Hypocrisy and the Disconnect Between The Obama's and The Little People

As we little people struggle to keep our lives together and on track with our 401k's crashing, the value of our homes plunging and the possibility of good jobs for our children in the trash for the foreseeable future it is amazing how the Obama's and other political hucksters in Washington don't get it. With Marie Antoinette...oh I mean Michelle (read) dashing from one vacation to another in tow with her numerous friends and staying at hotels (costing $2400/night!) and crooked politicians like Charles Rangel and Maxine Waters being investigated for dipping into "the peoples" coffers what are we to think about this administration? Not only are they selling America down the river by dismantling all we stand for but they assume they are God's gift to mankind and our saviours while they have their hands in the till the whole time! Look what Judicial Watch writes about Nancy Pelosi:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA): Last year House Speaker Nancy Pelosi made the "most corrupt" list for sneaking a $25 million earmark for her husband into a $15 billion Water Resources Development Act passed by Congress. This year, Pelosi ran afoul of federal election law by participating in an illegal advertising campaign funded by Al Gore's non-profit Alliance for Climate protection. The advertisement featuring Pelosi ran at least 300 times nationally, including in the House speaker's district, during campaign season, representing an illegal in-kind contribution to her campaign. Perhaps more disturbing than this incident, however, is the fact that Speaker Pelosi has allowed corruption to run rampant in Congress and has ignored serious incidents of crooked behavior within her own party. Pelosi promised a new era of ethics enforcement during the 2006 campaign and she has failed to deliver. Instead, she continues to protect the worst of the worst of political corruption in the House of Representatives.

Also read this at New York Daily News -

Sacrifice is something that many Americans are becoming all too familiar with during this economic downturn. It was a key theme in President Obama's inaugural address to the nation, and he's referenced it numerous times when lecturing the country on how to get back on its feet.

But while most of the country is pinching pennies and downsizing summer sojourns—or forgoing them altogether—the Obamas don't seem to be heeding their own advice. While many of us are struggling, the First Lady is spending the next few days in a five-star hotel on the chic Costa del Sol in southern Spain with 40 of her "closest friends." According to CNN, the group is expected to occupy 60 to 70 rooms, more than a third of the lodgings at the 160-room resort. Not exactly what one would call cutting back in troubled times.

Reports are calling the lodgings of Obama's Spanish fiesta, the Hotel Villa Padierna in Marbella, "luxurious," "posh" and "a millionaires' playground." Estimated room rate per night? Up to a staggering $2,500. Method of transportation? Air Force Two....

The Obama modus operandi is becoming clear. From lavish trips to Spain to reportedly flying Bo, the President's Portuguese water dog, on a separate aircraft to vacation with them in Maine, to a date night in New York City that perhaps cost nearly $100,000, their idea of austerity is really just the lap of luxury, at least for ordinary folks....

I don't begrudge anyone rest and relaxation when they work hard. We all need downtime—the First Family included. It's the extravagance of Michelle Obama's trip and glitzy destination contrasted with President Obama's demonization of the rich that smacks of hypocrisy and perpetuates a disconnect between the country and its leaders. (http://www.tiadaily.com/)

Obama Throws The Rule of Law Out The Window

Over at the Wall Street Journal Todd J. Zywicki explains Obama's strong arming of Chrysler. It's stench is horrible and America is the worse for this sad disregard for the inviolability of contracts.

The rule of law, not of men -- an ideal tracing back to the ancient Greeks and well-known to our Founding Fathers -- is the animating principle of the American experiment. While the rest of the world in 1787 was governed by the whims of kings and dukes, the U.S. Constitution was established to circumscribe arbitrary government power. It would do so by establishing clear rules, equally applied to the powerful and the weak.

Fleecing lenders to pay off politically powerful interests, or governmental threats to reputation and business from a failure to toe a political line? We might expect this behavior from a Hugo Chávez. But it would never happen here, right?

Until Chrysler.

The close relationship between the rule of law and the enforceability of contracts, especially credit contracts, was well understood by the Framers of the U.S. Constitution. A primary reason they wanted it was the desire to escape the economic chaos spawned by debtor-friendly state laws during the period of the Articles of Confederation. Hence the Contracts Clause of Article V of the Constitution, which prohibited states from interfering with the obligation to pay debts.
Hence also the Bankruptcy Clause of Article I, Section 8, which delegated to the federal government the sole authority to enact "uniform laws on the subject of bankruptcies."

The Obama administration's behavior in the Chrysler bankruptcy is a profound challenge to the rule of law. Secured creditors -- entitled to first priority payment under the "absolute priority rule" -- have been browbeaten by an American president into accepting only 30 cents on the dollar of their claims. Meanwhile, the United Auto Workers union, holding junior creditor claims, will get about 50 cents on the dollar.

The absolute priority rule is a linchpin of bankruptcy law. By preserving the substantive property and contract rights of creditors, it ensures that bankruptcy is used primarily as a procedural mechanism for the efficient resolution of financial distress. Chapter 11 promotes economic efficiency by reorganizing ...(READ at WSJ).

Socialized Health Care via Obama is Still Socialized Bad Health Care

Shikha Dalmia at Forbes Magazine shows how socialized health care has been tried and always fails to deliver. Come on, do you really think the government can run the field of medicine? It's a joke and everyone knows it but politicians see in this a great way to lay their hands on money...it's called corruption.

True to the advice of his chief of staff to never let a good crisis go to waste, President Barack Obama is using the current economic crisis to sell a top item on the liberal wish-list: universal health care. "You can't fix the economy," he has repeatedly said, "without fixing health care."

