Lies of my President, Part 6

This is Part 6 of my series on the lies told by Democratic Presidential Candidate Barack Obama in the nearly four years in which he’s been in office.  As I said earlier, I’m not concerned with his broken campaign promises so much as I am with his dishonesty while in office.

Here are some of Obama’s campaign ad lies (as opposed to the exaggeration, hype, and distortion that are part and parcel of campaign ads), from The Wall Street Journal.

One Obama spot says, “To pay for huge, new tax breaks for millionaires like him, Romney would have to raise taxes on the middle class: $2,000 for a family with children.”

That claim has been thoroughly discredited, including by PolitiFact Virginia and editorials in this newspaper.

In fact, the Romney plan includes reductions in tax rates across the board—for wealthy, middle class, and the poor (to the extent the latter pay any taxes at all)—while eliminating many deductions.  Since most of the deductions to be eliminated are taken primarily by the upper middle class and wealthy, this would reduce the impact of the rate reduction for those compared to the middle class and poor—while still reducing those rates across the board.  No $2,000 increase.

Another ad says, “As a corporate raider, [Mr. Romney] shipped jobs to China and Mexico.” In response, the Washington Post editorialized, “On just about every level, this ad is misleading, unfair and untrue.”

The Post‘s Fact Checker article debunks the “corporate raider” slur, and it identifies the jobs outsourcing claim as an Obama cynical distortion.

An Obama ad aimed at northern Virginia women intones, “Mitt Romney opposes requiring coverage for contraception.”  In fact, Mr. Romney opposes the president’s unprecedented assault on religious liberties—in this case, the federal government forcing religious institutions (like church-sponsored hospitals, schools and charities) to provide insurance coverage for contraception in violation of their fundamental moral values and, incidentally, the First Amendment.

There’s nothing to add to this correction.

Finally, there’s this whopper in front of an Hispanic audience—the recent Univision “Town Hall” interview—now about his own performance in office:

Obama claimed that his Justice Department’s botched “Fast and Furious” gunrunning program was “begun under the previous administration.”  This time it was ABC’s Jake Tapper correcting the record, pointing out, “it was started in October 2009, nine months into the Obama presidency.”

This is a rather blatant lie.  The program to which Obama is pretending to refer, the Wide Receiver program run under President Bush the Younger’s DoJ, had a number of significant differences with Obama’s Fast and Furious program, beyond the fact that Wide Receiver was terminated before the end of Bush’s term.

There are two differences of particular interest.  On the one hand, the program was done in coordination with the Mexican government, instead of behind its back, as was Fast and Furious.  On the other hand, far fewer guns were involved—about a quarter of the number of Fast and Furious.  In the end, Wide Receiver was terminated because it wasn’t working—most of the weapons were, in fact, lost.

But Obama’s DoJ apparently thought walking four times as many guns and doing it in secret from the Mexican government would help their version succeed.

Lies of my President, Part 5

This is Part 5 of my series on the lies told by Democratic Presidential Candidate Barack Obama in the nearly four years in which he’s been in office.  As I said earlier, I’m not concerned with his broken campaign promises so much as I am with his dishonesty while in office.

In a repeat of Obama’s 2008 fundraising technique, in the present campaign Obama—who spent the summer whining about being outraised by the Romney campaign, has again chosen to eschew controls on credit card donations.  Power Line describes the “standard controls:”

Federal law prohibits foreign contributions and requires the disclosure of identifying information for contributions in excess of $200.  Campaigns must accordingly keep running totals for each donor and report them once they exceed $200.

And so Obama gets—and retains—donations from such worthies as

“John Galt” (the hero of Ayn Rand’s novel Atlas Shrugged).  [The test donor] provided the equally fictitious address “1957 Ayn Rand Lane, Galts Gulch, CO 99999.” He checked the box next to $15 and entered his actual credit-card number and expiration date. He was then taken to the next page and notified that his donation had been processed.

and

Others repeated “John Galt’s” experiment, giving to Obama under such fictitious names as Della Ware, Joe Plumber, Idiot Savant, Ima BadDonation (with a Canadian bank card) and Fake Donor.

