The Obama Administration and The Political Class - No Certainty, No Leverage, No Progress

A couple of events bring this post together as we begin the new year of 2011. First, we are fast approaching the midpoint of the Obama administration, so with the dawn of the new year it seems appropriate to look back at the first two years of this administration and see what has been accomplished and whether or not the nation is moving forward in a positive direction. Given some of the dire issues facing all of us, it is critical to understand where we stand with the Obama administration and the entire political class to determine if and when they will finally start resolving the major crises of our times.

The second event was an email from Joe Biden's office that was sent to my brother-in-law a few days ago. The letter offered to send my brother-in-law a personalized letter from President Obama for all of the work and support my brother-in-law had done for the administration over the past two years. The letter contained a whole litany of phantom accomplishments of the Obama administration and congratulated the administration for all of the great work it had accomplished in such a short amount of time.

Before we start our review and determine the level of truth in the Biden email, keep in mind the following facts:

• My brother-in-law has probably never voted for a Democrat in his life, never mind worked on furthering the aims of the Obama administration. Makes you wonder who is putting together the White House communications strategy and tactics.
• Up until this past mid-term election, I had never voted for a Republican for national office in my life. Thus, the following analysis of the first two years of the Obama administration and the political class is not done from a long time, die hard Republican perspective. It is done from a rational, fact based, ordinary American perspective.
• Both the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate have been under the control of the Democrats for the past four years. As stated in the Constitution, government spending bills and laws are developed and passed in the Congress and then sent to the President for approval. Thus, all deficit spending budgets are developed and passed by Congress and those that control Congress.
• In the first year of the Obama administration, the Democrats held an overwhelming majority advantage in the House, had a filibuster proof majority in the Senate, and had a Democrat sitting in the White House, allowing for any Democratic Party initiative to have been passed without any compromising or negotiating with the Republicans.
• In the second year of the administration, the Democrats still held large majorities in both houses of Congress, theoretically still allowing them to get anything they wanted as long as they could convince a Republican Senator or two to join their position.

So, given the above facts and the beginning of a new year, how well has the Obama administration and the entire political class served the American public over the past few years? It is not a pretty sight, based on the following realities.

* Economy

While the economy has improved in some areas since the trough in everything in 2008, you have to wonder if any of the Obama administration and other political class policies had anything to do with the improvement or the economy basically healed itself. Consider:

• Cash For Clunkers - a failed stimulus program that resulted in virtually no incremental car sales, only the shifting of demand from the near future to the present to take advantage of government rebates, wasting billions of dollars in the process.
• Cash For Appliances - another failed stimulus program that failed for the same reason as Cash For Clunkers, no incremental demand created, only the timing was changed, resulting in more billions of dollars wasted.
• Cash For Caulkers - such a failure that even the administration does not talk about this program.
• First Time Home Buyers Program - another failure for the same reason as the "Cash" programs above. People bought homes a little quicker than they may have naturally but once the government incentive ended, home sales crashed. No incremental sales, just more taxpayer money given away to people that would have bought a home anyway. Home sales continue to suffer months after the program ended, indicating no long term impact on the housing industry.
• Mortgage Relief Program - even the inspector general in charge of the program deemed it a failure to stem the tide of foreclosures in the country.
• Infrastructure Improvement - A component of the Biden email was the bragging that the Economic Stimulus Program had resulted in significant improvement to the nation's infrastructure. However, an investigative report by the Associated Press, that was released on September 3 2009, showed that about half of the highway bridges "repaired" with stimulus money were in top shape and did not need any improvement or work done on them. Thus, at least with bridges, half of the infrastructure money was wasted on things that were not broken or close to be broken or dangerous. This was a result on politicians looking out for themselves, getting stimulus money spent in their home areas regardless of whether it was a waste or not.
• We have spoken many times in this blog about the wasteful projects that politicians inserted into the Economic Stimulus Program even though both the President and Nancy Pelosi vowed there would not be any pork or wasteful spending. The waste is too numerous to go into here but the one that sticks in my mind is where taxpayer money was used to replace windows in a visitors center at Mt. St. Helens, a visitors' center that had been shuttered for a long time since it was no longer needed and was highly unlikely to ever be opened again. Still, the Obama administration and the political class spent our taxpayer dollars replacing its windows. Shameful.
• The President threatened that if his economic stimulus package was not passed, unemployment could be as high as 8%. Well, the program did get passed and unemployment has hovered around 10% since then. Maybe we would have been better off not passing the stimulus program, not wasting hundreds of billions of dollars, and had settled for only 8% unemployment.

