racial set-asides

Dodd-Frank Financial “Reform” Violates Property Rights and Equal-Protection Guarantees

by Hans Bader on January 9, 2011 · 2 comments

in Bailout Watch, Economy, Legal, Property Rights, Regulation

Last week, I described how the Dodd-Frank financial “reform” law passed last summer violates constitutional separation-of-powers safeguards by giving unaccountable bureaucrats the power to seize companies and legislate through administrative fiat.  But that is not the only way Dodd-Frank violates the Constitution.  It also violates property rights and equal-protection guarantees.

For example, it contains racial preferences that were criticized by members of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. It “imposes race and gender employment quotas on the financial industry,” noted economist Diana Furchtgott-Roth in the Washington Examiner. Its ”Section 342 states that race and gender employment ratios must be observed by all government agencies that regulate the financial sector, as well as private financial institutions that do business with the government.”

This unconstitutional requirement is the brainchild of Los Angeles Congresswoman Maxine Waters, the Castro-loving, left-wing ideologue who earlier praised the Los Angeles race riots that destroyed scores of Korean-owned businesses as an “uprising” against injustice. Waters once told a CEO in a public Congressional hearing, “This liberal will be all about socializing . . . .uh, uh . . . would be about, basically, taking over and the government running all of your companies.”

Law Professor Richard Epstein notes that Dodd-Frank is also an unconstitutional “taking” of private property, since it deliberately forces certain banks to process debit card transactions at a loss. (That provision is being challenged in a lawsuit called TCF Bank v. Bernanke. Debit cards did not contribute to the financial crisis in any way, but Dodd-Frank regulates them at the behest of large businesses that objected to being charged any fee by banks for processing debit card payments. Thanks to Dodd-Frank, some customers will now be charged annual fees for their debit cards.)

Dodd-Frank itself contains little “reform,” reinforcing the very features of the status quo that spawned the financial crisis.  Congressional Democrats blocked a GOP amendment that would have reformed the government-sponsored mortgage giants, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and the Obama administration lifted a $400 billion limit on bailing them out and showered their executives with $42 million in pay — even though Treasury Secretary Geithner has admitted that “Fannie and Freddie were a core part of what went wrong” in the financial crisis.

Fannie and Freddie helped spawn the mortgage crisis by buying up risky mortgages and repackaging them as prime mortgages, thus creating an artificial market for junk: “From the time Fannie and Freddie began buying risky loans as early as 1993, they routinely misrepresented the mortgages they were acquiring, reporting them as prime when they had characteristics that made them clearly subprime.”

At the direction of the Obama administration, Freddie Mac ran up more than $30 billion in losses to bail out mortgage borrowers, some of whom had high incomes. Federal regulators sought to make Freddie Mac hide the resulting losses from the SEC and the public.

Dodd-Frank is not unique in containing racial preferences. Many bills backed by Obama are riddled with racial set-asides, including the health care law passed last year. Obamacare has attracted criticism from the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights for containing both racial preferences and lower standards for treatment in predominantly-minority institutions, potentially harming both white applicants and minority patients. This racial discrimination appears to violate court rulings like the Supreme Court’s Adarand decision, and the Rothe and Western States Paving decisions issued by the federal appeals courts.

Financial “Reform” Bill Engages in Racial Engineering, While Ignoring Corrupt Mortgage Giants

by Hans Bader on June 15, 2010

in Bailout Watch, Culture, Economy, Employment, Labor, Legal, Nanny State, Personal Liberty, Politics as Usual, Regulation, Sanctimony, Zeitgeist

Congress and the Obama administration refused to do anything about the corrupt government-sponsored mortgage giants, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, even though administration officials admitted that they were at the “core” of “what went wrong” in our financial system.  Doing so was just “too hard,” they claimed, and too time-consuming.

