“You know, it’s easy for the Monday morning quarterback to say what the coach should have done, after the game is over. But when the decision is up before you — and on my desk I have a motto which says The Buck Stops Here’ — the decision has to be made.” This is from President Truman’s farewell address to the American people given in January 1953.

President Obama has continued to blame “eight years of failed policies” for our current economic climate. Never mind that the democrats have been in control of Congress since the 2006 election. Never mind that recessions are cyclical and unavoidable. But now President Obama has stated that the war on terror, and the money spent in Iraq and Afghanistan, is to blame for our current lack of prosperity. Hhhmmm, one trillion spent over the last decade fighting terrorism, or this year alone where we have a $1.3 trillion deficit due largely to out of control spending from the White House and Congress. And projections for another trillion plus next year in deficit spending.

Where does the buck stop? I guess with Obama it still stops with the last guy.

President Obama has continued to blame eight years of failed policies for our most recent recession: “The policies that crashed the economy, that undercut the middle class, that mortgaged our future, do we really want to go back to that, or do we keep moving our country forward?” says Obama.

Yet one of the administration’s themes about raising taxes on the “rich” is because we’d be returning to the tax rates of the ’90s, and the ’90s were such a glorious economic time. It must have been the higher tax rates that allowed us to thrive through the economic boom of the ’90s. Yet what did the economic boom of the ’90s create? A recession that began with the tumbling of the NASDAQ in March of 2000. And yes, Bill Clinton was still president in March of 2000.

So was the boom of the ’90s because of successful economic policies? Or was the recession that followed because of failed economic policies?

“Theoretically, economic recessions are unavoidable as in a perpetual fluctuation of economic boom and decline,” says  Yang Yang the EconGuru. “Not a single nation is doomed with forever recession nor are they blessed with forever booming.”

Do you know how many recessions we’ve had since the beginning of the Great Depression? From the recession of 1937 through now, we’ve lived through 13 recessions. That’s one recession about every six years.

How many years were there between the recession that followed the ’90s boom and our most recent recession? Six years.

Recessions have come during or on the coattails of the presidencies of Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton and Bush. That’s every president since the Great Depression. (See this list of recessions.) This doesn’t include pre-depression recessions.

Using President Obama’s logic, it appears we’ve had failed economic policies during every presidency for the last 70 years.

Government Policy
So now that we’ve established that recessions are unavoidable, can the government prevent a recession? Should the government attempt to prevent future recessions? The answer is simple: no.

One of my greatest fears about the economy is that the federal government will do everything it can to prevent future recessions, but all they’ll end up doing is creating a climate that will stifle growth and prevent future booms. Government policy cannot prevent future recessions. But it certainly can stifle economic growth and opportunity.

The Blame Game
I guess it’s human nature to assign blame. And the government certainly bares some responsibility. It was (failed) economic policy from the ’90s that created the housing bubble that was never fully corrected in the recession of 2001. And (failed) economic policy certainly contributed to the atmosphere that created the recent failures in our banking industry. But even if the government does everything right (and they never do), I can guarantee you one thing: We will have another recession.

Would you be surprised to learn that government employees make more money than their private sector counterparts? I was.

Perception: I don’t remember when or where, but I know that at some point in my life I was told that government employees (public sector) make less than people who work for businesses (private sector). And maybe at the time I was told, this was true. My perception had been that people chose to work for the government despite lower wages for the benefits and for job security.

Today’s Reality: According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the typical federal worker is paid 20% more than a private sector worker in the same occupation. Here are just a few examples:

A chemist on average makes $98,060 working for the federal government, and $72,120 in the private sector. A graphic designer makes $70,820 working for the feds, while making $46,565 in the business world. Did you know that we employ dry-cleaning workers in the federal government? They make $33,100, where they make only $19,945 working in the private sector. These figures are all from 2008.

