THEY THINK WE'RE STUPID

Yes, the Left, the so-called Progressives (sic) think we average Americans are stupid.

The Progressives (sic) think that they really know better than you do what cereals to buy your kids? They think you are stupid because you don't understand difference between Tony the Tiger and whole grains. They think you as a consumer need the government's protection. They think you are stupid because you (of course none of them) paid and borrowed too much for housing and didn't understand the mortgage documents as they clearly do, being much smarter than you.  They think you are fat because of schools or food companies.  You know it's because you choose to eat and not exercise.  After all, health care and insurance costs -- courtesy of the government price fixing -- are the same for you if you're obese, anorexic or average, so where's any incentive not to eat and watch TV?

Why can a government gaggle of bureaucrats know more about what you want and need better than you can for yourself?


Those few -- Democrat autocrat-wanna-bes -- cannot foretell the future any better than you or I can. But they want to tell us how to lead our lives, what to buy, what to eat, how to borrow, what to pay executives, how to manage companies. (Do THEY live their lives any better? Do THEY buy more intelligently? Do THEY eat better? Do THEY borrow more smartly? Do THEY have successful experience in hiring executives who can manage companies profitably? Have THEY ever managed a company or even managed people before? Have the actual policies they have passed over the past 75 years reduced poverty, increased affordable healthcare, expanded and improved education?)  Any review of all the government projection errors, from corn prices to Solyndra, from unemployment statistics to Federal Reserve growth projections to gas prices proves the government bureaucrats can't guess any better than you or I, yet they are running your lives.  That could be spelled r u i n i n g.

The government of the Democrats thinks that you and I all are too stupid to survive without the government watching out over us.  This is the same government that takes money only from the successful -- whom they politically, and falsely, label the 1%, but is closer to 30% -- whom they think are the only ones who can succeed without government assistance.  But is that true?  Are the rest of us -- the 99% or 70% -- really unable to cope with our lives without Democratic Party overseers telling us how to? 

No!  So tell them in November to give us back our freedom.

We don't need Superman to bring back truth, justice and the American Way, we need President Romney!

One of the experienced, successful 55% who pay federal income taxes.  He can help the remaining 45% get to an income level so you, too, are able to contribute to the American Way on your own.

The issue of the conservatives (sic) versus the Progressives (sic)  is not ideas -- conservative or progressive (sic) -- it is power. For the most part the Left has it because the arms of communication, the media, the educational system is under the spell of the Left. Propaganda Power leans left.


Then there's the 88 major union bosses and myriad trial lawyers put into power and riches through legislation who in turn shower the proceeds of legislation (monopoly dues extraction and class-action settlements) into the Democratic Party which writes.

The Right has been busy creating companies, jobs and prosperity allowing the Left to use that wealth to gain and retain power. The Right tends toward modesty and restraint, the Left anything but. So the Left will do anything for that power, and does. We have a president that will stop at nothing to be reelected, using the entire asset base of the United States of America, lawful or not, he cares not, since power and "truth" is in the hands of the winner.

The terms "conservative" and "progressive" are inaccurate.  The so-called conservatives do not want the status quo of union boss power, a huge centralized government, dictatoral powers by the president and entrenched politicians.  The so-called Progressives are not progressive, they have the power and want to keep it using any means available, including dividing the population into discrete groups and showering each with something for which they'll vote in the Progressives

The Right has to change to win this Second Civil War, the second internal war for the survival of the United States and that for which it stands.  It needs to keep to its ideals, but become winner-take-all fighters for truth, justice (equally for all no matter wealth or nose color), and the American Way.

Good Job, Mr. President, except...

GROWTH IN GROSS DOMESTIC PRODUCT (USA)
Eleven quarters since the official end of a recession
Under President Barack Obama    Under President Ronald Reagan
2.4%                                                                 6.1%

Over the last year GDP has grown by $600,000,000,000;
The deficit by $1,300,000,000,000

I applaud you, Mr. President!

I applaud you, Mr. President.  You just conceived and assembled a  fail-safe method of bringing to an abrupt end any and all future genocide.  (Why weren't you around when Adolf Hitler was visiously attacking and arbitrarily killing one single targeted entity -- Jews -- for political and ideological reasons?)  The United States Atrocities Prevention Board.  YES!  As you so aptly and emotionally stated in your speech: "Never again."  Such a brilliant turn of a word.  Interagency it'll be and permanent with members from the Department of the Treasury, State Department, and U. S. Department of Defense, while chaired by Samantha Powers, the National Security Council senior director for multilateral and humanitarian affairs.  (Appropriate name, hers.)

"National sovereignty is never a license to slaughter...And when the Lord’s Resistance Army led by Joseph Kony continued its atrocities in Central Africa, I ordered a small number of American advisors to help Uganda and its neighbors pursue the LRA.  And when I made that announcement, I directed my National Security Council to review our progress after 150 days.  We have done so, and today I can announce that our advisors will continue their efforts to bring this madman to justice..."  That'll stop him.

Our president demanded the resignation of President Bashar al-Assad, the overthrow of his government, and an end to nearly five decades of Ba’ath Party rule.  Well, keep talking Mr. President, while another ten thousand Syrians get killed.  But hey, that's not the Holocaust.

"And our diplomacy continues, because in Darfur, in Abyei, in Southern Kordofan and the Blue Nile, the killing of innocents must come to an end..."  Sometime; until then, we have the Board.

"That does not mean that we intervene militarily every time there’s an injustice in the world.  We cannot and should not.  It does mean we possess many tools -- diplomatic and political, and economic and financial, and intelligence and law enforcement and our moral suasion.."

Keep talking, President Obama...

     I am hoping (against hope) that Romney will eschew the Republican fear of not being popular in the New York Times. Mr. Romney: the Times will try to seduce you by playing nice, then attempt to crush your every breath. It has worked for decades and look at where we are: nearing moral and financial bankruptcy. Of the media, only MSNBC is honest: it is the far-left mouthpiece of the Progressives. And for the rest of you America-loving voters: invest in your future, invest in Romney and conservative members of Congress. Yes, keep your nose to the grindstone (the government won’t pay YOU, only left-wing “activists”) but pay and stay in the fight against unions, trial lawyers, George Looney and Barack Obama. They want to own you and crush freedom and free enterprise. Donate and talk to everyone, convince only one person about how dangerous the Progressive agenda is, and we — America — will win.

Does Candidate Romney have an O'Bomb?

It has been almost four years since Mitt Romney watched John McCain take the Republican nomination from him.  Four years!  Has Mr. Romney been sitting around shrewedly investing his well-earned fortune?  Or has he been carefully preparing for the moment when the Republican nomination is his?  Has he been investing in his future by carefully and legally combing every possible record, locating and interviewing (or having interviewed) people with whom Barack Obama had some relationship back in his Hawaiian or Occidental College days?  The so-called popular media has had no interest in the real Barack Obama for fear it might derail their careful narrative of the country's first African American president.  And so far in 2012 there is nothing about President Obama's background unearthed.  It is almost as though he never existed, never had a footprint.  Who financed his college and post graduate education?  What were his grades, extracurricular activities, writings?  No one seems to know.  And the extent they care depends on whether they are liberal Progressives caring only about keeping their pet president in office even though his true accomplishments are scant; or Republican conservatives who seem to want him, his philosophies, policies and personnel out.

Stay tuned for some answers.

Most of us are average

The Far-left indoctrinates kids to "change the world" and that they all are "special". Truth is: most of us are average. A tiny, tiny few will ever change anything but many if not most are made to feel guilty for being simply average and not trying to change the world. The basis of  democracy and, for that matter capitalism, lies in each person living their lives for themselves not others.  The People -- everyone together -- make decisions for themselves, which in the main become best for the most people.  More people are happy simply making themselves happy. Isn't THAT the goal of a life?  For the Founders of country the pursuit of happiness was paramount.  The Progressive mantra of change and equality is a huge lie for them to gain power. Period.  So I say worry about yourself first, if everyone does that, the world will be a better place.  But with that pursuit of happiness must come self-discipline along with written rules of law which are obeyed.  Happiness is not pursuing pleasure with abandon, that also seems to be part of the Progressive mantra.

Here's the article from the Seattle Times today that brought on my post:

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/opinion/2017976951_brooks15.html

If you attend a certain sort of conference, hang out at a certain sort of coffee shop or visit a certain sort of university, you've probably run into some of these wonderful young people who are doing good. Typically, they've spent a year studying abroad. They've traveled in the poorer regions of the world. Now they have devoted themselves to a purpose larger than self.

Often they are bursting with enthusiasm for some social entrepreneurship project: making a cheap water-purification system, starting a company that will empower Rwandan women by selling their crafts in boutiques around the world.

These people are refreshingly un-cynical. Their hip service ethos is setting the moral tone for the age. Idealistic and uplifting, their worldview is spread by enlightened advertising campaigns, from Bennetton years ago to everything Apple has ever done.

It's hard not to feel inspired by all these idealists, but their service religion does have some shortcomings. In the first place, many of these social entrepreneurs think they can evade politics. They have little faith in the political process and believe that real change happens on the ground beneath it.

That's a delusion. You can cram all the nongovernmental organizations you want into a country, but if there is no rule of law and if the ruling class is predatory then your achievements won't add up to much.

Furthermore, important issues always spark disagreement. Unless there is a healthy political process to resolve disputes, the ensuing hatred and conflict will destroy everything the altruists are trying to build.

There's little social progress without political progress. Unfortunately, many of today's young activists are really good at thinking locally and globally, but not as good at thinking nationally and regionally.

Second, the prevailing service religion underestimates the problem of disorder. Many of the activists talk as if the world can be healed if we could only insert more care, compassion and resources into it.

History is not kind to this assumption. Most poverty and suffering — whether in a country, a family or a person — flows from disorganization. A stable social order is an artificial accomplishment, the result of an accumulation of habits, hectoring, moral stricture and physical coercion. Once order is dissolved, it takes hard measures to restore it.

Yet one rarely hears social entrepreneurs talk about professional policing, honest courts or strict standards of behavior; it's more uplifting to talk about microloans and sustainable agriculture.

In short, there's only so much good you can do unless you are willing to confront corruption, venality and disorder head-on. So if I could, presumptuously, recommend a reading list to help these activists fill in the gaps in the prevailing service ethos, I'd start with the novels of Dashiell Hammett or Raymond Chandler, or at least the movies based on them.

The noir heroes like Sam Spade in "The Maltese Falcon" served as models for a generation of Americans, and they put the focus squarely on venality, corruption and disorder and how you should behave in the face of it.

A noir hero is a moral realist. He assumes that everybody is dappled with virtue and vice, especially himself. He makes no social-class distinction and only provisional moral distinctions between the private eyes like himself and the criminals he pursues. The assumption in a Hammett book is that the good guy has a spotty past, does spotty things and that the private eye and the criminal are two sides to the same personality.

He (or she — the women in these stories follow the same code) adopts a layered personality. He hardens himself on the outside in order to protect whatever is left of the finer self within.

He is reticent, allergic to self-righteousness and appears unfeeling, but he is motivated by a disillusioned sense of honor. The world often rewards the wrong things, but each job comes with obligations and even if everything is decaying you should still take pride in your work. Under the cynical mask, there is still a basic sense of good order, that crime should be punished and bad behavior shouldn't go uncorrected. He knows he's not going to be uplifted by his work; that to tackle the hard jobs he'll have to risk coarsening himself, but he doggedly plows ahead.

