Conservatism Lives!

President Obama promised us a new era of transparency and openness in government. (He even has a page on the White House website about it here). He also promised us the “highest ethics standards ever.” (The White House even released an AP bulletin on Feb 3rd saying just that). His campaign and his inauguration were filled with enough “hope” and promises of “change” to lift the nation. So less than a month in, it seems relevant to ask the question of just how that’s been working out so far. Well, we’ve got ethical problems with administration members and cabinet nominees. We’ve got after hours last minute paybacks for campaign supporters. We’ve got blatant disregard for self imposed standards. Sounds less like hope and change and more like politics as usual to me. Where do we even begin? To make things a bit easier, let’s just do a list, shall we?

• Just three days after taking the oath of office, Obama lifted the ban on federal funding for “international groups that promote or perform abortions“. Nice to know we’re back in the business of killing unborn children overseas.
• Just nine days after taking office, Obama broke his promise that he “will not sign any non-emergency bill without giving the American public an opportunity to review and comment on the White House website for five days.”
• In a sweeping Executive Order that, among other things, order the much maligned Guatanimo Bay “prison” shut down, Obama also ordered all legal proceeding against terror suspects halted, including the trial of a man believed to be responsible for the bombing of the USS Cole.
• Nominated and successfully placed Treasury Secretary (who’s job includes running the I.R.S.) who was shown not only to have not properly paid his taxes from 2001 through 2004 to the tune of about $34,000, but who admitted to the fact that he used Turbo Tax to file said taxes. Let me remind you that this is the man who is supposed to be a financial genius and who is shaping the fiscal policy of our entire country.
• Nominated former Senate majority leader Tom Daschle for the head of health and Human Services who was revealed to have not paid over $100,000 in back taxes during his confirmation hearings. I guess for 34 large you get a pass, but for anything over a hundred Obama has to admit that he “screwed up”, and that the mistake was “serious”. I wonder how the common man with whom Obama connected so well with campaigning feels about Obama putting people in his cabinet who fail to pay taxes equal to over twice the average annual income in America?
• On Monday, Feb 9th, in an unprecedented power grab and politicization of what is supposed to be a non-partisan process, Obama ordered oversight of the U.S. Census moved from the Commerce Department directly to the White House itself. Who cares, you ask? The census results determine the make up of congressional districts as well as the make up of the Electoral College.
• Obama banned members of his administration from lobbying their former colleagues, and barred former lobbyists from working for agencies they had lobbied within the past two years in addition to requiring them them to recuse themselves from issues they had handled during that time. And then he nominated William Lynn as the deputy secretary of defense, even though he had been a lobbyist for the defense contractor Raytheon. And then he nominated William V. Corr for deputy secretary of health and human services even though Corr had previously lobbied for the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids. (Full story at the N.Y. Times here and commentary from U.S. News and World Report here).
• Obama issued an executive order on Friday, Feb 6 at approximately 4:30 PM (and updated the White House web site after 5:00) to repeal the previously issued Executive Order 13202 which prohibited union only project labor agreements on Federally funded construction projects, thereby discriminating against the 84% of construction workers that are non-union and paying back his union donors for their support.

And last but not least, the “stimulus bill”. The problems with this bill are as plentiful as the waste it contains, but more on that in a moment. President Obama has been pushing this bill hard, and using as much fear as possible to do so. In his widely publicized prime time address on Monday, he called our economic situation “the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression”. He has also said that if his stimulus bill isn’t passed, that the recession could “linger for years”, and has said in several speeches recently that without the bill “a bad situation could become dramatically worse.”

Not everyone likes what they see in this thing though, and I, for one, am glad that he’s getting some resistance. (Just today, Obama’s nominee for Commerce Secretary withdrew over his disagreement with the stimulus bill.) Let’s set aside the economic arguments about whether or not the government spending money it doesn’t have, in many instances giving it to businesses who can’t afford it (kind of like giving a mortgage to someone can’t afford it, but I digress), is a viable solution for stimulating the economy and creating jobs.

Let’s just take a look at some of the items that the Obama administration thinks are critical to “stimulate” the economy (larger list and commentary available here). These, by the way, would be some of those “little tiny, yes, porky amendments” that Democrat Chuck Schumer says you and I don’t care about. Enjoy:

• $50 million for the National Endowment for the Arts
• $380 million in the Senate bill for the Women, Infants and Children program
• $300 million for grants to combat violence against women
• $2 billion for federal child-care block grants
• $6 billion for university building projects
• $15 billion for boosting Pell Grant college scholarships
• $4 billion for job-training programs, including $1.2 billion for “youths” up to the age of 24
• $1 billion for community-development block grants
• $4.2 billion for “neighborhood stabilization activities”
• $650 million for digital-TV coupons; $90 million to educate “vulnerable populations”
• $150 million for the Smithsonian
• $34 million to renovate the Department of Commerce headquarters
• $500 million for improvement projects for National Institutes of Health facilities
• $44 million for repairs to Department of Agriculture headquarters
• $350 million for Agriculture Department computers
• $88 million to help move the Public Health Service into a new building
• $448 million for constructing a new Homeland Security Department headquarters
• $600 million to convert the federal auto fleet to hybrids
• $450 million for NASA (carve-out for “climate-research missions”)
• $600 million for NOAA (carve-out for “climate modeling”)
• $1 billion for the Census Bureau
• $36 billion for expanded unemployment benefits
• $20 billion for food stamps
• $4.5 billion for U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
• $850 million for Amtrak
• $87 million for a polar icebreaking ship
• $1.7 billion for the National Park System
• $55 million for Historic Preservation Fund
• $7.6 billion for “rural community advancement programs”
• $150 million for agricultural-commodity purchases
• $150 million for “producers of livestock, honeybees, and farm-raised fish”
• $400 million for global-warming research
• $2 billion for a “clean coal” power plant in Illinois
• $6.2 billion for the Weatherization Assistance Program
• $3.5 billion for energy-efficiency and conservation block grants
• $3.4 billion for the State Energy Program
• $200 million for state and local electric-transport projects
• $300 million for energy-efficient-appliance rebate programs
• $400 million for hybrid cars for state and local governments
• $1 billion for the manufacturing of advanced batteries
• $1.5 billion for green-technology loan guarantees
• $8 billion for innovative-technology loan-guarantee program
• $2.4 billion for carbon-capture demonstration projects
• $4.5 billion for electricity grid