President Obama and the Democratic Party effectively turned every controversial issue they faced over the past three years into a potential crisis, and convinced the American people to support their solutions without question to avert presumed dire consequences.  Important works of legislation capable of changing the American way of life were passed on the basis of “we have to pass this now – or else!”  Mr. Obama is preparing to face the nation again with another speech that will proclaim urgency and use panic to get his legislative desires passed.  We need to recognize what has been going on and put a stop to it.

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, the stimulus bill, was quickly passed by the Democratic controlled House and Senate without real debate in order to keep the unemployment rate from rising above 8%.  With unemployment at 9.1%, and over 17% when considering all those who stopped looking for work or are working part-time, that crisis was not averted.  All the stimulus bill did was to spend $800 billion of tax payer money to pay government workers salaries for one year and for a few temporary road construction projects.  The law did not provide any incentive for self-sustaining employment and our economy is now facing another recession.

The Patient Protection and Affordability Act of 2010, Obamacare, was crammed through the Democratic controlled House and Senate against overwhelming protests by the American people. All this ideologically designed legislation accomplished, with over 2,700 pages and the creation of 159 new bureaucracies, was to create uncertainty for employers and push up the cost of health care insurance.

The recently passed Dodd Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010, the last piece of hastily formed legislation passed by the Democratic controlled House and Senate before the November  2010 election shifted power in the House to the Republicans, is an empty bill passed for political purposes leaving its substance to regulations yet to be written.  Our nation’s banking system is now paralyzed by the uncertainty of what will be in those regulations.

From Cash for Clunkers to cash for Solyndra, everything this administration does is preceded by “pass it now, there is no time for debate.”  Economic conditions are difficult for most Americans and with 14 million citizens unemployed and an estimated 25 million Americans in total who are unemployed or under-employed, families are hurting and it would be easy to proclaim a crisis and cause panic.

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Rarely do I subject myself to liberal editorials, but occasionally I glance at Alan Binder’s column since he is one of the few liberals to grace the venerable opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal.  The Princeton professor is the quintessential, arrogant, ruling class elite, with a venomous dislike of all things private and a blind love of all things public. Binder’s never met a redistribution program he did not endorse, nor a spending cut he did not mock.

Binder’s latest hit piece attacks the GOP for wanting to reduce government spending. In particular, he argues that the evil GOP perpetuates a false notion that government overspending is bad for jobs. First of all, Binder makes the laughably unprovable assumption that the Obama “stimulus” created “1.3 million net new jobs”.  Even if we take the professor at his word (I know that’s a stretch but bear with me), these 1.3 million fantasy jobs come at a cost of $600 billion (his figure). THAT’S $460K PER JOB. And what types of jobs did the “stimulus” net us? Brain Surgeons? Captains of industry? Think municipal workers or SEIU jobs where they get paid to protest against the GOP Governors we elect. Sounds like a good ROI to me, professor.

Binder makes no distinction between public and private sector jobs, as if the Federal Government could solve our economic ills merely by employing 20 million Americans to dig holes in their backyards and refill them. Does the professor really believe that government jobs are on par with value creating private sector jobs?  In fact, the entire notion of value creation seems missing from Binder’s repertoire. Value—or wealth—is created when production and trade take place voluntarily so both parties gain.

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If Obamacare is completely implemented, doctors will no longer be practicing medicine. They will instead become the drones tasked with deciding who gets the meager healthcare crumbs doled out by the bureaucrats who have the ultimate power over patient life and death. Those who are deemed to have illnesses that require treatments which are not cost effective can expect a one way ticket to a hospice.

Like so many bills passed by Congress, there was a hidden provision in the Stimulus bill passed in 2009. It spends 1.1 billion dollars to create an important piece of the framework for the healthcare bill called the Coordinating Council on Comparative Effectiveness Research. It is based on the false premise that doctors in consultation with their patients don’t have the ability to make the right healthcare choices (see executive summary). The council consists of 15 people appointed by the President.

They all have one thing in common–they are all isolated from day to day patient care; and therefore, are insulated from the real practice of the art of medicine. It makes it easy to see patients as a cost center to be controlled. With views of members like Dr Emanuel, who champions the complete-lives system, it is hard to ignore the probability that senior citizens, those with chronic illness, and the very young will be on the outside looking in. This council is another example of the people of this country being told by the government that it knows what is best for us.

The framework set up by the stimulus bill merely set the stage for the implementation found in the healthcare reform bill. How can the government get doctors to participate in Obamacare thereby a) willingly destroying the doctor patient relationship, and  b) betraying their Hippocratic Oath to provide treatments that they deem to be effective? Simple – fear and intimidation.

