The Legacy

Today is Barack Obama’s final day as President.

Politicians like Mr. Obama have get out front to talk about their legacy because they fear more than anything else that even their True Believers might hear the truth. On his last full day as President, here’s the truth. It is a Legacy of Failure.

The Legacy of Shame
• Aleppo. Benghazi. China. Iran. Iraq. Israel. NATO. Russia …
• Mr. Obama drew the line in the sand to Bashar al-Assad over his use of chemical weapons, then ran away. He spoke forcefully to Vladimir Putin, then ran away. He spoke harshly to Iraq in 2011, then ran away (that precipitated the rise of ISIS).
• Former NATO Supreme Allied Commander James Stavridis said Mr. Obama will someday look back on his Syria policy “with deep sorrow and some shame.”


The Legacy of Broken Dreams
• “We [don’t have] an energy policy in this country that makes sense,” Mr. Obama said in remarks on the American Jobs Act in 2011. There is still no coherent energy policy. Sadly, the coherent energy policy is to bankrupt any energy producer not on the “friends” list. FAIL.
• The cost of college has increased faster than the rate of inflation. FAIL.
• China devalued their currency to make their goods cheaper and our goods more expensive. The Obama China policy was never to challenge them. FAIL.
• Health care policies have failed to lower health costs. FAIL.
• In 2008, Mr. Obama claimed his investments in green energy would create 5 million new jobs. FAIL.

The Legacy of Bankruptcy
• In 2008, Mr. Obama said that adding $4 trillion to the national debt was “irresponsible” and “unpatriotic.”
• On Jan. 20, 2009, the debt held by the public was roughly $6.307 trillion. Intragovernmental Holdings added 4.32 trillion bringing the total national debt to $10.63 trillion on the day of Mr. Obama’s own inauguration. The national debt stands today at 19,961,179,000,000 (>||< close to TWENTY TRILLION DOLLARS) and counting.

The Legacy of Ill Health
• About 9.1% of people in the U.S., or around 28.6 million, were uninsured in 2015.
• “If you’ve got health insurance, we’re going to work with you to lower your premiums by $2500 per family per year.” The average family premium increased by $3,065 from $12,680 in 2008 to $18,142 this year, a 43% increase.
• U.S. health care spending grew 5.8% in 2015 alone, reaching $9,990 per person. Health spending accounted for 17.8% of the Gross Domestic Product. It is now $10,384 per person.

The Legacy of Joblessness
• 86,591,000 men and women, young and old, either don’t have, don’t want, or can’t do a job. The Obama administration does not count them as unemployed because they had not searched for work in the four weeks preceding the BLS survey.

The Legacy of Lies
• “We will pursue the housing plan I’m outlining today. And through this plan, we will help between 7 and 9 million families restructure or refinance their mortgages so they can afford-avoid foreclosure.” Uh huh.
• “If you like your health care plan, you’ll be able to keep your health care plan.” Okey dokey. (Obamacare alone is a legacy of deception unlike any previous government program.)
• “I cut spending by over a trillion dollars in 2011,” Mr. Obama said in 2012 on Meet the Press. Right. (Spending actually increased by $147 billion in that period.)
• “As president, I will work to solve this energy crisis once and for all.” How’d that work out for us?

The Legacy of Overreach
• The Environmental Protection Agency is the poster child for Administration overreach. The Supreme Court had to smack down the EPA over and over again including the EPA’s first limits on coal-fired power plant emissions, Sackett v. EPA, and more.
• EPA head Gina McCarthy was not concerned about the power plant emissions ruling. The regs went into effect “three years ago,” she said. “Most of [the plants] are already in compliance, investments have been made.”
• The EPA would send armed agents to incarcerate landowners for a spill similar to the Animas River in Colorado but now won’t pay $1.2 billion for the damages it itself caused.
• Now, the EPA has madly pushed through new regulations, not because they think they will work, but to create a mass that Mr. Trump’s EPA will have to correct, allowing the Far Green to decry a “rollback.”
• The EPA is not alone. In 2011, after Boeing had hired 1,000 new employees to work at its new factory in South Carolina, the Obama administration ordered the company to shut down the factory, because the factory was non-union.
• Armed SWAT agents raid the Gibson guitar factory, ordered the employees to leave, and seized guitars and other property from the factory, all without warrants or charges filed. It was later revealed that Gibson had not broken any laws.

The Legacy of Poverty
• In 2009, 42.9 million people had income below the poverty line. That was 14.3% of the U.S. population. The official poverty rate is now 14.5%. That means 45.3 million people in poverty, up by over 8 million since 2008.

The Legacy of Terror
• In December, Mr. Obama told us that “no foreign terrorist organization has successfully planned and executed an attack on our homeland.” Uh huh.
• He called the 2009 Christmas Day bomber an “isolated extremist.”
• The Fort Hood shooter who shouted “Allahu Akbar as he pulled the trigger” committed “workplace violence.”
• He called the 2013 Boston marathon bombing a “vicious attack” and directed the full resources of the government to Boston to find the source of that “terrorist act.”
No terrorist attacks?

