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, 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: 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.
Filed under: Capitalism, Democrat Corruption, Economy, Election 2012, Politics | Tags: He Can't Stop, President Obama's Whopper, The Spending Binge
“Since I’ve been President, federal spending has risen at the lowest pace in nearly sixty years. Think about that. This other side, I don’t know how they’ve been bamboozling folks into thinking that they’re the responsible fiscally disciplined party. They run up these wild debts , and then when we take over we’ve gotta clean it up.”
The President of the United States actually said that. Is this what Valerie Jarrett advised? Is he so unfamiliar with the real numbers that he thinks he can get away with such a whopper? Did he read the Rex Nutting of MarketWatch attempt to portray the president as being downright stingy “Obama Spending Binge Never Happened?” and being unfamiliar with what the numbers actually were — believed it?
Right at the beginning of Obama’s term in office, Rahm Emanuel, his chief of staff, set up a daily economics briefing with his Council of Economic Advisers. We have been told that Obama found it boring and shortly eliminated the meeting. He clearly believes in the part of Keynesian economics that says to pump money into the economy to promote growth, because he is endlessly trying to stimulate the dead economy with more jolts of taxpayer money. Unfortunately, Keynesian stimulus has no record of success.
Mr Nutting uses a typical D.C. trick, often used by Congress. He speaks of annualized growth of federal spending. The trick is — where’s the starting point? Is it zero, or is it just the previous number? You have perhaps heard the frequent plaintive cry from Republicans about zero-based budgeting. Let’s say the Orwell Agency’s budget last year was 1 billion. Congress wants to give them another 20 million. Instead of correctly indicating that the agency budget is now $1 billion, 20 million, they speak of the “annualized growth of the agency is $20 million, That much smaller number sounds ever so much better. That’s the trick Rex Nutting is using.
Obama was inaugurated on January 20, 2009. Usually, the previous president will have signed a budget for the coming year into law around the end of the fiscal year. However, in 2008, Congress refused to pass the budget while George W. Bush was still in office (he might have vetoed?) and they sent to budget to Obama when he took office, and he signed it. But Mr. Nutting gives the whole 2009 budget to George W. Bush. It has TARP, the Auto Bailout, the Stimulus, Cars for Clunkers all Obama’s spending in it, but it doesn’t count under Mr. Nutting’s analysis. Then that number becomes the new base from which Obama’s spending is counted.
Until Barack Obama took office in 2009, the United States had never spent more than 23.5% of GDP, with the exception of the World War II years of 1942-1946. Here’s Obama’s spending record.
— 25.2% of GDP in 2009
— 24.1% of GDP in 2010
— 24.1% of GDP in 2011
—24.3% of GDP (estimates by White House) in 2012
If Obama wins another term spending, according to his own budget would never drop below 22.3% of GDP. He established 2009 as the “new baseline,” and turned a one-off surge in spending due to the Great Recession into the new normal through 2016 and beyond.
Or to put it differently — From the Treasury Department — spending per day: President Reagan– $2.5 Billion. President Clinton–$4.1 Billion. President Bush–$6.8 Billion. President Obama– $9.7 Billion.
President Barack Obama is spinning a fable. His record on the economy is dreadful. He has spent more than all the previous presidents put together, and he is fully responsible for that.
Filed under: Capitalism, Economy, Election 2012, Politics | Tags: Anything to Distract, Hypocrisy, Lily Ledbetter?
About the “War on Women” — “A group of Democratic female senators on Wednesday declared war on the so-called ‘gender pay gap’”, and urged their colleagues to pass the Paycheck Fairness Act when Congress returns from recess next month. But it turns out that there is a substantial gender pay gap in their own offices according to a Washington Free Beacon analysis of Senate salary data.
Of the five senators in the Wednesday press conference: Barbara Mikulski (D-MD), Patty Murray (D-WA), Debbie Stabenow (D-MI), Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and Barbara Boxer (D-CA) — three pay their female staff members significantly less than male staffers.
Patty Murray, “who has repeatedly accused Republicans of waging a “war on women” is one of the worst offenders. Female members of Murray’s staff made about $21,000 less per year than male staffers in 2011, a difference of 35.2 percent” — way more than the the 23 percent Democrats claim as a nationwide difference.
The other offenders were Feinstein and Boxer. Of the 50 members of the Senate Democratic caucus, 37 senators paid their female staffers less than male staffers. Women working for Senate Democrats in 2011 pulled in an average salary of $60,877. Men made about $6.500 more.
Golly darn, that just makes their “War on Women” even sillier, doesn’t it.
Filed under: Election 2012, Humor, Politics, Progressivism | Tags: campaign ad, Caption Contest, Obama, Straw Men
I decided it’d be brilliant to mock Obama’s incessant use of straw men in the form of a campaign ad; unfortunately the brilliant punchline escapes me. So, I turn to our brilliant readers.
