Blamer-in-Chief

By Alan Caruba

We teach children to acknowledge and accept blame when they do something wrong. It is an important and useful trait in life. Those who do not learn this remain emotionally stunted children their entire life. I am, of course, speaking of President Barack Hussein Obama and I shudder to think of the continued damage he can do to the nation during his remaining months in office.

As Fox News’ Doug McKelway wrote in August 2011, “Obama has suggested that blame for the stagnant U.S. economy lies in places other than the Oval office. The latest example occurred Monday when the President said, “There will always be economic factors that we can’t control, earthquakes, spikes in oil prices, slowdowns in other parts of the world.”

The greatest slowdown has been at home, the national economy, is the only one of concern to Americans. Three and a half years into his first (and hopefully last term), Obama is still blaming it on former President Bush.

As recently as April 18, Obama returned to his favorite theme. Urging a tax increase on millionaires, Obama said that tax cuts enacted “eight years before I took office” had contributed to a “global economic crisis.”

It is worth recalling the financial crisis occurred in September 2008 in the final months of Bush’s second term.

At the time:
The Dow Jones closed at 12,621.77
The GDP for the previous quarter was 3.5%
The Unemployment rate was 4.6%

George W. Bush's economic policies set a record of 52 straight months of job growth. So, Obama is not only trying to distract voters from the actual facts, but lying about them as well.

In point of fact the Democrats had taken control of Congress on January 3, 2007, at the start of the 110th Congress

In December 2011, Investors Business Daily opined that Obama was “no longer content to blame President Bush for the country’s economic ills” but was accusing “his Democratic predecessor of being a co-conspirator.” That would be former President Clinton!

In a “Sixty Minutes” segment, Obama had said the economy was suffering from “structural problems that have been building up for two decades.” Most observers concede that both Clinton and Bush43 did a good job in guiding the economy during their terms, but not Obama.

The segment also included his prediction that “If I don’t have this done in three years, then there’s going to be a one-term proposition.” The likelihood that Obama can be reelected with 8.6% unemployment, $4 gas at the pump, massive housing loan foreclosures, and a still stagnant economy grows smaller by the week.

Consider the many ways this President has found everyone else to blame for his failures. Oil prices were blamed on the “uncertainty about what’s going on in Iran and the Middle East”, but prices stayed moderate during all the years of conflict in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Despite the horrid waste of taxpayer’s money on the various green energy firms that keep failing, Obama blamed the Solyndra debacle on the Chinese who “were subsidizing their solar industry and flooding the market in ways that Solyndra couldn’t compete.” That was well known before the Solyndra half billion dollar loan guarantee was made, followed by still more to other solar companies.

Even the deficits that have grown under his administration weren’t his fault. In November 2011, he said “Obviously, this (reducing government waste) is even more important given the deficits that we’ve inherited and that have grown as a consequence of the recession.”

The key word here is “inherited.”

Of course it was inherited and Obama knew that as he campaigned to be the President who would solve the financial crisis. In February 2010 he said “If we had taken office during ordinary times, we would have started bringing down these deficits immediately.” Instead, his stimulus program tripled the national deficit in his first year in office

Regarding the debt, Obama in March 2011 said, “I inherited a big debt.”

In April 2011 he said, “much of it I inherited when I showed up.”

In August 2011 he said “I inherited a big debt.”

The message, repeated ceaselessly, is that the increase is not his fault.

No matter what the problem is, it is NEVER his fault.. This isn’t just habitual. It’s pathological. And it bodes ill if he is reelected.

© Alan Caruba, 2012

Treasury's Geithner: We have no plan, but we don't like yours

A Short Review of Obama's Agenda

By Alan Caruba

What word describes a President who knowingly and deliberately decreases the nation’s access to energy by stopping an oil pipeline that will not cost the taxpayers a penny and will generate 20,000 jobs?

# Who imposed a moratorium and oil production in the Gulf of Mexico that cost an estimated 12,000 jobs;

# Whose EPA is causing coal-fired plants that provide electricity to shut down;

# Whose administration has put uranium-rich lands off limits to mining to fuel the nuclear plants that represent 20% of the electricity the nation uses?

What word describes a President who knowingly and deliberately plans to cut the Pentagon budget by half a trillion dollars or more in the next decade?

# Who will force the Army to cut as many as eight of its 45 brigades;

# Who has announced that seven of the Navy’s cruisers will be decommissioned sooner than planned;

# Who will leave the Navy with a fleet of fewer than 230 ships if “sequestration” cuts another $500 billion by next January;

# Who appears to believe that the next war can be fought with drones?

The President takes an oath found in the U.S. Constitution that says, “ I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

What if he ignores the Constitutional limits on presidential powers?

Even in matters related to recess appointments, Barack Obama has shown an indifference to the Constitution and has appointed “czars” who largely went unvetted by the U.S. Senate and who presumably have more power to effect policy than the Secretaries of the various executive branch departments.

In March, the Supreme Court will hear a case against Obamacare brought by 28 State’s attorney generals who say that it is unconstitutional.

Whether by reason of intent or stupidity, President Obama is causing this nation to be systematically deprived of sources of energy vital to the economy and the welfare of Americans. He is undermining the ability of the nation to defend itself in the event of an attack and to project force throughout the world to maintain peace in the face of those nations that threaten it.

While declaring himself the protector of the poor and minorities both have become poorer and both have experienced unemployment at rates far higher than any other element of the population.

He has swelled the ranks of those dependent on government handouts. He is the “food stamp President” and he yet may become the “soup kitchen” President if he is reelected.

Americans have lost more wealth since Obama’s inauguration than during the 1930s Great Depression era. Their homes are worth less, their wages have either fallen or stagnated, and they are paying more for all their needs, food, gas, and other necessities.

Having driven the nation’s debt to the highest in its history, doing more in three years than all previous presidents from Washington to Clinton combined, he is now asking Congress to raise the debt ceiling by another $1.5 trillion. He has done this despite the first, historic downgrade of the nation’s credit rating.

He will not be impeached, but he must be defeated.

He is leaving Americans in the dark and unprotected.

© Alan Caruba, 2012

Working Into the Grave

By Alan Caruba

Believe it or not, there was a time when, if you turned 65 and retired, you could expect to live in reasonable comfort. Social Security covered a portion of your expenses; your savings account yielded a modest amount of interest, and, if you had made investments, stock dividends provided a safety cushion. Not so anymore.

“More Elderly Find They Cannot Afford Not to Work” was a January 21 headline of an article in The Wall Street Journal, noting at one point that an 87-year-old woman who had retired in 2003 was now earning $7.25 an hour, four hours a week, collecting tickets at a movie theatre in my former New Jersey hometown. I had lived there for 62 years.

Thanks to ever-rising property taxes, I sold my home before prices plunged in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. I parked the money in an annuity.

I am fortunate that there is no age limit on the ability to write for a living. The writing trade has always been a tough one. The former market for magazine articles is a shrinking pool paying little for one’s labors. Self-published books, particularly fiction, have flooded the marketplace and mainstream publishers rely on older, established authors with a following. As often as not, bestselling non-fiction is written by people who anchor television news or have some other form of celebrity.

As the Wall Street Journal article noted, “In 1981, Social Security paid 52% of the average worker’s pre-retirement earnings, according to the Social Security Administration.” I turn 75 this year and my Social Security is little more than “grocery money.” Interest on my savings account is a joke.

For too many of my fellow senior citizens, not working is not a choice The Wall Street Journal notes that “The unemployment level among Americans 75 and older—measuring the number of people seeking work—is relatively low but twice what it was five years ago. The rate was 5.6% last year…compared with 2.5% in 2006.”

When I was born in 1937 it was in the depths of the Great Depression. I have lived long enough to be swept up along with everyone else in the Great Depression 2.0.

