Back to Basics

Grim reaper photoshop credit: Manly Rash

I said yesterday in my Beltway Chainsaw Massacre column that the GOP needs to track the Obama jobs death toll and tell the victims’ stories far and wide.

But there’s no need to wait for the GOP. I’ll keep doing it right here.

The first story of the day comes from the Fort Worth Star Telegram in Texas, where a health insurer called Health Markets has laid off 70 workers and expects up to 180 more as it braces for the costs of Obamacare and other government mandates:

HealthMarkets, the North Richland Hills-based seller of health insurance, laid off 70 employees this month and expects to trim 180 more positions by the end of the first quarter of 2011, according to a recent federal filing.

In the Securities and Exchange Commission filing, HealthMarkets blamed the layoffs on “dropping enrollment levels experienced by the company’s insurance subsidiaries,” along with national healthcare reform and “related legislative developments.”

HealthMarkets provides insurance plans to the self-employed, individuals and small businesses.

The second story of the day comes from the Worcester Telegram in Massachusetts, where a local hospital will slash about 50 full-time jobs:

About 50 full-time jobs will be eliminated at the HealthAlliance Hospital — Leominster Campus, and one of two planned expansion projects may be cut back.

Mary Lourdes Burke, chief communications officer for the hospital, said yesterday the job cuts do not mean 50 layoffs, because some were vacant positions that will not be filled, and some were positions that had hours reduced. Also, she said, some union contracts required moving employees into other posts.

Building on my continuing War on the West/War on Jobs series, today’s column initiates an Obama jobs death toll. The social justice Left has always used Alinskyite story-telling to get its way. Time for the Right to better tell the stories of the forgotten victims of the Obama job-killing machine.

Regarding the new CBO report on the stimulus (coincidentally — or maybe not coincidentally — released on the same days as GOP leader John Boehner’s jobs speech), McQ says pointedly: “Of course it boosted the GDP by a sizeable amount. When you pour almost a trillion dollars out of the government bucket and that is part of the calculation of GDP, then naturally the GDP is going to be ‘boosted’. The question is, what good did it do. Claims of ‘increasing the number of people employed’ is, as is obvious, a guess cranked out by an economic model. But look around you. When what the bucket has dumped out drains away, what do we have? 9.5% unemployment – at least at an official level – 1.5% higher than what was promised if the “stimulus” wasn’t passed. A stagnant economy. Businesses neither expanding nor hiring. Car sales – down. Housing sales – way down. Consumer confidence – in the tank. Expanded regulation, increased taxation and a war on business…So let the left and the media try their best to make this more than it is – the effect on GDP calculation that absurd levels of governmental deficit spending will have. Take that out and there isn’t much to shout about, is there?”

***

The White House War on Jobs
by Michelle Malkin
Creators Syndicate
Copyright 2010

The “Summer of Recovery” is looking more and more like the Beltway Chainsaw Massacre for America’s workers. As President Obama lolls on Martha’s Vineyard with his well-heeled Chicago pals, a new Reuters/Ipsos poll shows that 72 percent of people are very worried about joblessness and 67 percent are very concerned about massive government spending. After a nearly $1 trillion fiscal stimulus and several multi-billion-dollar corporate and union bailouts, unemployment remains stuck near 10 percent nationwide; jobless claims rose again last week. One shudders to think how many more jobs will be on the chopping block after the vacationing president finishes “recharging his batteries.”

The blame avoidance industry, of course, never takes a break. Capitol Hill Democrats blame George W. Bush. President Obama blames inaction by the, er, Democrat-controlled Congress. On Tuesday, Vice President Joe Biden derided GOP Leader John Boehner’s speech on the Obama job-killing machine as a return to the past. Biden sneered about the
“good old days” when Republicans held the majority in Washington. But laid-off, unemployed, and endangered Americans in the health care sector, auto industry, oil, mining, gas, and fishing industries are no doubt wondering: What’s wrong with returning to the days when they had jobs and steady paychecks?

After the uprising of the 17th of June
The Secretary of the Writers Union
Had leaflets distributed in the Stalinallee
Stating that the people
Had forfeited the confidence of the government
And could win it back only
By redoubled efforts.
Would it not be easier
In that case for the government
To dissolve the people
And elect another?

