Wednesday, June 30, 2010

Unfortunately, Harris Validated the "Wacky" GOP Results

http://artvoice.com/issues/v9n13/those_wacky_republicans

Oops

Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas renounced all polling conducted for his website by the firm Research 2000 Tuesday, citing an independent investigation that found the numbers produced by the firm were fraudulent.


According to a report published on his heavily-trafficked blog, Moulitsas says at least a portion of the data was “fabricated or manipulated.”

“We were defrauded by Research 2000, and while we don't know if some or all of the data was fabricated or manipulated beyond recognition, we know we can't trust it,” Moulitsas wrote.

Deficit spending as a Stimulus

Rich(ie) asks me to comment on deficit spending in the form of a stimulus and/or as a stimulus to a downtrodden economy.
His/Their theory being that: The way to solve an economic malaise is to throw money at a problem. Really it is, the theory is that deflation, the economic condition which we now exist, in terms of assets (homes, stocks) can only be cured with government intervention.

Literally they want us to throw money at the problem, anywhere, to restart the economic engine and more importantly, more money will cause inflation in the various asset classes and restore prosperity.

Here is the rub, and being a scientist by trade, I can usually look at data and theory and find (if it exists) the hole, the assumption, the conflict, the bias which causes the theory to be invalid. (Which is why I can opine on the bias involved in Global Warming research with such confidence).

Their assumption, and it is an important one to their economic ideas, is that if citizens are allowed to keep their money, they will just save it, producing no economic effect. This theory established before, the Internet, online banking, and ignoring the human want to achieve.

During "the great stimulus", the argument was over tax cuts vs. shovel ready projects which were sure to stimulate the economy. (In truth, shovel ready projects were by definition already planned and funded so in reality there was NO economic effect, just pay back for votes).

A pause here, "the great stimulus", it was money we did not have and a decision was made how to distribute it, it could have been with across the board tax cuts or tax holidays (both of which were proposed) or as was done, directed by the Federal government.

Now, here we are a year and one half later and we remain mired in a severe recession. One might legitimately ask, if this theory is in fact true, should not throwing almost A TRILLION dollars at a problem fix it? Now their answer...it was not enough, let's do more!

Their theory rests on...the multiplier effect.

Yes!, they say, taking money with taxes, and having the Federal Government use it to build infrastructure is more productive than letting citizens keep their money and engage in commerce. Really?, the next Microsoft or McDonalds will grow from building a bridge? That is their multiplier?

So we return to deficits, and deficit spending in a recession. Rich(ie)'s theory (as do the Krugman and The Nation articles) ignores today's condition were we have used all of our bullets. Yes! Too much money was spent previously, but just because previous sins were committed, we should not repeat them now! We have no reserve and a tidal wave is coming. We cannot "stimulate" our way out of this mess. If it worked, if  any"stimulus" worked, then the Bush stimulus, TARP, Stimulus one, the Auto bailout, or something would have worked, it unquestionably did not!

The only way we are going to get out of this economic mess is with SPENDING CUTS AND TAX CUTS! We don't have time for a commission, we need to raise the retirement age now, we need to cut taxes to promote economic growth (are you really going to argue that a government stimulus promotes more economic growth than a tax cut?). Krugman is wrong, we and the rest of the developed world are not far from Greece.

Your party better get thrown out in November.

Fairness or menace?

From the Republic:

The prospect of states passing varied immigration measures doesn't worry everyone.  Although some states might enact their own interpretations of Arizona's law, many other states will not, said Steven Camarota, director of research at the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington, D.C., think tank that favors vigorous enforcement of immigration laws. Illegal immigrants likely will head toward the friendlier states, he said.

"In a way, maybe this is the compromise: The states that would like to have illegal immigrants leave their state may get their wish, and those that want them to settle in their states may also get their wish," Camarota said. "It's very hard to move policy in Washington; it's easier to move it at the state level. So, maybe that's where a lot of the action is going to be."

But Frank Sharry, executive director of America's Voice, a national organization that champions comprehensive immigration reform, predicted that Arizona and supporters of its law eventually will end up on the wrong side of U.S. civil-rights history.

"Mostly what it's going to do is drive some number of immigrants to other states - I think it will be a pretty modest number of people, but we'll find out - and give Arizona the reputation as the state that took the lead in what will become known as American-style ethnic cleansing," Sharry said. "I am horrified that states would say the way to address this problem is to put a target on the back of a whole ethnic group and try to terrorize undocumented family members out of the state."

Monday, June 28, 2010

STEVE FORBES

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton declared recently at the Brookings Institution, "The rich are not paying their fair share."  She then went on to praise Brazil as the tax holy grail for the rest of the world: "Brazil has the highest tax-to-GDP rate in the Western Hemisphere and guess what—it's growing like crazy." At first blush those kinds of words must make her neosocialist boss, President Obama, jump for joy. But is the secretary of state actually a supply-side subversive?

Take a look at Brazil's income tax rates—they are lower than ours. The highest rate is a mere 27.5%, far below our top federal rate of 35%, which, given the complexity of our tax code, is actually closer to 38%. Moreover, that exaction will climb to almost 43% come January.  Isn't Brazil's success an example of what Ronald Reagan and other tax cutters have always claimed: Lower rates generate more economic activity, which, in turn, generates more government revenue?


Sadly, for our beleaguered economy, Hillary Clinton and her staff had no idea that Brazil's income tax rate on the rich is slightly lower than that levied even in Ronald Reagan's heyday (28%), a rate Bill Clinton railed against when he was running for the White House.
Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Obama and the rest of the administration don't grasp that the top 1% of income earners in the U.S. already pay about 40% of federal income tax receipts, and the top 5% pay some 60%. When President Reagan took office the top tax rate was 70%, with the highest income earners paying a mere 18% of federal income tax receipts. By the time Reagan had whacked the top rate down to 28%, the proportion paid by the rich had soared to well over 30%.
Brazil's Mantega: Economic Recovery Approach Risky Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Obama and their friends also have no conception of capital creation. Low tax rates encourage people to take risks on new businesses, products and services. While most of these fail, the handful that succeed generate vast amounts in new assets.


Take the current stock market hottie, Apple. Before its dazzling train of iPods, iPhones and iPads, Apple was on the verge of extinction. Today the company is worth more than $240 billion, and Steve Jobs is high on the Forbes rich list. As a result, the government has collected billions of dollars in taxes on capital gains, corporate taxes and other levies, as well as on the profits from all of Apple's vendors. AT&T, for example, has been an enormous beneficiary of Apple's technology, as its network is the exclusive provider for the iPhone and iPad.


Clinton/Obama statists will never grasp the truth that those who create wealth will almost always reinvest it far more productively than government bureaucrats. Bill and Melinda Gates have established a foundation with assets of $35 billion. Does anyone really believe that money would do the world more good if it were put in the hands of the bloated bureaucracies of the Department of Health & Human Services or the Department of Housing and Urban Development?


Fortunately, while this administration will never understand the dazzling, opportunity-creating dynamics of genuine free markets, the American people still do.

Sunday, June 27, 2010

Let's look at the numbers

U.S. GDP $14T
U.S. Gov budget  $3.5T (25% of GDP)
U.S. Gov  deficit $1.43 T (12.3% of GDP)

To balance the budget, considering the coming entitlement wave and the government consuming 25% of GDP, we either can take everybody's money in taxes or we can grow the GDP.

Building bridges ain't going to cause a 5+% rise in GDP baby.

Reason

Right on Jan!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzDlN7VLmXQ&feature=player_embedded

"I'm Doing it Because I Said I Was Going to Do It"

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2010/06/27/obama_calling_bluff_of_those_complaining_about_debt_he_created.html

Please cut and paste the above.

Rich M Points to Obvious Cost Cutting Opportunities

Jim and Rich argue on TV :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wLC3eiR4lQE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wLC3eiR4lQE

not sure which link will work.

This is a hit piece, nothing more

Anticipating a tough question about Biden a staffer makes the mock reply "bite me", and this is insubordination?




A tough military man in a political quagmire.
 
The Runaway General | Rolling Stone Politics
The Obama administration, given its rhetoric, has been particularly disappointing. In an effort to push the administration to get serious about tackling the jobs gap, the New America Foundation, a nonpartisan think tank (BS!) , convened a luncheon discussion on Wednesday focused on the advocacy of a single idea: public-led investment in infrastructure as the only viable way to build back the jobs that have been lost.  (Only, really?  Not letting people keep more of their money?  Cutting regulations?  Letting small business create jobs?  Really?  The only way to create jobs is an investment in infrastructure?  How come none of these bozo's ever note that infrastructure jobs are temporary?)

