Posts Tagged ‘Obama’
September 20th, 2011 by John Feehery
The Electronic Benefits Transfer Card is the identification card for the SNAP/Food stamp program. It works like a credit card with a magnetic strip on the back that slides through a machine at a grocery store and some restaurants (including some fast food places).
Meant as a way to help reform the Food Stamp system in 2004, the EBT card is used in all 50 states and in the District of Columbia. It has not been without some controversy.
In the State of Pennsylvania, for example, Democratic State Auditor Jack Wagner found wide-ranging fraud in the system, including one example where one EBT card holder withdrew close to $150,000 in $1,500 increments in one day. Who knows what he (or she) did with the money.
The EBT has received some unwanted attention. As one website put it: “A new music video by R&B artist Chapter for her song “It’s Free Swipe Yo EBT” mocks black women on public assistance programs. In her satirical video, Chapter plays Keywanda, a young mother of ten who deals with the “stress of her children’s fathers.” And according to the video, Keywanda lives with very few worries because she’s on several public assistance programs. Among other subjects, this song mostly takes aim at the Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) program and Section 8 vouchers, which make both food and housing available to parents.” Read more...
Tags: African-American, America, Auditor Jack Wagner, Barack Obama, Congress, Democrats, Economy, election, Electronic Benefits Transfer Card, Food stamp program, Obama, Presidential election, R&B artist Chapter, Republicans, Section 8, Tea Party activists, unemployment insurance, Welfare abuse, welfare system
Posted in Bad Decisions, Bailouts, Drugs in America, Economy, Financial Crisis, GOP, Government, Immigration, Politics, Presidential election, Religion, Scandals, Theory, bad news, corruption, medicare, poverty, spending, taxes, welfare | No Comments »
September 14th, 2011 by John Feehery
They said that if I voted for John McCain for President in 2008, poverty would increase in America.
They were right. I voted for John McCain, and poverty has increased in America.
Of course, the shocking statistics about poverty in America are not a laughing matter.
Although, as Robert Rector points out at the Heritage Foundation, if you are going to live in poverty, America is a pretty good place to do it.
I was shocked to find out that when the Census Bureau makes its determination about who is poor and who is not, they don’t count the housing assistance, the food assistance and the Earned Income Tax Credit Assistance that most poor people get. If you add in all of those numbers, the poor here are much better off than the poor just about anywhere else in the world.
My friend Paul was riding the bus the other day and he overheard a conversation from one individual who was talking on a cell phone. Read more...
Tags: Census Bureau, Democrats, Earned Income Tax Credit, Heritage Foundation, John McCain, middle class, minimum wage, Obama, Politics, poverty, Robert Rector, welfare reform
Posted in Bad Decisions, Economy, Financial Crisis, Government, History, Politics, Presidential election, Promises, Theory, Unemployment, bad news, election, poverty, spending, taxes, welfare | No Comments »
September 13th, 2011 by John Feehery
I didn’t like the supercommittee when I first heard about its creation. I thought it was an abrogation of the regular order. I thought it was awkward legislatively. And I didn’t think it was going to work. But I am starting to warm to the idea. In fact, I am getting downright optimistic about its prospects.
While some believe that the supercommittee is destined for a super failure, I now believe that this bipartisan, bicameral panel of 12 members is going to produce something historically large, which will include far-reaching tax reform and long-term entitlement changes. Here are five reasons why I am getting more bullish on its prospects:
• The Members: Both Republican and Democratic leaders took great care to name members of the supercommittee who are both loyal to their team and pragmatic in their deliberations. While the co-chairmen, Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas) and Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), tend to be partisan and ideological, there are plenty of deal-cutters in the room. Republicans, who can easily make the case that any deal is better for Obama, have instead leaned forward by putting proven workhorses like Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) and Reps. Dave Camp (R-Mich.) and Fred Upton (R-Mich.) on the committee. I believe that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) want to get something done, even if a big deal helps the president politically. By putting Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) on the committee, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has also signaled that he could find a deal to be acceptable. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is the lone holdout, but presumably the president could put enough pressure on her picks to get a deal if he wants one. Read more...
Tags: America, Barack Obama, Congress, Conservatives, Fred Upton (R-Mich.), George Romney, Government, Harry Reid (D-Nev.), House Speaker John Boehner, Mark Prater, Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Obama, reform, Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas), Reps. Dave Camp (R-Mich.), Republican Finance Committee, Republicans, Robert Kennedy, Sen. Max Baucus, Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio), Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), taxes, The supercommittee
Posted in Financial Crisis, GOP, Government, Politics, Theory, spending, taxes | No Comments »
September 7th, 2011 by John Feehery
Ev and Gerry started the whole response thing.
Everett Dirksen and Gerry Ford, the former Senate Republican leader from Illinois and the former House Minority Leader (and later President) from Michigan used to have a radio show broadcast from the Capitol.
They turned that radio show into a televised rebuttal to President Johnson’s 1966 State of the Union Address.
Dirksen, with his mop of white hair, and Ford, with his bald pate, must have been quite a sight in the years leading up to the Age of Aquarius. Dirksen was the one who famously said, “a billion here, and a billion there, and pretty soon you are talking real money.”