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With the midterm elections right around the corner, Rasmussen reports that most voters oppose the reelection of anyone who voted for the health care law, auto bailouts, and stimulus plan. For this reason, polls show the GOP with a lead of seven percentage points on the generic ballot, 50%-43%, up four points from a month ago.

Due to the impact of Obamacare on voters, we at Eyeblast.tv went out to get the thoughts and opinions of ordinary people in Alexandria, Virginia on Obamacare and the individual mandate. Here are their responses:

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Scott Rasmussen now predicts that the Republicans will pick up fifty-five seats in the House. Larry Sabato at the University of Virginia still has the pick-up at forty-seven but says that, if forced to tweak the numbers right now, he would increase his estimate of Republican gains by single digits – which is to say, he agrees with Rasmussen.

There are pollsters out there who are playing games, as a glance at the polls for the Senate race in West Virginia should make clear – and, of course, it is easy to play games. If one wants to encourage the Left and discourage potential Republican voters and donors, all that one has to do is to base one’s poll on the presumption that the percentage of self-described Democrats within the voting public in 2010 will be equal to the percentage in 2008.

Sabato and his associates and Rasmussen are not, however, among the gamesters. Both are aiming at accuracy. Sabato and company have a reputation to uphold (and, in the academic world, that is all-important), and Rasmussen is a nonpartisan pollster who attracts clients by way of demonstrated precision. Neither outfit can afford to make a fool of itself.

I nonetheless think that both are greatly underestimating the size of the Republican surge. Both have reason to be cautious. For understandable reasons, neither is going to climb out on a limb; and both are basing their estimates on recent electoral history. If something is in the offing that exceeds the range of political oscillation in recent decades (including, notably, 1994), if we in American live in something other than normal times, they will miss the size of the surge.

It is good to remember that not a single Sovietologist predicted the collapse and dismemberment of the Soviet regime. History has a way of lulling us into sleep. What has been in recent times we tend to think will be in the foreseeable future. Then, every once in a while, suddenly, out of nowhere, a political earthquake arrives – and only in the aftermath do the experts notice that there were ample warning signs.

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Things aren’t looking good for Nancy Pelosi.  For almost the last four years, she has been pounding the gavel, shoving her grand, big-government schemes through Congress.  Even in the midst of a worsening economy, she was able to cut enough backroom deals to garner the votes she and her political allies needed to capture their Holy Grail: American’s health care system.

Pundits and polls, however, are now predicting that Pelosi will lose hold of the speakership in November.  They may be correct.  Her years of political kneecapping and recriminations may have finally taken their toll.  Big government takeovers don’t do well in a deteriorating, capitalistic-based economy.  Still,  do not count her out yet.  Madam Speaker is not going anywhere without a fight.   Her hold on the gavel is firm.  Earlier this year, a Democratic insider was quoted in Politico saying, “[Pelosi] will put a bullet in the head of anyone she needs to.”  That insider went on to say that she would do whatever it took to hold on to her majority.  Now, there won’t be any firing of actual bullets, but she is no doubt digging deep into her arsenal.

What sets Pelosi apart from other national leaders, and specifically other Speakers in modern history, is her ability to strategize and execute like a political boss in the classical sense   Consider this: She has legislated a government takeover of at least one-sixth of the economy, challenged the Catholic Church on abortion, circumvented the White House to meet with a Mideast dictator, and claimed that her liberal agenda is part of a holy calling.  Those are some pretty heady accomplishments for the first female Speaker of the House.

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September 22, 2010 marks the end of summer and beginning of fall.  So it’s an appropriate time to review the results of Democrats’ “Recovery Summer” for American workers.

Recovery_Summer_Report_2010_

In announcing the start of the “Recovery Summer” on June 17, 2010, the White House described Recovery Summer as a “surge in Recovery Act infrastructure projects that will be underway across the country in the coming months – and the jobs they’ll create well into the fall and through the end of the year.” Vice President Biden pledged that “this bold investment in the future will stimulate short-term and long-term American jobs….The upcoming summer of projects is the next step on the road to recovery.”

But did “Recovery Summer” show that Democrats’ trillion-dollar stimulus plan is really working as the White House continues to insist?  Unfortunately for American workers, the answer remains a disappointing “no.”

The data in this report shows that as “Recovery Summer” ends today:

(1) The unemployment rate is far higher than Administration officials predicted it would be if their stimulus plan passed;

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Once again Democrats with the help of a few soft minded Republicans have passed a massive spending bill to help keep state and local governments from having to make the tough decisions it will take to balance their budgets.