Naively, I and many others of my generation thought the years of economic growth that began in the 1950s would go on forever. We survived a number of investment “bubbles” and predictable, but short-lived recessions, but this one is different. It has been exacerbated by an ever-growing federal government, job-killing “environmental” regulations, and burdened by “entitlement” programs whose cost understandably keep increasing along with the nation’s growing population of older Americans.

“”Federal spending on Social Security and Medicare is rising,” said the Journal article. “both in total dollars and percentage of the budget. Social Security made up 20% of the federal budget in the 2010 fiscal year, up from 13% in 1962. Combined spending on Social Security and Medicare represents 9% of GDP and is projected to grow to 12% in 2035.”

The nation’s debt now equals its Gross Domestic Product. The U.S. is broke and so are Europe’s nations with the exception of Germany. That is simply not sustainable—something the Congressional “super committee” discovered when it punted on any solution to the nation’s fiscal woes.

Part of the problem is the nation’s aging population. No one anticipated that health care would improve to the point of extending people’s life expectancy from 65 in the 1930s to an average of 78 years today. As it is, both my parents lived into their 90s, I have an older brother in his 80s, and a nephew in his late 40s who just became a father again.

We can thank short-sighted “social justice” programs such as Fannie Mae’s and Freddie Mac’s appalling “sub-prime mortgage” programs and “bundled assets” that sank banks from sea to shining sea. The U.S. taxpayer has had to bail out these two “government sponsored entities” to the tune of billions and they keep coming back for more.

In the space of just three years, President Obama has increased the nation’s debt by five trillion in horribly misspent, wasted dollars. Since 2010 when control of the House was returned to Republicans, they have fought against pressures to raise taxes that would suck more money out of the economy and have put forth sensible plans to restructure Social Security and Medicare. Naturally, they have been accused of being heartless.

Any senior citizen who votes for Obama or a Democratic Party candidate is putting themself at further risk of having to work until they die or seeing their savings eaten by illness or other rising costs before that occurs.

Editor’s Note: The author’s editorial services site is here.

© Alan Caruba, 2012

35 Reasons Why Obama Will Lose in 2012

By Alan Caruba

One could make a very long list of reasons why Barack Obama will lose in the November election. Here’s a short list why Obama has already worn out his welcome among the majority of Americans, including some of those who formerly supported him.

As Obama delivers his State of the Union speech on Tuesday, his theme will be “economic fairness”, but more net jobs have been lost on his watch (1,663,000) then any previous president going back to Harry Truman, none of whom presided over such an economic disaster.

1. Blamed all problems on George W. Bush, not the Democrats who had controlled both chambers of Congress since January 3, 2007 until 2010 when the Republicans gained control of the House.

2. Obamacare: challenged by 28 States as unconstitutional, subject of a Supreme Court hearing in March.

3. Supported passage of Cap-and-Trade carbon regulation legislation.

4. A strong advocate of “global warming”; revealed to be a hoax in 2009.

5. His failed multi-billion dollar “stimulus” program.

6. Admitted there were no “shovel-ready jobs.”

7. Mortgage refinance plan deemed a complete failure.

8. Appointment of White House policy “Czars”, one of whom was a Communist.

9. Failed foreign policy; Israel, Iran, North Korea, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc.

10. Mishandling of BP oil spill; slow to react, shut down all drilling in Gulf of Mexico.

11. Abortive outreach to Muslims

12. Bowing to the King of Saudi Arabia.

13. Stopped the building of the XL Keystone pipeline. Has opposed offshore and domestic oil drilling

14. The Solyndra “Green energy” bankruptcy whose loan guarantee cost taxpayers a half billion dollars.

15. The “Fast and Furious” gun-running scandal.

16. Sued Arizona for trying to control illegal immigration.

17. A rogue Environmental Protection Agency.

18. Highest federal spending since World War II.

19. Highest budget deficit since World War II.

20. Highest federal debt since just after World War II.

21. Increased federal debt more than all Presidents from Washington to Clinton combined.

22. Highest long-term unemployment since the 1930s.

23. Lowest employment (58.1% if population) since 1983.

24. Lowest home ownership rate since 1965.

25. First downgrade of U.S. debt rating in nation’s history.

26. Refused to support the Defense of Marriage Act.

27. Wanted to shut down Guantanamo.

28. Has expressed hostility to banking sector, pharmaceutical companies, physicians, coal industry, oil industry, and other sectors of the economy.

29. Attempted to stop Boeing from building a manufacturing unit in South Carolina.

30. Government takeover of General Motors.

31. Authorized military action in Libya without Congressional approval.

32. Advocates major cuts to Pentagon budget for U.S. military

33. Continues to hide college records, passport and Social Security number information.

34. Questions exist about whether he is a “natural born” citizen as required by the U.S. Constitution.

35. Does not tell the truth.

And Obama gives little indication that he likes America, its values, its history, its military, and its role in the world.

I could go on, but voters who ignore any or all of these factors, keeping Barack Obama in office for another four years, would doom the nation to a Third World status, to default, and the end the greatest experiment in freedom and liberty the world has ever known.

© Alan Caruba, 2012

The Grand Panjandrum of Pundits

By Alan Caruba

It’s a little known event, perhaps because its participants want it that way, but as the new year is poised to begin, the Grand Panjandrum of Pundits gathered at an undisclosed location for their annual review of all the predictions they made regarding things that did not occur, all the events that did occur—taking them by complete surprise, and to exchange notes on their thoughts regarding 2012.

The philosopher Aristotle had it right when he said “Stuff happens.”

This particularly applied to the third year of Barack Hussein Obama’s extended vacation as President of the United States of America. He ended the year comparing himself to previous presidents whose shoes he is not fit to shine and whose bathwater he is ill equipped to draw.

On January 2, 2010, I wrote that I thought Obama’s life, at least in the chronology and facts that were presented to the public, was a pure fiction, make believe.  By then Americans had experienced a year’s worth of ineptitude that left anyone paying any attention astonished. It was just one blunder after another.

Even more astonishing is that no court, no one in Congress, and no one in the Republican Party has dared to say that the man was and remains ineligible to be President. Plenty of other people have said it. My friend, Dr. Jerome Corsi, wrote a whole book about it; two in fact.

The glaring truth that no one wants to address is the fact that his father was a citizen of Kenya and, as such, the terms of the U.S. Constitution which require that only “natural born” citizens—those whose both parents are U.S. citizens—can hold the office of President.

When you add in the serious doubts over the authenticity of his birth certificate—declared a fake by document experts and the dubious authenticity of his Social Security number, issued in Connecticut where he never worked a day in his life, and you have enough evidence to send him packing in less than 24-hours.

Even so, the Democratic Party will put him on the ballot again to run for office in 2012. The legality of this is no more likely to be challenged than it was in 2008, though some are trying. The Grand Panjandrum of Pundits was left to scratch their heads and mumble about the strangeness of this.

There was one thing they agreed upon. Barack Hussein Obama is the worst President the nation has ever had to endure.

No other president even comes close. He is the first to preside over the first U.S. sovereign debt downgrade in American history.

He has been responsible for the highest level of federal spending (25% of GDP) since World War Two and, in a comparable fashion, the highest level of federal debt (67% of GDP) since then as well.

Employment is the lowest since 1983 and long-term unemployment (45.9%) is the highest since the 1930s, the years of the Great Depression.

The rate of home ownership (59.7%) is the lowest since 1965 and the percentage of taxpayers paying income tax is the lowest in the modern era. At the same time, the level of government dependency (47%), those persons receiving one ore more federal benefit payments, is the highest in American history.

Obama and his economic advisors have achieved this in just three years while others in his administration were authorizing millions in loan guarantees to “Green” companies going bankrupt with alarming predictability or producing heavily subsidized products that no one wanted to purchase. Others we’re told were unaware of a Department of Justice program to run guns to drug cartels in Mexico. Plans to shut down Gitmo were quietly shelved. The Bush-Cheney policies were quietly extended.

Within twenty-four hours of the final withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq, Baghdad was besieged by bombings while the prime minister was busy trying to arrest and indict the vice president. You cannot make up stuff like this.

