Obama's Fractured State of the Union: Part II

The section on Iraq will be the longest on any topic covered in this blog. The reason for this is that the invasion of Iraq was one of the great disasters of U.S. policy. It has had devastating consequences for both Iraq and the United States, as well as pulling in other nations to their detriment.

Iraq - The last U.S. combat troops left Iraq on December 17, 2011, nominally ending a war that was started by President George W. Bush.in March 2003, almost nine years ago -- "nominally" because the war continues in many  real ways for all  Iraqis, especially for some 3.5 million who are either internally displaced in Iraq or refugees in another country. According to the Bloomberg-John Hopkins survey, using well-established survey methodology, a mean average of over 600,000 Iraqis were killed in the war -- the survey was taken several years ago. Moreover, the war has left a ruined country that was formerly one of the most advanced in the Middle East in terms of health and education:
* Up to 70 percent lack access to clean water
* Up to 80 percent lack access to sanitation
* Half of the doctors are either dead or have emigrated
*Average electricity availability is 14.6 hours per day.

The political situation in Iraq is also complicated and dangerous.Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki recently accused Vice President Tariq al-Hashemi of running a hit squad five years ago. He is also pursuing a vote of no-confidence against Sunni Deputy Prime Minister Saleh al-Mutlag. More broadly, al-Maliki has threatened to fire all nine of the cabinet ministers put together by Ayad Allawi, a former prime minister. Allawi's grouping ( Iraqiya) is boycotting all cabinet and parliamentary meetings, because even though Iraqiya won the most seats in the last parliamentary election, it feels it has been pushed out of a meaningful role in the governance of the country.

And in the United States, direct expenditures to date exceed $800 billion and there have been some 4,500 U.S. troop combat deaths, over 1,000 U.S. troop suicides and over 30,000 wounded. The $800 billion will grow substantially despite the war's nominal end, because as a nation we must keep our commitment to care for the veterans of the war.

The U.S. is maintaining a substantial presence in Iraq, with the largest embassy in the world and an army of mercenaries hired to guard the Americans working and living in that "embassy."

This war was a moral, humanitarian, financial and foreign policy disaster for the United States and its ramifications will continue for many decades.

Afghanistan - Obama believes that the Taliban's "momentum has been broken," a statement that is at odds with the assessment of U.S. intelligence agencies that Afghanistan "is mired in stalemate" and security gains have been cut.

Iran - President Obama reiterated his warning that all options are open if Iran crosses certain "red lines" in its claimed pursuit of developing nuclear weapons. One of the options is the use of nuclear warheads to obliterate Iran's deeply dug-in nuclear facilities. There is a computer model which calculates three million deaths if nuclear warheads are used against Iran's facilities.

If Iran is attacked, transport of oil through the Strait of Hormuz would be endangered and Iran has the capability to cause the United States other types of serious harm.

Both ABC News and the Washington Post have employed fact-checkers to analyze Obama's State of the Union speech. Both media outlets have disputed Obama's jobs gained and lost figures. Using Bureau of Labor Statistics figures, ABC News says he has he has over-estimated the job loss figures under Bush and over-estimated by almost a million jobs the jobs created by the Obama administration in its first three years. The Washington Post disputes the time periods during which these job losses and gains took place.

Another fact-check by ABC News raises doubts about Obama's claim that he has doubled the trade cases brought by Bush against China: Bush brought seven cases to the World Trade Organization and Obama has filed five.

Obama's statement that U.S. oil production is now at its highest level in eight years is largely meaningless because the level has remained relatively steady for those eight years.

President Obama proposed to use half of the money saved by reducing war-fighting costs to pay down the debt and half to do nation-building at home; however, all of the costs of the wars were financed by borrowed money, so there is no new money available to do that.

When President Obama said that the health care law "relies on a reformed private market, not a government program," he omitted the crucial fact that about half of the 34 million now uninsured who will receive coverage, will be placed in Medicaid. States are sharply reducing Medicaid coverage and lowered reimbursement rates are reducing the number of doctors who will take Medicaid recipients.

A Pew Center Research poll taken in May 2011 throws cold water on Obama's claim that foreign opinions of the United States are at the highest levels in years. Pew found that among two of our closest allies, Turkey and Jordan, confidence in Obama has dropped sharply: from 33 percent in 2009 to 11 percent in 2011 in Turkey, and from 25 percent in 2009 to 13 percent in 2011 in Jordan. Obama's confidence numbers have also fallen in Indonesia, part of the Asian theater where Obama wants to augment the U.S. military presence.

Probably the most incomprehensible proposal made by Obama was that all public school students will be required to stay in school until age 18 or until graduation. Obama gave absolutely no indication on how this would be done.

President Obama's glorification of the military at the beginning and end of his speech was devoid of any mention -- as has been the case in the past -- of the approval of widespread use of torture through the entire chain of command in the armed forces. Also, besides the many acts of compassion and kindness displayed to Iraqi and Afghan citizens, there have been disrespectful and even criminal acts performed on these citizens. A U.S. president has an obligation to provide a balanced and accurate account of how U.S. troops perform when serving overseas.

Finally, I would have liked to have a ballpark figure on how much the programs described by President Obama will cost and how that cost will be met. The most direct guidance we now have is Obama's 12-year plan, which proposes to raise revenue by $1 trillion but cut the accumulated debt by $4 trillion.


:

President Obama's Fractured State of the Union

President Obama's State of the Union speech was a long laundry list of proposals, a number of them distilled from prior State of the Union speeches and others either unworkable or dead on arrival in Congress. Obama started his speech with a claim that the current generation of military heroes has made the nation safer and more respected in the world and concluded with a recommendation that a democratic republic should operate in the  same way as the hierarchical, orders from the top down structure as found in the military. Except for a brief mention of a new defense strategy, Obama gave no indication that there would be a significant reduction of a bloated Pentagon, a less formidable nuclear weapons inventory and any trimming of a sprawling intelligence empire.

Obama's celebration of killing those designated as terrorists overlooks the contention of some analysts, including former intelligence czar, Dennis Blair, that conducting the War on Terror through primary use of the military, especially missile-firing drones, is probably creating more terrorists. So Obama's way of dealing with terrorists is probably doomed to failure. Obama should also have explained why and how he has abrogated to himself the right to order killings, even of U.S. citizens.

President Obama's :fair share" tax policy is heavily oriented to requiring millionaires and billionaires to pay a tax rate of at least 30 percent. Only about a quarter of these very wealthy people pay a lower tax rate than the average middle-income taxpayer; thus, the overall increase in revenue would be very modest.

Relative to the post-World War II, pre-Reagan years, when the nation was economically prosperous and the top marginal tax rate was never lower than 70.45 percent, current U.S. taxpayers, in general, are under-taxed in regard to federal income tax. What is needed is a progressive tax rate schedule, with a top rate of 60 to 70 percent.

In his State of the Union speech, Obama proposed to have a two- or even more tier system, whereby corporations that outsource jobs would pay a higher tax rate than corporations that create U.S. jobs. Obama would also give high-tech manufacturers a double tax credit. Manufacturers currently receive multiple tax credits and deductions. Counting both national and state corporate income taxes, the average corporation's tax rate is 39.2 percent but it falls to 27 percent when tax loopholes are included. These are Tax Foundation percentages. 280 corporations in the Fortune 500 paid an average rate of 18.5 percent in the last tax year studied.