The Legacy of Theft
• Mr. Obama stole General Motors from its stockholders — the government took a 60.8% ownership of the company and fired its CEO — then delivered ownership of the company to reward his voting block.

The Legacy of Wimps
• Even NBC’s Meet the Press questioned his manhood.


The Wrap Up
Mr. Obama brought a legacy of inadequacy and fear to America but he didn’t do it alone. There are still about 2,700,000 Executive branch civilians, 535 Congress critters, and about 65,000 people working for Congress in place and ready to keep on keeping on.

Mr. Trump has promised a clean sweep would start tomorrow but he has a lot to overcome.

 

Bashing, Redux

I followed a Subaru out the causeway the other day. It got me to thinking.

I get a free vacation day on the fifth Monday of every month. Enjoy these thoughts from November of 2008, just two presidential election cycles ago.

Coupla things have gone wrong for our kids in the past 40-or-so years. Unfortunately, it’s my fault. And Anne’s. And Bob’s. And Sal’s. And Dangerous Bill’s. And Linda’s. And Gene’s.

Ooh, there ya go. Let’s blame it all on Geno even if he is too old for the blame.

Our generation started out anti-war and ended up anti-everything. Want to put up a windmill to save us from imported oil? Somebody will protest. Want to shoot a terrorist? Somebody will protest. Want to manufacture widgets in Vermont, make some money and put folks to work? Somebody will protest. Want to cut a mangrove? Somebody will protest. NIMBY (Not In My Backyard) wasn’t coined by George Orwell. It came from the baby boomers.

That negativity has spread so it overshadows everything American.

We see one side of it in Jeremiah Wright who said blacks should sing “God damn America.”

We see the other side in that Subaru driver. See, there is a large and growing segment of America bashers who believe anything accomplished here is necessarily flawed and anything built here is necessarily shoddy.

Malcolm Bricklin made a deal with Subaru in the 60s to form Subaru of America and to introduce their cars to the United States.

I almost bought a Subaru Brat in 1978 or ’79. This scaled-down clone of the El Camino and the Ranchero from Chevy and Ford came with 4WD, an optional turbo charger, and standard rust. It was not a good car for Vermont and it cemented my expectations about Subaru quality for a couple of decades, despite the Legacy which was a decent, mainstream car and despite the fact that my daughter and son-in-law are on their third “Subi.”

I’ve looked pretty carefully at this now “National car of Vermont.” Subaru has built owner loyalty among yuppies by building what they see as an economical alternative to the Chevy, Ford, Jeep, and Volvo lines. It’s a worthwhile car.

Subi buyers, with their brethren Honda, Saab, Toyota, and Volvo buyers, won’t consider an American car. America-bashers believe German cars offer superior luxury and performance. America-bashers believe Japanese cars offer more dependability and fuel economy. America-bashers believe Scandinavian cars offer higher safety and quality. (It’s worth noting the Subaru plant in Lafayette, Indiana, the original Honda plant in Marysville, Ohio, the Nissan plant in Smyrna, Tennessee, and the Toyota plants in Alabama, Indiana, Kentucky, Texas, and Virginia. Saab is a wholly owned subsidiary of General Motors. Volvo is a wholly owned subsidiary of Ford.)

Domestic manufacturers have cars that lead in all these areas. In the J.D. Powers June survey, Mercury passed Honda and the Chevy Malibu was one of the best new vehicles of the year. The Detroit News reports that the survey results are “a pretty good predictor” of long-term vehicle quality and consumer satisfaction. Despite that, the domestic manufacturers may never overcome the usually uneducated bias among America-bashers, particularly those in the general press.

I have examined and driven the world class cars from Cadillac, Chevy, and Ford. The big Caddy STS V-8 can out-luxe and outhandle the Mercedes C300 and it gets 25 mpg on the highway. (Don’t believe me? The 2008 CTS outscored both the Mercedes and the BMW 328i in Consumer Reports’ sport sedan review.) The Corvette can stomp pretty much any sports car on pretty much any road. And it gets better mileage than the Caddy whilst idling down the Interstate. Heck, my dad’s 1997 Lincoln got 27 on the open road and he had a serious lead foot. And then there is Malibu. 30 mpg. Comfortable. Good performance. Good fit and finish. Anne drives an Accord. The Malibu is simply better. (Consumer Reports again: “This is a heavy hitter that competes head-on with Camry, Accord, and Altima … Really no reason for GM to build the G6, Aura, Impala, or LaCrosse anymore – just sell these instead.”)

I learned to appreciate the Subaru so it is possible to change people’s minds. Maybe.

I guess others think their “foreign” cars are better than “American” cars. I guess the America-bashers are wrong. Again.


If you liked this look back, read the Bashing Followup next.

For the record, I did indeed put my money where my mouth is. I owned GM stock until Mr. Obama (the “White House car thief”) stole the company. I still drive the same Camaro and Silverado, though, and SWMBO drives a Pontiac now but we will not buy a new car from a company stolen from us.

 

King Coal

Having learned how by stealing General Motors from stockholders like thee and me, Mr. Obama has now done the same to the coal industry: he broke it and is handing it to his supporters.