This worldview had a huge influence as a generation confronted crime, corruption, fascism and communism. I'm not sure I can see today's social entrepreneurs wearing fedoras and trench coats. But noir's moral realism would be a nice supplement to today's prevailing ethos. It would fold some hardheadedness in with today's service mentality. It would focus attention on the core issues: order and rule of law.

And it would be necessary. Contemporary Washington, not to mention parts of the developing world, may be less seedy than the cities in the noir stories, but they are equally laced with self-deception and self-dealing.

The Exploitation of Trayvon Martin

Excellent assessment by black author Shelby Steele:  (From The Wall Street Journal, April 5, 2012, page A15.)

OPINION Updated April 4, 2012, 7:17 p.m. ET Shelby Steele: The Exploitation of Trayvon Martin


The absurdity of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton is that they want to make a movement out of an anomaly. Black teenagers today are afraid of other black teenagers, not whites.Article Comments (665) more in Opinion

By SHELBY STEELE

Two tragedies are apparent in the Trayvon Martin case. The first is obvious: A teenager—unarmed and committing no crime—was shot dead. Dressed in a "hoodie," a costume of menace, he crossed paths with a man on the hunt for precisely such clichés of menace. Added to this—and here is the rub—was the fact of his dark skin.

Maybe it was more the hood than the dark skin, but who could argue that the skin did not enhance the menace of the hood at night and in the eyes of someone watching for crime. (Fifty-five percent of all federal prisoners are black though we are only 12% of the population.) Would Trayvon be alive today had he been walking home—Skittles and ice tea in hand—wearing a polo shirt with an alligator logo? Possibly. And does this make the ugly point that dark skin late at night needs to have its menace softened by some show of Waspy Americana? Possibly.

What is fundamentally tragic here is that these two young males first encountered each other as provocations. Males are males, and threat often evokes a narcissistic anger that skips right past reason and into a will to annihilate: "I will take you out!" There was a terrible fight. Trayvon apparently got the drop on George Zimmerman, but ultimately the man with the gun prevailed. Annihilation was achieved.

If this was all there was to it, the Trayvon/Zimmerman story would be no more than a cautionary tale, yet another admonition against the hair-trigger male ego. But this story brought reaction from the White House: "If I had a son he would look like Trayvon," said the president. The Revs. Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, ubiquitous icons of black protest, virtually battled each other to stand at the bereaved family's side—Mr. Jackson, in a moment of inadvertent honesty, saying, "There is power in blood . . . we must turn a moment into a movement." And then there was the spectacle of black Democrats in Congress holding hearings on racial profiling with Trayvon's parents featured as celebrities.

In fact Trayvon's sad fate clearly sent a quiver of perverse happiness all across America's civil rights establishment, and throughout the mainstream media as well. His death was vindication of the "poetic truth" that these establishments live by. Poetic truth is like poetic license where one breaks grammatical rules for effect. Better to break the rule than lose the effect. Poetic truth lies just a little; it bends the actual truth in order to highlight what it believes is a larger and more important truth.

The civil rights community and the liberal media live by the poetic truth that America is still a reflexively racist society, and that this remains the great barrier to black equality. But this "truth" has a lot of lie in it. America has greatly evolved since the 1960s. There are no longer any respectable advocates of racial segregation. And blacks today are nine times more likely to be killed by other blacks than by whites.
If Trayvon Martin was a victim of white racism (hard to conceive since the shooter is apparently Hispanic), his murder would be an anomaly, not a commonplace. It would be a bizarre exception to the way so many young black males are murdered today. If there must be a generalization in all this—a call "to turn the moment into a movement"—it would have to be a movement against blacks who kill other blacks. The absurdity of Messrs. Jackson and Sharpton is that they want to make a movement out of an anomaly. Black teenagers today are afraid of other black teenagers, not whites.

So the idea that Trayvon Martin is today's Emmett Till, as the Rev. Jackson has said, suggests nothing less than a stubborn nostalgia for America's racist past. In that bygone era civil rights leaders and white liberals stood on the highest moral ground. They literally knew themselves—given their genuine longing to see racism overcome—as historically transformative people. If the world resisted them, as it surely did, it only made them larger than life.

It was a time when standing on the side of the good required true selflessness and so it ennobled people. And this chance to ennoble oneself through a courageous moral stand is what so many blacks and white liberals miss today—now that white racism is such a defeated idea. There is a nostalgia for that time when posture alone ennobled. So today even the hint of old-fashioned raw racism excites with its potential for ennoblement.

For the Revs. Jackson and Sharpton, for the increasingly redundant civil rights establishment, for liberal blacks and the broader American left, the poetic truth that white racism is somehow the real culprit in this tragedy is redemption itself. The reason Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson have become such disreputable figures on our cultural landscape is that they are such quick purveyors of poetic truth rather than literal truth.

The great trick of poetic truth is to pass itself off as the deep and essential truth so that hard facts that refute it must be dismissed in the name of truth. O.J. Simpson was innocent by the poetic truth that the justice system is stacked against blacks. Trayvon was a victim of racist stereotyping—though the shooter never mentioned his race until asked to do so.

There is now a long litany of racial dust-ups—from Tawana Brawley to the Duke University lacrosse players to the white Cambridge police officer who arrested Harvard professor Skip Gates a summer ago—in which the poetic truth of white racism and black victimization is invoked so that the actual truth becomes dismissible as yet more racism.

When the Cambridge cop or the Duke lacrosse players or the men accused of raping Tawana Brawley tried to defend themselves, they were already so stained by poetic truth as to never be entirely redeemed. No matter the facts—whether Trayvon Martin was his victim or his assailant—George Zimmerman will also never be entirely redeemed.

And this points to the second tragedy that Trayvon's sad demise highlights. Before the 1960s the black American identity (though no one ever used the word) was based on our common humanity, on the idea that race was always an artificial and exploitive division between people. After the '60s—in a society guilty for its long abuse of us—we took our historical victimization as the central theme of our group identity. We could not have made a worse mistake.

It has given us a generation of ambulance-chasing leaders, and the illusion that our greatest power lies in the manipulation of white guilt. The tragedy surrounding Trayvon's death is not in the possibility that it might have something to do with white racism; the tragedy is in the lustfulness with which so many black leaders, in conjunction with the media, have leapt to exploit his demise for their own power.

Mr. Steele is a senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution. Among his books is "White Guilt" (Harper/Collins, 2007).

A version of this article appeared April 5, 2012, on page A15 in some U.S. editions of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: The Exploitation of Trayvon Martin.

Mr. President, Free Enterprise Works

Mr. President: Free Markets Work.


As doubtlessly you read this morning (March 27, 2012) in The Wall Street Journal, Mr. President, the article “Steel Finds Shale Sweet Spot.” It illustrates that free enterprise is alive and well in America and assisting in your agenda. Innovative technical advances from the private sector in oil and gas drilling, hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) coupled with horizontal drilling, allows access to huge deposits of oil and natural gas nearing two miles below the earth’s surface. Usual vertical drilling reaches only a few hundred feet down. Some government projections indicate a hundred year supply of natural gas and twenty-four billion barrels of oil within these shale lands in the contiguous 48 United States.

In ways central control of an industry can never predict, as the Journal article described, the cascading consequences of this technology come from a newly-accessible large supply of natural gas which pushes prices down – more than 35% from a year ago. Lower energy prices benefit the national economic turnabout. More gas creates lower prices which triggers increased useage (demand). The unchanged price of the major gas competitor, coal, causes its demand (and useage) to drop. This forces companies to shutter the unneeded coal plants expanding your agenda, Mr. President, of exchanging dirtier coal-burning plants for cheaper and cleaner-burning natural gas. Lower energy costs increase the profits of energy-dependent companies, where natural gas can be substituted for oil. For the steel industry more sophisticated drilling creates more demand for tubular steel products, such as the needed pipes, tubes and joints. More demand from lower prices creates a need for more production employees and those needed for support of higher sales of these steel products. The increased profits in the steel industry spreads out to suppliers of everything from transportation to accounting computers to toilet paper. The expected higher profits have increased the price of steel companies, with X – U. S. Steel’s New York Stock Exchange symbol – increasing from a 52-week low of $18.85 to yesterday’s close of $29.54, a change of over $14 billion accruing on paper to retirees, pension and mutual funds and other investors.

You see, Mr. President, the free markets work and work to enable your agenda. You might relax and let them just happen.

FILTHY REMARKS BY FUND RAISERS LOWER THE PRESIDENCY

I MAY BE OLD, BUT I SIMPLY DO NOT UNDERSTAND HOW ANY AMERICAN CAN BE PROUD OF A PRESIDENT WHO BY HIS ACTIONS ENCOURAGES FILTHY REMARKS BY BILL MAHER AND THIS CEE-LO-GREEN  (see-low, how low can you go?) DUDE?


CAN ANYONE ANSWER? DO YOU JUST TAKE ANYTHING FROM THESE SCUMS IN ORDER TO BE POPULAR WITH YOUR PEER GROUP?

Bill Maher, donor of $1,000,000 to President Obama's reelection: "C-word" and "T-word" about Sarah Palin and unrepeatable comment about Ms. Palin's daughter.
Co-Lo-Green at an Obama fundraiser: "F-word" and flipped up his middle finger to the crowd.

DON'T YOU UNDERSTAND THE LOWERING OF THE OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENCY?

PRESIDENT OBAMA HAS LOWERED THE PRESTIGE OF THE PRESIDENCY OF THE UNITED STATES LOWER THAN "I AM NOT A CROOK" NIXON OR W. JEFFERSON [sic] CLINTON, WHO TOOK ADVANTAGE OF AN IMPRESSIONABLE YOUNG INTERN IN HIS POSITION AS THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

SOMEONE PLEASE EXPLAIN. PLEASE.

DO THE LIBERALS SIMPLY TAKE ANYTHING IN ORDER TO BE POPULAR WITH THEIR PEER GROUP?

MOM AND DAD ARE ROLLING OVER IN THEIR GRAVES.

OBEDIENCE TRAINING

Obedience Training

The software company Microsoft was founded in 1975 by nineteen and a twenty-two year-old kids in Albuquerque where their first customer was. It incorporated in June 25, 1981, moving to Bellevue, Washington, the kids’ hometown. It performed an initial public offering of its securities on March 13, 1986. Almost exactly twenty-six years ago! Its 1986 revenues were $197,514,000 with 1,153 people. Driving force Bill Gates was brilliantly innovative, yet business savvy enough to take advantage of circumstances as they came up. He built the company the old-fashioned way, by creating something he thought customers would want or need. By grindingly hard, disciplined work. By a cadre of equally dedicated mostly young people.

He was a successful young businessman in a free enterprise society. Or was he?

On May 18, 1998 the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) of William J. Clinton’s Administration and some states filed a set of civil actions against Microsoft Corporation pursuant to Sections 1 and 2 of the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890. The government alleged that Microsoft abused monopoly power on Intel-based personal computers with operating system and Internet World Wide Web browser sales.

The trial started on October 19, 1998. On November 5, 1999, Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson found that Microsoft's dominance of the x86 based personal computer operating systems market constituted a monopoly. The judgment was split in two parts. On April 3, 2000, he issued his conclusions of law that the company committed monopolization, attempted monopolization, and tying, all violations of the Sherman Act. On June 7, 2000, the court ordered Microsoft broken in two. One part would make operating systems and the other to produce other software components.

