Her constant re-election is symptomatic of an electorate which apparently does not care they are being defined by this loose cannon.
When they trot her out and she lets loose I wonder how many of her constituents cringe?
She does not even represent me and I cringe.
The world's political scene has seen worst for sure but that is a poor excuse for her continuance in office.
I can think of no better reason for limited terms and eliminating seniority than to say Maxine Waters.
The government does not have a convincing record of picking winners because politics gets in the way of rational judgement.
It is so obvious, one would think the record would be an embarrassment on the order of Maxine Waters but power to control and spend is so politically compelling. (See 1 below.)
I do not know whether the abysmal record this president has achieved on all fronts, domestic and foreign, will catch the attention of voters before the election or whether they will remain fixated on the raucous way in which Republicans have conducted their own nomination process.
I still maintain this president can be beaten with his own words, his own failures and his own compulsive, pathological ideology that causes him to spend in a manner that will destroy our nation's credibility, credit and security.
Every president has spent beyond the nation's ultimate ability to manage the future costs.Since there has been no serious consequence voters can identify, its continuance has been permitted. Inflation and erosion of the dollar are silent occurrences that do not effect evenly but their results are cumulative and eventually cruel.
No one can predict, with certainty, when the wild spending by this administration will come home to roost but assuredly it will happen as night follows day and a dark tidal night it will be when it comes ashore.
All presidents prime the re-election pump but we have generally been better prepared to keep their overboard spending contained. This is not the case with this president because he spends with abandon and demonstrates utter disregard for the nation's future either because of arrogance, naivety and/or a purposeful and sick psychological need to bring our nation to its knees. (Am currently reading : "The Roots of Obama's Rage" by Dinesh D'Souza.")
His recent budget submission is nothing short of an affront.
Reid's conduct of the Senate is a national disgrace and were he a civilian trustee he would be in jail for mismanagement.
Viet Nam left an indelible smear on our nation' psyche and taught/convinced us defeat was something we could live with and so it has been ever since. Less than auspicious leadership has been the consequence as if the Oval Office could be won by the least qualified.
I find little of a redeeming nature not only in the way this president conducts himself but in the outrageous conduct of some of his most key appointees.
I write and feel this way not because I seek retribution against Democrats, though that may be hard for some to swallow. I write and feel this way because those currently in office are taking this nation into a financial abyss from which the consequences will be severe, of long standing and perhaps eventually crippling.
The current rise in the stock market is a consequence of Fed stimulus and the liquidity provided by their actions has created. It may continue for many months but it will eventually prove ephemeral.
Yes, employment is improving modestly but the savings rate has declined and the accelerating draw down from 401k's should be a sign of concern. Lower income families are spending more than half their earnings on essentials. More than half of American citizens receive some form of government benefits and then we have the food stamp statistics.
With stagnant job growth and an economy supported by 70% consumption where will the economic oomph come from? We are witnessing the first post-recession decline in personal income in 50 years. Not healthy signs one can cite to support a sustained stock market rise.
Housing remains a drag and the problems in Europe may not be contained. Then there is the looming clouds forming in the Middle East which portend a confrontation of significant dimensions.
Finally, no nation can spend endlessly, create dependency, replace the free market's ability to self-correct and pile on debt without regard to eventual repayment and perpetuate itself in healthy fashion.
Debt, failure to deliver an acceptable product and mismanagement overwhelmed the likes of General Motors, Eastman Kodak , Lehman Brothers etc. and now we see what it has done to Greece, Portugal and Spain and, as powerful as we are, we are not immune.
I would like to end with a medical analogy. The problems we and the world faces can be likened to blood clots and the Fed and other world central banking systems are providing is the Cumidin. Our vessels are full of plaque brought about by fattening caused by over unrelenting overspending placing the patient at risk!
Then when the economy begins recovering, as it will in time, these various Central Banks will be forced to initiate a withdrawal process by draining liquidity from the swamp they created thus putting downward pressure on the recovery they helped produce and interest rates will rise. How the patient will react is anyone's guess but history provides some clues and they are foreboding ones because withdrawal symptoms can be very unpleasant.
