8 years of suffering under Barack Obama

The sentence I hear most from well-meaning, conservative friends since President Trump’s election is this: “We suffered 8 years under Barack Obama.”

Fair enough. Let’s take a look.

The day Obama took office, the Dow closed at 7,949 points. Eight years later, the Dow had almost tripled.

General Motors and Chrysler were on the brink of bankruptcy, with Ford not far behind, and their failure, along with their supply chains, would have meant the loss of millions of jobs. Obama pushed through a controversial, $8o billion bailout to save the car industry. The U.S. car industry survived, started making money again, and the entire $80 billion was paid back, with interest.

This is long (3 parts), but it goes point for point as to what this author believes is truth. Maybe it had to do more with where you lived but, in my travels through the 8 years, I would consider it suffering. In a point for point; 1. While he was running the Dow ‘s high was 13K. It was already headed for a crash. When he took office it was down to just over 8K. The market bottomed out in March of 2009 at 6.5K, when the recovery started. At this early point, most give the previous administration credit for the steps taken for the beginning of the recovery, as he was only in office two months. Bush initially started the bailout in 2008 and the U.S. automakers were close to the levels of “any global manufacturer” in most areas by 2009. They were already in the middle of a large and successful improvement process when the financial crisis hit and they were among the victims. The following bailout in 2009 was needed due to the national downturn.

2. Worldwide, terrorism increased throughout the Obama Presidency. The only reason their appears to be a downturn at all is because the State Dept and Dept of Defense changed the method of how they determined terrorist related metrics. A December 2015 report from the Program on Extremism at George Washington University said 56 individuals were arrested in 2015 in the United States for ISIS-related activities, "the largest number of terrorism arrests in a single year since September 2001. We were lucky that we were able to catch this many people. So the US isn’t completely safer.

3. He did order the raid, and the world is better for it.

4. The initial drawdown had to be reversed and the fight to regain territory previously won came at a price of almost 2000 more casualties. Also the level of 15000 was never true as disbursed troops were dispersed throughout the middle east to a number closer to 68000.

5. As a veteran who uses the VA, the administration seemed to have very little impact.

6. Homeless vets did improve from 2010 to 2015 (74K to 40K). In 2016 the numbers began to go back up. This is follows the national trend with most of the increases in the veterans homeless population came from the West Coast. California and Washington combined saw a rise of nearly 2,500 new homeless veterans.

7. He did have 73 straight months of private sector job growth, almost all in the service industry, with low paying jobs with limited benefits. Luckily that is something that has changed for the better over the past 3 years, with the increases in the manufacturing sector.

8. crude oil production surge is that it is readily apparent that it happened despite his administration, and not because of it. President Obama coincidentally happened to enter office just as the shale oil boom in the U.S. was getting started.

9. In fact, the vast majority of the increase in U.S. oil production occurred on private land. On land that the U.S. government controls, it was a different story. The EIA reported in 2015 that while U.S. oil and gas production overall were surging, production of natural gas on federal lands was declining. Oil production is at about the same level as it was during his first year in office. The amount is oil imports is way down, mostly due to the shale oil boom and increase in cheaper cleaner natural gas from fraking. Cheap natural gas is why greenhouse gas emissions decreased by 12%.

10. The equal pay was long overdue and glad it made it thru.

11. They are now trying to figure out how to fund not only the 2 million miles, but now the additional 3.8 million lands designated just before he left office. There is a cost of taking care of twice as much federally protected land. Not ensuring you have the proper funding for these additional lands, to me, is almost criminal.

12. The deficit % GDP would be great if you were doing what needed to be done for National Defense. We saw the largest downturn in our military superiority with many programs not moving forward at all for the 8 years he was in office. Planes, ships, submarines, missile systems were all extended past their expected end date by more than 15 years. Now more will be need to be spent at a quicker pace to get past this major incompetence.

13. Obama Care was a plan the fixed medical care for 10% of the US, at the sake of the 90% who had it.

14. Obama does get the credit for rebuilding the levees. If we properly funded (they didn’t ensure future funding) and did the maintenance over the years, we could avoid this problem.

15. McConnell and all party leaders do the same thing. The current Democratic leaders prove they are doing the same thing as him.

16. Guantanamo Bay is a problem with no real solution that will be acceptable to the American public.

17. For me this is an ethical issue. I am Catholic and would like to see other adult stem cells used. The bulk of stem cell funding grants in California and Maryland are moving toward “ethical” research that doesn’t use human embryos. When gov’t funding strongly favored research from embryonic stem cells over “adult” stem cells, which are taken from the placenta, umbilical cord and some mature tissues and do not kill human embryos, I see a disconnect. I am all for stem cell research.

18. The credit card rules are great and I support it.

19. He may have had a party on the 4th of July with a few military families, but that was the limit of the love he gave. In a time where no new major systems had been developed in more than 20 years, he decreased defense spending in 6 of his 8 years in office. My example would be the Trident Submarines, built between 1979 – 1996. They had a projected service life of 25 years. It takes approximately 10 years to design the next generation of submarines. This means in 1995 they should have started to design the next generation and have been building them in 2006. They have just this year started building the new submarines this year. The Tridents are still in service today at more than 40 years at sea. The missile they carry as the main part of our nuclear Triad is also as old as the subs, with the new missile still being designed. The Obama administration sat on their hands for 8 years and did little to nothing. This was repeated on every other weapon systems for every service. Ronald Reagan is responsible for what our military is using. Our service members no longer have a technological advantage over many quickly grow adversaries.

