Filed under: Democrat Corruption, Foreign Policy, Intelligence, Iraq, Israel, National Security, Progressivism | Tags: London Terrorist Murder, National Defense University, Stockholm Riots
An off-duty British soldier has been butchered on a busy London street by two Islamist terrorists, the first terrorist murder on the British mainland since the 7/7 suicide bombings of 2005. The British-born Muslim convert calmly spoke to a witness’s video phone.
We swear by almighty Allah we will never stop fighting you until you leave us alone. Your people will never be safe. The only reason we have done this is because Muslims are dying by British soldiers every day.We must fight them as they fight us. An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. I apologize that women had to witness this today but in our lands our women have to see the same. You people will never be safe. Remover your government, they don’t care about you. Do you think David Cameron is going to get caught in the street when we start busting our guns? Do you think your politicians are going to die? No, it’s going to be the average guy like you, and your children. So get rid of them. Tell them to bring our troops back so we, so you can all live in peace.”
Witnesses said the men first ran over the soldier with a car, just yards from the Royal Barracks. Then they set about him with meat cleavers and knives. He was slashed, and eviscerated and beheaded, shouting Allahu Akbar, as horrified passers-by watched.
Here, Christiane Amanpour and Wolf Blitzer wondered why David Cameron and the British government immediately blamed the incident as terrorism.
In Sweden, “unrest” in Stockholm’s suburbs continued for a fourth night as rioters showed their anger by setting fire to as many as 30 cars and buildings, and throwing stones at emergency workers. Another 11 cars were set on fire in Husby, an area of high-rise apartment blocks. Unemployment rates for immigrants from countries outside the EU are nearly three times as high as for ethnic Swedes.
Well, we just had the Boston bombing, which they also had trouble calling terrorism. A bunch of left-leaning media types were hoping out loud that it would turn out to be a “white American” rather than a Muslim extremist. NPR’s Diana Temple-Raston speculated on air that it was likely right-wing extremists behind the bombing because it was Hitler’s birthday that week, and “Hitler’s birthday is ‘big’ for the right.” And today we have learned that a man shot by an FBI agent in Orlando implicated himself and the older Tsarnaev brother in a gruesome 2011 triple murder.
We had considerable difficulty getting anyone to call the incident in Benghazi an “act of terror”, or “terrorism.” Comes right from the top.
President Obama spoke earlier today at the National Defense University, at Fort McNair, in his most droning, lecturing voice. When we were attacked on 9/11, we were shaken out of complacency. “This was a different kind of war. …A group of terrorists came to kill as many civilians as they could:”
And so our nation went to war. We have now been at war for well over a decade. I won’t review the full history. What’s clear is that we quickly drove al Qaeda out of Afghanistan, but then shifted our focus and began a new war in Iraq. This carried grave consequences for our fight against al Qaeda, our standing in the world, and – to this day – our interests in a vital region.
For this president, the only reason for war was revenge against Osama bin Laden and his top deputies. Obama got bin Laden and has done in most of his staff, and ended Bush’s War in Iraq, brought 150,000 troops home, (and because of his mismanagement, never achieved a status of forces agreement, and an ill-prepared Iraq in now falling apart.) “We pursued a new strategy in Afghanistan and increased our training of Afghan forces.” (Hamstringing our forces with the politically-correct idea that we should show our “trust” by having our forces unarmed. This has resulted in a death-toll under Obama that is twice as high as any under Bush). “For over the last decade our nation has spent well over a trillion dollars on war, exploding our deficits and constraining our ability to nation build here at home.” (This from the president who has spent a trillion dollars every year of his administration so far, mostly wasted). He went into a big defense of his drone policy, which is mostly making undeclared war on nations with whom we are supposedly not at war. His defensive comments indicate that he is aware of the opposition from other nations.
Barack Obama does not get terrorism.He is the Not-Bush, everything Bush did was deplorable and he is sure the world hates us for the luxury seaside resort detention center at Guantanamo. He cannot get his mind around the difference between terrorists who have no legal standing under the Geneva Conventions and ordinary criminals.
