Print
E-mail
The Obama Presidency Continues To Melt Down
The Advocate
By Herb Denenberg, The Bulletin
In a previous column, I said the Obama stimulus package is the greatest consumer rip-off and fraud in history. (See “Obama Attempts to Pull Off Greatest Rip-offs, Con Jobs in History” (Feb. 2) and also on The Bulletin’s Web site at www.thebulletin.us.)
The President has saved Bernard Madoff, king of Ponzi schemes, from having that honor. He got away with a paltry $50 billion, nothing like the trillions we’re about to see go for pork.
I should also add that the stimulus package is just the beginning of the meltdown of the Obama presidency. In fact, Martin Wolf, a columnist for the respected Financial Times (of London)(Feb. 11), is already asking, “Has Barack Obama’s presidency already failed? In normal times, this would be a ludicrous question. But these are times of great danger.” Mr. Wolf concludes that the new rescue package for the banks will fail and we know that could prove to be a disastrous mistake.
I said the attempt to get the Obama stimulus package passed without proper hearings and consideration was a sure-red flag suggesting a rip-off in the form of the stimulus package by a con man, now in the White House. The world would not come to an end if we took a few weeks to get it right. They should at least allow enough time for reading the bill before passing it. Mara Eliason, of NPR, one of the most liberal news outlets, admitted most Congressmen haven’t even read the bill. Is that too much to expect from members of Congress? How can we have any respect for Congress or the stimulus bill when it is passed without knowing what is in it?
After my column appeared, I was glad to hear former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, admit when he wanted to get a bill or other measure passed without going through the usual process, he would claim it was a matter of urgency. This is an old and standard trick of all con men in consumer transactions — you’ve got to sign up now, or you’ll lose this opportunity. It seems to be a standard tactic of presidents who want to get through a bill without a real examination of it.
The president in urging the immediate passage of the stimulus without adequate consideration is proving to be a serial liar: He says it isn’t pork or earmarks, when in fact it is almost pure pig and earmarks. Isn’t it surprising that some of the fattest pork is going to Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s Congressional district? President Obama says it’s urgent, when in fact it isn’t. He says he wants to operate on a non-partisan basis, when in practice he lets the Congressional Democrats freeze the Republicans out, and literally kick their legislative teeth out of their heads. He claims non-partisanship, but views the Republican arguments as phony, obstructionist, outdated and all the rest. As Michael Goodwin, a columnist for the New York Daily News (Feb. 11) writes: we need someone with courage in the Senate “to call Obama on his promise to change the tone in Washington. Only three weeks into his presidency, the new president has repeatedly expressed scorn and ridicule for any who disagree with him. It is as unappealing as the initial promise for bipartisanship was appealing.”
President Obama says he wants to change the climate in Washington, but appoints the two most partisan members of Congress to draft and guide the bill to passage — Rep. Nancy “San Francisco Values” Pelosi and Sen. Harry “Wave the White Flag” Reid. This shows he is willing to get the bill passed in a purely partisan manner, suggesting he is as phony as I said he was.
And it also shows his lack of competence, by not drafting the most important legislation of his term in the White House rather than delegating it to the rabid partisans in the legislature. Presidents draft important bills in the White House, and don’t delegate that responsibility to partisan Congressional leaders like Mrs. Pelosi and Mr. Reid.
Mr. Obama keeps up the non-partisan jabber, and watches without complaint as the Democrats are frozen out of the whole legislative process, and can’t offer amendments, alternative bills, or conference. Perhaps there’s a reason he got only three votes in Congress from committee changes.
Out of the 535 member body, Mr. Obama got only three Republican votes, and the three votes he got are from RINOs (Republicans In Name Only), not Republicans.
