by Jack Lee
Before becoming president Barrack Obama campaigned on transparency and this was touted as one of his most fundamental personal beliefs. It’s why he promised transparency to the public, if they would vote for him. One question: What happened?!
“As a longtime supporter and colleague of Barack Obama at the University of Chicago, as well as an informal adviser to his 2008 campaign, I had high hopes that he would restore the balance between government secrecy and government transparency that had been lost under George W. Bush, and that he would follow through on his promise, as a candidate, to promote openness and public accountability in government policy making.” Jeoffrey Stone
President Obama has often cloaked his actions in an effort to evade the media on matters of separation of powers and opposition (republican) accountability, not to mention judicial reviews of proposals. This lack of transparency has raised concern about keeping our checks and balances working as they should, especially when it comes to issuing executive orders.
Our founders were wary of executive orders because this has undermines public debate. There is no media spotlighting, it’s just a dictatorial process. No non-war time president has ever issue more executive orders than Barrack Obama and that’s a concern for citizens in a democracy.
Obama’s track record on whistle-blower protection, which encourages transparency, has been nothing short of dismal. Congress proposed protective legislation back in 2009 with the Whistle-Blower Protection Enhancement Act. Obama as a candidate championed this legislation, but as a president, not so much. He let the last bill die in the Senate in late 2010.
No other president since WWII has invoked the common law doctrine of [States Secrets] more than the Obama administration. This was used to conceal the C.I.A.’s use of extraordinary rendition, drone strikes and the National Security Agency’s practice of wiretapping U.S. citizens.
Candidates notoriously run on promises they either don’t intend to keep or that exceed their authority to keep, but it doesn’t excuse them from accountability as elected officials! When promises made are not promises kept, then it’s our job to hold them accountable. When candidate Obama promised the most transparent administration in our history and we wind up with the most secretive, wouldn’t you say it’s time for accountability?
The absolute best way to accomplish that is by not electing democrats from the president on down the line!
Transparency was not just a promise but a promise backed up with related promises like the one to post proposed legislation on the internet for five days so the people would have a chance to read it. When I recall how the healthcare law was written and passed under his leadership his promises only serve to reveal a man who is at best insincere…and I suspect the worst.
This dishonesty is not confined to Democrats alone but so many radicals have gained positions of power within the party its hard to even consider the party American anymore.
In the days when Kennedy was president there were differences between the two parties but we stood equally as Americans. The radicals in the party then knew that the party faithful would never tolerate extremism and lawlessness. In fact they would be among the first to run radical commies out of town on a rail. As the WWII generation passes and the sixties radicals come to the fore, and with an influx of people from socialist countries who don’t assimilate as former immigrants did, the very nature of what it is to be American is being lost in the general populace and in a party that has embraced socialism over capitalism and central planning over freedom.
I have to say I agree that the best path forward is with Republicans…who will then be in the position to prove themselves worthy of support. But /democrats have done themselves no favors in the last nearly six years…a very poor record all around.
Tina, I agree. I get mad at the republicans, but when push comes to shove they are still the best of the two choices. However, if a 3rd party candidate knocked off a few dems it wouldn’t hurt my feelings.
Have you noticed how silent Libby has been recently? She must be totally disgusted with Obama’s either inept handling or absence on Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria, Libya, Ukraine v Russia, Iran, N. Korea, Israel v Hamas. Hmmmm…was there any foreign crisis that he handled correctly? I can’t think of one. Next, wondering how his big rescue plan with 6 unarmed investigators is going for those kidnapped African girls, curious if Michelle’s tweets have the terrorists on the run yet?
Obama made it very clear from the very beginning he didn’t plan to keep his promise to be the great “uniter.” Instead he told McCain (I paraphrase) I won, you lost so sit down and shut up.
Obama’s broken promise has given us a, “do nothing Congress,” with a House that has passed hundreds of bills that Harry Reid won’t even allow on the Senate floor.
Obama the Great Uniter? New Study on Political Divide Says Otherwise:
“[a] recent study titled “Political Polarization in the American Public” by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press establishes that Obama’s title of “Great Uniter” was a misnomer – even the mainstream media has abandoned it because it reeks of hyperbole.
…according to the Pew Research Center (PRC), a recent survey of 10,000 adults across the nation revealed that the ideological divide between Democrats and Republicans and the “antipathy” between the two is “deeper and more extensive” than it has been in the past two decades. Further, statistically the divide is greater between those adults who are the “most engaged and active in the political process.”
The study also revealed that the level of “partisan animosity” among voters in opposing parties has increased dramatically although, with a 24/7 cycle of news coverage it probably did not take a study to make this clear to the average American. This animosity, also seen in the halls of the Capitol, has likely contributed to the partisan gridlock so prevalent in Congress – a gridlock that does little to further the economic or national security of the nation. One might even go so far as to define the behavior in Congress as that of political warfare at the expense of the nation.”
Read more at http://guardianlv.com/2014/06/obama-the-great-uniter-new-study-on-political-divide-says-otherwise/#jKKcAum4whK63B64.99
The other big fat lie he told was to cut the deficit in half by the end of his first term.
Obama, “Today I’m pledging to cut the deficit we inherited by half by the end of my first term in office.
…I refuse to leave our children with a debt that they cannot repay, and that means taking responsibility right now, in this administration, for getting our spending under control.”
Has the Deficit Really Been Cut in Half Under Obama?:
“Obama and Company have made much over the ‘drastic’ drop in the annual deficit since he took office. In fact, he had promised to cut the deficit in half by the end of his first term in office, but he never specified in half from what and there is the rub. You see, in the final year of the Bush disaster, I mean, presidency we had a little thing happen, the end of the world as we knew it hit. The mother of all crises was on our doorstep and government had to do something it never had done before, bailout the private sector.
