Category Archives: political solutions

by Barry Kelly | September 9, 2014 · 7:30 am

EIGHT DECADES OF INSIGHTS 149

THE GOP NEEDS TRANSFORMING

Is America in trouble? I think so.

How did it happen?

Well, you cannot blame President Obama for everything that’s happened under his watch. The Republican Party insider group is also guilty. The House of Representatives has the total Constitutional power to appropriate money. Everything the progressives have done with Obama’s leadership had to be funded. The government runs on money, our money. The House is supposed to be the place funding requests begin.

Where has it been? Republicans did not provide a single vote to the passing of the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Yet they funded every bit of its implementation. Obamacare couldn’t have survived just on the funds that were appropriated when it was passed. The government had to pay for all the overruns, including the rollout. Instead of providing good stewardship of our money, the Republican leadership whined and complained about President Obama’s executive orders and the greatly increased scope and power of the HHS, EPA, IRS, DOJ, and Labor Department but was afraid to use its appropriation to bring Obama’s transforming of America to a near stop.

When they did try to bring Obama’s spending under control by refusing to raise the debt limit unless the president delayed a part of the ACA, the president refused to sign the appropriations legislation with the Republican amendment to raise the debt ceiling. He then began shutting down the parts of the government that would dramatically affect citizens, parts that could have been easily funded. Congress offered to help with authorization by allowing the president to shift funds to where they were needed. He refused and cleverly and successfully passed the blame onto the Republicans for shutting down the government. Not only did the American people accept the blatant blame shift, so did the Republican leadership. Now the speaker of the House and the Senate minority leader are afraid to use their Constitutional powers to defund certain parts of federal spending. With an opposition as timid and as inept as the current Republican leadership, we cannot look to them to act as a check on the growth of the federal government and spending.

The Republican Party leadership in and out of government is afraid to rock the boat. None of them would have signed the Declaration of Independence. (That is my yardstick for judging the courage of politicians.) In my state of South Carolina, several politicians and Republican leaders would have signed. Among them are Representative Joe Wilson, Senator DeMint, now the President of the Heritage Foundation, Governor Nikki Haley, Senator Tim Scott, and Representative Trey Gowdy. It is this kind of courage that is needed.

President Reagan believed that “Government isn’t the answer. Government is the problem.” Of all the threats we face today, big government is the biggest threat to our freedom and economic growth. The Republican insider group just doesn’t believe this. While the size of government has grown spectacularly under President Obama, conservatives must remember that the eight years of President Bush saw large increases in the size and scope of government. Term limits would fix a lot of problems with the Congress.

Written by the author of “Insights: Transforming America — Is This What We Fought For?” available now as an ebook, in paperback or hardcover on Amazon.com or BN.com. Follow the author on Twitter @factsfictions80. If you think this message is important, please share it.

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Filed under Barry Kelly, centralization, Conservative views, Intelligence & Politics, Obama, Obamacare, political solutions, Presidential Debate

Tagged as Bush, Congress, government, Obamacare, Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, president reagan, Progressive, Republicans

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EIGHT DECADES OF INSIGHTS 142

WRONG PICTURE

What is wrong with the pictures coming out of Ferguson, Missouri? Is that what middle America is? Are we a racist nation?

Last question first. No, America is not a racist nation. How can a nation be racist when the president, the attorney general, the national security adviser, and several other prominent officials are black? There are prominent blacks in every profession, stars in every professional sport and other entertainment areas. Blacks with military honors serve in every branch of the Armed Forces. Graduating students from our universities are black, as were some of their professors. No, we are not a racist nation nor are we a nations of cowards. In America, if you can walk the walk and talk the talk you can make it, no matter the color of your skin. While words are important, actions and real circumstances tell us more.

The words coming out of the president and attorney general do not help to calm the situation in Ferguson any more than the words coming out of the professional race manipulators who circle every possible injustice like a group of vultures swirling around the spot light of public attention. The shooting in Ferguson calls out for a real investigation of the facts, not political speeches crying racism is the cause. Shouldn’t the rush to racist statements on the part of our president and attorney general wait for the investigations to be completed before making racist pronouncements.

