From our friends at the New York Times, April 16, 2011:

President Obama  objected to the provision that would eliminate money for four czars handling health care, climate change, the auto industry and urban affairs. Lawmakers have criticized the use of such czars to oversee broad swaths of federal policy, arguing that they have enormous power yet are not accountable to Congress. All of the positions affected by the budget bill are vacant or have been eliminated, and it is not clear whether the White House wanted to fill any of them.

….

In his signing statement, Mr. Obama took issue with an obscure provision in the budget agreement, which keeps the government running through September. Mr. Obama said that the effort to cut financing from the positions conflicts with the president’s “well-established authority to supervise and oversee the executive branch.”

Click here to read the full article from the New York Times

Yes George W. Bush did this type of bullshit as well WHICH I DO NOT SUPPORT. However, like every bad policy that GWB saddled us with Obama is doubling down.  Today I read news that he’s at it again, from The Hill:

President Obama said Friday he will not be bound by at least 20 policy riders in the 2012 omnibus funding the government, including provisions pertaining to Guantanamo Bay and gun control.

After he signed the omnibus into law Friday, the White House released a concurrent signing statement saying Obama will object to portions of the legislation on constitutional grounds.

“I have advised the Congress that I will not construe these provisions as preventing me from fulfilling my constitutional responsibility to recommend to the Congress’s consideration such measures as I shall judge necessary and expedient,”

Obama said in a statement as he signed the bill into law.

Click here to read the complete article from The Hill.

So great… The Executive Branch of the US Government can affectively Veto any provisions set forth by the US Congress.

By my count we in effect have a “checks and balanced” government in which all three branches can make law as they see fit. Am I wrong here?

What a great video. This was sent this morning

Stephen Ohlemacher from The Associated Press writes in his piece Expiring tax cuts hit taxpayers at every level

A typical family of four with a household income of $50,000 a year would have to pay $2,900 more in taxes in 2011, according to a new analysis by Deloitte Tax LLP, a tax consulting firm. The same family making $100,000 a year would see its taxes rise by $4,500.

Wealthier families face even bigger tax hikes. A family of four making $500,000 a year would pay $10,800 more in taxes. The same family making $1 million a year would get a tax increase of $53,200.

The estimates are based on total household income, including wages, capital gains and qualified dividends. The estimated tax bills take into account typical deductions at each income level.

Democrats have been arguing for much of the past decade that tax cuts enacted in 2001 and 2003 under former President George W. Bush provided a windfall for the wealthy. That’s true, but they also reduced taxes for the working poor, the middle class, and just about everyone in between.

Anyone remember this?

What a POS liar..

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Just in case all of you out of work, looking at higher taxes and are quietly panicking about our huge national debt and reduction in freedoms, hey, don’t worry, Obama’s policies are working.

Less than two months before the midterm elections, President Barack Obama is imploring voters to support his party’s economic policies, even though he acknowledged that those policies haven’t brought about a recovery fast enough for many Americans.“We stopped the bleeding, stabilized the economy, but the fact of the matter is the pace of improvement has not been where it needs to be,” Obama said during a backyard town hall in a wooded, middle class neighborhood in Northern Virginia.

Obama said that additional economic measures – including the package of infrastructure investments and business tax incentives he proposed last week – would help accelerate growth in the short-term, while also paving the way for more sustained medium- to long-term growth. The proposals would require congressional approval, an unknown prospect given Washington’s highly partisan atmosphere.

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Just obtained this letter from Justice Department Inspector General Glenn Fine to members of Congress informing them that he will open up a review of the Obama administration’s selective enforcement of civil rights laws by the Voting Section office of DOJ.

Big news. Good news. Fine is a veteran IG whose meticulous work I cited in-depth in Invasion. You know how the Obama bully boys have treated IGs. Prayers for Fine would be most appropriate.

In yet another example of Obama Epec Fail:

Facing big Democratic losses in November, President Barack Obama blamed Republicans and election-year politics Friday for thwarting his efforts to do more to spur a listless national economy. He challenged Congress to quit squabbling and quickly approve “what we all agree on” — a reprieve for expiring tax cuts for the middle class.

“Let’s work on that. Let’s do it,” he told a nationally broadcast White House news conference, his first since last May.

Obama said his economic programs were helping, but “the hole the recession left was huge and progress has been painfully slow.”

Noting the stubbornly high jobless rate, Obama acknowledged that many voters in the Nov. 2 midterm elections probably will blame him for economic hard times and could take it out on congressional Democrats.

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Hope Yen, and Liz Sidoti of The Associated Press have an article on Yahoo noting that 2009 is looking to be the year with the highest rate of poverty increase in U.S. history. Go Obama! and your Hope and Change!

