Obama’s Legacy is Dismal but Forgettable

Obama's Legacy is Dismal but Forgettable

President Obama gave his farewell speech last night, orating for more than 50 minutes.

As noted by the Washington Examiner, his remarks were “longer than the good-bye speeches of Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush combined.”

But this wasn’t because he had a lengthy list of accomplishments.

Unless, of course, you count the bad things that happened. And there are three things on my list, if you want to know Obama’s legacy for domestic policy.

• A wasteful and failed stimulus.
• The Obamacare catastrophe.
• More regulation and red tape.

And those three things, combined with his other policies, produced dismal results.

• A very weak recovery.
• Falling labor force participation.
• Stagnant household income.

In other words, Obama’s legacy will be failed statism.

Writing for the Orange County Register, Joel Kotkin is not impressed by Obama’s overall record.

Like a child star who reached his peak at age 15, Barack Obama could never fulfill the inflated expectations that accompanied his election. …The greatest accomplishment of the Obama presidency turned out to be his election as the first African American president. This should always be seen as a great step forward. Yet, the Obama presidency failed to accomplish the great things promised by his election: racial healing, a stronger economy, greater global influence and, perhaps most critically, the fundamental progressive “transformation” of American politics. …Eight years after his election, more Americans now consider race relations to be getting worse, and we are more ethnically divided than in any time in recent history. …if there was indeed a recovery, it was a modest one, marked by falling productivity and low levels of labor participation. We continue to see the decline of the middle class."

And Seth Lipsky writes in the New York Post that Obama’s economic legacy leaves a lot to be desired.

Obama’s is the only modern presidency that failed to show a single year of growth above 3 percent… Plus, the Obama economy failed to prosper even though the Federal Reserve had its pedal to the metal. Its quantitative easing, $2 trillion balance-sheet expansion and zero-interest-rate policy all produced zilch. …The recent declines in the unemployment rate are due less to the uptick in employed persons than to an increasing number of persons leaving the labor force

All these accusations are very relevant, and I would add another charge to the indictment.

Median household income has been stagnant during the Obama years. And the data for Obamanomics is especially grim when you compare recent years to what happened under Reagan.

Beyond Econ

By the way, the bad news isn’t limited to economic policy.

Here’s what Tim Carney of the Washington Examiner wrote about Obama’s cavalier treatment of the Bill of Rights.

The Bill of Rights is a barricade protecting Americans from their government. Part of President Obama’s legacy will be that he inflicted damage on that barricade, eroding freedom of speech, free exercise of religion, the right to bear arms and the right to due process. Through his political arguments, executive actions and political leadership, Obama has taken some of the holes punched by previous presidents and made them broader or more permanent. This means that after Obama leaves office, people will be more easily silenced, killed or disarmed by their own government."

Tim extensively documents all these transgressions in his article. The entire thing is worth reading.

To be sure, there are people who defend Obama’s legacy.

From the left, Dylan Matthews wants readers of Vox to believe that Obama has been a memorable President. And he means that in a positive sense.

Barack Obama is one of the most consequential presidents in American history — and that he will be a particularly towering figure in the history of American progressivism. He got surprisingly tough reforms to Wall Street passed as well, not to mention a stimulus package that both blunted the recession and transformed education and energy policy."

A “towering figure”? That might be an accurate description of Woodrow Wilson, the despicable person who gave us both the income tax and the federal reserve.

Or Franklin Roosevelt, who doubled the size of the federal government and wanted radical collectivism. Or Lyndon Johnson, the big spender who gave us Medicare and Medicaid.

All of those presidents changed America in very substantial (and very bad) ways.

Obama, by contrast, wanted to “fundamentally transform” America but instead turned out to be an incremental statist. Sort of like Bush.

And I can’t help but laugh at the assertion that Obama got “tough reforms to Wall Street” Dodd-Frank was supported by Goldman-Sachs and the other big players!

Let’s get back to the Matthews’ article. His strongest praise is reserved for Obamacare.

He signed into law a comprehensive national health insurance bill, a goal that had eluded progressive presidents for a century. …it established, for the first time in history, that it was the responsibility of the United States government to provide health insurance to nearly all Americans, and it expanded Medicaid and offered hundreds of billions of dollars in insurance subsidies to fulfill that responsibility."

I’ll agree that this is Obama’s biggest left-wing accomplishment. I’ve even noted that it may be a long-term victory for the left even though Republicans now control the House and Senate in large part because of that law (and it may not even be that if GOPers get their act together and actually repeal the law).

