June, 2020, Part 7, Political Class Insanity: The 14 Major Failures of the Obama Administration, The First Seven

It is the beginning of another month which means it is time again to review the latest political class insanity from the American political class. Each month it takes us multiple posts to cover the wasteful spending, incompetent government organizations and employees, government programs that usually make a problem worse than resolving it, inane and idiotic politician comments, etc.

To review past posts on this insanity and idiocy, just click on the first few posts in each month listed to the right of this page. After reviewing just a handful of these insanity posts we think you will agree that we are currently being served by the worst set of American politicians ever to hold office in our entire history.

We are going to do a little retro today. For whatever silly reason, on a regular basis someone proposes that Obama was one of the greatest Presidents ever. It is an indefensible position on so many dimensions. We have previously talked about the multitude of failures of his administration:

The laws Obama broke:

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2016/10/part-2-obama-presidency-end-of-error.html

The failures of Obama’s administration: http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2016/10/part-1-obama-presidency-end-of-error.html

The hate inspired by the Obama administration: http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2016/10/part-3-obama-presidency-end-of-error.html

But let's revisit some of his failures courtesy of Matt Margolis who recently published a review of Obama’s failures on the PJ Media website. His article was entitled, “Liberals Still Think Obama Was the ‘Best President Ever,’ Here Are 14 Reasons Why That’s Ridiculous.” 

So let’s take a walk down memory lane and review 14 of Obama’s biggest failures [note: if you are a fan of Obama, try to come up with the 14 greatest successes of the Obama administration as you read the following, I am positive your 14 successes, if they even exist, cannot come close to matching the damage he did to the country via his failures.]

The driver of this article was the recent celebration of Obama’s birthday and some liberals' celebration of his failed Presidency. Apparently, Obama’s following 14 failures were not discussed during this celebration:

1) There was wide ranging corruption during the Obama years. Mr. Margolis has come up with 30 significant Obama Presidency scandals including but not limited to, the following: 

• He tried to sell his former Illinois Senate to the highest bidder.
• He used government agencies to target his political opponents.
• He gave untold billions of dollars to the biggest terror organization in the world, the Iranian government.
• He illegally spied on and tried to derail the Presidential campaign of a potential White House successor.
• He lied about his failure to protect Americans in Benghazi.
• He operated an illegal gun running operation called Fast and Furious which supplied high end, military grade weapons to the Mexican drug cartels, weapons which were used to kill an untold number of Mexican citizens and at least one U.S.Border Patrol officer.

We will not list the other 24 scandals that the article pointed out, you get the idea, to say his administration was scandal free is the height of ignorance.

2) The student loan debt of American college students skyrocketed during his administration. Just five years into his administration, student loan debt in the country increased a whopping 463%, much faster than any previous President. He had the Federal government takeover the program which not only saddled theAmerican taxpayer with this debt it also resulted in debt ridden kids graduating college into a feeble job market that his economic policies created.

3) Under Trump, the national average price for gasoline has stayed under $3.00 a gallon. During the Obama years it was not uncommon to pay between $3.50 and $4.00 a gallon in one three year period, more than double what we have been paying under Trump. 

This was his feeble attempt to get the country away from oil and into a green economy, an effort that also failed miserably. His green initiatives resulted in the wasting of billions of dollars of taxpayer wealth with absolutely no redeeming benefit. Who can forget the green company flameouts known Solyndra, A123, Spectra, and dozens of others who all failed and took billions of taxpayers down with them? Of course, the biggest flameout was Solyndra, which wasted over half a billion dollars but produced nothing of value.

4) Supposedly the biggest success of the Obama administration was going to be his landmark Obama Care legislation which was going to “bend the cost curve,” reduce annual health insurance premiums “up to $2,500 a year,” would make it possible for every American to get inexpensive health care, etc. But it did not bend the cost curve, it did not reduce anyone’s annual insurance premiums anywhere close to $2,500, and it failed to come anywhere close to getting every American affordable health insurance.

In fact, health insurance costs, co-pays, and deductibles went through the roof. Millions of Americans lost access to their favorite insurance policies, their favorite doctors, and their favorite hospitals. Health Insurance for millions became more expensive and less usable because of high deductibles or the inability to access doctors who accepted Obama Care insurance.

5) Unrealized by many Obama supporters is the high levels of poverty that were attained during his time in office:

• He broke a 50 year record during his Presidency relative to poverty.
• The poverty level measurement in this country got to 15% during three years of his Presidency.
• The number of people on food stamps got to a record 47 million Americans and none of his policies over eight years did much to relieve this food stamp need.

6) He violated the First Amendment any number of times relative to spying on journalists using government agencies to do so, abusing and misusing the Espionage Act in the process:

• His Justice Department secretly and illegally obtained two months of phone records of AP reporters and editors.
• This caused longtime sources of the AP to stop talking to the AP and other news organizations, stymying their attempts to keep politicians and government officials honest.
• Obama’s Justice Department also secretly and illegally obtained the phone records of Fox reporter James Rosen, records which enabled them to track his movements and read his emails.
• Obama threatened him with jail time and labeled him a “co-conspirator” along with one of his sources regarding an investigation Rosen was doing.
• James Risen of the New York Times also got the same treatment as Rosen, treated as a co conspirator along with one of his government sources under the Espionage Act, a law that was passed during the First World War to combat wartime spying and which has absolutely nothing to do with journalists doing their job today.

For any American that cherishes freedom, these acts of subverting the free press have to be very disturbing.

7) But his spying was not reserved just for journalists. He literally spied on tens of millions of ordinary American citizens:

• The NSA’s size grew exponentially during the Obama years.
• This is not because the NSA was tracking that many more potential terrorists but because they were tracking and spying on millions of ordinary American citizens who had done nothing wrong but live their lives.
• The ACLU estimates that there was a 64% increase in electronic spying by the Federal government during the Obama years, much of which had nothing to do with terror suspects.
• According to the article: "The Obama administration argued in federal court in 2012 that the public has no “reasonable expectation of privacy” regarding their cell phone location data and that the government can obtain these records without a warrant. Further blemishing Obama’s record on civil liberties, his administration green-lighted a giant government database of information on millions of citizens who weren’t even suspected of terrorism or any crime at all.”
• Furthermore: “The Obama administration argued that “without any individual suspicion of wrongdoing, the government is allowed to know whom Americans are calling every time they make a phone call, for how long they talk and from where.” Even that wasn’t enough. After Obama left office we found out his NSA was conducting illegal searches on Americans for years in defiance of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. The ACLU called these searches some of the most serious Fourth Amendment abuses ever documented.”

“Most serious offenses ever documented.” Scary stuff when it comes to privacy, freedom and an intrusive and dangerous government and political class. 

Okay, that will do it for today, seven instances where Obama was nowhere close to being a great President. Failures of execution (e.g. Obama Care, good economic policies, etc.) and violations of the Bill of Rights, the Constitution, and existing laws. Unfortunately, we are only halfway through the ignominious trail of failure and disaster that Obama wrought on the country for eight long years. The other seven failures in the next post.

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:

https://www.amazon.com/Walter-Bruno-Korschek/e/B002KYU08Q/ref=dbs_a_mng_rwt_scns_share

Please visit the following sites for freedom:


http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.bankruptingamerica.org
http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w