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Showing posts with label Jack Lew. Show all posts

Thursday, June 7, 2018

Over And Over Obama Administration Told Lies!

The Obama Administration LIED To The American People. Repeatedly. Here's The Proof.

ByBEN SHAPIRO

June 6, 2018

The Obama administration lied to the American people.

A lot.

The latest proof of their dishonesty: according to the Associated Press, the Obama administration attempted to end-around its own sanctions in order to give cash to the worst terror sponsor on the planet. Here’s the report:

The report by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations revealed that under President Barack Obama, the Treasury Department issued a license in February 2016, never previously disclosed, that would have allowed Iran to convert $5.7 billion it held at a bank in Oman from Omani rials into euros by exchanging them first into U.S. dollars. If the Omani bank had allowed the exchange without such a license, it would have violated sanctions that bar Iran from transactions that touch the U.S. financial system.

Only the fact that U.S. banks didn’t want to violate American law prevented Iran from getting its hands on $5.7 billion more in U.S. dollars. As Senator Rob Portman (R-OH) explained, “The Obama administration misled the American people and Congress because they were desperate to get a deal with Iran.” The Obama administration repeatedly lied — over and over again — about their supposed unwillingness to allow Iran “access to the US financial system.” Obama’s Treasury Secretary Jack Lew even testified to that effect.

So, what did Team Obama have to say about all of this? Unnamed Obama officials told the AP that they were acting “in line with the spirit of the deal,” and that the lies were justified because they were attempting to debunk arguments that Team Obama wanted to give even more concessions to the Iranians. Which is somewhat like arguing that Bill Clinton didn’t lie about Monica Lewinsky, he just wanted to debunk rumors that he had sex with an intern.

The Obama administration activity on behalf of Iran went even further, the AP reports. In March 2016, Obama officials including execrable Secretary of State John Kerry “fanned out across Europe, Asia and the Middle East trying to convince banks and businesses they could do business with Iran without violating sanctions and facing steep fines.” In other words, the Obama administration became the foreign ministry for the mullahs in Iran. The AP continues:

That same week, the AP reported that the Treasury had prepared a draft of a license that would have given Iran much broader permission to convert its assets from foreign currencies into easier-to-spend currencies like euros, yen or rupees, by first exchanging them for dollars at offshore financial institutions.

The draft involved a general license, a blanket go-ahead that allows all transactions of a certain type, rather than a specific license like the one given to Oman’s Bank Muscat, which only covers specific transactions and institutions. The proposal would have allowed dollars to be used in currency exchanges provided that no Iranian banks, no Iranian rials and no sanctioned Iranian individuals or businesses were involved, and that the transaction did not begin or end in U.S. dollars.

Obama administration officials at the time assured concerned lawmakers that a general license wouldn’t be coming. But the report from the Republican members of the Senate panel showed that a draft of the license was indeed prepared, though it was never published.

And when questioned by lawmakers about the possibility of granting Iran any kind of access to the U.S. financial system, Obama-era officials never volunteered that the specific license for Bank Muscat in Oman had been issued two months earlier.

This is the second story this week demonstrating that Team Obama lied to Americans about the Iran deal, which Obama treasured so dearly.

On Tuesday, the Iranian government announced that they had completed a new centrifuge assembly at their Natanz facility — just a month after President Trump killed the Iran nuclear deal. This is deeply suspicious, given their supposed acquiescence to disarmament under that deal. Here's how Obama fanboys at The New York Times reported that odd development:

While Iran said it would keep enrichment within limits set by the 2015 nuclear accord, the center’s opening seemed to signal that it could swing to industrial-level enrichment if that agreement, which the United States withdrew from last month, should further unravel. ... Under the 2015 nuclear deal, Iran stopped enriching uranium to the 20 percent level that would allow for rapid development of a nuclear weapon and agreed to a limit of under 5 percent. It will adhere to that limit, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said in a speech on Monday.

Yes, surely the mullahs who lied about their nuclear program for well over a decade would never have lied to us, facilitated by the obsequious Obama administration.

And, of course, the Obama administration lied constantly during the Iran negotiations about the supposedly "moderate" Iranian regime that had opened the door to those negotiations, with serial confabulator Ben Rhodes taking the lead. Rhodes later bragged about his "echo chamber" strategy to anyone who would listen.

