A Disastrous Presidency

A Disastrous Presidency

By William L. Gensert

http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/...residency.html

After almost three years of disastrous governance, all Barack Obama and the Democrats have left is the politics of bitterness and envy. He can't run on his record -- not with unemployment high and the economy in shambles.
It didn't have to be this way. Obama let Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and every other crackpot Democrat write his Stimulus Bill. In the end, he spent a trillion dollars insulating union members and government employees from the effects of the economic downturn, while the rest of us suffered.
The Stimulus could have consisted of permanent tax cuts for business, allowing capitalist competition to direct funds to its most profitable uses, thereby accelerating economic growth and providing jobs, but Barack Obama does not like profit and its trickle-down wealth.
Instead, in service of Obama's preferred policy of trickle up poverty, we funded non-shovel-ready construction projects and flushed billions down the low-flow toilet of green energy, while giving the rest of the Stimulus funds to the states to cover their budgetary shortfalls. Stimulus dollars bought us green energy boondoggles, un-built roads, and more government, with zero economic growth and increased unemployment. Millions of private citizens lost their jobs, while the government added 230,000 workers and crony capitalists grew fat.
The administration diverted TARP funds to rescue GM and Chrysler, while flipping the order of secured and unsecured creditors. Obama may have saved the UAW, but at what cost? The UAW was made whole, while some secured creditors had to take fifteen cents on the dollar. Will any investor ever purchase secured debt from GM again? If secured creditors don't have primacy in bankruptcy, what is the point of being a secured creditor?
Fresh from roiling the credit markets with the auto bailouts, the president then encouraged and signed into law the Dodd-Frank financial reform, a law so complicated that no one knows what's in it. The uncertainty felt by financial markets won't abate until the administration finishes writing the rules. In the interim, homeowners can't get mortgages and businesses can't get loans.
In 2007, the last year with a budget controlled by a Republican Congress and president, the deficit was $161 billion. The non-stimulating Stimulus exploded the budget baseline, raising the percentage of GDP consumed by the government from 20% to 25%, resulting in the $1.6-trillion deficits we have today. Looking at employment and the economy, it's clear that the nation has received nothing for the $5 trillion Barack Obama has added to the national debt. Instead of capitalist competition, we've had an explosion of crony capitalism. With the government picking winners and losers, we have replaced Adam Smith's invisible hand with Barack Obama's thumb.
Take solar panel manufacturer Solyndra as an example. The administration put a half a billion dollars into a company with financial ties to a group headed by Obama campaign donor George Kaiser. The administration structured the loan to give the group's investment precedence over the American taxpayer now that the company is being liquidated through bankruptcy. Its business plan consisted of producing a product for $1 and selling it for $0.75, while hoping to make up for the deficit in volume.
The entire green agenda, which the president has been pushing since day one, is flawed policy. Alternative energy sources such as wind and solar are too expensive to be price-competitive with coal, natural gas, and oil. Yet Obama's plan is not to find a way to get the cost of alternative energy down; it is to make the price of fossil fuel energy "skyrocket" until alternative energy is cheap by comparison.
Liberals tried to make this happen with Cap and Trade, an insanity that died an ignoble death in the Democrat-controlled Senate. Well, as Barack Obama said, there's "more than one way to skin a cat." The administration is working diligently through the EPA, the Department of the Interior, and myriad other agencies to destroy all energy production in America. Take for example the president's war on coal. Barack Obama has famously said that he would "bankrupt" coal-fired power plants. Coal, which produces 50% of the nation's electricity, could be replaced by nuclear power, with its zero emissions, but the administration won't allow that, either. The president's plan is to remove coal without replacing the generating capacity. This will reduce America to a land of rolling blackouts.
Energy is also about employment. The gulf lost 40,000 jobs when the president decided it was best to shut down all oil production after the BP oil spill. The approval for Keystone XL Pipeline sits on his desk, awaiting his signature. It would connect Canadian oil from the tar sands of Alberta with refineries in Cushing, Oklahoma and Nederland, Texas, while providing 20,000 direct jobs and 100,000 indirect jobs.
With recent discoveries and improvements in drilling techniques, some have called America the Saudi Arabia of natural gas. America also has the largest oil reserves in the world; the Bakken Formation alone is said to contain more than 11 billion barrels. Home heating costs, electricity, and gasoline are expensive because our leaders have for years instituted policies to make it so. If we as a nation were allowed to tap America's abundance of fossil fuel reserves, not only would we realize energy independence, but we could probably get unemployment down to the 5% level liberals once derisively called the jobless recovery of George W. Bush. But Barack Obama doesn't care about jobs. He is an ideologue, and in his mind, we should be willing to suffer for what he believes in.
This is a deliberate policy by the administration in response to global warming, which in essence is a scheme by which we destroy our economy today to prevent what might happen a hundred years from now. If given another term, Barack Obama will spend all his time shutting down energy production. In a few years, his policies will give America $10-a-gallon gasoline and electric bills triple what they are today. And none of it will make a difference, because the world's biggest polluter, China, is not as willing as Barack Obama to sacrifice prosperity on a possibility.
Last year, the president and his minions pushed Obamacare down the nation's throat, taking over one sixth of the economy. The health care legislation was written by the same people who wrote the Stimulus: Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and every other crackpot Democrat. It is such an abomination that some estimates say it has already cost the nation 800,000 jobs, and it has not even been fully implemented yet.
As a result of his administration's endless stream of anti-business regulations, failed stimulus, scandals, the pro-union NLRB, all the executive orders and signing statements, the endless class warfare, the accusations of racism from his supporters, the obvious incompetence of the president and his appointees, his elitism, and all the vacations and golf, Obama has gone from messiah and the one "we've been waiting for" to an abject failure of a president.
Barack Obama is a perfect storm. If he had intended to destroy the economy and trash employment while exploding the deficit and the national debt, he couldn't have done a better job.
There will be no more hope and change from Barack Obama. It will be the politics of bitterness and envy from here on in. After all, that's the only thing Obama's good at.