It was a lecturing, arrogant, defensive speech full of the usual straw men. He’s clearly threatened by all the scandals flowing around the White House. They are bad. Obama’s disregard for the Constitution and its provisions, contempt for the separation of powers, and unfamiliarity with good management and American tradition have led him to believe that he can approach governing America with Chicago-style politics. It would be a bad idea at any time, but in an economy weakened by Chicago-style economics, it has led to trouble. His overblown confidence in his own ideology is proving no more effective in the nation’s capitol than it is in the failing states run by Democratic administrations, like Illinois.
Filed under: Democrat Corruption, Election 2012, Media Bias, Politics, Progressivism, Taxes, The Constitution | Tags: "The Progressive Influence", A Government Beset, Internal Revenue Service
Once a scandal emerges, more people feel free to talk, or want to proclaim themselves on the correct side of the controversy. The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) gets to handle all the financial information of citizens and businesses who pay taxes because they don’t give out information to anyone, whether government official, press, or private citizen. Apparently the IRS office that handles applications for tax-exempt status has felt free to release the applications and tax returns of citizens, organizations, and businesses that do not hew to the reigning party line freely.
The progressive-leaning investigative journalism group ProPublica says the Internal Revenue Service office that targeted and harassed conservative groups during the 2012 election cycle gave them nine confidential applications of conservative groups whose tax-exempt status was pending. The initial spin was that the perpetrators were low-level people in some back office in Cincinnati. It seems that groups that seemed to be associated with the Tea Party, patriotism, the Constitution, the Declaration, were pro-Israel, expressed any opposition to the Federal Government, the National Debt, the Budget Deficit.
ProPublica, undoubtedly on the advice of attorneys, wants to get out ahead of the scandal and admit that they received, and made public information from applications or returns, assuming that they were newsworthy. Oddly, they did not target any groups with the word “progressive” or who received millions from the Sandler Foundation or George Soros” Open Society Foundations. ProPublica was initially given millions from the Sandler Foundation to “strengthen the progressive infrastructure” meaning very liberal. The group has won two Pulitzers for their investigative reporting — attacks on oil companies, the health care industry, opposition to fracking, and coal, of course:
Throw in a couple of investigations making the military look bad and another about prisoners at Guantanamo Bay and you have almost the perfect journalism fantasy— a huge budget, lots of major media partners and a liberal agenda unconstrained by advertising.
ProPublica is not the only Soros-funded organization stacked with members of the supposedly neutral press. There’s the Center for Public Integrity, which received $651,650 from the Open Society Institute in 2009 alone. The Center for Investigative Reporting (CIN) which received close to $1 million from Open Society from 2003-2008. They lean to stories on climate change, illegal immigration and the evils of corporations.
We are constantly told that journalists are neutral, and it isn’t true. They bemoan the influence of money in politics, yet make no mention of the influence of money in journalism. They need be more up front about their connections, their funding and who sits on their boards. There is a reason why they are losing money, losing subscribers and losing advertising.
And trust for the IRS is gone. Everybody lawyer up. Obama seems unconcerned. He does not take this seriously, any of this. He has never felt, as far as I can tell, that the words he says particularly matter. What he says today doesn’t necessarily stand. He might say something different tomorrow. Whether it’s because he doesn’t think you will remember, or that he doesn’t think you’ll care, I don’t know. He got a full four Pinocchio’s from the Washington Post for his claim that he identified the Benghazi attack at the time as a terrorist attack.
All these scandals are inflating into vast bubbles, and the more you find out, the more questions there are.
Filed under: Democrat Corruption, Foreign Policy, National Security, Politics, Progressivism, The United States | Tags: A Question of Character, Ansar al Sharia Attack, Benghazi Libya
Why were so many who wanted to go to the aid of our people under attack in Benghazi told to “Stand down?” Who gave those orders? Excuses, there are plenty of excuses. We didn’t have enough information. There wasn’t time. We didn’t have the right assets. it was too far. We didn’t know who was attacking. We needed more information. We couldn’t put more people at risk. Rescuers couldn’t have reached them in time. Who knew that the attack would go on so long. Woods and Doherty had been told to stand down. We thought it was just a protest that would die out. How were we to know when the attack started — how long it would go on?
