Published – Idaho State Journal, 12/02/12

Note: This column was written in response to a tasteless personal attack column written by former Idaho 2nd District Congressman Richard Stallings which appeared in the Idaho State Journal two weeks before the general election. His ad hominem attack can be read at http://www.pocatelloshops.com/new_blogs/politics/?p=9703.

Just before the election, a column was printed in the Journal authored by former Congressman Richard Stallings. While ostensibly written to call into question the political philosophy of erstwhile presidential candidate Mitt Romney, the column was little more than a contemptible assault on the character of the Republican nominee. It was replete with subjective judgments against the man, mischaracterizations and misrepresentations of his policies and comments, and displayed shocking ignorance of Christian theology.

The column impugned the integrity of the candidate, and his campaign by accusing “dishonesty” in representing certain positions. The examples cited were claims that President Obama raised taxes and had attempted to remove the work requirement for welfare recipients. The author claimed both of those were “lies” that Romney told the American people.

Certainly the congressman is aware that there are 21 new taxes in Obamacare, and that the Supreme Court ruled the Act constitutional by virtue of it being a tax increase. That makes the Romney statement accurate. Representing it as a lie is disingenuous at best.

Robert Rector who helped write the 1996 Federal Welfare Reform Act that included the work requirement for welfare recipients says Obama did in fact “gut” the reform by substituting work requirements. A Health and Human Services directive last year granted states the authority to issue “waivers” which allowed recipients to not work, but pursue “career pathways” which don’t require work. Since many of the self-appointed “fact checkers” have taken issue with the Romney claim, which seems at direct odds with those who actually drafted the legislation, it can hardly be called a “lie,” but more accurately, a difference of opinion based on the same set of facts.

Based primarily on these arguments, Romney was accused of being a dishonest man. The columnist capped this alleged moral deficiency by stating, “As a general rule, Mormons are interviewed annually by the Bishops and one of the questions is about honesty. They look you in the eye and ask if you are honest in all your dealings. The Church expects honest answers. From what I have seen from the Romney campaign his answer should be no.”

What the columnist did was engage in a logical ad hominem fallacy, which is literally an “argument against the person.” This tactic is employed frequently by those who, in order to discredit their adversaries, attempt to marginalize them personally by making unsubstantiated accusations or allegations against them. In effect this redirects attention to the individual, in this case Romney, rather than their policies. It is a linguistic misdirection to make the opponent the center of the argument, rather than the issues or policies at hand; something akin to a magicians’ trick.By employing the ad hominem logical fallacy, Stalling’s attack was rendered logically impotent.

It’s not a new tactic, but seems to be used with increasing frequency, not just by politicians today, but by the media.

That last statement by the columnist also is ambiguous as it relates to an “annual interview.” The only “annual interview” that members of the LDS faith have with their ecclesiastical leader is at tithing settlement where the member makes an accounting of his donations to the church. The interview Stallings seems to be referencing is a Temple Recommend Interview which occurs bi-annually. Allegations of dishonesty are of dubious veracity when simultaneously misrepresenting their contextual relevance. Such a misrepresentation might be construed as being dishonest.

And if I’m not mistaken, the congressman appropriated to himself the mantle of prosecutor, judge, jury, and executioner in declaring Romney “dishonest.” He is not in an ecclesiastical position to determine worthiness for Romney. I believe Jesus proscribed such unrighteous judgment, when he said, “Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged, and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.”

And finally, on the issue of Christian theology, the congressman apparently subscribes to the notion that citizens forced by the government to pay taxes, which in turn redistributes it to the needy, is a Christian act of charity. There are no salvific acts for government, and forced “giving” is not charity. We are, as he says, to be our “brothers’ keeper,” but not through forced tax payment and government largesse. Such a concept is utterly antithetical to Christ’s teachings. Jesus taught us individually to give, he didn’t go to the Sanhedrin to convince them to levy exorbitant taxes so the government could do what we are expected to do individually.

There’s a fine line between criticism of policy and casting aspersions at the character of those who seek elective office. Clearly the line was crossed in this case. A need must’ve been felt to try to knock Romney down a few notches with his vindictive personal attack, but the congressman only succeeded in diminishing his own stature.

AP award winning columnist Richard Larsen is President of Larsen Financial, a brokerage and financial planning firm in Pocatello, and is a graduate of Idaho State University with a BA in Political Science and History and former member of the Idaho State Journal Editorial Board.  He can be reached at rlarsenen@cableone.net.

By Richard Larsen

Published - Idaho State Journal, 10/07/2012

What will the United States look like by 2016, if Barack Obama is re-elected in November? Will it look much like it does today, or will it be dramatically different, economically and in world stature? These are the most fundamental questions posed by the blockbuster (by documentary film standards) movie 2016, Obama’s America, based on the 2010 book The Roots of Obama’s Rage researched and written by Dinesh D'Souza, and produced by Gerald R. Molen, who won an Academy Award for Schindler’s List.

Born and raised in Mumbai, India, D’Souza came to the States as an exchange student at Dartmouth College where he graduated with high honors. He became the editor of Policy Review, which caught the attention members of the Reagan administration who recruited him to the White House as a policy analyst. Currently serving as President of King’s College in New York, D’Souza has been a Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, and a Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. Investor’s Business Daily has called D’Souza one of the most influential policy researchers and analysts in the country.

The strength of D’Souza’s research for the 2016 movie is not just in his reliance on primary sources for the book and the movie, but in the close parallels between his background and that of our 44^th president. Both were raised in European colonial countries, both immigrated to the U.S., both received Ivy League educations, both became editors of major publications, and both went on to careers in public service. These parallels, laid out with precision at the beginning of the film, establishes a foundation that D’Souza’s research and perceptions place him in a unique position to assess and analyze those early influences that dramatically affected Barack Obama’s worldview, and more precisely, his view of America.

