Posted on 09/08/2009 9:49:21 PM PDT by smoothsailing
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| President Barack Obama gestures during his interview with The Associated Press, Thursday, July 2, 2009, in the West Wing of the White House in Washington. (ASSOCIATED PRESS) |
The resignation over the Labor Day weekend of White House "green jobs" czar Van Jones tells you some interesting things about the Obama administration. One of them is that a man who proclaimed himself a "communist" in the 1990s and signed 9/11 "truther" petitions suggesting Bush administration complicity in the Sept. 11 attacks was considered fit for a White House appointment. Liberal columnists have been attacking Republicans because some of their voters are "birthers," believers in the absurd charge that President Obama was not born in Hawaii and thus is not a natural-born U.S. citizen. But they have failed to identify any "birther" who occupied a position in the Republican firmament comparable to that of "truther" Van Jones in the Obama administration.
Another interesting thing about Jones is that the administration seems enamored of his "green jobs" concept. There's an understandable political reason. Legislation to restrict carbon emissions that is supported by the administration would undoubtedly kill a large number of jobs by increasing the cost of energy, and so you can see why its advocates might want to argue that there will be a compensating number of "green jobs" created -- at least if the government spends a lot of money on them.
But this sounds like fantasy. If there were money to be made in green jobs, private investors would be creating them already. In fact big corporations like General Electric are scrambling to position themselves as green companies, gaming legislation and regulations so they can make profits by doing so. Big business is ready to create green jobs -- if government subsidizes them. But the idea that green jobs will replace all the lost carbon-emitting jobs is magical thinking.
Obama's approach to health care legislation, unless he makes a major course correction in his speech to the joint session of Congress tonight, is of a piece with his hiring of Van Jones. By ceding the task of writing legislation to congressional Democratic leaders and committee chairmen, he has been following a "no enemies to the left" strategy.
By refusing to rule out the government option -- which its architects see as the road to a single-payer government insurance system -- Obama has prevented the emergence of a set of policies that have a chance of passing the Senate. The Senate Republicans in the "gang of six" who have been negotiating with Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus are not going to agree on a bill without assurance from the White House that they won't get rolled by hard-left House Democrats in conference committee.
Yesterday Baucus came out with his own plan, which includes a tax on high-value health insurance policies. But this is likely to be rejected by the Left, by labor unions that have negotiated such benefits from employers, and by members of Congress from states like New York, where, because of state policies, almost all health insurance costs that much.
There is an element of convenient fantasy as well in Obama's health care statements to date. We are going to save money by spending money. We are going to solve our fiscal problems with a program that will increase the national debt by $1,000,000,000,000 over a decade. We are going to guarantee you can keep your current insurance with a bill that encourages your employer to stop offering it.
The list goes on. We are going to improve health care for seniors by cutting $500,000,000,000 from Medicare. We aren't going to insure illegal aliens, except that we won't have any verification provisions to see that they can't apply and get benefits.
Most politicians like to promise voters all good things at once. Democrats got in the habit of doing this over the past 14 years when they could not pass legislation by themselves. Van Jones' moment in the White House is over. Exposure of his record in conservative media made him politically unacceptable, even though mainstream outlets like the New York Times ignored the issue entirely.
The Democrats' health insurance bills remain under consideration, and with large majorities in both houses, passage of some bill cannot be ruled out. But August town hall meetings and national polls have put the Democrats on the defensive. No-enemies-to-the-left and convenient fantasies may work in Chicago. They don't work so well when your constituency is the whole United States.
Michael Barone, The Examiner's senior political analyst, can be contacted at mbarone@washingtonexaminer.com. His columns appear Wednesday and Sunday, and his stories and blog posts appear on www.ExaminerPolitics.com ExaminerPolitics.com.
| Find this article at: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/politics/The-convenient-fantasies-of-President-Obama-8215470-57862907.html |
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Can’t guess. Dude’s sick.
Which of the other Obama “czars” are promoting Communist policies or agendas in the Obama White House?
