The REAL Obama

The Hidden Obama


A young man more introspective than ambitious, the future president took a long time to choose a direction in life.


By Jonathan Karl


Republicans often criticize Barack Obama for his lack of experience in the business world.  As Mitt Romney puts it: "The president's a nice guy, but he's never had a job in the private sector." That's not quite true.  After all, Mr. Obama met the future first lady while working in the Sidley Austin law firm in Chicago.  And right after graduating from Columbia University, he put his bachelor's degree to work at a place called Business International Corp. in midtown Manhattan.


The job at Business International wasn't exactly like running Bain Capital—Mr. Obama was paid an $18,000 salary to help to write and edit newsletters for American companies doing business overseas—but it was a private-sector job. And the young Barack Obama hated it. As he wrote in his memoir, "Dreams From My Father" (1995): "Sometimes, coming out of an interview with Japanese financiers or German bond traders, I would catch my reflection in the elevator doors—see myself in a suit and tie, a briefcase in my hand—and for a split second I would imagine myself as a captain of industry, barking out orders, closing the deal, before I remembered who it was that I wanted to be and felt pangs of guilt for my lack of resolve."


Barack Obama: The Story
By David Maraniss
Simon & Schuster, 641 pages, $32.50


Mr. Obama lasted only a year, fulfilling his initial commitment and not a day more. When he went in to the company's vice president, Lou Celi, to tell him he would be leaving and didn't know what he would be doing next, Mr. Obama got a lecture on career planning. "He just seemed not exactly clear of what he wanted to do," Mr. Celi recounted, decades later, in an interview for David Maraniss's "Barack Obama: The Story." "I told him he might be making a mistake, leaving a job when he did not have any plans except a vague notion that he maybe would do some public sector work." Mr. Ceci had no way of knowing that the person ignoring his career advice was a future president of the United States.


Mr. Maraniss's 641-page opus is an exhaustively reported journey through Mr. Obama's early past—a past that, until now, has been little explored despite David Remnick's 2010 biography of Mr. Obama and Janny Scott's 2011 biography of his mother. "Barack Obama: The Story," the first volume in what will supposedly be a multivolume biography, begins long before he is born—and, yes, just to be certain, Mr. Maraniss interviews people who worked on the maternity ward when Mr. Obama's mother gave birth to him in Honolulu in 1961—and ends when he is accepted into Harvard Law School in 1988.


Mr. Maraniss tracks down Mr. Obama's family history—his mother's side of the family in Kansas, his father's in Kenya—and interviews relatives, friends and acquaintances. He traces Mr. Obama's footsteps from Hawaii to Indonesia to college in California and New York and his first visit to his father's Kenyan homeland. The author finds the words "Obama" etched in a cement sidewalk at his old high school in Hawaii, the work of a schoolmate who was trying to make trouble for Barry, as he was then known. Mr. Maraniss unearths Mr. Obama's long letters to one girlfriend and the diaries of another. "Barack Obama: The Story" is a careful, thorough account in which the author treats his subject with sympathy but not reverence. The result is an admiring portrait, to be sure, but some of the details that Mr. Maraniss discovers raise questions about the carefully crafted story that Mr. Obama has told about himself.


As we know, Mr. Obama has a family background entirely unlike that of any other U.S. president. Mr. Maraniss describes Mr. Obama's charismatic great-grandfather, Obama Opiyo, who had five wives, two of whom were sisters, and his grandfather, Hussein Onyango, who was a convert to Islam and who also had five wives. If Mr. Obama's charisma came from this side of his family, his calm, cool demeanor did not. Mr. Obama's grandfather, Mr. Maraniss writes, "had a reputation for pummeling enemies with his fists, smacking children who did not show proper manners at the dinner table, and beating women who failed to meet his standards, including his five wives."


When Mr. Obama's father—Barack Hussein Obama Sr.—came from Kenya to study at the University of Hawaii in 1959 (with the help of Christian missionaries), he left behind a young daughter and a pregnant wife. The elder Obama immediately became a striking figure on campus who excelled academically, making Phi Beta Kappa and eventually earning a fellowship to Harvard. Mr. Maraniss says that Obama Sr. "had a captivating voice, a mesmerizing presence, and a certainty that he was correct, and a love of argument." But when he married a pregnant 18-year-old named Stanley Ann Dunham (her unusual first name inspired by a Bette Davis movie about two sisters named Stanley and Roy), the Immigration and Naturalization Service demanded to know how he could get married when he had said on his visa application that he already had a wife back in Kenya.