The pain of allowing markets to self correct were probably politically impossible but the long term results would have produced a much stronger stronger foundation on which the recovery could build. That option has been drowned in rescue pills! (See 2, 2b and 2c below.)
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Our oil situation explained in a geographic few words. (See 3 below.)
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Youth's are having second thoughts about supporting the messiah who has a job while they don't. (See 4 below.)
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Insight into who is the ventriloquist behind the puppet who sits in The Oval Office? (See 5 below.)
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Dick
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1)Washington's Knack for Picking Losers
Former Obama adviser Larry Summers warned the administration against federal loan guarantees to Solyndra, writing in a 2009 email that 'the government is a crappy venture capitalist.'
By MICHAEL J. BOSKIN
Like the mythical monster Hydra—who grew two heads every time Hercules cut one off—President Obama, in both his State of the Union address and his new budget, has defiantly doubled down on his brand of industrial policy, the usually ill-advised attempt by governments to promote particular industries, companies and technologies at the expense of broad, evenhanded competition.
Despite his record of picking losers—witness the failed "clean energy" projects Solyndra, Ener1 and Beacon Power—Mr. Obama appears determined to continue pushing his brew of federal spending, regulations, mandates, special waivers, loan guarantees, subsidies and tax breaks for companies he deems worthy.
Favoring key constituencies with taxpayer money appeals to politicians, who can claim to be helping the overall economy, but it usually does far more harm than good. It crowds out valuable competing investment efforts financed by private investors, and it warps decisions by bureaucratic diktats susceptible to political cronyism. Former Obama adviser Larry Summers echoed most economists' view when he warned the administration against federal loan guarantees to Solyndra, writing in a 2009 email that "the government is a crappy venture capitalist."
Markets function well when the returns are received and the risks borne by private owners. There are, of course, exceptions: Governments have a responsibility to fund defense R&D and other forms of pre-competitive, generic R&;D—e.g., basic science and technology from nano science to batteries—but only when they pass rigorous cost-benefit tests and maintain a level playing field among alternative commercial applications.
For example, the computer-linking technology that created the Internet was funded by the Defense Department for defense purposes. But, like numerous defense technologies, it wound up with commercially valuable civilian applications. Yet it would be foolish for the government to subsidize a particular search engine or social-networking platform.
The previous peak for U.S. industrial policy was in the 1970s and 1980s, when many Democrats wanted to emulate the then-growing Japanese economy by managing trade and directing specific technology and investment outcomes. Japanese subsidies mostly went to old industries like agriculture, mining and heavy manufacturing. We now know that this misallocation of capital was one of the main reasons for Japan's stagnation over the past two decades.
Martin Kozlowski
Industrial-policy fever waned after the 1980s but never died. President George W. Bush expanded ethanol mandates and pushed hydrogen cars. Hydrogen's use for transportation must still overcome combustibility concerns, or we'll be driving mini-Hindenburgs. The Bush and Obama administrations bet big on ethanol and other biofuels, providing subsidies that distorted the global market for corn. The federal government was forced to drop its cellulosic ethanol quota by 97% last year because of a lack of viable biorefineries—and the quota still wasn't met.
Even under optimistic projections, heavily subsidized wind and solar would each amount to a tiny fraction of global energy by 2030 and thus cannot be the main answer to energy-security or environmental problems. The short-run focus of most Department of Energy funding misses the main strategic imperative: We need alternatives that can scale to significance long-term without subsidies, and we need a lot more North American oil and gas in the meantime.
Mr. Obama is spending immense sums for subsidies to particular industries and technologies, almost $40 billion for clean-energy programs alone (some, appropriately, for pre-competitive generic technology.) Yet a large number of prominent venture-capital funds are devoted to alternative-energy providers. They should be competing with each other and with the technologies they seek to replace—not for government handouts.
Meanwhile, the administration blocks shovel-ready private investment such as the Keystone XL pipeline from Canada to the Gulf Coast, which would create thousands of American jobs, increase energy security, and even improve the environment. The alternative is shipping the Canadian oil to China; we can refine it more cleanly than the Chinese, and pipelines are safer than shipping.
