Tag: Investor’s Business Daily

Information Political

Reagan’s Successful Presidency

Reagan’s Successful Presidency

Leadership cannot thrive on division or uncertainty. It depends on an unshakable commitment to sound principles. That is where Ronald Reagan excelled as a president.

IBD Remembers Reagan’s Successful Presidency:

The following editorial was written July 13, 1987, by William J. O’Neil, founder and chairman of what was then known as Investor’s Daily. At the time, Lt. Col. Oliver North had just finished a full week of testifying before Congress on the Iran-Contra affair, responding to the Tower Commission report earlier in the year that had faulted the Reagan administration for the scandal. Reagan accepted full responsibility. Amid an ongoing media clamor, our editorial put Reagan’s presidency in a much broader context, one that since has been vindicated by history.

Teddy Roosevelt was once asked how often he expected his decisions to be right. He confessed that if he could be right 75% of the time, he’d be doing great.

So how often should our presidents be right? Should we demand they be correct 100% of the time?

If President Reagan has been on target seven or eight times out of 10, and he makes a mistake, should it be blown into a national crisis? The leader who makes no mistakes is the leader who makes no decisions, takes no risks and therefore achieves nothing for us.

Here’s a list of some of Reagan’s policy decisions that worked:

1. He lifted price controls on domestic oil amid protests that prices would skyrocket. Instead, oil topped and inflation unwound.

2. He rebuilt our depleted defenses and restored pride in our military so that a voluntary peacetime army became a reality.

3. He cut, over congressional objections, everybody’s taxes and slowed the explosive growth rate of government spending.

4. Inflation dropped from a high of 13.5% in 1980 to 1.9% in 1986.

5. The prime rate has dropped from 21% in 1980 to 8.25%.

6. He launched one of the longest economic recoveries on record.

7. He revitalized the ideal of democracy throughout the world and witnessed the trend shift from socialism toward free enterprise.

8. He took a strong stand on drugs. Budget authority for drug law enforcement, abuse prevention and treatment has climbed 150%.

9. He rewrote the tax laws after everyone said it couldn’t be done.

10. He stood firm at Reykjavik on the SDI when our media said his stand was wrong. Now the Russians are at the negotiating table.

11. His invasion of Grenada sent Cubans home, rescued grateful American students and surprised our negative national media.

12. He subdued, with the Libyan raid, Gadhafi and his terrorists.

13. U.S. fighter jets successfully forced down the Egyptian jetliner carrying terrorists from the Achille Lauro ship hijacking.

14. He properly assisted the Philippines in its break from a right-wing dictator’s rule.

15. He did the same for Haiti.

16. He cracked down on Soviet spies and thefts of U.S. technology, and reached parity with the Soviets in embassy and U.N. personnel.

17. He’s the first president since Truman to halt the spreading tide of communism, by providing help and encouragement to democratic resistance fighters in Afghanistan, El Salvador and Nicaragua.

How many incorrect decisions has our president made?

1. The Iran arms sale.

2. Sending U.S. Marines to Lebanon as part of a four-nation peacekeeping force without sufficient intelligence support.

The score:

Success 17, mistakes two. Most Americans would say batting .895 is an outstanding record.

 

 

Amusing

U.S. Has 60 Times More Oil Than Obama Claims

When he was running for the Oval Office four years ago amid $4-a-gallon gasoline prices, then-Sen. Barack Obama dismissed the idea of expanded oil production as a way to relieve the pain at the pump.

“Even if you opened up every square inch of our land and our coasts to drilling,” he said. “America still has only 3% of the world’s oil reserves.” Which meant, he said, that the U.S. couldn’t affect global oil prices.

It’s the same rhetoric President Obama is using now, as gas prices hit $4 again, except now he puts the figure at 2%.

“With only 2% of the world’s oil reserves, we can’t just drill our way to lower gas prices,” he said. “Not when we consume 20% of the world’s oil.”

The claim makes it appear as though the U.S. is an oil-barren nation, perpetually dependent on foreign oil and high prices unless we can cut our own use and develop alternative energy sources like algae.

U.S. Awash In Oil

But the figure Obama uses — proved oil reserves — vastly undercounts how much oil the U.S. actually contains. In fact, far from being oil-poor, the country is awash in vast quantities — enough to meet all the country’s oil needs for hundreds of years.

The U.S. has 22.3 billion barrels of proved reserves, a little less than 2% of the entire world’s proved reserves, according to the Energy Information Administration. But as the EIA explains, proved reserves “are a small subset of recoverable resources,” because they only count oil that companies are currently drilling for in existing fields.