We keep hearing that the Trump administration is historically dishonest. But the same press saying so largely overlooked and in many cases actively covered for Team Obama’s dishonesty on the Iran deal, beyond even covering for Team Obama’s rampant dishonesty on issues ranging from Libya to Obamacare. Obama goes around bragging that his administration was scandal-free. That’s factually untrue. But his administration was largely criticism-free thanks to a media replete with his supporters.

Sunday, April 3, 2016

Hell Will Be Paid By US And Others For Setting The Table Allowing Iran To Get The Bomb

Obama: Iran not following 'spirit' of deal

3520

By Julian Hattem - 04/01/16 06:46 PM EDT

President Obama on Friday criticized Iranian leaders for undermining the “spirit” of last year’s historic nuclear agreement, even as they stick to the “letter” of the pact.

In comments following the Nuclear Security Summit in Washington, Obama denied speculation that the United States would ease rules preventing dollars from being used in financial transactions with Iran, in order to boost the country’s engagement with the rest of the world.

Instead, Obama claimed, that Iran’s troubles even after the lifting of sanctions under the nuclear deal were due to its continued support of Hezbollah, ballistic missile tests and other aggressive behavior.

“Iran so far has followed the letter of the agreement, but the spirit of the agreement involves Iran also sending signals to the world community and businesses that it is not going to be engaging in a range of provocative actions that are going to scare businesses off,” Obama said at a press conference.

“When they launch ballistic missiles with slogans calling for the destruction of Israel, that makes businesses nervous.”

“Iran has to understand what every country in the world understands, which is businesses want to go where they feel safe, where they don’t see massive controversy, where they can be confident that transactions are going to operate normally,” he added. “And that’s an adjustment that Iran’s going to have to make as well.”

Months after the U.S. and other global powers lifted sanctions against Iran in exchange for limits on its nuclear program, Iranian leaders complain that they have yet to reap the benefits.

“Our banking trade, our efforts to return wealth from their banks, various kinds of businesses that require financial services — all of these are still facing problems,” Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said in an address last month. “When we investigate the issue, it becomes obvious that [the banks] are afraid of the United States.”

Despite the lifting of sanctions, American companies are still banned from doing business in Iran and foreign banks are prohibited from using the U.S. dollar for their Iranian dealings. Earlier this week, multiple reports indicated that the White House was considering easing financial rules to let foreign companies use the dollar to do business with Iran.

But on Friday, Obama appeared to shoot the idea down.

“That’s not actually the approach that we’re taking,” he said.

“It is not necessary that we take the approach of them going through dollar transactions,” he added. “It is possible for them to work through European financial institutions as well.”

Instead, Obama said, Treasury Secretary Jack Lew and other U.S. officials would help “provide clarity” to global businesses about what kinds of work they can do in Iran under current rules.

Sunday, October 25, 2015

Carson Makes More Sense On Debt Issue. Someone Has To Address The Elephant In The Room

BEN CARSON: I'LL FREEZE NATIONAL DEBT

Calls endless borrowing 'No. 1 national security threat'

Published: 13 hours ago

WASHINGTON – Dr. Ben Carson, the only close rival to Donald Trump in Republican presidential polls, says he will do something no president or Congress has done in a long time – freeze the debt, stop borrowing, force Washington to live within its means. It is a radical prescription to solve a problem Dr. Carson characterizes as “the No. 1 national security threat.”

In a commentary headlined, “Righting the Ship of State,” published exclusively on WND.com, Carson, a retired neurosurgeon who originally stunned the nation with a rebuke to President Obama’s Obamacare plans during a speech at the 2013 National Prayer Breakfast – immediately prompting chatter that he would run for president, noted the debt is $18.5 trillion today.

That’s “more than double what it was when Barack Obama took office in January 2009,” he wrote.

“While America faces several very real existential threats in the 21st century, our ballooning debt is one impending crisis that is worse than any other threat. If not addressed, this threat is certain to bring down our great country,” he warned.

He pointed out that no one – from either a Democrat White House or a Republican-led Congress, has “offered a plan to stop it, let alone reduce it. Borrowing and spending without limit is the new normal inside the beltway. Each year, Congress and the Executive joust over raising the debt limit, rationalizing that they are really just paying last year’s bills. There’s just one problem: This exercise is completely unsustainable and will eventually, without any doubt, result in catastrophe for the U.S. government and the U.S. economy,” he said.