But I hardly think it was a game-changing reform, even if it isn’t repealed. Government was already deeply enmeshed in the healthcare sector before Obama took office. Obamacare simply moved the needle a bit further in the wrong direction.

Again, that was a victory for the left, just as Bush’s Medicare expansion was a victory for the left. But it didn’t “fundamentally transform” anything.

And here’s his conclusion.

You can generally divide American presidents into two camps: the mildly good or bad but ultimately forgettable (Clinton, Carter, Taft, Harrison), and the hugely consequential for good or ill (FDR, Lincoln, Nixon, Andrew Johnson). Whether you love or hate his record, there’s no question Obama’s domestic and foreign achievements place him firmly in the latter camp."

I strongly suspect that Obama will wind up in the former camp. He was bad, but largely forgettable. At least if the metric is policy.

Let’s close with a couple of observation on the political side.

I’m amused, for instance, that Obama’s bitter that he couldn’t rally the nation behind has anti-gun ideology.

President Obama said his biggest policy disappointment as president was not passing gun control laws, according to an interview CNN aired… Obama was unable to convince Congress to pass legislation that would change those policies, including enhancing background checks and not selling firearms at gun shows and other venues."

And I’m also amused that he believes the American people would have reelected him if he was on the ballot.

Arguing that Americans still subscribe to his vision of progressive change, President Barack Obama asserted in an interview recently he could have succeeded in this year’s election if he was eligible to run."

To be sure, he may be right. He definitely has better political skills than Hillary Clinton, and I’ll be the first to acknowledge that he was better at campaigning rather than governing.

But his victories in 2008 and 2012 were against very weak Republican candidates. And it’s interesting that a hypothetical poll showed him and Trump in a statistical dead heat. Given Trump’s low approval rating, that doesn’t exactly translate into a vote of confidence for Obama.

More important, I shared some hypothetical polling data back in 2013 which showed that Reagan would have defeated Obama in a landslide.

Once again, that’s hardly a sign of Obama being a memorable or transformative President.

And I imagine Reagan would have an even bigger lead if there was a new version of the poll.

For what it’s worth, I think the most insightful analysis of Obama’s legacy comes from Philip Klein. He notes that Obama wanted Americans to believe in big government. But he failed. Miserably.

President Obama entered office in 2009 with the twin goals of expanding the role that government plays in the lives of individuals and businesses and proving to Americans that the government could be trusted to achieve big things. He was only half successful. …the gulf between his promises and the reality of what was implemented dramatically hardened public skepticism about government.

…As the Obama epoch wanes, trust in government has reached historic lows. A Pew poll last fall found that just 19 percent of Americans said they could trust the government to do the right thing most of the time — a lower percentage than during Watergate, Vietnam or the Iraq War. …Obama saw himself as the liberal answer to Reagan who could succeed where Clinton failed, putting an optimistic face on government expansion, passing historic legislation and getting Americans believing in government again. …Obama’s failure to repair the image of the federal government as a bungling institution — think of the DMV, just on a much bigger scale — will create enormous challenges for any Democratic successors trying to sell the public on the next wave of ambitious government programs."

This is spot on. I joked several years ago that the Libertarian Party should have named Obama “Man of the Year.”

But given how his bad policies have made people even more hostile to big government, he might deserve “Man of the Century.”

Reprinted from International Liberty

Daniel J. Mitchell

Daniel J. Mitchell is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute who specializes in fiscal policy, particularly tax reform, international tax competition, and the economic burden of government spending. He also serves on the editorial board of the Cayman Financial Review.

This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.

Obama Expands Surveillance Powers on His Way Out

Obama Expands Surveillance Powers on His Way Out



With mere days left before President-elect Donald Trump takes the White House, President Barack Obama’s administration just finalized rules to make it easier for the nation’s intelligence agencies to share unfiltered information about innocent people.

New rules issued by the Obama administration under Executive Order 12333 will let the NSA—which collects information under that authority with little oversight, transparency, or concern for privacy—share the raw streams of communications it intercepts directly with agencies including the FBI, the DEA, and the Department of Homeland Security, according to a report today by the New York Times.

That’s a huge and troubling shift in the way those intelligence agencies receive information collected by the NSA. Domestic agencies like the FBI are subject to more privacy protections, including warrant requirements. Previously, the NSA shared data with these agencies only after it had screened the data, filtering out unnecessary personal information, including about innocent people whose communications were swept up the NSA’s massive surveillance operations.