When you look at the whole picture, it turns out that there are vast supplies of oil in the U.S., according to various government reports. Among them:

At least 86 billion barrels of oil in the Outer Continental Shelf yet to be discovered, according to the government’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management.

About 24 billion barrels in shale deposits in the lower 48 states, according to EIA.

Up to 2 billion barrels of oil in shale deposits in Alaska’s North Slope, says the U.S. Geological Survey.

Up to 12 billion barrels in ANWR, according to the USGS.

As much as 19 billion barrels in the Utah tar sands, according to the Bureau of Land Management.

Then, there’s the massive Green River Formation in Wyoming, which according to the USGS contains a stunning 1.4 trillion barrels of oil shale — a type of oil released from sedimentary rock after it’s heated.

Source…

Amusing

The Saudi Arabia Of Shale


It is truly amazing the amount of oil and natural gas available to us in this country. Someday the corruption that exists in Washington will be gone and we will able to declare our energy independence!

Energy Policy: New York’s governor wants to tap into a shale formation that can supply the entire U.S. with natural gas for 65 years. Will NIMBY environmentalists let him stimulate New York’s and America’s energy economy?

Last week, David Patterson released a draft report of his Energy Planning Board that does something Democrats are loath to do: It proposes developing a domestic energy resource — the huge amounts of natural gas trapped in the Marcellus Shale formation. New York produces 5% of its natural gas in-state and imports more than 95% from the Gulf Coast and Canada.

The Marcellus Shale stretches from southwestern New York to Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Ohio. A nearby formation of Devonian shale is even more porous, with a superior amount of trapped gas per volume of rock.

Geologist Gary Lash of State University New York at Fredonia and colleague Terry Engelder of Penn State estimate that Marcellus holds 1,300 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. About 20 trillion cubic feet are produced in the U.S. annually.

Lash notes that successful wells have already been drilled in Pennsylvania — one near Pittsburgh and the other in Susquehanna County. A Penn State report that was requested by state legislators predicted that Marcellus could add $14 billion to the state’s economy in 2010, create more than 98,000 jobs and generate $800 million in state and local tax revenues. Now that’s what you call a stimulus package.

Read more…

Amusing

Politicians, Heal Thyselves!

The government should stay out of health care or they should be forced to swallow the same pill that they force down our throats. They ruin everything they touch! They have already wrecked the Post Office, the Railroads, the Steel Industry, the Tobacco Industry, the US borders, Social Security, Medicare, America’s Energy Independence….and on and on. Now they want to destroy the greatest medical system in the history of human existence.

Don’t let the gangsters in Washington make medical decisions for you and your children.

Health Reform: If Democrats in Washington think their health care reform with a public option is a good thing, why have they exempted themselves from it? Why isn’t what’s good for their constituents good for them?

During ABC’s June 24 infomercial for government-run health care broadcast from the White House, President Obama was asked if he and his family would abide by the restrictions and limitations that came with his proposed reforms.

In what Ed Morrissey at HotAir.com called “Obama’s Michael Dukakis moment,” President Obama refused to make such a pledge and confessed that if “it’s my family member, if it’s my wife, if it’s my children, if it’s my grandmother, I always want them to get the very best care.”

There was no commentary about evil insurance companies making excessive profits or greedy physicians and hospitals doing unnecessary tests and procedures to run up your bill.

There was only a dutiful husband and father wanting the best care for his wife and children, as do we all.

Yet here was the president arguing for the need for 50 million new patients officially in the system while adding no new doctors, a plan that inevitably leads to rationing.

Add to this situation doctors who will retire in droves and doctors who never will be, all to avoid a clone of Britain’s draconian National Health Service.

Dr. Orrin Devinsky, a neurologist and researcher at the New York University Langone Medical Center who asked Obama that question, says elites often propose health care solutions that limit options for the general public, secure in the knowledge that if they or their loves ones get sick, they will be able to afford the best care available, even if it’s not provided by insurance.

Congress is no exception.

As World Net Daily points out, on Page 114 of the Orwellian-titled Affordable Health Care Choices Act authored by Sen. Ted Kennedy’s staff and the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee (HELP), there is a provision that specifically exempts members of Congress from the public plan.

At a news conference June 23, President Obama said people would be able to choose their insurance “the same way that federal employees do, same way that members of Congress do.”

That statement was false.

Rep. John Fleming, R-La., a physician, told Fox News: “All these health care bills that are coming out on the Democrats’ side — the ‘reform’ bills — basically say that Congress is exempt for at least the first five years, and perhaps longer.

“I’ve issued H. Res. 615 that simply says, look, if you vote for this, then you should choose it.”