Obama could create tens of thousands of jobs almost overnight with two legislative initiatives;

1. Do away with corporate income taxes; the result would be a renaissance of domestic manufacuturing with many well paying union jobs !

2. Stop his war-on-carbon and open up all areas of oil/gas exploration and drilling. America would become almost energy independent and our economy would be unshackled from OPEC.

Both would have broad public support (exclcluding the hardcore left of the Obama base) and be high growth, well paying domestic jobs. Unfortunately, Obama will do neither; it isn't in his DNA.......

Obama could create tens of thousands of jobs almost overnight with two legislative initiatives;

1. Do away with corporate income taxes; the result would be a renaissance of domestic manufacuturing with many well paying union jobs !

2. Stop his war-on-carbon and open up all areas of oil/gas exploration and drilling. America would become almost energy independent and our economy would be unshackled from OPEC.

Both would have broad public support (exclcluding the hardcore left of the Obama base) and be high growth, well paying domestic jobs. Unfortunately, Obama will do neither; it isn't in his DNA....... Originally Posted by Whirlaway

You missing the big point WW- although I think those are good ideas- Obama can propose all the great plans he wants but if Congress sits on their asses nothing will get done- 5 weeks ago- still no vote on jobs plan?

You missing the big point WW- although I think those are good ideas- Obama can propose all the great plans he wants but if Congress sits on their asses nothing will get done- 5 weeks ago- still no vote on jobs plan? Originally Posted by wellendowed1911

You're missing the point. The Senate Republicans have tried to force a vote on the jobs bill twice and each time Harry Reid stopped it because he didn't have the votes.

My understanding is that BHO could basically accomplish parts of Whirl's item 2 with executive orders but he wont. Anymore egg on Barry's face and an omelet will be running for re-election.

You're missing the point. The Senate Republicans have tried to force a vote on the jobs bill twice and each time Harry Reid stopped it because he didn't have the votes. Originally Posted by gnadfly

So the Republican's plan for jobs is to kill Obama's jobs plan? Got it!