But they did find time in their financial “reform” legislation to push racial quotas at the Federal Reserve, requiring each Federal Reserve Bank to establish an “Office of Minority and Women Inclusion” to “increase the participation of minority-owned and women-owned businesses in programs and contracts.”  This requirement is the brainchild of Los Angeles Congresswoman Maxine Waters, the Castro-loving, left-wing ideologue who earlier praised the Los Angeles race riots that destroyed scores of Korean-owned businesses as an “uprising” against injustice.

Forget about those pesky Supreme Court decisions saying that racial preferences are presumptively unconstitutional and subject to strict scrutiny, and not permissible to promote “racial balance.”  Apparently, they are obsolete in the era of “hope and change.”  Plenty of other changes are afoot too.  Obama fired an inspector general for exposing corruption by one of his cronies.  And the Obama Justice Department illegally defied the Civil Rights Commission to cover up the fact that the administration let members of the racist, anti-Semitic New Black Panther Party get away with voter intimidation.

Republicans Will Lose Many Seats in Congress Due to Right-Wing Paranoia About the Census

by Hans Bader on March 31, 2010

in Legal, Nanny State, Personal Liberty, Politics as Usual, Precaution & Risk, Privacy, Zeitgeist

Republicans will lose many seats in Congress due to right-wing paranoia about the census and refusal to fill out Census forms, gloats the liberal web site Daily Kos. The number of congressional districts a state gets is based on how many of its citizens return completed Census forms.  Because voters in conservative states are completing and returning Census forms at lower rates than voters in liberal states, conservative states will lose many seats in the House of Representatives that they would otherwise gain due to increases in their population.

Republican-leaning “Red States” will also lose out on billions of dollars in federal funds, which are apportioned based largely on population.

Unlike many things the federal government does, the Census is expressly authorized by the explicit language of the Constitution.  (As a believer in free markets, limited government, and the Constitution, I have criticized some of the legislation backed by the Obama administration as being unconstitutional and beyond Congress’s enumerated powers.  But the Census and the questions it asks are perfectly constitutional, even though some of those questions may seem unnecessary.)

A few white Census respondents are stupidly listing their race as “human” or “some other race” rather than white.  Many commenters at the conservative website Free Republic say they will just refuse to report their race on their Census forms, viewing it as irrelevant.

This inaccurate reporting of racial information may unintentionally prolong racial set-aside programs that are obsolete and no longer necessary.  By making the white percentage of the population appear smaller than it in fact is, such responses can make it easier for the federal government to get away with racial quotas, which are based on so-called disparity studies, which measure the supposed gap between racial percentages in the population and racial percentages in awards of government contracts.  Under Supreme Court rulings like the 1987 Paradise decision, quotas are supposed to be used only as a “last resort” and for no longer than absolutely necessary.  But faulty Census data can give them a new lease on life, even when they serve no valid purpose, and enforce, rather than remedy, discrimination.

Nobel Prize Winning Economist Says Obama Policies Delaying Economic Recovery

by Hans Bader on January 8, 2010 · 3 comments

in Deregulate to Stimulate, Economy, Employment, Energy, Environment, Global Warming, Health and Illness, Healthcare, Insurance, International, Labor, Politics as Usual, Precaution & Risk, Regulation, Sanctimony, Stimulus to Nowhere, Trade

In the Wall Street Journal, Nobel Prize-winning economist Gary Becker and others explain how President Obama’s policies are delaying and retarding the inevitable economic recovery, keeping unemployment high even though the recession Obama inherited was similar to others in the past that gave way to rapid recoveries:

In terms of U.S. output contractions, the so-called Great Recession was not much more severe than the recessions in 1973-75 and 1981-82. Yet recovery from the latest recession has started out much more slowly. For example, real GDP expanded by 7.7% in 1983 after unemployment peaked at 10.8% in December 1982, whereas GDP grew at an unimpressive annual rate of 2.2% in the third quarter of 2009. Although the fourth quarter is likely to show better numbers–probably much better–there are no signs of an explosive take off from the recession. …

In terms of discouraging a rapid recovery, other government proposals created greater uncertainty and risk for businesses and investors. These include plans to increase greatly marginal tax rates for higher incomes. In addition, discussions at the Copenhagen conference and by the president to impose high taxes on carbon dioxide emissions must surely discourage investments in refineries, power plants, factories and other businesses that are big emitters of greenhouse gases.