You’ve heard all the Obama jazz about the need to move toward energy independence — one of the urgent, emergency purposes behind the stimulus package. But what happened to the expansion of offshore drilling for oil and gas, one of the few measures guaranteed to produce results in the short-run. That was in the works before the Obama administration, but now Mr. Obama’s Interior Secretary, Ken Salazar, delayed the offshore drilling plan by at least six months. The Department of the Interior will hold public meetings before taking action and will be open to pubic comment anytime before Sept. 23.
So what’s urgent, requiring immediate blind approval depends on what the Obama Administration favors. In fact the words used by Secretary Salazar to describe the haste of the offshore drilling decision could better be used to describe the haste of the stimulus package. Secretary Salazar said the plan for offshore drilling “was a headlong rush of the worst kind” and that “It was rigged to force hurried decisions based on bad information.”
I saw proof that the people supporting the bill don’t even know what is in. There was an exchange between Sen. Arlen Specter, RINO-Pa., and Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont. The exchange focused on a provision creating a National Coordinator of Health Information Technology, whose job would include seeing that the medical treatment everyone is undergoing is “appropriate.” Sen. Spector said he would see to it that the provision was properly corrected. Sen. Testor doubted that there was any such provision. But the exchange told a story of the nature of the deliberations on the stimulus package.
One of the senators didn’t know what he was talking about and obviously didn’t know what was in the bill. In the case, it was Sen. Testor. Giving both senators the benefit of the doubt, this provision shows the need for more legislative time to iron out possible ambiguities and misinterpretations. But it also shows you that the politicians are willing to go out and support a bill, put their credibility behind it, and not even know what is in it.
As indicated most of these great statesmen haven’t even read the bill. This is the inevitable consequence of a con man pushing a bill through so fast it doesn’t get the study and consideration needed.
Sen. Specter was asked if he would vote for the bill if this provision creating a medical czar weren’t taken out. He said it would be taken care of.
However, surprisingly, he said he had already given his word to support the bill and would not go back on that. So by implication, he didn’t know what was in the bill in the first place, and he will vote for the bill even if this outrageous provision, which he finds objectionable, isn’t taken out of the bill.
The Democrats, president and the three traitorous RINO Republicans are not just selling this National Coordinator of Health Care Technology, which they don’t even fully understand, but they’re selling over a trillion dollars worth of such big brotherism, socialism, pork, earmarks, big government, big national debt, and big deficit garbage.
Every day more outrageous pork is discovered; if the public understood how much outrageous pork was in the bill, it would be forcefully rejected. The rush is on, because as any con man knows, you don’t want to give a sucker time to study a deal.
Here’s more proof of the fabrication and phoniness that the president is using to sell the stimulus package. He keeps driving the economy into the ground by endless rants about the catastrophe before us if we don’t pass his boondoggle stimulus bill almost immediately. But a big part of the problem is said to involve the banks and the freeze-up of credit. So of course that should be taken care of immediately. So how does he take care of it with urgency?
He is sitting on $350 billion to use from the first bailout package passed during the closing days of the Bush administration. What he does is appoint his Secretary of the Treasury, Tim Geithner, to draft a plan for immediate action.
How does this certified tax cheat respond to the urgent problem? On Feb. 10, he calls a press conference, previously heralded by an announcement coming from the president at a town hall meeting. It turns out he doesn’t have a plan yet. He just has a bag of generalities about the plan being worked on.
He seems to think that like his boss he can get by on hot air and generalities. The credit squeeze, said to be at the very heart of the financial squeeze, apparently needs no urgent action.
The failure to provide details and provide only hot air. Ed Yardeni, a respected investment strategist, described Mr. Geithner’s pronouncement as an empty plan from an empty suit. The Geithner generalities are credited with driving the Dow Jones stock market averages down 382 points. Wow, wait till he gets specific. The market wants details, not oratory; the market wants specifics, not hot air. Someone should tell Mr. Obama it’s time to govern and that the campaign is over. As the president proclaims America is burning, he keeps playing his campaign fiddle, paying more attention to the 24-hour news cycle than the demands of governing.