I agree with everything except calling the New York Times “Mainstream”.
I never though I would be calling a US President a communist. Obama is not 100% communist but when he thinks he can get away with a communist type program....like Obama care
The NYT tells us little folk what to think. We would be lost without them.
How about these:
Czar 19 - Information Czar
Owen Thomas at The Gawker reports that Vivek Kundra “pleaded guilty to a theft charge in 1997.” • • Yusuf Acar, the D.C. computer security official accused of masterminding a multimillion-dollar embezzlement scam, told his co-conspirators that corruption was widespread in the city’s computer office, The Examiner has learned. Acar and former D.C. employee Sushil Bansal are accused of faking invoices and timesheets from contractors in order to skim money from the city. The pair was arrested last week.Several alleged co-conspirators were identified by initials in court papers but have not been charged with wrongdoing.”
• Yusuf Acar, the D.C. computer security official accused of masterminding a multimillion-dollar embezzlement scam, told his co-conspirators that corruption was widespread in the city’s computer office, The Examiner has learned. Acar and former D.C. employee Sushil Bansal are accused of faking invoices and timesheets from contractors in order to skim money from the city. The pair was arrested last week.
• ““What concerns us and the White House Counsel’s office is that Kundra and Bansal seem to have a very tight relationship that was not discussed during the vetting process,” says the White House source.
Czar 4 - Border Czar
• A grassroots report card for Alan Bersin
• • Snippet: • 2. Teacher’s Union Votes 93% No-confidence in Bersin. June 2001. 94% also voted no confidence in the school board majority of Sue Braun, Ed Lopez and Ron Ottinger. Earned Grade: F
• 9. Big Bucks For Bersin Brass: March 2002. Mr. Bersin and his three-vote board majority spent between $1.5 and $2 million for his inner circle of executives, despite news of a $33 million SDCS budget deficit...
Czar 18 - Health Czar
Obama health czar directed firms in trouble
Nancy-Ann DeParle, President Barack Obama’s health policy czar, served as a director of corporations that faced scores of federal investigations, whistleblower lawsuits and other regulatory actions, according to government records reviewed by the Investigative Reporting Workshop at American University.
Several of the companies were investigated for alleged kickbacks or engaging in other illegal billing schemes, while others were accused of serious violations of federal quality standards, including one company that failed to warn patients of deadly problems with an implanted heart defibrillator. Several of the cases ended with substantial fines paid to the federal government, even though the companies admitted no wrongdoing.
From what I hear, the NY TIMES didn’t mention Van Jones until Monday, below the fold.
Definitely NOT mainstream
Absurd?? Why is 0bama spending over $1 million to hide all of his personal documents from us? The NYT would not allow a Republican president to do that.
I noticed that too.
I had to read it several times to figure out whether Barone was saying birthers were absurd, or he was reporting that liberal columnists were saying birthers were absurd.
I finally decided he was referring to liberal columnists.
All 57 of them?
Valerie Jarrett, Obama’s consigliere, was a fan and was excieted about recruiting Van Jones. Her dad was in Chicago politics and was very hard left.
His mentor, Frank Marshall Davis, was a member of the Communist Party. He speaks about him in his book, Dreams of My Father. He sought out the leftist on his campus (also in his book).
They are mainstream by definition, because that is how the sheeple see them and treat them. If and when the sheeple wake and realize how extreme and out of touch the communist-infiltrated print and TV media are, then by definition they will not be mainstream. But as long as 7 in 10 Americans refuse to do their own homework, as long as some jackass can spout off on the 6 o’clock news and have the 70% sheeple parrot their socialist spoonfeeding, then by definition, they will be “mainstream”.
I hate to say, they are mainstream until outed, all things being relative. In absolute terms, then you guys are right — they are NOT mainstream because they are far, far to the left of center. FAR to the left of center.
good column
And he sat in the pews of a racist for 20 years.
Wow, Michael Barone kicks some serious ass in this column!
Bravo!
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