Obama: The Ineffective "Leader"

            These past few weeks Obama has shown himself to be a remarkably incapable and timid leader. Instead of making a decision about Libya when the violence first started, he waited until the last possible second to form a coalition and allow NATO to take the lead. But what is America’s goal in Libya? Who are these rebels fighting against Gaddafi? Whether it be Obama himself, Attorney General Eric Holder, or Hilary Clinton, the White House has been laughably incoherent regarding its foreign policy endgame in the Middle East. Is the main goal to throw Gaddafi out? Is it America’s job to intervene in all foreign affairs similar to this? If so, looks like Syria, Yemen, and Bahrain are next, right Mr. President? Vice President Biden is quoted as saying that unless there is a “direct and imminent threat to America” not only is there no reason to go to war (forget about getting Congressional approval or following the War Powers Act, the “Anointed One” is above that, obviously), but also Biden claims he would move to impeach any president that disobeys this principle. Obviously, this quote was in regard to Bush’s wars, and shows blatant hypocrisy from the current White House administration, yet again. Obama delayed his talks on Libyan policy for a week due to “scheduling conflicts.” (really?) Yet he was still able to pick his March Madness brackets on ESPN and go golfing. After finally addressing the issue to the public, which seemed more like a campaign speech, Obama changed his policies yet again. By “transferring” command to NATO, Obama is just covering up possible failures while continuing to put our troops in harm’s way. Yes, there could be a case made for the Libyan war, but Obama is simply not able to articulate any such reason for it in a coherent manner that doesn’t make him look like a hypocrite.

            Aside from these foreign affairs, there’s another battle going on right at home: the battle of the budget. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) was recorded on a phone conversation telling his fellow democrats to label Speaker Boehner as “extreme” and link him to the Tea Party so that they might get a better compromise on spending cuts. That being said, liberals are willing to cut about 20 billion dollars for the rest of the fiscal year. Seeing as America BORROWS 4 billion dollars per day, the fact that Chuck and his fellow liberals are trying to turn saving this country into a political game is utterly ridiculous. 20 billion dollars is nothing when Obama’s budget calls for a 1.5 TRILLION dollar deficit. All Republicans are asking for is to return to the spending levels of the Clinton years, which still isn’t enough, but at least it’s a start. Congressman Paul Ryan (R-WI) plans on releasing the Republican budget soon, which is reported to have much more serious cuts, thankfully. Rest assured, 2012 will be an epic battle of spending cuts centered primarily around entitlement programs. Obama needs to step up and take control of his party. America is at a crossroads and trying to play politics with the opposition will get us nowhere.

The Labor Union Myth

           With the inception of Labor Unions in the early 1900’s, workers were being gravely mistreated with long hours, little pay, and being forced to work in harmful work environments. The members stood up to politicians, interest groups, and fought for equal rights all around. Yes, labor unions were needed at the turn of the century, but the year is now 2011 and labor unions are the biggest political machine in America, working in iron triangles to achieve their revolving door political schemes. To quote Barack “I’ve been working with the SEIU before I was elected to anything.”

            So how can labor unions really be involved politics? Aren’t they just trying to level the playing field for the common working man? Well first of all, I wouldn’t call a union member a “common man” considering on average their salary is higher, pensions better, and health care cheaper than most of private sector workers. Their collective bargaining rights allow them to raise money to give to politicians who promise the head of the unions that they will maintain power. To put it in perspective, SEIU president Andy Stern (who regularly visits the White House) was quoted as saying, “We Spent a fortune to elect Barack Obama – 60.7 million dollars, to be exact – and we’re proud of it.” So it’s no wonder Barack called for the recession appointment of Craig Beck to National Labor Relations Board despite bipartisan disapproval. The unions were instrumental in getting him elected, so now it’s time for to return the favor by passing card checking laws, appointing the obviously pro-union Becker, and giving bailouts to both the teachers and auto workers unions with tax payer money. Richard Trumka, the head of the AFL-CIO is quoted as saying he goes to the White House 2-3 times a week. It's nice to know that Obama is so in touch with the "common working man"...

