The Bumbling American Government

For over a year many Americans have watched their vote for 'hope' & 'change' turn into a remake of the bumbling Keystone Cops.

We have watched as the Obama administration bumbles its way from one debacle to another. When they came into office the US had 7.7% unemployment. Obama told Americans that if we would give him a nearly $800 billion stimulus he could hold unemployment to 8%. The Democrats had identified a plethora of 'shovel-ready' jobs that were just waiting for funding. Obama pledged to voters that they would be able to track this spending on a special government website.

Obama and the Democrats told us this was emergency legislation that had to be passed immediately to keep the world from devolving into an economic abyss.

Congress passed the emergency bill without even being given time to read the bill. Was there a parade down Pennsylvania Avenue, delivering this emergency legislation to an awaiting signature from our President?

No.

He had taken his family and returned to Chicago for the weekend. So much for the emergency.

The tracking website took months to set up, and then was discovered to be full of 'inaccurate' information. It stated that stimulus funds were going to nonexistent zip codes and Congressional Districts.

When you use false information to justify spending, you invite skepticism, distrust and resentment.

This brings us to Obama's next bumbling of a questionable issue.

Our House of Representatives took up the White House's next major agenda item, Cap & Trade.

Here's a fine example of watching fools rush in. The House devised yet another monstrosity of a bill that was written so nobody could be sure what all was in it. Then they passed this on a near party line vote without members being allowed to read the bill. Over 300 pages had been added in the middle of the night.

The political European left has already passed & implemented a similar law. They have also watched as their energy costs have soared. In Munich, I had the pleasure of experiencing their version, as our hot water was metered to shut off at 10pm and come back on at 6am. They are all doing their part to uphold this new religion.

After our House passed this, the Senate has taken a more measured approach to this bill. They have not acted.

The House bill will result in far higher across the board prices, as anything relying on transportation or production will incur higher operating costs. These increases will be passed onto consumers through higher prices.

Obama told us this will result in many new green jobs. Some funding for green jobs were included in the stimulus bill.

It has produced some green jobs. Remember those green jobs revolve around wind, solar, hydro, et al. Well it was announced that Obama's wind farm in Texas that has consumed hundreds of millions of taxpayer borrowed money. It will deliver around 300 new jobs there during the construction phase.

The company building the Wind Turbines will get 2,000 new jobs. Unfortunately, the company is located in China. Taxpayers borrowed this money from China to create jobs in China. Did I mention Americans will have to pay this money back to China with interest?

"Most of the jobs are going overseas," said Russ Choma at the Investigative Reporting Workshop. He analyzed which foreign firms had accepted the most stimulus money. "According to our estimates, about 6,000 jobs have been created overseas, and maybe a couple hundred have been created in the US. -ABC News

Iberdrola, one of the largest operators of renewable energy worldwide, is based in Spain and has received the most U.S. stimulus dollars -- $577 million. It buys some of its turbines from another Spanish manufacturer, Gamesa, which has a U.S. connection. Gamesa has two facilities to manufacture turbine blades in Pennsylvania, but the company said the market forced it to temporarily lay off nearly 100 workers.

A Chinese company called A-power is helping to build a massive $1.5 billion wind farm in West Texas. The consortium behind the project expects to get $450 million in stimulus money.
Walt Hornaday, an American partner on the project, said it would create some American jobs. "Our estimation," he said, "is that we are going to have on the order of 300 construction jobs just within the fence of the project."

Since the House passed Cap & Trade more information has came out regarding the integrity of warming alarmists.

The exposure of several emails between climatologists who are at the forefront of this movement have shown the finely orchestrated effort to manipulate data, hide a decline in global temperatures, and manipulating the climate model used to produce the desired outcomes.

The main climatologist behind the man driven climate change theory, Professor Phil Jones, has lost or misplaced his research with the data to back up his claims. The left is still willing to trap the taxpayers in this mess regardless of whether the original data supporting it can be found or not.