We didn’t know. That’s not the point. The point is that we didn’t even try.
Filed under: Democrat Corruption, Middle East, Politics, Progressivism, Terrorism | Tags: Benghazi Libya, Pay No Attention, Terrorist Attack On America
Filed under: Capitalism, Domestic Policy, Health Care, News the Media Doesn't Want You to Hear, Progressivism, Taxes | Tags: Obama's False Claims, Obamacare, Unaffordable and Unworkable
On March 23, 2010, President Barack Obama signed into law what he billed as a triumphant reform of America’s health care system. Two days later in a speech at the University of Iowa, the president declared:
From this day forward, all of the cynics, all the naysayers — they’re going to have to confront the reality of what this reform is and what it isn’t. … They’ll see that if Americans like their doctor, they’ll be keeping their doctor. You like your plan? You’ll be keeping your plan. No one is taking that away from you. … It wasn’t Armageddon.”
“If you already have insurance, this reform will make it more secure and more affordable. … Costs will come down for families, and businesses, and the federal government, reducing our deficit by more than $1 trillion over the next two decades. That’s what reform is going to do.”
Last week. President Obama responding to Max Baucus’ comment that ObamaCare was a looming “train wreck,” He claimed it’s all much ado about nothing. “A huge chunk of it’s already been implemented.”
Well, no. All that’s been implemented so far are a mandate to cover children up to the age of 26, and a more generous Medicare drug benefit. Democrats have put off the bulk of the law — the massive market regulations, the government-run exchanges, the mandates to buy coverage and all sorts of taxes and fees — until 2014, both to hide the true cost and to keep the public ignorant before the 2014 election. Polls have shown that well over 40% of the public don’t know anything about ObamaCare. They probably think it’s free health care.
“For the 85% to 90% of Americans who already have health insurance…they don’t have to worry about anything else“
The Congressional Budget Office expects 7 million workers to lose their employer coverage because of ObamaCare, and perhaps as many as 20 million. Small businesses now offering coverage face huge rate hikes because of ObamaCare’s regulations and benefit mandates.
“The other stuff’s been implemented and it’s working fine. We’re going to be able to drive down costs…and that will save the country money as a whole over the long term.”
The high risk pools have been a disaster, attracting only a third as many people as predicted while costing far more than was budgeted. HHS had to issue more than 1,200 waivers to companies who said the laws initial insurance market rules would have forced them to cancel coverage for millions of workers. The small business tax credit has also been a bust. Obama’s own number crunchers say ObamaCare will force national health care spending up by at least 7.4% in 2014, and add billions more cost in the next decade.
It was built on lies in the first place, but the reality is turning out to be far worse than even its detractors believed. Seven to twenty million workers will lose their jobs or their jobs will become part-time — less than 30 hours a week. And the cost of their health care will go up dramatically, while they have less money to pay for it. Forced onto Medicaid? There aren’t enough doctors to go around.
Filed under: Capitalism, Economy, Freedom, Health Care, Law, Progressivism | Tags: Celebrate Achievement and Risk-Taking, Progressive Economic Policies, Supply Side Economics
Over the past five years we have been engaged in a test of progressive economic policies. The media happily tell us that we are recovering and offer up the 165,000 payroll jobs that were created in April. This is the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) Establishment Survey, or the U-3 unemployment report which showed the rate declining by 0.1 percent to 7.5 percent. So that sounds good.
The Household Survey numbers looks a little deeper into the economy, and that’s where it gets a little more uncomfortable. Also known as the U-6 rate the unemployment figures increased by 0.1 percent. While total employment rose by 293,000 during April, part-time jobs increased by 441,000, meaning that full-time jobs actually declined by 148,000. The April jobs numbers describe a mass replacement of full-time workers with part-time workers, and a drop in the length of the average workweek. Which means that the BLS report was bad news, not the happy day portrayed by the media. And the results of the roll out of ObamaCare are as expected, as more full-time employees are reduced to part-time hours.