Congressional ‘reforms’ of the American health delivery system have gone through dozens of versions. The separate bills passed by the House and Senate worry small businesses, in particular. They fear their labor costs will increase because of mandates to spend much more on health insurance for their employees. The resulting reluctance of small businesses to invest, expand and hire harms households as well, because it slows the creation of new jobs and the growth of labor incomes. …

Even though some of the proposed antibusiness policies might never be implemented, they generate considerable uncertainty for businesses and households. Faced with a highly uncertain policy environment, the prudent course is to set aside or delay costly commitments that are hard to reverse. The result is reluctance by banks to increase lending–despite their huge excess reserves–reluctance by businesses to undertake new capital expenditures or expand work forces, and decisions by households to postpone major purchases.

Several pieces of evidence point to extreme caution by businesses and households. A regular survey by the National Federation of Independent Businesses (NFIB) shows that recent capital expenditures and near-term plans for new capital investments remain stuck at 35-year lows. The same survey reveals that only 7% of small businesses see the next few months as a good time to expand. Only 8% of small businesses report job openings, as compared to 14%-24% in 2008, depending on month, and 19%-26% in 2007.

Obama’s $800 billion stimulus package, which failed to cut unemployment, is now pressuring states to raise taxes, thanks to costly requirements it imposed on states at the behest of powerful public-employee unions.

Obama claimed the stimulus package was needed to prevent the economy from suffering from “irreversible decline,” but the Congressional Budget Office admitted that the stimulus package actually would shrink the economy “in the long run.”  Unemployment has skyrocketed past European levels, as big-spending countries have fared worse than thrifty ones.  The Obama Administration claims credit for creating imaginary jobs in non-existent Congressional districts.

As the Examiner notes, “If his stimulus program was approved, Obama promised, unemployment would not go above 8 percent this year. The reality is that it passed 10.3 percent in October. So now the stimulus books are being cooked to mollify an anxious public worried that real-world jobs continue to disappear and angry that Obama has thrown almost $1 trillion down the stimulus rathole.”

The stimulus package actually destroyed thousands of real world jobs by triggering trade wars with Canada and Mexico that killed jobs in America’s export sector (the stimulus package barred a measley 97 Mexican truckers from U.S. roads, a minor NAFTA violation that led to massive Mexican retaliation against U.S. exports of 40 farm products and kitchen goods worth $2.4 billion).  It also is wiping out jobs by inflicting costly mandates on state governments (such as repealing welfare reform, and imposing costly “prevailing wage” regulations and expensive racial set-asides).

The stimulus package has since spawned countless examples of government waste and corruption.  Recently, Obama fired an inspector general, Gerald Walpin, who uncovered millions of dollars of waste and fraud in the AmeriCorps program, including by a prominent Obama supporter, endangering the Obama supporter’s ability to administer federal stimulus spending in Sacramento.  Obama’s alleged justification for firing the inspector general turned out to be false.

Stimulus Package Forces States to Raise Taxes, Harms Economy

by Hans Bader on January 2, 2010 · 2 comments

in Deregulate to Stimulate, Economy, Employment, International, Labor, Politics as Usual, Stimulus to Nowhere, Trade

The federal government’s $800 billion stimulus package, which failed to cut unemployment, is now forcing states and local governments to raise taxes. The Wall Street Journal describes how “stimulus dollars came with strings attached that are now causing enormous budget headaches . . . At the behest of the public employee unions, Congress imposed ‘maintenance of effort’ spending requirements on states. These federal laws prohibit state legislatures from cutting spending on 15 programs,” such as ”welfare, if the state took even a dollar of stimulus cash,” even if a state’s tax revenue has since fallen due to the recession.  “So when states should be reducing” their spending ”to match. . . lower revenue collections, federal stimulus rules mean many states will have little choice but to raise taxes.”

