Good government in the United States is Constitutionally based, but it is also a matter of common sense and ordinary decency. What really keeps things going in the right direction on a day-to-day basis are some homespun truisms: decisions must be made with deliberation, the truth must be told, and all operations of government must be carried out with transparency.
Governments that acknowledge this succeed. The others fail.
Consider these three truisms as applied to the passage of Obamacare. Obama, you may recall, promised that all aspects of the health care debate would be open, transparent, and, in fact, they would broadcast on C-Span.
But instead of broadcasting the healthcare debate on C-Span, the president strong-armed passage in closed-door meetings, made secret deals with big pharmacy, and railed at those who were holding up immediate passage of the 2700 page bill. The sky would fall if the bill were not passed at the earliest possible time. That there had been no time to read the bill was not a problem, according to the president’s compatriot, Nancy Pelosi. If you wanted to know what was in the bill, she said, you would find out after it was signed into law. The rush to pass the bill was hardly conducive to considered decision-making.
Then, when passage of the bill was in question and Obama needed the votes of a coalition of congressman headed by Bart Stupak, Obama promised Stupak that he would not enforce the bill’s requirement for abortion funding. In fact, Obama signed a pledge to that effect. In return Stupak and his coalition voted for the bill. Needless to say, the president’s pledge was not honored, although his lie to Stupak and the others was instrumental in getting it passed.
There were, of course, other lies, such as the promise that everyone could keep the insurance they then had, that Obamacare would be cheaper and more efficient, and that seniors would be well cared-for with no death panels. Now it turns out that many employers are discontinuing health insurance for their employees because it is cheaper to pay a fine than provide insurance, that premiums for Obamacare are skyrocketing across the country, in some locations more than 100%, and that Obamacare siphons off 500 BILLION dollars from Medicare with the promise of rationed and limited health care (death panels) for seniors.
These lies are exacerbated by additional lies and less than transparent dealings in other matters: the scandals involving Benghazi, Fast and Furious, AP, NSA and IRS. Lies and secret maneuvering, it would seem, are the modus operandi of the Obama administration.
Without going into these scandals in detail, let’s just consider only the two in which Americans lost their lives, Benghazi and Fast and Furious.
Obama has never explained why he did not send a rescue mission to our beleaguered diplomats in Benghazi. This is particularly troublesome in light of his press secretary’s announcement that Obama knew of the Benghazi attack at every step. The likely explanation for not sending troops to rescue Americans under attack is that Obama did not want to call attention, right before the election, to the fact that the Al Qaeda fighters he said were eliminated were actually alive and well, unlike our ambassador and the three others who died with no attempt at rescue.
In Fast and Furious, Eric Holder, the Attorney General continues to refuse to turn over to congressional investigators documents concerning this debacle. He denies that he knew of this ill-advised operation and offers the improbable explanation that it was designed to track illegal guns from the United States to Mexican cartels in order to make arrests. He does not explain how arrests could be made in light of Mexico’s insistence that it knew nothing of the operation. A more likely explanation is that Obama and Holder, gun-haters-in-chief, planned the operation as a way to argue that illegal guns from the US are going to criminals in Mexico, and therefore, that stricter gun regulations at home are required. They didn’t predict that an American border patrol agent might be killed by one of these guns.
It appears that lies, false promises, and deception are the markers of Obama’s administration. And this leads me to reconsider my earlier statement that Obamacare was precipitously enacted.
It is possible that the promulgation of Obamacare may have been very deliberate, but cloaked in lies. The plan, perhaps thought out months or years in advance, may have been to pass this draconian legislation, not to insure the uninsured, but to pave the way for a massive influx of 30 million undocumented aliens into citizenship, enticed with Obamacare and welfare. These 30 million new “Americans” would then presumably guarantee Democratic Party control of the United States, and transform the country overnight into a socialist state.
In support of this idea, consider the lawsuit in which immigration agents are now suing the department of homeland security. On June 15, 2012 the department of homeland security issued a directive instructing immigration agents to refrain from placing illegal aliens in “removal proceedings” if they came to the United States under the age of sixteen. Since this violates the statutory requirements that these illegals be the subject of removal actions and because no statutes authorize this type of benefit, several immigration officers sued the department of homeland security, asking for a preliminary injunction and declaratory relief. The administration’s directive would affect approximately 1.7 million illegal aliens. At this writing, the case is still pending. Crane v. Napolitano, (U.S. Dist Ct, ND Texas, Civil Action 3:12-cv-03247-O), April 13, 2013.
Why would the Obama administration attempt to circumvent federal law in order to avoid initiating removal proceedings against 1.7 million illegal aliens where the congress has said that removal proceedings should be initiated? To ask the question is to answer it. Obama is looking for 30 million new voters.
Americans have always assumed their government would tell the truth, be open in its actions, and deliberate in its decision-making. The Obama administration illustrates what happens when these bedrock requirements are not met. Lies become the norm, secrecy runs amok, and decision-making that seems to be humanitarian is actually nefarious and catastrophic. In this environment, public trust becomes a thing of the past and the government cannot govern.
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