But wait, it gets even worse. During April, the Full Time Equivalent jobs ratio fell for the fifth month in a row, and to statistics-watchers this hints of a new recession.
Progressive economic policies involve Keynesian fiscal stimulus (intentionally increasing government spending to boost domestic “demand”), monetary stimulus (deliberate action to weaken the dollar in order to increase demand for our exports), higher marginal tax rates on “the rich” (they can afford it), and increased regulation to control more of just about everything. They have also expanded alternatives to actually working, including Social Security Disability, Food Stamps, and extended unemployment benefits.
What you get with progressive economic policies is pessimism. America is just in decline, not going to get better, everything is changed, we need to be more like every other country and stop thinking we’re something special. No exceptionalism here.
Supply-side economics has specific steps as well. Tight monetary policy, a strong dollar, incentive cuts in marginal tax rates, and a reassertion of American optimism and creativity with confidence in what government policies will be.
Jared Bernstein, who was Vice President Joe Biden’s economic adviser, wrote in the New York Times about the slowly improving job market (?) that persists in spite of ‘an economic expansion continuing since mid-2009.’
For decades in postwar America, the maintenance of full employment, defined as an unemployment rate below 5 percent, was enshrined in law, beginning with the Employment Act of 1946 and revisited in 1978 in the Humphrey-Hawkins Act. It was a central goal of the Democratic Party, labor unions and advocates of social and racial justice.
And it usually worked. While conservatives and businesses pushed back — tight labor markets meant more worker bargaining power, higher wages and less profitability — between 1949 and 1979 the market was at full employment over two-thirds of the time.
I’m not an economist, but Mr. Bernstein’s nostrums don’t pass my common sense smell test. The problem is those darn ATMs that are replacing bank clerks (?), our large trade deficits have exported too much demand (I thought trade was by definition always in balance. If we sell them too many apples, we get the money), the sequester, which he calls “austerity”and the “economic version of medieval leeching.” (can’t cut back on the increase in the budget from last year?), and the Federal Reserve continues to apply high doses of monetary stimulus (which is why the stock market is doing well). We need more investment in “the areas where clean energy intersects with production.”And we need a new subsidized jobs program. (The WPA returns). The Great Recession continues to imitate the Great Depression.
I have no confidence in progressive economic policies. They didn’t work for FDR, and they have not worked for Obama, nor are they going to. It’s scary to start a new business, and you need, at the most basic, confidence in what the government will do next, and the belief that government is on your side — encouraging start-ups . A country that celebrates achievement and risk-taking is likely to see more economic success than one that does not.
History shows that the money that individuals and businesses invest and spend, if left alone to do so generates far more wealth and new jobs than any government-directed spending. The most successful cities and states dedicate their resources to creating the kind of conditions that attract private investment, rather than pouring public money into centrally planned visions of economic development.
………………………………….Brian C. Anderson: City Journal
Filed under: Capitalism, Economy, Energy, Health Care, History, Immigration, Progressivism, Statism | Tags: 12 Million Missing Jobs, 63.3% Participation Rate, Regulatory Burden on Business
The preliminary April jobs number has come in at +165,000, on expectations of +140,000. March numbers were revised upward from 88,000 to 138,000. This brought the unemployment rate down from 7.6% to 7.5%.
The number of unemployed — 11.7 million — didn’t change over the month, and the labor participation rate remains flat, only 63.3% — the lowest since 1979. This is the sour spot in the jobs picture.
The rate at which entrepreneurs create new jobs is down significantly. The U.S,lost 8.8 million jobs during the ‘great recession’, we have gained back about 6.8 million leaving a gap of about 2 million. Even if job gains average 180,000 a month to reach a high in about a year, private sector jobs will still be way below the 1990-2007 trend line. That shortfall is nearly 12 million missing jobs.
The numbers of those involuntarily employed part-time increased by 278,000 to 7.9 million. That’s a direct result of ObamaCare. President Obama’s health care reform law is hurting full-time, high-wage employment.