"Every government on Earth has changed its policy, hundreds of academic institutions, entire school curricula and the priorities of broadcasters and newspapers all over the world have been altered – all to serve the new doctrine that man is overheating the planet and must undertake heroic and costly changes to save the world from drowning as the icecaps melt." -UK Daily Mail

In 2007, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) won the Nobel Peace Prize based on its report on the melting of the Himalayan Mountains ice caps. It claimed they would be completely melted by 2035.

A couple weeks ago it was revealed that this Nobel Peace Prize winning report was based on casual observation versus sound science.

It was from a mountaineering magazine and the thesis of a student.

The Nobel Peace Prize is not what they used to be.

The far left in American politics seems all too willing to put taxpayers on the financial hook for their climate fantasy.

Folks, real science does not need to rely on manipulated data, avoidance of the Freedom of Information Act, and falsehoods.

Our bumbling President and his cohorts in Congress are gambling with our country's ability to compete on the global marketplace with this boondoggle. The emerging countries of India and China have both rejected this, and refuse to abide by the carbon limits it would impose.

This is an attempt by the left to fulfill their ultimate goal of redistributing the wealth of the west to developing nations through environmental or social justice, and perhaps padding their own pockets along the way. Remove the money from this equation and watch the lefts interest wane.

After failing to get action on Cap & Trade in the Senate, Obama jumped right to health care. With 85% of Americans reporting they are happy with their health care, Obama and the Democrats told us there is a crisis in health care

With a super-majority in Congress, Americans watched as the Democratic Party began infighting amongst the left wing and the centrist 'Blue Dogs'.

The bill in the House was very liberal, and cuts $500 billion from Medicare. It still covers the same amount of people. It just has $500 billion less to do it with.

The Democrats claim that they can provide the same treatment to seniors with $5oo billion less in funding.

The White House and Congressional Democrats said it was fear mongering to point out that this cannot be done. It was actually just common sense.

In late summer details of the plan began to emerge and leak out. It had to leak out, because the pledge of televising the debate on C-Span turned out to be another lie.

As Americans learned more of the contents of the bill, they began to challenge Congress at Town Hall meetings.

This exercise in free speech was met with charges of racism, hate speech, and people speaking out were also told they were being unAmerican.

I recall the previous eight years when protests were met with a warm embrace by those on the left, and described as patriotic.

That was before their own agenda was held up to the light of day.

Now the Senate has passed its version of health care. After telling voters that the GOP was beholden to the insurance lobby, the Democrat's senate bill hands the insurance lobby and big pharma 30 million new customers.

If any of the 30 million cannot afford this new insurance, the rest of the taxpayers will be forced to subsidize them.

Meanwhile the administration continues to ignore the voters vocal opposition to this agenda. Voters in purple Virginia and deep blue New Jersey sent a message in November when they dumped the Democrats in the elections.

The Democrats misread this outcome and continued to push this agenda.

Voters did notice that after nearly a year of rising unemployment, Obama did get around to holding a 'jobs summit' in December and eventually came up with a weak bipartisan jobs bill that was going to produce precious few jobs for the cost. The Congress decided to scrap the plan this past week.

Obama reminded voters of the money given to the banks during the bailouts, and vowed to get our money back. This flew in the face of Treasury Secretary, Tim Geithner, stating before Congress that the banks were paying back their borrowed money.

Obama said he would impose a fee on the banks. He ignores the fact that the banks will merely pass this fee onto taxpayers.

Not only did taxpayers have to borrow the money from China to give to the banks, we are now expected to pay additional bank fees, so we can recover the monies which are already being paid back.

Typical of the critical thinking skills demonstrated by the Obama administration.

This bumbling administration and Congress continue to push their failed policies, and now threaten to govern by fiat if the public continues to reject the direction they are taking us.

