Obama on Economy: Oblivious? Delusional? Lying?

On Oct. 2, President Obama told an audience at Northwestern University, "It is indisputable that our economy is stronger today than when I took office. ... By every economic measure, we are better off now than when I took office."

Sadly, that statement is demonstrably false. And unless the president is oblivious to inconvenient economic facts or delusional, it is a demonstrable lie.

In the movie, "Truman," President Truman utters the line, "I'm just the man holding this office. If I dirty it, the dirt doesn't leave with me when I go, it stays here to rub off on whoever comes after me from now on." The line may be pure Hollywood, but that doesn't make it any less true.

It is not "indisputable" that the American economy is "stronger today than when he took office." Below are facts from non-partisan sources which clearly indicate that what the president told the American people is far less than the whole truth.

1. In January 2008, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the labor force participation rate was 66.2 percent. In 2014, rather than improving, that rate declined to 62.8 percent.

2. In 2008, 28 million individuals receiving food stamps (annually); in 2014 the number has increased to 47 million.

3. In 2007, according to the Census Bureau publication "Income and Poverty in the U.S: 2013," the median income in the U.S. (50th percentile) was $51,939. This is a decline from 2007, when the median income was $56,436.

4. The Real Median Household income for Asians dropped from $72,000 in 2008 to $67,000 in 2013. For whites, it dropped from $61,000 in 2008 to $58,000 in 2013. For Hispanics, from $42,000 in 2008 to $41,000 in 2013. For blacks it dropped from $38,000 in 2008 to $34.5 in 2013, according to the Census Bureau publication "Income and Poverty in the U.S: 2013."

5. According to the same report, the "number in poverty" rose form 35 million in 2008, to 45.3 million in 2013.

6. According to the same report, the Annual Average Consumer Price Index for 2008 was 316.2. It increased to 342.1 in 2013. That represents a 7.6 percent decline in household purchasing power.

7. In 2008, 11.8 percent of families had total income under $15,000; in 2013, 12.7 percent. In 2008, 12.6 percent of families had incomes between $50K and $75K; in 2013, 11.9 percent of families. In 2008, 12.6 percent of families had income between $75K and $100K; in 2013, 11.9 percent. In 2008, $13.3 percent of families had income between $100K and $150K; in 2013, 12.4 percent.

8. The Department of Labor publishes statistics showing full-time vs. part-time employment, for persons aged 16 and over; 35 hours or more is considered "full time." The focus is on "total hours worked." Full-time status may result from multiple part-time jobs.

a. Of those employed age 16 and over, 83 percent had full-time employment in 2008; 81.3 percent in 2014. In 2008, 17 percent of workers had part-time employment; in 2014, the number has risen to 18.6 percent.

b. The Employment Cumulative Changes since 2007 shows full-time employment (ages 25-54) has decreased by 5 percent. Part-time employment has increased 0.4 percent (advisorperspectives.com/dshort/commentaries/Full-Time-vs-Part-Time-Employment.php).
Unless Mr. Obama is oblivious to inconvenient economic facts or delusional, there is only one reason why a president would say, "It is indisputable that our economy is stronger today than when I took office."

He wants to keep his party in power and he is willing to lie to achieve his goal. The Watergate plumbers did what they did to insure President Nixon's re-election. We impeached President Nixon because he lied to cover-up what had been done. I consider President Truman the greatest president of my lifetime (I was too young to know FDR) precisely because he refused to lie. Here's something President Truman actually did say:

"The fundamental basis of this nation's laws was given to Moses on the Mount. ... If we don't have a proper fundamental moral background, we will finally end up with a totalitarian government which does not believe in rights for anybody except the State."

It is one thing for the government to mislead our enemies. It is another thing for the government to mislead the American people for partisan advantage. If we can't believe the president when he talks about how the economy has improved during his tenure in office, how can we believe him when he tells us what we need to do to destroy the Islamic State (ISIS), to protect the homeland from terrorism and Ebola?


Posted Online:  Oct. 10, 2014, 11:00 pm - Quad-Cities Online
by John Donald O'Shea

Copyright 2014
John Donald O'Shea

Should Americans Go to Jail for Lying?

On June 28, 2012, in U.S. v Alvarez, the United States Supreme Court decided what was, in my humble opinion, among the most important of all the First Amendment Cases it has ever decided.

Alvarez, the defendant, had introduced himself, after being elected to a Water District Board as follows: "I'm a retired marine of 25 years.... (I)n 1987, I was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor."

