Filed under: Capitalism, Domestic Policy, Economy, Election 2012, Energy, Junk Science, Liberalism | Tags: Inadequate Investigation, Solyndra Bankruptcy, Squandering Taxpayer Money
And these voices are from some of the members of the media most in the tank for Obama. Experienced investors were even more dubious.
Filed under: Capitalism, Democrat Corruption, Domestic Policy, Economy, Energy, Taxes, The United States | Tags: Mitt Romney, Bain Capital's Record, Obama's Failed Investments
The Obama Campaign, noted for its brilliance, oddly seems to want to have a debate about which of the two candidates is more qualified to run the world’s largest economy. Obama’s economic policies vs.Mitt Romney’s Bain Capital? Um, you might want to rethink that.
Obama has made it clear that he really doesn’t understand the concept of profit. Liberals are often taught that profit is a bad thing that the rich sometimes do to line their disgusting pockets and pay for their yachts.
It is obvious that the administration is a little unclear about just how jobs are created. Today’s dismal jobs report makes that very obvious. Three and a half years later is really too late to keep blaming George W. Bush. At what point does the economy become Obama’s? When the recession is over? That happened in June of 2009, officially, from the agency that makes those decisions.
The Obama team does understand hiring, and have done a lot of it, creating new government departments and issuing new regulations; but they miss the detail about who pays for what. Government jobs are just another bill for the taxpayers to pay. From the president on down to the lowliest janitor, taxpayers pay their salaries and benefits. Government has no money of its own, a fact that liberals forget until they need more revenue, at which point they expect taxpayers to pony up without complaint funds which, when received, will become ‘government money.’
Bain Capital buys failing companies that they hope to revive, with private money from themselves and from investors. They look at the books carefully before they invest, and determine what is needed— money, better management, eliminating a sector that is losing money, a new business plan — and consider what they can successfully provide. If the business still fails, Bain and their investors will lose money, and have a harder time raising investment money the next time. Not every business can be made to succeed, but under Mitt Romney more than 70 percent of their businesses did succeed, many dramatically so. It’s a very good record.
The Obama Administration has picked businesses to fulfill their ideological interest in green energy. They have listened to promoters’ talk of capacity and potential, and had the benefit of having supporters or campaign bundlers in charge or as investors so there were some familiar faces.
They did not ‘invest” their own money, but invested billions of taxpayer funds in speculative businesses that had no track record nor no evidence of expertise or professionalism. When one of those businesses goes bankrupt, it is just another total loss for the taxpayers. The administration’s goals are policy driven — intended to fulfill green ideology, not return on investment driven. We’re still looking for one clean energy success. Just one.
Mitt Romney showed up at Solyndra’s empty building to make the point that when the administration invested in Solyndra, it wasn’t the administration that lost money, it was the taxpayers. The Obama campaign is trying to claim that Romney’s policies in Massachusetts were an economic failure because during his tenure, Massachusetts unemployment rate was 4.7%. Um, 5% unemployment is usually considered full employment.
Obama has big problems arising from his inexperience. He has made universally bad bets. Attempting to invest in “green” energy in spite of the abundant evidence from Spain and other European countries is folly. You would need extensive investigation from trained professionals in the technology and business prospects. Making investments with politically connected business ventures has led to charges of corruption and cronyism. The largest bets went to friends and contributors to Mr. Obama. The biggest losses went to the taxpayers.
Filed under: Capitalism, Economy, Election 2012, Politics, Taxes, The United States | Tags: Fear Of The Future, Fist Quarter Revised Downward, Unemployment Up
The economic news is all bad. First quarter economic growth has been revised downward to 1.9% growth, which is downright anemic. Now the preliminary May jobs report shows the unemployment rate (U3) rising to 8.2 with only 69,000 new jobs. All momentum is gone. This is the third subpar tally, with downward revisions for the two prior months.
The U6 unemployment rate which tracks the marginally employed or completely discouraged — increased to 14.8% from 14.5%. Labor earnings are almost, but not quite, keeping in line with the growth in inflation.