Yes, the stock market has risen recently from its lows from several years ago. Retail shopping is improving, economic growth is low but positive. However, the economy is still very fragile. Unemployment is still around 10% and the housing and mortgage markets are in shambles with foreclosures resulting in falling prices and rising inventories, inventories that will glut the market and stunt growth for years. Worse of all, the reckless spending of the Obama administration and the political class on all of the failed programs listed above, has resulted in this Democratic Congress and administration adding over $4 TRILLION to our national debt in just four years, debt that will burden the economy and future generations of Americans for a very long time.

Why have these policies failed? One view is that there was no leverage across anything the political class did economically. Cash For Clunkers was unrelated to Cash For Caulkers that was unrelated to the First Time Home Buyer Program, etc. There was absolutely no leverage, it was just a sequence of failed and poorly thought through ideas. The political class never understood what was happening before the economy crashed and never fully understood how to fix the underlying problems afterwards.

Given the high unemployment rate, it is pretty apparent that they still do not understand the underlying causes of our economic problems. As a result, the hastily throw out ill conceived programs that have failed to fix anything while increasing our national debt. No leverage, no solution.

Thus, I think there is little doubt, regardless of the Biden claims, that the political class has bungled the economic management and health our economy as badly as any in our history, resulting in high unemployment and huge national debt, with nothing to show in return. This reality was accurately described by an actual politician, U.S. Senator Michael Bennet of Colorado, in a recent quote in the September 3, 2010 issue of the Washington Post: "We have managed to acquire $13 TRILLION of debt on our balance sheet. In my view, we have nothing to show for it." For once, a piece of honesty from a politician.

* Foreign Affairs

With the recent ratification of a nuclear arms treaty with Russia, the Obama administration can claim a major foreign affairs success. I am not a nuclear weapons expert but from what I read, given the amount of bipartisan support for the treaty, it probably was the right thing to do. However, it may be the only foreign affairs success of the Obama administration:

• We are two years closer to seeing Iran become a nuclear weapons owner, with no effort from the Obama administration effectively slowing down the Iranians' acquisition of nuclear weaponry since the administration came into office.
• We are two years closer to seeing North Korea becoming a stronger nuclear weapons power with no effort from the Obama administration effectively slowing down the North Koreans' acquisition of more nuclear weaponry since the administration came into office.
• We are probably closer to actual war on the Korean Peninsula since the the war ended in 1953.
• We are no closer to peace in the Middle East despite extensive political capital spent by the administration to get peace talks, any kind of talks, underway between Israel and the Palestinians.
• We have a violent and almost lawless drug cartel dominated state evolving just south of our border with Mexico.
• We still have 50,000 troops stationed in Iraq for no apparent purpose and are fighting a war in Afghanistan with no apparent progress.
• We are seriously starting to worry about the huge and growing problem if Pakistan becomes destabilized by terrorists, given Pakistan's nuclear arsenal.
• We are seeing significant terrorist inroads in countries such as Somalia and Yemen, countries that could evolve into havens for future terrorists.

Thus, the world has become a far more dangerous place over the past few years with the current administration and the political class appearing incapable of doing anything to stop it. Lack of leverage becomes an issue here also. We are so tied into China from a debt and marketplace perspective, that we can only beg them to help us with North Korea. We cannot leverage anything to get them to help us diplomatically.

We have nothing except money that might leverage the Israelis and Palestinians to play nice together and given the historic and religious basis for their differences, money is mostly ineffective. As a result, we are reduced to humiliating begging to get them to talk to each other.

We have spread our military so thinly around the world that we cannot leverage our outsized military budget to fight the terror threat as effectively as we should. Stationing tens of thousands of troops around Europe and in Japan, places that require absolutely no U.S.military presence in light of current security threats, is a waste of resources and a waste of leverage.

