Articulo forbes

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Foirl
SEPTEMBER 27, 2010

OBAMA'S PROBLEM WITH BUSINESS
The oddities go on and on. Obamas Adminisarack Obama is the most antibusiness tration has declared that even banks that want to president in a generation, perhaps in The President isn't their bailout may be refused American history. Thanks to him the exactly a socialist. repayto do so. Onlymoneythe Obama teampermission after clearedera of big government is back. Obama runs up taxpayer debt not in So what's driving his a bank through the Fed's "stress test" was it eligible hostility to private to give taxpayers their money back Even then, dethe billions but in the trillions. He has expanded clared Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, the Adminthe federal government's control over home ^^ istration might force banks to keep themoney. mortgages, investment banking, health care, autos his roots. The President continues to push for stimulus and energy. The Weekly Standard summarizes even though hundreds of billions of dollars in such Obama's approach as omnipotence at home, funds seem to have done little. The unemployment impotence abroad rate when Obama took office in January 2009 was 7.7%; now The Presidents actions are sobizarre that they mystify his it is 9.5%. Yet he wants to spend even more and is determined critics and supporters alike. Consider this headline from the Aug. to foist the entire bill on Americans making $250,000 a year or 18, 2009 issue of the Wall Street Journal: "Obama Underwrites more. The rich, Obama insists, aren't paying their "fair share." Offshore Drilling." Did you read that correctly?You did. The This by itself seems odd given that the top 1% of Americans Administration supports offshore drilling—but drilling off the pay 40% of all federal income taxes; the next 9% of income earnshores of Brazil With Obamas backing, the U.S. Export-Import Bank ers pay another 30%. So the top 10% pays 70% of the taxes; the offered $2 billion in loans and guarantees to Brazil's state-owned bottom40% pays close to nothing. This does indeed seem unoil company Petrobras to finance exploration in the Santos Basin fair—to the rich. near Rio de Janeiro—not so the oil ends up in the U.S. He is fundObama's foreign policy is no less strange. He supports a ing Brazilian exploration so that the oil can stay in Brazil. $100 million mosque scheduled to be built near the site where More strangebehavior: Obamas June 15, 2010 speech in terrorists in the name of Islam brought down the World Trade response to the Gulf oil spill focused not on cleanup strategies Center. Obama's rationale, that "our commitment to religious but rather on the fact that Americans "consume more than 20% freedom must be unshakable," seems utterly irrelevant to the of the worlds oil but have less than 2% of the worldsresources." issue of why the proposed Cordoba House should be conObama railed on about "Americas century-long addiction to structed at Ground Zero. fossil fuels." What does any of this have to do with the oil spill? Recently the London Times reported that the Obama AdminWould the calamity have been less of a problem if America conistration supported the conditional release of Abdel Baset alsumed amere 10% of the worlds resources?
SEPTEMBER 2 7 , 2010 F O R B E S

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HOW HE THINKS
Megrahi, the Lockerbie bomber convicted in connection with the deaths of 270 people, mostly Americans. This was an eye-opener because when Scotland released Megrahi from prison and sent him home to Libya in August 2009, the Obama Administration publicly and appropriately complained. The Times, however,obtained a letter the Obama Administration sent to Scotland a week before the event in which it said that releasing Megrahi on "compassionate grounds" was acceptable as long as he was kept in Scotland and would be "far preferable" to sending him back to Libya. Scottish officials interpreted this to mean that U.S. objections to Megrahi's release were "half-hearted." They released him to his home...