Yesterday we reviewed the first 31 reasons why President Obama is unworthy of a second term. Some of yesterday's 31 reasons covered the many times when he was silent while his political allies vilified, slandered, and demeaned ordinary Americans for simply having an intelligent and honest difference of opinion with his administration's programs and views.
Yesterday's other reasons covered this administration's failed economic policies and increasingly frequent disregard for the tenets of the Constitution and the rule of law in this country. This first set of reasons is enough evidence of President Obama's unworthiness for a second term. However, more than 50 more reasons will be covered today and tomorrow.
The “Foreign Affairs Are Foreign To Me” Syndrome
Many of the foreign affairs issues we face as a nation are difficult and challenging. I am not sure that President John McCain could have done a better job than Obama, However, as the old sports saying goes, “you are only as good as your record,” and this administration’s foreign affairs record is not good, and given its track record to date, is not likely to improve in the next four years:
32) Iran is three years closer to having nuclear weapons capability.
33)North Korea is three years closer to having nuclear weapons capability.
34) The Israelis and Palestinians are no closer to peaceful coexistence than they were three years ago.
35) Our Afghanistan situation is just as hopeless and lost as it was three years ago.
36) The latest public opinion polls of Arab citizens indicate our standing with the “Arab Street” is as low as it has ever been, ranking behind Iran and its tyrannical leaders on many dimensions.
37) The Obama administration was caught totally unaware and unprepared when one of the biggest freedom movements of all time came to be, the Arab Spring, indicating a massive contingency planning failure of State Department.
38) Although the Obama administration has theoretically gotten us militarily out of Iraq, it was done much later than we were led to believe would happen during the 2008 Presidential campaign. In fact, Obama withdrew our troops from Iraq on the original George W. Bush withdrawal schedule, a fact that was not mentioned during Obama's campaigning.
39) All of which is a moot point since rather than stationing actual U.S. military troops in the country, we will pay anywhere from 5,000 to 10,000 mercenaries to do our military bidding going forward. Thus, we will still have armed forces in the country, regardless of what you call them, in direct opposition to Obama’s vow to get us all the way out of Iraq.
Overall, from a foreign affairs perspective, we are no better off, best case, than we were three years ago and in many cases, especially the growth in the nuclear arms club, we are likely worse off.
The “How To Screw It Up For The 90% When Trying To Fix It For The 10%” Syndrome - Obama Care
When the debate over health care reform started, it was viewed as a national tragedy that about 30 million Americans, or about 10% of the population, did not have health care insurance coverage. Rather than come up with a solution that addressed the needs of the 10%, the Obama administration constructed an immense, unwieldy, and doomed to failure piece of legislation that is likely to not fix the 10% problem but will cause havoc for many in the 90% of the people that already had, and were mostly happy with, their current health care insurance.
At no time in our history can I remember a piece of legislation that was so poorly thought out, so poorly written, and will have such catastrophic impacts on so many Americans:
40) Tens of millions of Americans are likely to lose their health care insurance from their employers since under Obama Care it is less expensive for them to terminate their health care insurance programs and pay a fine than to continue them.
41) Obama Care will impose more than 1,950 new Federal government rules and regulations on Americans and American businesses, reducing economic growth and contributing to high unemployment for years besides severely restricting the freedom of all Americans.
42) The CLASS component of Obama Care, that program which was supposed to provide long term care and was one of the main and few reasons for the initial financial analysis of Obama Care being positive, has already been shut down because it provided fewer benefits at higher cost than existing long term care programs in the private sector. Thus, the financial viability of the entire Obama Care program is now in great doubt.
43) The head actuary for Medicare and Medicaid recently completed his own in-depth analysis of Obama Care and concluded that it will add more than $300 billion to the national debt in the first ten years vs. if Obama Care had not been passed, shattering the Obama administration’s claim that Obama Care would reduce our skyrocketing national debt.
44) About 1,500 exemptions to the law’s requirements have already been granted by the Obama administration, strongly indicating that if you have to make over 1,500 exemptions before the full force of any legislation is in effect, it is not going to be a good piece of legislation.
45) The law is so poorly written that it will likely influence whether Americans get married, take a promotion, or retire since there are seriously financial ramifications for all of these decisions under Obama Care. Government laws and actions should make citizens’ lives easier, not seriously impact and influence the major personal decisions in their lives.
46) The legislation was passed through the barely legal but highly unethical process called reconciliation. Legislation of this magnitude and this importance needed to be passed with full disclosure and in the right, ethical way since it will impact every American. Reconciliation is the wrong way, it is the coward’s way.
47) Numerous opinion polls of business owners show that the magnitude, penalties, and uncertainty of the Obama Care legislation is causing business owners to hunker down and curtail business expansion and hiring, contributing to continued high unemployment and anemic economic growth.
48) The legislation will fail miserably because of the poor problem solving skills of those who wrote it. The root causes of our skyrocketing health care costs and resultant high insurance costs are the following, mostly public health reasons:
- Americans eat too much.
- Americans eat too much of the wrong types of food.
- Americans do not exercise enough.
- Americans smoke too much.
- Americans are getting older on average.
