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Post by philunderwood on Aug 8, 2011 6:22:14 GMT -5
That Darn George Bush!
Here's an opinion piece by Chuck Green who writes "Greener Pastures" for the Denver Post Aurora Sentinel...one of the more liberal papers in the country. Additionally, Mr. Green is a life long Democrat...so this is rather a stunning piece...
Obama is victim of Bush's failed promises Greener Pastures Column -- 5/ 15/10
Barack Obama is setting a record-setting number of records during his first term in office:
Largest budget ever. Largest deficit ever. Largest number of broken promises ever. Most self-serving speeches ever. Largest number of agenda-setting failures ever. Fastest dive in popularity ever.
Wow! Talk about change.
Just one year ago, fresh from his inauguration celebrations, President Obama was flying high. After one of the nation's most inspiring political campaigns, the election of America 's first black president had captured the hopes and dreams of millions. To his devout followers, it was inconceivable that a year later his administration would be gripped in self-imposed crisis.
Of course, they don't see it as self-imposed. It's all George Bush's fault.
George Bush, who doesn't have a vote in congress and who no longer occupies the White House, is to blame for it all.
He broke Obama's promise to put all bills on the White House web site for five days before signing them.
He broke Obama's promise to have the congressional health care negotiations broadcast live on C-SPAN.
He broke Obama's promise to end earmarks.
He broke Obama's promise to keep unemployment from rising above 8 percent.
He broke Obama's promise to close the detention center at Guantanamo in the first year.
He broke Obama's promise to make peace with direct, no precondition talks with America 's most hate-filled enemies during his first year in office, ushering in a new era of global cooperation.
He broke Obama's promise to end the hiring of former lobbyists into high White House jobs.
He broke Obama's promise to end no-compete contracts with the government.
He broke Obama's promise to disclose the names of all attendees at closed White House meetings.
He broke Obama's promise for a new era of bipartisan cooperation in all matters.
He broke Obama's promise to have chosen a home church to attend Sunday services with his family by Easter of last year.
Yes, it's all George Bush's fault. President Obama is nothing more than a puppet in the never-ending failed Bush administration. If only George Bush wasn't still in charge, all of President Obama's problems would be solved. His promises would have been kept, the economy would be back on track, Iran would have stopped its work on developing a nuclear bomb and would be negotiating a peace treaty with Israel.North Korea would have ended its tyrannical regime, and integrity would have been restored to the federal government.
Oh, and did I mention what it would be like if the Democrats, under the leadership of Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, didn't have the heavy yoke of George Bush around their necks? There would be no ear marks, no closed-door drafting of bills, no increase in deficit spending, no special-interest influence (unions), no vote buying (Nebraska, Louisiana).
If only George Bush wasn't still in charge, we'd have real change by now.
All the broken promises, all the failed legislation and delay (health care reform, immigration reform) is not President Obama's fault or the fault of the Democrat-controlled Congress. It's all George Bush's fault.
Take for example the decision of Eric Holder, the president's attorney general, to hold terrorists' trials in New York City . Or his decision to try the Christmas Day underpants bomber as a civilian.
Two disastrous decisions.
Certainly those were bad judgments based on poor advice from George Bush.
Need more proof?
You might recall that when Scott Brown won the election to the U.S. Senate from Massachusetts , capturing "the Ted Kennedy seat", President Obama said that Brown's victory was the result of the same voter anger that propelled Obama into office in 2008. People were still angry about George Bush and the policies of the past 10 years. And they wanted change.
Yes, according to the president, the voter rebellion inMassachusetts was George Bush's fault.
Therefore, in retaliation, they elected a Republican to the Ted Kennedy seat, ending a half-century of domination by Democrats. It is all George Bush's fault.
Will the failed administration of George Bush ever end, and the time for hope and change ever arrive?
Will President Obama ever accept responsibility for something... - anything?
(Chuck Green is a veteran Colorado journalist and former editor-in-chief of The Denver Post.)