America certainly has energy-security and possible environmental concerns that merit diversifying energy sources. More domestic oil and natural gas production will clearly play a large role. The shale gas hydraulic fracturing revolution—credit due to Halliburton and Mitchell Energy; the government's role was minor—is rapidly providing a piece of the intermediate-term solution.
The arguments to promote industrial policy—incubating industries, benefits of clustering and learning, more jobs, etc.—don't stand up to scrutiny. Echoing 1980s Japan-fear and envy, some claim we must enact industrial policies because China does. We should remember that Presidents Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon wanted the U.S. to build a supersonic transport (SST) plane because the British and French were doing so. The troubled Concorde was famously shut down after a quarter-century of subsidized travel for wealthy tourists and Wall Street types.
Instead of an industrial policy that fails miserably to pick winners, a better response to foreign competition should be:
• Remove our own major competitive obstacles. We can do this with more competitive corporate tax rates, more sensible regulation, improved K-12 education, and better job training for skills that the market demands such as the computer literacy necessary even to operate today's machinery. (Mr. Obama's green jobs training program spent hundreds of millions but only 3% of enrollees had the targeted jobs six months later.)
• Base trade and industrial policies on sound economics, not 'in-sourcing' protectionism.If another country has a comparative cost advantage, we gain from exchanging such products for those we produce relatively more efficiently. If we tried to produce everything in America, our standard of living would plummet.
• Pursue rapid redress for illegal subsidization and protectionism by our competitors. The appropriate venue for trade complaints is the World Trade Organization, not the campaign trail. We need to strengthen the WTO, not threaten its legitimacy with protectionist rhetoric that could spark a trade war.
Industrial policy failed in the 1970s and 1980s. Letting governments, rather than marketplace competition, pick winners and losers is just as bad an idea today. Still, the Obama administration is responsible for the biggest outbreak of American industrial policy since President Jimmy Carter's proposed $88 billion ($240 billion in 2012 dollars) synthetic-fuels program.
Mr. Carter was trounced in his 1980 re-election bid by free-marketer Ronald Reagan, who slashed marginal income-tax rates and regulations and lowered trade barriers. The result? The end of the "stagflation" of the Carter years and a return to strong economic growth.
Mr. Boskin, a professor of economics at Stanford and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, serves on the board of directors of Exxon Mobil Corp. He chaired the Council of Economic Advisers under President George H.W. Bush.
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2) Overreach: Obamacare vs. the Constitution
By Charles Krauthamer
Give him points for cleverness. President Obama’s birth control “accommodation” was as politically successful as it was morally meaningless. It was nothing but an accounting trick that still forces Catholic (and other religious) institutions to provide medical insurance that guarantees free birth control, tubal ligation and morning-after abortifacients — all of which violate church doctrine on the sanctity of life.
The trick is that these birth control/abortion services will supposedly be provided independently and free of charge by the religious institution’s insurance company. But this changes none of the moral calculus. Holy Cross Hospital, for example, is still required by law to engage an insurance company that is required by law to provide these doctrinally proscribed services to all Holy Cross employees.
Nonetheless, the accounting device worked politically. It took only a handful of compliant Catholic groups — Obamacare cheerleaders dying to return to the fold — to hail the alleged compromise and hand Obama a major political victory.
Before, Obama’s coalition had been split. His birth control mandate was fiercely opposed by such stalwart friends as former Virginia governor Tim Kaine and pastor Rick Warren (Obama’s choice to give the invocation at his inauguration), who declared he would rather go to jail than abide by the regulation. After the “accommodation,” it was the (mostly) Catholic opposition that fractured. The mainstream media then bought the compromise as substantive, and the issue was defused.
A brilliant sleight of hand. But let’s for a moment accept the president on his own terms. Let’s accept his contention that this “accommodation” is a real shift of responsibility to the insurer. Has anyone considered the import of this new mandate? The president of the United States has just ordered private companies to give away for free a service that his own health and human services secretary has repeatedly called a major financial burden.
On what authority? Where does it say that the president can unilaterally order a private company to provide an allegedly free-standing service at no cost to certain select beneficiaries?