The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned Judge Jackson's rulings on Microsoft’s appeal.

Judge Jackson had given interviews to the news media while hearing the case, a violation of the Code of Conduct for U.S. judges; the appeals court accused him of unethical conduct for not accusing himself from the case.

George W. Bush became the Forty-third president of the United States on January 21, 2001.

The DOJ announced on September 6, 2001 that it was no longer seeking to break up Microsoft and would instead seek a lesser antitrust penalty. Microsoft decided to draft a settlement proposal allowing PC manufacturers to adopt non-Microsoft software. Two month later the DOJ reached an agreement with Microsoft to settle the case; some critics called it a slap on the wrist in that the DOJ did not require Microsoft to change any of its code nor prevent Microsoft from tying other software with Windows in the future, much less break it up. On June 30, 2004, the U.S. appeals court unanimously approved the settlement rejecting objections that the sanctions were inadequate.

So began the obedience training of Microsoft and the entire high-technology industry.

In 1995, Microsoft had but a single lobbyist; seven years later it had one of the largest Political Action Committees (PAC) in history. The software giant's budget for its PAC increased from about $16,000 in 1995 to $1.6 million in 2000. Total donations to political donations from Microsoft and its employees to political parties, candidates and PACs in the 2000 election cycle amounted to more than $6.1 million.

Fast forward to today: this is all very funny to Democratic senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vt) chairman of the committee leading an antitrust investigation of Google Inc. According to the Huffington Post, he smirked, "I consider myself a public works project right here…My colleagues call it the Leahy Full Employment Act." But there is something more ominous with the ascension of the present central control of business by Washington, D. C.. Virtually every business action in the United States of America requires approval from one or more federal government bureaucracy or entity headquartered in Washington, D. C. and many times part and parcel of approval is vigorish in the form of lobbying, campaign and other contributions.

In 2011, Google hired eighteen lobbying shops and around year end had over ninety separate individual human lobbyists and its reported $9.7 million spend beat Microsoft’s $7.3 million and its employing around eighty lobbyists.

A recent The Wall Street Journal article (Mar. 1, 2012, on page B2, “FTC Attorney to Join Microsoft”) said that Microsoft hired a senior Federal Trade Commission attorney who led several of the agency's antitrust investigations into Google Inc. It seems clear from these two bitter rivals that competition is as or more intense in our nation’s capital as it is in the commercial marketplace.

Subscribers to The Wall Street Journal typically read of at least one article a day describing an investigation, indictment, charge, inquiry, target. (Here’s a smattering: “Banks May Face Charges From SEC”; “Inquiry Targets Goldman Official”; Fund Company in Valuation Inquiry”; “Watchdog Targets Overdraft Charges”; “Insider Targets Expanding”; “SEC Charges Noble Ex-CEO In Nigeria Bribe Investigation”; “Regulators Scrutinize Ties With Exchanges”; “Investigators Probe a Rush At MF Global to Move Cash”; “Watchdog Aims to Put Focus on Credit Bureaus”; “SEC Opens An Inquiry Of Wynn Resorts”; “Sites Are Accused Of Privacy Failings”;”Foreign Bribe Case at Avon Presented To Grand Jury”; “Lawmakers Target Google’s Tracking”; “Ex-Bond Highflier Is Warned by SEC”; “Red Flags Ignored, DEA Says”; “Criminal Charges Are Prepared in BP Spill”; “Banks Sweat as Tax Net Tightens”; “SEC Ups Game to Find Rogue Firms”; Deutsche Telekom Settles Charges”; “BofA Settles Lending Case”; “CEO Takes Leave After Suit by SEC”; “Fed Raises Bar For Bank Deals”;”Fed Writes Sweeping Rules From Behind Closed Doors”; “New Old Media Battle Over Net Rules”)

One of the most enlightening is: “After AT&T: The New Antitrust Era” announcing not only the killing of a $39 billion merger agreed to by AT&T and T-MobileUSA but that hereafter few corporate transactions will be allowed without central control by the U. S. Government.

And in today’s Journal was “U. S. Warns Apple, Publishers” about Apple changing the business model of book publishing after accomplishing the same in recorded music with its $.99 per song which unbundled a song from a CD at a low price.

I call all of this “obedience training” mandating that companies “heel” on a short leash held by the politicians and bureaucrats in Washington, D. C. That is the future of the United States governed by the Democratic political party.

President Obama's hiring quotas

President Obama is dictating that for all companies serving the U. S. Government, directly or indirectly, seven percent (7%) of their employees must be disabled.  Or there contracts will be revoked. (I suppose no matter the contract law.)  So, along with returning veterans, now you who compete in the job market have another protected group with which to compete.  Oops, strike “compete” the truth is “lose a job to”.  Of the seven percent, two percent (2%) of them will have to be “severely disabled” you lose your job to.  But the typically-confusing part is that a company who can’t hire you but must hire a disabled person in your place, cannot by law…by law (Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990) ask if a person is disabled.  Make sense?  So company owners and managers are forced to hire the disabled, but cannot ask if they are disabled.  This is beyond the realm of mere incompetence.  Does anyone in this administration have any real world life.  Nothing much President Obama does makes sense to any rational person.  And please know that these percentages are ofan entire labor force, so for some period of time ONLY the disabled will be able to be hired until the numbers reach Obama's arbitrarily demanded quotas.

Jobs are clearly not Job One for this president.  Micromanaging companies seems to be Job One for this president undermining the ability of businesses to make their own decisions.  Does President Obama really think he -- with no private business experience at all -- can manage companies? 

Ummm, you also know, this means that an alcoholic or illegal drug abuser can and will take your job under Obama's law.  Being they're disabled and all.

(Courtesy The Wall Street Journal, Wednesday, February 29, 2012, page B1:  U. S. Pushes Target for Hiring the Disabled)

COSMIC QUESTION

I have a cosmic question.  (Whatever that means.)

If individual American women can unilaterially decide whether or not to have a fetus inside them aborted, why can't they be allowed to decide whether or not to overdraw their checking accounts and incur predisclosed fees?  Can't each of them decide to overdraw or not on their own?

Is Bain the Bain of Romney or the losers?

“The Bain Capital Bonfire” (“Opinion”, Wall Street Journal, January 11) is the fulcrum of this Second Civil War of the United States of America. If the Republican Party and its presumptive nominee for president of the United States are not willing to stand up proudly for the capitalist/free enterprise system of the U. S. the central control of our government and society by the liberal/progressive branch of the Democratic Party will win out.



Although I have made all of the following up, I believe Mitt Romney should say something like this:



“I am a millionaire. I have proudly achieved this by getting businesses to run better. I can be just as successful if I become your president by working with folks to accomplish the same thing in our government. By helping our government to more effectively work for you we can save money and provide significantly better service to you who are both boss and customer.



“I started my career working for a management consulting company, Bain & Company in Boston. I remember my first assignment...[Romney inserts his personal story here.]



“I moved up in the ranks by helping companies that were troubled, many ready to fail. We'd go in and walk around the working areas, talk to the people and ask them what could be done better. It is true that sometimes those on top of a company or in the government can't really know what's going on. The only way to find out is to ask those who truly know.



“As part of improving some companies and helping them survive, some jobs would have be changed or eliminated. I remember at Allied Parts. Webster Johnson was very helpful in reconfiguring how we'd move parts from production to shipping. A result was that he designed himself out of a job. But he was a great and useful employee so we found another place for him. Not so for Jeff Bingham who with the changes became redundant with other employees. But we worked hard to help him get another job; out-placement is always important to the Jeffs of the world but also to the other employees and was core to our belief system. Jeff is still working for that other company, Helsell Parts and still living in Peoria after thirty years. I think both Jeff and Webster will retire in the next few years.



“One way of looking at it is that Jeff sacrificed his job to save a hundred other jobs and the company itself. That company was losing money, but after restructuring it became profitable. Now there’s a misconception that profits go into some fat cat’s pockets. Not so. In Allied's case, profits - which simply is an accounting term -- went to purchase another metal-bending machine and related equipment and to lease additional manufacturing space for it. And after a year-and-a-half Allied hired four more people. Not old Jeff though, he was happy at Helsell.



“After helping it become profitable, we advised Allied in raising some investment capital which with its profits financed its continued growth.



“This all happened in the private, non-government sector of our economy. The private sector has its ups and downs as Allied proved. But the company weathered the bad times with the help of Bain and without any need for government aid, investment or intervention. Many fail even with the management assistance and capital. This is the private enterprise system that has created for America the most free, prosperous economy in the history of the world.



“Through events like Allied we saw an opportunity to provide financing to these troubled or developing companies for which we consulted at Bain. Since there would have been a conflict with Bain, with its encouragement a few of us started Bain Capital, an independent venture capital entity.



“One of our first investments was in a single store office products retailer in Boston. Twenty-seven years later it has turned into Staples, Inc. with $15 billion in revenues and some 90,000 employees. A huge success for us, for its employees, for America.



“The investment monies for Bain Capital first came from wealthy individuals, but later on pension funds, not-for-profit foundations and university endowments put money in. These organizations have received a higher return on their capital thus funding employee retirements, more charitable donations and better educations for our citizens.



“An example is [this is fictitious, since Bain doesn’t disclose investors] Haverhill County, MD whose retiree funds have received on average thirteen percent a year return over the fifteen years it has invested in Bain Capital funds. For comparison, Social Security provides less than two percent today. The difference is enormous to the county and its retired employees. And Bain has never had a down year, which is not to say it won’t, but it hasn’t.



“Just think of how much better off our country’s finances would be receiving that return instead of the interest on U. S. Treasury securities as Social Security does now. While today I am not advocating it, openly researching this without bias would be one of the Romney administration’s activities.



“In 1999 I was asked to take over as president of the Salt Lake Organizing Committee for the 2002 Winter Olympics. There were some organizational, financial and ethical issues. I helped clear it all up and we held a highly successful and profitable Winter Olympic Games. But that is another story.



“Thank you for listening.”

Letter to the Editor of the Wall Street Journal

•

• Friday, December 23, 2011 As of 8:16 AM

OPINION



Will We Ever Again See the Great Days of Capitalism?

While his Dec. 19 op-ed "Capitalism and the Right to Rise" is well written about things that need to be said, Jeb Bush mischaracterizes two key points.

First he writes, "We see human tragedy and we demand a regulation to prevent it." "We" don't demand anything; the politicians seeking to keep their cushy jobs pass laws just after a "human tragedy" to capitalize on the media coverage. It is the politicians, not the people, who legislate.

Second, Mr. Bush writes that "Mayors, county chairs, governors and presidents never think their laws will harm the free market." Again I beg to differ. I submit that many politicians couldn't care less about free markets, some being in absolute opposition to them. But they pass laws to keep their power and think little about the consequences, unintended or not. They seem to believe that they'll be out of office before then. This is about power, raw power over others, not any fine point of policy. The rubber, so to speak, is meeting the road now, when the promises made are becoming laws and crippling the free markets.

Theodore M. Wight

Seattle

My Letter is based on the following Opinion piece:

• OPINION

• DECEMBER 19, 2011

Capitalism and the Right to Rise

In freedom lies the risk of failure. But in statism lies the certainty of stagnation.

• Article

By JEB BUSH

Congressman Paul Ryan recently coined a smart phrase to describe the core concept of economic freedom: "The right to rise."

Think about it. We talk about the right to free speech, the right to bear arms, the right to assembly. The right to rise doesn't seem like something we should have to protect.

