First let me say, I am not a Mitt Romney kind of guy. When this electon cycle began a long time ago, Mitt Romney was too moderate, Sarah Palin was too shrill, Michele Bachmann too scary, Tim Pawlenty too mild, Ron Paul too whacky on foreign affairs, Rick Santorum too much a lightweight, and Rick Perry sounded too much like George Bush. I guess you could say my tastes ran to three candidates, and only two of them were entered in the Presidential Sweepstakes. My absolute favorite, Condoleeza Rice declined interest in the job, and sadly, probably her most recent win (being granted membership at Augusta National Golf Club) is the only one she wants. That left me with two possibles, Newt Gingrich and Herman Cain.
Because the Republican Party has a habit of destroying most of its own in the primaries, Mr. Cain was soon sidelined by a somewhat questionable scandal. It is pure speculation on my part, but I suspect that the source of Mr. Cain's supposed "indiscretions" might have been the folks currently occupying 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. It would not be a first for Mr. Obama, who has done similar hatchet jobs throughout his brief political career. (If you don't believe me, ask Bill and Hillary Clinton or his opponents for both the State Senate and U. S. Senate seats in Illinois.) In short, I think that the last thing Barack Obama wanted to face was another man of color with a record of success on which to run.
Newt Gingrich was a different story. I KNEW that there would be enemies both within and outside of the GOP who would want him out of the race. Gingrich, as leader of the 1994 "Republican Revolution" and author of the "Contract with America," had made quite a few serious foes during his term as Speaker. That is probably the reason the the Speaker of the House seldom ends up in the Oval: Running the many and diverse members of Congress is bound to ruffle some feathers and disturb a few egos. Yet, for a couple of weeks, Speaker Newt had many of us thinking it might be possible. His debate performances in South Carolina and Florida were magnificent, particularly when he stared down and fired back at the usual sniping from the left-leaning media. Sadly, Newt also has an occasional case of "foot in mouth" disease
As a result, as winter turned to spring, it became clear that, like it or not, Mitt Romney was the inevitable choice of the Republican Party. I told several friends at the time, "Get ready for Obama v McCain II." That's how unimpressed I was. And then, something happened: "Mr. Likeable Obama" became a snake on the attack. As I will detail shortly, the President has no record of achievements on which he can run; consequently, he must attack and "kill" his opposition, hoping to keep his minions in the main stream media focused on his opponent, rather than on his dismal record of his three and a half years in the White House.
1. The Blame Game
In my years of following politics (I first voted for Nixon in 1972), I had never seen what I observed from the very outset of the Obama Presidency. The President immediately set about blaming his predecessor, George W. Bush, for all the ills of mankind. In defense of "W," I suspect that someday, long after I'm dead, history will be much kinder to the man than in the immediate aftermath of his Presidency. Not that the media will ever mention it, but many of the ills blamed on Bush were the result of the takeover of BOTH houses of Congress by the Dems in January 2007. Looking back to that time, remember that gas was $1.87 per gallon, unemployment was hovering around 5%, GDP was growing at roughly 4% and the country was running on budgets proposed by the President and passed by Congress.Once the Democrats took control of both houses, budgets became a thing of the past. The government operated on "continuing resolutions" and the outrageous spending which then-candidate Obama called "unpatriotic" began, (of course placing the blame squarely on George Bush for the spending approved by the opposition party in control.) Now, I'm as realistic as the next guy. George Bush overspent his welcome. But you can't hang all of that blame "package" on the President when faced with a Congress that, when money ran short, simply passed another "continuing resolution" to run the government and later continously raised the debt ceiling with no regard toward the future.
Another significant happening took place in January 2007: Barney Frank and Christopher Dodd took over critical chairmanships, Frank of the House Financial Services Committee and Dodd the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs. This put them both in DIRECT responsibility of
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
It is no secret that George Bush asked 17 times during his administration for an investigation into the practices at Fannie and Freddie. 17 times he was rebuffed, with Barney Frank claiming, "There's absolutely nothing wrong with either institution." Of course, while Frank and Dodd were refusing to investigate Fannie and Freddie, they were both receiving rather generous political contributions from, that's right, Fannie and Freddie. We also know that number three on the Fannie and Freddie "hit parade" was none other than the junior Senator from Illinois, one Barack H. Obama.
Had there been any investigation of Fannie and Freddie, it is possible that the housing crash, which resulted from people being ushered into homes which either they could not afford or were not creditworthy enough to buy, might have been avoided.
George Bush was not the only "blamee" of the new President. Throughout his first year in office he blamed the Arab Spring, the weather, and even ATM machines for various underachievements of the economy on his watch. Now, of course, since he has an opponent with some business acumen, he's chosen to demonize Bain Capital, which thrived under Mitt Romney's leadership.(Of course, what he WON'T tell you is that one of his "bundlers" is also a Bain Alumnus.)
