You are currently browsing the archives for the Issues category.
| S | M | T | W | T | F | S |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| « May | ||||||
| 1 | 2 | 3 | ||||
| 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 |
| 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 |
| 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 |
| 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 |
13. March 2009 by David A. Peterson.
The Obama Administration is less than 100 days old and the proposals have been flying out of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave fast and furiously. As a conservative I seem to be on the wrong side of every issue that President Obama has proposed.
I may be on the wrong side but I am impressed how fast the U.S. Congress has taken up his proposals and converted them into policies. Harry Reid has led the Senate and Nanci Pelosi has led the House to promote and pass these new policies with ease. I was thinking to myself that The President and the Congress were working well together - then it dawned on me…
The President isn’t working with The Congress he is basically letting them create the bills without any real input from 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. He is just creating the original ideas. He is delegating the individual content of each bill to Reid and Pelosi. President Obama is - “The Idea Man.”
If you are a Democrat is 2009 then you got to love this strong President proposing ideas that are quickly put into practice by the Democratic Congress.
If you are a Republican in 2009 then you got to be worried about how the heck we are going to pay for all of these new ideas.
Do you know who should be more worried than the Republicans???
President Obama is running the Executive branch like a CEO runs a corporation. The CEO sets the path and then he/she delegates the work to the different divisions to execute the plan that will lead the company down the correct path.
The only problem is the Presidency is supposed to lead the Executive branch. He/she is supposed to be a gatekeeper providing checks and balances for the other 2 branches of government.
In effect the President isn’t allowed to just propose the ideas and then get out of the way. The President has a duty to push back on policies being created by the Congress. If he doesn’t like any items in any bill that comes out of Congress then he is supposed to veto that bill.
It would be different if he actually sent more than just an idea to Congress, if he had sent his people to Congress to actually express his idea, and to make sure his concerns are in the final bill then it would be a different story. But what has really happened is that the Executive branch has literally join the Legislative branch of government.
These 2 branches aren’t working together - they are the same entity. Neither branch has the power to contradict the other. Neither branch is stepping up to the plate and acting as a check or a balance to the other entity.
The results are obvious to everyone outside of the D.C. beltway. The bills coming out of the U.S. Congress that the President has been signing are really, really bad. As an example look at the economic stimulus bill that just passed, a trillion dollars of one sided politics. The President thought the minor issues in the bill should be overlooked.
These minor issues are major problems for Main Street. Especially after the “stimulus” money is spent. Then the real fun begins - when your state needs new money to fund the federal programs that are peppered throughout these bills, programs that you have “accidentally” signed up for - who is going to pay for that?
Do you know who should be more concerned than the Republicans about funding these programs in the future - the activist courts?
That’s right those same courts that spend so much time overturning the people’s wishes. So much time setting their own agenda - after all they are the 3rd branch of the government. It is their job to keep the other 2 branches in check.
Why will the courts get involved? That is easy… The states will be suing the Federal Government for the funds to continue operating these new programs.
Isn’t it ironic that the courts in a just a few short years will be spending the majority of their time trying to decipher exactly what the President intended when the bills were moving through the legislative process? They will see the “ideas” in the notes but there will be no other information because the Executive branch forgot it’s obligation to the people.
Being “The Idea Man” is awesome. For the American people to have a President with ideas that he believes in is awesome. To have fresh ideas that can be hashed out in public, to be debated, to be decided on their merits, to have ideas that are bold is awesome.
Unfortunately the “ideas part” of the job is the fun part, eventually either the Legislative branch or the Executive branch of our government has to start looking at what the other one is doing. Otherwise the courts are going to be a very busy place over the next few years.
Posted in Issues | No Comments »
20. January 2009 by David A. Peterson.
Here we are Jan 20th just a few hours from the President-elects inauguration and his ascension into the highest office in the land. It’s estimated that 2 million people are standing on the national mall waiting for the hopeful event.
Hopes are high, and the problems facing our new President are even higher. I’m positive he will hit the ground running. Half of the country is worried about the direction the new President will take us but just about the entire country believes he will start his new journey at a full-paced run.
President Obama is in the race of his life. Modern life has made countries, counties, and cities all interdependent on one another. What happens in the
Here is a short review.
President Obama will have a lot of issues to dissect and decide however only one will define his term. My hope is that at the end of his 4 years he will be able to hang his hat on an airtight energy policy.
Our countries, counties, and cities are so interdependent on one another with the absolute link between them all being energy. Our non-renewable energy supplies that we currently consume are concentrated in countries with different values than ourselves. That is saying it nicely – really these energy producing countries actually hate us. Everyone from a middle school child to our incoming President realizes this dire situation that we are in concerning our current lack of a sustainable energy policy.
It doesn’t take much of a problem in the world for gas prices to rise to $4.00 gallon. Heating oil, diesel fuel, natural gas supplies, are all tied to world events. Not only world event affect our energy supplies; heck over the summer oil speculators ran up the bill without even actually touching a real barrel of oil.
Just this past week
So why should
The issue is that all of our non-renewable resources are tied up. “Drill baby, drill” is just a phrase it isn’t really happening. Coal and shale are available in abundance but are seen as destructive to the environment through the whole process. From digging those resources up to burning them in the power plants these forms of fuel have their detractors.
Natural gas is also available in abundance but we don’t have the distribution system or the ability to burn it in our country’s fleet of vehicles.
Then there is wind power, solar power, nuclear power, wave power, hydrogen power, fuel cells, hybrids, Ethanol, vegetable oil. There are countless other energy types being developed right at this moment.
Most of the above forms of energy are used to either power our vehicles or power the electrical grid. The push at this moment is the electrification of our country’s fleet. This will mean that we will need more electrical energy and a huge upgrade to our electrical grid that has already reached capacity in some parts of the country.
Take all of our non-renewal supplies; add in pollution, global warming, Green Peace, the Sierra Club, war, dictators, exploding populations, expanding commerce, cold weather, hot weather, weather in general, and stir it all together and poof you get our current energy policy. I wouldn’t call our current situation a policy more like a chicken with its head cut off.
What we really have when you stir it all together is a very fragile peace between all of the factors and factions. One rouge dictator, one small in change in China’s one child only policy, one thing we can’t foresee and $4/gallon gas will look cheap.
It only took one damaged pipeline due to Hurricane Ike to create gas lines in Atlanta in fall of 2008. In the 70’s it only took about 6 countries getting together to throw our entire way of life into turmoil yet here we are almost 40 years later with the same energy policy that we had in 1975.
President Obama is in the race of his life. Expectations for his Presidency are unbelievably high. I’m looking at 2 million people waiting on him to get sworn in. What will his legacy be? What will he try to tackle? There are so many problems that he could work on but what he should work on and try to tackle is a rock solid airtight energy policy before it is too late.
We are on borrowed time with our current policy. The race the President is running with our borrowed time has a finish line. Everyone from the smallest middle school child to our newest President knows it. Will he run to the finish line - will he do something about our borrowed time before it is too late?
Barack Obama – Sustainable Energy Policy
Posted in Issues | No Comments »