Obama claimed the stimulus package was needed to prevent the economy from suffering from “irreversible decline,” but the Congressional Budget Office admitted that the stimulus package actually would shrink the economy “in the long run.”  Unemployment has skyrocketed past European levels, as big-spending countries have fared worse than thrifty ones.

The Washington Examiner says that “75,000 jobs” Obama has claimed credit for are “clearly imaginary” or “highly doubtful.”  That includes thousands of jobs the administration claims credit for creating in nonexistent Congressional districts. As the Examiner notes:

If his stimulus program was approved, Obama promised, unemployment would not go above 8 percent this year. The reality is that it passed 10.3 percent in October. So now the stimulus books are being cooked to mollify an anxious public worried that real-world jobs continue to disappear and angry that Obama has thrown almost $1 trillion down the stimulus rathole.

The stimulus package actually destroyed thousands of real world jobs by triggering trade wars with Canada and Mexico that killed jobs in America’s export sector (the stimulus package barred a measley 97 Mexican truckers from U.S. roads, a minor NAFTA violation that led to massive Mexican retaliation against U.S. exports of 40 farm products and kitchen goods worth $2.4 billion).  It also is wiping out jobs by inflicting costly mandates on state governments (such as repealing welfare reform, and imposing costly “prevailing wage” regulations and expensive racial set-asides).

The stimulus package has since spawned countless examples of government waste and corruption.  Recently, Obama fired an inspector general, Gerald Walpin, who uncovered millions of dollars of waste and fraud in the AmeriCorps program, including by a prominent Obama supporter, endangering the Obama supporter’s ability to administer federal stimulus spending in Sacramento.  Obama’s alleged justification for firing the inspector general turned out to be false.

Stimulus Package Creates Imaginary Jobs, Destroys Jobs in the Real World

by Hans Bader on November 17, 2009 · 4 comments

in Agriculture, Deregulate to Stimulate, Economy, Employment, International, Labor, Legal, Personal Liberty, Politics as Usual, Precaution & Risk, Sanctimony, Stimulus to Nowhere, Trade

President Obama’s $800 billion stimulus package creates imaginary jobs, while destroying ones in the real world.

Billions from the stimulus are being spent on creating tens of thousands of imaginary jobs in 440 phantom Congressional districts, according to the government’s own web site:

Just how big is the stimulus package? Well for one, it has doubled the size of the House of Representatives, according to recovery.gov, which says that funds were distributed to 440 congressional districts that do not exist. . . . The web site operates on an $84 million budget and is tasked with monitoring the distribution of the $787 billion stimulus package passed by Congress–which, for the record, counts 435 members–in early 2009.

The site’s monitors, however, are not too savvy about America’s political or geographic landscape. More than $2 million was given to the 99th District of North Dakota, a state which has only one congressional district. In order to qualify for 99 districts, North Dakota would have to have a population of about 60 million people, almost 24 million more people than California.

From ABC News:

Here’s a stimulus success story: In Arizona’s 15th Congressional District, 30 jobs have been saved or created with just $761,420 in federal stimulus spending. At least that’s what the website set up by the Obama Administration to track the $787 billion stimulus says.

There’s one problem, though: There is no 15th Congressional District in Arizona; the state has only eight Congressional Districts.

There’s no 86th Congressional District in Arizona either, but the government’s recovery.gov Web site says $34 million in stimulus money has been spent there.

In fact, Recovery.gov lists hundreds of millions spent and hundreds of jobs created in Congressional districts that don’t exist.

