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I’m not in favor of knee jerk decisions, or decisions made without appropriate consultation, but Obama seems to suffer from that old syndrome, “Paralysis by Analysis”.
Obama appointed General McCrystal as his new Commander in Afghanistan, yet he hasn’t made a decision on the General’s initial recommendations.
Secretary of Defense Robert Gates directed General McCrystal to make an initial assessment of the situation in Afghanistan on June 26, 2009. The General provided his assessment to the Secretary on August 30, 2009. Here we are 57 days later and President Obama hasn’t made any decisions regarding the General’s numerous recommendations. One would think military decisions of this magnitude would be made in an environment of Time is of the Essence. Not so in the Obama administration because of “Paralysis by Analysis”.
The $787 billion in federal stimulus money is intended to create jobs and quickly boost the economy by fast-tracking infrastructure and other community projects. Stimulus money can be spent in a variety of ways – in the form of tax cuts or benefits, contracts to businesses, and grants to nonprofits or other public agencies. The money is funneled through the federal government to individual states and then to specific agencies, businesses or projects.
As of October 10, 2009 approximately $15 billion dollars has been awarded for federal contracts intended to increase employment. Approximately $2 billion dollars of that amount has been received by contractors. Only 30,383 jobs have been created/saved by way of the federal stimulus money received by contractors. This doesn’t sound like success.
One question that begs for an answer is why has only $15 billion dollars of the $787 billion dollars authorized by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 been awarded? Why has less than 2% of the authorized money to create/save jobs been authorized? A proactive president would place high priority on this matter if he truly cared about jobs being created/saved for American citizens. After all, this was HIS PLAN. Is this another example of “Paralysis by Analysis”?