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Post by philunderwood on Aug 9, 2011 8:51:47 GMT -5
S & P downgrades Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae
Published August 8, 2011 | By Bruce McQuain
Following the downgrading of the US sovereign debt, S&P has also downgraded the credit ratings of the two quasi-government agencies, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, to the same level as the US (AA+). The reason given by S&P:
The downgrades of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac reflect their direct reliance on the U.S. government. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were placed into conservatorship in September 2008 and their ability to fund operations relies heavily on the U.S. government. In addition to the implicit support we factor into our ratings, the U.S. Treasury has demonstrated explicit support by providing these entities with capital quarterly, as necessary. The projected cost to bailout Fannie and Freddie through 2020 is estimated to be between $373 billion and $376 billion. The agencies which Barney Frank assured us were in fine financial shape are, in fact, giant money pits. They are indeed reliant upon the US government for their subsidy as is obvious by the future funding that’s being planned for them. It is believed that approximately $291 billion dollars was necessary in 2009 to prop up the two agencies. Of course it is possible that the administration will try to attack this finding by S&P as well. However, the reality is the agency’s downgrade has indeed had an effect, no matter how hard the administration and various Democrats attempt to attack the messenger. Everyone has known at some point it wasn’t a matter of “if” the US debt would be downgraded, but “when”. And all the grousing and griping we’ve seen the last few days, all the attempts at blame-shifting and attack politics don’t change that simple bit of reality. Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae’s downgrade simply puts a cherry on the downgrade sundae. ~McQ
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Post by philunderwood on Aug 10, 2011 7:19:13 GMT -5
Ignorance, Stupidity or Connivance? By Walter Williams www.JewishWorldReview.com | President Barack Obama has called for a luxury tax on corporate jets as a means to generate revenue to fight federal deficits. The president's economic advisers ought to be fired for not telling him that doing so is unwise and counterproductive. They might have already told him so, only to have the president say, "Look, I know you're right, but I'm exploiting the public's envy of the rich!" Let's look at what happened when Obama's predecessor George H.W. Bush signed the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1990 and broke his "read my lips" vow not to agree to new taxes. When Congress imposed a 10 percent luxury tax on yachts, private airplanes and expensive automobiles, Sen. Ted Kennedy and then-Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell crowed publicly about how the rich would finally be paying their fair share of taxes. What actually happened is laid out in a Heartland Institute blog post by Edmund Contoski titled "Economically illiterate Obama, re: Corporate Jets" (7/12/2011). Within eight months after the change in the law took effect, Viking Yachts, the largest U.S. yacht manufacturer, laid off 1,140 of its 1,400 employees and closed one of its two manufacturing plants. Before it was all over, Viking Yachts was down to 68 employees. In the first year, one-third of U.S. yacht-building companies stopped production, and according to a report by the congressional Joint Economic Committee, the industry lost 7,600 jobs. When it was over, 25,000 workers had lost their jobs building yachts, and 75,000 more jobs were lost in companies that supplied yacht parts and material. Ocean Yachts trimmed its workforce from 350 to 50. Egg Harbor Yachts went from 200 employees to five and later filed for bankruptcy. The U.S., which had been a net exporter of yachts, became a net importer as U.S. companies closed. Jobs shifted to companies in Europe and the Bahamas. The U.S. Treasury collected zero revenue from the sales driven overseas. Back then, Congress told us that the luxury tax on boats, aircraft and jewelry would raise $31 million in revenue a year. Instead, the tax destroyed 330 jobs in jewelry manufacturing and 1,470 in the aircraft industry, in addition to the thousands destroyed in the yacht industry. Those job losses cost the government a total of $24.2 million in unemployment benefits and lost income tax revenues. The net effect of the luxury tax was a loss of $7.6 million in fiscal 1991, which means Congress' projection was off by $38.6 million. The Joint Economic Committee concluded that the value of jobs lost in just the first six months of the luxury tax was $159.6 million. Congress repealed the luxury tax in 1993 after realizing it was a job killer and raised little net revenue. Why did congressional dreams of greater revenues turn into a nightmare? Kennedy, Mitchell and their congressional colleagues simply assumed that the rich would act the same after the imposition of the luxury tax as they did before and that the only difference would be more money in the government's coffers. Like most politicians then and now, they had what economists call a zero-elasticity vision of the world, a fancy way of saying they believed that people do not respond to price changes. People always respond to price changes. The only debatable issue is how much and over what period. Here's my question for you: Is it likely that in the two decades since 1990, American human nature has changed? If Congress imposes a luxury tax on corporate jets and other luxury items, will Americans behave differently this time? In other words, can we expect federal tax revenues to rise and unemployment to fall as a result of Obama's tax proposal? I don't believe that Obama is dumb enough to believe that a tax on corporate jets would be a revenue generator. His agenda is to inspire envy and resentment against wealthy Americans as a tool in pursuit of his higher-tax agenda.