When all loopholes, credits, deductions and exemptions are taken into account, U.S.-based corporations pay a lower tax rate than do corporations based in the other industrialized nations; also, according to the Congressional Budget Office, two-thirds of U.S. corporations pay no income tax. Moreover, a study of the top Fortune 100 corporations found that 25 of them paid their CEO more than they paid in corporate income tax.

Obama's stated intent to create tax breaks for specific groups of people and corporations runs a danger of riddling the tax code with more exceptions than it has now. Military veterans already have a number of benefits which those without military service do not have. Why build more tax breaks for them into the tax code?

President Barack Obama has already cut governmental revenue by more than he proposes to increase it during the rest of his presidency; therefore, the nation's capacity to do home nation-building will have been diminished during his presidency.

Obama's claim that the Pentagon will be saving energy by changing its operations to be more fuel-efficient -- the Navy alone will save enough energy to power 3 million homes -- is misguided because a much smaller military would use far less energy.

Renewable energy was to have been a major focus of the Obama administration; however, to this point, Obama has devoted more resources to the fossil fuel industry than to renewable energy sources, by opening up more coal mining in the Western states and opening up more offshore oil leases. In the State of the Union speech, Obama proposed to provide access to 75 percent of the potential offshore oil and gas leases. Obama also wants much more reliance on natural gas, yet he has been depicted as "leaning" toward support of fracking. Fracking is suspected of contaminating underground water sources and possibly even causing earthquakes where they were unknown to occur before.

In regard to underwater homeowners, President Obama is proposing to provide each "responsible" family an annual savings of $3,000. This proposal is built on one he proposed in an October 2011 speech in Las Vegas. Most underwater homeowners didn't participate in that program. Economists calculate that because of many restrictions built into the Obama proposal, only about one million of the six million underwater homeowners will fully participate in the most recent program.

Obama was being grossly hypocritical when he asked for an end to deportation of the fully Americanized children of illegals. Immigration rights groups have assailed Obama for heedlessly breaking up families in the one million plus illegals he has sent back to Mexico.

The next blog will key in on some foreign policy issues and provide some fact-checks on the speech.

The Troublesome Future of an Obama Second Term (continued)

16) Iraq: Not a Real Success - I am not sure that if the voting public had been told by a campaigning Barack Obama that there would be a substantial U.S. military force in Iraq throughout the first three years of his presidency that Barack Obama would have been elected president. He had created an impression in the campaign that all the troops would have left Iraq well before three years had passed.

It is also the case that President Obama would not have withdrawn all of the troops by December 31, 2011, if Iraq had agreed to give U.S. forces immunity from the exercise of Iraqi law. The Pentagon wanted to keep at least 3,000 troops in Iraq and maybe as many as 15,000. So what Obama did was withdraw troops in accordance with an agreement drawn up between George W. Bush and the then-existing Iraqi government.

Despite the optimistic talk about creating a democracy in Iraq, virtually every sector of Iraqi life that one wants to seriously examine is in shambles due to the long years of war and occupation.

17) A Dangerous Take on Iran - A second term for President will keep the nation on tenterhooks regarding U.S. military attacks on Iran. Obama has not ruled out use of nuclear weapons if a "red line" is crossed. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said on December 2, 2011 that the imminent or actual development of a nuclear bomb by Iran was a "red line" that would trigger an attack by the United States. An attack utilizing nuclear weapons on Iran's deeply buried nuclear facilities could cause as many as three million deaths according to a computer program projection.

Iranian disruption of shipping through the Strait of Hormuz would cause a major spike in oil prices and Iran can cause the United States major grief in many other sorts of ways.

18) The Continued Proliferation of Overseas Military Bases - Except for Iraq, where U.S. bases have been emptied of troops and a possible trimming of bases due to a draw down from Afghanistan, there are no visible plans to reduce the large number of U.S. overseas bases. At least one major base will be added, as 2,500 U.S. Marines will be stationed in Darwin, Australia.

The Pentagon doesn't know how many overseas bases there are. A primary reason for this deficit of information is that many bases are called "lily-pad" due to the small number of troops stationed on them. Most estimates of total bases fall into the range of "over 800" to "over 1,000."

The proposed shift of strategic military interest from the European to the Asia/Pacific theater may result in a wash between bases closed and bases opened.

The 18 topics briefly examined above provide a perspective on what policies President Obama will likely follow in a second term and how they don't represent a major change in direction, which Barack Obama promised would happen if he was elected president. Under Obama we will remain a nation whose major governmental priorities are premised on fear.

The Troubling Future of an Obama Second Term

12) Renewable Energy Slighted in Obama Second Term - During his three years in office, President Obama has devoted more resources to fossil fuels than he has to renewable energy. He has opened up the Western states for much more production of coal and he has expanded the number of offshore oil drilling leases. Meanwhile, while he has inveighed against the tax breaks for fossil fuel industries, no action has been taken to reduce or eliminate any of the breaks.

President Obama did provide $80 billion for renewable energy in his initial stimulus spending plan. The electric-car industry received $5 billion of funding but much of it has not produced positive results. For instance, in August 2009, Obama announced $2.4 billion in more than 40 grants to car industry firms, much of it going to battery manufacturers. Several of these manufacturers have floundered or failed, laying off large numbers of workers. The Energy Department said in February 2010 that a goal was one million EVs by 2015. Actual sales now stand at 16,800, or about 2/10ths of one percent of 2011 domestic car sales.

13) Pluses and Minuses on the Environment - President Obama has had a mixed record on environmental policy. His greatest achievement was to get an agreement to require passenger cars and light trucks to achieve 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025. Probably his next most important achievement was to set a national standard for mercury, a toxic metal. The EPA has also reduced allowable downwind pollution for manufacturing and power plants.

Easily the two most controversial environmental decisions made by Obama were to block tougher standards on smog creation and to delay a decision on the Keystone XL pipeline until 2013. Even though the EPA's independent scientific panel was unanimous in supporting the tougher standards on smog, Obama rejected them due to the higher costs they would impose on the industries primarily responsible for the smog.

The EPA's record on mountaintop removal mining has been uneven, as it has denied some permits for such mining and approved others. The Obama administration has not moved to ban such environmentally destructive mining.

14) The Wrong Track on Education - President Obama has proposed some useful changes in No Child Left Behind, by giving the states more control and removing the focus on failure as a predominant outcome; however, he has continued to support high stakes testing, with its attendant narrowing of the educational horizon for students.

Obama is also a strong proponent of charter schools, even though the evidence continues to accumulate that they don't perform any better, in general, than traditional public schools; they are more segregated than traditional public schools; and are more prone to fraud and corruption than are traditional public schools. Only about five percent of charter schools employ unionized teachers -- a dagger aimed at his own party by Obama, because unionized teachers are among the most faithful constituencies of the Democratic Party.

As a general proposition, students from states with highly unionized teaching corps perform better on standardized tests than do students learning in right-to-work states. Students in industrialized nations with a heavily unionized teaching force also test better than do students form right-to-work states.

One of President Obama's main educational projects is the Race to the Top. In order to qualify, any cap on charter schools must be removed and teacher evaluations must be closely tied to student performances on tests. Most public schools do not participate in Race to the Top.

15) Near Status Quo in War on Drugs - President Obama has largely embraced the War on Drugs, increasingly seen as a colossal failure. Despite the expenditure of billions of U.S. dollars in Columbia, that nation remains a violent land for union leaders and other activists. Drug-related violence has actually increased in Mexico during the Obama years and the "Fast and Furious" program to trace U.S.-supplied firearms to Mexican drug cartels has been a major fiasco.

The Obama White House has stepped up raids of medical marijuana dispensaries and users in those states that have liberalized their marijuana laws. These raids and prosecutions have created a terrible quandary for those following their state law, only to be hit with a federal prosecution.