Former Clinton administration economist Laura Tyson, now a member of the current President’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board, opened the event with a talk that laid out the gloomy numbers. It will take 11 million new jobs to get back to where we were before the Great Recession, and absorb new workers coming into the labor force. If we create 200,000 jobs a month, it will take 12 years; at 350,000 jobs a month, four years. In May (May being 17 months after the "great election" and the institution of Socialism, that no one can call Socialism because it upsets the great "o" and his supporters), the private sector generated 41,000 new jobs. Don’t do the math; it’s too depressing.


Business remains reluctant to hire, (Wonder why Ms. Clift?  Every wonder, just for a moment why?)  and the “summer of recovery” that the White House is touting as evidence that its policies are working is fine as far as it goes, but does very little to chip away at the growing jobs gap. Unemployment is expected to remain at about 9.5 percent through this year, and then under the most optimistic scenario very gradually decline to 8.2 percent by the end of 2011, in time perhaps to help ensure Obama’s reelection, but not in time to save Democrats this fall.


What Democrats need are some bold initiatives, but first Obama will have to regain the upper hand from the deficit hawks. Senate Republicans, with the help of a lone Democrat, Ben Nelson of Nebraska, once again this week defeated legislation to extend unemployment benefits and provide cash assistance to strapped state governments because it would increase the deficit. The premise of the Obama administration is the positive use of government, but he’s been put on the defensive by charges that his policies are bankrupting the country and setting it on a slippery slope to Greece-style socialism. (ummm....because we are, that is why!  Just like CA and NY, any bets on how well NJ does as it regains fiscal sanity?)


The short answer is politics. Democrat Rep. Brian Baird recalled arguing with administration economist Larry Summers about the amount of infrastructure spending in the Recovery Act that Congress passed early last year. According to Baird, 12 percent went to infrastructure, and it created 24 percent of the jobs. Baird thought it should be more, but the wisdom received from Summers was that infrastructure projects wouldn’t create jobs fast enough, so the money was put into tax cuts. “Not a single person has said to me, ‘Thanks for the tax cut; they didn’t know they got one,’ ” Baird says. “The right says the stimulus didn’t work; part of the reason it didn’t work [as well as it should] was we spent it on things the right likes, like tax cuts.”  (As opposed to census workers?)


Democratic Rep. Peter Welch told the group that like it or not, a growing number of Americans think we’ve spent our way into the problem we have, and that any proposal for spending, however worthy, “will be used against us.” Welch offered the wisdom of someone who’s been on the campaign trail, saying that Democrats should talk very concretely about retrofitting local schools, expanding broadband into communities, and rebuilding deteriorating water systems. “It’s unbelievable how bad our water is. Red state, blue state—your water system is failing.” (OK, Mr. Dumb Mr Welch, what happens after we finish the public works projects and the private sector has created no jobs because the government has sucked all the money out of the system for short term projects not new businesses?  What then?)

Well before the recession hit, the government was spending well below what was needed to maintain existing infrastructure, let alone make the investments that would make us competitive. With Americans holding back on consumer spending, and businesses not yet hiring, a government boost in infrastructure looks like the logical path to job creation and political salvation. “The deficit is the creation of the right-wing media and the absence of any jobs program,” (bless their stupid little hearts!) declared Working America executive director Karen Nussbaum. “If we were delivering jobs, nobody would be talking about the deficit.” (because you don't deliever jobs you dope!) 



Eleanor Clift

Saturday, June 26, 2010

As one reads the logic contained in the post below from the WSJ, let's contrast the thoughts of fiscal sanity with the lunacy contained in the following article from The Nation which, I guess, is the standard bearer for the left.  A Liberal might argue about the margins of their ideas, but this is their plan, this is their wish, this is....are you kidding me!

The first fundamental failure of Keynesian economics occurred forty years ago during the Vietnam War when the economy was overheating but the political system failed to take the corrective steps that would restrain price inflation—that is, raise taxes and reduce federal spending. The decade of economic stagnation that followed became a central factor in discrediting both liberalism and the Democratic Party.

We are now witnessing a second great failure of the doctrine John Maynard Keynes devised for managing a healthy economy. This time, Washington faces the opposite problem—a starkly underperforming economy in which 10 percent of the workforce are without jobs and income. Yet the President and Democratic Congress, spooked by the swollen federal deficits, are unwilling to do what Keynes prescribed in these circumstances—pump up federal spending enormously and run even larger budget deficits in order to force-feed a stronger recovery.





 I'm not sure I would let these idiots baby sit a pet, let alone run a company (that's right, now that I think of it, The Nation, is continually begging for handouts) let alone our economy.  Really, we just have not spent enough money we don't have?  That is the problem????   What defect of cognition can cause a mind to arrive at such a faulty conclusion.  

Our main Liberal protagonist, Baxter, continuously asks for us to offer cuts to arrive at a balanced budget, not  being a legislator myself, I referred him to one offered by Conservatives which addressed the issue.

And what do the Democrats offer?  Stimulus III.  Good grief.




Hooray! Sanity!

The Keynesian Dead End

Spending our way to prosperity is going out of style.  Today's G-20 meeting has been advertised as a showdown between the U.S. and Europe over more spending "stimulus," and so it is. But the larger story is the end of the neo-Keynesian economic moment, and perhaps the start of a healthier policy turn.

For going on three years, the developed world's economic policy has been dominated by the revival of the old idea that vast amounts of public spending could prevent deflation, cure a recession, and ignite a new era of government-led prosperity. It hasn't turned out that way.  No, in fact it has bankrupted us and led to a prolonged severe recession with no end in sight.
[1keynes]
Now the political and fiscal bills are coming due even as the U.S. and European economies are merely muddling along. The Europeans have had enough and want to swear off the sauce, while the Obama Administration wants to keep running a bar tab. So this would seem to be a good time to examine recent policy history and assess the results.

Like many bad ideas, the current Keynesian revival began under George W. Bush. Larry Summers, then a private economist, told Congress that a "timely, targeted and temporary" spending program of $150 billion was urgently needed to boost consumer "demand." Democrats who had retaken Congress adopted the idea—they love an excuse to spend—and the politically tapped-out Mr. Bush went along with $168 billion in spending and one-time tax rebates.  Stupid ideas are stupid, no matter the party in control.


The cash did produce a statistical blip in GDP growth in mid-2008, but it didn't stop the financial panic and second phase of recession. So enter Stimulus II, with Mr. Summers again leading the intellectual charge, this time as President Obama's adviser and this time suggesting upwards of $500 billion. When Congress was done two months later, in February 2009, the amount was $862 billion. A pair of White House economists famously promised that this spending would keep the unemployment rate below 8%.
Associated Press
Seventeen months later, and despite historically easy monetary policy for that entire period, the jobless rate is still 9.7%. Yesterday, the Bureau of Economic Analysis once again reduced the GDP estimate for first quarter growth, this time to 2.7%, while economic indicators in the second quarter have been mediocre. As the above table shows, this is a far cry from the snappy recovery that typically follows a steep recession, most recently in 1983-84 after the Reagan tax cuts.
The response at the White House and among Congressional leaders has been . . . Stimulus III. While talking about the need for "fiscal discipline" some time in the future, President Obama wants more spending today to again boost "demand." Thirty months after Mr. Summers won his first victory, we are back at the same policy stand.
The difference this time is that the Keynesian political consensus is cracking up. In Europe, the bond vigilantes have pulled the credit cards of Greece, Portugal and Spain, with Britain and Italy in their sights. Policy makers are now making a 180-degree turn from their own stimulus blowouts to cut spending and raise taxes. The austerity budget offered this month by the new British government is typical of Europe's new consensus.
To put it another way, Germany's Angela Merkel has won the bet she made in early 2009 by keeping her country's stimulus far more modest. We suspect Mr. Obama will find a political stonewall this weekend in Toronto when he pleads with his fellow leaders to join him again for a spending spree.
Meanwhile, in Congress, even many Democrats are revolting against Stimulus III. The original White House package of jobless benefits and aid to the states had to be watered down several times, and the latest version failed again in the Senate late this week. (See below.) Mr. Obama is having his credit card pulled too—not by the bond markets, but by a voting public that sees the troubles in Europe and is telling pollsters that it doesn't want a Grecian bath.