But we do. We have to make it easier for people to do the things that allow them to rise. We have to let them compete. We need to let people fight for business. We need to let people take risks. We need to let people fail. We need to let people suffer the consequences of bad decisions. And we need to let people enjoy the fruits of good decisions, even good luck.

That is what economic freedom looks like. Freedom to succeed as well as to fail, freedom to do something or nothing. People understand this. Freedom of speech, for example, means that we put up with a lot of verbal and visual garbage in order to make sure that individuals have the right to say what needs to be said, even when it is inconvenient or unpopular. We forgive the sacrifices of free speech because we value its blessings.

But when it comes to economic freedom, we are less forgiving of the cycles of growth and loss, of trial and error, and of failure and success that are part of the realities of the marketplace and life itself.

Increasingly, we have let our elected officials abridge our own economic freedoms through the annual passage of thousands of laws and their associated regulations. We see human tragedy and we demand a regulation to prevent it. We see a criminal fraud and we demand more laws. We see an industry dying and we demand it be saved. Each time, we demand "Do something . . . anything."

As Florida's governor for eight years, I was asked to "do something" almost every day. Many times I resisted through vetoes but many times I succumbed. And I wasn't alone. Mayors, county chairs, governors and presidents never think their laws will harm the free market. But cumulatively, they do, and we have now imperiled the right to rise.

Woe to the elected leader who fails to deliver a multipoint plan for economic success, driven by specific government action. "Trust in the dynamism of the market" is not a phrase in today's political lexicon.

Have we lost faith in the free-market system of entrepreneurial capitalism? Are we no longer willing to place our trust in the creative chaos unleashed by millions of people pursuing their own best economic interests?

The right to rise does not require a libertarian utopia to exist. Rather, it requires fewer, simpler and more outcome-oriented rules. Rules for which an honest cost-benefit analysis is done before their imposition. Rules that sunset so they can be eliminated or adjusted as conditions change. Rules that have disputes resolved faster and less expensively through arbitration than litigation.

In Washington, D.C., rules are going in the opposite direction. They are exploding in reach and complexity. They are created under a cloud of uncertainty, and years after their passage nobody really knows how they will work.

We either can go down the road we are on, a road where the individual is allowed to succeed only so much before being punished with ruinous taxation, where commerce ignores government action at its own peril, and where the state decides how a massive share of the economy's resources should be spent.

Or we can return to the road we once knew and which has served us well: a road where individuals acting freely and with little restraint are able to pursue fortune and prosperity as they see fit, a road where the government's role is not to shape the marketplace but to help prepare its citizens to prosper from it.

In short, we must choose between the straight line promised by the statists and the jagged line of economic freedom. The straight line of gradual and controlled growth is what the statists promise but can never deliver. The jagged line offers no guarantees but has a powerful record of delivering the most prosperity and the most opportunity to the most people. We cannot possibly know in advance what freedom promises for 312 million individuals. But unless we are willing to explore the jagged line of freedom, we will be stuck with the straight line. And the straight line, it turns out, is a flat line.

Mr. Bush, a Republican, was governor of Florida from 1999 to 2007.

Our Government at Work.

In today's Seattle Times are four important articles.

1.  Front page of the Real Estate section E, page E 1.  "Some Big Goofs in Tax-Credit Program" discusses the fiasco of President Obama's tax-credit for first time home buyers.  Initially it was $7,500 then later $8,000.  The result?  Nearly 4 million applied and won $30 billion of taxpayers' cash for simply buying a home (which in all likelihood is worth less now).  But wait!  "A series of audits by the Treasury's inspector general has documented foul-ups by the IRS" including prison inmates, dead people, and teenagers getting the cash and plenty of fraud because the IRS initially didn't require any documentation.  The entire endeavor was a typical hugely expensive government bureaucratic mess costing upwards of a wasted $500 MILLION.  WASTED tax money from U. S. taxpayers.

2.  "4M  borrowers eligible for foreclosure review".   4,000,000 bundles of paperwork are to be reviewed by the U. S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, Federal Reserve and "independent" consultants forced on mortgage servicers for problems.  Who's to pay for all this?  You, one way or another, through use of your taxes or higher fees charged to get  a mortgage.

3.  Front Page D section, "Business", page D 1: "'Red Flag' seen before investment firm fell".
Seems Seattle investment advisor Mark Spangler's company The Spangler Group was inspected by an independent accounting firm which discovered that there was no independent qualified custodian of its customers' money and securities.  This material noncompliance was duly reported to the U. S. Securites and Exchange Commission which...did nothing.  Seems Spangler put $68 million of his clients' money into propping up failing (and subsequently failed) companies in which he had a personal investment.  The SEC was probably too busy writing rules or lobbying Congress to get more turf and regulations.  These are the regulators President Obama is counting on to stop another "meld-down"?  This agency was also investigated for illegally destroying its own records.  Oh yes, after the Spangler group filed for receivership did the SEC take a look.

4.  Finally in today's (November 6) Parade Magazine is an article which tells why this country is suffering from the rule of the over-zealous, anti-business Democratic Party.  Page 12: "If you purchased Reebok toning shoes...you may...[get cash] through a proposed class action SETTLEMENT", where Reebok denied all wrongdoing but decided to settle.  If you bought certain Reebok items you can receive UP TO $25, $40 or $50.  YAHOO!  Score.  But WAIT! There's more:  Trial lawyers will get $3,500,000 plus expenses.  Of which according to practive $350,000 will be donated to elect Democrat Party candidates.  The Democrats who gain election throught the contributions of trial lawyers fight tooth and nail to continue the Class Action Lawsuit Industry from which they ream millions and sometimes billions of dollars of settlements.  There are no trials, no adjudication only suits filed, settlements agreed and dollars for lawyers.  And remember Reebok pays by increasing prices to pay the lawyers.

Naive Republicans play the Democrats' game.

The Wall Street Journal

Letters to the Editor

November 1, 2011 page A 16

LETTERS

I beg to differ a little with Ms. Noonan. Her advice and that of most mainstream Republicans is to argue the Democrats' arguments.

Our country was founded on the concepts of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That means government assures individual liberty, allowing everyone to pursue his own happiness. It doesn't mean that government defining happiness for people, or pursues it on their behalf.

Republicans want to enable Americans to pursue their own happiness, however they alone define it. How can Democrats fight that?

Republicans should forget about taxes; argue about personal freedom, win the election, then lower taxes. Arguing that big business is as bad as big government, or vice versa, should keep President Obama in place for another four years.

Theodore M. Wight

Seattle







DECLARATIONS

•

• DECLARATIONS

• OCTOBER 29, 2011

The Divider vs. the Thinker

While Obama readies an ugly campaign, Paul Ryan gives a serious account of what ails America.

• By PEGGY NOONAN



People are increasingly fearing the divisions within, even the potential coming apart of, our country. Rich/poor, black/white, young/old, red/blue: The things that divide us are not new, yet there's a sense now that the glue that held us together for more than two centuries has thinned and cracked with age. That it was allowed to thin and crack, that the modern era wore it out.

What was the glue? A love of country based on a shared knowledge of how and why it began; a broad feeling among our citizens that there was something providential in our beginnings; a gratitude that left us with a sense that we should comport ourselves in a way unlike the other nations of the world, that more was expected of us, and not unjustly—

"To whom much is given much is expected"; a general understanding that we were something new in history, a nation founded on ideals and aspirations—liberty, equality—and not mere grunting tribal wants. We were from Europe but would not be European: No formal class structure here, no limits, from the time you touched ground all roads would lead forward. You would be treated not as your father was but as you deserved. That's from "The Killer Angels," a historical novel about the Civil War fought to right a wrong the Founders didn't right. We did in time, and at great cost. What a country.

Enlarge Image





Martin Kozlowski

But there is a broad fear out there that we are coming apart, or rather living through the moment we'll look back on as the beginning of the Great Coming Apart. Economic crisis, cultural stresses: "Half the country isn't speaking to the other half," a moderate Democrat said the other day. She was referring to liberals of her acquaintance who know little of the South and who don't wish to know of it, who write it off as apart from them, maybe beneath them.

To add to the unease, in New York at least, there's a lot of cognitive dissonance. If you are a New Yorker, chances are pretty high you hate what the great investment firms did the past 15 years or so to upend the economy. Yet you feel on some level like you have to be protective of them, because Wall Street pays the bills of the City of New York. Wall Street tax receipts and Wall Street business—restaurants, stores—keep the city afloat. So you want them up and operating and vital, you don't want them to leave—that would only make things worse for people in trouble, people just getting by, and young people starting out. You know you have to preserve them just when you'd most like to deck them.

***

Where is the president in all this? He doesn't seem to be as worried about his country's continuance as his own. He's out campaigning and talking of our problems, but he seems oddly oblivious to or detached from America's deeper fears. And so he feels free to exploit divisions. It's all the rich versus the rest, and there are a lot more of the latter.

Twenty twelve won't be "as sexy" as 2008, he said this week. It will be all brute force. Which will only add to the feeling of unease.

Occupy Wall Street makes an economic critique that echoes the president's, though more bluntly: the rich are bad, down with the elites. It's all ad hoc, more poetry slam than platform. Too bad it's not serious in its substance.

There's a lot to rebel against, to want to throw off. If they want to make a serious economic and political critique, they should make the one Gretchen Morgenson and Joshua Rosner make in "Reckless Endangerment": that real elites in Washington rigged the system for themselves and their friends, became rich and powerful, caused the great cratering, and then "slipped quietly from the scene."

It is a blow-by-blow recounting of how politicians—Democrats and Republicans—passed the laws that encouraged the banks to make the loans that would never be repaid, and that would result in your lost job. Specifically it is the story of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the mortgage insurers, and how their politically connected CEOs, especially Fannie's Franklin Raines and James Johnson, took actions that tanked the American economy and walked away rich. It began in the early 1990s, in the Clinton administration, and continued under the Bush administration, with the help of an entrenched Congress that wanted only two things: to receive campaign contributions and to be re-elected.

The story is a scandal, and the book should be the bible of Occupy Wall Street. But they seem as incapable of seeing government as part of the problem as Republicans seem of seeing business as part of the problem.

Which gets us to Rep. Paul Ryan. Mr. Ryan receives much praise, but I don't think his role in the current moment has been fully recognized. He is doing something unique in national politics. He thinks. He studies. He reads. Then he comes forward to speak, calmly and at some length, about what he believes to be true. He defines a problem and offers solutions, often providing the intellectual and philosophical rationale behind them. Conservatives naturally like him—they agree with him—but liberals and journalists inclined to disagree with him take him seriously and treat him with respect.

This week he spoke on "The American Idea" at the Heritage Foundation in Washington. He scored the president as too small for the moment, as "petty" in his arguments and avoidant of the decisions entailed in leadership. At times like this, he said, "the temptation to exploit fear and envy returns." Politicians divide in order to "evade responsibility for their failures" and to advance their interests.

The president, he said, has made a shift in his appeal to the electorate. "Instead of appealing to the hope and optimism that were hallmarks of his first campaign, he has launched his second campaign by preying on the emotions of fear, envy and resentment."

But Republicans, in their desire to defend free economic activity, shouldn't be snookered by unthinking fealty to big business. They should never defend—they should actively oppose—the kind of economic activity that has contributed so heavily to the crisis. Here Mr. Ryan slammed "corporate welfare and crony capitalism."