“Filings with the Securities and Exchange commission show that between April and June this year Soros Fund Management (SFM) bought more than 1 million shares in Peabody, the world’s largest private coal company, and 500,000 shares in Arch.”

In 2009, Mr. Soros pledged to spend $1 billion of his own money on renewable energy at Al Gore’s urging and funded the Far Green “Climate Policy Initiative” thinktank. At the time, he said: “There is no magic bullet for climate change, but there is a lethal bullet: coal.”

A spokesman for SFM declined to comment on the investments. Wotta surprise.

 

Distracted

A friend posted this: “I guarantee you’ll hear the phrase ‘My ancestors came here legally’ in the aftermath of President Obama’s immigration address. It’s almost impossible to find any conversation about immigration — between elected officials, pundits, online commenters – in which at least one participant doesn’t use the phrase.”

While the Obamanation and his Kool Aid quaffing crowd distract us with illegal executive orders and net neutrality, we still have crumbling roads and bridges, failing schools, and the slowest and most expensive Interwebs in the world.

Oh, yeah. And a still-broken healthcare system (dammit, I thought the Unaffordable Care Act was supposed to change things).

This newspeak argument over the illegal aliens the left wants to recast as “undocumented immigrants” is a decent stand-in for the criminal behavior across government.

If you are Abenaki, Eastern Pequot, or Mi’kmaq, your ancestors illegally displaced the Red Paint people. If your ancestor came over in 1642 at the invitation of Billy Penn with my greatx6 grandfather, you maybe displaced the Lenni-Lenapi. Mr. Penn had a legal charter and my greatx6 grandfather was a British subject because there was no United States. His grandson became an American citizen. His greatx2 grandson was born one. If your ancestor came in with my other great-grandfather, they used the then-normal immigration process and became citizens. They followed the law on the ground at the time.

No matter how they got here, the problem isn’t our ancestors (unless they were criminals). The problem is anyone who is here illegally now because they are criminals. The problem is this attempt on the part of so many to pretend that that ain’t so.

crim·i·nal /’krimənl/ noun
1. a person who has committed a crime.

The Obamanation has accumulated an extraordinarily long list of major crimes in just six years. The following is just the short list. If a business or a crime family got caught at all of this, we’d see million spent on RICO prosecutions.

• Mr. Obama stole General Motors from its owners and gave it to his cronies so they would vote for him. Grand theft is kind of against the law. Of course, car theft on that scale is now laudable.
• Mr. Obama stole your doctor and your health plan from you and gave it to the Big Insurance so they would pay for his election. Graft is kind of against the law. Of course, graft on that scale is now laudable.
• Mr. Obama exchanged five Taliban terrorists for an American deserter. That’s not just against policy; it’s against the law. Of course, breaking the law in the oval office is now laudable.
• Mr. Obama’s Justice Department illegally sold thousands of guns to criminals and refused to comply with congressional subpoenas about the operation. A sting is deceptive, probably unethical, but common; Fast and Furious wasn’t a sting. Supplying weapons to criminals and terrorists is kind of against the law. Newspeak calls it merely a “management problem.”
• Mr. Obama’s people falsely portrayed the Benghazi terrorist attack as a spontaneous protest against an anti-Muslim YouTube video, and then lied about White House involvement. Perjury is kind of against the law. Newspeak calls it merely a “management problem.”
• Mr. Obama’s IRS illegally targeted conservative groups for heightened IRS scrutiny. Using government agencies for political acts is kind of against the law. Newspeak called it merely a “management problem” — Liberals said the IRS did it to liberal groups, too.
• Mr. Obama’s IRS refunded more than $46 million to nearly 24,000 illegal aliens using the same Atlanta, GA address. Fraud is kind of against the law. Newspeak calls it merely a “management problem.”

And there you have it.

A crim·i·nal /’krimənl/ is a person who has committed a crime.

The newspeak argument to recast crimes as “hope and change” or “management problems” or “good politics” is worse than giving the burglar the keys to your house or the murderer a deadly weapon or the used car salesman your checkbook. We trust burglar and the murderer and the used car salesman to do us wrong. We’re supposed to trust those we elect to do us right.

The Obamanation has not only violated the law, they have shredded that trust.

 

Tuesday Twaddle

Fiat CEO Sergio Marchionne took over the reins at what is now Fiat-Chrysler and has run it without Mr. Obama’s administrative interference.

Fiat-Chrysler is showing a profit, paid off the $6 billion “bailout” loans early, and has cars that buyers want rolling off the lines. Oh yeah, and they have great advertising.

Bumper StickerOne of a long series of changes made by new-G.M. CEO Daniel Akerson was to appoint Joel Ewanick as chief global marketing Officer. Mr. Akerson is one of several board members whom Mr. Obama appointed. Mr. Ewanick “resigned” in the latest management shuffle at the top of the nation’s only government-owned automaker.

GM has a falling stock price, is showing a loss, owes billions in “bailout” loans, and has cars that no one wants rolling off the lines. Oh yeah, and their ads suck.

Great way to run a country.