The Washington Examiner says that “75,000 jobs” Obama has claimed credit for are “clearly imaginary” or “highly doubtful.” Readers can view its interactive map of “Inflated Jobs by State.”

As the Examiner notes, “If his stimulus program was approved, Obama promised, unemployment would not go above 8 percent this year. The reality is that it passed 10.3 percent in October. So now the stimulus books are being cooked to mollify an anxious public worried that real-world jobs continue to disappear and angry that Obama has thrown almost $1 trillion down the stimulus rathole.”

The stimulus package actually destroyed thousands of real world jobs by triggering trade wars with Canada and Mexico that killed jobs in America’s export sector (the stimulus package barred a measley 97 Mexican truckers from U.S. roads, a minor NAFTA violation that led to massive Mexican retaliation against U.S. exports of 40 farm products and kitchen goods worth $2.4 billion).  It also is wiping out jobs by inflicting costly mandates on state governments (such as repealing welfare reform, and imposing costly “prevailing wage” regulations and expensive racial set-asides).

Obama claimed the stimulus package was needed to prevent the economy from suffering from “irreversible decline,” but the Congressional Budget Office admitted that the stimulus package actually would shrink the economy “in the long run.”  Unemployment has skyrocketed past European levels, as big-spending countries have fared worse than thrifty ones.

The stimulus package has since spawned countless examples of government waste and corruption.  Recently, Obama fired an inspector general, Gerald Walpin, who uncovered millions of dollars of waste and fraud in the AmeriCorps program, including by a prominent Obama supporter, endangering the Obama supporter’s ability to administer federal stimulus spending in Sacramento.  Obama’s alleged justification for firing the inspector general turned out to be false.

Unemployment Rises to 26-Year High of 9.8%; Obama’s Policies Worsen Unemployment and Credit Crunch

by Hans Bader on October 5, 2009

in Bailout Watch, Deregulate to Stimulate, Economy, Employment, International, Labor, Politics as Usual, Stimulus to Nowhere, Trade

Unemployment has risen to 9.8 percent, a 26-year high.

That’s much higher than the Obama administration predicted unemployment would rise, if Congress had refused to pass his $800 billion stimulus package.  The administration claimed unemployment would rise to 8 percent without a stimulus.

Small businesses are finding it more difficult than ever to borrow badly needed money to meet their payrolls.  New financial regulations backed by the administration are contributing to a terrible credit crunch.  Meanwhile, the wealthy Wall Street investment bank Goldman Sachs, perhaps the biggest donor to liberal politicians, received billions of dollars it didn’t even need from the taxpayers’ $170 billion bailout of AIG.

The administration claimed that the stimulus package would deliver a short-run “jolt” that would quickly lift the economy, but unemployment rose very rapidly after its passage, and the package has actually destroyed thousands of jobs in America’s export sector.

Countries that refused to adopt big stimulus packages have fared better than those that imitated Obama. And the biggest-spending countries have suffered worst in the recession.

President Obama claimed the stimulus was needed to prevent an “irreversible decline,” but the Congressional Budget Office said it would actually shrink the economy “in the long run.”  It subsidizes lots of waste, corruption, and welfare, and repeals welfare reform.   It also contains racial set-asides (which are costly) and prevailing-wage rules (which will waste $17 billion).

Stimulus Packages Don’t Work; Obama’s $800 Billion Stimulus Will Shrink the Economy

by Hans Bader on October 1, 2009

in Economy, International, Labor, Legal, Politics as Usual, Sanctimony, Stimulus to Nowhere, Trade

“Stimulus” packages that increase government spending don’t work, notes Harvard economist Robert J. Barro in the Wall Street Journal.

The administration claimed that Obama’s $800 billion stimulus package would deliver a short-run “jolt” that would quickly lift the economy, but unemployment rose rapidly after its passage, and the package has actually destroyed thousands of jobs in America’s export sector.

