Part 2, Why The Obama Administration Deserves Its Rating As The Worst Presidency Since 1945

A recent public opinion poll conducted by Quinnipiac University, a traditional and unbiased source of public opinion, asked a sample of Americans who they thought operated the worst Presidency since 1945. Barack Obama won a plurality of votes in that poll for being the worst U.S. President since 1945. 33% of respondents named him as the worst President over the past seven decades with George W, Bush finishing second at 28%. 

Both of them far outpolled who I generally consider the two worst Presidents of the past hundred years, Jimmy Carter (8%) for being a President who was clueless and totally ineffective, and Richard Nixon (13%) for simply being a vindictive crook. America has to be pretty disgusted with your Presidential administration when you are mentioned 2-4 more times than either Carter or Nixon as the worst president since 1945.

Over the next few days we are going to explore the overwhelming number of reasons while this result for President Obama is not only rational but is well deserved. Before anyone starts with their counter arguments or disputing my list of Obama policy failures, criminal acts, economic ignorance, violations of the Constitution, and broken promises, keep in mind the following facts:

• I have never voted for a Republican for President in my life and I am over 60 years old.
• Up until November, 2010, I had never voted for a Republican for national office.
• In the first two years of his Presidency, Obama’s party was in control of both the House of Representatives and the Senate with filibuster proof majorities in both places, I.e. he could have done anything he wanted politically and legislatively without any assist from any Republican.
• I am not saying that anyone else would have resolved all of the issues listed below but it is difficult to think that at least some of these issues would have been resolved by people such as Truman, Kennedy, or Reagan. The Obama Presidency has been so bad that just about every issue and problem listed below is actually far WORST rather than BETTER since the onset of the Obama administration.
• Consider an old saying: “Don’t tell me how rough the seas were, just tell me you brought the boat safely into the harbor.” In other words, a true leader takes the blame and gives the credit. No one forced Obama to become President, he knew the situation he was getting into. He should be judged on how well he managed the situation he inherited going forward. Unfortunately, instead of leadership and looking forward, he chose instead to whine, look backwards, and to blame others for his failures rather than focusing on moving forward from whatever adverse situation he inherited.

Okay, so that sets out the preliminaries: I am not a conservative, a Republican, or a neocon trying to tear down this President. This President could have done anything he wanted in the first two years of his tenure, he cannot blame the Republicans for blocking anything he failed at since he had a historic window of political opportunity. Instead of leveraging the window and leading the country, he chose to blame the previous President, the Japanese tsunami, ATM machines, and a whole host of other factors in the absence of Presidential leadership.

Thus, without any further delay and in no particular order, consider the next set of reasons why the Quinnipiac public opinion poll is probably an accurate view of why America rates the Obama administration as the worst Presidential administration in the past 70 years or so (we covered the first 15 reasons yesterday which can be reviewed at: http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2014/07/part-1-why-obama-administration.html)

16) The President’s health care reform legislation has proven to be nothing more than a Rube Goldberg-like insurance scheme that is causing millions of Americans to lose their current health care insurance coverage, to lose access to their preferred doctors, to spend much money more for both their insurance premiums and deductibles, is adding substantially to the national debt, is causing a doctor shortage as more and more doctors retire early to avoid the trauma and nonsense of the legislation, and never addressed the real root causes of escalating health care costs, dooming his approach to failure. 

Relevant Obama quote: “And that means that no matter how we reform health care, we will keep this promise to the American people: If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor, period. If you like your health care plan, you'll be able to keep your health care plan, period. No one will take it away, no matter what.” 

17) His lies and deceptions regarding many components of Obama Care ended up getting him awarded the Washignton Post's "2013 Lie of The Year" award.

18) The President has taken extravagant and expensive vacations around the world, spending hundreds of millions of dollars, while Americans sit by and watch as their chances for a good job and good future go unrealized. 

19) He has played more golf and attended more campaign fund raisers than any other President, time that might have been better spent fixing the problems facing the country and its citizens. 

20) He has done nothing to improve the scholastic performance of American kids who badly trail many other countries along all measurements of educational excellence and who spend far less per student than the Federal government and the Obama administration do. 

21) Despite promising to operate the most transparent Presidential administration ever, he has decided that White House visitor logs will no longer be made public, breaking a long tradition of allowing Americans to know who is visiting the White House.

22) He has done nothing to develop and implement a long term and strategic energy policy for the country, instead wasting tens of billions of dollars given away to his political contacts’ and cronies’ failed alternative energy programs and companies (e.g. Solyndra). 

23) He presided over economic polices that have seen median U.S. household income decline for five years in a row AFTER the recession ended. 