The first drug czar appointed by President Obama spoke of the need to emphasize treatment over law enforcement; however, that called-for policy change has been mostly rhetorical in nature.

The Troubling Future of an Obama Second Term (continued)

9) The Ongoing Housing Crisis - The Obama administration has been far more concerned with helping bankers avoid the consequences of their bad and potentially illegal loans, than with rescuing underwater homeowners. The programs set up to help homeowners have been poorly promoted or ineptly administered, so that most underwater homeowners have not taken advantage of them.

Financial experts are saying that it will now be difficult for Obama to shift to a regulatory focus on bankers. No bankers have gone to prison for the major role they played in creating the housing mess.

10) No Adverse Regulatory Climate for Big Business - It is not likely that big business would face an adverse regulatory climate in an Obama second term. Obama notably wrote an op-ed published in the New York Times, in which  he warned against placing regulatory controls on business. One of the prime reasons that Obama rejected the new smog rules that the EPA was going to put into effect, was because they would add too much to the cost of the industries chiefly responsible for causing the smog.

One of the reasons that the Dodd-Frank legislation is criticized as being too weak to control business malpractice is that Obama did not press for stronger regulation. Even in regard to the creation of the new consumer protection agency, Obama reportedly wanted to lodge it in the Federal Reserve system, where consumer protection advocates argued it would lose the independence it should have as a stand-alone agency.

11) All Over the Waterfront on Taxes and Spending - President Obama has been all over the waterfront regarding taxes and spending. The best source of his long-term view is the 12-year plan, in which he proposes $4 trillion in deficit reduction, of which only $1 trillion will come from tax increases and only $400 billion will come from military spending cuts. Domestic spending will be hit the hardest.

This initial 3-to-1 ratio of spending cuts to increased revenue was widened significantly when Obama put Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid on the table in the negotiations on raising the debt ceiling.

President Obama subsequently endorsed other proposed long-term spending and taxation plans even before the ink was dry on them: them: the Reid plan and the "Gang of Six" plan were most prominent among these. The "Gang of Six" plan was particularly recklessly and sloppily written. It would have eliminated the Alternative Minimum Tax, causing a substantial revenue loss in the future; also, it set the top marginal tax rate in a range of 23 to 29 percent. Presumably, a future legislative action could have set the top rate as low as 23 percent. Even at 29 percent it would have been a huge giveaway to the top bracket people now paying 35 percent.

President Obama devoted much of his tax talk in July 2011 to calling for the closing of tax loopholes; in contrast, there was virtually no mention of allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire. Of course, Obama's agreement to a two-year extension of the Bush tax cuts has caused a big loss in revenue and broke a signature campaign pledge not to extend them.

President Obama's jobs package unveiled in September 2011 changed the tax equation once again. Obama has broken the package into "bite-sized pieces;" has agreed to drop the payroll tax cut for employers; and has accepted a surcharge on income over $1 million as a new funding mechanism -- subsequently abandoned by the Democratic legislative leadership. .

Given that President Obama is arguing that a failure to extend the payroll tax is a tax increase for about 160 million wage earners, he will find it hard to argue against another payroll tax cut and even an extension of the Bush tax cuts if economic conditions remain dire in late 2012.

The Troubling Future of an Obama Second Term (continued)

6) Torture Not Ended - Although President Obama has disavowed the use of torture, it appears, based on Associated Press reporting and that of human rights groups, that the United States is employing torture in Afghanistan. Not only is the U.S. accused of treating detainees in violation of the Geneva Conventions, but it is accused of overlooking torture being practiced by the Afghan government.

When the Military Commissions Act of 2006 was amended in 2009 to give detainees more rights, the provision in the 2006 law which permits the president to sanction CIA use of torture -- euphemistically termed "enhanced interrogation" -- was not removed.

7) Civil Liberties Record Builds on Bush - According to Bill Quigley, human rights lawyer and law professor at Loyola University in New Orleans, President Obama privately promised Bush officials that no one would be prosecuted for torture. He also advocated "a just following orders"  defense, which the Nuremberg trials had specifically termed invalid as a legal defense.

President Obama has adopted most of the civil liberties positions of George W. Bush: he supports indefinite detention -- with periodic review -- extraordinary rendition, warrantless wiretapping, telecom immunity, the Patriot Act and Special Security Measures: extra harsh conditions of confinement have actually increased under Obama.

Obama has made use of a state secrets legal theory to block dozens of public interest lawsuits; the FBI use of national security letters has increased dramatically during Obama's first term; he has cracked down on whistleblowers after saying how valuable they were in an early speech after becoming president; and he has failed to close Guantanamo as promised.

The Bush administration got away with an unconstitutional legislative act of creating a new criminal category: the enemy combatant. President Obama has gone one up on Bush by asserting the power to order the killing of U.S. citizens.

The Obama's use of military commissions is troublesome due to the lack of legal safeguards found in state and federal courts.

The infiltration of Muslim communities is yet another troublesome aspect of Obama's civil liberties record. The Associated Press has identified informants called "mosque crawlers," who monitor sermons, bookstores and cafes, as part of a large army of informants who pay particularly close attention to Muslims. Virtually all of the terrorist plots exposed to public notice since 9/11 were instigated by FBI undercover agents targeting those who had come under suspicion of harboring hostile feelings toward the U.S. society or government.

8) An Immigration Record of Betrayal - Barack Obama made two immigrant-related promises during the presidential campaign: he said immigration reform legislation would be a major priority and he would work to pass the Dream Act, allowing college-entry parity for the children of illegal immigrants. Obama has failed in both promises, although he faced and faces formidable political opposition to do either.

Besides the lack of movement on immigration reform and the Dream Act, immigrant rights groups have faulted Obama for the big increase in illegal immigrants deported south to Mexico. The number deported has now crossed the one million mark and the administration has been strongly criticized for not taking care to avoid breaking up families in the deportations.

A real scandal in immigration policy is occurring among those in detention. Huge backlogs of cases make a mockery of due process and the lack of a database makes it almost impossible to locate many of the detention facilities and where individuals are being held.

The next blog will continue to explore the probable future course of Obama policy if elected to a second term.

The Troubling Future of an Obama Second Term

Supporters of President Obama are contending that a second term for him would differ significantly from the first because he wouldn't be saddled with as many "Bluedog" Democrats in the U.S. House; those who deserted the Democratic Party in the 2010 elections would come back due to fear of the election of a Republican president; and Obama would no longer need to trim his agenda to get re-elected. I believe that these kinds of contentions are rendered wistful in nature when looked at in terms of Obama's performance to date and what he has revealed about his future plans.

1) A Bloated Pentagon - The United States, with about five percent of the world's population, accounts for almost half of world military spending. In President Obama's FY 2012 budget, he submitted a ten-year projection of Pentagon spending, totaling nearly $6.4 trillion. Obama's 12-year plan calls for only $400 billion in military spending cuts, or about five percent of projected spending in those years.

President Obama has also appointed a defense secretary, Leon Panetta, who sees any further cuts in military spending as endangering national security.

2) More Nukes - President Obama gave a speech early in his presidency in which he painted a bright future of a world without nuclear weapons. Since that speech, the only action Obama has taken to reduce the number of nuclear warheads has been the New START treaty with Russia. Getting that treaty ratified in the U.S. Senate was costly, however, because to get the ratification, Obama poured many billions of dollars into a nuclear weapons modernization program.

