2012 Presidential Election: It's All About The Economy, War, Drugs, Debt, Regulations, Bureaucracy... And So Much More
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This election has had some background music going on for quite awhile. Johnny One Note has been playing "It's The Economy" and everyone is focused on that.But that's a mistake.
True, the economic malaise is endemic. As far as the jobless rate goes, the U.S. has flatlined during the Obama administration. It's not just the unemployment rate that has been a problem. It is the quality of employment that has created a sense of "we can't get there from here."
The American Enterprise Institute recently published this chart that shows a severe lack of quality employment during Obama's administration:
Not only has there been a minuscule improvement in hourly pay for the past four years... not keeping up with the cost increases in health care, food, and energy expenses for the average person... but as the AEI article states:
And these earnings numbers are not even inflation adjusted. If they were, they would be negative, which partly goes to the quality of the jobs being created and partly to the slow pace of growth and job creation. [source]But that leaves other subjects glossed over or forgotten. Perhaps the biggest festering issue that has been conveniently swept under the rug is the mess in Mexico and Latin America. What, you've haven't heard anything about that? Exactly.
From The Cato Institute on October 31, 2012:
A striking feature of the presidential debate on foreign policy was the total lack of attention given to Latin America —notably the drug violence wracking our next door neighbor, Mexico. Nearly 60,000 people have perished since 2006 in the Mexican government's military-led offensive against the country's powerful, ruthless drug cartels. But while President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney both obsessed about the Middle East, they virtually ignored Washington's relations with our southern neighbors. After a brief observation from Romney near the start of the debate that the region offered important — and neglected — economic opportunities for the United States, both candidates quickly abandoned the Western Hemisphere.
That was extraordinarily myopic. Given its geographic proximity, historical ties, and mounting importance as an arena for trade and investment, Latin America should be high on Washington's diplomatic and economic agenda. And near the top of the national security agenda should be the alarming developments involving the drug violence in Mexico.
Killings continue to rise, and hardly a week passes without a new report of grisly acts south of the border. Portions of several key cities, especially Ciudad Juarez and Monterrey, are now virtual war zones. The Mexican government's control is becoming precarious in major swaths of territory, including the crucial northern states of Nuevo Leon, Chihuahua, and Tamaulipas. Several of the cartels, especially the Sinaloa cartel and the ultra-violent Zetas, pose a threat to the integrity of the Mexican state.
...
Most importantly, Mexico's troubles are also beginning to afflict the United States. According to law enforcement authorities, Mexican drug organizations now have ties to criminal gangs in at least 230 American cities, including all of the 50 largest cities. The cartels' presence now even extends to relatively small cities and, in some cases, to rural counties — and not just in the southwestern states, but portions of the South, the Midwest, and other regions. [FULL ARTICLE]
But our head of Homeland Security says things have never been better.
Meanwhile, the heavy hand of U.S. regulators presses down on the metaphorical back of the U.S. free market system with increasing force. From Forbes:
Stultifying, job-killing regulation has been a hallmark of the Obama administration. An analysis by Susan Dudley, the director of the George Washington University Regulatory Studies Center reveals that with respect to “economically significant” regulations, defined as impacts of $100 million or more per year, Obama has been an outlier. While Presidents George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush “each published an average of 45 major rules a year…the outliers are Reagan, who issued, on average, a mere 23 major regulations per year; and Obama, who has published 54 per year on average, so far.”
Compared with George W. Bush’s first term, the Obama administration has finalized roughly 30 more of these economically significant regulations, and there are many more on the way: According to Dudley, fully a third of the final major rules with private sector impacts have been postponed. And the government’s spring 2012 ”Unified Agenda of Federal Regulatory and Deregulatory Actions”, which provides a preview of and transparency with respect to agency and OMB planning for the coming year, has still not been published.
Such an unprecedented delay refutes the Obama administration’s claim of greater transparency and instead reveals an effort to hide what Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) has characterized as a “regulatory cliff” facing the economy if the president is reelected. Portman cites a broad spectrum of dubious, nanny-state, financial, environmental and consumer-product regulations in the pipeline that will cost consumers tens of billions of dollars and further vitiate the nation’s economic recovery.Just wait until the EPA's hiding in the bushes new regulations come crashing down on the U.S.
There are many who will say they can't discern a difference between a U.S. led by Barack Obama and a U.S. led by Mitt Romney. They haven't been paying a lot of attention to what has been going on for four years.President Obama is putting off major environmental regulations until after the November elections in order to avoid the political blowback of the economic damage those regulations will cause, according to a new Senate report.Environmental regulators in the Obama administration “don’t want this economic pain to hit American families just before the election because it would cost President Obama votes,” states the report, released by Environment and Public Works ranking member Jim Inhofe (R-OK) on Thursday, “so they have simply decided to punt, intending to move full speed ahead if they gain a second term.” [FULL ARTICLE]
Big government will not disappear because Mitt Romney is elected. But government does not have to be an impediment to a strong system and that is what it has become increasingly under Barack Obama... and big government doesn't have to keep expanding exponentially.
It is time for change.
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