President Obama, the reluctant warrior

By LEROY GOLDMAN
The Shadow Knows

Published: Sunday, November 10, 2013 at 4:30 a.m.

Today's column will be my last. The Shadow and I want to thank all of you who have been kind enough to send along words of encouragement and constructive criticism over the past two years.

President Obama, the reluctant warrior

The effort to enact health care reform in the United States is a century old. It began with the Progressive Party platform of Theodore Roosevelt's unsuccessful quest for the presidency in 1912.

President Franklin Roosevelt considered adding comprehensive health insurance to his proposal for Social Security in 1935 but dropped it for fear that the adamant opposition of the American Medical Association might doom Social Security.

President Harry Truman tried and failed to achieve passage of the Murray-Wagner-Dingell health insurance bill after World War II.

President Lyndon Johnson made health insurance a top priority, and with the advantage of huge Democratic majorities in Congress he successfully passed Medicare and Medicaid.

In the early 1970s, Sen. Edward Kennedy attempted to build a bipartisan bridge between his national health insurance proposal and the one submitted by President Richard Nixon. But Kennedy's allies in organized labor would not countenance any bargain with Nixon, and Nixon would not agree to financing such a measure through payroll taxes. Watergate sealed the failure.

Although President Jimmy Carter proposed his own health insurance scheme, it was not embraced by the leading Democratic proponents of comprehensive reform in Congress. It went nowhere.

President Bill Clinton made health insurance reform a top priority, and he appointed first lady Hillary Clinton to lead the effort. The complexity of the bill she presented to a Congress controlled by Democrats doomed it.

Comes now Barack Obama, the man who made the enactment of health care reform the centerpiece of his 2008 campaign and his presidency.

One would think that after such a protracted and bitter struggle over the past century, the enactment of health care reform in 2010 would be cause for a genuine national sigh of relief and celebration. But whether you love Obamacare or hate it, you can't deny the fact that its passage and implementation have left the nation deeply and bitterly divided.

In 2007, Obama was on the verge of not accepting an invitation to speak at a health conference sponsored by Families USA, a progressive group. But, as Carrie Brown and Glenn Thrush reported on Politico.com about six weeks ago, “two aides, Robert Gibbs and Jon Favreau, hit on an idea that would make him appear more prepared and committed than he actually was at the moment. Why not just announce his intention to pass universal health care by the end of his first term?”

One of them said, “We needed something to say. I can't tell you how little thought was given to that thought other than it sounded good.”

Thus, Obama came to embrace the necessity for health care reform mainly by accident. It was a way to enable him to begin to compete with his rival for the nomination, Hillary Clinton, on an issue where she had an established, though tarnished, track record.

Furthermore, at that time there appeared to be no consequential downside to the fact that Obama was a novice on heath care. Not only did Hillary Clinton expect to win the nomination, so too did many in the Obama campaign. But, of course, it didn't work out that way!

Once inaugurated, President Obama chose to stand and deliver on health care over the objections of senior advisers. But Obama turned the job of writing the bill over to the Democrats on the Hill — an unforced error. He did not insist that the bill contain provisions, such as tort reform, that would have brought at least a modicum of Republicans on board, making the effort bipartisan — an unforced error.

He allowed the bill to become so grotesquely complex that he has never been able to explain it to the American people — an unforced error. He steadfastly continues to characterize the law as health care reform when in fact many of its central components, including the individual mandate and the exchanges, are the handiwork of the health insurance industry — an unforced error.

He presumed that the federal government was capable of implementing a law that was designed to make profound changes in the operation of a $2.5 trillion industry that makes up what soon will be 20 percent of the nation's gross domestic product — an unforced error. And, after having more than three years to design the Obamacare website, HHS Secretary Sebelius and her bureaucrats gave birth to what she now describes as a debacle — an unforced error.

Those unforced errors are more than enough to ruin a good idea. But there is more, and the more is more troubling.

When presidents lie and the American people tumble to it, look out! At least 24 times, President Obama told the nation, “If you like your health care plan, you'll be able to keep your health care plan, period. No one will take it away. No matter what.”

Tell that to the hundreds of thousands of Americans who are now receiving cancellation letters. Their individual policies are being canceled so that the Obama administration can force younger, healthier Americans into Obamacare to prevent the program from imploding due to the influx of older, sicker persons.

Assuming that the president didn't know and intend that is preposterous.

The president and his sycophants are now trapped by their hubris, mendacity and incompetence. Obama has risked his legacy and more importantly the nation's well-being on a deeply flawed idea made immeasurably worse by its bungled implementation. It's what happens when you send a neophyte to do a man's job.

Tuesday should be telling for GOP

It's only a 275 mile drive from Richmond to Trenton. But given the dynamics of the two gubernatorial elections that will reach their climax this Tuesday, these two state capitals might just as well be on opposite sides of our Milky Way Galaxy.