From the article:

– The number of people in the U.S. who are in poverty is on track for a record increase on President Barack Obama’s watch, with the ranks of working-age poor approaching 1960s levels that led to the national war on poverty.Census figures for 2009 — the recession-ravaged first year of the Democrat’s presidency — are to be released in the coming week, and demographers expect grim findings.

It’s unfortunate timing for Obama and his party just seven weeks before important elections when control of Congress is at stake. The anticipated poverty rate increase — from 13.2 percent to about 15 percent — would be another blow to Democrats struggling to persuade voters to keep them in power.

More success for our Failure-n-Chief Berry Obama.

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Marcus Stern of ProPublica writes in USAToday about Obama’s new plan to deal with the huge number of illegals in this country. The simple solution? Only deport the illegals deemed as “dangerous”:

The Obama administration is changing the federal immigration enforcement strategy in ways that reduce the threat of deportation for millions of illegal immigrants, even as states such as Arizona, Colorado, Virginia, Ohio and Texas are pushing to accelerate deportations.

The changes focus enforcement on immigrants who have committed serious crimes, an effort to unclog immigration courts and detention centers. A record backlog of deportation cases has forced immigrants to wait an average 459 days for their hearings, according to an Aug. 12 report by Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), which analyzes government data.

Among the recent changes:

• Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Director John Morton ordered agency officials on Aug. 20 to begin dismissing deportation cases against people who haven’t committed serious crimes and have credible immigration applications pending.

• A proposed directive from Morton posted on ICE’s website for public comment last month would generally prohibit police from using misdemeanor traffic stops to send people to ICE. Traffic stops have led to increased deportations in recent years, according to Jessica Vaughan, director of policy studies at the Center for Immigration Studies, a think tank whose research supports tighter enforcement.

The directive said exceptions would be made in certain cases, such as when immigrants have serious criminal records.

• ICE officers have been told to “exercise discretion” when deciding whether to detain “long-time lawful permanent residents, juveniles, the immediate family members of U.S. citizens, veterans, members of the armed forces and their families, and others with illnesses or special circumstances,” Daniel Ragsdale, ICE executive associate director of management, testified July 1 in the administration’s lawsuit to block Arizona’s controversial immigration law. The law requires police officers to determine the immigration status of suspects stopped for another offense if there was a “reasonable suspicion” they are in the USA illegally. A U.S. district judge has held up the provision pending review.

• A draft memo from ICE’s sister agency, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service, to Morton discussed ways the administration could adjust regulations so certain groups, such as college students and the spouses of military personnel, could legalize their status or at least avoid deportation if Congress doesn’t pass comprehensive immigration reform. USCIS rules on applications for visas, work permits and citizenship. USCIS spokesman Christopher Bentley said the memo was intended to stimulate brainstorming on how to legalize immigrants if new laws aren’t passed.

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Obama Is Against a Compromise on Bush Tax Cuts by JACKIE CALMES of The New York Times writes

President Obama on Wednesday will make clear that he opposes any compromise that would extend the Bush-era tax cuts beyond this year, officials said, adding a populist twist to an election-season economic package that is otherwise designed to entice support from big businesses and their Republican allies.

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In a great story today out of Forbes from Dinesh D’Souza the question is asked:

How Obama Thinks

The President isn’t exactly a socialist. So what’s driving his hostility to private enterprise? Look to his roots.
Barack Obama is the most antibusiness president in a generation, perhaps in American history. Thanks to him the era of big government is back. Obama runs up taxpayer debt not in the billions but in the trillions. He has expanded the federal government’s control over home mortgages, investment banking, health care, autos and energy. The Weekly Standard summarizes Obama’s approach as omnipotence at home, impotence abroad.

…..

Obama Sr. was an economist, and in 1965 he published an important article in the East Africa Journal called “Problems Facing Our Socialism.” Obama Sr. wasn’t a doctrinaire socialist; rather, he saw state appropriation of wealth as a necessary means to achieve the anticolonial objective of taking resources away from the foreign looters and restoring them to the people of Africa. For Obama Sr. this was an issue of national autonomy. “Is it the African who owns this country? If he does, then why should he not control the economic means of growth in this country?”

As he put it, “We need to eliminate power structures that have been built through excessive accumulation so that not only a few individuals shall control a vast magnitude of resources as is the case now.” The senior Obama proposed that the state confiscate private land and raise taxes with no upper limit. In fact, he insisted that “theoretically there is nothing that can stop the government from taxing 100% of income so long as the people get benefits from the government commensurate with their income which is taxed.”

…..

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