"Notes and Quotes"

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Tuesday, March 10, 2009

An Open Letter to President Obama - # 4

An Open Letter to President Obama - # 4



Hello again Mr. President,


Sorry these letters have become monologues instead of dialogues but that is what happens when only one side is willing to partake in the discussion. If you ever really want to respond, perhaps it will help to read the previous three letters I wrote to you. Following are those links for your convenience:

Link for Letter #1 , Link for Letter #2 , Link for Letter #3


Mr. President, you have the most difficult job in the world. But no matter how big the job, all successful executives do one thing well. They set priorities. You simply cannot do everything at once. Even if you could, doing things in order saves an incredible amount of duplication and waste.


I hope today we can establish just three priorities upon which most Americans would agree. Yes, a case could be made for one or two other major items which might be included, but for discussion purpose let us start with just these three.


First: National Security


Nothing matters if we lose our sovereignty. Period. You can talk all day long about education, taxes, a college football playoff system, stem cell research, what kind of first dog you want for the kids, home foreclosures, whether or not Rush Limbaugh is the head of the Republican party, healthcare, providing additional funding to ACORN to further subvert our election process, immigration, well you get the idea. The point is, if we lose our way and become a second class power none of the other worthwhile programs will have any meaning or effect. If you accept the premise that in any group (people or countries) one is always the leader and there is always a pecking order from strongest to weakest, then all things being equal (and they never are) I prefer that the US be that leader.


I would argue that national security is the first, second, third, fourth, and fifth priority. Can we at least agree that it is your number one job as President of the United States to keep us safe from all threats foreign and domestic? Good. Now we are getting somewhere. Ben Johnson in FrontPage magazine said it perfectly.


"It appears he (President Obama) views the defense budget as a nest egg to be raided for "investment." He has promised cuts in Defense -- and that is one pledge we may rest assured he will keep. He similarly promised to "reform our defense budget so that we're not paying for Cold War-era weapons systems we don't use." Of course, we use hardly any of them. That's the point of having a deterrent force, another shibboleth of the Left. The primary American value is the preservation and continuance of the United States of America. If American values conflict with the well-being of her citizens and elevate the legal rights of its attackers to such a level that it inhibits anti-terrorism measures, then those values make us neither safer nor stronger but more susceptible."


In previous letters I touched on many other national security issues so let us get to some other priorities.


Second: Jobs


Once we are secure and free, the next most important priority in the US is jobs. It is not the governments function to provide jobs, it is the governments function to create an environment conducive to job growth. Through effective tax policy and regulation we should have the most job friendly economy in the world. We have the work force, technology, and skills to achieve virtually zero unemployment.


Almost without exception we shoot ourselves in the foot time and again when we lose jobs to other countries. Whether it be through government supported union inflexibility, or one of the highest corporate tax rates in the world, or intrusive government regulations, or minimum wage laws, which effectively choke off entry level positions normally used to train the workforce for the next level of responsibility, we find the US taking a back seat to our trading partners. We have lost our manufacturing base and I believe your second priority is to develop programs to get it back.


We need jobs. What is the point of discussing Social Security, education, clean energy, healthcare, etc, if we do not have jobs on which we pay taxes, so the these programs can be funded?


You recently said, "The high cost of health care has weighted down our economy and our conscience long enough. So let there be no doubt -- health care reform cannot wait, it must not wait, and it will not wait another year".


Sir, with all due respect what is weighing down our economy is the loss of jobs and the tax base those jobs produce. We have the finest healthcare system in the world. Perfect, NO... but miles ahead of any other. There is not a successful model of government run healthcare anywhere. Why not try the free market solutions first before condemning our system to the trash heap of other failed government programs.


Free small business to create jobs and you will be well on your way to fixing many of the social problems we face.


Third: A Sensible Energy Policy


I emphasize sensible because I believe you have veered off the path of sensible onto the "yellow brick road" of wishin' and hopin'. A large majority of Americans place energy independence near the top of their priority list. It is with good reason, because a sound energy policy strongly supports both national security and jobs.


The less we depend on foreign governments for our energy the more self sufficient we are. Anytime we depend on others for our energy needs, we run the risk (especially in times of war or emergency) of severe shortages. The more we use our own resources such as oil, clean coal, natural gas, oil shale and tar sands (all of which we have in abundant supply) the more our jobs and dollars stay in the US. How many jobs could we create if we built ten more oil refineries and/or nuclear power plants? How many jobs could we create if we drilled for oil both on and off shore, and utilized our more than ample supply of oil shale and tar sands? You cannot export this kind of job.


Do not misunderstand, I support your plan to develop green technologies for the future. It is a good and desirable goal. It is just that now, today, these unproven technologies simply cannot provide the quantity of energy we need to exist in any serious degree. To make matters worse, it seems you refuse to acknowledge that a large portion of the scientific community dispute the theory of man made global warming. It is the height of irresponsibility to spend billions upon billions of dollars to solve a problem until we understand it and can define it properly. Pat Sajak asked a very sobering question:


"What is the perfect temperature"? "If we are to embark on a lifestyle-altering quest to lower the temperature (or at least minimize its rise), what is our goal? I don’t ask this flippantly. Can we demonstrate that one setting on the global thermostat is preferable over another? If so, what is it, and how do we get there? And, once there, how do we maintain it? Will we ever have to “heat things up” again if it drops below that point?"