Congress actually is facing right now another demand to boost the debt limit – with a deadline scarcely two weeks out.

Carson’s promise?

“I plan to address this on my first day in office – Jan. 20, 2017. Here’s what I will do on Day One. I will tell the nation that, beginning immediately, we will no longer borrow money from future generations to sustain the growth of government or empower it over ordinary Americans.”

He said cuts will be made, programs ended, departments and agencies streamlined and waste eradicated.

“Washington will live within its means just like ordinary Americans,” he wrote.

Actually, there are several possible blockages to more and more borrowing and spending. The U.S. House at any point could have, as WND CEO and co-founder Joseph Farah pointed out in his “No More Red Ink” campaign in recent years, simply by not authorizing spending.

The Constitution requires that all spending bills originate in the House.

The president also can do the same by not signing a bill, even if it was approved by Congress.

Carson said he will not play the game of chicken every time the nation’s borrowing reaches its statutory limit.

Read Dr. Ben Carson’s commentary right now!

“I will make this announcement immediately so that we can begin planning, conferring and making intelligent decisions,” he said.

Promising to make sure existing loan obligations are paid, he said the solution is to “stop spending and borrowing beyond our means.”

Will he try to crash the system with funding cutoffs?

image: http://www.wnd.com/files/2015/06/Carson.png

Ben Carson

No, but he said the only way to get that limit increased would be for it to be necessary while “Congress commits to a viable legislative program with defined action items for budget reform that puts this country on a path of long-term fiscal discipline.”

What’s needed first to get out of a hole, he noted, is to “stop digging.”

“A long history of bipartisan profligacy will end on my watch,” he said. “The time is now. Today is the day of reckoning. I ask every American to stand with me in doing what is right and necessary to save America from its greatest security threat and from the inevitability of economic catastrophe.”

Farah, who launched the “No More Red Ink” campaign in January 2011 following the Republican takeover of the House of Representatives, said he is suspending the campaign because “there’s no chance the Republicans in the House are listening to the will of the people.”

The campaign generated more than 1 million red letters to House Republicans urging them to freeze the debt limit.

“Our only hope,” he said, “is that a Republican president in 2017 will take the bull by the horns and use the debt limit to extract major cuts in the budget or that he or she will simply freeze the debt and force cuts to balance revenues with spending. I’m grateful we’re starting to hear such talk from Dr. Carson and Donald Trump. The hour is late, and this borrowing-and-spending is indeed making this the No. 1 security threat to the nation.”

WND reported only this summer that the Obama administration was warning Congress that it needs to raise the nation’s debt ceiling – the maximum the government can legally borrow – beyond its level then of $18,113,000,000,000.00 because officials already are having to juggle the books to keep the balance in the black.

The issue repeatedly has been the source of conflict in Washington, with a standoff with Obama in 2011 leading to a downgrade in the nation’s credit rating by one rating agency and another in 2013 developing into a two-week shutdown of some portions of government when Barack Obama refused to negotiate with Congress.

Over the summer, according to CNN, Treasury Secretary Jack Lew dispatched to leaders of the legislative bodies a letter telling them they need to raise the ceiling, and soon.

Or lawmakers could, according to another plan from the Government Accountability Office, simply eliminate the ceiling entirely.

To give the president virtually unlimited borrowing authority.

The GAO report said such a move would eliminate the possibility there would be no money available to pay interest on the nation’s debt when it comes due.

Reported CNN, “This scenario would also reduce the potential for disruptions to financial markets well before a deadline that approaches for defaulting on the debt.”

The debt ceiling then of $18,113,000,000,000.00 was reached in mid-March, but administration officials say they were operating the government on “extraordinary measures” – essentially transferring funds around, utilizing those accounts with balances and delaying scheduled payments for things like retirement benefit accounts.

Estimates then were that those mechanisms will expire sometime probably in October.

That now has arrived.

image: http://www.wnd.com/files/2015/04/rush-limbaugh-no-glasses-hand-up-600.jpg

Rush Limbaugh

The debt ceiling already has been raised 74 times in the last five decades, including five times so far under Obama.

Congress had passed the Temporary Debt Limit Extension Act in February 2014, and that simply suspended the debt limit for Obama. But that expired in March of this year, and the new limit of $18,113,000,000,000.00 was set.

The national debt clock recently (the numbers change constantly) estimated that the debt liabilities per person totaled $57,026. But because there are many who do not pay taxes, the per taxpayer liability is $154,433.