The elder Barack Obama got out of that mess by claiming that he had divorced his Kenyan wife, but Mr. Maraniss says that he never bothered to divorce his first wife and probably never told her about his new marriage. And he was ill-prepared to be a father to the younger Barack Obama, born six months later. Just a month after he was born, Mr. Obama's mother left his father because, Mr. Maraniss speculates, he had become abusive. He moved on to Harvard, where he married another woman—and abused her, once holding a knife to her throat.


For Mr. Obama's early years, much of what the world knows up to this point comes from his "Dreams From My Father," published years before he ran for political office. Mr. Maraniss finds the book to be an unreliable guide to what actually happened in Mr. Obama's early life. The book, he says, "falls into the realm of literature and memoir, not history and autobiography." This is not a complete surprise: In the book's introduction, the author acknowledges taking liberties—changing names and chronology and compressing multiple people into single characters for the sake of narrative flow and dramatic effect.


Consider Mr. Obama's own description of his time working at Business International and those meetings with "Japanese financiers" and "German bond traders" and that reflection in the elevator mirrors of himself wearing a suit and tie. In reality, Mr. Maraniss finds out, Mr. Obama worked out of a tiny office barely large enough to fit a desk, dressed casually and didn't have meetings with financiers or bond traders. "The part about seeing his reflection in the elevator doors?" recalled one supervisor. "There were not reflections there. . . . He was not in this high, talk-to-Swiss-bankers kind of role. He was in the back rooms checking things on the phone."


In the memoir, Mr. Obama's experience at Business International, mentioned only briefly, is used as a device to portray a great temptation—he is almost seduced by the allure of a business career that would have forced him to sell his soul. The reality discovered by Mr. Maraniss is less dramatic but reveals Mr. Obama's state of mind. He was an efficient worker and an aloof colleague. Unlike many of his young co-workers, he never arrived at work late—and never stayed late. He did what the job required, "no more and no less." When one co-worker, knowing that Mr. Obama was a runner, suggested that they jog together after work, Mr. Obama declined, saying: "I don't jog, I run." It appears that he was simply biding time in a world he did not like. In a letter found by Mr. Maraniss, Mr. Obama's mother wrote a friend: "He calls it working for the enemy because some of the reports are written for commercial firms that want to invest in [Third World] countries."


Elsewhere, Mr. Maraniss finds that Mr. Obama's memoir "accentuates characters drawn from black acquaintances who played lesser roles in his real life but could be used to advance a line of thought, while leaving out or distorting the actions of friends who happened to be white." And so Mr. Obama wrote of commiserating with a fellow African-American in high school over the fact that white girls would not date either of them when, in reality, neither had a problem dating white girls and the friend was half-Japanese and had a black grandfather. And Mr. Obama wrote in the memoir of being denied a starting role on his Hawaiian high-school basketball team—which went on to win the state championship—because of his "black" style of play. Mr. Maraniss discovered the real reason: "He was one of the few players on the team who could not jump high enough to dunk the ball."


Mr. Obama's memoir recounts lots of pot smoking in his high-school days, and Mr. Maraniss gets the details—again, exhaustively. Barry Obama and his buddies formed what they called "the Choom Gang." In this case, "choom" is a verb meaning to smoke pot. And they seemed to smoke it everywhere—especially when driving around Hawaii in a VW microbus they called the Choomwagon.


One night they tried a little drag racing, pitting the Choomwagon against a friend's Toyota on a road snaking up Honolulu's Mount Tantalus. Mr. Obama was in the Toyota. The Choomwagon made it to the top first. When the other car didn't show up, the kids in the Choomwagon went looking for the Toyota. "On the way down," Mr. Maraniss writes, "they saw a figure who appeared to be staggering up the road. It was Barry Obama. What was going on? As they drew closer, they noticed that he was laughing so hard he could barely stand up." His friend driving the Toyota, it turned out, had rolled the car. Fortunately, nobody was hurt. Everyone avoided trouble by leaving the driver alone to deal with the police. It was, for Mr. Obama, a near miss, the kind of incident that might have ended badly, with injury or legal trouble or both.


In his high-school yearbook, in a section where students were supposed to record their gratitude to those who had helped along the way, Mr. Obama wrote: "Thanks Tut,"—his grandmother—"Gramps, Choom Gang, and Ray for all the good times." Mr. Maraniss notes: "Ray was the older guy who hung around the Choom Gang, selling them pot. A hippie drug dealer made his acknowledgments; his mother did not."


