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Monthly Archives: October 2013

The Obama Administration’s Scandals: What Accountability?

October 29, 2013 11:11 pm / Leave a comment

The Obama Administration came to office nearly five years ago promising hope and change and the most transparent administration in history.  Those delusions, which the electorate twice let themselves be fooled by, are blowing away like tumbleweed on the Great Plains.  Let’s begin with the biggest fiasco of all:  the health care enrollment website.  The multiple flaws of Obama’s “signature” legislation are becoming more apparent and will inevitably collapse of their own weight.  If any conventional online retailer such as Amazon or Ebay had an website incapable of dealing with traffic for nearly a month both of these companies would be bankrupt and in the dustbin of American retail history.  The Obama Administration had over three years to put together a website that would be easy to use and provide users with detailed options and has failed miserably.

We are already seeing many individuals and families lose their private insurance coverage because their policies do not meet Obama’s lofty standards.  This results in individuals having to pay higher than expected costs for themselves and their families to get enrolled in Obamacare exchanges.  Obama and his acolytes repeatedly claimed that individuals and families could keep their existing policies if they liked them.  That has not proven to be the case as Fox News recently revealed when it uncovered the exact opposite reality in a July 2010 IRS Internal Revenue Bulletin ruling.  Obama has repeatedly committed perjury by claiming this and consequentially has crossed the high crimes and misdemeanors and abuse of power threshold for impeachment.   The lofty one size fits all standards of Obamacare are going to have a very negative effect on employee hiring.

The administration has repeatedly promised data on Obamacare enrollees and failed to deliver.  On October 21, Indiana’s GOP congressional delegation sent a letter to HHS Secretary Sebelius asking how many Hoosiers had enrolled.  A response has not been received.  The number of enrollees nationwide has been so embarrassingly low that we are now told it will be mid-November before that figure is released.  Don’t hold your breath waiting for this.  The Administration has claimed that the website will be up and running by the end of November, two months after “launch” to accommodate the late rush of registrants who must be registered to comply with this heinous legislation.  You’re more likely to see the pandas at the National Zoo recite Sun Tzu’s The Art of War before this happens.

Yet Obama Administration accountability for this incompetence and criminality is, to quote Ecclesiastes, “chasing after the wind.”  The head of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, testifying today before the House Ways & Means Committee, refused to fall on her sword and take responsibility.  Testifying before the  House Energy and Commerce Committee last week, various private sector tech contracts blamed the Obama Administration without telling why they let themselves become involved in such an incompetently run endeavor.  Tomorrow, Kathleen Sebelius will finally fine time in her “busy” schedule to testify before Congress about this abysmal failure.  I hope Congress is so rough on her that they reduce the wicked abortionist witch of the west to tears.

We have ample experience with how government run health care produces longer wait times, worse patient outcomes, and lower service quality in countries such as Canada and the United Kingdom.  Do we have to learn the painful lessons these countries and their medical consumers have had to learn over several decades?  Will the ongoing fiasco of Obamacare cause the administration to exacerbate the situation by going for single-payer health care?

We are still waiting for Hillary Clinton to be held accountable and take responsibility for the botched handling of the Benghazi bombing which was vividly illustrated in a 60 Minutes story this past Sunday.  EPA officials have not been held accountable for their attempts to drive the coal industry out of business threatening the livelihoods of thousands of workers and their families and jeopardizing the future of one of our leading domestic energy resources due to their reflexive hostility to this resource because it is insufficiently “green and clean.”

There has been no accountability for Justice Department’s Operation Fast and Furious fiasco although Attorney General received a well-deserved contempt of Congress resolution from the House for his culpability in this matter.  In addition, no one in the IRS has lost their jobs for targeting conservative and pro-Israeli nonprofit organizations for not genuflecting before the presidential narcissist in chief.

In Barack Obama’s administration, no one is held accountable and forced to lose their job for incompetent performance and criminal behavior.  It has been said that a fish rots from the head down and this is true of the Obama Administration.  Barack Obama is becoming increasingly irrelevant and the health care enrollment meltdown, hopefully, will be the first widespread sign of buyers remorse for being seduced by this Chicago charlatan and consummate con artist.