Alvarez's medal claim was false. He was prosecuted under a law which provides "Whoever falsely represents himself or herself, verbally or in writing, to have been awarded any decoration or medal authorized by Congress for the Armed Forces of the United States ... shall be fined."

The press correctly reported the reversal of Alvarez's conviction, but failed to warn the American people what the Obama administration had argued to sustain the conviction. Had the court accepted the administration's position, the administration would have been handed the tool it needed to shut down and destroy Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, the tea party and any other American it believed to be lying. Had the administration prevailed, it would have been in position to criminalize telling any simple lie.

The Obama administration, in the words of the court, cited to the court "language from some of this Court's precedents to support its contention that false statements have no value and hence no First Amendment protection."

The court added, "In those decisions the falsity of the speech at issue was not irrelevant to our analysis, but neither was it determinative. The Court has never endorsed the categorical rule the Government advances: that false statements receive no First Amendment protection."

The government then set out three examples of "false speech" being regulated.

-- False statements made to a government official

-- Perjury

-- False representation that one is speaking on behalf of the government

The court considered and rejected the government's notion that there should be a "new category of unprotected speech," pointing out that in all the examples given by the government, more was involved than a simple false statement. "These restrictions, however, do not establish a principle that all proscriptions of false statements are exempt from exacting First Amendment scrutiny. ... Perjury, for example, undermines the function and province of the law and threatens the integrity of judgments that are the basis of the legal system. ...

"The Government has not demonstrated that false statements generally should constitute a new category of unprotected speech on this basis."

The court set out the logical consequences of the government's position.

"Here the lie was made in a public meeting, but the statute would apply with equal force to personal, whispered conversations within a home. The statute seeks to control and suppress all false statements on this one subject in almost limitless times and settings. And it does so entirely without regard to whether the lie was made for the purpose of material gain.

"Were the Court to hold that the interest in truthful discourse alone is sufficient to sustain a ban on speech, absent any evidence that the speech was used to gain a material advantage, it would give government a broad censorial power unprecedented in this Court's cases or in our constitutional tradition."

Finally, the Court put the kibosh on the administration's reach to limit the right of American's to engage in free speech.

"Although the objectives the Government seeks to further by the statute are not without significance, the Court must, and now does, find the Act does not satisfy exacting scrutiny. ...

"To recite the Government's compelling interests is not to end the matter. The First Amendment requires that the Government's chosen restriction on the speech at issue be 'actually necessary' to achieve its interest.

"The Government has not shown, and cannot show, why counter speech (refutation) would not suffice to achieve its interest. ...

"Once the lie was made public, (Alvarez) was ridiculed online, ... his actions were reported in the press, ... and a fellow board member called for his resignation. ...

"The remedy for speech that is false is speech that is true. This is the ordinary course in a free society. ...

"Freedom of speech and thought flows not from the beneficence of the state but from the inalienable rights of the person."

The Justice Department lawyers who advanced the arguments before the Supreme Court were trained lawyers. It is inconceivable to me that they did not understand that if they could put Alvarez in jail for telling a simple lie, they could use the power of the FCC to silence Limbaugh, Fox News, and all others who disagreed with the policy positions of the Obama administration. Had the court acceded to the administration's position, upon a simple majority vote of Congress, the hated Alien and Sedition Act of 1798 could once again have been made law, and the First Amendment rendered a dead letter.

And who would have had power to decide if a lie had been told? The government, of course!

Posted Online:  Feb. 02, 2014, 12:00 am - Quad-Cities Online
by John Donald O'Shea

Copyright 2014
John Donald O'Shea

'Means' and 'Ends': Whither Goest America?

Why is compromise in Washington no longer possible? Consider this: There are at play in America two diametrically opposed systems of morality.

The Catholic Church traditionally has taught that the morality of human acts depends on the "goodness" of (a) the object chosen, (b) the intention and (c) the circumstances. It holds that neither the "goodness" of the object nor the intention (for example, helping one's neighbor) justifies using means that are evil, such as lying, demonizing your neighbor or stealing. The church teaches that "the end does not justify the means," and that "one may not do evil so that good may result from it."

The opposing system, which is perhaps best described by Saul Alinsky, teaches that if the "end" is good, the morality of the "means" chosen to achieve that end is not a matter worthy of consideration. All that matters is that the means chosen will work.

