Franklin Otorofani
Franklin Otorofani is a Nigerian attorney, and holds LLB. Degree (Hons) Jos, and BL, degrees in 1988 and 1989 respectively. He has worked severally as Legal Draftsman in the Oyo State Ministry of Justice Department of Legal Drafsmanship and practiced law extensively in Nigeria in the law firm of Osaheni Uzamere and Co. He was Principal Attorney in the law firm of Franklin Ojobor and Co. in Benin City. He emigrated to the United States during the terrible years of Abacha's despotic rule and developed a second career in HealthCare Management. An expert in Healthcare Revenue Cycle Management (RCM), he holds a Post-Grad. Diploma in Health Technology from (SUNY) New York, and currently holds the twin positions of Denial Manager and Outsourcing Liaison Officer, (DMLO) in a major New York Hospital. A published poet and prolific writer, whose articles have appeared in several newspapers, trade journals, and Online publications, he is a frequent contributor to current issues affecting Nigeria and Africa and has two major publications in the works, in the fiction genre, due out soon. A labor and environmental activist, he has wide interests in reading, current affairs, environmental issues, nature, sports, movies, and cultural matters.
Jeannot Ramambazafy
Is President Barrack Hussein Obama presiding over the decline of the United States of America? Now that is a poser that was far from the mind of anyone in 2008 when then candidate Barrack Hussein Obama stormed the US political arena with electrifying presidential campaigns that humbled and severally intimidated his older and more experienced opponents in the persons of Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton in the Democratic presidential primaries, and later wartime hero and Republican presidential candidate, John McCain of the state of Arizona. The truth of the matter is that Obama was simply an usual political phenomenon that bestrode the US political landscape like a colossus whose popularity, anchored on soaring rhetoric, was unmatched by any other in the crowded but otherwise stale and uninspiring presidential political field of the day.
Today, however, that is the poser that is on the lip of every American, or at least, majority of them going by the results of recent public opinion polls about Obama’s job approval. Obama’s numbers are not looking pretty and they have not been looking pretty either for a long while now since the early days when his numbers were in the stratosphere. It’s a sad and regrettable thing indeed that a man on whom many had pinned their hopes has turned out this disappointing to the point that buyers’ remorse is fast setting in, in the American electorate regarding their votes for Obama in 2008 presidential election.
When Obama assumed the leadership of the United States on January 4, 2009, after his decisive triumph over McCain, so much was riding on his promise of “Change we can believe in,” and his slogan of “Yes we can.” If electoral sloganeering could win election those two sure did it for Obama, precisely because Americans believed in them or at least majority of them believed in them and dismissed the cautionary notes of skeptics and cynics who called him naïve and inexperienced and therefore not up to the job of C-in-C of the United States and also questioned his economic management credentials having not held any executive position in life but had only engaged in community organizing in Chicago— hardly a qualification for being US president. However, smarting under a welter of both economic and financial crisis, Americans brushed all of that aside and elected more or less a rookie US senator into the White House to fix the economy and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. With the benefit of hindsight, that was a shot in the dark and a huge political gamble, to say the least, the results of which we are now seeing in the United States and around the world. Now it is looking more like candidate Obama actually meant “Yes we can’t,” and “Change we can’t believe in” though he offered those lines in the reverse.
Let’s get right down to it: Across the Atlantic ocean Europe as a whole is currently in decline both economically, militarily and morally under the leadership of ultra liberal, leftwing leaders whose nanny state policies that reward the lazy and punish the hardworking with crushing tax burdens have driven the continent into a deep hole from which it struggling to dig itself out. From Ireland to Spain, Poland to Greece, and other nations in between them, several European states are buckling under the weight of debts they cannot repay and have had to go cap in hand begging for bailouts from their more prosperous neighbors. A decade ago that was the lot of African nations, but no more. As of today I am not aware of any African nation that is going under, under the crushing weight of debts. That is not to say, however, that Africa is out of the woods yet or that economic conditions in Africa are better than they are in Europe, which is clearly not the case, but to put matters in clear perspective. Yet it is fair to state from available data that economic conditions are improving in many African states with improved economic performances as indicated in rising GDP levels across the board. That is not happening in Europe at this moment in time. Rather than experiencing growth, economic recession is stalking several European nations at this moment in time that show no signs of thawing sparking riots all over Europe. Developed or not, Europe has succeeded Africa as the world biggest debtor continent that cannot repay her debts without asking for financial bailouts from international financial institutions and some slightly better positioned member nations within the EU, such as Germany and France.