Sounds like a winning strategy.....if you're real goal is to simply let the economy plod through mud for political gains.

Obama's job's plan isn't anything like #1 or #2 above; his plan is the same tax and spend formula of the first $1 trillion stimuls pln which didn't work.

So the Republican's plan for jobs is to kill Obama's jobs plan? Got it!

Sounds like a winning strategy.....if you're real goal is to simply let the economy plod through mud for political gains. Originally Posted by Doove

So Obama's plan is to keep yelling "Pass this bill" when people in his own party won't pass it? And then blame the TEA party?

Sounds like a winning strategy...when you had a majority in the house and a supermajority in the Senate for about your first two years in the Presidency (that you frittered away).

Don't worry little Dove...something's going to be passed...with little or no tax increases and Obama will sign it...It just won't be "his" bill but he'll take credit for it.

Shit the last few decades alone have produced disastors as far as presidential regimes are concerned. They are all liars!

So Obama's plan is to keep yelling "Pass this bill" when people in his own party won't pass it? And then blame the TEA party? Originally Posted by gnadfly

Not the point. Wellendowed suggested the Republican's ain't doing jack shit on the jobs front. You countered by suggesting they want to vote on Obama's bill but Reid won't let them.....as if they're trying to accomplish something if only Reid wouldn't stand in their way.

The Republican's campaigned on jobs jobs jobs.....not telling us that their plan to was make sure nobody got jobs jobs jobs.

Say what you want about both parties....the Republicans are the ones on record as saying they want to make Obama a one term president. Not that they want him to be a one term president....they want to make him one. And yes, there is a difference.

But you'd rather blame Obama, and mock me, rather than direct your angst at the people who want things to suck. Ergo, it's clear to me that you want things to suck.

If congressional Republicans wanted to cynically do everything possible to bring about Obama's defeat in 2012, they'd get the hell out of the way and pass that lemon of a "jobs" plan. Then after it failed to do much other than further worsen our fiscal outlook (because it wouldn't produce much bang for the buck) they could simply say, "OK, Mr. President. We did it your way, and now everybody in the world knows that you own the economy!"

Instead, Republicans are giving Obama plenty of campaign fodder for the upcoming year. Count on him to say at every turn that Republicans "opposed job creation", or some such thing.

It should surprise no one that Democrats in the senate (at least those with some understanding of the issue) are trying to save Obama from his own poor judgment by blocking a vote on this turkey.

Our economy suffers from severe structural problems that can't be fixed with another spending and tax-cutting binge as ill-considered as the mostly squandered $860 billion "stimulus package" of 2009.