How Obama & Congress bungled so much, in such a short period of time, is cause for concern amongst the governed.

In January the voters of deep blue Massachusetts turned Ted Kennedy's senate seat over to the GOPs Scott Brown who ran as the 41st vote against Ted Kennedy's life's work.

Poll after poll indicates voters are disenchanted with the high unemployment and high deficits this administration has to offer.

Voters are equally concerned with the radical lefts approach to national security and overall foreign policy.

We watched during Obama's first year as he made his worldwide, America is bad, apology tour. He has bowed his way through Asia and the Middle East apologising for American exceptionalism at every turn.

At home, Obama's poll numbers indicate a growing dissatisfaction with his agenda and horrible results.

During the primaries, Hillary Clinton warned of Obama's naive plan for dealing with Iran. He had proposed high level meeting with Iran without any preconditions. Clinton warned that this would give the Iranian regime undue legitimacy. She suggested we agree to meet on the condition that Iran suspend their nuclear aspirations.

Obama has ignored this advice. This week, Iran announced that it was now enriching uranium at 20%. This is much higher than is needed for energy use alone.

Americans have been told that the US is not in a War on Terror. We are only fighting al Qaeda. What we previously witnessed were not acts of terror, they were "manmade disasters".

The administration ignores that Hamas, and other terrorist organizations have launched a jihad against the US that goes beyond al Qaeda. The Obama White House was loathe to acknowledge the terror implications of the attack at the Little Rock, AR recruiting station or Fort Hood in Texas.

In both cases early warning signs were ignored, and the seriousness of the situation has been lost on a naive administration.

On Christmas day when a radical Islamist tried to blow up a Northwest Airlines jet over Detroit, the administration felt compelled to mirandize the suspect, provide an attorney and shut down any further intelligence gathering from him.

Now this White House wants to hold the terror trials in federal court to show the world our justice system works. Right after 9/11 the US did try Richard Reid the convicted 'shoe bomber' in federal court as we did the 20th high jacker, Moussoui.

What those trials yielded was to provide these nutcases with a public forum to spew their hatred for western culture.

We now have experience with these cases and most people favor trying the terrorists in military courts where the public is not put in danger. The costs of prosecuting them in civilian courts are estimated to be around $200 million because of the disruption to New York commerce and safety.

The military bases are already more secure, and located in less populated areas. The military already has capable lawyers and prosecutors to try these cases for a lot less money.

They are bumbling their way through their insistence on closing the prison at GITMO as well. This proposal has been met with public outcries yet the administration insists on moving forward.

This past weekend, Americans heard the administration state that the GITMO released prisoner recidivism rate has increased to 20%. They feel this is an acceptable level.

One out of five that are released are returning to fight us, and they feel that number is acceptable!

Every indication from this administration is that they do not understand the reality of what the west faces with regards to radical Islam. This calls for heavy lifting, and the White House is clearly not up to the task.

This past week has also heard Obama state that he will get this agenda. He stated that he will impose large swaths of this agenda using executive orders and bypassing Congress. He also has stated that the EPA is poised to act in the interest of Cap & Trade if the Senate fails to pass it.

"In the aftermath of a special election in Massachusetts that cost Democrats unilateral control of the Senate, the White House is getting ready to act on its own in the face of partisan gridlock heading into the midterm campaign".- New York Times“We are reviewing a list of presidential executive orders and directives to get the job done across a front of issues,” said Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff.

The EPA has already begun its push when they declared regulatory domain over any waters in the US. This includes every river, stream, farmers pond, or state owned lake. Even the mud puddle in your driveway. All water in the US means just that.The results of this administration have been dismal thus far. Voters have watched as dangerous policies are imposed that they have repeatedly rejected.

This bumbling administration and Congress continue to push their failed policies, and now threaten to govern by fiat if the public continues to reject the direction they are taking us.

How Obama & Congress bungled so much, in such a short period of time, is cause for concern amongst the governed.