Mr. President, the science is not settled. The debate is still open, whether or not you agree. Your "cap and trade" program is a huge tax on the very people you promise will suffer no tax increase. A year ago, you said, “Under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket.” Think of "cap-and-trade" as a price-protection racket for inefficient technologies. You cannot un-break this egg. Please slow down on this one. It will be better for all to err on the side of national security and jobs rather than "pie in the sky" technologies that, while worthwhile, are clearly a generation away from reality.


Please remember our nation's priorities. There is time to attempt to solve all the other problems later. If you do not attend to our priorities now, none of the other goals will be important anyway.





Respectfully,




Steve Mishket

stevemishket@comcast.net

03/10/09


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"Notes and Quotes" Archive

  • **“Nothing can destroy a government more quickly than its failure to observe its own laws, or worse, its disregard of the charter of its own existence.” – Justice Tom C. Clark (1899-1977) US Attorney General, 1945-1949
  • **"If the Constitution no longer matters, then the federal government no longer exists. The same document that restricts the federal government is also the document that created them and gives them their authority. Either it is in effect, or it is not." Gary Henderson
  • **"The hottest places in Hell are reserved for those who, in the time of moral crisis, maintain their neutrality." Dante
  • **“When anyone gets something for nothing, someone else gets nothing for something.” -Anonymous
  • ** "My desire to be well-informed is currently at odds with my desire to remain sane" Author unknown
  • ** “There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.” — Peter F. Drucker
  • ** “If getting employer benefits without paying union dues is BAD, why is getting government benefits without paying taxes GOOD?”
  • ** “It's not that ‘the rich’ aren't paying their ‘fair share,’ it's that America isn't. A majority of the electorate has voted itself a size of government it's not willing to pay for.” - Mark Steyn
  • ** "One of the penalties of not participating in politics is that you will be governed by your inferiors." ~ Plato
  • **"Fathom the hypocrisy of a Government that requires every citizen to prove they are insured...but not everyone must prove they are a citizen."
  • **If it matters, measure it: How do you know how much you’ve slipped or improved in an area unless you measure it? How do you take something “to the next level” if you don’t know what level you’re already at? How do you set concrete goals without a sense of where you are and where you want to go? If the success of your venture depends on it, you need to find a way to measure it.
  • **The man who doesn't read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them. - Mark Twain
  • **Political correctness is an approved form of censorship.  Based on emotional appeals at the expense of reason, political correctness mandates that inconvenient truths or facts be swept under the carpet.  Or else. Free speech, guaranteed to all Americans under the First Amendment, is on its way to becoming moot.  The political, media, and intellectual elites who control the terms of national debate and the rules of civil society have succeeded in censoring opposing views, limiting debate, and demonizing dissent.  Perception is on its way to becoming our new reality. Nancy Morgan
  • **Ronald Reagan once defined an economist as somebody who sees something working in real life and wondering if it will work in theory.
  • **"Fathom the odd hypocrisy that Obama wants every citizen to prove they are insured, but they don't have to prove they are citizens." ~ Ben Stein
  • **“America is the greatest, freest and most decent society in existence. It is an oasis of goodness in a desert of cynicism and barbarism. This country, once an experiment unique in the world, is now the last best hope for the world.”--Dinesh D'Souza
  • **No politician has any business talking about tax increases until ObamaCare is repealed. It’s the most comprehensively failed legislation of the modern era. Like a taxi that runs on plutonium, it’s costing us a fortune, and making us sick, even while it’s sitting there and doing nothing. Sold with fanciful promises and fraudulent cost estimates, it’s another expensive scheme to buy votes with taxpayer money, ending with a planned crisis the government will be only too happy to step in and “solve” by seizing even more of our wealth and liberty. Its passage stymied serious attempts at real improvements to our health-care system, including tort reform and allowing the interstate sale of insurance plans to increase competition. As with so many other delusional Big Government programs, the opportunity cost of passing ObamaCare, and passing up on reasonable plans that enhance individual liberty, rivals its staggering price tag. We’ll come trillions closer to a balanced budget by shredding it. -- Dr. Zero
  • **'If the Arabs put down their weapons today, there would be no more violence. If the Jews put down their weapons today, there would be no more Israel' -- Benjamin Netanyahu
  • ** This is almost unbelievable. Barack Obama is more concerned about Jews building homes in Jerusalem than about Iran building a nuclear weapon. --Ben Stein
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  • ** The banking crisis wasn't caused by a lack of regulation. It was caused by regulation that pushed banks to make bad loans. --John Hawkins
  • ** An ideal Federal government in our country wouldn't take much from you, do much for you, or get in your way . --John Hawkins
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  • **You can lead a man to Congress, but you can’t make him think. -- Milton Berle
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  • **The man who loves other countries as much as his own stands on a level with the man who loves other women as much as he loves his own wife. -- Teddy Roosevelt
  • **The prudent capitalist will never adventure his capital... if there exists a state of uncertainty as to whether the Government will repeal tomorrow what it has enacted today. -- William Henry Harrison
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  • **Since torture doesn’t work but waterboarding did work on KSM, doesn’t that prove that waterboarding isn’t torture?
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  • **John Maynard Keynes, responded to a challenge about his changing views, saying, “When the facts change, I change my opinion. What do you do, sir?”