I could understand the frustration of the two Republican (and minority) leaders. Lyndon Johnson wasn’t much to tell the truth, and Republicans at the start of 1966 didn’t have any legislative power. Dirksen, a genius when it came to the political communication innovation, probably dreamed up the idea of a joint response, and a new idea was born: Let’s tell our side of the story. Read more...
Tags: Age of Aquarius, America, Ames Straw poll, assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, Bob Livingston, Bob McDonnell, Bob Michel, Bobby Jindal, Congress, Denny Hastert, Dick Armey, Everett Dirksen, Gerry Ford, GOP, Government, House Republicans, Jennifer Dunn, Jim Wright, John Boehner, Lyndon Johnson, Michele Bachmann, Mike Mansfield, Mitch McConnell, Newt Gingrich, NFL, Obama, Paul Ryan, Politics, President Johnson’s 1966 State of the Union Address, President Obama, Presidential election, Republican, Richard Nixon, Robert Byrd, Ronald Reagan, Senate Republican leader from Illinois, spending, Steve Largent, White House
Posted in Economy, Financial Crisis, GOP, Government, History, Politics, Theory, election, speeches | No Comments »
August 31st, 2011 by John Feehery
Hurricane Irene blew in to Washington over the weekend and the biggest casualty was the Martin Luther King Memorial ceremony.
It turns out that the weather was pretty nice on Sunday afternoon, and the event could have still occurred, but it is hard to predict the weather.
It’s also hard to predict the future.
Are we as a country moving forward on the whole concept of racial harmony or are we moving backward?
Congressman Andre Carson said today that certain members of the Tea Party want to see black lawmakers “hanging on a tree.”
I wonder if Alan West and Tim Scott, two of the most influential Tea Party members of Congress (who coincidentally happen to be black), want to hang their fellow Congressional Black Caucus members up a tree.
I doubt it.
Carson believes that the Tea Party is to blame for the fact that unemployment is so high in the black community.
I find that hard to believe.
I guess it is far easier to blame a bunch of white conservatives than it is to blame the nation’s first black President.
The Tea Party hasn’t really had much of an impact on the President’s policies, not yet anyway. Read more...
Tags: affirmative action, African-Americans, Al Sharpton, Alan West, America, Barack Obama, Congress, Congressman Andre Carson, Conservatives, Democrats, Economy, election, first black President, George W Bush, GOP, hurricane Irene, Martin Luther King Memorial ceremony, Milwaukee Police Chief Edward Flynn, Msnbc, Obama, Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter, Politics, racism, raising taxes, Republicans, spending, taxes, Tea Party, Tim Scott, Washington
Posted in Bad Decisions, Economy, Financial Crisis, Government, History, Media, Politics, Presidential election, Religion, Theory, bad news, election, poverty, spending, taxes, terrorism | No Comments »
August 23rd, 2011 by John Feehery
Muammar Gaddafi
If and when Muammar Gaddafi is finally deposed in Libya, President Obama probably deserves some credit. He backed Nicholas Sarkozy and NATO’s efforts to aid the rebels (whoever they are). He authorized the Navy and the Air Force to bomb the hell out of the bad guys. And of course, he has been boldly predicting that Gaddafi’s days are numbered, a nice counter-balance to the Libyan dictator’s assurances that he was going nowhere.
Will Obama get that credit? Probably not.
Most Americans don’t care what happens to Mr. Gaddafi. They are worried less about the economic future of Tripoli and more worried about jobs in their own community. Why should we spend our hard-earned tax dollars deposing a far-away dictator when we have a huge budget deficit and a struggling economy back here?
For the conspiracy theorists out there, there is a persistent rumor that we went into Libya to bailout Goldman Sachs.
Goldman lost 98% of Libya’s Sovereign Wealth Fund in 2007 (which amounted to $1.3 billion, a lot of it personal Gaddafi money, undoubtedly), and the Libyans were not very happy about it. Goldman could never come up with a solution to this problem that could make the dictator happy. Read more...
Tags: America, Assad, Barack Obama, Economy, Goldman-Sachs, Libya, Muammar Gaddafi, NATO, Nicholas Sarkozy, Obama, Politics, spending, Syria, Tripoli, Wall Street Journal, war, Zarti
Posted in Bad Decisions, Economy, Financial Crisis, Foreign Relations, Government, History, Media, Politics, Scandals, Theory, bad news, national security, spending, taxes, war | 1 Comment »
August 19th, 2011 by John Feehery
For a lot of non-Tea Party Republicans, Rick Perry’s entrance into the Republican Primary makes Mitt Romney look a lot more attractive.
It is wrong to say that the Republican establishment wants Mitt Romney to be their Presidential candidate. First, that assumes that there is a Republican establishment that can make a decision, which I think is a vast overstatement. Second, if there were such an establishment, it is a non-evangelical elite that is simply not that comfortable with Romney’s Mormonism, and has been casting a wide-net for anybody other than Romney and Bachmann. Some had put their hopes in Pawlenty, others begged Haley Barbour, Mitch Daniels, Chris Christie and Jeb Bush to enter the race, to no avail, and now they are turning their attention to Paul Ryan, which will probably yield the same results.