Relevant Obama quote: “I'm a warrior for the middle class.” 

24) He unnecessarily intruded into the auto industry bailouts that still resulted in the city of Detroit having to file for bankruptcy and for General Motors to probably never pay back the $9.7 billion still owed to the American taxpayer, contrary to the President’s reelection campaign themes. 

25) His failed foreign policies have allowed North Korea to get five years closer to having substantial nuclear weapon and delivery capability. 

26) His failed foreign policies have allowed Iran to get five years closer to having substantial nuclear weapon and delivery capability.

27) His failed foreign policies have caused a significant loss of prestige and honor relative to the U.S. in both our allies and enemies’ eyes. A loss compounded by the unfathomable spying on the governments and leaders of our allies. 

28) His failed foreign policies have emboldened Russia in eastern Europe, e.g. the annexation of Crimea, and China in the Far East as that country bullies its neighbors over land scattered throughout the oceans in that region of the world.

29) He has presided over economic polices that have seen the average price of gas go up about 90% since the day he took office.

30) He has remained silent and allowed political allies to call his political opponents and ordinary citizens all types of slanderous and foul names despite his promise to unite the country. Those slurs include but are not limited to: a__h____s, terrorists, barbarians, Taliban, racists, Ku Klux Klan members, knuckle dragging Neanderthals, sluts, whores, among others. 

Relevant Obama quote: “There's not a liberal America and a conservative America - there's the United States of America.” 

Relevant Obama quote: “We want everybody to act like adults, quit playing games, realize that it's not just my way or the highway." 

Relevant Obama quote: “It's not surprising, then, they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.” 

31) He has failed to improve the tense situation in the Middle East, specifically the ongoing conflicts between Israel and the Palestinians. 

32) He had no plan and not a lot of interest in quickly resolving the Gulf Coast/BP oil spill, given the number of rounds of golf, the number of vacations and the number of political fund raisers he attended as the crisis was destroying nature and jobs along the Gulf coats. 

33) He has no plan for fixing the mess that is Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, who together have already gobbled up almost $200 billion in taxpayer bailout dollars. 

34) He promised to run the most transparent administration of all time and ended up running the most opaque and paranoid administration since at least the Nixon administration, implementing executive privilege too often, hiding witnesses called to testify in front of Congress, persecuting more government whistle blowers than all previous Presidential administrations combined, hunting down legitimate whistle blowers and dodging or sabotaging legitimate legal Freedom of Information Act requests.
Relevant Obama quote: "My Administration is committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness in Government. We will work together to ensure the public trust and establish a system of transparency, public participation, and collaboration. Openness will strengthen our democracy and promote efficiency and effectiveness in Government." 

Relevant Obama quote: "Often the best source about waste, fraud and abuse in government is an existing government employee committed to public integrity and willing to speak out. Such acts of courage and patriotism . . . should be encouraged rather than stifled." 

35) He has failed to fix the massively expensive and stupid redundancy in the Federal government: 

• The Federal government has 15 different agencies overseeing food safety laws 
• More than 20 independent Federal programs help the homeless 
• 80 different Federal programs to help economic development 
• 82 different government agencies work on improving teacher quality 
• 47 different government agencies work on job training 
• 18 different programs working on food and nutrition assistance

36) He has ignored the fighting going on Afghanistan and has not implemented a strategy that will withstand the withdrawal of Western troops in 2014, likely resulting in the Taliban taking over again and negating the blood and money the country has spent there over the past decade or so. 

37) He has angered civilians all over the Arab world with his drone attacks on terrorist suspects that have ended up killing hundreds, if no thousands of civilians, including hundreds of innocent children. These drone attacks have not slowed down the growth of Al Qaeda and other terror groups while it has embittered civilian populations from Yemen to Pakistan. 

Relevant Obama quote (from Pew research): "At the end of his first term, the level of confidence those nations [Middle Eastern countries‘ citizens] feel for Obama fell from 33% to 24%. When it comes to Obama’s policies, as opposed to his personality, the drop is even greater, falling from a high of 34% to a dismal low of 15%."

Thirty seven reasons and two days and we are not close to listing all of the reasons why the Obama administration deserves to be called the worst Presidency since 1945. This is especially true when we have not even touched on the many reasons why this President has violated the Constitution, broke the laws and deserves to be impeached and removed from office. Those reasons will be covered in the coming days.