On average, the typical federal worker makes $66,591 compared to their private sector counterparts, who make $55,500. That’s 20% more money in wages alone. According to the USA Today (see the full article here):

Federal. The federal pay premium cut across all job categories — white-collar, blue-collar, management, professional, technical and low-skill. In all, 180 jobs paid better average salaries in the federal government; 36 paid better in the private sector.

Private. The private sector paid more on average in a select group of high-skill occupations, including lawyers, veterinarians and airline pilots. The government’s 5,200 computer research scientists made an average of $95,190, about $10,000 less than the average in the corporate world.

State and local. State government employees had an average salary of $47,231 in 2008, about 5% less than comparable jobs in the private sector. City and county workers earned an average of $43,589, about 2% more than private workers in similar jobs. State and local workers have higher total compensation than private workers when the value of benefits is included.

Benefits: Now let’s look at benefits. According to the same USA Today article, “These salary figures do not include the value of health, pension and other benefits, which averaged $40,785 per federal employee in 2008 vs. $9,882 per private worker, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis.”

That brings total compensation to $107,376 for federal employees and $65,382 for their private sector counterparts. That’s a difference of $41,994 per year.

I don’t bring any of this up to disparage government employees. They’re just people like you and me trying the best they can to provide for themselves and their families. If you were a dry-cleaning worker, why wouldn’t you take a job with the feds if it paid $13,155 more and provided MUCH better benefits?

My question is, why are the salaries so out of whack with wages and benefits in the private sector? Officials attempt to explain it that these jobs aren’t direct comparisons. Again from the USA Today article: “National Treasury Employees Union President Colleen Kelley says the comparison is faulty because it “compares apples and oranges.” Federal accountants, for example, perform work that has more complexity and requires more skill than accounting work in the private sector, she says.”

This is nothing more than union speak and misdirection. Do you believe that nurses working  for the Veterans Administration perform tasks that require more skills than their private sector counterparts? Yet on average, a nurse working for the VA makes $10,680 more than private sector nurses, plus the difference in benefits.

Conclusions: Simply put, government is inefficient and wasteful. Think of how much money we could save by paying government employees comparable salaries and benefits to their private sector counterparts. The government fails to understand simple economics. Supply and demand. They set wages and benefits artificially high. Why? I have a few theories, but they’ll have to wait for another day.

Click here to view the embedded video.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The United States is accepting help from 12 countries and international organizations in dealing with the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

The State Department said in a statement Tuesday that the U.S. is working out the particulars of the help that’s been accepted.

The identities of all 12 countries and international organizations were not immediately announced. One country was cited in the State Department statement — Japan, which is providing two high-speed skimmers and fire containment boom.

More than 30 countries and international organizations have offered to help with the spill. The State Department hasn’t indicated why some offers have been accepted and others have not.

I guess I remain curious as to why this is a good idea now, but was a bad idea a month ago.

A few quotes to get us started:

1. “You never let a serious crisis go to waste. And what I mean by that it’s an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before.” — Rahm Emanuel

2. When Al Gore was asked about his method for communicating global warming to the people, he replied, “(U)nfortunately we still live in a bubble of unreality. And the Category 5 denial is an enormous obstacle to any discussion of solutions. Nobody is interested in solutions if they don’t think there’s a problem. Given that starting point, I believe it is appropriate to have an over-representation of factual presentations on how dangerous it is, as a predicate for opening up the audience to listen to what the solutions are, and how hopeful it is that we are going to solve this crisis.” (Interview for Grist in 2006.)

3. Dick Morris on socialism: “Socialism is not an epithet or even an economic philosophy. Whether a nation is socialist or not is determined by a single, simple statistic — what percent of the economy (GDP) goes to the public sector? When Obama took office, the U.S. public sector (federal, state, and local) spent about 30% of GDP. Now it is 36%. If Obamacare lives to be fully implemented, it will pass 40%.” (This quote is from last April on Morris’ website.)