According to the Associated Press:

The $26 billion measure would help states ease their severe budget problems and – advocates said – stop the layoffs of nearly 300,000 teachers, firefighters, police and other public employees.

Where have we seen this before? Oh yeah… the Stimulus Bill. Remember that massive spending program that was supposed to stimulate the economy and create jobs? But what it mostly did was plug holes in state and local government budgets.

For example, in California stimulus spending was reported to have saved around 100,000 jobs. But a closer analysis found that 90% of those were government jobs; this at a time when the Golden State has actually increased the number of government jobs.

The sad part is that because the funding was for only one year, many of those jobs are on the chopping block this year. Not so fast! Here come the liberals to the rescue.

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In politics, temperament matters – it matters a great deal, as Barack Obama has unwittingly shown us time and again.

Some women and men love to posture, talk, debate, and negotiate. Temperamentally, they are suited for a legislative role. It is said – only partly in jest– that, in Washington, DC, the most dangerous space to occupy is that which lies between a United States Senator and a microphone.

Other women and men – think of Winston Churchill, Margaret Thatcher, Indira Ghandi, Golda Meir, and Ronald Reagan – were born to take charge. When Harry Truman put a sign on his desk, reading, “The buck stops here,” he knew what he was talking about. As Alexander Hamilton observed in The Federalist, it is vital that we have in our Constitution a unitary executive because, in human affairs, emergencies are commonplace; secrecy, vigor, and dispatch are often requisite; and, in such circumstances, there has to be someone in high office able, willing, and even eager to take responsibility for the conduct of affairs.

Americans have an instinctive understanding of what is at stake. Ordinarily, they choose as Presidents men with executive experience – men with a track record in directing affairs that can be judged. George Washington, Andrew Jackson, William Henry Harrison, Zachary Taylor, Ulysses S. Grant, and Dwight D. Eisenhower had been prominent generals before they were elected Presidents, and Rutherford B. Hayes, James A. Garfield, Benjamin Harrison, and Theodore Roosevelt had also demonstrated an aptitude for leadership in war.

John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Martin Van Buren, the younger Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Lyndon Baines Johnson, Richard Nixon, and George H. W. Bush had held the vice-presidency. Jefferson and Van Buren had also been Secretary of State, and the same can be said for James Madison, James Monroe, John Quincy Adams, and James Buchanan. Monroe had also been Secretary of War, and this was true was well for William Howard Taft. Herbert Hoover had managed relief efforts in Europe early in and after World War I; he had served as Food Administrator within the United States after we entered that war; and, from 1921 to 1928, he served as Secretary of Commerce.

Many of the others elected to the presidency had previously held gubernatorial office.

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Some call it a homophobic slur; others, an obscure sexual fetish.  For the President of the United States, however, the term “tea bagger” is just another tool to marginalize opponents of his radical agenda.  As John Kartch of Americans for Tax Reform reported today, President Obama is quoted in a new book using this derogatory term to describe concerned citizens that make up the mainstream, nonpartisan tea party movement:

President Barack Obama, known for his lectures to others on civility, saw fit to use the obscene and derogatory term “tea-baggers” in a book interview with author Jonathan Alter.

Below is an excerpt from Alter’s new book The Promise: President Obama, Year One, to be released May 18:

“Obama said that the unanimous House vote against the Recovery Act ‘set the tenor for the whole year’: ‘That helped to create the tea-baggers and empowered that whole wing of the Republican Party to where it now controls the agenda for the Republicans.’  For Obama this was the greatest surprise of 2009.”

This has long been the modus operandi of the far left, from the likes of actress Janeane Garofalo to the commentators on MSNBC and CNN.  Yet for the President of the United States to invoke this term is simply stunning, particularly in light of the recently delivered commencement speech in which he heavily critiqued the tenor of political discourse in our age.

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The National Education Association, the nation’s largest teachers union, and its counterpart, the American Federation of Teachers, are ramping up attention on Senate Bill 3206, introduced by Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), which would create a $23 billion “education jobs fund” to hire or retain “150,000 or more” school employees for the next school year.  The NEA is engaged in a “massive, 24/7 lobbying campaign” to pass Harkin’s bill, according to its president Dennis Van Roekel.

That’s $153,333 spent per job just to “retain” them.  The most recent data from the American Federation of Teachers concluded the average teacher salary is $51,009.  Where is the other $100,000 per job going?

Nevertheless, in a recent Senate committee hearing, Harkin cited the “emergency” for creating the fund.  Note he didn’t say teachers, he said “education jobs.”  That’s because in many states, like Michigan, teachers unions are losing members that are custodians or food service workers.

