“Honest Mistakes, Broken Promises and Outright Lies!”

By William L. Garvin

"In this country, we rise or fall as one nation, as one people. Let's resist the temptation to fall back on the same partisanship and pettiness and immaturity that have poisoned our politics for so long." Barack H. Obama

When the President promised that passage of the Stimulus Bill would “jump start the private sector,” would create 3.5 million jobs, and unemployment would never rise above 8%, it could have been an honest mistake. After all, virtually none of his czars or economic advisors has any practical private sector experience. In fact, his staff has the least amount of private sector experience of any president in history. That’s why none of his outrageously expensive efforts have done anything of significance to assist the private sector. You can’t fix what you can’t understand nor are you likely to fix what you dislike.

When Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sobelius crows that the insurance companies will have their profits reduced by $90 billion dollars, she forgets that it also means there is $90 billion less to tax. When the government takes over student loans, it is estimated that there are 30,000 private sector employees who will lose their jobs. That’s a loss of 30,000 taxpayers. Of course that will probably mean that the Department of Education will have to add 30,000 federal workers. At an average federal salary, that’s another $2 billion per year in tax money that will be required just in wages!

Much ado is being made about the 162,000 jobs that were created in March. Of particular note is that 48,000 of those “jobs” are temporary federal positions for the census that will end around September. Apparently, the government intends to hire nearly one million workers for the census effort. Again, they are all temporary positions. Even if all 162,000 were private sector, full-time, and permanent, it’s just a drop in the bucket. The unemployment rate continues at 9.7% with approximately 17 million unemployed and countless others who are underemployed or who have just given up. If this is what “focusing like a laser on jobs” looks like, heaven help us all.

When you have a President with no private sector business experience and no governmental executive experience who picks a career politician as his Vice President, the inexperience gap is exacerbated. Virtually all of his key staff are bureaucrats, politicians, or academics. When the most frequent visitor to the White House is Andy Stern, the president of the Service Employees International Union, the results are predictable. Look at how the President demonized Wall Street. He demonized bankers. He demonized mortgage brokers. He demonized automotive executives. He demonized doctors. (Remember how he said they would perform unnecessary amputations because they could make more money!) He demonized insurance companies. He demonized oil companies. He demonized small business for not hiring. Why should they when they’re getting hit with new health care costs and the Bush tax cuts are expiring? Now it’s time to demonize (and terrorize!) Caterpillar, John Deere, AK Steel and ATT-Verizon for taking new health care charges which the SEC requires them to do! Representatives Waxman and Stupak possess little knowledge or sophistication in corporate finance so their subpoenas are little more than an excuse for another Congressional browbeating of corporate executives.

It’s to be expected that the President would demonize Republicans, despite his “postpartisan” promises, but he and his minions have also gone out of their way to demonize town hall protestors and citizens at Tea Parties. About the only people he hasn’t demonized are SEIU and his expanding federal government. Watch him pass “card check” in the dark of night that will effectively eliminate secret ballots for union members.

What certainly was more than an honest mistake was the eight recorded times he promised to open up the health care negotiations to public view and CSPAN. He also promised to have all bills on line for five days before he signed them. He promised to go over each bill line by line and eliminate earmarks and pork. None of this has been done. In fact, back room deals, bribes, and secret deals have reached new and obscene levels of sleaze. You may have noticed that there is no significant tort reform in Obamacare. The States are “allowed” to establish “commissions” to study the issue. It is purely coincidental that 94% of the American Trial Lawyers Association donations go to Democrats. It’s the same shell game as allowing offshore oil “exploration” instead of “drilling.” Did you notice that he also closed several leases that had already been approved? Delay, delay, delay.

The Obama-Reid-Pelosi triumvirate has an “unconstrained elitist vision” that they know what’s best for everybody and they are going to do it no matter what citizens say. They are ill equipped to deal with is the law of unintended consequences. These are the problems that pop up that were never anticipated. They don’t even see the fiscal problems that should be anticipated. When you have no cash in your pocket, you shouldn’t buy a round of drinks!