Obama Meets with Sharpton Regarding Police Department Reform
On December 1, 2014, President Obama met with Al Sharpton at the
White House to discuss matters related to the Michael Brown shooting and
police-department reform. News reports indicated that Obama would demand $263
million from Congress to put 50,000 body-worn cameras in U.S. police
departments and train local officers in the
proper use pf surplus military equipment. Brown's parents had pushed for
the use of cameras as one way to reduce distrust between police and nonwhites.
In August, the administration had said that it agreed with the idea in
principle, writing: "We support the use of cameras and video technology by
law enforcement officers, and the Department of Justice continues to research
best practices for implementation."
Al Sharpton Has Become Obama's Chief Advisor on Racial Issues
In August 2014, Politico.com published a feature story titled,
“How Al Sharpton Became Obama's Go-To Man on Race.” The piece stated that
“Sharpton not only visits the White House frequently, he often texts or emails
with senior Obama officials such as [Valerie] Jarrett and Attorney General Eric
Holder.” It quoted Jesse Jackson saying, “I’ve known Al since he was 12 years
old, and he’s arrived at the level he always wanted to arrive at, which is
gratifying. He’s the man who’s the liaison to the White House, he’s the one
who’s talking to the Justice Department.” Sharpton himself, meanwhile, offered
his own assessment of how he had bonded with Obama: “The relationship evolved
over time.... The key for him was seeing that I wasn’t insincere, that I
actually believed in the stuff I was talking about.”
In a subsequent New York Times piece, Obama was quoted as having
said of Sharpton: “You can do business with that guy.”
Obama Sees Racism As the Cause of Opposition to Immigration
Reform
In an August 2014 interview with The Economist, President Obama
derided "the dysfunction of a Republican Party that knows we need
immigration reform, knows that it would actually be good for its long-term
prospects, but is captive to the nativist elements in its party."
Obama Says Racism in America Is "Deeply Rooted"
In a December 2014 interview with Black Entertainment
Television, President Obama said that racism “is something that is deeply
rooted in our society, it’s deeply rooted in our history.” He added: “When
you’re dealing with something as deeply rooted as racism or bias, you’ve got to
have vigilance but you have to recognize that it’s going to take some time, and
you just have to be steady so you don’t give up when we don’t get all the way
there. This isn’t going to be solved overnight.”
Obama Cites the Continuing "Legacy of Slavery"
In an October 2014 New Yorker article, President Obama was
quoted saying thatthe biggest issues concerning race are “rooted in economics
and the legacy of slavery,” which have created “vastly different opportunities
for African-Americans and whites.” He added: “I understand, certainly sitting
in this office, that probably the single most important thing I could do for
poor black kids is to make sure that they’re getting a good K-through-12 education.
And, if they’re coming out of high school well prepared, then they’ll be able
to compete for university slots and jobs. And that has more to do with budgets
and early-childhood education and stuff that needs to be legislated.”
Obama Discusses Society's Continuing Racism
In A December 2014 interview with People magazine, Obama said:
"The small irritations or indignities that we experience are nothing
compared to what a previous generation experienced. It's one thing for me to be
mistaken for a waiter at a gala [an alleged incident that Mrs. Obama had just
recounted to the interviewer]. It's another thing for my son to be mistaken for
a robber and to be handcuffed, or worse, if he happens to be walking down the
street and is dressed the way teenagers dress."
Obama also told People: “There’s no black male my age, who’s a
professional, who hasn’t come out of a restaurant and is waiting for their car
and somebody didn’t hand them their car keys.”
The President also said that he and Mrs. Obama had often
encouraged their daughters to reflect on racial stereotypes, particularly
"how they think they should have to act as African-American girls."
"Around the dinner table," he added, "we're pointing out to them
that too often in our society black boys are still perceived as more dangerous,
and it will be part of their generation's task to try to eradicate those
stereotypes."
DIVIDING AMERICANS BY GENDER
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Obama Falsely Claims That Women Are Underpaid
“For every $1.00 earned by a man, the average woman receives
only 77 cents,” said an Obama campaign publication in 2008. “A recent study
estimates it will take another 47 years for women to close the wage gap with
men.” To rectify this, said the campaign, “the government needs to take steps
to better enforce the Equal Pay Act, fight job discrimination, and improve
child care options and family medical leave to give women equal footing in the
workplace.”
