In this week’s blog, I’ll touch on a number of stories that caught my attention, and I think are worth commenting on.
First, two headlines in the Cincinnati Enquirer were of particular concern: “Recovery Is Fizzling, Reports Suggest,” and “U.S. Loses 125,000 Jobs In June.” Despite Congress throwing hundreds of billions of our tax dollars into a so-called economic stimulus package, the American economy continues to limp along, and unemployment remains at unacceptable levels. Fiscal conservatives warned that this was likely to happen, but were shunted aside by the Obama Administration and by Pelosi’s followers in Congress, and the American people are paying the price.
In an attempt to try to convince the public that the economy is just swell, and getting sweller, Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden are on their much heralded “Recovery Tour” traveling across the country this summer trying to convince the American people that everything’s great. The American people aren’t buying it. President Obama had the nerve to say at a town hall meeting in Wisconsin last week that “every economist who’s looked at it has said that the Recovery Act (the $787 billion stimulus bill) did its job.” Now that’s just ridiculous. Economists are at best split on whether the Stimulus has been a marginal success or a total failure – but it’s clear that they don’t all think “it did its job.”
So where was the mainstream press coverage of this whopper. Virtually absent. FOX News mentioned it. But the rest of the mainstream press ignored it altogether. Let’s face it, there’s a double standard when Republicans and Democrats say dumb or controversial things. Look at the glee shown by the mainstream press in covering Republicans Joe Barton, Rand Paul, John Boehner, and Michael Steele.
But just as there was virtually no coverage of President Obama claiming that all economists agree the so-called economic stimulus package is working, where was the coverage of Bill Clinton at Democratic Senator Robert Byrd’s funeral just a couple days ago in essence justifying Byrd’s membership in the KKK, saying he was just “a country boy in the hills of West Virginia just trying to get elected.” He also said Byrd’s association with the clan was “fleeting” when in fact Byrd had worked his way up to being what they call a Kleagle (a recruiter) for this despicable organization. He also failed to mention that Byrd voted against not only the Civil Rights Act, but also against the Voting Rights Act, and that Byrd used the “N word” in an interview (for which he later apologized) a few years back. Where was the coverage of this? Virtually absent.
And perhaps most outrageously, where was the mainstream press coverage of Democratic Congressman Paul Kanjorski of Pennsylvania, just a few weeks back, when discussing more government assistance money, claimed that it wouldn’t just go to “minorities and defective people, it would go to average, good American people.” FOX News covered the racist comments, but the rest of the media ignored it. What if he’d been a Republican? I wonder.
Another headline which caught my attention in the Cincinnati Enquirer, on July 3rd, read, “Expect ER Wait Times to Lengthen.” Remember the health care legislation that Obama/Pelosi/Reid rammed down our throats a few months back? They claimed it would improve health care delivery, reduce the deficit, basically improve our lives. Well, let me quote from the article: “Emergency rooms, the only choice for patients who can’t find care elsewhere, may grow even more crowded with longer wait times under the nation’s new health law.” This is just one more bad thing we’ve learned about the health care legislation since it’s been passed into law. Remember when we were promised it would cost less than $1 trillion, and then after passage the cost estimates were revised up by $115 billion, putting the cost well over $1 trillion? And remember when we were promised that people who had health care plans they liked could keep them and wouldn’t be affected, and it was later revealed that it’s now estimated that over one-half of the people currently covered and satisfied with their plans will have to change? No wonder most Americans remain opposed to the federal health care takeover.
And no wonder so many Americans are skeptical of giving the federal government more power, and more control over our lives, and over our money. A July 3rd Enquirer headline read “Federal Program Bilked Out of More Than $100 Million.” Here’s the first paragraph of the story: “A federal program designed to help impoverished families heat and cool their homes wasted more than $100 million paying the electric bills of thousands of applicants who were dead, in prison or living in million dollar mansions, according to a government investigation.”
And finally a July 2nd Enquirer headline read “Millions of Doses of Flu Vaccine to be Burned.” Once again, I’ll just quote from the article:
Now the article begs the question, should the federal government have ramped up and prepared the nation for the possible swine flu onslaught? In my view, yes. But can we trust the federal government to be reasonably efficient with our tax dollars when it spends them? And to that I would argue, emphatically – NO.
There is way too much waste at the federal level, in fact at all levels of government. Millions, in fact billions of our tax dollars are wasted every year. And as our government has been allowed, in fact encouraged to grow since this Administration and this Congress took over approximately one-and-a-half years ago, it has grown from bad to worse. We’ll have the opportunity to reverse that trend in a little less than four months. Remember in November.
P.S. on an unrelated note, I’d like to encourage you to join me in helping Cincinnati Red, Joey Votto make it to the All-Star Game, by voting for him here. Good luck Joey!