We are now mere months away from the Supreme Court hearing a case regarding the constitutionality of Obamacare. It is normal for judges who have had any previous involvement in a case or those close to it to recuse themselves from participating, but the Obama administration is so marked by a lack of ethics that his former Solicitor General Elena Kagan, now an Associate Justice, has still not announced her decision.

If the Supreme Court rules in favor of Obamacare, the federal government can require you to spend your money on things you do not want and may not need.

This is why the Grand Panjandrum of Pundits ended in a state of mass confusion and despair. Just like it did in 2010.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

The 2012 Check List for America's Survival

By Alan Caruba

Many people make resolutions to start the year, but I think a list of things that must be done to protect and preserve the Republic should be tallied.

1. President Obama must be defeated in 2012 and the obstructionist Democratic Party must lose power in the Senate to ensure both houses of Congress will be Republican and in a position to initiate real change.

2. The Environmental Protection Agency must be reined in with increased Congressional oversight and legislative limits on its rule-making capacity. Having fulfilled its 1970 mandate to clean the nation’s air and water, it should be scaled back to the maintenance of these functions.

3. Americans, despite the administration’s efforts to redefine and distract us, must keep clearly in mind the threat of Islam to the nation and the world. A Middle East in turmoil lays ahead for 2012.

4. To jump-start the economy, taxes and spending must be reduced across the board. A tax on consumption, rather than income would be a good start. Only 49% of Americans currently pay income taxes, the lowest in decades.

5. Obamacare must be repealed should the Supreme Court fail to rule that the Commerce Clause takes precedence over its requirement that Americans must purchase health insurance or be fined for not doing so.

6. A serious restructuring of Social Security and Medicare must be undertaken. Older Americans who have paid into the system—it is involuntary—must be ensured their benefits will be paid, but younger citizens should have the freedom and responsibility to structure their own retirement and health plans.

7. Access to the nation’s vast reserves of coal, natural gas, and oil should be increased and encouraged. Oil companies should be encouraged to build more refineries via tax credits and removal of “environmental” obstacles.

8. Congress needs to identify and fund the repair to the nation’s aging infrastructure.

9. Utilities should be encouraged via tax credits and other incentives to expand the national “grid” for the distribution of electricity.

10. Term limits for Senators and Representatives should be added to the U.S. Constitution in the same fashion the presidency is limited. Salaries, pensions, and perks should be capped. A permanent political class is a danger to citizens.

11. The Federal government should be downsized with the elimination of the Departments of Education, Labor, and Energy, along with the Environmental Protection Agency. These powers should be returned to the individual States. (10th Amendment)

12. The nation’s military which has been significantly reduced in size and structure should be expanded with attention to the upgrade and increase of its naval fleet and aircraft.

13. Congress should reject and rescind all legislation based on “global warming” or “climate change” as the former has been demonstrated to be a hoax and the latter is meaningless insofar as the climate is beyond the control of humans.

14. The United States should significantly reduce its contribution to the United Nations and refuse to ratify any of its treaties.

15. Tort reform should be instituted to reduce the costs of health care.

16. The corporate tax rate should be significantly reduced from its present rate, one of the highest in the world, to increase expansion, new jobs, and competitiveness.

17. Public service unions should be illegal. The federal government does not permit such unionization and neither should states.

18. National Public Radio should no longer be funded. The “government entities” of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac should be eliminated.

19. The federal government should be restricted or significantly limited from the acquisition of more of the nation’s landmass.

20. Strenuous efforts must be undertaken to reduce the national debt and deficit. A devalued dollar impoverishes everyone.

These are just a few changes which, if implemented, would go a long way to reducing the ills associated with a federal government grown too large, subject to crony capitalism, and corruption.

As John Adams said, "Let us disappoint the men who are raising themselves upon the ruin of this Country."

© Alan Caruba, 2012

Spending More has Never Worked!

By Alan Caruba

Ask any financial advisor what to do when you are drowning in debt and they will tell you to spend less and pay down your debt. This is just common sense. However, if you ask politicians what to do, they will advise that the nation spend more and borrow more.

Despite a huge national debt and deficit, the federal government just concluded its biggest spending year with its second biggest annual budget deficit. For fiscal 2011 which ended September 30, the government spent $3.6 trillion, an increase over the $3.52 trillion posted in 2009.

The budget “deficit” is the difference between the revenues that government took in and what it spent. The “debt” is the accumulation of yearly deficits. The U.S. has a debt of $15 trillion and this grows by billions daily due to the interest that must be paid on the amount of borrowing required to sustain its operations. Fully 40 cents of every dollar the government spends is now borrowed.

The Congressional Budget Office noted that the deficit is “greater than in any year since 1945” as World War Two wound down. As a Wall Street Journal editorial expressed it, “The Obama years have racked up the three largest deficits, both in absolute amounts and as a share of GDP, since Hitler still terrorized Europe.”

In the wake of the failed Super Committee, charged with cutting a mere $1.2 trillion over ten years, the editorial noted that “President Obama fiercely resisted even the token spending cuts for fiscal 2011 pressed by House Republicans earlier this year.” He continues to press for higher taxes on “the rich” despite the fact that the rich pay the lion’s share of income taxes already. By Obama’s definition, the rich is anyone earning more than $200,000 a year. By most definitions, that qualifies as middle class, not rich.

We are entering a period that is likely to be called something like the Great Depression Two or 2.0. History usually serves as a guide and, as Hans Bader, counsel of special projects for the Competitive Enterprise Institute has noted, “government spending (and budget deficits) rose dramatically in the Depression under both the Hoover and the Roosevelt administration…(both) increased, rather than cut, spending in the Great Depression.”

It is a dangerous thing to cling to myths about the Great Depression. Bader says “Big government liberalism is a religion, not a school of rational thought. A false understanding of the history of the Great Depression is the cornerstone of left-wing ideology…”

The Great Depression was a series of recessions. In the August 5 New York Times, Bader noted that “In 1937, the Supreme Court upheld anti-business legislation that had been struck down by lower courts, like the National Labor Relations Act, in decisions like National Labor Relations Board v. Jones & Laughlin Steel Corporation. That made unions more powerful, led to a wave of costly strikes and discouraged hiring. The increased wages demanded by unions resulted in employers laying off many workers.”

Does this sound familiar? Efforts by States to rid themselves of collective bargaining, primarily with civil service unions such as Service Employees International Union (SEIU), is a reflection of the way they have drained public coffers with wage, pension and health plans that exceed those of private enterprise. Andy Stern, the former SEIU president, just had a commentary published in The Wall Street Journal in which he urged the U.S. to adopt Chinese Communism!

In Wisconsin, Ohio, and elsewhere, unions representing government workers and others in the private sector have spent millions to defeat such efforts to end collective bargaining. New Jersey Governor Chris Christie gained national attention for his efforts to curb that state’s teacher’s union demands.

What President Obama calls a “do nothing Congress” is one in which his party controlled both houses of Congress until the 2010 elections. It will live in infamy for imposing Obamacare on a nation that has flatly rejected it.

The Supreme Court will hear the suit brought against it by 26 state attorney generals. If permitted to stand, it will destroy what is widely regarded as the world’s best health system along with the historic interpretation of the Constitution’s commerce clause.

As for spending programs, President Obama’s “stimulus” or his “green jobs” program have been a costly failure along with the administration’s waste of billions in loan guarantees to green industries. Worst of all the administration’s thwarting of the nation’s traditional energy industries, as recently seen in the delay of the Keystone XL pipeline, has cost thousands of existing and future jobs.

It is a “perfect storm” of historic and current errors in judgment concerning the nation’s economy. Americans can only hope that Europe’s financial community does not implode before the November 2012 elections, dragging the U.S. and the rest of the world into another Great Depression.

