AnAverageAmerican

THE MEDIA IS BEGGINNING TO FLIP ON OBAMA

2010-03-09T09:19:00.000-08:00

THE LIBERAL WRITTEN MEDIA IS BEGINNING TO FLIP ON OBAMA. FROM THEIR LIPS AND PENS TO GOD'S EARS!!!

Mortimer Zuckerman is the Editor in Chief of the U S News and World Report. He was a supporter of Barack Obama during his run for the Presidency. This is a staggering appraisal of the President's first year in office- coming from someone who supported President Obama. In a January 20, 2010 editorial, the Editor in Chief of U.S. News & World Report, Mortimer Zuckerman, had this to say: "Obama's ability to connect with voters is what launched him. But what has surprised me is how he has failed to connect with the voters since he's been in office. He's had so much overexposure. You have to be selective. He was doing five Sunday shows. How many press conferences? And now people stop listening to him. He's lost his audience. He has not rallied public opinion. He has plunged in the polls more than any other public figure since we've been using polls. He's done everything wrong. Well, not everything, but the major things. I don't consider it a triumph. I consider it a disaster." And that's what his friends are saying about him. As the president occupied the White House on January 20, 2009 it was predictable that his presidency would last a year, at most, because the things he promised and the things he stood for were so uniquely un-American. Looking back over his year in office, any reasonably precocious fourth grader could make a cogent argument in opposition to nearly everything he's done. In fact, his policies have been so extreme and so far outside the mainstream that he was destined to achieve the most spectacular fall from grace of any American president in history. It was easy to see him serving out the final three years of his term as a virtual exile in the White House. afraid to venture out among any but the most rabid partisans. Seeing his most ambitious initiative, healthcare reform, die in the flames of the Massachusetts Massacre, Obama made a hastily-planned "sortie" to Ohio for yet another Bush-bashing, self-aggrandizing stump speech on job creation. It was vintage Obama. full of left wing hyperbole and planted questions from the Kool-Ade drinkers in the hand-picked audience. but there were just two things wrong with it: 1) Almost everything he said was either wrong or an outright lie, and 2) He is so overexposed that no one in the television audience really wanted to see him. Obama Kool-Ade drinkers in the media, and elsewhere, like to describe Obama as a "very bright man, a true intellectual (compared to George W. Bush and Sarah Palin, of course)." If that is the case, why has he demonstrated such a great inability to learn from his failures? The strident words and the in-your-face attitude of his Ohio speech were proof that he has totally misread the meaning of the Scott Brown victory in Massachusetts . Whatever hopes and dreams he had for his time in the White House, whatever grandiose plans he had for transforming the United States from a constitutional republic with a free market economy into a socialist dictatorship with a centrally planned economy, were all lost on Tuesday, January 19, 2010. one day short of a full year in office. Yet, he appears to have learned nothing from the experience. In the context of 21st century American politics, and assuming that he has any capacity at all for honest self-examination, Obama must be feeling today very much like a pair of brown shoes at a black tie soiree. When a politically naïve and totally inexperienced young black man, with a glib tongue and an exceptional ability to read words convincingly from a teleprompter, announced that he was ready to serve as President of the United States , liberals and Democrats saw it as a perfect opportunity to expiate whatever white guilt they may have felt. which was apparently considerable among those on the political left. It didn't seem to bother them that, as one pundit has remarked, "every time he walks into a room he is the least experienced and the least qualified man in the room." Nevertheless, his friends in the worldwide socialist movement and the international banking community figured out how to smuggle hundreds of millions of dollars in illegal campaign funds into the country, the black community rallied to his banner, and American liberals and the mainstream media jumped on board the bandwagon. Together, they made it happen for him. But now, just one year later, Obama appears destined to become the unhappiest man in American politics. What we do know about Obama is that, since his teen years, he has been mentored by, gravitated toward, and surrounded by the most dangerous sort of America-hating socialists, communists, and Marxists. from Frank Marshall Davis and Saul Alinsky to Weather Underground terrorists Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn, to Rev. Jeremiah Wright, George Soros, and countless radical left college professors. What destines Obama for the top spot on the list of unhappiest American politicians. aside from the failure of his economic recovery program, the failure of his radical cap-and-trade proposal, his failed attempt to give labor bosses unprecedented power to intimidate blue collar workers, and his ill-fated attempt at healthcare reform. is the fact that he carries on his shoulders the hopes and aspirations of every black child in America . It is unfortunate that, because he is so far outside the American mainstream, and because he carries so much hatred in his heart for the country he seeks to lead, his failures will be viewed by generations of black children, not as the failure of a black socialist attempting to bring down a constitutional republic, but simply as the failure of a black man. He is simply the wrong man, in the wrong job, in the wrong country, at the wrong time in history.