"Why have we extended an endless supply of taxpayer credit to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, instead of demanding that their government guarantee be wound down and their taxpayer subsidies ended?" Why are tax dollars being wasted on bankrupt, politically connected solar energy firms like Solyndra? "Why is Washington wasting your money on entrenched agribusiness?"

Rather than raise taxes on individuals, we should "lower the amount of government spending the wealthy now receive." The "true sources of inequity in this country," he continued, are "corporate welfare that enriches the powerful, and empty promises that betray the powerless." The real class warfare that threatens us is "a class of bureaucrats and connected crony capitalists trying to rise above the rest of us, call the shots, rig the rules, and preserve their place atop society."

If more Republicans thought—and spoke—like this, the party would flourish. People would be less fearful for the future. And Mr. Obama wouldn't be seeing his numbers go up.

Something is up: DC is Richer than Silicon Valley

Washington, District of Columbia, is the richest city in America.  San Jose, California, the heart of "Silicon Valley" used to be.  Median -- half above half below -- household income was $84,523 for 2010 in DC versus $83,944 for the San Jose metropolitan area, center of innovation, entrepreneurship and wealth creation in America.  DC unemployment rate is 6% against a national figure of 9.1% and 10% in San Jose.

The average civilian federal worker gets $107,843 in total compensation.

According to the Wall Street Journal top capital lobbyists receive $1 million to $5 million plus bonuses.

And they're ocupying Wall Street!

ReStart

My last post was October 29, 2010.  I am restarting after devoting the intervening time to vacations, a death in the family and my novel.

This is a practice.

PROFLIGATE, RECKLESS SPENDING BY OBAMA

My last post described a large number of examples where the Obama administratioin is harming business -- the engine of our prosperity and jobs -- through incessant investigations, lawsuits, crushing regulations and pronouncements.  He is killing, not creating, jobs.  (Funny, you don't hear him spouting about the three million jobs he created or saved any longer.  It was a bald-faced LIE.)

Now I will present a continuous scoreboard of the man's insane, drunken-sailor spending of your money and mine.  All borrowed from China and others, to be repaid in the future by some magical means.  He has increased spending 21.4% during his two years in office.  That's $628,000,000,000.  The national spending were in each year records.  $3,520,000,000,000 ($3.5 trillion) and $3,450,000,000,000 (also $3.5 trillion, rounded.)  In each case the figures were $1,420,000,000,000 and $1,290,000,000,000 more than the government took in.  Cumulative deficits those two years -- $2,710,000,000,000 (That's $2.7 trillion)!!!

That man knows how to spend.  Too bad he doesn't know how to earn.

The total INCREASED spending on student aid around $70,000,000,000 (up nearly 50% since he took office, and as would be expected by any rational person with all that money flowing into education, bureaucrats are getting it and increasing prices -- tuition's up around 5% a year for at least the last ten.)

ANOTHER $2,500,000,000 ($2.5 billion) for passenger rail projects, mostly to California and Florida.

EXAMPLES OF OBAMA'S ANTI-BUSINESS INITIATIVES

President Obama is flying all over the country trying to prop up with cash sinking Democrat politicians and, at the same time, spouting how many jobs he's singlehandedly created  3,000,000 alone by "saving" General Motors, he says.

Most rational citizens other than the far-left apologizers who wouldn't know free-enterprise if it hit them in the face, understand inherently that the Obama Administration hasn't created any jobs (other than those supported by taxpayer's future confiscations to repay the People's Republic of China's loans to us.  In other words: government jobs).  But what they might not consciously understand is that the Obama Administration is fervently against the private sector, free-enterprise and capitalism itself.  Obama is anti-business, anti-corporation and therefore anti-private-sector JOBS!

So instead of supporting the ONLY source of wealth- and lasting-job-creation -- companies -- Obama is busily investigating, suing, threatening, and micro-managing them.  He has taken over vast segments of the U. S. economy -- healthcare, automobile manufacturing and selling, financial services, education and its financing, consumer showerhead manufacturing and on and on and on.  All must bow down to his dictatorship.  He seems to believe that he and his anti-business, "social justice" henchmen and cronies, few of whom have even held mere jobs in the private sector, can build and manage corporations better than the hated "executives".  He completely ignores the trillion-dollar mismanaged fiascos of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, U. S. Post Office, Amtrak and virtually every other segment of government.  Mismanagement.  But excellent propagandizing!  In fact one would be challenged to name one success by the federal government in recent times.  I wonder if each of the initiatives mentioned below could not have awaited (and assisted in) an economic recovery that desperately needs jobs.  Obama is obviously idealogically anti-business.

So here's what he and his administration have been doing in his war against business:
[I am changing the numbering.  I originally started at 1. and went to 37. from top to bottom.  But I have decided to continue this with the latest posting, the largest number, on top.  It'll begin with today (Monday, August 23, 2010) and number 38.]

79.   Mark Lloyd, newly appointed Chief Diversity Officer of the Obama Federal Communications Commission, has called for making private broadcasting companies pay licensing fees equal to their total operating costs to allow public broadcasting outlets to spend the same on their operations as the private companies do.  Think about this one!!!!!!


78.  The Obama FDA frightened Abbott Laboratories into withdrawing the diet drug Meridia.  One study published in the New England Journal of Medicine found a higher risk of heart attacks and strokes, but 46 other clinical trials and six million patient-years of use didn't find the same risk.  No matter, and no matter the First Lady's obsesion with obesity; attacking for-profit healthcare companies is a higher priority for Obama, the President. 

77.  Synthes, INc. a surgical implant company settled charges by the Obama Justice Department that it improperly marketed some spinal compression fracture products. 

76.  Because it wants to, the Obama federal investigators are looking at ways big pharma could, maybe, possilby be paying bribes overseas.  Merck, AstraZeneca, Brostol-Myers Squibb, GlaxoSmithKline not to mention SciClone and Eli Lilly and Baxter all of which are being investigated by the Obama Justice Department and the Obama SEC.  The companies say it'll cost millions and millions of dollars and take place from Brazil, China,Germany, Poland, Itasly, Russia and Saudia Arabia.  More harrassment of business by the horribly oppressive Obama administration of for-profit companies.  Or could it be fishing for openings for trial lawyer suits providing millions of dollars to the Democratic Party?  And to further get them, Obama is threatening to file charges with business executives as well as the companies.  And people think the Peoples' Republic of China is repressive.

75.  The Obama Justice Department hit American Express Co. with a civil suit in its latest bullying initiative.  Bullying is not allowed on the playground why is it allowed by the Obama federal government?  AmEx did not sign  an agreement that Visa and MasterCard did one which loosens restrictions that credit card companies place on merchants.  Why is the Obama Justice Department putting its nose into the private agreement between private-sector companies?  Because it wants to.  AmEx dropped 6.5% October 4.

74.  The Rule of Law is being slowly replaced in the Obama Administration by the Rule of Personal Preference.  For example, the Obama Internal Revenue Service is arbitrarily allowing taxpayers a tax decuction for installing defective drywall in their houses which needs to be replaced to get the decuction along with myriad other complex requirements..  This new rule was promoted by the Democrats in Congress wanting to get reelected.

73.  The Obama Consumer Product Safety Commission said two Fisher-Price Trikes hurt ten kids of which two reauired medical attention.  So ELEVEN MILLION are being recalled.  (There's a protruding plastic key sticking out of Dora the Explorer and Barbie's trikes.)  And F-P's high chairs have pegs on their back to store the tray, but kids can fall on them.  (Fall on high chairs?)  And there are 14 reports of problems some of which OH DEAR! required stiches.  FORTEEN MILLLION RECALLED!  I submit that this is regulation gone wild.  That is .000096 PERCENT hurt. 

72.  See next post concerning discrimination.  With absolutely no empirical evidence that "diversity" of skin color provides any benefit to anyone, except 1) to elect Democrats and 2) to make liberals feel good about themselves, not the recipients of diversity.  It is well-researched and proven that diversity is costly to companies and government entities, through hiring of so-called "diversity officers" and accompanying time for siminars, etc. and literature, none of which manufactures anything for revenue.  So put another way, dicversity costs productive jobs.  Given that the Obama financial industry takeover bill named for its two major offenders, Sen. Dodd and Rep. Frank.  Both social-justice Democrats.  In their bill is Section 342, described in detail in the September 27, 2010 issue of Forbes Magazine (page 18, "On My Mind": "Good Intentions Gone Haywire").  A summary is that at least federal bureaus are required to open and staff Offices of Minority & Women Inclusion, including the Treasury Department, the Federal Reserve and each of the 12 regional, so-called privately owned, Federal Reserve Banks.  This costing you and me $58 million a year to start.  But there's more.  These new offices will implictly mandate racial and sexual (well, gender) quotas on every bank, financial institution and providers thereto.  That's over 50,000 businesses in the country, including law and accounting firms.  Forbes calculates that if only one new "deiverse" employee is hired in each of the firms that increases costs to business around $4,000,000,000 every year.  To start.  Quotas.  Quoata.  Quotas.  Illegal according to the Supreme Court but not the Obama prejudice.  Another Job killer!

71.  The Obama anti-jobs machine strikes again: the Obama Labor Department files a complaint against Tyson Foods Inc. because ONE of its managers allegedly discriminated against women.   It was filed under an Obama Executive Order.  Women only hold 28% of the jobs at this one SLAUGHTERHOUSE in Illinois.  (Why would they want any?)  The place employs 2,400 people and comes from an audit or job application forms.  No one complained.  Obama wants Tyson to hire 100 women there and will banish Tyson from cogernment contracts until it gives in.  Dictatorship?  Private enterprise?  Cuba?  (I do not know if Tyson is union or not, that would certainly be a reason Obama sued.  Not enough campaign contributions.  But it probably is, being in Illinois.)  A bigger question: Is discrimination a statistical study or an specific action or actions by a person or persons? 

70.  Further FDA micromanaging of physican prescribing: Two years ago FDA approved Avastin now it's withdrawing it from the market.  It is NOT because Obama thinks it's too expensive for Medicare to pay, of course not!  It does cost $100,000 a year.  It has proven a wonder drug for women in stage IV breast cancer, slowing its progression (shrinking tumors in half the patients using it) and extending lives (patients live twice as long as those not taking it).    Just to preclude sexism, Obama is also considering withdrawing Provenge a drug for advance prostate cancer (most women don't get this) because it costs $93,000.  Both these moves are revolutionary for the FDA.  Obama is beginning rationing.

69.  One goal of Obama's has succeeded.  Citigroup Inc. can't compete with a government monopoly in student loans, so it's shedding that unit, thus increasing Obama's grip on propagandizing United States college students through giving or withholding from them money to go to college.  Think about it!  An addendum: The default rates on student loans is continuing to increase.  To 7%  in 2008 up from 6.7% in 2007 and 5.2% in 2006.  Let's guess, will they go up or down with the government completely in charge?

68.  Continuing his perfect record of stupidity, President Obama will put another $11.4 billion of taxpayers' holders money at more risk by changing its preferred stock to common, which will increase Obama's ownership in the former General Motors Acceptance Corp. (GMAC, now Ally Financial, Inc.) to 80%.  We -- U. S. Taxpayers -- have given GMAC nearly $20,000,000,000.  General Motors, Ally's former owner declined to re-buy Ally and bought AmeriCredit Corp. instead for another $3,500,000,000 of our money.  Obama bought Ally because its former owner didn't want to.  Hmmm. Smart move Mr. President.  (Well, who cares, it's not your maney anyway.)

