===
Wrong man at the wrong time. (See 2 and 2a below.)
====
Obamacare's failure must also be GW's fault. See 3 below.)
Iran gets its back up and makes demands. (See 3a below.)
===
Be prepared for more false hope from Obama regarding how he has improved the livelihood of Americans. (See 4 below.)
===
This from the son of a very dear and old friend and fellow memo reader who practiced medicine for years and now his son does. "We are drifting toward tyranny and the unaccountable sovereign…. M----"
Out of town again, beginning Thursday - off to Athens!
Before I go I thought this was an interesting and beautiful video: "
Dick
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1)"Now, assume, reasonably, that Iran’s pursuit of a potentially genocidal weapon will not be seriously impeded by parchment barriers such as the recent nuclear agreement. And assume, prudently, that the Iranian regime means what it says about Jews and their “Zionist entity.”
Then apply Snyder’s warning: Ideas have consequences. The idea of anti-Semitism is uniquely durable and remarkably multiform. It can express a mentality that is disconnected, as in Hitler’s case, from calculations of national interest.
Hence an anti-Semitic regime can be impervious to the logic of deterrence."
I wanted to bring to your attention an important column in today's Washington Post about Iran and Israel:
Congressman Brendan F. Boyle
Does Iran’s anti-Semitism run too deep for deterrence?
Nazi party members salute Adolf Hitler, in left first row, during a 1938 meeting in Berlin. (Associated Press)
1a)
Opinion writer
Yale University historian Timothy Snyder is indebted to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who recently made Snyder’s new book even more newsworthy than his extraordinary scholarship deserves to be. And Netanyahu is indebted to Snyder, whose theory of Hitler’s anti-Semitism is germane to two questions: Is the Iranian regime’s anti-Semitism rooted, as Hitler’s was, in a theory of history that demands genocide? If so, when Iran becomes a nuclear power, can it be deterred from its announced determination to destroy Israel?
Netanyahu recently asserted, again, that a Palestinian cleric was important in Hitler’s decision to murder European Jews. Netanyahu said that on Nov. 28, 1941, when Hitler supposedly preferred to expel Europe’s Jews rather than exterminate them,Haj Amin al-Husseini, grand mufti of Jerusalem, met with Hitler and urged him to “burn them.”
Certainly the mufti favored genocide; he certainly was not important in initiating it. Mass murder — the Holocaust — accompanied the German army, especially after the September 1939 outbreak of war, and especially after the June 1941 invasion of the Soviet Union. Granted, it was not until the January 1942 Wannsee Conference that the “final solution” became explicit. But by the time Hitler met the mufti, approximately 700,000 Soviet Jews had been shot. Snyder, not Netanyahu, should be heeded concerning the Holocaust’s genesis.
Attempts to explain Hitler’s obsession with Jews began with the idea that he was unfathomable, a lunatic “Teppichfresser” (carpet eater). The comforting theory was that no theory can explain Hitler because he was inexplicable, a monster, a phenomenon without precedent or portent.
In 1996, however, Daniel Goldhagen’s book “Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust” argued that the explanation for the genocide was acculturation — centuries of German conditioning by the single idea of “eliminationist anti-Semitism.” This cognitive determinism reduced Hitler to a mere catalyst who unleashed a sick society’s cultural latency.
In an October 20 speech to the World Zionist Congress, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the “Mufti of Jerusalem,” Haj Amin al-Husseini, gave Adolf Hitler the idea to exterminate Jews during WWII. (YouTube/IsraeliPM)
This drew a rejoinder from Christopher Browning, author of “Ordinary Men” (1992), a study of middle-aged German conscripts who became consenting participants in mass-murder police battalions in Poland. Browning noted that protracted socialization — centuries of conditioning — could not explain the Khmer Rouge’s murder of millions of Cambodians or the Chinese slaughter of millions of Chinese during Mao’s Cultural Revolution.
What happened in those places proved the power of an idea — Marxism understood as a mandate to extirpate “false consciousness” — to legitimize, even mandate, mass murder. In “Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning,” published in September, Snyder argues that the Holocaust’s origins have been hidden in plain sight, in ideas Hitler articulated in “Mein Kampf” and speeches.
