I find it ironic that the same people who criticized President Bush for every little thing that he did–whether it was right, wrong, or unimportant have now resorted to questioning the Patriotism of people like me for simply disagreeing with President Obama.
Americanly Yours,
Phred Barnet
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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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