* Bush Vs. Obama - No Major Differences

When President Obama came into office, he pledged to change the ways things got done, especially in comparison to the Bush administration. In fact, this promise of "change" was probably the main reason that Obama got elected. But two years into his administration, has anything really changed, are Washington and the political class functioning and performing any differently:

• Obama basically rubber stamped the renewal of the Patriot Act, initially implemented under Bush, an act that is one of the most freedom depriving laws ever enacted.
• The Guantanamo Bay prison, opened under Bush, is still operating despite the fact Obama promised to close it.
• The President's education reform efforts are basically warmed up versions of the failed Bush "No Child Left Behind" effort.
• We still have troops in Iraq even though the President campaigned on the platform of getting us out of Iraq.
• We still are holding and will continuing holding terror suspects forever, without trial, with no chance of release, just like the Bush administration did.
• We are still held in low esteem by many Muslims throughout the world despite an initial burst of approval rating improvement based on the President's famous Cairo speech, the effects of which have long disappeared.
• We still have no sane or effective national energy policy, much like under Bush. The long dead cap and trade program would have been a disaster and the end run by the President to use EPA to control the nation's energy industry, without popular and Congressional approval, will also fail, given its dictatorial approach and lack of leverage.
• We still have no sane or comprehensive replacement for the failed "War On Drugs" disaster.
• We still have no sane or comprehensive immigration policy that would allow us to dictate who gets into the country, not who crashes our borders.
• We still have no sane or comprehensive program to stop the skyrocketing costs of health care costs in this country, including Obama Care. This effort is under fire in the courts, a recent Rasmussen poll indicates that 60% of Americans want it repealed, the financial underpinnings of the bill are already coming apart, health care providers are already starting to merge into super providers, reducing health care industry competition (the exact opposite of what is needed to allow competition to drive down costs), and major employers throughout the country (AT&T, Verizon, John Deere, Caterpillar, MacDonalds, etc.) are already looking at dropping their employee and retiree health care insurance in order to save money (resulting in more uninsured Americans, the exact opposite of the intended effect of  Obama Care).
• We still have lobbyists in high positions in the Presidential administration despite Obama's campaign vow to not include lobbyists in his administration.
• We still have no sane or rational plan to make Social Security solvent.
• We still have no sane or rational plan to make Medicare and Medicaid solvent.
• We still have no sane or rational plan to balance the Federal budget.

Given the above realities, it is safe to say that there are really no difference between Bush and Obama, they are just two ordinary members of the political class. Nothing has changed.

* National Unity

Well, maybe something has changed. As a nation, we may never have been so divided. Obama's pledge to change the way things are done and to unite the country have failed miserably and much of that can be put at his feet. He has done nothing to stop the name calling and mudslinging, especially from his fellow Democrats, that would help bring the country together. Consider:

• When Democrat Nancy Pelosi questioned the patriotism of any American who dared to disagree with the proposed health care reform, i.e. an American expressed an opinion, Obama was silent.
• When Democratic Congress members likened those opposed to Obama Care to the racists of the Civil Rights Era for having a differing opinion, Obama was silent.
• When a Democratic Congress called Republicans knuckle dragging neanderthals, Obama was silent.
• When a White House czar called Republicans a__h____s, Obama was silent.
• When Playboy's online magazine ran article on why and how to sexually abuse Republican women candidates, Obama was silent.
• When a Minnesota Democrats ran a fund raising concert for a Democrat running against Republican Michelle Bachman and called the concert "F___ Bachman," Obama was silent.

When Americans with a differing opinion are called Neanderthals, a__h___s, un-American and racists and the nation's leadership does nothing to stop this divisive talk, it is no surprise the country has become so divided. So divided that compromise and progress is next to impossible when this leadership void exists, starting with the President.