Nine days after his inauguration, President Obama honored one of
his campaign pledges by signing the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, a law making
it easier for women to sue employers for pay discrimination. Said the
President: “It is a story of women across this country still earning just 78
cents for every $1 [that] men earn, women of color even less, which means that
today in the year 2009, countless women are still losing thousands of dollars
in salary, income, and retirement savings over the course of a lifetime”
Obama Speaks at White House Event on Women and the Economy
At an April 6, 2012 White House event on women and the economy,
President Obama said: “When more women are bringing home the bacon, but
bringing home less of it than men who are doing the same work, that weakens
families, it weakens communities, it's tough on our kids, it weakens our entire
economy.”
Obama Speaks about the Need for “Pay Equity”
On April 17, 2012, President Obama stated that “women who worked
full-time [the previous year] earned only 77 percent of what their male
counterparts did.” “The pay gap was even greater for African American and
Latina women,” added Obama, “with African American women earning 64 cents and
Latina women earning 56 cents for every dollar earned by a Caucasian man.”
The “Gender Pay Gap” Is a Fiction
President Obama's claim that women were underpaid (in comparison
to men) by American employers was untrue. As longtime employment lawyer William
Farrell, who served as a board member of the National Organization for Women
from 1970 to 1973, explains in his 2005 book Why Men Earn More, the gender pay
gap can be explained entirely by the fact that women as a group tend, to a much
greater degree than men, to make employment choices that involve certain
tradeoffs; i.e., choices that suppress incomes but, by the same token, afford
tangible lifestyle advantages that are highly valued.
For example, women tend to pursue careers in fields that are
non-technical and do not involve the hard (as opposed to the social) sciences;
fields that do not require a large amount of continuing education in order to
keep pace with new developments or innovations; fields that offer a high level
of physical safety; fields where the work is performed indoors as opposed to
outdoors (where bad weather can make working conditions poor); fields that
offer a pleasant and socially dynamic working environment; fields typified by
lower levels of emotional strife; fields that offer desirable shifts or
flexible working hours; fields or jobs that require fewer working hours per
week or fewer working days per year; and fields where employees can “check out”
at the end of the day and not need to “take their jobs home with them.”
Moreover, Farrell notes, women as a group tend to be less
willing to commute long distances, to travel extensively for work-related
duties, or to relocate geographically in order to take a job. In addition, they
tend to have fewer years of uninterrupted experience in their current jobs, and
they are far more likely to leave the work force for extended periods in order
to attend to family-related matters such as raising children. During the course
of their overall work lives, men accumulate an extra 5 to 9 years on the job as
compared to their female counterparts, and each of those additional years
translates to approximately 3 or 4 percent more in annual pay.
When all of the above variables are factored into the equation,
the gender pay gap disappears entirely. When men and women work at jobs where
their titles and their responsibilities are equivalent, they are paid exactly
the same.
Obama Himself Has Paid His Female Staffers Less than His Male
Staffers
The women who worked on Obama’s Senate staff during 2007-2008
earned 78 cents for every dollar his male staffers were paid (annual salaries
of $44,953.21 for the women, vs. $57,425 for the men). These data, however, did
not take into account such variables as job position, experience, or
education—all of which are factors that could influence pay. Thus the raw
numbers did not constitute evidence that the women were being discriminated
against—though by the (invalid) standard which Obama had applied to all other
American employers, the numbers were indeed indicative of discrimination.
According to the 2011 annual report on White House staff, female
employees in the Obama White House earned a median annual salary of $60,000,
approximately 18% less than the median salary for male employees ($71,000).