20. After major increase after taking office in 2010 and 2011 there were 3 years of minor reductions, but increases in the last 3 years in office.

21. The President did have to comfort the nation to many times for gun violence. Still nothing was done of any consequence to do something about the state of Mental Health in the US.

22. He didn’t take away any guns.
23. He has a nice singing voice

24. I think the IG’s report told a different story of what was happening during the Obama presidency. So let us get to other things; Executive branch

25. Katherine Archuleta, Director of the Office of Personnel Management, resigned on July 10, 2015, after taking responsibility for cyber intrusions into her department that allowed the theft of data concerning 22 million people.

26. Secretary of Veterans Affairs General Eric Shinseki, resigned after Veterans Administration officials in the Phoenix, AZ, hospital lied about the length of wait times for veterans to see a doctor. See Veterans Health Administration scandal of 2014.

27. Steven T. Miller Acting Commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service, resigned after the IRS admitted to investigating conservative political groups associated with the Tea Party to see if they actually met the criteria for the tax exemptions they were claiming.

28. Lois Lerner, head of the IRS Office of Exempt Organizations, stated she had not done anything wrong and then took the Fifth before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.[586] She retired in 2013 after an internal IRS investigation found that she had neglected her duties and was going to call for her ouster.

29. Joseph H. Grant, Commissioner of the IRS Tax-exempt and Government Entities division, resigned on May 16, 2013.[588]

30. ATF gunwalking scandal – Attorney General Eric Holder (D) was held in Contempt of Congress after refusing to release all documents which the House of Representatives had demanded concerning the Fast and Furious gun walking operation. He did not resign and no charges were brought. (2012)[589]

31. Terence Flynn (R) an appointee of Barack Obama to the National Labor Relations Board, resigned in May 2012, after being accused of ethical violations by leaking Board information to the National Association of Manufacturers.[590]

32. Martha N. Johnson (D) head of the General Services Administration, fired two top GSA officials and then resigned herself after it was revealed that $822,000 had been spent in Las Vegas on a four-day training conference for 300 GSA employees. (2010)[591][592][593][594]

33. David Petraeus resigned as Director of the CIA on November 9, 2012, having pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of mishandling classified materials, after admitting to giving them to his biographer with whom he was having a sexual relationship. He was given two-years probation and fined $100,000.

34. A. Katherine Archuleta, Director of the Office of Personnel Management, resigned on July 10, 2015, after taking responsibility for cyber intrusions into her department that allowed the theft of data concerning 22 million people.

35. Secretary of Veterans Affairs General Eric Shinseki, resigned after Veterans Administration officials in the Phoenix, AZ, hospital lied about the length of wait times for veterans to see a doctor. See Veterans Health Administration scandal of 2014.

36. Steven T. Miller Acting Commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service, resigned after the IRS admitted to investigating conservative political groups associated with the Tea Party to see if they actually met the criteria for the tax exemptions they were claiming

42. OK, enough political scandals

43. The Nobel Peace Prize was bought and paid for with our tax dollars going to the UN and NATO. He went on an apology tour around the world for doing the best we could, with the hand we were dealt. His agreement with the Paris accord set us in a place where we would follow the rules and pay for rest of the world who signed with no intension of ever following it.
No, he wasn’t perfect, but no one is. My local community was really hurt during the 8 years he was in office. The US Space Program went on hold. The Constellation program was just launching our next generation rocket, to fill the gap between the Shuttle program ending and our future in Space. Instead we paid Russia to launch us into Space, at a tremendous cost. We, all the different contractors around the country, lost 85% of all jobs supporting the Space program. The average age of the people losing their jobs was 58, with little chances of finding new jobs. Instead many parts of a commercialization of Space went to donors who made large contributions to Obama. These donors also got to get a great advantage over established aerospace companies, pillaging existing equipment at no cost from facilities around the country. People lost their jobs, homes, marriages, families, and some even lives. So yes, the suffering was real. I am glad for all the people who didn’t have this happen to them, but it did happen, and the buck stops with the man in charge, President Barack Obama.

Twitter is suspending 70 pro-Bloomberg accounts, citing ‘platform manipulation’

By SUHAUNA HUSSAIN, JEFF BERCOVICI FEB. 21, 2020 9:40 PM

Michael R. Bloomberg’s presidential campaign has been experimenting with novel tactics to cultivate an online following, or at least the appearance of one.

But one of the strategies — deploying a large number of Twitter accounts to push out identical messages — has backfired. On Friday, Twitter began suspending 70 accounts posting pro-Bloomberg content in a pattern that violates company rules.

“We have taken enforcement action on a group of accounts for violating our rules against platform manipulation and spam,” a Twitter spokesman said. Some of the suspensions will be permanent, while in other cases account owners will have to verify they have control of their accounts.

https://www.latimes.com/business/technology/story/2020-02-21/twitter-suspends-bloomberg-accounts