As published on the Opinion Page of the Tomahawk Leader 10-30-12

Four years ago, Barack Obama campaigned on the premise that America needed to undergo fundamental systemic change. We have suspicions about what he meant but we’ll only deal with the result. After all, the American system has functioned quite well for more than 200 years. What has not functioned well is four years of the Obama system.

For the first two years. President Obama blamed everything on his predecessor, George W. Bush. After four years, that dodge no longer works, however. The administration claims the recession ended in June, 2009. Ask most businessmen in the Northwoods and they’ll tell you they haven’t noticed. By virtually every calculation the recovery has been the worst in U.S. history. We’ve seen 43 consecutive months of 8-10 percent unemployment according to the U.S. Dept. of Labor, along with declining economic growth, and an additional $5-trillion accumulated debt. Those are all factors that should drive every citizen to near rebellion.

We all know that paying for doctors and hospitals and insurance is expensive. How can paying for doctors and hospitals and insurance and government bureaucracy to administer all of it be cheaper? The Congressional Budget Office says Obamacare will add another $1.68-trillion to the debt over the next decade. Considering those factors alone, we find it puzzling that the presidential race is even moderately close.

But what other kinds of change have we gotten during Obama’s tenure? In January, 2009 there were 21.5-million unemployed in this country. Today there are 23.1-million. Those are just the ones still looking for work. In January, 2009 the national debt was $10.6-trillion. Today it is $16-trillion. And Obama was going to cut the deficit in half in his first term. Instead, according to the Congressional Budget Office, we’ve had four straight years of over trillion-dollar budget deficits. Blaming George Bush for the trillion-dollar budget loss in Obama’s first year is also a convenient dodge. Bush had a Democrat Congress his last two years in office and no budget was passed. Nancy Pelosi simply had the House pass “continuing resolutions” to keep the government running rather than adopting budgets. Of course, spending mushroomed and, naturally, George Bush got blamed.

Family income has dropped from $54,962 in January, 2009 to $50,054 today. When Mitt Romney brought that up during the presidential debates Obama couldn’t dispute it. And since Obama took office, 6.9 million more people are living in poverty than four years ago. That’s hardly a great showing for a man who was going to fix all that was wrong with America.

Obama said in a televised campaign speech in 2008, “We’ll invest $15-billion a year over the next decade in renewable energy, creating five-million new green jobs that will pay well, that can’t be out-sourced, and help end our dependence on foreign oil.” He then proceeded to trade sure things like drilling our own off shore oil, mining our own coal and natural gas, and transporting Canadian oil in the Keystone pipeline that would have created immediate jobs and energy for so-called green energy companies like Solyndra, Ener 1, Beacon Power, Abound Power, Amonix Power, Spectra Watt, and Eastern Energy. What did we get for his investment in those companies? We got bankruptcy from all of them. And, by the way, they were all donors to his campaign. Stimulus money also went to jobs and projects in China as reported even by noted liberal ABC News anchor Diane Sawyer.

He’s appointed more cabinet members who have no business or economic background than any president in over 100 years. His lack of economic understanding is blatant when he tells small business owners in Roanoke, Virginia, that they didn’t create their success through their own smarts and sweat, government did it for them. Among his close friends and advisors are anti-Americans and terrorists (Jeremiah Wright and Bill Ayers for a couple).
We could go on and on. A record like that should guarantee him only one term. We encourage you to help see to it.

First, the CBO does not estimate that the Affordable Health Care Act will increase the deficit in ANY report I can find. In fact, they have REPEATEDLY stated that they estimate the law will REDUCE budget deficits. "They estimated that the law would, on net, reduce budget deficits." and "On net, CBO and JCT estimate, repealing the ACA would increase federal budget deficits by $109 billion over the 2013–2022 period." - Estimates for the Insurance Coverage Provisions of the Affordable Care Act Updated for the Recent Supreme Court Decision - Congressional Budget Office

Second, yes, the recession did end in June, 2009. You do realize that is an economic term and doesn't mean "all's well"? That simply means that's when things stopped getting worse. It took years of poor choices to get the economy into the second worse crisis in US history. It would be foolish to think it isn't going to take years to dig our way back out.