© Alan Caruba, 2012

The Threat of a Global Financial Collapse

By Alan Caruba

At present, the amount of the annual Gross Domestic Product, $14 trillion—the value of all the goods and services that generate income—is exceeded by the nation’s debts.

America is presently $15 trillion in debt and it grows daily.

In a November 21 Wall Street Journal interview, Erskine Bowles of the presidential advisory commission on the nation’s debt, said “If you take 100% of the revenue that came into the country last year, every single dime of it was consumed by our mandatory spending and interest on the debt.”

“Mandatory spending in English is basically the entitlement programs, Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. That means that every single dollar we spent last year on national defense, homeland security, education, infrastructure, high-value added research—every single dollar was borrowed, and half of it was borrowed from foreign country.”

“That’s a formula for failure in anybody’s book.”

In truth, we are looking at a coming global financial collapse with experts from Credit Suisse to the Deutche Bank, the CEO of General Motors to Warren Buffett, all in agreement that the question is not if, but when.

It will come at a time when there is little, if any, real leadership to be found either in the U.S. or Europe, the most spendthrift of nations facing this crisis.

Thomas Jefferson, one of the most brilliant of our Founding Fathers, said “I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.” He also said that “It is incumbent on every generation to pay its own debts as it goes.”

Another Founding Father, James Madison, warned Americans against the concentration of power saying, “I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments by those in power than by violent and sudden usurpation.”

Over the years, more and more power has been concentrated in the federal government and it requires the dismantlement and elimination of several of its components. Americans need to say no to the Departments of Education, Energy, along with the Department of Housing and Urban Development. These are all functions previously addressed by the states.

You will not find any of these activities specified in the Constitution. Consider when they came into being:

Education was established in 1953, originally as the Department of Health, Education and Welfare. In 1979, it was subdivided into Education and Health and Human Services.

The Department of Housing and Urban Affairs was created in 1965.

The Department of Energy was created in 1977.

Thus, between 1953 and 1979, a period of 26 years, the federal government took control of key factors of the nation’s affairs, most if not all are dealt with far better at the state and local level.

To these must be added Freddie Mac and Fanny Mae, two government “entities” responsible for the housing mortgage crisis and currently asking Congress for billions more to cover their losses.

The Tenth Amendment of the Constitution specifically says that “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it by the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.”

Congress is filled with men and women for whom their position has become a sinecure as they are elected and reelected, some for decades But Congress has proved itself unwilling to govern the financial affairs of the nation. A recent vote in the House rejecting a proposed balanced budget amendment reflects this.

In 2012, the voters will have the opportunity to reverse this failure, electing men and women who will vote for term limits, a balanced budget amendment, and other necessary changes.

We have witnessed what happens when Americans lose sight of the vision of our Founding Fathers and the Constitution they bequeathed to posterity.

We are that posterity.

The present generations of Americans are obligated to save the nation or see it fail.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

System Failure on a Global Scale

By Alan Caruba

We are living in times when the structures involving the global financial system, national security, and self-governance are under attack, decaying, or just self-destructing due to all the ills to which humanity is prone.

Wars in the twentieth century were always an example of either the failure of nations to resolve their differences or of the ancient human inclination to steal whatever they can from their neighbor. Wars organize this into armies for that purpose. The other cause for war is the necessity to rid the neighborhood of the crazy guy who’s hoarding weapons and building bombs.

What is occurring of late, however, goes beyond the usual casus belli to something far greater, a loss of faith in national and international banking systems, aggravated by the failure of nations to act in a prudent fashion to protect the wealth of their citizens and their national sovereignty.

The cause of this is socialism, the polite name for communism. Like Islam, it exists for world domination, the control of the population for the enrichment of those holding the reins of power. It is no accident that the U.S. Congress is filled with millionaires or those who soon will be.

Communism, the creation of a man who never held a job in his life, Karl Marx, and its theoretically gentler version, Socialism, has proved to be a failure wherever it was implemented. It is always introduced as the antechamber to utopia, a better life for everyone and it has always led to the slaughter of millions in the name of achieving it. It is just another form of slavery.

Socialism, as practiced throughout the United States and Europe, dependent as it is on the “redistribution of wealth” in the form of “entitlement” programs is now crashing down around the heads of various elected leaders.

As the former British Prime Minister of Britain, Margaret Thatcher, once famously said, “Sooner or later you run out of other people’s money.”

When you pile on debt beyond the mind’s capacity to imagine and you empower “super committees” or hold desperate meetings as are occurring in Europe, public faith in national currencies begins to disappear and with it a rational world in which goods and services generate income.

We are now 66 years since the end of World War Two, the war that followed “the war to end all wars”, World War One. Peace—the absence of war—lasted a scant twenty-one years in Europe before the latter cataclysm began in 1939.

Times of turmoil are the perfect opportunity for tyrants of every description to emerge, organize the collective anger, and launch new wars. In the past 66 years of “peace” there has been a succession of wars, usually between Communist and Capitalist nations such as the Korean and Vietnam Wars or civil wars. The recent wars and revolutions in the Middle East have been about oil and who gets to pump it out of the ground.

Threatening the entire world is the rise of the Islamic Revolution. Islam is less a religion than a battle plan for global conquest that has the added fillip of enslaving its adherents in a faith system that demands total obedience on pain of death. Unbelievers in general face this threat. Israel in particular always has.

Capitalism isn’t a perfect system, subject to periodic cycles of recession and depression, but it does require a greater measure of individual freedom than any other in order to encourage the kind of innovation and risk-taking that creates vast wealth-producing economies.

The problem the West is facing has been brought on by the profligate and often corrupt waste of the people’s wealth. This has been the result of metastasizing laws whose ultimate purpose is to keep populations from demanding more freedom from rapacious taxing, borrowing, and spending. Even central banks are powerless against this. Ours, the Federal Reserve, has responded by printing dollars out of thin air.

On November 18th a proposed constitutional amendment that would require Congress to balance the budget failed in the House. The U.S. is currently $15 trillion in debt. The worst fears of our Founding Fathers are coming true. Presiding over the nation is a Marxist ideologue and his henchmen.

When the Congress of the United States of America refuses to obey the limits of the Constitution, you have failure.

When that same Congress refuses to reform “entitlement” programs and reduce massive spending, you have failure.

When the Federal Reserve—a central bank that is not a part of the federal government— owns most of the nation’s debt, you have failure.

In my lifetime, the United States of America went from a largely Capitalist system and society to one of near total government control. It is Socialism supported by an insane system of taxation lacking even the appearance of fairness.

The United States has moved too far away from the purpose of the Constitution, established to “form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity…”

We are that posterity,

In the decades since the last Great Depression a succession of Congresses has bankrupted the nation once again. It is happening as well in Europe because nations like Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Ireland and France thought they too could defy common sense and fiscal prudence.

It is system failure on a global scale.

Americans and the citizens of Europe are the unwilling victims of too much government, too much regulation, too much corruption, too much taxation, and the general inclination of those in charge to acquire as much wealth for themselves while keeping the rest of the population complacent with “redistribution of wealth” schemes that always fail.

The Tea Party movement is calling for a restoration of America. We have precious little time to do that and it is the Democratic Party in league with unions who oppose that goal.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

What the NBA & the 'Super Committee' Have in Common

By Alan Caruba

Considering that the National Basketball Association players individually make millions, it is hard to feel sorry for a bunch of guys who earn their living running back and forth trying to put a ball through a hoop.

Let me confess that I rarely watch any sport these days due to an extreme attention deficit problem brought on the by the endless commercials that interrupt the game. However, I am aware that the NBA and the players have reached an impasse in their negotiations. Their talks ended last Thursday despite or because of federal mediation efforts. Collective bargaining, as we have seen in Wisconsin and elsewhere, is an invitation to mayhem.

Here’s the problem. The league makes about $4 billion annually in revenue and the players who might otherwise be employed flipping hamburgers or washing cars want 52.5% of it. They previously wanted 53%. The league countered with an offer of 50%, up from 47%.