The heart of that modernization program is the building of three new facilities, which will quadruple the capacity to build nuclear warheads. The Pentagon's JASON study found that the nation's nuclear weapons stockpile is safe and reliable for a hundred or more years. The future blueprint for nukes includes a new nuclear-armed submarine fleet and a new bomber capable of carrying nuclear warheads.

3) The Intelligence Empire - There has been a tremendous expansion of building complexes, organizations, locations for intelligence work, personnel and spending since 9/11, as chronicled in a series run in the Washington Post. In the presidential campaign, Barack Obama promised to rein in the intelligence empire and make its operations more transparent; however, as set forth in a PBS "Frontline" program, he has taken no action to reduce the growth of this empire. Obama actually requested more intelligence spending in his FY 2012 budget than Congress was willing to give him; the Obama administration also strongly objected to the request by Congress for more information about the status of Guantanamo and government-to-government contacts. So much for the campaign promise of more intelligence transparency.

4) The Growth of Anti-Missile Defenses - President Obama has followed the practice of prior presidents in continuing the funding of Ronald Reagan's Star Wars fantasy, which purported to destroy intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) before they reached the United States. Not only have these anti-missile missiles failed many tests, they stand as an admission that the national government has no faith in the large deterrent  inventory of offensive missiles.

President Obama has also continued the George W. Bush plan to station anti-missile missiles in Eastern Europe to protect against Iran improbably launching nuclear warheads in that direction. The only change is that Obama has switched the defenses from a long-range to a short-range missile threat. This future deployment has seriously strained U.S. relations with Russia.

5) Increased Use of Drones - The best estimate of the Obama administration's use of drones is that it has quadrupled over the use of drones under Bush. Great Britain's Guardian newspaper says that the Obama White House has or is making use of drones in six countries: Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, Somalia and Yemen. Missile strikes by drones would, in times before 9/11, have been considered to be acts of war. Some analysts fear that the growing popularity of drones in the world may make wars more likely because no more pilots are exposed to harm.

The next blog will continue to explore the likely consequences of an Obama second term.

A Crumbling Medicaid System

The dominant story about Medicaid in many states is serious cutbacks in services. Recipients are unable to gain access to basic care; dental and vision coverage has been cut; the elderly don't qualify for dentures and hearing aids; mental health services have been restricted; and day centers have been eliminated or seen their hours cut back.

Besides these cutbacks in services, reimbursement rates for doctors under Medicaid tend to be less than reimbursement rates for equivalent services under Medicare, which itself is causing doctors to reject Medicare recipients. Thus, Medicaid recipients are finding it harder and harder to find doctors who will treat them.

The burden on Medicaid is being increased from another direction. Poverty is at its highest level in nearly 20 years and the number of children living in deep poverty -- in families with incomes less that 50 percent of the poverty line -- is at its highest level since the late 1970s, Once more, the unemployment rate for single mothers is at a 25-year high. Welfare rolls are rising at a time when states are tightening restrictions on getting help.

What is happening in Medicaid will have a profound impact on President Obama's Affordable Healthcare Act. The Act is heavily dependent on the expansion of Medicaid to provide coverage for millions of uninsured Americans. Millions of the uninsured will need to be added to the seven million who have enrolled in Medicaid since the financial collapse of 2008.

U.S. Arms Sales Are a Poor Job Creator and Help to Impoverish Recipient Countries

The recent announcement of a nearly $30 billion arms sale to Saudi Arabia was hailed as a hedge against Iranian aggression and as a job creator in the United States. This sale is part of a $60 billion deal over 10 years. 84 F-155A fighter jets will be sold in the current deal and 70 F-15 jets now in Saudi Arabia will be refurbished. The Obama administration is estimating the creation of 50,000 jobs as a result of the deal.

Also in the news is the Pentagon's consideration of the sale of "bunker busters" and other munitions to the Unitec Arab Emirates (UAE). What possible use would the UAE have for a "bunker buster," except for an implied threat that the UAE will bomb Iran's underground nuclear facilities if attacked by Iran?

One thing I have not been able to find in the mainstream media's coverage of these sales is the consensus conclusion of economists who study job creation that military spending is the worst way to create jobs through government spending. Also absent is any mention of President Eisenhower's warning about the aiding and abetting of the military-industrial complex.

On the receiving end, those countries to whom we sell arms are compelled thereby to increase the proportion of their resources devoted to the military. We thus help to impoverish these countries. During the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union used arms sales to bring the recipient countries to their respective sides in the ideological struggle for world supremacy.

Since the demise of the Soviet Union, the United States has assumed the world lead in arms sales to other countries by a big margin. In 2008, the United States, with $37.8 billion in arms sales, controlled 68.4 percent of the global arms market. Italy came in a distant second with $3.7 billion in sales. In sales to "developing nations," the U.S. controlled 70.1 percent of the market; Russia was far back in second, with a 7.8 percent market share.

Since 1970, nearly half of U.S. arms sales have gone to an area containing about one-fifth of the world's population. Sales to the Near East and South Asia go to countries where the leaders are heavily armed and the people have little to say in the elections for their leaders. So in addition to distributing weapons of war more widely in the world, the United States is tarnishing any image it wants to create as expanding the reach of representative government in the world.

Those who voted for Barack Obama for president, at least in part because he would reduce the prevalence of military weapons worldwide, have found his emphasis of arms sales as yet another reason to be disappointed in his presidency.

Palestinian Statehood and the Hope of Arab Spring

The attempt by the Palestinians to introduce a resolution for statehood in the fall of 2011 was pretty much doomed from the start, because the Obama administration had promised to use its veto power in the UN Security Council to block passage. Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas decided to introduce the resolution despite the enormous pressure being applied by the United States. Abbas had hoped to "jump-start" negotiations on a solution to the conflict but his failure sends a message that moderates and moderation have no ability to move the peace process, leaving a hard-line campaign premised on violence as the only feasible path to take. Defeat of the Palestinian efforts at the United Nations have returned the negotiations to a frozen state.

The United States has castigated the Palestinians for seeking a back door entrance to statehood through the United Nations Security Council. Yet, Israel achieved statehood through United Nations auspices.

The possibility of a breakthrough in Israeli/Palestinian negotiations seems to be very dim because the Israeli public seems generally satisfied with the status quo. Most members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's cabinet do not hide their opposition to Palestinian statehood and they openly advocate permanent retention of the occupied territories. Danny Danon, a Likud member and deputy speaker of the Knesset, has called on Netanyahu "to rectify the mistake we made in 1967 by failing to annex all of the West Bank."

Benny Begin, a member of the so-called Septet, Netanyahu's seven-member inner security cabinet, has said: "The establishment of a foreign independent sovereign state headed by the PLO in parts of the Land of Israel stands in opposition to the basic ideas that are both supported by a majority of the Knesset: the absolute historic right of the Nation of Israel to the Land of Israel and the right of the State of Israel to national security."

The Arab Spring has inspired hope and vision among Palestinians that they might gain self-determination and human rights; conversely, a more democratic Arab world reduces Israel's room to operate and it provides a ray of hope in cracking the current negotiating paradigm of U.S. control, Israeli domination and Palestinian retreat. Once more, Israel has lost an ally with the fall of Egypt's Hosni Mubarak.

One specific change in Israel's plans attributed to the Arab Spring is the calling off of a major military assault on Gaza in retaliation for the August 18 infiltration that killed eight Israelis. The assault was reportedly put off because it would look particularly heavy-handed in light of the hope of a less authoritarian world inspired by the Arab Spring.

                                           What Should Obama Do or Have Done?