What do these quotes tell us? That’s it’s OK to use a crisis to push a political agenda. That it’s OK to lie about the facts if you “know” what’s best for the country. And you never have to announce you want us to be socialists, you can move us there one step at a time by enlarging the federal government through legislation.

Economic Stimulus Package
We were told by the administration that it would save or create millions of jobs. The CBO (Congressional Budget Office) warned that by 2011 their would be NO net gain in jobs. And some economists and business experts, like those at IBD (Investors Business Daily), were predicting it would actually make things worse. That the stimulus bill was nothing more than big government spending. The result? We’ve lost millions of jobs, and the economy continues to struggle. Despite claims to the contrary, jobs and the economy have never been high on the administration’s priority list.

Health Care
We were told by the administration that their health care reform bill would lower costs and insure millions of people who are currently uninsured.  But at this point, virtually every organization is predicting that the cost of health care will continue to rise, and if businesses drop health care coverage as expected, it’s possible that we’ll end up with MORE uninsured people than we have now. We were repeatedly lied to about the costs of the bill. By ignoring tort reform and competition for insurance companies across state lines, it’s clear that reducing costs was never a goal of the bill. The true goal of the bill was to backdoor us into nationalized health care.

Banking Reform
This is a little more difficult for me to grasp. Banking regulations certainly aren’t in my wheelhouse. And I’m certainly open to the idea that our banking industry could use some smarter regulations and better oversight. But when the bill completely ignores two of the biggest culprits in our near banking collapse, the government run Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, it’s difficult to take the reform seriously. It’s another 2,000 page bill that even the democrats admit they don’t fully understand what it will do. And when the bill gives our federal government unprecedented power to takeover financial institutions engaging in “risky” business, I begin to get nervous. Real nervous.

The Oil Spill
I’ve written another post recently about the administration’s mistakes in the cleanup of the oil from BP’s disaster. Despite the administration’s claims that they’ve done everything they could in this crisis, they have not. They have not waived the Jones Act, and they have refused numerous offers of international aid. Why? I didn’t want to believe it, but it’s because allowing the oil spill to spiral out of control feeds their real agenda: green energy, cap and trade, and government control of our resources. There is no other intelligent conclusion.

So where is the Obama administration taking us? Down the path that even they will not name. Socialism.

When President Obama said that Americans would be allowed to keep their coverage, he lied.

Many large firms including AT&T, Verizon and John Deere, have already explained how they may have to drop health care coverage for their employees. A tax change created in the new law will cost these companies millions of dollars, and it may no longer be economically viable for these companies to continue to provide health care coverage. (See this story from CNN.com.)

But what came out in a recently leaked government document is even more disturbing. We had been promised that our health care coverage would be “grandfathered” in under the new law, allowing us to keep the policies currently offered by our employers. According to a joint project that is being prepared by the departments of Health and Human Services, Labor and the IRS, they have predicted that up to 51% of employers may have to relinquish their current health care coverage under the new law.

Why? Because most of these policies will lose their “grandfathered” status within the first few years.

The “midrange estimate is that 66% of small employer plans and 45% of large employer plans will relinquish their grandfathered status by the end of 2013,” according to the document. In the worst-case scenario, 69% of employers — 80% of smaller firms — would lose that status, exposing them to far more provisions under the new health law.

If a company makes even simple adjustments to their current plan, it is now considered a “new” plan and no longer subject to the “grandfathered” status. And all NEW plans must conform with the new government regulations, which will INCREASE the costs of the coverage. Just to give you some insight, 66% of small businesses and 47% of large businesses made a change in their health care plans last year that would have forfeited their grandfathered status. (See this story from IBD.)

So what do you think will happen when millions of Americans lose their health care coverage over the next few years? Don’t worry, the government will have a solution for us. It’s called government run health care.

At the end of this, I have a favor to ask, especially from my liberal friends.

To kick this off, I have three quotes that have continued to circulate through my brain. Keep these in mind as you read this post.