Ideally, I’d love to mock an actual Obama quote, campaign slogan, or soundbite — like this one — but it doesn’t have to; blurt out whatever comes to mind! It’s a brainstorm, not a test.
The best caption will win absolutely nothing of course — except credit, thanks, and a tiny modicum of eternal glory!
Have at it in the comments!…
Addendum: Someone on Twitter asked me what I meant by ‘straw men’. Good question! A ‘straw man’ is a type of fallacious argument that Obama uses very frequently. A ‘straw man’ argument misrepresents or outright lies about an opponent’s position (setting up the straw man), so that the person (Obama in this case) can easily knock it down. (Here’s the Wiki explanation).
Example: “My opponents want to make the poor and needy fend for themselves, but I think we can do better! My plan would make it possible for everyone to get affordable health care.” Obama sets up his straw man (a blatant lie about the Republican position), so that he can knock the straw man down. He does it virtually every day.
My only thoughts for captions so far were: “My opponents say…” (with Obama’s signature and the two pictured straw men). Or simply: ‘Setting ‘em up & knocking ‘em down”.
Hope that helps!
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Filed under: Capitalism, Democrat Corruption, Economy, Election 2012, Health Care, Law, Politics | Tags: Chief Justice John Roberts, Senator Pat Leahy, Threats to the Supreme Court
The Obama administration has just signed a deal with Public Relations firm Porter Novelli to promote ObamaCare. The Democrats were just sure that everybody would love it once it passed and they “found out what’s in it.” The people did find out what’s in it, and want no part of it. So naturally we must be made to change our minds. It’s an election year, and another $20 million should buy some more votes for Obama.
According to the news accounts, the multimedia campaign is a way to educate the public about how to stay healthy and prevent illnesses. No thank you. A HHS official told Roll Call that the PR effort is meant “to inform the American people about the many preventive benefits now available …as a result of the Affordable Care Act.
Wasted effort. The administration has been trying to sell it to the public relentlessly since the day it was passed. HHS pushed Congress to quadruple its public affairs budget. HHS spent $1.4 million for an online search ad campaign designed to drive traffic to the ObamaCare website.
More than two-thirds of the public, including half of the Democrats surveyed — want the Supreme Court to kill at least the individual mandate, according to a recent IBD/TIPP poll.
The bill is a disaster. It was written with a complete lack of understanding of the American people. Americans don’t much believe in their lives being run by experts in Washington. We don’t believe in their experts, nor do we believe that they are experts. We’re an independent lot. We want to talk over our own health concerns with our own doctor. We don’t believe that our doctor should be told what treatment we can have by some faceless know-nothing bureaucrat in Washington.
Obama has been sending messages to the Supreme Court to let them know that it is not acceptable for them to rule ObamaCare unconstitutional. After all, it’s an election year. The left is trying to intimidate the Supreme Court.
Senate Judiciary Chairman Pat Leahy recently took the extraordinary step of publicly lobbying the Chief Justice after oral argument but before its ruling. “I trust that he will be a Chief Justice for all of us and that he has a strong institutional sense of the proper role of the judicial branch” the far left Democrat declared on the Senate floor. “The conservative activism of recent years has not been good for the Court.” The Senator does not seem to have a strong institutional sense of the proper role of a senator in regard to the Supreme Court.
He added that “Given the ideological challenge to the Affordable Care Act and the extensive, supportive precedent, it would be extraordinary for the Supreme Court not to defer to Congress in this matter that so clearly affects interstate commerce.” That one doesn’t pass the laugh test. How embarrassing, and how disgusting that a Chairman of the Justice Committee should forget his place and the fact that the Supreme Court is an equal branch, not subject to the partisan bullying of an old-time liberal hack.
They are threatening John Roberts with being portrayed a radical who wants to repeal the New Deal and a century of precedent. Such attacks on the court and the Chief Justice are really appalling.
Filed under: Capitalism, Democrat Corruption, Economy, Election 2012, Politics, Progressivism, Taxes | Tags: Chairman Paul Ryan, Former Chrm. Austan Goolsbee, Fox News Sunday
I don’t know if you watch Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace. I cannot embed the video, but you can watch it here. The debate was between former Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers for President Obama,Austan Goolsbee, and Chairman of the House Budget Committee Paul Ryan. Paul Ryan mops the floor with Goolsbee.
Goolsbee demonstrates why the economy is still in the doldrums. It’s a pretty clear demonstration of how far apart the two sides are. If you believe in Keynesian stimulus, wasting taxpayer money on government bets on improbable energy companies invariably run by Obama bundlers or buddies, then you will find nothing untoward with Mr. Goolsbee’s claims. I would tell a kid of mine to avoid his classes. If you enjoy political confrontation, this is great fun.
Filed under: Capitalism, Democrat Corruption, Economy, Election 2012, Humor, Politics | Tags: Anything to Distract, Obama's Dismal Record, The War on Women
(h/t: Maggie’s Farm)
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Filed under: Conservatism, Election 2012, Politics | Tags: Keystone, Mitt Romney, Obamacare