***

The larger lesson here is about policy. The original sin—and it was nearly global—was to revive the Keynesian economic model that had last cracked up in the 1970s, while forgetting the lessons of the long prosperity from 1982 through 2007. The Reagan and Clinton-Gingrich booms were fostered by a policy environment for most of that era of lower taxes, spending restraint and sound money. The spending restraint began to end in the late 1990s, sound money vanished earlier this decade, and now Democrats are promising a series of enormous tax increases.
Notice that we aren't saying that spending restraint alone is a miracle economic cure. The spending cuts now in fashion in Europe are essential, but cuts by themselves won't balance annual deficits reaching 10% of GDP. That requires new revenues from faster growth, and there's a danger that the tax increases now sweeping Europe will dampen growth further.
President Obama's tragic mistake was to blow out the U.S. federal balance sheet on spending that has produced little bang for the buck. The fantastical Keynesian notion (the "multiplier") that $1 of spending produces $1.50 in growth was long ago demolished by Harvard's Robert Barro, among others.  The spending multiplier, now that is a joke, a stupid joke, like the government which can't run ANYTHING is going to be more efficient than the private sector.  Seriously, how could anyone, anyone ever believe in the "multiplier"? That $1 in spending has to come from somewhere, which means in taxes or borrowing from productive parts of the private economy. Given that so much of the U.S. stimulus went for transfer payments such as Medicaid and unemployment insurance, the "multiplier" has almost certainly been negative.
With the economy in recession in 2008 and 2009, we argued that some stimulus was justified and an increase in the deficit was understandable and inevitable. However, we also argued that permanent tax cuts aimed at marginal individual and corporate tax rates would have done far more to revive animal spirits, and in our view would have led to a far more robust recovery.

Jim G.  would like to take a moment to note that the following is exactly, not kind of, not almost, exactly what I have been saying all along!

What the world has now reached instead is a Keynesian dead end. We are told to let Congress continue to spend and borrow until the precise moment when Mr. Summers and Mark Zandi and the other architects of our current policy say it is time to raise taxes to reduce the huge deficits and debt that their spending has produced. Meanwhile, individuals and businesses are supposed to be unaffected by the prospect of future tax increases, higher interest rates, and more government control over nearly every area of the economy. Even the CEOs of the Business Roundtable now see the damage this is doing.
A better economic policy will have to await a new Congress, which we hope at a minimum can prevent punishing tax increases. But for now the good news is that voters and markets are telling politicians to stop doing what hasn't worked. 

Monday, June 21, 2010

The Greene Party IBD

The Democratic Senate candidate from South Carolina is not a GOP dirty trick but an appropriate representative of a party detached from reality. An incoherent and off-the-wall empty suit, he is a perfect fit.
Late Thursday night, the South Carolina Democratic Party's Executive Committee rejected a protest of the June 8 primary for U.S. Senate, in which Alvin Greene, who has a felony arrest for showing porn to college girls, defeated Vic Rawl, a former state representative and judge.

Greene has been declared the party's legitimate nominee, much to the chagrin of MSNBC's Chris Matthews, whose leg no longer tingles when President Obama speaks, and others.

Matthews asked guests: "Do you think this has the look of a dirty trick — sort of a Watergate number?" After all, how could a Democratic electorate that put a community organizer in the White House make such a mistake?


Perhaps the best thing that can be said about Alvin Greene, who came out of nowhere to become the Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate against incumbent Jim DeMint, just like Barack Obama came out of nowhere to become president, is that Greene almost makes guys like Alan Grayson and Eric Massa look normal and sane.

The Democratic Party is said to be a big tent but a circus tent is more likely.

Case in point — Eric Massa, the New York Democrat who took a wide stance on many issues, known for his alleged policy briefing from White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel in the congressional showers before he, uh, threw in the towel.  Tickle party, anyone?


Then there's Florida's Alan Grayson, the mouth that roared, who produced a chart on the House floor that said the Republican health care plan was for everyone to die quickly as he supported a bill that makes rationing an inevitability. Or there is North Carolina's Bob Etheridge, who roughs up college reporters, while complaining the Tea Party is an angry mob.  The question is not whether Alvin Greene is qualified. The question is compared to whom?


Roland Burris? Do we compare him to the ethically challenged Charlie Rangel who helps writes the nation's tax laws as he plays fast and loose with his own obligations and the law?


Or perhaps we can compare him with Barney Frank who said Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were financially sound right up to the moment he started to blame Republicans and President George W. Bush for the market collapse.

Alvin Greene has no visible means of support and few prospects, sort of like the America the Democrats want to create for all of us. No one knows where Greene got the $10,000 to file.


Well, no one knows where the Democrats will find the funds to unburden our grandchildren whose inheritance they have already spent.

The Democrats are led by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi who said of health care reform that we'd have to pass the bill to see what was in it.

Sounds like something Alvin Greene might say. We doubt if he'd read any bill he voted on either. He might even agree with Joe Biden that we have to spend our way out of bankruptcy.

Do you think Alvin Greene would support a failed stimulus that adds to the deficit as the unemployment rate rises?
Would he put forth a cap-and-tax climate bill that threatens to drain whatever life remains in the economy?
Would his answer to the Gulf oil spill be to dispatch an army of lawyers to find out who to sue and arrest while the oil continues to gush?


Democrats look with feigned embarrassment at how such a sad joke could become their candidate for the U.S. Senate. They should consider the ranks he would be joining.

Weekly Standard

The Obama presidency is nearly out of gas. So are the Democratic majorities in the Senate and House. Yet the White House and congressional Democrats aren’t surrendering. They’re still intoxicated with their “historic majorities” and bent on enacting more landmark liberal legislation this year, including cap and trade, a value-added tax (VAT), and who knows what else.
Are they fantasizing? Not entirely. The odds—and the political climate—are against them. But their ideological ambitions are undiminished and they have a sense of urgency. They know their majorities will be crippled (if not eliminated) in the midterm elections on November 2, which means they must enact the remaining parts of the agenda in 2010 or put them back in the cupboard of liberal dreams, maybe for decades. So it’s now or never.
There are two time slots for passing these bills, both difficult. The first is between now and whenever Congress recesses in the fall. Prospects look bleak in this time frame for approving anything except the final version of the financial reform bill. The second is when a lame duck Congress, filled with defeated and retired senators and House members, convenes in December.
Lame duck sessions don’t ordinarily enact major policy changes, but this one could be an exception. It is likely to meet after the president’s commission on reducing the deficit announces its recommendations, which may include a VAT. Democrats insist they’re not scheming to pass what is in effect a national sales tax. But a Republican official in the Senate told me a White House aide, in a recent chat, had raised the possibility of enacting one in the December session. A VAT has obviously crossed the president’s mind.

One can imagine the pressure that might be exerted to pass a VAT in a fiscal “emergency” in December: the deficit and the national debt exploding, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner reporting purchasers of government debt are suddenly backing off because of America’s fiscal mess, the president and his commission vowing to match the tax hike with spending cuts. The result: a VAT becomes law, most of the cuts don’t. President Reagan experienced a similar squeeze in the 1980s when he agreed to a tax increase in exchange for two times that amount of spending cuts. Taxes went up, the spending cuts went away.

Monday, June 14, 2010

They are kidding...right?

So we should use money we don't have (actually our childrens money that they will never see) to bail out government workers; as the private sector, which has already significantly cut back, continues to stagnate and suffer a high unemployment rate?  Why doesn't Government ever suffer?