1. “You never let a serious crisis go to waste. And what I mean by that it’s an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before.” — Rahm Emanuel

2.  “The tragedy unfolding on our coast is the most painful and powerful reminder yet that the time to embrace a clean energy future is now… (B)ut only if we accelerate that transition. Only if we seize the moment.” — President Obama from his address to the nation earlier this week. Full transcript here.

3. “Once you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” — Spock

Reasons for Human Behavior
I’ve always loved Spock’s intellect and insight. His analytical mind, yet his openness to believe what should be unbelievable. I think we often try to make things more complicated than they need to be. Human behavior is really fairly predictable. People do things for various reasons. And typically those reasons are fairly simple. To do good. To make money. To have fun. To change the world. Accomplishing our goals may not be so simple, but the reasons for our actions typically are.

I have been approaching my criticism of President Obama and his handling, or mishandling, of this oil crisis from a fairly simple perspective. That his lack of leadership skills have dramatically compounded an environmental catastrophe. But what if there’s another purpose at play?

Rejecting International Assistance
Let’s walk through what I consider some critical mistakes by the administration. Not in plugging the damn hole, but in helping to protect our environment and coastline from the oil.

April 20: Deepwater Horizon drilling rig explodes, and oil begins gushing into the ocean.

April 23: The Dutch, who have experience cleaning up oil, offer ships outfitted with oil-skimming booms, and it proposes a plan for building sand barriers to protect sensitive marshlands. It’s been reported that these ships can remove 20,000 tons of oil and sludge per day from the ocean. According to Geert Visser, the counsul general for the Netherlands: “The embassy got a nice letter from the administration that said, ‘Thanks, but no thanks,’”.

May 5: The State Department reported that thirteen international offers of aid had been tendered and the government would decide which to accept “in the next two days”. Two weeks later, it said it did not need any of them.

May 19: The administration has continued to leave BP in charge of both plugging the hole and the cleanup of the oil. When asked about the international offers, State Department spokesman Gordon Duguid told reporters “We’ll let BP decide what expertise they do need.”

Does that sound like the administration is in charge as they’ve often proclaimed?

At one point (unclear of the date), Coast Guard Lt. Commander Christopher T. O’Neil said that “all qualifying offers of assistance have been accepted.” But this is hugely misleading. There is an old law on the books called the Jones Act which limits foreign vessels from engaging in certain activities in our waters. In comparison, on day four after Katrina, then President Bush through an executive order waived the Jones Act so that we could accept international offers of aid. President Obama has chosen not to do this, thus most of the offers for aid are not “qualifying offers”. Countries have offered ships, skimmers and booms. Other countries have offered chemical dispersants that help to break down the oil in the water. BP was willing to contribute $360 million to help pay for sand berms to protect Louisiana, but this too was rejected because they were not “qualifying offers”.

A Precedent has Been Set
President Obama already has a record of saying one thing, but doing another. This certainly is not uncommon for a politician. It’s been clear since Obama took office that the economy and jobs have never been high on his priority list. The Stimulus Bill provided little stimulus. The administration said it would save and create jobs. The CBO (Congressional Budget Office) said that by 2011, the bill would have NO net affect on job creation. IBD (Investors Business Daily) predicted that it would make things worse. That it was just a big government spending bill. The administration pushed it through, and things have gotten worse. It appears to me that IBD was correct.

One of the first posts I wrote for this blog was about how Cash for Clunkers was a green program, and not a stimulus program as it was often described by the administration.

And the administration continues to press for legislation that will hurt our recovery such as cap and trade.

The administration has said that jobs are their top priority, but they’ve done little to help the economy. And much of their legislative agenda will do just the opposite.

The administration has said they’ve done everything possible to protect our coastline and environment from the oil, but the facts indicate otherwise.

“You never let a serious crisis go to waste. And what I mean by that it’s an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before.”