There appears to be little doubt that Republican, Ken Cuccinelli, will be defeated in Virginia, while Republican Governor, Chris Christie will be reelected in New Jersey. Cuccinelli is likely to lose by as much as 10%, and Christie may win by more than 25%. The oddity, of course, is that Virginia has been a solidly Republican state until very recently. On the other hand New Jersey is a solidly Blue, reliably Democratic state.

Understanding the anomalous nature of a Republican loss in Virginia, coupled with a Republican victory in New Jersey, can teach us a lot about whether the GOP can win back the Senate in 2014 and the White House in 2016, or whether it might lose the House in 2014 and be pulverized by Hillary Clinton 2016.

THE OLD DOMINION

The Governor's race in Virginia is a three-way battle among the Commonwealth's Attorney General, Republican Ken Cuccinelli, businessman and former Democratic National Committee Chairman, Terry McAuliffe, and lawyer and businessman, Libertarian Robert Sarvis.

From 1952 until 2004 Virginia's Presidential electoral votes have been cast for Republicans with the exception of 1964. But President Obama carried the Old Dominion in both 2008 and 2012. And now Virginia is no longer Red. It's Purple.

Significant demographic changes in Virginia account for its transformation. Chief among those changes is the explosive population growth in Northern Virginia, the Washington suburbs. Much of that growth is accounted for by an influx of Hispanics. A disproportionately large number of these individuals vote Democratic. And many of them are Federal employees.

Cuccinelli has not been able to navigate successfully between the ideologically driven Tea Party wing and the more pragmatic and moderate Republicans in Northern Virgina and in the Richmond suburbs of Henrico and Chersterfield counties. The presence of third party candidate, Libertarian Robert Sarvis, on the ballot continues to bleed Tea Party supporters from Cuccinelli. Lastly, the radioactive fallout from the recent Government shutdown and debt ceiling crises have hurt the Cuccinelli campaign badly, probably mortally, in the vote-rich suburbs outside the Washington Beltway.

McAuliffe is extremely wealthy and an inveterate optimist. He has a $10 million dollar advantage over Cuccinelli in campaign funds, and more importantly he has the Clintons. Bill and Hillary Clinton have been McAuliffe's close personal friends for decades. The families vacation together. McAuliffe has raised over $400 million for the Clinton's presidential campaigns. He was the Chairman of Hillary's unsuccessful 2008 bid for the White House. In 1999 when the Clinton's needed financial assistance to purchase their lavish home in Chappaqua, NY, McAuliffe personally secured their mortgage with $1.5 million in cash. Now the Clintons are campaigning for McAuliffe in Virginia. And it's more than friendship. The Clinton's want to be able to leverage a state Democratic Machine in Richmond in 2016.

THE GARDEN STATE

In New Jersey Republican Governor Chris Christie seeks a second term. He is opposed by Democratic State Senator Barbara Buono. Virtually all polling organizations show Christie with a huge edge, approaching 2:1. Barbara Buono will be buried under an avalanche of Christie votes Tuesday night. What remains unknown is how big the margin will be and, more importantly, how well Christie does with Hispanics, African-Americans, and Independents.

Christie is a conservative Republican who has demonstrated that he can not only win in a Blue state like New Jersey, but that he can govern successfully even though the Democrats control both chambers of the State legislature. How many news reports have you heard that describe impasse in Trenton like the impasse in Washington? If Christie couldn't effectively reach across the aisle and work with Democrats to solve problems, he would not be on his way to overwhelming reelection.

About 18% of New Jersey's population is Hispanic. Only seven states have a larger Hispanic population. And in mid October Governor Christie spoke to supporters at the Sabor Latino restaurant in Dover, New Jersey. What he said is what distinguishes him from folks like Ken Cuccinelli and those at right fanatical fringe of the Republican party who suffer from a doctrinally-induced coma.

Christie said, “The eyes of America will be on New Jersey on November 5^th. What they're going to see is a coalition supporting the governor like no other Republican has anywhere in the country: Hispanic voters, African-American voters, members of the building trade unions, people who live in the suburbs, people who live in cities, people who live on our farms”.

New Jersey law precludes a governor from serving more than two consecutive terms. So what's coming is a titanic struggle for the soul and the future of the Republican Party that will play out over the battle for the GOP Presidential nomination in 2016.

One of Trenton's famous landmarks is the TRENTON MAKES: THE WORLD TAKES Bridge over the Delaware River. Those words, illuminated in neon, can easily be seen by passengers taking the high speed trains from Washington and Philadelphia north to New York and Boston. In 2016 Chris Christie is hoping to redefine that 1935 motto into WHAT TRENTON MADE, AMERICA TAKES. His chief adversary is his own party!

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By LEROY GOLDMAN
Columnist

Published: Tuesday, October 22, 2013 at 4:30 a.m.

Affirmative action back in cross hairs 

“Equal Justice Under Law” are the words carved in the white Vermont marble on the west front of the U.S. Supreme Court. They paraphrase the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment.

