The Patriot Post Daily Digest 1-10-2014

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The Patriot Post Daily Digest 1-10-2014
From The Federalist Patriot
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Daily Digest

Jan. 10, 2014

THE FOUNDATION

“He therefore is the truest friend to the liberty of his country who tries most to promote its virtue, and who, so far as his power and influence extend, will not suffer a man to be chosen into any office of power and trust who is not a wise and virtuous man… The sum of all is, if we would most truly enjoy this gift of Heaven, let us become a virtuous people.” –Samuel Adams

TOP 5 RIGHT HOOKS
Dismal December Jobs Report

Economists predicted that December would see nearly 200,000 new jobs, but reality was … unexpected. Just 74,000 jobs were created last month. The headline unemployment rate dropped from 7.0% to 6.7%, but – and it’s a big but – this was almost entirely attributable to the 347,000 people who left the workforce. Just 62.8% of Americans were part of the labor force, tied for the lowest rate since 1978, and nearly 92 million people aren’t in the labor force. For the year, unemployment dropped 1.2 percentage points, but real unemployment is at least 13.1% and, again, we’d point to the 2.9 million Americans who left the labor force in 2013 as the reason. By the way, we’re entering year six of the Obama “recovery.”

Broken ‘Promise Zones’

The latest front in the Left’s redistributionist war on “inequality” is Barack Obama’s five “promise zones” – areas that will receive special federal aid due to their poverty. “We’ve got to make sure this recovery, which is real, leaves nobody behind,” he explained. Unlike the biblical promised land, Obama has determined that Los Angeles, Philadelphia, San Antonio, southeastern Kentucky and the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma are not exactly flowing with milk and honey and therefore need his help. (Interesting that Detroit’s not on the list.) He will choose 15 other needy areas in the future. Such targeted aid zones aren’t new, dating back to the New Deal. But – surprise – the results are usually both underwhelming and difficult to assess. Fortunately for leftists, it’s only intentions that matter.

Regulatory Explosion in 2013

The ever-growing regulatory state continues to strangle the U.S. economy. American Action Forum calculates that, in 2013, the cost of complying with new federal regulations stripped $112 billion from the economy, and $494 billion dating back to 2009. Most of last year’s hefty cost comes courtesy of two environmental standards. In total, the new rules equate to nearly 158 million hours of additional paperwork. AAF estimates this year’s financial burden to approach $143 billion. To see the effect of these regulations, see December’s jobs report1.

A Partial IRS Investigation

The Obama Justice Department selected Barbara Kay Bosserman, a trial lawyer in the department, to head up its investigation into the IRS political-targeting scandal. The catch is that Bosserman donated more than $6,000 to Obama in 2008 and 2012, as well as hundreds of dollars to the DNC, which creates quite the conflict of interest. The Justice Department says it won’t consider political activity when assigning cases, but this case should be an exception. Then again, the administration insists that using the might of the IRS to target political opponents is a “phony scandal,” so why wouldn’t they appoint a phony investigator?

Obama’s Racist Civil Rights Nominee

Barack Obama has nominated attorney Debo Adegbile as chief of the Department of Justice Civil Rights Division. But the Fraternal Order of Police isn’t happy. The FOP sent a letter to Obama explaining that Adegbile led efforts by the NAACP’s Legal Defense Fund to represent, pro bono, notorious cop-killer and far-Left darling Mumia Abu-Jamal. With Adegbile’s help, Abu-Jamal’s death sentence was overturned on bogus claims of racism. “This nomination can be interpreted in only one way,” wrote FOP National President Chuck Canterbury. “It is a thumb in the eye of our nation’s law enforcement.”

For more, visit Right Hooks2.

RIGHT ANALYSIS
Gates Slams Obama’s Political War Fighting

Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates’s new book, “Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War,” lays bare the shambles that is Barack Obama’s foreign policy. Not that we needed another book to tell us that. In it, Gates recalls a number of examples of how Obama prosecuted the war in Afghanistan purely for political gain with no regard for the consequences of his decisions, save re-election. The White House increasingly sought to control the war from the inside, repeatedly undermining the counsel and judgment of military commanders on the ground and in the Pentagon. Gates writes that he came to realize by 2010 that the president didn’t even believe in his own strategy and refused to take ownership for the conflict. “For him,” Gates wrote, “it’s all about getting out.” Yet, three out of every four Americans killed in Afghanistan died on Obama’s watch – in a war he was manipulating for political gain. It’s an absolutely disgusting breach of faith with our men and women in uniform.

Predictably, the White House objected to Gates’s portrayal, again asserting that Obama has a “clear plan for winding down the war, which will end this year.” But this statement only proves Gates’s point. The war in Afghanistan will not end simply because American troops are leaving the battlefield. We left Iraq thanks to another politically charged decision by Obama, and al-Qaida is busy regaining territory it lost during the 2007 surge3. A surge, by the way, that both Hillary Clinton and Obama openly admitted in front of Gates they opposed for purely political reasons.

Gates’s account comes as no surprise, but it’s no less troubling because of the extent to which the White House has allowed politics to dictate policy. Decisions on Libya and Syria followed the same model, with political aides in the White House making decisions and shutting the Pentagon out of the process. It’s no wonder that America’s allies are walking away and enemies are emboldened. The only real question is, where was this book in 2012, when the American people re-elected this sorry excuse for a commander in chief?