Democrats Praise Obama’s Jobs Creation - Do They Have A Point?

What is the real story behind jobs creation under President Obama’s leadership?  If we are to believe what democrats are saying, President Obama is responsible for the most successful jobs recovery in history while republicans are quick to scorn the president’s economic and job growth policies as being a failure.

So, which is it, success or failure, or do the facts land us someplace between the two? 

Let us take an in-depth look at jobs creation under this president and see for ourselves just exactly where we stand on jobs creation under the leadership of President Obama.  To carry out this endeavor, we will rely heavily on the assistance of the Bureau of Labor Statistics who has done a fine job in compiling monthly jobs figures.

To get started, let us first set the stage with some basic facts:

·         Between 80,000 and 170,000 new jobs {125,000 average} must be added to the economy each month in order to keep pace with the nation’s population growth

 

·         As the nation entered into the Great Recession, in the 2^nd quarter of 2007 monthly jobs creation dropped below what was necessary to keep pace with population growth

 

·         The economy began to shed jobs in the 1^st quarter of 2008

 

·         Barack Obama was sworn in as President of the United States on January 20, 2009

 

·         The nation’s unemployment rate was 7.8% when Barack Obama took office

Okay, with that out of the way, we can begin digging in to the numbers!

The Jobs Situation Before Obama Took Office

Heading in to the Great Recession job growth began to decline right around the start of 2007.  By the 1^st quarter of 2008 that job growth reversed and the economy actually began to shed jobs, a trend that would last for 23 months straight.

It was in September of 2008, when the Lehman Brothers bank collapsed, that the recession took its hardest hit.  The economic impact of the collapse included an immediate spike in job losses.  Job losses spiked a second time in November, pushing the rate of loss over one half million jobs per month, a figure that is maintained until May of the following year.

The first major step to mitigate job loss and restore economic growth was the creation of the Troubled Asset Relief Program or TARP.  TARP was a group of programs created in an effort to stabilize the country’s financial sector in the wake of the financial crisis.  The $787 billion {later reduced to $475 billion} TARP fund was created in early October of 2008 when President Bush signed the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act in to law.  The distribution of TARP funds began in late October of 2008 and continued through the end of 2009. 

TARP was not the only Bush Administration measure aimed to thwart off the negative effects of the recession, but it was certainly the largest and most effective.

Obama Takes Office and Gets to Work

Barack Obama is sworn in as the President of the United States on January 20, 2009.  At the time Obama took office and as a result of the recession, the US economy had at this point shed 4.4 million jobs and the unemployment rate had risen from the mid 4% rate, enjoyed by his predecessor for most of the 2 years leading up to the recession, to 7.8%.

The Obama transition team went straight to work on a stimulus plan that the president-elect had many times spoken of during his campaign for president, a plan intended to create shovel ready jobs and to quickly revitalize the economy through a massive stimulus.  By the time Barack Obama officially took office the creation of the stimulus was well on its way however, the stimulus package put before Obama for the first time in his official capacity as the President of the United States differed slightly from his own vision. 

Changes were made and a stimulus package that better reflected the new president’s desire was then passed in congress and signed in to law by President Obama just a few days shy of a full month in office.

A Look at the Stimulus

In December of 2008, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) published a report which indicated that the recession was deeper than earlier predicted and was expected to lose an additional 4 million jobs.  This report prompted president-elect Obama to up the game from his commitment of creating 2.5 million jobs in two years to creating 3 million and tasked his team to get more aggressive with their plan.   At the end of the day, President Obama’s 3 member Council of Economic Advisors (CEA) proposed and the president agreed to a plan which the CEA claimed would create or save 3.5 million jobs in the first two years.

Understanding that 3.5 million jobs over a two year period would hardly keep pace with population growth much less put to work the millions who had already lost their jobs, Republicans in congress remained skeptical of the stimulus plan being proposed by democrat’s and were calling for significantly more spending on job creating infrastructure programs.  Democrat’s on the other hand were more in favor of shoring up a safety net by expanding unemployment benefits and increasing food stamp benefits.  In the end the plan did emphasize shovel ready infrastructure jobs intended to create these jobs quickly but not near as much spending was allocated to short term jobs creation as most economist believe was needed.

The plan had both short and long term goals with some of the spending spread out over decade however, the bulk of the provisions in the package were funded immediately and ended after the 1^st and 2^nd year.

And on February 17, 2009, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, better known as “the stimulus” was signed into law.  Again, the primary objective of the stimulus was to immediately create jobs!

The Bleeding Continued

With TARP working to stabilize the financial sector and Obama’s stimulus signed in to law, America’s unemployed labor force stood poised and ready to get to work.  Unfortunately, new jobs failed to transpire.

Despite efforts to kick start the economy, 15 of the 19 months following the passage of the stimulus experience job losses 10 of which reported losses in excess of 200,000 jobs.  Unemployment continued to rise and in October of 2009 peaked at 10% and then held steady between 9.8% and 9.9% for the following six months.  During this 19 month period the economy shed another 4.6 million net jobs and if you were to factor in the number of jobs that the White House economists projected the stimulus would save/create {3.5 million in two years}, the economy could have actually shed as many as 7.4 million jobs during this 19 month period.