National Journal expresses concern about the “missing workers”:
So, who are these “missing workers?” Frustratingly, no one knows exactly who they are, why they left, and if they’ll ever return. The size of the pool there and the gap between the potential labor force and the actual working force represents a huge loss of potential productivity.
The answers also have deep political and policy implications over the next decade for the economic and budget outlook: Do we want to pay for the missing workers through programs that help to spur job growth, or through an increased cost in federal benefits?…
Political leaders and policymakers must weigh the economic implications versus the budgetary ones. If no one attacks the jobs crisis with gusto and addresses the issue of the long-term unemployed and the missing workers now, the United States essentially consigns people to rely on government benefits. That will only hurt the budget.
And, if lawmakers decide to attack the problem of the missing workers now, they’ll need to spend more money on job-training programs or infrastructure projects—anything that puts people back into a job, even a temporary one.
Regulatory costs skyrocketed during the first term of the Obama Administration, which added nearly $70 billion to the already excessive annual burden of government do’s and don’ts. Every aspect of American’s lives is controlled to a varying extent by regulation, including how we light our homes, wash our clothes, fuel our cars, feed our families, and obtain our health care.
That’s 131 new major regulations. $1,800 has been added to the average cost of buying a new car. In 2012 alone, we added $23.5 billion to the burden on business with 25 new major rulemakings. Only two rules last year decreased the burden, in spite of initiatives to weed out unnecessary regulations. There are hundreds of rules in the pipeline from Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform and from ObamaCare.
The small business organizations have told us over and over that uncertainty is the villain. Nobody knows what the government is going to do next, or how they are going to cope with the added costs, and the added regulations. The federal government does not understand the effects of their grasp for power. The EPA is the source of most of the regulation and most of the cost, yet they have said specifically that they have no need to consider the cost or effect of their rulemaking. When uncertainty is this high, entrepreneurs and venture capitalists are more reluctant to take on the risk of a new business, or a major expansion.
The National Journal reporter above quite accurately portrays the leftist response. What new program should government issue? What new job-training programs should we try— if I remember correctly there are some 45 job-training programs duplicating each other and managing to be totally ineffective. What the government needs to do is get out of the way. Stop raising fees, issuing rules and regulations and drastically raising the cost of doing business.
Central planning does not work now, nor has it ever worked. Those “experts” doing the central planning are not expert but just the same old political hacks. They don’t know what they are doing, and they are making a mess of things. Just stop!
Filed under: Politics, Domestic Policy, Economy, Democrat Corruption, Progressivism, Statism | Tags: High Speed Rail System, States in Drastic Decline, Odin's Mythological Horse Sleipner
If these deadbeat states are expecting the rest of the nation’s taxpayers to bail our the stupidity of their governments, they are going to be out of luck. California, dead broke and utterly unable to stop themselves from digging their hole even more deeply, cannot release its grip on the fantasy of a high speed railroad running from San Francisco to Los Angeles. They’re already in it for millions, nobody wants it, nobody would ride it, and unless they build new track all the way, it won’t be high speed.
Illinois, casting about for “good ideas,” has fixated on a super-fast, super-clean, super-cheap locomotive that has not yet been invented. The sight of California slowly sinking in the West does not deter them. The Federal Railroad Administration has placed Illinois in charge of buying 35 new “next generation” locomotives to serve the to-be-built-someday high-speed rail lines in Illinois, Michigan, Missouri, California and Washington, even though the locomotives do not exist.
“Currently these are not being manufactured,” said Joe Schacter, high-speed rail point man for the Illinois Department of Transportation. “We are fully confident that such a locomotive can be manufactured and will be manufactured.”
Illinois has $175 million to spend. $5 million per locomotive. “It may end up being more expensive, Schacter added.The $175 million comes from federal grants, but Illinois will end-up owning the high-speed trains when they are delivered. Kristina Rasmussen of the Illinois Policy Institute said that should worry anyone who knows anything about Illinois and its current fiscal state.( $9 billion in unpaid bills). If anything, they should be selling off assets.
