Fraud?

Mr. Dennis L. Young of Victoria, wrote a letter to our editor titled “ Federal government is defrauding America.”He claims that Congress and the executive branch has perpetrated the biggest fraud in the history of the world. That’s an awful large task considering all the failed governments throughout the history of the world.

According to Dictionary.Com, fraud consists of “deceit, trickery, sharp practice, or breach of confidence, perpetrated for profit or to gain some unfair or dishonest advantage.” It is my opinion that politics as usual doesn’t ordinarily lead to fraud.

I never had to wonder why we haven’t had a Federal budget for four years because I’ve kept up with the partisan food fights that leave no room to compromise.

There’s no question that by law Congress is required to produce a budget every year which goes through 12 calendar months that begins and ends on September 30. Technically, a budget is just an “omnibus spending bill” where thousands of printed pages show where the allocated money is supposed to go. That requirement can be met with “Continuing Resolutions” to keep the government going because there’s no penalty when Congress fails to produce a budget. In between, Congress needs to pass the debt ceiling which tells our creditors that we will meet our obligations. There are checks and balances throughout the complex process.

The fact Mr. Young can quote figures that we supposedly gave to the executive branch only prove that everything was above board; transparency works. How ironic, Mr. Young was not outraged when two wars and seven trillion dollar Medicare drug bill were passed without going through the regular budget process.

Mr. Young failed to mention the private sector fraud of Wall Street and the predatory subprime mortgage lenders that took eight trillion dollars out of our economy. That action led to layoffs, bankruptcies, and hardships for people all over the world.

The stimulus package was not large enough considering that eight trillion dollars of capital was removed and Congress only approved close to one trillion dollars to prop up the private sector. The stimulus package kept a floor on the amount of suffering people had to endure by supplying state's money to retain teachers, firefighters, and policemen and maintain the social programs.

On March 23, 2013, the Senate passed their budget, but I don’t know why it was not sent to be reconciled with the budget that the House of Representatives passed. It doesn’t have the 60 votes, but budget matters do not need the 60 votes. I’m not all that worried about a budget being passed because a grand bargain can supersede a normal budget process. For example, if a man and his wife can agree on what major expenditures take priority, then the home budget is much simpler to balance.

Our economy is steadily recovering, despite the strain put on it with the sequester cuts. The U.S. economy added 169,000 jobs in August, and the unemployment rate dropped to 7.3%. Our export deficit is holding us back because other countries are doing much worse than we are. They are exporting their goods at a much cheaper price in order to survive.

For the record, using the executive branch rather than President Obama as perpetrators of fraud did not fool me one bit. Republicans need to take a couple of extra strength Tylenols every four hours and chill out. Regardless of the baseless claims,the want to secede from the union or suddenly becoming pacifists,President Obama will serve out the rest of his term and ACA will still be the law of the land.

IT'S A MATTER OF INTERPRETATION

This morning I heard an argument from Joe Scarborough that's at the core of disagreements between the supporters of President Obama and those who hate everything he stands for. 

Joe started out by rolling  out his preconceived arguments that Obama is a weak out -of-place president who is now making us look foolish worldwide. There's no argument that Joe's perception may  be correct right now because a lot of people are hearing that message.  Howard Dean landed a powerful blow to Joe's theory when he called  it " phony Washington hooey. " And those remarks coming from Dean ,at 6:00 AM, really pissed off  the blowhard, Joe Scarborough.

The issue was the remark that Obama made in Stockholm yesterday, when he said that his credibility was not on the line,the credibility of the international community and that of Congress was on the line. 

Understanding liberals or even the wiliness to do so ,has  never been a priority for conservatives ,who think they control the normal train of thought. People like Joe Scarborough likes a man of few words who can make an instant decision and stick to it ;even if he's wrong. They put a lot of emphasis on the spoken word as they literally interpret it. Joe Scarborough thought that President Obama was shifting blame for his red line comment but he was not. President Obama is willing to back up his "red line" remark with limited military strikes, but he's not willing to give the international community or Congress a pass for their  unwillingness to enforce  the ban on the use of chemical weapons resolution of 1972,because it has been ratified several times. We didn't do anything when Saddam Hussein used chemical weapons against his own people and approved it when the dictator used it against Iran. If we're aren't serious   as many nations clearly are not,or if we want to selectively enforce the ban on the use of chemical weapons,then we should amend the resolution.

I believe the other 187 nations who approved the ban of the use of chemical weapons don't have the moral courage of their convictions like our country does.   Yes,our country's credibility was severally damaged 10 years ago and the other countries have a right to be skeptical. Having said that,they have the same intelligence we do, "that was then and this is now." It's easy to sit on the back bench and yell "Iraq all over agin."  

President Obama,Secretary Kerry and Hagel  are not war mongers,no matter how you slice it. Each have expressed their displeasure of war,but  answering an obvious violation on the use of chemical weapons crosses a line that they can't consciously ignore.

President Obama didn't ignore the other four uses of sarin gas by Assad;he didn't have enough evidence to lay the blame on the current regime.

Joe Scarborough keeps faulting President Obama for saying "Assad must go" and then  he remains in power. In due time Joe,we have a deliberate president not a "shoot from the hip" cowboy. 

Marco Rubio will vote against the resolution because it will help him with his anti-Obama theme in his 2016 presidential run.  The senator says the action is "too little, too late" because he thinks the administration should have taken action two years ago in supporting a pro-American rebel uprising. That's laughable,the president will have a hard time getting the votes for a limited two days of strikes and all of a sudden Rubio thinks the GOP would have supported Obama in arming the rebels. Oh,I've heard the call for action by the GOP but that was prior to voting for such action. Other reason the conservatives are angry with the president;he makes them put their money where their mouth is.

Several leading liberals in Congress and in the media are dead set against an intervention in Syria. People like Charlie Rangel,Ed Schultz,Chris Hayes and Chris Matthews disagree with President Obama and his reason for limited strikes. In fact national polls show that Americans do not support striking Syria. It's funny how the memories of 9/11 are beginning to fade but the memory of Iraq is still there.