Just for the record, billions of dollars have already been spent on “retaining” school jobs.  The NEA claims 325,000 public school jobs were “saved” under the stimulus bill.

The NEA released a YouTube video with a title which pretty much sums up the union’s entire existence: “The issue is JOBS.”

Of course: the issue is not accountability or test scores or huge amounts of fiscal waste.  It’s simply jobs and therefore union dues.

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From the Associated Press:

Rep. David Obey, a leading liberal Democrat and chairman of the powerful House Appropriations Committee, intends to retire at the end of his term this year, Democratic sources said Wednesday. It is another blow to Democrats defending their majority in an election season of voter discontent.

Obey, 71, won the first of 21 terms in 1969—when a special election was held after President Richard Nixon tapped Melvin Laird to be his defense secretary. He faced a potentially bruising re-election campaign this fall.

His office issued a statement saying he would make a major announcement in early afternoon, but disclosed no details. The Democratic sources spoke on condition of anonymity to speak frankly about Obey’s decision before the announcement.

Obey, among a handful of veteran House Democrats who had been bracing for competitive races this fall, has routinely won re-election easily despite representing a competitive district. He won in 2008 with 61 percent of the vote. But he has never faced the level of competition as he does this year as voters sour on Washington.

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It can be no secret by now that President Obama did not have a signature achievement his first year in office. Of all his major initiatives, health care, cap and trade, civilian trials for terrorists and the “stimulus” bill – only the so-called stimulus bill was enacted. Hardly a success, as more Americans than not know what Paul Krugman and E.J. Dionne do not – that it was a bad idea. Worse for the Democrats — none of those efforts have produced a greater consensus or momentum for them or Obama. To the contrary, the Democrats lost key races in 2009, a Democrat House Member defected to the Republicans, the nation is more divided than ever and the Democrat Party is in disarray — as in the Obama presidency.

Not to be out-done by 2009, in 2010, the Obama presidency has endured:

(1) the loss of the Kennedy seat (which is how the Democrats view that race) even though Obama stumped for the Democrats’ candidate;

(2) Obama’s deficit commission was shot down;

(3) The unions are warning the Democrats that they are “going to have a hard time getting members out to vote”;

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Last week, Congressman Thad McCotter introduced a Bill HR 4500, The Freedom From Rationed Health Care Act, that invalidates a little known, hidden part of the Stimulus Bill. That hidden part of The Stimulus Bill created the rationing and enforcement boards.  Significantly, this “minor” fiscal trim makes the first part of ObamaCare null and void.

On November 7th, 2009, Speaker Pelosi marched to the podium and paraded her lap dogs to the microphone to proclaim “Victory” for herself, her Democratic House colleagues, and President Obama.  What about every other American? The “Victory” was the passage of the second part of ObamaCare, “The Health Care Bill.”  That’s right, the second part of ObamaCare is the 1,990 page bill that created 118 new boards, commissions, offices and bureaus. The same bill that will be paid for with (1)  $740 billion in tax increases,  (2)  a cut in Medicare to Seniors by $500 Billion, and (3)  a cost shift of $34 Billion to States in unfunded mandates.

This “Victory” was Pelosi’s and President Obama’s second victory on the health care front.  The first occurred under the cloak of darkness and obfuscation, in February 2009.  Hidden in The Stimulus Bill and passed into law were the ominous Obama, Pelosi, Reid rationing and enforcement health boards.

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Wednesday will mark the first anniversary of the presidential inauguration of Barack Obama — who began his Presidency, as nearly all new first-term Presidents do, high in the polls. At that time, Obama’s approval ratings were, in fact, in the stratosphere. In the last twelve months, however, they have fallen further and faster than those of any President since polling began; and, and, as developments in Massachusetts suggest, his party is now in danger of suffering in November an historic defeat — which is likely to rival its fate in 1938, 1966, and 1994 if the Democrats do not, as I believe they may, do even worse. In a poll released on Thursday, the National Journal reports that half of the adults sampled responded that, if new Presidential elections were held right now, they would vote against Barack Obama, and less than a quarter of those questioned indicated that they would vote to re-elect the President. It is an appropriate time in which to pose this question: Why have Obama and his supporters fallen so far and so fast?

We must, I think, begin before the beginning. The Obama campaign was predicated on a fraud. With a skill that was breathtaking, Barack Obama managed during that campaign to signal to the left within the Democratic Party with a wink and a nod that he was their man and that he meant business — that he really intended to “transform” America. To those in the middle and on the right who are ashamed of the nation’s historic sins in matters of race, he offered absolution, and he promised that the penance that they would have to perform after leaving the confessional would not be harsh. He was not, he said, a tax-and-spend liberal.