Snyder presents a Hitler more troubling than a madman, a Hitler implementing the logic of a coherent worldview. His life was a single-minded response to an idea so radical that it rejected not only the entire tradition of political philosophy but also the possibility of philosophy, which Hitler supplanted by zoology.
“In Hitler’s world,” Snyder writes, “the law of the jungle was the only law.” The immutable structure of life casts the various human races as separate species. Only races are real and they are locked in mutual and unassuageable enmity, in Hitler’s mind-set, because life is constant struggle over scarcities — of land, food and other necessities.
One group, however, poisoned the planet with another idea. To Hitler, says Snyder, “It was the Jew who told humans that they were above other animals, and had the capacity to decide their future for themselves.” To Hitler, “Ethics as such was the error; the only morality was fidelity to race.” Hitler, who did not become a German citizen until 11 months before becoming Germany’s chancellor, was not a nationalist but a racialist who said “the highest goal of human beings” is not “the preservation of any given state or government, but the preservation of their kind.” And “all world-historical events are nothing more than the expression of the self-preservation drive of the races.”
Now, assume, reasonably, that Iran’s pursuit of a potentially genocidal weapon will not be seriously impeded by parchment barriers such as the recent nuclear agreement. And assume, prudently, that the Iranian regime means what it says about Jews and their “Zionist entity.”
Then apply Snyder’s warning: Ideas have consequences. The idea of anti-Semitism is uniquely durable and remarkably multiform. It can express a mentality that is disconnected, as in Hitler’s case, from calculations of national interest.
Hence an anti-Semitic regime can be impervious to the logic of deterrence. Much, including Israel’s calculation of what military measures are necessary for its safety, depends on the nature of Iran’s anti-Semitism.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
By Ralph Peters
If your neighbor’s house catches fire, is it wiser to call the fire department or to trust the good will of the flames to put themselves out? Faced with strategic conflagrations scorching much of the globe, President Obama’s approach is to delay as long as possible then to attempt to negotiate with the blaze.
If forced to act at last, he responds to wildfires with a water pistol.
In the administration’s latest weak-loined response to a swelling crisis, Obama belatedly allowed one US Navy destroyer to enter South China Sea waters illegally claimed by Beijing. The intrusion was brief, but China’s senior admiral threatened war. (Don’t worry: We’ll back down.)
What’s at stake? China constructed at least seven artificial islands atop reefs far from its mainland, in waters on which other countries have stronger claims. It’s a hostile takeover of some of the most important sea lanes on the planet, vital in peace and war. The Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei, Japan and Taiwan looked to us for leadership.
For years, China built and Obama dithered. For months, he avoided a decision about sending a single ship into the disputed waters to assert our support for freedom of navigation.
At last, Obama chose the mildest response that might serve as a pretense of action — and only to preserve his trade agenda. Our president’s afraid. And the dogs of war smell fear across oceans and continents.
The time to stop China was before they finished building the islands. Now they are entrenched, adding runways and artillery. Only military action could dislodge them now.
This situation has even greater resonance because it fits the Obama pattern of denial, delay, disarmament and defeat. Of those four stages, “disarmament” is the one routinely missed by analysts, who think of disarmament solely in terms of weapons cuts. But the “strategic disarmament” this White House pursues, the refusal ever to use military force in a timely, effective manner for even the most pressing purposes, is even worse than sharply reducing our forces.
It doesn’t matter if we have the world’s finest military on paper if the commander in chief employs it too little too late and under such draconian restrictions that it’s impossible for our troops to accomplish their missions.
Our military should, indeed, only be deployed as a last resort. But when we send in our troops, we should fight to win. The greatest immorality isn’t an accidental strike on a dubious hospital used as a headquarters by barbarian enemies. The greatest immorality is to lose.
So as the president nervously dips a toe in the South China Sea, he’s already abandoned plans to retaliate for China’s cyberattacks. Instead, he welcomed China’s gloating president to a White House tribute of the sort desperate princes used to stage for the emperor they feared.
Obama drew red lines in Syria — in disappearing ink. He denied that Islamic State terrorists were a threat. In Libya, he acted at last — but without a plan for the aftermath (goaded on by a secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, who so despises our military that she preferred to trust local militias for security).
When Putin invaded Crimea, the president and his paladins insisted it “would not stand.” Today, Crimea’s been gobbled whole by Russia. When Putin invaded eastern Ukraine, that, too, was not to be tolerated. But our president found it tolerable, after all, refusing to provide Ukraine basic weapons essential for self-defense.