The intent of the movie is well articulated on the movie’s website. “2016 Obama's America takes audiences on a gripping visual journey into the heart of the world’s most powerful office to reveal the struggle of whether one man's past will redefine America over the next four years. The film examines the question, ‘If Obama wins a second term, where will we be in 2016?’”

D’Souza doesn’t engage any of the conspiracy theories about Obama’s birth, religion, Social Security number, or sealed college records. His entire focus is on what he discovers from Obama’s book and from his own primary sources. The movie’s co-producer, Doug Sain, said that Dinesh “walks on solid ground,” with his research and sources.

The movie draws heavily from Barack Obama’s autobiographical narrative attributed to him, published in 1995, Dreams From My Father. References from the book within the movie are exceptionally poignant as they are from the audiobook version, with Obama reading the excerpts D’Souza uses.

The book tells the Obama story from his birth to when he enrolled in college at Harvard. The early narrative relates how his father, Barack Obama, Sr. of Kenya affected the young Barack’s attitudes about life, relationships, and politics, based largely on what his mother, Ann Dunham, told him. Since his parents were separated when he was about two, almost everything the young Barack knew about his father was from what his mother and maternal grandparents told him. Yet those dreams from his father, as related to him, were sufficient to form the philosophical and introspective thread of an autobiography.

Drawing from quotes in Obama’s book, D’Souza illustrates how his mother’s radicalism and his father’s anti-colonialism and self-avowed socialism guided him in his selection of school friends and associates, as well as what he read, and who he idealized.

D’Souza tracks the autobiographical and historical influences in Obama’s life, the people he actively sought out, associated with, and learned from, and refers to them as Obama’s “founding fathers.” They include the self-proclaimed Communist activist Frank Marshall Davis, the alleged anti-American preacher Jeremiah Wright, the terrorist and founder of the Weather Underground Bill Ayers, the anti-Israel professor at Columbia, Edward Said, and the radical Harvard professor Roberto Unger who mentored Obama and taught him in a class titled “Reinventing Democracy.”

Based on the evidence D’Souza presents, Obama’s own statements and firsthand interviews, Obama is an anti-colonialist who is heavily influenced by the ideals of socialism. “He adopted his father's position that capitalism and free markets are code words for economic plunder. Obama grew to perceive the rich as an oppressive class, a kind of neocolonial power within America,” D’Souza explains. From an interview, a friend of Obama Sr. says that “the son and the father are basically the same,” while describing the father’s dream of 100% taxation and a socialist state to take care of everyone’s needs.

From his research, D’Souza shows why Obama rejects American exceptionalism, and why he declared just before the 2008 election that we were days away from “fundamentally transforming America.” He is able to explain why Obama wants to reduce the global influence of the U.S. while increasing the nations that have been “plundered” by U.S. and Western domination.

The body of research is not inclusive, nor does it attempt to be so. D’Souza has an hour and a half of movie time to work with, not a miniseries, so his research that made it into the film is only of supportive evidence.

The film concludes by analyzing the affect of the massive debt and deficits under Obama’s term, nearly as much debt as was amassed under the previous 43 presidents combined. D’Souza interviewed former Comptroller General of the United States, David M. Walker, appointed by President Clinton. He described America as a “sinking ship” in a sea of our own debt. He points out that the country is rapidly heading towards a debt crisis that could collapse the U.S. economy within the next two to three years if we continue on our present course with no correction.

The mainstream media typically goes to great lengths to examine the background of our presidential candidates, but was conspicuously reticent four years ago in its vetting of Obama, and has done little to compensate for their omissions since then. This movie is an attempt to do what the media failed to do. As such, it should be required viewing by all who consider themselves to be informed voters, as the research is meticulous, and the evidentiary conclusions are sobering with far-reaching implications and ramifications.

AP award winning columnist Richard Larsen is President of Larsen Financial, a brokerage and financial planning firm in Pocatello, and is a graduate of Idaho State University with a BA in Political Science and History and former member of the Idaho State Journal Editorial Board.  He can be reached at rlarsenen@cableone.net. 

By Richard Larsen

Published – Idaho State Journal, 09/30/12

Most presidential election polls indicate that Barack Obama is leading Mitt Romney from two to eight percentage points. A notable exception is the Rasumssen poll which has Romney up slightly. While the pollsters are unlikely colluding, as the mainstream media do, to support their candidate of choice, there are three significant quantitative reasons the polls paint a skewed picture.

For a little perspective, with just a week to go before the 1980 presidential election, challenger Ronald Reagan trailed incumbent President Jimmy Carter by three to six percentage points in the polls. Then came the one and only presidential debate, and pre-election polls indicated the race was “too close to call.” The final results were significantly different than “too close to call,” as Reagan won by ten points, even with Independent Candidate John Anderson picking up nearly 7%, and Reagan won an electoral landslide, 489 to 49, with only 6 states voting for Carter.

The first issue that challenges the current polling methodology is based in party affiliation. This is always tenuous and in a state of flux, depending on sometimes exogenous factors that incline voters to lean one way or another with regard to political party identification. According to Rasmussen Reports, the latest data indicate a quantitative spike for Republicans (37.6%) and a drop for Democrats (33.3%) representing a 4.3% spread advantage for Republicans, with Independents coming in at 29.2%.