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:

Term Limits Now: http://www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com
http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

May, 2014 Political Class Insanity, Part 5: Tapxayers Pay For A Congressman's Crimes, Making Tanks Nobody Wants,The Illinois Fiscal Cliff and More

This is our fifth post this month in our monthly series nonpolitical class insanity. Every month we spend more and more time trying to keep up with the wasteful spending, idiotic programs and laws, and general ineptness of the American political class. This is a task that seems to get harder and harder to do every month as their incompetence seems to be growing exponentially.

1) There are still over twenty million Americans who are either unemployed or under employed throughout this nation. One reason might be because of what the following graph illustrates, as presented in a recent Independent Journal Review article:



Since 1978, the percentages of businesses being created every year (‘firm entry” rate) has generally been declining while the percentage of businesses being terminated every year (“firm exit” rate) has recently been increasing. These two trends crossed over in 2008 when the rate of business creation fell below the rate of business termination.

One could try and fine tune the data to their own political views and by blame patterns. However, the bottom line is that over the past 36 years, a time period when Democrats and Republicans controlled Congress and the Presidency at different times, no one in the political class was able to reverse the two negative trends illustrated in this graph.

Their economic incompetence as created a death spiral of business the business failure rate increasing and the business creation rate decreasing, getting us into the position where over 20 million Americans can not find a good job for themselves and their families. 

Einstein once said the definition of insanity was doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Our political class has been doing the same lame economic dance for 36 years, raising existing taxes and creating new business taxes, expecting different results but proving Einstein right after all: pure insanity. 

2) All parts of the Federal government are big wasters of taxpayer wealth but the Pentagon has to be one of the biggest black holes of waste. Recall in past posts that we have discussed the fact that government auditors have thrown up their hands trying to get their arms around the wasteful spending in the Pentagon and actually gave up, contending that Pentagon spending is so out of control that it is not possible to even audit and document the waste.

A recent example of how bad and insane Pentagon spending is concerns the production of the Abrams tank, a tank that is only made in one location in Ohio:

• The Army currently has more than 2,300 in active use around the world to serve its needs.
• Unbelievably, it also has another 3,000 in storage that it does not need or use.
• In the most recent budget agreement in Congress, another $181 m illion was authorized to continue production of more tanks that the Army does not need into the next year or so.
• Even those in the actual Army do not want more unused and unneeded tanks: “If we had our choice, we would use that money in a different way,” Gen. Ray Odierno, the Army’s chief of staff, told the Associated Press in April.
• Even the Pentagon’s assessments estimate that holding off on tank production and refurbishment for just three years would save the taxpayers $3 billion.
• But there are Ohio jobs and political careers at stake along with the financial results of General Dynamics who makes the tanks so the combination of corny capitalism and political cowardice in thousands of tanks being produced but never used.

So rather than restore the reductions in military benefit packages that Congress and the White House recently approved, rather than divert some of this wealth back to the taxpayer wallets or some other worthy cause such as job training, feeding the hungry, treating the addicted, housing the homeless, etc., our political class in Washington would rather just continue making unused and unneeded tanks. Pathetic.

3) Now this is a nice racket if you can get it. Unfortunately, you have to be a card carrying member of the Washington political class so god luck with that. Jess Jackson. Jr. was convicted of a number of financial felonies in connection with and his wife’s misuse and abuse of campaign contributions he was sentenced to two and half years in jail for his crimes. Remember those two words: “convicted” and “crimes.”

Despite having no mental problems for his entire life and his seventeen years in Congress, the former Congressman has suddenly developed a “mood disorder,“ allegedly happening as the Feds started closing in and examining his crimes. As a result of this sudden trauma to his odd, he has somehow been approved to receive a whopping $8,700 MONTHLY payment in Federal government disability pay. Remember those words, convicted and crimes, but still eligible to get $8,700 a month of taxpayer wealth for his mental state.

But it gets better. Despite him being “convicted” for his “crimes,” he is somehow still elibigle for an annual Federal pension of $450,000 a year. Thus, between his monthly $8,700 in disability payments and his annual $45,000 Congressional pension, he will be earning almost $150,000 a year despite having been :convicted for felonious “crimes.“ Again, great work if you can get it.

Thus, for doing nothing in the future, he will earn almost as much as if he was still a Congressman ($150,000 in pension and disability vs. a Congressional salary of about $170,000.) Even worse, at $150,000, he will be making about three times as much as what the median U.S. household earns in a year even though the members of that household have to go to a job everyday to get one third of what this convicted politician will earn. It does not get much more insane that this.