Didn’t we learn anything from the Treyvon Martin case? Too many bright young black teenagers, especially males, are being killed by senseless acts. The nation needs these young people. We need to give them time to live and contribute. Let the Ferguson situation play out, but deal severely with looters. Peaceful demonstrations must always be allowed but not street violence. Peaceful demonstrators of any color do not come to demonstrate with Molotov cocktails and guns. The police have a duty to protect the citizens of Ferguson from the violence of rioters and looters. And the attorney general and our president need to deal with the mass killing of young black teenagers by black on black violence.

Mr. President, tell your attorney general to go to Chicago with his legions of investigators. Give the young blacks of our inner cities a chance to live. Give them jobs and hope. So far you have done nothing to help them. Making them dependent on government money is not the answer. Give them real jobs, a chance to raise a family and give back to the community. Show them real justice is color blind. Your first step should be to remove your current attorney general who has said we are a nation of cowards when it comes to race. He is not an example that justice is color blind. We are not a nation of cowards and we are not, today, a racist nation. The pictures coming out of Ferguson fill the media’s appetite for sensational news but do not describe America.

EIGHT DECADES OF INSIGHTS 131

TRANSFORMATION AND SENIORS

Writers know they should write about what they know. In thinking how to write about the impact of President Obama’s transforming of America on senior citizens, I realized this is right in my wheel-house because that includes me at age 83. So I started with my own reactions to transformation.

First of all, I must admit President Obama gave us full warning about his plans for change. I didn’t support him because of his lack of any kind of management or leadership experience and his very far left ideology. But I didn’t expect the media to be so incredibly locked in to his socialistic view of the world. Nor did I think the Republican leadership in Congress would be so timid.

After five-plus years of unconstitutional growth in the power of the executive branch at the expense of the legislative powers, the speaker brings a whining lawsuit against President Obama for taking his toys. Who does he think will enforce the courts ruling if he wins? Attorney General Eric Holder certainly won’t. If the speaker had any courage he would use his powers of the purse given to the House by the Constitution.

A few days ago I wrote about another disappointment. The civil service in many democracies is a check on an executive gone too far. I may have been too hard on the many loyal and capable civil servants but, as a senior citizen with years in the civil service, I am dismayed at the way the employees of the IRS, HSS, EPA, State, DHS, FBI, C!A, and the Joint Chiefs have fallen into lock step to support the president’s unlawful policies. In a free society, government workers cannot enforce what they know is an unlawful course of action. I remember some trials after WWII in Nuremberg, Germany, that settled that issue.

Senior citizens have seen how the massive printing of money (bonds) by the Federal Reserve called Qualitative Easing cheapens their dollars while their income has not kept up with real world inflation. Medicare will be destroyed by Obamacare, as will the best medical care in the world. Sure, far too many people had no insurance, but that could have been fixed without moving rapidly toward a single-payer system and socialized medicine. Social security, which most of us have grown to count on, is less sustainable now than it was five years ago. This program needs attention now.

The rule of law is all that stands between us and a chaotic system based on favoritism and punishment without due process. This administration, especially this attorney general, enforces the law selectively and only investigates when it is in the interests of his imperial president. Many senior citizens have fought in wars, including the Cold War, and know the necessity of keeping a strong, well-equipped, and cared for military. We are nervous about the drastic reduction of our forces, the VA scandal, and the loss of respect for our views throughout the world. We have seen enemies who were impervious to diplomacy and endless talk with the threat of ineffective sanctions. We know America needs a leader whose word is respected throughout the world.

We are also concerned about the re-distribution of wealth, the growth of the government, the shift away from our close relationship with Israel, the so-called re-set with Russia, the debacle in Iraq, the rush to the good war in Afghanistan, the timid negotiations with Iran over the development of nuclear weapons, the anti U.S. development of domestic energy attitude, including the Keystone Pipeline.

Enough is enough.

Read my new book, “INSIGHTS – Transforming America. Is This What We Fought for?”

EIGHT DECADES OF INSIGHTS 130

WHAT ABOUT YOU, CIVIL SERVANT?

Note: This is the first in a series of blogs that comments on how five and a half years of Obama’s rule have affected different sections of our society. This one takes a closer look at the lives of civil servants. Next: Retirees.