Finally, in May of 2010, after experiencing the first consecutive months of jobs growth in 25 months, the unemployment rate dropped to 9.6% and over the following five months, bounced between 9.4% and 9.5%.  However, the drop in unemployment was not all good news as the economy shed another 282,000 jobs over the same period.  The lowering of the unemployment rate coupled with a continued loss of jobs told a bleak story, thousands of people had given up on looking for work!

A milestone was reached in September of 2010 which marked the final month to record jobs losses during the Great Recession.

It took the Obama Administration over one and a half years to stop the bleeding but it did finally stop.  Unfortunately, over that time an additional 4.6 million net jobs were lost on top of the 4.4 million that were lost prior to his taking office. 

The Jobs Hole that Needs to be Filled

There are three goals in the jobs recovery process.  First of course is to stop the loss of jobs; second, to create enough jobs to keep up with population growth; and last, to fill the hole of jobs lost during the recession.

It will be forever debated as to the reason why, but it was 20 months into President Obama’s first term in office {19 months since the stimulus was passed} before the economy finally stopped shedding jobs.  All tolled, 32 months passed from the time jobs first dropped into the negative numbers until the bleeding was permanently stopped.  Over those 32 months a net 9 million jobs were lost.

Beyond the jobs that were physically lost is the loss of jobs that were needed to keep pace with population growth meaning that for any given month approximately 125,000 new jobs were needed to accommodate new entrance into the work force. 

During the two years of the Great Recession, prior to President Obama taking office, 14 months experienced a net zero job growth and the remaining 10 months record an averaged shortfall of 28,000 jobs per month.  This equated to an additional 2 million new jobs deficit.  And in the 73 months that President Obama has been in office an additional 9.1 million new jobs were required just to maintain status quo.

In total 11.1 million new jobs were needed to make up for the shortfall in keeping pace with population growth.  Add to this the 9 million physical jobs the economy shed during the Great Recession and we arrive at a jobs hole 20.1 million deep that needed filling.

And so begins the task of filling that hole.


Now a Look at Job Creation

 

·         After Two Years

By the end of 2009 TARP monies had largely served their purpose in helping to stabilize the financial sector but unfortunately the stimulus was not as successful in achieving its intended purpose of creating shovel ready jobs and getting American back to work.  By the end of 2009 unemployment had risen from the 7.8% it was when President Obama took office to a near record high of 10%.  In the first 12 months, 4.3 million jobs were shed and total of 4.7 million net jobs were lost through the first 2 years of Obama’s presidency.   Over the same 2 year period a mere 1.5 million jobs were added to the economy, only half what was needed to keep up with population growth alone.

·         At the End of Obama’s First Term
While the unemployment rate did drop from its peak of 10%, by the end of President Obama’s 1^st term in office the unemployment remained higher than the 7.8% of when he first took office 4 years earlier and now stood at 8.0%.  And after 4 years in office, the Obama Administration recorded a net loss of nearly one quarter of a million jobs.  All the while, population growth added another 6 million to the number of people in search of employment during President Obama’s first term in office.

 

·         So Far in Obama’s Second Term
It was at the start of Obama’s second term in office that unemployment finally dropped and held below the rate at which it was when he first entered office but it was another year still before the 9 million physical jobs the economy shed were finally recovered.

But recovering the physical jobs is just one piece of the pie, there are still those 125,000 new jobs needed each month to keep pace with population growth that are absent from this equation.

The hole of 20.1 million jobs dug during the recession and subsequent recovery has been offset by 11.8 million jobs created since President Obama first took office, leaving the US at an 8.3 million jobs deficit now, two years into President Obama’s second term in office.

Did the Stimulus Work?
The answer to the question “Did the stimulus work?” all depends on who you ask.  If you were to pose this question to President Obama or any of his economic staff, of course the answer would be a resounding “yes” however, if you were to ask pretty much anyone else you would get a different answer.

An update report released by the CEA, on the effects of the stimulus, concluded that by the end of 2009 between 1 ½ and 2 million jobs were created as a result of the stimulus.  What is uncertain however, is the validity of this claim as in the executive summary of the same report, the authors state that evaluating the impact of the stimulus was “inherently difficult” due to a number of factors.  While none of the “number of factors” were identified in the report, one of those factors was the infusion of TARP money into the economy.

The most telling indicator of the ineffectiveness of the stimulus is the unemployment rate.   The stimulus, a plan intended to immediately put people back to work, seemed to have had an adverse effect on unemployment, although there are certainly other attributing factors.  The two months following the passage of the stimulus were met with sharp upwards unemployment spikes and a year later unemployment remained at a near record high 9.9%.  After two years of stimulus, unemployment managed to drop to 9.0% but this was still seven tenths of a percentage point higher than the month the stimulus was passed.  It would take a full three years before the unemployment rate returned to that of what it was prior to the stimulus.
  
