Obama smear.... and the real issues...

Here's the article on that kick Obama out of office group here in Henry I told you about.  Below i've included more on the two points I made to the reporter about health care and the deficit when he called me--if you want to do more background on these issues.  The only way we deal with distraction politics is to talk about the issues that matter...

Group seeks to remove Obama as president

By Jason A. Smith

jsmith@henryherald.com

A local businessman is organizing efforts in Georgia, which are aimed at ousting President Barack Obama from the Oval Office.

A group of Georgians, called Rise Up for America, recently "indicted" the president as being ineligible to serve, due to concerns related to his U.S. citizenship status.

Carl Swensson, of Morrow, is overseeing the 25 members of a common-law grand jury, or Thomas Jefferson Grand Jury, who returned the March 28 indictment.

Swensson, who owns CAS Computers, Inc., in Stockbridge, said Obama has been hiding crucial information regarding his eligibility to hold the office of president.

"Barack Obama has failed to provide any documents to lawyers seeking disclosure, concerning his eligibility," said Swensson. "He is either hiding documents that are innocuous, or he is hiding documents that are damaging. Which is it? That's what millions want to know."

Swensson said Obama, who has acknowledged his father was from Kenya, is a "dual national," who was adopted in Indonesia as a child under the name "Barry." As such, continued Swensson, Obama should not have been allowed to serve as president.

"To our knowledge, he has never [reverted] back to U.S. citizenship," said Swensson. "Obama went to Pakistan in the early 1980s when Americans were not allowed to go there. What that means is, he was still an Indonesian citizen, or traveled under an Indonesian passport."

FactCheck.org, a political web site operated by the Annenberg Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania, addressed the question of whether Obama was a citizen of Kenya when he ran for president. In an article from August of 2008, web site writer, Joe Miller, said insinuating dual citizenship for Obama is a "baseless" claim.

"When Barack Obama ... was born on Aug. 4, 1961, in Honolulu, Kenya was a British colony, still part of the United Kingdom's dwindling empire," wrote Miller. "As a Kenyan native, [his father] was a British subject whose citizenship status was governed by The British Nationality Act of 1948. That same act governed the status of [his] children."

Jim Nichols is the former chairman of the Henry County Democratic Party, and said he is aware of the activities of Swensson's group and others like it. Nichols called Rise Up for America's goals "absurd," and said there are other, "more important" issues with which the group's members should concern themselves.

"I really think this has more to do with distraction politics," said Nichols. "For example, the World Health Organization says we rank 37th in the world for quality of health care. Obama wants to address this. So what do you do? You change the subject. Look at the economy. Bush's tax cuts massively increased the federal deficit. Obama wants to address our long-term fiscal problems. So what do you do? You change the subject."

Nichols added that Rise Up's actions are taking attention away from "real issues affecting real people."

According to Swensson, similar actions to those of his organization have been undertaken since Obama took office, in Texas, Illinois, Ohio, California, Florida and Iowa.

"All of them are in the process of convening within the next 2-3 weeks," he said. "The interest in this topic has grown across the country. Our national group is in the tens of thousands of people."

Swensson said Rise Up for America's goal is to "remove" Obama from office, a measure which could have significant implications regarding decisions the president has made since his inauguration in January.

"Everything he has signed would be null and void, and new elections will have to occur within three months," said Swensson. "The sanctity of votes is what this is all about. If we vote for someone who is not eligible, what happens to that sanctity, and to the Constitution?"

Swensson said the "indictment" against the president has reportedly been sent to a number of state officials, including Atty. Gen. Thurbert Baker and Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle, as well as two judges, for review..

------------

First, you can read about the citizenship question at Factcheck.org.  Yes, he's born in the U.S.A.

Here is the World Health Organization's study that I mentioned, The world health report 2000 - Health systems: improving performance

We were 37th for overall performance, in between Slovenia and Costa Rica.

For more on Health Care you can go to CBPP: Insuring All Americans: Critical to an Efficient, High Quality Health Care System

 Regarding the Deficit: Policy Basics: The 2001 and 2003 Tax Cuts which notes:

The 2001 and 2003 tax cuts added about $1.7 trillion to deficits between 2001 and 2008. Because they been financed by borrowing — which increases the national debt — this figure includes the extra interest costs resulting from that additional debt.

This figure also includes the cost of “patching” the Alternative Minimum Tax to keep the tax from hitting millions of upper-middle-class households, a problem the tax cuts helped cause. (See Policy Basics: The Alternative Minimum Tax.)

Over the next decade (2009-2018), making the tax cuts permanent would cost $4.4 trillion, assuming that the tax cuts remain deficit-financed.

And Tax Cuts: Myths and Realities

Congressional Budget Office data show that the tax cuts have been the single largest contributor to the reemergence of substantial budget deficits in recent years.  Legislation enacted since 2001 added about $3.0 trillion to deficits between 2001 and 2007, with nearly half of this deterioration in the budget due to the tax cuts (about a third was due to increases in security spending, and about a sixth to increases in domestic spending).  Yet the President and some Congressional leaders decline to acknowledge the tax cuts’ role in the nation’s budget problems, falling back instead on the discredited nostrum that tax cuts “pay for themselves.”

I mentioned both the health care crisis and the deficit because the two are linked.  If we don't get control of our health care spending we will have major problems over the long term.

For more on this you can read Peter Orszag statement before the Committee on the Budget United States Senate Health Care and the Budget: Issues and Challenges for Reform in June of 2007.  At the time he was Director of the Congressional Budget Office but he is currently the Budget Director for the White House, and keeps a copy of Epictetus on his bed side table.

To see what would happen if we are able to control costs like the rest of the industrialized world, you need to check out the Center for Economic and Policy Research's Health Care Budget Deficit Calculator which, "allows you to see what the projected U.S. budget deficit would be, as a percentage of GDP, if the United States had the same per person health care costs as any of the countries in the list below, all of which enjoy longer life expectancies than the United States."

For more on Obama's plan you can read his Blueprint for Change.

For more on how you can help bring about this change join me in standing with Dr. Dean. So that we can assure that individual Americans can choose either a universally available public healthcare option like Medicare or for-profit private insurance.  A public health care option brings competition into the marketplace without it we will continue to pay 2 to 3 times as much for health care as other industrialized nations (while leaving large chunks of our population without coverage a.k.a "rationing" via income). 

For some housekeeping...

I've added a sign-up at the top right corner of JimNichols4.com if you want my blog posts to go to your email rather than using an rssfeed.

Also my twitter is JimNichols.

 

Posted via web from jimnichols's posterous