Retro 1 - Part 1, The Obama Presidency- The End Of An Error - Broken Promises and Lies

We originally ran this post back in October at around the 100 day mark of the final days of the Obama Presidency. We ended up running about seven blog posts which did a deep dive into the activities, acomplishmentsand failures of this Presidency. We found very little in the way of accomplishments but dozens and dozens of cases of falures and disasters, from the economy to foreign affairs to the basic concept of integrity. We are going to rerun those post over the next week or so as we close in on an end of an error, the Obama Presidency.

Part 1, The Obama Presidency - The End Of An Error - Broken Promises and Lies

As we near the end of the Obama Presidency, I thought it would be a good idea at the 100 day mark to review what he has done to and for this country over the past eight years. Before we do that, though, let me repeat my previous background statements on my past political actions:

• I have never voted for a Republican Presidential candidate in my life and I have been voting since the the Nixon era.
• Until 2010, I have never voted for a Republican for national office in my life.
• I am not affiliated with nor do I associate myself with the Republican Party, conservatives or people like Donald Trump.

Okay, now that we understand where I am coming from, let me just say that in my opinion Barack Obama has been the most inept, most divisive, most narcissist and worst diplomat in my lifetime to reside in the White House. From the economy, to race relations, to the national debt, to foreign relations to government operations, to blatant disregard for existing laws and the Constitution, in just about any measure we are far worse off as a nation than prior to him coming into office.

We will breaking down the failures and disappointments of this administration into some broad categories that will take us a number of days to cover as we analyze “The Obama Presidency - The End Of An Error.” Today we start with:

Broken Promises and/or Lies

These disappointments are related in that many times it is tough to tell whether the President actually believed the things he promised and then failed to deliver them (incompetence) or he just outright lied in order to get what he wanted. I cannot tell which is which, which is why the following incidents of broken promises and/or lies are grouped together:

Obama promised if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor under the Obama Care legislation. This was not a truth since millions of Americans lost access to their current and favored doctors as a direct result of Obama Care’s tenets.

Obama promised if you like your current health insurance policy, you can keep your current health insurance policy. This was not a truth since millions of Americans lost access to their current and favored health insurance policies as a result of Obama Care tenets.

Obama promised that the average American family could see their annual health insurance costs go down by up to $2,500 a year. This was not a truth since Obama Care policies costs, for both the premiums and deductibles, have been going up every year since the legislation was passed and was often much higher than the insurance premiums and deductibles people had prior to the Obama Care legislation taking effect.

Obama promised that getting access to an Obama Care health insurance policy was going to be a really simple online process which it was not. The Obama Care online processes, were slow, inaccurate, difficult to navigate, and opened up millions of Americans to a high chance of identity theft.

Obama promised that Obama Care would “bend the cost curve” of health care costs in this country but health care costs in this country and the cost of Obama Care policies continue to grow significantly year over year.

Obama promised that enacting the Obama Care legislation would not add a single dime to the Federal government deficits or the overall national debt but the legislation will likely add at least a trillion dollars to the national debt over the next ten years.

Obama promised to go through the Federal budget line by line to weed out wasteful spending which he did not do.

Obama promised to reduce the annual Federal government deficit by 50% by the end of his first term. Instead, he presided over four consecutive Federal budget deficits that exceeded a trillion dollars year, multiple times larger than any previous annual Federal deficit.

Obama promised to devote every waking moment of his life to serving Americans if elected President, foregoing private time, recreation time, and vacations and he then spent the next eight years playing over 300 rounds of golf, attending a record number of political fundraisers and taking exotic vacations around the world.

Obama promised that all Obama Care negotiations would be aired on C-SPAN which they were not.

Obama promised that all pending legislation would be put up on the Internet for public review for five days before he signed it but that never happened.

Obama promised we would have our troops out of Afghanistan by 2014 but two years after that deadline U.S. troops are still in the country. 

Obama promised that he would close the terrorist prison camp at Gitmo but it is still open and many of those terrorist suspects that he has released have returned to the world of terrorism around the world.

Obama lied to the world, to the nation and the families of those who were killed by a terrorist attack at Benghazi, falsely and willingly claiming that the cause of the terror attack at our consulate at Benghazi was an unknown YouTube video.

Obama promised to operate the most transparent Presidency ever and ended up operating one of the most secretive administrations of all times, ignoring Congressional requests and subpoenas, blocking and delaying many, many legitimate Freedom Of Information Act requests, persecuting and prosecuting more government whistleblowers than all previous Presidents combined, and spying on and hounding legitimate journalists.

Obama promised that his economic stimulus plan would create a plethora of “shovel ready jobs” but ended up creating very few legitimate and enduring jobs.

Obama falsely claimed that the Supreme Court had never overturned any law that Congress had passed.