This is government by presidential fiat. In Venezuela, that’s done all the time. Perhaps we should call Obama’s “accommodation” Presidential Decree No. 1.
Consider the constitutional wreckage left by Obamacare:
First, the assault on the free exercise of religion. Only churches themselves are left alone. Beyond the churchyard gate, religious autonomy disappears. Every other religious institution must bow to the state because, by this administration’s regulatory definition, church schools, hospitals and charities are not “religious” and thus have no right to the free exercise of religion — no protection from being forced into doctrinal violations commanded by the state.
Second, the assault on free enterprise. To solve his own political problem, the president presumes to order a private company to enter into a contract for the provision of certain services — all of which must be without charge. And yet, this breathtaking arrogation of power is simply the logical extension of Washington’s takeover of the private system of medical care — a system Obama farcically pretends to be maintaining.
Under Obamacare, the state treats private insurers the way it does government-regulated monopolies and utilities. It determines everything of importance. Insurers, by definition, set premiums according to risk. Not anymore. The risk ratios (for age, gender, smoking, etc.) are decreed by Washington. This is nationalization in all but name. The insurer is turned into a middleman, subject to state control — and presidential whim.
Third, the assault on individual autonomy. Every citizen without insurance is ordered to buy it, again under penalty of law. This so-called individual mandate is now before the Supreme Court — because never before has the already hypertrophied Commerce Clause been used to compel a citizen to enter into a private contract with a private company by mere fact of his existence.
This constitutional trifecta — the state invading the autonomy of religious institutions, private companies and the individual citizen — should not surprise. It is what happens when the state takes over one-sixth of the economy.
In 2010, when all this lay hazily in the future, the sheer arrogance of Obamacare energized a popular resistance powerful enough to deliver an electoral shellacking to Obama. Yet two years later, as the consequences of that overreach materialize before our eyes, the issue is fading. This constitutes a huge failing of the opposition party whose responsibility it is to make the opposition argument.
Every presidential challenger says that he will repeal Obamacare on Day One. Well, yes. But is any of them making the case for why?
letters@charleskrauthammer.com
2b) It’s time to return Holder’s contempt
By Michael A. Walsh
‘Contempt of Congress” is a pretty strong term, and one with tangible legal consequences, but how else to describe Attorney General Eric Holder’s continuing obstructionism in the burgeoning Fast and Furious scandal?
It’s been 14 months since news broke that a federal agent had been killed with weapons that Holder’s Justice Department intentionally allowed to cross the border into Mexico, with no plan on how to track them and without alerting Mexican officials. In all, the Obama administration sent thousands of guns south to the drug gangs under the misbegotten operation.
But since last May, Eric Holder has been stonewalling congressional attempts to get to the bottom of Fast and Furious — a mess hatched on his watch by Obama appointees at the office of the US attorney for Arizona and agents with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
On Tuesday, Rep. Darrell Issa (R.-Calif) — whose House Oversight Committee is leading the congressional investigation — sent Holder another in a series of stern letters, demanding that Justice comply with committee subpoenas that it’s been pretty much ignoring since Oct. 12.
The letter was prompted by Justice’s failure to meet a Feb. 9 deadline to make witnesses available and turn over hundreds, if not thousands, of pages of internal documents. Holder’s crew requested a further extension — while publicly decrying Issa’s probe as a political witch hunt.
Of course, as Issa writes, it’s Justice’s own “delay tactics” that “have extended this investigation into a presidential-election year.” Indeed, “had the department demonstrated willingness to cooperate with this investigation from the outset — instead of attempting to cover up its own internal mismanagement — this investigation likely would have concluded” last year.
“In reality,” Issa continues, “it is the department that is playing political gotcha games, instead of allowing a co-equal branch of government to perform its constitutional duty to conduct oversight of the Executive Branch.
“We cannot wait any longer for the deparment’s cooperation.”
Tough words. But will there ever be more than words?
Issa’s letter still offers Holder an out: “Please specify a date by which you expect the department to produce all documents responsive to the subpoena.”
