New Cartel Threat: U.S. Energy Supply

Energy: Mexico’s state oil firm, our second-largest foreign supplier, is under attack from drug cartels. But that’s not stopping the U.S. from investing more in its operations while American rigs lie idle in the Gulf.

The volatile Middle East is often seen as the nexus of risk to U.S. energy supplies. But the biggest threat may be next door, in Mexico. It’s bad enough that oil production there is declining due to underinvestment. But now the state oil monopoly, Pemex, is encountering a threat no one foresaw a few years ago: attacks from the country’s notorious criminal cartels.

The Los Angeles Times this week reported that the violent “Los Zetas” cartel has “crippled” production in the Burgos basin in Tamaulipas state, home of Mexico’s biggest natural gas fields.

Thirty oil workers and contractors have been kidnapped, including five who were snatched in May and haven’t been heard from since. The cartels force workers to collaborate with them to steal energy, which is then sold for cash.

The gunmen also shake information out of workers on security systems and the delicate workings of gas transport so they can hijack production. Natural gas, with its visible pipelines, is particularly vulnerable, but the cartels have begun moving on oil too.

Pemex won’t send its inspectors to some of the areas where the cartels have gotten a foothold, and the Times reported the company doesn’t want to talk about it.

These acts, from the same people who smuggle drugs and illegal immigrants into the U.S., amount to an attack on the Mexican state. One-third of the national budget comes from energy earnings. A cartel controlling Mexico’s substitute for tax revenue effectively can take over the government.

“How is it that Pemex, supposedly the backbone of the nation, can be made to bow down like this?” a relative of a kidnapped oil worker asked the Times.

But this creeping takeover also threatens the U.S. America is committed to Mexican oil, given that it isn’t permitted to produce sufficient quantities of energy at home, even with vast resources. About 1.2 million barrels of Mexican crude come to the U.S. each day along with significant gas supplies.

The U.S. has been pitifully dependent on Mexico for its energy supplies for some time, and energy analysts worry about the state of underinvestment in Mexico’s state fields. An explosion Tuesday at the country’s third-largest refinery did nothing to allay those concerns.

High debt and aging fields are other problems with the nation the U.S. depends on in lieu of its own development.

Conditions are now especially dicey given the Obama administration’s May 27 moratorium on offshore drilling. That arbitrary ban, placed by presidential decree in the wake of the BP oil spill, shut down deep-water drilling for U.S. companies that had been operating safely. Rigs affected are either lying idle or beginning to move abroad, leaving the U.S. to buy more oil from foreign suppliers.

That would explain why the U.S. Export-Import Bank has begun shoveling money into Mexican production. On Wednesday, Cybercast News Service reported that the independent government entity loaned $1.05 billion in 2009 to Pemex for four projects that would undoubtedly result in more development. Another billion is slated for loans this year, pending Congress’ approval.

The bank itself is quick to say that the cash would go to contracts for American companies, but so what? The fact is, U.S. firms will be working to develop oil and gas fields in a country that has lost control of its security.

Al-Qaida-menaced Saudi Arabia has managed to effectively deal with criminal threats to its oil, but Mexico has not. Developing its resources instead of our own will only create an attractive target for cartels such as Los Zetas.

Making matters worse, Congress is treating U.S. security aid to Mexico, known as the Merida Initiative, as a political football, teasingly offering up cash and then pulling some of it back over alleged human rights violations. That occurred last week, when $26 million in security assistance was yanked from Mexico’s $400 million aid package.

It all amounts to a big problem that’s getting bigger, but which is being ignored as Washington makes one bad decision after another.

The best solution for the U.S. is to lift the federal deep-water drilling moratorium and find ways to encourage production of viable, proven domestic sources of energy such as oil, gas, coal, shale and nuclear power that in the end will lessen our dependence on nations under attack by criminal cartels.

Read the original article Investor’s Business Daily

WEISMAN: Obama Takes Aim at Republicans

JONATHAN WEISMAN

President Barack Obama, in a combative, campaign-like speech in Parma, Ohio, conceded that his policies have “fed the perception that Washington is still ignoring the middle class,” even as he castigated Republican opponents for “riding…fear and anger all the way to Election Day.”

