knows sports like the back of his hand. That sounds like a win-win for everyone involved…
Monday, May 19, 2014
The dysfunctional Veterans Administration, the fig leaf of Obamacare and the time traveling Omega 13 device...
In one of the greatest and most underrated movies of all time, Galaxy Quest, the story revolves around something called the Omega 13 device. For most of the movie no one really knows what it is or does. We discover near the end that the Omega 13 is a time machine and it can turn back the clock… but only for 13 seconds. That doesn’t sound like much, but sometimes 13 seconds is enough to recognize a problem and go back and fix it. (spoiler alert) In Galaxy Quest the 13 seconds is enough to rescue our heroes and give them time to save the universe from the bad guy.
Today I’m wishing we had an Omega 13, but I might call it the Obama 5… as in five years. While in reality I might wish to go back and erase the existence of the entire Obama presidency itself, that’s obviously not realistic. But much more realistic would be going back to 2009 and erasing Obamacare.
The power of the Omega 13 didn’t come simply from its ability to turn back time, after all, what good would it do to set time back 13 seconds when everyone was busy sleeping? No, rather, the Omega 13’s power came from the ability to strategically turn back time at that critical moment when 13 seconds would make a difference between life and death. With the Obama 5 we may be at just such a moment.
It was in 2009 that Obamacare was passed and signed into law. Since then Obamacare has been nothing but a series of epic failures in every sense of the word empowered by unconstitutional manipulations, obfuscations and outright lies on the part of Barack Obama and his administration. While it was hardly credible, for much of the subsequent five years the administration could simply lie about things like premiums going down $2,500 or keeping your doctor, and since nothing had actually been put in place, there was no “proof” that they were lying. Today, after Obamacare has been rolled out and has been a disaster in every sense of the word, they can’t get away with the lies, although they do keep trying.
What’s more important right now, is not proof that the administration knew that premiums were going to rise and that people could not keep their doctors, rather what is far more important is what’s going on over at the Veterans Administration.
The VA is Obamacare taken to its logical conclusion. Why? Because Obamacare was doomed from the beginning. Even from the mouth of Barack Obama, everyone knew that Obamacare was simply a step on the path to single payer. Single rulemaker with the fig leaf of private insurance. Once Obamacare failed the government would step in as the provider of last resort. Single payer. And what is the Veterans Administration other than single payer within its area of responsibility... or irresponsibility as the case might be?
In a piece on Politico Max Cleland helpfully suggests that the target should be taken off the back of VA Secretary Eric Shinseki because, among other reasons “The latest American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI), an independent customer service survey, ranks the VA’s customer satisfaction among veteran patients to be the very best in the nation and equal or better then private-sector hospitals.” One wonders if any of the 40 patients who died waiting for service from the VA were among the surveyed… or the thousands of others who were kept on those unofficial waiting lists.
The truth is, the Veterans Administration has a long history of dysfunction, and survives only because a majority of veterans don’t use its services at all or use them as a supplement to their private insurance or use them only after their private resources have been exhausted. Were all eligible veterans to fully engage with the VA to the full extent possible the agency would collapse overnight under the weight.
Essentially the VA survives because there is a relief valve in the form of private insurance. And yet it’s still a perpetually failing enterprise. Now imagine that same structure being responsible for the healthcare of every American from cradle to grave, but without a relief valve. That’s Obamacare. Long waiting lines for care. Substandard care. Severely limited choices. Death panels… and extraordinarily expensive to boot!
Rarely in public policy is it possible to see such a stark representation of the future of a particular piece of legislation. The chaos of the Veterans Administration, the killer waitlists, the duplicitous bureaucracy, the limited choices and much more are on the horizon for every American as Obamacare more fully digests the entire healthcare system.
My guess is that, knowing what Americans now know about the failures of Obamacare, and after watching the fatal consequences of government healthcare play out right in front of them, most Americans would wish we had our own version of the Omega 13, an Obama 5, and would choose to turn back time 5 years, just long enough to correct the error of Obamacare and save hundreds of millions of Americans from a VA style future. Unfortunately we don’t have an Omega 13 or alas Obama 5 for that matter, but we do have an election in November and another in 2016. If there is a litmus test for any candidate, the first question on that test should be their support for a full repeal of Obamacare. It’s not nearly as fun as time travel, but it’s all we’ve got right now…
Today I’m wishing we had an Omega 13, but I might call it the Obama 5… as in five years. While in reality I might wish to go back and erase the existence of the entire Obama presidency itself, that’s obviously not realistic. But much more realistic would be going back to 2009 and erasing Obamacare.