Obama doesn’t seem to understand that businesses create jobs. If businesses don’t make profits and expand, they don’t create jobs — yet here is Obama out on the campaign trail criticizing Mitt Romney for making profits.
Well, today, faced with such dismal news, Obama hopped on Air Force One, at your expense, to fly to Minneapolis for “official business” at an event at a Honeywell factory in a Minneapolis suburb (which excuses putting the trip on the taxpayer bill. That there just happen to be six fundraisers on the schedule is just a coincidence. At the first, the president will address a group of 100 guests ($5,000 a plate), followed by two small roundtables of deep-pocket supporters ($40,000 a plate) and ($50,000 a person).
Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan noted that businesses are holding back on investing for the future because, “In short, there is a fear of the future.”Tax Armageddon still awaits us on January 1. and a new survey shows that uncertainty in the tax code is causing businesses to sit on the sidelines. Most financial officers, according to the tax firm Alvarez & Marsal Taxand, rate eliminating uncertainty in the tax code as their top issue. “Confidence in knowing precisely what the tax code will require has become more important than how much it will cost them.” They are operating in holding patterns.
President Obama has been notably silent on the prospect of keeping the United States from heading over a fiscal cliff. Speaker John Boehner has announced that the House will vote in July to prevent tax rates from rising. The Senate should so the same. There is time for Washington to take action, but the fiscal cliff is not all that far away. Where is the Corporate tax reform? Ours is still the highest in the world. And, unsurprisingly, corporate profits rose at the slowest pace in more than three years.
The White House has fallen once again back on its old theme (foregone briefly yesterday) it’s all George W. Bush’s fault. Nearly four years and the man cannot take responsibility for anything slightly negative, and makes up everything slightly positive out of whole cloth.
I wish I believed that the president was deeply concerned about the economy because of the misery it is causing the American people, but I don’t. It’s all about the election.
Filed under: Domestic Policy, Economy, Progressivism, Capitalism, Election 2012 | Tags: The Minimum Wage, Income From Gratuities, Waiters and Waitresses
In an election year, one of the big problems is that everyone wants to do nice things for their voters. They want to appeal to the heart. But your government does not love you, much as they try to make you think they do. They love getting re-elected. Case in point: Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA) has introduced the Rebuild America Act. (Good names make it harder to vote against). Among other things, the Iowa Democrat wants to raise the minimum wage by 220% for employees who receive tip income, such as waiters and waitresses. Huh?
Seems like only yesterday, Congress was railing about waiters and waitresses not paying taxes on their tip income. Fact: the federal minimum wage for employees who earn tip income is $2.13 an hour. The Labor Department permits this lower minimum wage so long as the employee earns at least the full federal minimum wage of $7.25 when tips are included. If tips fall short of that amount, employers kick in the rest. According to Census Bureau data, the average hourly wage for a restaurant employee earning tip income is $11.82. Top earners can collect $24 an hour or more. It pays to be a nice waiter or waitress.
The difference between the two minimum wages is called the “tip credit.” It is a political acknowledgment of the single-digit profit margins in tipped industries, and of the income supplement that gratuities provide.
Economic studies show no relationship between a boost in restaurant employee base wages and their take-home compensation. A study that examined 20 years of Census Bureau data found that each time the mandatory state wage for tipped employees rose by 10%, hours worked fell by 5%.
Economists William Even and David Macpherson analyzed Sen. Harkin’s bill, and they estimate that the combined loss of hours would translate to the loss of 447,000 jobs. There are always consequences. Table-service restaurants have experimented with computer terminals tat allow customers to order and pay at the table. When a server is only carrying food to the table, restaurant jobs won’t be as lucrative.
Progressive politics is simple. Just make the employer pay more. The law of unintended consequences always applies. But if Sen. Harkin’s bill doesn’t pass, restaurant employees in Iowa will know (maybe) that he tried, which is the point.