“The War on Women”: Obama Supports Georgetown Law Student Sandra
Fluke's Demand that Insurance Providers Cover the Costs of Contraception and
Abortion
On February 23, 2012, Sandra Fluke, a third-year law student at
Georgetown University and an experienced women's-rights activist, testified
about Georgetown’s policy on contraception during an unofficial hearing that
was led by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. Fluke argued that birth control
should be covered by health insurance policies, even at religious institutions
that objected to contraception on moral grounds. After radio host Rush Limbaugh
harshly criticized Miss Fluke for her comments, President Obama called the
young woman to express his support. In an interview with CBS News, Fluke
reported that Mr. Obama had thanked her for “helping to amplify the voices of
women across the country,” and had expressed concern “that I was okay.”
This incident laid the groundwork for the Obama administration
and the Democratic Party to accuse the Republican Party of waging a “war on
women,” a hallmark of which was Republicans' refusal to mandate that all health
insurance plans cover the cost of women's contraception and abortion services.
In January 2012, the Obama administration issued an edict
mandating that religious hospitals, schools, charities and other health and
social service providers provide “free” contraception, abortifacient pills,
sterilizations, and abortion services in their insurance plans—even if doing so
violated their moral codes and the teachings of their churches.
Obama Says the Augusta National Golf Club Should Allow Women to
Attend
In April 2012, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney informed
the media that President Obama believed that women should be admitted for
membership to the all-male Augusta National Golf Club.
Obama Campaign Urges Female Voters to “Vote Like Your Lady Parts
Depend on It”
On October 2, 2012, the Obama campaign posted an e-card,
targeting women, on its Tumblr site. It read: “Vote like your lady parts depend
on it.” Just hours after bloggers began criticizing the ad, the campaign
deleted the e-card.
Obama Mocks Romney's Reference to “Binders Full of Women”
During an October 9, 2012 presidential debate, Republican Mitt
Romney described how, when he began his tenure as governor of Massachusetts in
2003, he sought to increase the number of women in his cabinet: “I had the
chance to pull together a cabinet and all the applicants seemed to be men. And
I went to my staff, and I said, 'How come all the people for these jobs are all
men?' They said, 'Well, these are the people that have the qualifications.' And
I said, 'Well, gosh, can't we find some women that are also qualified?'” This,
explained Romney, led to a “concerted effort to go out and find women who had
backgrounds that could be qualified to become members” of his cabinet. “I went
to a number of women's groups and said, 'Can you help us find folks?' And they
brought us whole binders full of women” (i.e., women's resumes).
At a campaign rally in Iowa the following day, Obama made a
disparaging reference to Romney's remark: “We don't have to collect a bunch of
binders to find qualified, talented, driven young women ready to learn and
teach in these fields right now,” said Obama. “When young women graduate, they
should get equal pay for equal work. That should be a simple question to
answer.” He repeated a similar assertion later that day at a campaign event in
Ohio.
Obama Says Women Are Underpaid
During his second inaugural address as president on January 21,
2013, the newly re-elected Obama emphasized his belief that female workers in
America are not treated or paid fairly: “Our journey is not complete until our
wives, our mothers and daughters can earn a living equal to their efforts.”
Obama Laments America's Historical and Continuing Injustice
Toward Women
In a December 4, 2013 speech on the U.S. economy, President
Obama said: "It’s also true that women still make 77 cents on the dollar
compared to men.... It’s time to pass the Paycheck Fairness Act so that women will
have more tools to fight pay discrimination."
Obama Says Women Are Underpaid
During his State of the Union address in January 2014, Obama
said: "Today, women make up about half our workforce. But they still make
77 cents for every dollar a man earns. That is wrong, and in 2014, it’s an
embarrassment. A woman deserves equal pay for equal work."
Depicting a Supreme Court Decision As "War on Women"
On June 30, 2014, the Supreme Court ruled in a 5-4 decision that
some companies with religious objections could avoid the Obamacare mandate
requiring employers to provide their workers with health insurance plans that
cover contraceptives and abortifacients.
The Obama administration responded to the decision by
characterizing it as anti-woman. White House press secretary Josh Earnest said:
"President Obama believes that women should make personal health care
decisions for themselves rather than their bosses deciding for them. Today's
decision jeopardizes the health of the women who are employed by these
companies."