It is hard to say for certain what impact the stimulus may have had on job creation, if any at all, but what is for certain is that the economy shed 3.6 million jobs during the 10 month period covered in the CEA’s evaluation and new jobs creation did not seem to gain any steam until three years after its passage.  While proponents of the Obama Administration will argue that the stimulus simply took longer to take affect that predicted, a more realistic evaluation of what has taken place is that after four years of near economic stagnation caused by over-regulation and uncertainty, the economy went into a self-correcting mode, an argument that most economist would agree with.


When Will All Jobs Lost Be Recovered?

Now that the slowest recovery in over 50 years is finally showing some life, there is hope that all the jobs lost as a result of the Great Recession and slow economic recovery can be recovered.

Taking in to consideration the 4.4 million jobs shed by the economy prior to President Obama taking office; the 4.6 million jobs shed by the economy after he took office and that 125,000 new jobs are needed each month to keep pace with population growth, if the current growth rate of 261,000 jobs per month is maintained {past 12 month average} without interruption, all lost job will be recovered in May of 2020, 11 years and 4 months from the time President Obama was first sworn in to office.

12 Questions I Would Ask Hillary

If given the chance, these are the twelve questions I would love to ask Hillary Clinton:

1.   If elected president, would your economic policies be able to create as many new millionaires as your predecessor policies did?

 

2.   After losing the Democratic Presidential nomination to Barack Obama who subsequently went on to win the Presidency, what kind of a deal did he make with you to get you to join Team Obama and be his Secretary of State?

 

3.   If you had it to do over again, would you save you and our nation the embarrassment and double check to be sure that your aids spelt “Reset” in Russian correctly?

 

4.   In your former life as an attorney, if a senior White House staff member came to you inquiring as to if they should set-up an in home email server and conduct all their official correspondence using a personal email address, what advice would you give them?

 

5.   For westerners, many regions of the world have become a very dangerous place and as the POTUS and Commander in Chief, you would be required to travel inside many of these regions.  In doing so, do you have any concerns that this might bring back the terror you experience from the fictitious sniper fire you came under during her 1996 trip to Bosnia?

 

6.   You were amongst those that found their way to the situation room to witness the capture/killing of Osama bin Laden on the big screen TV however, during the 8 hour span of the attack on the US Consulate and CIA Annex in Benghazi, Libya, you failed to make the 1.5 mile trip from your Foggy Bottom office to the White House basement where the situation room, specifically designed and equipped as a command and control center for the management of foreign and domestic crisis, is located.  Is there a believable reason that you chose not to join the crisis management team in the situation room during the Benghazi attack or were you directed by a higher authority to remain at in your State Department office?
       

7.   If elected, would you denounce American Exceptionalism in the same manner as your predecessor has?

 

8.   During your eight years serving in the Senate you sponsored an astonishing 417 bills.  Where you shooting for some kind of Guinness record or something?

 

9.   Have you given any thought to a new domain name for the private email address you will use if elected president or will you simply resurrect the @clintonmail.com domain?

 

10. Was the live video feed, from the drone flying over the US Consulate and CIA Annex in Benghazi, as crisp and clean as the high definition imagery you have in your in-home entertainment studio?

11. Watergate was a very long time ago and most have forgotten the wrongdoings of Richard Nixon and his administration.  Could you please refresh our memories of the Watergate investigation, specifically what your old boss was referring to when he stated this about you: “She was an unethical, dishonest lawyer. She conspired to violate the Constitution, the rules of the House, the rules of the committee and the rules of confidentiality.”?

And the question that just has to be asked …..
 

12.  If you are elected as President of the United States, will Bill have access to the White House interns?

Hillary – Helping Republicans Win in 2016

So it’s official, through a single Tweet signed ‘-H’, Hillary Rodham Clinton announced on Sunday, “I’m running for president…..”

This announcement is a bit of a catch 22 for Hillary who, through her silence, has maintained an overwhelming lead over all other potential democratic presidential hopefuls yet, through her announcement yesterday, Hillary has relinquished the luxury of being able to remain tight lipped. 

Hillary will now have to face what will no doubt be a relentless barrage of attacks on her.  She will be forced to answer questions pertaining to her less than stellar record as a US Senator as well as to her tenure as Secretary of State which was void of any notable achievements.  On the foreign policy front she will certainly be challenges on her roll in destabilizing Libya as well as the infamous Russian reset.  Maybe the most damaging will be the questions raised regarding her refusal to disclose what took place in her office for the eight hours during the Benghazi attack.  And the course, the most recent issue to plague her long history of scandals and cover-ups, her continued attempts to hide the content of her State Department emails which she held in private until recently but did not release in hard copy until after scrubbing clean the email server to which they resided.  There are plenty more shortcomings in her political career, each one of which is likely to find its way to the surface at the aid of her political opponents.

Entering in what most consider a pool of one, most assume Hillary’s defense against these attacks will be met with the standard comebacks that do little more than demonize the opposition and never answer a question.  But what happens when the opposition comes from within her own party, what will she do then?

The only hope any democrat wishing to capture the presidential nomination has in beating Hillary is to take the very same approach that republicans will be taking.  Voting democrats have place Hillary on such a high pedestal that her political positions and promises mean little if anything, she has sealed their endorsement and so it leaves little else but for her democratic opponents to go directly for her jugular.  The danger of this is is that attacking Hillary on some of the very controversial issues and dealings she has been accused of being involved in exposes the party.