Scott Johnson expanded on this with a New York Post article.

It’s useful, also, to note that the above Della Ware tried the same donation to the McCain campaign in 2008, and it was rejected.  And

If you go here you will note that credit card donations to the Obama election campaign do not require the credit card security code [i.e., the CVV code]. What they have done is disable the Address Verification System (AVS) which prevents credit card fraud.

Adrian Murray advised Urgent Agenda that he’d tried the following:

Name – Adolph Hitler
Address – 123 Nuremburg Way, Berlin, Germany
Occupation – Dictator
Employer – Nazi Party

Murray promptly received an email from the Obama campaign:

“Dear Adolph, thank you for your generous donation….”

Murray tried the same thing with the Romney and Santorum campaigns; the “donations” were rejected.  I’ve been to the site, and the…deficiency…was still present last Sunday.

Hmm….

What’s Going On Here?

US military members tend strongly to vote Republican.  Yet in election swing states, absentee ballot requests are shockingly low.  There are a couple of possibilities for why this is so: on the one hand, our soldiers and spouses, and those who support them, don’t care enough about voting in this year’s elections to request their ballots.  This is hard to credit.

On the other hand, they’re not getting the information they need to get their ballots so they can vote.  We know some things about this.  For instance, we know that the Joint Chiefs of Staff is not in the chain of command for our soldiers, but it is charged with providing the command chain with training, equipage, and support for the commanders’ soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines.

We also know that the Chairman of the JCS, General Martin Dempsey, is too busy hectoring ex-military and civilians for exercising their free speech rights to have any time left providing that support—which, among other matters, includes making it possible for our soldiers and spouses, and those who support them, to vote absentee.

Here’s how well he’s doing on soldiers’ absentee voting, and how will others specifically charged with the task are doing.  This table, taken from the Military Voter Protection Project‘s report, shows how far the numbers of requested absentee ballots have fallen from the numbers in 2008 (the complete report is available at the MVP Project link).

State

Total Requested
in 2008

Current
Requested
in 2012

Percent
Difference

Florida

121,395

65,173

-46%

Virginia

41,762

12,292

-70%

North Carolina

19,109

7,848

-59%

Illinois

9,858

3,532

-64%

Ohio

32,334

9,707

-70%

Alaska

13,766

6,535

-52%

Colorado

5,104

2,986

-41%

Nevada

4,919

1,750

-64%

We also know some other things about this shameful failure.  DoD spokeswoman Cmdr Leslie Hull-Ryde is insisting that 2012 is much different than 2008: the 2008 elections had contested primaries for both major parties, but this time only Republicans had a contested primary.  That’s their excuse, apparently: there must be primaries by both parties, else the Pentagon is relieved of its duty.  Hull-Ryde added, proudly,

We are in complete compliance with the law.  (The Federal Voting Assistance Program) strives to ensure that every absent military and overseas citizen voter has the tools and resources to receive, cast and return an absentee ballot and have it counted—regardless of who they vote for.

When I was on active duty in the USAF, such “meets standards” performance, noted on an Officer Efficiency Report or an Airman Proficiency Report, was the kiss of death to a career.  We were expected to do better than that.  Moreover, DoD was authorized $75 million for last year and this to set up the mechanisms—including those voting assistance offices—for getting this voting information to its service members.  Yet it has chosen not to, to any great extent, despite the fact that the 2009 Military and Overseas Voter Empowerment Act requires them to.

Pam Mitchell, acting director of the FVAP, compounds the matter, bragging that there are over 220 voting assistance offices seat up worldwide, and claiming with a straight face,

I strongly believe that voting assistance is the best that it has ever been.

Never mind that she has a vested interest in downplaying this failure.  Never mind that the 220 offices of which she’s so proud is a trifling number compared to the thousands of locations around the world at which we have soldiers and spouses, and those who support them—or just soldiers and their support—stationed.  It seems the FVAP isn’t striving very hard.