The Solution, Brecht

It is that season again when the high and mighty among the Fourth Estate gaze down in disgust from their skyscraper office windows, and contemplate their onerous task of educating the unruly rabble. From his luxurious digs on Martha’s Vineyard, the son of a Muslim Kenyan diplomat and the grandson of the Vice-President of the Bank of Hawaii, turns away from the east for a moment, and regards the West. Those vast stretches of land beneath the setting sun, full of towns and villages of people clinging to their guns, religion and refusal to do what they’re told. And he sighs. Soon he will have to go back and deal with them again. Too soon. What is it with those Americans anyway?

Leaf through the pages of just about any politically oriented magazine this summer, and you come away with the impression that you are reading the complaints of British officers managing India or the staff of a Roman viceroy in Gaul. There are a great many complaints about how awfully ignorant, dangerous and violent these Americans are. How they don’t know what’s good for them, even when they’re carefully instructed by their betters.

You have to put microchips in their bins that track when they’re taken to the curb, just to get them to recycle. And ban trans fats and corn syrup to get them to eat right. They have to be forced to buy health insurance, and then you have to take away their asthma inhalers in order to save the planet from another of those problems we invented in order to control their lives. You have to tax everything in sight, and then tax the taxes, just to get them to turn over the money they insist on hoarding for themselves and their families. Sales taxes, phone taxes, death taxes, boat taxes, archery taxes and vaccine taxes. And somehow no matter how hard we tax them, they still hang on to their money.

It all reads like the commentary of an occupying force, disgusted by the mulish obstinacy of the natives in refusing to see that their way is better. It is the British Raj or the Norman Conquest, a culturally isolated group of invaders who wonder if they can ever bring civilization to the heathens. And yet it is what passes for the official discourage of the American cultural elite. A cultural elite that endeavors to at once express its disgust with America, while insisting that its values are American, and those of the rest of the country are not.

On the Ground Zero Mosque, Barack Hussein Obama and the media have insisted that their attitude is American, and that of the majority of the country is Unamerican. But if most Americans are actually Unamerican, and the country’s leading American is a fellow whose church rang to gentle cries of “God Damn America”, who fancies that there are 57 states and whose favorite reading material is The Post-American World (by another great American, Fareed Zakaria), then it’s clear that being Anti-American is the new definition of American. But then who exactly are those hundreds of millions of people living between the oceans. If they’re not to be considered Americans, then who and what are they?

The political and cultural elite insist that they are the real Americans, and that the majority of Americans are Unamerican. The majority of Americans have decided that it is the political elite that is Unamerican. There are legal mechanisms in place for the people to enforce their decision by electing a new government. And while the months roll around, the political elite is scrambling for ways to elect a new American people.

That suggestion isn’t as far-fetched as you might think. A while back the Labor Party decided that it was time to elect a new people. So that was what they did, by importing large numbers of Muslims into England. The result was New Britain, a charming place with ever so many stabbings and mosques, and stabbings conveniently adjacent to mosques. Terrorists no longer speak with Irish accents, but raise their arses to Mecca, and load the latest lecture from Al Queda on their iPods before voting for the Liberal Dems. But that is the problem when governments try to elect a new people by way of immigration, that new people might just decide to elect a whole new government anyway.

As Obama takes his 6th vacation, this year (and it’s only August), he has certainly expended great measures of time to reflect upon his job running the country. Considering his ample ego, I suspect that he is very proud of the destruction he has, thus far, brought to bear against the United States of America and We-the-People. As well as overtly directed at the American people, Obama must also smirk and laugh exuberantly to himself at his uncanny ability to get away with destroying much — if not most — of the foundation of the American system. Again, no one is stopping his illegal and unconstitutional raid of all that is — or was — American.

At his regularly weekly-scheduled parties in the White House, Obama and his other anti-American cohorts and friends must truly revel in their ability to have overturned a Republic that — although tried and tested through the years by a few other internal criminal tyrants — had, since the final ratification of the Treaty of Paris in 1784 establishing the USA as an independent and sovereign nation, largely stood intact for 226 years. He must be proud that he was chosen by the dark forces to eradicate the last vestige of the nation this world has known that was founded upon the tenets of freedom and liberty. But, destroying and gutting a country — from top to bottom and inside out — is hard work! So, Obama and his family have taken myriad luxurious and extremely expensive vacations — on our taxpayer monies — to soothe and iron out his furrowed brow; depicting a mind that seems filled with the ongoing ObamaQuestion: “Who and what can I destroy today?”

To give us a better idea of what Obama will destroy today and tomorrow, it’s probably a good idea to take a look at some of the things that he has already decimated.

