PrintNovember 28, 2009
The Five Obama Fails
The Obama administration burst onto the presidency with a historic wealth of good will, hope, and change. It is now marked by one failure after another. Unfortunately, these failures are not without costs. The burden is borne by consumers, taxpayers, and generations yet to come. Nearly one year after Obama's inauguration, we have an economy heading in the wrong direction, unemployment rising, a deficit that will double, banks failing, a war command which is virtually ignored, 9/11 terrorists given Constitutional rights at a civil trial, and an administration hell-bent on destroying -- not "reforming" -- the world's best health care system. Not a bad turnout for an experienced community organizer.
1) Bank Bailout. The banks were bailed out to the tune of trillions of dollars with no oversight. The result: Banks continue to fail all over the country and lenders are not making any commercial loans, causing more business failures. Obama's score? Fail.
1) Bank Bailout. The banks were bailed out to the tune of trillions of dollars with no oversight. The result: Banks continue to fail all over the country and lenders are not making any commercial loans, causing more business failures. Obama's score? Fail.
2) Auto Bailout. GM was given billions of dollars, and the government hand-picked its board of directors. Result: GM is still losing billions. A simple bankruptcy would have allowed GM to emerge with leveled books, without the need to have invested a single dime of taxpayer money. Fail.
3) Cap and Tax. This boondoggle is more commonly known by the misleading name "cap-and-trade." This scheme caps all CO2 emissions at a level 83% below the current level and punitively taxes any additional emissions. Even the left-leaning Brookings Institute predicted dramatic job losses, particularly in certain energy industries, of between 35%-40% as soon as 2025. I'm guessing this legislation was the brainchild of China, as there is no better way to encourage the few American manufacturers we still have in this country to pack up and manufacture overseas.
This discourages manufacturers from expanding their companies...not a great idea in the midst of a global recession. This will not only be a jobs-killer, it will force a huge tax on the consumers, who will have this tax burden passed on to them via higher costs. Trucking, flights, gas, electric, and everything else that is moved or manufactured will go up in price. Obama fail.
4) Health Care Reform. According to a Kaiser Foundation study, 89% of Americans are very satisfied with their current insurance plan. Creating a government-subsidized plan to compete with private insurers is not competition at all. It will destroy private insurers until only the taxpayer-subsidized government option is left standing. We all know how successful other government-run programs are: Social Security (failing), Medicare (failing), post office (failing), Fannie Mae (failing), GM (failing), bank bailout plan (failing), and creating more jobs after trillions in "stimulus" (failing). Even the Obama-touted but poorly planned Cash for Clunkers unexpectedly ran out of money in the first week.
Obama said he would veto any health care reform bill which added to the deficit, yet he believes the bill that's working its way through Congress will insure an extra 40 million people without a loss in quality or increase in costs. Was I the only one who saw The Wizard of Oz and the fraudulent wizard behind the curtain? "Nothing to see here." How exactly does costs for insuring an extra 40 million people not equal costs to the taxpayers? Of course they will. The bureaucrats will just juggle their books and pass the added costs to both the states, by getting them to cover the cuts in Medicare, and directly to taxpayers (particularly to the younger Obama-supporters) through new mandates.
Moreover, forcing insurance companies to take anyone with any preexisting condition sounds pleasantly populist, but what if you bought your car insurance only after you had an accident? How long will insurance companies stay in business? They won't stay in business at all, and that's where we have another "government rescue"...and another fail. Connect the dots on all of Obama's other big successes.
5) Global Warming. Anthropogenic CO2 makes up about 3.2% of greenhouse gases. New Zealand atmospheric scientist Augie Auer wrote that three-quarters of the earth is ocean, and 95 percent of the greenhouse effect is governed by water vapor.
Of that remaining 5 percent, only about 3.6 percent is governed by CO2 and when you break it down even further, studies have shown that the anthropogenic (man-made) contribution to CO2 versus the natural is about 3.2 percent.So if you multiply the total contribution 3.6% by the man-made portion of it, 3.2%, you find out that the anthropogenic contribution of CO2 to the global greenhouse effect is 0.115 percent ... that's like .12 cents in $100. It's minuscule ... it's nothing.
Finally, the Obama administration would like to sacrifice business growth, at an astronomical cost to both the taxpayer and the consumer, while slowing down our economy further, in order to reduce our carbon emissions by 20%. But it's not a total waste; he will be satisfying his left-wing base. Assuming the entire world cooperates with Obama's plan -- which it won't -- this initiative will have a negligible effect on global warming. Another Obama fail.
Adam Sparks is a San Francisco writer and can be reached at adamstyle@aol.com.