2. Promises, Promises
Candidate Obama promised several things upon which he has not delivered. One or two missed objectives are understandable, but to have accomplished NOTHING, especially when you consider that the first two years in office he had a majority in BOTH Houses of Congress, is unacceptable any way you choose to look at it.Obama promised that if Congress passed the stimulus package that unemployment would be back to 5-6% by the end of his first term. Not only has it never gotten under 8.1%, but the only reason it has been that low is because people have given up looking for work. We've since been told that we need MORE stimulus, which makes me recall the old adage that true insanity is doing the same thing over and over, hoping for a different result.
Then there was that business about "shovel ready" jobs in infrastructure which later turned out to be "not so shovel ready." Funny, Mr. President, I don't hear many of the unemployed or underemployed laughing.
Similarly, he promised that he would cut the deficit (at the time of his election, roughly 5.8 trillion dollars) in half by the end of his first term. Not only has he failed to cut the deficit, he and his pals in the Congress have accelerated the deficit almost three fold. He has, in his first term, spent MORE than the evil George Bush spent in two terms. And that, mind you, is before the Affordable Care Act kicks into gear. Once that happens, the numbers will get REALLY big.
Oh, and the economy, which he promised to stimulate and get moving again? It's stuck in the mid 1%'s of GDP growth.
The other thing that I have noticed (and the media, again, WON'T tell you,) is that almost every time an economic number is released and digested by Wall Street, that number is later revised DOWNWARD.
And finally, we get to energy. Remember candidate Obama promising that he was going to help save the planet and provide us with energy independence? As President, he has tried almost single handedly to dismantle the coal industry, our primary source of affordable electric power. We still aren't allowed to drill offshore or on Federal lands, but we can sure send billions to Brazil so they can.
Oh, he did do something. He approved loan guarantees (to the tune of over 500 million dollars) to Solyndra, a company which had already been turned down by the Bush administration. Surprise, surprise,Solyndra goes bankrupt, but not before kicking in to Obama's campaign cash. I think he blamed that one on the Chinese for undercutting Solyndra on the price of photovoltaic cells. This is crony capitalism at its WORST.
Here again, I have a bit of personal experience. Back in 2006, my wife and I examined the possibility of taking our home "off the grid" through the installation of solar panels. Even the most aggressive salesperson would not recommend this until they could get a source from China for the photovoltaic panels, and that those made domestically were not efficient enough or cost effective enough to take our 3 bedroom house to where we wanted it. We could do small things like heat our pool or run attic fans, but nothing like generating all of the power that we needed.
Meanwhile the taxpayers are still on the hook for the 500 mil. Had Bush done this, there would have been cries for impeachment or beheading. But what's a paltry 500 million among our friends on the left. And, there may yet be other shoes (like Solyndra) to drop.
3. It's the Economy, Stupid...
James Carville, one of the preeminent democratic political hacks, used this phrase famously in guiding Bill Clinton to his electoral win over George Herbert Walker Bush. Now, even as partisan as I am, I have to admit that Bill Clinton presided over one of the better economies in my lifetime. He also had a lot of help.After his first two years in office, the Republicans won control of the House in 1994. The impact of the mid-term election was to drag President Clinton toward the center of the political spectrum. Clinton, sensing the political reality of the situation, worked with the Congressional Republicans and some very good things were accomplished, among them a balanced budget and welfare reform, (the latter of which, President Obama has recently gutted by taking away the work requirement for welfare.)
Just the other day, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, obviously looking for some way to save his job, intiated QE 3 or quantitative easing (for the third time). This process, by which the U. S. essentially buys back some of its debt, (on credit of course, usually from the Chinese) only exacerbates the debt problem.
Speaking of the debt problem, has anybody been paying attention to all of the fallout that has occurred in Europe? As Europe has become more and more socialist, many of the economies there have fallen into some serious bad times. Coincidence? I don't think so. You simply cannot mortgage your future by allowing government to be all things to all people. The Greeks have tried it, the French have tried it, Spain has tried it, and all are in serious trouble.
Not only has President Obama failed to keep his promises as noted above, he has also pushed us ever closer to the cliff in terms of the debt and deficit. Some liberals don't think that's very important. Let me explain it by using the model of Porter Stansberry. Currently, the U. S. dollar is the world's reserve currency. That status alone allows us to "print money" even though it devalues our currency at the same time.
Now, let's say for the sake of argument, that the Indians or the Chinese, our two primary creditors, get serously worried about the creditworthiness of the United States. (Bear in mind, our credit rating has already been downgraded once on the President's watch.) The time could come when the creditor nations decide that they will no longer accept service on our debt in U. S. dollars. Maybe they ask for another currency, or gold, or Lay's Potato Chips. Doesn't matter, we can't print or make it fast enough to service our own debt. And we become Greece, virtually overnight.