As the New York Times put it, with the new rules, the government claims to be “reducing the risk that the N.S.A. will fail to recognize that a piece of information would be valuable to another agency, but increasing the risk that officials will see private information about innocent people.”

Under the new, relaxed rules, there are still conditions that need to be met before the NSA will grant domestic intelligence analysts access to the raw streams of data it collects. And analysts can only search that raw data for information about Americans for foreign intelligence and counterintelligence purposes, not domestic criminal cases.

However—and this is especially troubling—“if analysts stumble across evidence that an American has committed any crime, they will send it to the Justice Department,” the Times wrote.  So information that was collected without a warrant—or indeed any involvement by a court at all—for foreign intelligence purposes with little to no privacy protections, can be accessed raw and unfiltered by domestic law enforcement agencies to prosecute Americans with no involvement in threats to national security.

We had hoped for more. In November, we and other civil liberties and privacy groups sent a letter to President Obama asking him to improve transparency and accountability, especially around government surveillance, before he leaves office. This is not the transparency we were hoping for.

We asked that he declassify and release Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court opinions, shed some much-needed light on how certain foreign-facing surveillance programs are used to target Americans, and more.

Obviously, and not for the first time, we are disappointed in the Obama administration.

In his finals days in office, let the president know about your disappointment in the government surveillance infrastructure he’s bulking up before he hands the reins to Trump. Sign our petition here.

Source: Obama Expands Surveillance Powers on His Way Out | Electronic Frontier Foundation

NSA Will Spy for Local Cops Under New Obama Administration Rules

NSA Will Spy for Local Cops Under New Obama Administration Rules


New rules under development by the Obama administration will make it even easier for federal agencies like the FBI and DEA to access troves of phone calls, emails and location data collected by the NSA on millions of people, including Americans, and pass it on to local cops for everyday investigations, or basically any other purpose that suits them.Proponents of federal spying inevitably defend any objection to mass warrantless surveillance by playing the terrorism card.The NSA must be able to sweep up virtually everybody’s electronic data to protect America from terrorist attacks, so the argument goes. This carries a great deal of weight, especially in the wake of tragic bombings in Paris and Brussels. Many Americans brush off the constitutional violations and invasion of privacy inherent in NSA spy programs because they honestly believe they only target terrorists.But in fact, the vast majority of information dredged up by the U.S. spy apparatus ends up in the hands of state and local law enforcement for use in routine criminal investigations. Instead of “fighting terrorism,” the American surveillance state primarily serves as a way to circumvent the Fourth Amendment and prosecute the unconstitutional “War on Drugs.”We’ve known for several years that a DEA Special Operations Division utilizes warrantless data collected by the NSA for routine drug investigations. Reuters revealed the extent of NSA data sharing with state and local law enforcement in an August 2013 article. According to documents obtained by the news agency, the NSA passes information to police through the SOD. These cases “rarely involve national security issues.”

Former NSA technical director William Binney said the feds share information gathered without a warrant and direct the local police force to make an arrest. Using a process known as “parallel construction,” investigators then build their case using normal policing techniques, getting warrants for information they’ve already obtained. The process serves to hide the illegally gathered information, creating the illusion of a legitimate case.

As Washington Post columnist Radley Balko put it, parallel construction is “a bureaucratically sterilized way of saying big stinking lie.”

Binney called this “the most threatening situation to our constitutional republic since the Civil War.”

A new policy quietly under development by the Obama administration will make it even easier for the NSA to share this information with no privacy screening. According to a New York Times report, “Robert S. Litt, the general counsel in the office of the Director of National Intelligence, said that the administration had developed and was fine-tuning what is now a 21-page draft set of procedures to permit the sharing.”

Under the proposed rule changes, federal agencies such as the FBI would gain direct access to streams of information gathered by the NSA, including emails, phone calls and location data. They would then be free to pass along this information to state and local law enforcement.

All of this can happen without any congressional or judicial oversight under a Reagan era executive order known as EO 12333.

Obama at SXSW: “Your phones shouldn’t be off limits…’

Obama at SXSW: “Your phones shouldn’t be off limits…’


Obama made an appearance at the SXSW festival this weekend. In case you’re wondering, SXSW is basically a hub for media conferences and nerd-fest that Barack ditched Nancy Reagan’s funeral for. Priorities. It was there that our Commander in Chief shamelessly made an ass out of himself. Again.