In Congressional testimony on Wednesday, the Secretary of the Treasury still had no more details on the structure or amount of the new bailout. He said he would have more information as soon as possible.
While we’re at it, lets clear up a few other matters. Apparently, President Obama wasn’t satisfied with a parade of tax cheats appointed to the Cabinet and White House staff. He apparently wasn’t satisfied with appointing an attorney general who pardoned terrorists who didn’t even ask for a pardon and who pardoned a fugitive from justice. So who does he appoint to be the Deputy Attorney General? He appoints David Ogden, a lawyer who has spent his entire career defending Playboy and Penthouse, fighting child pornography laws and working for unlimited access to abortion.
Even pornographers are entitled to legal counsel, but do we really need a deputy attorney general who has spent his entire legal career defending child pornographers, abortionists and sex magazines? It gets better. He claims that some of his positions were based on “immaturity.” As one critic put it, the performance of Mr. Ogden in justifying his legal history is a “textbook example of an ambitious nominee saying whatever he needs to say to get the votes for confirmation.”
Now Mr. Ogden says, “Child pornography is abhorrent. Issues of children and family have always been of great importance to me.” If that’s the case, why did he spend his working career defending child pornographers?
Mr. Ogden before the Senate, reversed himself on his life work and on all the positions he has taken throughout his life. If the Senators fall for that, they are less principled than even I thought possible.
I read about 10 papers a day. I found only one carried the Ogden story. As you probably guessed, it was The Philadelphia Bulletin. The mainstream media continues its slobbering love affair with Barack Obama and his new administration.
One other matter while speaking of principle: let’s go back to Sen. Specter supporting the stimulus package. If that’s not bad enough, he has a voting record in support of the union-favored card-check legislation. This would effectively abolish the secret ballot in union elections, and make union representation possible just by getting a majority of the union to sign a card — and that could take place in a parking lot with six union thugs helping to inform the employee about the need to sign the card.
This bill is the opposite of what America stands for. And any Senator and any party that supports this fascist-flavored legislation to abolish the secret ballot deserves to be voted out of power. Sen. Specter now says he’s undecided. In my view, that’s about as bad as being for the bill. If you can’t decide on the merits of whether to abolish the secret ballot, you ought to look for a job other than that of a senator.
If that’s not bad enough, the card-check bill gets even worse. If after the card-check system makes a union the bargaining representative, and if the union and company can’t come to an agreement for a union contract, then federal arbitrators come in to settle the terms of the union contract. So federal arbitrators will be dictating wages, work rules and all the other terms of the union contract.
When you look at Mr. Specter on card-check and the stimulus package, you can understand why he has a higher approval record among Democrats than among Republicans. Maybe he should finally declare his candidacy and complete the cycle — moving from a Republican to a RINO to a Democrat.
In my view, the Democratic Party, which almost unanimously supports this card-check bill in Congress, has sold its sole to the unions. And any Congressman who supports this anti-American, anti-secret-ballot law, has sold his soul to the devil. This shows how far the Democrats have moved to the left, and how they are no longer the old Democratic Party, but an extreme radical leftist party that is on track to bring disaster to the American scene.
If you think the economy is in trouble, wait for this card-check bill to pass and we’ll have unions in every company and wages and working rules dictated by federal arbitrators. That’s where the Democratic Party and its president are taking us.
This demonstrates again that when you elect an untested, untried, unvetted political novice from the Chicago school of politics who is a radical leftist, you should not be surprised when he acts like what he is.
Herb Denenberg is a former Pennsylvania Insurance Commissioner, Pennsylvania Public Utility Commissioner, and professor at the Wharton School. He is a longtime Philadelphia journalist and consumer advocate. He is also a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of the Sciences. His column appears daily in The Bulletin. You can reach him at advocate@thebulletin.us.
The President has saved Bernard Madoff, king of Ponzi schemes, from having that honor. He got away with a paltry $50 billion, nothing like the trillions we’re about to see go for pork.