1. Obama’s first Executive order was issued on 21 January 2009 shortly after he had taken the White House. Upon moving into the White House, Barack Hussein Obama revoked Executive Order 13233 of November 1, 2001 (which allowed Congressional and court access to Presidential records “ec. 6. Right of Congress and Courts to Obtain Access”) and replaces it with Presidential Executive Order 13489, which now denies access to Obama’s records.

2. Obama and his Marxist Congress established H.R. 1388, the so-called “Serve America Act,” which — amongst myriad other non-service based and “give money to my supporters” items — includes requirements for national service (read that: ‘Service to The Obama’). Although the Save America Act (as almost all American now know we must actually Save America from Obama) does not use the term “mandatory,” the Act calls for the strengthening of Americorps service (meant to be ‘required’ by the Obama) and states from SEC. 122. NATIONAL SERVICE PROGRAMS ELIGIBLE FOR PROGRAM ASSISTANCE the dictates for teachers and students of: “(II) perform service related to such training outside the classroom during the school term and during summer or other vacation periods; and (III) agree to provide service upon graduation to meet unmet human, educational, environmental, or public safety needs related to such training.”

3. The now highly-infamous ObamaCare, which effectively destroys what had been called “the best healthcare system in the world” (Obama can’t have Americans being cured of diseases anymore — that detracts from his desires to place Americans’ healthcare monies into his and his masters pockets), has been enacted. Obama signed off on this Machiavellian replete-with-Death-Panels-programs which confiscates at least $500Billions from Medicare (to effectively kill off Senior citizens), plans to steal even more from Social Security to further fund Obama & Co’s ill-gotten gains and destroy the healthcare system that was the best on the planet. Why has The Obama done this? For power over We-the-People, of course. Note: Suppression of the people (and bleeding them dry) is a “given” practice in all tyrannical forms of ‘government.’

4. As Obama’s Cap & Trade proposal (of which he said “Under my plan electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket”) is having more and more difficulty passing through the Legislative branch, Obama simply bypassed Congress! Via Executive fiat (used increasingly more these days by Dictator-in-Chief Obama), Obama has given the EPA both the authority and mandate to regulate CO2 emissions as The Obama so rules.

University of Chicago Medical Center top executive Dr. Eric Whitaker is a busy, busy man.

Here’s a rundown of his schedule since his Chicago pal Barack Obama moved into 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue:

*Golfed with Obama on his December 2008 Hawaii vacation;

*Played hoops with Obama during a three-day getaway to Chicago in February 2009;

*Attended the Obamas’ first state dinner in November 2009;

*Traveled with Obama to Norway in December 2009 for Nobel Peace Prize ceremony;

Loathsome cowboys

How’s that Summer of Recovery working out for you? Continuing my series on the White House War on the West, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar’s attack on the economy, and the White House land lock-up (Part 1, Part 2) and ocean grab, here is the latest on Barack Obama’s deliberate job destruction policies.

According to the WSJ, the administration forged ahead with its junk science deepwater drilling ban despite knowing it would cost 23,000 jobs.

Senior Obama administration officials concluded the federal moratorium on deepwater oil drilling would cost roughly 23,000 jobs, but went ahead with the ban because they didn’t trust the industry’s safety equipment and the government’s own inspection process, according to previously undisclosed documents.

Marcia McNutt, an Obama administration science adviser, commented on the corporate culture of BP in a memo sent to Michael Bromwich, the administration’s new top offshore oil exploration regulator, on June 28.

Critics of the moratorium, including Gulf Coast political figures and oil-industry leaders, have said it is crippling the region’s economy, and some have called on the administration to make public its economic analysis. A federal judge who in June threw out an earlier six-month moratorium faulted the administration for playing down the economic effects…

Sound familiar?

Just last month, you’ll recall, the TARP inspector general reported on how the capricious Dealeragate mandates of Obama’s non-expert auto experts deliberately destroyed jobs in the name of “shared sacrifice” to appease Big Labor.

Then there are more and more Obamacare job-killing stories piling up like this one:

Assurant Health is eliminating 130 jobs at its offices in Milwaukee and Plymouth, Minn., by Oct. 1 as the health insurer prepares for changes under federal health care reform.

What gift says “I love you” better than a poke in the arm and the possibility of seizures and neurological damage? That must be the thinking behind the Walgreens marketing team as the store introduces a flu shot gift card.

That’s right, just in time for the coming fall flu scare, Walgreens is selling $29.99 gift cards so you can give your favorite loved one the gift of a flu shot — the same shot that causes convulsions and wonderful, heartfelt diseases like Guillain-Barré Syndrome and protects you from… nothing.