* Government and Political Class Incompetence

Although there are numerous cases of government and political class discussed above, there are far many instances where both this administration, the government it runs, and the politicians that operate it have totally failed the American people:

• The BP oil spill was a complete disaster on all fronts. Government employees failed to do their jobs to protect against spills like the BP spill with reports that these government employees failed to do the required safety inspections, possibly because some of them were surfing the Net for pornography while at work, abusing drugs, or looking for jobs with the very companies they were supposed to be inspecting.
• Once the spill happened, it became obvious that the government had no contingency plans in place as oil gushed for months while the administration bounced between one failed idea to another, resulting in catastrophic ecologic disaster. The President looked lost and helpless, possibly because of the several vacations he took, the two cross country fund raising trips he took, and the many rounds of golf he played while the citizens of the Gulf coast suffered with the spill. A disgraceful display of government incompetency, on the level of the Katrina disaster.
• As the economy melted down and no government entity (Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, FHA, HUD, FDIC, SEC, Treasury Department, Federal Reserve Board, Senate and House committees on banking and housing) had any foresight into the looming collapse, dozens of SEC employees were shown to be also surfing the Net for pornography during work hours.
• Attorney General Eric Holder testified in front of Congress that he might take Federal action against the Arizona immigration law that had been recently passed. However, it turns out he was going to take action against a bill that he had not even taken the time to read, a bill that was only a handful of pages long. Thus, here was a government official ready to take action against something that he knew no facts about. Unbelievable.
• Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napalitano had the audacity to state everything was under control and all of our security systems had worked as planned relative to the Christmas Day Bomber affair. How can everything be under control when a nut case was only a faulty ignition switch away from blowing up a plane over Detroit? Unbelievable.
• Staying with Homeland Security, how could a top ranking Homeland Security official not know that the British had recently arrested numerous terror suspects when interviewed by Diane Sawyer? Isn't that the kind of stuff they need to keep abreast of in their job, to know what is going on around the world regarding terrorism plots? Isn't the cracking of a major terror cell in Britain worth knowing, especially before going to a TV interview on homeland security? Unbelievable.
• Given that the majority of banks had returned their TARP payments within months of receiving them, indicating that most of them did not need the government bailout to begin with, how could the government and political class be so oblivious to that fact?
• Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were at the heart of the housing and financial meltdown and are now costing the American taxpayer billions of dollars every month to keep them afloat, with no end in sight. The political class knew years ago that both organizations were on shaky accounting, profitability, and operations grounds but did nothing to fix the problem until it was too late. One possible reason is that Fannie and Freddie were big re-election campaign contributors to the very politicians that were supposed to oversee them.
• The political class is quite proud that they passed a financial industry reform bill although it was like closing the gate after the horses got lost, i.e. they passed financial regulations after the economy collapsed. And they did an incompetent job in that area also. The legislation leaves all of the tough decisions to government bureaucrats to implement, the same people that were asleep at the switch when the Great Recession hit. Also, the legislation does nothing relative to car loans, Fannie Mae, and Freddie Mac, major, major portions of the financial industry. What good is passing legislation for an industry that excludes major components of that industry? Unbelievable.
• If the political class cannot even manage a simple mailing list, per my brother-in-law, how can we expect them to manage the country?

Lies?

This administration has a tendency to suppress and spin reality, so much so that it creates a high degree of uncertainty of whether you can trust anything they say or do. Consider:

