The Year of Hope & Change

It has been a year since President Obama took the oath of office. This was to be a historic presidency; not just in the terms of a black man achieving the highest office in the land, but the bringing in of “Hope & Change”.

As promised, one of the first deeds was to sign an order closing the prison at Gitmo; a task that Obama has found to be more difficult to accomplish than originally thought. The eventual plan announced was to move the detainees to a supermax prison in Illinois. Why this administration feels that simply moving them is a solution is beyond me.


We then move onto the stimulus package that promised to keep unemployment below 8%, while it now hovers at ten percent. The money is supposed to be tracked and recorded on a website that can be accessed by all Americans. The website itself was not only very expensive to set up and maintain and it is often filled with erroneous information, such as zip codes that don’t exist. In some cases, we have paid more than $250,000 per job. The Los Angeles Times reported that teacher positions that were never in danger of being lost were counted as saved jobs.


The President hammered home the point of how he was going to change the way business was done in Washington. A new era of transparency was going to descend upon Washington. What we have actually seen is tax evaders elevated to cabinet level positions; ironically enough in charge of the IRS. We have seen such nonsense as “ethics waiver”. A government employee is excused from ethical behavior, what a concept. Change I can believe in.

Healthcare reform was ramped up in a big way this year. The campaigner Senator Obama railed on Senator McCain’s plan of taxing “Cadillac plans” then supports the exact same position as president. Unless of course, if you are a card carrying union member; a favored constituency of the Democratic Party. Senator Obama promised us the healthcare debates on C-Span, not once but on eight different occasions. President Obama has made deals behind closed doors with the likes of union officials, big pharma, and others. The debate was then turned over to the far left of his party, who continued the closed door deals such as the “cornhusker kickback”, the “Second Louisiana Purchase” and other deals for Michigan, Vermont, and Connecticut. The promise of the most transparent administration in history has certainly gone by the wayside, arrogantly ignoring the dissatisfaction of the public.


The Obama administration sweeps into town with his Chicago cronies in tow, and requests that the White House become more welcoming. In the past year, at least five different people have had unauthorized access to the President; a danger to our democracy. This is the business of every American.


A justice department that has continued the Bush administration’s trampling of our constitution. The Bush administration stepped outside the bounds on issues of national security. This administration has shown quite clearly their disdain for our laws against voter intimidation by dropping charges against The New Black Panther Party. On Election Day they clearly used tactics that were meant to intimidate voters, they went as far to call black republican poll watchers race traitors as they left the polling place. I don’t think the justice department would have looked as kindly on a white man wearing a sheet saying the same words. Senator Obama proudly displayed the endorsement of NBPP on his website during the run up to his election. The House of Representatives have been complicent in this effort as just last week they refused to move forward with an inquiry to further investigate why these charges were not pursued. Sadly this only one example of how the Holder justice department is either ignoring or just flat out changing the laws in the mane of racial equality. If a crime is swept under the rug due to color it is an insult to all Americans, regardless of color.


I will be remiss here if “fairness” is not broached. We have not seen much fairness if a union member gets a tax break that a non union member does not. There is no fairness in a tax code that is based on union membership. We don’t have fairness when an excessive tax is levied on bank employees but not an employee of General Motors. Lower level employees that worked in departments that had nothing to do with the financial mess will be forced to pay these excessive taxes just to have a populist boogey man.


We do not have fairness if Wall Street is forced to take all the blame for the financial crisis. The justice department has been investigating cases of fraud since the meltdown has happened. During this time 826 suspects have been charged; only two are connected to Wall Street. We do not hear about the role of such businesses as Countrywide Financial and the government entity Sallie and Freddie, as they have clear lines to Chris Dodd and Barney Frank among others.


The poll numbers have been dropping not only on Obama, but the democrats in general. The people elected a man who promised us transparency as well as “hope & change”. Well, it is transparent that the Hope & Change has been nothing but hype. Isn’t it ironic that his first year ends with Massachusetts sending a republican to the senate to fill the open seat left by the death of Ted Kennedy?