Filed under: Domestic Policy, Energy | Tags: Big Investment, No Jobs Yet, The Fisker Karma
Fisker Automotive announced today that the company’s revenue for the first quarter of 2012 has exceeded $100 million, and funding for the company has exceeded $1 billion. Pretty good for a company that has only one product, pretty, but questionable. In the last six months they have sold 1,ooo cars since starting deliveries last December.
That would add up to about five-and-a half cars sold a day. That’s really good for a car that retails for over $100,000. Fisker said they would make 15,000 Karmas in 2012. The recalled battery packs either are replaced or will be soon.
Fisker also announced earlier this year, the Atlantic, a less expensive model that is also extremely sexy looking. Very good looking cars, very expensive price. President Obama has invested $200 million in the company which they have already received. they also received federal funds to help purchase a closed General Motors plant in Delaware, Vice President Biden’s home state, where they said they would one day employ 2,000 auto workers to assemble the clean burning gas-electric car called the Atlantic. However they may never make cars in the U.S.
The Karma is a hybrid sports sedan that it assembles in Finland, and the company says it has started to sell in Europe and could soon be on sale in the Middle East. Rich oil sheiks should really like this one. Fisker appears, however, to be preparing for the day when they will no longer get government monies —”then obviously we are in a place where other options are open to us and have to be considered from a business perspective.” Well, yes, I can’t imagine a Romney administration continuing to plunk down taxpayer money for sexy playthings for the 1%.
The electric car is a puzzle that has not been solved. The GM Volt and the Nissan Leaf have fared poorly in the marketplace. For the electric car to be more than a plaything for very rich environmentalists, it has to succeed in the mass market.
The cars themselves are technology marvels; the availability of charging infrastructure can be extended as long as government is willing to foot the bill. Good looks and supposed environmental purity may be appealing to first time buyers. BUT. Electric car batteries are extremely expensive — they can account fo one third of the cost of the car — and they depreciate fast. New buyers may not pay much attention to the resale value, but for the mainstream market it’s important.
Lots of attention has gone to the roll-out of charging stations, but little attention has gone to investment in the smart-grid technology that would assure that the grid would support mass charging. If 5% of cars in LA County were to plug in at the same time, that could place a 750 megawatt load on California’s already strained grid — equal to two midsize power plants. There is no evidence that electric cars will have the slightest effect on CO2 in the atmosphere, and using our own abundant oil resources should bring the price of gasoline down significantly.
Engineers have said that they have investigated every element in the periodic table of elements, and that battery technology will require some breakthrough that is as yet completely unknown. Electric cars look very different and have all sorts of bells and whistles, but they don’t go significantly farther on a charge than the 1898 Roberts electric car which went a solid 40 miles on a single charge.
Filed under: Art, History, The United States | Tags: Barack Obama and Michelle, George W. Bush and Laura, The Official Portraits
Today, the Obamas invited President George W. Bush and Laura Bush to the White House for the unveiling of the official presidential portraits. The ceremony was warm and friendly, more so on the video, which is here, than in the transcript, which is here. You will enjoy watching the video. George W. is charming, funny, and very gracious. I really miss that man.
The photos of the portraits below, are cropped, but you can get an idea. Mrs. Bush’s portrait is full length, and from the pictures, her dress may have been navy blue, or black, or possibly something else. The portraits are skilled, and it was charming of Mrs. Bush to thank the artist and mention his family.
These ceremonies are always more awkward when the portraits are of a previous president of a different party who you’ve just been blaming for everything for three years. But they mind their manners and do it nicely. Jonathan Horn at Ricochet dug up the speech that President Bush gave when unveiling the portraits of the Clintons. It’s short, but gracious, and a model to follow.
These portraits will be there for the ages, barring some awful incident, and Michelle has promised to save George W’s portrait, as Dolley Madison saved the other George W.’s.
Filed under: Foreign Policy, History, The United States | Tags: Poland, Presidential Medal of Freedom, White House Gaffe
America’s highest civilian award is the Presidential Medal of Freedom. In the ceremony last Tuesday, while presenting World War II Polish resistance hero Jan Karski with a posthumous medal, President Obama made a reference to” Polish death camps.” It was Jan Karski who brought evidence of the existence of Nazi Death Camps to America.