The court’s interpretation of that clause is at the heart of the nation’s struggle to define the proper bounds of affirmative action. The struggle has been bitterly controversial. It is a work in progress and not the zero-sum game that too many would like it to be.

Perhaps the best way to grasp the opposing views of how to define what’s permissible under the aegis of the Constitution respecting affirmative action is to contrast the words of former Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun with those of Chief Justice John Roberts.

On June 28, 1978, in a fractured plurality decision, the Supreme Court ruled in the case of Regents of the University of California v. Bakke that affirmative action permitted race to be used as a factor in college admissions. In his opinion, Justice Blackmun’s stated, “In order to get beyond racism, we must first take account of race. There is no other way. And in order to treat some persons equally, we must treat them differently.”

On June 28, 2007, in another fractured plurality decision, the Supreme Court ruled in the case of Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1 that the school desegregation plans of both Seattle and Louisville, Ky., were unconstitutional because they were not sufficiently narrowly tailored. In his opinion, Chief Justice Roberts stated, “The way to stop discriminating on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.”

What is incontrovertibly clear is that Blackmun’s view and Roberts’ view cannot coexist. The fundamental question going forward is whether Roberts will be able to put up or whether he will have to shut up. When we know the answer to that question, we will know the outcome of the war over affirmative action, not simply the outcome of one of its many battles.

Comes now the case of Schuette v. Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action, the next battle in the war. The high court heard oral arguments on Schuette last Tuesday.

Writing in SCOTUSblog, Editor Amy Howe recently stated, “in late June, the court issued its decision in Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin, a challenge to the university’s consideration of race in its undergraduate admissions process. The court sent the case back to the lower court with instructions to take a closer (and tougher) look at the policy.”

In Schuette, Howe opined, the high court will confront the sequel to the Fisher case, stating, “In Fisher the court was considering whether the Constitution allows a university to (voluntarily) consider race as a factor in admissions; in Schuette, the issue is whether the Constitution allows a state to do the opposite: prohibit universities from using race as a factor.”

Schuette’s seeds were sown in 2006 when voters in the state of Michigan approved Proposal 2, a constitutional amendment that blocks the state from using race or gender in public education, employment and contracting. The proposal was adopted by a whopping 58 percent to 42 percent margin. Seven other states have adopted similar prohibitions: Arizona, California, Florida, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Oklahoma and Washington.

The challengers of Proposal 2 were successful last November in persuading the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that Proposal 2 skewed the political process against the interests of minorities and thus violated the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause. They relied upon what is known as the “Political Process Theory,” which is based on Supreme Court rulings in Hunter v. Erickson (1969) and Washington v. Seattle School District No. 1 (1982). The 6th Circuit’s 8-7 decision aligned the eight judges chosen by Democratic presidents in opposition to the seven judges chosen by Republican presidents.

It’s likely that Justice Anthony Kennedy’s vote will decide Schuette. And his line of questioning during the oral arguments last week suggests that he may be looking for a way to distinguish Schuette from the prior precedents the court laid down in the 1969 and 1982 cases, and upon which the eight justices of the 6th Circuit relied.

In SCOTUSblog, Lyle Denniston wrote, “Kennedy began looking for factual differences between the prior cases and the one now before the court. And then he showed real fascination with suggestions by Michigan’s solicitor general, John J. Bursch, as to how the court could distinguish the prior precedents without having to overrule them.”

That indeed may be the way that Justice Kennedy threads the eye of the needle in this case. If so, it will tell us that the battles will continue, but the outcome of the war hangs in the balance. And it will tell us that Chief Justice Roberts has not yet been able to persuade a majority of the court that the way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.

Roberts may have less time than he thinks to create that majority. Justice Kennedy, the court’s “swing justice,” is 77. If the suicidal obsession of the Republican Party hands the nation yet another Democratic president in 2016, Kennedy will be 88 by the end of that president’s second term. Tempus fugit, Mr. Chief Justice.

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Jeff Miller's the right man for the job

Jeff Miller's the right man for the job

Eligible voters of Hendersonville are now in the process of voting for their City Council and mayor. If you haven’t yet voted, I urge you to make your voice heard by voting in this important election.

Its importance is vital not only to the residents of the city of Hendersonville but also to all of us who live in Henderson County.

Although the residents of Hendersonville make up only about 10 percent of the population of the county, the reality is that Hendersonville is the county’s anchor. We all have a stake, even if we don’t have a vote, in its ability to thrive and grow. If it does, all of us will be the beneficiaries of its success. If it doesn’t, all of us will pay the price for its decline.

Those of you who have lived in Western North Carolina and/or Hendersonville all of your lives already love this uniquely special corner of America. And, like so many of you who chose to come here from all over America, my wife and I treasure the beauty, opportunity and magnificence we have found here.

That said, let’s talk about the election now underway for Hendersonville City Council. Two of the council’s four seats are up for election. Jeff Miller is seeking your support and your vote for one of those two City Council seats. I urge you to give him that support by voting for him, and I’d like to tell you why.