The speech, at Cuyahoga Community College, was billed as a major economic address to unveil a new round of proposals to kick-start a flagging economic recovery. The president did introduce three new policy proposals the White House has been rolling out for nearly a week: $50 billion in additional infrastructure spending, a permanent and expanded research and experimentation tax credit and a measure allowing businesses to write 100% of their investment costs off their taxes through 2011.

But Mr. Obama’s speech was far more about politics than economics.

“If we’re willing again to choose hope over fear, to choose the future over the past, to come together once more around the great project of national renewal, then we will restore our economy, rebuild our middle class and reclaim the American dream for the next generation,” he said, striking the same cadences that buoyed his presidential bid.

He fell back on campaign themes that propelled his 2008 surge: his grandfather’s World War II fight, his father-in-law’s struggle to work with multiple sclerosis and his work “in the shadow of a shuttered steel plant on the South Side of Chicago.”

In a way he never has, the president singled out House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R., Ohio) repeatedly and by name, castigating him for proposing “the same [economic] philosophy that led to this mess in the first place. And he hit Republicans hard for opposing the administration’s economic policies.

“Instead of coming together like past generations did to build a better country for our children and grandchildren, their argument is that we should let insurance companies go back to denying care to folks that are sick, and let credit-card companies go back to raising rates without any reason. Instead of setting our sights higher, they’re asking us to settle for a status quo of stagnant growth, eroding competitiveness and a shrinking middle class,” Mr. Obama said.

Mr. Boehner countered with a proposal that he said should garner bipartisan support: Extend all of the tax cuts passed under George W. Bush for two years and cut spending on programs not tied to national security to 2008 levels.

“If we’re able to do this together, I think we’ll show the American people that we understand what’s going on in the country, and we’ll be able to get our economy moving again and get jobs growing in America,” Mr. Boehner said on ABC’s Good Morning America.

The president’s speech and a White House news conference on Friday will cap more than a week of headline-grabbing economic efforts at the White House. Administration officials say Mr. Obama has regained the initiative and has muted criticism even in his own party that he is not sufficiently focused on a job market stuck at 9.6% unemployment.

The policy proposals, thus far, have gained little traction. Sen. Michael Bennet (D., Colo.), who is locked in a difficult election fight, said Wednesday, “I will not support additional spending in a second stimulus package.” Such spending should come out of still-unused funds from last year’s stimulus law.

Democrats have expressed some disappointment in the president’s choice of proposals. In a speech Tuesday, Rep. Joe Sestak, the Democratic candidate for Pennsylvania’s open Senate seat, said he welcomed Mr. Obama’s proposals, although he added they should have come 18 months ago.

“Why now? We’re doing it for the polls, we should be doing it because it’s the right thing to do,” he said in a speech on the economy at Carnegie Mellon University.

But Mr. Sestak’s top priority, a 15% payroll tax credit for small businesses, was rejected by the White House, as was a proposed payroll tax holiday for new hires that Wisconsin Sen. Russ Feingold, another embattled Democrat, pressed on White House economist Larry Summers last Friday, according to a person familiar with the conversation.

“The rollout has not been good,” said a Democratic congressional campaign aide, who noted there was little coordination between the White House and congressional leaders.

But, the aide added, Mr. Obama’s combative tone—both Wednesday and at a Labor Day picnic Monday—has been helpful for Democrats, who are trying to turn the November midterms from a referendum on Democratic control in Washington to a choice between Democratic and Republican policy prescriptions.

For their part, Republicans were not dodging the charge that their responses to the president’s proposals have been a constant and resounding “no.”

Asked why Republicans should win in November, Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, a potential rival to Mr. Obama in 2012, said Republicans “in a very unified fashion have opposed bad policy. And the public appreciates it when a party fights against what it knows is bad policy.”

Read the original article OnlineWSJ

Peter Ferrara: Fire Obama!