I was not taken in. Late in 2008, after reviewing the page proofs of Soft Despotism, Democracy’s Drift, I persuaded my editor to allow me to add the following to the book:

Once again, as in the 1920s, rational administration has failed us. As on that other occasion, the Federal Reserve Board and the Department of the Treasury pursued over an extended period under more than one administration an easy-money policy bound in the end to give rise to “irrational exuberance” in the markets and to a bubble followed by a catastrophic decline in prices and a collapse of the credit markets. And, to make matters worse, we responded to this set of circumstances precisely as we did on that earlier occasion — by electing a president and choosing a Congress intent on dramatically increasing the scale and scope of the administrative state.

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As if bailing out banks and the auto industry wasn’t enough, now Washington, D.C. wants more control over schools.

In order for a state to apply for its share of President Obama’s Race to the Top stimulus funds, it will have to explain how it will use those federal dollars on a list of suggested education reforms.  This week, Texas Gov. Rick Perry said “thanks but no thanks.”

This was the proper decision for Texas, and here’s why:

• Education has historically been a state issue, with power in Texas delegated to the Texas Legislature and the State Board of Education. Texas lawmakers control funding and school requirements, and the State Board makes decisions about curriculum.  All of these are elected positions directly accountable to the voters at least once every four years.

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The American Reinvestment and Recovery Act (the Stimulus Bill) has been such an epic failure, that even the mainstream media has started to notice. The White House has tacitly acknowledged this and recently announced that it would no longer ‘count’ jobs ‘created or saved’ by the Stimulus. The basic problem is that the bulk of the spending went to programs or projects that have nothing to do with economic growth.

The latest example of this is a $500,000 grant to Michael Mann, Professor at Penn State University and unintended c0-star of the ClimateGate e-mail scandal. The leaked e-mails revealed collaboration among scientists to stifle dissenting views on the extent of man-made global warming.

Mann is also the creator of the “Hockey Stick” graph, which purported to show a sharp increase in recent temperatures. That work has been thoroughly discredited by researcher Stephen McIntyre. Yet, in June 2009, the National Science Foundation awarded Mann a three-year $500,000 to further study the climate’s response to human activity. According to the grant award:

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One cannot drink oneself into sobriety. Yet that is precisely what Congressional Democrats and the Obama Administration have attempted with our economy for the past year with predictable and painful results.

Unemployment continues to stand at an official 10% for the third month in a row, the worst joblessness in 27 years.  The real unemployment rate is far worse.  Included in the December economic figures was a shocker – the percentage of adult men who are working has fallen to the lowest level in recorded U.S. history at just 80%.  That means that one in five men in this country between 18 and 54 are neither working nor claiming unemployment.  They have fallen completely out of the workforce.

That helps explain why December’s unemployment rate remained at November’s 10% rate in spite of an additional 85,000 Americans losing their jobs.  At the same time the new jobless claims were added, many of the previously unemployed were simply removed from the workforce numbers altogether.

Economists estimate our true jobless rate as high as 17%, and that could grow in coming months as more Americans exhaust their unemployment benefits and lose homes to foreclosure.

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Recently, retired military have received e-mail messages notifying them of a withholding tax increase. The email states:

NO ANNUAL COST OF LIVING ADJUSTMENT (COLA) WILL BE ADDED TO MILITARY RETIRED PAY IN 2010.

DUE TO RECENT LEGISLATION YOUR FEDERAL WITHHOLDING TAX HAS CHANGED.

After much investigating and several discussions with the IRS, it appears the Democrats have played a “cash-flow trick” on working Americans and are taking more out of American’s paychecks across the board–all the while touting the Making Work Pay tax credit.

The trick, when looking at the new withholding tax tables for 2010 as compared to post-stimulus 2009, buries an increase in federal withholding taxes–for all income categories–basically giving the government an interest-free loan until current year taxes are filed next year. Some would blame the increase in withholding on the Making Work Pay tax credit being spread out over 12 months as compared to 2009, which was only over 9 months, but this would be impossible as some middle class wage categories carry an increase in the withholding tax of over $200 per pay period.

Unlike the middle class wage earners, who are going to see huge amounts taken out of their paychecks, unless they increase their exemptions on their W4 form, it’s an increase that most wouldn’t even notice–$10 or $20 in some cases. Here are some of the “highlights” of the new 2010 withholding tables:

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