To provide context, at the time of the 2010 midterm elections, party affiliation was Republican 36.0%, Democrat 34.7%, for a 1.3% advantage for Republicans, and Independents at 29.3%. At the time of the 2008 presidential election, Democrats led significantly with 41.4%, versus Republicans at 33.8%, for a 7.6% Democrat advantage, and Independents at 24.7%. Election results for both 2008 and 2010, based on self-declared party affiliation, portend significantly different results for 2012 than what polls are currently indicating.

In spite of the current affiliation advantage for Republicans, the major polls are nearly all oversampling Democrats, as they explain in their methodology. Their rationale is based primarily on 2008 voter demographics gleaned from exit polls. Pollster’s explanation for their methodology is an exercise in statistical and verbal gymnastics as they justify their sampling rates.

Mr. Morris, who engineered Bill Clinton’s successful elections as governor and president, said recently, “All of the polling out there uses some variant of the 2008 election turnout as its model for weighting respondents and this overstates the Democratic vote by a huge margin.”

Morris explains why the 2008 data is not an accurate model for the 2012 election. “But 2008 was no ordinary election. Blacks, for example, usually cast only 11% of the vote, but, in 2008, they made up 14% of the vote. Latinos increased their share of the vote by 1.5% and college kids almost doubled their vote share.”

“But polling indicates a widespread lack of enthusiasm among Obama’s core demographic support due to high unemployment, disappointment with his policies and performance, and the lack of novelty in voting for a black candidate now that he has already served as president. If you adjust virtually any of the published polls to reflect the 2004 vote, not the 2008 vote, they show the race either tied or Romney ahead, a view much closer to reality.”

Which brings us to the second anomaly as it relates to the current crop of polls. There’s a significant shift in the enthusiasm gap with this election cycle. In 2008, voters that leaned Democrat were 61% more enthusiastic than usual to vote, while the Republicans were at 35%. In 2010, the enthusiasm gap had evened out at nearly 50% for each side. For this election cycle, Gallup indicates those that lean Republican are 51% more enthusiastic, versus 39% for the Democrat leaners.

Gerald Seib of the Wall Street Journal pointed to this enthusiasm gap this week. “Among those who voice the highest interest in the election — in other words, those who seem most intensely interested in voting — Mr. Romney leads by three percentage points.”

The third quantitative anomaly is in how the demographic disparities just don’t add up to confirm most poll results. The independent vote, 29.2% who self-identify as such, favors Romney by 15 points (James Carville’s Democracy Corps) and 14 points (CNN). Politico indicates Romney is favored by middleclass voters by 14 points and male voters by 6. Rasmussen says Romney leads the white vote by 20%. The 45 and older voters favor Romney by 7%, white women favor Romney by 9% representing a 16% gain from what McCain got in 2008. Romney is making gains with Hispanics at 40%, and leads with Catholics at 51%. A Democrat has never won the presidency without a majority of the Catholic vote. Obama is losing 25% of the Jewish vote he garnered last time, and the youth vote, which voted 78% for Obama last time, gives him only a slight edge, 49% to 41%, this time around. Also, Morris claims that historically, as much as 75% of the undecided vote breaks for the challenger, which is between 7-10%.

Questionable under or oversampling, a widening enthusiasm gap, and demographic breakdowns that don’t add up, paint a different picture than what most polls are indicating and cast a pall of doubt over their validity. Ultimately it all boils down to who shows up to vote, and the best thing for conservatives to do is ignore the pollsters and show up en masse on November 6.

AP award winning columnist Richard Larsen is President of Larsen Financial, a brokerage and financial planning firm in Pocatello, and is a graduate of Idaho State University with a BA in Political Science and History and former member of the Idaho State Journal Editorial Board.  He can be reached at rlarsenen@cableone.net. 

Published – Idaho State Journal, 09/09/12

“I'm convinced that Americans on the right and left differ not so much in what they believe, as in what they believe the others believe,” was the comment by a friend of mine this past week. I responded that there’s much truth to that, and that was even before I watched as much of the Democrat National Convention as I could physically handle.

After watching the DNC, I knew my friend was more perspicacious than perhaps even he was aware of. The mischaracterization of conservatives, or specifically, Republicans, by the whole bevy of speakers and entertainers at the Convention prove they either don’t know what Republicans believe, or they just assume all of us watching were idiots and would believe their inaccuracies, misrepresentations, and outright lies.

San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro claimed that Romney would raise taxes on the middle class. This is a false statement, for there is nothing in any of Romney’s fiscal policy proposals that even hints at a tax increase, for anyone. If he had been honest, he should’ve said that his own candidate has raised taxes on the middle class since most of the 21 new taxes imposed through Obamacare hits the middle class directly.

Castro and others, including Joe Biden, also claimed, “The president has created 4.5 million new jobs.” Not only does the president not “create” jobs, but according to Factcheck.org, the economy has recovered only 4 million of the 4.3 million jobs lost during the Obama administration. More significantly, the participation rate, or the percentage of the population either employed or looking for work, has dropped to a 38 year low at 63.5%, according to the Dept. of Labor, which also reports that over 3.5 million Americans have simply quit looking for work the past four years.

Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick claimed that Mitt Romney, “left his state 47th out of 50 in job growth.” According to Factcheck.org, under Romney, Massachusetts moved from 50th in job creation during the governor‘s first year at the helm to 28th when it came to Romney’s final year. Another outright prevarication.

Connecticut Gov. Daniel Malloy made the claim that the Republican platform would “take away a woman’s right to choose even if she is a rape victim.” There is no such wording in the Republican platform. Another outright lie.

Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards advanced the ludicrous notion that Romney and V.P. Candidate Paul Ryan are committed “to ending insurance coverage for birth control.” To the contrary, both maintain that employers should not be mandated to cover contraceptives at no cost to employees, especially for religious groups like the Catholic Church, thereby supporting the First Amendment “freedom to exercise” clause.