I should also add that the stimulus package is just the beginning of the meltdown of the Obama presidency. In fact, Martin Wolf, a columnist for the respected Financial Times (of London)(Feb. 11), is already asking, “Has Barack Obama’s presidency already failed? In normal times, this would be a ludicrous question. But these are times of great danger.” Mr. Wolf concludes that the new rescue package for the banks will fail and we know that could prove to be a disastrous mistake.
I said the attempt to get the Obama stimulus package passed without proper hearings and consideration was a sure-red flag suggesting a rip-off in the form of the stimulus package by a con man, now in the White House. The world would not come to an end if we took a few weeks to get it right. They should at least allow enough time for reading the bill before passing it. Mara Eliason, of NPR, one of the most liberal news outlets, admitted most Congressmen haven’t even read the bill. Is that too much to expect from members of Congress? How can we have any respect for Congress or the stimulus bill when it is passed without knowing what is in it?
After my column appeared, I was glad to hear former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, admit when he wanted to get a bill or other measure passed without going through the usual process, he would claim it was a matter of urgency. This is an old and standard trick of all con men in consumer transactions — you’ve got to sign up now, or you’ll lose this opportunity. It seems to be a standard tactic of presidents who want to get through a bill without a real examination of it.
The president in urging the immediate passage of the stimulus without adequate consideration is proving to be a serial liar: He says it isn’t pork or earmarks, when in fact it is almost pure pig and earmarks. Isn’t it surprising that some of the fattest pork is going to Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s Congressional district? President Obama says it’s urgent, when in fact it isn’t. He says he wants to operate on a non-partisan basis, when in practice he lets the Congressional Democrats freeze the Republicans out, and literally kick their legislative teeth out of their heads. He claims non-partisanship, but views the Republican arguments as phony, obstructionist, outdated and all the rest. As Michael Goodwin, a columnist for the New York Daily News (Feb. 11) writes: we need someone with courage in the Senate “to call Obama on his promise to change the tone in Washington. Only three weeks into his presidency, the new president has repeatedly expressed scorn and ridicule for any who disagree with him. It is as unappealing as the initial promise for bipartisanship was appealing.”
President Obama says he wants to change the climate in Washington, but appoints the two most partisan members of Congress to draft and guide the bill to passage — Rep. Nancy “San Francisco Values” Pelosi and Sen. Harry “Wave the White Flag” Reid. This shows he is willing to get the bill passed in a purely partisan manner, suggesting he is as phony as I said he was.
And it also shows his lack of competence, by not drafting the most important legislation of his term in the White House rather than delegating it to the rabid partisans in the legislature. Presidents draft important bills in the White House, and don’t delegate that responsibility to partisan Congressional leaders like Mrs. Pelosi and Mr. Reid.
Mr. Obama keeps up the non-partisan jabber, and watches without complaint as the Democrats are frozen out of the whole legislative process, and can’t offer amendments, alternative bills, or conference. Perhaps there’s a reason he got only three votes in Congress from committee changes.
Out of the 535 member body, Mr. Obama got only three Republican votes, and the three votes he got are from RINOs (Republicans In Name Only), not Republicans.
You’ve heard all the Obama jazz about the need to move toward energy independence — one of the urgent, emergency purposes behind the stimulus package. But what happened to the expansion of offshore drilling for oil and gas, one of the few measures guaranteed to produce results in the short-run. That was in the works before the Obama administration, but now Mr. Obama’s Interior Secretary, Ken Salazar, delayed the offshore drilling plan by at least six months. The Department of the Interior will hold public meetings before taking action and will be open to pubic comment anytime before Sept. 23.
So what’s urgent, requiring immediate blind approval depends on what the Obama Administration favors. In fact the words used by Secretary Salazar to describe the haste of the offshore drilling decision could better be used to describe the haste of the stimulus package. Secretary Salazar said the plan for offshore drilling “was a headlong rush of the worst kind” and that “It was rigged to force hurried decisions based on bad information.”