The Silver Lining of the Left in Power

2009-11-18T08:42:00.000-08:00

There may be a major silver lining for conservatives and for America's future thanks to the foreign and domestic policies of President Obama and the Democrat-controlled House and Senate: For the first time in their lives, millions of Americans are coming to understand the left.
It is difficult to overstate how important this is. For decades, the left has largely controlled the news media, the arts, the universities and the entertainment media. And vast numbers of Americans have imbibed these leftist messages and the leftist critiques of conservatives. What these Americans have never been able to do is to see what the left would actually do if in power.

Of course, all one had to do was look at California and see how a left-wing legislature brought the country's largest state economy to near insolvency and bankruptcy, chased away many of its most productive citizens, and wasted tens of billions of dollars thanks in large measure to union domination of the state's politics.
But most Americans do not observe other states. Most Americans are preoccupied with their lives and, unfortunately, with what is on television.
Now, this has all changed. Americans are watching California enacted on the national stage.
And it is scaring all but the ideologically committed left -- a rather small, if profoundly influential and powerful, minority. This is why last week, Gallup reported an extraordinarily dramatic and quick shift of independent voters' electoral preferences. In the Gallup Poll's words: "Over the course of the year, independents' preference for the Republican candidate in their districts has grown, from a 1-point advantage in July to the current 22-point gap."
In half a year, there has been a 23 percent shift from Democrats to Republicans among independent voters. And nothing particularly bad had occurred -- no further economic meltdown, no terrorist attack from abroad (the Poll preceded the Fort Hood attack).
Now Americans see the left's policies for what they are:
1. The left wants America to abandon its defining commitment to individualism and replace it with a European-style nanny, or welfare, state. At most Americans' core is an abiding belief that we are supposed to take care of ourselves, our families and our neighbors, and not rely on the state to do so.
2. The left is naive about evil. Most Americans deemed Communism evil; the left ridiculed President Ronald Reagan for calling the Soviet Union an "evil empire" and often undermined the fight against the Communist world. So, too, the left is naive about Islamic terror and undermines the fight against it.
The smoking gun was the nearly universal denial by the left that his Islamic beliefs had anything to do with Maj. Nidal Hasan's mass murder of fellow servicemen at Fort Hood. One of many examples was this reaction to the shootings by Evan Thomas, Editor at Large at Newsweek: "I think he's probably just a nut case. But with that label (Muslim) attached to him, it will get the right wing going..."
3. The left is more interested in redistributing wealth than in creating it. This should have been as obvious to Americans as the brightness of the sun. Finally, Americans are coming to realize that the left's goal is now, as it always has been, equality, not prosperity.
4. The left is far more interested in power than the right is. This, too, should have been self-evident, but finally, people are realizing that those who are preoccupied with creating an ever-expanding state are obviously far more interested in amassing power than those who want a smaller state.
5. The left is preoccupied with America being loved, and in pursuit of that end, compromises some of America's core values. Examples abound here, too. To cite a few: the Obama administration's neglect of those in Iran risking their lives for freedom in that tyranny; the administration's refusal to meet with the Dalai Lama when the Tibetan leader visited Washington, lest the president annoy China's dictators; the American government siding with Hugo Chavez against the Honduran government, which had legally removed a Chavez clone from the Honduran presidency; and the president's obsequious apologies for America wherever he goes.

