Some Things to Think About

Some interesting tidbits picked up today through a friend.

Nearly every president since the turn of the previous century has had people on their staff that had business experience. While some of the progressive democrats had as little as 30% of their staff with business experience it pales in comparison to how much business experience can be found within the Obama Administration. Warp your hands around this figure: 8%. That’s right people; only 8% of Obama advisors have any sort of private sector business experience.

And we expect these people to lead us out of our economic troubles?

To further point out just how inept Obama is when it comes to picking out people to provide him with economic advice take a look below

Franklin Raines was a Chairman of Chief Executive Officer at Fannie Mae. Raines was forced to retire from his position with Fannie Mae when auditing discovered severe irregularities in Fannie Mae’s accounting activities. Raines left with a “golden parachute” valued at $240 million in benefits. The government filed suit against Raines when the depth of the accounting scandal became clear.

Raines now works for President Obama as his Chief Economic Advisor.

El Presidente for Life

Over the past year I have blogged several times about how President Obama is increasingly taking Congress out of the mix when it comes to governing our nation through his czars and his unilateral executive orders.

While certainly not the first instance of Obama threatening to bypass Congress, this was probably the one that caught everyone’s attention (of course, except those in the main stream media).

“Believe me; doing things on my own is very tempting.”

That little sentence scares the livin’ snot out of me. How can someone who purports to be a Constitutional scholar really believe this is a good way to govern? What is even scarier is the crowd chanting its approval. Are these people really Americans? Do they really want to live in nation where power is even more centralized than it is now? Maybe they should move to Venezuela or Iran to get a taste of what it is like to live under a dictator.

How Freddie and Fannie did What they Did.

A must read on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. It explains how Fannie and Freddie got so big by publicly denying they were backed by the government but privately saying something else.  Even good old Barney Frank, who now wants to be rid of Fannie and Freddie, said there was no government backing for the quasi-private companies.

“There is no guarantee. There’s no explicit guarantee. There’s no implicit guarantee.  There’s no wink-and-nod guarantee. Invest and you’re on your own. Nobody who invest in them (Fannie and Freddie) should come looking to me for a nickel. Nor anyone else in the Federal government.” (Source: NPR)

Of course we now know that Frank was talking out both sides of his mouth.  Good grief, Frank was romantically involved with a one time leader of Fannie. I don’t think anyone believes that there wasn’t so sort of pillow talk at one point of another.  This is the same Barney Frank that told President Bush to go away when Bush suggested we get out of the business of supporting Fannie and Freddie.  So far, the feds have given Fannie and Freddie over $100B dollars and it will probably be more before it is all said and done.