Several speakers claimed that a Romney administration would be slashing all domestic spending across the board by 20%. There is no such quantified proposed reduction. Another oft-repeated lie.

Bill Clinton, Rep. Chris Van Hollen from Maryland, and Obama himself made the falsified claim that Obama’s “plan” would cut the deficit by $4 trillion. The Washington Post fact checkers have totally debunked that “plan” as phony number juggling. The President’s Simpson-Bowles deficit reduction commission made its recommendations in November, of 2010. If Obama was serious about deficit reduction, why didn’t he start two years ago?

Obama, in his acceptance speech, said that the money not spent on war will be spent on domestic programs. All that money is being borrowed! What he essentially admitted was that he would not be reducing the deficit, but continuing to spend borrowed money, for currently we’re borrowing $41 out of every $100 being spent.

There were some other doozies as well. Kerry Washington, claimed Republicans would “take away our right to vote, getting educated, and health care.” Kathleen Sibelius asserted that with the Republican plan, “everyone’s on their own. Nancy Pelosi claimed Republicans, “want to suppress our right to vote.” Another speaker claimed, “when it comes to middle class jobs, Mitt Romney says no, and when it comes to respecting women’s rights, Mitt Romney says no.” DNC Chairman Debbie Wasserman-Shultz, claimed Romney would deprive breast cancer survivors of insurance coverage. All these are fallacious, factually incorrect, and were clearly attempts at demonization.

And we can’t forget California Democrat Chairman John Burton comparing Republicans to Nazi ?Joseph Goebbels, and South Carolina Party Chairman Mr. Harpootlian comparing his governor, Nikki Haley to Hitler’s mistress. These examples barely scratch the surface, for the full three days of the DNC was replete with character assassination, fraudulent opposition-party misrepresentation, and outright falsehoods.

No wonder that former Clinton advisor, James Carville, said what he did a couple years ago. “The Democratic constituency is just like a herd of cows. All you have to do is lay out enough silage and they come running. That's why I became an operative working with Democrats. With Democrats all you have to do is make a lot of noise, lay out the hay, and be ready to use the ole cattle prod in case a few want to bolt the herd. Eighty percent of the people who call themselves Democrats don't have a clue as to political reality,” he said.

If there is a post-election “bounce” for Obama in the polls, it will prove nothing more than that there are still too many Americans who are just as uninformed, gullible, and ignorant as they were four years ago when they fell for “Hope and Change.”

AP award winning columnist Richard Larsen is President of Larsen Financial, a brokerage and financial planning firm in Pocatello, and is a graduate of Idaho State University with a BA in Political Science and History and former member of the Idaho State Journal Editorial Board.  He can be reached at rlarsenen@cableone.net. 

Published – Idaho State Journal, 09/02/12

Our U.S. Federal debt is reaching a tipping point. Just four years ago, economists feared that our public debt would reach 60% of the GDP by 2022. Failure to curtail spending, pass a budget, and piling on massive new spending has hurled us past that 60% benchmark twelve years earlier than feared. We passed the mark in 2010.

That 60% benchmark is critical, for it is recognized across the European Zone and developed nations as the “prudential limit” for public debt. And here we are, just two years later and our public debt is even greater. The public debt clock shows we’ll hit the spending limit of $16 trillion within the next couple of weeks, which means with a $15 trillion economy, we’re rapidly approaching the 107% mark of public debt to our GDP. For every $100 we spend, $41 of it is borrowed. All reasonable citizens must recognize the fact that we cannot continue this way.

Even that is an incomplete picture, as the total debt associated with unfunded liabilities associated with Social Security, Medicare, and Obamacare places our debt level between $55 and $80 trillion.

According to Joseph J. Minarik, Director of Research at Committee for Economic Development, “Today’s financial risk arises largely from U.S. fiscal misbehavior.” We did not have a budget passed by congress while Nancy Pelosi was Speaker, and the last two years the Senate has refused to pass one.

The President has presented his own “budget” to congress, but did not receive a single vote, even from his own party, because it was so out of touch with fiscal realities. Yet with his massive spending, from a $1.3 to $1.7 trillion deficit every year that he’s been president, our debt has skyrocketed.

Just four years ago Obama declared George Bush to be “irresponsible and unpatriotic” for $4 trillion in new debt in eight years. It must be more responsible and patriotic to run up $5 trillion in half the time!

The Simpson-Bowles Commission came up with recommendations to balance the budget in 12 years and reduce our debt load. The president ignored his own commission and has continued to spend as if there is no tomorrow. And there is no hint of an indication that the president has any plans for curtailing his spendthrift ways for the next four years.

The United States now has the seventh highest public debt burden among advanced nations, according to Minarik and the latest data. The countries ahead of us should sound familiar for their debt is destroying their economies: Greece, Iceland, Italy and Japan are worse off. We’ve even far surpassed Portugal. Minarik says without fiscal discipline, our politicians have placed us on course to “stumble into a financial meltdown.”

Minarick reveals, “In due time, U.S. public finances will be caught in a vicious cycle. Rising interest rates raise the federal government’s debt-service cost, which increases the risk premia on Treasury interest rates, which raises debt-service costs still further. Higher interest rates extend to private borrowing costs, which slows economic activity, which increases the federal government’s budget deficit. In another Catch-22 contradiction, the drop in economic activity is not cushioned by a fall in interest rates to match the fall in the demand for credit. Rather, the fall in activity triggers a massive growth of fear of default risk, and so interest rates rise rather than fall, accelerating the vicious cycle. Perhaps this crossing over in the effects on interest rates would constitute a true ‘tipping point.’”