4) But it is not just rich Washington politicians that stick it to working Americans and taxpayers. Consider a recent, in-depth analysis done by the Taxpayer Union of America (TUA) relative to the horrid financial condition of the state government of Illinois:

• Just the pension liabilities for government workers in Illinois is an unreal $187 billion.
• This means that every Illinois household would have to write a check for over $35,000 just to pay for the current liability of the Illinois pension system.
• And that $187 billion is the estimate today, but given that the state political class and state government has not put any true reforms into place, that number is highly likely to grow in the coming years.
• The real insult is when you get underneath the $187 billion number and find 11,054 Illinois state pensioners now get more than $100,000 per year in pension payments, twice what the median U.S. household income level is. 
• By the year 2020, number will more than double to 25,000. 
• There are over 78,526 state pensioners receiving annual pension payments over $50,000. The TUA pointed out in their analysis that these robust pensions are funded by taxpayers who get an average Social Security pension of about $15,000.
• Funding those impossible pension liabilities is even more difficult since Illinois has the second highest unemployment rates at 8.4%, the second highest property taxes in the country, and the lowest rating in the country for its general operating bonds, making it difficult to raise more taxes when taxes are already so high and so many citizens are unemployed and contributing nothing to the tax revenue.
• Getting even further down into the TUA analysis on finds that someone named Tapas das Gupta has annual pension of $452,843, about nine times more than what the typical U.S. household earns in a year. 
• His estimated lifetime pension payout of $5,276,384 makes him a millionaire five times over.
• Edward Abraham has an Illinois state annual pension of $439,965, or $9,073,587 in estimated lifetime payouts according to the TUA. 
• Larry K. Fleming retired from Lincolnshire-Prairie View District 103 at the age of 55 and is now receiving $258,163 per year while only paying in $326,507 into the system during his career. In other words, he recoup his payments into the system in less than 16 months of pensions payouts. Disgraceful.

Again, nice work if you can get it as long as you and your union keep supporting the same crooked politicians in office.

Something has to break at some point. You cannot keep rewarding Washington politicians for non-performance and criminal performance and expect no consequences. 

You cannot keep having exorbitant pension payouts to your union supporters and not expect the entire Illinois financial system to crash at some point in time. 

You cannot keep building Army tanks that never get used and which contribute nothing to society except any ever increasing national debt burden without the Federal government eventually crashing under that burden.

And you cannot keep increasing the tax burden on businesses, both existing and new, and expect them to continue creating jobs and economic vitality as they did in the past.

Our politicians are taking us to the edge of a very steep cliff in so many ways and one day, probably sooner than later, we are all or some going over that steep cliff for a nasty fall. That is why we call it insanity, going over a cliff even though we see it ahead of us in so many ways.

To avoid that cliff, please consider joining our term limits effort at:

www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com

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:

Term Limits Now: http://www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com
http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

May, 2013 Political Class Insanity, Part 5: Taxing The Rain, Incest Cronyism, and More

This is the fifth but, unfortunately, not the last post this month that covers the political class insanity we have uncovered over the past month or so. It was a long, difficult haul to get all of the idiocy, wasteful spending, ego, and other lunacy compiled but tomorrow should do it, at least for this month. I am sure that early next month there will be another pile of political mess to review and disparage.

1) Let’s start with a U.S. Senator from Louisiana, Mary Landrieu. She has been in the U.S. Senate for almost 18 years during which time we have seen her and the Washington political class preside over and contribute mightily to the following:

• The Great Recession.
• The weakest post recession recovery in the history of the country.
• Chronic long term unemployment and underemployment.
• A national debt close to hitting $17 TRILLION.
• An economic stimulus program that cost over $800 billion with no long term societal benefit in return because of its stupid priorities and programs.
• Health care industry reform legislation known as Obama Care that has virtually no chance of succeeding in reining in out of control health care costs but will suppress employment and economic growth.
• Drops in average household income and wealth that has accelerated since the Great Recession ended.
• No resolutions to any long term national problem, be it illegal immigration, failing public schools, lack of a national energy program, sky high health care costs, a lost war on drugs, etc.

Quite a nasty track record, a track record that should shame and embarrass any politician that has been in office as long as Ms. Landrieu. However, the good Senator does not see it that way. She recently pronounced that: “Without sounding braggadocio, I’m indispensable in this effort to secure for Louisiana a significant and reliable string of revenue to save our coast.”

Given the above track record of the Senator and her peers, indispensable is probably the last word I would be using relative to any sitting politician on any topic or issue. Incompetent yes, indispensable no.

2) In our July 9, 2012 post we related a sordid tale of Washington political cronyism. In late September, 2011, the Department of Energy approved a $737 million loan guarantee to a company called Solarserve that is working on a solar plant in Nevada. Talk about a major “coincidence.“ Turns out that the brother-in-law of former Speaker of the House, Democrat Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, Ronald Pelosi, is second in command at the primary energy investment fund that backs the Solarserve effort. Surprise, surprise.