You can’t go stumbling along in foreign relations without an understanding of history. Europeans have long memories, and Poland was a Nazi-occupied country, and a great many Poles were executed at Auschwitz and Birkenau. The presence of the Nazi concentration camps in Poland was a deep affront. To suggest that the camps were Polish when awarding a medal, posthumously, to a resistance hero is more than tasteless. To assign the task — not of apologizing — but of saying oh, the President just misspoke, is a greater insult.
But then Obama is the one who notified the Poles with a midnight phone call on September 17, 2009, the 70th anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Poland, that we were pulling the plug on our missile defense base they had stuck out their necks to host.
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk responded: “I am certain that our American friends are capable of a more explicit reaction than issuing a correction and the spokesperson of the White House expressing regret. When someone says “Polish death camps,” it’s as if there was no Hitler. That is why our Polish sensitivity in these situations is so much more than just simply a feeling of national pride.”
Embarrassing incidents can be smoothed with a real apology.
ADDENDUM:Lo and behold. “The issue hasn’t gone away just because he wants it to,” and, as Jim Treacher at the Daily Caller reports, “in an undoubtedly ego-bruising development, he’s been forced to publicly apologize.” The Hill reported:
President Obama has penned a letter of apology expressing “regret” over using the phrase “Polish death camps” in a ceremony earlier this week, which has drawn heavy criticism from Polish officials.
“In referring to ‘a Polish death camp’ rather than ‘a Nazi death camp in German-occupied Poland,’ I inadvertently used a phrase that has caused many Poles anguish over the years and that Poland has rightly campaigned to eliminate from public discourse around the world,” Obama wrote in a letter released by the Polish government. “I regret the error and agree that this moment is an opportunity to ensure that this and future generations know the truth.”
Why do people move? Packing up all your stuff and moving to a new location is not an easy task, and it’s not fun. Trust me, I’ve done it a lot. It’s one thing if you decide you can finally afford your dream house, and quite another when you downsize.
But think of the boundless courage that sent the Pilgrims across months of the North Atlantic in a leaky ship, or even the Puritans, a little later, in the Winthrop fleet. Taking all your earthly possessions and leaving everything you have known to strike out for the completely unknown is something else entirely. Americans continued to up and move — across mountains, looking for better farmland. They pushed into what is now Tennessee and Pennsylvania. And consider those who embarked on wagon trains to cross an unknown Indian territory bound for an unknown Oregon.
Fast forward to today. California, the ‘Golden State’ has, in the last two decades, lost four million more people than have come to California from other places. Lots of reasons. High taxes, if you don’t own a big chunk of Google or Apple, your chance of owning a home in the Bay Area is close to nil. Environmental extremism, with a goofy cap-and-trade law resulting in skyrocketing energy costs drives out jobs and business. Jerry Brown believes that green jobs will replace vanishing industry.
New York’s high taxes have made the Empire State a place to flee. In the past ten years, it has suffered an exodus of some 3.4 million New Yorkers, nearly a million more people than those who escaped East Germany for West Germany or West Berlin from 1949 to 1961 — an exodus that led the Communists to construct the Berlin Wall in 1961.
The outflow hasn’t stopped. New York State’s income loss for the state is $45.6 billion, according to the Tax Foundation. There is still plenty of immigration from abroad. It’s not surprising that most refugees have headed for sunny, income-tax free Florida. New Yorkers who leave an estate of more than 1 million get hit with a state death tax reaching 16%.
Governor Andrew Cuomo admits the problem, but hasn’t threatened New York’s status as “tax capital of the nation” with any substantive reforms.
I don’t know why it is so hard to understand, but people who live in high tax states are moving to states with no income tax. States with high energy costs and high taxes are losing businesses to low tax states with reasonable regulation. Some of the folks who are moving are the hated rich, and they seem to be rich because they run their businesses — which they are also moving — efficiently, and find it more profitable to do business in states where taxes are low, energy costs are low, and the states are preferably right-to-work.
