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Obama legacy: cycle of death and taxes

Written by Gehrig Rosen

Death, debt and deception are the three words that sum up the legacy of Barack Obama.

Former President Obama had some well thought out bills and executive orders. For example, he was a strong believer in gay marriage and helped make pushes to get the supreme court to legalize gay marriage. He also directed the military mission that killed Osama Bin-Laden.

However, when his presidency is boiled-down we see the deaths of foreign civilians due to drone strikes, a dramatic increase in national debt and deception.

Death

The Bureau of Investigative Journalism (a U.K. based non-profit organization) reported on the amount of civilian deaths from U.S. drone strikes.

Approximately 2,500 people have been killed by these strikes. An estimated 685 of these deaths were civilian casualties; around 180 of them were children.

In the event of a drone strike, the absolute lowest chance of a civilian being killed is 16 percent. In addition to this, the average chance of a civilian being killed in every drone strike is more than one-in-four.

Furthermore, the lowest chance that one of these civilians was a child was 18 percent. This almost guarantees that at least one in every five civilians killed was just a kid.

Civilian deaths of this large quantity should have never been a sacrifice in the war against terror.

Debt

According to FactCheck, a nonprofit website run by the University of Pennsylvania, in 2008 the national debt was roughly $10 trillion U.S. (compared to GDP).

Despite political promises of lowering the national debt, under the Obama Administration, the debt has nearly doubled to $19 trillion U.S., and looks to be past the point of no return.

Deception

Before his presidency, the penalty for not having a healthcare plan was paying the full bill if hospitalized. However, as a result of the Affordable Care Act (otherwise known as Obamacare), every U.S. citizen is forced to have a healthcare plan or face a tax penalty.

The problem lies within his defense of the bill. People from both political parties criticized this bill for being unconstitutional. His defense was along the lines of, “This is not a tax.”

However, when backlash and disapproval of the bill continued to erupt, congress and the Obama administration attempted to disprove their outrage by saying “Congress has the constitutional power to apply tax,” which was a contradiction to Obama’s original defense.

Even with the confirmation through congress that this was indeed a tax, Obama still asserted that it was not. This is an act of deception that a president should not be a part of.

The magnitude of these crimes committed by President Obama, demand at the very least our denouncement of his tenure, and the scorning of his legacy.

U.S. President Barack Obama listens to Vice-President Joe Biden after he presented the Medal of Freedom to him during an event in the State Dining room of the White House, Jan. 12, 2017 in Washington, D.C. (Olivier Douliery/Abaca Press/TNS)

Image Sources

  • U.S. President Barack Obama presents the Medal of Freedom to Vice-President Biden – DC: Olivier Douliery/Abaca Press/TNS | Used With Permission
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