At this moment, it now looks that the choice comes between Perry and Romney. Michele Bachmann, whether she knew it or not, was always a placeholder for Perry, and my guess is that she will quickly fade in the polls. Read more...
Tags: Chris Christie, Democrats, Haley Barbour, Jeb Bush, Karl Rove, Michelle Bachmann, Mitch Daniels, Mitt Romney, Obama, Paul Ryan, Politics, preseidential race, Presidential election, presidential election 2012, Republican, Republican Primary, Rick Perry, Tim Pawlenty
Posted in GOP, Government, History, Media, Politics, Presidential election, Promises, Religion, election | 3 Comments »
August 15th, 2011 by John Feehery
I caught some of Michele Bachmann’s appearances as I drove down to Florida on my family vacation. She was doing one of the Sunday talk shows after her Ames, Iowa victory, and she sounded articulate and smart enough to hold her own.
The Republican Party of Iowa has already had an outsized influence on the GOP primary process. By elevating Bachmann and the Libertarian Ron Paul over Tim Pawlenty, the Straw poll voters knocked out the former Minnesota Governor.
Tim Pawlenty made an attractive candidate on paper. He had a good record. He is a nice guy. He is plenty conservative. What he didn’t have was a compelling message. He wasn’t crazy enough to appeal to either the Bachmann or Paul supporters (or the Herman Cainers either), and he wasn’t establishment enough to attract Mitt Romney type money.
I believe and continue to believe that if he portrayed himself as a warrior for the middle class, he could have made a bigger dent in the campaign. Instead, he kind of wandered from one message to another, at one point warning the party that it was becoming too isolationist, at another, claiming that he was a reformer with results, ala George Bush. Read more...
Tags: America, Ames, Ames Straw poll, Barack Obama, Congress, Conservatives, Democrats, election, George Bush, Governor Rick Perry, Iowa, Kay Bailey Hutchison, Michele Bachmann, Mitt Romney, Obama, Politics, President Obama, Presidential election, Red Staters, republican party, Republicans, Ron Paul, Straw Poll, Tim Pawlenty, White House
Posted in GOP, Government, History, Media, Politics, Presidential election, election | No Comments »
August 10th, 2011 by John Feehery
According to Wikipedia, a flash mob is “a group of people who assemble suddenly in a public place, perform an unusual and sometimes seemingly pointless act for a brief time, then disperse, often for the purposes of entertainment and/or satire. Flash mobs are organized via telecommunications, social media, or viral emails. The term, coined in 2003, is generally not applied to events and performances organized for the purposes of politics (such as protests), commercial advertisement, publicity stunts that involve public relation firms, or paid professionals.”
Neither the Obama campaign of 2008 nor the Tea Party movement of 2009 can be characterized as flash mobs under that definition, although they share many of the same characteristics.
Under that definition, the Arab Spring protests also don’t qualify as flash mobs. They had a political point to them.
Flash mobs have overtaken London and other British cities. They don’t seem to have any point to them at all, other than rage and terror.
Flash mobs have also rose suddenly in many American cities. The Wisconsin State Fair was besieged by black flash mobsters whose only goal was to terrorize white citizens. Imagine, for a moment, if white flash mobsters decided to terrorize black citizens. Al Sharpton would be doing his new MSNBC show from wherever the white racists did their deed, and we would never hear the end of it. Read more...
Tags: Al Sharpton, American flash mobsters, Arab Spring protests, British flash mobs, flash mob, Milwaukee attacks, Msnbc, Obama, snow ball fight in Dupont Circle, Tea Party, terror, terrorism, terrorist, Wisconsin State Fair attack
Posted in Bad Decisions, Government, History, Politics, Social Media, Theory, bad news, terrorism | No Comments »
August 9th, 2011 by John Feehery
Barack Obama just turned 50 years old. He is still a young man (by contemporary standards). He still plays basketball regularly, he likes to golf, he enjoys spending quality time with his daughters.
I have an idea for him. He should announce that he is taking a break at the end of next year from politics. Instead of running for re-election, Mr. Obama should tell the country that he is going into private business.
He has plenty of time to run again should he discover that he still has some work he wants to finish as President.
He can always run again. He can pull a Cleveland. Grover Cleveland was the only President to win in two non-consecutive terms, although he lost to Benjamin Harrison in between. Obama can take the high road and leave while the leaving is good.
The President needs some real world experience. Imagine how much better he would do with the experience of having to meet a payroll or worry about the P&L Statement. Imagine how much more sympathetic he would be if he actually understood how his health care law would make it harder to hire people. Imagine if he actually understood that by “spreading the wealth around,” the government actually makes it harder for the economy to grow. Read more...
Tags: Barack Obama, Benjamin Harrison, Congress, Conservatives, Democrats, Economy, election, George Bush, Government, Grover Cleveland, Hillary Clinton, Jeb Bush, medicare, Obama, Politics, President Obama, Republicans, spending
Posted in Bad Decisions, Economy, Financial Crisis, GOP, Government, History, Politics, Presidential election, Promises, Theory, election, health care | 1 Comment »
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