It happens that one of my friends is Jim Camp, an internationally known negotiation coach who has been coaching deals of every description for twenty-five years. He’s currently supervising one such deal that involves nearly a billion dollars. So he's been around the block when it comes to such things.

After reading about the negotiations in Friday's Wall Street Journal, I called him and asked what he thought and his response was that the talks will cost owners, players, and fans the 2011-2012 Season. That got my attention.

“Thanks to the conventional collective bargaining process, both sides are now mad at each other,” said Camp, “and unable to arrive at an agreement because ‘the other side’ is not doing what both parties believe they were supposed to do. Conflict is being created, not solved.”

“Once the season is lost and frustrations are lowered when both sides go home, they will realize that it was stupid, if not crazy, not to arrive at an agreement. Cooler heads will prevail, but under the current circumstances that is not possible,” said Camp.

How can grown men blow an entire NBA season over a few million? Camp put on his coach’s hat. “Based on the science of neuroscience, all negotiations are driven by emotion and not by the popular belief that facts are the driving force. That is the failure of bargaining.”

Warming to the subject, Camp pointed out that both sides hire lawyers to represent them. “How do lawyers get paid?” By the hour I replied. “Lawyers,” said Camp, “are paid to argue.” A light bulb went off in my head. The more they argue, the more they earn.

To those convinced that negotiation is more a game of chess moves than an effort to come to an agreement, that “mindset” dooms the effort.

Then Camp surprised me by comparing the NBA negotiations to those of the Congressional “super committee” that has been given the charge to find a way to cut $1.5 trillion from federal spending. According to some reports, they too are at an impasse. There would be no super committee if Congress took the issue of the budget and national debt seriously. Instead, it opted for automatic cuts to the budget if the committee cannot come up with a variety of cuts through a negotiation process.

“You can put money on the fact they will not find any common ground of agreement,” said Camp, “even though the current national debt exceeds $14 trillion dollars, an amount equal to the entire gross national product.”

It’s one thing for a bunch of basketball players and team owners to disagree over how to split revenue and quite another when the nation’s highest elected legislators are unable to come to grip with an insane amount of spending and debt.

Camp’s system is contrarian and spelled out in his 2007 book, “Start With No.” It is his view that if you arrive at any negotiation feeling needy and emotionally vulnerable, the guy on the other side of the desk is going to wipe the floor with you. If, however, you learn how to say no in a fashion that alters his mindset, conditions will be created for a mutually beneficial outcome.

My money is on Jim Camp!

© Alan Caruba, 2011

Obama's First Thousand Days

By Alan Caruba

After the brief period of intoxication with candidate Obama’s rhetorical skills, the promise of “hope and change” became the business of governing a nation still reeling from a major financial crisis and issues of war in Iraq and Afghanistan.

As the euphoria subsided, reality in the form of growing numbers of unemployed, the homes that continued to be foreclosed, and the growing realization that Obama’s attitudes toward America and his view of the world were antithetical to our well-being and completely out of touch with what was actually occurring.

John F. Kennedy’s first thousand days in office included continuing and expanding the nation’s space program. Obama has, in effect, shut it down. The Bay of Pigs fiasco in Cuba was sobering and the expansion of U.S. participation in Vietnam’s civil war became a national tragedy, but Kennedy’s assassination, his martyrdom, as well as the myth of Camelot that included his beautiful wife, Jackie, lives on.

By contrast, Obama’s first thousand days, a marker in time he recently passed, has been one long series of astonishingly bad judgments that have his polling numbers heading south. There is a widespread and persistent view that he has taken America in the wrong direction.

As the 2012 campaign begins to gain momentum it is worth taking a moment to briefly review the record.

He has overseen the tripling if the national debt. It stretches to the Moon and back. For the first time in the nation's history its Triple-A credit rating has been reduced.

Billions spent as a “stimulus” to the economy have done little more than waste taxpayer’s money. It was and is a political slush fund, not much different from similar programs during the New Deal era of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. It is distinguished by its emphasis on “green jobs” that are best symbolized by the Solyndra scandal; jobs created that are each measured in millions “invested.”

Obama’s focus from the beginning, however, was the imposition of universal health care in the form of a 2,000 page piece of legislation dubbed “Obamacare” which has already been repealed by the House and will be the subject of a Supreme Court case to determine its constitutionality or lack of it. Americans hate it.

All administrations have their scandals and Obama’s is no exemption. Still festering is the ATF program, “Fast and Furious”, that actually facilitated the sale and transfer of guns to the drug cartels operating out of Mexico. The Attorney General appears to have been caught in a lie regarding his knowledge of it. It cost the life of at least one Border Patrol officer and who knows how many victims of the cartels.

In addition to the many “czars” Obama appointed to oversee public policy---many of whom not vetted by Congress---his cabinet appointees have proven to be ideologues more interested in advancing the global warming hoax and restrictions on America’s access to its vast energy reserves than facilitating a greater degree of energy independence and job creation.

The Environmental Protection Agency has literally gone rogue, requiring Congress to constantly pass legislation to restrain it from further damage to the economy.

Obama’s greatest contribution to life in America has been to make Americans so jaded that they no longer even ask if he was or is eligible to be President. He has boldly hidden virtually all of the paper trail of his life from public examination and the “birth certificates” he has offered have been, according to experts, forgeries.

Throughout his first thousand days, he has expressed contempt and disdain for almost every aspect of American society; its “millionaires and billionaires”, for the “corporate jets” used to facilitate travel in the pursuit of business expansion, for Wall Street "fat cats", for the entire medical profession who he suspects of recommending expensive treatments to patients when a cough drop will do. But oh how he loves those unionized teachers!

More recently his support of thuggish union behavior has been on display along with support of the “Occupy Wall Street” protesters that mock American values in favor of vague demands for “social justice.”

In pursuit of a second term, he is using class warfare and the race card. He is claiming falsely that Republicans have never offered him a jobs program when it is perfectly obvious they have.

He has gone from having a Democrat-controlled Congress from 2009-to-2010 that had to be bribed and threatened to pass his Obamacare law to the loss of the House of Representatives, largely due to the spontaneous rise of the Tea Party movement. His latest “jobs” legislation, introduced in an unprecedented joint session of Congress, was unable to secure even the support of Democrats.

There is a word to describe his first thousand days. It is “failure.” As this is being written, he has some 460 days left of what is surely his first and last term in office.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

Obama's Delusions of Grandeur

By Alan Caruba

Did Obama really think that a 2,000-page takeover of the nation’s healthcare system, passed late on the night before Christmas 2009 in the Senate was going to go unnoticed or unprotested?

Indeed, it was protested when a million Americans showed up in Washington, D.C. in September 2009 to demand its defeat.

The obscenely misnamed Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act was passed because all the Democrats in the Senate voted for it, but in the House 34 Democrats in addition to all the Republican members voted against it on March 21, 2010. The President signed it into law on March 23, 2010.

By November 2010, political power in the House passed from the Democrats to the Republicans and in almost every election before and since Republicans have been the people’s choice. The House voted to repeal Obamacare and that bill sits idle in the Senate that is still controlled by Democrats.

The Supreme Court is expected to take up the case brought against Obamacare by 26 state attorneys general and various amicus curiae. It would be justice, indeed, if it were declared unconstitutional before the November 2012 elections. A new Congress controlled by Republicans would finish it off no matter how the Supreme Court decides, but Obamacare has had a dangerously disruptive affect on the economy.

I have been saying that Obama is a moron since well before it became fashionable to doubt his alleged intelligence. I saw little evidence of it and now, like many others, I am seeing evidence of a man under intense pressure and—to be generous—not handling it well.

We expect our presidents to be able to take the heat. It is the job description.

We learned belatedly that President Nixon was a raving paranoid, convinced that everyone was plotting against him when, in fact, he was plotting against them. He even kept an “enemies list”. The result was the Watergate scandal and it took impeachment proceedings in Congress to finally get him to resign. His successor, Jerry Ford, granted him a pardon and promptly lost the next election. Unfortunately for America, it was won by Jimmy Carter.