Obama promised that lobbyists would be excluded from high ranking positions in his administration, a promise that never occurred as many lobbyists ended up taking jobs high up in his administration.

Obama stated that the IRS was not targeting or violating the First Amendment rights of anyone but it is now apparent that the administration conspired with the IRS to block any political groups or citizens that were not consistent with the views of the administration.

Obama lied when he said that he did not say there was a red line that would result in dire consequences if the Syrian government used chemical weapons on its citizens when he actually did say there was a red line that should not be crossed.

Obama promised that he was not spying on innocent Americans but it was later clear that his administration, via the NSA, was spying on just about every American’s electronic communications.

And his biggest lie or broken promise of all: “I, Barrack Hussein Obama, pledge to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States of America.”

Let's stop our broken promise/lies list here but let me give you one more source of Obama lies. The Politifact website, an organization that is supposed to be an unbiased source for facts and realities, tends to give Democrats and liberals the benefit of the doubt when it comes to political statements. Thus, whenever it declares that a liberal or Democrat has lied, you know it must have really passed the smell test. The following link to their website lists 71 other Obama lies, most of which did not make our list above:

http://www.politifact.com/personalities/barack-obama/statements/byruling/false/?page=4

That will complete this first section of our review of the Obama administration. Twenty lies or broken promises that this President has made that bring the integrity of his entire Presidency into question. More reviews of different aspect of his Presidency in the following days as we approach the end of an error.

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

May, 2016, Part 7, Political Class Insanity: Secret Service Down In The Dumps, Obama Dumpoing Terroriosts Into The Real World, Harry Reid Takes a Dump On Twitter, and More

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. In fact, last month we set a record, needing ten full posts to cover it all.

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.

It looks like our politicians have been especially insane over the past month or so let’s get started with the latest insanity from today’s American politicians:

1) Over my lifetime, the U.S. Secret Service as almost always been q highly respected, effective organization within the Federal government. But during the Obama administration, its reputation has taken a severe hit. A drive by shooter shot out windows in the White House, there have been any number of White House fence jumpers with one of them actually getting deep inside the White House before being apprehended, there was the partying with drug cartel hookers in Columbia, and other stories of ineptness.

And now, according to two Congressmen, the Secret Service is losing agents much quicker than they can replace them, an unheard of situation given the historically levels of esteem the organization had been held too. This may force the Secret Service to pull people from other parts of the Federal government to address this vital shortfall. In a letter written by two Congressmen on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, the two Congressman described the once elite organization as being in crisis.

The organization has 47 fewer full time employees than it did just five months ago with an annual attrition rate of 7% for agents. The Inspector General for Homeland Security concurred with the Congressmen’s views stating that the agency is “hemorrhaging” employees because of the “severely understaffed” force, leading to “inadequate training, fatigue, low morale, and attrition,” the inspector wrote.

Why go over this crisis? Because if the U.S. Secret Service cannot do its job adequately, given its rich history of being a top notch, top performing entity within the Federal government, you can imagine how poorly other Federal government organizations screw up their jobs. If you cannot get good employees for the Secret Service, I am pretty sure you are not getting good employees for those organizations that have a long history of screw ups, e.g. the IRS, the Veterans Administration, etc.

2) But apparently it is not only the American political class that is held in such low esteem by ordinary Americans. According to a recent article on the website, www.investors.com, a recent opinion opinion poll by the Media Insight Project found that only 6% of Americans saying they have a “lot of confidence” in the press to tell them the truth.

But this does not mean that Americans do not recognize what good journalism looks like and what it can do. The poll found that almost 90% of Americans consider it extremely important or very important that journalists get their facts right. Unfortunately, rather than do journalism, most media outlets today do public relations work for their favorite politicians, which is almost always a Democrat. Remember how Woodward and Bernstein at the Washington Post and Seymour Hersh at the New York Times were real journalists who did real journalism, leading to the downfall of a corrupt Richard Nixon?

The Obama administration has had so many comparable scandals, e.g. Benghazi, Fast and Furious, Iran nuclear deal lies, IRS harassment and denial of First Amendment rights of conservative groups, trillion dollar annual deficits, a failed $800 billion economic stimulus program, Syria, illegal and un-Constitutional war in Libya, the deletion of 30,000 emails by his Secretary of State, etc. And yet, not a single journalist or media type took up the cause for their profession like Woodward, Bernstein and Hersh did in the 1970s.

And that is why Americans view of the journalism industry and profession today is so anemic, comparable to the anemic ratings of the American political class. Which should not be a surprise, I guess, since the two of them have quietly melded into a single false entity of truth and integrity.

3) One of Obama’s bigger lies was his pledge to shut down the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay. The inference was that he would put the inmates there through a legal due process and free those found innocent and keep those found guilty in custody in order to protect not only our fighting forces but also ordinary Americans here at home.