Countries that refused to adopt big stimulus packages have fared better than those that imitated Obama. And the biggest-spending countries have suffered worse in the recession.

Obama claimed his stimulus package was needed to prevent the economy from falling into an “irreversible decline,” but the Congressional Budget Office repeatedly admitted that the stimulus package will shrink the economy “in the long run.” The stimulus package subsidized lots of government waste and corruption.

Obama’s welfare-filled stimulus package largely repealed welfare reform.  That will result in lower employment and a smaller economy over the long run.

Earlier this year, Obama fired an inspector general, Gerald Walpin, who uncovered waste and fraud in the AmeriCorps program, including by a prominent Obama supporter, affecting his access to stimulus money.

The stimulus package imposes on state governments wasteful racial set-asides and union-backed prevailing-wage requirements. The prevailing-wage requirements will cost $17 billion. Racial set-asides are very costly.

Economies are like children: they naturally grow, unless they are subjected to especially severe abuse and neglect by the government.  So the U.S. economy will turn around by November 2010, despite Obama’s economic mismanagement and wasteful spending.

But long-run economic growth is likely to be much slower thanks to his harmful economic policies, which will massively increase the national debt even while raising taxes.

Civil Rights Commission Criticizes Obama Health-Care Plan’s Racially-Discriminatory Affirmative Action

by Hans Bader on August 12, 2009 · 2 comments

in Healthcare, Legal, Personal Liberty, Politics as Usual, Sanctimony

The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights says Obama’s health-care plan is racially discriminatory. The House health-care bill backed by Obama is filled with “sections that factor in race when awarding billions in contracts, scholarships and grants” and give “preferential treatment to minority students for scholarships.” Taxpayers of all races will end up paying more because of these arbitrary racial preferences. The Civil Rights Commission has concluded that this racial discrimination is unjustified, and that it will neither “reduce health care disparities among racial and ethnic groups,” nor “improve health care in underserved areas.”

Earlier, I wrote about other provisions backed by Obama that would mandate affirmative action in health care to promote “cultural competence” — whatever that means — and fund left-wing community organizers. “ObamaCare” also contains preferences for illegal aliens, who are exempt from its taxes and penalties, but can access its benefits due to lack of eligibility verification safeguards. The safeguards were blocked by liberal lawmakers allied with Obama.

Historically, affirmative action did not apply to health-care in general, only to employment, education, and government contracts, although Obama has advocated expanding it to health-care in his published writings. When critics of affirmative action passed state constitutional amendments banning racial preferences in California, Michigan, and Nebraska, they applied such bans only to “employment,” “education,” and “contracting,” because it never occurred to them that anyone would advocate affirmative action elsewhere. But Obama seems determined to go further than any other president in pushing affirmative action. In his 2006 book “The Audacity of Hope,” he advocated race-based “affirmative action” in the form of “targeted programs to eliminate existing health disparities between minorities and whites.”

Earlier, the Civil Rights Commission chided the Obama Administration for letting an Obama poll-watcher and Democratic official get away with racist voter intimidation against non-black voters in Philadelphia (even though they were caught on videotape wielding a nightstick and using racial epithets) and for backing a hate-crimes bill designed to allow people who have been found innocent of hate crimes in state court to be reprosecuted all over again in federal court.

One of Obama’s own advisers says the Obama Administration’s health-care plan will harm people with insurance while raising their taxes. ObamaCare will take away 5 important freedoms, notes a CNN commentary. It will also destroy many affordable health-care plans while breaking Obama’s campaign promises.

“Join Your Fellow Pervs for Some Explicit, Twisted Fun” Courtesy of Obama’s Stimulus Package

by Hans Bader on August 11, 2009 · 2 comments

in Economy, Healthcare, Legal, Personal Liberty, Politics as Usual, Sanctimony, Stimulus to Nowhere

“Join your fellow pervs for some explicit, twisted fun,” urged a recipient of more than $25,000 from Obama’s $800 billion stimulus package, which received the money through the National Endowment for the Arts. The stimulus is also being spent on “nude simulated-sex dances, Saturday night ‘pervert’ revues,” and “pornographic horror films.” While providing taxpayer funds for “numerous” sexually perverse projects, and lots of money for welfare, the stimulus package has done little for America’s roads and bridges.