Despite the Pentagon’s decision to fail [sic] on this, soldiers and spouses, and those who support them, can request absentee ballots at the MVP Project link above and at  the Heroes Vote Initiative Web site, http://heroesvote.org.

One more thing: think the military vote is too trivial to matter?  Aside from the utter immorality of depriving these men and women who are willing to sacrifice everything in order to protect us and our freedoms—including our right to vote—of their right to vote, think about the numbers involved.  Compare the present reduction in military votes cast (again, a segment of our population that tends strongly to vote Republican) with the closeness of past Presidential elections in Florida and other swing states, the 2008 Senatorial election in Minnesota, the gubernatorial elections in Washington, and so on.

Voting Rights

From The Wall Street Journal‘s Law Blog comes this hopeful sign.  A number of states have filed a Friend of the Court brief in support of South Carolina as that state prepares to defend itself against the Obama administration’s assault on its effort to protect the sanctity of the vote.  The money paragraphs in the brief speaks is this, and it needs no further comment from me.

Because Section 5 [of the Voting Rights Act of 1965] applied arbitrarily to the Covered Jurisdictions [i.e., those states subject to the VRA], none of which uses discriminatory tests or devices, and many of which have higher voter turnout, or lower disparity in minority voter turnout, than many of the uncovered jurisdictions, the Covered States are denied the fundamental principles of equal sovereignty and equal footing.  Because the VRA’s purpose is to eradicate voting discrimination for all United States citizens, treating states differently is not congruent with the Act’s purpose.

The brief, BRIEF OF ARIZONA, ALABAMA, GEORGIA, SOUTH CAROLINA, SOUTH DAKOTA, AND TEXAS AS AMICI CURIAE IN SUPPORT OF PETITIONER, can be found here.

Broadening Attacks on Vote Sanctity

Now President Obama is having his DoJ attack Pennsylvania’s Voter ID law.

The letter from DoJ to Pennsylvania’s Secretary of the Commonwealth can be viewed here.  Not only is Obama objecting to protecting the sanctity of a legitimate vote by trying to block efforts at screening “voters” who are ineligible, in this letter he’s also demanding a potful of wholly irrelevant personally identifying information on voters and potential “voters.”  Here’s a sample from his DoJ’s letter:

  • The current complete Pennsylvania voter registration list, including each registered voter’s full name, address, date of birth, identifying numbers (including driver license, social security, or other numbers), voter history, and race.
  • The current complete Pennsylvania driver license and personal identification card list, including each individual’s full name, address, date of birth, identifying numbers (including driver license, social security, or other numbers), and race.

There are a total of 16 different items of information being demanded, including the legitimate request for clarification of the apparent disconnect between the governor’s statement that 99% of eligible voters already have acceptable ID, and the commonwealth secretary’s statement that 758,000 registered voters lack acceptable ID.  However, this question’s legitimacy only exists on the basis of a legitimate concern for voter eligibility and has nothing to do with any voter ID requirement itself.  Since the administration’s attack on the Pennsylvania law has no legitimacy, the question about the disconnect is irrelevant.

Moreover, a voter’s voting history is wholly irrelevant to such an inquiry: what other fishing expedition is Obama’s DoJ conducting, sub rosa?  Nor is the individual’s address or age relevant.  Nor is the voter’s race, except that this administration intends to play, again, its race card.  In fact, the prior question that must be answered is whether legitimate voters are being removed from the voter registration lists in any significant number.  Only then can a question of racial motivation come into play.  (Disparate impact has no legitimate role, here, only motive.)  Since DoJ hasn’t established that legitimate voters are being removed in Pennsylvania, the entire investigation is bogus.

Finally, the Supreme Court already has upheld a substantially identical Voter ID law passed by Indiana.

Why is Obama running this, then?  So he can add names and addresses to his campaign and fund-dunning mailing lists?  So he can target those who might vote or support the wrong candidate?