But as with most Obama pledges, this was has proven also to be false. Rather than put the captives through a fair and legal due process, he has been busy emptying the place based just on his whims. And as a result, any number of the terrorists he has released have ended up back in the terrorism fight on the side that wants to destroy America.

The latest example of his screw ups in this area was reported by the US Chronicle website on February 29, 2016. A Gitmo released terrorist has ended up in an ISIS terror cell in Spain. Citing an Associated Press report, this individual was described as “a leader who was trained in handling weapons, explosives, and in military tactics.” And despite this knowledge and intelligence, Obama released him from prison. 

The unnamed terrorist was arrested while recruiting people to the ISIS cause in Spain and who was in the process of obtaining weapons and explosives to carry out a terrorist attack on Spanish soil. The article points out other examples where Obama has released prisoners who were trained in weapons, explosives, bomb making, leadership roles, and recruiting, all of whom have returned to various terrorist organizations around the world. And all of them were released without a thorough vetting and due process of law.

Obviously, Obama is trying to embellish his legacy by eventually claiming that he closed Gitmo. Imagine how horrible that legacy would have been if that ISIS Spanish cell had actually gone on and killed dozens or hundreds of Spanish citizens in the name of the Obama legacy, insanity and ego to the nth degree.

4) Frequent readers of this blog know that we have found very few functions that American politicians and the government that they operate, local, state and Federal, do well, efficiently, or effectively. The politicians over promise the benefits of a project which usually under achieves, usually severely going over estimated and promised costs, and put schedules together that are rarely met. As a result, taxpayer wealth is wasted on shoddily developed government projects that may or may not ever get finished. Think the Boston “Big Dig” effort that missed its budget by about 8 fold, missed its schedule by years, and its shoddy construction allowed a falling piece of concrete to kill a passing driver.

Now consider the latest insanity, also in the transportation arena, out of Minnesota, as reported by Leah Jessen on the Heritage Foundation website:

• A Minnesota commuter rail line called the Northstar opened up for service in 2009.
• It covers a 40 mile stretch of land that runs from downtown Minneapolis to Big Lake.
• It cost American and local taxpayers $320 million to build since the Washington political class gladly gave the rail line over $161 million of American taxpayer money.
• In fiscal year 2014, the rail line took in passenger fares worth $2.3 million….but had operating expenses and costs of $15.5 million, meaning that the rail line revenue pitifully covered only about 15% of its expenses and costs. 
• This comparable to its first full of operation in 2009 when it collected $2.5 million in fares but had expenses and costs of $16 million, again covering only about 15% of its costs and expenses, establishing a baseline of under performance that continued through 2014.
• This disaster is nicely summed up by Annette Meeks of the Freedom Foundation of Minnesota: “When you’re subsidizing about 80 percent of every trip on the line, it’s a really big fiscal disaster.”
• Put another way that is just as insane, for EVERY passenger that rides the rail line, local taxpayers are putting up $22 for every rider.
• The rail line was originally rejected because it could not promise that there would be adequate ridership to justify Federal government taxpayer subsidies so the rail line was shortened in order to meet that criteria. Remember what we said above about underachieving when it comes to government programs?
• Advocates of the line originally promised that daily ridership would be 3,400 riders but actual ridership has come nowhere near that many, another under achievement.
• Ridership increased just .2% in 2015 vs. 2014 so it does not look like ridership still has a way to ramp up, it is virtually stagnant at levels that cannot make the line profitable.
• Thus, despite warnings long ago that this would be a financial disaster, the local politicians, with help from the Washington political class, went ahead anyway and now local taxpayers, most of whom will never ride the rail, are putting out $22 every time somebody does use the rail line.
• But despite all of the financial downside results, there are some nut cases that want to make the rail line bigger and longer, extending it 30 miles to St. Cloud, Minnesota: “We feel we deserve the option to not own a car,” Richard Gordon, a St. Cloud State University student, told The St. Cloud Times. “I’ve never owned a car and I don’t plan to, so I need this train.”
• Which is fine Mr. Gordon, as long as you pay the additional $22 every time you take the train, I think the rest of us taxpayers would have no problem with you never owning a car. But by the way, Mr. Gordon, you do not deserve the option to not own a car, get over it. 

Let the cost causer be the cost payer and everyone would be better off financially...except for Mr. Gordon who thinks he deserves something that someone else will have to pay for, the kind of voter that the American political class loves to pander to. Another insanely stupid political class adventure in wasting taxpayer money.

5) Let’s finish today’s insanity with a tweet from former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. Remember, Senator Reid was one of the most powerful people in the country before the Republicans took over the Senate in the last election. But before that he had provided this blog with a tremendous amount of material, from inane quotes to crony capitalism to stupid programs and quotes about those programs.