Peter Ferrara

House GOP Leader John Boehner created a stir last month when he called on President Obama to fire his top economic advisors, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and Assistant to the President for Economic Policy Larry Summers, because of the Administration’s disastrous economic performance. But while Summers is, indeed, a clueless Keynesian, and Geithner is a career bureaucrat, they are not the source of the problem. The source of the problem is the Godfather of the Administration’s economic policies, President Obama himself.

Consequently, what is needed is not to fire Geithner or Summers, but to fire Obama. While President Obama is not on the ballot this fall, the American people will nevertheless have the opportunity in November to do precisely that, by effectively removing him from power, as explained further below. Reality will continue to punish the American people harder and harder until they do.

President Obama’s Malaise

The National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) officially scored the recession as starting in December, 2007. NBER also reports that since World War II, 65 years ago, the average duration of recessions has been 10 months, with the longest previously being 16 months. In April of this year, NBER issued a statement saying it could not yet determine an end to the recession, 28 months after it began.

What we do know is that in August, 2010, 32 months after the recession started, double the previous longest recession in the 65 year postwar era, the economy was still losing jobs, and unemployment was still rising. The Labor Department reported another 54,000 jobs lost in August, with unemployment rising to 9.6%. Major Obama voting blocks are being punished by Obamanomics, with African Americans suffering a sustained depression reflected by 16.3% unemployment, even worse for teenagers with unemployment at 26.3%, and Hispanics not far behind at 12% unemployment.

The total army of the unemployed remains stuck at nearly 15 million, with 42% of those classified as long-term unemployed, jobless for over 6 months, the highest since the Great Depression. The number of additional workers employed part-time for economic reasons was still rising in August, up by another 331,000 to nearly 9 million. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) defines these workers as those who “were working part-time because their hours had been cut back or because they were unable to find a full time job.”

Another 2.4 million were defined as marginally attached to the labor force, stuck at that total for a year. The BLS explains that these individual “wanted and were available for work, and had looked for a job in the prior 12 months,” but were not counted among the unemployed because they had not looked for work in the prior 4 weeks. These included 1.1 million discouraged workers, up 352,000 over the past year, who were not currently searching for work, and therefore not counted as unemployed, because they believe that in the economy of hope and change no jobs are available for them.

The army of the unemployed and underemployed consequently stands at 26.2 million Americans. That would add up to an unemployed and underemployed rate of 16.7%, almost 3 years after the recession started. The full picture of hopelessness is measured by the precipitous drop in the civilian-employment population ratio from 63% in 2007 to 58% today, fully reflecting the millions who have simply given up even trying to look for work.

Moreover, the economic growth we have experienced recently has been less than half the growth we experienced after similarly severe downturns. The economy grew by almost 7% in real terms in Reagan’s recovery in 1983 and 1984. Even under President Ford, real GDP grew by 6.2% in the year after the 1974-75 recession. But under President Obama, economic growth is again in a tailspin already, falling from 5% in the fourth quarter of 2009, to 3.7% in the first quarter this year, to 1.6% in the second quarter. Moreover, the stock market is stalled, mired 30% below its record highs over 14000 in the Dow.

This deteriorating economy couldn’t be a worse time to raise top federal tax rates across the board for every major federal tax, as will begin on Jan. 1 under President Obama’s economic policies. If those tax increases go through, the probability will be over 100% for a double dip recession, if not Art Laffer’s Coming Crash of 2011.

President Obama’s Fallacies

In his Labor Day speech before a cheering AFL-CIO crowd excited about their prospects of taking over the economy, President Obama revealed the root of the problem. He has no clue as to how the economy works, or what policies would produce economic growth. Indeed, while he may have physically been in America over the last 30 years, his mind may as well still have been in the Indonesia of his youth, for all he understands about what has happened in this country over that time.