Can we say honestly that we've done ANYTHING to forestall this nightmare?
4. The Affordable Care Act a/k/a "Obamacare"
I will be the first to admit that the healthcare situation in this country needs improvement. I have, however, a BIG problem with being mandated by government to buy something which, if liberals get their way, will only be SOLD by government and which will be managed by government bureaucrats.First of all, when has government EVER run anything successfully? The Post Office is broke, Social Security is broke, Medicare is broke, and Medicaid is broke (and shot with fraud and waste.)
A lot of people bought into candidate Obama's line, "If you like your doctor, you can keep him." Well, I can tell you that's not necessarily the case. Since the passage of Obamacare, I've already lost one personal physician who left private practice because he could no longer deal with the fact that to make his practice profitable, he had to limit patient time to 5 minutes per visit. He also had to hire exrta staff to handle the paperwork for both medicare and medicaid. Does anyone really think that adding more patients to less doctors equals better care?
A lot of people made a big joke out of Sarah Palin's "death panels" remark. As I said before, I'm no huge fan of Ms. Palin, but this one she had just almost right. To paraphrase the act, of which I have read and digested more than 1000 of the 2000+ pages, "The Health and Human Services Secretary or his designate, shall be empowered with the responsibility... to determine end of life care as well as decisions as to the viability of procedures on an individual basis."
Considering that healthcare is roughly one sixth of the American economy, can't we do better than having health care decisions rendered by bureaucrats? Moreover, did anyone really even read as much of the Act as I did? Not anyone who voted for it, you can bet. Speaker Pelosi said it herself: "You'll have to pass it so you can see what's inside it." Is this any way to run one sixth of the economy?
Now, if you want to talk about healthcare reform, the first place you need to start is tort reform. During my personal health crises this spring and summer, I have become aware that healthcare professionals have gotten perilously afraid of malpractice. Why? Because around every corner there's a trial lawyer looking for a huge judgement or windfall both for his client and (on a contingency basis) for himself. They advertise on TV all the time. Until we cap these awards and take away the "lottery win" aspect of the system by stopping all the frivolous lawsuits, the professionals are going to "over test" just to cover their asses.
There are other things that can be done without crashing the whole system. How about making the insurance industry more competitive by allowing companies to sell policies across state lines?
Instead, the President demonized the insurance companies. I personally believe his eventual goal is to bankrupt all of the insurance companies. At some point, when you add in those who need coverage with pre-existing conditions (one of the few things the Act got right,) you get to the inevitable (and ultimate) goal of the Act, a single payor system with the government being the payor. This will, by necessity, lead to health care rationing. There's no way it can be avoided.
If allowed to stand by the re-election of President Obama, I submit that by 2016, we will be at or near that single payor system. What do you think THAT is going to do to the debt problem?
Not only that, but the President "borrowed" 750 billion dollars from Medicare to pay for this monstrosity. That only hastens problems for the over-stressed Medicare system.
5. "You Didn't Build That!"
When I heard the President say this, I almost lost my lunch. Since 1997, I have been the owner of two businesses. With all due respect, Mr. President, I DID BUILD THAT! Not only did government NOT help me, but in both cases, government (either state or federal) made it increasingly hard to STAY in business.My first such business was a video poker casino. It was tremendously successful. For a time, my little company was the second largest employer in Marlboro County, South Carolina, right behind the county hospital. We were very active in the community, hosting free Thanksgiving dinners and monthly cookouts, buying police equipment for the local P. D.'s, offering off duty police personnel the opportunity to work security for us, and even helping to fund a problem gambling "hotline," (somewhat ironic, considering the State of South Carolina refused to help fund it.)
We employed over 200 people at our high point, many of whom had not worked since the textile mills in the area closed back in the early 90's. We paid the State of South Carolina $1000 per year for each gaming station, and considering that the State had some 80,000 machines in operation in 1999, that amounted to about 80 million a year into the State coffers.
But that apparently wasn't enough for South Carolina. Just before we opened in 1997, the State came down with a requirement that all gaming stations (each machine) had to be connected to a statewide network. From that network, the State would then assess a tax based on the amount of dollars put into the machine. Not what we, as casino operators WON, but what our players paid in REGARDLESS of whether the player won or lost. None of us in the business were terribly sure that we could continue to make money if the State instituted this change, but we were willing to try it and see.
But we never got the chance.
The South Carolina Supreme Court, an amalgam of old farts who couldn't care less how valuable we were to our employees or the communities surrounding us, ruled that video gaming was an "illegal form of lottery." We were ordered to close by June 30, 2000 and were required by judicial fiat, to remove our machines from the State permanently. Not only was this "judicial activism" at its finest, but this decision disallowed a statewide referendum on video poker. With one stroke of the pen, these geezers put 200,000 people in the State out of work, effective June 30.