As Mr. Obama heads off to college, first at Occidental in Los Angeles and then at Columbia in New York, there is more studying, less pot and a lot of writing—journals and letters to a girlfriend filled with adjective-laden descriptions of what he sees in New York that read as if he is practicing to write a novel. He gives his first political speech at Occidental—two minutes deploring apartheid in South Africa—but spends more time on personal introspection than political activism.


The years at Columbia in particular are something of an enigma in the Obama story, barely mentioned in "Dreams From My Father" and sometimes called his dark years. Mr. Obama's first roommate at Columbia compared him to the main character in Walker Percy's novel "The Moviegoer," "where you're not participating in life but you're kind of observing, one step behind." He was a member of the school's Black Student Organization, but the other members contacted by Mr. Maraniss have little or no memory of him; neither, it seems, did he make much of an impression on his professors.


But in the diary of one girlfriend and the letters he wrote to another, a portrait emerges of someone struggling with his own identity and not sure where he fits in among his old Choom Gang buddies, who were "moving to the mainstream," and among college friends heading toward the business world. His letters are long and self-absorbed but strike the themes that would fill his memoir 10 years later.
In one letter to his girlfriend in 1983, he writes: "Caught without a class, a structure, or tradition to support me, in a sense the choice to take a different path is made for me. . . . The only way to assuage my feelings of isolation are to absorb all the traditions [and all the] classes; make them mine, me theirs." That's heady stuff for a love letter but also a first glimpse of the "post-partisan" Obama who would take the stage at the 2004 Democratic convention.


The recurring theme that runs throughout "Obama: The Story" is just how unlikely is was that someone with Mr. Obama's exotic and tangled family history—whatever his race—would end up in the Oval Office. But perhaps the most striking thing about this story is how much it differs from the story told in "First in His Class" (1995), Mr. Maraniss's acclaimed biography of Bill Clinton. Bill Clinton was the kid who knew he was going to be president when he was 9 years old and acted that way. In Mr. Obama's early years, there are precious few hints of the kind of ambition that would lead him to the White House. For that, we'll have to wait for volume two.


—Mr. Karl is a senior correspondent for ABC News.


A version of this article appeared June 16, 2012, on page C5 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: The Hidden Obama.

An Outlaw in the White House

Obama's Lawless Presidency Close To Totalitarianism

2012 June 18

The Obama Record

The Obama Record: The chief executive who swore to faithfully execute the nation's laws picks those he'll ignore and makes up others through regulation and executive order. He sees no need for a Congress or Constitution.

Maybe it's because Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts stumbled a bit in leading President Obama through the oath of office that the president doesn't feel bound by it.

But through the awkwardness these words were heard: "I, Barack Hussein Obama, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."

It would not take Obama long to make clear he meant his interpretation of the Constitution, not the Supreme Court's, a principle established in Marbury v. Madison, the 1802 case that formed the basis for the exercise of judicial review in the U.S. under Article III of the Constitution.

In his State of the Union address a year later on Jan. 27, 2010, he shamefully scolded the justices on national television for "having reversed a century of law" in the Citizens United ruling in which the court was protecting the freedom of political speech enshrined more than two centuries ago in the First Amendment. We agree with Justice Samuel Alito's eloquent rebuff of the president, in which he was seen mouthing the words "Not true."

Then came ObamaCare, which would prove to be a monumental assault on the First and 10th Amendments to the Constitution. Virginia, along with other states, filed suit challenging the landmark health care reform law on the grounds the law's requirement that its residents have health insurance violates the Commerce Clause of the Constitution. Never before had a citizen of the United States been required to purchase a product just for being a citizen of the United States.

The Constitution according to President Obama also requires a suspension of the First Amendment guarantee that Congress shall make no laws restricting the free exercise of religion. Arguably, the Congress did no such thing in passing ObamaCare. But it left the door open when it replaced "We The People" of the Constitution with "the Secretary shall determine," a phrase that appears in the bill a mind-boggling 1,563 times.

One of the things Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius determined was that religious institutions be required to provide health coverage in violation of their faith and religious conscience. HHS argues that churches are exempt, but the 43 Catholic institutions that filed suit argue the government has no right to define what a church is and that acting on their faith through everything from hospitals to colleges to soup kitchens is constitutionally protected.

The role of the president, according to Article II, Sec. 3 of the Constitution, is to "take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed." Laws were intended by the Founders to be passed by Congress and signed by the president. Obama finds this a mere inconvenience.

