Obama's insane economic agenda
Check out Obama’s insane economic agenda. He promised change, and it looks like he plans to deliver.
Is Obama eligible to be president?
For nearly a year, Barack Obama has refused to produce evidence that would quash a seemingly incredible internet conspiracy theory–that he is not a natural born citizen of the United States and, therefore, according to Article II, Section I of the United States Constitution, cannot serve as president.
In August, Philadelphia attorney Philip Berg filed a lawsuit against Obama and the DNC seeking an injunction against his continuing candidacy on the grounds that he is constitutionally ineligible to be president.
In the lawsuit, Berg states that Sen. Obama was born in Kenya, and not in Hawaii as the senator maintains. Before giving birth, according to the lawsuit, Obama’s mother traveled to Kenya with his father but was prevented from flying back to Hawaii because of the late stage of her pregnancy, “apparently a normal restriction to avoid births during a flight.” As Sen. Obama’s own paternal grandmother, half-brother and half-sister have also claimed, Berg maintains that Stanley Ann Dunham–Obama’s mother–gave birth to little Barack in Kenya and subsequently flew to Hawaii to register the birth.
Berg cites inconsistent accounts of Sen. Obama’s birth, including reports that he was born at two separate hospitals–Kapiolani Hospital and Queens Hospital–in Honolulu, as well a profound lack of birthing records for Stanley Ann Dunham, though simple “registry of birth” records for Barack Obama are available in a Hawaiian public records office.
Should Sen. Obama truly have been born in Kenya, Berg writes, the laws on the books at the time of his birth hold that U.S. citizenship may only pass to a child born overseas to a U.S. citizen parent and non-citizen parent if the former was at least 19 years of age. Sen. Obama’s mother was only 18 at the time. Therefore, because U.S. citizenship could not legally be passed on to him, Obama could not be registered as a “natural born” citizen and would therefore be ineligible to seek the presidency pursuant to Article II, Section 1 of the United States Constitution.
The simple and straightforward response from someone with nothing to hide is to release the original, embossed vault copy of his birth certificate to the public. So why hasn’t Obama done this? Why not just end the speculation and move on?
Instead, his lawyers are trying to run out the clock. In having failed to respond to Berg’s requests for admissions within 30 days, according to Rule 36 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, Obama admits all allegations against him.
Berg contends that the failure to respond and serve the response within the time limit is “damning,” and made two appearances overnight on Rollye James’ talk radio program, the second one coming shortly after midnight, during which he disclosed the meat of today’s filings and the legal and political ramifications of the defendants’ failure to respond.
“They did not file answers or objections or anything else to the request for admissions we served upon them on September 15,” Berg said to me shortly before midnight, noting that Obama and the DNC did in fact acknowledge service of the admission in their motion for protective order. “They knew the admissions were due. They knew they must object or answer specifically in 30 days. Here, they did nothing.”
If the lawsuit is without merit, as I suspect, why not just produce evidence that could put an end to it once and for all?
The 'tax rebates' for people who pay no income taxes will come from social security
The WSJ provides another effective analysis of Obama’s tax cut sham:
Now, if you have been following this so far, you have learned that people who pay no income tax will get an income tax refund. You have also learned that this check will represent relief for the payroll taxes these people do pay. And you have been assured that this rebate check won’t actually come out of payroll taxes, lest we harm Social Security.
You have to admire the audacity. With one touch of the Obama magic, what otherwise would be described as taking money from Peter to pay Paul is now transformed into Paul’s tax relief. Where a tax cut for payroll taxes paid will not in fact come from payroll taxes.
WSJ exposes Obama's tax cut lies
The Wall Street Journal provides a concise, effective skewering of Obama’s deceptive “tax cut” policies.
Obama has repeatedly stated that he’s going to cut taxes for 95% of Americans, an obviously absurd claim considering that about 50% of Americans pay no federal taxes. (Of course, the mainstream media has refused to challenge him on it.)
From the article:
It’s a clever pitch, because it lets him pose as a middle-class tax cutter while disguising that he’s also proposing one of the largest tax increases ever on the other 5%. But how does he conjure this miracle, especially since more than a third of all Americans already pay no income taxes at all? There are several sleights of hand, but the most creative is to redefine the meaning of “tax cut.”
For the Obama Democrats, a tax cut is no longer letting you keep more of what you earn. In their lexicon, a tax cut includes tens of billions of dollars in government handouts that are disguised by the phrase “tax credit.”
…Once upon a time we called this “welfare,” or in George McGovern’s 1972 campaign a “Demogrant.” Mr. Obama’s genius is to call it a tax cut.