Never before in our history has a president behaved with such self-absorption
After Iran-backed Iraqi militias murdered hundreds and mutilated thousands of American troops in Iraq, Obama’s top priority became a worthless deal on Iran’s nuclear-weapons program that will only enrich Tehran. Today, Iran has replaced the US as the dominant foreign power in Iraq (where we control nothing beyond our lavish embassy); Tehran supports the Assad regime’s religious cleansing of Sunni Muslims in Syria, intentionally creating refugees in the millions; and our feckless president has not even gotten the release of a single American hostage held by Iran — instead, Iran just arrested another American-passport holder. And Iran is now a full participant in Secretary John Kerry’s Vienna gabfest about Syria’s future.
Never before — never — in our history has a president behaved with such self-absorption, self-delusion, fecklessness and irrefutable cowardice. To find a “president” who did more damage to our country, you’d have to include Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederate States of America. Of course, the comparison is unfair, since Davis was willing to fight for his beliefs, however misguided.
The best comparison of all is to Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. For act after hand-wringing act, Hamlet won’t lift a finger (except to drive a hapless girl to suicide). He’s a classic intellectual, forever asking, “To be, or not to be?” Even when the opportunity arises to avenge his father’s murder in a stroke, Hamlet reasons himself out of taking action.
The result? When Hamlet acts at last, it’s far too late. And every principal character dies miserably. Even Mom.
In strategic affairs, some mistakes can be repaired, if at great cost. But time is unforgiving. As with that fire in the house next door, the best time to put it out is right away. A President Hamlet, forever seeing only risks and never opportunities, ends up in a bloodier, more expensive mess than a sober and decisive man of action.
The president is a prisoner of his fears and of vanity that can never admit an error. He’s captive to an ideology that distrusts the United States, and he’s crippled by a deep disdain for our military. He’s the wrong man in the wrong place at the wrong time, and our country will need decades to extinguish the strategic fires he’s allowed to burn out of control.
Ralph Peters is Fox News’ strategic analyst.
2a)When will our leaders understand that it's Morning in America for jihadists?
In his 2009 inaugural speech the new president declared that America "will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist" when discussing "those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent."
The result? Today Egypt is rebuilding its government following the disastrous Islamist Muslim Brotherhood regime. Libya is a malignant tumor in north Africa that spreads the cancer of weapons, training and ideology throughout the broader region. Syria and Iraq are nearly ungovernable with ISIS on its murderous rampage. Israel is under siege by Palestinian terrorists.
This is not to say that Obama and his advisors caused the chaos by themselves, yet the common thread starts from when it fundamentally reversed longstanding bipartisan U.S. foreign policy. For the first time in decades, the government embraced such bad actors as the Muslim Brotherhood, Al Qaeda and Hamas – jihadist groups with American blood on their hands – without prejudice.
Previous Republican and Democratic administrations did not overtly engage with radical Islamists because their philosophy is inconsistent with Western values. Their goal is not to reach an accommodation with the West, but to destroy it.
Obama's rhetoric became policy, and the full nature of the dramatic shift revealed itself. He threw President Hosni Mubarak – our ally in Egypt – under the bus as the U.S. subtly signaled that it was comfortable working with the Muslim Brotherhood.
Director of National Intelligence General James R. Clapper reinforced the change in direction with his unfounded prediction to a congressional committee in 2012 that al Qaida would "find it difficult to compete for local support with groups like the Muslim Brotherhood that participate in the political process, provide social services and advocate religious values."
In Libya, Muammar Qaddafi's son, Seif, begged for peace negotiations, but the administration allied with the salafi-jihadist Libyan Islamic Fighting Group to overthrow and kill his father.
The resulting failed state in Libya allowed significant weapons caches – Gaddafi's leftover stockpiles, NATO-supplied arms and those shipped in from the UAE and Qatar — to make their way into the hands of those who murdered four Americans in Benghazi, as well as to the 'rebels' in Syria that would metastasize into ISIS.
Jihadi organizations around the world saw a new America with the Obama administration that they had repeatedly fooled into believing that they could now be trusted and managed.