"Whenever Congress refuses to act, Joe and I we're going to act," Obama said in February at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, with Vice President Joe Biden off to the side. "In the months to come, wherever we have an opportunity, we're going to take steps on our own to keep this economy moving."

Obama took that opportunity regarding immigration when he announced he was unilaterally suspending the deportation of some young illegal aliens and allowing others to apply for green cards, essentially implementing the provisions of the so-called Dream Act he has been unable to get through Congress, including one in his first two years dominated by his own party.

Article 1, Sec. 8 of the Constitution, which enumerates the power of Congress, states that "Congress shall have the Power To ... establish an (sic) uniform Rule of Naturalization." Congress has passed numerous laws pertaining to immigration and naturalization, including laws requiring the deportation of illegals. Congress? Obama don't need no stinkin' Congress.

Can't get cap-and-trade or the Kyoto Protocol through Congress? Let the EPA implement through regulations and then ignore the courts when they think your energy policy has crossed the legal line.

Louisiana Federal District Court Judge Martin Feldman found the Obama Interior Department in contempt of his ruling that the offshore oil drilling moratorium, imposed by the administration in 2010, was unconstitutional. After Feldman struck down the initial drilling ban, the Interior Department simply established a second ban that was virtually identical.

In January, the president illegally appointed a director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, along with three appointments to the National Labor Relations Board, all without the approval of a Senate still legally in session, as the Constitution requires.

The president also selectively decides which laws he'll enforce and which he won't. Regarding education, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan recently granted waivers to 10 states, freeing them from the strict requirements of the 2002 No Child Left Behind Act.

In February 2011, the Justice Department announced it would not defend the Defense of Marriage Act against court challenges. Last August, Obama's DHS announced it would no longer deport the noncitizen spouses of gay Americans — a direct contradiction to DOMA as well.

Maybe all this works in Venezuela, but it won't wash here. We still have free elections, and there's one in November when we can fundamentally restore respect for the law and the Constitution.

What Do We Know About Obama?

A Few Legitimate Questions By a female Obama supporter who voted for him for president. This election has me very worried. So many things to consider. I voted for Obama. McCain was a Washington insider and we don't need any more of them. I have changed my mind three times, since then. I watch all the news channels, jumping from one to another. I must say this drives my husband crazy. But, I feel if you view CNN, and Fox News, you might get some middle ground to work with. I started thinking "where does all the money come from for President Obama"?  I have four daughters who went to College, and we were middle class, and money was tight. We (including my girls) worked hard and there were lots of student loans. I started looking into Obama's history for my own peace of mind. Around 1979 Obama started college at Occidental in California.  He is very open about his two years at Occidental, he tried all kinds of drugs and was wasting his time but, even though he had a brilliant mind, did not apply himself to his studies.  "Barry" (that was the name he used all his life) during this time had two roommates, Muhammad Hasan Chandoo and Wahid Hamid, both from Pakistan.  During the summer of 1981, after his second year in college, he made a "round the world" trip. Stopping to see his mother in Indonesia, next Hyderabad in India, three weeks in Karachi, Pakistan, where he stayed with his roommate's family, then off to Africa to visit his father's family. My question - Where did he get the money for this trip? Nether I, nor any one of my children would have had money for a trip like this when they were in college. When he came back he started school at Columbia University in New York. It is at this time he wants everyone to call him Barack - not Barry. Do you know what the tuition is at Columbia ? It's not cheap to say the least.  My girls asked me; where did he get money for tuition? Student Loans? Maybe it's none of my business? After Columbia, he went to Chicago to work as a Community Organizer for $12,000  a year. Why Chicago?  Why not New York?  He was already living in New York. By "chance" he met Antoin "Tony" Rezko, born in Aleppo Syria, and a real estate developer in Chicago. Rezko has been convicted of fraud and bribery several times in the past and in 2011 Rezko, was named "Entrepreneur of the Decade" by the Arab-American Business and Professional Association".  About two years later, Obama entered Harvard Law School. Do you have any idea what tuition is for Harvard Law School ? Where did he get the money for Law School ? More student loans? His family has no money that's for sure. After Law school, he went back to Chicago. Rezko offered him a job, which he turned down. But he did take a job with Davis, Miner, Barnhill & Galland. Guess what I discovered? They represented "Rezar" which is Rezko's firm. Rezko was one of Obama's first major financial contributors when he ran for office in Chicago.  In 2003, Rezko threw an early fundraiser for Obama which Chicago Tribune reporter David Mendelland claims was instrumental in providing Obama with "seed money" for his U.S. Senate race.  In 2005, Obama purchased a new home in Kenwood District of Chicago for $1.65 million (less than asking price). With ALL those Student Loans - Where did he get the money for this property? On the same day Rezko's wife, Rita, purchased the adjoining empty lot for full price. The London Times reported that Nadhmi Auchi, an Iraqi-born billionaire, loaned Rezko $3.5 million three weeks before Obama's new home was purchased. Obama met Nadhmi Auchi many times with Rezko. Now, we have Obama running for President. Valerie Jarrett was Michele Obama's boss. She is now Obama's chief advisor and he does not make any major decisions without talking to her first. Where was Jarrett born? Ready for this? Shiraz, Iran! Am I going nuts or is there a pattern here? On May 10, 2008, The Times reported, Robert Malley advisor to Obama was "sacked" after the press found out he was having regular contacts with "Hamas," which controls Gaza and is connected with Iran. This past week, buried in the back part of the papers, Iraqi newspapers reported that during Obama's visit to Iran, he asked their leaders to do nothing about the war until after he is elected, and he will "Take care of things."  What the heck does that mean? Oh, and by the way, remember Obama's college roommates that were born in Pakistan? They are in charge of all those "small" Internet campaign contribution for Obama. Where is that money coming from?  The poor and middle class in this country?  Or could it be from the Middle East ? And the final bit of news: on September 7, 2009, The Washington Times posted a verbal slip that was made on "This Week" with George Stephanopoulos. Obama on talking about his religion said, "My Muslim faith".  When questioned, "he made a mistake."  Some mistake, huh? All of the above information I got on-line. If you would like to check it - Wikipedia: Barack Obama, Tony Rezko, and Valerie Jarrett.  Daily Times: Obama visited Pakistan in 1981; The Washington Times - September 7, 2008; The Times May 10, 2008. Now the BIG question - If I found out all this information on my own, Why haven't all of our "intelligent" members of the press been reporting this? As Arsenio Hall would say.----"HUMMMMMMM! Does something stink or is it my imagination?" These are legitimate questions for our president. Rachelle Derrough Provider - M.D., RS - PHYSICIANS FOR WOMEN CoxHealth