After last year’s “stimulus” costing nearly a trillion dollars that was supposed to be focused on “shovel ready” infrastructure projects, President Obama on Monday announced his “new” economic recovery plan: another $50 billion in increased federal spending for infrastructure. He said, “I am announcing a new plan for rebuilding and modernizing America’s roads and rails and runways for the long term.” But even this simple statement of his own plan is false. For there is nothing new about it. That is what his stimulus of over a year ago was supposed to be about. But the American people are learning from hard experience that President Obama does not learn from experience. He is all theory and ideology, neo-Marxist ideology.

President Obama has made it clear over and over, including in Monday’s speech, that what he thinks drives economic growth is increased government spending, deficits, and debt. That is the sum and substance of his entire Keynesian economic theory. And he persists in that even though experience under his own Administration has proven once again that Keynesian economics doesn’t work. Indeed, that was proven so thoroughly in America in the 1970s, and again in Japan since the 1990s, that Keynesian economics today is frankly silly, and advocating still more of it now can only be accurately characterized as braindead.

Japan suffered its own financial crisis at the start of the 1990s. It responded with Keynesian government spending, deficits and debt, focused on infrastructure spending. The result has been what has been accurately called two lost decades of economic stagnation, very similar to what America is experiencing now.

Read the rest of the article American Spectator pg 2

Hugh Hewitt: Seventy percent of Americans know they’ve been conned

Minimum estimate of Saturday’s crowd on the Mall: 300,000 Maximum estimate: One million people.

Meaning of the crowd: An enormous upheaval in the emotions of average Americans is coursing through the country, with a certain significance for November’s elections. It will have a lasting, profound impact on America’s political direction.

Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin provided an occasion to glimpse this undeniable phenomenon. Of course, the interpretations of what the phenomenon is and what its consequences will be will keep the chattering class busy for weeks, if not years.

Some on the left are trying, with increasing desperation, to use old and new media to brand this surge in public participation in politics as sinister, even though it was preceded by a surge from the left of people and energy into President Obama’s campaign.

The new tools of communication and the ease of movement have unleashed a tumultuous era of politics driven by the demand that elites not attempt to speak for, or condescend to, average citizens. They will not quietly or passively be lectured to, or insulted by, the president, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg or any anchor on any network, any columnist in any paper, or any blogger on any Web site.

The people on the Mall and the millions more who watched the gathering with satisfaction rather than fear are quite simply sick of the left, and of its vast sneer toward the traditions, values and, yes, faith of the American middle class.

The American Enterprise Institute’s Arthur Brooks has quite accurately described America as a 70/30 nation, with the 70 percent presently massively underrepresented in the federal government, the Manhattan-Beltway media elite and academia.

The 70 percent is appalled by the placebo economics practiced by the president and the Congress over the past two years, shocked by its profligacy with the wealth of the republic, and sickened by the looting of the next generation’s opportunities.

The 70 percent did not want Obamacare, but it has been thrust upon them.

The 70 percent did not want federal judges to declare “game over” in the complex discussion of what marriage is and means.

The 70 percent want a fence on the border that works, and do not want their concern over unregulated immigration dismissed as nativisim.

The 70 percent are not ashamed of their belief in God, deeply resent being labeled bigots because they view ground zero as land that ought not to be exploited for “messaging” of any sort by any group, and are enraged by the scorn which they encounter everywhere in media except Fox News and talk radio.

The 70 percent believe that the federal government is remote and clueless, and that the Constitution’s principles of enumerated and limited powers and the sovereignty of the states are vibrant, important core values to the republic.

The 70 percent think Iran is in the grip of an evil, theocratic fascism, and that Israel is our true friend and ally deserving of our full-throated support.

We are in the middle of a perilous economic passage to a new competitiveness across the globe. We are watching other countries across the globe respond to the new demands of competitiveness by shrinking the public sector and encouraging private-sector growth. But American education is crippled by bureaucracy and burdened by the inability of a political class to demand reform of the practices and pensions of the public sector. Children have been hostages of this countrywide collapse of common sense for a generation, despite wave after wave of “reform”.