by Dennis Prager

Budget tricks rife in health reform effort

2009-10-21T08:37:00.000-07:00

By Jennifer Haberkorn and David M. Dickson THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Advocates of health care reform are relying on budget manipulations to stick with President Obama's pledge to overhaul the system without adding to the deficit, critics on and off Capitol Hill say.
Both independent budget analysts and Republicans say a Senate vote expected this week on a 10-year, nearly $250 billion Medicare reimbursement bill is the perfect example. They say it was sliced out of the reform plans because it would send the cost of Mr. Obama's top legislative priority over $1 trillion.
Further, they argue that the health care overhaul bill has been front-loaded with revenue and backloaded with spending to make it look less expensive that it actually is. The reforms price tag will play a major role in the looming debates in Congress and across America.
"It's a gimmick that is designed to allow the president and the Democrat majority to say our health care reform bill is deficit-neutral," said Sen. John Thune, South Dakota Republican. "And well, sure, if you take $250 billion and back it out, it's easy to say it's deficit-neutral."
The Medicare bill, offered by Sen. Debbie Stabenow, Michigan Democrat, would repair what physicians say is a flawed formula that underpays them fortreating Medicare patients. Nearly every year, the math calls for them to face a double-digit cut unless Congress overturns it.
"The very act of separately passing the 10-year physician-payment patch, without paying for it, before passing health care reform undermines [the Democrats'] credibility and the confidence that they will make the hard choices necessary to make sure that reform is fiscally responsible," said Maya MacGuineas, president of the bipartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.
But Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Nevada Democrat, says the move is simply to address an annual problem that must be fixed to ensure doctors can treat senior citizens.
"Physicians, you know, they go into medicine to take care of people, and when they are faced with a situation where if they see a Medicare patient, they can't even pay their overhead, that doesn't speak well for our Medicare system," Mr. Reid said.
Both the American Medical Association and the AARP are lobbying hard in support of the measure.
"Those who are concerned about waiving budget requirements should recognize that the past practice of 'temporary band-aids' on the [rates] has only served to increase both the size of future cuts and the cost of subsequent interventions. That is neither responsible budget policy nor in keeping with our obligations to provide access, choice and quality care," the groups said in a letter to Congress.
While there is near-universal agreement on Capitol Hill to fix the formula somehow, Republicans and some moderate Democrats warn that it's irresponsible to cut the fix out of health care reform and not pay for it.
"The physicians issue has to be addressed but it has to be addressed in a way that doesn't increase the deficit by $245 billion," Sen. Evan Bayh, Indiana Democrat, said last week. "That's just not responsible. ... If we're going to honor the president's promise to make this fiscally responsible, that's an issue that ought to be addressed."
In his televised address to Congress last month, Mr. Obama drew a clear-cut line in the sand between budget deficits and health care reform. "I will not sign a plan that adds one dime to our deficits - either now or in the future. Period," he said.
On the payment cut, physicians have lobbied hard since 2001 to fix the flawed system, calling it one of their top legislative issues. The Sustainable Growth Rate was established in 1997 in an attempt to keep payments from spiraling out of control, but each year Congress overturns the cuts.
"There's been a strong desire to get a permanent fix," said Julius W. Hobson Jr., a senior policy adviser at Bryan Cave LLP and lobbyist for the American Academy of Family Physicians.
But even they say it's going to be hard to talk Republicans and even some Democrats into backing a bill without a payment mechanism. Many of the suggested ways to pay for it already have been claimed by the reform bill.
"I'm not sure where you get the Republican votes for something like that," Mr. Hobson said.
Fiscal policy hawks say that the Congress should stick with its rule to "pay as you go."
"If policymakers believe that the current [Medicare] formula is unrealistic, they should replace it with a more appropriate policy and pay for the change in keeping with their pledge to reform health care in a deficit-neutral way," said Robert L. Bixby, executive director of the Concord Coalition, a bipartisan group that advocates for a balanced federal budget.
Republicans in the House and Senate are expected to offer amendments to pay for the Medicare fix bill and try to attach medical malpractice reform.

Republicans argue that Democrats have played with their math before. They say that the Senate Finance Committee's bill enacts revenue raisers quickly but doesn't enact spending measures as soon, to make it look less expensive.
Douglas J. Holtz-Eakin, a former director of the Congressional Budget Office who was the chief economic adviser to the 2008 presidential campaign of Sen. John McCain, Arizona Republican, criticized the plan passed by the Senate Finance Committee and its chairman, Sen. Max Baucus, Montana Democrat, for "front-loading taxes and backloading benefits."
The plan begins imposing taxes in 2010 on the pharmaceutical industry ($2.3 billion), the medical-device industry ($4 billion) and the health insurance industry ($6.7 billion). Beginning in 2013, the plan imposes a 40 percent excise tax on the cost of so-called "Cadillac" health insurance plans above a certain threshold ($21,000 for family policies).
An expansion of Medicaid and the sliding-scale subsidies paid to offset the cost of health insurance for low- and middle-income households would not begin until 2014.
In 2010, the Baucus plan begins to cut $117 billion in payments over 10 years to insurance companies for the Medicare Advantage programs they operate. Those programs, which offer increased benefits to 10 million beneficiaries, compete with the traditional Medicare program operated by the federal government.
Mr. Holtz-Eakin said the 10-year deficit cut was achieved by assuming that revenue from tax increases and spending savings from Medicare cuts would both rise by 10 percent a year.
"No Congress has ever cut Medicare on a sustained basis," Mr. Holtz-Eakin said.
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has estimated that the bill would cost $829 billion over 10 years and reduce the deficit by $81 billion.
Sen. Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, the top Republican on the Finance Committee, said that examining the bill after 2013 tells a different story than starting in 2010.
"If you take the years 2013 through 2023, you'll find it's a very expensive bill," he said when the CBO report was released earlier this month.
The CBO said that the federal deficit would continue to decline after 2019, but based it on a rough estimate and on the assumption that policies in the Finance Committee bill remain in place.
"These projections assume that the proposals are enacted and remain unchanged throughout the next two decades, which is often not the case for major legislation," the CBO report said.