Of course, you remember that Jeff ran for our seat in Congress in 2010. Shortly after he won the primary, I decided maybe I could help him in the general election.

At that point, I had never met Jeff and knew little about him. The one thing I did know was how successful the HonorAir program had become and that Jeff was the driving force who had made it possible for so many World War II veterans in Western North Carolina to travel to Washington to visit the magnificent World War II Memorial and Arlington Cemetery.

So I called Jeff and introduced myself. I asked him if I could come by and meet with him for 10 minutes and talk about whether he’d like to have me as an unpaid volunteer for his campaign. He said yes, and the next day our 10-minute talk turned into a fascinating two-hour discussion.

Suffice to say, I called my then-editor at my former newspaper and requested a leave of absence from writing my weekly op-ed column in order to avoid any appearance of possible conflict of interest, which was granted. And during the summer and early fall of 2010, I did what little I could to advise for Jeff’s campaign.

Let me tell you about what happened regarding a piece of advice I gave him early on in the campaign. His reaction stunned me, caused my respect for him to skyrocket, and causes me to be urging you to vote for him now. It has everything to do with his integrity, humanity and willingness to help others — not himself.

Early on in my days as a volunteer in 2010, I engaged Jeff in a conversation about HonorAir.

I said, “Look, Jeff, there’s got to be an enormous number of veterans, their families and friends here in this congressional district who have benefited from the HonorAir program, right?” He responded, “Sure.”

“Do you have, or have access to, a mailing list of all of those folks?” I asked. “Yep”, he said.

“Jeff”, I said, “this is a special resource that could and should be used during the campaign. It could be a game changer on Election Day.” And Jeff smiled and said, “Don’t go there. I won’t mix my work with Honor Air with my political campaign, and that’s final!”

Now think about that conversation and contrast it with the way most politicians in this nation do business, whether they are in Washington, Raleigh or Hendersonville. I’ve worked very closely with scores of elected officials from both political parties over many decades, and I’m here to tell you that not one of them comes close to matching the integrity I saw firsthand from Jeff as he faced an uphill battle in 2010 against an entrenched, far better funded incumbent.

None of us is surprised that last month Gov. Pat McCrory came to Hendersonville and presented Jeff with one of North Carolina’s most prestigious awards, the Order of the Long Leaf Pine, for the HonorAir Program.

I could go on at considerable length and give you all the other strong arguments to vote for Jeff. But you already know most of them — things like being life-long Hendersonville resident, a successful small businessman, his superb working relationships with a host of civic and county organizations, and more. But that’s simply the icing on the cake, isn’t it? You get the point.

Jeff Miller, once elected to Hendersonville City Council, will turn his remarkable talents and limitless energy to giving our local government the boost and direction it needs to succeed. And he will do it for you and for all of us here in Hendersonville and Henderson County because that’s the kind of individual he is. That’s what makes him special, and that’s why he deserves your vote.

The Shadow Welcomes Comments

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By LEROY GOLDMAN
Columnist

Published: Sunday, October 13, 2013 at 4:30 a.m.

Real crisis is plight of the middle class

President Barack Obama has repeatedly made it clear that he will not negotiate with Congress over the necessity to raise the debt ceiling. House Speaker John Boehner has repeatedly said the House will not raise the debt ceiling absent negotiations that reduce government spending and deal with our rising debt.

Both sides are dug in, and you and I are caught in the no man’s land in between. While both sides may cobble together a short-term agreement to avert economic Armageddon, that will only trigger another round of dysfunctional, dangerous infighting before the holiday season.

Although there are some out there in right-wing La-La-Land who dismiss the clear and present danger inherent in default, most Americans know it’s a risk that we dare not run. What most Americans don’t yet know is that there is a worse risk of a different kind of default we are taking and that the collective jackasses who control both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington know about, but won’t give voice to — defaulting on the middle class.

Default means a failure to act. It means neglect. It means failure to perform a legally required obligation. And that’s been Washington’s default position for years on a threat more ominous and insidious than the one we face right now on the debt ceiling. I’m talking about the death of the American middle class.

In Profit Confidential last month, Michael Lombardi called it “the elephant in the room no one wants to talk about.” He believes the middle class is on the verge of collapse. For the half-century from the end of World War II until the financial crisis that began five years ago, a vibrant middle class was the engine that drove the American economy forward. Its spending fueled the expansion of thousands of businesses, large and small. It created millions of good jobs to meet expanding consumer demand. And it enabled companies to invest in research, development and expansion to make the American economy the envy of the world.

It was a tide that lifted all boats. It’s a tide that Washington, with our acquiescence, has allowed to run out.

Seventy-six percent of all Americans live check to check, and 46 percent have less than $800 in savings. America’s second largest employer, after Wal-Mart, is a temp agency, Kelly Services! With the exception of the wealthy, the incomes of Americans are declining.