It was in 2009 that Obamacare was passed and signed into law. Since then Obamacare has been nothing but a series of epic failures in every sense of the word empowered by unconstitutional manipulations, obfuscations and outright lies on the part of Barack Obama and his administration. While it was hardly credible, for much of the subsequent five years the administration could simply lie about things like premiums going down $2,500 or keeping your doctor, and since nothing had actually been put in place, there was no “proof” that they were lying. Today, after Obamacare has been rolled out and has been a disaster in every sense of the word, they can’t get away with the lies, although they do keep trying.
What’s more important right now, is not proof that the administration knew that premiums were going to rise and that people could not keep their doctors, rather what is far more important is what’s going on over at the Veterans Administration.
The VA is Obamacare taken to its logical conclusion. Why? Because Obamacare was doomed from the beginning. Even from the mouth of Barack Obama, everyone knew that Obamacare was simply a step on the path to single payer. Single rulemaker with the fig leaf of private insurance. Once Obamacare failed the government would step in as the provider of last resort. Single payer. And what is the Veterans Administration other than single payer within its area of responsibility... or irresponsibility as the case might be?
The truth is, the Veterans Administration has a long history of dysfunction, and survives only because a majority of veterans don’t use its services at all or use them as a supplement to their private insurance or use them only after their private resources have been exhausted. Were all eligible veterans to fully engage with the VA to the full extent possible the agency would collapse overnight under the weight.
Essentially the VA survives because there is a relief valve in the form of private insurance. And yet it’s still a perpetually failing enterprise. Now imagine that same structure being responsible for the healthcare of every American from cradle to grave, but without a relief valve. That’s Obamacare. Long waiting lines for care. Substandard care. Severely limited choices. Death panels… and extraordinarily expensive to boot!
Rarely in public policy is it possible to see such a stark representation of the future of a particular piece of legislation. The chaos of the Veterans Administration, the killer waitlists, the duplicitous bureaucracy, the limited choices and much more are on the horizon for every American as Obamacare more fully digests the entire healthcare system.
My guess is that, knowing what Americans now know about the failures of Obamacare, and after watching the fatal consequences of government healthcare play out right in front of them, most Americans would wish we had our own version of the Omega 13, an Obama 5, and would choose to turn back time 5 years, just long enough to correct the error of Obamacare and save hundreds of millions of Americans from a VA style future. Unfortunately we don’t have an Omega 13 or alas Obama 5 for that matter, but we do have an election in November and another in 2016. If there is a litmus test for any candidate, the first question on that test should be their support for a full repeal of Obamacare. It’s not nearly as fun as time travel, but it’s all we’ve got right now…
Monday, May 5, 2014
Barack Obama, 2016 and the Burning of the Reichstag
Let’s face it, most Americans expect our politicians to lie. At least about the little things. Typically politicians try to keep things opaque so that they can easily massage the historical record once things don’t work out or the winds change. “I’ll put America back to work”. “I’ll bring home jobs.” “I support a fair tax system.” “I support education & women’s rights.” The less precise that a politician’s statements, the fewer people they will alienate, and in an American political universe of negative campaigns, that often seems to be the road most traveled. We expect them to lie about little things, but be aboveboard about the big, important things.
Then there is Barack Obama. News came out this week that provided confirmation that the Obama administration lied to the American people about Benghazi. On September 16, 2012 Susan Rice made the rounds of five talk shows telling the nation the attack on Benghazi that took the lives of 4 Americans was the result of spontaneous protests in response to an anti Islamic YouTube video. To many people that seemed absurd, but some were unsure and were willing to give the administration the benefit of the doubt. When it became clear that that narrative was simply false, the administration claimed that the talking points were directed by the State Department and the CIA. On Tuesday that was proved a lie as an email from the White House addresses Benghazi specifically in terms of blaming the video and not terrorism or policy failures.
This fits a pattern for this White House. And what makes it so perfidious is that it’s not to protect the country, but rather to save Barack Obama’s political skin. Again and again they have lied to the American people about big things, important things. And it’s gotten worse over time. At first it was passing of Obamacare, something sufficiently incomprehensible that Nancy Pelosi said “We have to pass it so we can find out what’s in it.” Barack Obama promised If you like your doctor you can keep your doctor and If you like your insurance, you can keep it despite the fact that the administration knew that to be specifically false.
Then it was using the police power of the government, embodied by the IRS, to seek to shut down the voice of their opponents. Certainly Americans would not be surprised that political opponents of a president sometimes find themselves being audited. But this was much more than auditing. This was the government seeking to use its power to muzzle opponents by limiting their ability to raise funding. And of course Barack Obama assured the American people that there was nothing political going on. In a free nation is there any more pernicious act than a government using its police power to repress its opposition? No. In America where we spend about as much on political campaigns as we do on chewing gum annually, even a modest limitation on the spending of your opponents can pay handsome rewards.