The president… made it clear he didn’t see why phones should be off limits. If, technologically, it is possible to make an impenetrable device where there is no key, no door at all, how do we apprehend the child pornographer, how do we disrupt a terrorist plot? “It’s fetishizing our phones above every other value,” he said. “And that can’t be the right answer. If [the government] can’t get in, then everyone is walking around with a Swiss bank account in their pocket.”

“How do we apprehend the child pornographer?” Hopefully not the same way the government “apprehends” rapists or those who commit treason by jeopardizing national security. Through their illegal email servers they’re trading classified information from.

Obviously Obama’s newest attack on personal privacy stems from the whole San Bernardino-terrorists debacle. But really, the FBI eyeing the tech field has been a long time coming. The government has inserted itself into just about every industry possible. Look no further than Obama showing up at SXSW, where presidents have no possible business other than to push propaganda where it doesn’t belong. Uncle Sam does not like being left out. Whenever he steps in he brings a load of new rules with him that somehow manage to limit our freedoms even more.

Obama’s remarks are not only patronizing but condescending. And douchey. He’s implying that the American people are being unreasonable. The government just wants unfettered access to all of your data: including bank account information, coordinates, passwords, your entire network.

McConnell and Obama Both Wrong on Scalia Replacement

McConnell and Obama Both Wrong on Scalia Replacement


One of the dumber debates in recent history has broken out in the wake of Justice Antonin Scalia’s passing. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has suggestedthat President Obama shouldn’t nominate a replacement for Justice Scalia because Obama is in the last year of his final term.

Opponents, including the president himself, have responded that the Senate has a constitutional duty to bring Obama’s appointments to a vote and to confirm one, if qualified.

Both sides are completely wrong. The President has the legitimate authority to nominate a successor on every day of his presidency, up to and including the very last day. That precedent was set by no less than the second president of the United States. As Elizabeth Warren astutely observed,

Article II Section 2 of the Constitution says the President of the United States nominates justices to the Supreme Court, with the advice and consent of the Senate. I can’t find a clause that says “…except when there’s a year left in the term of a Democratic President.

But neither can be found the words “shall bring to an up or down vote” or anything to the effect that the Senate is required to take action on the President’s nominees. The Constitution was deliberately constructed so that inaction would be the starting point in all matters. The reason for the separation of powers was to ensure that things didn’t get done efficiently within the federal government, because efficient government is a threat to liberty.

Democrats cite this latest controversy as another example of Congress deliberately “obstructing” the President, implying they are overriding the wishes of the people who elected him. We heard the same nonsense about the Democratic Congress during Reagan’s presidency. It doesn’t compute. The people who elected the president also elected the sitting Congress, in both cases.

That Congress can in any way “obstruct the president” is a horrible, fascist, un-American idea. It assumes the lives of hundreds of millions of people are to be ruled by the wishes of one person, with Congress merely a procedural rubber stamp to legitimize the emperor’s policies. This is autocratic thinking straight out of Hobbes’ Leviathan, which asserted an elected assembly could be tolerated as long as it conformed without exception with the wishes of the absolute monarch.

The American republic supposedly rejects this idea. The U.S. Constitution assumes Congress is the supreme power, vested with the “sovereign functions of legislation,” as Thomas Jefferson put it. The President is supposed to be a subordinate executor of its laws.

James Madison actually warned his countrymen in Federalist #48 that the chief danger to liberty resided in the legislative body, because “the executive magistracy is carefully limited.”

Obama to propose $10-per-barrel fee on oil

Obama to propose $10-per-barrel fee on oil


President Barack Obama will propose a $10-per-barrel charge on oil to fund clean transportation projects as part of his final budget request next week, the White House said Thursday.

The proposal — which follows the passage of a bipartisan transportation bill last year — would have difficulty clearing the Republican-controlled Congress. In a statement, Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana, House majority whip, said the House would quash the “absurd” plan.

Oil companies would pay the fee, which would be gradually introduced over five years. The government would use the revenue to help fund high-speed railways, autonomous cars and other travel systems, aiming to reduce emissions from the nation’s transportation system.

“By placing a fee on oil, the president’s plan creates a clear incentive for private sector innovation to reduce our reliance on oil and at the same time invests in clean energy technologies that will power our future,” the Obama has prioritized reducing carbon emissions and the use of fossil fuels. But some of his administration’s proposals, including the Clean Power Plan, have faced significant opposition at the federal and state level.