              So why do union bosses only give their funds to Democrats instead of Republicans? Well in all fairness, on average a labor union will give 5% of their funds to a GOP candidate, so at least the Republicans aren’t left out completely! But the answer is simple, the unions supports bigger government and higher taxes- just like liberals!

 Here are some examples of a union’s true intent:

          

              -Oregon – unions spearheaded a battle to raise taxes on business and income by $727 million a year. 75% of the funding for the promotion of this tax increase came from unions.

            -Arizona – in order to avoid government spending cuts, unions played a pivotal role increasing the sales from 5.5% to 6.6% , totaling about 1 billion dollars a year.

            -Washington - Unions contributed over half of the $6 million dollars it took promote substantially raising taxes on those earning over $200,000 per year.

            There are countless other examples of  unions giving the money of their members to any political scheme that fits with the bosses specific political agenda.

           

            Union membership has been on the decline, dropping from 14.3 million members in 1997 to 6.1 in 2011. This drastic decrease calls for Democrats to try and pass things like the card check, which makes it much easier for a company to unionize. Frankly, without the unions, in which all the members must pay their dues to the boss, who in turn give it to a Democratic candidate, the left would have a serious funding problem. The GOP has finally stepped up and taken on this corrupt partnership, much to the left’s dismay.

            The challenges started with Chris Christie in 2010 when he demanded that teachers take a 1-year pay freeze (union members typically have an automatic raise after every year) and contribute a measly 2% of their salary to cover their whole families health care for a whole year. Considering the state of the budget, and how hard the private sector was hit by the recession, that doesn’t seem like too much to ask does it? Well the teachers union went on vicious smear campaigns against Christie, which lead to an email being circulated wishing for his death.

         

             In more recent news, every Union member (and maybe just a handful of liberals) are up in arms about Republican Governor Scott Walker carrying through with his campaign promise and attempting to pass a bill that would avoid laying off 5,500 state workers by having them contribute 5.8% of their incomes towards their pensions, 12.6% of their salary towards health care, and have their collective bargaining rights removed. Even with the raise of contribution towards pensions and health care, the price for these union members would still be lower than the national average. It’s no wonder the cowardly democrats literally ran away from these problems, they are afraid without the bargaining rights their funding will dry up (one can only hope!). Considering the 3 billion dollar budget Wisconsin faces, do you really think that this bill is asking too much of these union workers?

How Can Obama be so out of Touch with the Rest of America?

            In his State of the Union speech, which many critics called Reaganesque, Obama pretended to be at least a little fiscally responsible. However, at the same time, he laughably contradicted himself with all the “investing” (aka more spending) talk. What America needs right now is jobs jobs jobs. I really don’t know what it will take to make the “anointed one” (props to Hannity) realize that the Federal Government DOES NOT CREATE JOBS! Jobs are created in the private sector by entrepreneurs and businessmen. The best thing the Federal Government can do is simply get out of the way! There is no such thing as a “shovel-ready” job as Obama admitted in an interview after passing the wretched stimulus bill. (Fun fact: 70% of economists agree that the stimulus didn’t help the economy recover).            

            Obama even went as far as saying he would veto any bill with an earmark that came to his desk. Ugh it’s a shame he didn’t make that promise before passing the health care bill, which had literally thousands of earmarks! Still, I was thinking, “Alright, Barack finally gets the idea, we need to rein in Federal spending” but then comes the 3.7 trillion-budget plan. You know your budget is unpopular when even the San Francisco chronicle disputes its fiscal responsibility. The budget has been widely criticized by the right AND the left, various newspaper articles remark, “Obama punts on deficit” and “Obama pulls a Cee Lo Green with the budget”. Obama continually claims not to be a big spender, a socialist, or even a progressive, and who wouldn’t believe him with his elegant rhetoric that can go on for hours? (unless O’Reilly is there to interrupt him). But the truth is that the “anointed one” continually breaks his promises of bipartisanship (“You need to punish your enemies” –Obama on Latino radio, referring to Republicans of course), fiscal responsibility, and a transparent Washington.