Third, your unemployment numbers might have been accurate, right up until you threw in the, "Those are just the ones still looking for work." line. The real number of unemployed looking for work is 12.1 million. BLS Where ever you got your number, it might be the number of unemployed, underemployed and those that have simply given up looking but since you didn't provide a source and I haven't been able to find any source that provides those numbers it's pretty hard to check. Either way, your statement is false.

Fourth, nice try on the budget numbers. It has been repeatedly proven that Obama was handed his first year deficit. If you aren't going to blame Bush for the deficit he handed Obama because it was passed by Congress then you can't blame Obama for it either. The fact is, Bush signed the bills that made the estimated deficit $1.2 trillion before Obama ever took office. Obama signed the recovery act, which added $200 billion, but he isn't on the hook for what happened before he took office. If anything, it shows the deficits haven't been out of line with what he was given to begin with... http://www.factcheck.org/2010/02/a-texas-size-whopper/

Fifth, you want to attack Obama for the investment in green energy. That's fine, but you might want to look at some of the real numbers. Last year US oil production was at its highest level since 2003 and that is despite the reduction in production due to the BP spill in the gulf. US EIA Also, the investment in "green" energy has a 2.6% failure rate so far (below what was expected when the bill was written). Washington Post Let's compare that with a private business that invests to see how they did, let's say, Bain Capital under Romney's watch... A study of the information available to the public showed they had a 30% failure rate. Wall Street Journal

You also fail to mention ANY of the success stories. Companies like Tesla, etc. who are actually paying their loans back early. Or that many of the companies sold the projects they were granted loans on before going bankrupt (which means someone else now owns that loan). Also, the stimulus money going to China is a bit of an exaggeration. Sure, money went to foreign companies, for projects in the US. Chinese based companies received 0.1% of all of the wind investments and thousands of jobs were created right here in the USA. http://www.factcheck.org/2010/10/stimulus-jobs-in-china/

In addition, you imply the Keystone Pipeline has been stopped. In reality, Obama actually approved the southern portion of the pipeline and ordered agencies to expedite the permit process. In addition, the company behind the project expects the northern portion to be approved in early 2013 (no matter who the president is). The truth is they were asked to move the pipeline around an environmentally sensitive area. http://www.factcheck.org/2012/03/more-pipeline-piffle-and-an-alaskan-absurdity/

Finally, the cabinet thing is pretty questionable too... Fact checking organizations have looked into this and found a significant number of Obama's cabinet members have business experience. http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2011/sep/01/michele-bachmann/bachmann-says-obama-has-virtually-no-one-his-cabin/ http://www.politifact.com/georgia/statements/2012/oct/08/chain-email/private-sector-experience-short-supply-obama-admin/

Someone else from Tomahawk did an excellent writeup on the reasons to vote for Obama and included a large number of sources (imagine that). Rather than have to rewrite all of it, I'd suggest people looking for good information go take a look.

My Vote: Why I will vote for Barack Obama, Part One - Foreign Policy
My Vote: Why I will vote for Barack Obama, Part Two - The Economy
My Vote: Why I will vote for Barack Obama, Part Three - The Rest
My Vote: Why I will vote against Mitt Romney

And a personal note:

Multiple studies have shown Romney's tax plan can't possibly add up and he made the same promises of lower taxes when he ran for governor so lets look at that record. Once he got into office he was forced to recognize that the numbers simply didn't work and he raised fees (often on those who could least afford them, a new fee for getting a blind certification card) and taxes on businesses. Some of his most extreme fee proposals were fortunately shot down by the Democrats in the legislature (a large fee for testing positive for TB???).

If he couldn't do the math when he ran for governor, and apparently didn't learn his lesson and is trying the same thing again, and also is more than willing to change his position on issues to please what ever crowd he's talking to, why should anyone trust him???