The Tax Foundation estimates that under the Obama plan 63 million Americans, or 44% of all tax filers, would have no income tax liability and most of those would get a check from the IRS each year.
Obama keeps lying about cause of financial crisis
The current financial crisis was ignited by the sudden devaluation of subprime loans that were granted over the past decade to borrowers having little or no credit. Financing derived from the Greenspan Fed’s easy-money policy and was steered into mortgages via government mandates.
The Community Reinvestment Act all but prohibited banks from expanding operations unless they issued a politically correct number of mortgages to unqualified borrowers. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, government sponsored entities created to provide liquidity to the mortgage markets, purchased billions of dollars of subprime mortgages from banks. Fraudulent accounting practices masked the companies’ deteriorating capital positions and forced executives of both companies to resign in disgrace.
Republican efforts, spearheaded by Bush in 2003 and McCain in 2005, to regulate Fannie and Freddie’s investment and accounting practices were thwarted by the Democrats:
Why didn’t the Dems support additional oversight? Perhaps it’s because Fannie and Freddie paid them to look the other way.
Obama to 'vote present' on important bailout legislation
Barack Obama has a long and distinguished history of shrinking in the face of difficult votes.
While a state senator in Illinois, he refused over and over to take stands on important issues. Instead of voting “yes” or “no”, he simply voted “present” more than 130 times.
It’s apparent Barack has yet to conquer his political cowardice.
The Artful Dodger said yesterday he will skip the upcoming vote on one of the most important pieces of legislation put to Congress in decades, a $700B bailout of financial firms. Obama insisted he would return to Washington to vote, but only if it was so close that his vote would decide the outcome. (He did not, of course, take a position on the proposed legislation which is now being debated in the Senate while he campaigns in nearby Pennsylvania.)
“Look if we get a consensus and everybody is popping champagne – then I will probably be going back to campaign with folks who are having a tough time in places like Ohio, and Michigan and Pennsylvania,” Obama said adding, “If this ends up being a close vote or a vote where the outcome is an open question then obviously this is a top priority.”
Obama shares responsibility for the current financial crisis
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are government-sponsored entities that leverage their special status to raise money at low interest rates and use it to buy up billions of dollars of mortgages. In 2005 they became embroiled in numerous accounting scandals that led to calls for more regulation and oversight.
Senate bill S.190, sponsored by John McCain, subjected Fannie and Freddie to regulation and would have eliminated their investments in high-risk debt.
So what happened? Kevin Hassett explains:
If that bill had become law, then the world today would be different. In 2005, 2006 and 2007, a blizzard of terrible mortgage paper fluttered out of the Fannie and Freddie clouds, burying many of our oldest and most venerable institutions. Without their checkbooks keeping the market liquid and buying up excess supply, the market would likely have not existed.
But the bill didn’t become law, for a simple reason: Democrats opposed it on a party-line vote in the committee, signaling that this would be a partisan issue. Republicans, tied in knots by the tight Democratic opposition, couldn’t even get the Senate to vote on the matter.
That such a reckless political stand could have been taken by the Democrats was obscene even then. Wallison wrote at the time: “It is a classic case of socializing the risk while privatizing the profit. The Democrats and the few Republicans who oppose portfolio limitations could not possibly do so if their constituents understood what they were doing.”
Now that the collapse has occurred, the roadblock built by Senate Democrats in 2005 is unforgivable. Many who opposed the bill doubtlessly did so for honorable reasons. Fannie and Freddie provided mounds of materials defending their practices. Perhaps some found their propaganda convincing.
But we now know that many of the senators who protected Fannie and Freddie, including Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Christopher Dodd, have received mind-boggling levels of financial support from them over the years.
Throughout his political career, Obama has gotten more than $125,000 in campaign contributions from employees and political action committees of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, second only to Dodd, the Senate Banking Committee chairman, who received more than $165,000.
The current mess might have been averted, but Fannie & Freddie pulled a few strings and their puppets in the Senate killed the bill.
Jim Byrd provides a nice summary:
…in 2005, McCain co-sponsored bill S. 190, the Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act, to address the very crisis we are experiencing. The bill would have reined in Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae’s out of control lending practices. McCain warned Congress of the eminent collapse of these two institutions, and others, if not regulated. What did Obama do concerning this legislation? He was vocally against S.190, and watched as his Democrat compatriot Chris Dodd killed it in committee, and stood in line, behind Chris Dodd, with his hand extended, then walked away with $126,349 doled out by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Obama then hired Fannie Mae CEO James Johnson to vet his prospective vice presidential candidates, who had to quit because of a shady mortgage he received. A heartfelt thanks to Obama for “the change we need.”