The White House is calling for Congress to urgently pass measures to extend jobless benefits, aid cash-strapped states and provide targeted tax breaks to encourage research and development by businesses.
Obama's Democratic allies, facing congressional elections in November, have grown cautious about additional spending. Seizing on voter anxiety about deficits, Republicans have cast the administration's policies as fiscally reckless as they seek to challenge Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress.
"People are suffering out there. We want to keep this economy growing faster. We want to see an acceleration of job creation. And we have to take some steps to continue in that direction," top White House adviser David Axelrod told NBC's Meet the Press on Sunday.
His comments came a day after Obama wrote to congressional leaders, urging them to move swiftly to approve new measures to "spur job creation and build momentum toward recovery."
Senate Democrats have introduced legislation that would renew expiring unemployment benefits, and extend business and individual tax breaks. They would offset some of the bill's costs by raising taxes on hedge fund managers and other steps.
The bill complements one passed in the House of Representatives last month, which would authorize about $80 billion in new spending and add $31 billion to the deficit. The cost of the Senate version has not been estimated yet.
Obama also backs a separate measure that would provide cash to states to prevent teacher layoffs but a $23 billion version of that legislation recently failed in the Senate.
"What the president is saying is, we need to expend additional dollars to make sure that we don't have significant layoffs," House of Representatives Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, a Democrat, told ABC's "This Week."
But Hoyer acknowledged growing concern about the U.S. deficit, which reached $1.4 trillion in 2009 and which the White House projects will hit $1.6 trillion in 2010.
"I think it's accurate that there's spending fatigue, not only on Capitol Hill, but around the country. People are concerned about the debt level, and we are, as well," Hoyer said. "But clearly, you cannot not continue to stimulate an economy that is still struggling to get out of the deep ditch that we found it in about 18 months ago."
In his letter to lawmakers, Obama said last year's $863 billion stimulus halted a freefall in the U.S. economy after the worst financial crisis since the 1930s Great Depression.
The jobless aid and many of the other steps under consideration would extend provisions in last year's stimulus package, which Republicans have derided as a wasteful, big-government approach to economic policymaking.
Obama warned that without additional aid, states could be forced to enact "massive layoffs" of teachers, firefighters and other employees.
Without the six-month extension, estimated to cost $24 billion, states would be forced to lay off thousands of workers, the governors said. The extension was stripped from the jobs bill passed in the House but is included in the Senate bill.  "I'm concerned about the plight of teachers, firemen, policemen who face the real possibility that they may be laid off," Boehner said on "This Week" but he added such spending needed to be offset.

Tax Hikes and the 2011 Economic Collapse

Today's corporate profits reflect an income shift into 2010. These profits will tumble next year, preceded most likely by the stock market.

By ARTHUR LAFFER

People can change the volume, the location and the composition of their income, and they can do so in response to changes in government policies.
It shouldn't surprise anyone that the nine states without an income tax are growing far faster and attracting more people than are the nine states with the highest income tax rates. People and businesses change the location of income based on incentives.
Likewise, who is gobsmacked when they are told that the two wealthiest Americans—Bill Gates and Warren Buffett—hold the bulk of their wealth in the nontaxed form of unrealized capital gains? The composition of wealth also responds to incentives. And it's also simple enough for most people to understand that if the government taxes people who work and pays people not to work, fewer people will work. Incentives matter.
People can also change the timing of when they earn and receive their income in response to government policies. According to a 2004 U.S. Treasury report, "high income taxpayers accelerated the receipt of wages and year-end bonuses from 1993 to 1992—over $15 billion—in order to avoid the effects of the anticipated increase in the top rate from 31% to 39.6%. At the end of 1993, taxpayers shifted wages and bonuses yet again to avoid the increase in Medicare taxes that went into effect beginning 1994."
Just remember what happened to auto sales when the cash for clunkers program ended. Or how about new housing sales when the $8,000 tax credit ended? It isn't rocket surgery, as the Ivy League professor said.
On or about Jan. 1, 2011, federal, state and local tax rates are scheduled to rise quite sharply. President George W. Bush's tax cuts expire on that date, meaning that the highest federal personal income tax rate will go 39.6% from 35%, the highest federal dividend tax rate pops up to 39.6% from 15%, the capital gains tax rate to 20% from 15%, and the estate tax rate to 55% from zero. Lots and lots of other changes will also occur as a result of the sunset provision in the Bush tax cuts.
Tax rates have been and will be raised on income earned from off-shore investments. Payroll taxes are already scheduled to rise in 2013 and the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) will be digging deeper and deeper into middle-income taxpayers. And there's always the celebrated tax increase on Cadillac health care plans. State and local tax rates are also going up in 2011 as they did in 2010. Tax rate increases next year are everywhere.
Now, if people know tax rates will be higher next year than they are this year, what will those people do this year? They will shift production and income out of next year into this year to the extent possible. As a result, income this year has already been inflated above where it otherwise should be and next year, 2011, income will be lower than it otherwise should be.
Also, the prospect of rising prices, higher interest rates and more regulations next year will further entice demand and supply to be shifted from 2011 into 2010. In my view, this shift of income and demand is a major reason that the economy in 2010 has appeared as strong as it has. When we pass the tax boundary of Jan. 1, 2011, my best guess is that the train goes off the tracks and we get our worst nightmare of a severe "double dip" recession.
In 1981, Ronald Reagan—with bipartisan support—began the first phase in a series of tax cuts passed under the Economic Recovery Tax Act (ERTA), whereby the bulk of the tax cuts didn't take effect until Jan. 1, 1983. Reagan's delayed tax cuts were the mirror image of President Barack Obama's delayed tax rate increases. For 1981 and 1982 people deferred so much economic activity that real GDP was basically flat (i.e., no growth), and the unemployment rate rose to well over 10%.
But at the tax boundary of Jan. 1, 1983 the economy took off like a rocket, with average real growth reaching 7.5% in 1983 and 5.5% in 1984. It has always amazed me how tax cuts don't work until they take effect. Mr. Obama's experience with deferred tax rate increases will be the reverse. The economy will collapse in 2011.
Consider corporate profits as a share of GDP. Today, corporate profits as a share of GDP are way too high given the state of the U.S. economy. These high profits reflect the shift in income into 2010 from 2011. These profits will tumble in 2011, preceded most likely by the stock market.
In 2010, without any prepayment penalties, people can cash in their Individual Retirement Accounts (IRAs), Keough deferred income accounts and 401(k) deferred income accounts. After paying their taxes, these deferred income accounts can be rolled into Roth IRAs that provide after-tax income to their owners into the future. Given what's going to happen to tax rates, this conversion seems like a no-brainer.
The result will be a crash in tax receipts once the surge is past. If you thought deficits and unemployment have been bad lately, you ain't seen nothing yet.

Friday, June 11, 2010

The partial reason for the deficit during the Bush years

Rich like a lot of his fellow liberals has already forgotten about what happened on 9/11. Maybe that possibly had something to do with the creation of the deficit as well.

The bigger question for liberals is since we on the Conservative side have all stated that Bush spent way too much money and strayed from any conservative roots he might have had why do you continue to bring Bush up and continue to try to paint over all of the terrible things that this current administration has done by comparing everything to the Bush years?

I repeat I am disgusted with all of the spending on entitlements that occurred while Bush was the President. I am not disgusted by the increased military spending and I am proud that under his leadership we did not suffer any othe terrorist attacks on US soil.

We can all agree that Bush signed the legislation as pushed forward by the Democratic Congress known as TARP. We will not agree unless you admit to the fact that since Democrats have been in control of Congress the deficit has grown to a level that is unprecedented. For you to try to gloss over the fact that the Pelosi and Reid led Congress is much more responsible for the deficit than any Republican is intellectually dishonest.

The Democratic Congress certainly has had the power to stop any of the increased spending. Instead they have chosen to increase spending to a level that is unsustainable no matter how much you increase taxes. These are the facts and this is why the majority of Amercians want to throw them all out. I agree that any Republican who is voting for this increased spending should be voted out as well. That is why we are happy about what happened in Utah during the straw poll.

Rich, if you cannot at least admit to the fact that this current Democratic controlled Congress is out of control as far as spending goes then you have zero credibility in your posts.

Another reason why he is not qualified to be President.

Lauer: Have you talked directly to Tony Hayward, the CEO of BP?

Obama: I have not spoken to him directly – and here’s the reason: because my experience is when you talk to a guy like a BP CEO, he’s going to say all the right things to me. I’m not interested in words, I’m interested in action. And we are communicating to him every single day, exactly what we expect of him and what we expect of that administration.


Its not the "ass kicking" that is the issue. Terry's "smart" guy, the guy with no real world experience, who sent tingles up legs, cannot discuss an issue with a CEO and figure out fact from fiction? This is truly amazing and scary.


Yes, it is stupid that this fool will "talk" to our enemies but will not talk to a CEO but what is really concerning is that he is what afraid of being manipulated.


The book, Game Changer-noted what a dunce Mc Cain was and what a poor campaign he ran. I make this comment because the impression was that he could not have been as bad as the press portrayed him, but it turns out to be true.

Now it appears that the character of "O" as a naive, inexperienced, all hat and no cowboy is also true.


Republican staff members and candidates are folks with real world experience (see the CA lady candidates), our fool President is surrounded by staff devoted to Liberal ideology who have not a clue and in fact are hostile to business.


We are in big trouble.

Republican Sen. Tom Coburn represents Oklahoma.