I saw proof that the people supporting the bill don’t even know what is in. There was an exchange between Sen. Arlen Specter, RINO-Pa., and Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont. The exchange focused on a provision creating a National Coordinator of Health Information Technology, whose job would include seeing that the medical treatment everyone is undergoing is “appropriate.” Sen. Spector said he would see to it that the provision was properly corrected. Sen. Testor doubted that there was any such provision. But the exchange told a story of the nature of the deliberations on the stimulus package.
One of the senators didn’t know what he was talking about and obviously didn’t know what was in the bill. In the case, it was Sen. Testor. Giving both senators the benefit of the doubt, this provision shows the need for more legislative time to iron out possible ambiguities and misinterpretations. But it also shows you that the politicians are willing to go out and support a bill, put their credibility behind it, and not even know what is in it.
As indicated most of these great statesmen haven’t even read the bill. This is the inevitable consequence of a con man pushing a bill through so fast it doesn’t get the study and consideration needed.
Sen. Specter was asked if he would vote for the bill if this provision creating a medical czar weren’t taken out. He said it would be taken care of.
However, surprisingly, he said he had already given his word to support the bill and would not go back on that. So by implication, he didn’t know what was in the bill in the first place, and he will vote for the bill even if this outrageous provision, which he finds objectionable, isn’t taken out of the bill.
The Democrats, president and the three traitorous RINO Republicans are not just selling this National Coordinator of Health Care Technology, which they don’t even fully understand, but they’re selling over a trillion dollars worth of such big brotherism, socialism, pork, earmarks, big government, big national debt, and big deficit garbage.
Every day more outrageous pork is discovered; if the public understood how much outrageous pork was in the bill, it would be forcefully rejected. The rush is on, because as any con man knows, you don’t want to give a sucker time to study a deal.
Here’s more proof of the fabrication and phoniness that the president is using to sell the stimulus package. He keeps driving the economy into the ground by endless rants about the catastrophe before us if we don’t pass his boondoggle stimulus bill almost immediately. But a big part of the problem is said to involve the banks and the freeze-up of credit. So of course that should be taken care of immediately. So how does he take care of it with urgency?
He is sitting on $350 billion to use from the first bailout package passed during the closing days of the Bush administration. What he does is appoint his Secretary of the Treasury, Tim Geithner, to draft a plan for immediate action.
How does this certified tax cheat respond to the urgent problem? On Feb. 10, he calls a press conference, previously heralded by an announcement coming from the president at a town hall meeting. It turns out he doesn’t have a plan yet. He just has a bag of generalities about the plan being worked on.
He seems to think that like his boss he can get by on hot air and generalities. The credit squeeze, said to be at the very heart of the financial squeeze, apparently needs no urgent action.
The failure to provide details and provide only hot air. Ed Yardeni, a respected investment strategist, described Mr. Geithner’s pronouncement as an empty plan from an empty suit. The Geithner generalities are credited with driving the Dow Jones stock market averages down 382 points. Wow, wait till he gets specific. The market wants details, not oratory; the market wants specifics, not hot air. Someone should tell Mr. Obama it’s time to govern and that the campaign is over. As the president proclaims America is burning, he keeps playing his campaign fiddle, paying more attention to the 24-hour news cycle than the demands of governing.
In Congressional testimony on Wednesday, the Secretary of the Treasury still had no more details on the structure or amount of the new bailout. He said he would have more information as soon as possible.
While we’re at it, lets clear up a few other matters. Apparently, President Obama wasn’t satisfied with a parade of tax cheats appointed to the Cabinet and White House staff. He apparently wasn’t satisfied with appointing an attorney general who pardoned terrorists who didn’t even ask for a pardon and who pardoned a fugitive from justice. So who does he appoint to be the Deputy Attorney General? He appoints David Ogden, a lawyer who has spent his entire career defending Playboy and Penthouse, fighting child pornography laws and working for unlimited access to abortion.
