For decades, America's progress could always be summed up by saying that on the one hand there was something that was good while on the other hand there was something bad. We Americans could judge for ourselves whether the good outweighed the bad, and it was this weighing that led to our overall conclusion about the state of the country. Today, I was trying to think about the two alternatives. No one who reads this blog would have any doubt that I think there is a great deal in America today that is not going well (to put it mildly). The problem, however, is that I cannot think of anything which is going well. That is a first.
Now let me be clear. I still think that our Constitution and our system of government are great. At the moment, however, even they are under assault from president Obama and the Obamacrats. Obama is ignoring his duty to enforce the law as written. Instead, he is announcing changes to law when he lacks the authority to make such changes. We have the Executive branch of the government refusing to cooperate with the Legislative branch and, indeed, lying to that branch. Just look at the IRS response to the scandal surrounding the targeting of conservatives and the latest back and forth regarding Lois Lerner's supposedly lost emails.
I also regard some things as not being as bad as they could, but that does not put them on the positive side of the ledger. For example, the US economy has managed to stay positive, although barely so. We could have had an ongoing economic contraction. Certainly the policies followed by Obama have all pushed in that direction. The underlying strength of the American economic system has managed to keep the economy afloat, but we should have been experiencing a growth rate that was much more robust during the last five years. Indeed, had Obama followed pro-growth policies the GDP could have easily grown by 2% per year faster than it did. That may not sound like much, but it would have added just about two trillion dollars to the economy in 2014. That comes out to over six thousand additional dollars per person during the year. That is what Obama's policies have cost America at a minimum.
There are no bright spots in foreign affairs. America's position in the world and our influence across the globe have been greatly diminished under Obama. There are no bright spots in government affairs. Obama and his team have proven themselves to be the most incompetent administrators in American history. Just think about Obama's team spending close to a billion dollars to build the most expensive website in the history of the world only to find that it would not work. Remember, that failure was not just around the edges; at the beginning, the site crashed if more than 50 people tried to get on it at the same time. Then there are those who run the Veterans medical system. You know, the administrators who arranged things to maximize their bonuses while leaving veterans to die while waiting months for treatment that never came.
There are not even any bright spots in interpersonal relations across the country. In 2008, America had reached a point where racial animosity had declined to the lowest ebb in my lifetime. We elected an African American president and the hope was that a new day had dawned regarding race. Since then, of course, we find that every time anyone disagrees with Obama, we get a chorus from the Obamacrats accusing that person or group of racism. The very idea of racism has been diminished into being a joke. But it really is not a joke. There still are racists who ought to be confronted. The tactics of the Obamacrats, however, have so devalued the issue of race that the real bigots, the ones who base their actions on race rather than on merit, are allowed to get away with that.
So again I wonder, where are the good things? Where's the other hand?
Now let me be clear. I still think that our Constitution and our system of government are great. At the moment, however, even they are under assault from president Obama and the Obamacrats. Obama is ignoring his duty to enforce the law as written. Instead, he is announcing changes to law when he lacks the authority to make such changes. We have the Executive branch of the government refusing to cooperate with the Legislative branch and, indeed, lying to that branch. Just look at the IRS response to the scandal surrounding the targeting of conservatives and the latest back and forth regarding Lois Lerner's supposedly lost emails.
I also regard some things as not being as bad as they could, but that does not put them on the positive side of the ledger. For example, the US economy has managed to stay positive, although barely so. We could have had an ongoing economic contraction. Certainly the policies followed by Obama have all pushed in that direction. The underlying strength of the American economic system has managed to keep the economy afloat, but we should have been experiencing a growth rate that was much more robust during the last five years. Indeed, had Obama followed pro-growth policies the GDP could have easily grown by 2% per year faster than it did. That may not sound like much, but it would have added just about two trillion dollars to the economy in 2014. That comes out to over six thousand additional dollars per person during the year. That is what Obama's policies have cost America at a minimum.
There are no bright spots in foreign affairs. America's position in the world and our influence across the globe have been greatly diminished under Obama. There are no bright spots in government affairs. Obama and his team have proven themselves to be the most incompetent administrators in American history. Just think about Obama's team spending close to a billion dollars to build the most expensive website in the history of the world only to find that it would not work. Remember, that failure was not just around the edges; at the beginning, the site crashed if more than 50 people tried to get on it at the same time. Then there are those who run the Veterans medical system. You know, the administrators who arranged things to maximize their bonuses while leaving veterans to die while waiting months for treatment that never came.
There are not even any bright spots in interpersonal relations across the country. In 2008, America had reached a point where racial animosity had declined to the lowest ebb in my lifetime. We elected an African American president and the hope was that a new day had dawned regarding race. Since then, of course, we find that every time anyone disagrees with Obama, we get a chorus from the Obamacrats accusing that person or group of racism. The very idea of racism has been diminished into being a joke. But it really is not a joke. There still are racists who ought to be confronted. The tactics of the Obamacrats, however, have so devalued the issue of race that the real bigots, the ones who base their actions on race rather than on merit, are allowed to get away with that.
So again I wonder, where are the good things? Where's the other hand?
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