Thursday, June 10, 2010

Deficits

http://blog.heritage.org/2010/02/05/past-deficits-vs-obamas-deficits-in-pictures/

A good chunk of the deficits racked up by the Bush administration came from actions that President Bush and a Democratic Congress took to prop up the economy right before he left office. It is a fact that TARP was enacted after consultation with the in coming administration. Rich likes to ignore all of these facts when he and the other liberals act like petulant children and try to blame all of the world's ills on Bush. I am sure you learned in your high school Civics class that no spending is done without the explicit approval of Congress. The Legislative branch "holds the purse strings" not the Executive branch.

If you look at the charts contained at the link above you can see that since the Democrats have taken control of Congress the deficit has increased from around 200 million to where it is today. The reverse can be said about when Clinton was in office. The deficit was eliminated and the surplus was created when Republicans were in control of Congress. However Clinton was a pragmatic President and was able to tack heavily to the right during his Presidency I do not believe this President has enough common sense to do the same. The Democrats will try to claim that the deficit is shrinking substantially prior to the 2012 election but anyone with any brains will know that this is being accomplished using accounting trickery. As the good Doctor has pointed out under the health care reform bill the government will be collecting substantial amounts of increased taxes before they start spending as part of the health care reform. Their hope is that this will create a reduction in the deficit in time for the election before the costs hit and the deficit spikes to the south.

This is the kind of people we have running things now. They will mortgage the future away to win elections. Shame on any politician that has voted for this abuse!

Crisis reveals Obama’s weakness

Here is a great comment to the editor of the Houston Chronicle published June 8, 2010

The oil is blunt, harsh and without nuance, like the judgment of a tabloid.
In this crisis in the Gulf of Mexico, the Great Obama is reduced to a helpless observer of men with whom he is uneasy, performing tasks he does not understand. Neither he nor his functionaries can do anything, and their regulatory and financial chirping alongside the roaring machinery only serves to remind the rest of us of the uselessness of those who have made a career of taking and threatening, hindering, suing and penalizing.
The gritty physicality of this crisis undoes their self-imagined toughness, calling to mind Tony Soprano’s Gucci-shod thugs’ sorry encounter with the Russian Special Forces veteran in the snowy Pine Barrens.
It is so easy to imagine energy czar Carol Browner, Secretary of Homeland Security Napolitano, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and President Obama huddled together like Christopher and Paulie, freezing, with nothing but packets of McDonald’s ketchup and mustard to sustain them because they don’t know where they are or what to do.
The energy czar, or coordinator or whatever she is called, assures us she “has been a lifelong environmentalist,” but will be remembered only as one of those who could do little to save a rich way of life as rooted in history and place as she and her world view are abstracted from them.
With luck Alan Brinkley, Doris Kearns Goodwin or some other historical conjurer may, in time, soften the focus and confuse the issue. For now, though, Obama is twice undone. Even the densest Obama-addicted voter (Rich) begins to appreciate how unacceptable is the price of having handed power to a president unprepared by experience, temperament or understanding of this nation to wield it.
And those of the political class are now free to do what necessity and their own low characters require.
The Obama illusion is in shreds. The power on which he fed politicians and media is spent. He no longer has anything to offer them, so they will abandon him. In the end it will be the spectacle of the political elites’ scorn and betrayal that serves as the ultimate sanction for the presumptuousness of this posturing mediocrity, whose unfitness to be president of the United States has now been proven conclusively.
(emphasis added)

James V. Capua
Greene County

Wednesday, June 9, 2010

Yesterday's biggest losers

Sort of obvious. It is the unions. They went in and spent in excess of 10 million to try to make a statement in Arkansas and they were rewarded with a significant anti union backlash.

I told you they should have used that money to help with their pension underfunding. It would be very interesting to have a poll of union members to ask them if they approve of the way their leadership spends their money given the sad state of their pensions.

Tuesday, June 8, 2010

True

The Alien in the White House  By DOROTHY RABINOWITZ

The deepening notes of disenchantment with Barack Obama now issuing from commentators across the political spectrum were predictable. So, too, were the charges from some of the president's earliest enthusiasts about his failure to reflect a powerful sense of urgency about the oil spill.


There should have been nothing puzzling about his response to anyone who has paid even modest critical attention to Mr. Obama's pronouncements. For it was clear from the first that this president—single-minded, ever-visible, confident in his program for a reformed America saved from darkness by his arrival—was wanting in certain qualities citizens have until now taken for granted in their presidents. Namely, a tone and presence that said: This is the Americans' leader, a man of them, for them, the nation's voice and champion. Mr. Obama wasn't lacking in concern about the oil spill. What he lacked was that voice—and for good reason.


A great part of America now understands that this president's sense of identification lies elsewhere, and is in profound ways unlike theirs. He is hard put to sound convincingly like the leader of the nation, because he is, at heart and by instinct, the voice mainly of his ideological class. He is the alien in the White House, a matter having nothing to do with delusions about his birthplace cherished by the demented fringe.

One of his first reforms was to rid the White House of the bust of Winston Churchill—a gift from Tony Blair—by packing it back off to 10 Downing Street. A cloudlet of mystery has surrounded the subject ever since, but the central fact stands clear. The new administration had apparently found no place in our national house of many rooms for the British leader who lives on so vividly in the American mind. Churchill, face of our shared wartime struggle, dauntless rallier of his nation who continues, so remarkably, to speak to ours. For a president to whom such associations are alien, ridding the White House of Churchill would, of course, have raised no second thoughts.


Far greater strangeness has since flowed steadily from Washington. The president's appointees, transmitters of policy, go forth with singular passion week after week, delivering the latest inversion of reality. Their work is not easy, focused as it is on a current prime preoccupation of this White House—that is, finding ways to avoid any public mention of the indisputable Islamist identity of the enemy at war with us. No small trick that, but their efforts go forward in public spectacles matchless in their absurdity—unnerving in what they confirm about our current guardians of law and national security.



Consider the hapless Eric Holder, America's attorney general, confronting the question put to him by Rep. Lamar Smith (R., Texas) of the House Judicary Committee on May 13. Did Mr. Holder think that in the last three terrorist attempts on this soil, one of them successful (Maj. Nidal Hasan's murder of 13 soldiers at Fort Hood, preceded by his shout of "Allahu Akbar!"), that radical Islam might have played any role at all? Mr. Holder seemed puzzled by the question. "People have different reasons" he finally answered—a response he repeated three times. He didn't want "to say anything negative about any religion."


And who can forget the exhortations on jihad by John Brennan, Mr. Obama's chief adviser on counterterrorism? Mr. Brennan has in the past charged that Americans lack sensitivity to the Muslim world, and that we have particularly failed to credit its peace-loving disposition. In a May 26 speech at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Mr. Brennan held forth fervently, if not quite comprehensibly, on who our enemy was not: "Our enemy is not terrorism because terrorism is just a tactic. Our enemy is not terror because terror is a state of mind, and as Americans we refuse to live in fear."


He went on to announce, sternly, that we do not refer to our enemies as Islamists or jihadists because jihad is a holy struggle, a legitimate tenet of Islam. How then might we be permitted to describe our enemies? One hint comes from another of Mr. Brennan's pronouncements in that speech: That "violent extremists are victims of political, economic and social forces."


Yes, that would work. Consider the news bulletins we could have read: "Police have arrested Faisal Shahzad, victim of political, economic and social forces living in Connecticut, for efforts to set off a car bomb explosion in Times Square." Plotters in Afghanistan and Yemen, preparing for their next attempt at mass murder in America, could only have listened in wonderment. They must have marvelled in particular on learning that this was the chief counterterrorism adviser to the president of the United States.

Long after Mr. Obama leaves office, it will be this parade of explicators, laboring mightily to sell each new piece of official reality revisionism—Janet Napolitano and her immortal "man-caused disasters'' among them—that will stand most memorably as the face of this administration.

It is a White House that has focused consistently on the sensitivities of the world community—as it is euphemistically known—a body of which the president of the United States frequently appears to view himself as a representative at large.


It is what has caused this president and his counterterrorist brain trust to deem it acceptable to insult Americans with nonsensical evasions concerning the enemy we face. It is this focus that caused Mr. Holder to insist on holding the trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in lower Manhattan, despite the rage this decision induced in New Yorkers, and later to insist if not there, then elsewhere in New York. This was all to be a dazzling exhibition for that world community—proof of Mr. Obama's moral reclamation program and that America had been delivered from the darkness of the Bush years.