This was done through TARP, a $700 billion dollar check to banks, automakers and insurers, but that wasn’t planned, it was a one-off event and Obama voted for it. The bottom line is that it drove the annual deficit up to over $1T but it wasn’t actual budget spending and was repaid, which also offset future annual deficits. Are you still following this? This is why they can lie and get away with it. To blame the crisis on Bush is inaccurate and to blame the deficit going over $1T as Bush’s fault is also inaccurate, it had to be done unless you really don’t like America and our way of life. We worry about blame way too much and truth be known the blame goes to Clinton, Larry Summers as well as Bush and the democrats in Congress, but no one likes the truth so why bother explaining.
Regardless, politicians never tell the truth so an ambiguous statement like ‘I cut the deficit in half’ is all dependent on what the future brings, in half from the Bush presidency or in half from the record high $1.4 trillion deficit? Are we talking about the deficit being reduced in terms of real dollars or by measurement of GDP? I have to first tell you that whenever we start measuring things in terms of ‘against GDP’ that should always be a red flag as GDP should, usually, always grow, go up, while even if spending remains the same any increase in GDP will show as a decrease in deficit, get it yet? Politics got to love them!
http://dailydrag.com/2014/03/06/deficit-really-cut-half-obama/
Jack, I don’t think Libby is alone off kicking herself in the backside. Did you hear Diane Feinstein and other Dems speaking out against Obama’s lack of leadership on the border and his foreign policy with Russia and Israel? He doesn’t know what the hell to do and even his own party members are realizing it now.
Jack I agree, in fact if a third party candidate knocked out a few rino Repulicans it would be a good thing…as long as that candidate wasn’t a lefty loon. America, and the world, has had quite enough of the radical left.
Libby isn’t ever going to admit to the poor performance by her party and its big hero in the WH. She has taken whatever emotions shuddering through her underground and will put her energies into getting Elizabeth Warren in the WH next (ugh)…she is the author of “you didn’t build that.” She has been described as further to the left than the O-man.
Last I heard 53 of the kidnapped African girls escaped their captors; 276 remain in captivity.
CNN claims 63 escaped.
No word about whether our investigators helped or if they are still on the job.
Peggy part of that PEW report entertained the idea that both sides are equally responsible and the conclusion being made is that the polarization results from extremists on both sides. I find it amusing that their side is extreme a la Saul Alinsky, radical environmentalist, and big centralized government while our extremists are characterized by the Tea Party that has a fondness for the founders and the Constitution, a reasonable tax system, and faith in the power of ordinary American to make things work!
We will know we’ve won when the media, and our own representatives, understand what the dispute is about. Right now they think its about people on both sides who can’t stop arguing to find compromise…wrong. The arguing is a very real battle for the survival of the republic and nothing CAN get done until the people resolve that issue. The radical Democrats are pushing for a permanent socialist one party ruling body…there is no way to compromise with that and remain a republic with three separate bodies of government and a system of checks and balances.
How can they not see that this administration is already ruling, rather than governing, and sidestepping the balances in our government?
Tina, I agree and disagree the polarization does exist now, but it hadn’t in the past, not to the degree it does now. If it did we wouldn’t be in the current mess we’re in. The Tea Party didn’t really become an issue until after the 2008 election and the IRS’s targeting of them in 2009-2010. Prior to 2008 the Republicans in Congress were made up of enough progressive RINOs to vote with the Democrats resulting in the advancement of their socialist leaning agenda.
The polarization is now between the newly elected conservative Republicans like Ted Cruz, Mike Lee, Tim Scott, and others who are no long willing to go along with the Democrats and the Republican leadership. They are the ones labeled, “right-wing radicals.” Even by members of their own party. With out them we’d still have a one party system with differing points of view, but the same agenda of social equality and big government.
Over the past 50+ years our nation has moved from a center-right core to the left with a few adjustments to the right like when Clinton was president and the Republicans held both houses of Congress. Clinton even declared the end of big government. But, then Bush got in and the Dems took over Congress and we slid back to the left again. With Obama in the WH and the Dems in control of both houses again we moved even farther left resulting in TP groups being formed all over the country with people saying enough and demanding their voices be heard and the votes to matter.
Polarization wasn’t a problem for over 50 years, as long as the progressives were able to move us further and further to the left, but once the right said no more then and only then did it all of a sudden become a problem. Right-wingers and Teabaggers are now accused of creating the problem, because they’d been pushed back against the wall so often forced to give up and give in they decided to fight back.
I wish every parent would take their 10 year olds and have them set up a lemonade stand two weekends in a row. The first week let them run it as a free market/enterprise where after paying for the supplies they get to keep all of the profits they worked for. And on the second week after paying for the supplies make them divide all of the profits with every member of the family, even those who didn’t help at all. It would be a very easy lesson to teach the next generation of leaders and business owners the difference between socialism and the free market.
The progressives are in control of our nation now because the communist radicals from the 60s took over our educational systems. They were smart enough to figure out the bombing and the riots weren’t going to get them the results they wanted, so they moved into education and worked from the inside on our kids minds. We now have a generation of kids in Common Core that doesn’t even mention Hitler or the Holocaust in WWII. College grads can’t get jobs because there are no jobs available. They’re seeing just what socialism does because they’re living it. We just need to do the same thing as they did. Take over the educational system and teach the following generation what the free market, anti-socialism life we had as kids and adults and they can too.
Do you know what a progressive is? A communist with time to wait and plan. Saul Alinsky laid out the plan and sat back and waited for it to work and work it did.
Do you know what a conservative is? A person who believes our Founders gave us the best system of government ever created and are willing to fight for it.
You got it, Peggy, thanks!