Here is my State of the Union Mr. President

A couple of weeks ago our President delivered the State of the Union address.  Early this week while reading over the Wall Street Journal, I realized the country portrayed in a number of articles is drastically different than the rosy picture painter by President Obama. After listening to the Presidents speech you would think the only thing left to do is get marriage for gay people and shorten up some lines at the voting booths.

A quick glance across the front section of the Wall Street Journal gives us an indication that the state of the union might still be lacking in some areas.

The lead article above the fold it titled “Payroll Tax Whacks Spending”. This article goes on to talk about how major retail stores and restaurants were lowering sales expectations as $110 billion dollars is transferred out of consumers hands to the federal government in the form of a 2% increase in payroll tax.  With consumer confidence shaken by a total lack of leadership in Washington, I think consumer spending will remain low for some time.

A page three article talks about how drivers are feeling the pinch of still high gas prices. With the national average hitting $3.78 a gallon, it is not hard to see how having the price of gas more than double in the last four years is hurting consumers.  Sure, it would be nice to go back to the $1.60 a gallon prices from before Obama took office and the democrats would like us to blame the big bad oil companies. But let’s not forget - that the single largest component in the price of gasoline is - - taxes. Taxes account for 48 cents of every gallon here in North Carolina where I live.

Almost the complete forth page is dedicated to the sequester and the potential fallout from it. Democrats are predicting a total break-down in life as we know it if 44 billion dollars of cuts to federal spending are allowed to go through. If the federal government cannot afford to absorb $44 billion in cuts over the next 10 months there is no hope. How will the government ever close the one trillion dollars a year in deficit spending if $ 44 billion will lead to a total break down on schools, police, air travel and boarder protection? The President and leading democrats warn that only higher taxes on the wealthy (on top the $ 600 billion dollars of higher taxes already agreed on by Republicans) can save us from anarchy. $ 3.8 trillion dollars of spending every year, and still not enough we are told.

Meanwhile the US State Department is, for about the 500th time, trying to “restart” talks about changing their nuclear program with Iran. I have the feeling if we were not successful the first 499 times this effort will not accomplish anything, well except buy a little more time for Iran to perfect its weapons.  Bill Clinton negotiated with North Korea while they completed their atomic bomb, he is still a hero of the left and maybe Obama is just following his lead.

Amazingly on the same page is a short article detailing plans by NATO to keep at least 350,000 troops in Afghanistan until at least 2015 with 225,000 being almost permanently deployed after 2017. During his State of the Union address the President said that the war ends in 2014.  But you can bet the bulk of any NATO force will be Americans.

One page further and we find a piece written by the co-founder of the Home Depot stores that discusses a recent Supreme Court case. The court found that three members of the National Labor Relations Board were unlawfully appointed by President Obama. The court found that the President could not use a recess appointment when the Senate said it was still in session.  By law the board must have a quorum to conduct any business so any decisions handed down by the board while the illegal appointees severed were not valid. The really important part of the story is the chairman of the board, Mark Pearce, disagreed with the court and was going to continue business as usual. In other words the NLRB was ignoring the Supreme Court completely. 

Dwight Lee writes an insightful story about the congressional pages that we find out are not being paid. Seems the elected officials who think private industry should pay entry level workers $10 an hour to learn basic work skills are the same elected officials that feel the US congress is doing those same entry level workers a favor by paying them nothing. Senators such as Barbra Boxer who urges the country to “heed the call” to raise the minimum wage to $10 a hour feels $0 a hour is more appropriate if her office is footing the bill. Charlie Rangel’s official web site notes although interns are unpaid they will gain “valuable work experience”. Well isn’t that what minimum wage earners in the private sector are doing also? The hypocrisy would be funny if it wasn’t so tragic.

Left out this day’s paper was any mention of the dismal employment numbers. With full time unemployment at 7.9% there are more people actually without a job than during the Great Depression and the number of people actually in the job market is at a 20 year low. Those statistics combined with record numbers of people completely giving up on finding work, you would think this would be front page news. But the employment numbers have been dismal for so long it is hardly news anymore, unemployment above 7.5% is the new norm. The actual number of people collecting food stamps is up 50% compared to the peak of the recession. And for some reason the number of people collecting federal disability is nearly double. We actually have twice as many people suffering injury or sickness, or at least collecting disability under this President. All the while the number of people living below the poverty line remains at an all times high and increased by 2.6 million this year, over four years after the recession ended.

The Journal also missed the US government failing to pass a budget for the fourth straight year, if we did have a budget it would be easy to see that the federal government will spend about 1 trillion dollars more than it will take in this year. Yet the Democrats continue to tell us the government does not have a spending problem. Just like the unemployment numbers, the federal debt is no longer newsThe media has noticed the President’s big push to ban military looking weapons from the hands of law abiding citizens. Of course they could not find much time to report when Obama’s justice department allowed over 2000 of those same type weapons slip into the hands of Mexican drug gangs.  Some of those weapons were actually used to kill a US Border Patrol Agent. The response is more of a “Nothing to see here folks . . . . . go back to Dancing with the Stars”.

So there we have it.  Somehow, Mr. Obama missed all of this in his State of the Union. All of the above is why conservatives voted against this President. I just wonder if this is  the change his supporters voted for?