Former Comptroller General of the United States, David M. Walker, appointed by President Clinton, agrees. He’s been sounding the clarion call of economic disaster for the nation if spending is not reined in, and politicians refuse to deal with fiscal realities of unabated spending. He describes America as a “sinking ship” in a sea of our own debt. He points out that, “The US ranks near the bottom of developed global economies in terms of financial stability and will stay there unless it addresses its burgeoning debt problems,” based on the Sovereign Fiscal Responsibility Index.

“We think it is important for the American people to understand where the United States is as compared to other countries with regard to fiscal responsibility and sustainability,” Walker said in a CNBC interview recently. He predicts that the country is rapidly heading towards a debt crisis that could come within the next two to three years if we continue on our present course.

Some may call this fear mongering, but it is the fiscal reality that we face as a nation today. We simply cannot go “Forward” on this same trajectory without collapsing the entire national economy under the weight of our debt, which is now $140,000 per taxpayer (mostly middle class). Is this the “fundamental transformation of America” that Obama has in mind? It’s our reality unless we change captains to navigate the fiscal obstacles ahead of us.

It’s time to put nation ahead of partisanship for everyone, Democrats, Republicans, and Independents. There are even those who claim to be “patriots,” who cling cult-like to a former presidential candidate. Any who claim to love this country, our founding documents, and our founding principles, who will, by voting for a third-party candidate, write in a candidate, or not voting at all, facilitate the election of the one with his foot on the spending gas pedal, are not worthy of the “patriot” appellation. They will be accomplices to the destruction of the very nation they feign fealty to if they put their “principles” ahead of national survival by failing to do all they can to prevent this otherwise inevitable destruction.

AP award winning columnist Richard Larsen is President of Larsen Financial, a brokerage and financial planning firm in Pocatello, and is a graduate of Idaho State University with a BA in Political Science and History and former member of the Idaho State Journal Editorial Board.  He can be reached at rlarsenen@cableone.net. 

Published – Idaho State Journal, 08/20/12

When the Affordable Care Act was passed in 2009, one third of the cost of the program was to be funded by “savings” from Medicare. These “savings” were achieved by reducing payouts to service providers and reducing coverage to seniors. The amount to be “saved” was $713 billion over ten years. The Congressional Budget Office has updated that figure to $741 billion.

Why there was so little objection to paring Medicare so drastically? Senior citizens and “baby boomers” about to go on the program should’ve been in an uproar. Yet the media, so punctilious in their colonoscopies performed on any Republican policy or suggestion, literally lapse into a somniferous daze when their ideological comrades come up with a plan. Where were the media outcries? Why was AARP supporting this? Where were the self-proclaimed “champions” of the senior citizen in the halls of Congress when the President’s plan gutted Medicare to the tune of $741 billion?

Confirming this fact, the following is an exchange that occurred between ABC News’ Jake Tapper and President Obama on November 9, 2009.

TAPPER: One of the concerns about health care and how you pay for it — one third of the funding comes from cuts to Medicare.

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: “Right.

TAPPER: A lot of times, as you know, what happens in Congress is somebody will do something bold and then Congress, close to election season, will undo it.

OBAMA: Right.

TAPPER: You saw that with the ‘doc fix.’

OBAMA: Right.

TAPPER: Are you willing to pledge that whatever cuts in Medicare are being made to fund health insurance, one third of it, that you will veto anything that tries to undo that?

OBAMA: Yes.

Did you catch that? The President promised to veto his own health care plan if it didn’t include the $741 billion in cuts to Medicare. Medicare was sacrificed on the funding altar of Obamacare.

The Wall Street Journal states, “Many doctors, surgeons and specialists providing critical care to the elderly—such as surgery for hip and knee replacements, sophisticated diagnostics through MRIs and CT scans, and even treatment for cancer and heart disease—will cease serving Medicare patients. If the government is not going to pay, then seniors are not going to get the health services, treatment and care they expect.”

“Everyone should know by now that Medicare suffers dramatic long-term deficits and unfunded liabilities, and is in need of fundamental, structural reforms. But effectively refusing to pay the doctors and hospitals that provide the medical care the program promises to seniors is no way to solve that problem.”

The National Center for Policy Analysis points out that, based on the Medicare Actuary’s official 2012 report, ObamaCare is cutting future Medicare payments to doctors and hospitals for seniors retiring today by an average of $36,000 per retiree, adding up to trillions in Medicare cuts for health care for seniors over the next ten years

When Obama and Biden accuse opponents that their proposals will end Medicare as we know it, the charge rings hollow, for they beat everyone else to the punch! They ensured it with the passage and implementation of Obamacare.

And to make sure that Obamacare has the funds to operate as intended, the law created the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB), an unelected body with the power to implement even more cuts in Medicare as deemed necessary for funding Obamacare.

Forbes said this week, “In 2011, Medicare covered 48.7 million Americans — and cost nearly $550 billion. There’s now a $280-billion gap between the premiums and taxes the program takes in and the benefits it pays out. Since the last presidential election, the amount by which benefit payments exceed dedicated tax collections has nearly quadrupled. This fiscal trend is unsustainable. Medicare is inadequately financed over the next ten years, according to the Trustees.”

Medicare reimbursements to service providers are already low, about 65% of the private market, which is why so many doctors are not adding new Medicare patients, and many are getting out of the program altogether. And due to a decade of “kicking the can” down the road and procrastinating resolution of Medicare’s funding problems, this year faces an additional 30% cut in payments, according to Forbes.