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Post by philunderwood on Aug 12, 2011 8:31:31 GMT -5
The failure of of liberal gods By Wesley Pruden www.JewishWorldReview.com | The gods of the liberals — "progressives," as they insist on calling themselves this season — are failing all over the place. Restless natives are rioting in London. Peasants are getting rich selling 90-proof Oolong in Washington. The elites are "unsettled," as elites always are, in a lot of places between. The "progressives" are particularly frightened by Barack Obama's prospects for expanding the debacle he wrought in Washington. They haven't yet come to terms with the fact that it's not just the man, but his fraudulent message. Another speech won't accomplish anything more than another national shrug. "He's a do-gooder at heart," a former official in the Clinton administration and now one of the consultants who make a good living dispensing cheap wisdom and other profundities, tells the London Daily Telegraph. "He thinks everyone has the same agenda to do the right thing, but other people don't have the same agenda. Their agenda is to score points and get their party re-elected. This is the downside of him not being terribly political like Bill Clinton. Bill woke up every day relishing this kind of fight, and Hillary is just a tougher person. The Clinton are much more combative. They're always ready to go to Defcon 1." Defcon 1, as every Washington slinger of insider slang knows, is Pentagon talk for "war is imminent." The terror that dare not speak its name is not yet Barack Obama (the left is getting there), but Jimmy Carter. Mr. Jimmy is the president's mortal twin, the doppelganger the White House tries to keep to shelling peanuts in the basement. The Obama approval ratings, as reckoned by the pollsters, are sinking well into the neighborhood where Mr. Jimmy dwelt for one miserable term. Gallup reckons the Obama number is flirting with the 40-percent mark. Rasmussen posts a similar finding. Gallup finds even scarier signs and omens in its plumbing of sentiments of religious folk. By far the friendliest are the Muslims, who make up only a fragment of the population and who, fairly or not, are the religious folks who frighten everybody. Eighty percent of Muslims think Mr. Obama is doing a good job as president, compared to 65 percent of the Jews, 60 percent of the atheists (who yearn recognition as a sort of religion), 50 percent of the Catholics, 37 percent of the Protestants and 25 percent of the Mormons. Anyone paying proper attention to what's causing Mr. Obama's trouble has concluded that the stuff everyone got drunk on in 2008 was poison moonshine. The portents abound, in the prospects of incumbent mayors, governors and senators. The easy ride is over, and the future of easy riders is dark and bleak. But the land is nevertheless littered with those unable to learn the lessons taught by Experience. Theory, after all, grades on an easier curve. The chattering class is drinking deeply just now of an elixir peddled by Drew Westen, a professor of psychology at Emory University, and author of an op-ed essay in the New York Times suggesting that all the nation needs is better bedtime stories from the president. "The stories our leaders tell us matter, probably almost as much as the stories our parents tell us as children, because they orient us to what is, what could be, and what should be; to the worldviews they hold and to the values they hold sacred . . . Children crave bedtime stories." If only President Obama would let him write the bedtime stories the professor could help the president put the children to sleep happy, contented and oblivious to the harsh vicissitudes of reality. All those unhappy American children want is "a clear, compelling alternative to the dominant narrative of the right. They want to be reassured that the problem was not caused by "tax-and-spend liberalism," as common sense is telling them, but by . . . George W. Bush. This is a familiar pot of mush from a wimp, as Jimmy Carter's malaise was mocked, but it's mush that still finds an appetite on the left. The professor's op-ed has been much e-mailed, whizzing about the Internet at the speed of fright since it first appeared in the New York Times a week ago. A "progressive" just can't understand how anyone so kind, so compassionate, so educated, so tender-hearted, so like himself, could be so misinformed about a man who so many wise and good people drooled over for so long. The humiliation of the "progressives" is the realization that such loathsome folk as Tea Party voters are smarter than they are, and were never fooled by the man.