Why? Because feminist leaders complained that rebuilding roads and bridges would employ working-class men, who have borne the brunt of the recession, rather than women or the “sexually diverse.” Unemployment is very high among transportation and construction workers, who are overwhelmingly male. The vast majority of people who have lost their jobs in the current recession are male — 82%. But the stimulus package is not aimed at helping them. In response to demands from feminist leaders, the Obama Administration rewrote the stimulus package to largely exclude them, as Christina Hoff Sommers has chronicled at length.

The Obama Administration purged the stimulus package of most of the investments in roads and bridges originally suggested by economists, and filled it instead with welfare and social spending, out of political correctness, after feminist leaders complained that building and repairing roads and bridges would put unemployed blue-collar men to work, rather than women.

As Christina Hoff Sommers points out, “Men are bearing the brunt of the current economic crisis because they predominate in manufacturing and construction, the hardest-hit sectors, which have lost more than 3 million jobs since December 2007. Women, by contrast, are a majority in recession-resistant fields such as education and health care, which gained 588,000 jobs during the same period.”

But when the Administration floated the concept of “an ambitious . . . stimulus program to modernize roads, bridges, schools, electrical grids, public transportation, and dams” as a way of “reinvigorating the hardest-hit sectors of the economy,” “Women’s groups were appalled,” asking “Where are the New Jobs for Women?” and denouncing what they called “The Macho Stimulus Plan.”

The Obama Administration quickly knuckled under to this pressure, replacing its recovery package with an $800 billion stimulus package that instead “skews job creation somewhat towards women” by spending money instead on social services like welfare that are administered mostly by female employees.

“A recent Associated Press story reports: ‘Stimulus Funds Go to Social Programs Over ‘Shovel-ready’ Projects.’ A team of six AP reporters who have been tracking the funds find that the $300 billion sent to the states is being used mainly for health care, education, unemployment benefits, food stamps, and other social services.” Or, as another AP report put it, “Stimulus Aid Favors Welfare, Not Work, Programs.” Less than 6 percent of it ended up going to transportation.

The stimulus package also repealed welfare reform, as Slate’s Mickey Kaus and the Heritage Foundation have noted. Obama ran campaign ads claiming to support welfare reform, even though he had actually fought against meaningful welfare reform as an Illinois legislator. The stimulus package largely repeals the welfare-reform law passed by Congress in 1996.

Obama claimed the stimulus package was needed to prevent the economy from suffering from “irreversible decline,” but the Congressional Budget Office admitted that the stimulus package would shrink the economy “in the long run.” The stimulus package has since destroyed thousands of jobs in America’s export sector, and subsidized countless examples of government waste and corruption.

Recently, Obama fired an inspector general, Gerald Walpin, who uncovered millions of dollars of waste and fraud in the AmeriCorps program, including by a prominent Obama supporter, endangering the Obama supporter’s ability to administer federal stimulus spending in Sacramento.

The stimulus package also imposes on states racial set-aside requirements and prevailing-wage requirements, which increase the cost to taxpayers of government contracts. The prevailing-wage requirements will inflate the cost of state construction and transportation projects by at least $17 billion. Racial set-asides also are very costly to taxpayers.

Racial quotas, set-asides, and affirmative action are also mandated by Obama’s health-care plan, drawing criticism from the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, reports today’s Washington Times. Earlier, the Commission criticized the Obama Administration for turning a blind eye to racist voter intimidation by black panthers, including an Obama poll watcher and Democratic official who used a nightstick and racial epithets to drive white voters away from a Philadelphia polling place.

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