The implosion of the housing market has savaged the middle class. The delinquency rate on single-family mortgages earlier this year was 558 percent higher than the delinquency rate in the first quarter of 2005. Homeownership is at it lowest rate in almost 20 years. Median household income has declined by almost 8 percent since 2000. Sixty percent of the jobs lost in the recent recession were good-paying jobs, but almost 60 percent of the jobs created since then have been low-wage jobs. The nation has lost 56,000 manufacturing plants since 2001, and the number of Americans employed in manufacturing has dwindled from 17 million to 12 million.

Almost 50 million Americans live in poverty. About 25 million American adults live with their parents. In 2000, 17 million Americans were on food stamps, while today it’s 47 million.

A recent poll by the Pew Research Center shows a large majority of the American people believe that government policies in response to the recession have done little or nothing to help. Seventy-one percent believe the middle class has not been helped, and 67 percent believe small businesses have not been helped. On the other hand, large majorities believe government policies have helped large banks (69 percent), large corporations (67 percent) and wealthy people (59 percent).

In a recent editorial, the Detroit News stated, “After five years of wealth transfer schemes, the income gap in America is now at its widest since the 1920s, the Gilded Age. It should be evident by now that taking money from the rich to give to government doesn’t make the poor richer.”

All of this is summed up nicely by Harvard economist Michael Porter. He told CNBC’s “Closing Bell” earlier this year, “America used to be a uniquely productive, low-cost place to do business. We had an efficient infrastructure, limited regulation, and we believed in the market. This position has eroded. Regulatory costs have gone up, the legal system is more cumbersome, infrastructure is eroding and the country is falling behind on skills.”

Porter argues that these declines have forced government to make social welfare promises, like health care, that can’t be afforded because of the lackluster performance of the economy. He calls for a sustainable budget compromise, tax reform and energy independence by taking advantage of the shale revolution.

But nobody in Washington will give voice to our real problems, and they’re betting you won’t notice. Washington’s circular firing squad over the shutdown and debt ceiling is all about jockeying for position in the 2014 midterm election — 17 seats in the House and six in the Senate. It’s got precious little to do with the restoration of our economy and saving the middle class.

Since the president won’t negotiate with Congress over the shutdown or the debt limit, he’s had time to broker a powwow with Daniel Snyder, Jerry Jones and Roger Goodell. The White House has just announced that henceforth the Redskins and the Cowboys will be known as the Redpersons and the Cowpersons!

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PLAYING WITH FIRE

PLAYING WITH FIRE

Our mothers told us not to play with fire. The message didn't get through to President Obama and the Congress. The stalemate over government funding and the onrushing date when the debt ceiling may be breached is an indictment of the President and Congress. Their attempt to pin the blame for their brinkmanship and its dire consequences on each other means they believe that we're dumb enough to fall for it.

However, the good news is that most Americans are clear headed enough to know that the spin coming out of Washington is just that—spin. It's a smoke screen, a smokescreen that cloaks a conflagration that could irreparably harm the nation's already fragile economy.

The impasse over funding the Government and raising the debt ceiling is cause for alarm. But the real problem is, of course, much worse. Washington's failure to govern is monumental and longstanding. The economy remains weak and fragile. Its growth rate is anemic. Unemployment remains persistently high and far too many of the jobs being created are part time, low pay jobs. The necessity to reform the tax code for individuals and corporations is dead in the water. Regulatory reform of the puzzle palaces that line the Potomac is stillborn. Millions of young Americans graduate from college inadequately equipped to find good jobs, while saddled with crushing student loan debt. Immigration reform has morphed from dream to nightmare. The effort to make America energy independent and to curtail the power of OPEC has run out of gas. The renaissance of American manufacturing that the energy boom could have triggered hasn't materialized. The urgent need to reform Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security before their runaway growth eats the entire Federal budget has been shelved.

You get the picture. You and I are responsible for having populated both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington with a collection of deceitful clowns who won't work together, who won't do the nation's business, and who expect us to reelect them, regardless of their willful failure to govern. Unforgivably, too many of us do just that.

And now their intransigence has led the nation to the brink of default. Complicating the battle that will occur over the next few weeks concerning raising the debt limit is the fact that a large swath of the American people do not understand the risks associated with default. A recent Washington Post-ABC poll showed that 43% of respondents favored not raising the debt limit and letting the Government default on paying its bills and meeting it obligations.

Such a view is either foolhardy or draconian. Here's why. Default will cause the Government to cut spending by about a third. That will throw a wet blanket on already anemic economic growth. Default will preclude the government from borrowing from investors in order to meet its financial obligations. That will send a shock wave of instability through the financial system as investors worry that their loans might not be paid back. Their response to that uncertainty almost certainly will be to raise interest rates. Those interest rate increases will spread throughout the economy adversely increasing what you pay on your mortgage, car loan, and your credit cards.

