Because President Obama will now have a tough time getting his liberal agenda through a more Republican Congress, many Democrats are urging him to ram it through using the executive branch’s unilateral power.

John Podesta, head of the Center for American Progress, even issued a list of executive orders and rule-makings last month that Mr. Obama can use to “push the country to a better place.” If the Department of Labor is representative, his advice is in sync with moves already under way.

On Sept. 22, Labor’s Office of the Solicitor—which employs 400 attorneys to enforce the nation’s labor laws—issued a draft “operating plan” to dramatically increase pressure on employers. A source inside the department says the plan has been adopted.

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The Obama administration’s “summer of recovery” has morphed into a summer of economic discontent amid anxiety over the weakening economy. The greater than 4% growth and less than 8% unemployment envisioned by the president’s economic team are nowhere to be seen. Almost everything that is supposed to be up—the economic growth rate, the stock market, bond yields—is down. And almost everything that is supposed to be down—unemployment-insurance claims, new mortgage delinquencies—is up.

Sometimes a weak early recovery gathers strength after a year or so, as in 2003 when the second round of the Bush tax cuts helped double growth to 3.8% from 1.9%. But there are serious headwinds to stronger growth: household deleveraging, unresolved toxic assets, and most government economic policies headed in the wrong direction. While the base case outlook is still slow recovery, a double-dip recession or a Japanese-style lost decade is more plausible than a few months ago. This explains why Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke felt compelled last week to reiterate that the Fed will use more of its (in my view, weak) ammunition should the economy falter further.

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Sure, Mr. Obama’s ostensible purpose was to lobby Congress for the eighth extension of jobless benefits since the recession began, to a record 99 weeks, or nearly two years. And he whacked Senate Republicans for blocking the extension, though Republicans are merely asking that the extension be offset by cuts in other federal spending.

But Mr. Obama was nonetheless obliged to concede that, 18 months after his $862 billion stimulus, there are still five job seekers for every job opening and that 2.5 million Americans will soon run out of unemployment benefits. What happens when the 99 weeks of benefits run out? Will the President demand that they be extended to three years, or four?

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June 16 (Bloomberg) — Reports of the death of capitalism may have been greatly exaggerated following the panic and crisis of 2008 and the government’s assumption of a bigger role in the economy. Now I’m not so sure.

It’s one thing when the government takes an ownership stake in a company, as it did with the banks. Then it has the authority, even a duty to taxpayers, to be involved in determining how much the company pays out in the form of dividends to shareholders and how generously it compensates its executives.

When the government has no ownership stake, it has no business interfering in the inner workings of a company, other than ensuring compliance with the regulations it has put in place.

President Barack Obama wants to change all that.

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We wish for the sake of our 401(k) we had noticed this Delphic call, not least when Senator Obama was opposing the reform of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. But let’s not fight over history. The current reality is that the President had better be very, very smart because the reform bill he is stumping for would give him and his regulators vast new sway over financial markets and risk-taking.

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“Over the last several years Iran has shifted its stories with each well documented new discovery about its enrichment efforts by the IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency]. First it claimed it had no centrifuge program at all; then it claimed it had done only a limited amount of centrifuge testing, and now we know that Iran in fact possesses not a few but thousands of centrifuges.

“All along, Iran’s leaders have claimed that it was enriching uranium for solely peaceful purposes– to produce nuclear energy and not nuclear weapons. And yet again, Iran’s story has changed. Just yesterday, Iran’s supreme religious leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, stated that they do not intend to use weapons of mass destruction. No longer does he deny that they are seeking to make such weapons.

“The world’s last remaining window to prevent nuclear terrorism from becoming a reality for this and future generations is rapidly closing.

“If the Obama Administration is going to take action to stop such a scenario from coming to pass, it must cease sending mixed signals and take swift, decisive action– with or without the support of China and Russia. If they do not, they will have to answer to our children for forfeiting a window of opportunity we will never get back.”

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WASHINGTON – Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, called President Obama’s plan for returning the U.S. to space thoroughly misguided, saying it will waste years of time, billions of dollars and cost thousands of jobs in Utah and elsewhere across the nation.

“This is getting silly. The President’s plan wastes billions of dollars and years of valuable time,” said Hatch. “I would say the administration’s plan is laughable, but I can’t find much humor in it when the consequences to space exploration and American workers during tough economic times are so dire.”

Speaking yesterday at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, the president outlined his revised plan, which, despite speculation to the contrary, will effectively scrap Project Constellation and the Ares rocket program. The Administration’s plan calls for doling out huge amounts of taxpayer dollars to commercial businesses, many inexperienced in human space flight, to build craft to carry astronauts to the International Space Station.

“First, they want to throw away our nation’s $10 billion investment in Project Constellation and the successfully-tested Ares rocket. Then they want to give away billions more to build something less capable than what we already have. President John F. Kennedy would be rolling over in his grave. This decision reeks of politics, not common sense,” Hatch said. “Former astronauts Neil Armstrong, the first man on the moon, and James Lovell and Eugene Cernan were right in saying that if we follow the president’s plan, ‘we will have lost the many years required to recreate the equivalent of what will be discarded.”

Project Constellation would return American astronauts to the Moon and lay the foundation for the exploration of Mars. The Ares 1 rocket can carry astronauts to the International Space Station and send them beyond low-Earth orbit, while its heavy-lift relative, Ares V, is designed to carry the equipment for future space exploration missions.

Ares is equipped to perform a variety of missions, including sending astronauts to the Space Station and it can go beyond low-Earth orbit so it can be used as the foundation for any space exploration program the nation decides to take on. Recent NASA studies have shown the Ares rocket is ten times as safe as the Space Shuttle and twice as safe as the systems being developed by private industry.

Hatch also takes issue with the president’s assertion that his plan, which calls for taking five years to study heavy-lift rocket technology before picking which rocket to develop, will return America to space quicker than Project Constellation.

“It strains credulity to the breaking point to assume the major work on a rocket using technology that doesn’t even exist yet will be built sooner and at a comparable cost than what we already have,” Hatch concluded.

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April 05, 2010

When President Obama said that his administration would be the most transparent in history, we wanted to believe him.  After all, he went so far as to issue a Presidential Executive order calling for greater transparency and open Government.  Despite the executive order, it soon became clear this was a façade.  Instead, this Administration has demonstrated a consistent pattern of hidden agendas and ulterior motives.

In February, I received a leaked copy of an internal Department of Interior (DOI) memo that identified as many as 13 million acres throughout the West as possible sites for national monument designations.  Such a designation would immediately place the lands under a restrictive lockdown, blocking access for public land users.  To those unfamiliar with the West, this could seem rather harmless.  After all, the Washington Monument and Statue of Liberty are two well known monuments that are visited by millions each year.  However, in the West, national monument designations sweep up large swaths of land and place them under lock and key.  This not only destroys Western communities that rely upon access to land, for such things as ranching, mining, grazing, farming and recreation, but it dries up a major source of tax revenue for local communities.

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Not surprisingly, Republicans overwhelmingly feel closer to the Tea Party and most Democrats say that their views are more like Obama’s. Among voters not affiliated with either major political party, 50% say they’re closer to the Tea Party while 38% side with the President.

The partisan divide is similar to that found in the President’s Job Approval Ratings and on the Generic Congressional Ballot.

“Unaffiliated voters are continuing the pattern they established in 2006 and 2008 of opposing the party in power,” notes Scott Rasmussen, president of Rasmussen Reports.

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