Both the Republican governors of Ohio and Wisconsin have opted out of wasting any more taxpayer money on high speed rail boondoggles. The Obama administration announced they would take those dollars and give them to California, where even Democrat legislators have dubbed the project a Super Train to Nowhere. Some have compared it to chasing Unicorns. I prefer another mythological beast from the Norse Eddas: Odin’s horse Sleipner.
This portrait of Odin’s stallion — “the best horse among gods and men:”— is attributed to John Bauer, 1911. You will notice that he has eight legs, and a rather remarkable mane. Like Obama’s high-speed rail network, entirely mythological.
Filed under: Politics, Domestic Policy, Economy, Socialism, Democrat Corruption, Progressivism, Law, The United States | Tags: Government Cronyism, Reparations for All, The Left's Racial Guilt
Back in 1997 class-action lawsuit Pigford v. Glickman was filed by Timothy Pigford and 400 southern black farmers who apparently had legitimate claims of discrimination against the U.S.Department of Agriculture (USDA) in its allocation of farm loans between 1983 and 1987. For farmers, the cost of planting is high — seed, fertilizer, equipment — and they may need loans to tide them over till harvest.
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) and the Department of Agriculture found no evidence of ongoing discrimination but that black farmers had been treated unfairly in the past. This injustice became the reasoning for an officially sanctioned fraud amounting to reparations for non-white, non-male farmers.
The Clinton administration decided on a $1 billion settlement that , as one lawyer told the Times “was more a political decision than a litigation decision.”The presiding judge expanded the definition of claimants to include anyone who had “attempted to farm” and no written complaint or proof of discrimination was necessary. The judge set up a mechanism to provide “those class members with little or no documentary evidence with a virtually automatic cash payment of $50,000.”
Enter the money tree. Mass meetings of potential claimants were held and staff from lawyers’ offices filled out forms for claimants. Entire families filled out claims; people filled out claims for their kids. Planting tomatoes in the back yard would qualify you as a farmer. Most applicants had never received any loans, making it impossible to check the record to verify their claims.
The Times examined 16 ZIP codes in Alabama, Arkansas, Mississippi, and North Carolina, and found that “the number of successful claimants exceeded the total number of farms operated by people of any race in 1997, the year the lawsuit was filed. Those applicants received nearly $100 million.” In Little Rock, ten members of one extended family reaped a cool half a million dollars.
Thousands of applicants missed the 1999 deadline for the original lawsuit. Senator Barack Obama supported paying the late applicants, and as president he successfully sought another $1.15 billion for the purpose. “Political appointees at Justice and Agriculture committed $1.33 billion to compensate not just the original 91 plaintiffs, but thousands of Hispanic and female farmers who had never claimed bias in court.” The government settled for another $760 million with Native Americans, but even with the lure of the cash, they could only give away $300 million. So $400 million will go to Native American nonprofits if they can find any. The plaintiffs’ lawyers get $60 million for their assistance in squandering taxpayer money.
The deal, according to the Times, was fashioned in White House meetings in spite of vehement objections of career lawyers and agency officials who argued that there was no credible evidence of widespread discrimination, and the basic plan —proved to be a magnet for fraud.
The deal resulted from a desire to redress what the government and the judge agreed was a painful legacy of bias against African-Americans by the Agriculture Department. The Times showed that it became a runaway train driven by racial politics and pressure from influential members of Congress and law firms that stood to gain more than $130 million in fees. More than 90,000 people have filed claims, more claimants than farms.
Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, whose only connection to agriculture is that he was a former governor of Iowa, a farm state, said the compensation effort ushers in “a new chapter of civil rights at U.S.D.A.” where “we celebrate diversity instead of discriminate against it.” Gaack.
At the time of his premature death, the great Andrew Breitbart had been delving into the Pigford settlement for more than a year, trying to bring attention to this open-ended government redistribution scheme that showed no signs of ending. A handful of conservative outlets devoted small amounts of effort to mentioning it, but in Breitbart’s lifetime it never broke through to widespread attention. Perhaps that will change with the publication of the New York Times well reported 5,000 word piece on Pigford. The case represented everything Andrew Breitbart hated. — cronyism, identity politics, hypocrisy and complete indifference from the mainstream media.