In his book, Rules for Radicals, Alinsky devotes his second chapter to a discussion of means and ends. He writes:

"The second rule of the ethics of 'means and ends' is that the judgment of the ethics of 'means' is dependent upon the political position of those sitting in judgment. If you actively opposed the Nazi occupation and joined the underground Resistance, then you adopted the means of assassination, terror, property destruction, the bombing of tunnels and trains, kidnapping, and the willingness to sacrifice innocent hostages to the end of defeating the Nazis.Those who opposed the Nazi conquerors regarded the Resistance as a secret army of selfless, patriotic idealists, courageous beyond expectation and willing to sacrifice their lives to their moral convictions. To the occupation authorities, however, these people were lawless terrorists, murderers, saboteurs, assassins, who believed that the end justified the means, and were utterly unethical according to the mystical rules of war. Any foreign occupation would so ethically judge its opposition. However, in such conflict, neither protagonist is concerned with any value except victory. It is life or death."

Alinsky would no doubt see universal health care as a matter of "life and death." As such, he would place the "have nots" in the shoes of the Resistance, fighting the Nazi occupation, and those who oppose universal health care, in the shoes of the Nazi occupiers. For that reason, an Alinsky-ite would ask only what means he would work? Fair and truthful political argument? Lying? Demonizing your opponents? Destroying his reputation? Calling him a racist? Bribing reluctant supporters? Punishing political opponents?

Alinsky has written, "Life and how you live it is the story of means and ends. The 'end' is what you want, and the 'means' is how you get it. Whenever we think about social change, the question of means and ends arises. The man of action views the issue of means and ends in pragmatic and strategic terms. He has no other problem; he thinks only of his actual resources and the possibilities of various choices of action. He asks of ends only whether they are achievable and worth the cost; of means, only whether they will work. To say that corrupt means corrupt the ends is to believe in the immaculate conception of ends and principles. The real arena is corrupt and bloody. ... he who fears corruption fears life."

Once the Alinsky-ite decides that the end is achievable, and worth the cost, his only other question is whether the means chosen will work. Therefore if lies will work, lying is a permissible means. If destroying your opponents reputation will work, that is permissible. And, at the extreme, if assassinating your opponent works, do it! And if by controlling the press you can stifle all outcry, that too is an acceptable means.

For the Alinsky-ite, the individual cannot stand the way of the good of the masses: "The practical revolutionary will understand Goethe's 'conscience is the virtue of observers and not of agents of action;' in action, one does not always enjoy the luxury of a decision that is consistent both with one's individual conscience and the good of mankind. The choice must always be for the latter. Action is for mass salvation and not for the individual's personal salvation. He who sacrifices the mass good for his personal conscience has a peculiar conception of 'personal salvation'; he doesn't care enough for people to be 'corrupted' for them."

The church teaches otherwise: "Social justice can be obtained only in respecting the transcendent dignity of man. The person represents the ultimate end of society, which is ordered to him. Respect for the human person entails respect for the rights that flow from his dignity as a creature.These rights are prior to society and must be recognized by it. They are the basis of the moral legitimacy of every authority: by flouting them, or refusing to recognize them in its positive legislation, a society undermines its own moral legitimacy. If it does not respect them, authority can rely only on force or violence to obtain obedience from its subjects."

The great problem, of course, with Alinsky's view of ends and means is that if you and your friends can assassinate me (politically or actually) to achieve political or economic mass good, then why can't I and my friends employ like means against you to achieve our notions of mass good? What sort of society do you have when everybody and every political faction lies, bribes and blackmails in support of what they believe to be "social justice?"

Alinsky's equating the struggle between the "have-nots" and the "haves" to war and Nazi occupation turns civilian life into war. But war is the absence of morality and the rule of law. "War is Hell." Is that what we want for ourselves and our children?

So, why is compromise becoming impossible in Washington? How do you compromise when the other side lies about you and the issues? Who vilifies and demonizes you? Who calls you a racist?

Alinsky's notion that the individual and his conscience must be sacrificed for the mass good scares the hell out of me. His paradise looks too much like a new and unimproved version of Stalin's USSR, or Hitler's Germany. If the government -- on behalf of the masses -- determines that the ends are achievable and worth the cost, what prevents the despoilment, destruction or enslavement of the minority "haves?"


John Donald O'Shea of Moline is a retired circuit court judge.


Posted Online: Dec. 05, 2013, 12:00 am - Quad-Cities Online
by John Donald O'Shea

Copyright 2013
John Donald O'Shea