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June 5th / 7th, 2009
"Barack the ‘Cave’ Man"
Prior to his election, Barack Obama wrote and spoke about the audacity of
hope.
It was an inspirational phrase that also carried with it a diplomatic jab
at naysayers who think nothing can ever get done or changed inside the
beltway.
But after little more than a hundred days in office, Mr. Hope has
established a pattern of buckling under to the Washington establishment, and has
caved in to almost everybody except for a few Somalian pirates.
Here then, in no particular order, are some of the instances where
President Obama is guilty of either acquiescing or back-tracking with regards to
promises and initiatives.
FOREIGN WARS
During the primary campaign, candidate Obama spoke of immediate troop
withdrawals from Iraq. But once he snagged the nomination, Obama caved in and
pandered to some of the pro-war Southern voters by scaling back on his
timetable for a pull out. Once elected, Obama made good on his cave-in, and put
the brakes on leaving Iraq. Then, to make matters worse, he announced that
he would be moving more troops into Afghanistan. Where’s Ron Paul when you
need him?
GITMO
President Obama has always been against torture, and was an outspoken
critic of the Bush/Cheney hotel for wayward terrorists at Guantanamo Bay. But
go back and look at the video of Obama’s “Close Gitmo” signing ceremony,
and you’ll hear him say to an aide,“do we need to do something else?”.
Obviously the President was referring to the Kodak moment at hand, but his aside
was quite telling, because Obama forgot to have a plan in place for moving
the Gitmo detainees. Before the ink was dry on the Presidential Order,
Obama was abandoned by his liberal allies in Congress who pushed for the
base closing in the first place. Suddenly, none of them wanted the prisoners
transferred to their particular State or district, so the bad guys are in
grid lock limbo. Obama should have just reformed Gitmo and kept the
terrorists where they are, but instead he caved in to pressure from the left, and
ended up throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
HOMELAND SECURITY
For someone who claims to be a civil libertarian, Barack Obama has done
nothing to undo the Bush administration’s trampling of citizen rights.
Harvard Professor Jack Goldsmith who served as one of George Bush’s legal
counsels, but who opposed “W” on many issues, recently said of President Obama, “
The new administration has copied most of the Bush anti terrorism program,
has expanded some of it, and has narrowed it only a bit. Almost all of the
Obama changes have been at the level of packaging, argumentation, symbol,
and rhetoric”.
One example is the Terrorist Watch List which has yet to be reformed or
dismantled. The names of thousands of innocent individuals remain on this
McCarthy-like list, which was created under Bush/Cheney, and has served to do
nothing but disrupt travel of, and cause undue stress and embarrassment to
those who have done nothing wrong. Some people were put on the list because
they have a foreign sounding name, or because they have the same name as
someone else under investigation. But others, like CNN’s Drew Griffin, were
placed on the TWL simply because they were outspoken about abuses by the
Bush administration.
THE ECONOMIC CRISIS
We all realize that Barack Obama had nothing to do with the collapse of
the housing market or abuses by Wall Street, but, by the same token, he’s
done nothing of substance to correct those problems. First of all, he hired
two crooks to lead his administration. Rahm Emanuel, once on the board of
Freddie Mac while it was creating the current crisis, is now White House
Chief of Staff. And Timothy Geitner, who failed to pay his own taxes and who
engineered the first round of bail-outs, is heading up the Treasury
Department. And it gets worse. With proof in hand that the first round of
bail-out money was squandered with no accountability, Obama enthusiastically
released the second round of hand-outs. On top of that he now wants to return
any unused bail-out monies back to the bail-out fund instead of to the
Treasury. Translation, though Obama tells us we are now part owners in some of
these greedy companies, we taxpayers will likely never see a return on our
investment.
Speaking of greedy companies, Obama patted himself on the back for capping
the salaries of bail-out recipient CEOs at half a million dollars. But
the cap is moot because it does nothing to prevent those companies from
compensating the CEOs in other ways.
And then there’s the stimulus package. While campaigning for the
Presidency, Obama pledged to cut pork barrel spending by at least 50%, then, after
being elected, proceeded to craft a stimulus bill that was full of it.
When it comes to dealing with our struggling economy, Obama has caved at every
turn.
CREDIT CARDS
Everyone is raving about Obama’s crack down on greedy credit card
companies.
He has been hailed as a hero for signing a new law that will prohibit the
card sharks from raising interest rates without proper notice. But what
may appear to be true reform is just another cave-in. The credit card
companies can still continue to charge whatever they want because Mr. Audacity of
Hope failed to place a cap on interest rates. This shouldn’t surprise
anyone who knows that Obama is as much a political insider as anyone, and is
not going to buck the banks where rates are concerned. And just look at who
he picked as his Vice President. Joe Biden has accepted over $200,000
dollars in campaign contributions from MBNA alone, and he helped lure most of
the country’s major credit card operations to Delaware, which is a tax
haven for financial institutions.
ENVIRONMENT
Though a champion of alternative energy sources, and a crusader in the war
against global warming, Obama is displaying a pattern of caving in to big
oil companies and other business interests at the drop of a hat. Writes
TIME Magazine columnist Bryan Walsh, “Obama’s preference for cooperation
over confrontation may mean he will back away from the truly radical action
needed to combat climate change”.
The most recent example of this came last month when
the Obama administration upheld George Bush’s finding that the Endangered
Species Act is not an effective means of restricting carbon dioxide and
other greenhouse gases that threaten the polar bear and its environs. This
misstep may open up exploration of oil and gas in the Alaska seas.
OVERSEAS PROFITS
President Obama boldly proposed that he will put the screws to American
companies who do business abroad by hiking their tax rate. But even if his
bill passes, it will not stop the abuses that are at the heart of our
current economic crisis. During the primary campaign, Obama agreed with Hillary
that NAFTA and CAFTA needed to be re-evaluated. But once elected, that
promise has disappeared along with millions of additional jobs. Only a
repeal of those agreements will stop the decimation of American jobs. Moreover,
Obama should place a moratorium on all overseas hiring and expansions by
U.S. companies.
He wont, of course, because caving in is much easier than bucking the
system.
HEALTHCARE
Obama claims he wants to make healthcare more affordable for all
Americans, but last month’s White House summit was heavily laden with private sector
lobbyists, and absent of anyone in favor of a public sector, single-payer
option.
To no one’s surprise, Barack caved in to the insurance industry and, at
least for the moment, has let them off the hook for providing affordable
coverage without regard to pre-condition.
CONCLUSION
I am well aware that Barack Obama has only occupied the White House for a
short time, but first impressions are usually accurate, and my impression
is that he caves in far too often on too many issues to far too many
interests. In fact he’s had so many cave- ins that if he were a gold mine, we’d
have to abandon him. The only campaign promise he hasn’t caved on is to
make government transparent, and that’s worked, because we can see right
through what he’s doing.
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