I was therefore not surprised when New York Post columnist, Michael Goodwin, made the same connection, writing “While there is no indication Obama is walking the halls of the White House late at night, talking to the portraits of former presidents, as Richard Nixon did during Watergate, the reports explain his odd public remarks.”

In a similar fashion, a recent column by David Limbaugh titled “Obama’s Behavior is Getting Worse” spells out the reasons to doubt his intelligence and judgment, while focusing on his personality and the price we all pay for his failures. Elections have real consequences.

What we know about Obama at this point is that he is a hardcore narcissist who will not take the blame for anything. This is an unpleasant trait in children, but we know, too, Obama is extremely immature.

We know that he spends taxpayer’s money on all manner of foolish things such as loan guarantees to Solyndra and countless other “Green” enterprises that yield either bankruptcy or slim returns. He threw billions at the nation’s unemployment problem without success and, incredibly, is insisting that Congress authorize more of the same.

We know that his “answer” or “fix” for any problem is to give another speech either before a joint session of Congress (usually reserved for a State of the Union speech or the declaration of war). on the campaign trail, or in a hasty press conference where any serious questions evoke the rather tiresome blaming syndrome.

Lately everything is the Republican’s fault even though Democrats controlled both houses of Congress for the first two years he held office and still control the Senate. The President’s own party is dragging its feet on his latest “jobs” bill.

For a President of all the people, he makes no secret of the fact that he has no love for people who use corporate jets, for businesses of any size, for bankers, for Wall Street, for physicians and their patients, and people who don’t want to join a union.

Most certainly, he has been actively engaged in bankrupting the nation, achieving in two and a half years (with the authorization of a Democrat-controlled Congress) a national debt that exceeds the total achieved by every prior President from George Washington to George H.W. Bush.

This reflects his penchant for self-indulgence which has been seen in his vacation choices, the lavish lifestyle he maintains in the White House, and his frequent visits to the golf course. His wife seems to think she is the National Nanny, forever hectoring everyone about what and how much they should eat. The administration tried to pass her off as someone who shops at Target!

The worst aspect of all of this is the contempt other nation's leaders feel for him and, in particular, his judgment which impacts events worldwide. He is a great embarrassment for his inept handling of foreign relations. Ironically, after decrying George W. Bush’s conduct of the war on terror, he has adopted every single aspect of it.

His energy policies have favored no energy as his administration attacks coal, oil, and natural gas extraction and use. Unleashing the energy industries would generate thousands of jobs and billions in tax revenue. Lacking adequate energy, America will begin to resemble a Third World nation.

In so many ways, his election has proven disastrous whether it is for the 14 million Americans who cannot find work or those whose homes have been foreclosed. It is a national shame that so many are on food stamps and other government handouts.

We have witnessed a mainstream news media that debased itself, first by ignoring his thin resume and then by ignoring to whatever extent is possible the damage he has done and continues to do.

All Americans must now wait out the election process until November 6, 2012. The good news is that his party will suffer greatly at the polls and America will be rid of Barack Hussein Obama on January 20, 2013.

The nation has taken wrong turns in the past and reversed course. It will do so again.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

What Debt? Obama's Insane Spending Binge!

By Alan Caruba

There’s a reason that President Obama wants to increase taxes. His administration cannot spend your money fast enough.

A visit on Tuesday morning to the websites of various federal departments reveals that this administration can find an excuse to spend millions on anything. Here’s a quick tour.

In the wake of the Solyndra scandal in which taxpayers were, in the words of Investor Business Daily, “put on the hook for at least the first $75 million if the company should default and with “a minimum of five green firms going bankrupt” the U.S. Department of Energy, on September 13, announced a $1.2 billion loan guarantee to Mojave Solar LLC for the development of the Mojave Solar Project.

On the same day, the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) announced a $32.5 million grant “to finalize expansion plan of Boston’s South Station” for the purpose of expanding and enhancing the historic station on the grounds that it estimates a “50 percent increase in high-speed intercity passenger rail travel in the coming years.” And we all know how accurate estimates are, eh?

Three days later, the DOT provided $22 million to the Maryland Department of Transportation for a study of replacement options for the Susquehanna River Bridge on Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor from Boston to Washington, D.C. Why not spend the money on actually replacing the bridge? On September 19, DOT awarded $25 million to the city of Charlotte, N.C. for a streetcar line “to improve access to jobs, housing, and schools.” Why money from other States should gift Charlotte with a streetcar line when the nation has a $14 trillion debt might have something to do with the fact that the Democratic Party National Convention will be held there in 2012.

In the midst of a recession that officially does not exist, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Affairs (HUD), on September 15, announced $93 million in grants to 39 local projects “to conduct a wide range of activities intended to protect children and families from potentially dangerous lead-based paint and other home health and safety hazards.” HUD estimates there are “nearly 7,000 high-risk homes” because “providing healthy and safe homes for families and children is a priority.” Keep in mind that lead-based paint was banned for residential use in 1978, more than three decades ago.

On September 15, the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services announced awards totaling $10 million “to aid 129 organizations across the country that would like to become community health centers. The funds came from the Affordable Care Act, but at the same time Obamacare cuts billions from Medicare, reducing payments to hospitals and to individual physicians providing care to America’s growing population of the elderly. Go figure.

At the Department of Commerce, on August 30, they were celebrating a $2.9 million “investment to expand access to capital for area small businesses and entrepreneurs.” One of them was a new $75.6 million Convention Complex in Cedar Rapids, Iowa that broke ground that day and we all know how many conventions Cedar Rapids hosts.

On September 14, the Department of Agriculture announced that taxpayers are now on the hook for loans to 27 rural electric cooperative utilities. DOA made $603 million in loans to help electric utilities "upgrade, expand, maintain and replace rural America’s electric infrastructure."

This is the same administration whose Environmental Protection Agency is waging war on coal-fired utilities and mining (coal provides 50% of all electricity in America). On September 16, USDA announced funding for more than 500 projects to boost renewable energy production (wind and solar) despite the fact that this represents just over 2% of all the electricity produced and companies producing solar panels are declaring bankruptcy on a weekly basis these days.

Secretary Tom Vilsack also noted that USDA Rural Development “is providing $35 million to finance smart grid technologies such as advanced metering infrastructure.” The problem with smart grids is that, if the utility thinks you’re using too much electricity to cool your home or business in the heat of summer, it can reduce the amount you receive. Same goes for warming it in the winter.

Not to be outdone, the U.S. Department of the Interior announced in late August that it was making more than $53 million in grants to 17 states “to support conservation planning and acquisition of vital habitat for threatened and endangered fish, wildlife, and plants.” The Endangered Species Act has been one of the greatest failures in U.S. history and responsible for thwarting billions in development. This money is intended to remove yet more landmass from development, all in the name of obscure species and plants.

On September 14 the Department of Justice announced grants totaling $118.4 million to “enhance public safety in Indian Country.” The money went to tribal governments. Apparently the Apaches are on the warpath again. Over the last two years, DOJ spent $121 million on conferences.

This doesn’t even take into consideration the money flowing from the Departments of Defense, Education, Veteran Affairs, and Homeland Security. It is in fact just a quick overview of the funding the Obama administration is spending while 14 million Americans are trying to find a job and others struggle to pay their mortgage or put their children through college.

It is a look at a government grown so large and so profligate that its credit rating was recently reduced and our President is on the campaign trail telling Americans they must pay more taxes despite the fact that 40% pay no taxes and “millionaires and billionaires” pay 70% of taxes collected. It’s the same government that wants to impose a 1% tax on all banking transactions, the deposits and withdrawals of your money!

Tea Party, anyone?

© Alan Caruba, 2011

This Way to the Poorhouse

By Alan Caruba

On Tuesday, September 13, Reuters news service reported “Number of poor hit record 46 million in 2010.” Another new record set by the Obama administration and a President who has been out campaigning to “Pass this jobs bill now.”