The epic New York Times Pigford exposé is here. If you ever wondered about government corruption, cronyism, hypocrisy and redistribution of assets, here is your evidence. Over at Breitbart’s Big Government, Joel Pollak has a note on how widely disseminated it is.
Filed under: Democrat Corruption, Education, Health Care, Progressivism | Tags: Big Government Excess, Federal Parenting, Food and Drug Administration
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has decided that 15 year-old girls can purchase the “morning-after” pill over-the-counter without a prescription or without the knowledge of their parents. They remain not old enough to drive, not old enough to decide what they want for lunch, not old enough to get an aspirin for a headache, not old enough to go on a school field trip without an official signed permission slip from their parents, but the “morning after” pill — no problem. Go figure.
The so-called Sexual Revolution has a lot to answer for.
Filed under: Capitalism, Democrat Corruption, Economy, Freedom, Law, Politics, Progressivism | Tags: Economic Policy Uncertainty Index, Killing Growth With Interference, Regulation and Uncertainty
“Unexpectedly” U.S. economic growth expanded in the first quarter at the sluggish annual rate of 2.5 percent, the Commerce Department said on Friday, missing economists’ forecast of a 3.2 percent growth rate. The fourth quarter nearly stalled at 0.4 percent. This is all before the sequester went into effect.
The recession (“the worst recession since the Great Depression”) officially ended in June, 2009. The stock market is soaring, hitting record levels, the rich are getting richer — and the poor are getting poorer. What’s happening? Why is there no recovery? Economies, the results of millions of transactions in a free market, like to recover. When an economy is thrown off track by some major error — in this case the housing debacle — once the downturn stops going down it usually recovers fairly swiftly. So what’s going wrong?
Many small businesses and companies are in good shape and have money to spend, but they are not pumping capital back into the economy. In today’s Wall Street Journal Bill McNabb, chairman and CEO of the Vanguard Group says:
Quite simply, if firms can’t see a clear road to economic recovery ahead, they’re not going to hire and they’re not going to spend. It’s what economists call a “deadweight loss”—loss caused by inefficiency.
Today, there is uncertainty about regulatory policy, uncertainty about monetary policy, uncertainty about foreign policy and, most significantly, uncertainty about U.S. fiscal policy and the national debt. Until a sensible plan is created to address the debt, America will not fulfill its economic potential.
I’m certainly not an economist, but I’ve noticed that every time there is a positive move by the administration or Congress that should encourage growth, the administration is either issuing major new regulations, attacking an industry, raising some tax, raising the cost of energy. To be at lest partly fair, I don’t think the administration understands the consequences of many of their actions.
When the administration forces coal-fired power plants out of business, it raises the cost of electricity. Low cost electricity powers our economy. Increased prices affect everything. Approve the Keystone pipeline. Don’t raise taxes until the economy recovers, not even little taxes. Stop playing sequester games. Back off. You’re taking in more revenue than ever before.
Concern about the national debt, and about excessive spending, are heightened by the president’s refusal to consider any reduction in spending and his demand for more taxes. The President is creating the uncertainty himself, that is holding the economy back.
The economists who measure uncertainty point out that both parties blame each other, and each sees the other position as false.
- Republicans are blaming the President and Congressional Democrats for creating regulatory uncertainty and introducing harmful regulations.
- They further accuse the Democrats of failing to face up to the main long-term drivers of rising debt and press for the reform of social security, Medicare, Medicaid and other social insurance programs.
- Democrats, in turn, accuse Republicans of obstructionism, political brinksmanship and an obsessive focus on tax and spending cuts.
- They fault Republicans for a lack of meaningful detail on their healthcare reform proposals, and for failing to embrace a mix of both spending cuts and tax hikes in order to respond to US fiscal imbalances. ( click to enlarge)
It doesn’t have to be this way. This isn’t some mysterious economic trick. Knock off the regulation. You have enough regulation to govern every action for the next century. It’s just a compulsion to tell other people what to do, and you don’t know enough about running a business to tell anyone what to do. Just leave them alone. They do know how to run their businesses, and how to grow.