But after the past six, and then what will be eight long years of compromising the future of their political careers in order to protect the party, many democratic hopefuls are simply fed up.  Democrat up and comers cannot help be feel some level of disdain for Hillary, whose current party popularity is driven by name and historical value only.  Under the leadership of Hillary, many see a future of another 4 and possibly 8 years of a White House constantly under fire, political dysfunction and the further damaging of the Democratic Party brand. 

The likelihood of no other democrat throwing their name in the hat is highly unlikely and you can be assured, anyone even considering doing so is already developing their anti-Hillary campaign.  This will take huge pressure off of Republican’s who can remain focuses on policy issues and leave all the dirty work to those democrats who will be going after Hillary from a moral and ethical standpoint and who may even push the point of how damaging she could be to the future of the party.

Then there is the issue of the current administration and how Hillary will deal with following an unpopular president and a list of failed and failing policies. Another catch 22 for Hillary who has to be careful to not paint herself  as an Obama 2.0 yet in order to disassociate herself from the current administration she has few options other than calling the Obama’s policies a mistake that have not served the better good of the nation.

And nobody is watching closer than the democratic hopefuls who are no doubt waiting in the wings and are ready to pounce on any opportunity Hillary presents them to damage her campaign.  A savvy republican campaign will ensure that those opportunities transpire.    
      
Hillary and Bill certainly have their work cut out for them.  In their effort to defend Hillary’s past and separate her from the Obama Administration, they have to do so without playing to the hand of the Republican Party.  This could prove to be the impossible task. 

A White House of Amateurs

Maybe the source to one of the problems that plagues the Obama Presidency is that the president does not pick good people!

It is more than evident that President Obama’s lack of experience has hurt him significantly in the areas of decisive decision making and more so in his ability to provide strong leadership, two critical traits needed to ensure a successful presidency and that can only be learned through years of experience of which the Jr. Senator and south side Chicago community organizer has very little of.

Another extremely important aspect to ensure a successful presidency is to appoint good people to your cabinet and the various other staff and support assignments.  There are numerous positions that a president must fill covering a vast array of disciplines and knowledge bases.  Filling those positions with competent and trustworthy people whom are experts in the particular field that the position pertains to will make the difference between an administration's success and failure.  

Prior to being elected as the President of the United States, Barack Obama had been in politics for just 12 years, only 4 of which were at the national level, the balance he served as an Illinois State Senator with his efforts almost exclusively focused on issues of equality and rising Chicago’s lower class.  Before his entrance into politics Obama worked as a civil rights attorney and was a part time lecturer then senior lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School (no, Obama was not a constitutional law professor as he claims).

Neither of Obama's pre-political positions provided him with any practical exposure to those working in the ranks of politics.  Serving on the Illinois State Senate granted him only minimal exposure to national political figures and private sector professionals.  As a Junior US Senator, Obama had hardly gotten his feet wet before choosing to make a run for the presidency.  In short, Barack Obama’s short and very isolated  time in politics left him with a very limited list of potential candidates of which he had close personal knowledge to their unique skillsets and qualifications.

An indictment to Obama’s lack of knowledge of qualified individuals to bring into his administration is the high turn-over rate of his own cabinet members.  Of the 21 cabinet positions, serving in the Obama Administration, only 4 have not been turned over two of which are Vise President Joe Biden and Attorney General Eric Holder, whom will be parting ways with the president shorty.  The remaining positions have all been turned over at least once and some as many as three times.  And while it is not unusual for cabinet members to come and go, the number of turn-overs experienced by the Obama Administration thus far is staggering.  With all things being equal (correcting for cabinet sizes and two full terms in office), the rate of turn-overs experienced during the Obama Administration’s first 5 years puts it on a trajectory to reach 90 different cabinet members by the end of the presidents second term, double that of any other administration looking back as far as JFK, the one exception of course is the Ford administration which had to clean house and nearly start from scratch following the Watergate scandal.   

We have seen it time and again with this administration, as they experience one political folly after another, the problem being traced back to the lack of qualifications of the person in charge, such as was the case with both Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius and Secretary of Veterans Affairs Eric Shinseki.  Of course, not all staff members are under qualified and we have seen as well, on many occasions, the president ignore the advice of many of his senior staff members and advisors.

This is not to say that it is impossible for an individual with limited time in politics to put together a good team.  With thorough due diligence and embracing the assistance of trusted senior members, very strong candidates for cabinet and other appointed positions in one’s administration can be sought out.  Selecting from a list of friends, acquaintances and those who have or will provide political favor will only lead to failure as our president is experiencing this very moment.

The New Colossus - Give Me Your Tired Your Poor

“Give Me Your Tired Your Poor……”

These words, which appear on a plaque mounted on the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty, cannot be found in the words of the Constitution of the United States or the Bill of Rights.  These words were not written by any of our founding fathers nor do they reflect any of founding principles which drove a group of British Colonists to fight for and gain their independence.