Two years into what had been sold as a new politics and a new approach, the 70 percent are fully aware that they have been conned, suckered, and taken to the cleaners by a hyper-ideological amalgam of leftist public intellectuals, snarling bloggers, career politicians with limited abilities who are often corrupt, and a president wholly inexperienced in the management of complex problems who is in way over his head and prisoner to slogans and schemes that make for great campus debates — but for disaster in the real world.

The people on the Mall were saying much more than “this far and no farther.” They were saying “rewind and restart.” They will hold that thought and that purpose as they peacefully, but with great passion and purpose, insist on real change come Nov. 2.
Read the original article Washington Examiner:

Michelle Malkin: Obama’s Big Labor Ethics Loophole

Everything you need to know about President Obama’s fraudulent ethics pledge can be summed up in four words: SEIU lawyer Craig Becker.

Becker is the left-wing lawyer Obama sneakily installed on the National Labor Relations Board. The U.S. Senate rejected Becker’s nomination on a 52-33 cloture vote in February. Obama responded by flipping the bird and ramming through his recess appointment during the congressional spring break. (The New York Times approvingly dubbed it a “muscular show of his executive authority.” When that authority was exercised by GOP President George W. Bush, of course, the Times editorial board called it a “constitutional gimmick.”)

Despite the White House’s much-heralded policy of binding every executive appointee to strict conflict-of-interest guidelines, a defiant Becker now remains free to rule on cases involving his former Big Labor bosses. And the most ethical administration in U.S. history isn’t doing a thing to stop him.

While serving as an associate general counsel for both the SEIU and AFL-CIO in 2009, Becker generously lent his legal expertise to the White House. He served as an Obama transition team member for labor issues and helped draft several union-backed executive orders.

These new rules essentially blackball non-union contractors targeted by labor organizers and blacklist non-union employees in the private sector from working on taxpayer-funded projects. Another union protectionist measure immediately adopted by Obama requires that when a government service contract runs out — and there’s a new contract to perform the same services at the same location — the new contractor must retain the old workers. Such regulatory favoritism limits freedom in the workplace and raises the cost of doing business. This suits Becker and his White House champions (who reaped $60 million in SEIU campaign donations and support in 2008) just fine.

Becker’s anti-business views date back to his days as a UCLA professor, when he argued that unions should not be subject to the same rules of democracy and fair elections as everyone else. He favors radical rewriting of union organizing rules and elimination of the secret ballot process by administrative fiat.

It’s no surprise that Becker now refuses to hold himself accountable for the ethics pledge he himself signed in April. As the past two years have taught us, Team Obama’s operational slogan is: Rules are for fools. The contractual ethics commitment states: “I will not for a period of two years from the date of my appointment participate in any particular matter involving specific parties that is directly and substantially related to my former employer or former clients, including regulations and contracts.” Yet, Becker has participated in numerous NLRB cases involving the SEIU and its affiliates — and is parsing the definition of “former employer” by arguing that local SEIU chapters are “separate and distinct legal entities” that don’t fall under the ethics rules.

The National Right to Work Foundation, which has fought both national and local SEIU officials in court on behalf of rank-and-file workers’ rights, eviscerates Becker’s lawyerly blather. SEIU’s own constitution considers local affiliates “constituent subordinate bodies” of the national union, the foundation notes. “Moreover, in 2009 over 85 percent of the SEIU’s receipts came from a per capita tax on the locals’ membership dues and fees. The national union even has the power to assume control over its locals if they do not conform to International policies.”

In any case, Becker has also acknowledged playing a key role in providing “advice and counsel” to the powerful SEIU affiliate in Illinois “relating to proposed executive orders and proposed legislation giving homecare workers a right to organize and engage in collective bargaining under state law.” Championed by Big Labor water-carrier and disgraced former Democratic Gov. Rod Blagojevich and current SEIU-endorsed Democratic Gov. Pat Quinn, such measures effectively bust into private homes for the Purple Shirts of the SEIU and other union competitors hungry for new dues-paying members.

Now, Becker is in the catbird seat — adjudicating challenges to the power grab rules he helped author.

Little did America know that when candidate Obama promised the SEIU he would “open up the doors of government” to them, he’d give them the keys to our living rooms, too.