The main tenets of an Israeli/Palestinian settlement promoted by the United States should include: 1) a two-state solution with each side accepting the full sovereignty of the other; 2) the end of Israeli settlement building in the West bank and East Jerusalem -- negotiations between the two states would determine what happens to the existing settlements; 3) the division of Jerusalem into two spheres of control; 4) compensation for those who can demonstrate that they or their immediate families lost their homes in what is now a part of pre-1967 Israel.

There is a proposal to create a Middle Eastern Economic Investment Authority once a two-state solution has been fully implemented. This proposal should be given serious consideration.

The United State can exercise maximum leverage by withholding all economic and military aid from which ever side is proving to be an obstacle to plan implementation. Military aid would very likely affect only Israel.

In regard to nuclear weapons, the United States should be putting pressure on Israel to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty; also, it should be working to make the Middle East a nuclear weapons-free zone, which could make Iran more amenable to ending its own efforts to get a nuclear bomb.

The UN Gateway to Palestinian Statehood and the Hope of Arab Spring

Israel closed all of Gaza's borders in June 2007, Since that time Israel has continued to control all access to the Gaza Strip from the Mediterranean, overland from Israel and from Egypt through agreements with the Egyptian government. Israel has blocked shipments of food, medical supplies and even school books; also, fuel supplies to run Gaza's electricity and water treatment plants have been blocked. This kind of collective punishment is illegal under international law, particularly the Fourth Geneva Convention. But Israel's denial of international law in its occupation policies is not the sum total of its defiance of international norms, as it is exhibited in Israel's use of banned weapons of war and its exempting itself from agreements in what gets labeled as weapons of mass destruction.

The kind of defiance of international law carried out in Israel's occupation policy is also on display in its use of weapons of war. An article entitled "Israel Treated Gaza Like Its Own Private Death Laboratory" by Conn Hallinan in the February 14, 2009 issue of Foreign Policy in Focus, chronicles Israel's use of lethal weapons, which approach or exceed international norms.

Erik Fosse, a Norwegian cardiologist who worked in Gaza hospitals during the December 2008/January 2009 conflict in the Gaza Strip, said he had been to war zones for 30 years and he had "never seen such injuries before." Dr. Fosse was describing the effects of a U.S. "focused lethality" weapon that minimizes explosive damage to structures, while inflicting catastrophic wounds on its human victims.

The specific weapon is called a Dense Inert Metal Explosive (DIME). The weapon wraps high explosives with a tungsten alloy and other metals like cobalt, nickel or iron in a carbon fiber/epoxy container. When the bomb explodes, the container evaporates and the tungsten turns into micro-shrapnel that is extremely lethal within a 13-foot radius. According to the Norwegian doctor Mad Gilbert, the blast results in multiple amputations and "very severe fractures. The muscles are split from the bones, hanging loose, and you also have quite severe burns."Even if the victims survive their injuries, they are almost certain to develop rhabdomyosarcoma (RMS), a particularly deadly cancer that deeply inbeds itself into tissue and is almost impossible to treat.

DIME weapons may have been used in the 2006 Israeli invasion of Lebanon but they were widely used in  Gaza, with one hospital alone seeing 100 to 150 patients with DIME-like injuries.

DIME weapons aren't banned under the Geneva Conventions because they have never been officially tested; however, any weapon capable of inflicting such horrendous damage is normally barred from use.

Besides DIMEs, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) also used white phosphorus in Gaza. White phosphorus is a chemical that burns with intense heat and inflicts terrible burns on victims. The IDF initially denied using the chemical but on January 20, 2009 it confessed to using it in artillery and mortar shells.

Israel is also accused of using depleted uranium ammunition (DUA), which a UN sub-committee in 2002 found in violation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the UN Charter, the Geneva Conventions, the International Convention Against Torture, the Conventional Weapons Convention and the Hague Conventions against the use of poison weapons.

Besides the use of these lethal weapons, Israel was also charged with intentionally targeting medical personnel in the Gaza conflict, killing over a dozen, including paramedics and ambulance drivers. This targeting prompted the International Federation for Human Rights to call on the UN Security Council to refer Israel to the International Criminal Court for possible war crimes.

Extending this critique of Israel's use of Israel's use of banned or condemned weapons of war to weapons of mass destruction, Israel has refused to sign conventions on biological and chemical weapons and has similarly refused to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty -- the United States has joined some European nations in blocking any efforts to compel Israel to sign the treaty.

The United States has embraced the curious term of "nuclear ambiguity" as an excuse to break laws saying it can't give aid to countries that have weapons of mass destruction and don't follow the rules of the road regarding their possession. The number of nuclear warheads Israel is estimated to possess varies widely -- from 60 to as many as 300. One proposed remedy to induce Iran to give up any nuclear bomb aspirations is to make the Middle East a nuclear weapons-free zone. That sort of remedy is unlikely to be supported by the current White House, with its "unshakable" and "ironclad" ties to Israel.

Even though all countries have an obligation to take remedial action against those accused of "grave" breaches of the rules of war, the U.S. is almost certain to veto any UN Security Council effort to  refer Israel to an international body for sanctions.

At a lesser, though still tragic level, the IDF has on at least six occasions, hurled tear gas canisters at people, killing three and seriously injuring three others.

The U.S. Arms Export Control Act (Public Law 90-829 ) limits the use of U.S. weapons given or sold to a foreign country to "internal security" and "legitimate self-defense" and prevents their use against civilians.

On December 15, 2011, Congress released a new condition, as part of the foreign operations portion of the spending bill, asking the State Department to submit a report "detailing any crowd control items, including tear gas, made available with appropriated funds or through export licenses to foreign security forces that the Secretary of State has credible information have reportedly used excessive force to repress peaceful, lawful and organized dissent".

In the final analysis, President Barack Obama would have accorded himself a much higher standing in world public opinion and in the eyes of historians if he had not so uncritically accepted the excesses of Israeli behavior.

The final blog on Israeli/Palestinian relations will look at the Palestinians' attempt to gain statehood recognition at the United Nations and indicate what President Obama has done or should do to help bring resolution of the conflict.

"Unshakable" and "Ironclad" Ties Won't Beat the Israel Lobby

In a speech on May 22, 2011, given to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, President Barack Obama said that the ties between the United States and Israel are "unshakable" and "ironclad." Three days before that speech, Obama had laid down some markers for a peace accord between the Israelis and the Palestinians:
1. The time to press for a peace accord is now, not some time in the indeterminate future.
2. Putting forward American parameters for bilateral talks is not an imposition on the parties. The parameters are essential terms of reference for successful talks.
3. The starting point for talks about mutually agreed-upon territorial swaps must be the 1967 lines.
4. A peace accord must provide credible security arrangements for both parties and "full and phased" withdrawal of Israel's military forces from the West Bank.

Early in his presidency, Barack Obama gave every indication that he would make the termination of any further Israeli settlement building in the West Bank and Jerusalem a keystone of his Middle East policy; however, Israel has continued to build settlements without incurring any effective counter-action on the part of the United States. Vice President Joe Biden's arrival in Israel in March 2010 was greeted with word that Israel would be building 1,600 housing units in East Jerusalem. Instead of just expressing disapproval of Israel's continued settlement building, the United States should have made the sending of any more aid to Israel contingent on the end of settlement building.

It was reported that during Biden's March 2010 visit, he excused Israel's horrific destruction in its air raids on Lebanon and the excesses documented in the Goldstone report on Israel's military campaign in the Gaza Strip. It was in April 2011 that UN Ambassador Susan Rice said she wanted the Goldstone report to "disappear." The report by Judge Richard Goldstone found that it was Israel's indiscriminate use of force that broke international law.