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Post by Ritty77 on Aug 13, 2011 10:00:33 GMT -5
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Post by philunderwood on Aug 17, 2011 7:47:04 GMT -5
Ominous Parallels By Walter Williams www.JewishWorldReview.com | People are beginning to compare Barack Obama's administration to the failed administration of Jimmy Carter, but a better comparison is to the Roosevelt administration of the 1930s and '40s. Let's look at it with the help of a publication from the Mackinac Center for Public Policy and the Foundation for Economic Education titled "Great Myths of the Great Depression," by Dr. Lawrence Reed. During the first year of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal, he called for increasing federal spending to $10 billion while revenues were only $3 billion. Between 1933 and 1936, government expenditures rose by more than 83 percent. Federal debt skyrocketed by 73 percent. Roosevelt signed off on legislation that raised the top income tax rate to 79 percent and then later to 90 percent. Hillsdale College economics historian and professor Burt Folsom, author of "New Deal or Raw Deal?", notes that in 1941, Roosevelt even proposed a 99.5 percent marginal tax rate on all incomes more than $100,000. When a top adviser questioned the idea, Roosevelt replied, "Why not?" Roosevelt had other ideas for the economy, including the National Recovery Act. Dr. Reed says: "The economic impact of the NRA was immediate and powerful. In the five months leading up to the act's passage, signs of recovery were evident: factory employment and payrolls had increased by 23 and 35 percent, respectively. Then came the NRA, shortening hours of work, raising wages arbitrarily and imposing other new costs on enterprise. In the six months after the law took effect, industrial production dropped 25 percent." Blacks were especially hard hit by the NRA. Black spokesmen and the black press often referred to the NRA as the "Negro Run Around," Negroes Rarely Allowed," "Negroes Ruined Again," "Negroes Robbed Again," "No Roosevelt Again" and the "Negro Removal Act." Fortunately, the courts ruled the NRA unconstitutional. As a result, unemployment fell to 14 percent in 1936 and lower by 1937. Roosevelt had more plans for the economy, namely the National Labor Relations Act, better known as the "Wagner Act." This was a payoff to labor unions, and with these new powers, labor unions went on a militant organizing frenzy that included threats, boycotts, strikes, seizures of plants, widespread violence and other acts that pushed productivity down sharply and unemployment up dramatically. In 1938, Roosevelt's New Deal produced the nation's first depression within a depression. The stock market crashed again, losing nearly 50 percent of its value between August 1937 and March 1938, and unemployment climbed back to 20 percent. Columnist Walter Lippmann wrote in March 1938 that "with almost no important exception every measure (Roosevelt) has been interested in for the past five months has been to reduce or discourage the production of wealth." Roosevelt's agenda was not without its international admirers. The chief Nazi newspaper, Volkischer Beobachter, repeatedly praised "Roosevelt's adoption of National Socialist strains of thought in his economic and social policies" and "the development toward an authoritarian state" based on the "demand that collective good be put before individual self-interest." Roosevelt himself called Benito Mussolini "admirable" and professed that he was "deeply impressed by what he (had) accomplished." FDR's very own treasury secretary, Henry Morgenthau, saw the folly of the New Deal, writing: "We have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work. ... We have never made good on our promises. ... I say after eight years of this Administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started ... and an enormous debt to boot!" The bottom line is that Roosevelt's New Deal policies turned what would have been a three- or four-year sharp downturn into a 16-year affair. The 1930s depression was caused by and aggravated by acts of government, and so was the current financial mess that we're in. Do we want to repeat history by listening to those who created the calamity? That's like calling on an arsonist to help put out a fire.
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