See if you can figure out what point he was trying to get across with the following tweet he sent out from his Twitter account:

Maybe Republicans should ask the Zika-carrying mosquitoes not to breed this summer since it’s the last year of a two-term Presidency.

Huh? Maybe is is well past time for the Senator to move up his retirement date and step aside now rather than at the end of his term next January if this is the most cogent tweet he can put together. What the hell was his staff thinking allowing him to put this garbage out in the Twitter world? 

That will do it for today's insanity: A Senator who may have lost some coherence, another government project boondoggle that under performs but goes way over cost, Obama releasing dangerous terrorists back out into the real world in a vain attempt to enhance a very thin legacy, Americans’ view of journalism and the media nosedives, and the Secret Service is no longer the elite cadre of special agents that it once was, a sign that the entire Federal bureaucracy is in a shambles. More insanity tomorrow.

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

March, 2016, By The Numbers, Part 1: Gitmo Disconnect, Wasting Money In Mexico, FOIA Stonewalling and More

On a periodic basis we do some posts that fall under the theme of “by the numbers.” Rather than trust what the American political tells us about reality, we like to examine the real numbers and the real reality in the world to understand what is actually going on. Relying on politicians, and their cohorts in the media, to tell us what is reality is always a sucker bet. They have their own agendas and goals, usually centering around their needs and self-enrichment. So we need to look at the reality of the numbers to determine what is really going on.

Previous analyses of “by the numbers” can be accessed by entering the phrase in the search box above. This is the third and final post this month where we look at the numbers to truly find out how good, not likely, or bad, most likely, the American political class is doing in managing our tax dollars, protecting our freedoms, and resolving major issues that affect all of us. 

1) The Freedom Of Information Act (FOIA) was passed several decades ago and was one of the few good pieces of legislation passed over those decades. The law requires the Federal government bureaucracy to make a thorough, good faith search of Federal records whenever a private citizen or organizations submits a formal FOIA request. 

Those records would then be presented to the whoever requested the records, assuming that those records do not contain personal information or threaten national security. This is a checkpoint on runaway government to protect the rights of citizens and ensure that government entities and workers are complying with existing laws.

Fast forward ahead to present time and recall that President Obama promised the country that he would operate “the most transparent” Presidential administration ever. Great promise, we, the citizens, would be able to easily see what hanky panky was going on within the Federal government because the head of the Federal government, Obama, promised that we would be able to see everything going on.

But alas, like most, if not all, Obama promises, this one was also a lie. According to the Associated Press:

• In 2015, the Obama administration set a record for the number of times that Federal employees claimed they could not find the records that journalists, citizens, and others requested via the FOIA.
• In more than one out of six requests, the government searchers said nothing could be found that related to the FOIA request.
• This translates to 129,825 times that the Feds said nothing, not a single page or record in the entire Federal bureaucracy, existed related to the search requested.
• The results across different Federal agencies were quite different and disturbing: the FBI could not find any records 39% of the time, the EPA office that covers New York and New Jersey could not find anything an amazing 58% of the time, and the U.U. Customs and Border Protection could not fulfill requests 34% of the time.

The obvious conclusion is that the government is hiding a lot of stuff. Defenders of the Obama administration could counter that assumption by claiming that 1) there are a lot more requests so that the number of empty searches would go up as a result of more searches being requested or 2) the latest searches are looking for stuff that really does not exist.

However, the following paragraph from the Associated Press report destroys those two rebuttal points [my emphasis added]:

In some high-profile instances, usually after news organizations filed expensive federal lawsuits, the Obama administration found tens of thousands of pages after it previously said it couldn't find any. The website Gawker sued the State Department last year after it said it couldn't find any emails that Philippe Reines, an aide to Hillary Clinton and former deputy assistant secretary of state, had sent to journalists. After the lawsuit, the agency said it found 90,000 documents about correspondence between Reines and reporters.

This is called stonewalling, it is illegal under the FOIA legislation and is typical of the corruption within this administration.

2) As we have reported many times in this blog, the city of Chicago has some of the toughest, most restrictive gun laws in this country. And yet, the southern part of Chicago is so violent that it gives the whole city the distinction of being one of the most violent cities in the country and the world. Consider the latest tally of violence from Chicago as reported by AWR Hawkins, writing for the Breitbart website:

• Between Thursday morning and 6:29 the following Friday morning of a recent week, about 24 hours, 21 people in Chicago were shot, one was stabbed and one died.
• The one person who died died as a result of a gun shot, an incident that also saw two people wounded.
• There were 8 separate shooting incidents within that 24 hour period.
• On March 9, Breitbart also reported that 21 people in Chicago had been shot including two who died inside of a 20 hour window of time.
• The Chicago Tribune reported on February 22, 2016 that the Chicago homicide rate was up about 100% over the same time period in 2015.