In 2011, when the President and the Congress last collided on whether to raise the debt ceiling, one of the nation's three credit rating agencies, Standard and Poors, lowered its rating of the U. S. Government from AAA to AA+. If the Government defaults later this month, it's likely that the other two rating agencies, Moody's and Fitch Ratings, will also lower their ratings. Such a move will roil Wall Street and international markets. So what, I don't care, you may say. Well you should care because what's at stake is the value of your 401K and your IRA. Once this cycle begins the threat of a new and severe recession becomes real.

The way to break this impasse is for the House Republicans to set aside their insistence that the debt limit can only be raised if the President and the Congressional Democrats agree to their Obamacare demands. Don't misunderstand me here. I'd love to see Obamacare delayed, or repealed so that a wholly new and effective Health Care Reform law could be enacted in its place. But that is not going to happen until 2017 at the earliest. The GOP's Obamacare strategy is fatally flawed, dangerous to the economy, and will backfire politically.

If the GOP believes that Obamacare won't work, If they believe that its onerous taxes on individuals and businesses will provoke a national outcry of opposition, and if they believe that the Federal Government will never be able to properly and efficiently administer the program, then they should simply sit back and wait for its inevitable collapse, which will fall directly and crushingly on President Obama and the Democrats. When that happens, who knows, it might create the conditions whereby the Republicans could regain the Senate and the White House with a governing mandate.

In the meantime think of Washington as a major league baseball team with a starting rotation of Reid, Pelosi, Boehner, McConnell, and Obama. For two of them every pitch is wild Left. For two others every pitch is wild Right. And that leaves the southpaw who takes the mound, fingers the rosin bag, goes into his windup, but refuses to pitch the ball.

The Shadow's yanking Washington's starting rotation and sending them down to the bush league (pun intended), but Goldman can be reached at:  EmailMe

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Looks like George and Yogi were right

It’s unlikely that philosopher George Santayana and the great Yankee catcher Yogi Berra ever knew one another. But they shared an understanding of human nature. Santayana said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it,” and Yogi said, “It’s like deja vu all over again.”

The unnecessary, futile and poisonous battle in Washington over funding the government and raising the debt ceiling has begun in earnest. It will play out over the next month and will be eerily reminiscent of what occurred in 1995-96.

Shortly after his election in 1992, President Bill Clinton began his effort to enact comprehensive health care reform. He asked the first lady, Hillary Clinton, to lead the effort. She headed the task force that developed the legislation that promised universal health care.

The health insurance industry and the pharmaceutical industry were adamantly opposed to the legislation and destroyed it with a nationwide campaign of television ads featuring Harry and Louise, who dramatized the complexity of the plan and the dominant role of the federal government. By September 1994, the plan was dead. Its demise was assured by its stupefying complexity and red tape. The Democrats, who controlled both houses of Congress, never brought the legislation to a vote.

Not only had the Clintons failed in their effort to enact health care reform, they had also sewn the seeds of a Republican renaissance on Capitol Hill. Exploiting the unpopularity of the Clinton’s failed health care reform proposal, the Republicans captured the House for the first time in 40 years and also regained control of the Senate. It was a Republican revolution, and it was led by the GOP’s firebrand from Georgia, Newt Gingrich, with his Contract with America. President Clinton was humbled and famously and inaccurately announced that “the era of big government is over.”

It didn’t take long for the battle lines to be drawn between the White House and the House Republicans. And they were drawn around federal spending and the debt ceiling. In late 1995, Clinton vetoed a spending bill that the Republican-controlled Congress had passed with spending cuts in Medicare, the environment and education.

In addition, the developing crisis also threatened to risk a default by the government as Congress threatened to refuse to raise the debt limit unless Clinton agreed to its proposed cuts to the federal budget. The impasse resulted in two government shutdowns in late 1995 and early 1996 totaling 28 days.

The Republicans overplayed their hand by not recognizing the severity of the public’s opposition to the shutdown and the risk of default’s effect to the economy. Clinton exploited the House Republicans’ overreach to regain his standing with the public and to use that popularity in his successful effort to win a second term against Sen. Bob Dole later in 1996. Gingrich’s Republican revolution sputtered and died.

Most of the political class did not expect Barack Obama to win the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008. But once he did, there was no doubt he would be elected in November. President George W. Bush’s dismal performance for the previous eight years guaranteed that, just as it had guaranteed the Democratic takeover of Congress in 2006.

As Obama took the oath of office, the nation’s economy was in free fall. The failure of Lehman Brothers the previous September had made clear that something really scary, really bad had infected the economy.

But rather than reaching out to Congress on a bipartisan basis to address the failing economy, President Obama chose to make the enactment of health care reform his top priority. Having made that strategic, unforced error, he then made the matter far worse. He turned the job of writing the bill over to Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi.

We know what happened. The nation was torn in half as the debate over Obamacare became ever more bitter. The public did not and still does not understand Obamacare. No Republican voted for the bill. Obamacare and the way it was handled on the Hill poisoned the well for all ensuing legislation.