Whatever Remains, However Improbable, Must be the Truth
I have repeatedly commented on what I have seen as a lack of leadership from President Obama. My criticisms began long before this crisis. And I still contend that Obama is a poor executive. Many of my liberal friends continue to tell me I’m wrong. So why has he not waived the Jones Act? Why have we rejected numerous offers of aid when it’s clear that we need the help? Why has he left BP in charge of the cleanup for so long? Can you explain this to me?

President Obama is a smart man. He is surrounded by smart people. They have a reason for their actions, and their inactions.

If it’s not poor leadership, then what is it? Is the administration using this crisis to push their own agenda? By their own words, it is clear that they are.

“The tragedy unfolding on our coast is the most painful and powerful reminder yet that the time to embrace a clean energy future is now… (B)ut only if we accelerate that transition. Only if we seize the moment.”

Would the administration intentionally drag their feet and ignore opportunities to help cleanup the oil to further exasperate the crisis? I have a very difficult time believing that ANY President would do this. But I’m also have a hard time attributing all of these decisions to poor leadership. I’m beginning to fear that to further the cause of green energy, we have intentionally let this crisis spin out of control. It paints an ugly picture.

A Favor
So what favor do I ask, particularly of my liberal friends? Tell me why my fears are wrong. Persuade me that there’s another purpose, a reasonable plan, for why we have rejected these offers of international aid. I want to believe. I’m just finding it tough at the moment.

And as Spock would say, “Live long, and prosper”.

1. John Browne: Former CEO of BP because he’s accused of “cost-cutting” at BP prior to stepping down in 2007.
2. Tony Hayward: CEO of BP when the the oil leak occurred.
3. Chris Oynes: Interior Department official who oversaw the MMS until he retired at the end of May.
4. Doug Suttles: BP’s COO.
5. George Bush: too cozy with the oil industry.
6. Dick Cheney: too cozy with the oil industry.
7. The American Driver: 200 million people driving 250 million passenger vehicles.
8. Barack Obama: because he “proposed” opening new tracts for oil production prior to the crisis. (This is the one in particular that I disagree with their reasoning, and a clear indication of Time’s bias.)
9. Ken Salazar: Obama’s Interior Secretary who oversees the MMS.
10. S. Elizabeth Birnbaum: Obama’s pick to run the MMS until she was ousted on May 27th.
11. Steve Newman: CEO of Transocean, the company that owns the Deepwater Horizon rig.
12. Tim Probert: President of Halliburton, the contractor responsible for cementing the well.

Personally I find two huge omissions from this list. And the fact that a left-leaning publication like Time would miss on these does not surprise me.

Congress and White House
We’ve already thrown millions of Americans under the bus, why not Congress and the White House too? And not just this Congress and the White House, but everyone who has served in Congress and the White House since 1982. Why 1982? Because “In 1982 Congress passed the ‘Federal Oil & Gas Royalty Management Act‘ which mandates protection of the environment and conservation of federal lands in the course of  building oil and gas facilities. The Secretary of the Interior designated the MMS as the administrative agency responsible for the mineral leasing of submerged OCS lands and for the supervision of offshore operations after lease issuance.” This is quoted directly from the MMS website.

What does this mean? That in 1982, Congress in their infinite wisdom, put one department in charge of collecting royalties AND providing oversight to the oil industry. They collect BILLIONS from the oil companies that go into the coffers of our government. Not to mention the corruption that has existed in this department for many years. How come our politicians never seem to understand that such an incestuous situation is a REALLY bad idea until it’s too late? Every member of Congress and every member of the White House that has allowed for this kind of situation to occur since 1982 bares some responsibility for the current catastrophe. And they run a VERY CLOSE SECOND to BP for allowing this crisis to occur.

Why did Time miss this? Because Congress in the ’80s was controlled by the left.

One of the few things President Obama has done right since this occurred was to split up the responsibilities of the MMS. Good job Mr. President.