67.  See 46 below.  The Obama Justice Department cowed the six leading high-tech companies into settling civil charges.  Google, Apple, Adobe, Intuit and Walt DIsneys' Pixar have agreed not to not poach each other's employees by cold-calling them.  Of course they didn't admit any wrongdoing or have to pay anything.  Just why did Obama do this? 

66.  President Obama runs General Motors, which was purchased with roughly $50,000,000,000 of taxpayer money and is 61% owned by U. S. taxpayers..  Now GM after Chapter 11 has once again begun making political donations now mostly to Democrats which are mostly elected with union funds, to which Obama gave a hunk of GM stock.  (And much more of Chrysler's.)  If this isn't blatently illegal, it certainly doesn't pass the stink test.  It stinks.  Taxpayers are indirectly financing Democrat reelections.

65.  As in 64 below, this is about legal (well, formerly legal) drugs.  The Obama Justice Department is trying to butt into the lead plaintiff position in a suit against Pfizer, Inc.'s Wyeth unit about Rapamune, which prevents a body from rejecting kidney transplants.  In the past doctors, were able to prescribe medicine as they thought best for their patients.  NO MORE!  The FDA bureaucrats are quickly second-guessing physicians and taking over that function.  Micromanagement by bureaucrat.  Jobs, revenue, growth, profits?  Health?  Obama could care less.  His mad power is what is important.


64.  In his quest to get foreign countries to like him, Obama has proposed plans to increase airline passenger "rights" (as defined by Obama, of course).  The international airline industry is up in arms against him.  It'll bring higher fares,  fewer flights, confusion and will conflict with international rules.  It'll also ban peanuts.

64.  Further micromanaging the business world, the Obama Federal Drug Administration decided that the diabetes drug Avandia, by GlaxoSmithKline PLC, once a multi-billion dollar drug used by 600,000 patients has been regulated off the market.  FDA bitterly debated the data and evidence, thought by many to be inconclusive.  But whatever FDA will tell physicians how to prescribe drugs.  Afterall who knows more bureaucrats or doctors?

63.  The Obama Administration wants to manage their hated health insurance companies.  The health industry takeover specifies that health insurance companies must spend at least 80% (or 85% depending) of its premiums collected on actual medical care.  Problem?  There's no definition of medical care and the possibilities are endless.  Rules are coming from bureaucrats.   This clearly will damage small health plans who do not have the critical mass to instigate all the regulations, thus throwing their expense rations out of whack and them out of business.  It's only maybe a few thousand jobs, though.  That's pocket change to Obama.

62.  Please see No. 36 below, about potatoes.  I just spent a weekend in Prosser, WA, and saw a brand-spanking new huge Lamb Weston potato plant in the middle of Prosser closed, shut tight.  I'd guess a hurdred or two hundred josb lost.  Why?  Because the Teamsters union doesn't like the North American Free Trade Agreement and it is not letting the Obama Administration live up to a NAFTA agreement the U. S. signed with Mexico to allow Mexican trucks to travel a short distance inside the U. S.  But now, let's dis China.  The Democratic Congress and President Barack Obama had flipped a discretionary 35% tariff on Chinese tires at the demand of the Steelworkers union last year.  In addition Obama and the Dems want China to raise the price of its currency to the dollar to make our imports less costly.  Gee, what would you do if you were China?  Call Barack and say what a nice guy he is and let's be friends?  Or slap a 50% to 105% tariff on U. S. Poultry products.  Just to remind readers the full-on trade wars of the 1930's -- also courtesy of the Democrats and unions -- kept the Depression depressing a decade longer.  Smoot-Hawley here we come!

61.  Please see Number 56, below, about Obama's vendetta against for-profit  (God- or god-forbid!) schools.  Their profits should be taken from them he believes.  But today I read (September 28, 2010, Wall Street Journal, page A-something, the second to the last, "Black Colleges Need a New Mission".  It states in this article about HBCUs -- historically black colleges and universities -- you can't call them black anymore apparently, that "for the past two years, the University of Phoenix, a FOR-PROFIT COLLEGE has conferred more bachelor's degrees on black students than any other school."  Go after them, Obama, throw another generation of  African Americans in the garbage bin.

60.  The Obama Federal Trade Commission sues POM to get them to tell the truth, as they see it, about health benefits of POM.  (Pomegranate-based fruit drink.)  The FTC wants POM to change its advertising.  FTC go after the president, Congressional members and condidates that lie, lie, lie.  Leave productive employers alone.  Every job is needed today.

59.  On to Obama's particular target: U. S. health insurance companies.  Obama's ObamaCare mandates for insurance companies to eliminate co-pays on preventative care; extends the definition of "children" to stay on parents' policies to age 26 (children?); and forces automatic coverage of kids regardless of pre-existing conditions and, finally, the dictates the elimination of lifetime caps.  Obama obviously believes all this should be free and carved out of insurance companies' ginormous profits.  But, no, the companies are raising premium costs.  Well, his administration will hunt these companies down to see if the increases are "unjustified" (a strictly-defined legal term which means anything Obama arbitrarily doesn't like).  If this fierce confrontation isn't enough, Democrats in Congress want to fix the prices of insurance companies, with legislation that was stalled but might be awakening.  If that all isn't deadly enough, Obama has threatened to keep the companies that "unfairly" raise prices -- once again a term of arbitrariness from Obama -- out of competing in the state-run insurance exchanges scheduled under Obama's health industry takeover bill to begin in 2014.

59.  Obama's Environmental Protection (sic) Agency wants the facts, Ma'am, nothing but the facts from nine huge natural gas (fossil fuel) companies who use a relatively new techinque "hydraulic fracturing" to access ginormous underground gas fields.  Some chemicals are used in the process have been disclosed to local regulators but are deemed competitive secrets by companies.  Environmentalists are scared and rumbling, so the EPA acts.

58.  Obama's United States Department of Justice (sic) and his Securities and Exchange Commission have ganged up on Hewlett-Packard probing possible bribes (as defined in our government's U. S. competitive-hampering Foreign Corrupt Practices Act) in Russia.

57.  Obama's Federal Trade Commission has unleashed on Apple Inc. to force it to change its products to allow competition from mobile devices from Google by letting Adobe Systems's programming language to be used on its devices.  Google's AdMob ad network likely will be serving up ads to Apple's applications (called "apps").  Apple caved.  Probably a coincidence that Google executives and founders were major supporters of Obama's election.

56.  Please see Number 3 below about for-profit colleges which are being attacked by the Obama U. S. Government Accountability (sic) Office.  Owner of one of the largest, Washington Post Co. (owner of Kaplan Inc.)  has danced into Washington with money and lobbyists and its Chairman Donald Graham.  No doubt after grabbing campaign contributions for the upcoming intense election in November, this issue will fade away.  Is this attack on business simply about extorting money for reelection?  We'll see.

55.  It's your turn once again, Toyota.  That'll teach you to be successful when Obama's GM is struggling.  The Obama National Highway Traffic Safety (sic) Commission is "scrutinizing" Corollas and Matrix vehicles for possibly stalling.\ and of course publicizing the investigation everywhere.

54.  Obama's financial services industry takeover is costing consumers more.  No matter, saysa prominent Democrat; "Better to know up-front what the interest rate is, even if it's higher..." said Rep. Maloney (D., N.Y.) principal author of Obama's Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility and Disclosure Act (CARD) as consumers' credit card  rates near 15%.  So Obama is attacking every big company in the land for possibly increasing consumer costs, yet when he's in control, it's OK.  Not only is CARD increasing prices, at the same time it's reducing the availability of credit.  This is critically dangerous to new and early-stage small companies who use credit cards to finance their businesses.  They used to be the source of most new employment.  Not so much anymore, in part thanks to President Ovbama.

53.  The Obama Federal Aviation Agency is requiring a record $24,000,000 penalty for American Airlines apparently for not putting certain clips an exact number of inches apart. 

52.  Speaking of restricting competition, see below Number 50 about Obama requiring registration and certification of some badly-hurting building contractors which limits competition, here's another.  Obama's Internal Revenue Service is requiring all paid tax-return preparers to register and get a Preparer Tax Identification Number (PTIN).  This could encompass over a million citizens who will have IRS watching over their shoulders, after they have to pay for their own mandated training.  Will the government require them all to register and vote Democrat?  Stay tuned!  In the meantime it'll disrupt the industry.  Couldn't Obama push for a simpler tax return that doesn't require any "expert"?

51.  The Obama Commodity Trading Futures Commission is after CME Group Inc.'s conduct in its Treasury-futures business.  Obama was alerted by a CME competitor.

50.  Speaking of Google.  Obama's regulators are closely investigating Google's entry into the airline flight information business through an acquisition.  While there are plenty of alternatives to Google's target, ITA Software Inc., that doesn't matter apparently.  Government lawyers are asking potential future Google competitors, Expedia and Orbitz, for example, as well as present intense competitors such as Microsoft, if they could be unfairly disadvantaged.  Wonder what they'll say; I am certainly they will be honest and forthright.   Rules don't matter, if Obama doesn't like something WATCH OUT!

50.  A new Obama Environmental Protection (sic) Agency rule requires certification by government-approved trainers of badly-hurting building contractors who work on older homes to make sure they follow step-by-step processes for working on these houses that might have lead somewhere in them.  Cost be damned, but EPA says $150 or more will be added to costs each time. 

49.  Your Obama Congress at work: airline passengers must be offered water and snacks if they're on the ground awaiting takeoff for two hours.

48.  Obama's Federal Trade Commission, ever active, has sued Dun & Bradstreet for buying a unit of Scholastic Corp. last year.  This is a $29 million transaction -- peanuts -- which somehow might hurt consumers by reducing competition in the market for kindergarten to highschool data.  Data?

47.  Obama-hated health insurance company (he actually hates them all!) Aetna Inc. was suspended from signing up new members for its (soon-to-be-gutted by Obama's health industry takeover-) Medicare Advantage and Medicare prescription drug plans because it didn't comply with rules about changing its plan designs.  There are approximately 150,000 pages of Medicare rules and regulations and at any particular time any entity engaging in anything to do with Medicare will be in some violation.

46.  Obama's Justice (sic) Department is going after a dozen major high-technology companies, including Google, Intel, IBM, Apple and IAC/Interactive for their hiring practices, specifically agreements not to raid the others' companies for employees by cold-calling. 

45.  The Obama Environmental Protection Agency for the first time imposed limits on emissions of mercury from existing Portland cement plants.  Some plants will be forced to shut down which will kill jobs n them and probably force up prices of stucco and concrete.  The EPA itself estimates cost to the industry of $950,000,000.

44.  The Obama Food and Drug Administration panel rejected a drug to alleviate pain from fibromyalgia, a medical disorder characterized by chronic widespread pain and painful response to pressure.  Other symptoms include debilitating fatigue, sleep disturbance, and joint stiffness, it affects an estimated 2% to 4% of the population and 9 - 1 women over men.  The reason?  It could be misused and abused, even though it works well.  To my limited knowledge, this is a first.  Overregulating for soft, subjective,

43.  The Obama Securities and Exchange Commission has started a formal investigation of officers of General Growth Properties, Inc., owner of 200 shopping malls in the U. S., for insider trading.  Back in October 2008 the company's stock price plunged from doubts about the company's ability to repay or refinance its massive debt.  That triggered margin calls necessitating sales of the company's stock by some insiders.  Some ended up with no stock as a result.  In its continuing anti-business and anti-executive wars,   Obama is going after these people whose stock sales were involuntary.