The White House said the oil-fee proposal would invest an additional $20 billion per year to cut traffic and “provide new ways for families to get to work and school.” It would also put about $10 billion per year into regional travel systems and another $2 billion annually into clean transportation research.

At least part of the cost of the proposal would be passed on to consumers, Jason Furman, chairman of Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers, told CNBC on Friday.

Federal debt hits $19 trillion; new record set

Federal debt hits $19 trillion; new record set


The federal government is now officially $19 trillion in debt, according to the latest figures released by the Treasury Department Monday that show the Obama administration crossed that ignominious line late last week.

President Obama took office with the debt at $10.6 trillion, and has added more than $8 trillion during his seven years in the White House — a record pace that the Congressional Budget Office says is likely to continue.

Federal deficit to soar in 2016 after Ryan-Obama tax deal

Federal deficit to soar in 2016 after Ryan-Obama tax deal


The tax-cut deal inked by President Obama and House Speaker Paul D. Ryan last month has put a major dent in the federal budget, helping send the deficit soaring by 24 percent, the Congressional Budget Office said Tuesday.

The $544 billion deficit projected for 2016 marks the first year since 2009 that the red ink has grown, and it powers the deficit back up over the half-trillion mark, where it had been for most of Mr. Obama’s tenure.

And the rest of the decade will only get worse, the CBO said, with Social Security beginning to draw down its trust funds in 2018, and overall deficits surging back above the $1 trillion mark by 2022.

Struck by the grim news, budget watchdogs said politicians needed to heed the wake-up call.

“Turning a blind eye to the problem, as so many congressional and presidential candidates have done, merely means they are passing the buck to the next generation as concerns about political damage outweigh policy advantages,” said Steve Bell, senior director of economic policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center.

CBO projections contained some good news, with the economy showing signs of solid growth in 2016 and 2017, finally overcoming some of the “slack” that built up during the 2008 Wall Street collapse and the Great Recession. Analysts said more people will be enticed back into the labor force, but inflation and interest rates will also rise as the economy ticks along.

But spending and taxes remain the biggest problem for the budget, with the twin deals at the end of last year to break the sequester budget caps that had held spending in check, and to extend a series of special interest tax breaks.

Combined, they meant the government needed more money than ever — but had less flowing in.

Overall, spending will spike by 6 percent in fiscal year 2016, to reach $3.9 trillion. That amounts to 21.2 percent of the country’s output as measured by gross domestic product.

By contrast the government will collect just $3.4 trillion in taxes, or 18.3 percent of GDP.

President Obama Hints At Asking Silicon Valley To Magically Block Terrorists From Using Tech Products

President Obama Hints At Asking Silicon Valley To Magically Block Terrorists From Using Tech Products


As you probably know, last night President Obama gave a big address from the Oval Office about what he plans to do about ISIS, along with dealing with the threat of lone wolf and other attacks at home. Buried deep within (in fact, I missed it the first time through) was a nod towards the idea of pushing Silicon Valley to magically undermine encryption. Here’s the entirety of what he said on the subject:

I will urge high tech and law enforcement leaders to make it harder to use technology to escape from justice.

That seems like a simple sentence, but it’s loaded with meaning, and most of it’s not good. As we’ve noted over and over again, the last refuge of those looking to undermine encryption is to bring up the idea of “if only Silicon Valley techies and law enforcement could get together, surely they could come up with some magic golden key. But that’s clueless, because what they’re asking for is impossible. This isn’t something that’s “difficult” — it’s impossible. You can’t make a backdoored encryption system that doesn’t make everyone vulnerable and less safe.

And, yes, while you can say he doesn’t specifically say “encryption” here, the use of the phrase “technology to escape from justice” clearly implies encryption.

Appeals court deals crippling blow to President Obama’s immigration plan

Appeals court deals crippling blow to President Obama’s immigration plan


A federal appeals court dealt a potentially fatal blow Monday to President Obama’s immigration plan, leaving more than 4 million undocumented immigrants in legal limbo and setting up a possible Supreme Court battle at the sunset of his administration.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit upheld a challenge to the deferred deportation program brought by Texas and 25 other states with Republican governors, who argued that Obama lacked the authority to protect about one-third of the nation’s undocumented immigrants by executive fiat.