Shutdown and Kick the Debt Can

October 18, 2013 9:36 pm / Leave a comment

We’ve seen this movie before.  Another debt ceiling extension approaches although this time the drama was heightened by a two week old government shutdown which caused minor inconvenience and produced histrionics from statist sources.  Our leaders had a chance to begin seriously dealing with our unsustainable entitlement programs and national debt problems.  Did we start addressing them?  Of course, not!

We passed another temporary borrowing authority extension and kicked the can again.  Although the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics are still a few months away, we can award ourselves the gold medal for failing to deal with national economic problems.  It was not a total defeat for conservatism since we retained 2011 sequestration spending levels and inserted income verification requirements for Obamacare recipients.

However, we let ourselves get played by the Obama Administration, Senate Democrats, leftist media bias, and Tea Party inability to count votes.  We could have used the abysmally incompetent rollout of Obamacare enrollment due highlight this program’s egregious shortcomings.  Unfortunately, we clinged to the chimerical illusion that Obamacare could be defunded now when we don’t have the votes to do that.  This is a process that will take time and Ted Cruz, admirable though he is in many ways, and other Tea Party enthusiasts need to understand the need for prudent long-term planning in their efforts to achieve political objectives.  Overturning Obamacare will not be a quick blitzkrieg but a long war of attrition.

It’s also time for fellow Republicans to close the circular firing circle and recognize that Barack Obama, Harry Reid, and Nancy Pelosi are our enemies.  I’m frankly tired of the anti-establishment babbling coming from some Tea Party adherents.  That sounds like pathetic Saul Alinsky leftist whining instead of responsibly exercising power.  The fact of the matter is that the GOP has been a conservative party since the Reagan Administration.  There are plenty of tactical differences between party members on how to achieve political goals but we need to quit squabbling like spoiled kids.  Running government is an adult activity and the conservative cause does not benefit from ignorant twits crying RINO at experienced policymakers and activists who don’t agree with their petulant tactics.  It’s especially sad to see figures like Karl Rove and Lindsey Graham receive such opprobrium from intellectual dimwits who probably don’t know the difference between a continuing resolution and appropriation and who were asleep during their high school government class.

At the same time, GOP policymakers need to be aware of grassroots activist concerns and demonstrate real tenacity and ruthlessness in fighting for our goals.  These policymakers will have another opportunity in a few months to continue fighting for real budgetary and entitlement reform.  Additional opportunities to fight for conservative principles and effective policymaking will also be provided by the Senate confirmation processes for questionable Federal Reserve Board Chair and Secretary of Homeland Security nominees with the latter nominee being nothing more than a money raising bag man for Barack Obama.  Conservatives also have the opportunity to reject dangerously misguided “immigration reform” legislation and produce more effective immigration reform legislation which will secure our borders and promote greater assimilation into anglospheric culture by new immigrants.  We also need to press for reducing unnecessary regulations which stifle economic growth and job creation (yet another chance to weaken Obamacare), promote greater energy  independence, and continue investigating and achieving prosecutions and convictions of Obama Administration scandals such as Obamacare, the out of control IRS, and the Benghazi consulate attack.

Prudence and political perseverance and tenacity must mark our steps in the coming weeks and months.  We may be temporarily down in the polls due to the shutdown, but public disenchantment with Obamacare and the failure to effectively address our fiscal problems will give us the opportunity to rebound.  Obama is practically a lame-duck President anyway, and we must remember that favorable 2010 redistricting will help us in 2014 House elections and also remember that the party out of power usually does well in the sixth year election of a presidency as 1986 and 2006 demonstrate. Tea Party members must become serious about providing competent and effective government and quit engaging in unrealistic grandstanding for us to achieve our objectives of retaining the House in 2014 and gaining control of the Senate as well.  The time for childishness has ended and the time for mature, focused, disciplined, and pragmatic adult leadership must begin!

Default Approaches

October 15, 2013 9:59 pm / Leave a comment

This coming Thursday the U.S. is expected to reach the limits of governmental borrowing authority.  For the past two weeks, the Obama Administration and Congress, have been locked in a test of wills resulting  in a partial government shutdown.   What makes this coming Thursday so important, is that the failure to raise the national debt borrowing authority could result in a the U.S. defaulting on its financial obligations which would be an unprecedented event.  Needless to say, such an event would have unforeseen and undesirable domestic and international repercussions.