In the same manner the Obama administration provided unprecedented access by individuals and groups with radical Islamist ties to the highest levels of the executive branch. Such access offers unique opportunities to influence public policy and to gain credibility, which they in turn exploit to discredit other organizations and add authority to their messages.
Such a sweeping policy change by Obama resulted in much of the world seeing U.S. weakness and taking advantage of it. America has experienced the failure of this engagement policy through aggression by the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt; radical Islamists operating unmolested in Libya; ISIS expanding its reach and genocidal campaign in Syria and Iraq; as well as Hamas and Palestinian mercenaries attacking Israel, which current Secretary of State John Kerry dismisses as "random acts of violence."
Despite the turmoil, former Secretary of State and presidential frontrunner Hillary Clinton recently claimed that the U.S. is safer and that this is the best example of an exercise in American smart power.
It's not.
U.S. leadership needs to recognize that jihadists hate us, they want to destroy our way of life, and that they have developed dozens of front groups in the United States such as the Council for American-Islamic Relations to provide cover for their activities.
We are at war and the sooner we recognize, confront and defeat the enemy, the safer we will become.
Pete Hoekstra is the former Chairman of the U.S. House Intelligence Committee and currently the Shillman Senior Fellow with the Investigative Project on Terrorism. This piece has been excerpted from his new book, Architects of Disaster: The Destruction of Libya, published by Calamo Press. (c) Pete Hoekstra 2015. All rights reserved.
2a)When will our leaders understand that it's Morning in America for jihadists?
BY PETE HOEKSTRA
Shillman Senior Fellow, Investigative Project on Terrorism
Jihadists awoke to a new dawn on the day that the Obama administration began implementing a new and uncharted foreign policy seven years ago.
In his 2009 inaugural speech the new president declared that America "will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist" when discussing "those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent."
The result? Today Egypt is rebuilding its government following the disastrous Islamist Muslim Brotherhood regime. Libya is a malignant tumor in north Africa that spreads the cancer of weapons, training and ideology throughout the broader region. Syria and Iraq are nearly ungovernable with ISIS on its murderous rampage. Israel is under siege by Palestinian terrorists.
This is not to say that Obama and his advisors caused the chaos by themselves, yet the common thread starts from when it fundamentally reversed longstanding bipartisan U.S. foreign policy. For the first time in decades, the government embraced such bad actors as the Muslim Brotherhood, Al Qaeda and Hamas – jihadist groups with American blood on their hands – without prejudice.
U.S. leadership needs to recognize that jihadists hate us, they want to destroy our way of life, and that they have developed dozens of front groups in the United States such as the Council for American-Islamic Relations to provide cover for their activities.
Previous Republican and Democratic administrations did not overtly engage with radical Islamists because their philosophy is inconsistent with Western values. Their goal is not to reach an accommodation with the West, but to destroy it.
Obama's rhetoric became policy, and the full nature of the dramatic shift revealed itself. He threw President Hosni Mubarak – our ally in Egypt – under the bus as the U.S. subtly signaled that it was comfortable working with the Muslim Brotherhood.
Director of National Intelligence General James R. Clapper reinforced the change in direction with his unfounded prediction to a congressional committee in 2012 that al Qaida would "find it difficult to compete for local support with groups like the Muslim Brotherhood that participate in the political process, provide social services and advocate religious values."
In Libya, Muammar Qaddafi's son, Seif, begged for peace negotiations, but the administration allied with the salafi-jihadist Libyan Islamic Fighting Group to overthrow and kill his father.
The resulting failed state in Libya allowed significant weapons caches – Gaddafi's leftover stockpiles, NATO-supplied arms and those shipped in from the UAE and Qatar — to make their way into the hands of those who murdered four Americans in Benghazi, as well as to the 'rebels' in Syria that would metastasize into ISIS.
Jihadi organizations around the world saw a new America with the Obama administration that they had repeatedly fooled into believing that they could now be trusted and managed.
In the same manner the Obama administration provided unprecedented access by individuals and groups with radical Islamist ties to the highest levels of the executive branch. Such access offers unique opportunities to influence public policy and to gain credibility, which they in turn exploit to discredit other organizations and add authority to their messages.