But it’s clear Holder is trying to stall through Election Day. Holder and President Obama are joined at the hip, and if Holder falls, the president is severely damaged. Were Democrats to regain control of the House, they could shut down Issa’s probe.
So what can Issa do?
As he pointedly notes in his letter, willful failure to comply with a congressional investigation is a federal misdemeanor, “punishable by a fine of not more than $1,000 nor less than $100 and imprisonment in a common jail for not less than one month nor more than 12 months.”
Easier said than done. Issa’s full committee would have to approve a contempt citation and then forward it to the full (Republican-dominated) House for approval by a majority vote. After that, it goes to the US attorney for the District of Columbia, “whose duty it shall be” to take it to a grand jury. But the US attorney for DC is another Obama appointee — who reports to Holder. Think there might be more delays?
Since 1975, 10 high officials have been cited for contempt; most cases ended with negotiated agreements between the White House and Congress. Sometimes, as in the case of former Environmental Protection Agency chief Anne Gorsuch in 1982, Justice simply refuses to prosecute. The last contempt citation acted on was in 1983, against former EPA official Rita Lavelle, who got a fine and prison term for lying to Congress.
These fights don’t go quickly, so Issa and the House GOP leadership must up the ante now. Holder’s plainly not going to voluntarily comply with Issa’s subpoenas; presumably, the evidence would just be too explosive.
One approach may be to start pushing other federal agencies; in more news, a federal agent is now saying that the Homeland Security Department knew more about Fast and Furious than has been disclosed — to the extent of even blocking some gun transfers from ATF to the bad guys.
The shell game has gone on long enough. The country deserves answers — not gotcha games.
For months now, Holder has been dodging, obfuscating, withholding evidence and outright lying in his attempt to evade responsibility for the deadly program that has cost the lives of two federal agents and countless Mexican nationals.
Contempt of Congress? Contempt for the American people is more like it.
2c)Obamanomics Has Failed
Three years ago today, President Barack Obama signed into law his trillion-dollar stimulus plan, a measure that he promised would save or create 3 million jobs by the end of 2010 and would prevent unemployment from ever going above 8 percent. And though the President today will likely claim that thanks to his efforts, the U.S. economy is surging, don't believe him. The verdict is in: Obamanomics has failed.
But you don't have to take our word for it. Yesterday, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released a report offering an analysis of the last three years of the Obama economy. In short, the stimulus did not live up to the President's promises.
The CBO writes that America's unemployment rate has exceeded 8 percent since February 2009, making this the longest stretch of high unemployment since the Great Depression. To make matters worse, unemployment will remain above 8 percent until 2014. And the level of long-term unemployment -- those looking for work for more than six months -- is over 40 percent, the highest since at least 1948, when that data was first collected.
"But wait a minute!" you might shout, "There are jobs being created; we're on the road to recovery." True enough. The White House brags that 257,000 jobs were created in January and that the economy has added private sector jobs for 23 straight months. While those are good numbers, bear in mind that in this case, the beauty of the Obama economy is only skin deep and that lead has not quite been turned into gold. In fact, the strength of the U.S. economy's recovery is much weaker than advertised. And though the President would like to credit his stimulus with today's growth, keep in mind that the stimulus ended one year ago. Obamanomics would have predicted faster growth sooner, not later, and certainly not after the stimulus wound down.
In a new report, Heritage's James Sherk explains that today's economic growth needs to be viewed in its proper context -- in the aftermath of the worst recession in two generations, today's recovery is remarkably slow. Though the economy is growing, the current economic recovery is the slowest recovery in the post-war era. Four years after the recession started, the economy still has not replaced the jobs lost in the downturn. And while the economy normally grows rapidly after a steep recession, hiring rates today remain one-sixth below pre-recession levels. What's the future hold? At current rates of job creation, the economy will not return to normal rates of unemployment until 2015.
The dismal economy is having a terrible impact on America's workers. Sherk writes that millions of Americans have stopped trying to find jobs, and today only 63.7 percent of adult Americans are active in the labor force, meaning that they're either employed or looking for a job. That's the lowest level since 1983.