“The number of poor Americans in 2010,” Reuters reported, “was the largest in the 52 years the Census Bureau has been publishing poverty estimates.” Obama has the great misfortune of presiding over a government, some of whose agencies report just how bad a job he’s doing. Last month, we were informed that zero new jobs were created in August.

On the same day of the Reuters article, Douglas W. Elmendorf, the Director of the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) was on Capitol Hill, advising the new deficit super-committee to whom Congress has punted the job of reducing the obscene amount of money the federal government wastes every day.

If they don’t come up with a plan, cuts kick in automatically. This basically means that they have to decide what agencies and departments get protected. Otherwise the federal government gets a one-size-fits-all budget cut. That is as dumb a way to run the nation as one can imagine.

There was some fairly desultory media coverage of Elmendorf’s presentation. For most reporters it was just more of the same, but for the rest of us, it was a reasoned description of the utter disaster that faces the nation if a truly massive effort isn’t undertaken to slash government spending.

Aside from spending, there’s the problem of all those old codgers like me. “If current policies are continued in coming years,” Elmendorf said, “the aging of the population and the rising cost of health care will boost federal spending, as a share of the economy, well above the amount of revenues that the federal government has collected in the past.”

Social Security and Medicare have to be significantly reformed. They are bankrupting the nation because, in the words of Margaret Thatcher, “Sooner or later you run out of other people’s money.”

Reform, however, of any part of the federal budget is complicated by “the weakness of the economy and the large numbers of unemployed workers, empty houses, and underused factories and offices.”

Or to put it another way, we’re broke. We are seriously broke. We are $14.3 trillion broke in terms of the national debt. That’s about the same amount of the entire gross domestic product for a year.

We are not only broke, Elmendorf told the committee, “the economic growth for the remainder of this year and next is likely to be weaker than the agency anticipated—with growth in the vicinity of 1 ½ percent this year and around 2 ½ percent next year.” We need at least 3 percent to just break even.

Since both the Democrats and Republicans got us into this jam, it is highly doubtful the super-committee will do anything but dawdle long enough to let the automatic cuts kick in.

Meanwhile, the rest of the federal government is hemorrhaging money.

As this is being written, I received a news release from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development that it has awarded “nearly $100 million to promote jobs, self-sufficiency, independent living for HUD-assisted housing developments.”

Then the U.S. Treasury informed me that “two additional New Jersey community banks receive $22 million to help small businesses access capital, create new jobs.”

And something called the Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Advisory Committee is set to “present eleven recommendations to promote U.S. exports of renewable and efficiency technologies to federal officials.”

Folks at the Department of Commerce will be told that green energy and clean energy is the wave of the future. Did anyone tell them that Solyndra, the solar panel company that received a U.S. government loan of more than $500 million just filed for bankruptcy? Or that General Electric builds its wind turbines in China? Or that it shut down the last factory in America that manufactured incandescent light bulbs?

A week ago, the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) released a ten-point plan to create jobs that has nothing to do with shoveling gobs of taxpayer money out the door to banks, housing developments, or wasting time discussing renewable energy.

Among its recommendations were the repeal of the financial “reform” laws, Dodd-Frank and Sarbanes-Oxley. Bank of America isn’t planning to cut 30,000 jobs because it has too little regulation, but too much bad regulation.

CEI urged that proposed or recently finalized federal environmental regulations that will force the closing of power plants and energy-intensive industrial plants be put on hold. The Institute urged the federal government to expedite environmental permitting of natural resource projects (coal, oil, natural gas) projects on federal, state and private lands. Ending taxpayer subsidies for wasteful, inefficient “green” jobs was yet another recommendation.

It’s not that CEI and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, among other think tanks and trade associations haven’t been telling the Obama administration what needs to be done to energize the economy. It’s more like the administration either isn’t listening or doesn’t care or intends to deliberately put America further into bankruptcy.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

Jobs? Obama? You're Kidding!

By Alan Caruba

America is dying a death by a thousand cuts in the form of hidden and explicit taxation, the insane generation of new regulations, and the resulting massive unemployment. Obama just selected a new economic advisor who is known to favor a value-added tax that would drive up the cost of everything you purchase.

It’s not like solutions to our economic disaster are not known. They are and the Obama administration will not implement them. They do know what they are doing and it is deliberate.

On September 7, in the guise of a jobs speech Obama will offer massive new spending programs. The money for them would have to be borrowed. The interest on that borrowing would sink the nation further into debt.

In the August 31 edition of The Wall Street Journal, an editorial revealed that, when Speaker John Boehner asked the White House to disclose any “major” federal rules in the works with estimated economic costs of $1 billion or more, he was informed that the Obama regulatory agenda for 2011 contains 219 proposed such new regulatory initiatives.

In 2010 the administration had 191 proposed regulatory initiatives in the works which combined with those proposed in 2011 add up to a total of 410. By contrast the first two years of the Bush administration rulemaking accounted for only 103 new, major regulations.

Of seven pending major rules estimated to cost more than $1 billion one includes the Environmental Protection Agency’s ozone regulations, estimated to cost $90 billion if Congress does not step in and put a stop to it. The EPA is trying to eliminate one tenth of all the utilities that provide the electricity the nation needs to function.

The Competitive Enterprise Institute’s experts on regulation have concluded that the present cost of federal regulation to businesses that must comply with them is $1.75 trillion annually.

If you visit USA Action News.com, you will find an issues section devoted to the Cloward-Piven strategy named after two socialist academics who spelled out just what it would take to economically destroy the nation. It is being implemented by the Obama administration.

Why would anyone at this point think that President Obama knows how to create jobs?

Isn’t this the first President in the nation’s history to be in office when its historic AAA credit rating was downgraded?

Isn’t this the President whose original “stimulus” plan is universally regarded as a costly failure?

Isn’t this the President who added more than $4 trillion to the national debt in just two and a half years?

At TheEconomicCollapseblog.com, you will find an article, “Wake Up America! 10 Very Obvious Reasons Why the Devastating U.S. Jobs Famine is Going to Suck the Hope Right Out of America.”

If you lack the time to delve into it, here are some of its highlights:

Citing a recent article in the Wall Street Journal, it turns out that there are more unemployed Americans than the combined populations of Wyoming, Vermont, North Dakota, Alaska, South Dakota, Delaware, Montana, Rhode Island, Hawaii, Maine, New Hampshire, Idaho, and the District of Columbia.

The number of unemployed Americans is larger than the entire population of Greece!

The number of Americans on food stamps has increased 74% since 2007.

Among the reasons cited or suggested by the article were that politicians in Washington, D.C. really don’t care that the nation is bleeding jobs and, to make matters worse, the Obama administration has instituted a “backdoor amnesty” that would make deporting illegal aliens that hold jobs virtually impossible.

As some U.S. States and local governments face the equivalent of bankruptcy, they are shedding jobs “at an unprecedented rate.” The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimates that more than half a million such jobs have been lost since 2008. It forecasts that nearly a half million more will be gone by the end of 2012.

U.S. corporations exist to generate profits and dividends for their investors. As such they must compete in a global marketplace where other nations like China pay pennies in salaries while they must undertake mandated costs over and above any salary they have to pay new U.S. employees. So jobs are exported. Unfair trade practices tip the scale of exports to nations like China that, in turn, do not import a comparable amount of U.S. goods.

As for taxes, businesses of all size in America are “being taxed into oblivion” with U.S. corporate taxes being the highest in the world. Between state and other taxes, Americans give up some 42% of their income before they can put their paycheck in the bank.

This is deliberate.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

Democrats and Liberals Keep Calling the Kettle Black

By Alan Caruba

Maybe it’s “just politics” or maybe it’s the fancier psychological term, “projection”—saying that others possess the same traits as oneself—but it is impossible to ignore the way liberals in general and Democrats in particular are quick to label any Republican president or presidential candidate as “dumb.”