This violence happens in Chicago even though the city has a violence tax that raises the price of every gun and bullet sold at retail in the city, it limits the number of gun stores and the locations of those stores, and the New York Times says that Chicago handgun restrictions allow Chicago politicians to “get as close as they could get legally to a ban without a ban.”

The numbers do not lie, tougher gun control laws do not reduce violent crime. If they did, Chicago would not be what it is today from a homicide and assault perspective. Maybe another approach to violent crime is in order, the numbers prove the current approach does not work.

3) The lead laden water coming out of the water pipes of homes in Flint, Michigan has been national news for the past couple of months. As most people know, having lead leach into tap water can cause a number of serious health conditions including brain damage. It is a serious condition.

While Flint has gotten all of the publicity about bad pipes, a recent USAToday article pointed out that Flint is just one of thousands of water systems throughout the country that have problems with lead in the water. Their investigation found that an amazing 2,000 or so water systems in the country were tested and showed that their pipes were carrying lead contaminated water.

These water systems and their lead contaminated water is serving 6 million Americans and 350 of those water systems provide water to schools and daycare centers. A Maine elementary school’s water system had lead levels 42 times higher than the EPA limit. A Pennsylvania school’s water was 14 times higher than allowed under EPA guidelines. A New York state school’s water had so much lead that it was pushing the bounds of being classified as “hazardous waste.”

Part of a central function of government should be to protect the safety and well being of citizens that fund that government via taxation. As with everything else that the American political class touches, this is just another example where American taxpayers have paid trillions of dollars in taxes and have been stuck with not only a $19 TRILLION national debt by today’s politicians but we have nothing to show for our tax dollars in return: our bridges are crumbling, our roads are falling apart and we now know that our water systems might be poisoning us, water systems managed by and neglected by the politicians in this country today.

4) And while across the country, Americans are being served by substandard safety processes by their water systems, Washington politicians continue to waste money on themselves while infrastructure needs like clean water go wanting. Consider the cost of a recent ONE DAY trip Vice President Joe Biden made to Mexico City, according to reporting by Elizabeth Harrington of the Washington Free Beacon:

• Just the cost of the hotel accommodations for the Vice President’s trip was over $500,000. Did I mention this was a ONE DAY trip?
• Biden and his entourage stayed at the luxury International Presidente Hotel.
• The trip entailed the American taxpayer paying for 260 rooms and meeting areas with a total hotel tab of $538,528.65. Did I mention that this was a ONE DAY trip?
• This comes out to an average cost of over $2,000 per room.
• The State Department tried to justify the outrageous expense due to last minute changes to the itineraries, which was the fault of, you guessed it, the State Department. How many last minute changes to the itineraries could there have been, it was a ONE DAY trip?
• The hotel where Biden’s entourage stayed is described as a "luxury hotel tower with sweeping city views," the hotel has "world class" rain showers, blackout blinds, spa treatment availability, steam bathing facilities, massages, body scrubs, body wraps, foot reflexology, manicures, and waxing, in other words, this is not a Red Roof Inn.
• As the article points out, this was just for the hotel rooms. It does not include transportation, security, and other costs for a ONE DAY meeting.

The numbers show a pathetic waste of taxpayer money and so many unanswered questions: why so many people for a one day trip, was this one day trip really necessary, why such a high cost, why couldn’t some people stay at the U.S. Embassy compound to save money, and most importantly, what did this ONE DAY meeting accomplish? According to the article, it probably accomplished nothing since no one from either government claimed it accomplished anything. Pathetic.

5) So how has the economy treated African-Americans over seven years into the first African-American Presidency. According to an article from the Seattle Times that was summarized in the March 11, 2016 issue of The Week magazine, while the U3 unemployment rate for white Americans is 4.3%, the U3 unemployment rate for African-Americans is more than double, 8.8%. 

In fact, the state with the lowest African-American unemployment rate, Virginia, where it is 6.7%, is equal to the state with the highest white unemployment rate, West Virginia. So much for “hope and change” changing the economic plight of the African-American community, nowhere in the numbers is that true.

6) According to a recent YouGov poll, as reported in the March 11, 2016 issue of The Week magazine, 56% of Americans want the terrorist prison at Guantanamo to stay open, 26% want to see it closed, and 18% remain unsure. Just another example where many people in Washington, especially the President, continue to be out of touch with what Americans want and value.

Another set of numbers that show how the American political class has failed the American public. Ignoring our priorities on terrorists, failed economic programs especially for African-Americans, wasting our tax money on Mexican luxury hotels, not protecting us from lead laden water, etc. More bad numbers tomorrow.