“Give Me Your Tired Your Poor ……“  is a phrase that is found in The New Colossus, a sonnet that was written and donated to be auctioned to raise money for the construction of the Statue of Liberty’s pedestal, nothing more, nothing less.

The author, American born Emma Lazarus, was the daughter of Portuguese immigrants.  The poem was certainly influenced by stories told to her by her elders and reflected the feelings of those, such as her parents, who were welcomed by a country filled with great opportunity and in need of those eager to work hard for the country that had much to offer. 

But that was over a century ago and this country has grown, changed and is no longer in need of the tens of thousands of immigrants who came to this country each year, as it was once upon a time.  No longer are their vast opportunities available to anyone who wished to come to this country to better themselves, today there are hardly enough opportunities for those who are already here.  

And then, immigrants who came to this country paid their own way, they came wishing for nothing more than a simple opportunity to take a chance on themselves.  Now, the majority of immigrants that swarm to this country do so knowing that they will become part of this nation’s social entitlement society, a culture perpetuated by a liberal ideology paid for by the sweat of hard working Americans born of immigrants from generations ago.

So the next time your hear the someone make claim that helping those who come to this country is one of the founding principles of this nation, or as then president Obama put it, “it’s in our DNA”, you might suggest that they check their history.  The principals that guide this nation can be found in the documents written by our founding fathers not in a poem written for a fund raiser.

Who Stands to Lose the most from Emailgate?

On Tuesday, Trey Gowdy, the chairman of the Select Committee on Benghazi, formally invited Hillary Clinton to participate in a private, transcribed interview to be held on a date of her discretion but no later than May 1.

This special invitation to the former Secretary of State stemmed from the reply the committee received to their request that Hillary’s private email server, of which she conducted State Department business on, be turned over to an independent third party for further scrutiny.  In the reply from Hillary’s attorney, it was stated that not only would the Clinton email server not be made available but that it was unnecessary to do so as the period in which the committee was interested in scrutinizing {the period in which Hillary served as Secretary of State} had been scrubbed from the server’s hard drive as well as all back-up sources.

Short of the hard drive being destroyed or coming up missing, extraordinary measure continue to be taken to prevent the emails records of the former Secretary of State from being made available to the various congressional oversight committees, as well as the media and general public. 

The efforts taken to control the custody of her emails, dating back to the creation of a private email account and on to the more recent effort to conceal the contents of what may be on the Clinton’s private email server, are highly troubling to say the least and certainly not they kind of actions one would expect from a person considering to take a run at the White House.  This begs the question as to who might be more interested in keeping the contents of Hillary’s emails out of the hands of the people she served than Hillary herself? 

When the story of Hillary’s private email account and server first broke, it was immediately obvious that the media had only a cursory interested in the story.  This created the opportune time for Hillary to get in front of the spin, to come clean and let the story run its course.  The Clinton’s have been finding their way through political tight spots for decades and this would have been a cake walk for Hillary.  The media would have played soft ball with the grand confessions of the 2016 presidential hopeful and the story would have been over almost before it started.

But something is very different this time and with each poorly played chess move made by Hillary, the situation worsens.  These are not the actions a typically well planned Clinton offense with the quarterback reading the lineup and calling an audible.  Instead what we seem to have is poor plays being sent in from someone on the sidelines with a very different end game in mind than scoring the big “W” for the Hillary.

Of all those who we can speculate might get hurt if something damaging exists on the Clinton email server, Hillary has the least to lose.  Sure, she would find it nice to make history and be the nation’s first woman president but Hillary is also well aware that under the given set of circumstances she would have, at the very least, a troublesome presidency being that she would be follow a failed administration led by someone who democrats wish to portray as a legacy.  There would be a big push from within the party for her to tread lightly and move slowly so as not to make the previous administration look like a total failure.  Hillary also knows she would face a large contingent of liberal democrats who would push hard for her to move more to the left.  And these are just the challenges she would be facing from her own party!  Hillary would be 69 years of age if she were to win the White House in 2016, does she really need all of this?

President Obama has more to lose than Hillary.  If in fact information that resides on the Clinton email server could implicate him in committing or being a part of what could be defined as a higher crime or misdemeanor he could face impeachment.  But if evidence of this nature were to be found, this would merely sets the wheels of impeachment in motion.  A great deal of footwork would be necessary so as to be certain that actions warranting articles of impeachment to be filed truly did exist.  Impeachment is not a matter to be taken lightly as accusing the leader of the free world, of whom was elected “by the people”, will have a significant negative implications both home and abroad, guilty or not!

And if such evidence that would warrant articles of impeachment were uncovered, the question would then have to be answered if enough time remains to impeach a sitting president and if so, does the will of congress exist to do so?  Considering the time it will take to finally learn what might be on the Clinton email server, assuming we ever do, and then the time it would take to do all the necessary investigative work and build a case sellable to congress, the odds of impeaching President Obama, while still in office, is pretty slim and grows smaller with each passing day.  While the expiration of service from office does not put an automatic end to impeachment proceedings, it does make them a moot point as other than to be used as an entry in history books, the only action of impeachment is to remove someone from office.