42.  The Obama administraion has targeted the politically-unpopular, but consumer-popular same-day check cashing companies for elimination.  Some 38,000,000 American citizens use them to cash 200,000,000 checks annually.  To put them out of business the Obama Treasury Department is seeking $50,000,000 from Congress to create the "Bank on USA" by subsidizing commercial banks to open unprofitable checking accounts. Nearly 25,000 outlets and an estimated 125,000 jobs are scheduled for elimination!   From Obama to these some 38,000,000 voters: you are stupid for deciding on your own where to cash checks, the government can better decide for  you.

41.  The Obama administration is investigating pay practices throughout the entire gigantic healthcare industry after finding that, for example, nurses choose to take care of patients instead of running off to a mandatory break.  They put the patient first and choose to give up lunch to see that patients are taken care of properly.  ILLEGAL!  The Obama Labor Department dictates that no one can choose to help out patients instead of taking a break.  It says: "It is the duty of the management to exercise its control and see that work is not performed..."  Now let's see...this has led to trial lawyers suing and hospitals settling.  $1.7 million from the Sad Sisters of Mary (SSM); $2.7 million from Partners Healthcare; $7.25 million from Kaiser Permanente.  Obama has increased the wage-and-hour investigators in the Labor Department by 33.3%  - 250 more government workers here to dig up actions for trial lawyers to sue on.  One trial lawyer said that these Not-for-profit hospitals were "taking advantage of the good instincts of employees, knowing they will put the patient first.  That is, of course against the law.  Those three settlements alone brought around $11,000,000 to the trial lawyers who typically tithe 2% to the Democratic Party.  That figure would be $225,000.  Your healthcare cost just increased and the hospitals had to find that money somewhere, perhaps by not hiring a number of nurses for better patient care.

40.  Both Obama's SEC and his Justice Department are investigating at least a dozen major pharmaceutical and medical device companies, such as Merck, Johnson & Johnson, Eli Lilly, Medtronic, for (see many sections below) falling afoul of the FCPA (that's the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act passed in 1977 by the then Democratic majority in Congress under President Jimmy Carter)).  With a slowdown of sales in the U.S. because of fierce regulation and the recession, major emerging markets such as China, Russia, India and Brazil are looked upon to be sources of growth in the future.  To put it mild, the business practices in those countries are looser than those mandated by law in the U. S.  Rather than understand the differences and work with companies to facilitate sales, the Obama administration investigates and sues.  And kills jobs.

39.  The first unintended (or intended) consequence of the Obama financial services industry takeover bill (AKA Dodd-Frank):  an immediate and unforeseen-by-regulators SHUTDOWN of the $1,400,000,000,000 asset-backed securities markets.  These are bonds secured by assets such as automobile purchase loans (such as those issued by AmeriCredit soon to be purchased by Obama's GM for multi-billion dollars) and credit-card receivables.  More liquidity in these markets, of course, enable consumers to buy cars and other goods which will drive a recovery.  Stopped!  Buy an administration so hell-bend to regulate it has no clue of the consequences.  The SEC is rushing to figure out how to stop this huge block to future growth in America jobs which it caused.

38.  The Obama Justice Department sues Oracle Corp. for fraud.  This alleged fraud was started on a False Claims Act, by which traitorous employees rat out their employers for money.  The suite began in 2007, but Obama piled on in April 2010.  Doesn't much matter that it was about some Government Services Administration sale that the government said wasn't priced as low as some private sales.

1.  Having Treasury Department officials sitting in at bank board meetings, as board "observers", second- guessing decisions after they've been made.

2.  Investigating  high-technology wunderkind Hewlett-Packard Co. for foreign bribery, demanding millions of pages of company information.  Ummm, yes, the trial lawyer lawsuits have been filed!

3.  Penalizing for-profit career colleges for graduating students with high debt-to-income ratios.  (NOTE: only "corporate", for-profit schools, not Harvard, where tuition, room and board runs $50,000 a year.)  Ummm, yes, the trial lawyer lawsuits have been filed!

4.  Raising taxes on the so-called "wealthiest" Americans, which is incorrect, if not a bold-faced lie, because since the income taxes to be raised on them are based on income.   Not "wealth" but income, initially over $250,000 a year (a high proportion of which are small businesses).  This was expressed by Obama's Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner.  Periodictablet to Secretary Geithner: wealth is money in the bank, property, things owned.  Income is money provided by a job, or sales of securities.  Sir, if you don't know the difference you should not be the Treasury secretary!

5.  Attacking Toyota, intense and highly-successful competitor to Obama's General Motors and Chrysler.  It has come under a blisteringly-fierce negative public relations propaganda barrage stage managed by, in my opinion, trial lawyers and the left-wing media, all orchestrated by the Obama Administration.  Toyota was blamed for killing people, shoddy manufacturing and hiding information from the "public".  All from "sudden acceleration".  However all that was bogus.  Investigations by the Obama's U. S. Department of Transportation couldn't hide the facts: the so-called "sudden acceleration" is completely the fault of drivers, most of whom didn't even push their brakes down in the face of such "sudden acceleration" which they themselves caused.  Read about it in the Seattle or New York Times?  Not so much.  Ummm, yes, the trial lawyer lawsuits have been filed!


6.  The Obama Administration will be selecting what services will  be provided free in its community clincs.  Let's see, cancer screeings, and, of course the trendy obesity prevention, shots, blood pressure.  Obama may say they're free, but that's a lie because, someone's going to pay.  Probably "the rich" and companies  will pay instead of creating jobs.  Tobacco cessation will be free.  Birth control?  No.  Abortions?  Who knows?  But in the future it'll be that which is provided  by the largest campaign contributors and what's popular and trendy to the far left.  (And like all government services it is free.)

7.  Obama's General Motors announced that it'll be buying AmeriCredit for $3,500,000,000. (Just from where is all that cash coming?)  Obama is spending taxpayer money for GM to give out loans to so-called "sub prime" GM customers, that is, those with sketchy credit and a challenged ability to repay.  Hmmmm. Shades of Fannie and Freddie, the government-sponsored entities who went broke backing sub-prime mortgages to those couldn't pay.  Who'll pay when the inevitable GM defaults come?  U. S. Taxpayers (financed by China).  But it'll allow GM to "go public", artificially of course, but Obama and his media will praise his uncanny business ability and acumen widely.  (Wonder if a bunch of Demcorats own AmeriCredit?)

8.  The Obama-hated oil ompanies were stopped from developing oil and gas wells on billions of dollars of leases in Alaska because environmental laws were not followed BY THE GOVERNMENT!

9.  Obama's financial takeover bill  gave vast new strangulation powers over the U. S. financial services industry to Obama's Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) even as it gets smacked down by the courts for overreaching.  The Obama SEC of three Democrats to two Republicans -- political eh? --  issued a rule dictating that annuities be registered with...THE SEC...and sold by registered (with the SEC) broker-dealers rather than insurance agents as was the practice historically. What was the reason, other than a blind grab for power?  The D.C.Circuit Court ruled its (non-)reason was arbitrary and capricious and stopped it in its tracks.  The new benchmark for Obama's administration: arbitrary and capricious.

10. Obama's aforementioned SEC moves to limit mutual fund marketing fees, taking any choice away from customres and the companies.  Obama's SEC Chairman, Mary Schapiro said those customers don't realize those salesmen get paid.  Separately, it also told investment advisors how to give their clients information demanding "plain English descriptions".  My guess is that the former unplain English descriptions came about as a result of trial lawyers suing.

11.The Obama Department of Energy under his secretary, Steven Chu, has decided to essentially ban expensive showerheads -- showerheads -- ones with multiple nozzles which cost thousands of dollars.  They use too much water.  What I read did not say if Mr. Chu watches people take showers.  But...  Chu on that America!  Regulating your showerheads!  Freedom?

12.  The historic baby crib with the dropping sides which make it easier to put in and take out baby?  Banned by the Obama Consumer Products Safety Commission.  There have been 10 - 12 deaths a year recently from the millions and millions of these products sold.  (Could it be from dumb, stoned or neglectful parents?  Nah, the government can't get power over them.   Yet.)  After forcing them off the market and enriching the trial lawyers who finance the Democrats into power, Obama's CPS Commission will dictate what kinds of cribs companies will sell.  Prices should shoot up and sales will suffer, naturally.  But jobs?  jobs?  jobs? who cares?  Not Obama.  Ummm, yes, the trial lawyer lawsuits have been filed!


13.  The aforementioned Toyota Motor Corp. has been subpoenaed yet again by an Obama federal grand jury apparently about a probe from five yearrs ago about whether Toyota notified the National Highway Traffic Safety Administraton in a timely manner about some possible steering rod defect.  It took them five years?  Or now that Obama is in charge of GM does he simply want to hobble Toyota's ability to compete with his GM?  Ummm, yes, the trial lawyer lawsuits have been filed!


14.  The Democrats in Congress are taking aim at continuing-care retirement communities (CCRCs), which give seniors lifetime care, just after he Obama Federal Government Accountability Office released a report damaging to the industry.  Some communities have defaulted on their high-yield municipal bonds issued to build them.  In only one have the residents lost their entrance deposits.  One of over 600,000 units nationwide.  They are regulated individually by state.  But it's clearly time to throw away state' rights of regulation and crippling federal regulations over them.   Yet another Obama industry takeover.  Ummm, yes, the trial lawyer lawsuits have been filed!

15.  Obama bashed again, this time by his own government watchdog.  (Bow wow.)  His arbitrary closing of automobile dealerships hurried in order to push GM and Chrysler through his bankruptcy takeover of them, unnecessarily increased significant job losses, said Obama's own Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program, Neil Barofsky in an audit of the program.  He said "thousands of small businesses and tens of thousands of jobs" were irretrievable lost.  But, Mr. President you said you saved three million jobs.  Huh???????? Sir, you couldn't be lying to us, could you?

16.  Obama's Food and Drug Administration will regulate diagnostic tests, including direct-to-consumer DNA ones.   They are concerned about cutting doctors out of the process, thus obviously costing them money that could be used to make campaign contributions.  FDA wants to grab regulation of these laboratory-developed tests from the Centers of Medicare and Medicaid Services.  Turf war.  And exactly does this help consumers?

17.  The also aforementioned Obama SEC is investigating large homebuilder's joint ventures.  Because apparently the goverment's gross mismanagement in micromanaging Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Federal Housing Administration hasn't crippled them sufficiently.   But no doubt the trial lawyerws need some more obscene wealth.  Their lawsuits \obviously are forthcoming, only the timing is in doubt.  Large U. S. homebuilders, such as KB Home have taken over $30 billions in writedowns since the government-caused housing bubble collapsed in 2007.  Apparently Obama thinks hat's not enough

18.  As if Obama hasn't done enough manipulation to the U. S. automobile indusrty by taking much of it over and brutally attacking Toyota, he will spend another $6,000,000,000 no doubt borrowed from The People's Republic of China.  Neo-venture capitalist Obama knows how to invest, he's had so much experinece at it since he's been elected prexy.  Three-quarters of a trillion alone from his so-called "stimulus".  (We don't have to count any returns, they'll be counted in the next election he was trying to win.)  But this time our cash will attempt to develop batteries, (The Everyready bunny will be happy!) and pay for electric plugs and tax credits to bribe people who don't want to buy electric cars.  (Zero to 60 miles and out of power.)  While Obama is blowing yet another borrowed-$6 billion on his pet projects,  real venture capital can't compete with him.  Only $1.9 billion was invested into free market venture capital investors the second quarter of 2010.  One major culprit: the U. S. government whose Sarbanes-Oxley Act killed Initial Public Offerings with vast regulation and cost increases.  IPOs used to be the generator of returns for venture capital investors.  In the good old days of free-market innovation!  Gone now!  Something like one-third of the most successfully-innovtive high-technology companies like Apple, Microsoft, Cisco, Google, Yahoo, Intel and on and on were created by venture capital.  Gone!

