Part 1, The Obama Administration: Many Promises Made, No Promises Fulfilled

Before we begin today’s discussion let me state a few facts:

1. I am not a Republican by any stretch of the imagination.
2. Until the November, 2010 mid-tem elections, I had never voted for a Republican for national office in my life.
3. Thus, I have never voted for any Presidential candidate named Bush.
4. 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.
5. 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.”

Thus, I believe that I am not solely a President Obama basher, I believe that I am a political class basher which, unfortunately, includes about every member of the class.

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.

Seems you cannot be much further away from the President’s economic forecast.

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.

Thus, not only was “shovel ready” a myth, the ability of massive government stimulus and deficit spending to create jobs turned out to be a myth.

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:

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/search?q=freedom+of+information

• 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.

That's enough for today as far as broken promises. We will continue with this list tomorrow, a list of non-achievement that would make any procrastinator proud.

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

 



Wherever The United States Is Going From a Corruption Perspective, India Will Get There First

We have discussed how many different ways our political class in Washington has corrupted the democratic process in this country in any number of posts. From using so-called budget "earmarks" to steer taxpayer money to friendly reelection campaign donors to using insider government and company information to enrich their personal wealth portfolios to voting themselves more and more perks of office such as automatic pay raises, our politicians are especially creative in helping themselves to our wealth.

However, just like in yesterday's post where we saw how our nation's financial destruction is following down the same path of Italy's financial ruin, it appears the corruption within our democracy is following the lead of government and political corruption in India. This analogy becomes clear when we review two recent news articles.

The first article was contained in the "Briefing"section of the October 14, 2011 issue of The Week magazine. It was entitled, "India's Fed Up Middle Class" and it covered the following information:

• This past summer, tens of thousands of Indians marched in the streets to protest the high degree of government and political corruption in the country.
• For example, in 2010 it was uncovered that friends of the ruling Congress Party had wasted $40 billion of taxpayer wealth by awarding telecom contracts to well connected businessmen in exchange for bribes. In America, we call well connected businessmen "lobbyists" and we call bribes "campaign donations."
• Also in 2010, it was revealed how ineptly the government had mismanaged the staging of the Commonwealth Games that year. According to the article, $10 billion was spent building stadiums and infrastructure that were largely useless for the general public, and much of that money was squandered through corruption, incompetence, and bribery. Sounds like what we do in this country when it comes to government programs like Social Security and Medicare, programs that waste hundreds of billions of dollars every year, also through corruption, incompetence, and bribery.
• The article asserts that bribery is a way of life for every Indian, that just about any contact with any government agency involves having to pay a bribe, whether it involves getting a marriage license, getting through through customs, or getting a telephone installed. Sounds like the way ex-Illinios Governor, and soon to be prison inmate,  Rod Blagojevich ran his governor's office when he shook down businesses and individuals for bribes in return for favorable state government legislative treatment.
• A recent opinion poll in India found that two thirds of all who responded in the poll reported that they have had to bribe a government official in the past just to get something done that the government required.
• A call center employee told the Washington Post recently that he had to actually pay a $20 bribe to a government official before he could get a birth certificate for his new born son.

As protests spread this summer, the Indian political class responded with a watered down anti-corruption piece of legislation that exempted top level of government officials from the penalties of the legislation. This is eerily similar to how Congress exempts themselves from our insider trading laws, affirmative action laws, whistle blower laws, etc. Fortunately, the reaction to the exemptions resulted in more protests, hunger strikes, etc. and the law was changed to get rid of the exemptions.

Although we may not be as far along as India when it comes to political corruption, e.g. I do not believe most Americans have ever had to pay a bribe to get a simple government document such as a marriage license or birth certificate, there are many troubling parallels at the higher political level, as pointed out above.

But it is not just bribes and politicians enriching themselves that show how the decline of democracy and freedom in our country and India is so comparable. Consider the sad story of Shehla Massod of India.

Ms. Massod had used India's newly passed public document freedom of information act to expose the corruption of local politicians. She engaged in such analysis when she became suspicious that her company never won any government contracts. Her story was told in the October 24, 2011 issue of Business Week.

Once she got her hands on some government documents, she found out her suspicions were right. The documents showed that many times she was the lowest bidder on many government contracts but was never assigned the job. She continued to investigate by requesting other government documents and became an activist against government corruption, investigating government expense issues, environmental harm issues, and other topics, eventually sharing her corruption findings with newspapers.

Unfortunately, Ms. Masood was shot and killed in a criminal case that is still open. The article explained that once an ordinary Indian citizen asks for government documents, that request is often secretly forwarded to the government officials that are likely to be affected by the request. It goes on to document how over a dozen such ordinary citizens, whose only trespass was attempting to find out the truth about their government, have been assassinated once they received the documents. You cannot live in a free country when citizen whistle blowers who expose political class and  government crime risk their lives in doing so.

Now, I do not believe that this situation has gotten as bad in the U.S. but there are some early, troubling parallels. First, the political class in our Congress has exempted themselves from whistle blower laws. Thus, if a Congressional staffer becomes aware of corruption and wrong doing within any part of Congress, if he or she speaks out, they risk sidetracking or assassinating their government career since our Federal whistle blower laws provide no protection in this case. While not as bad as getting physically assassinated as in India, much illegal activity by Congressional members may be going unheard, unreported, and not prosecuted due to this exemption our politicians have provided to themselves.

This situation becomes more ominous when you consider news reports from several months ago. At that point in time, the Justice Department wanted to exempt itself from America's Freedom of Information Act. They wanted to be able to actually lie and say requested documents did not exist even if they did and the Justice Department could put their hands on them. This is very scary stuff, allowing the government to actually lie to its citizens.

If memory serves me right, this request to suppress information requested under the Freedom of Information Act was withdrawn once it came to light, a small victory for freedom. Hopefully, it was not a temporary victory since it is obvious that forces in the U.S. political class and the government would certainly be more comfortable providing the least amount of information possible about their actions and goings on, much like the politicians in Inida.

Woodrow Wilson summed up this dilemma quite nicely almost a hundred years ago: "Government ought to be all outside and no inside. . . . Everybody knows that corruption thrives in secret places, and avoids public places, and we believe it a fair presumption that secrecy means impropriety." Secrecy also usually means political class and government corruption in this country and if we are not careful, it will lead to Indian style suppression and assassinations. That is a place we do not want to follow India to.




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/