Americanly Yours

Hypocrisy.  Thats all this is.  That and an unprecedented intrusion into your personal privacy by the federal government.  RIP 4th Amendment.  It was fun while you lasted.

What am I talking about?  I am talking about the proposed Cybersecurity Act of 2009.  This bill was proposed by 2 Democrats–Jay Rockefeller and Bill Nelson–and 1 Republican–Olympia Snowe and grants the administration sweeping powers over the internet.  It establishes the Office of the National Cybersecurity Advisor and grants that office, the President, and the Commerce Secretary unprecedented powers.

Under this bill, the President will be allowed to declare a cybersecurity emergency and shut down or limit traffic in in any “critical information network” when the President declares it to be in the “interest of national security.”  Of course, the bill defines neither a critical information network nor a cybersecurity emergency and leaves this power up to the President.

However, to me, the scary part is found in the new powers of the Commerce Secretary:  the Secretary will be given “access to all relevant data concerning networks without regard to any provision of law, regulation, rule, or policy restricting such access.”

Ummmm… what?  Thats a scary sentence.  I think the worst part is… well… the whole thing is just awful.

You can find the complete text of the bill here.

From liberal blog Mother Jones: “This means he or she can monitor or access any data on private or public networks without regard to privacy laws.”

This proposed law doesnt just disregard privacy laws, it also disregards the 4th Amendment to our Constitution.

The 4th Amendment reads as follows:  “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

Allowing the government the right to search internet records, without defining the scope of the governments search powers is a blatant violation of the 4th Amendment.

The hypocrisy argument comes in here:  the same people that opposed President Bush for signing the Patriot Act, implementing a warrantless wiretapping program, and keeping records of all phone calls made are the people supporting this measure.  If it is wrong under President Bush, it is wrong under President Obama.

I actually thing that this is a much bigger intrusion into privacy than was President Bush’s program.  While President Bush looked at records of phone calls and made the occasional (so we are told) warrantless wire tap, this plan could give the government unlimited access to an amazing amount of private information.

This is just too much power for the government (and especially one person in the government) to have.

Can anyone imagine how vocal the public opposition to this would have been if this had been supported by the Bush administration?  Can you imagine how loud the media would have been screaming about this if it was supported by President Bush?  Instead, Im willing to bet that unless you are a political junkie, you probably havent heard about this.

I opposed warrantless wiretapping and domestic spying under President Bush.  I oppose it under President Obama.  There is no need for this type of bill and I hope it fails.  However, I am hopeful that if this bill passes, it will be significantly pared down and hopefully vetoed by President Obama.

Americanly Yours,

Phred Barnet

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The nonpartisan CBO made a disturbing announcement in regards to our future budget deficits yesterday.

“President Barack Obama’s budget would produce $9.3 trillion in deficits over the next decade, more than four times the deficits of Republican George W. Bush’s presidency.” Remember that Mr. Obama criticized President Bush for sharply increasing the deficit which Mr. Obama inherited.  Well, Mr. Obama’s ambitious plans will leave his successor with a much much larger debt to inherit.

President Obama inherited a deficit of about $1,000,000,000,000 [$1 trillion] from President Bush’s administration–and the Democratic Congress.  He then added another $800,000,000,000 [$800 billion] to the budget by passing his gargantuan “stimulus” plan.

Mr. Obama did inherit a large annual deficit from the Bush administration, however, trillion dollar deficits were by no means emblematic of the Bush administration’s record.  President Bush’s deficits peaked at $412,700,000,000 [$417 billion] in 2004, but dropped down to $162,000,000,000 [$162 billion] by 2007– a drop of over 60% from its peak.  In 2008, the deficit did soar to record heights, however this was mainly due to the massive stimulus bill that sent every working American a check and was championed by President Bush and the Democratic Congress.  However 2008′s record deficit is still 1/4 of the size of this year’s deficit and less than half of the projected average annual deficit for the next decade!

And, the $9,300,000,000,000 [$9.3 trillion] in deficits projected by the CBO is $2,300,000,000,000 [$2.3 trillion] higher than the total deficits projected by President Obama back in February.  As you may recall, I previously wrote about Mr. Obama’s plans to “cut the deficit in half” by 2013 and criticized that statement as a distortion of the facts.  However, the CBO is now projecting that Mr. Obama’s deficit for that year will be $139,000,000,000 [$139 billion] higher than the numbers that he announced in February!  “Obama’s budget promises to cut the deficit to $533 billion in five years. The CBO says the red ink for that year will total $672 billion.” And, following that year, the deficits will begin to climb again, ageraging just under $1,000,000,000,000 [$1 trillion] each year for the next ten years!!!

The avergae deficit for the next ten years will be as large or larger than the one that President Obama criticized President Bush for leaving behind.

The large increases in spending in 2008 and 2009 have been justified by Presidents Bush and Obama and Congress as temporary measures that are “necessary to end the recession and stabilize the economy.”  But economists, the Foderal Reserve, and the CBO are all saying that the recession will end in late 2009 or early 2010.  Why then is the President proposing budgets that continue to promote reckless deficit spending after the crisis has ended?

Americanly Yours,

Phred Barnet

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I mentioned yesterday that President Obama signed a massive $410,000,000,000 [$410 billion] spending bill loaded with over 8,500 earmarks.

In last year’s campaign, Senator McCain pledged that he would not sign a bill with a single earmark.  Whether or not he would have abided by this pledge is of course unknown to us.  What is known, however, is that President Obama just signed a bill with over 8,500 earmarks which will cost tax payers billions of dollars.

