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It's really sad watching the Obama administration bungle through running the country. He's managed to break most of his campaign promises, both in specific and in intent, in a very short time. His administration is not transparent, not holding itself to a higher ethical standard, and not practicing any kind of bipartisanship. He's appointed tax cheats and lobbyists to senior cabinet positions. Instead of encouraging people in the midst of an economic crisis, he's been using rhetoric of doom and gloom to drum up votes for the massive and unprecedented spending bill that is not supported by most economists and most citizens. The only people really happy about the bill are Democratic Congressmen who get to fund all their pet programs (and the recipients of this money). On foreign affairs and national security, his team has insulted the previous administration and talked about starting a new way. All this does is undermine our existing relationships with other countries. By dismissing the previous administration, the Obama team has given every country in the world an excuse to abandon any agreements made in the last eight years. He's also shown that he's willing to deal with our enemies. He's giving legitimacy to the Israel hate-fest that is Durban. Iran is crowing that the US is finally going to give in to Iranian demands. On the other hand, his administration is reserving the right to used "enhanced interrogation" and rendition and will close Gitmo "eventually."
It's sad but I see a very good chance that our economy will stagger along under the burden of the "stimulus" bill and we will suffer for decades under the massively increased spending. I believe that there is a very good chance that we will see more national security failures and we will see our allies back off and our enemies emboldened. I hope I'm wrong but I fear that I am not.
Technorati: Politics, Government
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
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3 comments:
I disagree with many of your conclusions here, Bollie. But I recognize that ideologically I feel different than you do about the role of government.
The tax cheat comment, however, has no basis in fact. I assume that you are talking about Geithner. Its hard to feel sorry for the head of the treasury, a life long expert, doing something so stupid as using turbo tax when he was self-employed. But that's what he did. And he got audited. And he paid a fine. At no point did the Bush administration tax officials feel like it was criminal, and the only reason there was an issue is that a portion of the fine was limited by the statute of limitations. Armchair quarterbacking, geithner should have said that he made a mistake. He got caught. He was told what to pay by the irs and he paid it. Trying to go back latter and pay some more because he realizes he got a good deal does not help him morally. It just annoys people.
The bigger problem here is with software makers. For almost every other product made, some warranty of merchantability and some liability for product defect exists. Not so with software. Compare that with your (as in you Bollie) duties to the public as an engineer and its eggregious. The law still labors under the notion that computers are exotic new technologies and that its all caveat emptor.
That said, I am using turbo tax in 08. But this is the last year, I swear!
To deal with the specific, as the head of the IRS, I would hope that Geithner wouldn't be as sloppy as an ordinary person doing his taxes. Also, several people have pointed out that he signed a form that specifically warned him about paying these very taxes.
In general, though, he has tried to appoint several people who have withdrawn because of tax and other problems. In general, he is NOT living up to his higher standard of ethics. He campaigned on the premise that he would change the way things are done in Washington with more transparency and higher ethical standards. His appointments, all political insiders and many tainted in various ways, completely contradict one of his fundamental promises.
My problems with what Obama is doing are not so much ideological (I have those problems with him, too) but pragmatic. I believe that what he is doing will actually create more suffering and do very real harm to the country in terms of loss of prosperity and loss of security. I think both Liberals and Conservatives would agree that the ultimate goal of the President is to improve the lives of the people as much as possible. And completely aside from the programs that I don't agree with, I believe he is going to hurt everyone with his policies.
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