Read the original article TownHall

Muslim leaders to abandon plans for Ground Zero community center?

Shlomo Shamir

After weeks of heated debate over plans for an Islamic community center near Ground Zero – the site of the 9/11 attacks on New York – it seems Muslim leaders will soon back down, agreeing to move to a new site.

The decision follows a high-profile campaign against the project that included advertisements on New York buses showing images of the burning Twin Towers, an iconic landmark razed when al-Qaida terrorists flew packed passenger planes into them in 2001. The New York Republican party is also said to be planning a hostile television campaign.

Sources in New York said on Monday that Muslim religious and business leaders will announce plans to abandon the project in the next few days.

New York Governor David Patterson said last weekend that Muslim leaders had rejected outright his proposal tto swap the site in for another in Manhattan.

But several people familiar with the debate among New York’s Islamic activists now claim that the leaders are convinced abandoning the site is preferable to unleashing a wave of bitterness towards Muslims.

They also hope the move will be seen as a show of sensitivity to families of the victims of the 9/11 attacks, and to the  American public generally.

Another factor in the apparent climbdown is a lack of funds to pay for construction of the center, estimated to cost a hundred million dollars. Backers hope moving it will lead to a wave of support, accompanied by cash donations.

It is also possible that the decision was also influenced by comments made by U.S. President Barack Obama on Sunday, in which he appeared to reverse an earlier show of support.

Obama said that when he went on record backing the center, he meant only that it was the right of every religious group to establish its own places of worship – but he did not intend to justify building the center specifically at Ground Zero .

Read the original article Haaretz

IBD:Rose Garden Thorn

Editorial:

Federal Spending: When the president urged Congress last week to pass $26 billion in emergency aid to help save the jobs of laid-off teachers, one of his human props was out of place. It was a mistake he may regret.

Flanked in the Rose Garden by teachers, President Obama said last Tuesday: “We can’t stand by and do nothing while pink slips are given to the men and women who educate our children or keep our communities safe.”

Later in the day, Obama signed the bill that Democrats say will save the jobs of 300,000 teachers and police officers who’ve been laid off due to budget problems in state and local governments.

While that claim is debatable — so far, federal spending legislation intended to save jobs has failed miserably — this one isn’t: The Obama team made a mistake with one of its human props, an error that will draw attention to an uncomfortable issue .

The scene didn’t look unusual. Next to Obama during his morning plea from the Rose Garden were two teachers, one of them Shannon Lewis, who had been laid off at Hampshire High School in West Virginia. Everything looked so normal that we even included in our I&I pages a photo of her at the evening bill signing.

But Lewis wasn’t laid off because the government could no longer afford to pay her. She was laid off “because of an enrollment decline in Hampshire County,” the Charleston Daily Mail reports.

“Even if the state were in boom times, the current school aid formula would not support her salary.”

Which brings up a question the White House is going to wish hadn’t been asked: How many other teachers are there who, like Lewis, lost their jobs not because of low tax revenues but simply because they were not needed, and will now be paid … for what?

There might not be many. But this question leads to another place the White House doesn’t want to go:

Public school employment, the Cato Institute reported in its @ Liberty blog, has increased 10 times faster than public school enrollment since 1970 — and the result has been stagnant test scores.

Despite these facts, Democrats continue to funnel money into teachers’ pockets, rewarding them for a job poorly done. And the party is getting a rich return. Democrats are heavily supported by teachers union money — the top two teachers unions make 95% of their political donations to Democrats, according to opensecrets.org — and union members’ votes.

This is another set of unsavory facts the Democrats want the public to forget. But when the party’s top operator tries to hoodwink voters by bringing in what amounts to a shill for a photo op, he reminds everyone of this unwholesome alliance.

Reaad the original article IBD Editorial

The Hill- Obama: Healthcare law gave Medicare ‘sounder financial footing’

Shane D’Aprile

President Obama used his weekly radio address Saturday to tout the findings of a Medicare Trustees report that concluded the program will remain solvent through 2029, largely as a result of cost-cutting provisions included in the recently enacted healthcare law.