A Disastrous Presidency

By William L. Gensert

http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/...residency.html

After almost three years of disastrous governance, all Barack Obama and the Democrats have left is the politics of bitterness and envy. He can't run on his record -- not with unemployment high and the economy in shambles.
It didn't have to be this way. Obama let Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and every other crackpot Democrat write his Stimulus Bill. In the end, he spent a trillion dollars insulating union members and government employees from the effects of the economic downturn, while the rest of us suffered.
The Stimulus could have consisted of permanent tax cuts for business, allowing capitalist competition to direct funds to its most profitable uses, thereby accelerating economic growth and providing jobs, but Barack Obama does not like profit and its trickle-down wealth.
Instead, in service of Obama's preferred policy of trickle up poverty, we funded non-shovel-ready construction projects and flushed billions down the low-flow toilet of green energy, while giving the rest of the Stimulus funds to the states to cover their budgetary shortfalls. Stimulus dollars bought us green energy boondoggles, un-built roads, and more government, with zero economic growth and increased unemployment. Millions of private citizens lost their jobs, while the government added 230,000 workers and crony capitalists grew fat.
The administration diverted TARP funds to rescue GM and Chrysler, while flipping the order of secured and unsecured creditors. Obama may have saved the UAW, but at what cost? The UAW was made whole, while some secured creditors had to take fifteen cents on the dollar. Will any investor ever purchase secured debt from GM again? If secured creditors don't have primacy in bankruptcy, what is the point of being a secured creditor?
Fresh from roiling the credit markets with the auto bailouts, the president then encouraged and signed into law the Dodd-Frank financial reform, a law so complicated that no one knows what's in it. The uncertainty felt by financial markets won't abate until the administration finishes writing the rules. In the interim, homeowners can't get mortgages and businesses can't get loans.
In 2007, the last year with a budget controlled by a Republican Congress and president, the deficit was $161 billion. The non-stimulating Stimulus exploded the budget baseline, raising the percentage of GDP consumed by the government from 20% to 25%, resulting in the $1.6-trillion deficits we have today. Looking at employment and the economy, it's clear that the nation has received nothing for the $5 trillion Barack Obama has added to the national debt. Instead of capitalist competition, we've had an explosion of crony capitalism. With the government picking winners and losers, we have replaced Adam Smith's invisible hand with Barack Obama's thumb.
Take solar panel manufacturer Solyndra as an example. The administration put a half a billion dollars into a company with financial ties to a group headed by Obama campaign donor George Kaiser. The administration structured the loan to give the group's investment precedence over the American taxpayer now that the company is being liquidated through bankruptcy. Its business plan consisted of producing a product for $1 and selling it for $0.75, while hoping to make up for the deficit in volume.
The entire green agenda, which the president has been pushing since day one, is flawed policy. Alternative energy sources such as wind and solar are too expensive to be price-competitive with coal, natural gas, and oil. Yet Obama's plan is not to find a way to get the cost of alternative energy down; it is to make the price of fossil fuel energy "skyrocket" until alternative energy is cheap by comparison.
Liberals tried to make this happen with Cap and Trade, an insanity that died an ignoble death in the Democrat-controlled Senate. Well, as Barack Obama said, there's "more than one way to skin a cat." The administration is working diligently through the EPA, the Department of the Interior, and myriad other agencies to destroy all energy production in America. Take for example the president's war on coal. Barack Obama has famously said that he would "bankrupt" coal-fired power plants. Coal, which produces 50% of the nation's electricity, could be replaced by nuclear power, with its zero emissions, but the administration won't allow that, either. The president's plan is to remove coal without replacing the generating capacity. This will reduce America to a land of rolling blackouts.
Energy is also about employment. The gulf lost 40,000 jobs when the president decided it was best to shut down all oil production after the BP oil spill. The approval for Keystone XL Pipeline sits on his desk, awaiting his signature. It would connect Canadian oil from the tar sands of Alberta with refineries in Cushing, Oklahoma and Nederland, Texas, while providing 20,000 direct jobs and 100,000 indirect jobs.
With recent discoveries and improvements in drilling techniques, some have called America the Saudi Arabia of natural gas. America also has the largest oil reserves in the world; the Bakken Formation alone is said to contain more than 11 billion barrels. Home heating costs, electricity, and gasoline are expensive because our leaders have for years instituted policies to make it so. If we as a nation were allowed to tap America's abundance of fossil fuel reserves, not only would we realize energy independence, but we could probably get unemployment down to the 5% level liberals once derisively called the jobless recovery of George W. Bush. But Barack Obama doesn't care about jobs. He is an ideologue, and in his mind, we should be willing to suffer for what he believes in.
This is a deliberate policy by the administration in response to global warming, which in essence is a scheme by which we destroy our economy today to prevent what might happen a hundred years from now. If given another term, Barack Obama will spend all his time shutting down energy production. In a few years, his policies will give America $10-a-gallon gasoline and electric bills triple what they are today. And none of it will make a difference, because the world's biggest polluter, China, is not as willing as Barack Obama to sacrifice prosperity on a possibility.
Last year, the president and his minions pushed Obamacare down the nation's throat, taking over one sixth of the economy. The health care legislation was written by the same people who wrote the Stimulus: Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and every other crackpot Democrat. It is such an abomination that some estimates say it has already cost the nation 800,000 jobs, and it has not even been fully implemented yet.
As a result of his administration's endless stream of anti-business regulations, failed stimulus, scandals, the pro-union NLRB, all the executive orders and signing statements, the endless class warfare, the accusations of racism from his supporters, the obvious incompetence of the president and his appointees, his elitism, and all the vacations and golf, Obama has gone from messiah and the one "we've been waiting for" to an abject failure of a president.
Barack Obama is a perfect storm. If he had intended to destroy the economy and trash employment while exploding the deficit and the national debt, he couldn't have done a better job.
There will be no more hope and change from Barack Obama. It will be the politics of bitterness and envy from here on in. After all, that's the only thing Obama's good at. Originally Posted by TheDaliLama