KEY OBAMA APPOINTEES: REFLECTING THE PRESIDENT'S RADICALISM
(Return to Table of Contents)
Obama's Values and Political Agendas Are Reflected in the
Individuals Whom He Has Appointed to Key Posts in His Administration
Alikhan, Arif (Assistant Secretary for the Office of Policy
Development): When he was Deputy Mayor of Homeland Security and Public Safety
for the City of Los Angeles, Alikhan was responsible for derailing the LAPD's
efforts to monitor activities within the city’s Muslim community, where
numerous radical mosques and madrassas were known to exist, and where some of
the 9/11 hijackers had received support from local residents.
Berwick, Donald (Administrator of the Centers for Medicare &
Medicaid Services): Opposed to free-market health-care systems, Berwick favors
a government-run, single-payer model. He is particularly fond of Great
Britain’s government-run National Health Services (NHS) and its National
Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE), a body of bureaucrats who
evaluate the relative costs and benefits of various medical therapies in order
to determine what procedures the NHS will cover. In Berwick's calculus, America's
health-care system traditionally has been inferior to Britain's because of the
free-market elements present in the U.S. system.
Bloom, Ron (Senior Counselor to the President for Manufacturing
Policy): Asserting that “the free market is nonsense,” Bloom supports
federal-government control of the American healthcare system. “We kind of agree
with Mao,” says Bloom, “that political power comes largely from the barrel of a
gun.”
Brooks, Rosa (Undersecretary for Defense Policy): In a September
2006 L.A. Times column, Brooks referred to President Bush as America’s
“torturer-in-chief,” and she suggested that Islamist terror attacks against the
U.S. were manifestations of a backlash against America’s foreign
transgressions. “Today, the chickens are coming home to roost,” she said.
Browner, Carol (Assistant to the President for Energy and
Climate Change): Browner formerly served as a “commissioner” of the Socialist
International, the umbrella group for 170 “social democratic, socialist and
labor parties” in 55 countries. The Socialist International's “organizing
document” cites capitalism as the cause of “devastating crises,” “mass
unemployment,” “imperialist expansion,” and “colonial exploitation” worldwide.
Browner also worked on the Socialist International's Commission for a
Sustainable World Society, which contends that “the developed world must reduce
consumption and commit to binding and punitive limits on greenhouse gas
emissions.”
Chu, Steven (Secretary of Energy): In 2008, Chu advocated steep
rises in gasoline prices as a means of coaxing Americans into being more
fuel-efficient and purchasing green energy cars: “Somehow we have to figure out
how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe” (i.e.,
approximately $10 per gallon).
Cole, James (Deputy Attorney General): After 9/11, Cole
contended that prosecutions related to terrorism should be adjudicated in
civilian courts rather than in military tribunals. Further, he legally
represented Prince Naif Bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, a member of the Saudi royal
family, in a lawsuit filed by Motley Rice on behalf of 9/11 families. Prince
Naif headed the terror-aligned Al Haramain Islamic Foundation. Between 2002 and
2004, the Treasury Department concluded that 13 branches of that Foundation had
ties to al Qaeda; in 2008, Treasury extended the terror designation to the
entire Foundation.
Dunn, Anita (White House Communications Director): Dunn has
cited former Chinese dictator Mao Zedong as one of her “favorite political
philosophers.”
Emanuel, Rahm (Chief of Staff): In December 2008 it was reported
that Emanuel, cognizant of the fact that the economic recession in which
America was mired presented an opportunity for the Democratic Party to enact
sweeping legislation under the guise of an economic recovery plan, had said the
following in a candid moment: “You never want a serious crisis to go to
waste—and what I mean by that is it's an opportunity to do things that you
think you could not do before.”
Freeman, Charles: (Nominated for Chair of the National
Intelligence Council, but withdrew from consideration in March 2009): In a 2002
speech, Freeman said: “Saudis and other Gulf Arabs were shocked by the level of
ignorance and antipathy displayed by Americans toward them and toward Islam
after September 11. The connection between Islam and suicide bombing is a false
connection. Kamikaze pilots were not Muslims…. And what of America's lack of
introspection about September 11? Instead of asking what might have caused the
attack, or questioning the propriety of the national response to it, there is
an ugly mood of chauvinism. Before Americans call on others to examine
themselves, we should examine ourselves.” In 2007, Freeman said the U.S. had
provoked Islamic terrorism by failing to put an end to “the brutal oppression
of the Palestinians by an Israeli occupation that is about to mark its fortieth
anniversary and shows no sign of ending.”