49) And most importantly, Obama either lied or was totally oblivious to what Obama Care would do to most Americans. The President said we could all keep our current health care plans but that will not happen since many companies will opt to pay Obama Care’s small fines than continue to carry health insurance for their employees. The President said that Obama Care will not add to the national debt but that is no where close to being a true statement according to many nonpartisan experts.
The “I Hope The Big Issues of Our Time Get Resolved Since I Have Other Things To Do” Syndrome
For decades, no one in the White House or in Congress has come up with effective, compassionate, and efficient solutions to the major issues of our times. These include Republicans and Democrats, today and forty years ago. Thus, although candidate Obama campaigned on the promise of hope and change, his ability and come with actual plans to implement that hope and change has failed just as miserably as those that came before him, causing that “hope and change” theme to ring very hollow three years into his term:
50) Forty years or so after Nixon declared “war on drugs,” we are no closer as a nation form having a sane and effective illicit drug program. In fact, if anything, the growth of the violent drug cartels that threaten the sovereignty of Mexico and other Central and South American countries has grown exponentially during Obama’s first three years as resolution of our war on drugs is nowhere in sight.
51) Decades after Congress ordered the military to seal the Mexican/U.S. border within 45 days to prevent illegal immigration, our border still leaks drugs and illegal immigrant crossings as much as ever with no sane, compassionate, comprehensive immigration policy at hand.
52) Almost thirty years after the Reagan administration systematically identified the major and many flaws in our public education processes, our kids are still getting undereducated relative to kids in many, many other countries, with this administration proposing nothing worthwhile to change that situation. President Obama's education efforts are just as feeble as the Bush administration's efforts.
53) More than thirty five years after the oil Arab embargoes from the 1970s, we are no closer to having a coherent, clean, and comprehensive energy program for our country. Ordering the EPA to overstep its bounds and legal mandate as Obama is trying to do is not a coherent, clean, and comprehensive energy program.
No other Congress or President seriously tried to solve these problems prior to the Obama Presidency a club he has now joined.
The “And Don’t Bother Me With The Little Details Of Government Either Since I Have Other Things To Do” Syndrome
Not only has this administration not made any progress on the big issues facing Americans today, government operations have never seemed so hapless, inefficient, and wasteful as we have seen over the past three years:
54) The Medicare program still wastes/loses $60-90 billion a year due to fraud, criminal syndicates, and inefficiency, with no apparent plan in place to fix the problem three years into this Presidency.
55) The Medicaid program still wastes/loses $30-40 billion year due to fraud, criminal syndicates, and inefficiency, with no apparent plan in place to fix the problem three years into this Presidency.
56) The Social Security program still wastes/loses about $70 billion a year due to fraud, criminal syndicates, and inefficiency, with no apparent plan in place to fix the problem three years into this Presidency.
57) Just one of the Federal government’s unemployment program loses about $19 billion a year due to fraud, criminal syndicates, and inefficiency, with no apparent plan in place to fix the problem three years into this Presidency.
58) The IRS fails to collect over $300 billion a year due to tax evasion with no apparent plan in place to fix the problem three years into this Presidency, a failure that forces honest Americans to pay more in their tax bills.
59) The Federal government’s food stamp program wastes/loses at least $3 billion a year due to fraud, criminal syndicates, and inefficiency, with no apparent plan in place to fix the problem three years into this Presidency.
60) The waste and redundancy of government programs is mind boggling with the Federal government having 15 different agencies overseeing food safety laws, more than 20 independent programs helping the homeless, 80 different programs to help economic development, 82 different government agencies working on improving teacher quality, 47 different government agencies working on job training, and 18 different programs working on food and nutrition assistance. These overlapping, redundant, inefficient, and different agencies and departments waste tens of billions of dollars every year with no apparent plans in place to fix the waste.
61) The Federal government and Obama administration was completely unprepared to handle the Gulf oil spill, taking months to develop a plan to stop and contain the situation, a plan that should have been ready for deployment within hours of the disaster.
62) Although Congress passed legislation in 2008 to curtail fraud in the food stamp program, three years later the Obama administration has still not written the regulations mandated in the law, allowing food stamp waste to continue unabated even though legislation is in place to address the situation.
63) As of late 2011, the Obama administration had failed to write 75% of the regulations that were scheduled to have been completed as mandated under the Dodd-Frank Financial Industry Reform legislation, a failure that may have led to the bankruptcy of MF Global and the loss of over $1 billion in client wealth.
64) Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the Federal government’s large housing industry entities that were major culprits in behind the Great Recession, continue to devour billions of taxpayer dollars every month in subsidies with no apparent plan in place to stop the need for subsidies
65) Despite hemorrhaging billions of tax payer dollars every month, the Obama administration has made no plans to curb outsized executive compensation at Fannie and Freddie.
Government is more than having tea with the queen and signing grandiose pieces of legislation. It is about respecting taxpayers and the taxes they pay for mundane, every day government services and operations. Allowing those services and operations to waste hundreds of billions of dollars every year is a disgrace, is disrespectful of those citizens and grounds for defeat at the polls.
We will continue with the final of the 88 reasons tomorrow. If I have missed any reason for making President a one term President, please let me know. Conversely, if there are any major reasons why President Obama should be reelected, let me know that also. Both views would contribute to a mature, adult conversation in order to find a way to fix our democracy, our economy, and our political processes before it is too late.
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/
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