Last year the World Health Organization teamed up with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and governments around the world to cook up a global health pandemic and called it swine flu. The populace was ginned up over the possibility of hundreds of thousands of deaths and worldwide catastrophe like you’d find in a Stephen King novel.

And all the while those advising the WHO and CDC were laughing all the way to the bank as their paymasters — Big Pharma — raked in billions of government-sponsored largess and rewarded them handsomely.

Meanwhile, those who bought into the scaremongering convulsed and suffered.

Don’t buy into the hype. Flu vaccines contain harmful agents and DNA fragments and “protect” you from last year’s flu, as they’re made before the next season’s flu outbreak strikes. They are strictly a Big Pharma boondoggle aimed at taking your money — either directly from your pocket or through your government — and making you sick.

“Apres moi le deluge”, “After me, the flood” and though attributed to the French King Louis XV, historians believe it was actually said by Jeanne Poisson, Madame de Pompadour. The last members of the monarchy spent France into the poorhouse until they had their heads separated from their bodies via the guillotine.

People have noticed the same eerie disconnect from the suffering of the populace as Barack and Michelle Obama party on. There has been a succession of vacations topped off by Michelle in Spain on the U.S. dime. Keeping track of the vacations, about seventeen this year, has become a media pastime.

Twenty months into his first and last term, President Obama, has wasted a trillion dollars we didn’t have on a stimulus package that was little more than a wish list of pet projects for Democrat congressmen and bailouts of the teacher’s unions whose members would otherwise have to join the long lines at the unemployment office.

People noticed.

Obama has had notably little success in foreign affairs, failing to draw the line with the Russians on issues of defensive missiles in Europe, managing to insult the British in a dozen ways, and being mocked by the Iranian leaders as they get ready to fire up a nuclear reactor.

People noticed.

When he finally decided what to do in Afghanistan, he made the announcement at West Point, including a date when the new infusion of troops would leave. The cadets slept through the speech and the Taliban circled their calendar for 2011.

Yea that economic recovery is going great. Nobody but pinheads in D.C. and Wall Street are surprised. We have been saying for the better part of 2 years that the economy sucks. Obama spent a trillion dollars in wasted “stimulus” on local government improvement projects. Nothing was done for those small businesses that create real productive jobs.

Now it seems big corporations are sitting on TONS of cash from massive cost cutting. They aren’t hiring. Why? Because the idiots in D.C. hate capitalism. Their policies are killing this economy. Health care “reform”. Finance “reform”. Bailouts. Impending higher taxes.

If these news laws were so great then why are Democrats not running their campaign extolling their virtues. Not a single one that I have seen or read about brags about how great these policies are and how they should be the platform from which they are re-elected or elected. No, they can only talk about race and blame Bush. That is their platform.

On the other hand we have folks in the GOP like Rep. Paul Ryan coming up with great plans to get the country back on track. Yes it’s true despite what the left-media wants leads you to believe. The GOP has rightfully been the party of NO. I love that they have said no for the last 18 months. They have plans but they don’t fit the agenda, the narrative, of the liberal left so they are dismissed and ignored.

So now we have proof that Obama-nomics are a failure. We gave him a TRILLION dollars of our money to fix the Bush problem. We gave him bailout money. We let him give money to your neighbor to buy a car. We let him pay off the unions. His statist Keynesian spending spree has not worked. The economy that he inherited from Bush still exists. He has done nothing to fix it. Obama is a failure.

After his endorsement of a mosque at Ground Zero created an awful kerfuffel that has Democrats racing for cover right before mid-term elections, President Obama has retreated behind the protective cover of the U.S. Constitution.

Barack Obama and the Constitution?

Is it not the highest form of blasphemy just to mention this president’s name in the same sentence as the U.S. Constitution?

After all, he has waged all-out war on that document since invading the Oval Office on January 20, 2009.

As reported at Yahoonews.com, in part:

“BOARD AIR FORCE ONE – A White House spokesman says politics wasn’t a factor in President Barack Obama’s remarks about building a mosque near the site of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in New York City.

Deputy White House press secretary Bill Burton said it was “not politics” but Obama’s feeling that he had the obligation as president to “make sure people are treated equally” under the Constitution.”

If Obama really gave a tinker’s dam about the Constitution, he would scrap his outrageous law suit against the state of Arizona for protecting its citizens from invaders.

He would move to scrap ObamaCare, which was rammed down the throats of unwilling Americans with legislative sleight of hands and bribery when the votes were not there to follow the rules.