Such a sweeping policy change by Obama resulted in much of the world seeing U.S. weakness and taking advantage of it. America has experienced the failure of this engagement policy through aggression by the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt; radical Islamists operating unmolested in Libya; ISIS expanding its reach and genocidal campaign in Syria and Iraq; as well as Hamas and Palestinian mercenaries attacking Israel, which current Secretary of State John Kerry dismisses as "random acts of violence."
Despite the turmoil, former Secretary of State and presidential frontrunner Hillary Clinton recently claimed that the U.S. is safer and that this is the best example of an exercise in American smart power.
It's not.
U.S. leadership needs to recognize that jihadists hate us, they want to destroy our way of life, and that they have developed dozens of front groups in the United States such as the Council for American-Islamic Relations to provide cover for their activities.
We are at war and the sooner we recognize, confront and defeat the enemy, the safer we will become.
Pete Hoekstra is the former Chairman of the U.S. House Intelligence Committee and currently the Shillman Senior Fellow with the Investigative Project on Terrorism. This piece has been excerpted from his new book, Architects of Disaster: The Destruction of Libya, published by Calamo Press. (c) Pete Hoekstra 2015. All rights reserved.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
3)
A view of Iran's Parliament
3)
The Slow-Motion Implosion of ObamaCare
I see firsthand in my company why not enough people are signing up and premiums are rising.
PHOTO: BLOOMBERG NEWS
Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell announced recently that she expects 10 million people to be enrolled in health-care coverage through ObamaCare’s exchanges by the end of next year. What she didn’t mention was that in March of last year the Congressional Budget Office predicted that 21 million people would be enrolled in 2016—more than double the new estimate.
The administration says the difference can be explained away: For instance, fewer companies dropped coverage than expected, thus fewer employees are migrating from employer-sponsored plans to the exchanges. “We haven’t seen much of a shift at all,”Richard Frank, a health and human services assistant secretary, told USA Today.
But the question isn’t where Americans are getting health insurance. It is whether ObamaCare will provide more Americans with affordable insurance for decades to come.
In other words, ObamaCare expanded coverage in 2014 to the extent that it gave people free or nearly free insurance. That goal could have been accomplished without the Affordable Care Act. To justify its existence, ObamaCare must make affordable private insurance available to a broad cross-section of uninsured Americans who are ineligible for Medicaid.Supporters credit ObamaCare with helping nine million uninsured Americans find coverage in 2014. But a new paper from the Heritage Foundation, however, suggests that nearly all of the increase came from adding nearly nine million people to the Medicaid rolls.
But with fewer people buying insurance through the exchanges, the economics aren’t holding up. Ten of the 23 innovative health-insurance plans known as co-ops—established with $2.4 billion in ObamaCare loans—will be out of business by the end of 2015 because of weak balance sheets.
And while rates vary widely by state, the cost for private insurance through the exchanges is also increasing dramatically. An analysis by consulting firm Avalere Health released on Friday shows that some of the most popular insurance plans in the ObamaCare exchanges will experience double-digit premium hikes in 2016.
One problem is that nearly half of the 10.5 million uninsured people eligible for ObamaCare are between the ages of 18 and 34—and young people tend to be healthy and unwilling to pay for pricey coverage they don’t need.
But propping up ObamaCare requires this group’s subsidizing the medical costs of the aging and ill. So far, no luck. It makes sense for healthy young people to pay a penalty rather than purchase the insurance. And in 2015 that’s what 6.6 million people did, according to the IRS. Next year the minimum penalty increases to $695 or 2.5% of income above $10,000, whichever is greater. In many cases, that’s still much cheaper than insurance.
At our company, CKE Restaurants, we offer eligible employees ObamaCare-compliant coverage. We used federal guidelines and set our employee monthly contribution for the least expensive Bronze plan at $1,116 a year, or about 25% of the annual premium. The company pays the rest, and the deductible is $5,500. But even when next year’s higher penalty kicks in—2.5% of income above $10,000—an employee would need to earn more than $50,000 a year for the penalty to exceed the premium.
Then there is another problem: It is easy to avoid or limit exposure to the penalty with some simple tax planning, as there are 30 different exemptions (which 12 million people claimed last year) and the IRS collects the penalty by reducing an employee’s tax refund.
The uninsured also know they can receive medical care at the emergency room. And if they fall ill, they can always purchase insurance during the next enrollment period, because ObamaCare eliminated existing conditions as a justification for denying coverage.
