Are You Better Off Than You Were before Barack Obama?

It is the Bill Clinton “peace dividend” coming again. President Obama is cutting the defense budget by $400 billion while America is engaged in three wars. Regarding Libya, Obama has stated the United States is not pursuing regime change but Obama has repeatedly said Gaddafi has to leave. Isn’t that regime change? What does Obama do? He gives another speech.

President Obama has touted the stimulus bill as creating or saving (a non-existent metric) hundreds of thousands of jobs. Unfortunately, the unemployment rate in December 2008 was recorded at 7.2% ; at its peak the unemployment rate was over 10%. Today, the unemployment rate is 8.8% with 13.5 million unemployed. This is a 22% increase in the unemployment rate. The employed to population ratio is 45%, the lowest ever recorded. Mr. Obama’s stimulus bill is a failure. In response, he gives another speech.

Barack Obama’s energy program is non-existent. He obsesses on renewable energy, spending vast sums of tax dollars in vain. Spain went into renewable energy in a big way, then discovered that each “green job’ created since 2000 cost $774,000: cost transferred to energy customers in the form of higher premiums. Spain also lost 2.2 jobs in other industries for every new “green job” created.

Italy has also discovered the shortcomings of renewable energy. Italian citizens have had to pay over six billion Euros in renewable subsidies. The Italian government passed a decree that could spell an abrupt end in renewable energy construction and severe reduction in subsidies. Other European countries are also seriously cutting back on renewable energy due to the costs involved and damage to the countryside.

What does Mr. Obama do in light of European experience? He has closed off virtually all drilling, increasing taxes on oil companies, instituting anti-carbon regulations, and, oh yes, he gave another speech.

Recently, Mr. Obama stated that America needs to reduce its reliance on foreign oil by 30% over ten years. But replacing this lost oil will require domestic drilling, which Obama refuses to allow. As a result, prices for a gallon of gas have increased from $1.64 in December 2008, the month before he took office, to $ 3.79 in April 2011. What was Obama’s response? He gave another speech.

Experts state that $5.00 a gallon gas could occur by Memorial Day. The April gas price is a 131% increase over December 2008. If the Memorial Day gas price occurs, it will be a 204% increase in the price of gas.

It appears that Mr. Obama is moving away from affordable energy, making what energy we do have more expensive and basing America’s future on renewable energy, which Europe is moving away from as rapidly as possible. Ironically, America is awash in relatively cheap energy. It is just that the President refuses to let us develop it. He would rather invest $2 billion in George Soros’ Brazilian oil company and promise the Brazilian government we’ll buy their oil.

Why does it always seem that Barack Obama says one thing and does the opposite? Obama states that the United States must reduce its deficits and national debt but put forth a budget that does neither. Obama says we must reduce our reliance on foreign oil but tells Brazil we’ll buy all their oil. He says “We’re going to need oil and gas and coal for a long time if America wants to keep the lights on,” but denies American the opportunity to develop cheaper oil, gas and coal.

In 2008, the deficit was $ .438 trillion. Obama has submitted three budgets, all with deficits in excess of $ 1.400 trillion, or 3.5 times larger than President Bush’s last year in office. As a result, the national debt has risen from $10.6 trillion to $14.3 trillion (April 2011): a 35% increase in our national debt in 28 months of Obama’s presidency.

Standard and Poor’s just declared a negative outlook on America’s AAA credit rating, stating
“"The outlook reflects our view of the increased risk that the political negotiations over when and how to address both the medium- and long-term challenges will persist until at least after the national elections in 2012."

The Wall Street Journal, in analyzing he Standard and Poor’s statement, concluded that is was in response to President Obama’s anti-Republican speech last week, indicating that it will be “very difficult for GOP Congressional leaders to believe they can enter into a budget negotiation in which the White House will deal in good faith.”

So as the misery index increases from 7.73 in December 2008 to 11.01 in April 2011, the Rasmussen Presidential Approval Index from 28 on January 21, 2009, his first day in office, to -15 on April 15, 2011, an equivalent of a 96% drop in approval.

Obama’s speeches are incoherent, the topics asynchronous to current events and flawed. To paraphrase Peggy Noonan’s article in her Wall Street journal column (4/16-17/2011, A13), because of these flaws, his speeches “. . . will have no afterlife, and a major speech with no afterlife might as well not have been given.”

Are you really better off than you were before Barack Obama?