- I am not a Republican by any stretch of the imagination.
- Until the November, 2010 mid-tem elections, I had never voted for a Republican for national office in my life.
- Thus, I have never voted for any Presidential candidate named Bush.
- I think that politicians are equal opportunity when it comes to corruption, wasteful spending, laziness, and self enrichment, i.e. Republicans and Democrats are no different when it comes to screwing up the country.
- I was so upset about the Bush administration that I wrote a book about how bad the political class was operating the Federal government and what to do about it, “Love My Country, Loathe My Government.”
Which brings us to our next topic, the top ten disappointments of the Obama administration, as identified by the Independent Journal Review, on May 2, 2013. The first ten disappointments were from the Independent Journal Reviews analysis. I took the liberty of adding a few more of my own.
Think back about four years ago. Obama’s approval rating as he came into office was sky high. He could have done just about anything he wanted, good or bad, since his party controlled Congress. He made many promises, economically, politically, and internationally. He promised to unite the country. He promised to fix the economy. He promised a lot.
And he delivered very little. The economy is still in the dumps. Our international standing and respect is in retreat. Over 20 million Americans are unemployed or underemployed. Food aid is at an all time high. His approval rating has sunk like a rock. Government surveillance and the destruction of freedom and rights are at an all time high. And his promises have failed miserably at becoming reality as the following review and analysis shows.
1. Close Gitmo
"As President, I will close Guantanamo, reject the Military Commissions Act and adhere to the Geneva Conventions." Four years later, Gitmo is still open, the American taxpayer continues to pay billions of dollars to manage and expand the facilities there, long time inmates are in the midst of a hunger strike and forced feeding, and the President recently promised to again to close the facility but admitted he had no idea how to do it.
This was supposed to be a major international coup for the President. He and his supporters said that this type of detention facility was an embarrassment to our ideals of liberty and needed to be shut down. So much for shutting down this embarrassment.
2. End Afghan War Quickly
"After 18 months, our troops will begin to come home [in June 2011]… [O]ur troop commitment in Afghanistan cannot be open-ended – because the nation that I'm most interested in building is our own." Thus, this promise would have had most of our troops and financial resources out of the country by Afghanistan by December, 2012 if the President was able to hit the 18 month target.
The U.S. military will be in Afghanistan at least until 2014, and possibly longer, along with the associated taxpayer cost. Troop withdrawals have been modest since these statements.
3. Stimulus - Unemployment Below 5%
President Obama's stimulus package passed in 2009 and cost the American taxpayer over $800 billion. The administration boldly stated that if the stimulus package was not implemented, the U.S. unemployment rate would go as high as 8%. His stimulus program promised to get unemployment under 5% by May 2013 without millions dropping out of the labor force to get to that level.
Well, it is May, 2013 and since the stimulus was passed, we have suffered through the following disappointments:
- The stimulus package was passed AND the unemployment rate did get to over 8% despite the promises of the stimulus.
- In fact, this administration set a record for most consecutive months with the national unemployment rate being over 8%.
- The promised 5% unemployment rate is no where in sight.
- The truer picture of unemployment, where we include both the unemployed and the underemployed, is in the 14% range which translates to over 20 million Americans in need of better job opportunities.
- A recent poll by Accenture found that 41% of U.S. workers who graduated from college in the last two years are underemployed and working in jobs that did not require a college degree.
- The poll also found that only 16% of college students who will graduate this year had already landed a job.
- Worse, 32% of the 2011 and 2012 college graduates who are employed make $25,000 or less in annual salary.
- Household wealth and income has dropped substantially AFTER the Great Recession ended.
4. Shovel Ready Jobs
"Shovel-ready was not as shovel-ready as we expected," said the President in one of the bigger under statements of his administration. One of the biggest catch words of the stimulus program was that the money would be put to work immediately in so-called “shovel-ready” jobs.
These jobs would be good paying, solid, long term jobs that built roads, repaired bridges, retrofitted schools, and did other good for society immediately. Several years later, even the President realized that there were no shovel ready jobs. Instead, the administration spent taxpayer wealth on replacing windows in a national park building that had been shut down and would never be reopened, a study of insects on a an island half way around the world, and hundreds of other equally inane and useless programs, none of which were shovel ready jobs.
Even if you buy the administration’s contention that the stimulus created over 2.2 million private sector jobs:
- Many of them were part time jobs.
- And if you divide the number of jobs “created” into the total cost of the stimulus you see that each of these private sector jobs cost over $375,000 each to create. Hardly a cost efficient way to get people back to work.
- Many other jobs that were “created” turned out to be government jobs, which require that taxpayers pay for them every day going forward.
5. Most Ethical & Transparent Administration Ever
"I won't stop fighting to open up government... we have put in place the toughest ethics laws and toughest transparency rules of any administration in history." Unfortunately, the Obama administration is even more secretive and unethical than the Bush administration:
- When the President was awarded an award for supporting transparency in government, the presentation ceremony was held in secret with no members of the press being present.
- When Bloomberg tried to get simple government employees travel records under Freedom Of Information (FOI) guidelines, the ordeal was stonewalled and stalled way beyond reasonable time frames. Details for Bloomberg’s FOI adventure, along with other serious transparency transgressions, can be accessed at:
- When four brave Americans were unnecessarily murdered in Benghazi, Libya last fall, the administration including the President, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the State Department, and Defense Department hid behind false stories and stonewalled all attempts to find out the why and the who of the disaster, withholding information and trying to silence government whistle blowers.
- This past week the the Associated Press conducted a study showing that in 2012 the Obama administration rejected more FOI requests on national security grounds than in any year since Obama became President. The report quoted Alexander Abdo, an ACLU attorney for its national security project, as follows:
"We've seen a meteoric rise in the number of claims to protect secret law, the government's interpretations of laws or its understanding of its own authority. In some ways, the Obama administration is actually even more aggressive on secrecy than the Bush administration."
If this is his idea of transparency, I cannot imagine what his definition of opaque is.
6. Would Not Rest Until More Jobs, etc.
"But I want you all to know, I will not rest until anybody who's looking for a job can find one -- and I'm not talking about just any job, but good jobs that give every American decent wages and decent benefits and a fair shot at the American Dream." The Independent Journal Review claims that the President has taken at least 57 vacation days since making this statement in late 2009.
I am not saying the President should not be taking vacations to recharge his batteries and energy levels. It is a high stress job that requires some time off. However, the 57 vacation days probably underestimates the time he takes away from working on job and economic issues:
- How many meetings has he had with NFL, NHL, NBA, college, and other sports teams that have been crowned champions in their respective sports? These types of distractions have nothing to do with governing and creating a healthy economy, they only stoke his ego.
- How many meetings and political fund raisers has he attended just this year that have nothing to do with creating a healthy economy?
- This week the President was traveling around Mexico for no apparent critical reason. Would not spending time at home governing and trying to fix the economy have been a better use of time?
- A recent public opinion survey by Pew found that the overwhelming, most critical issue facing the President was the economy and jobs. He must have not read the poll or understand Americans’ priorities since he has been so busy working on immigration and gun control, issues that are extremely minor in Americans’ minds, playing a lot of golf, taking vacation, socializing with sports teams, hosting a concert at the White House, attending campaign fund raisers, etc.
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.reason.com/
http://www.cato.org/
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://realpolichick.blogspot.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w
No comments:
Post a Comment