(excerpt from the writing of Andrew W. Smith, from Cape Sable Island , N.S. , who writes and resides in Tulsa , Okla.)
•Obama’s “tax cuts for 95 per cent” turned out to mean $13 a week from June to December, to be clawed back to $8 a week in January – as compared with President Bush’s 2008 tax rebates of $600 to $1,200 plus $300 per child, which were notably scoffed at during the election campaign by Michelle Obama.
•Obama’s campaign promise of a $3,000-per-employee tax credit for businesses that hired new workers – repeated ad nauseam for weeks before the election – was discreetly retired even before inauguration day.
•Obama abandoned his campaign promise that “lobbyists won’t work in my White House,” waiving his no-lobbyist executive order or conveniently re-defining his appointees’ past lobbying work to allow 30 lobbyists into his administration.
•Obama abandoned his campaign promise to reform earmarks, signing the omnibus bill which contained 8,816 of them.
•Obama took more money from AIG than any other politician in 2008 – over $100,000 – and signed into law the provision guaranteeing the AIG bonuses which later had him in front of the cameras “shaking with outrage” and siccing the pitchfork crowd on law-abiding citizens who had fulfilled their end of a contract and had their payment upheld by Obama’s own legislation.
•Obama’s first two major bills alone, the “stimulus” and “omnibus,” cost nearly twice as much as was spent on Iraq over six years – $1.2 trillion vs. $650 billion.
•Obama abandoned his campaign promise of “a net spending cut,” his first annual deficit – not counting bailouts – being three times the worst deficit under President George W. Bush.
•Obama’s objective in his first G20 summit – commitments to spend our way to prosperity with massive stimulus boondoggles across the G20 – was rejected out of hand.
•Obama’s objective in his first NATO summit – commitments to combat troops for Afghanistan from “our European allies,” which Obama and his party imagined were ready and willing to fight if only someone “enlightened” like him were running things – was predictably refused, with some more European non-combat contingents offered as a token.
•Obama’s Defence Department announced cuts of $1.4 billion to missile defence, the day after North Korea test-fired its long-range, multi-stage ballistic missile.