Oddly enough, most of the states with a business-friendly climate seem to be run by Republican governors who go for balanced budgets and low taxes. Must be a coincidence.
Filed under: Democrat Corruption, Energy, Environment, National Security, Politics | Tags: "Beyond Natural Gas", American Energy Abundance, Greens Target Fossil Fuels
America has undergone a monumental change, and the major media are just waking up to it. The administration has apparently not heard. America is awash in fossil fuels. We have lots. All that bit about being dependent on foreign oil — nevermind. America has a boom in shale natural gas, and even Fortune magazine admitted it in a cover story.
So, naturally, as night follows day, the Sierra Club has announced a new battle plan called “Beyond Natural Gas.” This is a companion piece to “Beyond Coal,” in which the Sierra Club has been lobbying for rules to force the shutdown of America’s coal-fired power plants, the closure of coal mines, an end to the use of coal — which supplies just a little less than half the electricity in the country.
The theme was previously that coal was dirty, disgusting, dangerous, and we should rely instead on clean natural gas. Now that they have the closure of coal-fired power plants well underway, they are turning to eliminating natural gas. Sierra Club executive director Michael Brune announced their goal this month.”We’re going to be preventing new gas plants from being built wherever we can.” They have rolled out a new website that says:
The natural gas industry is dirty, dangerous and running amok. The closer we look at natural gas, the dirtier it appears, and the less of it we burn, the better off we will be.
Sounds vaguely familiar. But this is no idle threat. The Sierra Club has deep pockets, with 1.4 million members, generous funding from liberal foundations, and the knowledge of just how to work the media and the politicians. The lobby has successfully helped to block new nuclear plants for more than 30 years, the “Beyond Oil” campaign helped to keep much of America off-limits to oil drilling, and its “Beyond Coal” campaign has all but shut down new coal plants, and is working on shutting down the old ones.
The Sierra Club was once a modest affair, founded by John Muir in 1892, to “make the mountains glad.”It is the oldest and arguably the most powerful environmental group in the nation. But it is no longer my father’s Sierra Club. It used to offer summer horse packing trips into the high Sierra, featured Ansell Adams’ beautiful photographs of Yosemite, and grew into photography books, animal books and all those nice things that make us love nature — that we can put on our coffee tables to show how ecologically with it we are. It has grown into a radical environmentalist organization of 1.4 million members with leadership positions held by activists with radical ties. It has managed to maintain a “mainstream” image, but its goals are hardly mainstream.
The radicalism of radical environmentalism is way out there, and makes little sense. They essentially oppose modern civilization, and all its peoples. They are attempting to shut down the power plants that power the wind farms and solar arrays that they, for now, favor. How long will wind energy be acceptable when Congress offer special waivers to the wind farms for the eagles they chop up? The green energy bubble is bursting everywhere. The Energy Tribune notes:
The EU’s ideologically-driven Energy Road Map prioritized ‘green’ renewable energy, diverting away from Russian natural gas dependency and harmonizing energy and environmental needs. The result: a devastatingly inept screw up that threatens continent-wide power outages even, as Die Welt recently reported, in Germany as early as next winter.
In short order, EU energy policies have created an unsustainable, publicly-subsidized, market-skewing ‘green’ energy bubble, eschewed a cheap fossil fuels policy and realistic alternatives to Russian gas imports. Together those failed policies have resulted in the double double-whammy of soaring of energy prices and, as is now being reported, diminishing European industrial competitiveness.
The Sierra Club gets no awards for consistency. They were all for natural gas when the price was $8 or more per million BTUs and the supply seemed to be limited. But gas prices have fallen to $2.50, and natural gas may come to dominate U.S. energy production. Wind and solar and biofuel power may never be competitive. If the subsidies are removed, there will be no profit in wind and solar anyway. It’s ordinary people who will benefit if there is a plentiful supply of cheap natural gas. It will benefit industry and the economy, and there are somewhere around 600,000 jobs in the natural gas industry alone, not to mention the jobs provided by a thriving economy fueled by cheap, abundant energy from natural gas and coal.