Needless to say, less than a month hence, the State instituted the "South Carolina Education Lottery," essentially telling everyone that it was ok for the State of "South Confusion" to be in the gambling business, but not private enterprise. THEY built that.
Even after all that, and being put out of business, I started another. I decided to take my money from the gaming business and start something a little less controversial. I decided to sell toilet paper. I spent small buckets full of money to get the appropriate legal paperwork, business licenses, and such in order. However fast the licensing agency cashed the check, they sure took their time about sending out the business licenses.And, as far as my vendors were concerned, no license, no sale, no delivery. As a result, my new partners and I ended up selling "air" for about a month and paying for the privilege.
Let's just say that selling paper products, chemicals, janitorial and food service supplies is not as exciting or profitable as the gambling business, but at least I didn't think anyone would run me out of business for selling toilet paper. Enter the Environmental Protection Agency and its state version, the Department of Health and Environmental Control or DHEC. DHEC, for its part, mandates what you must do to sell food or beverages to the public. They do restaurant inspections predominantly as well as mandating cleanliness standards for bars, restaurants, and even convenience stores. The EPA on its own can rain on your parade by demanding that chemical compositions be changed for often unspecified reasons. This imposes a hardship both for my business and my client's business. Got an oven and grill cleaner that you really like and your clients love? You can bet the EPA will change the composition so that it doesn't work quite as well.
Above and beyond that, you have the usual suspects, all wanting some sort of paperwork on a monthly or quarterly basis, to include the IRS (payroll taxes), South Carolina Department of Revenue (sales and payroll taxes,) Department of Employment and Workforce (unemployment/worker's compensation). So, as a result, I have to hire a bookeeper/accountant to keep me straight on all the stuff that has to be filed whenever.
Don't get me wrong. After years of working for someone else, I enjoy being my own boss. There are, however, times when I would rather work for $10 an hour hauling freight at WalMart. At least I'd know I would get paid every week, something most small business owners can't guarantee. We get paid after all the insurances, taxes, vendors, vehicle maintenance, and employees get paid. Quite often, I don't take a salary between October 1 and February 15. And, anytime the company comes up a little short of meeting its obligations, guess who steps up and goes to the bank to fund the shortfall out of pocket. That's right, me.
Would I like to expand my business? Absolutely. I cannot, however, justify doing so when I have no idea what the economic future of my country, as well as my business, is. Given a little more stability and a little less regulation, maybe, but not in the current context.
And this President, who has never met a payroll, never run, or even worked at a small business, wants me to acknowledge that I didn't build it or that government did something to help? Get REAL, Mr. President. I'd rather have someone in charge who at least KNOWS what a business goes through. DO NOT tell me or any of the thousands of small business owners that WE didn't build that!
6. "Foreign Policy? We Don't Need No Stinking Foreign Policy..."
Or, at least that's the way it seems. Maybe it was the drugs I took back in the 70's, but I seem to be having flashbacks to Iran and Jimmy Carter this week. Ask Jimmy how that worked out.Seriously, I am not suggesting that Hosni Mubarak or Muammar Ghaddafi were nice guys, but do we have ANY idea what we're getting with the Muslim Brotherhood? We KNOW they want Israel wiped off the face of the earth. We KNOW that ISLAM mandates its followers to dispose of or convert the infidels. We've been around this block a time or two.
We know that the Assad regime in Syria is slaughtering dissidents by the thousands, so why are we not reacting there? Maybe because that regime is supported by Russia and Iran? Hello, does anyone have a CLUE? Hillary? Mr. President? Buehler.....?
In the meantime, we disrespect our one longtime ally in the Middle East, Israel, who aside from Saudi Arabia represents the only stable government in the region?
And now, when a career diplomat pays for this with his life, (and the lives of three others,) you really expect me to believe it was all about some nondescript movie the trailer of which has been posted on YouTube since July? That's right, "It's Only a Movie."
Sorry, No Sale. The incidents of this week and the worldwide actions of Radical Islamists (oops, I guess we're not supposed to say that anymore,) are a clear reaction to the weakness and lack of any consistency of a foreign policy. Dick Nixon might have been a crook, but when he spoke, Brehznev listened. So did Mao.
Then I hear that during the week of 9/5 through 9/11, that you, as President didn't bother to get a "live" intel brief? And you have the GALL to call yourself Commander in Chief? Of all times to go MIA, you choose the week of the 11th anniversary of the attacks? How DARE you, sir?
No, I wasn't a Mitt Romney kind of guy. And, Mr. President, you may still get away with it. But at least with Mitt Romney at the helm of this government, the world and the country will know where we stand.