This is just a bunch of shit all in one place. The majority of these issues have been discussed on this board. Just the same mis-characterizations and sound bites.

If only he would sign the pipeline bill sitting on his desk, all our problems would disappear (said while wringing hands). Where did it come from? Who put it together? Etc, etc, etc.
And of course, why is he the only person that knows about the document. It makes sense the media would say nothing. Going after them and investigating fast and furious is one thing but this is just a tube that carries oil.

Obamacare has cost 800,000 jobs?

Shut down all the drilling in the gulf?

How about this?
http://www.gpoaccess.gov/usbudget/fy10/pdf/hist.pdf

The traditional pattern of running large
deficits only in times of war or economic
downturns was broken during much of the
1980s. In 1982, large permanent tax cuts
were enacted. Moreover, these were accompanied
by substantial increases in defense
spending. Although reductions
were made
to nondefense spending, they were not sufficient
to offset the impact on the deficit.
As a result, deficits averaging $206 billion
were incurred between 1983 and 1992.
These unprecedented peacetime deficits increased
debt held by the public from $789
billion in 1981 to $3.0 trillion (48.1 percent
of GDP) in 1992.
After peaking at $290 billion in 1992, deficits
declined each year, dropping to a level
of $22 billion in 1997. In 1998, the Nation
recorded its first budget surplus ($69.3
billion) since 1969. As a percent of GDP, the
budget bottom line went from a deficit of 4.7
percent in 1992 to a surplus of 0.8 percent
in 1998, increasing to a 2.4 percent surplus
in 2000.

These people can’t see the forest for the elephant legs in the room. We are about a year from the election. When is all this stuff supposed to happen?

When are the republicans going to come up with a budget. Ryan’s has been torn apart by many at this point. That “balance” thing wasn’t.

The tax cuts have had 8+ years to work, They’re not.

We have 2 wars (the cost of our involvement in the middle east is chump change compared to Afghanistan) and a trillion dollar un-funded prescription drug plan to pay for. People scoff, miscalculate the amount of revenue a tax hike would generate, and claim it can all be done by lowering taxes and reducing spending.

The asshole author of this dung heap says, in letters 5 times the size of the other letters (a scream if I ever heard one) to make sure you remember, “It will be the politics of bitterness and envy from here on in.”
What fucking planet does he live on? It’s been that way since Jan. of 09.
Because this is an opinion piece, you know, whirlaway facts, he doesn’t have to really tell the truth. This article is a perfect example of the bitterness that has been around since 08.

At this point, the only thing that might save our asses is re-electing Obama. I know that’s going to set a bunch of folks off but hey, fuck all y’all.
The reason I say that? The republican’s leadership came out and said their goal for the next 2 years was to make sure Obama was a 1 term president. No goals for America, no plans to help Americans, nothing. Just attach as much baggage as they could to Obama. If their tactic works, and that is all it is because they hold no answers other than cut taxes, what happens if the democrats decide to make the next guy a 1 term president? Yeah, I know how you’ll scream they are un-American, blah, blah, fucking blah. Would the repubs dare to sit on their asses for 4 more years? I really am afraid to find out.

No one asked them to give away everything. Compromise wrote the Constitution

The problem is the dems, the republicans, and anybody who supports that style of politics at the cost of our country are the un-Americans.

Instead, Republicans are giving Obama plenty of campaign fodder for the upcoming year. Count on him to say at every turn that Republicans "opposed job creation", or some such thing. Originally Posted by CaptainMidnight

Or maybe they're just afraid it would be successful. We all know the only chance the Republicans have of taking the White House next year is a tanked economy. And if you don't believe they'll do whatever they can get away with to accomplish exactly that, you're not as bright as you want us to think you are.