The authority that the administration claimed, the court said in a 2-1 ruling, would allow it “to grant lawful presence and work authorization to any illegal alien in the United States.”

The White House said in a statement that it strongly disagreed with the court and that the departments of Justice and Homeland Security will review the ruling to determine the “next steps” in the case.

“The Supreme Court and Congress have made clear that the federal government can set priorities in enforcing our immigration laws,” the statement read. “This lawsuit is preventing people who have been part of our communities for years from working on the books, contributing to our economy by paying taxes on that work, and being held accountable.”

The decision had been anticipated by the administration and immigration rights groups, who have hung their hopes on the Supreme Court rather than the conservative appeals court with jurisdiction over Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi. But the four-month wait for a ruling, since oral arguments were held before the three-judge panel, could mean that the justices won’t get the case during their current term — and won’t decide it before Obama leaves office.

Under that scenario, the 4.3 million undocumented immigrants deemed eligible for the program would be at the mercy of the next president — either a Democrat who favors giving them temporary protection from deportation, or a Republican who most likely would have campaigned against it.

That makes the panel’s decision a major blow to Obama, who has hoped to overhaul the nation’s immigration system before leaving office even if Congress won’t go along

Obama presidency to end with $20 trillion national debt

Obama presidency to end with $20 trillion national debt


When President Obama signs into law the new two-year budget deal Monday, his action will bring into sharper focus a part of his legacy that he doesn’t like to talk about: He is the $20 trillion man.

Mr. Obama’s spending agreement with Congress will suspend the nation’s debt limit and allow the Treasury to borrow another $1.5 trillion or so by the end of his presidency in 2017. Added to the current total national debt of more than $18.15 trillion, the red ink will likely be crowding the $20 trillion mark right around the time Mr. Obama leaves the White House.

When Mr. Obama took over in January 2009, the total national debt stood at $10.6 trillion. That means the debt will have very nearly doubled during his eight years in office, and there is much more debt ahead with the abandonment of “sequestration” spending caps enacted in 2011.

“Congress and the president have just agreed to undo one of the only successful fiscal restraint mechanisms in a generation,” said Pete Sepp, president of the National Taxpayers Union. “The progress on reducing spending and the deficit has just become much more problematic.”

Some budget analysts scoff at the claim made by the administration and by House Speaker John A. Boehner, Ohio Republican, that the budget agreement’s $112 billion in spending increases is fully funded by cuts elsewhere. Mr. Boehner left Congress last week.

“The Boehner-Obama spending agreement would allow for unlimited borrowing by the Treasury until March 2017,” said Paul Winfree, director of economic policy studies at The Heritage Foundation. “This deal piles on billions of dollars to the national debt by increasing spending over the next three years and then not paying for it for a decade — with half of the offsets not occurring until 2025.”

The bipartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimated that only about half of the increased spending in the budget deal is paid for. Rather than a spending increase of $80 billion over two years, the nonprofit group said, the actual spending hike is $154 billion when interest costs and budget gimmicks are factored into the equation.

“Of this $154 billion, about $78 billion is paid for honestly” through Medicare reforms, reductions in farm subsidies, asset sales and other measures, the group said. “The remaining $56 billion of the legislation — mostly the war spending increase and interest costs — is not paid for at all.”

Of course, Congress bears equal responsibility for the high level of debt. A prime reason that Mr. Boehner left office was conservatives’ displeasure with his accommodation of the president’s budget requests, aside from three years of “sequestration” spending caps that helped limit annual deficits.

“We will be raising the debt ceiling in an unlimited fashion,” said Sen. Rand Paul, a Kentucky Republican who tried to filibuster the budget deal before the Senate approved it in the wee hours of Friday. “We will be giving President Obama a free pass to borrow as much money as he can borrow in the last year of his office. No limit, no dollar limit.

Obama admin asserts dominion over creeks, streams, wetlands, ditches — even big puddles

Obama admin asserts dominion over creeks, streams, wetlands, ditches — even big puddles


President Obama’s administration on Wednesday claimed dominion over all of America’s streams, creeks, rills, ditches, brooks, rivulets, burns, tributaries, criks, wetlands — perhaps even puddles — in a sweeping move to assert unilateral federal authority.

The Environmental Protection Agency, along with the Army Corps of Engineers, says it has the authority to control all waterways within the United States — and will exercise that authority.