Opposition to the bill helped give birth to a political force that has haunted Obama and his legacy ever since the 2010 election — the tea party. The tea party has become Obama’s nemesis, and he is its father! It now controls the House Republican Caucus. Speaker John Boehner is its puppet.

Tea Partyers loathe Obama. They will stop at nothing to repeal Obamacare, and they are willing to shut down the government and/or refuse to raise the debt ceiling and incur default in order to get their way.

Those leading the charge, including especially Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, refuse to recognize the futility of their doomed effort. The lessons of 1995-96 are lost on them. It is always thus for zealots.

All of this has significance for the 2016 presidential contest. Don’t be surprised if the Republican contest for the nomination turns into a death struggle among Cruz, Libertarian Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., and Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla. The one thing they have in common is that none of them will stand a chance against the prohibitive favorite for the Democratic nomination, Hillary Clinton.

In her inaugural address in 2017, she will announce that first husband Bill Clinton will head a task force to fix Obamacare! It’s deja vu all over again.

The Shadow welcomes comments.  Please contact me at:  EmailMe

A ‘new beginning'? Not quite

Note:   Second of a two-part series. Part one was published in the Sept. 8 edition and can be found at: Blue Ridge Now.

As Libya descended into chaos in 2011, the United States vacillated with respect to its role in removing Libya's strongman, Moammar Gadhafi. By October of that year, the Arab Spring revolt in Libya was victorious and Gadhafi was dead.

A year later, U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans were murdered by terrorists at our consulate in Benghazi. The event created a firestorm of criticism directed at the State Department, then-Secretary Hillary Clinton and the Obama White House concerning what they did and did not do and say as this tragedy unfolded in the midst of the 2012 presidential election campaign.

On Jan. 23, 2013, in testimony before the Senate Foreign Relation Committee, Clinton failed to put the issue to rest. Instead, she shouted, "Was it because of a protest or was it because of guys out for a walk one night who decided they'd go kill some Americans? What difference at this point does it make?"

Pakistan

Pakistan is the world's sixth most populous nation. It is a catastrophe in the making. Its central government is notoriously weak. Its rogue intelligence service, the ISI, acts independently and has been allied with the Taliban in Afghanistan for decades. Radical Muslim clerics in Pakistan continue their efforts to subvert the central government, which has a nuclear arsenal of 50-100 warheads. Osama bin Laden took refuge in Pakistan until he was killed in 2011 by the United States.

Does anyone believe the ISI didn't know bin Laden was holed up in Abbottabad less than one mile from the Pakistan's version of our West Point? Since bin Laden's death, America's relations with Pakistan have gone from bad to horrendous.

Conclusion

Unfortunately, the United States is unable to project a coherent foreign policy in the Middle East because of the paralytic shadow that is cast upon the region and the American government by our ill-fated wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Most Americans believe former President George W. Bush and President Barack Obama have little or nothing in common. History will prove that belief wrong in one critically important way, the monumental blunders of those two wars.

After 9/11, Bush took America to war in Afghanistan in order to deny al-Qaida the training ground it had used to attack America. No credible analyst doubted the prudence or necessity of that decision. By 2003, we were on the verge of victory in Afghanistan.

But instead of finishing the job, Bush embarked on a pre-emptive war against Iraq, even though there was clear evidence that Iraq had not been involved in the 9/11 attack. Having decided to attack Iraq, the Bush administration needed a rationale that could be sold to Congress and the American people. It chose to assert that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.

It was an argument that carried the day politically but was false. But by then it was too late. America was locked in a no-win ground war in Iraq that cost hundreds of billions of borrowed dollars and thousands of needless deaths and injuries. When the war sputtered to a stalemated conclusion years later, the United States' blunder was obvious, and the victory that was within reach in Afghanistan in 2003 had vanished.

The fundamental purpose of war is to achieve clear and essential political objectives and outcomes, not simply to seize territory and win battles. From that perspective, the Iraq war, unnecessary from the outset, was a failure.

On Dec. 1, 2009, after seemingly endless meetings with his National Security Team, Obama addressed the Corps of Cadets at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. He announced the fateful decision he had made to escalate the war in Afghanistan and to say in advance when it would end. He said, "As commander in chief, I have determined that it is in our vital national interest to send an additional 30,000 U.S. troops to Afghanistan. After 18 months, our troops will begin to come home."

Like Bush's pre-emptive war in Iraq, Obama's escalation in Afghanistan was a military and foreign policy blunder that undercut the effective projection of our vital interests throughout the Middle East. Just like it did in Iraq, this nation has invested hundreds of billions of borrowed dollars in a military adventure in a country that was not in 2009 a central training ground for al-Qaida and international terrorism. By then, al-Qaida had migrated to the Arabian Peninsula, Africa and Pakistan.

A recent study at Harvard by Linda Blimes now puts the costs of these two wars, including medical and disability costs, at $4 trillion to $6 trillion.

The Middle East is a seething and uncontrolled cauldron of ferment and antipathy toward this nation. The United States has less influence and less respect in the region that at any time in our history. That is the enduring legacy of Bush and Obama's combined arrogance and incompetence.