Obama reacted mildly to the Israeli commando attack on a Gaza humanitarian ship in international waters by deploring the loss of life and calling for an investigation. There was almost universal international condemnation and Obama's mild reaction to one ally, Israel, risked a serious rife with another ally, Turkey, whose government and people were incensed by the Israeli raid.

It is appalling that the U.S. should not have roundly condemned Israel for its massive overreaction in Lebanon to the taking of two of its soldiers. Furthermore, the U.S. should have demanded that Israel assist monetarily in the rebuilding of a heavily damaged Lebanon or withhold aid that it was planning to send to Israel.

In regard to the well-documented and even-handed Goldstone report, which cited both the Palestinians and the Israelis for war excesses, instead of trying to make the report "disappear," the U.S. should have commended and supported Goldstone for his valuable public service.

The subject of the Goldstone report was the December 2008/January 2009 assault on the Gaza dubbed "Operation Cast Lead" by the Israeli military. According to the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, "Operation Cast Lead" destroyed over 14,000 buildings in the Gaza Strip, including schools, mosques, hospitals, civil administration buildings and homes. The 22-day-long conflict left 71,675 Palestinians homeless.

U.S.-supplied F-16s, Hellfire missiles and ammunition were employed in the assault, in spite of stipulations that such military hardware not be used in offensive operations.

The next blog will focus on Israeli violations of international law, especially its use of banned weapons of war.

Obama Emulates Bush on Signing Statements

At a campaign stop in Grand Junction, Colorado in May 2008, Barack Obama said that the Bush signing statements changed "what Congress passed by attaching a letter saying 'I don't agree with this part' or 'I don't agree with that part.'" Obama added, "Congress's job is to pass legislation. The president can veto it or he can sign it."

Contrary to what candidate Barack Obama said at a campaign stop, President Obama has used signing statements that alter congressional intent, 20 times since taking office. His latest signing statement came a few days ago with his disagreement with three sections of the National Defense Authorization Act, which Obama said interfered with his constitutional powers to conduct the nation's foreign policy. The three offending sections were: 1) restrictions on data exchange with Russia; 2) new authorities to detain suspected Al Qaeda members; and 3) sanctions against the central bank of Iran.

Senator Mark Kirk (R-IL) has contended he was assured by top national security advisers that some date, such as telemetry or hit-to-kill technology would not go to Russia. He accused any lawyer writing the signing statement language of speaking with a "forked tongue." Kirk also fears that any technology we share with Russia will make its way to Iran.

Several prominent organizations weighed in with condemnation of Obama's signing statement. The American Bar Association said that if the president is not going to abide by a part of any given legislation, he must veto it. Anthony Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, said that Obama will " forever be known as the president who signed indefinite detention without charge or trial into law." the Council on American-Islamic Relations, which has generally supported President Obama, contended that it is unconstitutional for the military "to become a police force... ."

President Obama had come under fire from senior Democratic legislative leaders in June 2009, when he declared he had the right to ignore legislation on constitutional grounds. Obama had attached signing statements to a $410 billion omnibus spending bill and a $106 billion bill putting conditions on aid to the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

The four Democrats, David Obey, Barney Frank, Nita Lowey and Gregory Meeks, signed a letter saying that the president can't "pick and choose" which aspects of congressional statutes he was required to enforce. They related his actions to those of George W. Bush.

President Barack Obama's positions during the journey of the National Defense Authorization Act from committee hearings to bill signing were confusing to follow and even perverse in nature. When opposition arose in the Senate Armed Services Committee to the indefinite detention provisions of the bill, chairman Carl Levin (D-MI) said that Obama insisted that the language remain in the bill: however, when the bill went to the Senate floor, Obama said he would veto it unless the indefinite detention provisions were changed to his satisfaction. According to Levin, the bill on the floor had the language that Obama had insisted on when the bill was in committee. Attempts on the Senate floor to either delete the broad indefinite detention language or make it crystal clear that U.S. citizens would not be subject to its provisions were defeated on the Senate floor. Subsequently, Obama withdrew his threat to veto the bill but stated in the signing statement that enforcing the indefinite detention provisions would interfere with his constitutional foreign policy powers.

Embrace of George W. Bush's signing statements join the lengthening list of campaign promises that President Barack Obama has broken.

Afghanistan: No Exit Sign for the Longest War (continued)

If Barack Obama believed that stable institutions can be built in Afghanistan through U.S. and other foreign investment, corruption and lack of accountability are major roadblocks. Transparency International is the organization that keeps a corruption index of nations. It rates Afghanistan as one of the three most corrupt nations in its index.

Reports have been rife about the United States and other NATO nations paying bribes to get supply convoys to their destinations. Some of this money allegedly has been helping the Taliban. A few months ago, the Pentagon admitted it had been paying bribes to get supplies through but was changing its ways.

In December 2009 the State Department internal watchdog criticized the State Department's nearly $2 billion anti-drug efforts in Afghanistan, accusing it of poor oversight and lack of a long-term strategy.

The most disturbing indicator, however, of the failure of funding projects in Afghanistan was the report released in December 2010 by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction. He said that there is no way to account for the $55 billion spent to bolster and rebuild Afghanistan.

Perhaps the most credible argument that Barack Obama made in his West Point speech regarding why we need to maintain a military presence in Afghanistan is to prevent Al Qaeda from using its territory to plan and train for acts of major terrorism.U.S. intelligence puts the number of Al Qaeda operatives now in Afghanistan at a two- or three-digit figure, at best.  Vice President Joe Biden reportedly argued in White House discussions about Afghanistan troop levels that if terrorism bases in Afghanistan is a major concern, than a contingent of U.S. Special Forces -- maybe no more than 12,000 to 15,000 troops -- would prevent that eventuality.

                                          What Should Obama Do or Have Done?

A bill introduced by Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA) would restrict Afghan funding to bringing U.S. troops safely home. The genius of this bill is that it avoids the argument that cutting of funding for war-making  would jeopardize the troops stationed in Afghanistan. A bold, transformative president would have come to that type of decision when he made his drawn-out assessment of what to do on Afghan policy.

What should not be done is funnel any more reconstruction money through governmental channels, as, in Iraq, auditors and inspectors can't account for how many of the billions already spent were spent.If there are indigenous groups or international NGOs that have a good track record on projects, any additional funding for Afghanistan rebuilding should be channeled through them.

President Obama should also pay close attention to the wise words of Robert Dreyfuss to disabuse himself of any illusions he has of a successful conclusion of the war in Afghanistan. Dreyfuss says a central part of U.S. policy in regard to the region must be to facilitate a peace process between Pakistan and India.

Dreyfuss's geography lesson is that entire swaths of southern Afghanistan, in provinces along the Pakistan border south and east of Kabul, are controlled by the Pashtun and their allies.

Dreyfuss has some precautionary warning words about the complicated web of insurgents and Islamist organizations in Afghanistan and Pakistan. He says that the U.S. military has identified at least 14 separate insurgent organizations in Afghanistan and maybe as many as 50 separate Islamist formations in Pakistan. Dreyfuss further claims that putting thousands of additional troops into Afghanistan gives the Taliban more targets, sparks Pashtun nationalist resistance and inspires more recruits for the insurgence.

Finally, Robert Dreyfuss sees giving Afghanistan a centrally directed state was a major blunder, because we excluded from governance, local authorities in a largely tribal nation.