Wait, George W. Bush was a Republican?

As to be expected when the main stream media is mostly controlled by the  left, George W. Bush was often criticized ( to put it nicely) constantly on nearly every single policy. Now while I could cite examples of how nicely the Media has treated Obama (aka the anointed one) compared to their blatant bias of Bush, I'm going to take a different turn. With a close look back as Bush's presidency, it becomes clear that he was honestly one of the most progressive presidents since LBJ. After looking at all his liberal policies, I think that only if Bush would have had a (D) after his name, the media would've been drooling all over him. This partisan judgment shows the hypocrisy of the left, similar to the Petraeus replacing McChyrstal situation. Remember when Democrats called him "General Betray Us"?

Just to give some examples of how Progressive George W Bush really was:
-Bush added $3.3 trillion dollars to the Deficit, increased the National Debt to $5 Trillion dollars, spent a total of $20.5 trillion dollars in his eight years, and increased the Federal Budget by 42 PERCENT! Compare that number to Bill Clinton's figure of increasing the budget by only 12 percent, and he was supposedly a Democrat. As the NY Times reported in January of 2002: "In a sign of changing times, Bush calls for more spending. The budget...strays far from the agenda of a small government and fiscal conservatism that the administration advocated on taking office a year ago." If I recall correctly, liberals abide by the Keynesian notion that one can spend his way out of debt. Seeing as Bush clearly greatly expanded spending, then why so many complaints?

-Most people remember the Bush Tax Cuts as an example of a good conservative promise being kept, yet tax cuts only work best when combined with SPENDING CUTS. The way the politicians carried on with their massive spending increases mirrors the Reagan years where a Democratic congress refused to let spending cuts accompany the tax cuts instituted by Reagan.

-In his first term, Bush spent more money on regulatory spending than Clinton did in his eight years. Now, which one is supposed to be the conservative who believes in a free market with very limited Government regulations? While regulations might not seem like a big deal, think of it this way: every time you regulate something (cough cough health care) new bureaucracies are created, more red tape is set up, and more money is spent fishing your way through these rules and regulations. In 2008 alone, over 1 trillion dollars was spent in regards to complying with regulations compared to a total corporate revenue of only 304 billion dollars.

-Bush expanded the Government's role in education by signing the "no pass no play" bill. When the National Government gets involved in things it shouldn't, everybody pays a price. In order to find away around this rule, teachers simply lowered their standards of what it meant to "pass" going from a 70 to 45 in some cases. (I could discuss a lot more about education problems and National Government, but we'll save that for later)

And then just to name a few other things, which don't necessarily need explaining and fit pretty well into a "liberal" category: Filed a Supreme Court brief that supported affirmative action, proposed amnesty for illegal immigrants, and added over 100,000 federal employees.

All in all, Bush's two terms were riddled with overwhelmingly PROGRESSIVE policies ( lets not forget the bailouts). So its a wonder why the liberal media was so hard on him, isn't this what they wanted? Also, these progressive policies clearly contributed to the economic recession, so once the democrats take over, what's their solution to solve it? Oh, well how about they just take Bush's policies and make them EVEN MORE PROGRESSIVE, maybe that will solve the problem! Obviously Bush does indeed deserve some blame for the economic slump, but by blaming him and then continuing on with his failed policies, liberals really aren't helping their case...
Now obviously I haven't forgotten about Iraq and Afghanistan. I guess the wars are really the only non-liberal things Bush did while in office, and was no doubt the center for much of the hate he was given. Still, the fact that Bush was portrayed as a far right dictator, often being compared to Hitler, is ridiculous considering that George Bush really ought to have had a (D) after his name.



Oliver Shea