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

Part 2, The Obama Administration: Many Promises Made, No Promises Broken

Yesterday, we reviewed six major promises that Presdent Obama made prior coming into office. Part of that review included the fact that he has failed miserably in attaining and executing any of those promises. From not closing Gitmo to wasting over $800 billion on a failed stimulus program to failed economic polices to very little government transparency, this administration has been just one failure after another.

Today, we will look at the other four failed promises, as outlined in a fine report by the Independent Journal Review and expanded with my comments and observations. Tomorrow, we will finish up this failed promises discussion with other major screwups that the Independent Journal Report work did not cover.

 
7. Line by Line to Cut Waste

"Every dollar I’ve proposed, I’ve proposed an additional cut that it matches. To give an example, we spend $15 billion a year on subsidies to insurance companies. It doesn’t help seniors get better. It’s a giveaway. I want to go through the federal budget line by line, programs that don’t work, we cut."

And yet President Obama complained about the mere $85 billion he proposed in annual cuts, out of the $3.75 trillion in government spending (just over a measly 2% of total spending), like it's the end of the world.

And he obviously did not go through the Federal budget line by line, matching new spending with comparable spending cuts. We know that deficit spending has exploded to over a TRILLION dollars every year he has been in office and if he had gone through the Federal budget line by line, there is no way he, as a rational person, could have justified just this small sample of wasteful spending:

• A USAID development program in Morocco included pottery classes that was funded using American taxpayer wealth.
• Despite skyrocketing national debt, the Federal government is spending $947,000 via NASA to study what food astronauts could eat on Mars, by simulating a Mars outpost at a barren location in Hawaii. When and if this research might be needed is far, far off in the future if ever.
• A $325,000 government grant was used to create a robot squirrel to study how squirrels and rattlesnakes interact. What makes this expenditure doubly bad is that apparently the American taxpayer has already funded a similar program in the past, making this study doubly unnecessary and wasteful.
• The USDA gave a $300,000 grant to a caviar producer in Idaho for marketing purposes. How big of a market there is for caviar in Idaho, both from a production and consumption perspective?
• The American taxpayer paid out $3.3 million to bail out a local Arkansas tourist boat company that was going out of business.
• The Department of Transportation gave an Alaskan tribe millions to start a ferry business that competes with existing private ferry services. Apparently, these other private businesses, who never asked for or received a government handout, are now struggling to survive in the face of this government subsidized ferry service.
• The Federal government wastes almost $2 billion annually in maintenance fees for grant accounts that are either expired or empty of funds, all because the Department never got around to closing out the unneeded accounts.
• State officials used a Federal stimulus grant to purchase massive, overpowered routers that are too big and unnecessary for rural schools, libraries, and government offices, wasting $24 million in the process.
• The National Science Foundation spent $516,000 on a research program that created a computer game simulating a high school “Prom Night” and the week leading up to the prom night.

This is just an extremely small sample of the tens of thousands of ways the Federal government wastefully and frivolously spend taxpayer money. Many other examples can be found at the following links:

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2012/10/wastebook-2012-wasteful-federal.html

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2012/10/wastebook-2012-wasteful-federal.html

You will never get spending under control when you are paying for prom night game development and robotic squirrels and after more than four years in office, there is little chance this administration will “go through the Federal budget line by line, programs that don’t work, we cut."

8. Cut the Deficit in Half

"And that's why today I'm pledging to cut the deficit we inherited by half by the end of my first term in office. This will not be easy. It will require us to make difficult decisions and face challenges we've long neglected. But I refuse to leave our children with a debt that they cannot repay -- and that means taking responsibility right now, in this administration, for getting our spending under control."

$6 trillion in total deficits later from the Obama administration makes this statement seem pretty ludicrous. Consider the annual Federal government deficits over the past decade or so, as documented on the White House’s own budget website (double click for a larger view):

As you can see from the White House numbers, annual Federal government deficits were actually decreasing during the second half of the Bush administration. They skyrocketed once the Democrats and Obama took office. In fact, during the Obama administration some MONTHLY Federal government budget deficits were larger than some of Bush’s ANNUAL budget deficits.

Thus, this promise of cutting deficit spending in half by Obama is a travesty and his outrageous spending will likely “leave our children with a debt that they cannot repay.”

9. Pledge Not To Raise Taxes on Middle Class

"And I can make a firm pledge. Under my plan, no family making less than $250,000 a year will see any form of tax increase – not your income tax, not your payroll tax, not your capital-gains taxes, not any of your taxes.” Another promise severely missed.

Obama raised payroll taxes under the fiscal cliff deal, Obama Care will become the biggest middle class tax increase in decades in many ways, this administration raised cigarette taxes which likely affected the less wealthy in this country since they are more likely to smoke, and the hidden tax of exponentially expanding overregulation in this country is making businesses pass on the cost of regulation to consumers, the most of which are in the middle class.