Environmentalists
Yep. Throwing all of us environmentalists under the bus too. Why? Because oil companies DO NOT want to drill in the deep sea when safer locations could be made available to them. The President in his address to the nation the other night said that one of the reasons we need to move away from oil dependency is because we’re running out of places to drill, and that is why we’re drilling so far out into the ocean. This is misleading and disingenuous. We’ve told the oil companies that we need more oil, but have prohibited them from drilling in much safer locations such as ANWR and shallow waters where the chance of such a catastrophe would be incredibly minimized. The compromise that we’ve made is that we’ll allow oil companies to drill further out into the ocean so that we don’t have to see the oil rigs. But the deeper we drill, the greater the risk. And now this compromise has come back to bite us all in the ass. (Yes, ass is still my favorite cuss word.)

Why did Time miss blaming the environmentalists? Because many on the far left don’t want ANY domestic drilling. And Time’s reasoning for including Obama on this list (because he dared to possibly allow MORE drilling) clearly displays their bias against oil production and consumption.

Have we thrown everyone under the bus now? I hope so.

Legislation: The President will discuss legislation that he wants Congress to act upon. Likely to include our new “green economy” and “stricter regulations” for oil companies.

Taxation: Prepare for increased taxes on the oil companies. Which of course will create higher prices for us.

Investigation: The President and his staff will consider criminal charges against BP.

It is also expected that he will urge BP to create an account that will be used to help businesses and people who have been adversely affected by this crisis. Earlier this week, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid sent a letter signed by 54 Democratic senators to BP demanding that they create a $20 billion account to pay for economic damages and cleanup costs.

The President will also try to explain how his administration acted quickly and has done everything within their power to cope with the catastrophe, but news reports are beginning to spring up outlining all the ways the administration failed to accept help from other countries. Here are a few quotes from DickMorris.com:

The president’s tardy requests for international assistance and his government’s bureaucratic response to their offers demonstrates his lack of command and control. The Washington Post reports that the Obama Administration initially “saw no need to accept offers of state-of-the-art skimmers, miles of boom or technical assistance from nations around the globe with experience fighting oil spills.” Arrogantly, State Department spokesman Gordon Duguid told reporters on May 19th “we’ll let BP decide what expertise they do need.”

Two weeks after the spill started, the State Department and the Coast Guard sought to figure out what aid they could use from abroad. On May 5th, the Department reported that thirteen international offers of aid had been tendered and the government would decide which to accept “in the next two days.” Two weeks later, it said that it did not need any of them.

Now, when it is too late, the U.S. has finally accepted Canada’s offer of 10,000 feet of boom. In late May it took 14,000 feet from Mexico, two skimmers from Mexico, and skimming systems from Norway and the Netherlands. Too little too late.

Why didn’t the Administration act sooner?

Bureaucratic obstacles stopped it and the president was not involved or active enough to sweep them aside.

Coast Guard Lt. Cmdr Christopher T. O’Neil said that “all qualifying offers of assistance have been accepted.” But this bureaucratic-speak did not mention that the Jones Act – an isolationist law passed in the 1920s that requires vessels working in American waters to be built and crewed by Americans – disqualified many of the offers of assistance. But Obama could have waived the Jones Act whenever he wanted to.

A Norwegian offer of a chemical dispersant was rejected by the EPA – more bureaucracy.

When Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal sought to create sand berms to keep oil away from the coastline, the Washington Post reported that he reached out to “the marine contractor Van Oord and the research institute Deltares…BP pledged $360 million for the plan, but U.S. dredging companies – which have less than one-fifth the capacity of Dutch dredging firms — objected to foreign companies’ participation.”

Read the full article here.

The President has continued to compound his mistakes by failing to recognize how to handle a crisis. The President is a legislator and litigator by nature, thus his desire for new legislation and regulations in the face of this catastrophe. But what we need is leadership, and we’re getting precious little of it from this administration.