Besides that, Europe’s military strength is in serious doubt today. In the absence of robust leadership from the United States, NATO, which is almost wholly comprised of European states is currently unable to remove a fly like Muammar Gadaffi from power after France and Britain had zealously jumped into the Libyan purely domestic fray to side with rebels they knew not. That is what liberalism has caused in Europe. Thank goodness the liberals have been thrown out in the recent elections in Spain.
Now, however, the contagion of the pestilence of liberalism has spread to the United States under the presidency of Barrack Hussein Obama. Liberalism is killing the United States from the inside like an indo-parasite inside the body of an otherwise healthy animal. The United States of America, the most powerful nation the world has ever known, is currently on the decline, militarily, economically, diplomatically, and morally—well, just like Europe.
On the economic front the chicks are now coming home to roost after a period of unbridled squander-mania on borrowed money seemingly raised to an art form under the Obama administration. As one prominent Republican and the architect of the government shutdown during the Clinton years, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich characterized Obama’s spending habit not in so many words: Obama is essentially acting like a kid who suddenly found himself in a supermarket with his parents check book in his hand going on a spending binge. Obama inherited a whopping $700 billion TARP money from President GW Bush in the wake of the mortgage crisis to help deal with the crisis. And on top of that he engineered through Democratic controlled Congress close to a trillion dollar American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) stimulus package. So he had both TARP and ARRA windfalls to play with all of a sudden due to the economic crisis and that explains Newt Gingrich description of Obama as acting like a kid in the supermarket with his parent’s checkbook in hand.
What has the Obama administration done with these huge funds, which some Republicans have described perhaps appropriately as “slush funds”? Americans are still asking this very question and getting no real answers because there is little or nothing to show for these humungous bailout funds which seem to have gone into bureaucracy and internal bailouts to municipalities and civil service departments that have no effect on the economy. The “shovel-ready” massive construction projects that Obama had promised with the funding are nowhere to be seen. There is a US government website for ARRA spending touting purported achievements in job creation in certain sectors but the net results have been resoundingly negative. Both TARP and ARRA seem to have brought more recession than economic growth as testified to by the job numbers nearing zero employment as of June. Last month’s disappointing job creation report was nothing short of a disaster just like the previous month of May with the May figures reversed downward by the Commerce department.
The reality now is that the US economy is not just vegetating or sluggish in growth as once thought but actually coming to a screeching halt under the Obama administration even with the almost one trillion dollar ARRA windfall pumped into God knows what. And the Obama administration seems to have run out of ideas of re-inflating the lumbering US economy. Speculations are rife that the Obama Economic Adviser, Timothy Geitner, is on the verge of quitting the administration having failed to deliver on the economy.
True enough Obama inherited a load of debts and free falling economy with hundreds of thousands in monthly layoff of American workers from GW Bush that he had managed to stabilize somewhat to his credit earlier on but the time for shifting blame and buck passing is long past. It is not enough just to stabilize the economy but to engineer growth to be bring back the millions of jobs lost under both his and Bush’s administration, with the huge funding at his disposal. And that initial stability seemingly attained earlier on is gradually slipping away under his watch. Therefore, this wobbly US economy is Obama’s not Bush’s. Period! He was voted in to help fix the economy and he has done a pretty bad job at it in the past three and a half years.
