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« on: October 04, 2013, 06:03:53 PM » |
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The Patriot Post Friday Digest 10-4-2013
From The Federalist Patriot
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THE FOUNDATION
“Public affairs go on pretty much as usual: perpetual chicanery and rather more personal abuse than there used to be.” –John Adams
GOVERNMENT AND POLITICS
Phony Shutdown Pain
Once the government shut down Monday at midnight, the Obama administration went into overdrive to make the “Republican shutdown1” as noticeable and inconvenient as possible. National Parks were one of the more visible targets, though many of these remained open during the shutdowns in the 1990s.
Obama had Park Service personnel place Barackades2 at the World War II Memorial in Washington, though that didn’t stop hundreds of veterans from visiting anyway3. Just for good measure, Obama also closed the cemetery at Normandy4 in France. And he tried to blockade Mount Vernon, which is privately owned. That didn’t work out so well.
Even the football game between the Naval Academy and the Air Force Academy was in jeopardy of being canceled5. Fortunately, however, sanity prevailed late Wednesday night given that the athletics programs of both schools are privately funded and don’t rely on government money. “We could run our entire athletics program and conduct events as we always do without any government funds,” said Naval Academy Athletic Director Chet Gladchuk.
Clearly, the White House thought the public would blame the GOP for these ridiculous closings. In order for Obama to beat his Republican enemies – the ones his aide called terrorists “with a bomb strapped to their chest6” – his administration is authorizing high profile cuts to create as much public pain as possible. But it’s the Democrats who look bad here.
Meanwhile, Obama doesn’t share the pain. Even as the grocery stores on U.S. Army bases are closed, imposing a significant inconvenience on active duty military personnel and their families, the president’s beloved golf course at nearby Andrews Air Force base remains open. And though Obama has issued a moratorium on National Cemetery flyovers to honor fallen warriors, he continues to use Air Force One and its entire contingent of additional Air Force aircraft and support crews to commute to political fundraisers, stump speeches and vacations7, at enormous expense. It’s not that we think Obama should book his flights on Expedia, but the fact that the commander in chief continues to use this most costly Air Force asset for purely political or pleasure trips while closing down memorials, cemeteries and grocery stores is disgraceful.
ObamaCare Rollout Hits Snags
The federal and state ObamaCare insurance exchanges opened for business8 Tuesday and so far it has overwhelmed government websites and agencies and frustrated millions of consumers nationwide who couldn’t even complete the login process. The federal government and 14 individual states had three years to design, implement and test their insurance exchanges (36 states opted out of setting up state exchanges, leaving the job to Washington.) Yet, ObamaCare’s first week was plagued by a multitude of reports from all over the country about glitches in the system.
California, home to 15% of the nation’s uninsured, had to pull its $313 million enrollment site the first day. The agency in charge of the exchange claimed that the site received five million hits, supposedly crashing the system. But two days later, the state admitted its overstatement9 and said the real number was 645,000. Oops. Meanwhile, Oregon has a faulty calculator that won’t be fixed till later in the month. Louisiana wasn’t even able to determine if a single person has obtained insurance. Federal hotlines were swarmed with calls.
The White House laughably spun these and many other problems as a sign that ObamaCare is even more popular than they anticipated. Even if these problems were caused by pure volume and not just bureaucratic incompetence, early trends don’t bode well for success. ObamaCare needs to draw a larger number of voluntary uninsureds, so-called young invincibles, into the system early to make it viable. They are in a position to balance the cost of fines against the cost of insurance, and right now, fines are winning. Lower than anticipated enrollment will upset the cost balance of the program, raising premiums and leading to more taxes to cover the overage. It will also mean that the eight million working poor and impoverished won’t get subsidies. One more promise to be broken.
DoJ Attacks North Carolina Voter ID Law
The Obama Justice Department has filed suit against the state of North Carolina over its new voting rules in the latest move in Attorney General Eric Holder’s crusade.
Read more and comment here10.
ECONOMY
Unofficial Jobs Report: 166,000 Private-Sector Jobs Gained
One casualty of the government slowdown this month will be an “official” unemployment figure from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Because it’s a non-essential agency, the BLS halted its operations before the scheduled Friday release. Instead, economists and others who read the tea leaves will have to make do with a similar report. One from the private payroll firm ADP, which calculates its own employment figures based on their surveying and comes with a caution that they only assess private-sector jobs and not government work, came up with a figure of 166,000 jobs created. The BLS numbers will likely vary.
But comparing the September ADP numbers with those of July and August, it’s still apparent the economy is in a narrow trough of job creation. Their figures for those two months show 161,000 jobs added in July and 159,000 in August. That’s just treading water.
On the other hand, the Labor Department is still in operation and their weekly jobless claim report showed 308,000 new claims last week. That number, when added to the less volatile four-week rolling average economists prefer to use, shows the average is down to 305,000 – the lowest since May 2007. Yet workforce participation remains near all-time lows, so fewer new jobless claims is not as encouraging as it might be.
Meanwhile, the Gallup organization, which also tracks employment through a more unique ratio11 called P2P, or payroll to population, came out with a P2P number of 43.5 percent, down from 45.1 percent a year ago. Gallup’s version of the unemployment rate declined for the month, though, from a surprising 8.7% in August to 7.7% in September – more in line with the figure economists would anticipate had the BLS report been released.
There are a lot of numbers out there, but they point to an economy still struggling and not providing a lot of hope to those whose personal unemployment rate is 100%.
NATIONAL SECURITY
Iran Again Enters the Stage
Barack Obama may refuse to negotiate “with people with a bomb strapped to their chest6” – referring, of course, to his Republican political opponents – but he doesn’t seem to have any qualms about dealing with Iran. New Iranian president Hassan Rouhani snubbed Obama at the UN last week, but the two soon talked on the phone to smooth things over. Rouhani – who isn’t Mahmoud Ahmadinejad but is still under the control of Supreme Leader Ali Hosseini Khamenei – needed to string Obama along a bit more. The topics of conversation were not only Iran’s nuclear program but also its client state of Syria. Such talks mean that U.S. military action in Syria is less likely now than it ever was.
Remember last month, when the president addressed the nation to talk about “the children lying in rows, killed by poison gas” and the need to respond militarily? It’s remarkable how quickly that righteous firestorm died out.
And about that nuclear program: The Moscow Times reports12, “Russia and Iran signed a protocol Monday transferring control of the Bushehr nuclear power plant to Iranian specialists.” Meanwhile, Yukia Amano, general director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said that Iran “is not providing the necessary cooperation to enable us to provide credible assurance about the absence of undeclared nuclear material and activities,” and his organization “cannot conclude that all nuclear material in Iran is in peaceful activities.” In other words, Nobel Peace Prize laureate13 Vladimir Putin is one step ahead of Obama once again.
Finally, three related tidbits: First, Iran hacked the U.S. Navy computer network in September. Second, the State Department wants Congress to hold off on any more sanctions for a while. And third, the United Nations chose Iran to serve on its Committee on Disarmament and International Security. That committee is chaired by Libya, where arms flow freely to al-Qaida after Obama helped oust Moammar Gadhafi. So all in all another fine week in foreign policy for our feckless president. |