In 1997, Congress enacted the sustainable growth rate (SGR) formula to limit the growth of payments to doctors participating in Medicare to the overall economic growth rate. But for the past ten years, Congress has waived those adjustments in reimbursements, effectively postponing the effects. A decade of procrastination has resulted in this year’s pending 30-percent cut in Medicare payments unless Congress procrastinates SGR implementation yet again.

As despicable as it was to raid Medicare to fund Obamacare, it’s worse to ignore the problems in the program hoping they’ll miraculously solve themselves. It’s time for real leadership and some backbone to assure Medicare’s future viability.

AP award winning columnist Richard Larsen is President of Larsen Financial, a brokerage and financial planning firm in Pocatello, and is a graduate of Idaho State University with a BA in Political Science and History and former member of the Idaho State Journal Editorial Board.  He can be reached at rlarsenen@cableone.net.

By Richard Larsen

Published – Idaho State Journal, 08/12/12

At nearly every campaign stop these days, the President convincingly declares, “the middle class is under assault.” Looking at the economic data produced by our own government, there can be no mistake that he’s right. But what he obviously doesn’t realize is that it’s his own policies that are besieging the working, producing, and taxpaying middle class of America.

We all like to think we’re part of that middle class economic stratum, and for the most part, we are. Those who are fortunate enough to have jobs, run businesses, hire people, pay taxes, are not on government assistance, and not rolling in dough, are part of our middle class.

So it’s not surprising that he’d be targeting his reelection message to us. But we mustn’t get caught up in the grandiloquence of his oratory or his populist rhetorical appeals. We must instead look at the fruits of his first three years of labor, which are decimating to the middle class.

The average 16% real rate of unemployment and underemployment, based on the Department of Labor’s U-6 report, during Obama's first three years in office, has been devastating to the middle class. With over 15 million people not working, (28 million according to the Wall Street Journal based on the U-6 data) there are that many fewer middle class taxpayers and consumers, and that many more on government assistance at the poverty level relying on income redistribution from producers.

The job situation will not improve appreciably until the cost of doing business starts dropping. Last year the Small Business Administration reported that regulation costs American business $1.75 trillion per year, and costs small businesses as much as $10,585 per employee. Just the costs of Obamacare, Financial Regulatory Reform, and new EPA regulations, are projected to increase that cost per employee by more than 30%, according to Investor’s Business Daily.

The federal budget has grown from $2.5 trillion to $3.8 trillion, a 40% increase, and our yearly deficit has quintupled our deficit from $240 billion per year to $1.3 trillion per year. Our debt-to-GDP ratio, a significant barometer of the fiscal health of a nation, has spiked to over 100%, a nearly 30% increase in just three years. The middle class will pay the costs of this government expansion. Even if Obama increases the taxes on “the rich” as he desires, the most it will raise is $65 billion, hardly scratching the surface of the deficit.

High energy prices hit the middle class harder than anyone, and the Recent Bureau of Labor Statistics report on consumer prices shows gasoline costs are up 130% since his election. While not totally controllable domestically, Obama’s assault on domestic oil production and weak dollar policy have contributed to an equivalent 130% tax increase on transportation costs.

And that’s not the only energy cost that’s increased. As a result of the administration’s assault on the coal industry, coal-fired power production has dropped from 44.6 to 36% in just one year. Coal is a cheap source of energy, and moving away from it will dramatically increase the cost of electricity. PJM Interconnection, the company that operates the electric grid for 13 Eastern and Midwestern states indicates the new market-clearing price for projected 2015 capacity just cleared $136 per megawatt. That’s more than eight times higher than the price for 2012, which was just $16. When these skyrocketing energy costs hit the middle class, it will be devastating.

ObamaCare was promised to lower the cost of health care for nearly everyone. Instead, private medical insurance costs have soared by as much as 59%, and hospital costs are up nearly three times the rate of core inflation. These costs adversely affect the middle class disproportionately, as the rich have no problem paying, and the middle class is paying the cost of the lower income levels.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported just last month that the U.S. average weekly wage declined nearly 2% percent between the fourth quarter of 2010 and the fourth quarter of 2011. This is only the fifth time wages have declined in the past 33 years.

Succinctly stated, we have shrinking income, inflation in energy and food “skyrocketing,” just like Obama predicted four years ago, a weaker dollar, a ballooning debt, and a national security-risking deficit. The costs of all this “hope and change” are landing squarely on the back of the middle class.

A strong middle class equals a strong America. We can’t have one without the other. And our current policies are killing both. So don’t listen to Obama’s rhetoric, for it rings hollow. Look at his actions, and his policies, and what has been done to cripple the middle class. It truly leaves one wondering how he can pander as he does to the middle class, and keep a straight face while doing it.

Is President Obama right in assuming that Mitt Romney is “hiding something?” Responding to a Washington Post article which revealed that Romney “is using an exception in federal ethics laws to avoid disclosing the full extent of his investment holdings,” Obama sent three tweets under his verified personal Twitter account attacking Romney. In his last tweet Obama queried, “What’s Romney hiding?”

Having filled the requirements of the Office of Government Ethics by what he’s already disclosed, the expectation that Romney would open his entire economic history to public scrutiny is not required, though it would be a courtesy to American voters. Obviously the OGE didn’t have any problems with Romney’s disclosures since they requested no further documentation, explanation, or more tax returns.

This isn’t an isolated instance, but seems to be an inscrutable theme by the Obama camp. Just a few months ago, before the first release of tax documents by Romney, Ben LaBolt, a spokesman for the Obama campaign, was asking, “What is it that he doesn’t want the American people to see?”

