Has President Obama Overstepped His Constitutional Authority As Republicans Claim?

President Barack Obama

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April 25, 2012

By: D. DiFrancesco

We Can’t Wait - President Obama's slogan signifying the administrations unwillingness to wait for Congress to decide on domestic policy issues.

President Obama is not letting congressional gridlock slow our economic growth.

"Without a doubt, the most urgent challenge that we face right now is getting our economy to grow faster and to create more jobs…. we can’t wait for an increasingly dysfunctional Congress to do its job. Where they won’t act, I will."

- President Barack Obama, October 24, 2011

Is President Barack Obama's willingness to use all of the tools at his disposal, and in the process bypassing Congress, appropriate in light of the ongoing gridlock caused by the extreme partisanship and inflexibility that exists in the right wing of the Republican Party?

Selfishly, I would say yes, but does history support this?

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Do Higher Income Tax Rates Produce Lower Unemployment? History Says They Do!

April 18, 2012

By: D. DiFrancesco

Out of my own curiosity, I decided to look at the relationship between the top income tax rates by year and the annual unemployment rate.  My conclusions are based on the years 1950 through 2011.  I would also like to state that I am neither an accountant nor an economist so the statements I am making are my personal opinion based on what I see in the numbers.

The figures used for my conclusions were derived from two sources, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Tax Policy Center.

In the process of doing this analysis I learned some things which I found pretty fascinating...

• The top tax rate during the 61  years being reviewed  occurred in 1953 with a rate of 92% and ironically, the annual unemployment rate was the lowest of any of the years sampled at 2.93%.

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Mitt Romney, Wayne LaPierre, and the NRA Perfect Together...None Of Them Can Tell The Truth

National Rifle Association President Wayne LaPierre

Back in November of 2011, then executive vice president of the National Rifle Association Wayne LaPierre said, "It's bad politics to be on the wrong side of the Second Amendment at election time.  They're [Democrats] trying to fog the issue through the 2012 election and deceive gun owners into thinking he's [President Obama]  something he's not, which is pro-Second Amendment."

As expected the portrayal of President Obama as being anti-gun is resurfacing as the 2012 Presidential election nears, with Mitt Romney jumping on the pro-gun bandwagon in an attempt to score brownie points with the NRA and its now president Wayne LaPierre.

Romney speaking at the Annual National Rifle Association Convention in St. Louis on April 13, 2012 said, "We need a president who will enforce current laws, not create new ones that only serve to burden lawful gun owners. President Obama has not. I will."

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Rep. Allen West's Ignorant Comments Show Why the Republican Party Is Not The Party of the American People

With all of the negative and horribly unhelpful comments made by representatives of both the Republican and Democratic party's this election season, Rep. Allen West's (R-FL) has to be some of the most inflammatory I have heard.

We have had Republican talking head, Rush Limbaugh's insulting remarks to Sandra Fluke, calling her a slut and a prostitute after her testimony before House Democrats.  And just yesterday, Democratic strategist Hilary Rosen's comment about Ann Romney, who as a stay at home mom, "never worked a day in her life." inciting a Republican backlash and causing everyone from the White House to RNC chairman Debbie Wasserman Schultz to apologize and distance themselves from her comments.

Rep. Allen West (R-FL)

As if these were not enough, now we have Rep. Allen West, who when asked by a constituent at a town hall meeting in Jensen Beach, FL, how many members of Congress are "card-carrying Marxists?"  stated, "I believe there's about 78 to 81 members of the Democratic Party that are members of the Communist Party."  Has the entire Republican Party gone off the deep-end?

West's campaign manager, Tim Edison, in what appears to be an attempt to soften the inflammatory rhetoric spewed by the Representative, says the members in question belong to the Congressional Progressive Caucus.  What does that mean as if it is any less disrespectful.

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