Did you hear about the British picket ship firing a missile across the bow of one of our aircraft carriers in international waters? Did you hear about Angela Merkel saying that Germany was going to boycott all imports from the United States? Neither did anyone else because neither of the two events happened. The UK and Germany are friends of the United States. But did you hear about the Iranian ships taunting our warships in international waters? This event – and others – have actually happened.
Obama, representing himself and a few other powerful political elites, has a dead-end one-way unscrupulous treaty with Iran, the nation that Mr. Obama says we must trust. This is the same Iran that took the crew from a U.S. Navy vessel last January and embarrassed these sailors and our nation. The careers of several of these crewmen were shattered, but I haven’t heard about any retribution or rebuke of our Iranian “friends and treaty partners.” Do the liberal members of the Democratic Party encourage such temerity or are party members so feckless that they endorse the inaction of an indecisive “leader?”
The world has changed in the past eight years, and as promised the Obama administration has led the change. Other nations now realize that we are a people of promises without action, threats without fortitude, and treaties without conditions. The United States has become a nation of summits of world leaders without follow-up, a rudderless ship of state without a compass and a champion of oratory without influence.
An unmarked airplane arrived in Iran under cover of night on January 17, 2016. Waiting nearby in another airplane were four U.S. citizens, all men who had been held by Iran. According to reports the plane containing the newly-released Iranian prisoners were not allowed to leave until the air freighter arrived containing the pallets of cash–currency issued by several countries. Cash can’t be traced. Strong words issued from our leader Mr. Obama denying the charge that the money was ransom; no-siree, the United States doesn’t do ransom transactions. Our Iranian “frenemies” said it was ransom, but we must believe what is filtered through our esteemed government.
Our national debt is around $94 trillion, but how many of us know that our hard earned tax extractions are funding terrorism? Israeli investigators have found that funds through California-based World Vision have been transferred to Hamas to purchase weapons and build attack tunnels in Gaza. The Palestinian government also uses money from U.S. and other nations to reward families of Palestinian killers who attack and kill Israelis.
Our current President brought academic scholars and theorists into the administration and created the $836 billion stimulus package in 2009. Other trillions of dollars were inoculated into the banking system. What our amateur economist President didn’t know or realize is that economic expansion comes from private industry, not government. During his tenure more than 600 major regulations have been introduced at a cost of about $743 billion plus almost $2,300 in taxes for each U.S. citizen. Government spending has also contributed to the national debt because the all-knowing government economists don’t remember that government spending adds to debt, not expanded economic activity. Budget-busting government spending, accelerating taxation and super-regulation chokes the fuel line to the U.S. prodigious economic colossus.
Here is an explanation that appeared in the final issue of Newsweek magazine for August 21st, 2016. Speaking of historians in the future, the Newsweek writer asks, “How, they will wonder, did a man so devoid of professional accomplishment beguile so many into thinking he could manage the world’s largest economy, direct the world’s most powerful military, execute the world’s most consequential job?” Readers of this column should peruse this editorial in the final edition of the liberal Newsweek magazine as it fills in gaps that we have been observing for almost eight years.
The hallmark of liberal economics is to increase taxes and accelerate spending. This leads to apathy of workers (stagnant wages), production lethargy (1% forecast GDP growth 2016), bloated government staffing and growing debt and trade deficits. Our greatest threat may not be terrorism, national debt or climate change it may be our own government.
Dick Baynton