Let’s turn the table on what Obama tweeted. We should all be asking, “What’s Obama hiding?” In spite of having written two ideologically oriented autobiographies, we know remarkably little about the man who’s been our president. Charlie Rose and Tom Brokaw admitted four years ago on PBS, “We don't know a lot about Barack Obama,” and now three years later, we still know very little about him.

And the reason? So much of his documented history is sealed and proscribed from release to the public. It seems only logical that if someone goes to such great lengths to seal and hide records, that there must be something worth hiding, based on Obama’s own reasoning. There must be something that would raise serious questions about his candidacy, or at the very least, provide an unwanted distraction to a candidate in a presidential election campaign.

While there are verifiable lists of nearly twenty items from his past that Obama has had sealed, there are a few undisclosed items that have particular relevance to his past that voters deserve to know about him. Yet for some unexplained reason, have remained hidden from the public.

For example, none of his college records from his two years at Occidental College in Los Angeles have been released, or from his next two years of undergraduate study at Columbia University. No records, grades, or transcripts from his years there. And, you guessed it, we have none from his law school days at Harvard either, including papers published while president of the Harvard Law Review.

He has prevented all such records from being made public. It can’t be a matter of being embarrassed by bad grades, for he wouldn’t have been able to go from a small private liberal arts school to Columbia, one of the most prestigious higher education institutions in the country without stellar grades. And for that matter, with bad grades he wouldn’t have been able to matriculate at Harvard Law School, either. So, Mr. President, what are you hiding?

The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act prevents institutions from releasing student educational records, but in the spirit of full disclosure, shouldn’t Obama release those records, including his transcripts?

We also have no records from his 18 months as a practicing attorney, including client lists. In fact, even his record with the Illinois State Bar Association remains sealed.

All of his records and files from his years as an Illinois State Senator are sealed. Even his medical records are sealed, as the only evidence we have of his medical health is a one-page, 276-word statement from his doctor. By comparison, John McCain, in the last election cycle, released over 1,000 pages of medical records.

Even more troublesome, is the obvious duplicity and lack of impartiality on the part of the mainstream media. The cacophony of talking heads from the media is parroting Obama’s call for Romney to release his records. So where are the calls for Obama to open the books and records on his past?

Just last week Obama said in an interview on Univision, “I think that it’s important for any candidate in public office to be as transparent as possible, to let people know who we are, what we stand for, and you know, I think that this is just carrying on a tradition that has existed throughout the modern presidency.”

Mr. President, are you not to be held to the same standards of transparency? Or is this a standard you hold everyone to except you? So, what are you hiding? How about a document swap; all of your sealed records for Romney’s tax returns?

AP award winning columnist Richard Larsen is President of Larsen Financial, a brokerage and financial planning firm in Pocatello, and is a graduate of Idaho State University with a BA in Political Science and History and former member of the Idaho State Journal Editorial Board. He can be reached at rlarsenen@cableone.net.

Published – Idaho State Journal, 03/18/12

In a discussion this past week, someone raised the question of whether President Obama will have to go negative in his campaign against whoever happens to be his opponent. There probably is not a limit to how negative he'll go in the campaign, as evidenced by the fact that his campaign released a TV ad this week attacking Sarah Palin, who as I recall, is not even on the ballot! His actual record doesn’t have much to offer to the thoughtful voter.

I don’t care for polls, but when objectively conducted, they constitute the most viable vehicle to quantify public sentiment, which is crucial when it comes to measuring the efficacy and effectiveness of the president’s accomplishments and policies. So while I personally disdain relying on polls, such studies, targeted at key Obama efforts for the first three years, may provide insight as to whether the president will be running on, or from, his record.

Of greatest concern to Americans should be the national debt. It is, as Hillary Clinton has said, an issue of “national security.” Obama owns this. $5 trillion of our debt, and three years of $1.5 trillion deficit spending are creations of Obama and his facilitating congress. Such fiduciary ineptitude would disqualify him for mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, let alone our national president. He may dismiss it as inconsequential, but he cannot run from it.

Looking at his three signature legislative accomplishments, Obamacare is favored by just 42%, of Americans. But perhaps more importantly, “72 percent of Americans believe that the law's individual mandate to purchase health insurance is unconstitutional, including 56 percent of Democrats,” according to Rasmussen from two weeks ago. And perhaps more significantly, “65% of doctors believe healthcare will deteriorate in the next five years” because of it.

The “Stimulus” was not viewed positively just a year after its passage. “Sixty-eight percent of Americans said they think the $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) was a "waste," compared to just 29 percent who think the money was well-spent,” according to an ABC Washington Post poll.

The last legislative “accomplishment” is actually seen as a positive for congress, the Dodd-Frank financial regulatory overhaul. But if people understood that it defined “too big to fail,” virtually assuring future bailouts of big banks and financial institutions, they wouldn’t be too keen on that landmark legislation either, since only 9% view the big banks and the recent bailouts positively. Only a slight majority, 51%, views the auto bailouts unfavorably.

He can’t very well run on his record for helping gas prices, for as we saw this week, as they have skyrocketed, his approval ratings took a 10% hit…in one month. Currently 61% feel he’s handling gas prices poorly.

Perception on the jobs situation has improved, but can any of his policies be traced to amelioration of that malaise? Here there seems to be a real disconnect with voters, since his approval rating improves when unemployment drops, but when pressed for what he’s done to improve job creation, those polled by Gallup recently could not identify anything specifically that he’s done for the non-farm payrolls to increase. And in a CBS poll recently only 38% of respondents thought the president had a plan for creating jobs.