Groaning under the yoke of some $14 trillion debts owed to an assortment of nations the payment of which falls due on August 2, 2011, the US government is on the verge of default on her sovereign debts prompting both Standard and Poor’s and Moody’s to issue stern warnings about downgrading the US “Triple A” sovereign credit rating. Currently as I pen these lines both Congress and the White House are locked in bitter negotiations about how to raise the US debt ceiling to avoid default on August 2, 2011, just around the corner and, at the same time, reduce the budget deficits by trillions of dollars over the long run. While both sides are narrowing their differences to avert economic catastrophe which a default would inflict on the nation and its ripple effects on the global economy, there is no question that whatever agreement that is reached by both parties would only increase the debt burden, not lighten it, at least in the short run because the US has been condemned to deficit budgeting due to its huge amalgam of programs and international commitments which cannot be wished away overnight. That is not to say that a final agreement has been reached or around the corner by both parties. Political brinksmanship and grandstanding, which is Washington’s common staple with an eye to the 2012 elections have both conspired to stymie an early agreement with desperation now setting in. The sticking points: tampering with Medicare and raising taxes on wealthy Americans, both of which are sensitive no-go areas respectively for the Democrats and the Republicans. However, the huge budget deficits will not go away anytime soon regardless of whichever agreement that is reached eventually. There are present commitments that must be met. In fact this year’s budget already has over $1.5 trillion deficits built into it. Medicare which has been raided, almost bankrupted now must be refunded because people have paid into it and expect it to be there for them when they retire. And by current projections that will not happen at its current funding levels. It would be unconscionable to deny people a benefit they had paid into all their working lives with monthly deductions from their paychecks to fund the program, which the government has been dipping its hands into all along to satisfy its huge spending appetite to the point of bankrupting it. There are huge defense budgets, Obama’s hugely expensive healthcare plan derisively dubbed “Obamacare” by the Republicans, as well as the huge interests on the US sovereign debts, amongst others, which will ensure that the US remains committed to deficit budgeting that in turn translates into more borrowing hence the raising of the debts ceiling being currently negotiated between Congress and the White House. This was, in fact, predicted in my earlier article on this subject and it’s coming to pass as you read this piece.
Perhaps nothing signals the decline of the United States under the Obama administration more than the tanking of the US Space Program. The launch of the Atlantis Shuttle to the International Space Station last week marks the end of that program and the US will now have to rely on the Russians and perhaps some private space agencies to ferry her men and cargo to the international Space Station. The agony of those who have worked all their lives in the space industry was written all over their faces on television screens when reality dawned on them that their jobs are gone with the Atlantis into the sky, so to speak. The grounding of the Atlantis on its return would appear to symbolize the grounding of the US economy and indeed of the US in general under the Obama administration, not just the economy.
On the military side, the picture is not any different, but rather frightening. Obama is now negotiating with the terrorist Talibans in Afghanistan and has, in fact, set a date of withdrawal of US troops from that war torn nation reportedly against the advice of his top military brass, who, by the way, engineered the US success against entrenched insurgents in the Iraq war and wrested victory from the teeth of defeat under GW Bush and currently in charge of the US Afghanistan war efforts, General David Petreaus now speculated to be eyeing the US presidency in 2012 to challenge Obama. Possible defeat now stares the US in the face in Afghanistan from the Talibans under Obama. Obama is, in fact, being accused of half-hearted prosecution of the war in Afghanistan and literarily handing victory to the Talibans, who have meanwhile stepped up daring military acts in the last several weeks. And his image of half-hearted Commander-in-Chief and warrior is not helped by the Libyan debacle which this author had warned about from the get go and has now come to pass as NATO is not up to the job without full US commitment to the removal of Muammer Ghadaffi from power.
On the diplomatic front the US is fast losing clout as evidenced in Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu’s talking down on Obama right in front of the Oval Office in a press conference during his last visit. Without using the words himself, he practically told Obama to his face to “shut up” over Obama’s demand that Israel should revert to the 1967 boundaries with the Palestinians as a basis for a Palestinian state, a demand which he voiced just hours before Netanyahu’s visit that upset the Israeli PM.
Even in the Middle East and the Arab world in general, the United States under Obama has come out worse off with the democratic uprisings, liked neither by the public nor the dictators because of his dithering and tentative handling of the uprisings, which demanded clarity of purpose rather than mixed messages, which is what is currently bedeviling the Libyan fiasco. It is now becoming clear that both Britain and France may have spearheaded the Libyan mission while skillfully dragging the US into it in order purposely to showcase and market their new air machines over the Libyan skies. And no sooner did the air raid over Libya began than new contracts for aircraft deliveries started to roll in with US companies losing out in hefty contracts deals by the Indians and others to France under the Obama administration. US companies were totally blindsided and edged out of the deals. Above and beyond all of the above is the huge debt overhang. How much weight can a debt ridden nation like the US truly throw around creditor nations like China, Japan, India, and Russia, for instance, just to mention but a few, realistically speaking? Not a whole lot, and therein lies US weakness on the diplomatic front under the Obama administration for which he is partly to blame.