Filed under: Democrat Corruption, Global Warming, Junk Science, Media Bias, Progressivism, The Constitution | Tags: Not Exactly Peace in Our Time, Republicans v. Democrats, The Real Battle
The extreme differences between the thinking of Liberals and that of Conservatives is an endlessly distasteful obsession of mine. If you read some of the early fulminations in the media upon the election of Barack Obama, it’s clear that he was widely regarded as someone who would bring the two warring camps in Washington together. Bipartisanship. Bringing people together — peace in our time.
It was only talk. Liberals want to do away with Conservatives, not get along with them. Their hatred for Conservatives is palpable — because we disagree. They don’t just want to defeat us in elections, they want us unable to compete at all. Liberals are apt to approach subjects emotionally, to turn to those who agree with them and reject those who don’t. They say silly things about the right because their understanding comes from what their friends say — they have no direct experience of conservatives. Haven’t you noticed that they all say the same thing at the same time?
For example, Liberals want to raise the minimum wage. They feel deeply for the poor, and think it is just plain mean to expect someone to support a family on the minimum wage at $7 an hour. The minimum wage is meant to be a starting point for beginners, not families. Studies show when it is raised too much, businesses are unwilling to pay people while they are trained to perform the most minimum tasks adequately. Increasing the minimum wage eliminates the first step on the ladder of lifetime employment. Liberals are not interested in studies.
What got me started on this was a video on the Boston Herald site. A female reporter was interviewing the photographer who took the iconic photographs of the immediate aftermath of the Boston marathon bombing. She showed a photo, full screen, and asked the reporter “How did you feel when you took that picture?” Stark photos of the first-responders in among the wounded and the debris. Then she’d show another and ask “How did you feel when you took this one?” Repeat, over and over. [ I have worked with lots of photographers, I can tell you that the one thing he was totally unaware of was his "feelings." He was concerned with getting a good shot, representing the horror going on, catching the rush to help, the faces, the bodies, the wounds, the lighting, the design.] I knew Liberals thought of emotion first, but really!
Here is an important example of the liberal mindset, with three articles that make the problem clear:
— From Slate:the liberal view of global warming, Fox News, and the narrow right-wing wackos for whom Fox is their only news source.
— From the Washington Times: David Deming, a geophysicist and professor at the University of Oklahoma, explains the science.
— From the Weekly Standard: Steven Hayward, indispensable intellectual, professor, explains the rise and fall of the Climate Circus, how it happened, and why it matters.
Do read all three, they’re not long and they are keepers — that explain the confusion about the whole global warming issue. Global Warming is not just an emotional issue for Liberals, it is about as close as you can get — to a true religion. The left on the one hand talks about progress and how to fix everything that is wrong with the world today. On the other hand, their solutions are the same old failed progressive ideas that have been handed down from Wilson, Roosevelt, Johnson, Clinton to Obama. Their ideas have never worked, but they are sure that this time it will be different.
Liberals are perpetually discontented. They are sure that if they can just fix the things that so annoy them, change the bad things, they will arrive at some happy Utopia — or at least a better place. They admit to no underlying principles. They would like to have some, but they just can’t figure out what they are.
On the right, you find conservatives consistently talking about principles, facts, studies, freedom and free markets and how those principles apply to the problems of the day. The Constitution is revered by conservatives as the document devised by the people, who grant limited powers to the government that exists at their pleasure. It is a simple document that states general principles and doesn’t pretend to address all the problems of a country. At 226 years of age, it is the longest serving constitution in the world, and has served us well, and most Americans take pride in it.
Conservatives are more apt to recognize ordinary human nature as rather messy and not fixable. Perhaps what makes conservatives different from liberals is that they paid attention when their mothers told them that “life isn’t fair. You just have to do the best you can.” Liberals kept whining about stuff not being fair, and are convinced that if you just trust their expertise,
they will fix it.