Has Congress created a reason not to buy health insurance

2009-10-13T10:09:00.000-07:00

What if you, and every member of your family, had the chance to save $4,000 each?. Would you be interested? Under the terms of what's being called "the Baucus bill" -- Washington-speak for the bill the Senate Finance Committee will vote on tomorrow -- that is how much you could save by dropping your health insurance.
People might have thought that health care reform would lead to an increase in the number of people getting health insurance coverage. Indeed, the Congressional Budget Office claims the Senate Finance Committee's health care bill will reduce the number of uninsured in 2019 by about 29 million," but the financial rewards are huge for people if they drop their insurance. Amazingly the CBO makes this prediction of 29 million more insured Americans without ever once analyzing the financial incentive for those who are already insured to drop their insurance.
Consider some numbers. In 2008, the average price of an individual insurance policy was $4,704 and it was $12,682 for a family of four. But the Baucus bill explicitly states that insurance companies "would be prohibited from excluding coverage for pre-existing health conditions."
Thus, you may wait until you have been diagnosed with cancer or are pregnant or have some other problem to purchase insurance. True, there is a fine if you do not buy insurance but it is very small compared to the actual price of the insurance. The fine will eventually reach "$750 per adult in the household. This per adult penalty would also be phased in: For 2013, $0; $200 for 2014; $400 for 2015; $600 in 2016 and $750 in 2017." Even if the cost of insurance didn't rise by 2019, which is extremely doubtful, paying the fine and waiting until you're sick before you got insurance would easily save you $4,000 per person insured. -- Every American could save thousands of dollars, every year, by waiting to buy insurance until they are seriously ill or get pregnant. This would affect a lot of people. Although not everyone may immediately feel comfortable dropping their insurance, especially those with minor health problems, many people will. And more and more will do so as the price of the "same" insurance keeps on increasing.
Could you imagine what it would be like if you could buy auto insurance right after you have had an accident and then be allowed to immediately drop it again once the car was fixed? Everyone would understand that's not how insurance works. The "insurance" fee would be the price of what it costs to get the car fixed plus the administrative costs of handling the "insurance."
The same applies to health care. -- The more people who shy away from buying insurance when they are healthy, the higher the price of insurance will be for those who buy it when they are ill. -- There will be a quick unraveling of the insurance system as everyone suddenly realizes that insurance has become something you only need to buy when you are really sick. Of course, this means that insurance companies will stop insuring people and, instead, health care will be transformed into a fee for service system.
The proposed "Baucus bill" health care reform would thus both dramatically reduce the number of people with insurance and dramatically increase insurance premiums. Of course, that's just the opposite of how the program is being sold.
Mr. President, if this is what you meant when you said that you wouldn't "mess" with people's insurance if they were happy with it, we don't need your help.
John R. Lott, Jr. is a FOXNews.com contributor. He is an economist and author of "Freedomnomics."

Worst hires rates ever

2009-08-14T12:10:00.000-07:00

Worst. Hires Rate. Ever.Welcome to the “Help Not Wanted” economy.
By Jerry Bowyer