When Carson addressed the prayer breakfast, with Obama in his audience, he earned the instant praise of talk-radio icon Rush Limbaugh.

Specifically, Carson pointed out that medical health savings accounts would be a far better solution to America’s health-care issues than the universalized Obamacare.

Carson said at the time, “When a person is born, give him a birth certificate, an electronic medical record, and a health savings account to which money can be contributed – pretax – from the time you’re born ’til the time you die. When you die, you can pass it on to your family members, so that when you’re 85 years old and you got six diseases, you’re not trying to spend up everything. You’re happy to pass it on, and there’s nobody talking about death panels.”

“I want to spend some time here … on Dr. Benjamin Carson,” Limbaugh said at the time. “You don’t hear people speak this way. The Republicans don’t speak this way to Obama. … Here you have the guy who’s head of neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital at the National Prayer Breakfast. … [and] in 43 seconds, the director of neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins gave the answer to Obamacare.

“In 43 seconds.

“It’s not 2,700 pages, and it doesn’t enlarge the government. It doesn’t hire 16,000 IRS agents, and it covers everybody.”

Read Dr. Ben Carson’s exclusive WND commentary right now!

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Wednesday, April 1, 2015

US Leadership Around The Continues To Fall.Middle East Collapsing, Economy In The Dumper And Now US Loses On The World Economic Arena.

WEALTH OF NATIONS

Lead, America, or Get Out of the World’s Way

While all eyes are on the Iran negotiations, on the other side of the world, Jack Lew’s visit to China shows how far U.S. prestige has fallen.

The United States is doing a poor job of leading the global economy. But apparently we won’t let anyone else lead it either. In a world increasingly defined by the global flow of goods and services, Washington finds not just curiously adrift but actively at odds with itself and a coherent approach.

That was particularly apparent this week as Treasury Secretary Jack Lew traveled to Beijing for meetings in preparation for the upcoming U.S-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue. High on Lew’s agenda was the attempt (largely unsuccessful) to dent a project dear to Beijing: the creation of an alternate international lending institution called the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. The bank has been championed by China as an alternative to the World Bank and other international development institutions, in no small part because the United States has resisted allowing China to have larger say in how the established institutions are run.

It may not be surprising that the United States has viewed China’s moves with suspicion. While official China’s rhetoric has been all about the needs for more financing of vital Asian projects than current institutions allow, the move to set up a new bank with at least $50 billion in capital led by China is not purely about projects; it’s also about prestige.

Washington has responded by trying to convince its allies not to join the bank, whose founding members had to declare by March 31. Americans have been cautioning against the new bank on the grounds that it will lack the protections embedded in the World Bank charter about corruption, transparency and environmental costs. Those may be fair issues, but they have not deterred more than 40 countries from joining the efforts, including notable U.S. allies such as Great Britain, Germany, South Korea and Australia.

What a difference from nearly two decades ago, when the United States—then standing at a much higher stature in the world economy—successfully squelched an effort to build such a regional bank during the Asian currency crisis. What a difference as well from the degree to which the United States was the guardian of the global economic system and viewed as both lender and consumer of last resort until the financial crisis of 2008-2009. Before then, the United States not only acted to stave off of meltdowns hither and yon (albeit not always giving the best advice) but was seen by many, China above all, as a model for how an economy should be managed. The financial crisis, because it began on Wall Street, severely dented international confidence in the United States. So did the dithering over the debt ceiling in the summer of 2011, which the rest of the world took as a sign that some American politicians would be willing to commit ritual economic suicide on points of principle regardless of how they imperiled the economic health of the world.

It isn’t only the formation of a China-led bank that exposes an America adrift. The inability of the United States to halt the launch of the bank is oddly juxtaposed to its inability to move forward on one of the most important negotiations in the world today: the formation of the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Unlike the bank, this trade deal has the enthusiastic support of the Obama administration. It is vast multilateral plan to open up the entire Pacific Ocean to free trade, stemming from Chile to Japan. It would in its way be the equivalent to the North American Free Trade agreement but on a much wider scale, and it has been in the works for some time.

Now, as the negotiations enter their latest phase, the plan has not surprisingly come under attack from both the left and the right in the United States. The Elizabeth Warren camp of the Democratic Party has warned that a new, vast free-trade agreement will further erode American jobsand wages, and have been actively seeking to halt it. In the House of Representatives, members of the Tea Party caucus and others so distrust the Obama administration that they oppose any extension of negotiating powers (known as “fast track authority”) that are almost certainly needed to get the deal done.