Afghanistan: No Exit Sign for the Longest War

Afghanistan has been called the graveyard of empires. More recently, the super-power Soviet Union was forced to leave the country in defeat. Despite this history of dashed expectations, during the presidential campaign Barack Obama made Afghanistan his war of choice, although when he talked about the size of the additional military commitment needed, he talked in terms of a brigade or two, maybe 8,000 troops. Thus, when Obama announced at West Point that he would send 30,000 troops to Afghanistan it came as a shock to those who had assumed that the troop increase would be much more modest.

If President Obama believed that the U.S. was building a democracy in Afghanistan, he should have been thoroughly disabused of that notion by the presidential election of September 2009 and the parliamentary election of September 2010. Let's take a short look at these elections.

Election fraud was rampant in the 2009 presidential election: President Hamid Karzai was credited with over 100 percent of the votes in some polling places and in one he received 2,500 votes to his opponents' six. A tribal elder went to a polling place at 10 a.m., found there were no voters there but the ballot boxes were stuffed full. In one polling place, Karzai ballots were bundled together in even increments, such as 200 and 500. Observers witnessed tribal chiefs voting for the entire tribe.

After the election was over, an European observer said that of the total votes cast, about 1.5 million were fraudulently cast -- 1.1 million of them were for Karzaai. More than 700 instances of fraud were alleged. Hamid Karzai won the election with about 54 percent of the vote, but after over one million ballots were thrown out, he was forced into a runoff, which was not held because his major opponent withdrew.

Yet even after this orgy of fraud, President Obama congratulated Karzai for winning an election run in accordance with Afghanistan law!

The run-up to the parliamentary election on September 18, 2010 was a great boon to printing shops in both Pakistan and Afghanistan, as parliamentary candidates ran off large numbers of election ballots that could be filled in before election day.

Of 5.6 million votes cast in the election, 1.3 million were thrown out. The spokesman of the Afghanistan election commission said the level of fraud in the parliamentary election was normal for an Afghanistan election!

In his West Point speech, President Obama spoke lyrically about the major increase in the size and capability of the Afghan security forces. If he really believes in that optimistic assessment, he is at odds with both history and facts on the ground in Afghanistan. The history of U.S. training of foreign security forces is dismal. One mission Ronald Reagan gave to the Marines he sent to Lebanon was to train the Lebanese security forces to keep order after the Marines had left. Yet after the tragic bombing of a Marine' barracks, Reagan had to turn tail and run, leaving behind a chaotic situation in Lebanon.

For years, the United States trained scores of Latin American military personnel at the School of the Americas -- since renamed -- yet many of these U.S.-trained soldiers were instrumental players in atrocities committed against the citizens of their countries.

In South Vietnam, over a decade of training South Vietnamese guerrillas was wiped away almost overnight after the U.S. withdrew its troops.

After more than eight years of training Iraqi security forces, their level of capability remains so shaky that in July 2011 the Pentagon began leaking the word that as many as 10,000 to 15,000 U.S. troops might stay in Iraq beyond the December 31, 2011 deadline. A high but unnamed U.S. official in Iraq confided to the press that security in Iraq was below what it had been one year before.

Disturbing facts on the ground in Afghanistan belie any optimism about the U.S. ability to leave behind a stable, capable security force. Among these countervailing factors are: a desertion rate as high as 25 percent; the sale of U.S.-issued military equipment -- especially by the officers -- widespread illiteracy; the very young age of many of the trainees; the patchwork of hostile tribes being trained; and the finding of many syringes at training sites by U.S. soldiers, indicating widespread drug use. The major reason, however, that U.S. training will be unsuccessful is that only about seven to eight percent of the trainees are from the Pashtun tribe, the dominant tribe in Afghanistan.

The next blog will began with an examination of the corruption and lack of financial accountability found in Afghanistan.

President Obama Is Lying on a Messy SOFA

SOFA stands for status of forces agreement, which is a common vehicle used when the U.S. government establishes a military base in a foreign country. It is just such an agreement made between the Bush administration and the Iraqi government that President Obama has followed almost to the letter in withdrawing troops from Iraq. There are those who believe that George W, Bush engaged in an executive branch power grab in signing the agreement and that Barack Obama, by logical extension, has reinforced this power grab.

The core of the argument is whether the agreement signed by President Bush and Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki rises to the level of a treaty. Websters' New Universal Unabridged Dictionary says that treaties may be of various kinds, as for regulating trade and forming alliances, offensive and defensive. It also lists "agreement" as a synonym. The Encyclopedia Americana refers to treaty as a generic term applied to written instruments whereby two of more states regulate specific or general relations among themselves. It also states that treaties may cover a wide spectrum of activities. Therefore, the agreement between the Iraqi and the U.S. heads of state appears to have the attributes of a treaty and thus must be ratified by the U.S. Senate.

The agreement between Bush and al-Maliki could also be looked at as a de facto legislative act, in which a foreign leader becomes co-legislator with Bush for forcing the U.S. Congress to fund about 50,000 troops annually for the indefinite future.

Bruce Ackerman, a professor of law and political science at Yale University, says that U.S. legislative approval could come in two ways: a 2/3s vote in the Senate under Article II treaty language, or a simple majority in both houses under Article I.

Ackerman has also alluded to State Department guidelines set down in 1955, which emphasize the need for congressional action when an agreement "involves commitments or risks affecting the nation" and when it requires "the enactment of subsequent legislation by the Congress."

State Department guidelines also require its legal adviser to provide a memorandum justifying its use of an executive agreement, including an "analysis of the constitutional powers relied upon."

On November 17, 2008, Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA)  wrote a letter to then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi, in which she requested the opportunity to debate and vote on H.R. 6846, the "Iraq Security Agreement Act of 2008." Lee stated in the letter that it is "vitally important the the outgoing Bush administration do nothing to impede the ability of the new administration to extricate our nation from the disastrous decision to invade and occupy Iraq... ." H.R. 6846 provided that no provision in the agreement could have any legal effect unless put in the form of a treaty requiring the advice and consent of the Senate.

Lee's legislation also addressed the question of American military operations being subject to "the approval of the Iraqi government," something only done in the past under treaties ratified by the Senate. It is notable here that both President Obama and the U.S. military commanders in Iraq ceded to the Iraqi government the power to keep U.S. troops in Iraq after the apparent December 31, 2011 deadline.

Besides a treaty ratification process, Article II, Section 8 of the Constitution gives the Congress the power "To make rules for the Governance and Regulation of the Land and naval (sic) Forces." Presumably, Congress could have governed and regulated U.S. troops out of Iraq.

In summary, President Obama relied on a Bush template in removing troops from Iraq. If the Iraqi government had granted U.S. troops immunity from Iraqi law, there would have been from 3,000 to 15,000 troops still in Iraq after December 31, 2011, according to Pentagon high and low troop retention estimates.

JSOC: Obama's Covert Operations Right Hand

Washington Post reporters Dana Priest and William Arkin have made keeping track of U.S. covert intelligence a journalistic specialty. In the September 2, 2011 issue of the Post, the two corroborated on a dissection of the Joint Special Forces Command (JSOC), which has grown to 25,000 troops, a number that fluctuates according to mission.

JSOC has the president's authority to select individuals for its kill list and than to kill, not capture. The CIA has a similar but shorter list. JSOC has its own intelligence division; its own drones and reconnaissance planes; and even its own dedicated satellites. JSOC officers, when working with civilian government agencies in U.S. embassies, dispense with uniforms and wear no names nor rank identifiers.

The only significant difference in JSOC management between George W. Bush and Barack Obama is that Bush rarely briefed JSOC activities to Congress and Obama has insisted on briefing select congressional leaders.