And now the most treacherous if not traitorous thing of all is the abject manipulation of the truth about the death of a US Ambassador in order to sway an election. We now have proof that six weeks before the 2012 election the White House manipulated the media and the message related to Benghazi for the specific purpose of supporting the illusion of Barack Obama’s foreign policy competence and his claim that al Qaeda was on the run and had been “decimated”.
So the question is, now that the election is over, what’s next? We already know from his own message to Putin that he believes he has greater flexibility now. Since there is no pending election through which the American people might put him in the unemployment line, what limits exist? He has pushed the envelope from taking away liberties to oppressing opponents to lying about his administration’s responsibility for the loss of life of a US Ambassador and three others. It’s not likely that he can get a repeal of the 22nd Amendment through, but one has to wonder, could he or would he manufacture some crisis that would cause the election of 2016 to be postponed? Perhaps indefinitely? Is it possible that the DHS might use events like the one down in Nevada with Cliven Bundy and his supporters to implement some sort of unprecedented nationwide emergency powers to battle people the DHS already considers potential terrorists… You know, like veterans or anti-abortion activists or border enforcement types? Is it possible that he could fall back on his community organizing skills to inflame his supporters to occupy government buildings around the country and demand changes as the students did at Columbia in 1968?
Sure, this might sound farfetched, but we’ve covered a lot of ground towards fascism over the last six years. No one gets elected in a democracy saying “I want to take away your rights” although they often do get elected saying they are going to take away someone else’s. Once they have their hands on the reins of power however, particularly of the DOD and DHS, it’s only a president’s integrity and appreciation for America’s greatness above their own that keeps him from seeking to manipulate the levers to extend his stay. (Remember, Nixon left without putting up a fight beyond the courtroom.) With Barack Obama, a man with little compunction about lying, an ego that makes Donald Trump look like a wallflower and who has both a disdain for the Constitution and a love affair with Executive Orders, I find myself a little concerned about the potential for a contrived American version of the burning of the Reichstag.
Then there is Barack Obama. News came out this week that provided confirmation that the Obama administration lied to the American people about Benghazi. On September 16, 2012 Susan Rice made the rounds of five talk shows telling the nation the attack on Benghazi that took the lives of 4 Americans was the result of spontaneous protests in response to an anti Islamic YouTube video. To many people that seemed absurd, but some were unsure and were willing to give the administration the benefit of the doubt. When it became clear that that narrative was simply false, the administration claimed that the talking points were directed by the State Department and the CIA. On Tuesday that was proved a lie as an email from the White House addresses Benghazi specifically in terms of blaming the video and not terrorism or policy failures.
This fits a pattern for this White House. And what makes it so perfidious is that it’s not to protect the country, but rather to save Barack Obama’s political skin. Again and again they have lied to the American people about big things, important things. And it’s gotten worse over time. At first it was passing of Obamacare, something sufficiently incomprehensible that Nancy Pelosi said “We have to pass it so we can find out what’s in it.” Barack Obama promised If you like your doctor you can keep your doctor and If you like your insurance, you can keep it despite the fact that the administration knew that to be specifically false.
And now the most treacherous if not traitorous thing of all is the abject manipulation of the truth about the death of a US Ambassador in order to sway an election. We now have proof that six weeks before the 2012 election the White House manipulated the media and the message related to Benghazi for the specific purpose of supporting the illusion of Barack Obama’s foreign policy competence and his claim that al Qaeda was on the run and had been “decimated”.
So the question is, now that the election is over, what’s next? We already know from his own message to Putin that he believes he has greater flexibility now. Since there is no pending election through which the American people might put him in the unemployment line, what limits exist? He has pushed the envelope from taking away liberties to oppressing opponents to lying about his administration’s responsibility for the loss of life of a US Ambassador and three others. It’s not likely that he can get a repeal of the 22nd Amendment through, but one has to wonder, could he or would he manufacture some crisis that would cause the election of 2016 to be postponed? Perhaps indefinitely? Is it possible that the DHS might use events like the one down in Nevada with Cliven Bundy and his supporters to implement some sort of unprecedented nationwide emergency powers to battle people the DHS already considers potential terrorists… You know, like veterans or anti-abortion activists or border enforcement types? Is it possible that he could fall back on his community organizing skills to inflame his supporters to occupy government buildings around the country and demand changes as the students did at Columbia in 1968?
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