Geithner, Timothy (Secretary of the Treasury): During Geithner’s
Senate confirmation hearings, it was learned that he had failed to pay $43,000
in federal self-employment taxes over a four-year period. He subsequently paid
the amount in full, stating that he had been guilty only of making “careless”
and “unintentional” errors. In March 2009, the Associated Press reported that
Geithner would soon “unveil a series of rules and measures … to limit the
ability of international companies to avoid U.S. taxes.” Also in March,
Geithner told the House Ways and Means Committee that President Obama intended
to propose legislation to limit the ability of American companies and high
earners to shelter foreign earnings from U.S. taxes.
Holder, Eric (Attorney General): Holder was deeply involved in
former President Clinton's pardons of Puerto Rican FALN terrorists and Marc
Rich (a fugitive oil broker who had illegally purchased oil from Iran during
the American trade embargo, and had then proceeded to hide more than $100
million in profits by using dummy transactions in off-shore corporations). He
also has condemned the Guantanamo Bay detention center as an “international
embarrassment”; has sought to try islamic terrorists in civilian courts rather
than in military tribunals; has filed suit against several states that had
passed laws designed to stem the flow of illegal immigration; and has opposed
efforts to purge voter rolls of ineligible names, or to enact voter-ID laws.
Holdren, John (Assistant to the President for Science and
Technology): Viewing capitalism as an economic system that is inherently
harmful to the natural environment, Holdren once called for “a massive campaign
… to de-develop the United States” and other Western nations in order to
conserve energy and facilitate growth in underdeveloped countries.
Johnsen, Dawn (Assistant Attorney General to the Office of Legal
Counsel): Johnsen views the United States generally as a nation rife with all
manner of injustice, including racial discrimination against nonwhites. In an
April 2008 article she lamented “the devastatingly disproportionate rates of
imprisonment of racial minorities.” In 2008 she characterized the War on Terror
as an ill-advised brainstorm that President Bush had undertaken impetuously as
an overreaction to a single act of terrorism. Moreover, she believes that
nominees for the federal judiciary should automatically be disqualified from
consideration if they subscribe to the concept of Constitutional originalism
(as opposed to the notion that the Constitution is a malleable “living
document”).
Jones, Van (Special Advisor for Green Jobs, Enterprise and
Innovation): In 2004 this self-identified revolutionary communist signed the
9/11 Truth Statement, which called for a federal investigation into whether
President Bush had been privy to advance knowledge of—or perhaps had colluded
in—the destruction of the World Trade Center.
Koh, Harold (Legal Advisor to the U.S. State Department): Koh is
an advocate of transnationalism, a concept arguing in favor of “global
governance” as opposed to the constitutional sovereignty of independent
nation-states. This perspective holds that the world's most challenging
problems are too complex and deep-rooted for any single country to address
effectively on its own. The solution, says Koh, is for all members of the
international community to recognize a set of supranational laws and
institutions whose authority overrides those of any particular government.
Lloyd, Mark (Diversity Chief of the Federal Communications
Commission): Lloyd seeks to shut down, or at least weaken, talk radio—on the
pretext that doing so would promote “diversity” and the interests of “local”
populations.
Medina, Eliseo (National Latino Advisory Council): Medina once
served as an Honorary Chairman of the Democratic Socialists of America.
Mogahed, Dalia (Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood
Partnerships): Mogahed views the United States as a nation rife with
discrimination against Muslims. She contends that the Western view of Sharia
Law is “oversimplified,” and that the majority of Muslim women around the world
associate Islamic Law with “gender justice.”
Muñoz, Cecilia (Director of Intergovernmental Affairs; Director
of the Domestic Policy Council): By Muñoz's reckoning, America is a nation rife
with white racism and bigotry. On one occasion, she told The Detroit News: “It
gets old. We're [Latinos] tired of being treated as if we don't belong here.”
Muñoz calls for immigration reform that would create a clear path to
citizenship for illegal immigrants, and describes organized opposition to this
agenda as a “wave of hate.”