It was why this administration tapped officials like Michael Posner, assistant secretary of state for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor. Among his better known contributions to political discourse was a 2005 address in which he compared the treatment of Muslim-Americans in the United States after 9/11 with the plight of the Japanese-Americans interned in camps after Pearl Harbor. During a human-rights conference held in China this May, Mr. Posner cited the new Arizona immigration law by way of assuring the Chinese, those exemplary guardians of freedom, that the United States too had its problems with discrimination.

So there we were: America and China, in the same boat on human rights, two buddies struggling for reform. For this view of reality, which brought withering criticism in Congress and calls for his resignation, Mr. Posner has been roundly embraced in the State Department as a superbly effective representative.

It is no surprise that Mr. Posner—like numerous of his kind—has found a natural home in this administration. His is a sensibility and political disposition with which Mr. Obama is at home. The beliefs and attitudes that this president has internalized are to be found everywhere—in the salons of the left the world over—and, above all, in the academic establishment, stuffed with tenured radicals and their political progeny. The places where it is held as revealed truth that the United States is now, and has been throughout its history, the chief engine of injustice and oppression in the world.

They are attitudes to be found everywhere, but never before in a president of the United States. Mr. Obama may not hold all, or the more extreme, of these views. But there can be no doubt by now of the influences that have shaped him. They account for his grand apology tour through the capitals of Europe and to the Muslim world, during which he decried America's moral failures—her arrogance, insensitivity. They were the words of a man to whom reasons for American guilt came naturally. Americans were shocked by this behavior in their newly elected president. But he was telling them something from those lecterns in foreign lands—something about his distant relation to the country he was about to lead.


The truth about that distance is now sinking in, which is all to the good. A country governed by leaders too principled to speak the name of its mortal enemy needs every infusion of reality it can get.

Response

No, I/We do not agree that we need to raise taxes and especially do not need to massively raise taxes.  We must reduce the size and scope of government.  We are going broke and cannot tax our way out of this mess.  If we raise taxes now, we will only postpone our day of reckoning and further cement the entitlement mentality that is destroying our country.

The previous administration presided over an economic meltdown brought on, in truth, by citizens buying homes they could not afford, which became securities that were not secure, causing an avalanche. Prior to that event, there were much more modest deficits brought on by the whole government being guilty of over spending and not addressing entitlements.



While both parties were to blame for over spending and not addressing entitlements.  Never mentioned by smug liberals including our President is that the opposition party, the Democrats, were in control of the legislative branch of government the last 2 years.

Where, prey tell has this administration done a good job at limiting the deficit? Yes, they will begin to collect taxes for health care before benefits are implemented, but soon the benefits will overwhelm the health care apparatus inevitably leading to rationing.


We do not need to raise taxes! They are already a large enough part of GDP.


We need to reform entitlements dramatically to save this country. There are courageous conservatives which would propose such reform, except the Democrats, Rich's Democrats, the Liberals, the welfare promoters who want to keep us dependent to keep themselves in office, will demagogue the issue, AS ALWAYS, and prevent AS ALWAYS an meaningful reform. There will ultimately be social carnage, just like in Greece because of the Liberals who insist on -UCKING UP (sorry) our country.

Rich you know in your heart that massive tax increases are not going to solve our problem, we, like Greece, need to curtail the welfare state and it is your party that stands in the way. 

Last time:

Cut discretionary spending
Raise the retirement age
Revoke health care reform
Revoke the rest of the stimulus
Do not do another stimulus (for God's sake)
Freeze Colas for one year.
Eliminate earmarks


and most importantly


Extend the Bush tax cuts and get out of the way of the American economy.


And while you wrongly accuse us of never answering your question, despite my answering it many times (yes it may not completely eliminate the deficit, but it would restore some fiscal sanity and even more importantly allow the economy to grow!)


You never address the fairy tale that is your scenario: What evidence, now answer this!, do you have that after your massive taxes are implemented, without any spending controls in place, the bar will not be reset for even more spending and entitlements and deficits and and and.


And when are your going to admit that the current management of our economy has sucked it dry with increasing entitlements, bailouts and deficits resulting in low growth and high unemployment?


You can't continue to blame the previous administration for the housing calamity when the liberals have held the purse strings for 4 years, done things exactly their way and we continue to flounder.

Freedom, free markets, self reliance and minimal government.

Hopefully, The Lame Duck GOP Won't be So Stubborn

Most or all of my right wing friends on this blog have a dirty little secret - and I know what it is. With respect to the budget and taxes, you know I am right. Pride prevents you from admitting it as does the fear of reproach from your fellow Republicans.

Unfortunately, Congress operates the same way. Members of the GOP Caucus - most of whom are bright, overachieving guys - know that we have to raise massive revenue or eliminate Social Security and Medicare, which is not going to happen. The problem is, they saw what happened when George HW Bush broke his promise. They saw what happened to the Democrats after the budget balancing 1993 Budget Bill. They have all sworn off tax hikes. Self preservation means opposing any and all tax hikes if you are a 2010 Republican officeholder.

They complain about a $1.4T deficit, but they know that Bush handed Obama $1.3T of annual red ink that was rapidly growing. Objectively, from a fiscally conservative standpoint, the administration has done a good job on the budget. Had Bushes trajectory continued, we'd be >$2.6T in the soup this year.

So - we have a huge structural fiscal imbalance. That's a fact. The Debt Commission will report it's recommendations in November or December. Will Congress have the courage to do the right thing? Can we cut discretionary spending, gradually raise the entitlement ages, and significantly raise taxes in a manner that causes the least drag on our economy? We'll have to - the world's future depends on it. We cannot lead the world if we are broke and can't borrow money and that is the path that we are on. If the system is broken, we will arrive at that sorry destination sooner rather than later.


How to be Unpresidential

Has everyone seen the latest from our current liar in chief?

In response to the public's correct view that this President is unqualified to be a leader during disasters, Barry makes the following comment: "I was down there a month ago, before most of these talking heads were even paying attention to the gulf. A month ago I was meeting with fishermen down there, standing in the rain (poor baby) talking about what a potential crisis this could be," Obama said, defending his administration's handling of the spill. "And I don't sit around just talking to experts because this is a college seminar; we talk to these folks because they potentially have the best answers, so I know whose ass to kick."

Tough words from the person who has allegedly been in charge the entire time. How about starting with your own? Add this to his unpresidential statement of how he has his boot on the neck of BP. Then add on how he was spouting about forcing BP not to pay their dividend. Why doesn't he just force BP into bankruptcy? Is Barry short BP stock or something? I would like to know how many retirees depend on BP dividends. Maybe he should just take over BP, I am sure that would make the average American feel so much better given Barry's tremendous experience at being in a position of executive leadership.

According to the latest ABC/Washington Post poll, more than two-thirds of those polled, 69 percent, disapprove of the federal government's handling of the spill. That's higher than the outrage over the Bush administration's handling of Hurricane Katrina.

Rich, that number is 69%! Unfortunately thus far Barry has made most of my pre-election predictions come true. The only people still supporting him are the hard core liberal Kool Aid drinkers or those that stand to gain financially because of Barry taking care of them. Rich has pointed out that President Reagan's poll numbers were lower at this juncture. But what you fail to mention in your attempt to rewrite history is that Barry was at a 69% approval rating in January of 2009. No President has fallen farther and faster at this point in their Presidency! Barry came in promising a new and better world and he is delivering the exact opposite. Instead of hope we are getting despair!

President Reagan was blessed with his unbridled optimism and the fact that he had experience being an executive where Barry has this so called cool, laid back demeanor coupled with tremendous arrogance and a hair trigger temper. Not qualities to give the American public confidence that things are going to get better. We are all witnessing the fall of the US mostly due to the ugly fact that the liberals still believe in Keynesian economic principles even though they have been shown to be ineffectual over and over and over again. We cannot continue to sustain the pace of spending 100s of thousands of dollars for each temporary job that this Administration creates. It is clearly unsustainable and the road to ruin as a nation.

Why are Jews Liberals?

 Dick Morris  June 5, 2010

It is the question that sooner or later baffles every political pundit, consultant, expert, or observer. Why do American Jews persist in their adoration of the Democratic Party? Why, like an abused spouse, do they tolerate Israel-bashing, support for the Palestinians and Democratic softness on terrorism and still return for more? As the richest demographic group in our population, why do they still vote for Obama and donate money to him when he specifically proposes to raise the taxes on those making more than $200,000 per year?
Why do they let liberal politicians embrace the likes of Louis Farrakhan and Rev. Jeremiah Wright and still support them on Election Day?
I don´t have an answer and have never heard a satisfactory one from any leader of an American Jewish or pro-Israeli organization.