During Romney's time as governor, Massachusetts was 47th in job creation. He signed a law for mandatory health care but claims he would repeal a similar law as president. He cut higher education, leading to 63% fee increases for students. He passed gun control laws. He vetoed stem cell research (which the legislature overturned) and his approval rating was 48th out of the 50 US Governors.

Even the largest Mormon owned newspaper in the US refused to endorse him...

This one is long but provides a large number of statistics and a great deal of information that I think members of both parties would find interesting. And once again, sources are generally provided.

http://www.tilsonfunds.com/VotingObamaAgain.pdf

Hmmm, you are employment numbers? Ahhh, your employment numbers.

Sorry, couldn't resist. Some of my pet peeves, the misuse of your and you're; there, their, and they're: to, too, and two.

PS: The formatting is not working no matter how one tries the quote.

You're absolutely right, and I fixed it now.

Also, the quoting appears to be because your message had, "Disable BBCode" checked. Once I unchecked that and saved the message it was appearing properly.

Thank you so much for your brilliant and supremely informative posts, Kerry! I trust you will be able to see our President Monday - the day before he is re-elected to begin his second term!

[quote="Kerry Tobin"]You're absolutely right, and I fixed it now.

Also, the quoting appears to be because your message had, "Disable BBCode" checked. Once I unchecked that and saved the message it was appearing properly.[/quote]

Strange, I haven't changed any of my options since the day I signed up.

Thanks for fixing it.

Edited: OK Kerry, it's doing it again. In the user preferences BBCode is on. On this post, under options it says BBCode is off. I think there's a glitch somewhere.

Kerry, any idea why my BBC code and smilies are turned of since the last time I was on line. I haven't changed anything.

Me thinks you have Gremlins !

Not sure why it would have changed but I believe it is a per user setting that each of you can set in your "User Control Panel". Once in there, I think it's under "Board preferences" and "Edit posting defaults". Make sure "Enable BBCode by default" is Yes.

I think that will take care of it. Not sure if one of the updates might have turned it off by default?

Kerry, when I look at my settings as you suggested I see:
Enable BBCode by default: Yes
Enable smilies by default: Yes
I even hit the Submit button to make sure it was set to yes.... I also Quit out of the Message Board and reconnected...no help.

But when I post a reply...as I am now...I see this on the left side of this page.
Options:
BBCode is OFF
Smilies are OFF

[quote="kmartell"]Kerry, when I look at my settings as you suggested I see:
Enable BBCode by default: Yes
Enable smilies by default: Yes
I even hit the Submit button to make sure it was set to yes.... I also Quit out of the Message Board and reconnected...no help.

But when I post a reply...as I am now...I see this on the left side of this page.
Options:
BBCode is OFF
Smilies are OFF[/quote]

I have the exact same problem. It is a glitch. It is not due to user failure in setting the preferences in the control panel.

All my settings are turned on according to the defaults also, and I haven't made any changes.

I thought the Options thing had been fixed. When I replied to 'SHhhhh We`re sleeping' below it worked fine. When I went to check 'Time to get our change back!' the Options were still OFF.

After doing some spot checks it seems that everything under 'In Our Opinion' has the Options OFF. Other postings under the major topics seem fine.

=====
Tomahawk and the Northwoods
SHhhhh We`re sleeping

Options:
BBCode is ON
[img] is ON
[flash] is OFF
[url] is ON
Smilies are ON

==================
In Our Opinion
Time to get our change back!

Options:
BBCode is OFF
Smilies are OFF

I think I found it in the permissions for that specific forum. Because that forum only allowed Tomahawk Leader employees to start topics the permissions were configured differently than other forums. I updated some of the settings to make them match up better.

Let me know if that doesn't resolve the problem & thanks for helping to narrow down the issue!

Thanks Kerry...it looks like it's fixed now !!!

Man, I didn't know how important those Smiley faces were to me(us) !!!

_________________
Ken Martell
kenmartell@gmail.com
Thankful to be alive and healthy. Proud to call Tomahawk my hometown.