The Problem in Europe

Eye of the Hurricane

2012 June 18 - 8:13 ET

Well, that’s a relief. The worst possible outcome from Greece was avoided. Now, it is on to the next crisis. It could be Spain, Italy, France, or even Greece again. The European developments will occur against a backdrop of slowing global economic growth and sluggish earnings.

Reflections on the Greek Election

The market avoided a potentially severe negative event as a result of the Greek elections. It appears as if a coalition government will be formed that seeks to avoid Greece leaving the eurozone – at least for now.

The elimination of a negative, however, is not the same as a positive.  Greece still has a long way to go before it is on the path to sustainable fiscal and economic conditions.

Greece must still:

1. Establish a coalition government. The two parties expected to form a government have just 162 of the 300 seats in parliament. It will be fragile.
2. Develop a credible fiscal plan that accommodates additional bailouts. The deficit is currently projected to run at 5% to 6% of GDP this year.
3. Deal with an economy that is imploding. Real GDP has fallen about 15% total over the past four years. It is expected to decline 5% this year.
4. Prevent capital outflows that were reportedly very high in recent weeks.
5. Deal with the reality that a county can not pay pensions of 80% to retirees at 58 when fertility rates are just 1.52. Birth rates have been below replacement level (2.1) for three decades. The actuarial math is undeniable – it implies fiscal calamity.

None of this will be easy. The unemployment rate is 22%. The risk of civil unrest is high (and understandable).  Life will be very hard in Greece for quite some time.


All that the election did was prevent an immediate crisis of the country leaving the euro-zone and precipitating a credit crisis throughout Europe.

None of Greece’s underlying problems have been solved by the election. Any relief rally in the market will be short-lived.

Spain and Italy and France, Oh My!

Greece is just 3% of the eurozone economy. There are bigger concerns.  Spain is over 13% of the eurozone economy. The problem in Spain is that a massive bubble in the housing market has burst, undermining the stability of the banking system.

The unemployment rate is 24% and the economy is dead in the water.  The announced banking bailout in early June has yet to be finalized, and there are doubts it will do much more than prevent a crisis.

Spain has a massive government fiscal deficit and faces demographic problems similar to Greece. Spanish 10-year bond yields went over 7% this morning. Whether 6% or 7% is ultimately an unsustainable level is arguable, but the reality is that either compounds very quickly, particularly when the economy and government revenues are flat.