Our employees are smart enough to figure this out. Of our company’s 5,453 eligible employees, only 420 enrolled. Our experience isn’t unique, according to press reports. A March survey by the consulting firm Mercer found “virtually no change between 2014 and 2015” in the average percentage of employees signed up for employer-sponsored health plans. Mercer found a 1.6% increase in the absolute number of enrolled employees, but that happened thanks to a growing workforce, not the law.
How have things changed under ObamaCare? Wealthy Americans continue to have health insurance, albeit at a higher price. But they can afford it. Many middle-class Americans are paying higher premiums they can hardly afford. And then millions more low-income Americans have heavily subsidized insurance or Medicaid coverage.
However, millions of other Americans who enjoyed good individual insurance before ObamaCare have found themselves forced out of affordable plans, with their new premiums rising rapidly. Other middle- and working-class Americans who were uninsured are still uninsured and paying the penalty or claiming an exemption. That isn’t affordable care. In many cases, it isn’t care at all.
Mr. Puzder is the chief executive officer of CKE Restaurants.
3a)Iran not to implement JCPOA until sanctions repealed: MPs
A view of Iran's Parliament
Iranian lawmakers have urged the administration to withhold the execution of its commitments under a nuclear agreement reached with the P5+1 group of countries until the US and EU sanctions against Tehran are declared null and void.
In a letter to President Hassan Rouhani on Sunday, 213 lawmakers said no practical measure should be taken with regard to the implementation of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) before US President Barack Obama and the European Union officially declare the lifting of all financial and economic sanctions against Tehran.
They called on the government to set up a “powerful, informed and astute” committee to supervise the JCPOA implementation.
It is expected that the government fully observe the directives issued by Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei on the JCPOA implementation to safeguard the Iranian nation’s interests, the letter read.
In a letter to President Rouhani on October 21, the Leader enumerated certain points on the implementation of the JCPOA and issued directives to be heeded in this regard.
The Iranian president, in a letter addressed to the Leader on October 22, expressed gratitude to the Leader for his guidelines and support regarding the nuclear agreement and reiterated that Ayatollah Khamenei’s instructions will be fully taken into account.
On July 14, Iran and the P5+1 group of countries – the United States, Britain, France, China and Russia plus Germany – finalized the text of the JCPOA on Tehran’s nuclear program in the Austrian capital, Vienna.
According to the agreement, Iran will accept restrictions on its nuclear program in return for removal of sanctions imposed on Tehran by the US and the EU.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
4)Brace Yourself for Another Disappointing Jobs Report and More White House Disinformation
The best apples to apples comparison are the rather difficult conditions of Presidents Reagan and Obama inherited and how the fortunes of America’s families then progressed — with the former relying on conservative prescriptions and the latter on activist government to stimulate growth.
Obama confronted a terrible financial crisis and endured a punishing recession. Unemployment peaked at 10 percent in his first term, but since the economy has reclaimed and added 12.6 million jobs and employment is up 9.8 percent.
The Gipper faced tough times too — double-digit unemployment and interest rates and a bruising recession. Unemployment peaked at 10.8 percent but subsequently the economy added more than 17.2 million jobs and employment rose 19.4 percent.
The reason Reagan was able to create so many more jobs — in a much smaller economy — is quite simple. It wasn’t just lower taxes and less spending but rather, a reliance on private decisions to guide recovery. He cleared a path for businesses, large and small, to invest as they deemed fit and raise wages as they decided they could afford, and encouraged the unemployed to get out and look for work.
Whereas from subsidies for solar energy projects and mandatory health insurance to incessant preaching that ordinary folks are victims of racism, sexism and the evil machinations of the well-off, Obama has sought to micromanage business through an explosion of regulations and to pacify a middle class under siege and Americans underemployed or not working at all with giveaways from free contraception to forgiving college debt.
A broken appeals system offers a decided advantage to those crafty applicants who hire a lawyer — a situation the Obama administration refuses to fix.
For hard working families, the results are predictable — annual family incomes have declined about $1650 during the Obama years, whereas those increased $3900 during Reagan’s tenure.
For the indolent, this is the Second Age of Pericles but for those who toil for their daily bread, Obama’s pronouncements that the economy is much improved and performs better with Democrats in control have a decided Orwellian ring.