Filed under: Education, Environment, Heartwarming | Tags: Baby Animals, Raising Babies of Rare Species, Zoo Borns
A Bison calf was born in Chicago at the Brookfield Zoo on May 16. the first birth of this species since the early 1970s. Feisty little girl. Zoo Borns is a great website for moments when you are tense, or down. Who can look at baby animals and not relax.
And there are so many species that I’ve never heard of. Great website to share with the kids. Zoos all over the world are cooperating in an effort to save endangered species.
Filed under: Capitalism, Democrat Corruption, Economy, Election 2012, Energy, Politics | Tags: Campaign 2012, Chicago Style Graft, Solyndra & Friends
Filed under: Capitalism, Democrat Corruption, Economy, Election 2012, Politics | Tags: Excess Regulation, Excess Uncertainty, Sluggish Job-Growth
Recovery? What recovery? In almost every speech, President Obama proudly claims that he inherited the worst recession since the Great Depression. He has added new jobs each month, and while we need to do more, we are heading in the right direction.
According to the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis which tracks economic performance for each recovery, compares the growth of gross domestic product for each recovery, and job growth for each recovery; there have been 11 recessions and 11 recoveries over the past 60 years. This recovery is near the bottom of all 11.
Average normal job growth is 6.5%. Cumulative non-farm job growth is just 1.9% 34 months into the ‘recovery.’ Cumulative growth of GDP is just 6.8% 11 quarters into this ‘recovery.’ The average is 15.2%, and GDP growth is the worst of all 11 recessions.
The administration has tried every Keynesian method for achieving economic growth to no avail. The recovery remains one of the worst since World War II. The problem lies with the way the “stimulus” was carried out, the uncertainty of a looming tax Armageddon, the anti business rhetoric, and the piles of new regulation. This is, I believe, the first President that has ever run for office opposing capitalism and the free market.
The monetary policy of the Federal Reserve has resulted in extraordinarily low interest rates — almost zero for the past three years. In a normal world, low interest rates wold lead to increased borrowing by individuals and businesses — increasing economic activity. What it has done instead is to help the government to borrow more cheaply, the big banks to recapitalize quickly, and homeowners to refinance at low rates.
The uncertainty concerning ObamaCare and what it will do to business and individuals, higher taxes on business combined with anti-business rhetoric from the administration, and the constant threat from EPA actions has discouraged the kind of borrowing and lending that low rated usually encourage. The low interest rates have meant historically low yields on savings, and encouraged riskier investments.
The president’s fiscal policy has increased expenditures by about $700 billion per year since 2008. The increased spending has had a temporary stimulating effect, but has resulted in an increase in the national debt of over $5 trillion. Where has all the spending gone? The money for the most part, was badly spent. Billions went to reward government employees, and the auto unions. More billions went to training programs that don’t work, (the government has 49 job training programs administered by nine agencies — all ineffective), extended unemployment insurance that reduces the incentive to find work. That which was directed to infrastructure was mostly wasted because those “shovel-ready” jobs weren’t shovel ready.
In Obama’s first three years, 105 major federal regulations have added more than $46 billion per year in new costs for Americans. 32 new major regulations in 2011 increased regulatory costs by another $10 billion annually with an additional $6.5 billion in one-time implementation costs.
The mindset that says that innovation, growth,and job creation come from government; and that the economy will perform better if government tells people what to do; is a real problem. It’s not just the hubris that assumes that they know better, nor the contempt they have for the American people. It is that they simply do not understand who Americans are.
We are a courageous people who picked up our lives and went forth to an unknown country in the hopes of more freedom and a burning desire for a better life. That’s true for the first immigrants, and the most recent. Those who were lacking in courage or content with things the way they were stayed put.
Those who didn’t find what they dreamed of on the East coast picked up and struck out for the West. Americans don’t need a lot of regulation, they don’t need to be told what to do, and they just want government to get out of their hair, and leave them alone to innovate, create, to try, fail, and succeed.