Spanish fiscal issues could quickly turn into a market crisis the next few weeks.


France also has major fiscal problems and appears to be in denial.  The election on Sunday of a Socialist parliament in France means that needed reforms won’t even get a look.  France will choose “growth” over “austerity” in that false dichotomy which simply allows the government to spend more money while not addressing the long-term structural problems that are causing deficits.

The Socialists have promised to hire more government workers and are not expected to increase the retirement age. Spending more money in the short-term may boost the Keynesian math of GDP, but spending money in ways which do not increase productivity won’t help make France more competitive long term.

Italy deserves respect in that its primary government deficit (excluding interest payments) is in surplus. Interest payments have to be made, however, and Italy’s economy is also stagnant with the same demographic problems plaguing Greece. Italy can not be ruled out as a potential crisis instigator in the months ahead.

Global Economic Growth

The potential for a credit contagion from Europe remains serious. Unfortunately, these concerns will persist in a worsening global economic environment.

The problems are well known. Growth in China is slowing, though the degree is hard to quantify.  China's real GDP has grown over 8% per year since 2002, but is expected to grow “only” 7.0% to 7.5% in 2012. Second quarter growth is expected below 7.0% so a second half rebound is optimistically forecast to get total growth back above 7.0%.

European economic growth will be near zero this year, and could well be in recession.  US second quarter growth is on track for about a 2% real annual rate. That follows an average of about 2.3% over the past four quarters. That is below long-term trends. 

Sluggish economic growth around the world will make the task of fiscal reform extremely difficult for Europe. It will not be possible for countries to rely on revenue growth to pull them out of their downward fiscal spirals.

What It All Means

Last week’s column was about the Spanish bank bailout and how it only partly addresses the issues in that country.

This week’s column is about how the Greek election simply eliminates a downside risk for the market but offers no positive developments.

Next week’s column will be on the sluggish trend in US real GDP and second quarter earnings expectations (barring some major development from Europe). Unfortunately, earnings estimates have been coming down. The earnings outlook is not worrisome, but it isn't exciting either.

The litany of negative trends and risks isn’t about to stop just because it appears that Greece may form a coalition government that will attempt to stay in the eurozone.

US equities represent tremendous relative value. They are extremely cheap by almost any measure. At this time, however, the focus is correctly on the risk associated with equities rather than the potential long-term rewards. It may stay that way through the summer.

Long-term investing will prove worthwhile, but there are plenty of short-term problems to overcome first. The Greek elections this weekend simply present a lull before the next storm from Europe hits.

Dick Green

Founder and Chairman, Briefing.com 

Absurd U.S. Tax Policy

U.S. Tax Law Pushes American Businesses Overseas

By GARY SHAPIRO

Posted 06/14/2012

Should American businesses invest and hire overseas? The answer you get depends on whom you ask. Many Americans think businesses should only invest in America. Businesses investing abroad are called everything from "greedy" to "immoral" to "unpatriotic."

Yet, all of the American business leaders I know would rather keep most, if not all, of their operations in the United States. So why do they shift overseas?

Sometimes it's just good business. Being near customers helps sales. As U.S. economic growth has slowed and Asian economies have grown, it makes sense to invest in other, faster-growing markets.

It is also often cheaper to manufacture abroad. The time, cost and drudgery of foreign trips, and the added expense and delay of overseas shipping, are offset by lower labor and input costs. But cost savings are rarely the only reason.

Fencing Out Workers

A big factor is that U.S. laws encourage overseas investment. The United States taxes overseas income if a company attempts to invest it back in America, so businesses are incentivized to leave their foreign earnings abroad. Every company with overseas revenue faces this perverse incentive.

In addition, the U.S. not only has the world's highest corporate tax rate, but it is also one of the few nations to tax the global earnings of multinational companies based here.

Democrats often accuse American businesses of acting selfishly with regard to their overseas profits, but how are they supposed to act? Should they willingly hand over millions of dollars in taxes on income that — in their view — has already been taxed?

It's a flight of fancy to expect companies to go against their interests and the demands of their investors. Instead, the U.S. should lower the penalties and encourage companies to reinvest their earnings right here in America.

Our immigration laws also encourage investment in overseas jobs. Absurd visa limits, rules and quotas restrict U.S. companies from hiring and bringing to our nation the world's best and brightest employees. This means that much of the talent companies need to innovate and grow is living outside the U.S.