On the moral front, the US under Obama is going downhill with sex perverts and sexually maladjusted having a field day where abnormal and unnatural sexual relations which are clearly against Biblical teachings in which he professes faith and which he himself had voiced his opposition against during the presidential campaigns have been given a pass, and in the process utterly desecrating the time honored traditional institution of marriage.
In fact, it is hard to put a finger on where the US has prospered under the Obama administration, for decline is everywhere you look. Municipal and state services are shrinking by the day with layoffs and layoffs and more layoffs. Even Obama’s signature achievement of the Healthcare Reform is unraveling by the day with states and the courts nullifying parts of it and rendering those parts inoperable. The healthcare reform Act has become so cannibalized that it is difficult to recognize it today and understand what is left of it. And what’s more, much of it will not even come into effect during his first term anyway, and should he lose his re-election battle, the total repeal of that act will be the first order of business for a Republican president. The only bright spot in this darkened firmament in which the Obama administration is operating seems to be the capture and killing of terror kingpin, Osama Bin Laden, and even here the handling of it has left much to be desired. Why was Bin Laden not brought to trial like Saddam Hussein was under President GW Bush even in Pakistan where he was captured since he was captured alive rather than subjecting him to summary execution and dumping his body at sea? That should have helped to remove every iota of doubt about his capture and killing and the conspiracy theories swirling around. Let’s face it: there are still folks out there who believe that Osama Bin Laden is still alive and that the whole thing was a charade. Conversely, I have heard some claim that Osama had been long dead and this new show was just a charade. Do I believe such theories? No, but the fact that they exist at all should have informed the trial of Bin Laden publicly in order to put such conspiracy theories to rest once and for all, and also for demonstrating compliance with due process as well for which the United States is known and admired the world over. Saddam Hussein’s trial demonstrated that beyond a shadow of doubt under GW Bush and his execution that followed his conviction helped in no small way in removing any hope by his diehard followers of him regaining power again in Iraq to hunt down his enemies thus helping to quell or mitigate the insurgency. The little bump Obama got in public opinion poll days after the capturing and killing of Bin Laden has since evaporated into thin air leaving his numbers in the low 40s actually 46% Job Approval according to Gallup Poll for the month of June, down from 50% in May. The McClatchy-Marist poll paints an even bleaker picture for Obama’s job approval rating. According to this sampling taken from a web report from “Outside the Beltway” website:
“President Barack Obama is in a fragile position as the 2012 campaign begins: Only 37 percent of registered voters approve of his handling of the economy, his lowest rating ever, according to a new McClatchy-Marist poll.
Another ominous sign for Obama: By nearly 2-1, voters disapprove of how he’s handling the federal budget deficit, expected to hit a record $1.5 trillion this fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30.
“It’s a real caution sign … the four-year lease on the White House is very much dependent on how people end up looking at the economy,” said Lee Miringoff, the director of the Marist Institute for Public Opinion, which performed the survey.”
He simply cannot go into the next election in 2012 with those numbers unless something really drastic happens between now and 2012. Obama has been running around courting and raising campaign funds from these fringe groups in the hope of winning their votes but in the process of doing so alienating many of us who stand for real family and traditional values. But the question is, what is he going to run on come 2012 which is around the corner with the Republicans already gearing up take over the Oval office as they did in Congress in last year’s mid term elections? I’m still scratching my head in search of a single achievement that could sell Obama for a second term in office, but I simply can’t find any. He appears to be an all-round failure in the important areas of the economy, defense, diplomacy and the stature of the United States in the world today. He has not provided leadership in the execution of any of the policy thrusts of his administrations but rather waits on others including Congress to lead the charge while he simply lay back in the background. This happened time and again—in the healthcare reform; in immigration; in the Arab streets’ uprising including off course, the case of Egypt and Libya, and it is happening now in the deficit reduction/cum debt ceiling negotiations going on at the moment. While the Republicans have been upfront with their plans for deficit reduction long ago Obama had been late in the game and only just getting seriously engaged now on the issue as if it was an afterthought at the eleventh hour when the deadline is less than three weeks away. This fire brigade approach to governance on issue as serious as potential US debt default leaves much to be desired from the president of the United States.