If you think that's bad news, there's even more in store for America. "Small businesses currently identify taxes and government regulations as their most important problems," Sherk writes. "Businesses are forward-looking and fear that Congress will raise taxes to cover the cost of the recent federal spending spree." They're not about to get relief any time soon. On Monday, President Obama unleashed his FY 2013 budget, delivering an annual deficit exceeding $1 trillion. For those keeping score, it's the fourth such trillion-plus budget the President has produced. Even the President's own Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner says the level of spending is "unsustainable."
Yesterday in testimony before Congress, Geithner admitted that "Even if Congress were to enact this budget, we would still be left with--in the outer decades as millions of Americans retire--what are still unsustainable commitments in Medicare and Medicaid." That's not the kind of news America's job creators need to hear if they are to gain the kind of confidence in Washington that will encourage them to go forth, invest, and create new jobs.
But that is the story of Obamanomics -- a black hole of government that sucks the energy out of America's job-creation machine in order to fuel an ever-expanding bureaucracy. This trend must end. Washington should adopt pro-growth policies like the job-creating New Flat Tax, allow the exploration and use of American fossil fuels, pursue free trade policies, cut unnecessary regulations, and deliver a budget that gets government under control. Americans have suffered long enough, and they can't afford to wait any longer.
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3)
2) Overreach: Obamacare vs. the Constitution
By Charles Krauthamer
Give him points for cleverness. President Obama’s birth control “accommodation” was as politically successful as it was morally meaningless. It was nothing but an accounting trick that still forces Catholic (and other religious) institutions to provide medical insurance that guarantees free birth control, tubal ligation and morning-after abortifacients — all of which violate church doctrine on the sanctity of life.
The trick is that these birth control/abortion services will supposedly be provided independently and free of charge by the religious institution’s insurance company. But this changes none of the moral calculus. Holy Cross Hospital, for example, is still required by law to engage an insurance company that is required by law to provide these doctrinally proscribed services to all Holy Cross employees.
Nonetheless, the accounting device worked politically. It took only a handful of compliant Catholic groups — Obamacare cheerleaders dying to return to the fold — to hail the alleged compromise and hand Obama a major political victory.
Before, Obama’s coalition had been split. His birth control mandate was fiercely opposed by such stalwart friends as former Virginia governor Tim Kaine and pastor Rick Warren (Obama’s choice to give the invocation at his inauguration), who declared he would rather go to jail than abide by the regulation. After the “accommodation,” it was the (mostly) Catholic opposition that fractured. The mainstream media then bought the compromise as substantive, and the issue was defused.
A brilliant sleight of hand. But let’s for a moment accept the president on his own terms. Let’s accept his contention that this “accommodation” is a real shift of responsibility to the insurer. Has anyone considered the import of this new mandate? The president of the United States has just ordered private companies to give away for free a service that his own health and human services secretary has repeatedly called a major financial burden.
On what authority? Where does it say that the president can unilaterally order a private company to provide an allegedly free-standing service at no cost to certain select beneficiaries?
This is government by presidential fiat. In Venezuela, that’s done all the time. Perhaps we should call Obama’s “accommodation” Presidential Decree No. 1.
Consider the constitutional wreckage left by Obamacare:
First, the assault on the free exercise of religion. Only churches themselves are left alone. Beyond the churchyard gate, religious autonomy disappears. Every other religious institution must bow to the state because, by this administration’s regulatory definition, church schools, hospitals and charities are not “religious” and thus have no right to the free exercise of religion — no protection from being forced into doctrinal violations commanded by the state.
Second, the assault on free enterprise. To solve his own political problem, the president presumes to order a private company to enter into a contract for the provision of certain services — all of which must be without charge. And yet, this breathtaking arrogation of power is simply the logical extension of Washington’s takeover of the private system of medical care — a system Obama farcically pretends to be maintaining.
Under Obamacare, the state treats private insurers the way it does government-regulated monopolies and utilities. It determines everything of importance. Insurers, by definition, set premiums according to risk. Not anymore. The risk ratios (for age, gender, smoking, etc.) are decreed by Washington. This is nationalization in all but name. The insurer is turned into a middleman, subject to state control — and presidential whim.