Couple that with a Zogby poll a few months ago where “just one third of the public feels President Obama deserves re-election while five times more Americans think Obama has done a worse job fixing the economy than Jimmy Carter, the modern era's Herbert Hoover.” Overall, 6 in 10 Americans disapprove of Obama’s handling of the economy according to the latest ABC Washington Post poll.

When we look at the raw polling data on the specific areas where Obama has expended most of his effort, we’re hard pressed to find anything substantive from a public sentiment standpoint that he can hang his hat on. Rather, we find mostly wide public disapprobation over what he has actually done, rather than what he claims to have accomplished.

So will he run on his record? It’s unlikely. If his record was a scorecard, it would be filled with “D”s and “F”s. Voters bought his “hope” and “change” mantra without any record to run on four years ago. Will there be a similar logical disconnect this year, with a record? Hopefully voters will be more logical, and less emotional and gullible, this time around. Only with copious spin and misrepresentation can his “record” appear viable to reasonable voters.  After all, elections provide our opportunity to hire, or fire, our leaders based on actual performance; as opposed to how well they can tell us they did.

Based on his own words from 2009, his administration should be a “one-term proposition.” If he’s not part of the solution, he’s part of the problem and clearly should go.

AP award winning columnist Richard Larsen is President of Larsen Financial, a brokerage and financial planning firm in Pocatello, and is a graduate of Idaho State University with a BA in Political Science and History and former member of the Idaho State Journal Editorial Board. He can be reached at rlarsenen@cableone.net.

Published – Idaho State Journal, 03/11/12

The Constitution is the foundational codex for our legal and governmental system. Built into its relatively succinct 4,500 words is an elaborate system of checks and balances designed to prevent any one of the three branches of government from gaining supremacy over the others. The powers of the government are enumerated for each branch, and what powers are not enumerated, “are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.”

The Constitution has clearly become increasingly inconsequential to the ruling class in Washington over the past several decades as the limitations to the federal government by that document are progressively disregarded for political expediency. The Constitution should be respected as an inviolable founding document. This, in essence, is the message of Ron Paul, with which I totally concur.

However, there’s an aspect of Paul’s interpretation that begs further examination as it relates to foreign affairs. Paul would have us believe that isolationism, a policy of retraction and seclusion of one’s country from others, is a constitutional requisite. Most of his speeches about our national defense and security sound like they could’ve been written by the issues committee at Code Pink. Even his official website addressing foreign policy utilizes nearly the entire allotted space explaining “blowback,” the notion that we created the justification for Islamic extremist’s Jihad against us by “having boots” in Saudi Arabia, where the holy sites of Mecca and Medina are located.

While our presence on the peninsula may have provided an excuse for the fundamentalist jihad against western culture and democracy, it certainly wasn’t the cause for it. For that we must look at least as far back as the 1940s and the influence of the prolific Islamic author Sayyid Qutb, who later became the figurative head of the Muslim Brotherhood. Qutb was writing scathing and vitriolic letters about American decadence written from his university dorm room in Greely, CO, later published in Egypt.

We could go back even further to find the roots of Islamic extremism in the 18^th century and the influential teachings of the fundamentalist reformer and theologian Muhammad Ibn Abd al-Wahhab, for whom Wahhabism is named. Although denied by Islamic apologists, Wahhabism, or Salafism, seems to be the common thread running through most of the anti-American, anti-western civilization extremist groups like Al Qaida and the Muslim Brotherhood.

Aside from the “blowback” issue, Paul’s “constitutional” basis for foreign policy correctly cites Congress’ role in declaring war. He maintains that although the president serves as the Commander in Chief of the military, that the exercise of that role should be ultimately controlled and directed by Congress. And that’s fundamentally true, but it doesn’t equate to isolationism.

Article II Section 2 of the Constitution clearly specifies that the president and the executive branch take the lead on foreign relations negotiating treaties and appointing ambassadors with Senate ratification. Article I Section 8 enumerates the authority of Congress, including Section 8.11, the power to declare war.

This seems to be the tenet most focused on by Paul, that only Congress can declare war. Congress has only passed a “Declaration of War” five times in our history. But they have authorized war by resolution or by funding at least 19 times. The Supreme Court logically ruled in 2003 that congressional action supporting bellicose activity is the equivalent of declaring war.

Ron Paul supporters point to the Founding Fathers who spoke in their personal writings against "entangling alliances.” Clearly they were opposed to war. After all, who isn't? Ideally, there would never be cause for conflict. But reality seldom converges with the ideal, so they built into our founding document the ability to declare war, without proscribing under what conditions it may be done. 

The Founding Fathers’ actions speak perhaps even louder than their words. Exercising diplomacy, Thomas Jefferson negotiated his way out of hostilities with Morocco over piracy of American commercial ships. Unable to do the same with Algeria, Jefferson sought, and obtained, Senate approval for the First Barbary War against those 18th century terrorists. No “War Declaration” was passed, yet congress gave him funding and authorized the use of force for the protection of American interests. John Adams and George Washington concurred with the action.

Although some claim Paul’s isolationism is the policy of the Founders and the Constitution, there is ample evidence to the contrary. Facing the reality of exogenous threats, the Founders opted for reality in dealing with those threats rather than adhering to the ideal. One can claim a preference for isolationism, a foreign policy perhaps best characterized by an ostrich, but such a preference is not based on even a literal interpretation of the Constitution.

So while it may sound good to say, "Ron Paul's foreign policy is the founding father's policy," in reality, it clearly is not.

AP award winning columnist Richard Larsen is President of Larsen Financial, a brokerage and financial planning firm in Pocatello, and is a graduate of Idaho State University with a BA in Political Science and History and former member of the Idaho State Journal Editorial Board. He can be reached at rlarsenen@cableone.net.