10. Obama Care Would Lower Healthcare Costs, Reduce Premiums, Keep Your Doctor, etc., etc. This promise is so unfilled it is tough to find a place to start:

• Obama Care is already costing more than two times original estimates that were put forth by Democrats when the legislation was approved.
• Obama Care will add trillions of dollars to our national debt, requiring higher taxes on everyone to pay for it.
• Obama Care is increasing health insurance premiums an average of 30% this year alone.
• Obama Care is causing six in ten doctors to say they will retire early rather than deal with the hassle of the legislation.
• Obama Care is not creating a wealth of new jobs as promised. If anything, Obama Care is suppressing hiring of new employees, suppressing business expansion, and suppressing the hours current employees work each week.
• Obama Care will get result in universal health care coverage, according to the Congressional Budget Office, that estimated upwards of ten million citizens will still not have health care coverage ten years from now.
• Obama Care will cause about seven million Americans to lose their current health care insurance coverage, according to the Congressional Budget Office. This kills another promise of the President who boldly stated that if you like your current health care insurance, you can keep it. Seven million Americans will shortly find out the fallacy of that promise.
• Recently even Congressional supporters of the legislation have openly admitted that Obama Care will be an operational and financial  “train wreck” and that a lot more money is needed if it is ever to get off the ground, far more taxpayer wealth than originally hyped and planned for.

Missing on all cylinders, this mess called Obama Care.

Obscene deficit spending, obscene wasteful spending, obscene taxation oppression, and the disaster that is Obama Care, horrific performance by this administration. Shaping up as one of the worst Presidential administrations ever, with the remaining broken promises being covered tomorrow.

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

 

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

 



Believe It Or Not, These Politicians Are Actually Doing The Right Things

Unfortunately, most of what we cover in this blog is of a negative angle relative to government, the deterioration of freedom, and bad politicians acting badly. The reason we focus on these topics is that they overwhelmingly dominate what is going on in this country today.  

Government inefficiency, redundancy, and waste rob the citizens and the economy of wealth that they would put to far better use. The Patriot Act, NDAA, drone spying, the prison at Gitmo, indefinite detention without due process, email and other communications snooping without warrants, and politicians more concerned about their personal enrichment and political careers than resolving any of the major long standing problems facing America. I wish it was different, I wish that these infractions and insults to liberty were so infrequent that I did not have enough material to write about. But that is not the case.  

However, let’s take a different tact today and focus on the positive, some political instances of the way things should be and not the way they usually are. These examples of goodness are few and far between but we should celebrate them when they do occur in order to hopefully, sow the goodness elsewhere in our government, our political class, and our country.  

Before we start, let me reference one other time where we focused on the good. Such examples were presented at the following link:

 http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2009/12/year-end-review-good-bad-and-ugly-today.html

It is has been a long time since we did that feel good post, hopefully, today’s post is also as positive.  

1) I believe that just about any human organization expands to fill the budget allowed to it, whether it is a company, a charity, or a political entity, and that organziation will wastefully spend money if it has it to spend. Thus, it was quite refreshing a little while ago when Senator Rand Paul announced that he was actually giving back $600,000 to the U.S. Treasury from his Senate office budget. With a little work, smarts, and ingenuity he found ways to actually do more with less, making his office operations more efficient without sacrificing quality or reducing headcount.  

This $600,000 is about 20% of his government operating budget and it comes on top of the $500,000 he returned to the American taxpayer last year. At his press conference announcing his taxpayer savings, he stated that he will also introduce legislation this year incentivizing Federal employees to identify and eliminate wasteful programs in their respective agencies. This aspect of his announcement is especially gratifying since we proposed this exact same program three years ago in Step 1 from our book, “Love My Country, Loathe My Government.”  

If each member of Congress was as smart and efficient as Senator, the American taxpayer would save over well over $3 billion over the next ten year budget cycle. That could fund a lot of White House tours and Easter Egg hunts.  

2) Consider the highlights of a New York Times article from January 23, 2013 that highlighted some of the bold and freedom enhancing steps the Kansas political class is undertaking

• Early in January, 2013, the largest tax cut in Kansas history took effect when income tax rates were substantially reduced.
• The state government has converted its Medicaid system to be handled and managed by private insurers to save money.
• Legislation introduced into the state government in late January would reduce income tax rates further, with the goal of eventually eliminating the state’s individual income tax.
• The government has already reduced the state’s welfare rolls and reduced the state government workforce.
• The governor has merged state government agencies to reduce redundancies and wasteful spending and is proposing further consolidation.
• He is also pushing for state employee pension changes, a government expense that is bankrupting the treasuries of many other state governments because of excessive benefits.
• Senator Susan Wagle, the Republican Senate president who represents the Wichita area had the following quote in the article: “If you look at the demographics of my voter base, a lot moved to Florida and Nevada for lower taxes. I’d like to see them come back.”