The "o" listens...a little

Let's take a wild guess which programs won't be touched.  Probably the same which were supported by the "you voted for me" reward program known as the stimulus.



"The public wants to know that we're willing to be very aggressive on spending. They're willing to invest, but they also want to know that you're going to wear the green eyeshades," Emanuel said in an interview Monday. "That's exactly what's happening here."


Previous administrations have asked agency heads to justify programs, but budget analysts said they could not recall a time when agencies had been ordered to volunteer programs for elimination. To encourage cooperation, Obama also will ask Congress for new authority to let agencies keep half the savings they identify, administration officials said. The agencies could then put the cash toward higher priorities rather than surrendering it all for deficit reduction, as is typical.

It is hard to say which programs are likely to attract the ax. Administration officials frequently refer to dozens of duplicative programs scattered across government. In a speech he is set to deliver Tuesday, Orszag will point to 110 programs dedicated to advancing science and math education, more than 100 to youth mentoring, and more than 40 to employment and job training.

"This redundancy wastes resources and makes it harder to act on each of these worthy goals," Orszag will say, according to an advance copy of the speech.

Monday, June 7, 2010

Union pensions

Can someone tell me why my taxes should go to bail out a non Federal employee union pension fund?

These unions have the most underfunded pensions in the country due to their mismanagement and now seek to have their useful idiots in congress pass legislation to bail them out. Can you tell me why these unions can continue to spend untold millions on political campaigns but not have to use the money to shore up their obligations to their members? That should be a crime like management diverting money that should have been paid for payroll taxes.

Liberals love to talk about "fairness" and "justice" yet they never think twice about putting their hand in my pocket and taking my money to give to their cronies.

When most Americans have to work longer because their 401 K has lost value due to the downturn that is being exacerbated by the massive spending and anti business policies of the current administration many liberals see no problem in not requiring union members to make similar adjustments due to the fact that their pension investments have also gone south.

Where is the "fairness" in that? Shouldn't the unions themselves be required to stop spending their money on political ads until they have their pensions properly funded?

It is time for the unions to go under the microscope.

Are they really this stupid!

Last week we saw this administration through the champion of hair plugs and others trumpeting the jobs number before it came out on Friday morning. The market appeared to have factored a good jobs number in prior to Friday because what did we see? That is correct, A huge down turn in the market.

The question one needs to ask is: is this administration that stupid that they actually believed that the market would not be able to see that most of the jobs in the report are temporary? On top of it we now know that these slime balls in charge have been firing people and then rehiring them over and over and counting these as new jobs each time. You certainly do not give the public confidence in this manner. Now we are getting to the point where people are starting to not believe anything this adminstration says because of there lack of credibility.

Not even the Nixon administration was this arrogant, this condescending, this thin skinned, and this dishonest. They are really starting to make Jimmy Carter look good as a President!

In way over his head

Peggy Noonan had a great editorial talking about how our underqualified President is actually showing us that he was never qualified for the job.

Now it appears that there is lots of buyer's remorse out there.

I said it numerous times leading up to this election and I stand by those comments. You do not meet the qualifications to be the leader of the most powerful country in the nation during times like these by being the President of Harvard's Law Review, a community organizer and a US Senator for about one half of a term.

We as a nation have really shown how naive we are by putting this clown in the White House. Now he thinks he can show leadership by acting like he is mad.

Watch those poll numbers free fall. How can anyone in their right mind defend this guy? They are even questioning his competency on the Huffington Post!

Yet we have Rich who must have been dropped on his head as a baby to continue to not see what is happening out there.

Oh that is right I forgot. All of the bad things that have happned during Barry's time in office are Bush's fault!

Sunday, June 6, 2010

Seems the Republic agrees with me.

Tax cuts!

Egghead economists (or Realtors blogging in their underwear:),  may judge economic progress in all sorts of ways, but to the man and woman on the street, the only thing that matters is jobs.
And if the billions of dollars being spent on the economic stimulus are not producing those jobs, then they are contributing to a toxic byproduct: debt. Enormous, dangerous, economically counterproductive national debt.


Stock markets took a huge tumble Friday on news of job gains that proved lower than anticipated, with the Dow Jones industrial average dropping an unnerving 3 percent to a close of 9,931.
There were a number of factors driving the down draft, including news that yet another member of the European Union, Hungary, is joining Greece, Spain, Portugal and Italy on the list of debt-laden countries dragging down the European currency, the euro.

But, in the U.S., the lack of new jobs unrelated to federal stimulus spending is what is shaking investors.

The economy will kick into gear again when the private sector begins adding jobs. Investors were spooked Friday because it isn't doing that yet. Of the 413,000 jobs added in May, just 41,000 of them were in the private sector, barely a fifth of what economists expected, and many of those jobs were temporary ones. Speaking of which, virtually all the public-sector job increases were the result of temporary workers hired by the U.S. Census Bureau.

"We know that employment is the lagging indicator, but . . . we've been saying that for a year. There comes a time where we're really going to have to see that number pick up," said Robert Froehlich, senior managing director of the Hartford Mutual Funds.

Even anemic job-growth numbers would have been enough to cheer investors, who have come to expect a slow, shallow recovery. But a report showing essentially no private-sector job growth links the worst fears the Europeans are facing - unsustainable debt - with a growing concern here that the nearly trillion-dollar federal stimulus package has failed to accomplish anything more than add to this country's debt.
The Keynesians who advocate for bigger stimulus spending to avoid a double-dip recession are beginning to bump up against the limits of their argument that deficit spending can lead the economy back to a growth cycle. The stimulus spending has to show some private-sector results. We can't keep pointing to the census workers, teachers and other public-sector jobs that have been "kept" thanks to stimulus money.
Why not? The best answer to that question is unfolding in Europe. No, the U.S. is not Greece. Nor is it Hungary. Nor Ireland nor Spain.
But by trillion-dollar strides, we are getting closer to that precarious model. And by the evidence of the first stimulus, a second such addition to the deficit would bring the U.S. one giant stride closer.

Truth

$13,050,826,460,886.97  That’s what the National Debt topped this week, a record.


Go ahead, let it soak in: Thirteen trillion, fifty billion, eight hundred twenty-six million, four hundred sixty thousand, eight hundred eighty-six dollars . . . and ninety-seven cents.


Seen on the “debt clock” in Times Square, that number seems little more than an abstraction, something almost impossible to process. But think about it this way: If you earned one dollar every second, it would take you 416,000 years to earn enough money to pay it off. Or consider: Alex Rodriguez earned $33 million last year, making him the highest paid player in baseball. It would take nearly 400,000 Rodriguezes to earn that much money.  But that’s what our children and grandchildren now owe.

Actually, that’s just part of the debt we have dumped on future generations. That’s because most of what the government owes isn’t on the official books.


Social Security, for instance, faces unfunded liabilities of more than $15.8 trillion. And while that sounds like a lot of money, it is dwarfed by Medicare’s looming budget shortfall of between $50 trillion and $100 trillion, depending on which accounting measure is used.

So the real national debt may be as much as nine times bigger than the official estimate.  No wonder the bond-rating firm Moody’s recently warned that the US government was at risk of losing its AAA credit rating.

This is not a partisan issue. When George W. Bush became president, the entire federal budget was $1.2 trillion. By the time he left office, it was $2.9 trillion, the biggest increase since World War II. A budget surplus in 2000 had become a $400 billion deficit at the end of Bush’s term.


Contrary to Republican mythology, it was not just because of increased defense spending and the “war on terror.” President Bush increased domestic discretionary spending faster than any president since Lyndon Johnson. His signature accomplishment was a new Medicare prescription drug entitlement that added more than $13 trillion to the program’s future liabilities.


But President Obama makes Bush look like a skinflint. He’s proposed a budget this year that would top $3.8 trillion.  His signature initiative so far is a new health care entitlement, which will add hundreds of billions to the federal deficit over the next 10 years, and trillions more beyond that.


As a result of this bipartisan profligacy, federal spending topped 24.7% of gross domestic product last year, the highest peacetime percentage in US history. The optimistic projections of the most recent Obama budget see that declining ever so slightly to 23.7% by 2020 (for comparison, the historical average has been roughly 21% of GDP). But that respite, such as it is, will be only temporary. As the full force of entitlement programs kicks in, the federal government will consume more than 40% of GDP by the middle of the century, and rise to an unfathomable 80% of GDP beyond that.