The U.S. has experienced a nearly gradual rise in its national debt during its 2 1/4 centuries of sovereign government.  There have been rare exceptions to this such as during the Jackson Administration (1829-1837) which saw national debt fall.  Some of this debt has occurred due to increases in national prosperity throughout our history while much of it, in recent decades, has been due to the growth of entitlement programs which are no longer economically sustainable.  During the Bush 43 presidency, then Senator Barack Obama voted against increasing the debt ceiling and criticized this administration for increasing the national debt from over $5 trillion to $10 trillion during its eight years though Obama conveniently forgot that we had to fight two wars.

Upon being elected to the presidency in 2008 and reelected in 2012, Obama failed to take any concrete steps to reduce government spending.  In fact, he enacted a financially unsustainable “health care reform” law whose preliminary costs are expected to add over $1 trillion to the budget deficit and far more than that to the national debt.  History shows that most federal programs, particularly social policy programs, far exceed their initial costs as Medicare and Medicaid demonstrate.  We must not forget that the “fiscally conservative” Senator Obama has, since becoming President approximately 4 years and nine months ago, increased the national debt to nearly $17 trillion dollars far exceeding the debt incurred by the Bush42 administration and is well on his way to surpass the debt incurred by all previous presidential administrations.

Congressional Republicans are right to try to quit “kicking the can” down the road and begin the painful process of restraining the federal spending leviathan.  Although Senator Ted Cruz, was overly quixotic in his belief that we could defund Obamacare through a filibuster, he was spot on in recognizing the bureaucratic and fiscal monstrosity this legislation is and will become if not trimmed back.  While it will not be possible to eliminate this legislation until the hopeful advent of a Republican Congress and President on January 20, 2017, incremental legislative steps can be taken to emasculate Obamacare in the interim. A positive political step in this direction New Jersey voters should take tomorrow is electing Steve Lonegan to the U.S. Senate.

Such steps include:

1. Supporting alternative legislation such as the GOP’s sponsored H.R. 3121 which would provide more market-based solutions to our health care problems.

2. Require members of Congress, their staff and executive branch personnel to live under Obamacare provisions.

3. Require income verification for all individuals and families applying for coverage under Obamacare.

4. Repealing the medical device tax.

5. Prohibiting the IRS from enforcing provisions of Obamacare including the individual health insurance mandate.

6. Prohibiting the Justice Department and HHS from conducting prosecutions against individuals or employers such as Hobby Lobby who have religious objections to Obamacare’s mandatory contraception coverage requirements.

7. Follow Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan’s call for serious discussion of how to reform federal entitlement programs.

8. Prohibit ACORN’s successor organization from being involved in registering individuals for Obamacare.

9. Begin the process of eliminating unnecessary regulations which stifle job creation; particularly by small businesses.

10. End Obamacare exemptions for big businesses and unions.

House Republicans have consistently adhered to legislative budgetary tradition by passing appropriations bills by groups of federal agencies instead of in one allegedly “clean” continuing resolution as advocated by congressional Democrats personified by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.  Congress must reform the budget process by eliminating continuing resolutions and passing annual agency appropriations bills by September 30 or members of Congress will lose their pay.  Congressional Republicans have done their job while the Obama Administration and Senate Democrats have failed to do theirs and Barack Obama and his congressional allies will be solely responsible for a default if one occurs.

The American electorate has chosen divided government in the last two elections.  We must not forget that Article 1 Section 7 of the Constitution gives the House of Representatives sole power to raise money.  Congressional Republicans are right to tenaciously defend that prerogative even as the Obama Administration and its mainstream media allies demonize Ted Cruz and other legislators and media commentators refusing to genuflect before Barack Obama’s inescapable prison of debt and decline.