“We’re finalizing a clean water rule to protect the streams and the wetlands that one in three Americans rely on for drinking water. And we’re doing that without creating any new permitting requirements and maintaining all previous exemptions and exclusions,” EPA head Gina McCarthy told reporters Wednesday.

The moves comes as part of the Clean Water Act and federal officials say they are simply trying to help businesses comply with regulations.

“This rule is about clarification, and in fact, we’re adding exclusions for features like artificial lakes and ponds, water-filled depressions from constructions and grass swales,” McCarthy said. “This rule will make it easier to identify protected waters and will make those protections consistent with the law as well as the latest peer-reviewed science. This rule is based on science.”

The Supreme Court has twice questioned the breadth of powers decreed under the Clean Water Act, prompting Wednesday’s actions.

McCarthy claimed the new powers would “not interfere with private property rights or address land use.”

“It does not regulate any ditches unless they function as tributaries. It does not apply to groundwater or shallow subsurface water, copper tile drains or change policy on irrigation or water transfer.”

Not surprisingly, Sen. Barbara Boxer of California, THE top Democrat on the Environment and Public Works Committee, loves the plan.

After Five Years Of Obamanomics, A Record 100 Million Americans Not Working

After Five Years Of Obamanomics, A Record 100 Million Americans Not Working


The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) jobs report for December counted 74,000 jobs created last month. That was less than half the 200,000 new jobs expected.

Nevertheless, the BLS reported those 74,000 new jobs as reducing at least what it calls the U3 unemployment rate by three tenths of a percentage point, from 7.0% to 6.7%. That was because 347,000 workers fled the work force altogether last month, and so were no longer counted as unemployed.

Those 347,000 workers leaving the workforce altogether were almost 5 times (4.689) the 74,000 new jobs created. But the BLS, and the New York Times, still count that as headline unemployment plummeting on net to 6.7% from 7.0%. In fact, all of the decline in the U3 headline unemployment rate since President Obama entered office has been due to workers leaving the work force, and therefore no longer counted as unemployed, rather than to new jobs created.

Those 347,000 for December, 2013, however, are still out there not working, and suffering. Indeed, they joined a near record of more than 102 million Americans not working in December, all still out there and suffering without jobs. Those 102 million Americans are the human face of an employment-population ratio stuck at a pitiful 58.6%. In fact, more than 100 million Americans were not working in Obama’s workers’ paradise for all of 2013 and 2012.

The 102.159 million Americans not working in December is not the all-time record of Americans not working. That all-time record was set in October, 2013, at 102.896 million. The employment-population ratio that month was an even more pitiful 58.2%.

That was the lowest in 30 years, all the way back to 1983, the first year of the recovery from Reagan’s recession, which finally slayed the historic double digit inflation of the 1970s. The employment-population ratio of 57.9% in 1983 was up by the fifth year of Reagan’s recovery to 61.5%, on its way to 63.0% in 1989. That represented an increase of 17 million jobs since that recession started in July, 1981.

But that was when America was following pro-growth economic policies. Today we have President Obama emphasizing equality rather than growth, and after 5 years of Obama as President, we still have not recovered all of the jobs lost since the recession began in 2007. When the recession began in December, 2007, the economy was employing 146.273 million Americans. Today, after 5 years of Obamanomics, in December, 2013 the number of Americans employed was still only 144.586 million, about 1.7 million fewer jobs.

President Obama is not the only President to be challenged by a recession while in office. Since the Great Depression, there have been 10 other recessions before this last one. On average, all the jobs lost in those recessions were recovered within two years after the recession started, as reflected in the official historical data, which is well presented on the website of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. But here we are today under President Obama, more than 6 years after the recession started, and we still have not recovered all of the lost jobs!

Moreover, Obama apologists cannot say that Obama’s recovery from the recession is so bad because the recession was so bad. The historical record for the American economy has always been the worse the recession, the stronger the recovery. America has forgotten that experience, because Reaganomics produced 25 years of steady, often booming growth, from 1982 to 2007, with only two, short, shallow recessions. But under every other President in U.S. history, going back for well over a century at least, the economy was in a booming recovery within 5 years as President Obama has had, even under Franklin Roosevelt during the Great Depression!

Today’s economic reality is better represented by what the BLS calls the U6 unemployment rate. That rate includes discouraged workers who have given up looking for a job in the past 4 weeks, and others the BLS considers marginally attached to the work force. It also includes involuntary part time workers who want a full time job but could only find part time work. That U6 unemployment rate was 13.1% in December.

