Legacy of a Narcissist

            Barack Obama, supreme narcissist, is concerned about preserving his legacy. He is depending on the voters in this election to confirm their love of him by electing Hillary Clinton to succeed him and continue his policies. That he is depending on the most corrupt politician in the history of presidential politics to perpetuate his agenda does not appear to bother him. But just in case, he is buying insurance by appealing to his most loyal constituents, the solid bloc of black voters who flocked to the polls to elect and re-elect him. He will consider it a personal insult if they don’t vote to cement his legacy by voting for Hillary.

            What will be Obama’s legacy? On the domestic front he will be remembered as the man who presided over: a recession recovery that never exceeded two percent growth in GDP; the lowest labor participation rate since the 1970s; a doubling of the national debt; a disastrous health care system derisively bearing his name; a widening racial divide featuring race riots and assaults on law enforcement officers; out-of-control illegal immigration; and repeated acts terrorism whose nature the president refuses to acknowledge.

            Internationally, history will remember President Obama as a weak leader who: abhorred confrontation with Russia in Ukraine, with China in the South China Sea, and with North Korea’s nuclear testing; created a vacuum in Iraq that led to the rise of ISIS; and negotiated with Iran a disastrous agreement that threatens the security of the Middle East.

            Worst of all, Obama drew a red line with Syria, but did not act when Syria crossed it. Had the President bolstered our allies on the ground by destroying Syria’s planes and its chemical stores, we would not have seen the destruction of so many cities, the loss of more than 200,000 innocent civilian lives, and the desperate migration of a million refugees.

            Barack Obama has always been in love with the image he sees in the mirror. But history will not be kind to him. His legacy will not be one of success and triumph; it will be one of failure at home, weakness abroad, and cowardice in the face of the enemy.

  

The Unity of Lies

    The top half of the front page of today's Virginian-Pilot Sports section is a photo of ODU football players forming a circle on the field. Their coach, Bobby Wilder, approved of this political statement. He said, "Let's show unity, respect free speech."
     Isn't that wonderful! Except that the players were wearing Black Lives Matter shirts and holding their hands up in the familiar "Hands Up, Don't Shoot" pose. Free speech is wonderful, but not when it perpetuates a lie, especially when that lie has led to the murder of policemen.
     Coach Wilder caught some heat for his uncritical position on this matter. That's when he said, "But this is about the children. Everyone needs to put their agenda down." Well, what about Black Lives Matters's agenda? Does Coach Wilder approve of killing police? What about his responsibility for teaching his players respect for the truth?
     Bobby Wilder is a moron. He should not be in a position to influence kids. He should be fired.

Why No Hillary Indictrment

            I don’t know about anybody else, but to me the incessant cacophony in the media before the first presidential debate was the very definition of excess. I don’t think the media could have placed a greater importance on any event short of the Big Bang.  Unfortunately, its absorbed frenzy totally obliterated another story of perhaps greater import: the Friday night FBI dump of information that revealed why Hillary Clinton was never indicted (the Friday night in question being just three days before the debate).

            The reason FBI Director James Comey decided against recommending an indictment of Secretary Clinton—even after laying out a solid case for it—is that it would have exposed President Obama as a direct participant in the case, making him liable to prosecution himself for a violation of the law. The facts are really quite simple.

            We all remember President Obama announcing that he had first heard about Hillary’s illegal use of a private server from a news story in the press. That was a lie.  We now learn from the information turned over by the FBI that Obama not only knew about Clinton’s server, he sent classified email(s) to her on it. Even more telling, he used a pseudonym so as not to be identified as the source of the information.  According to former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy, “He not only engaged in the same type of misconduct Clinton did; he engaged in it with Clinton.”

            Are we starting to get the picture? Had Comey recommended a Clinton indictment, the prosecutorial process would have revealed the President’s own culpability and brought public embarrassment to the President, the Justice Department, and the FBI. Hence, the need for a massive cover-up, beginning with “straight-shooter” Comey squashing the indictment.

            The stench of corruption pervades this administration. The old saying has never been truer: A fish rots from the head down.

Taxes and Regulations

            We may soon see a new entitlement piled on top of the mountain of entitlements contributing to America’s massive debt. This one may be named for the next president’s daughter. No, not Chelsea Clinton, but Ivanka Trump. If Trump is elected president, Ivanka will likely be the face of a new entitlement providing child-care tax rebates or, for those who pay no income taxes, an increase in the earned-income tax credit.

            Donald Trump is looking for ways to ingratiate himself with women. But does the cost of this new idea have to be piled on top of existing entitlements and social programs, the chief causes of the nation’s unsustainable debt? Trump says he will pay for his new program with a reduction in fraud and abuse. Wishful thinking. A drop in the bucket at best.

            Given our presidential candidates’ opposition to reforming Social Security and Medicare, there is only one way to reverse the stampede to national bankruptcy: Growth. Under President Obama GDP has risen by less than 2% annually. What we need is for growth to be 3.5% at a minimum.

            So how do we remove the impediments to growth we have seen under Obama? Two ways: tax reform and regulatory reform.