If those highly skilled workers cannot come here, then U.S. companies will go to them. So with the money companies have parked abroad, they buy or build overseas facilities and hire whoever they want.

For instance, Google maintains offices in Britain, Brazil and Canada for employees who cannot get visas in the U.S. In an in-depth 2009 New York Times article on the problem, these employees expressed that they would prefer to set down roots in the U.S., and certainly companies like Google would prefer to have them here. But our absurd visa restrictions ensure that they don't.

Lawsuits Fly

The United States also has one of the highest concentrations of lawyers among developed nations — with twice as many lawyers as in the European Union — a litigious environment, tough and growing anti-discrimination laws, a heavy pro-union atmosphere, plaintiff-favorable tort laws and an increasingly regulatory federal government. All of these factors encourage U.S. companies to invest abroad.

Despite all of this, if a U.S. company with global sales keeps the bulk of its employees in America, our laws sadly encourage a foreign company to buy it. Since non-U.S. earnings are not subject to the world's highest corporate tax rates, transferring ownership overseas saves a company's owners huge amounts in taxes.

It's crazy that our laws encourage businesses to be sold to foreign owners, but it's true.

However, all of these disadvantages to U.S. companies are fixable. Congress just has to decide that if it wants more U.S. investment and jobs, then it must start seeing business as the source rather than the greedy "one percent." This shift in rhetoric and policy requires leadership over politics and a focus on business for America rather than business as usual.

• Shapiro is president and CEO of the Consumer Electronics Association, the U.S. trade association representing more than 2,000 consumer electronics companies, and author of the book, "The Comeback: How Innovation Will Restore the American Dream."

Market Medicine NOT ObamaCare

No Need For ObamaCare If Providers Are Liberated

By CHARLES J. WILLEY
Posted 06/13/2012

We continue to read with dismay about the adverse effects of ObamaCare ... the crafty way it was passed, the 2,700-page bill no one read, the "Cornhusker Kickback" and other secret deals, the hidden regulation and costs. Now our fears about the bill are reality.

The Department of Health and Human Services has generated thousands of more pages of regulation. Even the government admits ObamaCare will cost at least twice its estimates and will increase health care costs by $2,000 annually per family. Many will not keep their current insurance and doctors.

Practicing doctors, who know best how to care for patients most cost effectively, are still today left out of the health care debate . .. a small voice among powerful lobbyists, politicians and regulators. Doctors are particularly skeptical about ObamaCare: 90% say premiums will go up; 70% say it will drive the best and brightest out of the profession; 65% say quality of care for their patients will decline. I am one of those doctors who fears for my patients' future care.

Real health care reform is possible and necessary. But it won't come from government regulation dictating methods of practice and health insurance purchase requirements. Over-reaching regulation depersonalizes patients and dissociates them from its demoralized doctors, favors hospitals that can manipulate the system, guarantees profit for giant insurance companies without regard to health outcome, and disenfranchises patients from authority over, and responsibility for, their own health and its costs.

Real health care reform comes from eliminating the misguided rules and incentives created by government and other interlopers into the patient-doctor covenant.

The high cost and limited access in our current system is caused by government. Here are a few examples:

Medicare currently pays hospitals two to four times more than a nonhospital vendor for the exact same stress test or MRI.

Government bans physician-owned specialty hospitals, such as orthopedic surgery centers, forever relegating joint replacement to be performed in the same high-cost operating suites as those used for cases involving puss, risking devastating prosthesis infection.

Doctors and nurses spend more time on regulatory paperwork than patient care. There is no patient-centered rationale for this regulation. In fact, these policies deny choices, diminish care, and increase costs.

The effect on my profession has been catastrophic. Doctors now need to function like lawyers if they care for Medicare patients, complying with thousands of regulations that no one understands, under threat of criminal penalties.

Many run for cover to hospital employment, whose expertise has sadly evolved to managing regulation to advantage every next government incentive. The results: soaring costs while individualized patient care suffers.

Real health care reform should encourage practice models (and their coordinated financing plans) that combine clinical and economic responsibility with our long-term patient relationship. We know this practice model works.

For 30 years, I've led physician groups who care for populations of seniors — with higher than average illness burden — at much lower than average total cost of care, with better outcomes.

I presently care for a regular Medicare population with quality rankings above 90% on six of seven measures. For an 11% higher illness burden, my total cost of care is 72% lower than average (CMS Quality and Resource Use Report, March 2, 2012).