House Resolution 615, which is nonbinding, says “members who vote in favor of the establishment of a public, federal government run health insurance option are urged to forgo their right to participate in the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program (FEHBP) and agree to enroll under that public option.”

On July 16, Rep. Dean Heller, R-Nev., went further and offered an amendment to the House version during the Ways and Means Committee markup that would require members of Congress to enroll in its own government-run health care program.

Democrats defeated the amendment, 23 to 18.

The irony here is that under the health reform he is sponsoring, it is unlikely that Sen. Ted Kennedy would have gotten the treatment he needed for his brain tumor if his case had to be reviewed by some cost-effectiveness board.

The likelihood is that if Ted Kennedy were British and subject to the tender mercies of that nation’s National Health System, he’d be dead by now.

As Fleming says, his resolution offers “members of Congress an opportunity to put their money where their mouth is.”

Congressmen, heal thyselves.

Source…

Amusing

Putin’s Patsy?

It was obvious from the start that the Russians would pluck Obama like a dead chicken. Think about it… Putin is a former KGB agent and Obama is a former Chicago community organizer. You be the judge. You don’t even need those old Soviet Olympic judges to know the outcome.

Russia’s nondemocratic rulers over the years have shown an uncanny knack for detecting weakness in their foes. Russia’s Vladimir Putin is continuing the tradition.

President Obama no doubt believes he was dealing with honest brokers when he agreed with Russia’s leaders to cut U.S. and Russian nuclear warheads to about 1,600 each. For the U.S., that’s a cut of about a third.

But please read the fine print. This is a “preliminary” agreement. In order for it to go into effect, Russian leaders say they want the U.S. to give up its plans for a missile defense system.

To do so would, in effect, be a unilateral disarmament by the U.S. against the most feared weapons on earth — nuclear missiles. It’s an abandonment of our allies, including Poland and the Czech Republic. It’s not an acceptable bargaining chip.
It’s reminiscent of the time in 1961 when President Kennedy — like Obama, youthful, attractive, intelligent, well-spoken — met with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev. During that meeting, Khrushchev quickly sized up Kennedy as a foreign-policy lightweight.

Within months, he tested Kennedy’s mettle — erecting the Berlin Wall, and, the following year, sending missiles to Cuba to challenge the U.S. just 90 miles off its own coast.

In public, Kennedy stood up to Khrushchev; behind the scenes, he caved, trading our missiles in Turkey for the ones in Cuba. Kennedy, in interviews, later regretted his own callowness.

Compare that with President Reagan’s 1986 showdown with Mikhail Gorbachev in Reykjavik, Iceland. That came on the heels of a U.S. deployment of missiles in Europe, Reagan’s refusal to sign a Nuclear Test Ban Treaty and his 1983 “Star Wars” speech. He was negotiating from strength — the only thing Russians get.

In 1985, Reagan had told Gorbachev bluntly during Geneva arms talks: “We won’t stand by and let you maintain weapon superiority over us. We can agree to reduce arms, or we can continue the arms race, which I think you know you can’t win.”

In Reykjavik, with the world’s media egging him on to make a deal, any deal, on nuclear arms with the USSR, Reagan said, “Nyet.” Why? He wouldn’t give up U.S. missile defense. With that stand, the Soviet Union’s demise was assured.
By contrast, Obama on Tuesday called Russia, a country that’s falling apart, a “great power” and reassured the nondemocratic Putin he’ll keep Russia’s interests in mind while crafting U.S. policy.

“As I said in Cairo,” the president said, “given our interdependence, any world order that tries to elevate one nation or group of people over another will inevitably fail. That is why I have called for a ‘reset’ in relations between the United States and Russia.”

This implies an equivalency between Russia and the U.S. that simply doesn’t exist. Russia comes up short on any measure of civilizational success you might want to use. Indeed, we have elevated a country that has invaded a neighbor, uses energy as a weapon against our democratic allies and refuses to help in our effort to halt Iran’s dangerous nuclear program.

Russia is not a “great” power. It’s a Third World nation with First World nuclear weapons. It’s in a downward spiral due to its collapsing population, shortening life-spans and shrinking economy. It might not even survive this century as a nation.
This has been the U.S.’ biggest mistake: to give Russia respect it hasn’t really earned. Maybe, as it turns out, Putin, a former top KGB operative, is more clever than Gorbachev. He knows our president needs a foreign affairs success.

Before President Obama signs off on anything, he’d do well to review the presidential history of dealings with the Soviets. He can learn from both Kennedy and Reagan.

Source…

Load More