It’s not enough for most people to know what the unemployment rate is and whether it’s going up or down. It’s not enough for investors and entrepreneurs living during some of the strangest times in American financial history. And it’s not enough for citizens trying to decide whether the policy proposals now in Washington are worthy of their support. If you fall into any of these categories, you need to know more about the labor market than the headline numbers. In particular, you need to know the JOLT.Last week we learned that non-farm payrolls dropped by “only” 247,000 and that the unemployment rate decreased a tick from 9.5 percent to 9.4 percent — important statistics both. This week, however, a lesser-known but no-less-vital jobs indicator arrived: the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (or JOLT, to its friends). This survey breaks down the ins and outs, literally, of our dynamic employment system. It tells us how fast we’re hiring, firing, quitting, and offering gainful employment. Critically, it tells us the hires rate.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics defines the hires rate as the “number of hires during the month divided by the number of employees who worked during or received pay for the pay period that includes the 12th of the month.” And the latest hires rate — the worst in the history of this measure — confirms what BuzzCharts has been reporting for months (see “Obama’s Magical Misery Tour” and “The Jobless Recovery”): Entrepreneurs and business managers are frozen. They’ve stopped posting want ads and they’ve stopped adding staff. When I look at the chart above, I see a giant sign hanging in the window of America. It reads: “Help Not Wanted.” Economic minds on the political left might reflexively counter that the blame should fall on the greedy businesspeople who are not hiring. But even if we concede that business owners are greedy (which we do not), was there ever a point, across the hundreds of months during which the hiring rate has been reported, when they weren’t greedy? Weren’t they greedy when they went on a hiring spree following passage of the Bush-Cheney (or is it the other way around?) tax cuts of 2003? Did Obama make them greedy?No, but Obama has made them scared. Everywhere I go I hear the same story. Business owners know the little details that academics and pundits don’t, and they know what not to do. They know, for example, that payroll taxes are not only scheduled to rise, but already have risen. And they know all too well that government-mandated unemployment compensation is funded by employers through an unemployment-compensation payroll tax. As a result, they know not to hire.As a business owner, your unemployment-compensation level rises as you are forced to cut your workforce. And when job-market conditions are strained, as they are now, each new employee you hire becomes a potentially larger cost center than he used to be for each hour worked. If you let him go, you will end up paying him anyway every time you cut a check to your remaining employees. My friend Art Laffer calls this a “wedge” between employee and employer. It’s a job killer and a wealth killer.BuzzCharts offers its sincerest prayers and condolences to the roughly 15 million Americans — including one in four teenagers and one in three African-American teenagers — who want work but can’t find it. We’ve been there too.But if the job statistics don’t miraculously recover, you’ll need to proceed as follows: Next year, get out there and elect for yourself, and the rest of us, a new Congress. One that understands the way the world really works.Two years after that, vote in a new president.— Jerry Bowyer is an economist, CNBC contributor, and author of the upcoming Free Market Capitalist’s Survival Guide.

The Truth About Obama's Health Care Plan

2009-08-09T10:19:00.000-07:00

What is the difference between waste and the health care you want? Answer: a government bureaucrat.

Posted on Friday at Heartland.org is a new comprehensive study: The Obama Health Plan: Rationing, Higher Taxes, and Lower Quality Care. The study explains in full detail, based on the pending Congressional legislation, exactly how the Obama health plan would impose government rationing that will deny you health care, severely restrict your freedom of choice and control over your health care, raise, not lower, health costs, impose sharp tax increases that would leave America uncompetitive in the world economy, and increase federal spending, deficits and debt.
The rationing begins with the dominant public option government health insurance plan, which is authorized in the legislation to follow the practices of Medicare and Medicaid in sharply underpaying doctors and hospitals. Medicare pays doctors 20% below market rates, and hospitals 30% below market. Medicaid pays 30% to 40% less than Medicare.
This power to underpay medical bills is the most important reason the government public option health insurance plan will eventually drive out the private competitors, leaving you without the choice of keeping your current insurance plan. Any private plans that do manage to survive will be able to do so only by adopting the practice of paying only what the government plan pays. So the government will end up dictating all payments to health providers in any event.
Doctors and hospitals will consequently begin to restrict their care to fit what the government will pay. Their practices will shrink to avoid the more expensive medical services and treatments that the government payments will not sufficiently cover.
These underpayment practices in turn will have dramatic, powerful effects on investment in the health care industry. Investors are not going to finance acquisition of the latest, most advanced equipment and technologies with the government slashing compensation for the services such technologies provide. Investors are also not going to finance expanded or new hospital facilities or clinics, or even the full maintenance of existing ones.
The supply of doctors, surgeons and specialists will also decline, just when demand for their services is soaring under the Obama health plan giveaways. Obama repeatedly says that under his health reform plan if you like your doctor you will be able to keep him or her. But the real question is whether under his reform plan your doctor will be willing to keep you, when the government refuses to pay adequately for the health care services you want and need.
This is how the long waiting lines for diagnostics, surgery, and other referrals begin to develop. This is why in other countries with national health plans or socialized medicine, facilities seem old, aged, and deteriorated.
Vast new realms of possible, innovative, new health services and care opened up by modern science will lag unutilized. Drug companies will also cut back sharply on investment in new, cutting edge, restorative, painsaving, or lifesaving miracle drugs. Many people will suffer or die unnecessarily as a result.
A recent report from President Obama's Council of Economic Advisors (CEA)[1], which he has touted as showing how his health plan would reduce health costs, elaborates even more explicit and comprehensive government rationing of health care.
The CEA report says 30% of American health care is waste, which government bureaucracy is going to eliminate under Obama's health reforms. What is the difference between waste and the health care you want? Answer: a government bureaucrat.
The CEA says the government will reduce health costs by deciding for doctors and hospitals across the country what health care works and what doesn't. Even worse, it will decide what health care is cost effective, which means the government will decide whether your health care is worth the cost, not you and your doctor. This will be enforced through the payments to doctors and hospitals. Those who follow the government's dictates on your health care get paid, those that don't don't get paid.
These are some of the reasons why the public is now protesting so angrily against the Obama health plan in public forums all over the country, and why the polls show the public has turned in decisive opposition to the Obama health plan.
President Obama insists that if you like the health insurance you have today, you will be able to keep it. But under his health plan, if you have employer provided health insurance, that won't be your choice, it will be your employer's choice. Your employer will have every incentive to dump you into the so-called public option, government insurance plan, and pay an 8% payroll tax instead. If the employer's work force averages $50,000 a year in wages, then the employer would only have to pay $4,000 per year per worker under the payroll tax, which would likely be less than what he is paying for your current health coverage.
[1] The President's Council of Economic Advisors, The Economic Case for Health Reform, June 2, 2009
Peter Ferrara is Director of Entitlement and Budget Policy for the Institute for Policy Innovation, and General Counsel of the American Civil Rights Union. He served in the White House Office of Policy Development under President Reagan, and as Associate Deputy Attorney General of the United States under the first President Bush.