19.  An Obama federal regulator, the Federal Housing Finance Agency, has subpoenaed sixty-four issuers of mortgage backed securities to see if they misled Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac.  Let's see, Congress demanded that Fan and Fred buy sub-prime and Alt-A mortgages given out to sketchy borrowers.  Congress mandated it.  And buy they did, like furiously, ending up holding over a quarter-trillion dollars ($255,000,000,000) from a standing start around 2006.  THIS CAUSED THE FINAL HOUSING BUBBLE.  Now that that strategy has come unglued, putting the U. S. Government (and the People's Republic of China) at risk for something like $5,000,000,000,000 in toto that same U. S. government is second-guessing.  NOT FANNIE OR FREDDIE, but only the U. S. free-market participants.  Has any part of the U. S. government, the administration or Congress EVER admitted that what they did was wrong, or turned out badly?  NO!  And now even after putting $145,000,000,000 cash into "saving" Fan and Fred, plus issuing them an absolute blank check,  the government is trying to blame the free-market.  Without government intervention (which includes the Fed's free and easy money) there would have been no subprime meltdown or recession (and in all likelihood no Obama presidency, although that is subject to disagreement.) 

20.  Obama wants banks to lend more.  Bank of America Corp. warned that the financial industry takeover bill could cost it $4,300,000,000 every year plus a one-time charge of $7,000,000,000 to $10,000,000,000.  And on July 16 the stock tanked 9%.  Unintended or intended consequences?  You decide!

21.  And speaking of banks again.  The Obama Treasury Department is working on a system to appoint members of banks boards of directors when they fall behind on their payments.  Troubled Asset Relief [sic] Program said that while only one Califonria bank "qualifies" so far, literally hunderds of community banks of the 700 TARP recipients could easily get there.  Is this a government takeover or simply micromanaging?  Unintended or intended consequences?  You decide.

22.  Obama's wholly-owned Congress is considering taxing airlines' increasing fees for such things as checked baggage, seat selection, meals, blankets, headphones, everages and other services because they are, according to Democrat House Transportation Committee Chairman James Oberstar of Minnesota, "backdoor price increases" because these things were formerly free and private sector companies are apparently not going to be allowed to raise prices without Congressional approval.  And the government desperately needs the money.  Jobs?  Huh, what are they?

23.  The Obama Federal Trade Commission is cracking down on Nestle SA's advertising that its Boost Kid Essentials drink builds immunity.  It doesn't stand up to scrutiny.  Whatrever that means.  And is "standing up to scrutiny" in some Congressional regulation?   Ditto Kellogg's Rice Krispies.  (Boost is a nutritional drink often given to people who can't eat solid foods becasue of some medical condition.)  Parents are not and never can be capable of making decisions for their own kids.  Obama is, however.

24.  So Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and Obama's own Federal Housing Finance Agency and Obama's Office of the Comptroller of the Currency oppose a home-energy-improvement program of the Obama admiinistration, that is being implemented in California.  The program is convoluted at best: municipalities can loan money through special property-tax assessments called Property Assessed Clean Energy ("PACE") for homeowners to install solar panels, energy-efficient heating systems and other stuff.  There's no safeguard that homeowners can repay the debt, but the government does not cares about  that.  But the state of California likes it.   Therefore, running-for-governor California Attorney General -- a Democrat like his leader, Barack Obama -- Jerry Brown is suing.  Suing Freddie, Fannie, FHFA and not to be left out, Obama's Comproller of the Currency to stop them from opposing that program.  Well none of it makes sense, but it isn't supposed to.  The more complicated government is, the more the citizens will give up and let the Democrats have their way with them.

Now, this whole play is so stupid it should be a crime!  No matter this is costing all of us rational human beings trillions of dollars tossed out like confetti by irresponsible, stupid, greedy, ignorant, Machiavellian Democrats thirstily doing anything to keep their pathetic government jobs.  The loans.  The "energy (in-)efficiency".The entities, the programs, the administration.  Micromanaging our world.

25.  (White House raises deficit forecast to $1,400,000,000,000 for 2011 and $8,500,000,000,000 over the next ten years.  Shhhh, don't tell anyone.)  and no the trial lawyers are not suing.

26.  The Obama administraton is doing what all along I thought it wanted to do.  Go into business.  Because certainly his "social justice" approach to business, where profits are so not needed, is preferable to the old, discarded idea of making profits.  In this little toe step, Obama's National Institutes of Health is developing drugs, an endeavor which is expensive, time-consuming and prone to failure.  In this case $24,000,000 of money doubtlessly borrowed from the People's Republic of China will target sickle-cell disease (for black voters), Chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL, which affects a couple hundred thousand voting adults);, Niemann-Pick Type C and hereditary inclusion body myopathy and finally schistosomiasis (this parasitic disease is most commonly found in Asia, Africa, and South America) and hookworm which damages 600 million people all over the wrold, but not much in the U. S.  No voters there but kudos to Obama for caring, that should bring votes.

27.  The first anniversary of Obama's teenage and black anti-job bill, raising the minimum wage 40% to $7.25 came and went.  Some analysts estimate this labor-union desired job-killer probably cost the U. S. 200,000 jobs!  Mostly teenagers and black kids.  Whose side are you really on, Barry?  Ideology over jobs.

28.  Edward E. Whitacre Jr. Chairman of GM announced August 5th that GM might NOT "go public" before the November elections.  Days later he is replaced as GM CEO.  Huh?  Obama is not micromanaging GM?  Huh??  No, it's all a coincidence, like the Toyota attacks.  (Whitacre was replaced by a GM board member who is beloved , if that is possible, by Wall Street.)

29.  This is great: Obama Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner apparently promised out loud that the Obama administration would try -- gee, do our best -- to avoid killing the anemic economic growth while strangling the financial services industry with hundreds of new restrictions on every possible peripheral and mainstream participant in the industry.  He promised that the half-dozen federal agencies would work together to "safeguard the freedom, competition and innovation that are essential  to our growth" while micromanaging each participant, fixing products, prices and services in order to stop "too much freedom for predatioin, abuse and excess risk."  All to be defined in the future by a bunch of competing left-wing, anti-business bureaucrats.  That, of course, is both impossible and a simple bold-faced lie.  Democrats can't even decide on who should run the main octopus, a brand-spanking-new bureau, the Consumer Financial Protection (sic, well maybe not consumer protection.  It is specifically designed to protect Democrats' elections.) Bureau (which will have -- get this -- a $500,000,000 budget per year).  The CFPB (sounds like a banned chemical) is governed by a brand-spanking-new council,  the Financial Stability (sic for real) Oversight Council of ten members.  (FSOC doubtlessly pronounced foosock).  The secretary, I assume still straight-faced, then puked out another promise: to dramatically reform Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, all taken over by Obama and granted a blank check on the U. S. Treasury.   No doubt it'll dramatically attempt to reelect Democrats and do nothing else.

30.   Let's get back to reality because all that wanton spreading of cash isn't real.  Can't be.  But what is: Intel settles an onslaught by the Obama's U. S. government anti-trust regulators, the Obama Federal Trade Commission.  With 80% market share of the world's microprocessor market (one invented by Intel) Obama's anti-business leftists need to rein in its success.  As Clinton did to Microsoft, Intel will operate under a leash held by the FTC.  Microsoft is struggling today.  Why does Obama and the far-left want to punish succes?

31.  Unions win rights to meddle in companies' businesses via the Obama SEC (3-2 vote) rule of "proxy access" making it easier for unions and other stockholders to nominate their henchmen as directors.

32.  Obama lackey isn't immune from his anti-business attacks.  General Electric Co. owner of Obama's main propaganda arm, The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) settles with Obama's SEC for $23,500,000 for paying alleged kickbacks to win Iraqi healthcare and water contracts.  This also settles a review by Obama's Justice Department.

33.  Just some anti-business information.  Plaintiffs' (sic) or trial or tort lawyers (choose a title) earned almost a billion dollars the first half of this year 2010 -- one-half year -- suing companies in securities class actions.  Actually $902,000,000.  That represents another in the continuing bonanzas for Obama and the Democrats to whom trial lawyers donate around 95% of their campaign contributions made.

34.  The GE settlement mentioned above had to do with the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (or something like that).  Now here's an article from the Wall Street Journal wherein GM agrees to pay its Opel/Vauxhall unions in Europe about $1,400,000,000 if GM doesn't spend $14,000,000,000 over five years to overhaul Opel's vehicle lineup.   Is that a bribe to keep the workers' working?  If so, I guess it's OK because 1) Obama says it is and 2) Obama's attorney general Eric Holder won't investigate liberals.  And just where is broke GM goint to get all this cash?  Yes, ladies and gentlemen, from the People's Republic of China via the U. S. Government, to be repaid by the U. S. Taxpayer.

35.  Another indication of the Democratic government's anti-business stnace is in another WSJ article wherein it writes that lawmakers (Congress) and others are growing impatient at the relatively small number of senior executives that have been charged in connection with the allegedly neear-collapse of Wall Street.  This during a session where a federal judge refused to approve a settlement the Obama SEC made with Citigroup Inc. about subprime mortgage stuff.  The judge, she said she was "baffled" by it and wondered why two little guys within Citi were the only ones charged.  And to their credit, the SEC responded to it all saying it can only bring charges where it has enough evidence.  No doubt Obama will make them find it.  It ain't over til it's over!  Keep investigating businesses, Obama, you'll get a settlement from fear from time to time.

36.  Obama chooses the International Brotherhood of Teamsters union, its votes and power instead of American business and the creation of jobs.  Specifically a variety of producers and manufacturers of around a hundred products which will be impacted by Obama changing an agreement with Mexico from the North American Free Trade Agreement.  By refusing to allow  cross border trucking previously negotiated, Obama has forced an angry Mexico to greatly expand the tariffs on American products.  This support for the Teamsters union (like all unions a significant backer of Democrats) will cost profits and jobs of farmers and manufacturers of: ketchup, chewing gum, graperfruit, chocolate, dried fruit, to name a few, and extending not removing tariffs on pears, apricots, cherries, peas, almonds, potatoes and wines.  Consider  these Washington State jobs and profits lost when thinking of voting for Murray or Rossi in November.

37.  And finally (for now).  Obama's typically-knee-jerk (and I mean that word kindly) reaction in abruptly stopping drilling in deep water will cost 23,000 jobs as disclosed by Obama's own henchmen discussing.  And he talkes about "shipping jobs overseas"?  What about simply killing them as he has done?  23,000 here and an estimated 13,000 more if the moratorium continues another 6 months.  If Obama makes it permanent it might be more than 400,000 jobs lost.  But also the government wants to increase taxes on oil companies -- which will restrict their ability to expand and create jobs by finding domestic oil sources -- by upwards of $25,000,000,000.   No doubt competitors such as China and Venezuela will jump right in.  There are 9,000,000 American energy industry jobs at stake.