But the president needs to take a chill pill before committing America to a huge new entitlement: One is hard pressed to find any evidence from abroad showing that universal coverage has grown the major industrialized economies more than ours in the past--or shielded them more than us from the global slump now.

At the president's behest, Democrats are exploring ways to ramrod a health care reform bill through Congress this fall by using procedural shenanigans to avoid a Republican filibuster. In his budget, Obama has already proposed an additional $634 billion--nearly three-quarters of a trillion dollars--in health care spending over the next few years. If he gets his way, this money will be the first installment toward a government insurance plan that will compete with private plans to allegedly put affordable coverage within everyone's grasp.

But whatever else universal coverage might bring, there is no evidence that it will bring economic nirvana. If anything, contrary to what the president suggests, the correlation runs the other way for countries with universal coverage such as Canada, England, France, Germany and Japan. On nearly every economic front, their performance has been worse than America's--even, surprisingly, in controlling health care costs. Read at Forbes

Get the Bums Out of Congress - NOW!

A summary of where we are as a nation - We, the people, have to rein in a runaway spending congress and that means getting rid of the Pelosi/Reid crowd. Let's all send emails to these people and demand that they be fiscally responsible with our money! It is time for change, not Obama's "change", but a change of guard - new people in congress: less spending, less corruption and no bailouts for any company that fails and that means Fannie and Freddie - sorry I have no sympathy - and certainly NOT GM! Sarah Palin seems like a breath of fresh air - maybe she will set a new standard of honesty and fiscal responsibility in Washington. (READ "The Spending Explosion" at Wall Street Jr.)

The real news in yesterday's Congressional Budget Office semiannual report is that federal expenditures on everything from roads to homeland security to health care will on present trends reach 21.5% of GDP next year. That's a larger share of national output than at anytime since 1992. If the cost of the federal takeover of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac prove to be large and are taken into account, next year federal outlays could be higher as a share of the economy than at anytime since World War II. In this decade alone, federal spending has increased by almost $1.2 trillion, or 57%.

...We hope Congress and the Presidential candidates don't obsess over the deficit per se, because the real fiscal drag from government comes from how much it spends, not how much it borrows.

The Bush tax cuts also aren't the budget problem. Until this year federal tax collections have been surging. In the four years after the 2003 tax cuts become law, tax receipts exploded by $785 billion. ...

The real runaway train is what CBO calls a "substantial increase in spending" that is "on an unsustainable path." That's for sure. ... There's certainly no recession in Washington. The CBO says that, merely in the two years that Democrats have run Congress, federal expenditures are up $429 billion -- to $3.158 trillion.

The fiscal blowouts have included a record farm bill, notwithstanding record farm income; an aid bill for distressed homeowners, extended unemployment benefits, and more generous veterans benefits. Next up: votes on $50 billion for Detroit auto firms, an $80 billion energy bill, as much as $50 billion for spending masked as a "second stimulus," plus $100 billion or more for the Fannie and Freddie rescue. Rather than sort through priorities, Congress is spending more on just about everything.

Meanwhile, remember that "pay as you go" spending promise that Speaker Nancy Pelosi made in 2006? We called it a ruse at the time, and the last two years have proved it. Senator Judd Gregg (R., N.H.) has tallied up at least $398 billion in "paygo" violations so far. Earmarks were also supposed to be cut in half by this Congress. In 2008 there were some 11,000 at a cost of $17 billion, the second most ever, and far more than half the peak of 14,000 in 2006.

The point to keep in mind is that this big spending blitz is coming even before a new President and Congress arrive next year with far more spending promises in tow. As they contemplate their choice for President, voters might want to consider which of the candidates is likely to be a check on Congressional appetites, rather than a facilitator. (READ)

Public School Mayhem Brought to You by The Corrupt Teachers Union

If you want to see how bad our Public schools are watch this video by Drew Carey and weep. How can we compete on the world stage when our children cannot get a decent education? How can we unlock the potential of each child when these Public schools are run by the most corrupt Union in America? It is obvious in the video whose interests the Union is trying to defend. Watch this and write to your congressman!

reason.tv - Videos > Unlocked

The Hyprocrisy in Our Congress is Stunning

In the Wall Street Journal today in their Review and Outlook section there is an article called "Waterboarding: Congress Knew". (Surprise, surprise!) The orginal article is in the Post Web site.

"One certainly may hold as abhorrent the idea of aggressively interrogating any terrorists ever, either for fear of what they might do to our people, as John McCain does, or because one thinks this violates our values. What one may not do -- at least not if one wants the system to function -- is assent to such a policy in 2002 and then, when the policy is made public, put up the pretense that one is "shocked" and appalled to learn of it."

"This is bad faith. Worse, it risks setting in motion the ruin or eventual criminal prosecution of CIA employees who in 2002 did what the Bush Administration, Congress and indeed the nation wanted them to do to protect the American people from another September 11.

"It has been widely reported by now that waterboarding was used on only three individuals... If Speaker Pelosi and her colleagues want the handling of such terrorists conformed to what they call "our values," then she should define that and put it in an explicit piece of legislation. Then let the Members vote yea or nay, in public, on the record.

"But don't sign off on such a sensitive policy at a moment when the nation's "values" support it, then later feign revulsion when you can't take the heat from the loudest in your political constituency. There was a time when politics at least assumed more backbone than that."

It is beyond understanding how morally corrupt our Washington politicians are. For people like Pelosi to say yes to waterboarding then pretend that they are revolted by it a few years later to fit some political scheme is beyond belief. What kind of people are we sending to Washington to lead this nation? That´s what we should all be asking ourselves. Another question is why can´t we find better.