Considering the fact that prior to being elected President, Barrack Obama hardly had a job and quite possibly never even worked for a “for profit” company, he seems mighty confident in criticizing Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s record of achievement let alone his net jobs created record at Bain Capital.
The President stood there this week talking about how Romney’s work experiences from Bain Capital to the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics to Governor of Massachusetts hardly prepared him to be President of the United States.
President Obama seems to think his three years in office give him the experience edge even in light of the multiple failures of his administration. He can legitimately claim credit for taking out bin Laden. It took ten years to track him down and whether the Bush Administration contributed to the successful outcome or not, US military forces got the job done. So is that the foundation of his Foreign Policy? I read somewhere that right up to the hour before the mission was launched, Valerie Jarret was pushing Obama to abandon the mission.
The Arab Spring will prove to be significant in history as the time when America could have helped shape the evolution of free society in the Middle East but twiddled our thumbs as the opportunity faded away.
Then of course there is the Keystone Pipeline deal that had been through the approval process but needed Presidential approval that fell by the wayside in spite of the tens of thousands of jobs that would be created, the Solyndra half billion dollar debacle, the Fast and Furious guns to Mexico deal and the million dollar GSA junket to Vegas as examples of the President’s record of either personally deciding or delegating decisions to his appointees; example after example of failures of leadership to be sure but indicators also of a seriously incompetent or corrupt administration.
The President can talk about Romney’s record all he wants but how can he not expect us to compare Romney’s record to his own.
I’m still astonished with the way the General Motors deal was done. Rather than letting the company enter some form of bankruptcy protection that would give the share holders and managers time to renegotiate debt payments and labor contracts the President instructed the government to seize the company, infuse it with enough federal stimulus money to get it through the financial crisis in exchange for high priority shares of stock rendering privately held shares relatively worthless while at the same time preserving the labor contracts that contributed so much to the underlying problems. Is that even legal?
The President talks about how he is a job creator but in my mind, jobs that go away when the government money goes away are not jobs. A real job is a man or woman creating something of value that someone else is willing to pay a market price for. A real job sustains itself.
My final issue is the glut of regulation that flows out of the various federal departments. Anyone who has ever been in business knows the impact changing regulations to a business plan. If you don’t know how the Obama Health Care law will impact your business, it’s not likely that you will hire new employees unless your existing workers are being worked to the bone. Unpredictable regulatory times are a huge impediment to job creation. But it isn’t just the changes, it’s the volume of the regulations. Thousands of pages of new federal regulations fly out of the Environmental Protection Administration, Department of Energy, Department of Commerce, Department of Education and the Department of Transportation each week.
President Obama needs to show us examples of how his buddy politics policies have created jobs since so many of his showcase plays have been unmitigated disasters.
The President should be careful how he characterizes Romney’s qualifications since his own record shows he clearly had no experience at anything except being a slick talking lawyer before he was elected.
I don’t believe Obama has ever served a full term of office in any job he ran for so his record as a legislator is bare as well.
If there were ever a “Do Nothing, Done Nothing!” president, Obama is tops.
No Loss for Words 
Supreme Court of Last Resort?
by Steve DanaLike a lot of us, I was sure the Supreme Court would make a favorable ruling on the Affordable Health Care case and render the whole thing unconstitutional. Sadly, that didn’t happen. I never actually read the act so I’m not sure why I thought it would be overturned. I guess that NOT reading thing is a failing we all suffer from.
With regard to the Court’s ruling, the two sides can argue about the motivation of Justice Roberts and the merits of the health care statute till the cows come home but the fact remains until the thing is repealed it is the law of the land.
In the legislative arena we see majority parties jam through bad laws every day; whether it’s a state legislature or the US Congress, the majority rules. I don’t remember which pundit said it but I have to agree that the laws passed by a majority don’t make them fair or just or right but they are legal. The recourse is to amend or repeal them.
And, whining seldom changes a thing. For all the years that the Democrats ran roughshod over the state of Wisconsin the Republicans had to take it. That was just the way it was.
Then, the tide turned and the remaining Democrats had to taste a little of their own medicine.
Needless to say payback’s a bitch. Interestingly though when they were getting their lunch handed to them, instead of gracefully taking it, they bolted the legislature to prevent the Republican majority from voting on legislation they disagreed with. A very childish response revealing something about their character but again, whining doesn’t change a thing but it can make you look really stupid.
In all my years in government I have been a champion of process. Reliable, predictable process is what makes the system work.
In the case of the Obamacare Affordable Healthcare Law the Democrats held a super-majority in both houses of the Congress so they didn’t have to follow the normal process prescribed by their “rules” because they were able to “suspend the rules” when it suited their needs. The two thousand six hundred page law was drafted outside of the normal process and the substance was never debated in any committees so when the whole thing was engrossed for approval very few people knew what actually was in it.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi was crowing at the microphone prior to the House vote, “We have to approve the bill before we can find out what’s in the bill.” And all the Democrats were actually onboard with her? What’s with that?
Maybe they did know what was in it and knew of the firestorm that would follow if it were exposed in public. So they consciously demonstrated a willingness to subvert the process and deceive the country with their supposed ignorance rather than taking the heat of the normal public process. Those House members who supported that action should have been vilified publicly at the least and thrown out of office at the first opportunity.
From a process standpoint that should be a fatal flaw. Not so much a Constitutional flaw but clear sign of bad faith government.
So here we are, the court has let stand one of the worst laws ever passed by the Congress. In the Majority Opinion, Chief Justice Roberts tries to clarify that the Court’s job is not to invalidate bad legislation because it’s bad, but to determine the Constitutionality of the legislation. In a very carefully worded opinion the Court ruled that most of the law would survive.
Bummer!
It would have been so simple for the court to overturn the law and send it back to the Congress for a “do over” but it didn’t happen. And in spite of the fact that I would have preferred that outcome the “process guy” in me knew the only real resolution for bad law is to amend it or repeal it in the same venue as it was created.
If we rally the troops to elect Republicans this fall, what exactly will our healthcare bill look like? In the past two years the Republican majority in the House has held a bunch of hearings and voted on more than one healthcare bill that died in the Senate. So do they have one they are willing to fall on their sword for?
Republicans need to articulate what Healthcare Reform looks like for them since the Democrats have their deal on the table. Complaining about bad legislation is not a substitution for a better alternative.
We need to elect enough members to both the House of Representatives and the Senate to send a bill the new President that will accomplish what we wanted the court to do.
I hope we’re up to the task.
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