Third, the assault on individual autonomy. Every citizen without insurance is ordered to buy it, again under penalty of law. This so-called individual mandate is now before the Supreme Court — because never before has the already hypertrophied Commerce Clause been used to compel a citizen to enter into a private contract with a private company by mere fact of his existence.
This constitutional trifecta — the state invading the autonomy of religious institutions, private companies and the individual citizen — should not surprise. It is what happens when the state takes over one-sixth of the economy.
In 2010, when all this lay hazily in the future, the sheer arrogance of Obamacare energized a popular resistance powerful enough to deliver an electoral shellacking to Obama. Yet two years later, as the consequences of that overreach materialize before our eyes, the issue is fading. This constitutes a huge failing of the opposition party whose responsibility it is to make the opposition argument.
Every presidential challenger says that he will repeal Obamacare on Day One. Well, yes. But is any of them making the case for why?
letters@charleskrauthammer.com
2b) It’s time to return Holder’s contempt
By Michael A. Walsh
‘Contempt of Congress” is a pretty strong term, and one with tangible legal consequences, but how else to describe Attorney General Eric Holder’s continuing obstructionism in the burgeoning Fast and Furious scandal?
It’s been 14 months since news broke that a federal agent had been killed with weapons that Holder’s Justice Department intentionally allowed to cross the border into Mexico, with no plan on how to track them and without alerting Mexican officials. In all, the Obama administration sent thousands of guns south to the drug gangs under the misbegotten operation.
But since last May, Eric Holder has been stonewalling congressional attempts to get to the bottom of Fast and Furious — a mess hatched on his watch by Obama appointees at the office of the US attorney for Arizona and agents with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
On Tuesday, Rep. Darrell Issa (R.-Calif) — whose House Oversight Committee is leading the congressional investigation — sent Holder another in a series of stern letters, demanding that Justice comply with committee subpoenas that it’s been pretty much ignoring since Oct. 12.
The letter was prompted by Justice’s failure to meet a Feb. 9 deadline to make witnesses available and turn over hundreds, if not thousands, of pages of internal documents. Holder’s crew requested a further extension — while publicly decrying Issa’s probe as a political witch hunt.
Of course, as Issa writes, it’s Justice’s own “delay tactics” that “have extended this investigation into a presidential-election year.” Indeed, “had the department demonstrated willingness to cooperate with this investigation from the outset — instead of attempting to cover up its own internal mismanagement — this investigation likely would have concluded” last year.
“In reality,” Issa continues, “it is the department that is playing political gotcha games, instead of allowing a co-equal branch of government to perform its constitutional duty to conduct oversight of the Executive Branch.
“We cannot wait any longer for the deparment’s cooperation.”
Tough words. But will there ever be more than words?
Issa’s letter still offers Holder an out: “Please specify a date by which you expect the department to produce all documents responsive to the subpoena.”
But it’s clear Holder is trying to stall through Election Day. Holder and President Obama are joined at the hip, and if Holder falls, the president is severely damaged. Were Democrats to regain control of the House, they could shut down Issa’s probe.
So what can Issa do?
As he pointedly notes in his letter, willful failure to comply with a congressional investigation is a federal misdemeanor, “punishable by a fine of not more than $1,000 nor less than $100 and imprisonment in a common jail for not less than one month nor more than 12 months.”
Easier said than done. Issa’s full committee would have to approve a contempt citation and then forward it to the full (Republican-dominated) House for approval by a majority vote. After that, it goes to the US attorney for the District of Columbia, “whose duty it shall be” to take it to a grand jury. But the US attorney for DC is another Obama appointee — who reports to Holder. Think there might be more delays?
Since 1975, 10 high officials have been cited for contempt; most cases ended with negotiated agreements between the White House and Congress. Sometimes, as in the case of former Environmental Protection Agency chief Anne Gorsuch in 1982, Justice simply refuses to prosecute. The last contempt citation acted on was in 1983, against former EPA official Rita Lavelle, who got a fine and prison term for lying to Congress.
These fights don’t go quickly, so Issa and the House GOP leadership must up the ante now. Holder’s plainly not going to voluntarily comply with Issa’s subpoenas; presumably, the evidence would just be too explosive.
