What’s wrong with President Obama and his administration is that they don’t know rights from wrongs.
They are more concerned with:
• The PLO’s rights rather than the PLO’s wrongs. In inviting Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Washington to restart peace talks after a two-year hiatus, Obama perpetuated the illusion that the PLO has any credibility as a reliable partner. The PLO has repeatedly reinforced its commitment to kill Jews and destroy Israel. For decades, the PLO has misappropriated countless billions in U.S. and foreign aid. Before it gets negotiating “rights” the PLO needs to demonstrate through actions that it is capable of renouncing violence and corruption and that it can honor—rather than consistently violate—any agreement.
• An Imam’s Rights Rather than an Imam’s Wrongs. Obama buys into the “religious rights” argument of Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf to build a $100-million mosque and Muslim cultural center near Ground Zero. But the issue is how wrong the location is. Obama also disregards Rauf’s refusal to acknowledge Hamas as a terrorist group and Rauf’s assertion that U.S. foreign policy caused 9/11. The president must realize that Rauf misused his “goodwill” trip to the Middle East (funded by taxpayer dollars!) as a publicity and fundraising stunt.
• Terrorists’ Rights Rather Than Terrorists’ Wrongs. The Obama “Justice” Department has dropped the prosecution of Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, the accused coordinator of the Oct. 2000 suicide attack on the USS Cole in Yemen. It has also granted Miranda rights (the "right to remain silent") to the Christmas Day and Times Square bombers and it fights to provide civilian (rather than military) trial rights to terrorists including admitted 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Terrorists terrorize us twice when our legal system uses wrong reasoning to give them “rights.”
• Unions’ Rights Rather Than Unions’ Wrongs. Obama has given unions sweetheart deals that raise corruption and cronyism to obscene levels. For example, in the government takeover of General Motors, as The New York Post reported, the Obama-supporting United Auto Workers got: “a remarkable 17.5 percent of the stock plus $2.5 billion in cash plus $6.5 billion in preferred stock carrying a dividend of about 9 percent. In other words, the UAW got three to four times as much as [private] bondholders for a smaller claim on GM's assets. The union even boasted to its members in May 2009 that it had made no concessions on pay, health care or pensions in the restructuring. In effect, the government divided up GM's creditors into favored and unfavored groups, then gave a fat stake in the reorganized business to the favored (aka longtime Democratic Party donors).” Whether it’s health care reform, educational reform or any other kind of reform, Obama and his administration always find ways to serve up sweet treatments for unions and sour treatments for the public.
• Illegal Immigrants’ Rights Rather Than Illegal Immigrants’ Wrongs. The Obama administration’s insistence that the federal government has exclusive authority over immigration laws has resulted in the perpetuation of abuses by illegal immigrants and in the Justice Department suing Arizona for trying to enforce immigration laws that the feds either won’t or can’t. A recent study conducted by the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) says harboring illegal immigrants costs an average of $1,117 for every “native-headed” household in America. FAIR estimates that $52 billion is spent on schooling the children of illegals, $28.6-billion is spent by the federal government in “illegal related costs” and state and local budgets are crippled with $84.2 billion in illegal immigrants’ costs. One example FAIR gives is that the $21.8-billion California spends on illegal immigration is $8 billion more than the state’s current budget deficit of $13.8 billion. For those who argue that FAIR is being unfair, it is indisputable that illegal immigrants are inflicting enormous costs on our health, educational and criminal prevention systems. Illegal behavior should not be a passport to undue “rights.”
• Financial Scammers’ Rights Rather than Financial Scammers’ Wrongs. Take your pick: certain Wall Street firms, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, AIG, mortgage brokers and borrowers—the list seems endless. Obama and his administration have created moral hazard and monetary mayhem with the nation’s financial system and have battered, bruised and scorned law-abiding, taxpaying Americans. In Obama’s upside down world of bailouts, handouts, buyouts, copouts, and sellouts, the wrongdoers get rewarded and the right doers get punished.
How can a president be right when he and his administration can’t tell rights from wrongs?
Communications consultant Jon Kraushar is at www.jonkraushar.net
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