Not the point. Wellendowed suggested the Republican's ain't doing jack shit on the jobs front. You countered by suggesting they want to vote on Obama's bill but Reid won't let them.....as if they're trying to accomplish something if only Reid wouldn't stand in their way.

The Republican's campaigned on jobs jobs jobs.....not telling us that their plan to was make sure nobody got jobs jobs jobs.

Say what you want about both parties....the Republicans are the ones on record as saying they want to make Obama a one term president. Not that they want him to be a one term president....they want to make him one. And yes, there is a difference.

But you'd rather blame Obama, and mock me, rather than direct your angst at the people who want things to suck. Ergo, it's clear to me that you want things to suck. Originally Posted by Doove

Wow. Not that sorry argument. You're smarter than that. Clinton learned to triangulate, play ball and was re-elected. Obama is going to proudly double down on his socialist agenda and for that you blame the Republicans and whine "they want him to fail."

He's failing thru his own fault. Even after he shoved Obamacare down America's throat he admitted that he should have spent more time on jobs. Yes, I saw the interview. That was BEFORE the 2010 election when Democrats and Independent went to the polls to throw the Pelosi and Obama enablers out on their ears. But he is tone deaf and arrogant.

He doesn't even have the DEMOCRATIC senate votes and demands that his most current jobs bill be passed NOW. He's just a bad politician. The same bad politician that flew to Copenhagen even though he was there a few days earlier for an Olympic bid to then protest "global warming", promises the UN body $100 Billion dollars that we don't have whenever he's already said "we're broke" and gets rebuffed. He just doesn't understand political capital.

I'm serious about something being passed. It will contain elements of his plan but it won't be his plan...and he'll sign it and take credit for it. People from both parties will prance around saying that they won but UE will still be around 9%.

Or maybe they're just afraid it would be successful. We all know the only chance the Republicans have of taking the White House next year is a tanked economy. And if you don't believe they'll do whatever they can get away with to accomplish exactly that, you're not as bright as you want us to think you are. Originally Posted by Doove

Although Republicans nowadays can be counted on to reflexively oppose almost anything Obama proposes, if you had any understanding of this issue it would be obvious to you that the "jobs" act, taken in its totality, is simply a fraud and would not do much to boost the economy or lower the unemployment rate. As was the case with the poorly-designed $860 billion "stimulus package" of 2009, it's all about politics, not economic recovery or job creation.

And as I pointed out in my earlier post, many Senate Democrats oppose this lemon. It's understandable that they don't want to sign up for more of Obama's fiscal kamikaze missions.

This is pretty easy to understand. Do you really have that much difficulty grasping these concepts?

Although Republicans nowadays can be counted on to reflexively oppose almost anything Obama proposes, Originally Posted by CaptainMidnight

Bingo.

if you had any understanding of this issue it would be obvious to you that the "jobs" act, taken in its totality, is simply a fraud and would not do much to boost the economy or lower the unemployment rate.

Because you're just so much smarter than everyone else.

"In all, the firm projected that the plan would add roughly 1.25 percentage points to gross domestic product and create 1.3 million jobs in 2012. JPMorgan Chase estimated that the plan would increase growth by 1.9 points and add 1.5 million jobs. Most bullish is Moody’s Analytics, which forecast that the package would add 1.9 million jobs, cutting the unemployment rate by a point, and increase growth by two percentage points."

Sorry, i'll take their opinion over that of some anonymous poster on an escort review board any day of the week.

And as I pointed out in my earlier post,

Where you failed to mention why they opposed it.

many Senate Democrats oppose this lemon.

While they work out the details of how to pay for it.

This is pretty easy to understand. Do you really have that much difficulty grasping these concepts?

Most bullish is Moody’s Analytics, which forecast that the package would add 1.9 million jobs, cutting the unemployment rate by a point, and increase growth by two percentage points."

I understand exactly what that means. You?