A presidential veto of this bill would have earned Mr. Obama credit with fiscal hawks like myself.

Predictably and pathetically, President Obama blamed the earmarks in the bill on President Bush.  When will this president finally step forward and take responsibility for his own administration?  This has become almost a gut reaction from this President–any criticism of him gets deflected by blaming President Bush.  The earmarks that were in the bill are the responsibility of the Congressmen who placed them into the bill, the Congressmen who voted for the bill, and the President who signed the bill into law.  President Bush is nowhere to be found in this process.

Even more disturbing than the 8,500 earmarks in this bill is the fact that our President has broken a campaign promise by signing this bill.  Check out this CNN clip.

Americanly Yours,

Phred Barnet

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I was at Publix the other day buying some stuff when I passed by the magazine aisle and noticed Newsweek’s new issue:

That cover made me so angry at first, but then it made me feel sad and mournful for the loss of the free market system which is what made this country so great in the first place.

Heres what the inside had to say (I kept the title, but blacked out the article because I dont wanna get sued):

But we are not all socialists now.  Maybe our leaders are, but the American people are not.  According to a recent Rasmussen poll, a large percentage of Americans were opposed to the “stimulus” plan that President Obama is going to sign today.  A much higher percentage opposed the bank and automaker bailouts. Over the past year, the Bush and Obama administrations have supervised unprecedented levels of government intervention and control–and often even nationalization–of private sector industries. Just because the American people have not yet organized mass protests and demonstrations against this does not mean that we agree with it.

To the Democrats and Republicans:  The American people do not want your socialism.

Americanly Yours,

Phred Barnet

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The following story isnt true.  It is more of a “political joke” of sorts.

When Nikita Khrushchev was forced out of power in the Soviet Union he left his successor (Leonid Brezhnev) with two letters.  He told his successor to open the first letter when he came to his first major crisis and follow the instructions.   He was told that following the instructions would get him through the crisis.   He was also told that when a second major crisis stuck, he should open the second letter from Khrushchev and follow its instructions.

The inevitable crisis happened and Brezhnev became worried that the crisis could cause him to be removed from power.   He opened Khrushchev’s first letter which said “Blame everything on me.  The only way that you can stay in power is to blame everything on my poor leadership and announce that you have to reverse my policies in order to save the State.”

So, Brezhnev followed the instructions in the letter and things in the Soviet Union got better for a while.   However, after a few more years, the economy began to stagnate and Brezhnev once again became worried that he would lose power.  He realized that the advice from Khrushchev’s first letter had saved him once and that maybe it could do so again.

Brezhnev opened the second letter and it read “Sit down and write two letters.”

As I said above, this is not a true story.  It is however, a useful lesson on political survival.

I would argue that President Obama began reading his first letter during the campaign when he blamed everything wrong in the world on President Bush.  He has continued to beat up on President Bush’s record in a constant attempt to convince the public that the current crisis is not his fault.

He will likely continue to read from this letter for several years.

For example, if the situation in Iraq continues to improve and we can pull our troops out, Mr. Obama will undoubtedly take all of the credit, despite the fact that President Bush’s controversial Surge plan was a complete success and has effectively won us the war.  If on the other hand, the situation in Iraq deteriorates and we either do not leave within Mr. Obama’s promised 16 months or we end up leaving in disgrace, there can be no doubt that President Obama will blame Mr. Bush.

Similarly, if the economy turns around in the next year or two, Mr. Obama will take all of the credit.  If however, the situation worsens, the economy continues to contract, and unemployment approaches or reaches double digits, President Obama will claim that he inherited this mess.  In his speech last night President Obama said “I can’t tell you for sure that everything in this plan will work exactly as we hope, but I can tell you with complete confidence that a failure to act will only deepen this crisis as well as the pain felt by millions of Americans.  My administration inherited a deficit of over $1 trillion, but because we also inherited the most profound economic emergency since the Great Depression, doing a little or nothing at all will result in even greater deficits, even greater job loss, even greater loss of income, and even greater loss of confidence.” This was effectively Mr. Obama hedging his bet:  if the economy turns around, he can take credit, but if it doesnt work, he will say that things are still better than they would have been if the bill wasnt passed and besides, it is still President Bush’s fault.

This is why President Obama still sounds like his is running for President, rather than holding the office.  It is safe to say that President Obama was not elected to office based any past accomplishments that he had.   He was also not elected based on any future plans that he had.  Rather, he was elected because the American public was (and still is) fed up with President Bush.  The fact that Mr. Obama was elected President is really only an externality of the perceived failure of the Bush Administration.  Mr. Obama really didnt run against John McCain; he really ran against President Bush. How many times did you hear Mr. Obama refer to “8 years of failed policies?”   Because Mr. Obama was elected as an opposition candidate–a reactive candidate rather than a proactive candidate– he is likely to continue this course of acton.  Expect him to continue to beat up on President Bush’s record.  Furthermore, you can expect him to denounce Republicans who vote against his programs (in a manner that will probably become much more hostile in the near future).

The problem is that Mr. Obama cannot continue on this course for too long.  The American people are fickle and grow tired of things quickly.  Remember that when the War in Iraq started Bush (who was cheered on to war by the American public as well as the media) had an approval rating of near 70%.  At some point, the American public will grow tired of hearing Mr. Obama blame all of the country’s problems on the previous administration–especially if things get worse.  The people want solutions and when President Obama realizes that he cannot deliver them, he may have to reach for that second letter.

Americanly Yours,

Phred Barnet

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