Recent Good News from Australia

October 9, 2013 10:13 pm / Leave a comment

During a time period where we daily witness the Obama Administration’s domestic and international incompetence, I have the pleasure to bring good news to your attention.  A new government came to power in Australia last month which will bring hope to this country after six years of misgovernance.  In 2007, Australians let themselves be seduced by the siren song of leftist seduction and incompetence, when they toppled the 11 year government of John Howard and his conservative coalition which had brought increased international prestige and domestic prosperity to that country as well as eliminating their national debt.

Australians fell for the superficial Labor Party leader Kevin Rudd in the 2007 election.  Despite campaigning as a fiscal conservative, Rudd proved to be another leftist whose government would soon return Australia to debt.  Rudd proved an incompetent leader quarreling with many members of his Labour Party caucus including his deputy Julia Gillard.  In June 2010, just before having to go to the voters as part of Australia’s three-year election cycle, the Labour Party toppled Rudd from power replacing him from Gillard.  She proceeded to win a minority party government in that year’s election needing the help of the Green Party and other easily bought independents to cling to power.  The next three years were not pretty.  The Labour Government imposed a carbon tax which significantly increased consumer electric rates, imposed a mining tax which injured Australian mineral resources companies who play a key role in that country’s prosperity, managed to temporarily cut off beef to Indonesia which damaged Australia’s critical relationship with that neighboring and important country and Canberra’s important agricultural export industry.  Another programmatic fiasco was a green energy initiative to place “environmentally friendly” insulation into homes which produced fires in some of these residences resulting in death.  Australian immigration policy also suffered as the country experienced an increase in illegal immigration by smugglers using fragile boats to bring illegal aliens to Australia.  This problem had been dealt with firmly by the Howard Government, but the weak-willed Rudd and Gillard administrations dithered and made their country a soft target for illegal immigration.

These problems were further exacerbated by the reality show soap opera relationship between Rudd and Gillard.  After being toppled in 2010, Rudd made two unsuccessful attempts to topple Gillard as Labour Party leader while also serving as Foreign Minister.  Rudd, despite proclaiming himself a  Christian, decided to lift his finger into the wind, and support same-sex marriage in this year’s election campaign.  Although an atheist living with her boyfriend, Gillard actually opposed same sex marriage.  Gillard also played the feminist card when she would accuse her critics of misogyny.  When her poll ratings sank below Antarctic winter temperatures earlier this year, Rudd and other Labour Party apparatchiksiseized power from her and Gillard decided to retire.

Australian voters had enough of this incompetence and amateurism, so on September 7,  they tossed Rudd and Labour out of power and returned to adult leadership and conservative competence under the leadership of Prime Minister Tony Abbott.  Abbott is a staunch conservative who served as Health Minister during the Howard Government.  He is a Rhodes Scholar, fitness fanatic, devout Catholic, and has done extensive volunteer work in various worthy causes while representing the suburban Sydney district of Warringah.  His wife is Margie, and they have three daughters”:  Louise, Bridget, and Francis who are articulate and quite attractive.  His book Battle Lines (published by Melbourne University Press) gives a good overview of his philosophical moorings.  American readers should remember that in Australian politics Abbott’s Liberal Party uses the term liberal in the classical sense of adhering to maximum economic freedom.

Abbott and his government are beginning the process of reopening Australian economic performance by restraining unnecessary spending and eliminating the carbon tax.  Many of his cabinet members served in the Howard Government and his Foreign Minister Julie Bishop will present a positive image as it manages critical relationships with Indonesia, China, Japan, and the United States.  In fact, Abbott’s first foreign trip was to Indonesia.

Bishop is the only woman in the inner cabinet and this has attracted criticism from diversity cult adherents down under.  Although there are other women in positions of authority in Abbott’s outer cabinet, he knows that leadership must be merit based instead of adhering to delusions of gender equity.  One example of a meritorious women advising Abbott is his Chief of Staff Peta Credlin who, like the Chief of Staff to the U.S. President, serves as the gatekeeper for those seeking access to the Prime Minister.  This is a position of real power earned by merit and trust instead of gender tokenism.

Abbott’s critics forget that it takes time to learn the skills necessary to be a Cabinet minister in a parliamentary government and that cabinet reshuffles in such governments occur on a regular basis.  Consequentially, there will eventually be more female members in Abbott’s senior cabinet.  There would have been another woman in the senior cabinet in shadow Science and Industry Minister Sophie Mirabella had not lost her House of Representatives reelection campaign for the rural Victorian seat of Indi.