Keeping all this in mind, if in fact President Obama did engage in some form of wrong doing, the secrets of which are hidden on the Clinton email server, what the president does have to lose is how he will be portrayed in the history books.  If the president were to be impeached there would be chapters, even entire books written on his failed and corrupt presidency while if he were to leave office prior to the completion of the impeachment proceedings, which would most likely be the case, the impeachment process would foster little more than a paragraph.

So Hillary Clinton might have to forfeit a run for the presidency and President Obama might have a harsh paragraph written about him in the history books if in fact there were something on the Clinton email server that implicated either of them of wrong doing.  Initially, conservative media outlets would be demanding prosecution and jail time while the liberal media outlets would spin a story that he or she {or both} made a “poor choice” and then drop the story from the news cycle before weeks end.  And within a few months, the fallout would be over and a lucrative speaking career would commence.

But there is in fact a big loser in all of this if damaging information from the Clinton email server does manage to surface that implicated either Obama or Hillary and that loser would be the entire Democratic Party!

Over the two and a half years since the Benghazi tragedy, congressional democrats, democratic pundits and millions of self-proclaimed political experts from the left have been unrelenting in their efforts to create the perception that “There is no there there”, but it has proven difficult for their efforts to gain any traction due to the constant drip drip drip of new events that contradict the “There is no there there” argument.  These continued drips of new events gives the clear appearance that the State Department is hiding something, the most recent and certainly the most compelling of course being the concealing of emails and email server by the former Secretary of State.  This coupled with the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) complete lack of interest in looking in to any of the apparent wrong doings and the Chief Executive’s failure to compel the DOJ to do so, has put the Democratic Party in a very precarious position if a cover-up or scandal is ever  exposed. 

Protecting President Obama and his scandal ridden administration has created a very difficult situation for the Democratic Party.  The party has so deeply invested itself in this effort and done so for so long that any truth brought to any of the scandals and cover-ups surrounding the administration will have a long and lasting negative impact on the democratic brand.  The number of times leading democrats have gone on-record in defense of questionable actions of this administration are too numerous to count as well as are the number of times they have demonized republicans, claiming they are on a witch hunt in an effort to cause harm to the president.  In far too many cases, the demonization of republicans by these democrats has included a racial component to them, making their situation even worse. 

If their effort to protect the president and his administration fails, any democrat that has jumped on the “There is nothing there” bandwagon will be void of any credibility as well as will have opened themselves up to what will no doubt be a great deal of public scrutiny that will follow them for the rest of their political careers.

And if Emailgate breaks and has legs to a Benghazi cover-up, this will be just the tip of the iceberg as once it is learned that one cover-up is real, Republican’s will be relentless in their efforts to expose the truth behind the countless other scandals and cover-ups that surround the Obama Administration and this time they will not have to push back against democratic lawmakers or the liberal media as they will have all been silenced.  If Emailgate breaks, it could get really ugly for Democrats.

So what is this all about anyway, what could anyone possibly be hiding that makes it worth the risk of damaging the party so deeply?  Nobody knows for certain, with exception of Hillary and possibly some of her closest confidants, exactly what digital secrets lie embedded on the hard drive of the Clinton email server, but for the betting man or woman, the answer to the question is Benghazi!

From all the congressional investigations that have taken place, we know with a high level of certainty, of the failures that took place within the State Department during the months, weeks and even days before the Benghazi attack.  There is also a reasonable level of knowledge of what took place in the days and weeks after the Benghazi attack with exception of a few remaining unanswered questions.  But what is still a great mystery is what took place between the White House and the State Department during the critical eight hours of the attack itself.

No reasonable explanation has ever been given as to why neither the President nor the Secretary of State ever found their way to the Situation Room at any point during the entire eight hours of the Benghazi ordeal.  The President was in the White House the entire time, spending some time at his residence and the majority of his time in the Oval Office.  Some of the President’s time in the Oval Office was filled by a lengthy scheduled phone conversation with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and a 30 minute meeting with a few of his staff.  Beyond that, the president is believed to have been alone in his office for most of the attack.  There were no other scheduled meetings or phone calls on his schedule and no account of the remainder of his time has ever been provided.

The Secretary’s story is similar.  During the entire Benghazi ordeal, to the best of anyone’s knowledge, she remained in or near her State Department office, just a few blocks away from the White House and Situation Room where the attack was being monitored and where the real time information is received.  No explanation has ever been provided as to why neither of them made their way to the Situation Room at some point during the lengthy attack.

Initially, it was reported, by the White House, that the President and the Secretary never spoke directly until just before the Rose Garden speech and then had their first formal meeting shortly after.  It was not learned until a few months later, and only due to an accidental slip of the lounge by then Press Secretary Jay Carney, that the President and the Secretary had a brief phone conversation just minute before Hillary released the public brief which included the first blaming of the attack on an internet video.  Prior to this slip by Jay Carney, it had been denied that the President and Secretary had spoken or corresponded directly, at any time during the attack.

Nobody has ever ascertained just exactly who was in charge, here at home, during the Benghazi attack.  White House spokespersons have been very elusive when ask the question and answer by saying that “the president’s team” kept him abreast of the situation.  There has never been a direct tie to who the Secretary or the President spoke with, during the attack nor who was making critical decisions.  And of course, no answer has ever been given as to who directed, or even suggested to Hillary to float the claim that the attack was a result of an internet video.