How have you personally fared in the first five and half years of President Obama’s rule? How have things changed for you? You probably feel your job is secure. The government is growing at a rapid rate. A lot of your friends are unemployed or in part-time jobs, but you aren’t. Pay is good. You get raises and bonuses. Your health care is good and you have been able to keep your government health insurance and your family doctor. Under President Obama things have been good. If he ran again, he would get your vote for the third time. No question you will vote for whoever the Democratic candidate happens to be.

You have noticed that the pressure to keep your comments within the party line is greater. It is like the Hatch Act disappeared. Politics are front and center in your working life. Whistle blowing is a dangerous profession. You are expected to actively support the president’s policies. You don’t need his daily direction. You and your supervisors know what is expected. If the president wants it, you will use all under your control to give it to him. You can read the tea leaves as well as anyone. You have seen what you know is true to be questioned. Cover-ups are to be expected in partisan politics where there is no room for debate and compromise. Partisan political investigations lead to defensive responses the other side calls cover-ups.

If the president looks bad, everyone on his team will suffer. You are either with the president’s policies or against them. That’s okay. Your management and the union leaders will take care of you. Like them, you do not believe the government is too big or that the government will ever be a danger to your freedom.

You will always vote for your self-interests. If that means leaning hard toward the president’s way, no problem. You work for him. You have friends in the IRS, HHS, EPA, DOJ, FBI, CIA, DOD, and many other units. They are good people with families to support. Just like you.

The House Republicans are loose cannons. They are trying to destroy what the government has built. The crazies are even willing to shut the government down. Without you the country cannot run. Don’t they realize how wrong they are? The Civil Service is the backbone of the country. Your job is to support the president and get his plans carried out.

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EIGHT DECADES OF INSIGHTS 129

IS THE PRESIDENT INEPT?

President Obama, photo by the New York Daily News.

Many people, including many political scholars and sitting elected officials, often describe the president as inept, clueless, unengaged, and a poor leader. Yet President Obama has bested them in every conflict. He lurks in a cloud of disinterest and mind-numbing bumbling.

If that is your image of President Obama, you are wrong.

Here is a man from a modest economic background. He grew up without family connections that would assure his future. Barack Hussain Obama was raised mostly by a single mother. He was surrounded by people who leaned far to the left. Somehow this young black man with a white mother got into and graduated from prestigious American universities. His grades are not public but we have to assume he was educated well. It is hard to attend Columbia and Harvard universities without embracing a far left political ideology.

At some point in this educational journey, he found his way to the teaching of Saul Alinsky, a brilliant American revolutionary intellectual. (Read his book Rules for Radicals if you think otherwise.) Both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton found their respective ways to Saul Alinsky’s revolutionary ideology by different paths, but both today are practicing progressives. (That term is one Alinsky thought was more acceptable in America than Socialism or Communism). Let’s agree that a stupid or inept man could not have gotten into and graduated from Columbia and Harvard with a law degree. Nor could a clueless, incompetent man make his way to the Illinois Senate, the U.S. Senate and finally become a two-term president.

The reason Republican intellectuals and elected politicians think he is inept is that they don’t understand the rules he plays by. They focus on problems and issues that need to be solved for the good of the nation or, more narrowly, their political party. President Obama does not focus on the same problems or issues. He is above that. Problems will always be with us. The proper use of problems according to Obama and Saul Alinsky is to use the issues that are associated with or come from the national problems to destroy your political opponents. Once you have destroyed the opposition and seized power, then you can fix America’s problems by establishing a one-party socialist government run by a progressive elite. The process is called Transforming America. Heard that before? Maybe from President-Elect Obama’s ordination speech in Chicago.

I believe the president must be astonished that his opposition has not yet figured out his game plan. I believe the progressive plan is so simple yet unique in American politics that lifetime politicians cannot grasp that Obama does not now care a whit about immigration, jobs, health care, education, foreign policy, terrorism, energy, military force size, debt, nor any other issue important to present and past political leaders. He or his successor will focus on those issues once they established a strong socialist state.

I have written the only book I know of that explains President Obama and the progressive game plan point by point or issue by issue. President Obama is not just a worse Jimmy Carter. He is a political type we have never before seen in America. He has no love or even an identification with the greatness of America and will destroy everything Americans have fought for since we arrived on these shores.