Napolitano, Janet (Secretary of Department of Homeland
Security): From her earliest days as the head of DHS, Napolitano broke with the
Department’s tradition of warning the American public about potential terrorist
threats. Instead, Napolitano began referring to acts of terrorism as
“man-caused disasters.”
Perez, Thomas (Assistant Attorney General for the Justice
Department's Civil Rights Division): In June 2010, J. Christian Adams, a
five-year Department of Justice (DOJ) veteran, resigned to protest the “corrupt
nature” of DOJ's dismissal of a case involving two Philadelphia-based members
of the New Black Panther Party who had intimidated white voters with racial
slurs and threats of violence on Election Day, 2008. Adams cited Thomas
Perrelli (the Associate Attorney General) and Thomas Perez as the two DOJ
officials most responsible for dropping the case. In July 2010, Adams gave
damning public testimony about how Perez and other Obama DOJ officials believed
that “civil rights law should not be enforced in a race-neutral manner, and
should never be enforced against blacks or other national minorities.”
Posner, Michael (Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy,
Human Rights and Labor): In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, Posner asserted
that America's treatment of Middle Easterners was akin to the internment of
Japanese Americans during World War II. Particularly appalling to Posner was
the government's practice of holding suspected terrorists such as al Qaeda
operatives Jose Padilla and Yaser Hamdi in military detention indefinitely and
without access to legal counsel. From the time of Padilla’s arrest in 2002,
Posner was deeply engaged in the defendant's case and filed the first amicus
brief on his behalf in July 2003. In May 2010, Posner headed the American
delegation to a “U.S.-China Human Rights Dialogue,” where he repeatedly made
reference to the recently enacted Arizona immigration-law-enforcement bill as
an example of America’s own human-rights failures―calling it “a troubling
trend in our society, and an indication that we have to deal with issues of
discrimination or potential discrimination.”
Power, Samantha (Director for Multilateral Affairs, National
Security Council): Power has said that America’s relationship with Israel “has
often led foreign policy decision-makers to defer reflexively to Israeli
security assessments, and to replicate Israeli tacticsӉۥthereby provoking
terrorist attacks upon America from the Muslim world.
Rice, Susan (Ambassador to the United Nations): Downplaying the
aggressive, faith-based intentions of radical Islamists, Rice contends that
terrorism is primarily “a threat borne of both oppression and deprivation.” In
the aftermath of the deadly September 11, 2012 attacks on the U.S. consulate in
Benghazi, Rice went on five separate news programs and falsely stated that the
attacks were a “spontaneous reaction” to an obscure Internet video that was
critical of the Prophet Mohammed. Soon thereafter, it was learned that the
American consulate in Benghazi had been attacked and threatened at least 13
times before the deadly September 11 attack, and that the Obama administration
had failed to provide proper security at the facility.
Solis, Hilda (Secretary of Labor): Solis firmly embraces
President Obama's class-warfare mindset. In April 2012, for example, she
delivered a speech at Al Sharpton's National Action Network, where she stated
that imposing higher taxes on the wealthy was justified: “It’s about fairness
in the workplace; it’s about fairness in education; and it’s about fairness in
terms of what services are provided by government.... [T]hose that can afford
it, the billionaires and millionaires ... want to pay more because they know
it’s their obligation!”
Sunstein, Cass (Administrator of the White House Office of
Information and Regulatory Affairs): Sunstein's views on taxes are wholly
consistent with those of President Obama. Wries Sunstein: “In what sense is the
money in our pockets and bank accounts fully ‘ours’? Did we earn it by our own
autonomous efforts? Could we have inherited it without the assistance of
probate courts? Do we save it without the support of bank regulators? Could we
spend it if there were no public officials to coordinate the efforts and pool
the resources of the community in which we live?… Without taxes there would be
no liberty. Without taxes there would be no property. Without taxes, few of us
would have any assets worth defending. [It is] a dim fiction that some people
enjoy and exercise their rights without placing any burden whatsoever on the
public fisc. … There is no liberty without dependency. That is why we should
celebrate tax day …”
Sutley, Nancy (White House Council on Environmental Quality): On
December 15, 2008, President-elect Barack Obama appointed Sutley to lead the
White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ). Sutley and the CEQ came
under scrutiny in 2009 when it was learned that Van Jones, President Obama’s
“Green Jobs Czar” and also a member of the CEQ, was a communist with a
twenty-year history of radical activism. Sutley initially had championed Jones
as “a strong voice for green jobs,” but once the scandal snowballed and eventually
forced Jones to resign, Sutley issued only a short statement on Jones' “hard
work” and dedication to green jobs and renewable resources.