4)Brace Yourself for Another Disappointing Jobs Report and More White House Disinformation
By Peter Morici |
Friday, the Labor Department will issue another mediocre jobs report — private forecasters estimate 190,000 jobs were created in October — well below the 260,000 averaged in 2014.
The White House will tout the economy is doing quite well — proclaiming 61 consecutive months of jobs creation — and liberal commentators like New York Times columnist and CNBC analyst John Harwood may offer this as more proof that the economy does better with a Democrat in the White House.
So much depends on the circumstances in which each president governs.
For example, does his party control one or both houses of Congress and more importantly, what was the state of the economy bequeathed by his predecessor?
The White House will tout the economy is doing quite well — proclaiming 61 consecutive months of jobs creation — and liberal commentators like New York Times columnist and CNBC analyst John Harwood may offer this as more proof that the economy does better with a Democrat in the White House.
So much depends on the circumstances in which each president governs.
For example, does his party control one or both houses of Congress and more importantly, what was the state of the economy bequeathed by his predecessor?
The best apples to apples comparison are the rather difficult conditions of Presidents Reagan and Obama inherited and how the fortunes of America’s families then progressed — with the former relying on conservative prescriptions and the latter on activist government to stimulate growth.
Obama confronted a terrible financial crisis and endured a punishing recession. Unemployment peaked at 10 percent in his first term, but since the economy has reclaimed and added 12.6 million jobs and employment is up 9.8 percent.
The Gipper faced tough times too — double-digit unemployment and interest rates and a bruising recession. Unemployment peaked at 10.8 percent but subsequently the economy added more than 17.2 million jobs and employment rose 19.4 percent.
The reason Reagan was able to create so many more jobs — in a much smaller economy — is quite simple. It wasn’t just lower taxes and less spending but rather, a reliance on private decisions to guide recovery. He cleared a path for businesses, large and small, to invest as they deemed fit and raise wages as they decided they could afford, and encouraged the unemployed to get out and look for work.
Whereas from subsidies for solar energy projects and mandatory health insurance to incessant preaching that ordinary folks are victims of racism, sexism and the evil machinations of the well-off, Obama has sought to micromanage business through an explosion of regulations and to pacify a middle class under siege and Americans underemployed or not working at all with giveaways from free contraception to forgiving college debt.
Through the first 25 quarters of Obama’s recovery, GDP growth has averaged 2.1 percent, whereas during the comparable period for Reagan, GDP advanced at a 4.6 percent annual pace.
And whereas Reagan’s social safety net assisted the unemployed, Obama’s pays the unemployed to be idle.
The 7 million men between the ages of 25 and 54 who are neither employed nor are looking for work are rewarded with food stamps, the earned income tax credit if their spouse is a low-income worker and federal healthcare subsidies—and even virtually free health care through Medicaid in many states.
For folks refusing to do anything productive with their lives, Obama is offering an even more attractive benefit — free money in the form of a government pension.
Despite the fact that Americans are living healthier and longer lives and work is generally less physically challenging, the percentage of adults ages 16 to 64 certified as permanently incapable of working by the Social Security Disability Insurance program now stands at 5.1 percent — about double the figure in Reagan’s day.
And whereas Reagan’s social safety net assisted the unemployed, Obama’s pays the unemployed to be idle.
The 7 million men between the ages of 25 and 54 who are neither employed nor are looking for work are rewarded with food stamps, the earned income tax credit if their spouse is a low-income worker and federal healthcare subsidies—and even virtually free health care through Medicaid in many states.
For folks refusing to do anything productive with their lives, Obama is offering an even more attractive benefit — free money in the form of a government pension.
Despite the fact that Americans are living healthier and longer lives and work is generally less physically challenging, the percentage of adults ages 16 to 64 certified as permanently incapable of working by the Social Security Disability Insurance program now stands at 5.1 percent — about double the figure in Reagan’s day.
A broken appeals system offers a decided advantage to those crafty applicants who hire a lawyer — a situation the Obama administration refuses to fix.
For hard working families, the results are predictable — annual family incomes have declined about $1650 during the Obama years, whereas those increased $3900 during Reagan’s tenure.
For the indolent, this is the Second Age of Pericles but for those who toil for their daily bread, Obama’s pronouncements that the economy is much improved and performs better with Democrats in control have a decided Orwellian ring.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
No comments:
Post a Comment