The president said the report clearly demonstrated that the passage of healthcare reform has put Medicare on “a sounder financial footing.”
“Reform has actually added at least a dozen years to the solvency of Medicare – the single longest extension in history – while helping to preserve Medicare for generations to come,” Obama said.

“We’ve made Medicare more solvent by going after waste, fraud, and abuse – not by changing seniors’ guaranteed benefits,” the president said. “In fact, seniors are starting to see that because of health reform, their benefits are getting better all the time.”

The president also touted a $250 rebate meant to aid senior citizens who fall into the so-called “doughnut hole” in Medicare prescription drug coverage. He noted that by next year seniors who fall into that coverage gap will be eligible for a 50 percent discount on needed medication.

“Already, we have put insurance companies on notice that we have the authority to review and reject unreasonable rate increases for Medicare Advantage plans,” Obama said. “And we’ve made it clear to the insurers that we won’t hesitate to use this authority to protect seniors.”

Still, the Trustees report hailed by Obama was filled with caveats, the biggest of which is that the projected cost savings are dependent on future cuts that even Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius suggested are doubtful.
The report’s conclusion hinges on Congress agreeing to a 30 percent cut in Medicare payments to doctors over the next few years, as well as cuts in funding to hospitals and other providers.

Without those cuts — both of which are politically unpalatable options and ones lawmakers are unlikely to embrace when the time comes — the financial projections are not so rosy.

What Democrats and the president hailed as “cost-saving measures,” Republicans panned as “accounting gimmicks” last week.

“Simple logic says that you can’t spend and save the same dollar,” House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) said Thursday. “The trustees’ report confirms that Medicare’s future now rests on Washington Democrats’ accounting gimmicks and tricks, a risk America’s seniors are by no means eager to take.”

Meanwhile, the president’s radio address made no mention of the more dour projection the report made on Social Security. It concluded the program’s fiscal outlook has dimmed, in large part due to the high unemployment rate.

With more money being paid out through the program than coming in, both this year and next, the Social Security trust fund is expected to run dry by 2037.

Read the original article TheHill

NY Post: Obama’s credit-grab

How’s this for hubris: President Obama extolling his “new strategy” in Iraq — even though it never would have succeeded had his original vision prevailed?

The president struck a triumphal tone this week about the Iraq mission coming to an end — but shunned the word “success.” He spoke of “ending” the war, but took pains to avoid context.

Sen. John McCain rightly called the address “small-minded” and “bizarre.”
At the time, then-Sen. Barack Obama said of the surge: “20,000 troops is not going to make a difference.”

Indeed, Obama couldn’t bring himself to give a shred of credit to the man who most deserves it: George W. Bush.

Bush’s surge — and Gen. David Petraeus’ on-the-ground leadership — created the conditions for Iraqis to take full control of their country, allowing Obama last year to introduce his “new strategy.”

A year later, he responded to Bush’s State of the Union Address by declaring that “tonight we heard President Bush say that the surge in Iraq is working, when we know that’s just not true.”

Obama’s lack of graciousness even barred him from noting that his speech occurred 20 years to the day after the invasion of Kuwait. He couldn’t offer even a small nod to the first President George Bush, who led the liberation of Kuwait.

But that’s a minor quibble measured against Obama’s overweening hypocrisy.

He scorned the strategy that produced the outcome he’s now celebrating with a straight face. And he won’t say one kind word about his predecessor, no matter how warranted.

If any president has shown less class than Obama, it’s hard to say who.

Read the original article NY Post

Michelle Obama’s Spanish vacation draws critics

Peter Nicholas and Katherine Skiba
As the president preaches frugality in lean economic times, his wife and youngest daughter are vacationing at a luxury resort outside Marbella. Officials say the Obamas will pay for personal expenses.
Reporting from Washington — As the economy endures high unemployment and a jittery stock market, President Obama has preached sacrifice and fiscal discipline. But the pictures coming out of a sun-splashed Spanish resort this week may be sending a different message.