Answering all the unanswered questions surrounding the eight hours of the Benghazi attack was the goal of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.  This committee encountered tremendous pushback and a lack of cooperation during their investigation, not just from the White House and State Department but from the Democrats on the committee.  While this committee’s investigation is still open, it has been placed on hold in lieu of the more able Select Committee on Benghazi being formed.

And it is the result of the work from the Select Committee on Benghazi that has led to the discovery of the Secretary’s private email addresses and the Clinton email server, which now has become the focal point of the investigation, only because of the refusal by the former Secretary to turn the email sever over to a third party for scrutiny.

Based on the extreme effort being put forth to keep the contents of the Clinton email server secret, one can only conclude that it contains something very damaging to someone, something so damaging that they are willing to protect the contents of the server by any means possible.

And to think, all this because of someone’s bad decision to blame a terrorist attack on an internet video!

It’s Getting Harder to Look Democrats in the Eye

Undeniably, politics has been marred by more than its fair share of wrong doings by participants from both sides of the isle over the years, but never has a single administration been so callous and shown such an indifference to right and wrong as has the Obama Administration.   And just when you think that they can’t possibly come up with another scandal or cover-up there they go again!

While it may seem inconsequential to most democrats, to the administration the Hillary Clinton email scandal is significant and reaches far beyond the possibility of damaging the party’s golden girl and her prospects of running for the presidency in 2016.  When put into perspective, the Hillary email controversy could prove to be a much larger scandal than Nixon’s Watergate and undeniably a much greater cover-up.  If the truth behind Emailgate, as it has been so aptly named, is ever learned, it could be the scandal that brings down the entire administration, unless of course, democrats happen to let them get away with it!

As you read the progression of events regarding Hillary Clinton’s private email account used during her time as Secretary of State, it becomes abhorrently clear to any rational thinking person that Hillary’s actions were deliberate and with premeditated purpose.  From creating the email accounts to making the choice not to turn them over to the State Department and then on to the scrubbing of her email server’s hard drive, each action was a necessary escalation driven by events occurring during her service as Secretary of State.

Here is a recap of what has gone on with Hillary and her private email she used to conduct her business as Secretary of State on:

·         Just days before being confirmed as Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton has a private email account set up on her in-home private email server.

 

·         During her four years as Secretary of State, Hillary uses two different private @clintonemail.com email addresses exclusively, for all State Department business, including communications with some of her aids, who had also used private email accounts, as has just recently been learned.

 

·         During her time serving as Secretary of State, the State Department failed to respond to numerous FOIA requests for documents pertaining to the Secretary, submitted by various media outlets and watchdog groups.

 

·         Just days after the 9/11 attack on the US Consulate and CIA Annex in Benghazi, Libya, the first congressional oversight request for documents from the Secretary of State was made to the State Department.  The request was never fulfilled.

 

·         Upon departure from the State Department, Hillary does not turn over an electronic or a hard copy of any emails generated through her private email server and from her private email account covering her time as Secretary of State.

 

·         John Kerry takes over as Secretary of State and vows him and his Stated Department’s full cooperation in the Benghazi investigations.

 

·         Numerous congressional oversight committees, investigating various departments and their actions as they pertained to the events surrounding the Benghazi attack, stated clearly in their final reports that the State Department was non-cooperative in releasing requested information.  This in turn hampered the particular committee’s investigation and in some cases their final conclusions.

 

·         State Department agrees to allow congressional oversight to review some 25,000 documents but would not turn custody of the documents over to the committees.  Oversight had to meet in a room where the documents were made available, were allowed to review and take notes and at the end of the day the documents were boxed up and secured.  This process made it near impossible to create a time line or string documents together for proper oversight.  Also, no emails addressed to or from Secretary Clinton were amongst any of these 25,000 documents that were reviewed by oversight.

 

·         After numerous failed requests for documentation pertaining to Benghazi, the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, chaired by Darrell Issa, issued two subpoenas to the State Department.  Neither subpoena was ever responded to and they still remain active today.

 

·          Republicans gain full control of congress which changes the complexion of congressional oversight and their {republican’s} ability to fend off democratic stonewalling and obstruction of their duty to conduct oversight.

 

·         The State Department made its last production of materials to the House Oversight Committee on April 17, 2014.  In all the time spanning from the very first document request made by any oversight committee on the subject of the Benghazi attack, the State Department had never turned over a single email to or from Hillary.

 

·         Select Committee on Benghazi was formed, chaired by Trey Gowdy, on May 8, 2014.

 

·         A renewed demand for documents, pertaining to Benghazi, fell upon the State Department.

 

·         At some point the State Department reaches out to Hillary Clinton for emails.  Despite the countless FOIA requests, congressional oversight document requests and at least two subpoenas, the State Department has never disclosed to anyone that they did not have physical custody of Hillary’s emails from her tenure as Secretary of State.

 

·         At her sole discretion, Hillary sorts through her private emails on her private server and prints those documents that she chooses to hand over to the State Department.