Priest and Arkin write that even before Abu Ghraib photos began circulating in 2004, a confidential report warned that JSOC interrogators were assaulting prisoners and hiding them in secret facilities. They detained mothers, wives and daughters. An investigation over a four-month period in 2004 found that interrogators gave some prisoners only bread and water, in one case for 17 days. Others were locked in cells so cramped they could not stand up nor lie down, while their captors played loud music. Still others were stripped, drenched with cold water and then interrogated in an air-conditioned room or outside.

JSOC interrogators were, and still are allowed to keep their detainees separate from other prisoners and hold them for up to 90 days.

In 2009, JSOC executed 464 operations and killed 400 to 500 enemy forces in Afghanistan.

The JSOC roles now include tracing the flow of money from international banks to finance terrorist networks and psychological operations.

According to the two reporters, Obama uses JSOC more than did Bush, repeating a pattern found in my blogs, in which Obama follows Bush policies but pursues them more energetically.

Abortion: Obama Needs to Get Back on the Tiger

In the Illinois state senate in 2003, Barack Obama voted against the Induced Infant Liability Act -- which anti-choice people have apparently relabeled The Born Alive Infants Protection Act. Although Obama is portrayed by anti-choice, government coercion people as approving killing of babies after they are born, he defends his vote on two grounds: 1) the bill had technical language which might have "interfered with a woman's right to choose;" and 2) Illinois law already required medical care in such situations.

Obama's next legislative action on abortion was his vote against the Partial Birth Abortion Ban. In defense of that vote, Senator Obama said that a state can properly restrict late-term abortions but they must have a provision to protect the health of the mother. Senator Obama also voted against a bill to make it a crime for anyone other than a mother to accompany a minor across state lines to obtain an abortion.

When Senator Obama became President Obama, one of his first actions was to strike down by executive order the policy that said any organization that receives family-planning funds from the U.S. Agency for International Development cannot offer abortions nor abortion counseling. Obama said his administration would "initiate a fresh conversation on family planning... ." There is no public evidence of such a conversation taking place.

In 2009, President Obama spoke at Notre Dame University and promised those with anti-abortion convictions would be honored by his administration -- he advocated adoption of a "sensible conscience clause."

The Obama administration had another brush with the Catholic position on abortion when the Justice Department defended a grant to the Conference of Catholic Bishops' program of helping victims of sexual trafficking. The ACLU of Massachusetts filed a lawsuit against the grant because Catholic programs don't refer for abortions. Subsequently, in October 2011, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) ended the funding. Critics of the action accused HHS of linking global health grants and "reproductive health" services.

Historically, abortion had been legal in the United States until 1821, when Connecticut became the first state to make abortion after "quickening" -- at about four months -- a crime. By the middle of the twentieth century -- with limited exceptions -- abortion had become illegal in most states.

One of the great ironies of history is that it was primarily Republicans who established the very federal family-planning services that are now such a thorn in the side to the Republican establishment.

President Barack Obama has been very silent about abortion since the speech at Notre Dame. He had an excellent opportunity to weigh in on the issue when a Mississippi amendment that would have defined a fertilized egg as a person came up for a referendum vote. Approval of the referendum would probably have outlawed in-vitro fertilization; criminalized birth control; caused doctors to decline to provide pregnant women with chemotherapy due to fear of legal prosecution; and probably have led to murder charges against doctors who perform constitutionally-protected abortions. Even expectant mothers who use drugs or drink alcohol to excess could be charged with murder.

Much as President Obama would have remained silent on the Ohio referendum to support the stripping of collective bargaining rights from public employees, until he was pushed, with only a few days remaining before the vote, by talk show host Bill Press to support a "no" vote and thus help save collective bargaining rights, he totally ignored the Mississippi referendum. When a state wants to take its residents back to medieval times with a horrendous piece of legislation, the issue becomes too important for the president to remain silent. As it turned out, the referendum, generally expected to pass, was defeated by a vote of 59 to 41 percent.

                                       What Should Obama Have Done or Do on Abortion

Several years ago I read a very exciting article on abortion, which I thought I saved but now can't now find. The article was built around the increasing number of young females -- many of them pro-choice -- entering medical school. They were lobbying their schools to teach abortion procedures; also, these activist students were pushing hard for a greater availability of abortion services through a geographical disbursement of abortion clinics.

Many pro-choice lawmakers complete their statement of support for a woman's right to choose by saying        that abortion "should be rare." Besides the standard argument that unwanted children are more likely to be neglected or even abused, there is the fact of  the large resource-use footprint of the average American. When syndicated columnist Cal Thomas wrote an article reprinted in the Albuquerque Journal, I wrote a letter to the Journal editor, slamming Thomas's contention that Roe v. Wade prevented 50 million Americans from being born and these additional births would have enriched the nation. The core argument in my letter was that increasing the U.S. population by about one-sixth would have greatly increased our oil consumption and placed additional stress on clean water resources -- especially in the American West. Overall, with that increased population, the U.S. would have consumed and would be consuming more of the world's finite resources. A smaller U.S. population is actually good for the rest of the world.

In his book, Beyond Choice, Alexander Sanger, grandson of the family-planning advocate Margaret Sanger, makes the provocative core argument that reproductive health and safety is enhanced by spacing pregnancies. Too little space between pregnancies and teenagers having babies increases the health risk to both mother and infant. Out of all those who would like to weigh in on whether or not an abortion should be performed, the expectant mother is the best one to make that judgment.

President Barack Obama should have adopted the position of the pro-choice female medical students described above, and worked to make abortions much more available in the nation

An Afterword: Rick Pearlstein, a historian who has written on the history of the labor union movement, believes that President Obama is afraid of being burned by association with movements that suddenly spring up. Thus, he largely absented himself from the movement to restore collective bargaining rights to public employees in Wisconsin and Ohio -- including the burgeoning movement to recall Wisconsin's anti-union Governor Scott Walker -- and Obama was silent on the Mississippi referendum to call a fertilized egg a person. Pearlstein says a transformative president must be prepared to ride the tiger and Obama has an anti-tiger phobia.

Concerns Rise on Payroll Tax Cut

When I picked up the Albuquerque Journal yesterday and started reading it, I was pleasantly surprised to find within it a reprinted article written by Jia Lynn Yang of the Washington Post. The article focused on how cutting the payroll tax may undermine Social Security, a strong concern that I have expressed in more than one previous blog.

Yang says that experts, some lawmakers and both public trustees of the Social Security trust fund are worried "that Social Security will lose its status as a protected benefit owed to every working American and instead become politically vulnerable, just like any other government program."

Yang quotes Charles Blohous, one of the two public trustees for Social Security, as saying: "It just seems to me the program both financially and politically will be on a lot rockier footing."

The other public trustee, Robert Reischauer, who is also the president of the Urban Institute, believes extending the payroll tax cut during high unemployment is justified but if continued for a substantial period of time, could "undermine one of the foundational arguments that makes the Social Security program inviolate."

Nancy Altman, co-director of Social Security Works, an advocacy group, describes the payroll tax cut as breaking the "fire wall that has always existed between the trust fund and the operating fund." Altman says that the payroll tax wasn't supposed to be a stimulus mechanism. "Now the payroll tax is this variable thing that goes up and down according to other economic conditions."

Nonetheless, despite these warnings of longer-term negative consequences, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has said he will appoint a conference committee to search for ways to extend the two-month cut for all of 2012.

President Barack Obama may have set a precedent for future presidents to reach for a payroll tax cut as a way to climb out of a recession.