But lightning recently struck twice regarding a national Democratic woman politician from California. Out of the entire universe of those who could have won the first phase construction contract for California’s high speed rail boondoggle, who do you think won the contract?

Richard Blum and his company won the contract. Turns out that Mr. Blum is the husband of California U.S. Senator Diane Feinstein. Blum is the principle owner of Tutor Perini, the lead firm in the three-firm consortium selected by the California High Speed Rail Authority. Surprise, surprise. The political class continues to take of themselves and their families while the rest of the country suffers and ends up paying for the cronyism mess they create.

3) The Federal government is going to spend $152,000 to study “voice therapy” for transgenders. Voice therapy for transgenders, really? We have a $17 TRILLION national debt and we are worried about voice therapy for transgenders?

Now, do not get me wrong. I really do not care what someone does to their own bodies or what their life style is. But it is their life, they should face reality and pay for the consequences of their choices rather than taxpayers paying for this type of wasteful spending. According to a National Institutes of Health grant:

“This study will illuminate the capabilities of the human larynx and inform the relationship between voice production and perception. The long term goal of this research is to inform and provide new directions for Transgender (TG) voice care, thereby improving the lives of TG people who feel their voice is a great obstacle to living as their preferred gender.”

Again, I have no problem with others messing with their gender. But they should pay for the alterations and the implications of those alterations, not the American taxpayer.

4) You know things are insane in Washington when your read an April 28, 2013 Associated Press article. Lawmakers from both parties have set aside nearly half a billion dollars ($436 million) in taxpayer money over the past two years to build improved versions of the 70-ton Abrams tank for the Defense Department.

However, even the bloated, out of control spending Defense Department does not think they need nor do they want the additional tanks. Why build more tanks then if the Army does not want them and future military conflicts are most likely to be against terrorist organizations where tanks will be useless?

The simple answer is politics and votes. The Abrams tank is made in one location in Ohio and both Ohio Democrats and Republicans in Congress have managed to keep this useless expenditure alive in order to not tick off voters back home in Ohio. Rather than find better uses for this taxpayer wealth, including returning the wealth to the taxpayers, we now have a Federal government that would rather spend the money on useless economic activity in order to protect their political careers.

Producing products just for the sake of producing products that will never be used is certainly suboptimal in any type of economy. It is pure insanity. It is similar to what the Navy did several years ago when they spent over $300 million to build two Navy ships almost to completion and then took them apart for scrap metal before they were ever used.

Between these two atrocities of waste, the combined $736 million could have been used to fund the suspended White House tours for well over 700 years. How many teachers, border agents, drug treatments, and other more beneficial activities could have been funded for over $700 million? But these beneficial activities never happened because some Ohio politicians wanted to protect their own political careers buy funding tanks that even the Army does not want. Pathetic.

5) The MarylandReporter.com reported on April 10, 2013 that the state of Maryland will institute a rain tax in nine of its counties, i.e. people in Maryland will be taxed on how much water falls on their properties. This rain tax will be determined by how much of a property’s area is covered by a hard surface such as a building or a driveway. This calculation will be determined by aerial surveillance of each property.

It will cost Maryland homeowners, business owners, and churches about $300 million a year. The state law exempted state and local government from paying the rain tax (of course, taking care of their own kind!).

Long ago the Beatles warned us this might happen, tax us for rain:

If you drive a car, I'll tax the street,
If you try to sit, I'll tax your seat.
If you get too cold I'll tax the heat,
If you take a walk, I'll tax your feet.

They just never imagined we could be taxed on rain.

6) The Washington Times reported on a nice piece of political class elitism on April 24, 2013. As we have discussed many times in this blog. It is quite apparent that President Obama decided to make the government spending cuts from the measly sequester budget cuts as painful as possible for the ordinary American citizen. The latest insult was to furlough air traffic controllers which has resulted in long delays for American travelers.

Well, at least most American travelers. The chief of the FAA told Congress that Washington D.C. area airports will largely escape the effects of the air traffic controller furlough, making travel for D.C. lawmakers much easier and more hassle-free than for most Americans.

Just another example where selfish Washington politicians take care of themselves before even considering taking care of the rest of America.

That will do it for today. I promise tomorrow’s post will be the last in this series of monthly political class insanity reviews. Tomorrow, we will also spend some time proposing steps that need to be taken to get this insanity, idiocy, and waste under control before it is too late…or before it rains.

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