First Lady Michelle Obama is in the midst of a five-day trip to a luxury resort along with a few friends, her youngest daughter, aides and Secret Service personnel. Her office said the family will pay for personal expenses, but won’t reveal the taxpayer cost for the government employees.

Elected officials — Democrats and Republicans — were reluctant to weigh in, not wanting to appear critical of the president’s wife. But the trip provided plenty of fodder for television news anchors, talk-show hosts and bloggers.
Critics portrayed the foreign getaway as tone-deaf to the deep economic anxiety back home. Earlier in the week, the first lady was photographed walking through the streets of the Costa del Sol region wearing a one-shouldered Jean Paul Gaultier top.

Every first family takes vacations. The criticism aimed at Michelle Obama is that she chose to visit a foreign country rather than remain in the U.S. and support its fragile economy.

Last month the first lady flew to the Florida Panhandle, a tourist draw hit hard by the oil spill crisis, and delivered the message that for parents “looking for things to do with their kids this summer … this is a wonderful place to visit.”

The opulence of the European trip also has drawn scrutiny. The president has urged frugality in lean economic times. He once cautioned that families saving money for college shouldn’t “blow a bunch of cash in Vegas.”

Michelle Obama is staying at the Hotel Villa Padierna, a Ritz-Carlton resort in the mountains outside Marbella. The resort boasts two golf courses, a posh spa with Turkish baths, views of the Mediterranean Sea and a high-end restaurant specializing in avant-garde fare. Room rates start at $400 and rise to $6,500 for a two-bedroom villa with a private pool and 24-hour butler service.

The danger for the Obamas is that the trip may feed perceptions that they are elites, out of touch with struggling American families, said Chris Wilson, a Republican pollster.

“This in and of itself doesn’t hurt President Obama, but it plants a seed in voters’ minds that she’s not like me, that they’re not like me,” he said.

Though her friends arrived in Spain on their own, Michelle and Sasha Obama flew in on a type of aircraft that is also used by Vice President Joe Biden. It costs the government $11,555 an hour to operate the plane, according to the Air Force. Assuming a nearly eight-hour flight to nearby Malaga, the total round-trip cost of the flight is about $178,000.

The Obama family will reimburse the government an amount equal to two first-class tickets, Air Force officials said. A round-trip first-class flight to Malaga costs about $7,400, without discounts or restrictions.

Anita McBride, who was chief of staff to former First Lady Laura Bush, was not surprised that the trip has its critics.

“When you are a public figure, it can be difficult to lead a private life. Despite the fact that much of this trip is paid for personally, the American people know that there are costs borne by the taxpayers, and it’s to be expected that the more expensive the trip, the greater the risk of criticism,” McBride said.

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs has declined to answer questions about the vacation, saying only that it is a “private trip.”

Edwin Donovan, a spokesman for the Secret Service, declined to say how many agents and aides are with the first lady in Spain.

A White House official said that Michelle Obama is accompanied by “a handful of longtime family friends — it’s moms and daughters — and it’s minimal staff.” One aide on the trip is the first lady’s deputy chief of staff, Melissa Winter.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the destination was chosen by Michelle Obama and her friends.

After the first lady returns home, she and her family will soon head out for another vacation. They will travel to the Gulf Coast for the weekend of Aug. 14, followed by a 10-day vacation on Martha’s Vineyard off the coast of Massachusetts.

Other first ladies have faced an uproar over personal travel. In October 1963, two months after the death of a son born prematurely, Jacqueline Kennedy left her husband behind for a two-week Greek holiday, which featured sailing the Aegean aboard Aristotle Onassis’ 303-foot yacht.

A House Republican from Ohio opened an attack, alleging that Onassis owed millions to the U.S. government and questioning the propriety of a trip on a yacht with a 60-man crew “including two coiffeurs and a dance band.”

As Letitia Baldrige, Kennedy’s chief of staff, recalled Friday in an interview: “People were rather bummed out when she went on that yacht. She got tremendous flak.”

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