It is sad to note that the only people in America who seem to have benefitted from the Obama administrations and are therefore happy with him are the fringe groups of sex perverts who seem to be succeeding under Obama in sodomizing America. What a moral tragedy! What moral travesty and an abomination from a man carrying African blood in his veins! African-Americans are hurting badly because black unemployment is double, if not triple the national average and are swarming US prisons in disproportionate numbers. Latinos are hurting badly because Obama has been vacillating and dithering as usual on immigration, which is dear to their heart. Every direction one looks it is doom and gloom under the Obama administration.
There is a lesson here for African nations looking up to Obama for help and inspiration. What inspiration? What help? Obama himself needs help and deliverance from the demons that have suddenly hijacked his presidency to further their narrow morally abominable ends to the detriment of the moral health of the United State—all in the name of equality. A man who was once quoted as saying that one term was enough for a good president to effect lasting achievements in office is now so desperate for a second term that he is prepared to wine and dine with the Devil just to get votes for his second term projects and in the process destroying the moral fabric of the United States and the larger world. He has not shown himself as having true African blood running in his vein though of African parentage.
Why am I so hard on Obama having supported him all along until now? It is because I’m disappointed in him and the quality of his leadership so far, and my support for any leader is not a given but hinged on performance in office and quality of leadership. I must confess, however, that much of my earlier support for Obama had been colored to a great extent by the clearly racist attacks directed at his person on account of his skin color from the equally racist, rightwing arm of the Republican Party, which continues till date as the 2012 elections draw nearer. But it gets to a point where the issues have to be dispassionately evaluated on their merits and dealt with as they are, totally devoid of extraneous considerations as to race or party affiliations. Moreover, at a time when political correctness has been perversely used to silence the voice of wisdom even from the pulpit and where politicians are concerned only with the political benefits they stand to repeat from courting disaffected groups in society, someone has to speak up against these things that are clearly harbingers of destruction and tell truth to power.
I wish I could point to any significant achievement of the Obama administration that is worth all the hopes and expectations of the millions who voted for him because they believed that change was in the air. If there has been any change at all it has been for the worse except off course for the fringe groups that he has been courting. It is not clear, however, whether they alone would put him back in the Oval Office come 2012. The die is cast and if the Republicans get their acts together, Obama may indeed become history quicker than anyone thought back in 2008 when he barnstormed the US political landscape with the mesmerizing slogan of “Change we can believe in.”
Notwithstanding the foregoing, however, I would still rather Obama remained in the White House if only he can be a little more principled and respectful of traditional values that he had himself professed coming in, but which he has since utterly betrayed in office to please fringe groups because of their votes and campaign donations. Political ambition cannot and will not replace God and Godliness. He is, unwittingly, destroying the lives of impressionable younger generations of Americans who are now being made to believe that unnatural sexual relations by same sexes is somehow normal and cool all of a sudden in the 21st century. It is ordinarily horribly difficult to raise children in the United States and frighteningly miserable to grant children an open license or even a signal to regard same sex as acceptable behavior in any society which goes against nature, traditions and culture and; yes, religion. His repeal of the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” (DADT) policy coupled with his refusal to enforce the federal Defense of Marriage Act challenged by fringe groups in court, have opened the floodgate of unbridled agitation from fringe groups that have now culminated in the destruction of the marriage institution in the United States. He is thus, to that extent, responsible for the prevailing moral atrophy in the United States in that regard.
In other words, he has to retrace his steps, because this is not what Americans voted for. The moral atrophy that is immanent in his ultra liberal policies is simply unacceptable to those of us who value traditional values that he seems to have thrown to the dogs in the name of equal rights. Many important segments of the American electorate including independents and young voters have deserted Obama not to mention the older voting block, including, guess what, significant portions of the African-American community according to the polls, hence he is running to cut deals with fringe groups to beef up his chances at the polls in 2012. This rather pessimistic outlook, therefore, is in recognition of the stark realities on the ground which cannot simply be glossed over or wished away. While the Republican presidential field is not particularly inspiring at the moment, there is no question that Obama is in deep trouble going by the polls. And it is largely self-inflicted.
Yes we can’t. This is definitely change we can’t believe in. The scales are off and realities are on—of President Barrack Hussein Obama actually presiding over the rapid and precipitous decline of the all-powerful United States of America. Now, that may not be his wish and desire, but hey, that is the reality.
Franklin Otorofani for www.madagate.com
July 13, 2011