Blaming Bush

2009-07-17T08:09:00.000-07:00

I find myself wondering: When will Obama and people stop blaming George W. Bush? Every elected official inherits what their predecessor left. The moment you raise your hand and take the oath, it is your responsibility.
There is a saying: " Playing the hand life deals to you ", It is time this President, this administration and this government man up and take full responsibility for their actions.
However let's look at some issues here. First, did not Bush inherit problems too? I remember a problem with a certain dot.com bubble busting. Just consider the following information:
The stock market began its decline in mid-January 2000, dropping from an all-time high of more than 11,700 in the Dow to below 9,800 in early March 2000, on its way to its first calendar year loss since 1994.The dot.com bubble also burst in 2000. The Nasdaq, site of some of the largest IPOs in history, peaked on March 10th, 2000. And by December 2000, the time of our meeting in Austin, it had dropped by more than 50 percent.The economy itself began slowing in the third quarter of 2000 as GDP declined by an annual rate of 0.5 percent. And, all of this took place before George W. Bush set foot in the Oval Office.
Bush inherited this problem and 9/11 to boot. But we came together and worked our way through it. We, the people, not the U.S. Government. I cannot remember Bush coming out week after week blaming Clinton. He could have but I can't recall it.
The second issue:
A President is to establish a budget and submit it to Congress. The budget submitted does not mean that the end result of the actions taken by Congress will match completely what gets passed and signed into law. Congress reviews the budget and determines what they feel are good programs to be enacted and which require additional discussion between Congress and the President. The relationship between Congress and the President is part of a checks and balance which was established in our Constitution. This is important!.
Congress has many responsibilities in conducting their business. Their main responsibility is to enact legislation that is right for the country considering the proposed budget submitted by the President. It is also important to note that the language of legislation must be agreed upon by both the Senate and the House of Representatives.
Does this not mean Congress at anytime could have stopped George W. Bush from any spending? Now consider why the Democrats did not. At no time did Bush have a super majority like Obama. They could have filibustered him at anytime. Also remember that when Bush won in 2000, "Jumping" Jim Jeffords, who changed party affiliation to independent, but caucused with the Democrat party once he was promised a committee chairmanship by Democratic Leader Tom Daschle. Jeffords was given the committee chairmanship of Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. This gave the Democratic party the majority and the hands down ability to stop anything Bush wanted to do, did it not? Even later when Bush had majorities in both the House and Senate the Democrats had the numbers to stop Bush.
While Bush was a social conservative he was a liberal spender. His tax cuts transformed the economy taking it from recession to growth every year except the last year of his presidency. Had Bush cut spending as well as the tax cuts we would be talking about a very different legacy.
If governments could prevent or stop recessions and depression, why have we had so many? In fact they cannot and history has shown over and over that they in most instances caused or contributed to the problem, often causing them to be longer and more severe. While the jury is still out as to what caused this recession, the first domino seemed to be the housing industry where Democratic leadership insisted, promoted and applied legislation which gave unqualified people housing loans. There is overwhelming written and video evidence proving this, showing Republicans and some Democrats voicing concern of the collapse of this industry. Did not these toxic loans take down the banking industry? Why did the Democratic party allow this? At anytime they could have stopped it. The answer is simple: While it was not the level of spending and entitlements they wanted, it was at least some of what they wanted. So it is time the pot stops calling the kettle black. The House of Representatives and the Senate are equally responsible for the mess we find ourselves in.
Let's move forward now that Obama won and the Democratic party is in total control. With the super majority by Obama and the Democrats we have lost the check and balance established by our Constitution. Leading up to this moment words like "crisis", "unrecoverable economical disasters" and "the worse economy since the great depression" were used. So what was their answer or solution? Obama and the Democratic leadership's answer was to spend not one, not two, but four times the money Bush spent on the budget and entitlements. This created deficits you can hardly fathom. The Media and the People seemed alarmed by billion dollar deficits. Welcome to Obama's multi-trillion dollar deficits. Now each day passes with something new that this Administration and Congress wants to do. Taking over banks, GM and now healthcare. Healthcare having it's own price tag of over 1.5 trillion dollars, if you believe government estimates. History shows that the governmental estimates of cost to run these new agencies or programs is never right usually being somewhere from 6 times to 100 times more. Using the historical average of miscalculation would mean that Healthcare reform would be somewhere between 6 and 100 trillion not the 1.5 trillion this Administration or Congress is promoting. We cannot afford this level of entitlements and spending.
It is unreasonable to think you can tax your way out of it either. Those who make 250,000 and above will not be able to bear this load of over-taxation. History shows: Tax the rich and you will always see the poor and middle class paying for it. Raise taxes on the oil companies: Will you not see the price everyone pays at the pump increase? Are you really buying that only the rich will feel and see these tax increases? Add a surcharge tax to businesses and you will see an across the board rise in everything you purchase. Big business and small business will pass the addition cost along to everyone. Are you buying that the rich will not pass these costs along? Why does it seem that their only answer is to tax and tear down the rich? Why is it never: Let's raise the poor? Why can't the Bill Gates and Oprah's of the world say: " Let us use our extra resources and take people off the rolls of welfare and put them in college or trade schools"? This would raise the poor out of poverty and make them productive members of society, not to mention the valuable service they would be doing for their government and the general welfare of all Americans. This American would even be willing to give anyone who does this a tax break for the money they spend funding this.
The greatest of America is that you can be as great or as small as you choose. This is the magnet that draws everyone from all over the world here. You cannot mandate equality. How do you force someone to be something they choose not to be? Point being here for example: Has lowering the standards at schools stopped dropouts? No, and it never will. Which is why the founding fathers put "the pursuit of happiness" in our Constitution. You cannot mandate contentment. One person making thousands can be content while for another it takes millions.
The solution here for this American is to change things in a very different way. If you want to fix things like healthcare and social security, it's much easier than you think. First, let's put every Congressman and Senator
on the same plan they come up with for us. Let them live on Social Security like the rest of us. No more of this serve one term and get your salary for life. This should include the President. After all, everyone of them are usually millionaires anyway. Next, let's vote for a balanced budget amendment except in times of war or natural disaster. Finally, let's remove the 3/5 or 60 vote majority in both the House and Senate and move it back to 2/3. This would promote true bipartisanship instead of what we see today.