Tauscher, Ellen (Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and
International Security): When she was a congresswoman, Tauscher opposed efforts
to create any new nuclear weapons and withheld funding from the Reliable
Replacement Warhead program, which was designed to secure America's aging
nuclear stockpile. Not only were missile-defense systems “untested,” in Tauscher's
view, but they were unnecessary—because Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejiad
and al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden did not yet possess nuclear weapons. In
March 2009 Tauscher excoriated advocates of missile defense for “running around
with their hair on fire warning about a long-range threat from Iran that does
not exist.” Tauscher believes that in order to discourage aggressive dictators
from developing nuclear weapons, the United States should disarm itself of its
own nuclear stockpiles. In February 2009 she told the Munich Security
Conference: “The U.S. would, without question, be more secure in a world free
of nuclear weapons. The real question is whether pursuit of such a goal is in
our security interests. I believe it is.”
Trumka, Richard (Member of President Obama's Economic Recovery
Advisory Board): This powerful socialist labor leader helped rescind a founding
AFL-CIO rule that banned Communist Party members and loyalists from leadership
positions within the Federation and its unions. As a result, Communist Party
delegates became free to secure positions of power in the Federation. The
Communist Party USA (CPUSA) declared itself “in complete accord” with the “very
positive” new policy. In the late 1990s, Trumka twice invoked his Fifth
Amendment right against self-incrimination in a congressional committee
investigation of a corruption and money-laundering scandal.
Warren, Elizabeth (Special Assistant in charge of organizing and
establishing a new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau): In 2009 Warren
appeared in Michael Moore's anti-capitalist film titled Capitalism: A Love
Story. In a taped interview, the filmmaker told Warren that “capitalism in and
of itself, at least the capitalism we know now, is immoral, it’s not
democratic, and worst of all, it doesn’t work...” Warren did not disagree,
replying: “But we made up these rules, and the rules are of men, of people. We
pick what the rules are. The rules have not been written for ordinary families,
for the people who actually do the work. We have to rewrite those rules.” When
Moore then blamed the greed of “corporate America” for allegedly having tricked
people into borrowing money they could not repay, Warren said: “Its a big part
of what happened, and then just layer in on top of that: 'Can we sell them more
credit cards that are loaded with tricks and traps?'” In April 2012, Warren
became embroiled in controversy when it was learned that during the 1990s she
had falsely identified herself as part-Native American in an effort to bolster
her chances of being hired by a university seeking to improve its “diversity”
hiring record.
West, Tony (Assistant Attorney General for the Justice
Department’s Civil Division): In 2001, West joined the legal defense team of
John Walker Lindh, an American Muslim convert and a member of al Qaeda, who had
taken up arms against U.S. troops in Afghanistan after 9/11. In July 2002,
after Lindh signed a plea deal that would send him to jail for up to 20 years,
West stated that Lindh “is not a terrorist,” but a young man of great
“intellectual curiosity.” “He’s so intellectually driven,” said West, “and he
has a wide variety of interests—from English literature to World History to
Islamic studies. I truly believe John will have a lot to offer after his
incarceration, and I believe John’s faith has led him to the same conclusion.”
On a later occasion, West argued that “defending the despised,” in this case
Lindh, was akin to the founding father John Adams’ 1770 defense of the British
officers who had participated in the Boston Massacre.
THE DREADFUL ECONOMY
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Obama Pledges to Improve Economy During His First Term
When President Obama took office in 2009, he said that he “will
be held accountable” for his actions and their consequences. “If I don’t have
this done in three years, then there’s going to be a one-term proposition,” he
said.