The overall strategy of this government streamlining and efficiency drive is to reverse years of economic stagnation. Kansas private-sector job growth has been just 1.6% over the past 14 years, compared with 12.2% in the 10 states with the lowest tax burdens. The state government estimates that the tax cuts will generate nearly 23,000 jobs by 2020 and $2 billion of income for the state.

Of course, many state politicians do not think this is the right strategy. The fear, as always, is that the poor will suffer the most when taxes are reduced. I do not know if this is true under this approach but as always, those opposed to shrinking government, provide no plans to make government more efficient or effective. They want the status quo maintained or even better, raise taxes and make government even bigger.

But bigger government in Kansas does not seem to be working, at least over the past 14 years. Low economic growth, outward migration of citizens to lower taxing states, redundant and inefficient government operations. The critics of this plan should be working with the Governor to keep basic safety net programs intact while cleaning up the slop in government operations.

Give these members of the political class credit in Kansas for trying something new, something, that if successful, will make government leaner, more effective, and more nimble, increasing freedom by allowing hardworking citizens of Kansas to keep more of their wealth, and keep citizens in the state. Doing nothing is losing, doing something with these huge potential benefits is worth the risk.

By the way, these actions have gotten the attention of other politicians in nearby states, resulting in the following positive domino effect, according to the article:

• The governor of Nebraska has introduced legislation to eliminate a variety of taxes, including ones on individual income and small businesses.
• The governor of Oklahoma plans to call for modest income tax cuts.
• Missouri lawmakers are working on reforming their tax code.

Less waste, more retained wealth, more economic growth, all positive.

3) A recent story in the March 18, 2013 issue of Business Week gave me hope that there is a chance to clean up political corruption at all levels of government in this country. The article focuses on Cuyahoga County in Ohio, home of Cleveland. If you read some of the quotes and horror stories in the article, you cannot help come to the conclusion that there was a hotbed of political corruption:

• Some businesses would not even do business in the county due to the widespread and embedded cancer of payoffs and corruption.
• Several years ago, residents and business owners said enough is enough and authorities started going after the crooked politicians.
• Sixty two of them were arrested and 47 of them have been sent to jail or are awaiting sentencing.
• County commissioner and Democratic party leader, Jimmy Dimora, was sentenced to 28 years in jail for giving out county contracts in return for money, vacation trips, and prostitutes.
• County auditor Frank Russo pleaded guilty to charges that he steered no bid county contracts to certain contractors in exchange for rewards and he is now serving 22 years in prison.
• 975 county employees were either fired, quit, or retired as a concentrated effort to clear out long standing and deep corruption roots among county employees.

Good stuff, cleaning up government making it more efficient by cleaning out the corruption and kickbacks. But best of all, businesses in the county developed and signed an oath under the guidance of Northeast Ohio Business Ethics Coalition that not only would they not engage in corrupt and illegal practices in order to do business with the county government, they also promised in the oath to identify and call out businesses that did engage in corrupt practices. In addition, all 59 towns within the county have signed their own pledge to clean up their operations.

Clean government is good government serving the people, in the least expensive way possible. Kudos to honesty and integrity in Ohio.

4) And finally, a tip of the hat to some politicians long ago who had faith in the free market system when they decided to deregulate the United States' airline industry. They took government out of the equation and substituted free market capitalisim in its place.

At the time, those that favored government control were besides themselves with forboding, claiming that without government regulation and oversight, planes would start falling from the air and prcies would skyrocket. My goodness, how could we not have government involved!

Well, they were right and the politicians that got deregulation approved were the heroes. Airline safety has gotten steadily better since deregulaiotn in 1978 and according to  an article in The Atlantic, that was sumamrized in the March 15, 2013 issue of The Week magazine, the cost of airline travel, when adjsted for inflation, is about 50% less expensive now than in those pre-deregulaiton days. A great example where government got out of the way and the world got better, cheaper, and safer.

So, let’s review. We have a Washington politician giving back unneeded taxpayer wealth without sacrificing quality. We have state politicians in the Midwest who understand that tax revenue is not their money to waste and abuse, it is their money to carefully shepherd and use in the most effective and efficient way possible, reducing wasteful government spending and increasing economic freedom for their constituents in the process. We have county and municipal governments in Ohio, who in co-operation with citizens and businesses, have cleaned up their cesspool of political corruption, making their governments more effective, transparent, and efficient. We see the results of getting government out of the economy to improve service but lower the price of a market offering.

Effective, transparent, and efficient, increasing freedom in the process. Is that really too much to ask of Washington also?

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