• A few years ago a senior EPA scientist wrote a paper that questioned the reality and underpinning assumptions to the whole global warming theory. Rather than let that paper be published and debated in true scientific manner, to be proven or refuted, the Obama administration squashed its publication.
• To justify its decision to shut down some offshore oil drilling in the wake of the BP oil spill, the Obama administration asked a panel of experts what the dangers of another spill would be. They then took the feedback from the scientists and twisted it to justify the shutdown, resulting in an outcry from the scientists, involved claiming their findings had been abused.
• When the Obama administration asked the Congressional Budget Office to cost out Obama Care and estimate how much many dollars it would save the government budget, the estimate came back that it would reduce the deficit by $135 billion over ten years. Hardly earth shattering savings but positive nonetheless. However, an investigative report shortly after by the Associated Press revealed that the Congressional Budget Office did not include all of the legislation's final components and thus, overstated the savings by over $100 billion, virtually wiping out the cost savings hyped by the Obama administration to get the bill passed. Lies, oversights or the plain inability to count?
• The other financial shenanigans pulled by the Obama administration involved the ten year view of the plan and how good the financials looked. However, that biased, deceptive view included ten years worth of tax collection but only six years worth of expenses, i.e. it compared apples to oranges in order to sneak through the financial impact of the legislation. Lies or oversights?
• The administration recently announced through its Treasury Department that the taxpayer loss in the bailout of AIG would only be about $5 billion. However, according to an article in latest issue of Reason magazine, the inspector general charged with overseeing the bailout stated that true bailout of AIG will actually cost taxpayers $45 billion. Why the difference? According to the inspector general, the Treasury Department was doing unacceptable accounting tricks to make the bailout, and the Obama administration, look less negative than it actually was in reality.
• Several months ago, General Motors and the government announced that General Motors was paying back the first $6 billion of the bailout it received from the Obama administration. However, in a classic political class spin, the money paid back was not out of operating profits of GM but from another Treasury Department account. In other words, GM was paying back the government (and taxpayers) not with its own money but with other government money. How stupid to they think we are?
• Staying with General Motors, in the fall they had what some called a successful IPO. The Obama administration trumpeted the IPO to prove that it made the right decision to bail out GM in the first place. What they "neglected" to mention is that unless the stock price goes through the roof (it has not so far), the American taxpayer will still be on the hook for over $10 billion of bailout money, a bailout that was never necessary. The marketplace and courts could have taken care of the GM bankruptcy process without government intervention and wasted billions of dollars. However, that may have cost some union jobs and the Obama administration could not let that happen, better to waste billions of taxpayer dollars than to lose a few votes.

Where does all this leave us? Certainly in conflict with Joe Biden's assertion that this administration has been so productive. We have made virtually no progress in any major area of concern to Americans. Where legislation was actually passed, it is easy to see how it will fail or is already failing. Thus, with apologies to the Vice President, there has been no progress on any important front in the past few years.

But the political class has certainly create  more uncertainty in our lives. We are uncertain whether we will be able to afford health care insurance or keep the policies we have. We are uncertain if Social Security or Medicare will ever get fixed and become solvent. We are unsure what the EPA might do to our heating and driving habits and life styles. We are uncertain about when and how the next terrorist attack might occur, knowing that we narrowly escaped when the Christmas Day Bomber and Time Square Bomber came very close to success. We are uncertain what a politician might call us for voic\ning an honest differing opinion or worse yet, invoke some part of the Patriot Act to make sure we behave. And worse yet, we are growing more uncertain whether those in government and the political class can solve any problem and whether can trust anything they tell us.

One glaring fact that comes to light when it comes to problem solving is that those currently in charge do not know how to do a root cause analysis. They are always in a reactive mode. By not understanding root causes, they cannot find ways to leverage assets and power to actually solve a problem. Like the economic malaise facing the country, politicians have only come up with a string of unrelated and unsuccessful programs that leverage and solve nothing. In foreign affairs, the Obama administration is reduced to begging other countries to do something, never understanding the root causes of crises, an understanding that would allow us to leverage our military, intelligence, and economic resources.

Thus, no certainty, no leverage, no progress, the story of our lives the past few years, regardless of what Biden says. I have no idea what world he lives in, given the track record listed above. Maybe he should have read "Love My Country, Loathe My Government." All fifty steps in the book are focused on eliminating the road blocks and processes that prevent problems from being solved while enhancing our freedom. It is not hard but apparently it is too hard for the political class.

The basis of the book is borne out by the political class behavior reviewed above and it all has to do with freedom. For every tax dollar wasted, for every government bureaucracy created, for every government task mishandled, for every failed government and political class initiative, for every insult thrown at ordinary Americans who dare to have a difference of opinion with a politician, for every misuse of the Patriot Act, our freedom and liberty suffer. That is the true tragedy of the past few years, we no longer are as free as we think we are, as free as we once were, or as free as we should be under the Constitution and Bill of Rights. Happy New Year.



Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at www.loathemygovernment.com. It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.


Please visit the following sites for freedom:

http://www.cato.org/
http://www.robertringer.com
http://realpolichick.blogspot.com
http://www.flipcongress2010.com/
http://www.reason.com/
http://www.repealamendment.org