Abbott believes in the anglosphere and will be a staunch ally of the U.S. in it’s tilt to the Asia-Pacific region.  Hopefully, his government’s skills will rub off on the increasingly incompetent and irrelevant Barack Obama who to miss the important Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Forum conference due to his gross incompetence in allowing the government shutdown to occur.  Obama’s failure to be at this conference leaves China to dominate the show and causes anxiety among our Asia-Pacific allies who are concerned about China’s rise to prominence.  American conservatives should look forward to the Abbott Government’s eventual accomplishments and take heart that Australian voters rejected Labour’s leftist nostrums and the Obama Administration’s attempts to help Labour in their most recent campaign.

Shutdown Saga

October 3, 2013 5:33 pm / Leave a comment

The federal fiscal year runs from October 1-Sept. 30 and FY 2014 got off to a rousing start with a government shutdown.  The term “shutdown” is something of an exaggeration since many government functions continue.  However, I understand and partially sympathize with the frustration of federal workers over being furloughed.  We must be honest that this came about due to the refusal of the Obama Administration and the Senate, malignantly personified by Majority Leader Harry Reid, to negotiate with Republicans on objectionable features over Obamacare, misnamed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, and th uninterrupted and upward spiral of federal spending and national debt.  Obama and Reid should heed the sage advice of Indiana Senator Dan Coats who said that Americans voted for divided government.

Ignorant Obamite acolytes have indulged in all kinds of hysterical and apocalyptic rhetoric about the shutdown.  They conveniently forget that they would engage in similar tactics if a Republican President was in power.  Democrats are so enamored of increasing the dependence of Americans on the federal government that they are willing to drive the nation into physical and moral bankruptcy.  It is with good reason that our founders chose Article 1 Section 7 of the U.S. Constitution to give sole power for raising money to the House of Representatives.  It is providentially fortuitous that the House is currently controlled by the Republicans.  You would think that as a former constitutional law professor, Barack Obama would recognize this reality and realize that he needs to accommodate GOP objections to his signature health care legislation and other aspects of federal spending.

Unfortunately, Obama is a narcissistic fool clinging to his health care legislation like J.R.R. Tolkien’s character Gollum obsessed about the ring in the Lord of the Rings.  The stubbornness of Obama and Reid will, hopefully, produce the same politically ruinous results as Gollums’s deceit.  Obama can find time to negotiate with thugs like Vladimir Putin, Bashir Assad, and his new BFF Iranian President Rouhani but cannot address critical national issues because he thinks he’s superior to congressional Republicans.

Nations giving their national government preeminent control over the health care sector experience declining service quality, higher taxes, rationed care, poorer patient outcomes, and bureaucratic dominance in which political priorities, instead of the best needs of doctors and patients, become paramount.  Through this legislation, Obama, Reid, and their allies seek to impose an insidious slavery and totalitarian control on the critical doctor-patient relationship.  They seek to stifle innovation in medical practice and care by imposing a medical devices tax and get more individuals narcotically hooked on federal benefits and the constitutionally mythical belief of a “right to health care.”

While the shutdown is inconvenient for many people, congressional Republicans should hold firm.  They should continue trying to pass legislation to fund individual federal departments and force the Democrats to negotiate with them.  There have been comparisons with the 1995-1996 shutdowns, but in these lines of communication remained open between Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich.  Obama arrogantly believes he doesn’t need congressional Republicans, but the fact of the matter is that in the 2010 and 2012 elections, the electorate chose divided government.  This storm over the shutdown pales in comparison to the looming showdown over increasing the national debt in two weeks.  As a general rule, I am against increasing the debt limit since must retain the national and international full faith and credit of our economy by restoring fiscal discipline.  We cannot sustain the growth of entitlement programs and the extra costs, probably woefully underestimated, which Obamacare provisions will inflict on our economy.  The American people are about to learn in the hardest way possible, the price they will have to pay for entrusting national leadership in the last two presidential elections and the last four Senate elections to the former Chicago community organizer and his Las Vegas gangster partner Harry Reid.