In a very real way, it is a form of validation. Michelle Bachmann, when she showed strength in Iowa in its recent straw vote was accused of being a ditz and the great liberal bugaboo, religious. When Texas Governor Rick Perry announced he was in the running, he caught flack for participating in a prayer gathering and actually praying! Predictably, as Perry’s popularity has soared, Politico posted an August 29 article, “Is Rick Perry Dumb?”

Anyone who has given Gov. Perry’s resume even a glancing look knows that he’s not only bright enough to have risen from humble beginnings, but he has never lost an election. And the man is from Texas, just like two previous Bush Presidents and the unlamented Lyndon B. Johnson who managed to not only mire the nation in a war in Vietnam, but to lose it.

In the Bush-Kerry match-up, their college scores were released and it turned out that Bush43 did better than his opponent. Last time I heard, securing a bachelor’s degree from Yale and a master’s from Harvard Business School is no walk in the park

By contrast, two and a half years into his term as President, no one knows what grades Barack Hussein Obama received at either Columbia University or Harvard. Indeed, as far as a “paper trail” is concerned there are still gaps wide enough through which to drive a tank regarding what is actually known about Obama such as, for instance, where did he get his Social Security number? What nation’s passport did he travel on when he visited Pakistan in his youth?

And the biggest question of all, why is he President, given that the Constitution states, “No person except a natural born citizen (that is to say, both parents being American citizens)…shall be eligible to the office of President…” This is not rocket science. A commentary from CanadaFreePress.com cited the following, “As his father was not a U.S. citizen, but rather a citizen of Kenya, Obama inherited by birthright, natural law, his fathers name and citizenship. He is NOT a “natural born citizen” of the US, no matter where he was born.”

So far, he has produced several “birth certificates” that were so bogus that they were instantly revealed as such by experts who meticulously detailed why. Just as with the 2008 campaign, the mainstream media has run interference for this usurper, largely by ignoring the issue.

When it comes to comparing smart versus dumb, how smart is Obama when the record shows that he ignored the problem of the national debt, handing it off to a commission whose findings he ignored until Standard & Poor’s downgraded the nation’s credit rating for the first time ever!

Those in the White House and leading the Democratic Party so obviously regard the American public and, in particular, voters, as stupid that they utter the most stupid things themselves, thinking no one will notice. The new chairwomen of the Democrat National Committee, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, said that Republicans are wrong on illegal immigration because they think “that in fact it should be a crime.” Earth to Debbie, it is a crime.

Vice President Joe Biden, who has become an embarrassment to the White House and Democratic Party, speaking of the decision to kill Osama bin Laden, called it “The boldest decision any president has undertaken on a single event in modern history.” What about all the decisions President Bush had to take following 9/11?

Obamacare was such a disaster that the U.S. Department of Health has had to issue 1,400 waivers. Hardly a day goes by without new revelations of the costs it imposes on the economy or the thousands of bureaucrats that would have to be hired to enforce it. The House of Representatives has already voted to repeal it and 26 States brought a court action against it; the most recent decision on the way to the Supreme Court has found it to be unconstitutional.

The same day a Politico’s article, blogger Burt Prelutsky posted a brief hilarious review of Obama’s gaffes that is well worth reading.

The Democrats have given us the dumbest, most dishonest President ever elected to that office and the race card is already being played. Democrat Representative James Clyburn of South Carolina has said, “people don’t like to deal with it, but the fact of the matter is, the president’s problems are in large measure because of the color of his skin.”

So the kettle is calling the pot black. In the case of the Barack Hussein Obama, Jr., his skin color will provide no protection from his appalling record of incompetence and stupidity.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

Obama Fatigue

By Alan Caruba

It occurred to me (and probably a lot of others as well) that it’s just over for Obama. It doesn’t matter that he intends to present yet another “plan” to get Americans working again after his Martha’s Vineyard vacation.

Whatever plan Obama puts forward will simply repackage his failed “stimulus”, his “tax the rich”, and other idiotic socialist notions of how to “fix” the economy. They didn’t work during the Great Depression and will not work now.

Like a female preying mantis that eats the head of the male who mates with her, just about everyone that has had any contact with Barack Obama suffers as a result. It didn’t matter if it was his white grandparents who took him in when his mother abandoned him---after having gone through two husbands. It didn’t matter if it was his longtime pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, in whose church he learned the fundamentals of black liberation theology. He has a habit of abandoning or denying relationships. His marriage appears to be the exception.

Presidents, though, are judged on their accomplishments and Obama has so few it’s becoming an embarrassment. Like the woman who told him she was “exhausted” from trying to defend him, a lot of die-hard liberals are looking for cover as he hits the campaign trail to secure the nomination for a second term. If there is such a thing as an honest Democratic Party consultant or strategist, they would surely tell you that Obama is going to be overwhelmingly defeated.

A former Louisiana Governor, Edwin Edwards, famously said that the only way he could be defeated was if he was found in bed with a live boy or a dead girl. The only way the Republican candidate will be defeated would involve similar indiscretions. That has not stopped liberal scum from advertising for “dirt” on Gov. Rick Perry.

This is likely to be one of the dirtiest, if not the dirtiest, campaign ever waged against whoever is the Republican choice to run against Obama. That’s the “Chicago way.”

Come September, policy wonks will be looking to see what Obama has to say about the one issue that will surely defeat him, unemployment. Let me save you some time, the ill-famed “stimulus” devoted much of its billions as transfers to states so teachers, police and fireman could be retained and pensions paid, to ill-fated “green” enterprises, and to a few infrastructure projects after Obama discovered there weren’t many that were “shovel ready.”

The other part of his plan was to expand the size of the federal government through the creation of some truly monstrous bureaucracies such as those associated with Obamacare and the passage of the Dodd-Frank oversight of banks and financial firms.

Simply stated, government does not create jobs in the private sector. It just creates government jobs. Even The New York Times took note of a Brookings Institution report that found “clean-technology jobs accounted for just two percent of employment nationwide.”

To which I say, “Duh!” If you want to know where solar panels and wind turbines are manufactured, Google CHINA. In the U.S., they are merely assembled for sale. So-called “green” companies are filing for bankruptcy with predictable frequency, taking taxpayer subsidies and grants with them.

What I confess I find astonishing are the continuing reports of the President’s fund-raising success. Notably Obama has already scheduled far more such events than the last four presidents who preceded him. Hollywood gives gobs of money and so does Wall Street. The latter has always struck me as odd if only because it represents a hotbed of capitalism while, in reality, its denizens tend to be raving liberals.

What worries me more than anything else about President Obama is the fact that he has sixteen months left in which to inflict as much damage on the economy and the nation’s future as possible. I have little doubt that is his intent.

He just issued an Executive Order as an end-run around the illegal alien amnesty issue that Americans have defeated a half dozen times when Congress tried to get it passed. The new fuel economy standards his administration has announced will add an average of $11,000 to the cost of buying a new car.

Another recent executive order tells the heads of departments and agencies to make sure their hiring practices involve “diversity” which is another way of saying pass on qualified whites and hire blacks and Hispanics. His Supreme Court appointee, Sonia Sotomeyer, once ruled that a local fire department had to lower its hiring standards because no blacks passed its application exam. Whatever happened to color blind hiring?

A President is expected to provide leadership and Obama has provided none, domestic or foreign.

Americans cannot begin to fathom how much other nations around the world look to America to set the tone and provide direction in the conduct of their affairs with each other. We have seen what happens when foreign leaders and troublemakers conclude the President of the United States of America can be ignored with impunity.

America is experiencing Obama Fatigue. He has worn out everyone with endless speeches. The man lies. He lies all the time. He lies more than Bill Clinton during the awful Monica Lewinsky scandal or Richard Nixon during Watergate.

His job plan will be another lie, another pathetic liberal concoction in which the government just spends more money it does not have. Or worse, intends to tax people for money they cannot spare.

© Alan Caruba, 2011