 

·         August 11, 2014, State Department turns over fewer than a dozen documents to the Select Committee which, for the first time ever, included emails to/from Hillary Clinton.  It was in these documents that oversight first discovered that Hillary was using private @clintonemail.com email addresses to conduct official State Department business.

 

·         November 18, 2014 the committee sent a request to both the State Department and to Hillary Clinton demanding all her emails from her personal eclintonemail.com email addresses.

 

·         Email server is “wiped clean” sometime between Oct and Dec. 2014.

 

·         December 2014 – boxes containing 50,000 printed pages of Hillary’s emails were delivered to the State Department.   Hillary would some time later publically claim that these 50,000 pages make up the full record of emails which resided on her private server, during her time as Secretary of State.

 

·         State Department reviews the 50,000 pages of emails and produces roughly 900 pages pertaining to Benghazi, to be turned over to the Select Committee.

 

·         After 2 1/2 years of request and subpoenas, on Feb. 11, 2015 the State Department delivers the first substantial number of Clinton documents {850 pages of Clinton emails} to the Select Committee, emails which originated from two separate private @clintonemail.com email accounts.

 

·         Select Committee discovers a hole in the emails provided by State Department.  The hole {missing emails} covered the most critical time period of the Benghazi investigation.

 

·         In early March 2015, the Select Committee first learns that Hillary’s private email account resided on a private email server owned and in the custody of the Clinton’s.

 

·         Hillary speaks publically of her private email server and email account she used during her time as Secretary of State.  She claimed she use as single email address for both personal and State Department business out of convenience of having to use only one device. Hillary also stated that she believed her emails were being archived as she communicated with others only using their government email addresses.  Hillary also discloses that all her personal emails have been deleted from the server and that the server would remain in her custody.

 

·         Select Committee Chairman attempts to compel Hillary to turn her email server over to an independent third party for review to avoid having to do so through legal channels.

 

·         Speaker Boehner suggests that they may take legal action to obtain the Clinton email server as it is the only record of her time as Secretary of State and must be preserved.

 

·         March 27, 2015 a letter from Hillary’s attorney, stating that they would not be turning over the email server as the hard drive and all backup devices and been “wiped clean” of the period that encompassed Hillary’s time served as Secretary of State and therefore contained no useful information to the committee.

 

·         Just yesterday the Associated Press reported that, contrary to Hillary’s claim of choosing to use single email and device out of convenience, she used both a Blackberry and an iPad to communicate with her staff even prior to the Benghazi attack.  Also, Hillary still remains unchallenged, by democrats, as to how she can only manage a single email account on one device.

 

After reading through Hillary’s private email chronology, two things become very apparent:

First; controlling access and custody of her emails while serving as Secretary of State was a deliberate and intentional act pre-conceived by Hillary Clinton or an advisor.  The reason for doing so most likely being that Hillary had thoughts of taking a run at the presidency again and in the position of Secretary of State, was trying to limit the chance of any of the tens of thousands of her Secretary of Stated email correspondences from ever facing public scrutiny.  Operating her own email server gave her exclusive control of her electronic correspondence “just in case”.

Second; at some point during her time as Secretary, an event took place that, if the truth were to be learned by the public, would be highly damaging to herself and/or others, making it imperative that she maintain full control and custody of her emails, as well as, deny access of them to anyone, at any cost.

And it is the “at any cost” where it grows harder and harder to look democrats in the face.

What has transpired over the past few weeks makes it beyond impossible to deny something is being covered up.  Whether one wishes to believe the cover-up extends beyond the Secretary herself is their personal choice however, Hillary’s actions to conceal the contents of emails, which belong to the people, is a clear indictment of her guilt to a crime which is defined in the very emails she is purposely concealing from the people she once served.

And yet, Hillary Clinton’s popularity amongst democrats remains virtually unwavered, the latest polls showing that she is still the top candidate to capture the democratic presidential nomination by a very large margin, if she so chooses to run.

Listening to democrats defend the indefensible has left a sour taste in the mouths of those who have simply grown tired of the party’s ease and willingness to endorse wrong over right in their “at any cost” effort to expand and protect their parties brand.  Another perfect example of the democrats “at any cost” approach came just recently from an interview with Harry Reid where, when questioned on his 2012 election cycle fabricated declaration that Mitt Romney had not paid taxes for over a decade, Reid’s undignified response to the question was nothing more than “Romney didn’t win did he?”   

And be it Hillary Clinton’s email cover-ups; Harry Reid’s blatant willingness to fabricate lies; President Obama’s national fear mongering platform of the doom and gloom that would befall all of American if the 2013 sequester were allowed to happen; or of course, the very event that led us to Emailgate, the tall tale told of an internet video being the cause for the attack on US assets in Benghazi which left four American’s dead, the democratic response is the same  ……  “There is nothing to see here”.

Clearly, the moral compass of the majority of democrats is severely broken.  With their willingness to overlook the countless wrongdoings of the leadership in their party, it makes it very difficult to engage in a civil exchange of thoughts and ideas much less trust in anything they say or do.  It’s even getting hard to look a democrat in the face without complete contempt.