Obama's blunders

2009-07-11T12:12:00.000-07:00

I find it very interesting that Barack Obama first patted himself on the back for the voter turn out in Iran. Then, the news broke before the polls closed that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had won in a landslide. This was one time when the silence was deafening, compounding the problem by not supporting the voters who were disenfranchised and who had voted in a new leader. No, instead he said: " I will work with whom ever is there and there is not any difference between the two". What!? No difference between someone who is legally elected and someone who is not? Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is an anti-Israel and anti-America bigot who denies the holocaust even happened.
It is safe to say that the blood of Iranians is on Obama's hands. Iran responded by closing off all media reports and cracked down on those who are protesting and in fact won. The last time they did this hundreds of thousands died but this time it is with Obama's blessing. Oh well so much for Islam being a religion of peace, looks to me like they are killing anyone who disagrees with them.
Then, move forward to Honduras. In Honduras the elected president decides he can violate their constitution by being president again. His ouster came hours before polls were to open on a constitutional referendum that Zelaya was pushing ahead even after the Supreme Court and the attorney general said it was illegal. The constitution bars changes to some of its clauses, such as the ban on a president serving more than one term.
Their Supreme court, the highest in the land, rules that his action is unconstitutional. But Obama backs Zelaya and condemns Honduras Supreme courts action which ordered the ouster. Why would Obama back anyone who violated not only the constitution but the nation's highest court ? Obama sees the Constitution as a hindrance not something that is required to be followed, either theirs or ours.
Rep Jose Serrano (D-NY), introduced H.J. RES. 5 earlier this year, and the media doesn't talk about these things until they actually come of something, a House Joint Resolution to repeal the 22nd Amendment to the United States Constitution. For all of you who are not Constitutional scholars like myself, this is the Amendment that limits the number of terms a President can serve to two. With Obama having super majorities in both the House of Representatives and the Senate, is there any doubt that this could become a factual vote?Shouldn't we demand our elected officials follow and honor our constitution and honor other nations' constitutions?
Below is the actual text of the bill:

Here is the text of the legislation H. J. RES. 5:

Proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States to repeal the twenty-second article of amendment, thereby removing the limitation on the number of terms an individual may serve as President.

Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled (two-thirds of each House concurring therein), That the following article is proposed as an amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which shall be valid to all intents and purposes as part of the Constitution when ratified by the legislatures of three-fourths of the several States within seven years after the date of its submission for ratification

tea party

2009-07-08T08:57:00.001-07:00

Hello,
My name is Gary Smith. I'm writing to you today about the tea parties that occurred on 4/15/09. This is not a Republican, Democrat, Independent or Libertarian movement. This is a grassroots movement of Americans who are exercising their protected Constitutional rights. I was offended by the Speaker of the house, who called it an astro-turf movement of rich people who did not want their taxes raised. So you know, I am a man who is raising his family of three on 50k a year, not hardly a rich man by anyone's imagination. The majority party and the Media ignores us, even laughing at us and disrespecting our rights. So let me give you my point of view about what I am protesting. In 1773, Americans had a tea party, throwing tea into Boston harbor protesting taxation without representation. In 2009, Americans gathered to protest on 4/15, tax day. The majority of Americans were against all the spending that went on including me. I contacted my representatives and let them know; they proceeded anyway, spending and taxing against my desires or wishes. Is this not taxation without representation? So what am I protesting? That's easy to explain. 1. OUT OF CONTROL SPENDING 2. UNFAIR TAXATION AND 3. VIOLATIONS AGAINST THE CONSTITUTION. The Obama administration put out a report calling anyone who basically disagrees with them a Right wing extremist or domestic terrorist. They even had the audacity to call Veterans returning home from Iraq and Afghanistan extremists. I served my country with honor and would gladly serve it today, even if it meant death. I am no extremist, I am a patriotic man who has the right to disagree with this administration or any other. I call on the person who wrote this report to be fired and for a public apology from President Barack Obama who is responsible for it. No veteran of any war should be labeled "extremist".
As I mentioned above the tea parties happened on 4/15/09 and they were laughed at and disrespected. I ask you to do the math. 1000 tea parties in all 50 states. The reports I heard there were parties who had anywhere from 1,000 to 20,000 people. Using a very conservative average of 2,000 per party means 2 million Americans protested. Using a more realistic average of around 4,000 per party means 4 million Americans protested.
This is hardly a fringe movement or a laughing matter. The people I encountered were of all genders, races, nationalities and ages. I can not tell you how proud I was of my fellow countrymen and women. Now that this day has passed we must not let this movement die out. My brother pointed out that the civil rights movement had a million man march on Washington, DC. Why can't we do a Multi- Million man march on Washington DC again? I agree with my brother. My son picked the day, July 4th,2009. Could there be a better day than this to declare our independence? Let's join forces in Washington, DC on September, 2009. Americans standing together, united as one. Standing for our Republic, Standing for freedom, Standing for fair taxation of all Americans, Standing united against out of control spending by any party and Standing up for our Constitution who no man or no party has the right to violate. I ask that if you agree with this send this to all your friends and associates. Join me, an average American, in Washington DC.

Gary Smith

Addiction

2009-07-07T11:51:00.000-07:00

Our government has an Addiction. It is addicted to our money and it does not matter what level it is at. City, State and Federal government; all addicted to money. They do not care how they get it: taxes, fees, licenses and any other name they can come up with. Let them collect trillions; they will spend more than they bring in everytime. Let there be hard economic times and they will still spend more than they bring in everytime. What is it they say about insanity :" doing the same thing everytime expecting different results"
Now we see Obama changing the very fabric and form of our government. When asked, "What kind of government did you give us?", Benjamin Franklin answered " We have given you a Republic. Now go and see if you can keep it." We are a Republic of the people, for the people and by the people. Hence these truths came forth.
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal,that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, That among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to serve these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, Deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed."
The people did not want bail outs, but the government ignored us. The people did not want to bail out the auto industry, but the government ignored us. The people did not want cap and trade, but the government ignored us. Our government has forgotten they derive their power from us not the other way around. Czars appointed with no checks and balances other than the Obama administration and the Democratic House and Senate, hence changing the very form of government. They say California leads the way often in our country. In the last special election, Californians stood up for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. They sent the government a clear message: no excessive taxes, no excessive spending. It is time to cut the addict off. This Californian was proud of my fellow statesmen and women. Hopefully the rest of the nation will wake up and cut off the addiction. The alternative is waking up in a country of the government, for the government and by the government. Is this the change we voted for? Not I.

Gary Smith