Congress doesn’t seem to care, treating debt as an abstraction, monopoly money, someone else’s problem. Let them deal with what happens when the US becomes Greece. Except that day may be sooner than they think.


There is no way to tax our way out of this mess. Just keeping up with currently projected spending would require raising both the corporate tax rate and top income tax rate from their current 35% to 88%, the current 25% tax rate for middle-income workers to 63%, and the 10% tax bracket for low-income workers to 25%.

And that’s just at the federal level. State and local taxes would be added on top of that.


Does anyone really believe that our economy can survive that kind of taxation? Yes Rich does!


If Democrats and Republicans continue to spend like drunken sailors, it won’t really matter who pays the bar bill.


Whether government borrows the money or raises it in taxes, every dollar that government spends is a dollar siphoned off from American workers, making us less productive, less prosperous and less free.


Sooner or later, someone is going to have to have the courage to say “No.”


Surprisingly, that line may be drawn here — in New York and New Jersey. In Jersey, which faces a nearly $1 billion budget shortfall, Gov. Chris Christie has refused to raise taxes, and has made real cuts in state spending. Meanwhile, Andrew Cuomo, the leading candidate to become New York’s next governor, has rejected a proposal by Lt. Gov. Richard Ravitch to borrow $6 billion to close the state’s budget gap. Perhaps at least some politicians are learning to live within their means.


Now, if only a tiny bit of that courage would bubble up to Congress.

Saturday, June 5, 2010

Double Dip (no not Terry and Rich)

I want smart. GWB was way over his head. Cronyism!


Let's see what 2010 brings us:

First, apparently the White House feels it is appropriate to interfere with the citizens of Pennsylvania and their choice of Senator. Their defenders scream, this has always been done! Showing no examples.

Oil leaks. One cannot fault "o" for the accident but the cleanup, the prevention of the damage, after the governor of the state ASKED for help? You bet!

During the hurricane, there was this little LAW issue, the governor had to ask for help, didn't until a little too late. The equivalent of a nuclear bomb had gone off and folks were struggling. But oil leaking? Not too hard to respond. But how did the great Barry respond? After the Governor ASKED for help? Golf and his usual primary function as Demagogue in Chief. Instead of helping, he blamed.

On to immigration, we have an immigration problem correct? A state traumatized by illegal immigration passes a law. Does Barry read the law, do those in his administration who manage the issue, including the former governor of the involved state? Of course not! Why address an issue when you can... now here it is again...demagogue!

Lastly the economy. We are broke, we have no reserves. Conservatives can blame government intervention in the housing market, Liberals can blame the lack of oversight, but however we arrived here (actually we arrived here in 2008) we are here and it needs to be managed.

Now our friend Eric, of syntax and the stock market, says we are in for a big ass kicking.

Agree, but if the cause is deflation of housing prices and stock prices, surely a cure would be an improved business environment which would lower the unemployment rate (reducing government expenditures) and improve tax revenues. How? Tax cuts! Broad based tax cuts to free up capital and hiring.

But no, what Barry and his minions promote is another stimulus as they...here it is again...demagogue "tax cuts for the rich".

Now argue as you might Dear Mr. Baxter the Stimulator, but the first one, the one where we borrowed money from ourselves to pay ourselves has been a spectacular failure. Your boys theme, that tax cuts would just cause folks to save the money has been completely wrong. That scenario, the people holding on to their money, has been brought to fruition with stimulus, health care, and new taxes.

As sure as day follows night, there will be a response.

Before you write, let's visit yesterdays employment numbers, that of only 41,000 private jobs created, the rest related to the census which will presumably return to the legions of the unemployed after August.

The Demagogue in Chief spoke, saying we cannot go back, cannot return to the calamity that caused the housing crisis (he really did) as if the housing crisis of 2008 would continue to limit employment opportunities in 2010. We must progress with "green" jobs, so says the Demagogue in Chief, without a smidgen of reality contained within that idea.

We should be creating a huge number of jobs except this administration is squarely in the way. We should be done with this recession but instead we are headed for a second dip.

November 2010, please come quickly.

I guess Sweden is too far, let's be like China!

http://www.infowars.com/steve-wynn-takes-on-washington/

Friday, June 4, 2010

Don't you think it is ironic?

Don't you think it is ironic that the Barry administration trots out the former Liar-In-Chief, who had is law license suspended for lying to a Grand Jury under oath, as their point man on the Sestak affair? They have to be brain dead to think that the public and media are going to accept the credibility of Bill Clinton regarding this scandel in the making.

Never mind that the entire official explanation strains credibilty and facts past the breaking point. I told you about the Chicago style politics before the election. You are now seeing a demonstration of it over and over again as they continue to try and BS the American public as they glom more and more of the tax payer pie and redistribute it to their cronies and supporters. Doesn't it bother you to hear these clowns justify their behavir with comments like "politics have always been this way"? Really, please give us some examples of other administrations promising jobs to people for not running for election against their favorites.

This is probably not enough to get Barry impeached but I am predicting that these scandels are going to cost someone their job in this administration. The only question is who will they choose to be the sacrificial lamb.

Do you think that Israel know believes the entire world is against them?

More and more evidence is coming out that Israel was totally correct in their response to the flotilla.

It appears that our State Department urged Israel to use caution and restraint and that is why the Israeli soldiers had paintball guns instead of real weapons loaded with bullets. They were completely surprised by the violent response of the 50 or so men who ambushed the Israeli commandos as they rappelled onto the ship's deck.
http://maggiesfarm.anotherdotcom.com/archives/14600-EXPLOSIVE-Question-Did-Obamas-Urging-Lead-To-Paintball-Guns.html
The EU Parliament's Foreign Affairs Committee, led by the French, fully condemened Israel. "I hope that the death of these pacifists, these activists, will lead us to say this time: 'That's enough! It has to stop! ...Let us put an end to the impunity of Israel!'" Even when presented with the video images of the so called "pacifists" in action a French MEP stated that there is "no guarantee that the images that were shown are in any way authentic."

then the great leader of the Free World, Barry himself, again rushed to judgement, remember the way he rushed to judgement in the Cambridge police officer affair? He walks lock step with the huge anti-Semite himself, Jimmy Carter, who condemned Israel publicly as well.

Even that liberal, gay Jew, who is the Father of our current financial crisis, Barney Frank, condemned Israel before gathering any facts.

So Israel is always guilty in the eyes of left leaning politicians.

Here is an excellent take on the issue by Rich's favorite writer, Charles Krauthammer.
http://article.nationalreview.com/435513/israel-disarmed/charles-krauthammer

Aren't we all glad that Barry is in charge of the oil leak.

My gosh if Barry hadn't taken control of fixing the BP leak, in between his record number of rounds of golf and vacations for a President, it would have never passed the Exxon Valdez as the largest oil spill of all time.

Tuesday, June 1, 2010

Can Rich(ie) be far behind. Crazy Rich is already mad at him about the "war". Terry? You too?

Once More, With Feeling


By MAUREEN DOWD
President Spock’s behavior is illogical.


Once more, he has willfully and inexplicably resisted fulfilling a signal part of his job: being a prism in moments of fear and pride, reflecting what Americans feel so they know he gets it.   “This president needs to tell BP, ’I’m your daddy,’ “ scolded James Carville, a New Orleans resident, as he called Barack Obama’s response to Louisiana’s new watery heartbreak “lackadaisical.”


At a press conference, Obama said Malia had asked him, as he shaved, “Did you plug the hole yet, Daddy?” (That hole should be plugged with a junk-shot of Glenn Beck, who crudely mocked the adorable Malia.) Oddly, the good father who wrote so poignantly about growing up without a daddy scorns the paternal aspect of the presidency.


In the campaign, Obama’s fight flagged to the point that his donors openly upbraided him. In the Oval, he waited too long to express outrage and offer leadership on A.I.G., the banks, the bonuses, the job loss and mortgage fears, the Christmas underwear bomber, the death panel scare tactics, the ugly name-calling of Tea Party protesters.


Too often it feels as though Barry (now where have we hear Barry before?...that is right! Mark used Barry when he was warning us about this joker) is watching from a balcony, reluctant to enter the fray until the clamor of the crowd forces him to come down. The pattern is perverse. The man whose presidency is rooted in his ability to inspire withholds that inspiration when it is most needed.