So here is where we stand: the Obama administration signals ambivalence about China’s efforts to take a more active role in international trade and development; many in Congress are trying to halt more free trade. The result is a worst of both possible worlds. The United States is effectively saying the rest of the globe, “We aren’t going to spend much more effort facilitating more commerce and greater flow of goods and services, but we don’t want anyone else to either.” That is the equivalent of saying that we don’t want to dance, and neither can you.

Many countries question free trade and wonder whether it harms domestic wages. It is true that the rise of free trade in the modern era has coincided with stagnant wages in the developed world. The formation of the World Trade Organization and NAFTA, as well as the European Union and others, all stem from the same late 1980s and early 1990s period when middle class incomes stopped growing in the United States. Multinational corporations, meanwhile, have seen no dearth of profit over the same period.

Yet the arguments against trade almost always leave out the cost side of the equation, and the degree to which most goods ranging from food to household necessities have plunged in price over the same period, care of both globalized supply chains and new technologies. The U.S. economy, in particular, has in aggregate thrived, even as the distribution of those rewards has been deeply uneven.

You can believe that the U.S. economic system is failing at fairness and still recognize that free trade generates massive benefits for both Americans and the world. That said, let’s say you truly, madly, deeply believe that any further extension such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership will harm America and that the best course is to halt and perhaps reverse course behind a Fortress America that satisfies its own economic needs with less recourse to the world at large. If so, then trying to halt China’s attempt to fill a leadership vacuum is both hypocritical and delusional.

It has to be one or the other. Either we actively engage a world that is more than ever committed to the freer flow of goods as a means to increase prosperity and enhance the lives of billions of emerging members of the middle class, or we do not and then allow others to lead the way. Choosing to focus on our domestic issues and withdraw is a coherent choice, even though it is likely to fail. But doing that and then attempting to thwart the rise of China as economic leader is not coherent and will do even more harm.

Only the White House can speak with one voice here, and that would require heartily embracing China’s new bank and then actively pursuing the authority to negotiate the trade pact, which many Republicans in Congress do support. A unified approach in this arena won’t magically restore America’s middle class or solve manifold domestic issues; it would at least turn what is now a muddle into a viable path. It wouldn’t take much, but it would mean a lot.

Monday, January 26, 2015

Anyone Listening? Obama Does NOT Care About Remembering Anything But Muslims!

Obama Will Not Attend 70th Anniversary of Auschwitz Liberation

Heads of state from France, Germany, Belgium, Austria, the Netherlands, and Denmark will be present

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AP

BY: Daniel Wiser
January 23, 2015 5:01 pm

Treasury Secretary Jack Lew will represent the United States at the 70th anniversary ceremony for the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp on Tuesday—rather than President Barack Obama or Vice President Joe Biden—while other countries are slated to send their heads of state.

Tuesday’s ceremony will likely be the last major anniversary where a significant number of survivors of the Nazi camp are present. About 300 are expected to attend, and most of them are in their 90s or older than 100. Nazi authorities killed 1.1 million people at the camp, mostly Jews, which was liberated by the Soviet army in January 1945.

The New York Times reported on the foreign dignitaries that would be present:

A preliminary list of those attending includes President François Hollande of France, President Joachim Gauck of Germany and President Heinz Fischer of Austria, as well as King Philippe of Belgium, King Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands and Crown Prince Frederik of Denmark. The United States delegation will be led by Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew.

President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia said he would not attend because his schedule was too crowded and because he had not received an invitation. Museum officials said no head of state had received one. Mr. Putin had attended the 60th anniversary ceremony in 2005 — it was Soviet troops, after all, who liberated the camp in 1945 — but relations between Russia and Poland have soured over the conflict in Ukraine.

British Prime Minister David Cameron visited the camp last month and toured it with the state museum director.

Bernadette Meehan, National Security Council spokeswoman, said in an email that, “President Obama will be in India, on a long-scheduled trip.”

The Obama administration faced a barrage of criticism earlier this month when it declined to send Obama or Secretary of State John Kerry to a march in Paris expressing solidarity with the victims of the Charlie Hebdo terrorist attack. The heads of Great Britain, Germany, and Israel all attended.