I also provide superior care for 1,000 Medicare Advantage members, whose illness burden, quality and satisfaction scores are even higher, under a richer benefit plan than Medicare, at a cost of care which is 50% less than average.

If all Medicare beneficiaries were cared for under this model, Medicare could be administered for $290 billion annually instead of its current $580 billion, saving $2.9 trillion in 10 years, without any cuts, serving healthier, happier seniors.

Our practice model lowers cost by achieving lasting population health that finances a rich benefit plan so patients can afford recommended care, resulting in high patient satisfaction. We intervene early and often, minimizing the misery and costs of catastrophic illness.

We transfer a manageable portion of the risk for cost-of-care to the patients in the form of copayments, creating a meaningful short-term economic incentive to be healthy and respect their fiduciary duty to the health risk transfer pool.

We schedule fewer patients for longer well-placed visits, treat more patient situations ourselves, and work closely to lead specialists and hospitals to high quality, efficient care of patients. We use information technology to anticipate population care needs, rather than waiting for patients to become sick, avoiding the 'systems failure' of an emergency room visit.

We aggressively promote wellness through leadership and coaching, even paying YMCA membership fees helping seniors exercise and socialize. Many other medical groups use this model with similar quality, access, and low cost.

We don't need to reduce quality and access to care or create a massive government-mandated system to improve our health care. These do not benefit patient care, access, or cost. Medical groups know that we just need an environment that is free of ObamaCare and liberated from the pre-ObamaCare regulations that exist only to protect well-entrenched fiefdoms currently controlling health care.

Historically, we know that free markets provide free societies with competitive pricing, improved access for all, and greater innovation. They can do the same for health care. Restoring free markets with the advantages of information technology can redefine the existing strained patient-doctor covenant for the best result: high quality, low cost, long-term health for all.

The new scrutiny of the patient (the customer) armed with the bright light of information technology will greatly diminish the need for government regulation. We must liberate health care providers to innovate, compete and be rewarded not only on quality care for patients, but also on their performance and costs in achieving long-term population health.

Doing so will improve long-term citizen health and access to care, and reverse rising health care costs. The solution hides in strategically reducing government's role in health care.

This modest model solution already exists; it just needs room to breathe.

• Willey, an internist, is the founding CEO of several medical groups and a Medicare Advantage health plan, currently practicing with six physicians and five nurse practitioners as Innovare Health Advocates in St. Louis.

Government: Rotten to the Core!

Where are Jim, Tim, and Franklin now?


Just in case you might have wondered how their ineptitude affected their lives after they ruined so many dreams and lives.  Where are Jim, Tim and Franklin now?

Here's a quick look into the three former Fannie Mae executives who brought down Wall Street.


Franklin Raines - was a Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at Fannie Mae. Raines was forced to retire from his position with Fannie Mae when auditing discovered severe irregularities in Fannie Mae's accounting activities. Raines left with a "golden parachute valued at $240 million in benefits." The Government filed suit against Raines when the depth of the accounting scandal became clear.


Tim Howard - was the Chief Financial Officer of Fannie Mae. Howard "was a strong internal proponent of using accounting strategies that would ensure a "stable pattern of earnings" at Fannie.  Investigations by federal regulators and the company's board of directors since concluded that management did manipulate 1998 earnings to trigger bonuses. Raines and Howard resigned under pressure in late 2004. Howard's Golden Parachute was estimated at $20 million!


Jim Johnson - A former executive at Lehman Brothers and who was later forced from his position as Fannie Mae CEO. Investigators found that Fannie Mae had hidden a substantial amount of Johnson's 1998 compensation from the public, reporting that it was between $6 million and $7 million when it fact it was $21 million." Johnson is currently under investigation for taking illegal loans from Countrywide while serving as CEO of Fannie Mae. Johnson's Golden Parachute was estimated at $28 million.

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WHERE ARE THEY NOW?

FRANKLIN RAINES?

Raines works for the Obama Campaign as his Chief Economic Advisor.

TIM HOWARD?

Howard is a Chief Economic Advisor to Obama under Franklin Raines.

JIM JOHNSON?

Johnson was hired as a Senior Obama Finance Advisor and was selected to run Obama's Vice Presidential Search Committee.


Read Reckless Endangerment: How Outsized Ambition, Greed, and Corruption Created the Worst Financial Crisis of Our Time by Gretchen Morgenson and Joshua Rosner for all of the painful details.


Our government is rotten to the core! Vote in 2012 ... it is the most important election of our lives ... and our children's lives!