Wednesday, May 21, 2008

The Keystone Cop President and His Cabinet

The Keystone Cop President and His Cabinet, also known as How to Turn the American Dream into the American Nightmare in Less Than Eight Years

A barrel of oil reached $131 per barrel today. The service tech for my home heating oil burner said he expects fuel oil to reach $5 per gallon this coming heating season. Because of high fuel costs revenue on the NJ Turnpike, a toll road dropped and will need to raise tolls in order to pay off its bonds. The airline industry has been hit with billions of dollars of additional fuel costs just in the past few weeks with rising oil prices and are in bad shape. Rents are rising to force tenants to help pay for energy to heat their apartments. Truckers are being hurt with high deisel prices raising their rates where they can and raising all prices on store shelves. Large food price increases are outrageous. Public transportation will require fare increases in order to pay for high energy costs and reluctant state and federal authorities to subsidize them. Unemployment is rising. Some businesses are going out of business because they cannot afford the high energy prices. Consumers are cutting back on general merchandise in order to pay for high energy costs and high cost food. Mortgage lenders ripped off the American public with funny loan packages and no documentation which caused severe writeoffs on the paper, diminished the availablility of current loans, and almost brought the American money market to a severe decline. And there is no sign that any improvement is coming anytime soon.

Our President and his Cabinet are the executives and suppposed to be the leaders of our country. Below are the 20 executive positions in George Bush Junior's casbinet level team.
The Cabinet includes the Vice President and the heads of 15 executive departments-the Secretaries of Agriculture, Commerce, Defense, Education, Energy, Health and Human Services, Homeland Security, Housing and Urban Development, Interior, Labor, State, Transportation, Treasury, and Veterans Affairs, and the Attorney General. Under President George W. Bush, Cabinet-level rank also has been accorded to the Administrator, Environmental Protection Agency; Director, Office of Management and Budget; the Director, National Drug Control Policy; and the U.S. Trade Representative.

They all deserve a grade of zero for what they have done and what they did not do. Basically, if they did not have bad luck they would not have any luck at all. Leaders are supposed to lead, but these people are like ostriches with their heads in the sand. If they were funny they would be like the old Keystone Cops in the old movies. They spent almost 8 years ruining America. They did a real good job destroying American labor. They are removing millions of families from the American middle class and preventing as many from reaching it. There is no empathy from them or their fellow republicans and democrats in Congress. They are turning the American Dream to the American Nightmare.

George Bush, Junior should be know as Bloody Bush, had to start a war in Iraq instead of listening or following his father's direction to stay out of there. And he and his cabinet bungled it every way they could. Tens of thousand of America's best have been maimed and thousands have died there and there is no solution yet in sight except to get the troops out of there. He also had penchant for blood as governor sending many convicts to death.

We saw energy prices increasing for years while Bush killed the California electric car. The current energy act seems to give billions more to the already extremely high profit oil companies. The major oil companies seem to act in their own interest not in America's. There should be an American energy plan that will solve today's problems but there is none. Tears came to my eyes when I recently saw the President in Saudi Arabia and the announcer said he asked the Saudis to open their oil fawcets more to help lower prices. The solution is not more foreign oil to solve the foreign oil problem. I knew they would say no. I would not have asked for something that would be refused or that they did not have the ability to do it. What kind of advice is he getting?

Why are we converting 30% of so of our corn and soybean crop to fuel without a plan to open up millions of additional acres to growing corn and soybeans? Where is our food plan? With Bush trade policies American farmers are suffering due to unfair trade practices allowing imports of honey and juices and other products into America. With high food prices, the current food stamp program provides much less food than the system did ten years ago and must be increased for the hungry. It is nice to have many food products year round instead of only seasonally but our farmers are competing with food all around the world. There is no signs to let people know what countries the food is coming from. Some imports have killed our pets and others had contaminated toothpaste reaching America. There is a lack of inspection of these products.

Where is America's transportation plan? The auto industry is still trying to reach CAFE standards set 40 years ago during the Carter Administration.

Education is totally incompetent. Our grammar and secondary students are being outpaced by students overseas. College is not affordable for most people. The debt incurred by those attending college is excessive. Students are avoiding much needed skill categories in America such as math, engineering, computer science, and others because they see these jobs outsourced overseas.

Bush's department of labor supports the outsourcing of millions of american jobs overseas, tens of millions of illegal aliens working in america, and the enablement of hundreds of thousands of H1B temporary alien workers replacing American citizen workers on the job in America. How can that be justified. She enabled the lowering of wages and benefits for American citizens remaining on the job. She does not support a decent minimum wage for low paid american workers. Therefore she supports the decline of the American middle class and to make it more difficult for others to reach it.

The veterans are being cheated from their promised benefits.

Where was the Treasury and the Fed before the current crises evolved, sleeping? I do not think monetary policy will minimize inflation when they decide to face it. I think the recession will linger for many years.

Health insurance and prescriptions are too expensive. Too many do not have good health insurance. One week in a hospital can be charged as much as $90,000 or more. Most bancruptcies are caused by high medical bills. Too many businesses in America depend on Medicaid for their employee health. American citizens are refused care because illegal aliens registered in clinics first and there is no additional budget for others. America's hospitals are closing due to lack of payments for charity care of illegal aliens, jeopardising life.

Justice and Homeland Security ignore tens of millions of illegal aliens that should be deported and their employers charged with hiring illegal aliens. They are still botching recovery of new Orleans.

There has been no improvement in the drug problem during the last 7 years. I would not be surprised that there are more drugs on the street today.

Continuing energy and food increases will cause severe economic consequences probably worse than the effect of the depression. Why don't the economists, play what-if oil went to $100 per barrel and an ear of fresh corn went to a dollar, or lowest airfares doubled, or rents doubled? What would it be like if oil reached $200 per barrel?

America's armed forces are severely strained by Iraq and Afganistan and the majority their resources need replacement. Bush used the reserve forces that were traditionally held for world wars and put America's civilian population at risk during severe catastrophies here in america.

The republican presidential candidate, McCain will only continue the incompetent Bush junior policies and turn America from a first rate economic power into a third world country. Obama and Clinton do not have it either however there should be much improvement over McClain, especially if Democrats gain a big enough majority to prevent the republicans from hindering a democratic agenda.

Bush and his cabinet have disgraced themselves and America and should just resign immediately. The administration should have been impeached long ago. All republicans should resign in Congess too for incompetance.

It is going to take some clear thinking and the President to work with Congress to solve the severe problems caused mostly by Bush junior and his administration and the republicans in congress.

Three years ago there were mandates from the elections to get out of Iraq and to fence the Mexican border and to round up the illegal aliens and prosecute the employers that hired them.
Nothing meaningful was acomplished to meet these mandates. In fact McCain want to remain in Iraq fighting for 100 years and the Democrats want to grant citizenship to the illegal aliens.

You do not get to become Secretary by being dumb and stupid. I suspect the president has a heavy hand on preventing good work being accomplished by cabinet secretaries if they were given some freedom to work directly with Congress. Let the secretaries carry the ball, Mr President. Open the problems up for discussion. Encourage people to discuss possible solutions. Step aside and let good people provide solutions. Bring some democrats into your administration. Bush has put a great freeze on progress and is in the way for America to solve the current messes. I fear that Bush has nothing to offer to meet today's problems. I fear much the same during the next four years when a new president comes to office.

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