One approach may be to start pushing other federal agencies; in more news, a federal agent is now saying that the Homeland Security Department knew more about Fast and Furious than has been disclosed — to the extent of even blocking some gun transfers from ATF to the bad guys.
The shell game has gone on long enough. The country deserves answers — not gotcha games.
For months now, Holder has been dodging, obfuscating, withholding evidence and outright lying in his attempt to evade responsibility for the deadly program that has cost the lives of two federal agents and countless Mexican nationals.
Contempt of Congress? Contempt for the American people is more like it.
2c)Obamanomics Has Failed
Three years ago today, President Barack Obama signed into law his trillion-dollar stimulus plan, a measure that he promised would save or create 3 million jobs by the end of 2010 and would prevent unemployment from ever going above 8 percent. And though the President today will likely claim that thanks to his efforts, the U.S. economy is surging, don't believe him. The verdict is in: Obamanomics has failed.
But you don't have to take our word for it. Yesterday, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released a report offering an analysis of the last three years of the Obama economy. In short, the stimulus did not live up to the President's promises.
The CBO writes that America's unemployment rate has exceeded 8 percent since February 2009, making this the longest stretch of high unemployment since the Great Depression. To make matters worse, unemployment will remain above 8 percent until 2014. And the level of long-term unemployment -- those looking for work for more than six months -- is over 40 percent, the highest since at least 1948, when that data was first collected.
"But wait a minute!" you might shout, "There are jobs being created; we're on the road to recovery." True enough. The White House brags that 257,000 jobs were created in January and that the economy has added private sector jobs for 23 straight months. While those are good numbers, bear in mind that in this case, the beauty of the Obama economy is only skin deep and that lead has not quite been turned into gold. In fact, the strength of the U.S. economy's recovery is much weaker than advertised. And though the President would like to credit his stimulus with today's growth, keep in mind that the stimulus ended one year ago. Obamanomics would have predicted faster growth sooner, not later, and certainly not after the stimulus wound down.
In a new report, Heritage's James Sherk explains that today's economic growth needs to be viewed in its proper context -- in the aftermath of the worst recession in two generations, today's recovery is remarkably slow. Though the economy is growing, the current economic recovery is the slowest recovery in the post-war era. Four years after the recession started, the economy still has not replaced the jobs lost in the downturn. And while the economy normally grows rapidly after a steep recession, hiring rates today remain one-sixth below pre-recession levels. What's the future hold? At current rates of job creation, the economy will not return to normal rates of unemployment until 2015.
The dismal economy is having a terrible impact on America's workers. Sherk writes that millions of Americans have stopped trying to find jobs, and today only 63.7 percent of adult Americans are active in the labor force, meaning that they're either employed or looking for a job. That's the lowest level since 1983.
If you think that's bad news, there's even more in store for America. "Small businesses currently identify taxes and government regulations as their most important problems," Sherk writes. "Businesses are forward-looking and fear that Congress will raise taxes to cover the cost of the recent federal spending spree." They're not about to get relief any time soon. On Monday, President Obama unleashed his FY 2013 budget, delivering an annual deficit exceeding $1 trillion. For those keeping score, it's the fourth such trillion-plus budget the President has produced. Even the President's own Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner says the level of spending is "unsustainable."
Yesterday in testimony before Congress, Geithner admitted that "Even if Congress were to enact this budget, we would still be left with--in the outer decades as millions of Americans retire--what are still unsustainable commitments in Medicare and Medicaid." That's not the kind of news America's job creators need to hear if they are to gain the kind of confidence in Washington that will encourage them to go forth, invest, and create new jobs.
But that is the story of Obamanomics -- a black hole of government that sucks the energy out of America's job-creation machine in order to fuel an ever-expanding bureaucracy. This trend must end. Washington should adopt pro-growth policies like the job-creating New Flat Tax, allow the exploration and use of American fossil fuels, pursue free trade policies, cut unnecessary regulations, and deliver a budget that gets government under control. Americans have suffered long enough, and they can't afford to wait any longer.
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