With regard to the president's proposal of a possible military strike against Syria, he miscalculated the mood of the American people, Congress and our allies. His behavior reminds us of the mayor of Doodyville, Phineas T. Bluster, a marionette dangling at the end of strings now being pulled by the Kremlin.

The "new beginning" Obama promised at Cairo University in 2009 is stillborn, its death shroud two lost wars. Obama will leave office just like his predecessor, resembling the philosophic Cheshire Cat in "Alice in Wonderland" — with nothing but a grin.

The Shadow's in the Kremlin watching Putin orchestrate Obama's volte-face, but Goldman can be reached at:  EmailMe.

Obama is trapped by his own red line

Obama is trapped by his own red line

Note:  Part one of a two-part series. Part two will be published Sept. 15.

Words matter, but they matter less when they are not accompanied by deeds that make them authentic.

Less than five months after taking the oath of office, President Barack Obama delivered a major address at Cairo University titled, "A New Beginning." It fulfilled a campaign promise that he had made to speak to Muslims. The speech was lengthy, eloquent, hopeful, and was closely followed not only by Muslims but throughout the world.

In it, the president said, "I've come here to Cairo to seek a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world ... [based on] principles of justice and progress; tolerance and the dignity of all human beings."

As Congress now prepares to debate whether to support Obama's decision to launch a military strike to degrade Syria's capacity to use chemical weapons of mass destruction, it's time to take stock of the president's rhetoric at Cairo in 2009 and the standing of the U.S. in the Middle East today.

Syria

The civil war in Syria has been raging for two years. More than 100,000 Syrians have been killed, and more than 2 million Syrians have fled their homeland and are now in refugee camps in neighboring nations. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, a physician, is a brutal dictator willing to use whatever force is necessary to maintain his control of the Syrian government and to subjugate its people.

A week ago, Obama stunned the world by delaying his military strike on Syria's capacity to make further use of poison gas against its own people. The delay is intended to give the administration time to seek approval of that strike from Congress, approval which Obama maintains is unnecessary.

But Obama's hand has been forced because he is cornered politically. The American people do not support the strike, nor do the United Nations, the Arab League or our most dependable ally, Great Britain. There is no assurance that such a military strike will be successful. More importantly, there is no clarity about whether such a strike will make the situation on the ground better or worse, and whether it might lead to a further escalation of American military involvement in Syria.

Obama is now trapped by the red line he unwisely drew two years ago. On Aug. 20, 2012, he stated, "We have been very clear to the Assad regime ... that a red line for us is we start seeing a whole bunch of chemical weapons moving around or being utilized." It is that inelegant statement that now has come back to haunt Obama.

The president now feels compelled to strike militarily given our intelligence assessment that Assad has used sarin gas on his own people. The matter is further complicated by the fact that the president has stated that such a strike is not intended to bring about regime change in Syria and that he believes such a change will be effected through diplomacy. That belief is a flight of fancy.

Regime change isn't going to happen as long as Assad has the strong support of Russia, Iran and Hezbollah, a dominant Islamic political and militant force in Lebanon, funded by Iran. Hezbollah fighters are in Syria assisting Assad's military.

It's obvious that the only way to effect regime change is to remove Assad, who Secretary of State John Kerry has called a murderer and a thug. Obama has authorized the use of drones for this type of "kill" operation in the Arabian Peninsula, in Africa and along the Pakistan/Afghanistan border. It's past time to put Assad's name on a Hellfire missile, something the president has not been willing to do.

Israel

The United States has been the principal ally of the Jewish state since its founding in 1948. The American people will have it no other way. Yet, under the Obama administration, our relationship with Israel is at its nadir.

Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu do not like and may not trust each other. Efforts at the creation of the two-state peace settlement between Israel and the Palestinians have been deadlocked since Obama took office. If the United States cannot deter Iran from its obsession to acquire nuclear weapons, Israel will not hesitate to take military action to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.

Iran

The United States and Iran have been at each other's throat since the Iran hostage crisis in the late 1970s. The current crisis is driven by Iran's clear intention and long-standing program to acquire nuclear weapons. Topping the list of Iran's enemies is the Jewish state of Israel.

The United States has led the effort to impose sanctions on Iran in the hope that such sanctions will deter Iran from its effort to acquire nuclear weapons. The sanctions have exacted a punishing toll on Iran and its people. However, they have not caused Iran to abandon its quest for nuclear weapons capability.

Egypt

The Egypt that existed under Hosni Mubarak when Obama delivered his speech at Cairo University in 2009 is no more. Since then, the United States has stood helplessly on the sidelines as Egypt installed a government dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood, which has now been deposed in a coup led by the Egyptian military.

Our relationship with Egypt has disintegrated. America can't even determine whether we should continue to provide Egypt's military with $1.5 billion in military assistance annually.

The Shadow's in Libya preparing next Sunday's column, but Goldman can be reached at: EmailMe.