Even pornographers are entitled to legal counsel, but do we really need a deputy attorney general who has spent his entire legal career defending child pornographers, abortionists and sex magazines? It gets better. He claims that some of his positions were based on “immaturity.” As one critic put it, the performance of Mr. Ogden in justifying his legal history is a “textbook example of an ambitious nominee saying whatever he needs to say to get the votes for confirmation.”
Now Mr. Ogden says, “Child pornography is abhorrent. Issues of children and family have always been of great importance to me.” If that’s the case, why did he spend his working career defending child pornographers?
Mr. Ogden before the Senate, reversed himself on his life work and on all the positions he has taken throughout his life. If the Senators fall for that, they are less principled than even I thought possible.
I read about 10 papers a day. I found only one carried the Ogden story. As you probably guessed, it was The Philadelphia Bulletin. The mainstream media continues its slobbering love affair with Barack Obama and his new administration.
One other matter while speaking of principle: let’s go back to Sen. Specter supporting the stimulus package. If that’s not bad enough, he has a voting record in support of the union-favored card-check legislation. This would effectively abolish the secret ballot in union elections, and make union representation possible just by getting a majority of the union to sign a card — and that could take place in a parking lot with six union thugs helping to inform the employee about the need to sign the card.
This bill is the opposite of what America stands for. And any Senator and any party that supports this fascist-flavored legislation to abolish the secret ballot deserves to be voted out of power. Sen. Specter now says he’s undecided. In my view, that’s about as bad as being for the bill. If you can’t decide on the merits of whether to abolish the secret ballot, you ought to look for a job other than that of a senator.
If that’s not bad enough, the card-check bill gets even worse. If after the card-check system makes a union the bargaining representative, and if the union and company can’t come to an agreement for a union contract, then federal arbitrators come in to settle the terms of the union contract. So federal arbitrators will be dictating wages, work rules and all the other terms of the union contract.
When you look at Mr. Specter on card-check and the stimulus package, you can understand why he has a higher approval record among Democrats than among Republicans. Maybe he should finally declare his candidacy and complete the cycle — moving from a Republican to a RINO to a Democrat.
In my view, the Democratic Party, which almost unanimously supports this card-check bill in Congress, has sold its sole to the unions. And any Congressman who supports this anti-American, anti-secret-ballot law, has sold his soul to the devil. This shows how far the Democrats have moved to the left, and how they are no longer the old Democratic Party, but an extreme radical leftist party that is on track to bring disaster to the American scene.
If you think the economy is in trouble, wait for this card-check bill to pass and we’ll have unions in every company and wages and working rules dictated by federal arbitrators. That’s where the Democratic Party and its president are taking us.
This demonstrates again that when you elect an untested, untried, unvetted political novice from the Chicago school of politics who is a radical leftist, you should not be surprised when he acts like what he is.
Herb Denenberg is a former Pennsylvania Insurance Commissioner, Pennsylvania Public Utility Commissioner, and professor at the Wharton School. He is a longtime Philadelphia journalist and consumer advocate. He is also a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of the Sciences. His column appears daily in The Bulletin. You can reach him at advocate@thebulletin.us.
 |
||
| 'Car Book' Offers Advice On Saving Your Life, Money When Buying A New Car |
Reader Comments
The following are comments from the readers. In no way do they represent the view of thebulletin.us.
You must register with a valid email to post comments. Only your Member ID will be posted with the comments.
Registered users sign in here: |
Become a Registered User |
Donna T wrote on Feb 13, 2009 12:14 PM:
A lot of legislation is like garbage and it's garbage the first day in the can, but if it sits there long enough, it really starts smelling.
Congress knows that the so-called stimulus bill is garbage, but hope it gets voted on before it sits there long enough to start smelling." "