            Growth can only happen if the private sector creates new jobs. The single most desirable tax reform would be a reduction in the 35% business tax that has forced companies like Apple to move overseas to avoid this massive tax burden and major employers like Ford to move plants to Mexico to take advantage of cheap labor. Common sense reforms to reduce labor costs domestically would help, but nothing will persuade companies to remain in America more than tax reform.

            We must also reduce the burden of regulations that cost businesses billions of dollars in compliance and prevents start-ups from creating new jobs.  In 2015 the federal government wrote 5,712 rules and regulations totaling 81,611 pages. And that wasn’t even a record for an Obama Administration intent on regulating everything from smokestacks to puddles. This year will probably end up being worse.

            Taxes are necessary to run the government, and some regulations are needed to maintain order and safety for the citizenry. But government must stop micromanaging every aspect of our lives and just get out of the way so we can break the shackles of debt and get back to rebuilding a prosperous nation.

The 10th Gets No Respect

            The 10^th Amendment to the Constitution is brief, only 28 words, and should be perfectly clear to anyone who reads it. It says, in effect, that the federal government has no powers except those specifically granted to it by the Constitution. Yet, the 10^th Amendment has been violated more frequently by the Executive Branch than any other. And of all the presidents who have violated it, Barack Obama is the worst. He has said unabashedly that where Congress fails to act, he will. And he has. Again and again he has legislated from the White House, usurping powers specifically granted to Congress by the Constitution.

            Most egregious perhaps are the changes the President made to ObamaCare, re-writing provisions of the law he didn’t like. He got away with it, because a squabbling and divided Congress proved powerless to stop him.

            Most numerous have been his frequent extra-constitutional executive orders. But in some cases, like the one leading to amnesty for illegal immigrants, the court stepped in to prevent the President from executing his unlawful orders.

            Most insidious, though, are the regulations issued by federal agencies with the force of law. The worst offender, in my view, is the EPA, which has, among other abuses, interpreted the broad mandate of the Clean Air Act to put the coal industry out of business.

            One can hope that the next president will put a stop to these violations and respect the balance of power our Founders felt was so necessary to maintain an effective government responsible to the people. In January Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump will take the oath to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. But do they intent to respect the 10^th Amendment? That would be a good question to ask the candidates in the up-coming debates.

Institutions Crack

            We Americans are blessed. We live in the most prosperous and most powerful country in the world. For our entire short history people have wanted to come here to enjoy the limitless opportunities offered by our liberty, our free-market capitalism, and our system of government. Ours is the longest-surviving democracy in the history of the world, a democracy based on a Constitution that has guaranteed freedoms enjoyed nowhere else.

            But our base is cracking because of a loss of faith in our institutions. Our national defense is crumbling, our no-growth economy is mired in debt, our cities are festering with drugs and violence, while our law-enforcement community is disrespected my millionaire football players and protests based on lies. Moreover, we have a political system corrupted by venal politicians abetted by a biased media and led by candidates with unheard-of negative ratings. Even the FBI, an institution deemed incorruptible from the days of Elliot Ness, has fallen prey to political ambition.

            There was a time when the FBI could not be bribed and could not be dictated to from above. It was truly untouchable. Now that aura is gone. It was blown away by a scandalous dereliction of duty in the Hillary Clinton investigation. We had been led to believe that Director James Comey was a straight-up guy who would not be influenced by politics, who would conduct a fair and impartial investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails. Now it appears that he intentionally let her off the hook. Whether it was at the direction of President Obama who wanted to protect his ideological successor or whether Comey wanted simply to advance his career, we likely will never know. In the face of overwhelming evidence that Hillary Clinton committed multiple felonies (destruction of evidence, obstruction of justice, perjury), Comey caved. He recommended that no charges be brought, thereby relieving compromised Attorney General Loretta Lynch from making that decision. This wasn’t justice: it was pure politics.

            Elliot Ness must be turning in his grave.

Multiculturalism -- Good or Bad?

            America has never appeared to be so divided as it has during this election season. There seems to be no middle ground anymore.

            Take immigration. Donald Trump wants to keep illegal immigrants and Musllims out. Hillary Clinton wants open borders to our south and open arms for Syrian refugees.         Trump and his followers are not against immigrants. After all, this country was built by immigrants. They brought different languages and different cultures, but they all sought to assimilate and to make their fortune in this land of opportunity. They might have been British, Germans, Italians, Poles, and Jews, but they all wanted to be Americans. Their descendants on the Right view any immigrant group that does not want to assimilate as rejecting America’s core values and should therefore be barred the door.

            Obviously, the Left does not see it that way. It trumpets multiculturalism as necessary for the advancement of our pluralistic society. Asian, Latino, and Middle Eastern immigrants all enrich America. Never mind Mexicans who burn the American flag or Muslims who prefer Sharia to our system of laws. Just give them time to assimilate.

            Multiculturalism is not an evil nor a goal to be achieved without qualification. If it is to benefit our nation, it must be tempered by common sense and the realization that everything that is different is not necessarily good—or bad. There is a middle ground on immigration. I hope warring political factions can find it.