Judge Napolitano: ‘It Appears Obama Has Given Up His Constitutional Role as President’

Judge Napolitano: ‘It Appears Obama Has Given Up His Constitutional Role as President’

Once again, President Obama is looking to use his executive powers to modify ObamaCare, going around Congress. This time, it’s a proposed rule that would expand insurance through the Affordable Care Act to temporary and seasonal government workers.

The law, as it was passed, prohibits extending coverage to temporary employees. The move comes as House Speaker John Boehner pursues a lawsuit against the president for using executive orders instead of seeking changes to laws through Congress.

Judge Andrew Napolitano said this that this is “yet another violation of the Constitution” because once again the president is moving to spend money that was not authorized by Congress.

...

“It appears as though he has given up his constitutional role as president and has now taken on the role of ideologue in chief to change whatever laws he can by whatever means he can in the two years he has remaining. The Constitution be damned.

Obama administration releases disturbing photo of Obama depicted as a king

Obama administration releases disturbing photo of Obama depicted as a king

Last year, United States Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.) criticized Obama for acting “like a king or monarch” as the administration threatened to unconstitutionally bypass Congress on gun control. It seems as though the administration felt the title should stick.

The picture depicts “King Obama” sitting upon the “Iron Throne” at Kings Landing in the ancient kingdom of Westeros from the HBO hit series Game of Thrones. The photo looks as if it was lifted straight from The Onion. However, it is not. The image is a result of Obama’s speech at last week’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner where he joked about enacting more executive orders. The administration took it upon themselves to create the photo of King Obama, and the official White House Twitter account sent out the tweet before last week’s episode aired.

Report: EPA tested deadly pollutants on humans to push Obama admin’s agenda

Report: EPA tested deadly pollutants on humans to push Obama admin’s agenda

The Environmental Protection Agency has been conducting dangerous experiments on humans over the past few years in order to justify more onerous clean air regulations.

The agency conducted tests on people with health issues and the elderly, exposing them to high levels of potentially lethal pollutants, without disclosing the risks of cancer and death, according to a newly released government report.

These experiments exposed people, including those with asthma and heart problems, to dangerously high levels of toxic pollutants, including diesel fumes, reads a EPA inspector general report obtained by The Daily Caller News Foundation. The EPA also exposed people with health issues to levels of pollutants up to 50 times greater than the agency says is safe for humans.

The EPA conducted five experiments in 2010 and 2011 to look at the health effects of particulate matter, or PM, and diesel exhaust on humans. The IG’s report found that the EPA did get consent forms from 81 people in five studies. But the IG also found that “exposure risks were not always consistently represented.”

“Further, the EPA did not include information on long-term cancer risks in its diesel exhaust studies’ consent forms,” the IG’s report noted.

Obama knew CIA secretly monitored intelligence committee, senator claims

Obama knew CIA secretly monitored intelligence committee, senator claims

McClatchy and the New York Times reported Wednesday that the CIA had secretly monitored computers used by committee staffers preparing the inquiry report, which is said to be scathing not only about the brutality and ineffectiveness of the agency’s interrogation techniques but deception by the CIA to Congress and policymakers about it. The CIA sharply disputes the committee’s findings.

 Udall, a Colorado Democrat and one of the CIA’s leading pursuers on the committee, appeared to reference that surreptitious spying on Congress, which Udall said undermined democratic principles.

Obama nominee for Surgeon General says banning guns is part of medicine

Obama nominee for Surgeon General says banning guns is part of medicine

The problem with Murthy ... is his position on guns. Namely, he thinks one of the questions doctors should ask patients during a routine medical history is whether the person has any guns in his home.

 Investors.com notes that Murthy, 36, is president and co-founder of Doctors for America, an anti-gun group that advocates making gun control a facet of the practice of medicine.

White House rejects review board finding that NSA data sweep is illegal

White House rejects review board finding that NSA data sweep is illegal

The White House on Thursday disputed the findings of an independent review board that said the National Security Agency’s mass data collection program is illegal and should be ended, indicating the administration would not be taking that advice.

“We simply disagree with the board’s analysis on the legality of the program,” White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said.

Obama to wait until sequester hits before meeting with congressional leaders

President Barack Obama will wait until the sequester hits to have his first sequester-related face-to-face meeting with congressional leaders on Friday, according to a report by ABC News’s Jonathan Karl

via megalextoria.com